February 2, 2025 - bloghan 32
Well shoot. It's been quite a while since this last happened, but welcome to the first delayed bloghan of 2025!! Alright, moment's over, here's what caused such a delay for this week:
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: theories on normative ethics. I've been thinking about these a lot recently, but mostly at a "high level." For example, I've mostly been looking into consequentialism, and not things within that category of normative ethics theories like utilitarianism or intellectualism. Here's the tier list:
Ordered tiers, unordered within tiers. I developed this list from the list of normative ethics theories on Wikipedia. Some of these theories just have plain out negative implications, or ones that I feel are too restrictive of what one is. I mean, role ethics, state consequentialism, divine command theory, all tying to family, country, and God? Yeah, no, hard pass. Now that list didn't include ethical egoism, but I think what's in S-tier right now is the closest. Now, I'm not saying that everyone should follow the maxims of ethical egoism. But right now, that's kind of what I'm running on. Not to the scale of what's considered hedonism, it's a bit more reined in.
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
It feels like it has been forever since I had a normal Monday morning, but that's exactly what I had... almost. It's not every day that the fanatic gives me a ride to work, but it is every day that I really don't care for what happened on Friday while I worked from home. Once we got to the office, I checked the mass of emails and messages, deleting basically all of them. There's just one relating to my documentation task and one from my predecessor about how to fill out our timecards. That message was actually sent 3 mintues after I shut down my laptop on Friday, and I hoped it wasn't too late to tell him the right info. Thankfully, my manager already told him on Monday. I get into some work, going ahead with my documentation task since my manager hasn't gotten back to me yet about that new task (nothing ever changes around here...), and my predecessor visits me for a bit talking about how my work rival has yet to show up, and about the tasks we've been given. I have some trouble parsing through the files to figure out what exactly is going on, but once I get back in the flow of this more design-analysis stuff, it becomes more and more clear. It's coming back to me! Months of Absconder haven't dulled it all that much. My work rival eventually shows up, and he blabs about some other task that he got. I'm focused on what I'm doing though, even as other people ocassionally come and go for various visits. I'm realizing very quickly that the old diagram is not only missing a bunch of stuff: it's pretty inaccurate too. There's a specific structure that the old diagram shows is present about 5 times over, but when I actually look at the project, it only exists twice. I can't really copy that odl diagram then... well, it would be no fun if it was too easy! This is bringing back memories of doing similar things for old courses I did. I cycle through music on my phone quite a bit while doing this (I keep forgetting about my randomized playlist!!), but the two I end up listening to the most are 'KNIGHT OF THE WIND' and 'Showtime [Imp Strife Mix].' The drawing tool I have to use for work is still not what I prefer. Over the course of the morning, I flip back and forth in my mind if I like or don't like it. The line snap isn't as enforced as other programs are, which is very nice, but when I want it to work to connect two lines together, it just doesn't. Sticking with it is the plan because of sunk cost fallacy, but I do still wish overall that I could use a different software. While making this diagram, I realize there might be a tool which can interact directly with the project to help guide me in what kinds of structures are present. I remember using such a tool near the beginning of my time here, but I don't quite remember what it's called. My predecessor would know though, so I go to pay him a visit at his desk. It's a bit far from the corner desk I sit in, and it makes me painfully aware of how bad the squeaking of my shoes has gotten, but once I go there he shows me which things I need to run for that tool. It'll take an hour and five minutes... well, guess I'll just use it to double check my work then. I fill out more of the diagram, and eventually, one more visit occurs from crossword cubicle folks, telling us it's time for lunch. I head down abotu 5 minutes after them, after just one more copy and paste. After wandering around for a bit on my floor, trying to figure out where thye went, I just go down a floor to that lunchroom, and my guess turned out to be correct. I found myself in a situation where on my left people are playing a card game, and on my right, everyone is focused on eating and not really