January 19, 2025 - bloghan 30

This bloghan is also a return to form, but not a return to form like when it was just starting out. No no no! It's a return to form of the reaction I had to that previous style, a return to the form of writing a bunch of bloghan each day of the week, so that I would have more available for me to do on the weekends! It sorta worked this week, just like it sorta worked in the week where I introduced it. It's so nice that this bloghan was written over the week unlike the last bloghan, although... why am I just repeating what I did in 2024 for 2025 again? Ah, whatever, it doesn't matter all that much, right? Let's get into the week:

Tier list of the week

This week's tier list: water temperatures, or to some (like me some of the time), "flavours." I don't think I need to explain that water tastes different at different temperatures. This tier list is focusing on different temperatures of water for consumption, so steam won't be here. Here's the tier list:

Ordered tiers, unordered within tiers. A nice and simple list, for once. Hot water from a kettle is the best, and it's all I've been drinking for the last couple months. The taste of it is superior to tap water, and I feel as though there's more you can do with it: coffee, tea, and hot chocolate come to mind. Tap water is fine, but I feel like there's not as much room to do stuff with it. You'd rather have your juices and such be cold, right? I don't really like cold water as much anymore though. It makes my throat feel worse than hot water does, even if hot water makes my mouth feel worse than cold water does. Ice water and ice just exacerbate these problems.

Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)

Monday morning was just normal, with the same old breakfast and lunch and all that being prepared. Opening the blinds revealed that it had snowed a little bit throughout the night, and looking closely I could see that it was still snowing lightly. This day was off to a suspiciously good start. I left my place on time and saw my landlord shoveling outside, who greeted me with a smile and a warning to be careful while on the snowy sidewalk. I've decided that this week, I will be writing bloghan whenever I can so that I can finish other things as soon as possible, and with higher quality. My first bus ride of today was a good example of that, as right after exchanging "good mornings" with the regular driver, I wrote and wrote on my phone. Getting to my second stop, I was going to write a little bit, but it was just a bit too cold to not go without gloves, so I waited instead. The second bus was really late today for some reason, and I think I saw the fanatic drive right by me too (he must be mad about agreeing to having no crossword on Monday and Tuesday), but once it did come I was able to make it to work on time. Walking into the corner, I saw my equivalent and my Japanese coworker! They were back from their vacation, and they were both talking about the food poisoning that they had undergone while abroad. I had a more pressing matter though: my picture. The frame was right there on my desk, having been empty for so long, waiting for the gentle touch of the photo I had gotten printed. I opened the cardboard envelope mostly satisfactorily (could've done it better, cleaner, I suppose), pulled out the image of his glorious face, and slid it into the frame. And... it was too small. I was so sure that I had measured the frame to be 5 inches by 5 inches, but the photo rested awkwardly in the bottom middle of the stand, curling slightly at the corners, not being held in place by the metal bars on the outside edges. I was crushed. Defeated. I couldn't believe it. How could I do this professor of mine such a disservice? The intention was for this photogrpah to be a beacon on my desk, a reminder that even if work got tough or stressful, it would all turn out "mmmalright" in the end. I guess it can still fulfill that purpose... I searched around for a ruler, looking by the former coworker's desk (she took her ruler with her, it seems) and by the printer (no luck), and eventually measured out the frame using those long sticky notes, which are standardized to be 3 inches by 5 inches. Using the 3 inch side of one to split a 5 inch side into a 2 inch and 3 inch segment, I determined that the frame was meant for a 7 inch by 7 inch picture. Well, I guess I know what I'm ordering from the print shop next. After some more chatter from my Japanese coworker and the fanatic (snacks from Japan look quite good, ordering a new picture for my frame, and my Japanese coworker having more availability for D&D !), I settled into work. By work, I mean writing bloghan while Absconder loaded up, as well as chatting with my work rival about how he was missing out on the Japanese snacks and about his Absconder presentation. Should've come into the office today buddy, because both of those things are really rough. An email came in from a senior on my team, about him coming back from "far Asia" and bringing sweets, and I did want to go, I really did. However, since my work rival was working from home today, I couldn't just leech off of his social bravado to walk into someone's cubicle and request snacks, so I went over to the crossword cubicle. I talked for a bit there, waiting for the compatriot to finish his meeting so I could ask him to go with me, and I noticed my crossword from Friday on the board, which had a lot of transcription errors in the clues. Well, I guess they made it way harder on themselves, huh? The compatriot finished his call and we moved towards the senior's desk, but we chickened out at ht elast moment since neither of us wanted to approach. We did get some Asian sweets though, by heading back to the corner desks and talking to my Japanese coworker, talking about pay details with vacation and missed days, about courses and random teams, about my work rival not being present, and the picture, of course. We tried one of the sweets, a Kit-Kat made with "sakura and soybean powder" flavouring. I didn't know that "sakura" was a flavour, but my Japanese coworker let us know that these bars didn't really have much of that flavour, and that it was mostly the soybean powder. Still though, it was really good! I'll try the other Kit-Kats later, once this taste is out of my mouth. I started to give feedback on my work rival's Absconder presentation as my own Absconder stuff was running in the background, and it was hard to believe that it was almost lunch time. I feel like I've done so much today already, even though I haven't really done much of my task that I was supposed to do today. After a visit from my co-DM (where we talked about the upcoming D&D campaign and about how sleepy my Japanese coworker was from jet lag, we went for lunch soon after, our group almost being at its full size. The game being played today was 'President' again, but this time with two decks. I skipped it again today, and faced another round of humiliation at my knowledge of the rules. Someone from my home city deconfirmed the suit order that I had known my entire life, and not just from anecdote: they used a fact and logic to show that it would only make sense for the spades to be the highest suit... Has my whole life been a lie? Or at least my knowledge of playing cards? During lunch, I kept to myself, giving further feedback to my work rival's presentation and finally starting to purposely introduce errors in the project to see if Absconder would see them. We moved back upstairs after quite a while, and I was so glad to see the picture on my desk smiling back at me. Tonight, I will probably go ahead and order that 7x7 version. For now though, I was running Absconder over and over again to see if my very small changes were noticable, and while it was doing the running, I was writing more bloghan and writing clues for the 15x15 crossword (the fanatic did not seem happy that I may have to delay it from Wednesday to Thursday, but my work rival really wanted that to be the case). I was making really good headway into both, but then the fanatic slammed his coffee cup on my desk to draw me into conversation. It was a bit of a doozy of a conversation, asking me why I didn't sign up to speak at a local university (I don't wish to talk to egotistical people who think they're the best students out there), and then we talked about how good certain students are compared to other students (well, he talked about that, I didn't want to engage in that topic). I really don't care if someone else is "smarter" than me and gets to go to all these fancy tech companies in one year because they have a "better" degree than I do. It doesn't affect me, it's their life. I know where I want to go, so why don't I just do what I can to go there? Once the fanatic realized that I wasn't really engaging with this conversation very much, he got a little quiet, so I started with something new: how I was pretty excited to see 'The Merchant of Venice' shown in a theatre in February. He told me that there's another close-by city (if you have a car) that is famous for putting on many different Shakespeare plays throughout the year. I immediately looked it up and started looking through their upcoming shows, spotting 'Macbeth' in May, which piqued my interest. He told me he wouldn't drive me though. This guy really only wants me for my corsswords, huh? This theatre company also has their own shuttle, so I could theoretically not have to worry about transportation, but it looks like it might be expensive, so while I'm pretty set on 'The Merchant of Venice,' we'll see about the Scottish play. He left while I was looking through those transportation options, so I could get back to what was important: crossword writing, bloghan writing, helping my work rival with his presentation, and I guess my actual Absconder work for the day. Once I had worked for quite a bit, I took a short break to browse around on my phone, and saw that I got a message from someone back in my home city. We talked for a bit about the club we were both in, and I brought up the photo I got printed, showing her how sad it was, sitting in the frame uncentered. She lost her mind at it, at the fact that I would want to see the glorious visage of an analog guy at work to bring me comfort, and gave me a good idea (as she does, it's kind of her thing): cut out a square of paper (7 inches by 7 inches), and glue the photo in the middle of it. I got up to share this idea with the crossword cubicle, and the compatriot joined me as we ransacked my work rival's desk for a sheet of graph paper, then measured out the correctly sized quare on it, then headed to the workplace guillotine to cut it. The guillotine already had measurement markings on it, which was good for cross-referencing my prior sticky note measurement. Once it was cut, I tested it without glue at first, and it seemed like it would work. All I've gotta do next is do this with a clean sheet of paper, and actually figure out how I'll actually affix the photograph onto the square. Once that was done, I got back to writing the crossword and checking in on my Absconder stuff, making sure it was catching each error I introduced. Before long, the fanatic came to visit again, while the compatriot and I were sitting in the corner cubicle. He started taling about grades and university stuff all over again, but now with a new audience, then turned to the sweets that my Japanese coworker had brought, then left. Man, he gets to take a lot of breaks huh? Once I had gotten over the corn chip back I was constantly grabbing from (I had to ensure I wouldn't gain more unnecessary weight), I worked a bit more on bloghan stuff, making occasional small talk with the compatriot. My Japanese coworker was coming in and out of the corner, and one time brought his manager back with him, who immediately spotted the snacks and began asking about them. He couldn't read the Japanese on them, and made some pretty inaccurate guesses. There was also a Chinese snack on the table that was leftover from a different event, but he thought the lettering on it was Japanese. He said that it looked like it was Japanese text. My Japanese coworker started to question it, but his manager said something about how the youth of today were always questioning leadership. He saw me watching, and asked if it was Japanese or not. I told him it was Chinese, and he asked if I was calling him a liar: I told him he was just misinformed, and he accepted that. After some more very interesting interactions, he dragged my Japanese coworker back to wherever. While it was clear that the entire interaction was a bit of sorts, I didn't know if I should feel bad for my Japanese coworker, or jealous. Almost right after that, I got a message from that coworker I did stuff with in August. This message was about a task I did back in December that updated documentation for something, and he was specifically asking about a diagram that was meant to accompany it. When he told me about it, I remembered that my manager had specifically brought it up as something to do once I finished updating that documentation, but I completely forgot about it. Oops. I told him that I would take care of it before February, but just like that, the fanatic was back in the corner to bother us more. It barely felt like any time had passed at all! He asked about the keyboard stuff, and I showed him the new layout that our former coworker was proposing: it removed the question mark key, the quotation mark key, the backwards slash key, and the equals sign key. He and the compatriot were bewilidered by this choice, and about the awkward placement of the right arrow key, just kind of off to the side. I told them her decision was that this was more sightly and symmetrical, but they were not satisfied. I became a sort of intermediary between the "stakeholders" of the project and the "project manager," relaying these complaints and concerns to the uncaring former coworker, who told them that a new set of keybindings could alleviate their concerns. Based on this whole thing though, she decided that she would add a place for stakeholders to be directly more privy to design choices, so that feedback could be collected more effectively. The fanatic went off to collect more opinions on these key removals, and I tried to settle back into work, but he ended up bringing back the rest of the crossword cubicle to snack and discuss. "Celeste" couldn't stop laughing at the picture on my desk (so disrespectful...), my co-DM liked our plan of hiding all the snacks and leaving the empty bags on the table to mess with my work rival, and the fanatic talked on some more about how he didn't like the keyboard design choices. I tried the wasabi Kit-Kat, and it tasted pretty good, and reminded me of a sort of nut I had eaten a while ago. They stayed for a bit, each talking a little more on those subjects, then left. I got another couple minutes to myself to write more, but the fanatic seems to always come back at every moment. He delivered another statement on the keyboard, and kinda just hung around as I tried to phrase what he said ("I guess it's ok since it's her keyboard layout at the end of the day") in a way that would let me keep those keys. I fear that the issue will be escalated above my head soon though. After short discussion on the infinite waiting time he seems to have, and a bit about 'One Piece,' he finally left. I finished my last round of Absconder testing, showing that every error I introduced, of each type of error identified, was indeed getting recognized by Absconder. It was done. As was I, just for the day. After helping to hide the sweets, I walked through the snowfall to make it to my buses, noting that the wind wasn't nearly as blustery down at ground level as it seemed from the higher floors where I worked. It was supposed to be uneventful... except that I missed getting of a station on my first bus by one stop, then at a street crossing, the pedestrian signal button was frozen. I barely made the second bus, catching it right before it left an intersection. Thankfully, I made it back to my place without incident, and thanks to all the writing I had done earlier today, I was able to actually do things this night! First, I did some coursework (the one with random teammates), then worked on my 15x15 crossword. Following that was some time washing dishes and updating the random thoughts page for the first time in a while, which I can't believe I let fester like that for so long. I cooked fried rice with the last of my vegetables at the same time as reading another 30 pages or so of 'Homestuck,' and after I had finished eating, I set myself on more of that photo editing, getting the pixel sizing of things just satisfacotry and matching enough, and beginnig to move onto the recolouring. I ended up staying up way later than I wanted to, but it was made way better by the fact that it wasn't because of bloghan that I was doing that: it was because of all the other stuff I was doing! How refreshing. I went to bed that night very tired, but very satisfied too.

