January 12, 2025 - bloghan 29

Well, this bloghan is a return to form, but not in a good way: guess who ended up writing most of it on Saturday on Sunday? Wait. Why would I ask about who wrote this bloghan? There's literally only one person who can write bloghan. Me. Oh, well, I guess there is the possibilty that I have discovered an ancient alchemical secret and used it to make a homunculus that has my memories, forcing it to write bloghan... Nah, if that happened, it would be stuck doing chores. On that realtively normal-person-thing-to-say note, here's how I totally ended up having to push bloghan writing to the weekend this week:

Tier list of the week

This week's tier list: chores. I'm only focusing on the ones that I have to do while over here, in my place. Also, snow shoveling is supposed to be on this list, and I forgot to add it on. Well, I think it's pretty easy to guess where I'd put "a little time spent in the snow" on a tier list of chores. Here's the tier list:

Ordered tiers, unordered within tiers. I'm really surprised by how much I like cooking for myself now that I live alone like this. I don't like it to the extent where it's like a hobby or something, it's still just a necessary drag and a time consuming task that I must do due to the needs of this fragile meat vessel. The various cleaning chores are a mixed bag, with some being less effort than others for similar tasks. The stuff in the lower tiers (except bed making) just take a level of commitment that rely on me needing a free time slot where I really can commit to doing it, and doing it well. I think if I talk more on this topic, I would be inviting more criticism in my DMs than I would like, so just remember that it would be problematic of you to do so because I was a minor for 17 years at least.

Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)

I woke up very early on Monday, very sweaty and feeling overheated. I did not sleep well last night, as I felt like I was in and out of sleep a lot, in some strange state. I got up and decided to shower and shave before going to work, just to feel a little more fresher than just my morning tea would make me. When I got to work, it was a little more busy than it had been in recent memory, but still rather quiet in my corner, as I was the only one working in there. The compatriot had returned from our home region, and I wanted to ask him about if the Absconder stuff I showed him last week was well-received by his manager. He was in a meeting though, and so I set myself on trying to get my own Absconder stuff resolved. My work rival showed up a couple minutes after I started, and I wished him a happy birthday, knowing it was today. That is why he blew me off yesterday for the company of that girl, after all. He actually seemed surprised that I knew that, as if we didn't have a list of birthdays on the crossword whiteboard. While there were some conversations going on between us, and some people visiting us and letting us know about their vacations, their plans, their tasks, there was nothing really all that remarkable about this morning. I just worked on my Absconder stuff, trying to remember what I was asked to do on Friday, somewhat stressed about being able to do this. The compatriot visited and told me he didn't even bother showing Absconder to his manager, so I guess that was wasted effort on my end? No time to complain though, it was lunch, and it was time to go down to eat it. After gathering everyone, we headed to the break room downstairs, but unfortunately for us, it was completely filled up. Everyone I came down with decided to head back up, but I got beckoned by someone in this breakroom, someone from my home city (not the compatriot, he's from my home region, keep up!). He asked me if I had made any plans for a big project that I would be doing once I got back to my home city, to which I replied that I hadn't even started considering it. He had, apparently, and also had someone reach out to him on LinkedIn to ask about his interest in a specific team. This LinkedIn cold DMer claimed that he had asked me on LinkedIn as well, which is why I was being asked about it, but I had never gotten any LinkedIn message like that. We talked some more about the big project, about the validity of this random guy, and I promised I would check my LinkedIn once I was done work. Once that conversation was over, I headed back upstairs, but I couldn't find my regular lunch group on our own floor. I had no idea where they went, so I decided to just eat at my desk and continue my fruitless Absconder work. Honestly, this whole "sort the warnings" thing seemed simple, but I kept running into walls. Eventually, my work rival showed back up at his desk, asking me where I went: I relayed what had happened downstairs, and he seemed to understand, but asked why I hadn't seen the message from the group about where they went to eat. I checked my messages, and sure enough, they had told me where they went. Whoops. All throughout this day, I had also been preparing another cryptic, just a simple 5x5, and by now it was finally done. I dragged myself over there, put it up, and watched them solve it. It was a bit simple, and they solved it quickly, but I suppose that just comes with the territory for 5x5 cryptics. My work rival headed off for a meeting, and Steve was still avoiding his assigned desk in our corner because it was cold, and I ended up delving more into the Absconder stuff. I had finally figured out the filtering aspect, but I realized that I had completely forgotten exactly what I was supposed to keep and discard with the filter. I was debating how I should ask my mentor this: it would surely look bad if I admitted that I had forgotten the instructions that he had given me on Friday, and he also looked to be in a mixed state of "busy" and "locked in," judging by the headphones he was using. Someone from another cubicle came to visit me (it's because the thing he was working on took a long time to start up, so in between failures and fixes he had to wait a long time), and he told me to just go up to his cubicle, knock, and ask him. I took that advice to heart, and proceeded to not do any of that and just send him a message online, and wait here, holed up in my corner. Well, I was on seen for quite a bit, but eventually my mentor came over to my desk to get more clarification on my question. I tried to dodge around the topic of the filtering as much as I could, to avoid that aformentioned bad look, but I think it was pretty clear to him that I had indeed forgotten. Still, he did end up just re-telling me, so it was alright in the end. I set my efforts on trying to figure out how t oadjust my current filtering scheme to the one he wanted, which was different than my original best guess. It was getting late though, and my work rival had already left, and I was feeling pretty tired from the sheer amount of Absconder testing and the lack of sleep last night. Really, I just ended up reading a bunch of the next arc of the IDW run of 'Sonic the Hedgehog' (Metal Virus arc was so good!! Turns out that maybe bioweapons are a bad thing....), and going home as soon as my regular leaving time rolled around. I got back and did a little bloghan, but I was feeling so sleepy and tired that I wasn't really getting much done. I decided that it would probably be beneficial if I took a nap, just a short 20 minute one. I turned off all the lights, set a timer for 20 minutes, climbed under the covers, and woke up 4 hours later. When I woke up, I realized right away that the time on my phone was not what I had expected at all, and I debated if I should just not get up and go back to sleep. I laid there in thought for another 10 minutes, finally putting on an encouraging and energetic song ('Live & Learn') to do the chores I needed to do. While I didn't end up doing any bloghan that night, I got it everything else done in a timely manner and went to bed.