talking. I just sit there on my phone, eating. Eventually my work rival shows, and he gets all boisterous and yappy yappy about housing prices and marrying for combined income to buy a house. How impractical. My predecessor shows up 10 minutes later, and my work rival asks all of us about why we didn't invite him. My guy. You were the last one on the floor. You should've done it, if nobody else. My predecessor sits at another table, off to the side, and my work rival begs him to come sit by us, pulling up a chair to the corner of the table, but my predecessor refuses, saying he's quite alright. There's a chair empty across from him though, so I eat the remainder of my lunch as fast as possible and go over there to join him. We talk more about games we are playing and all that, and at that point, the process for that tool finishes. We open it up and explore, dismissing its usefulness at first. Once we figure out how to actually work it though, it sort of amazes both of us at how useful this would be for a whole variety of things. After examining this tool and a specific case to our heart's content, we both head upstairs before the others do. I get back to work on my diagram, as people come up and yet again constantly visit us. Especially the fanatic. That guy just keeps doing it, huh? Sometimes he's bringing tomato juice, sometimes he's talking about a bunch of resumes he got his hands on, sometimes he's talking about gacha, or about work processes, but he always always always comes back to just talk and talk and talk and talk. I'm trying to let it distract me less and less, and I think it's working. When I get a moment of quiet, I let myself write a short stint of bloghan and then get back to my diagram. It doesn't take long for my predecessor and the fanatic to come by and just talk and talk. The fanatic really just tells me about how useful my diagram will be and also teasing me about things being uncentered, while my work rival and my predecessor mostly talk about places they've vacationed to and about former coworkers and that failed job interview my work rival had that one time. I also visit my co-DM to ask about this Friday's event, and I'm put in charge of making the 'Jeopardy' board and running the game. Sounds like fun! I sure hope I'll have enough time for that. There's a couple points in my diagram making where I realize I've made mistakes: I've accidentally represented one structure with a closely related but entirely diffrent structure, I haven't matched the names of things to quite the right place, and one of the things that I haven't yet touched in this diagram turns out to function in a much stranger way than I initially thought. At some point, my mentor visits me as well, letting me know he'll get me that file tomorrow morning! Finally!! The only other thing that was of any note was that I went to the break room with Steve to get a hot chocolate, and Steve tried to get me to say hi to the first perosn I recognized on our path. Luckily for me, no one was on our path. Take that, Steve. I finished off the day with a short bloghan break before starting to connect the big elements on my diagram, until it came time to leave. There was supposed to be a snowstorm tonight, and while I do lov a snowstorm, I would very much rather observing one from inside than to commute in it. It turns out though that maybe I shouldn't have been thinking so much about avoiding snowstorms or putting on some last few details for my diagram, since my regular leaving time had passed. I need to leave right now. Right right now. I rusehd out, barely saying bye to anyone, rushing out of the building. Just before I get to the stop, I get smacked in the face by a tree branch waving in the air, and as I approach the curb, the bus does as well. Whooph. Just made it. This bus goes along, and halfway to my stop, the bus driver parks at a stop and gets out???? He walks in the direction of a nearby fast food restaurant, and I'm just sitting there, wondering what's going on. Maybe 6 or 7 minutes pass before he returns, empty handed, and we go on. What did he even go in for??? Thankfully, nothing else really happened out of the ordinary. I made my trasnfer successfully, I had a great time whistling loudly and softly on the way home, and I had a feeling that it was going to be one of those weeks where I really enjoy being alive. Haven't had one of those in a bit. I washed all my dishes that I had no space for yesterday, then jumped into making a small 5x5 crossword and making a complete 'Jeopardy' board (I was only going to do the first round but it was really fun so I did the whole thing), updated bloghan a bit more, made dinner and had a PCB related conversation with the keyboard folk, then really got into the assignment I had due soon. Well... I tried to. I just couldn't start. I'm sure once I do start I can start making something though. It would be better to just get some rest instead though.