Thanks to the "staying up late" that I did yesterday, I woke up about three minutes later on Tuesday than I did on Monday. As such, when I perfectly replicated Monday's morning routine (adding taking out the trash and recycling), I left for the bus three minutes late. I got lucky this time, but on some days where it arrives at the stop early (which I've noticed has a consistent time), I would've missed it. As my first bus dropped me off at my first stop, I noticed there was a car with hazard lights flashing parked right in front of the stop. The bus driver had to awkwardly drop me off a little bit ahead of the stop, himself stopping a little bit inside of the intersection. We did our usual wave goodbye, and I crossed the road to get to my next stop, noticing that this hazard lights car was slowly moving forward a couple feet every so often. Eventually, he got past the intersection, but on the overpass just kind of parked in the side lane and started pacing on the sidewalk by the car. Well, he didn't hit me or anything, so I guess I don't care. When I got on my bus it was quite difficult to keep my balance (something I have not experienced on a bus here for a while...), but other than that, no issues getting into work. My work rival wasn't here, and neither was my Japanese coworker, but Steve was here, and he was finally sitting at his desk in the corner cubicle again! He was complaining about being unable to submit some presentation he was doing to some company-wide convention or whatever, because he could not find his name in the dropdown menu. He tried it with my name and it came up right away, but his was nowhere to be found. I showed him where we hid the Japanese snacks to give him a bit of a break, and once he got back he finally found his name! For some reason, he was listed under his username, not his name like everybody else. Around this time, I was getting to my emails and messages from yesterday. I had a direct message fomr the director and an email from my manager. The director wanted an update on my recent Absconder work, and I told him it was done, just needed a bit more testing. He told me to set up a meeting with him and my manager to disucss what I changed and the results I eventually got. My manager wanted me to setup something for a new project, one of those "nightly" repeatable tasks that automatically get done. For now, I elected to ignore that message. My work rival finally showed, and what I saw shook me to my core. It made me question my reality just a little bit more. Turn up the paliperidone dosage, because this is a funeral for my grasp on reality: he was clean-shaven. No beard, no moustache, just a little stubble. It felt wrong. Unnatural. I told him as much. He sighed, and told me it was the result of a shaving accident turned scorched earth policy. The fanatic and my equivalent walked in to the corner cubicle around a couple of times this morning as well, mostly to talk with Steve about the presentation, and to comment on my work rival's hairlessness. I did bloghan after this, chatting about my picture and the shaving incident with my work rival and Steve ("he looks like he's ready to learn!' - Steve, on the work rival), and about my blog with the fanatic when he visited for the second time today. I quickly realized that if our team has a new project, there's going to be a whole influx of new automated emails that I'm going to start getting, and I needed to setup inbox filters right away, so I got to work on that, copying my old filters and fixing their names in the hopes that it would work and be easier to maintain in the future. I spent way longer than I thought I would on this, just a couple minutes more than an hour, but I think I really needed to do this. The names of all my rules and filters were so messy and they were all so scattered and inconsistent. Once the new rules were in place, I reran every rule on every email, and it was so satisfying watching them all trickle down into the folders I had organized. My work rival came back from a meeting with his manager, a meeting that he was supposed to be scheduling but kept messing up, and then the group decided to go down for lunch. It seems as though we waited a bit too long though: the usual lunch room we went to was full already, and while the others went up to another floor, I decided that I would just eat at my desk and continue with what I was doing. I finally sent out that meeting invite that the director asked me to do, and re-read the 'Return to Sabaody' arc of 'One Piece.' Steve and my work rival came back during this, assuming I was working during lunch again (sort of correct), and they themselves got back in the flow of it too. Once I was satisfied with this break that followed very little inconsequential work, it was time to get to work on something of a little more substance. I got to work on the task that my manager gave me, setting up a nightly repeated task for the new project. Strangely, there wasn't much buzz or discussion around there being a new project, but I guess that just means no one will know that I'm the one in charge of this nightly thing until it's been set up. I sent a message to the person who was already running this nightly thing for the most similar project, asking her about the validity of a guide I found in our documentation to do this very task, and waited for her response. In my waiting, I walked around a bit, visited the crossword cubicle, but found not all that much conversation to be honest. When I got back to my desk, I had a response back, telling me that the guide was perfectly fine, and that if I had any more questions, I could ask her. The guide was pretty straightforward, though it didn't tell you precisely what you need to do at all times. There was a setup window that I neede to paste some text into, but the window itself wouldn't let me do that, so I typed it out manually. As I was doing that, I got an "interrogation" by my work rival on my blog. This topic of conversation came up because he wanted to know about my 15x15 crossword progress, and I reponded that I was able to finish 1/3 of it due to the time I got from writing bloghan more frequently throughout the day. He wanted to know about what kinds of things were in it, the format, and how I talked about the coworkers in it, and most of all, if there was any private thoughts about my romantic interests while over here and if he could read it. I'm not letting these coworkers of mine read this website until my position has ended here and I go back to my home city, even if my work rival pays me to (which he asked as a hypothetical), and no. I don't have any romantic feelings for anyone over here, or for anyone at all right now. Not anymore. It's clear to me that those kinds of feelings, those kinds of desires, they aren't something I can act on by the fact of who I am, so they're unimportant to my life. If they ever come up, I have a fierce round of inner turmoil to surpress it as much as I can. Based on an answer that was more compact than that last spiel, my work rival concluded that I had nothing to hide from my coworkers - oho, if only he knew! I just joked about how they probably didn't want to peer into "my sick and twisted mind" until after I was very very far away (and out of melee range) from them, and he still wasn't satisfied. He brought up a question about what kinds of things are even in the blog, asking why there was so much worry about what I say concerning coworkers. Do I only write about work? Do I write about my life? Steve chimed in, saying that I had no life, and he was right. I really only have online interactions or spend my time alone. Most of what I write is about work, what I do after work, and what I do on the weekends. The compatriot walked in, and I'm still trying to manually type this relaly long thing into that window, when my work rival says I should try and appraoch a girl during my time in this city, and potentially even get a girlfriend, and that the compatriot should do it too. In the same sentence, somehow he asks if I have any romantic feelings towards any of the people here at work. Eugh. I make it clear that the answer to both of his questions is "no." I really can't believe this guy. He asks how much money it would take for me to approach a woman and ask for her name and phone number. I don't say no, but just give him a look. I mean, why would I ever do that? Sure, I'll joke about such a thing, but that's not really a feasible course of action for the thing that I am. I didn't say that to him though, that's one of the exclusive bloghan thoughts that you've all come to not enjoy reading about, but I instead just hit him with another question: "why?" Why does he want to see me do that?? His answer: "it would be entertaining." Are you serious? I can't stand this guy sometimes. I really don't understand how I seem like the only person who understands that I'm not really all that compatible with anyone! Sure, I fit the "silly little guy" trope, but that's something that gets boring after weeks anyways. The fanatic comes in around this time, and I'm glad that he distracts them enough to switch to the topic of the chips or a ski trip or something like that: I'm refocusing on this new task to get the nightly thing going. There's some files I need to copy, and the person I've been talking to about this tells me which files and what info I need to keep and change, and while I struggle for a bit to find the right info, I got it in the end. Steve even helps me out with some of it, because he also got some tasks related to setting up tools and such for this new project, so the info he received, in my eyes, is more complete than the info I received. Once I finish receiving a verbal lashing by the fanatic about Vim keybindings in a buttonless window, I can save everything I've worked on and start the next steps. Doing those steps made me realize that I had been naming things very wrong for the last hour or so, and so I have to go back and fix all of it before I can continue. This job really took away my ability to read, huh? While it's not really "designing" something, I am really liking this task, since it feels like I'm doing almost foundational work, stuff that even the highest of positioned staff will be relying on when working on this project. I don't realize that my focus is so high that I didn't even notice that the compatriot and the fanatic left, only seeing my work rival panic about his presentation and Steve just chilling once I give myself a break. I go right back into it, opening and editing things to adapt it to this new project, and while I manage to work through every step, I'm still not sure if I've done everything correctly. After one more visit from the fanatic, just "checking in" on me for some reason, I spend the last 15 minutes of my shift writing bloghan to wind down a bit while also sounding busy. I should really get a keyboard like this for typing on my phone... it feels much better writing long form stuff like bloghan posts on a keyboard. The only problem is that it would need to have USB-C, so I guess I'll have to wait until the former coworker and I finish that keyboard we're designing. Once my regular leaving time rolls around, I spent an extra minute or so to finish off this very sentence, and headed off to the bus. This time, my commute home was uneventful, and even what I initially did once I got back was pretty uneventful too. Just some games, some more writing, watching some videos, things like that. Right after that, I hopped onto a call to record another video for my friend's YouTube channel where he does a let's play of 'Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga,' and I bring up stuff to talk about. This episode still doesn't clear the potato peeler one, but it was more fun than the last one, as we talked about hypothermia and how you should urinate once you are inside if you have it, about overly complicated plans in fiction, a little about 'Evangelion,' and a bit more about the tragedy. Still not quite a conversation that drew me into debate mode like the potato peeler discourse, but still fun! Afterwards, I decided to work on more clues for my 15x15 cryptic, but progress on this felt slower than it did yesterday. I had been splitting the clues to write into thirds, and today I was tackling the second set of words, which had some trickier ones to do. I felt like I was relying on some of the tools I use (anagrammers, cryptic indicator lists, clue repositories) way more than I'm used to. About halfway through writing, I decided to make dinner, even though I barley had anything in my fridge. No vegetables, only sausage and eggs... well, I guess stir fry noodles with just two things would suffice! It tasted good I suppose, though I knew that this could not go on: eventually, I'll need to go gorcery shopping, preferably before the weekend. I ate and wrote the clues, feeling more confident with them as I went on. Once I had finished both my dinner and my clue writing for the day, I thought I would wind down by finishing off today's section of the bloghan, but I got caught up in some discussion with my former coworker about our keyboard. We had a little bit of fun with making roles in our group chat, making room for the "stakeholders" (my co-DM, the fanatic, and the compatriot) to give feedback, and a whole lot of discussion on the design choices being debated right now. The big sticking point is how my former coworker wants the keyboard to be as compact as possible, without sacrificing the features she wants, like the rotary encoder and the LED strip. Honestly, I feel like an intern of sorts in this project, as I'm always asking questions about mechanical keyboards and keyboard layouts that feel so basic once they're explained to me. Eventually, she tells me that we should just discuss tomorrow, telling me to go to bed. "OK, got it boss," I reply, and after just a bit more bloghan, I head to bed. A little less productive of a day than yesterday, but surely this will change tomorrow, right?