I was feeling a little less sleepy on Tuesday morning, but still just a little drowsy, enough to keep me on edge in watching the time. I still haven't fixed the time on my microwave after the power outage reset it, so I don't have an easy way to guage time anymore (except for looking on my phone, but I have to walk up to my phone to check everytime - so not easy). Nonetheless, I make it into work on time, and open up my inbox to see that I've gotten a bunch of emails from the director and the not-manager about about some task. It was the one I was working on currently for my mentor, but applied to simpler parts of the project. All I had to do was apply the Absconder stuff and send them the results, it seemed, so I did that while working on finishing up the warning thing too. While this was all going on, there were some visits to the work rival and I, just from people in the crossword cubicle wondering when the next crossword would be ready (I'M STILL WORKING ON IT OK???) and other visits just asking about what we wanted for plans tomorrow (birthday triple deluxe or whatever). Those Absconder results were ready, and I sent them to the not-manager, but he got back to me pretty quickly, saying that he needed it in a custom format that I had made for some other task I'd done for him. This Absconder application was heavily based on one the director had made years ago, which is why it didn't have the capability to produce results in the new format I had made, and I guess now my hand was forced: I'd have to add that functionality to it as well. Well, I had a feeling I was going to need to anyways, and it wouldn't be that much work, right? Well, it was a little more difficult than I originally anticipated, and I ended up working through lunch to get it working and running. Speaking of lunch, this time, I did eat it with my coworkers, and it took a very strange deep turn. My work rival decided to open our little lunch session with a hypothetical: consider two twins who are raised in the exact same way, being best friends with another set of identical twins who were raised the same way. One twin and their best friend each get in a car for a road trip, but there's an accident caused by "a white male drunk driver" (my work rival's words, not mine!), which kills the best friend of each main twin. His proposition to us was that the two twins would develop a different kind of hatred for a certain race, sex, or level of drunk driving. Now, what raised my curiosity at this question was the fact that my work rival decided to bring race and sex into the equation here, and I questioned why his whole hypothetical even needed those factors: surely, the drunk driving was enough? I decided to pile on this topic more, as the other people at the lunch table actually engaged with the question being posed, which really is just a rehashing of the whole "nature vs. nurture" argument that's popular. Eventually, there was conversation running around about ideal conditions for perfect replicas of people vs non-ideal realistic conditions, random schotastic processes involving nerve growth and biological associations between topics in the brain, and more on nature vs. nurture and serial killers who grew up in good homes. From there, more questions got posed and raised, ones that I didn't really care for. Stuff on fate and determinisim vs. free will, stuff on how a higher power that is benevolent would even allow evil (is it just a test? or does it prove there is no benevolent deity?), things on various belief systems, and about how nothing we do matters since humanity will extinguish itself given infinite time. My work rival was also going on and on about how we can't teach calculus to ladybugs, and about how humans aren't as smart as they think they are (I used that statement to insult him quite a bit!!), and so aliens wouldn't bother teaching us how to harness our planet or sun or whatever type one civilization tech they were going on about. It got pretty doomer pretty quick, but to be honest, the only doomers I care about are the ones that inhabit "Another Dimension" in the 'Kirby' canon. And on all that stuff they were talking about if it was worth it to live, and if anything really mattered, I didn't voice what I was thinking, but I will here: my choices matter but what I want does not; I don't find it all that worth it to live, but there's still a lot of things I want to do before I die. Honestly, a lot of their arguments on how pointless things are, on how we should live and not just stay alive, were not that interesting to me. All I need is to survive. Living isn't for me. We headed up after all this, with me putting up another crossword which they solved in less than 10 minutes. That's good for them, but they seemed a little unsatisfied with the fewer amount of clues. Still though, they are happy with even getting one per day, so once it was all done I headd back to my desk, shoving all my efforts into my Absconder work. I quickly sent the not-manager the results he wanted (in that style that I created or whatever), and I'm going to assume that him not replying further meant that he was satisfied. There wasn't much left to this workday, just me getting really, really close to finishing off the warnings thing I was working on, and fielding some random questions from my work rival (the one that was the most remarkable to me was the one on if making these cryptics is satisying to me: to be honest, they take up more time than I would like, but they are still satisfying to make, though for different reasons now compared to when I started). The way home was freezing, sill a strange thing to feel without even a millimeter of snow on the ground, but I got back alright. After some fooling around, it was time to record anoher episode of that "podcast" thing, where me and a friend from home just kinda talk and discuss as he plays 'Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga.' This episode wasn't all that exciting to be honest, not like the potato peeler one we did back in 2024, but it was still nice to do. ARound halfway in, I didn't really have any idea about what we could talk about, so I opened up the Wikipedia article on unusual Wikipedia articles and just started pulling from that, as well as quite a lot of conversation on shorts and leg shaving. We had to move it today since he and I both had something Wednesday evening that we had to do. When we had finished this, we kind of just talked for a bit, about food, Tylenol abuse, hair removal cream, our friends who were also going places to work, stuff like that. Eventually, we called it a night, and I went to bed soon after.