Despite going to bed really late, I woke up nearly half an hour before my first alarm. My morning was pretty smooth once I woke up for real 40 minutes later, and I even had an extra couple minutes once it was all done. As I headed out though, closing the garage door behind me, I had a feeling I was forgetting something... Ah! Garbage and recycling is today! I even brought the bin and bag up to my front door in ahead of my departure, but it still managed to slip by my mind. I ran back through the garage and to my front door, leaving everything open along the way, and brought them both out, closing everything behind me. Phew. I don't ever want it to get so bad to the point where my landlord takes it into her hands to throw it out for me, ever again. Once I got to work, there was not much going on. I saw the fanatic in teh crossword cubicle, already taking a chat break, and in my own corner, it was just me and my Japanese coworker, along with my predecessor visiting us. There was some short conversation, but once I really started to get to work on the diagram, he left to go back to his desk. For the next couple hours, I managed to just hard focus on this diagram, achieving that flow state, that moment after a black flash of inspiration, if you will. I just had one song playing in my headphones, 'LIVE LIFE,' and while it was making me tear up a little because of my inability to do so, it was also carrying me through this task. I was rearranging, sketching, doing pixel based measurements, and a whole host of other things, with only one interruption: my mentor, telling me there was a slight setback in that file he was going to give me, but I would get it today. I feel like I haven't had one of those moments in a long while, where I really just worked on the same thing for hours at a time without going on my phone even once, for like 3 hours. I started to get curious when people weren't coming to collect me at our regular lunch time, but almost exactly an hour later they did. I guess everyone's a bit busy today, and since my work rival wasn't in today, there were not as many distractions. Once I got collected by "Celeste" - wait. She doesn't even play D&D with us anymore. I need a new nickname for her... She's the most friendly and and extroverted of all of us I think, and she goes out every weekend with her friends. How about "the gregarious" (unlike Gege, she is not nefarious). Well, I get collected for lunch by the gregarious and by my equivalent, and it's not that exciting of a lunch. I bring my laptop so I can continue to work on my diagram, and I eat in mostyl silence, as not many people are really talking to me. The fanatic is lightly teasing my diagram, which I've now realized requires a shape that the program doens't have. I set myself on making that shape out of the available ones as the others talk a whole ton about the university that they all went to, down to specific instructors and course codes. I'm pretty left out of this since I didn't go to that university, and being down here is starting to annoy me, mostly because there's someone at a different lunch table who has to most grating, chidish, and intrusive laugh I've ever heard. During a lull in the conversation, the gregarious leaves, and I leave right after her, just to get back to the diagram. It's almost done! I just have to link up the last few things... and that's when the fanatic shows up and demands a crossword. I give him the one I made yesterday, and he leaves me to my diagram. On that topic, I've also figured out I don't need that weird shape, I can just make it a rectangle with a very long label explaining what it does!! My predecessor comes to visit around this time, just to talk about a whole bunch of stuff, and it's really nice having someone I can talk to who isn't my work rival, and who I find a lot of commonality with. As we talk, I finish my diagram, and I send it off to the people who requested it. I finally let myself have an opportunity to take a break on my phone, also having gap-filled conversation with my predecessor about Friday's event and encouters with other people on our team (and some discussion on my work rival being noncompliant with showing up to the office). I remember suddenly someone else also asked me to send them the diagram and accompanying spreadsheet, and as I rush to get that sent off, my predecessor tells me he's distracted me enough and goes back to his desk. From here, I set my sights on the file I finally received from my mentor, and start going through the motions to run Absconder on it for the not-manager. My equivalent comes and goes, talking about how much work some of us do compared to others (I'm probably in the middle in terms of workload), and I get Absconder going. I also pay a couple visits to the people planning the Friday event, asking if my predecessor could attend (he was unsure if he was invited or not), and they said yes! I went back to my desk, and decided to go ahead with a bit of bloghan. When I got to the part involving the gregarious collecting me for lunch, I had to get up and ask her what she wanted her updated nickname to be on bloghan. That was fruitless though, as she had no idea. While I waited for her response, the compatriot yapped at me about how he wanted to start up a 'Minecraft' server with our little group of people and for some sort of tree mod? I don't know, I'm really busy this month. I come up with "the gregarious" at my desk, then try to do more bloghan before the inevitable visit from my