Wednesday morning was a bit rougher than the last two, as I woke up later than I wanted to, and I ran out of milk. I had enough of it for today's breakfast at least, but I'll have to figure something out for tomorrow, soon. At least waking up late today didn't actually make me late for any buses or for work. Walking into work and sitting at my desk, I knew I had a lot to do... but I just couldn't bring myself to work. I still had to prepare for my meeting with the director and my manager on Monday, and I had the crossword to do as well, the documentation I agreed to finish by February, and this new task for the nightly thing in the new project. Yet there I was, sittign at my desk with my head tilted down, cycling through the same few apps. I knew I should've been doing work, but I don't know. Just wasn't feeling it, maybe? Even so, I did have some stuff up on my laptop, so I was asbentmindedly checking over the steps for that nightly task thing, making sure that what I had done yesterday was all correct. I found a couple mistakes in what I had done previously. My co-DM swung by around this time, telling me that maybe we should delay the D&D character creation session since two of the players were super jet-lagged, and really should be resting. I agreed with her, but suggested that they should be the ones to decide that for themselves. My Japanese coworker, one of the players, told us that he was feeling just fine for later tonight, but my co-DM managed to convince him to take a rest. He seemed to feel a little bad, but it's pretty normal for D&D sessions to get cancelled or omoved arouind, so I didn't really mind. After she left, I allowed myself to move on with my automated nightly task setup, starting on the last few steps. It said there was one file that I needed to make adjustments to, so it would match the new project. Thinking this would be a simple fix, I looked at it, and... 500 lines. 500 lines?? Everything else in this whole process has been so short and simple, 30 lines max! I have to go through all of these to match it up to the new project?? Well, time to get to work I guess... right after I read a couple 'One Piece ' chapters, that is. I'm back at the part which made me take a break before, where Sanji is being really annoying with his whole nosebleed thing. I would be fine with it if they didn't use this trope of nosebleeding when you see someone pretty to introduce some pretty important and heavy racism lore in the world of 'One Piece.' I'm so sure that Oda will be using "blood" as a symbol here because of all the blood transfusion drama that's been going down with the fish-men and the humans, but did he have to introduce it with some perverted guy dying from blood loss seeing boobs for the first time in 2 years? That's what annoys me the most about it. Should've stayed a gag. I'll still read it though, because I was told it would get better. We went down for lunch after this too, and once again, the group began to play 'President.' I put myself to work though, finally starting to go through the file and cross-checking the things it listed with the actual project, in between reading more 'One Piece' pages. My co-DM wanted to know if we should have a lunchtime discussion with the players, but I decided against it, since they were all busy playing 'President' anyways. "Celeste" (who wouldn't be playing D&D with us this time) pointed out the snow to me, and it was snowing to what I would say is a medium extent. The flurries themselves though were pretty huge, and that did make me smile, just a bit. As I worked and read, I silently judged her as she swirled her orange juice bottle (not actually judging her of course, just looking at her strangely when she did), and shared with her some of the bizarre things that happened between me and the work rival yesterday. Lunch felt like it ended sooner than it actually did, and once I was back up, I decided to really focus now and put more effort into this long file. I had previously assumed that it was all probably right anyways, but as I looked around the new project, I saw that it really wasn't. I entered in my corrections, but there was somethign odd happening. I mistyped one command as I was navigating, and it gave me errors. Errors on simple navigation? You literally can't do that incorrectly (unless you mistype it, like I did). I tried again and again, and still, the same errors. I refresh things and it seems to alleviate the issue. Not even a minute passes by before Steve asks me about if I'm getting any errors, and he sees on my screen that I just did. On Steve's own screen is some sort of "post" by my manager on some sort of forum looking thing, using the same app that our team does for direct messages with each other. Wait, I'm not on that board? I feel like I should be, as people on my team are rpelying in real time to my manager's "post," which asks about the same error that I was previously getting, but for one of our other projects. I thought that I fixed it myself, but a minute later, the error comes back, this time with no mistyping from me. Refreshing doesn't fix it this time either, and nothing else does too. The scope of the what the error actually does seems huger than I initially thought, as I can't access or edit anything. I mentally run through my list of tasks and realize I can't do them without at least looking at certain things in the project or in my previous Absconder work. Resigned to this state of being unable to do any work at the moment (unwillingly), I begin to read more 'One Piece' (willingly). One nby one, other coworkers filter into the corner , bored and unable to doo any work too. THey start conversing about what must've happened and how they actually can't do anything right now, and they start discussing academics and crosswords and what things might still be working, if only they had the foresight to open them up before all this happened. The fanatic tells me that if I had the crossword ready for today, they wouldn't have to be boired, but once he sees that I'm reading 'One Piece' instead, he is satisfied. See, he's not just a crossword fanatic: he's a 'One Piece' fanatic as well, and he's been pushing me to catch up for months. Well fine, I'm getting back into it anyways! My equivalent suggests that everyone moves downstairs to talk and play cards while they wait for things to start working again, but once I'd felt like I've read enough 'One Piece' for the day (I'll be real: Shirahoshi and Otohime's backstory is just making me real sad and now is a good stopping point in the story anyways), I switched to writing bloghan, catching up with what has happened since this morning. While I could continue writing it down in the lunch room, I'd have to do it with the touch keyboard on my phone, and not the external keyboard on my work desk that can connect to my phone. The fanatic tells me that I should just try using his mechanical keyboard instead, so I can get a feel for it and so that I can carry it downstairs. I want to try it out first, so I sit myself down at his desk and begin typing. Honestly, I quite like it! It's not like the last mechanical keyboard I tried, where the keys felt hard to press down and had a layout that looked similar to a regular one but felt just a bit off. This keyboard had a pretty normal layout, and I felt like I didn't have to exert myself to use the keys as much. I think I am now sold on the idea of mechanical keyboards. As I type away, it seems like whatever errors were present got resolved, but as I'm already on a roll with this block of text, I decide to finish off whatever blog writing I'm doing, then get back to work. In that time, the crossword cubicle decides to start struggling with a New Yorker cryptic, and my equivalent compliments my clever way of looking like I'm doing work while actually updating bloghan. Well, that wasn't really the intention, but I guess that is what it looks like. I head back to my desk after seeing the director pass me while sitting at someone else's desk (this time though, it looks like I was doing work, for once!), and continue on with the task I was doing before any of this error business. Except... maybe one more chapter of 'One Piece' wouldn't hurt? This backstory is really engaging, and now that Sanji isn't being overbearingly annoying and the action is intensifying, I'm really liking the present series of events. Anyways, after reading about 10 more chapters from the 1 chapter I said I would read, I get back to work on checking that one big file, looking through the project and... oh, it's that error again. Well, back to 'One Piece' I go! Genuinely, there's nothing else to do, and so I read and read, even as people come to visit me. My equivalent shows up and tells me he's still feeling super tired from the jet lag, and he wanted to know if we would be canceling the character creation session today. I ask both him and my Japanese coworker if they wanted it, receiving a yes and a no respectively. I go to ask my co-DM and the compatriot what they think, and I walk in on the compatriot and the rest of the crossword cubicle (except my co-DM, she's working) sitting very very still, still staring at that New Yorker cryptic from earlier. "Celeste" is sat up in her chair, her hands clenched in a stressed position, and silently mouthing words. She looked like she was being possessed or chanting out some sort of dark ritual. She didn't even notice that I walked in. I shared with my co-DM what was going on, came up with the idea that we make the in person session optional, judged the rest of the cubicle for an easy clue that they hadn't yet solved (they told me it's my fault they were resorting to New Yorker cryptics, and they need more bubbler time... geez, more bubbler time is usually a bad thing), and headed back to my desk to see that the error was still around, then went back to 'One Piece.' My equivalent went home, and after a while it was almost time to start the character creation session. At first, my co-DM needed a bit more time, so I read a chapter or two as people started to gather and chat in our corner, then once she was ready, my Japanese coworker requested another 10 minutes, so I read up to almost the end of the 'Fish-Man Island' arc. There was a cool moment where some classic Oda foreshadowing occurred, and I turned to the fanatic to show my excitement at it, and he was quite happy to see me finally back on the 'One Piece' train. At last, my Japanese coworker finished up, and we were able to go downstairs to an empty meeting room and discuss characters. I gave them a run down of the different classes, party balance and all that, and we split into two, where I helped the compatriot make his character, a high elf artificer. This was my first time really looking through the artificer class, and it really blew me away with the sheer amount of options it had to do just about anything. I mean, if you have 100 gold pieces, you can summon a whole homunculus at second level! All the unique buffs it can give things seem really useful too... I guess we'll jsut have to see. My co-DM was helping my Japanese coworker, and it seemed liek he was going to make the same character as last time, which there's nothing wrong with. He kept trying to tell her that he really wanted to specialize in having a very high AC, which I don't mind at all, but she seemed to be pretty against it. I'll have to talk to her about that, but maybe later. After the all the big decisions had been made, I thought it would be fun to give everyone one of the non-magical trinkets, but as we rolled on the first table I found, it was giving some really weird trinkets: I mean, "the stick that you were beat with as a child" and "a bag made of flesh?" Quite frankly, what the hell? My co-DM quickly found the right table, the one from the 'Player's Handbook,' (turns out I had found the table form 'Curse of Strahd,' a more macabre setting), and assigned some trinkets that were a lot more... tame and normal. Once we had finished the session, I was not shocked to see that it had taken about 90 minutes, and we got a ride back to all our places by my co-DM. It was a pretty quiet car ride, and there really wasn't all that much to talk about. I debated asking her to bring me to a dollar store or something to buy macaroni and cheese or something, but I decided that I would just repeat my dinner from last night instead. I got dropped off and I got started on catching up with messages I had accidentally left on read, bloghan, some games I wanted to play, researched LEDs for a light strip on the keyboard (didn't get very far with this unfortunately), and finished off the crossword (even harder than last time... I think I have to commit to using smaller words). I cooked my stir fry noodle with sausage and egg, made lunch plans for Saturday with my predecessor (he was the one I had to catch up on messages with the most), then went to bed.