Wednesday started off pretty normal, even if I woke up a little later than usual. Things were a bit rushed, I'll admit, but I made it out on time. I was eeling bad abou something though: I had left a lot of recycling and garbage piled up in my bins, waiting for the garbage collection day to roll around to finally put it out. That day was yesterday, and in the morning of yesterday, I had completely forgotten to put out any of my trash. When I came back last night, I saw that my landlord had done it for me, and now, Wednesday morning, I saw the empty bins again and felt pretty bad for forgetting. I was fully intending on throwing it out! I just forgot this one time, for what I think is the second time? As long as she doesn't bring it up, I suppose I can live with myself... I get on my bus and check my messages as I'm headed towards my first stop, where I see that a coworker is asking me where I currently am, as he would offer me a ride if I'm at that first "layover" bus stop by the time he passes that intersection. We keep each other updated on our location, and eventually he makes it to that stop before my second bus does. I asked why he came to pick me up, and he responded with something along the lines of how it was extremely cold outside and that he wouldn't want to be taking the bus this morning. Interesting... it's not really all that cold out? What could this mean for his true intentions? It actually.... meant nothing, he and the other people from this region just wouldn't last in the winters of my home region, that's all. When I got into work, I started by finally finishing off those measures I had made to handle all those warnings from my Absconder task. Finally, I could show the final results of this task to my mentor, and once he signed off on it, I could present the finished results to the director as well! I let my mentor know, and he told me to book a meeting with him..? That was strange, for all our other meetings on this topic, I would just come to his cubicle (when he invited me) with my work laptop to show him what I had done. Why would we need a meeting time to specifically be set to deal with this? I set it for later this day, and he accepted. This morning, my work rival was not going to be in until 3 or 4 hours after lunch, and once again I was working alone in the corner. I had my headphones on and was just working away on merging two Absconder applications that I had created when I saw some people come up behind me: the people in the crossword cubicle? They surrounded me on all sides and asked me to come over to their cubicle to work, since there was an empty spot there, and I was all alone here. I kinda did want to stay here though, so I manoeuvred my way through the conversation to imply that I would if I wasn't so busy (lie), and they seemed satisfied with that. The compatriot, "Celeste," and my co-DM left, and that coworker who drove me to work today came in after them, asking about today's crossword. I haven't given him a nickname yet, so we'll call him "the crossword fanatic" (or just "the fanatic"). The fanatic walked in, immediately asked when today's crossword would be ready, asked about my progress so far on the current one (unsaatisfactory to him, it seems), and left after telling me "chop, chop." Asking me to move was not the only reason they came though: there were snacks in the break room, and they let me know. When I got there, I saw that the snacks weren't really ones that I was all that interested in, so I grabbed two for my work rival's snack cabinet, given that he was away. I got back to my desk, and while I'd like to say what followed this was an intense period of work, I can't... I got caught in an hour long cycle of brooding about my future, as I do sometimes, though not usually at work. This round of brooding had me looking out the window, watching the snow fall pitifully, and did bring me to tears at some point, but I willed them to not fall. There were also some random thoughts sprinkled in there about if I should... y'know, get some work done, but no, these lines of thoughts that I shouldn't share (they were rather embarrassing) were more important for me to confront right now. People visiting from the crossword cubicle shook me out of it, with my co-DM and 'Celeste" surrounding me just to chat, ask about what I was working on, and to collect me for lunch. Down at the lunchroom, my co-DM pulled out a deck of cards, and suggested we play 'President.' This excited me: I loved playing 'President' back home! But as soon as we start playing, weird things started happening... they were playing spades on diamonds for the same ranked card? If you pass once, you pass forever? Why are they just playing poker hands on single cards??? They explained to me that this is the proper way you play 'President,' but it just made me wonder how it is that this center of civilization could live so.. so backwards? So wrong? So barbaric? This explains so much about why drivers here seem so much more dangerous, why people look at me weird when I talk to them normally. That game of 'President' was a mixed bag for me, to say the least, though there were a lot of jokes being fired back and forth about which region was truly the backwards one. We headed upstairs and I continued work on the next crossword and this bloghan (plugging in the keyboard into my phone to write it!). This got some questions by the fanatic, but he quickly got over it and wanted to know about the crossword. I told him it was almost done, but since the work rival wasn't in yet, we should wait for him. The fanatic agreed, and left me to work. The time to meet with my mentor about the Absconder thing was approaching fast, but I saw him holed up in his cubicle in a meeting, and he sent me a message a minute later about how he was too busy for it today, and that I should move it by a day. No problem, I suppose? My work rival did end up arriving around this time, an hour after he said he would, and the fanatic could finally get his rcossword fix for the day. He'd been visiting me over and over to ask for it, refusing to believe that he agreed to wait for my work rival. He's just so demanding... They solved this one pretty quick too, and the work rival and I headed back to our desks. I worked on some more Absconder and reading the IDW run of 'Sonic the Hedgehog,' and apparently my work rival got an Absconder task from his manager and the director (one that the director basically already finished?), and the last hour in the office was spent really only doing that. Instead of going home though, there was a different plan for tonight. My work rival's birthday was Monday, the compatriot's was today, and my co-DM's was on Friday, so all of us were going to celebrate the three birthdays together on this day. "Celeste" had bought a tiramisu flavour cake earlier, and we had been voting on the crossword whiteboard for what restaurant we would go too. I voted for the Korean barbeque hcicken place, since every other place on the options would require me to use chopsticks and I wanted to avoid that embarrassment as much as possible. However, because of the fanatic's peanut allergy, that option was suddenly struck from the options, and a Chinese place was selected instead. I like Chinese food, I really do, but there's only so much chopstick related humiliation that one who is used to eating with their hands can take. Befroe we left, there was one little thing I wanted to take care of, but with my name being said in a loud, admonsihing tone by "Celeste," we headed out. The compatriot and I got into "Celeste's" car like it was an Uber, and we talked a bit about the restaurant and such, and upon arrival we assumed we got there first. Walking in, we waited by the front for the server to ask us how many people we were, trying to figure it out exactly to optimize gratuity and all that, but the server told us "your friends are over there." Sure enough, my co-DM, Steve, and two others were already there. We were only waiting for my work rival and the fanatic, who split off from the main group as we were leaving to grab soda and juice from the break room. We left them behind since the fanatic has a car, so we assumed that they would be fine just driving there. After some looking at the menu I had decided on just getting the special since it seemed easy enough to eat: teriyaki chicken with a basted egg and mushrooms? Sounds good to me. I was still flipping through the menu though, in case there was somethign else that would be in my comfort zone and that I could reasonably finish. The fanatic and the work rival came in just then, complaining about how we left them behind and about how the fanatic was forced to go double the speed limit to make yellow lights, as well as a couple illegal lefts? He... he didn't have to do that... My work rival also shared how he drank an entire soda on the short car ride, and called me out for forgetting to take off my coat and hanging it on the back of my chair. It genuinely had slipped my mind, but it was humiliating all the same, even more so because it was at his hands. One of these days, my work rival will turn me into a misandrist. The server came by again, and we put in our orders with an alphabetical code of sorts, and they went to deliver the order to the kitchen. I took this opportunity to try and practice using chopsticks, trying to hold them and use them, but they kept falling out of my hands. In order to keep them steady and firm enough to pick something up, I had to squeeze fingers really tightly, and eventualyl the strain would get to my hand and I would drop them. The others around me would try to teach me, but to no avail. My work rival called me a disgrace for being this unskilled with chopsticks even though I consume so much anime, but.. I don't really consume that much? Compared to most terminally online people, and even some of the people at this table (like him), I've not watched all that much. He seemed satisfied with the answer, then went to the washroom. He displaced 5 people because of that request, and it was all because he drank that soda in the car. What a guy... The food was brought over, with most people getting giant noodle bowls, and the rest getting those smaller rice bowls. My work rival and the fanatic got the same as I did, and so did "Celeste," but with eel instead of chicken. It was really good! I went to grab the giant cucumber piece with my chopsticks and immediately, it fell out of my grasp, then the lower chopstick. My hand was shaking now because of the amount of effort I was putting into the squeezing of the chopstick, and for what? More shame than I've already taken on. I was lucky that a spoon was included in my bowl, so I just switched to that and ate te rest quite quickly. Once everyone was done, we got Steve to ask the server if we were allowed to eat the cake here, and they provided us with plates and a foot long knife. Candles were put in, giving the numbers of the ages of all three parties in binary, and while they were lit, I just couldn't stop getting so entranced by the way the flames flickered on the lighter. I want to light something on fire. I haven't done it in so long. Just watch as something slowly gives way to the flames, gets consumed by it, reduced to ash, with glowing orange red edges. To destroy is to create is to destroy is to create. But what is to burn? Everyone sang happy birthday really loudly (Steve and I kept quiet and aware of our surroundings), then the three birthday people blew out the candles. "Celeste" wanted them to do it again because she got so caught up in the moment she forgot to take a picture, a very interesting problem to have in my opinion, but that's not really a topic I want to get into in this bloghan. After scooping out the copious amounts of wax that had built up on top of the cake due to just how long it took to figure out how to optimally do this whole process of cake stuff or whatever. The three split the cake, plated it for each person, and we ate. I got some questions on how this cake compared to all the other celebratory cakes that the group has gotten, since I was the only one who got a taste of all the cakes: my birthday celebration was cake just for me, after all. All these cakes were fine, but I'm getting a little tired of how the group keeps getting these far out strange cake flavours, like "sweet potato" or "pumpkin." Like, what is wrong with just a normal cake every now and then? Would probably cost less too. After providing the rankings of the cake, and admitting to my pumpkin avoidance, we finally decided that we had probably overstayed our welcome in this restaurant. Heading up to pay, people realized that the place only accepted debit or cash, which I didn't have on me, so I had someone pay for me now, with me e-transfering them later. We went back to our table, collecting up garbage and splitting the tables again, then everyone decided to just start figuring out who would drive back which people just in the restaurant, blocking the path? Like guys, why don't we just do this outside? It's not that cold... The server gives us a glare, and they finally understand. Outside, we figure it out, I get into my co-DMs car, make a $20 gambit with someone that they can't guess my address, and immediately lost that gambit because they just asked my co-DM (she was happy to divulge the information). I was dropped off first, and when I got home, I helped one of my friends back home learn how to pirate a game nowadays. Once they were done for the day, so was I.