predecessor. At that moment, my Absconder run decides to just quit: apparently they changed some stuff with the project, renaming some stuff and adding some new stuff that was messing with the specific things my Absconder was looking at it. Just great... I restarted it, and got back to bloghan, but now my predecessor was back, and dragged me into conversation again. This keeps happening. I love the guy, I really do, but I'm secretly glad that this will scale back once he starts getting more work. After some very limited chatter, he asks if I want a ride back, which I gladly accept. Only a little while later, we're outside walking to his car, and it's snowing pretty hard. It was all blue skies and bright sunshine this morning... when did this happen??? It feels so familiar... We talk as awkwardly as we usually do in the car, like about the two songs about crying that autoplayed once we got in the car (again, should I really be riding in this guy's car?), about Supersister and Kesha, the road conditions, and quite a bit about AI. I get off at my place and do all the standard things I do when I get home (a hot chocolate, a shower, peanut butter toast), then finally worked on my infographic assignment. Again though... I tried, but I just stared at an empty canvas for a while. My landlord visited me and gave me some meat fat jelly, and I made multiple cups of hot water, but I just couldn't get started. I even went ahead and did a bunch of other things I was procrastinating, just because I didn't want to do this. I mean, it just feels like there's a whole lot to do, with such unclear instructions and such strict grading. I knew what I wanted to do, but the largeness of the task just prevented me from doing it. I eventually wound up in a call with my friend from my home city, just to bounce ideas off of her, and have some good times watching some random videos and listening to 'LIVE LIFE' on loop, sending dramatic yelling gifs everytime the outro played. We ended the call really really late, but she did help me with the trickiest part of the assignment, which was the analogy I wanted to implement in my infographic. Given that it was late, and I was feeling so drained, I opted to skip dinner because I wasn't feeling all that hungry (when I get really worried, I "stress-fast" and can't get an appetite going), and just went to bed.
As expected, I didn't wake up hungry on Wednesday, and since they would be giving us pizza at work today, I didn't bother making lunch. You'd think that because I had less to do this morning, I would get out of the house faster. You would be wrong though, since it encouraged a sort of laziness within me, such that I would not get up from my chair until it was one minute before I had to leave. I dressed in a hurry, and ran outside towards my bus stop, but yet again it seems like I made it with a couple minutes to spare. Once I get on the bus, everything is normal until I have to make the trek to the office form the second bus stop. It's made very difficult by the intense wind that's blowing down here, which almost flips me over a couple times. I'm being pushed around so easily by the wind, but I still don't think I would have it any other way. I get into work and see a Chinese New Year message from Steve, and a couple messages from my mentor and manager asking me to update some stuff on our team's task tracker. I do this not very elegantly, feeling very tired and such, and distracted by visits from a whole bunch of people. My work rival shows up late once again, and he meets with the predecessor as I go to the break room for snacks. I opt to go visit the crossword cubicle instead of my desk right after, and after some limted conversation there about why I chose the nickname "the gregarious" and about bloghan. These people will not read about it for months, but I didn't feel bad about lying to them concerning it's publishing status. I told them that for now it's just kept locally on a drive, and that I'd actually put it up on the Internet at the end of my time here. Man, I love lying!!! Once I get back to my desk, I bloghan and do some research for my infographic assignment. No one is really asking me for anything right now anyways. This goes on for a bit until one of the more senior employees walks in to let us know that the pizza lunch was here. Shortly after, we move down. For the first time in a while, I don't bring my laptop down to lunch with me. When we get there, there's already a couple people there, and my work rival makes a beeline towards the food. I take a seat first, but realize that since I didn't bring my laptop, I have nothing to leave at my seat to mark it as mine. Well, I guess I'll just go get the pizza then. The person who organized this event sees me and asks how I'm doing, pulling me out of the crowd to do so. I think she saw just how tired yet wide-eyed I was, and she read to me all the upcoming days off, with a message of "hang in there..." ah, thanks. I get my food and eat, and I sit there in silence and sleepiness as the others talk about their high school and elementary expereinces, and somehow that bridges into a conversation on favourite animes. I don't really care for what they're talking about, and I kind of just fade into the background. I can't really bring myself to eat, and so I take very slow bites. I'm still just so panicked about things in general, so my appetite is basically gone. Some get up to play 'Jenga,' others keep talking, but I still just sit there. I think I might have fallen