This next morning, Thursday morning, sucked. No milk means no tea and no oatmeal, so my regular breakfast was out of the question. I woke up too late to make eggs and sausage without being late to work, so I decided to just make lunch, shave, pack a tea bag from home in my bag, and buy breakfast at the restaurant in the company building. There was a lot more snow falling this morning, albeit in very tiny flakes as opposed to yesterday's flurries, which was lovely to see. Why couldn't we get this kind of consistent weather in December? I got on the bus (there was someone who was waiting at the first bus stop with me so I couldn't whistle 'Snow halation' when it came on, feels bad), and I made all the rest on time, walking into work on time, but not going up to my desk first. Visiting the restuarant was my top priority, and I was surprised to see that their breakfast menu had completely changed: in fact, it was completely gutted! There was barely anything on there. I endd up getting the two breakfast burritos and coffee, subbing the coffee for orange juice. While I waited for my food, someone I knew from a different floor came in to also presumably order breakfast, but I wasn't really feeling like talking to anyone just yet, so I hoped that she didn't see or recognize me. Luckily, I successfully avoided such a conversation, and headed upstairs soon after with breakfast in hand. I sat down at my desk and ate, as Steve and my Japanese coworker worked (my work rival showed up later). There were no new important emails or messages waiting for me as I walked in, but the error from yesterday seemed to be fully resolved, so I could start working on that nightly thing, or start planning for that meeting with the director and my manager... Well, I chose the former, saw that there was just so many files I still had to go through, and decided to just ask if there was a way to check if the whole thing was working first, to see if there were any corrections I'd have to make (instead of checking everything, just find what isn't working!). While I waited for a response from the person I asked about that, I thought to start figuring out what I'd do for that meeting on Monday, but the cloud document portal thing wasn't loading at all, So, logically, it was time for me to go on my phone and read the rest of the 'Fish-Man Island' arc of 'One Piece.' This arc was really good, and if it weren't for the criticisms I pointed out yesterday, it would probably be an extremely good arc. I really enjoyed just seeing how the Straw Hats have grown, in power and in mental fortitude, and the classic emotional backstories and compelling characters were very strong now. I think my favourite part of this is the new lore that was introduced and shared. I wasn't really expecting this to be as lore rich as it was, what with the ancient weapons not necessarily being machines, or this whole business with Joyboy and the ponegliffs. I also really like all this setup with Big Mom, with her being set up to be the next big enemy. I'm very excited for more! But... maybe later, I'm starting to get a little busy. Once I finish the arc, I decide to start updating bloghan to catch up, reading the messages I got in response about how to check my nightly runs, and a visit from the fanatic where he asked about the 15x15. Speaking about that, it was done! I just made a couple hotfixes to it this morning, and so it was all ready to go. I still don't think it's that great of a crossword, just because of a whole lot of jank clues stemmingfrom hard words to cryptic clue with, but I can just say that's part of the challenge. As I continue to type away, people from the crossword cubicle come in to talk to us, and my work rival loses all his focus immediately. They talk about cooking, about keyboards, about diffrent types of sauce, and about team deadlines that certain people will be or will be unable to meet. Eventually, people grew tired of standing around not going to lunch (oh, I guess that's why they all came here to chat!), and so they all went to lunch. Since I had spent the last 20 minutes writing stuff, I decided to start at my desk and actually do some work. Now that there were no new chapters of 'One Piece' downloaded on my phone, no 15x15 clues to write, and no more bloghan to catch up on (for the most part), I could actually maybe do something!! Plus I want that hungry since I ate breakfast a bit later today. My first step was to kick off one of those nightly things just on my own device, to see if I had things all linked up properly. While I waited for that to complete, I started planning out what I would do for the meeting on Monday. I settled on makinga presentation, and after struggling rfor a bit to find the template that everyone in our company has to use, I started working on it. I get that it's probably not something where a presentation is required, but just in case it is, I want to have something to show, at least. I cycle through some songs on my phone as I do this, eventually settling to loop 'Infinite' (just a peek into my sick and twisted mind, reallly), and slowly people came back to work in the corner. As soon as the fanatic came by though, I knew that things would change, as he finally requested the 15x15 be placed on the board. After all this time, he's back for more. I head to the crossword cubicle and see that they've already prepared a 15x15 grid on the board. Must've taken them a long time to do. I fill in the black boxes and numbers, and send them the link, and watch as they suffer and solve. Over the next hour, they slowly put solutions up on the board, as I work on my presentation and monitor the dry run of the nightly thing. To my shock, the group is making great progress, having finished half of the grid in only 30 minutes. My work rival is getting zero of these clues though, and he quits after 45 minutes. The fanatic though? He's loving it, as is my co-DM. After about an hour, they've basically filled it all in, exempt for one slightly awkwardly worded clue that I didn't fix. When they get it by guessing, it makes sense, but I agreed that my choice of words to clue in the cryptic part wasn't great. Just one hour... that's all it took? More than three days to get a good fill, and three days to write clues, and it's solved in an hour? The 12x12 took them longer! I'll have to see if making future large crosswords is worth it. I stick around in the crossword cubicle for a bit after the crossword has been solved, still working on my presentation, when my mentor visits me. I'm not at my desk right now, so it's a bit of a surprise when he does visit me at someone else's desk. He asks me about the intentional error thing from earlier this week, and I told him that the results were all there and correct! However... I did end up getting rid of my changes when updating my project version, so all of the work was gone. He told me that it was alright, and that maybe next week I could try doing it again so I can share the results. After this, I decided it was time to head back to my desk, even if I was doing work here. I focused in on my presentation, actually making some very good progress, pointing out all the differences between my Absconder work, and the work of the director that it was based on. I focused in to work, listening to 'HAPPY PARTY TRAIN' on loop. The fanatic visits me just for a second, to show me that he's listening to 'HAPPY PARTY TRAIN' (due to some prior conversations we've had), to which I show him my phone screen and 'HAPPY PARTY TRAIN' being there too! He laughs and leaves. That one was a pretty funny outcome. I worked some more, finishing off the section where I talk about differences, and starting to work on the part which talks about results. One seemingly innocuous project file update later, and I start up Absconder to regenerate all those error logs. At this point, I'm about to go back onto my phone, but just then I got a message from my manager, with him asking if I was free to come by his desk for a chat. Just like every time this happens, I get worried at first: is THIS the meeting where he tells me I need to stop slacking off as much as I do and work just a bit harder? Well, like always, it's no. He asks me about what I'm doing now (the presentation for Monday, the diagram for February, and the nightly runs for the new project), then after talking a bit more about each of those (giving me the reigns on a different set of nightly runs to also manage for the new project), he asks me about what else I've got in progress. I share with him about just how many tasks I have in a "waiting" phase, whether it's people on my work rival's team who ask