Thursday morning was very similar to Wednesday morning. In fact, it was basically the same before I got to work, with me making the same meals and such in about the same time, getting to the bus around the same time, and even getting picked up midway by the fanatic again. Once at work, I didn't really do much in the way of work. I continued merging my two Absconder applications, then testing the merged result in the three different ways it was supposed to be used, and while it was running I was writing more bloghan and more crossword stuff. My work rival decided to come in on time today too, so there was some conversation happening, mostly about the work we were doing and just random things. If I'm being honest, there was not much going on this morning. Once it was lunch, the group went down to eat and play more 'President,' but given the rules I had just learned about yesterday, I was not interested in playing again. I don't know, just wasn't feeling it. I ate my lunch as the others played, having some limited conversations with people around me about random things, like chopsticks, like major projects, like the coworker who left us a week ago - oh, and the one who was supposed to come back this Monday. My predecessor had told me months ago that he would be returning to the office on Monday, and I was keeping a lookout all throughout this week, both online in employee directories and in the actual office too. He didn't seem to be around at all. I just assumed that he pushed it back by a month or something, and everyone seemed to agree. When I was done my lunch, the group that chose to play 'President' was still going, so I heaeded back up to my desk without a word. I hung around in the crossword cubicle, where a little more random conversations took place once people came back from downstairs, just on crosswords and leg shaving (this is me saying this to you, my bloghan readers: should I shave my legs? I was looking into hair removal creams and they look kinda harsh... but I don't want to do shaving because I already know I'm going to get thousands of cuts and bumps) and our work ethic. Once everyeone was back from lunch and done with their meetings, I put up the next crossword on the board, a 6x6 which they took longer to do than the 5x5s being presented to them this week. They liked this one a lot, and I was satisifed with it too, returning to my desk to prepare for my meeting. Now, I had scheduled this meeting for the same time, jsut on a different day, but my mentor asked me if I had booked a meeting room for it. Now, I had assumed that he just wanted to call me, if he wasn't bringing me into his cubicle, so I told him that I didn't book a room, to which he asked if there were any even avaiable. I chose one, updated the meeting invite and headed there all confused. I still didn't understand why this had to be moved out of his cubicle. He beat me to the room, greeted me as I walked in, and then we started with an update statement by me: it was done! Right? Well, not quite. After putting up my screen on the big screen in the meeting room (is that why he wanted a meeting room?), we began to track down some of the major errors that we were finding, noting that it was strange that something appeared to be entirely correct in the project hat Absconder was adamantly saying was incorrect. After assigning me the goal of figuring out where those errors came from, my mentor wanted me to now help him brainstorm ways we could ensure that this Absconder work really was done and that it was catching everything it needed to catch, and not reporting things it shouldn't have been reporting. In essence, it was to check for functionality. I would need to introduce purposeful errors in the project, to see if my Absconder stuff that I've been making for the last little bit would catch those errors correctly. We began thinking up scenarios to cover everything, and while he also came up with some too, he was teaching me things about design philosophy that I'd never even thought of. Well, it was less design philosophy, but more an insight on how one could approach checking a design from a designer standpoint. The method he used to come up with his cases was one where he considered how design is done, and where mistakes may have been made. In a sense, he was working backwards: if I was a designer, where would I want to check for any mistakes that I may have made? I've never really thought of it that way, and it really made me feel like I was doing design work! Not just some Absconder design-tool thing to check design work, which I was still very much doing, but it really felt like I was doing the work of a designer. It was exhilarating, like a breath of fresh air. Once we came up with the tasks, I made sure I understood what my next two "missions" were: figure out the weird errors currently being reported, then once those have been dealt with, introduce fake errors to test the Absconder stuff's reliability. Once that was wrapped, we still had 5 minutes left, and he mentioned that my choice of room was great, since his next meeting would also be in 5 minutes, in this very room. He asked me how my experience in this company has been so far, and I told him it feels better each day, with this design vibe being the best part in quite a while. It was time for me to leave though, so I headed back to my desk, with a request to book another meeting 30 mintues from now in the same meeting room, to continue the conversation. Now, my mentor had given me some theories on why those weird errors were popping up, but I really didn't feel like it was that: surely if his theories were true, then a lot more errors would be getting reported. This Absconder task has to do with three parts of the project, but when you actually look at the project, you'll see that those three parts require another three parts that kind of act like intermediaries. Usually, when you're looking at those main three parts, you just ignore the intermediaries, assuming that they don't really impact or change things, just facilitate and maintain sameness. I had a hunch though, so I did a scouring of the intermediaries, trying to find anything that would give rise to the errors. I did this in the crossword cubicle, and as such, was distracted from making much headway on that front until my second meeting rolled arund. GOing back to the meeting room, we talked more about the cases, and started prioritizing them, as well as devling into a little theory on how all these little parts interact and interconnect. It was a good meeting, I'll tell you that much. I feel like I've learned so much just in those two short meetings, not even 30 minutes each. Once it was over though, I left with my mentor, and he asked me about the temporary worker life, joking that it wasn't all that busy. I countered with a sarcastic "not busy?" He laughed it off, asking me a question about how I'm finding the work, and