I tried to log in to EFTPS last night to pay my 2023Q4 estimated taxes and was surprised that they’ve revamped their authentication flow.
They now have three options for Multi-Factor Authentication, and I had to pick one and set that up before I could even get to the page to enter my EFTPS credentials.
The first option they have, PIV/CAC is only for federal employees, so that’s not helpful to me.
The next two options for everyone else are login.gov and id.me.
I looked at both options and login.gov seemed easier to set up quickly (and they’re not a private company that collects biometric data), so I’m gonna recommend them.
If you like processes, I took notes on my steps:
1. Visit https://www.eftps.gov/eftps/
2. Click the “MAKE A PAYMENT” button
3. Wait for a new page to load with three login options
4. Click the “LOGIN.GOV” button
5. Wait for the Login.Gov|Treasury page to load
6. Click “create an account”
7. Enter your e-mail address
8. Select English
9. Accept the Rules of Use
10. Click Submit
11. Check your e-mail for a confirmation link
12. Load the URL from the confirmation link
13. Enter a secure password
14. Set up MFA with your preferred methods (app-dependent and out of scope for these instructions)
15. At this point, if you were quick enough, it might take you straight to the EFTPS traditional login page, which still requires your old EFTPS enrollment credentials. If not, head back to the EFTPS page and click MAKE A PAYMENT and use your login.gov credentials and MFA now.
I would strongly recommend setting that all up now, and not waiting until January 16th, as this will be the first tax deadline this system was in place for and we have no idea how well the servers can handle the load.
Until next time, y’all, this is Joe Hills from Nashville, Tennessee.
It’s Tommy time! Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty!
We took a break off last month’s newsletter for PAX Unplugged and the holidays, thanks for being so patient, now let’s catch up on all the latest!
HermitCraft Season 9 draws to a close!
It’s hard to believe that the season is over! Starting back in March of 2022, the server reached a tender age of a year and nine months before ending. Don’t grieve this loss, and don’t rush forward for the next season either! Joe is not quite ready to say goodbye yet, as he’s still got some footage to edit and release throughout the month. You can look forward to that, but until then enjoy the world download!
Deep Field moves to stage 2!
While you enjoy the scale model pinball table from the download, Joe will be continuing to build it in real life! If you want to see it you can watch him do it live during his craft streams. Find out what times Joe plans to be live at joehills.net/soon!
If you’re curious about the materials and tools Joe will be using there is a spreadsheet available here for folks to follow along!
Music video release:
If you like seeing Joe in cool stuff, check him out featured in this music video! It’s definitely a fun watch!
PAX Unplugged panel
Speaking of cool stuff Joe has been featured in, Joe held a panel with fellow Hermit VintageBeef at PAX Unplugged! If you missed the event, you can enjoy the VOD of the panel over here!
HermitCraft TCG
If you enjoyed the PAX Unplugged panel, HermitCraft Season 9, or just like card games in general you can still get some! Booster boxes are still available for pre-orders until January 15th.
If you want a chance to play against other people, you should consider going to Tennessee Game Days! Joe and Quinn will be there, ready to battle any challengers. Do you have what it takes to win?
2023 Q4 Quarterly Meeting
We’ve got the VOD and minutes from the last quarterly meeting of 2023! You can find them on this page here.
Update! The Snow Globe build contest judging day has been moved! The new date is now Saturday, January 27th! The time is to be determined based on judge availability. I’m excited to see what folks build!
DS9 event schedule
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, January 20th, Noon US Central Time.
Winter Snow Globe Build Contest
Saturday, January 27th, 1pm US Central Time.
October Everstorm missing reports
The survivors of October’s Everstorm share these final reports:
Magenta built a lil house on the hill and survived by avoiding the sponges of doom
SuperStone explored the borderland of the Infernal Deep and the Eternal Storm, building riches in the shore of the river that runs through the rock
Moonroses built up spawn, attempted an iron farm that then fancy fixed, and survived a close encounter with a sponge.
Kindalas worked hard to summon the sponge wither without success.