me for little variations of the same task and never get back to me once I give them results, or about how the not-manager still hasn't gotten back to me about my Absconder stuff for him, or about that one task he mentioned a while ago that he never gave me. Upon hearing that last one, he seemed confused, and as I told him more about what I remembered of it, he turned to his computer and looked around in some files or whatnot. Once he found what he was looking for, he searched it a bit more, then leaned back and remarked that he thought it was something that had been resolved by now. He told me that he might give me that task a bit later, since I had a lot on my plate right now. During this entire meeting, I found my eyes wandering around his desk, looking at photos with him and a tiger, a PEZ dispenser, his 2025 calendar with some yummy looking pasta, a weird glass cuboid trophy for years of service at this company, and a much bigger trophy with some sort of golden athlete figure from a different company in the same field. Once he handed me the new task, and told me that I didn't need to wait for my dry run to finish, and that I should test the nightly automation system of the run tonight. On Friday, we could talk about the results and figure out what to do next. After that, he sent me on my way. I really don't know sometimes about what he thinks of my work ethic. Clearly, I'm still getting things done on time, even if it usually looks like I am not working half the time. I think my manager feels like I don't have much tasks, so he gets me in a meeting with him to figure out just what kinds of things I am doing, since I seem to get a bunch of tasks now that aren't necessarily from him directly, so he wouldn't know about them. I don't really know though, so I head back to my desk, happy to be oblivious to the "why" of it all. Once I get back, I realize that one of my Absconder tool runs stopped working! It was the part analyzing the stuff I've been working on for the last week. It was working on Monday, so why did it stop now? I thought for a bit, realized it was because I did an update of my files, and asked my mentor for a fresh copy of one of the files we had to manually add. While I wait for his response, I try and try to get things working again, but I end up giving up and waiting for responses to the things I'm working on. I pass the time by going back on my phone and reading the 'Sonic the Hedgehog' comic. I reallyy am the omdel employee. The fanatic visits me, but when he sees that I'm reading 'Sonic' and not 'One Piece,' he leaves, dissapointed. My co-DM visits my Japanese coworker, and I listen in as they quietly talk about a really bad meeting that he just went through. Apparently, he just had a meeting where he reported to his manager that he hadn't done anything, and while his manager didn't tell him to his face that it was not great, he had the feeling that his manager was a bit upset. They ended up leaving early, and it was just me left in the corner cubicle. I go back to the phone to read more, and that's when my mentor chooses to walk in, catching me in the act. He just ignores it though, and asks me more about why I need an updated file. WHen I explain the situation to him, he tells me that because of the large changes made, he can't really provide that right now, so I need to redo all this with an older version of the project. Well, that's not ideal, but I go ahead and rearrange a bunch of my workspace stuff on my device to facilitate this. Just before it's time to go home, I restart every Absconder process. The snow is coming down much harder now, like to the level of the typical snowstorm in my home city. I wait at my regular first bus stop, but the time that it usually comes at comes and goes. I wait for an additional 10 minutes, and it arrives. When I get in, it makes sense: it's a new driver, not one who regularly does this route. The other drivers of this route were really good about being on time to this station, but this guy does not seem like that at all. A bit dissapointing, but I guess that's just how bus driving schemes go... I really hoped that I would not miss my second bus, as the timings can be tight between them, but thanks to 'Kaguya no Shiro de Odoritai' playing in my headphones, granting me energy and a compulsion to walk at a pace matching its fast-paced BPM, I made it on time, recovering the time loss. When I got back, I did a little bloghan, then hopped on call for the regular Thursday call with some friends from my home city. As I waited for them to also hop on, I started up my little illicit cocpy of 'Balatro' and started a run. I was playing pretty badly due to how tired I had become, and as the two fellows came in to the call, I had to also try explaining how the game worked to one of them and getting a bunch of much-needed backseating from the other, who had slowly become obsessed after I showed him that one flush run I did last week. I got pretty far into the run before someone brought up what our plan for this stream even was: 'Danganronpa.' Oh yeah, right, we were supposed to do that. The entirety of my night is spent playing 'Danganronpa,' specifically its first case. The plan originally was just to play up to the first body discovery, with the voices being done by two of us, though my voices were just plain to start, to spare my vocal cords. Honestly, I would really like this game more if there was just a lot less padding. Yes, I like characters and character interaction, and having some downtime form the plot, but I think this game takes a really long time to get to the point of... well, just about everything in this game. Once we got to the discovery of the body (why'd they have to kill my favourite character first??), to which I started playing Michael Jackson's 'Man in the Mirror,' and then the reveal the second death to occur (why'd they have to kill my second favourite character second??), we weren't sure if we should keep going. I mean, it was really late, but we were finally getting into the part of the game which I was most interested in. The decision was reached after I decided something on my own: to keep going. The others adjusted by telling me where I needed to go to take the least amount of time in the investigation phase, but I still wasted it anyways by talking to Byakuya every so often. I also likened Byakuya's vocal patterns to the person that I typically record those "podcast-esque" YouTube videos with, since he was in this call. To be honest, the likeness is not really present in the first place, but the confusion and disbelief I sowed anyways was delightful all the same. Once the investigation was all finished up, I felt like I had figure out most of what was going on, and even if I was spoiled on the majority of how this case would go, I felt pretty good about it anyways. Now was the start of the trial segment, and the other people in the call were telling me it was getting late and that they had other things to go to. Thinking it would satisfy my curiosity enough, I told them I'd just play through the trial's first minigame, then hit the classic "Alt + F4" combo. Well, the trial was engaging enough that I ended up playing through it in its entirety. Throughout the run of the trial, the other two people in the call dropped off, but I saw it through to the end. I did it almost flawless, only getting caught up on the difference between a question asking "how" over a question asking "where" (in this case, they seemed to be the same question, didn't they?), and with the closing argument rhythm game section as well. Why did they put a rhythm game at the end of it??? I also whiffed it completely, not failing it, but getting really close to it. I accidentally had mouse controls on while playing on controller, so when I switched to mouse it messed me up. The minigame didn't even make any sense to me. It felt like the ways it wanted me to hit the beats were not on the beat of the music that was playing during this segment. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but I got to the execution cutscene, and the end of the first chapter. By now, I was alone in the call, so I saved my game, left th call, and went ahead with writing some bloghan. But as I wrote... I realized that there was just so much that happened in the latter half of this day that I didn't feel like writing more. It had become so late though, so now I was feeling too tired to cook anything (even if there wasn't really anything to cook in teh frist place), and I ended up just going to bed without eating anything. It wasn't so bad, and I didn't feel hungry anyways, and I fell asleep pretty quick.