asleep at one point too? I'm not really sure of what's going on in my own reality right now. As soon as the group of people that I'm sitting with start preparing a game of 'President' though, I know it's time to get up and start getting ready to go back upstairs. Before I do though, my predecessor walks in and gets some pizza, before going up to watch the people playing 'Jenga.' I go up there and we talk for a good bit about some mutual friensd, about 'Jenga,' and our shared manager, before going back upstairs ahead of everyone. I get back and field a single question about my diagram befroe I realize that I really have nothing I want to do right now. I do have a single thing I can be doing right now, but I am not really eager to restart work on that, so I try to focus my efforts on the infographics. It's not going well though, as I find myself just cycling through the same few apps on my phone instead. My work rival nad my predecessor are working together on some task, Steve and my Japanese coworker are doing their own work, and I'm just here, looking at my phone and getting stressed because of it. I have to break tha pattern, escape the loop. I head off to the break room, grab an iced tea from the new brand that everyone's been raving about, and visit my equivalent's desk. He is playing D&D with us, but he's not going to be present for this session, so I needed to ask him about what we would be doing with his character. After getting his response and struggling to open my can of iced tea, I try to help him with an Absconder thing he's struggling with. His team uses a different version of Absconder that relies on a different backbone than the one I use, but we do eventually figure out that there is something he forgot to change simply because it was hidden away in another file. I went back to my desk, and my predecessor showed me this 'Wordle'-esque flag guessing game he's been doing for a little bit, but once he leaves I have free reign to write some bloghan and feel like I'm doing something again. People come and visit, people come and talk, but I'm getting pretty curious about that alternate Absconder method, so I try it out on my own device, updating my equivalent about my progress and how I did it. Over this next hour or so, I manage to figure it out and start workshopping with my equivalent about how he can do his new task using the limited amount of Absconder tools that are present in his version of it. I also have some chatter with the people in the crossword cubicle, a bit about Amazon deliveries and a bit about D&D. Finally, the next big thing was a short meeting with my manager, who calls me over to his desk once again. He asks me about that file I sent him, the one which I thought he completely forgot about. I look at what he's doing, and I realize that he's checking them one by one, by hand. Does he not believe in my Absconder work?? I know that it works, I'm sure that it does. Well, he asks me about a couple specific rows, and I recognize that this is a case that I had to consider separately from the intuitive solution. Once I explain it to him, he's quiet for a bit, but realizes I'm right. I think that he's going to have to go through the whole file again and check for other similar cases that he marked as an error... oh boy. The rest of my working time today ended up being about not working, but desperately trying to catch up on bloghan before we started D&D. The person playing the rogue, who I'll call "the cable guy," was currently running between the buildings trying to get the correct cable for something he was working on, so I had a bit of time. My co-DM was teaching my Japanese coworker new English words, the fanatic and the compatriot were talking gacha, and I was just writing. Once the cable guy was all done for the dya, we headed down, 30 minutes after we intended to start. After a bit of a rocky start explaining a few new mechanics to them, we launched into the session, and it was a blast! They definitely were not as murderous in this session, probably because they were told that their healer was not able to join this session. They had someone go down to 1 HP last time, so I guess they were scared. It also felt a lot more goal oriented, though I will say that my co-DM and I were also a bit scared when planning this session. We were under the impression that the four players would not be able to handle things because of their habit of rushing in to hit things, but since they were playing more strategically this time, our weakening of the enemies made them stomp the enemies a little too much. My co-DM also had a lot of good ideas during this session, such as a dream being given to one player to foreshadow the things coming up later, and remembering that the boss at the top of the windmill had cronies to call on. 2 hours in, the lights shut off in the building, so we move to a differnt room that has a little more passive lighting, and we play for another 30 minutes. Honestly, I don't like long sessions all that much, but if we need to get through the story, we need to get through the story. After the session, we all got a ride back by my co-DM, collecting feedback along the way. I got home and wrote bloghan, then got to work on my infographic. I was feeling a bit better about it now, and while I got a bit of work in, being distracted by friends and things I wanted to watch was not helping. After making my dinner, I tried to get back to working on it but my Internet was acting up. I saw this as a cue to just go to bed.
