January 26, 2025 - bloghan 31
This one was a pretty good week. Got to do a bunch of stuff, and I believe this week marks the first time where I did just about everything on my to-do list. Granted, a lot of it got pushed to the ends of the week, but I still did it, didn't I? Here's what happened to me this week:
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: planets of the solar system. This means that I'm not including Pluto, Ceres, Eris, Planet X, or the Sun. Actually, on the topic of Planet X, I feel like it would benefit from a different name, since it would be the ninth planet. Planet X implies it's like the tenth planet or something, but Planet IX doesn't have the same ring to it. Well, we're not really talking about Planet X anyways. Here's the tier list:
Ordered tiers, unordered within tiers. Not all that much to this one. I really think Mars is just kind of overrated and overhyped. Sure, there's ice on it, but there's an entire moon made of ice. Sure, it's got two moons, but Earth has a moon that can cover the entire Sun, and Jupiter has actual cool moons (and a lot more of them too). Venus is much more interesting because of its unique climate, and Mercury is too for its speed. Saturn is a bit overrated (not as much as Mars), since it's really mostly known for the rings, but it's still cool I suppose. Neptune might not seem all that interesting, but I think it's got the most beautiful shade of blue I've ever seen. Uranus and Earth are just alright. Uranus has the weird tilt and Earth has that water thing going, I suppose. The best planet is Jupiter though. It's flush with just a while bunch of cool stuff: the moons, the spot, the storms, and the size, just to name a few things.
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
All things considered, Monday morning was actually not all that bad. Even though I went to bed 3 hours later than I really should have, I woke up earlier than my alarm! And even when I decided to get a little more sleep anyways, I still woke up again in a reasonable amount of time. Thanks to my grocery delivery, I finally got to have my regular breakfast of oatmeal with berries and orange pekoe tea, for the first time in... uh, 4 or 5 days? I even have enough time to shave, along with making lunch! My buses came on time today, and the only eventful things were a pair of firetrucks, blaring sirens that I couldn't outwhistle. Walking into work, I greeted Steve and my Japnese coworker, and checked in on the nightly runs that had gone through over the weekend: none worked. Oh well! I started to get more prepared for my presentation later today, cleaning up those log files so that they looked like the points I made in my presentation, and getting every window I needed opened, open. Afterwards, I turned my attention to the nightly task, and to the person who was helping me get it setup. She was asking if I had good news regarding those nightly runs, and I shared that the same error was happening. She took only a couple of minutes to get back to me, sharing that in a set of files that were seemingly fine last week, that there was something that I needed to change to fit a new standard. Now, I'm a bit suprised at this, since in the most closely related project, this non-standard version of the file seems to work for the nightly runs regarding those other projects. Why does it not work now, when the process doesn't seem to have changed for that older project? Well, whatever. As I make that change, she messages me from another place to letting me know about this standards thing. She must really want to get this thing done, and done now. Once I finish, I set up the "nightly" task to go off in 5 minutes (it hasn't even hit lunch time yet), just for testing purposes, and let her know that I have. Now, we wait to see if that did the trick. The only thing I really have left for myself today is to prepare further for the presentation. I've got the slides ready, the logs, the specific locations of where things are going wrong... what else could I do? Well, since this was about my recent Absconder work, I should probably prepare to be asked questions about things on it. I went back through it, studying it like it was an actual exam, making sure I knew how each part of it worked. A little bit after I started, we went down for lunch. I brought my laptop down but didn't do work on it until after I had finished my sandwich. The people on the left of me played 'President,' and on the right was a game of 'Monopoly Deal.' I only watched the games, eating my sandwich and talking about D&D with the players present. Me and my co-DM recruited a new player as well! I'll have to work with him tonight to get his character ready. There were also things I needed to get figured out with my equivalent's character and with my Japanese coworker's character as well. After my lunch was finished, I continued to study my Absconder work, each little part of it, as everyone else played some card game around me. Eventually we went back upstairs, and it was back to prepping for me. My work rival asked if was nervous or not, since he saw me on my phone a couple times during that prep, but I just waffled some nonsense about how if the world chooses to become my enemy, I would fight like I always have. You know how it is. While I studied up, I checked in on the logs for the nightly thing, trying to see if it was working. The person helping me with that told me it looked like it had gotten past the point of the previous errors, so I guess the fact that the log seemed incomplete was a good thing. My work rival tried to bring up the topic of 'Sonic the Hedgehog 4,' talking about the next villain, but he interrupted himself: he forgot he had a meeting to attend. That left me alone to prepare myself further, but another work-based distraction would come up pretty soon after. The person who was helping me set up the nightly thing on the new project was having trouble accessing that new project, and needed me to log in to her device from my laptop to submit her changes to that project. I had no idea that one could do that, and wasn't sure if I should. What if her change broke a bunch of stuff? Would I be on the hook? Also, who's to say that I don't have those same access problems? After some consulting with Steve (all he said just kinda amounted to "just do it man"), I went ahead with it. Following this was my meeting and presentation. It would go well. It had to. I walk into the meeting room 5 minutes before the starting time, and wait. 5 minutes pass, and no one else enters. I'm starting to wonder if they thought this meeting was online, but my manger's status is "busy" and the director's is "away." Hmmm... I wait anotehr 2 minutes, and in walks my manager, greeting me. I ask him if we should wait for the director, and he nods, so we both work on our laptops in silence. This silence is only broken by him asking about the new nightly run task that he gave me (for the new project, there's 2 of those nightly things, and I was originally only asked to do one