Friday morning was going to be different. In fact, Friday was going to be different. This whole week was slowly getting worse and worse, with more and more tasks getting piled up on me, less and less food in my fridge, and as always, bloghan. When I got up though, I wasn't feeling like getting up to go to work. However, since my laptop was not fully charged (I still don't have a charger!!), I would have to go into the office to get everything I needed to done. I debated skipping breakfast today, and decided to use half of my remaining sandwich ham for breakfast (with an egg), and half for my sandwich lunch, which was a faster process than I thought it would be. I'm still feeling so drianed and tired from staying up so late each night, and having no tea to drink is not helping with this. Boiling water it is, I guess. In my bag, I still have that teabag from yesterday which I didn't use, and I throw in a roll of packing tape too, as a surprise tool that will help me later. I make it to work with no issues, and sit down to get some work done. I hard focus on my presentation for Monday, trying to get it completed at the very least, and overnight, all my Absconder stuff had finished, so I had all the results reasy: I just needed to talk about them. I start by writing down the stuff I already had to track down for my mentor, the errors that I had to prove were just false flags but valid cases. There were a couple visits from people, like the fanatic asking for more crosswords, but I managed to get a good flow of music to push me through completing about 2/3 of the tracing and writing that I needed to do before lunch. When lunch did roll around, my co-DM and the fanatic came to collect me and my Japanese coworker, and after some conversation made dumb by my contributions to it, we made our way downstairs. I had brought my laptop to finish that last third of the log file discussion. Despite this, I still agreed to play 'President' with the people who were here, accepting that I would have to play by these strange rules that they play with over here. It was more fun than the other times I've played 'President' here, with the poker hands rule finally making sense, and although the first couple of rounds were rough due to some bad luck and bagholding on my part, as more people joined the game and I got a bunch of double full house hands, I managed to turn things around and get second two rounds in a row. We switched the president's role to give the bum their two lowest, not two of their choosing, to avoid snowballing. I don't really know how to feel about that, but if they like it, then I guess I'll play along. I got a couple lines into my presentation during this, but I was mostly focused on how I could clean up my end of round game in 'President,' figuring out that early full houses helped clean up things, and that holding onto four of a kinds could be pretty helpful if someone tried to pull a full house in the late game. We went back upstairs, and I got another music mix going to focus in on this presentation, completing it! However... if either the director or my manager assked me to show where in the actual project these errors and their justifications were, I didn't want to awkwardly have to navigate around from scratch, so I took some extra time to go over each one again, noting in my notebook where they were located down to the line number. I was super satisified with this list, and allowed myself to take a break, finally going to the break room with my Japanese coworker and the compatriot in tow. Tea poured and milk capsules collected, I began to walk out, but my Japanese coworker's manager walked in, and asked his employee how he was feeling. One response of "not well" later, that manager began grilling him about why he was here! The compatriot and I thought the atmosphere was getting a bit awkward, so we slunk off, back to our desks, wondering if maybe we should've stayed with our coworker. I went back to the corner, and soon, so did my Japanese coworker, having trouble understanding what he was being told in the break room. Now was a pretty good time to star writing bloghan, but just as I got started my manager messaged me: he didn't see that the nightly run had gone off yesterday (it emails my entire team once it completes), so he was wondering what had happened. I completely forgot that it had happened, and I started lloking around to see if I could find any errors or logs or... well, anything! I realize that it had sent me an email or something, and that email had a couple of errors listed in it. Sending these errors to my manager, I thought he would be the one helping me with them, but he asked if I had contacted someone who does other nightly runs like this about my issues. I just plain out hadn't so I decided to tell the truh and say that I had only just finished my preparations for Monday, and was just getting to start on this nightly thing now. I got in contact with person who wrote the guide right after that, and she got back to me pretty quick, asking to see the logs. I had no idea where to find them, and when I asked the fanatic, he just gave me a command that didn't give a log, just the stuff that would run every night. Eventually, I ended up just having to ask where the log was, and with the amount of information she gave me, I had a feeling she already knew where to find the log and was just making an opportunity to teach me where it was. For the next hour or so, we would be back and forth, with her asking other questions about things I changed as I sent her where I made those changes. At some point, she made a group chat with that manager who asked me "what have you done since you got here," but he didn't seem to be reading it, so it's not going to be a worry until later. In between lapses in communication, I wrote bloghan. After giving me a suggestion to adjust a format of something that I didn't touch (because it was there before, so it would've worked before, right?), and told me to submit my changes so that everyone could ask me. If I kept the changes only on my device, then the nightly run wouldn't pick it up. Oh...so that's how that works. In hindsight, it makes sense that it would work that way, and now I'm wondering why I previously thought that it would work any other way. Submitting my changes, and adjusting the timing on the nightly run to be more like an evening one, I settled on taking a break from bloghan and from work, chatting a bit with the fanatic and my co-DM (they had just visited the corner) about corn chips and the spicy gluten snack thing also sitting on the table. Corn chips, in my opinon, are best eaten by themselves, with no salsa or sour cream or nacho cheese or whatever other sauce or dip you eat them with. They're fine as is, and I have a strong prefernce towards eating them by themselves. However, I don't believe people are wrong for eating corn chips with extra stuff, it's just not my taste, noy my style. My Japanese coworker and my work rival both got an email alerting them of my submission, and my work rival told me "good job" (thank you, I suppose??), and my Japanese coworker decided to setup a filter for emails about this new project, since he wasn't wokring on it just yet. During the filtering process, he navigated to his junk folder and found a bunch of phishing emails. These weren't those test spam emails that we got from the company. No, they were very real. He was in a bit of disbelief, but I guess it's good that he reported them even after they ended up in his junk folder. The rest of my work day was spent on bloghan, and a little bit of internal hoping that this time, the nightly run would actually work. Right at my regular leaving time, I looked around and found out that I was the last person to leave the office. That hasn't happened in a good while. Just before I left though, I thought that I should neaten up my desk a bit, starting with the picture in its frame, sitting next to my monitor. I took that test paper that we used, flipped it over to the white side, and used the tape and a blade I had snuck into the workplace to tape the photo in the square. I struggled for a bit to put it back in the frame, but once it was placed, it was... glorious. After some organization of the sticky notes, notebooks, and pens on my desk, I headed out. The ride home was pretty tame, with the only thing of note being an opposum near my second bus stop. It was the first opposum I've ever seen! I guess I can see why people think they're cute? They seem a little scary though, like they would have no problem doing vicious to a creature larger than they are. After I got back, I made myself a hot chocolate and just kind of relaxed for a little. I've been so focused on doing work this week, whether it was for my job or for myself, but a little relaxation is nice too. My relaxation had some playing of games, some watching of videos, some snacking on some pretzels, and it ended with bloghan. I decided on a couple things, then and there: one, I'm going to make a huge batch of biryani, and two, I'm going to finish all the assignments for the more relaxed course this weekend. I caught up on some chores, cooked and eat dinner (sorry for committing the cardinal sin of putting cheese on stir fried noodles), and went back and re-did the first trial of 'Danganronpa' to easily get two achievements that impose restrictions on your trial run. After this, I went to sleep.