Void almost died to a sponge due to curiosity and then decided to retreat to the safety of an ancient city
MJ mined a bunch of diamonds for the surface dwellers.
fancy didn’t do much but did fix an iron farm
Dotty will never look at a sponge the same way again.
Salem mined a lot and lives in fear of sponges now.
November Everstorm closes
Here are all the obituaries reported for November:
MJ is pretty sure that Husk had a mustache.
Arthr waterbent himself too far into the deep end and got impaled by a waterbending master (drowned).
quilava got blown to bits by a creeper while getting jungle wood for the seaside outpost
Magenta attempted to take on the sky dungeon as it claimed them as its victim
Moonroses perished by the axe of a Big Danger Castle denizen. She never stood a chance even with full gear.
Centuritron’s curiosity killed the fox, but ’twas no satisfaction to bring it back
The survivors of November’s Everstorm share these final reports:
Gritmonger’s curiosity did not kill him, against all odds.
CheftNutmeg was not sure she could really count it as work wise she only managed to get on for about fifteen minutes all month.
December Everstorm opens- and closes!
The Everstorm has come and gone for December already, folks seemed to not enjoy all the mobs that plagued their winter wonderland!
Here are all the obituaries reported for December:
ChefNutmeg logged on, got into a building, lagged out of the building, and died to zombie.
Moon ran into the forest and was never seen again.
Gritmonger was too confident in their ability to fight zombies, and didn’t remember they have always been a noob.
The sole survivor of December’s Everstorm shares this final report:
Centuritron logged on, raided a distant village, planted a potato farm, & forgot to log back in.
January Everstorm opens
This month’s Everstorm comes kitted out with lots of structure generating mods! Here’s a handy list for you!
Check out the mod’s pages linked above if you’re curious about it! It’s all server-side, no need to download anything to play! Just be a Minecraft level patron on Joe’s Patreon and join with the server information posted under Realms and Servers > #everstorm-jan-2024
Toxxic Vault Hunters server
Server Operator ToxxicGlitter is back with a fun new modded server! Using the same seed as the Hermits are using in their current Vault Hunter series, you too can run some vaults! The modpack and server information is available under SMP: Vault Hunters By ToxxicGlitter > #vh-setup, there’s also #vh-setup-help for if you need assistance installing the mods!
Pinball FX Weekly Tournament
November Winners
Week 1: Twilight Zone results are available here and the winner was ButterflyGirlKMC, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to jsparker77!
Week 2: Hurricane results are available here and the winner was JoeHills, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to Laxmi13!
Week 3: World Cup Soccer results are available here and the winner was JoeHills, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to ButterflyGirlKMC!
Week 4: Road Show results are available here and the winner was ButterflyGirlKMC, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to Laxmi13!
The full results are available here, now here’s the November series winners!
Congratulations to ButterflyGirlKMC for taking first, JoeHills for 2nd, jsparker77 for taking 3rd, and Laxmi13 for 4th!
December Winners
Week 1: Cirqus Voltaire results are available here and the winner was jsparker77, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to JoeHills!
Week 2: Tales of the Arabian Nights results are available here and the winner was JoeHills, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to Laxmi13!
Week 3: No Good Gofers results are available here and the winner was JoeHills, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to Laxmi13!
Week 4: Indiana Jones results are available here and the winner was jsparker77, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to JoeHills!
Week 5: Sword of Fury results are available here and the winner was JoeHills, congrats on 1st place! 2nd place goes to jsparker77!
The full results are available here, now here’s the December series winners!
Congratulations to JoeHills for taking first, jsparker77 for 2nd, Laxmi13 for taking 3rd, ButterflyGirlKMC for 4th, and Mr. Hardluck for 5th!
January Series
Here are the tables you can expect for January’s series!
Week 1: Whirlwind
Week 2: The Machine: Bride of Pinbot
Week 3: Space Station
Week 4: Funhouse
Vault Hunters
Even though Joe will be releasing his last episodes of HermitCraft season 9 this month, you can still enjoy the Hermits in their Vault Hunters series! Check out Joe’s playlist over here.