of them; recently, I was assigned to do both). Showing him my emails, I showed him that for the second nightly run, someone else seemed to have already done it. He was surprised by this, I guess because he didn't ask them to do it, so he told me to ask if they were already doing that specific nightly run. We fell into a silence again, waiting for the director to walk in, but he did not for another few minutes. Eventually, my manager asked if I had anything to share regarding the focus of this meeting, and I launched into my presentation. He nodded along and paid attention, and I think I delivered it pretty confidently. He had some questions in between, and I was actually feeling pretty grateful that the director wasn't here, since I would be getting a whole bunch of even harder questions if he was. Once I finished the presentation, I showed my manager some of the actual things that I was talking about: the settings for it, the way it looked things up, the way it reported warnings and errors. He got a little confused on how some of the warnings could even exist, and to be honest I didn't have a good explanation since I had no idea how Absconder was getting the information specified in those warnings. He also asked about some of the errors that were present. When I looked through last week, a lot of those errors weren't actually errors at all, they just seemed like they were to Absconder because of the way things travel through our project. It couldn't see perfectly through certain parts of the project, so it registered those as errors. He asked if there was a way to get Absconder to look through them, and I said "maybe," fully knowing in my mind that the answer was most likely "no." I can't really tell him that though, so leaving it ambiguous is the way to go. Someone was waiting outside the meeting room at this point, the person who had booked it for the next half hour time slot, so we had to leave. My manager kept discussing it with me in the hall though, asking about one error in particular. I tried to explain it with just words, but it was clear that we both really needed to see it on the screen, so we quickly went into an unoccupied meeting room. He wanted to specifically where the error was coming up in the project, and I was prepared. Thanks to me listing out all the locations of each of these errors last week, I was able to show him right away. Man, that felt good. Looking at it it for a good while, he started to put together an email or something to some other team, to ask if they could wrap up a part of our project into theirs. With that, he told me that I should leave a couple notes within the work itself to explain how it worked to people (I do admit there are some non-intuitive parts to it), and that I should submit it for everyone to see. With that, we ended the meeting. I still can't believe the director didn't show up! He was the one who told me to set up this meeting with the the three of us, and he was the one who gave me this task all those months ago. Well, I guess it all turned out fine in the end. I told my coworkers about what had happened, and they gave me a variety of witty things I could send to the director. If I ever sent any of those, the next and final message I would be receiving from him would surely be "please see me in my office." I sat back down at my desk, and decided that now was an apt time to write some bloghan, but my work rival was back, and he wanted to talk 'Sonic.' Well, I guess that's fine too. He seemed like he was back in in a bored mood again, and we talked a bit about the endless possibilities for the next movie, though I had to keep it spoiler free. I still think my face gave away some details though. Well, it's on him for not going to see but continuing to ask me about it. Our discussion made him reflect on why they went straight to a 'Sonic Adventure 2' adaptation, skipping a couple games, and then it made him ask a bunch of questions about that game. Telling him about Terios then got him down a whole other rabbit hole, and we somehow ended up doing a bunch of 'Sonic' trivia. The first website he found was more about history of the game series (release year and such), so he just decided to ask an AI to give him these questions. It gave us some pretty basic stuff, but to my work rival, it didn't seem all that simple? Basic plot points and names, really. It was fun, and somehow, my work rival was very unsurprised that I knew as much as I did about this series. I feel like I don't really know all that much though?? Well, we went on like that until he decided to do some work, leaving me to my own devices. People came and visited, and people left the office, my work rival asked me about my favourite soup (don't have one because I don't like soup!), and Steve asked me my favourite type of girl (strong sense of justice, knows what she wants and goes after it, abs), and I eventually got an exciting email: the nightly thing that I set to run this morning had just finished and sent an email to everyone on my team. It worked? It was finished! Finally! I let that victory carry me through the rest of the work shift, and I left a little bit after my regular time. Walking outside seemd like no problem. It wasn't snowing, just a bit windy, but I really started to notice that the wind was picking up once I stood and waited for my first bus. It was late, which was becoming more and more commonplace for this specific bus, and the cold wind was really starting to bite. Facing away from it seemed to work the best, so I awkwardly stared at incoming traffic until it came. When it dropped me off at my first stop, I had to start walking towards my next bus, and unfortunately for me, I had to do that walking in the opposite direction of the wind. I'm a light guy, so it was slowing me down quite a lot, to the extent that even walking to the beat of the average Printemps song was very difficult to maintain. That's not even talking about the how it was blowing right into my face, making my nose feel like it frozen. I mitigated it as best as I could by facing towards the road or the houses, but it was still quite bothersome. When I finally made it the bus hold, my nose began to warm up and consequently become a snivelly mess. I haven't experienced a winter walk like that since I left my home city! Very nostalgic indeed. Getting back to my place was no trouble after that, and once I was at my place, I had a massive undertaking of writing about 4 sentences of bloghan, accidentally watching hours of 'Balatro' content, ate my leftovers and ate more biryani for dinner, worked on a little bit more of character building for each of the players, and washed every dish I could find, even some clean ones. I went to bed that nigth a little bit frustrated: I hadn't finished off writing my bloghan section for this day, but I somehow found time to do 'Balatro' and nothing else? Tomorrow would have to be way more productive. At least I could've gone to bed way later, but chose not to. Hopefull that will translate into a better day tomorrow.