Woke up on Saturday morning and flew straight into the sun. An hour later than I had planned, but that was alright. This morning was mostly filled with making a simple breakfast, shaving, and some back and forth with my predecessor about our lunch plans. We settled on a Turkish restuarant close by, and I didn't do much as I waited, just a little bloghan and a little bit of video watching. He texted me that he was outside, and I headed out, seeing him for the first time in four months. He didn't look all the different, and the rental car he was in was really really fancy. I mean, a dial for the shifter and electronic screens for every possible instrument dial? The car was also massive! Why would anyone want a car this big? My predecessor mentioned this too, and we found ourselves in our old regular rhythm of conversation: interesting conversation, a period of awkward silence, then one of us breaks it by bringing up something else to talk about. We mostly caught up with each other, with me talking about the things he did while back in my home city for four months, and him asking about what had been going on recently with the team and my work. We got to the restaurant pretty quickly, and we walked in as we were talking about some of the recent happenings of the office. We were greeted at the door by a server, who asked us if we wanted breakfast or lunch. We came for lunch, but when we chose that we were told that we'd need to wait 30 minutes for lunch, since they only served it at noon. Why even give us the choice then??? We ended up accepting the breakfast, and headed for a table right in the middle. There were only four items available for breakfast, and I ended up mirroring a lot of things that he did: his eventual choice off the menu, when he would go for the tea, looking around the place, things like that. We both went for the menemen, as we talked further about how the workplace hadn't really changed all that much in the time that he was gone. Only a couple employees had left, and there was a new project, but really that was all. We talked about work as much as we could without breaking the rules of confidentiality, and he talked to me about the things he was doing in his final years of education. The menemen was brought to us alongside some nice bread, and we began to eat. It tasted really good! I was kind of going into this not expecting to like it, because of that whole lunch snubbing thing, but the tomato and the mushy egg really complemented each other, and the Turkish bread was the perfect thing to go along with it. We ate and talked in between bites, and my predecessor found a really long string inside one of his bread pieces, but otherwise, the meal was excellent, if a bit expensive. Our first conversation point was about his wife and what she does for work. She will come to live here in a couple months, not in February as we were originally told. It was really nice being able to talk to my predecessor again, and I told him about all the people who were looking forward to him returning, and about the whole debacle with the starting date choice. He wanted to delay that initial start date so he'd have a bit more of a break after school and Christmas, and he started asking about delaying things. Apparently, HR had told him that he couldn't delay it by one week because there would be no orientation in that week, and that he'd need to start on Tuesday the week after that, since Monday was a holiday (no it wasn't???). There was more discussion on similar topics and how this place seemed a little fancy, and as we finished up eating, I avoided taking the last piece of bread, in case he wanted it. Once he was finished with his current slice, I asked if he wanted to split it, but he rejected that. He was full, so I tookthe ifnla bread piece and finished it off. The server came by after all our dishes were taken away, and my predecessor asked for just one bill. Once the server left, I thanked him for paying, and he told me that he was a full time now, so it was his treat. We talked a lot about how payment and job stuff worked, and he told me some funny stories about how he misunderstood his offer at first, and ended up asking for more in this economy, making HR a little mad. He also got a notification the next day that something to do with his "consideration for a role" was rejected, but the next day it was cleared up for him that he didn't actually lose his offer, it's just that the system didn't really cooperate with him working at the company and being offered a new position later down the line (this was months ago, by the way). We got offered more tea, and we talked more about what it would be like on the day he came back, and about other people who might be coming back too. We left after finishing our tea (seemed like he wanted to get out quickly to return his rental car), with me having an awkward moment being unable to open the door. The one I tried to open (both ways) was the right one, but they keep that one locked I guess? We walked through the rain, getting to his car so he could drop me off. In the car, we talked more about workplace safety and the uselessness of a thing called "reading" in our position, and also about how it was raining in January. Coming from where I do, that just feels so wrong. I wished him a good last few days before getting back to work, then headed inside. I'm really excited to see him on Tuesday. The rest of Saturday was spent on bloghan or other chores, and as always, getting distracted with games, SiIvagunner lore drops, or 'Balatro' gameplay. At some point, I also check in on my work laptop, to see if the nightly thing worked out: it didn't, but I guess that's a Monday problem. When I get hungry, I just make some hot chocolate, as the rain from this morning has turned to some snow. I guess my plans of going grocery shopping on this day were dashed, and I'm seriously starting to consider getting them delivered instead. I know it's what my work rival does, but I don't want to pay for fees. I put my debate aside for now, as there's still things to do. I wrote more bloghan, and prepared a baked potato to enjoy as a snack. The evening became mostly bloghan and eating my baked potato, loaded with cheese, and some chores and video watching to go along with it. I tried to get started on one of those assignments that I wanted to grind through, but I just wasn't feeling it. I made my dinner, a repeat of last night's but with rice instead of noodle, then prepared more for next week's D&D session by starting to prepare the players' character sheets. After this, I went to bed a little earlier than usual. Tomorrow would need to be a big day. And a big day it was! I woke up early on Sunday so that I could take care of things from the get-go, starting the morning with a small breakfast and an assignment from the course I need to speedrun, then working on some character sheet stuff. I was starting to get hungry and was considering if I should go to the grocery store or get the gorceries delivered, when that compsci friend from bloghans back asked me if I was getting groceries today. He had been increasingly worried (for nothing) about what I was eating (also nothing, essentially), and I told him I would be getting groceries today with either of the aforementioned methods. He suggested to me a new service that I wasn't as familar with for grocery delivery, and over the course of the next hour or so, I spent some time finding and submitting my groceries. I had free delivery since I just signed up, and the fees besides the delivery one were actually not so bad, so I sent it, and went for a short shower right after. When I got in the shower, not even after 2 minutes I started hearing this really loud knocking sound. I rushed out of the shower, quickly dried about 40 percent of myself, then walked around to every door in my vicinity to figure out where it was coming from. And there was no knocking to be found. I went back to finish off my shower, and once it was, back on the bloghan grind. After a bit, my order came in, and it was heavy. Really heavy. It turns out that the chicken that I bought didn't come in the small weights that I wanted, so I got given something double the size instead (and double the price too). The cilantro I had asked for was also not included, but that was refunded at the very least. After putting everything into my frige and freezer, I worked mostly on bloghan, some favours for friends, another assignment, and a little more of the D&D character sheet prep, followed by some 'Homestuck' reading. Some game time later, I started to prepare my biryani. The first step was to have the chicken drumsticks "marinate" in the powders and such for an hour (in quotations since it's only for an hour). But as I walked into my kitchen, I realized something: I put the chicken in the freezer. Why did I put it all in teh freezer if I was planning on eating some of it tonight??? I hoped that it wouldn't be too frozen, but I was too late. It was frozen solid. I split it up into the amount I still wanted to eat tonight and the amount I wasn't and decided to put it in the metal bowl I was going to use to marinate it, put a lid on top of it, then put it in a large pot with boiling water in it. Hopefully, that would defrost it enough so that I could do the hour of marination. I worked on more D&D stuff in that time waiting for defrost, and after a couple rounds of replacing the boiling water, it actually worked! I got started right away with mixing the spice mix, yogurt, and the other two spice mixes that I had with the defrosted drumsticks. I probably should have put the powders in before mixing the yogurt though... oh well, that's what sinks are for! Once it was sufficiently mixed, I stowed in the fridge and soaked the rice. I was going to make a huge batch of this, so I grabbed rice on the cup scale, not just the "couple handful" scale. Next was to cut the onions. I cried. So. Much. It was really bad. It had been a while since I had last cut fresh onions, and I was crying to the point of wailing and stamping my feet. I had to wash my eyes multiple times during this, but I managed to figure out that if I leaned back about 130 degrees, it wasn't nearly as bad! Once I had finished the onions, I went to write a couple bloghan sentences, then got straight into cooking my soaked rice, which freed me up to start cutting the tomatoes. After draining the cooked rice 10 minutes later, I could begin to saute and brown the onions, then balacing tomato cutting, bloghan writing, and ingredient preparing during that. As it skewed more towards bloghan writing, I began starting to burn the onions, so I knew that was my sign to thrown in the marinated chicken. At this point, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to get to everything on my to-do list tonight, due to my frozen chicken blunder, so I just put everything left into bloghan and cooking. Once it was done, it was still a bit wet, so I let it cook extra as I finished off everything. I served myself and stored away the majority of it for later, but I wasn't able to finish my dinner. I had heaped too much onto my plate. Well, I guess it'll serve as a nice thing to microwave when I get home tomorrow. I ended up going to sleep extremely late, which is probably a really bad thing considering what I had upcoming, but I'll find a way to make it work and make it to work.