HermitCraft 9 Videos
Before the last of season 9 gets uploaded, make sure you’re up to date on all of Joe’s episodes! Here’s the HermitCraft 9 episodes playlist!
Streams
Upcoming Streams
If you’re looking for a place to find out when Joe is streaming, have I got the answer for you! You can see a calendar of all Joe’s upcoming streams over at this page over here!
Notable streams playlists
Crafts stream fans can enjoy all the latest arts and crafts VODs over at this playlist!
Wow that was a lot of updating and formatting and editing! As always, if you spot an error of any kind please let me know under Joe Hills Meta > #feedback-newsletter. Thank you, and Happy New Year!
This has been TommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty.
VintageBeef, Creo, and the Hermits have been working for the last few weeks to figure out how to get y’all more cards so you can build your HermitCraft TCG decks for head-to-head play, so I’m excited to finally be able to share details about the upcoming second printing of the HermitCraft TCG booster boxes!
Here’s the details:
The pre-order window for the second printing will run from December 15th–January 15th.
There is no cap on the number of pre-orders we can print, so if you’re desperate to expand your collection, skip the scalpers and order from the source!
The second printing boxes will be the same price as the first printing ($50 USD), but will also include an additional pack of item cards to help y’all assemble playable decks easier.
Cards will now include rarity indicators printed on them to help players following certain deck-building rulesets to determine if their decks are tournament-compliant.
The second printing will fix an error with the common FalseSymmetry card, so if you have a first-printing copy of that, hold onto it!
Other than those two changes, there won’t be any changes to the art from the first printing.
The Hermits won’t be signing any 2nd printing cards before they’re packaged, but I hope you’ll consider meeting up with us at gaming conventions and card shop events so we can sign some in person for you!
I’ve just gotten settled with my TCG cards and markers at PAX Unplugged’s FreePlay table 49E, between the E3 and E8 pillars. Stop by until 1pm if you’d like to trade cards, play HermitCraft TCG, take a photo with me, or get something signed.
It’s Tommy time! Community Liaison ThatTommyBoii reporting for newsletter duty!
I hope you’ve had a good month, and that November goes even better for you. Let’s see what’s in the news!
PAX Unplugged panel
I wanted to remind folks that Joe will be doing a panel with fellow Hermit VintageBeef at Pax Unplugged on December 3rd! They’ll be talking about the HermitCraft TCG so if you’re interested you can buy the Sunday badge to check out their 2:30pm panel in the Mothman Theatre (Grand Ballroom A).
Or you can attend the whole convention! Tickets are still on sale on their website here, we’d love to see you there! Yes, that was a “we”! I’ll also be in attendance, I’m so excited to meet more of the awesome people that make up our community!
If you’re unable to attend but would still like to see the panel, it will be livestreamed on this twitch channel.
HermitCraft TCG update
To everyone who purchased the HermitCraft TCG from Creo, thank you so much! There has been an update from the company about the status of shipping the cards! You can take a look at the full notes over here on Reddit.
The main takeaway to share from Creo is the following: “Our revised target is to have everything in the mail by the week of Nov 6th. “
2023 Q4 Quarterly Meeting
A reminder to folks, our next quarterly meeting is on Saturday, November 18th at 1pm US Central time. I will see folks there and as always stream it to my twitch channel for folks to watch it live. The VOD and meeting minutes will also be made available for folks at a later date and time.
Folks are encouraged to submit any agenda item requests to the Joe Hills Meta > #next-quarter-new-business-agenda-requests channel.
With October coming to a close our Haunted Mansion build contest has ended! There were some really great builds from our community, I hope everyone had a great time!
If you want to see the unbelievable skills you can check out this VOD!
Winter Snow Globe Build Contest
This contest will be launching on November 18th during petitions, so if you want to be in the know of the snow, be sure to attend!
A quick summary of this contest is that folks will be making snow globes in marked plots. It will be an ongoing contest until Saturday, January 20th at 1pm US Central time. I’m sure when the rest of the details are released they’ll be very… cool!