Tuesday morning was a lot better. This "getting more sleep" thing might be worth it after all. My morning routine was the same as yesterday's, swapping out shaving for taking out the trash, compost, and recycling. The bus posed no problems or itneresting events either. I guess the good stuff for this day would be mostly at work, huh? I came in and got to my desk, pulling out a roll of tape. My Japanese coworker was here, but Steve and my work rival were not. Probably both sick again... one actually sick and the other "sick," I'm sure. My Japenese coworker let me know that my predecessor had already come to the corner cubicle to visit, and his first remark was on the picture of an analog guy on my desk, wondering why in the world I had it. While I wish I had been there for his initial reaction, I was still glad that he had a visceral reaction all the same. I take out the blade (nail clippers) I had snuck into work again and cut a small piece of tape, then taped the corner of the visage onto the paper backing. That corner was slightly lifting off from that backing, and it was bothering me, so this'll be more secure. Once this was taken care of, I finally open my laptop and plug it into my monitors. The first thing I see after logging in is a direct message from my predecessor, asking me why I have that picture on my desk. Seeing that made me laugh probably a bit too loudly, but it seems that my picture had its intended effect. I got up to see the folks in the crossword cubicle, telling them about my predecessor's return and about his reaction, and we discussed a bit about my predecessor. He couldn't start yesterday because it was a holiday (for HR), and the person who worked from home yesterday started to panic: did she just work all day yesterday, not knowing it was a day off? Before I could continue the troll further, the compatriot told her that everyone in the office on Monday did indeed work. Around that point, my predecessor walked by us, and for the first time in a while, we talked a whole bunch at work. It was mostly about relaying info he had already told me to the others in the crossword cubicle, and him observing the 15x15 still on the board, noting that we made effective use of our work hours. He also saw the list of birthdays, but told us that he wouldn't be putting his name on that list since he wasn't really like us anymore. He was hired in one of those full-time roles now, not just a temporary one like me or my work rival. Shortly after this, he told me that he was going to the break room to get tea, and I took that as a signal that it was time to go back. I walked alongside him in some light conversation, but at the first junction, I headed back to my desk. I was expecting him to go to the break room, but he started to follow me. I understood then: when he said he was going to the break room to get tea, he was also inviting me to do the same with him. I exclaimed "oh that's what you meant!" My predecessor told me along the way that he was following me under the assumption that I was getting my company mug from my bag, which I had failed to bring today. We talked a bit about the new projects and stuff, free from the limitation of being unable to tell him confidential stuff outside the office. After het got his tea and I grabbed a hot chocolate in a paper cup, we headed back. A lot of other employees were telling my predecessor "welcome back," or similar things, and once we were in the corner, we had another discussion, just about my desk and how about my work rival was not coming into the office as much as he was supposed to. We also talked about the director, and how he must think I'm really abnormal... well, I am, I suppose. The whiteboard also still had all the strange drawings on it, and I relayed some stories about how the director always takes five seconds to process them every single time. My Japanese coworker also joined in the conversation a bit, and said that he was going to try the dual vertical monitors soon for a task he had gotten. We'll see if I get my vindication! My predecessor and I took a short trip to a team member's desk, one thta used to work with him a little bit. This team member was actually the one who interviewed me! The interviewer had recntly come back from a long Asia trip, and had brought these cookies to share with us. We chose our cookies, and he decided to share quite a bit about his trip: he didn't really like Hong Kong because of all the China stuff, and Bali was great for sightseeing, but his highlight was Singapore. He talked about the couples he saw, the alternative approach to architecture and building design, the culture around there, and the draconian laws. We got our fill of the story and went back to my desk, where we ate the cookies and talked a bit more, after which my predecessor left. I got back into doing some work, since a message from the not-manager appeared in my notifications, telling me that various files I sent him were a bit outdated when it came to their format, so I needed to get on that right away. They weren't tricky to fix, really only just a couple of key presses, but he was just coming up with more and more. I thought to ask him again about another format thing I did, one that he didn't answer back in 2024, and he told me to re-make it and send it to him again. Well, I got that started up, and while I waited for it to finish (it would take around an hour, probably), lunch time rolled around. We went down for lunch, and most people ended up playing 'President' again, while I talked to the players of tomorrow's D&D campaign about their characters. There were only a few things left to do: 1 character was done, 2 just needed the personality stuff to be filled out, and the last one... well, the last one, we haven't even started yet, but he knows he wants to play either a rogue or a monk! That's something at least. I was actually quite surprised by this new player, since he was actively looking up D&D stuff to learn what exactly the game was about. He was doing research, without being told to! A breath of fresh air, truly. I watched Absconder float down my screen as people played and chatted around me, eating my sandwich and conversing a little bit with people. I tried to troll the others who went on that Switzerland trip with me in our groupchat too. We had all recently gotten a grant from that country, and we all knew about it months in advance, but I had been ignoring the chat. Now though, I was pretending that I had no idea this was coming, and asking if we had to return the money. One girl thought I was being serious and tried to point me towards the email which told us about it, but the others figured out that I was just joking around, calling me a funny guy. They know too much. I decided to head back up after a long while, but I still think it should count as me working since I was monitoring Absconder the whole time. It was still taking a very long time though, so I went back to my desk and decided to try and catch up on some bloghan. However, as i was doing that, my predecessor decieded to visit me at my desk, and we had a good long chat, again. He was having trouble accessing things that would allow him to start working, and he was also not sure what other things he needed to get permission for so that he could log in. I tried opening stuff on my own laptop, trying to see where exactly his problem was, and it ended up being that he was still waiting for some permissions to come inm which they did as we talked. However, even once those permissions arrived, there were still more that he had to wait for, so we ended up just kind of catching up on how things were going at work. We talked quite a lot about the tasks I had been getting, about the presentation yesterday, and about how things were going back in the home city. We also talked about the glorious figure depicted in my picture frame, and about some interactions I've had with people because of my strange desk setup. Apparently, my predecessor was also already getting emails requesting his help for something he wrote months back, even though he couldn't even access anything yet. Eventually, I started getting some