Future plans

If only, if only, if only I hadn't had those days where I felt unmotivated and didn't do anything! I really wish that I could have no need for things like food and rest, so that I could just do all the things I want to. At least this week I did still do a bunch of the things I planned to do:

• PCB stuff: no progress on the one-bit adder project, but the kyboard project might finally have a layout!
• Door: no progress
• 'Homestuck': read further, still in Act 2, but read another good 40 pages or so.
• Cryptic crossword: just the 15x15 this week:
  • Original Nonchecked 15x15 Cryptic 1
• Hanayo Koizumi's birthday: All I have to say is "Making flowers bloom (4)"
• Course speedrun: well, I speedran two thirds of it. Still a really good outcome.
• 'One Piece': finished the Fish-Man island arc!! Really good, and gave me great vibes of "we are so back."
• 'Balatro' runs: I started one... I'm off my game.

This week, I'm going to make footprints for the one-bit adder PCB, read more 'Homestuck,' finish the speedrun of one of my two courses, and start working towards 100% completion of 'Yohane the Parhelion: NUMAZU in the MIRAGE.' There will probably be more 'Homestuck' reading, and maybe some more 'One Piece' too. I will probably also make a second batch of biryani this week too. Outside of D&D prep, if I still somehow have more time leftover after that, maybe I'll prepare to buy stuff to shave my legs.

Song of the week

'Main Theme' (https://youtu.be/Y_EVa7P9w-s) from 'Balatro' is the song of the week. I'm going to be honest with you: I can't stop hearing it. I don't mean that in my everyday life, things just happen to play the theme, no, I mean like when I'm just not doing anything, it's on my mind and playing in my mind. I have this thing where sometimes it really feels like the music I'm imagining is really around and playing into my ears. I know it's not just me thinking of the music and replaying the sound in my mind, because both have happened on separate ocassions. And for some reason, it's this theme that keeps appearing in that rarer form of my brain's internal audio formats. It plays in my sleep, it plays in the washroom, it plays when I'm walking outside, it plays. And I'm not even annoyed by it. It's relaxing, almost. The remixes of the theme that are more low-key could probably work to lull me to sleep, if needed. I'm not one who takes risks really, not ever, and while this theme doesn't make me want to go gambling or something, it does get me into a state of focus or relaxation, whichever I need. Also, sorry, I can't find an official release of just the theme by itself, so you're going to have to do with this hour long /mix.

Until next time

Typing bloghan on a keyboard that has a bit more substance to it has been such a boon this week. And honestly, just being able to do more things this week, even if it wasn't everything that I wanted to do this week, has also felt pretty great. Big things are going to be happening this upcoming week: after the long winter, is the brighter next season: winter 2. Thanks for reading, and see you next week!

- bubbler

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