DS9 event schedule
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, November 18th, Noon US Central Time.
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, December 9th, Noon US Central Time.
DS9 Petitions
Saturday, January 20th, Noon US Central Time.
Winter Snow Globe Build Contest
Saturday, January 20th, 1pm US Central Time.
October Everstorm closes
Here are all the obituaries reported for October:
Grit died like he always does on Everstorm, panicking and afraid.
May died as she lived, among piglin and feeling like her heart was leaping out of it’s chest.
eclogues was chased by skeletons into a hole, where a zombie ate what little brains he had
Arthr was too distracted by the prospect of a wolf friend to notice the creeper intersecting with them
Centuritron got in a bit over their head looking for diamonds, and suffered a fall due to Warden related injuries.
quilavabucket fell into a larger, less friendly bucket of lava while contemplating spooky mods
ruffboi was killed by a baby zombie who somehow managed to escape their zombie farm
No survivor’s posts yet for October’s Everstorm!
November Everstorm opens
This month Everstorm is getting a little more hands on! The only details I have to share are that pvp will be enabled and the server will be running the bending mod. Fans of Avatar the Last Airbender and/or Legend of Korra will enjoy this month for sure! Though I wonder what else is changed?
New Toxxic server
If you missed it, server operator ToxxicGlitter was creative lead on a creative server to test out the new building mod Axiom! It was really cool but now we’re getting ready to shut it down and bring you The New Hotness, a Vault Hunters server!
We don’t have an official launch date yet, as Iskall needs to first release the modpack and then Joe needs to spin up the server as per Toxxic’s instructions. I can tell you that it will be up within the first half of November, it will be modeled closely after the Hermit’s configuration, and will even use the same seed!
The end date is also not yet selected, but we guarantee the server will be up until the end of February 2024. A date will be finalized by the 1st of February, so have fun hunting vaults when you still can!
Pinball FX Weekly Tournament
After some discussion with some top pinball players, Joe has decided to wrap up the half year series early in favor of a monthly series! This will work similarly to the half year series, but instead of the best 15 standings counting to the final placings, we’ll be using the scores of the 4-5 tournaments per month.
Before we get to the weekly results, here’s the final winners with the full results available here!
Congratulations to ToxxicGlitter for taking first, Joe Hills for 2nd, ButterFlyGirlKMC for taking 3rd, Laxmi13 for 4th, and jsParker for 5th!
October Winners
Week 14: Star Trek: The Next Generation results are available here and the winner was ToxxicGlitter!
Week 15: Monster Bash results are available here and the winner was ToxxicGlitter!
Week 16: Creature from the Black Lagoon results are available here and the winner was Mr. Hardluck!
Week 17: Addams Family results are available here and the winner was Joe Hills!
Congrats to our winners for their awesome pinball skills! Here’s what you can expect to play during November!
November Series
Week 1: Twilight Zone
Week 2: Hurricane
Week 3: World Cup Soccer
Week 4: Road Show
Who will be our first winner? Only time will tell!
Vault Hunters
I’m sure folks have noticed the new modded series the Hermits have been playing! Joe’s been having such a great time playing Vault Hunters with everyone that he’s made a playlist for folks to watch! You can find that that playlist over here.
Also, there’s a Vault Hunters website! Did you know that? Cause I sure didn’t! Take a peek over at https://vaulthunters.gg/
HermitCraft 9 Videos
If you somehow have missed all of Joe’s episode the past month, no worries, I’ve got a link to where we left off since the last newsletter! There’s a ton of episodes to enjoy thanks to Decked Out 2 from TangoTek! If you haven’t seen Joe’s runs yet or if you want to watch them again, here’s the HermitCraft episodes playlist!
Streams
Upcoming Streams
If you’re looking for a place to find out when Joe is streaming, have I got the answer for you! You can see a calendar of all Joe’s upcoming streams over at this page over here!
Notable streams playlists
Crafts stream fans can enjoy all the latest arts and crafts VODs over at this playlist!