messages from the not-manager asking for other things, and the person helping me with one nightly thing for the new project gave me the setup required for a different nightly thing to be added to my responsibliites. Once my predecessor saw I was getting back to working, he headed off to his desk. I'm really glad he's back. Since he was in my position right before me, I feel like he's someone I can really talk to about my work without having to do a whole bunch of explanation. It also helps that we're from the same home city, and we have some mutual friends back there too. The second nightly task was easy to get going: she had been setting it up at the same time that I was setting up the other one, and all I had to do was to put my name where it needed to go, and to put it on my laptop. For the not-manager though, there was a whole slew of thigns eh was asking. For one set of deliverables, he needed me to swap some things around (since I guess they were still using that old format?? I thought I just fixed that...). There were two Absconder processes he was concerned with, and he wanted me to run both of them with updates on his machine, but when we were first talking, I thought he was only specifying that he wanted one of those ran on his machine. I kept trying to ask him how and where I should run the other one, and he would respond with "my machine," then in a spearate message talk about another Absconder process, which just kept the confusion going for longer. In fairness, I sort of also contributed to this by beginning to reply to both his messages when he would send him, so it was hard for me to isloate what he wanted me to do with each process. At some point he brought up a third Absconder process that reminded him of another one, but I shut that down quick by saying that I was busy with "that other one," and didn't get a chance to do the third Absconder one. I do. So much Absconder. At this point, another manager started to ask me about one of those Absconder processes, asking if it was done. This was the one I prestned on Monday, and I told it was finished. He asked for a "review" of it, and I wasn't sure what he meant, but I mentioned I had those slides prepared. I let him think on that as I went back to the not-manager, who had started to also ask about that one, and if there were any deliverable updates for it. Of the 3 deliverables it can give, I needed a place to make 2 of them, and the third I couldn't make until my mentor provided me with an updated version of a particular file. At this point, he told me for probably the third time that I should use his machine for those first 2, and I finally understood that this whole time, he was asking me to run multiple Absconder things on his machine. Ohhhhhhhhh. I started that off, and went back to the other manager. I saw that he had asked if I would hold the meeting again or if I could send him the slides, but since I didn't respond quickly, he decided "a meeting" for me. ALSO AT THE SAME TIME my predecessor was updating me as he was getting his permissions coming in. This period of half an hour was getting so hectic, trying to balance so many conversations and Absconder things that I wrote all at once. Eventually, the end result was this: my predecessor seemed to get most of his permissions for everything, except for the two newest projects. The not-manager asked me to press my mentor for that updated file, and I began running an Absconder process on his machine (the one I presented on Monday). Finally, the other manager told me he'd schedule a meeting with me to redo that presentation from Monday, and I also requested that he invite the director, since the director missed that meeting on Monday. After all that had occured, I decided that it was time to maybe take a break from all this. I was intending on taking a break by writing more bloghan, but I decided that I would instead read. There wasn't too much that I wanted to read though, and as I was scrolling through my manga/comic app, I noticed that I could access some more of the IDW 'Sonic' comics. Specifically, these were the sidestory comics 'Tangle & Whisper,' 'Bad Guys,' and 'Impostor Syndrome.' These storylines constantly keep getting referenced in the main run of the comics, which was initially frustrating for me, since I didn't think I could read those side stories. I was under the assumption that they weren't in the app. They were really well written, and I think that 'Impostor Syndrome' is my favourite. While I get why these weren't included in the main run of the comics (since those are focused on Sonic and these side stories are not focused on him), I still feel like they could've made it work. We don't necesssarily see the Straw Hats in every chapter of 'One Piece,' such as the backstory chapters or the ones that take place away from where the Straw Hats are, but at its core, it's still 'One Piece' in every chapter. I don't know, maybe I'm overthinking it too much. Once I exhaust those options, I end up getting back into bloghan writing, up until there is about 15 minutes left in my shift. At this point, my predecessor walks in once again to vist me, this time wearing his jacket. We talk some more about our work hours and about how my work rival doesn't show up to the office as regularly, on my excellent proficiency with Absconder, and about lunch breaks and all that. There's some discussion on all that meeting shenanigan stuff that just happened to me, and about the Absconder work that I've been doing, and we both headed out at the same time. I was going out to the bus station to head home, and he was getting a taxi to the car dealership to buy a car. We parted way downstairs, and I headed out in the biting wind. Today wasn't as bad as yesterday though, and I make it back to my place pretty quickly, beating the cycle and catching my second bus a bit earlier. When I get back into my neighbourhood, I see my landlord bringing in the bins. I rush to help her with it, but she tells me that she's quite alright, and that I should be more careful on the ice. Oh, well, sure I guess. She bids me good night, as do I, and I walk up to my front door, which I discover is ajar. I guess the wind blew it open again, and the interior is freezing because of it. I get on my laptop to work on D&D and bloghan stuff, working on things as best I can, but it's just so cold. I end up wrapping a fleece around myself and jamming the space heater under it, warming me up in this cocoon that I've developed. I prepare myself a snack of chicken strips as I get down to work as well, and once I get rolling with the newest player finally being online and ready to make his character, I can see that I'll probably be able to finish before midnight. He's way funnier that I thought he was: for example, I was explaining to him how the proficiency bonuses worked, adding onto d20 rolls, but he said that he won't need to do that math ever, since he'll just roll 20 every time. That was hilarious. I was also very surprised by how deep he wanted to make his backstory, and it was honestly really cool. It reminded me a lot of Raiden from 'Metal Gear,' as an assassin who was brought up by the military but failed a mission, causing them to be abandoned and hunted until they finally escaped to the island where this advnture will take place. I sent all the sheets to my co-DM for printing, worked on a little bit of bloghan and played a little bit of some games, then made my dinner. I looked for something to watch while eating, and found myself on some 'Word Girl' power scaling video, which veered away from power scaling and ended up being some insane Marvel theory or something? But that video stuck with me because of just how strong 'Word Girl' is for no reason at all? The fourth wall stuff is the most insane though... even after all that, I somehow ended up on some Tumblr blog that was making a fan comic of 'Word Girl,' written similarly to 'Invincible.' It was captivating, very well written and drawn. While it was very compelling, and a bit nostalgic to even be thinking of 'Word Girl' after all these years, it was also extremely late. I went to bed as soon as I realized.