Walking into work on Thursday, I had to do a bunch of restarts of my laptop becuase of updates from IT. I'm sure you can guess what I was up to while I was waiting for it to reboot. During this, my mentor comes by my desk, asking if I was having any issues with a navigation tool. This specific navigation tool was one that I had fixed a while ago for the new project, and surprisingly, it was not working for my mentor in that very project! How strange... I updated my version of the project and saw that it was working just fine for me. My mentor told me not to make this a priority, and while I did have other things I could do, I decided to poke around. I asked the people around me if it was working for them, and they all said yes... Everythign seemed fine in the logs and all that too. My predecessor told me that he had seen this happen to someone else before on another project. Only they couldn't get this tool to work, and they could never get it fixed. That does not bode well for my mentor... good thing he told me not to prioritize it! I worked then on the 'Jeopardy' board that I had made for tomorrow, because I realized that it wa a little to media heavy and it wouldn't be as fair because of it. Also, I needed to transfer it from one account to another, but there was no easy export and import option to facilitate that. I did the import and the rewrite for a good chunk of time, missing out on lunch because no one really pushed to collect me. Once the board was finished, I ate lunch and was about to work on my infographic, when I got a cople of messages from my mentor and his manager. This manager was the one who asked about what I had done since I had gotten here... I don't like him very much. He wanted to know about some Absconder work that I was still reviewing, but basically was finished, asking if I had reviewed some of the results from. When I told him I went through the results with my manager and my mentor, he got a little mad that I wasn't keeping him in the loop, and requested that I do from now on. He was being quite passive aggresive about it, but he threw a smiley face on at the end? My predecessor encouraged me to just go up to him and talk, but I elected to just repeat that I understood. My work rival began to yap to the people visiting again, and my mentor came to ask me about that very same Absconder work, asking about the log from the most recent runs of it. I had a feeling that his manager was the one making him do that. Before I sent it off to him though, I wanted to do a little experiment with that old Absconder version that my equivalent was working with. I realized that although that version was old, there were still sub-versions of it that might have the features he was looking for, and I confirmed that those sub-versions indeed existed. He was very surprised that I figured out this subversion thing... as if it's not right there in the file path? Then I delivered the log to my mentor, and as my work rival was about to yap at me about circuits or something, I got called over to my mentor's desk. It was about those pesky errors once again. I have no idea where they're coming from, and while I agree that they really shouldn't be there, because I let them get noted in the first place, I am now responsible for tracking them down. What a bother... I start investigating, and get trapped in a vicious loop of "being on my phone" while I wait for Absconder to load up. I know I should be working on something, even my infographic, but I can't stop myself, only taking breaks when Absconder is between loads. During this time, my work rival tells me some really bad but funny puns, and I grab a random tuna sandwich in the break room too (not someone's lunch, just leftovers from a team lunch elsewhere). It's only once Absconder is done and thoroughly confuses me with how something in the project even works that I manage to break through the loop and actually do the work. Once I got started, it wasn't nearly so bad. I didn't get to make much progress though, as I got drawn into conversation a bunch. My strategy to get them to go away wasn't very effective... turns out that the Challenger disaster is a very interesting ethical conundrum. I tried a different approach with the last distraction of the work day, which was to give up and let them distract me. At least it was the end of the work day: I could just go back to my place and do the things I planned to do. When I got back, I did some of my regular routine things before I hopped on my regular Thursday call. We were going to just watch me play 'Danganronpa,' but