I talked again about how at first I didn't like getting assigned all this Absconder stuff, but it was genuinely interesting and it was nice to be considered as someone with a little expertise on teh subject. He agreed, blathering about how it was safer to use than just manually looking at or adjusting the project, and that it felt like the design tool of the future, or something like that. Honestly, I've kind of cycled back around on my view of Absconder, where I'm no longer a superfan of it, but not yet back to my resenting phase of it... I just hope there's something else to do after I finish all my current Absconder stuff. Getting back to my desk, I start tracing through the intermediaries to find things, and I vist the crossword cubicle as well. I walk in to find them doing a New Yorker cryptic, and struggling, hard. The compatriot and my work rival are so focused on this one goal, and it's just not working out for them. My co-DM and I are giggling over them getting frustrated at some of the easiest clues, and it's funny every time. My work rival can't read faces at all, so whenever he gets something right and one of us laughs, he assumes we're laughing because he got it wrong, and he erases all of it. He also just makes random guesses that don't really make sense, and only realizes they don't make sense when someone challenges him to look at the clue again. This guy... Eventually, it gets too much for him, and he just straight up starts asking for hints. We also get on the topic of other after-work activites we could do, and the topic of 'Jeopardy' gets brought up. My work rival is initially against it because he thinks I'm some sort of trivia master (I'm not), so I look up an archive of every presented question in the show's history. All this gets interrupted by the manger of my Japanese coworker coming to visit our cubicle to see the compatriot. Like the Chad he is, the compatriot leaves the crossword open on his laptop screen. The manager is here to marvel at the smart glasses that the compatriot just has for some reason, but never uses? An inopportune moment, for sure. Once that manager leaves, we all remark on the crossword being left up, but the compatriot makes a good point about it looking even worse if he went to close it in the middle of the conversation. At that moment, the floor admin sees that we're all in the same place, and lets us know that "our friend" would be returning on the 21st. She has to be talking about my predecessor! But... the 21st? That's so far off from what he told me! Well, whatever, I'm still excited for him to come back, so I can show him just how much I've learned/semi-mastered Absconder. On the topic of Absconder, I'm still scrolling through the intermediaries, others are doing work or crosswords, and the director passes us by many many times, making eye contact with me each and every time... Maybe it's time I go back to my desk. And almost as soon as I do, I find it! In just one inoccuous statement, I find where the error is coming from... or at least one of them. I go over to my menbtor's cubicle, see he's not in a meeting online, knock, and ask him if he's busy. He says he is very busy right now, and I let him know that I found where the issue was for one of the weird errors. I received some assurance that he would visit me, and sure enough, he did 10 minutes later, as I was investigating the other weird error. As I showed him where I suspected things were going wrong in the guts of the intermediaries, he asked me to show him how it was still possible that everything was functional even with this error. I realized I would have to work "backwards" through the intermediaries (I've been going "forwards" this entire time) to figure that out, but since he was busy, I told my mentor that I'd message him once I had a satisfactory answer. He left, and I spent the rest of the work shift focusing on that and telling the fanatic my plan for next week's crossword (yes, crossword, nonplural). While I did find and report the cause of the error from the "backwards" direction, my mentor told me that we'd review it tomorrow, and I headed out without a further word to my coworkers. It was getting even more cold now, but there were no late or missed buses on my way back this night, so it ended up quite alright. When I got home, after some snacks and a litle bit of further assistance for my friend who has never pirated before, I hopped into a voice chat with a different friend, the same one who I recorded a video with on Tuesday. He saw me waiting in the call first playing something I said I'd never buy: 'Balatro.' Well, that declaration is still true, I will not be buying it, so I'll leave it up to reader interpretation to figure out just how I got it. He was really excited to see me finally try ouy this game, and we decided that one run wouldn't hurt while we waited for our other friend to join. This run was a very good run, with an early couple of Spectral cards letting me duplicate the Cavendish Joker, which when combined with some Jokers and Planets that helped with flushes (and some very handy Spectrals and Tarots to convert most of my deck to Spades), led to a very easy first successful run. Throughout the run, my friend was very surprised at how easily I was able to score huge hands with the strategies that I had used, questioning just how bad he was at 'Balatro.' Well, I've absorbed so much knowledge from watching amazing gameplay of so many runs of various difficulty or cheese, and exposure to all these strats and broken Jokers helped fuel my own strategies (just keep on flushing, for one). He admitted he barely watched any gameplay of 'Balatro,' so that's probably why. After my first run finihsed, we decided to switch roles: I would watch and coach as he screen shared his run. We had about an hour of technical difficulties though, with me only being able to see a frame every 10 seconds or so. We tried so many things to fix it: updating how our applications got allocated resources, trying browser versions, doing so many different combinations of graphics and audio settings, with a couple things lagging out his computer altogether. We finally figured out it was due to screen-sharing the 'Balatro' window itself, so the workaround that was developed was to screenshare 'OBS Studio,' which was capturing footage of his whole screen, and watching the game through that window. A funny and probably not practicle solution, but hey! If it works, it works. His run was a little slower than mine, but leaned nicely into pairs and high cards, and he managed to beat his first ever run of 'Balatro' too! I know that our runs were on the easiest difficulty stakes on the starter deck, but I think for our first ever runs, we got it down pretty quick. We realized that our third friend wasn't joining us anytime soon, ao we called it a night there. After some cooking ad playing other things, I went to bed.