Wednesday morning didn't seem to start off very notable, with just a snow plow that seemed to be going a little too fast on the sidewalk between my two buses. However, the fanatic spotted me waiting at the second bus station, and decided to give me a ride to the office today. As soon as I opened the door, he got a blast of cold air, leading us to a conversation about how blast furnaces work to strengthen steel. The fanatic had been out of the office for the past two days to take care of his sick mother, so he wasn't aware that my predecessor was back. We came in together, each sharing stories about cars and other full time staff doing things. At work on Wednesday, it seemed that Steve was still out, and my work rival was going to be late again. I visited my co-DM and we talked about tonight's session. She didn't have enough time to print the character sheets for some reason, and My first order of business was to check if the nightly stuff that I had set up were working: they were, but the emails wern't getting properly filtered to my designated sub folders. That was only 10 minutes of work though, and I went ahead with some very important work: catching up on bloghan. Pretty soon after I started though, my work rival walked into the office, and asked me if there any tasks right now that he would be able to do as well. Apparently, it was going to be one of those days where he showed up and only had to start something up and watch it progress for hours and hours before continuing. Since I had to redo that intentional error placement test anyways, I gave him all the info and requirements for that, and set him on his way to working. It took a little bit of explaining, but I was able to get him up to speed enough so that he could start. It was at that moment that my predecessor walked in, and all hope was lost in my work rival doing this task for me, as he was instantly enraptured in conversation with my predecessor. The first part of the conversation was all a repeat of things talked about with my predecessor on Saturday and yesterday, and as the fanatic came in and introduced himself to my predecessor (they've never met apparently), they started to talk about some other things that bored me. I ended up diving back into some of that Absconder work, listening in on their conversation as my work rival started to ask about montary details. As I knew he would, eventually. At some point they also stated to talk cars, and the new car that my predecessor had bought? Also license and fee stuff too, which bored me even more. I wished I could just start focusing on bloghan, but I didn't relaly want to do it in front of my predecessor, since he was hired in a higher position now. Meanwhile, while all of this was happening, my Japanese coworker was sitting at his desk on a call, with both his monitors in the vertical position, looking at some long file on both of them. I have been vindicated. Vindicated!! My work rival asks if we did anything special for my predecessor's return yesterday, strongly implying food. Well, no, I guess we didn't really. Once told that, my work rival asks if we want to go to a shawarma place he talks about often, and my predecessor agrees. We were about to leave right away for it, but there was a slight problem: at that moment, my work rival realized he had a subteam meeting to attend. We decided to push things back so that he could attend the meeting, and my predecessor heads back to his desk. I continue my work, my work rival continues his meeting, and the fanatic and the compatriot visit us. There's limited conversation on my crosswords, since I was thinking that the fanatic wouldn't show up, so I wouldn't have to make a crossword this week. My work rival invites the two of them to join us for the shawarma lunch thing. They agree, then leave and it's quiet for a bit, a rarity when my work rival is in office for once. Fast forward to an hour from now: the fanatic is back, we're talking to the work rival about 'House' and what it's about, my work rival begins to figure out a way out of this call, and I'm asked to call over my predecessor. He arrives, we start to put on our jackets and leave (before we do, we talk to my Japanese coworker about his new setup: he loves it only for this specific task... a little less vindicating, but vindicating all the same). We go on to collect the compatriot and the fanatic, then we're out to the car. It looks and smells like a brand new car, and its got less than 100 on the odometer. During the car ride, it's mostly my work rival nad my predecessor talking more of that car and pay stuff over and over again, while everyone else in the back is basically silent. My predecessor has some trouble controlling the car at the first intersection, as he fails to speed up in the middle of it as the light turns yellow. We peter through the intersection, only clearing the lights 5 seconds after it turns red. Is this a manual car? He figures out pretty quick that he can switch between semi-manual and automatic, and I was honestly a bit scared about what could've happened. He had accidentally set it to manual befroe we left, but if that intersection was busier, I surely would've been hit in the back seat. Turned out fine in this case though. I say a little bit of nonsense, but no conversation is generated from it, so I just stay quiet until we get to the restuarant. Inside, my work rival orders at the till, while eveyone else uses the ordering station. I get a shwawarma bowl, my predecessor a wrap, and everyone else this weird poutine shawarma fusion. We wait for quite a bit, sitting at a table with metal chairs. Since it's freezing outside, these metal chairs are very cold, and everytime someone enters of leaves the restuarant, a blast of cold air hits us. I'm pretty glad that we were never going to eat here, just that we were going to take it to the office. We wait for our food with some discussion on our company and similar companies that aren't doing as well currently, then about the new American president's executive orders (scary, but we'll see what happened I guess). Once we've got our food, we head back to work. My predecessor got a bit lost in the parking lot, but we make it back without further incident. That is, unless you count extended discussion about my Tylenol practices, and my work rival actually believing me for a second as an incident. Heading inside with food in tow, we go to the lunch room to eat, and I bring my laptop so I can continue to freak out about this documentation task. We eat and my work rival brings up that informed voter quiz idea again, proposing it specifically to my predecessor. It's only his second day back in the office man! We go in on the idea, the impracticability of the idea and how it would bias polls even more than they are already. Thankfully, we were over that topic pretty quickly, and we launched into a quick round of 'President,' after which I left. I did a mix of just fooling around on my phone and bloghan, and when my work rival got back to his desk, he gave me back that task from this morning. He suddenly got a new task from his team, so I guess he successfully dodged the one that I gave him. I continue on for quite some time, achieving levels of locked in that I've been desperately needing this week, until my manager gets back to me on a message I sent him this morning. I had previously reported that the nightly tasks were all set up, and his response to that was to get me to start looking into some of the errors those nightly tasks were showing. Almost as soon as I started to look, I figured out that it had something to do with the improper and imcomplete removal of something in this project, but before I could actually begin to more specifically diagnose the problem, my manager told me to stop. He had forgotten he had already assigned this task to another member of our team. Well, that's fine I suppose. I guess I'll just go back to that diagram task due in February. Once I got over myself and actually started putting in the first bits of the work, it wasn't too bad to get started on it. Plus, February is coming up pretty soon, and this really does need to get done soon. That doesn't stop me from getting further distracted though, with bloghan and other faffing about quickly taking over once I have the layout for the diagram done. My predecessor visits me once again before he leaves, drawing me into yet another conversation. We talk about anniversary events at our office, and I make a masterful joke that relates it to a bunch of work things, and it really goes to show just how bent I have become towards this company and this team's culture. In addition, I also show my predecessor the progress I've made on the diagram, but it's in that presentation of that diagram that I realize there's something missing. I've been basing my new diagram on a diagram from an old project, but I realize that what's missing is missing from both. And I've left no space for it on my new diagram. It's going to have to be a tomorrow problem though, because my co-DM