I wanted to test the Jeopardy game that I had made, and the tech behind it. It seemed to work very well, with only a bit of ping diff, and we ended up playing the whole thing, which ended up being a ton of fun. There were some very embarrsing answers and non-answers, some contentious clues, and a final round where both people lost almost everything, but one person won by 1 dollar. It was a very dramatic game, and it gave me some good feedback for how tomorrow would go. Almost immediately after the game ended, one person's Internet decided to give up, so me and the other guy stat co-playing 'Balatro' again, as I made food. I was using the last of my biryani, and I didn't realize just how little of it I had left, so I made some chicken strips afterwards to fill me up. I worked on a bit of bloghan once the call ended on the last note of 'LIVE LIFE,' and once it had been caught up I went back to my infographic. I made some good progress on this again, but I just couldn't bring myself to completely finish the research as it got really late. I knew that I would have to work a lot on it on Friday and probably all day Saturday, so I decided to take the risk that I would be able to do it on those days and went to sleep.
Woke up on Friday, a little bit later and a lot more rested. Made my breakfast (eggs and bacon), then logged into my work laptop and my regular laptop. Today, I was completely set on finishing most of my infographic assignment, so I just kept my work laptop active and my fingers typing on my regular laptop. I was still stuck in the research phase, but now that the deadline was fast approaching, I was speeding up my efforts. As I tried to do this, I had to field some messages from coworkers, just on one thing that felt like a wild goose chase for a file that didn't exist. We needed it for one of my two nightly runs, but why we didn't need it before is beyond me. She sent me to talk to a bunch of people, and they all told me to use the same file. Everytime I'd get back to her, she'd be unsatisfied, and tell me to ask another person. Eventually, I got to someone who asked a lot more questions, and took a long time to get back to me. Maybe he'd give me a differnt file? While I waited, I had a great opportunity to finish off almost all my research, there were just a few things missing. I got the response back after that hour or two.... the same file again. This time though, it was accepted. She must've realized that there wasn't going to be another answer. Once I did that though, it was time to rush and get ready: I had to start heading to work for our 'Jeopardy!' and tiramisu event. I rushed through shaving, getting dressed a little fancily, packing my bag with everything that I needed, and realized that I was wasting too much time on making sure my shirt was getting tucked. I had to run out of my door and didn't stop running until about a third of the way to my bus stop. I stopped running. Surely I woudl make it right? Halfway to the station, I turn around, and see the bus behind me. After one last mad dash to the station, I got there at the same time as the bus did. Pretty soon, I was at work. I walk in and pass by the crossword cubicle, saying "good morning" to all of them. That was the bit I had decided on for this evening. We didn't start at the pre-determined time because we were waiting for people and because some people still had some work to do, so I went to my desk and stared at my screen for a while. The gregarious visited me, so I did what I had always done this week and yapped at her about the Challenger disaster until she tired of the conversation. I got another one! After 15 minutes of waiting, I went back to the crossword cubicle and saw the giant list of words they were teaching to my Japanese coworker, and saw them start to move downstairs to make the tiramisu. My Japanese coworker and my co-DM stayed behind, since the latter was panicking about having a large task that she put off until the end of the day being due now, so I stayed up with them. After we convinced her to just go talk to the person who gave her this task, my Japanese coworker searched the entire building for our little gathering, not being able to find them on our first pass. On our second pass, we first hit the first floor break room, and found them there. I thought we checked it? But I guess not. I let the people there start making the tiramisu as I asked the people who didn't come in yet where they were. My predecessor said he was sick (I fully believed that), as did my work rival (I didn't believe that one bit). Everyone