As a work from home day, Friday felt like a treat. I wake up early with the intention of doing bloghan, then go back to sleep, then finally get up and make peanut butter toast and tea for breakfast. I logged into my work laptop a little late, but no one was after me right now. Most of my work for today was tracking down specific locations to point out errors in the intermediaries. The plan was to get these specific locations to prove to my mentor that the error was in the intermediaries, so that I could move on right away to the test case phase. There was also some news on Absconder: the people who make it annoucned that they had made a new website for the documentation, and this one actually loads so quickly! It's about time. I texted my predecessor about this (wait... why didn't I text him about his start date being moved?), and he was excited about this too. He sent me a message about how his start date moved, and that he'd be coming to the city a week earlier, a message I haven't yet replied to. However, you didn't think that I really focused that hard at work on a Friday at home, did you? I got pretty distracted with tons of videos, music, bloghan writing, game playing, laundry, dish washing, and photo editing for an extremely late birthday present. My lunch was supposed to only be perogies, but I was still hungry after eating, so I had to make an additional pizza pop to hold me over. Late into the evening, an hour before I was supposed to be done my shift, I remembered that I was supposed to meet with my mentor, so I sent him a message asking if it was too late to call. Thankfully, it wasn't too late at all, and so we called. I started with the little spiel I had prepared in my mind, and was about to pull up the intermediaries and the list of locations I had spent time collecting but he just kind of believed me on the first example I showed him, and told me that I didn't need to worry about fixing these errors, as they were entirely warranted. He just wanted to double check if it was like that in the previous version of the project, and I asked him who was the person responsible for these parts of the project which I've been checking for that last few weeks. I knew that once I showed the results of my Absconder work to the director, he'd ask me to send it to whoever was in charge of those parts, so I thought I'd get a headstart on that eventual email. My mentor replied with "it's me, that's why I asked you for your help with this." Ah. That makes sense. Following this, we signed off with wishes of a good weekend and that was the end of work this week. Still, there were still things to do: more bloghan, more reading, more cooking, and more cleaning to do. While I was cleaning though, I got a phone call from an old friend. He's from my home city, but he came to this city for university. We don't really talk that much, maybe every once in a while, but when it comes to family stuff and friendship situations, we are very similar. I pick up, and I don't think he really expected me to answer, but eventually he asks if I'm still in the area. Well, I've been since July, and after telling him that we proceed to talk for 2 hours, mostly about his university and how terrible his first semester went, about this kind professor that gave him A LOT of lenience on an essay, how lucky that he was already planning to write an essay about Black masculinity so he could just use that (I got a pretty insightful audio essay about its origins and its problems from him!!), then about self scheduling and all that. The conversation took a pause for him to pick up his chicken delivery order, so we talked about that for a bit, and about how he was going to have to clean his apartment quite a lot since he was visiting the home region for the last two weeks. He asked if I visited, and I talked about how I didn't go, but he understood my reasoning. We talked then about the game he was currently obsessed with ('Persona 5 Royal') and I was surprised at how he had only bought in 2025 but was already about a third into the game, but it made sense given his admission that he was playing it for 10 hours every day. After I told him about the differences between 'Royal' and the base game, we had a little discussion on how weird it really is that you can date the teacher in the game, and about how it feels like characters have an arc and they're done. Once we had exhausted our discussion on that topic, we began to talk about 'Sonic' for the rest of our 45 minutes talk, starting with about 20 minutes of discussion on 'Sonic the Hedgehog 3' and our complaints about it (and the things I loved too). I did agree with him that Shadow was done amazingly by Keanu Reeves and that there was just a little too much Jim Carrey in this film, which led into conversation about portrayals of Dr. Eggman in 'Sonic' media. He's mad, cruel, and a genius, but also careless and unable to plan ahead. Movie Eggman seems to lean really into the "mad" and "careless" aspect more than a lot of other Eggman interpretations do, such as the IDW comics, which have an Eggman which leans more into "cruel," "careless," and "unable to plan ahead." I feel as though movie Eggman leans into and relies too much on that "mad" aspect, and that it could've used a bit more of the "cruel" aspect, which we got in flashes from Gerald. This discussion on Eggman portrayals led us into discussion on the next few movies for the 'Sonic' franchise, including which storylines they could adapt next. I'm hoping for the fourth movie to adapt parts of 'CD' and 'Heroes,' and for the fifth one to adapt the game released in 2006. He and I talked a bit more about the games, the shows, and the comics, and I really was surprised at how much he knew. I didn't know that he was into 'Sonic' like that, probably even more than I am! I guess it's a childish thing to still like (so many of my friends have relationships and all that) but since something like is out of the picture for me anyway, I might as well "live life." Around this point, the conversation started to die off, and he must've sensed that, saying it was time for him to clock in for his 'Persona 5' shift and that he'd let me know what times he'd be available in the new semester, and that was that. I still can't believe we talked for 2 hours... I never thought I'd have that much in common with this guy, and while we were friends before, I think whatever bond we had grew at least a little bit. One thing still nags at me though... why did he call in the first place? This wasn't some social media call, no, this was a straight up phone call. Well, I guess that doesn't really matter. I made my dinner, made more dinner when the frist round wasn't enough (shameful on my part, I need to be happy with eating less so I can actually lose weight...), worked on bloghan and played games until I went to bed.