has walked in, telling me everyone else is almost ready for D&D. 15 minutes later, we gather in the crossword cubicle, say a round of goodbyes, and head down. We may not have character sheets for tonight's session, but at least we have the dice, right? Wait... oh, shoot. I didn't bring those. Well, we'll just have to use the dice app on my phone... This first session is going to suck isn't it? Well, ok, it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. The beginning was a bit rough, what with telling them to look at their phones for their sheets, but they really liked the setting that we've created here: a happy port town that has soured a bit recently. Before we could start with the actual session, my equivalent asked if we would consider having some sort of town ambience to help with immersion. Little sounds of a market square and a jaunty lute or something. While I would be down for that, I didn't think it would be the best idea, since we were using a meeting room at work, and I didn't want to bother people too much. Also, I don't really know where I stand on ambience and such when playing this game. I feel as though it can be easily distracting if not done carefully. He followed up this request with an ask to have some sort of AI generated image up on the screen matching where the setting was. This is something I have a pretty hard stance on: I don't want to use an AI generated image to show them what the setting is. It's not even aobut the AI in this case, though that is something I don't really want to use when there's perfectly good pictures of Spanish towns that I could use. No, I don't want to show a picture of what the town looks like outside of the battle map because I want the players to have their own idea of what the town looks like. It's ok if they have slightly different interpretations, what's important to me is that they have a good time imagining their idea for a character trapezing through their idea of the setting: any minor differences that cause misunderstandings are just that. Minor. I didn't tell him that of course, mostly just "suggested" it, and left the possibilty open (it's not, but I'll still say it is). The session was mostly a combat encounter, but there were already tensions flaring up between party members, specifially the compatriot and my equivalent. My equivalent was playing a pretty interesting character, being an outlander who values nature quite a lot, while the compatriot was.... trigger happy, we'll say. So when presented with a rampaging series of animals, the two of them had some conflicting ideas on how to deal with it. The compatriot, my Japanese coworker, and the new guy were playing very bloodthirstily, just wanting to kill and be violent, while my equivalent was more interested in actually interacting with the world. Also, they don't seem to want to play characters who will work well with others, so I might have to have to have a conversation about that at some point. My co-DM did pretty well for this being her first time in the DMs seat, but we're going to have to talk about splitting responsibility and how to make the player's feel good and cool about the events of the game. The big thing though was our organization: we have got to get our act together. Through information management, we did make sure that it seemed pretty organized, but it really wasn't. The session ended with an authority figure asking them to do a favour for the town, and the characters immediately trying to threaten her.... oh boy, I really hope this isn't going to turn into one of THOSE campaigns. The ones where players don't do anything interesting, just kill. With that though, the session came to an end, with the group victorious and off to investigate a mystery elsewhere. Even if the players are a little murderous, I think this group's dynamic will develop into something at least a little bit funny. We left the room, and my co-DM told us that she would drop us all off. We were confused by this, since there were 6 of us but her car only seated 5, but she said it would be fine. We walked outside together, seeing the snow coming down quite a lot, and I was busy trying to observe for any halos forming 'round the streetlights. My co-DM got in the driver's seat and told us to get in, but once we started asking ohw the other 5 of us would fit in safely, she realized that... we couldn't! It was a really good thing that my equivalent lives so close to the office, but I still felt bad for him ggetting invited to a ride back to his place, just to have to walk anyways. He went off, and so did we. I collected feedback from the players here, and they were happy with how things introduced them to the game, and most of their frustrations were about not having character sheets, interpersonal conflicts with other character's actions (we're going to have to work on that one, it seems), some wishes for foes that were a bit more compelling, and for the compatriot, a frustration for the NPC introduced at the end. Hmm... that's going to be nipped in the bud with a little thing I call "backstory tech." My co-DM was feeling pretty drained after this, as was I to some extent, but that's just how the post-DM brain fog goes. We knew that from the feedback that we'd need to give the players more resources so they know what kinds of things they could do, and also that we needed to get our act together for next week. Back at my place, I hop right onto bloghan and type the night away. Well, ok, maybe I play some games and get caught up in watching some long videos. My front door also opens randomly due to a gust of wind during that, and it surprises me back into a writing mood, which is quickly spoiled by me spilling some soda on my desk. For dinner, I eat the sandwich I made for lunch (which I replaced with the very filling shawarma bowl earlier today), and I look at that one course I'm in. I get a sense of dread for this course: there's just so much to write! All the assignments seem so subjective and I'm still so nervous about the random group member thing. There's nothing I can really do about it though, so I wash all my dishes and go to bed after spending a lot of the night.
Thursday morning was uneventful. The only change was that I watered my houseplants, which I noticed were starting to wilt a bit. I ope I wasn't too late, but it's probably already over. A bad sign... I get to work, then get to work on some bloghan and some of that diagram stuff. My work rival arrives later than as per usual, and this time he actually seems to have work to do this time, so it's even less distractions this morning. My predecessor comes by the corner around half an hour later, since he's running into an error on the new prjoect. It's not a problem with permissions, because I'm encountering it too. I suggest that we ask Steve, and I send Steve the relevant errors that we're looking at. Hopefully, that will get resolved. My work rival and my predecessor get into a conversation about pay details AGAIN, so I go back to the diagram. The mention of snacks brings me back into the conversation though, and we get to grab some, encountering another manager along the way, asking about how we're doing. He hears some info from us about how people from out of the city get an extra housing bonus, and he realizes that his son (applying for positions here) should report his address as out of town for his application After receiving thanks for the info, we head back to the corner and I let the two talk of granola or whatever. As soon as my predecessor leaves though, it's back to bloghan (with a short intermission of talking to my equivalent, talking about wastewater treatment and collecting his feedback on yesterday's D&D session). And finally, after quite a bit of effort, I've fully caught up on bloghan! I can actually do things tonight! Oh, and I guess I should probably do work too, huh? I start to reorganize my diagram to make space for that missing piece I noticed last evening. There's not much room though, and it's a bit of a struggle to get it done, so I fall back on doing no work once again, being caught by the fanatic for writing more bloghan. My predecessor came back to talk lunch and to talk the able the solution to the error he got earlier. I forwarded Steve's eventual solution to him a bit ago, and it worked perfectly. Steve carries once again. We decide to delay lunch to allow the fanatic to join, and I focus in again on work, finally figuring out the best way to do this diagram, implementing it. I don't really know how long I work on it, but eventually my work rival asks me why O haven't gone down yet. Wait, he just walked in? When did he get up? I was still waiting for the group to come and tell me that they were going down for lunch, but my work rival lets me know that they already went down. Oh. Well, that's fine, I've got stuff to do anyways. I do some work before my predecessor comes to visit me, asking if I want to go down for lunch. He's getting it from the restaurant downstairs, so I decide to join him as he buys it. When we're