I woke up pretty early on Saturday and made my breakfast right away so that I could get a headstart on bloghan. I was behind all week because of not feeling like writing much of it on Monday, which caused me to fall behind the entire week as well. Once I got up, I decided top open my blinds for the first time in 24 hours, and was delighted to see about half ofa foot of snow on the ground! When did that happen? I mixed in some laundry with this as well, that same photo editing from yesterday, and some more general cleaning as well. I really don't know how I was able to write as much bloghan as I did on Saturday, but I had a feeling it was because there weren't any videos that I really wanted to watch on this day, so I only had music on in the background. Crazy how focusing on something makes it actually get done. There were still some distractions however, namely trying to make fills for large crosswords that just weren't working out, and some scraping sounds outside that I thought were knocks on my door at first, before realizing it was just the neighbour shoveling snow. My lunch was pierogies and another pizza pop to round it out, and I got a visit from my landlord asking me to shovel the snow just outside my door to avoid ice formation, and to give me another letter from my father. From here, my eyes were feeling pretty strained from just how much bloghan I was writing, so I thought it was prime time to do my regular tech of getting under my bed covers and using a wireless keyboard and a really zoomed in screen to continue working, having the 'Balatro' main theme playing the whole time. It's a very well composed song, somehow making you feel like you're just playing something and working on something big at the same time. I guess that's actually just a description of high-level 'Balatro.' I managed to complete the majority of the bloghan on Saturday, but by the time I had finished bloghan writing for the day it was already dark. That didn't stop me from putting my headphones on and shoveling the snow outside, softly singing my memories to myself as I did. It was a pretty busy week for me, but it's about to get even busier... Once I finish shoveling the snow, admiring that state of sky where it's a cloudy night with a pinkish tint, I head inside, cook dinner, and go to bed. Sunday was supposed to be another day where I woke up early, but when I did I ended up just staying in bed for an extra hour, half asleep and half on my phone. When I got out of bed, I realized the gravity of what I'd done, so rushed to make breakfast and hop right back onto bloghan. Once I had caught up to current events, I had to get dressed to go to the office supply store: the picture print I ordered was finally ready for pickup! After a quick lunch, I headed out in a rush, still making it to the bus on time because we clutch those. When I got to the store and headed to the corner where the print shop was, I was kind of lost. There was one line up there which seemed to be for picking up print orders, but when I was third in line I overheard the person in front of me ask about a print pick up, and she was told she was in the wrong line. I moved then and there, but there wasn't really any other clearly defined place to line up. Non employees were at any of the other tills, as they all seemed to be dealing with an angry customer who was behind the counter for some reason? After 15 minutes of waiting, they finally cleared that upm the angry customer leaving with a huff and a refund, and then I got served. I was just kind of hanging around by the counter, but I guess I must have started a new line behind me or something. The guy serving me seemed really surprised that I was picking up a print, asking for my name and spending around 7 minutes digging around in various filing cabinets, before wordlessly handing me a cardboard envelope, and taking the next customer. Compared to where I worked, the whole print service team in this store seemed... dysfunctional. I left the store and texted my work rival, since I was pretty close by. Since he didn't immediately respond though, I decided that I would just get on the first bus I see, as a little adventure. It brought me back to the road I was going to have to go down anyways to get back to my place. Whatever happened to the spirit of adventure? I just decided that I would wait for the bus that would take me back to my place right away, but once I realized it wasn't coming for 30 minutes, I decided to just walk back in 15 minutes instead, down the highway, past the children sledding down the snowy hill, and watching the snow start to fall once again just as I was walking. A wonderful afternoon, I must say. Once I got back, it was more bloghan and a little bit of gaming (I finally picked up 'Sonic Heroes' again! I should write an 'Aqours Heroes' story or something, granted that the song 'Aqours☆HEROES' exists...), more filling of a large crossword, then some imperfect sweeping too (boring, but made better with a speedrun documentary playing in the background). More bloghan and more cooking followed, then the release of details on a course I would be taking over the next 4 months happened. What I read in there made me very angry. Randomized groupmates?? At this stage?? Why????? I don't understand why we're still pretending like random groupmates teach you how to work in a real team in a real office: I'm doing that right now with my job, and in a real office, the only people who make it onto a team are already competent at the thing they are tasked with doing! Random teams serve only to flatten out the curve. Through my anger, I knew that I would just have to overcome this. Alone is the way I do most things nowadays, so I would just have to maximize every little bit I could get out of solitary portions to do well. I started this off by rushing through everything I could start doing before the course even oficially started, then finalized this bloghan, and went to bed.

Future plans

Well, well, well, if it isn't the consequences of my actions. Since I ended up not writing bloghan throughout the week as much as I should have, my weekends became filled with bloghan in the stack instead, causing me to lose time for those more creative projects. Well, at least bloghan is giving me writing experience in some form. Despite this, there were some things that I managed to do:

This week, I'm going to continue to be at the mercy of my former coworker when it comes to the keyboard PCB, make footprints for the one-bit adder PCB, read more 'Homestuck,' finish reading the Fish-Man Island arc of 'One Piece,' do another couple 'Balatro' runs, finish off that 15x15 crossword, and speedrun one of my two courses. I don't know if I'll have much more free time outside of that.

Song of the week

'Shoujo Ijou no Koi ga Shitai' (https://youtu.be/fP5nAQ0ycxM) from 'Love Live! Sunshine!!' is the song of the week. I was thinking that this week's song would be one that I've listened to a lot like 'Live & Learn' or that one Siivagunner rip that replaces the lyrics of the aforementioned with those of 'Big Time Rush,' or maybe even some other 'Love Live' song I've listened to this week, but there's something that I've been noticing about myself that I think this song can at least help me get insight on. The song is written from the point of view of a very young person, asking to finally experience a form of love that a child would not be subject to. Sure, they get it from friend and from family, but here, the speaker is talking about love that's more grown up. Romance and all that. To be honest, that's something that I've been feeling a lot too, something that I really wish to ignore. In my thinking this week, in the brooding and in the "lost in thoughts" moments, I've been going through lists of people in my life who have that kind of thing going for them in their lives. What sets them apart from me? Well, now I think I can confidently say its a hard maturity difference. I mean just consider all the recent bloghan songs of the week: so many are from 'Love Live!' (aimed at high school girls) and 'Sonic' (aimed at young kids), and so many of the things I like to watch and play are also just as childish. I'm just childish, compartively. How can I ask for something more than what a childish person is really capable of? I like to say that as long as it's loved, it's alright, but the things that you do like do effect how you're seen, perceived, and probably how you act too. I think the greatest irony of this song is how while the lyrics are a plea by the speaker to finally be allowed to experience this kind of "grown up" relationship, they're sung to a backing track that's playful and, as the kids would say nowadays, "girlypop." The core of who I am is just a little too strange, just a little too childish, to have that kind of thing. Well, those were my big revelations this week, and I think this song captures it in another way, in another perspective. Oh, and it is still very much a good track. The 'HAPPY PARTY TRAIN' single had three songs and all of them were bangers! Would love to get my hands on one of the CD releases of it one of these days...

Until next time

It didn't feel like a busy week, not at all, yet... Oh, I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting lazy? I talk so much about "locking in," but am I really? Hmmm... I need to get busier, and get busier better too. I don't know what kind of change would be meant by such a sentiment, even though I am the one who came up with it just now, but I guess we'll both see what that looks like in next week's bloghan.

- bubbler

Click to return to bloghan