there, one of the admin figures for a different floor of the building is getting food, and as she sits down, she sort of shout-talks to us about filling in the work survey. Now, I and my predecessor can't fill out this survey because he just joined the company again and I'm only a temporary, but she starts spouting about employees not reporting being sick and about how she's tired of begin treated this way. Then, she begins to mouth off about how she's work at like 5 or 6 other firms like this before in this role, and that we shouldn't believe the lies we're told about how well we're paid or whatever. She begins to talk to us specifically about her experience and about how we need to let our voices be heard, but she stops talking about it once we tell her that we literally cannot do that. She talks some more to my predecessor, about retirement and about tech companies or whatever, and my predecessor gets his food. As we leave, she calls out to us to ask us to not reveal that she said all that disparagement. Me and my predecessor are shocked at that behaviour. Sure, you can have complaints about how a company treats you and its workers, and how it pays them too, but I feel like it's not a great move to half yell that in a restuarant where employees of other business may be too, let alone to employees of your own company that you don't even know. Like, what if instead of my predecessor and I, it was the director and the VP? I guess she'd know those two on sight actually, but you get what I mean. We head to the lunchroom, still kind of processing what just happened, and take our seat next to the ongoing 'President' game. We eat, and I work on my diagram. I've become so used to working as I eat, not even just at work. Even in school or at hom, I do it. My predecessor is most surprised by this, but I'm making good progress at least. Watching the game next to me devolve into poker hand hell, I ask my predecessor if he's heard of 'Balatro,' and he hits me with "yeah I'm about to gold stake black deck." Black deck!? This guy's cracked! We talk at length about the game, and once we've had our fill of this break, we head upstairs, separately. I do quite a lot of diagramming at this point, getting more and more used to the software my organization uses, liking it more and more too. My focus would soon be broken by two series of conversations, one with the fanatic (I mostly just spread misinformation about what my team develops, while he was busy being amazed that my subteam makes documentation and diagrams?) and one with my predecessor (focusing on bank accounts, the smartest students we know, how I got the picture on my desk, stories of our old schools, and how much more work it seems that our Japanese coworker does compared to us). On that last point, we realized that maybe it was time to get some work done, and I dove back into the documentation. Got some good work in too, but a message from my manager got me to pause and go see him. He was asking about some Absconder thing I wrote months ago, that thing where the director came to visit me a lot, made for my work rival's team. We spent a lot of time just figuring out how it worked, since he seemed to think it worked one way when it didn't really work like that at all. Once this was done, we spent even more time figuring out how it would display any warnings it found, and where it would "start" and "stop" when looking for them. He looked at it, and I thought he was kind of impressed that I had thought of these holes that he was trying to poke at. Then he gave me a new task: make a variation of this Absconder thing that has those same "start" points, but "stops" as far as possible. Just to start though, make each warning take less space, and hold information in the overall log about even the correct things. As I left his cubicle, I was not feeling great about this new task. It had been so long since I did this specific thing, and since I was told that it takes priority over my diagram task... so effectively, I have two big February deadlines. Hmmmm... not great. I decide to visit the crossword cubicle first, since I haven't seen everyone here yet. I greet "Celeste" (I need a new nickname for her...) for the first time today, joking that she must've been mad at me. She gives her assent to this, and just as she does, the compatriot walks in and raises his voice at me, asking why I'm not at my desk. He went to visit me and my work rival, and I just wasn't there. I take this as a cue to leave, and he raises it again, saying he just got here. I know they're all joking about this whole "mad at me" thing, and the good cheer calls over my predecessor for the following conversation, where I mostly only talk about my new task. I head back to my desk and try to just do some bloghan with my last 30 minutes in the office. However, the curse of conversation being often in this office strikes again, with my co-DM and the fanaitc coming by, to give my Japanese coworker a ride home and to talk about D&D and some event at the local university. We all leave around the same time, and I make it back to my place pretty quickly. From here, I feel like I did a lot and not much at all: shower and a snack, some mobile games, some 'Danganronpa' with friends from home on call, a little showcase of those little "pngtuber" icons for our future use, and some streamed 'Balatro' gameplay. It was a fun little evening, and I closed it out with the last of my biryani, finishing up some bloghan stuffs, and doing a bit more of my long course, before going to bed.
Friday was a nice day. I got to sleep in a little, and made a breakfast with bacon and eggs (it was a bit of a struggle to open the bacon packaging though...) and tea prepared with the milk first. Logging into my work laptop, there was no immediate important messages or whatnot, so I just got to work on that new task my manager gave me yesterday. While I wait for things to run to completion, I'm on my own laptop, doing more coursework. That's what the work day mostly became, with me fielding some questions from my manager about when I could expect results, making chicken strips for lunch, and watching videos for my course assignments that come with them. Once that task was done and sent to my manager, I decided to just kind of take a break. My work laptop was slowly dying, so I didn't want it to be on constantly. I focused more on those assignments and such, when a message from the not-manager brought me back to attention. He wanted me to run one of my Absconder things on a part of the project that I haven't yet run for him. I purposely have not run Absconder on that part since I didn't yet have the necessary file for it. The person who would know if that file was ready yet was my mentor, so I asked him for it. At the same time, the not-manager told me that he had actually talked with my mentor already, and my mentor confirmed that the file was ready! Well then, it's about time. I just have to wait for my mentor to get back to me... and he does, 10 minutes later, telling me he's too busy to give it to me, and to ask on Monday. I just hope that the not-manager is ok with waiting that long. From here, I finished off another quiz for my course and read another 80-90 pages of 'Homestuck,' as I waited for something I could do at work. None came, however, and just before my work laptop's battery died, I shut it down and ended work for the day. I spent some time calculating the probability of getting a specific person in my random group for my long course, then ended up trying my hand at the last assignment in my really short course. I did some chores, made peanut butter toast, and prepared tea in my new favourite way, then got to work. I did a little bit of work, mostly headings really, but not much else before joining a call with a friend from my home city, to record another episode of that let's play/podcast thing we do. It was fun I suppose, though I feel our conversation was more banter-y than usual. Once it was done, I engaged in my friend's major obsession and watched him play 'Balatro.' Actually, I'd say that it was more like we were playing it together, as we were discussing the hands, consumables, and jokers to play. We managed to orange stake the red deck, and get to the ante 7 boss of gold stake red deck, and it was quite a fun time indeed. After we ended this, I cooked some fried rice and finished half of that last assignment, almost completing the smaller of my two courses that I was doing. I only finished half of it because I got distracted by the keyboard project chat, where I had a discussion about the technology that we'd be using in it. In addition, she added a new person to the project to help design it... I don't know how to feel about that. Although I get that I haven't been as responsive for this project, it was supposed to just be our project. We'll see how it goes. I'm probably going to give the cold shoulder to that other guy as much as possible. That was quite a lot of work done and not done today, and I went to bed pretty satisfied overall.
Saturday felt like a Sunday, probably because of how many things I got done on Friday, making it feel like a Saturday. After my breakfast, I got to work finishing off that assignment from yesterday, then started up a load of laundry. While that was going, I decided that enough was enough. I'll finally resume work on my PCB. If that's what I want my future to look like, I better get started. Making all the footprints was a bit slow, only having one done before my laundry finished, and only having two done by the time I was hungry enough to make lunch, but it got faster as I went on. After many more hours, I had finished all the footprints. I even had to go back to the schematic and swap out one switch for another one because it had a pretty terrible layout map that I didn't want to do, and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be! Tomorrow, I will probably do the layout of the PCB itself. After sweeping the floor and taking a break from... just all of it, really, I launched up the 'Yohane' roguelike and played for quite a bit. I was planning on resetting a whole nuch to grind out this one request, but I had a really good run that let me complete even more quests, so I'm not complaining. It did take quite a while though, and it had gotten very very dark out in the time that I had been playing. I started up a pot of rice, and read more 'Homestuck' as it cooked. Once that was done, I made myself fried rice and headed to bed. Sunday morning wasn't all that different, with me making a similar breakfast as the ones I've been having the last few days, and working on getting this bloghan finalized enough. Some 'Yohane' and shaving later, I did some PCB work. I was excited to finally start the layout, but once I brought the components in, I knew I couldn't. The new switch that I had chosen was just too big. I finagled with the software a lot, through accidental deletions of 3D models that I should not have deleted, and through pin assignments that I had messed up. After about an hour of figuring out all my mistakes, I was ready to layout. I was really hungry though, so I made lunch first, and when I got back to my desk, I realized it was close to my meeting time with my co-DM. Well, it's a good thing I only promised to do the footprints this week!I hop in the call and while I'm expecting a more fun meeting, it's kind of.. dead? She seems sick and her printer isn't working, so I'm mostly working on the advneutre details alone with her just going "uh-huh" or "sounds good" to everything I say. Well, I'm sure the session will turn out alright. I also place my grocery order at this time too. We plan it for around 3 hours, and after she's figured out her printer issues, she gets a bit more lively, and the session planning really starts. It's pretty comprehensive compared to the session plans I usually make, which might explain why things are going smoothly on the story front. As soon as we finish, my grocery order arrives. I offered to give the guy some bags to offset the cost of buying the bags, since I'm not sure if he has to buy them himself, but he turns me down. He hands it to me, and takes a picture of me for proof of delivery (that feels odd...), and I put them in my fridge. Once I update my afternoon in bloghan, I don't really know what to do next. It's a bit too early to start prepping the chicken for the biryani, but I don't really want to just watch a bunch of videos. I guess I'll just game a bit? After that, a masterclass of a Powerpoint presentation, and some peanut butter toast later, I decide to try my hand at the PCB layout once again. It's going pretty well for the first core, which are the logic ICs, until I get to the last few ones. There's an awkward set of pins that need to be connected, but there's no way to do it without vias, which I'd rather not do for a single connection. I'd have to use two vias for that, just to bring one signal from one side to another. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do about that... This PCB thing is what I want to do in my future, for sure, but I guess it is going to be a lot harder than I thought it would be. As my design stands right now, it's not possible to make this PCB, so I've got to figure out some other alignments for components to make it happen. Once it had gotten sufficiently late enough, I started cooking up my second batch of biryani, this time with way less crying and way more heat. The end result was better than last week's batch for sure, mostly because of that extra cooking to boil away water, but I am a little bit concerned about my chicken being cooked enough... I'll find out tomorrow, I suppose. After I had gotten my fill of whatever slacking off I was doing after finishing my food, and made a basic plan for that infographic assignment, I headed to bed. Man, it's going to be a pretty busy week.
Future plans
I had time to do stuff at the beginning and the end of the week this time! Now, to do something about the middle of the week... While I figure that out, here's how last week's goals went:
- PCB stuff: no progress on the one-bit adder project, and I don't know about the keyboard project's progress at all!
- Door: no progress
- 'Homestuck': read further, still in Act 2, but read another good 80 pages or so.
- Cryptic crossword: didn't make any this week.
- Course speedrun: that short course is now completely finished.
- 'Yohane the Parhelion: NUMAZU in the MIRAGE': another run done, a couple of things completed for that 100%
- D&D prep: some done on Sunday, not much though.
- Biryani batch 2: done!
This week, I'm going to make finish the one-bit adder PCB, read more 'Homestuck,' finish off that infographic for my course, and keep working towards 100% completion of 'Yohane the Parhelion: NUMAZU in the MIRAGE.' Now that I know a batch of biryani lasts me a little less than a week, I'll probably have to make another batch next week. I'll probably buy that stuff to remove hair from my legs and I might make a crossword or two.
Song of the week
'Deep Resonance' (https://youtu.be/_csrXZNMEIQ) from 'Love Live! Sunshine!!' is the song of the week. This song is the song of the week because of the D&D campaign that I recently started. The main overarching story of this campaign is greatly inspired by this song (my co-DM doesn't know that, hee hee!), and when I plan stuff for it, I usually either reference this song or have it on loop. Also, the song goes kind of crazy, and it really highlights the vocal talent of Aika Kobayashi, who also sang 'Far far away.' I might just use this song for my presentation in June...
Until next time
Well, we're not quite in winter 2, but I think with the frequent light snow, rain, and pockets of sunshine, we're getting pretty close. Also, I've been realizing lately that maybe I've been putting a bit too much detail in these? So I'll try to trim it down a bit so that it's more reasonable to read and more reasonable to write. See you next week!
- bubbler