was so shocked that he would suddenly change his tune, but accepted the sick explanation, but I think this guy was just a flake. That's all, plain and simple. I watched as they clumsily made the tiramisu, which I wasn't all that invested in, and once it was fridged we headed over to a nearby meeting room to play 'Jeopardy!' There wasn't really all that much hassle to get all set up, just one team having a small struggle with their team name constantly changing, but we launched into the game pretty quickly. It went by slower than I thought it would, nad that's because these people didn't get nearly as many answers as my friends from my home city. My coworkers were all so risk averse, and barely ventured any guesses. Also, they just seemed to have less trivia knowledge than my friends from home, which made for way more awkward moments of silence. There was no timer on the clue screens when no one buzzed-in, so a lot of the time they would just stare blankly at the screen. There were a couple moments when team would murmur to themselves about what they thought it was, and then another team would answer correctly using that murmuring. Things were very quiet in the first round (why did no one listen to me when I told them to study Mesopotamia?), but they picked up a lot in the second round, as one team went on a huge streak to take the lead by only a few hundred. While we had a technical glitch in the final round, where one team couldn't submit their wager, it was easily solved by removing them and recording their score by hand. The team who made that comeback eventually won, since no one got the final question, and they wagered the least. I was a little disappointed in how it went, since I was expecting these guys to know more than my friends from home, but I guess my friends from home are just similar enough to me to know those things? We headed upstairs with our tiramisu, and ate... it was fine? I mean, the tiramisu I had in Italy back in May was the best I've ever had. Still though, what we had was much better than the grocery store control sample of tiramisu that they also bought, so i suppose that counts for something. After our little taste testing session, and an argument we had about who had ot take home the leftovers, the gregarious told us she didn't feel like joining us for the dinner that she kept suggesting. Girl... whatever. The rest of us went to a pho place, where I got the pork chop plate, and eveyone else got massive bowls of pho. My strategic choice was to guarantee that I got a fork without asking, and it played out perfectly. We had some conversation about 'Jeopardy!' balance and about things at work just straight up not working, and the full-time coworker who had joined us for that night ended up paying for the whole thing. It was a great night out, and very filling too! When I got back to my place it was pretty late, but that was OK since I had already eaten. Some games and some infographic work, and a voice call with a friend talking to them about how much worse 'Jeopardy!' went with the people at work, were how I ended off this day. I was already dreading tomorrow and the deadline that would be coming with it, but I reasoned that a little more sleep would mean I could start working on it earlier. With loads of worry, I fell asleep.
Saturday was a pretty boring day. As soon as I woke up, I was on my laptop finishing my infographic. I'm not kidding when I say it was all I did that day: I barely cooked or ate anything, I only talked to friends for a little bit of the day just for a short break and to talk about getting some feedback on it, and only a little bit of chore time while I was waiting for that feedback. I submitted the assignment close to midnight, and spent the next 3 hours awake, just switching between apps on my phone. I was feeling pretty bad about what I had submitted, since I don't really think it was my best work, and I went to bed not feelign great about my academics. Sunday was at least a little more exciting. I woke up just after noon (I love catching up on sleep that I missed!!), stayed in my bed for another hour just looking at my phone, and once I decided to get out of my bed, I started my day with a shower. I was still feeling super tired though, drained in generla, and while I was behind on bloghan, I just didn't feel like doing much. I made my breakfast, and did some chores, played some games, and did everything but do bloghan. As I was catching up with messages that I haven't been responding to, I got alerted to the next 'Love Live!' project's announcement, and the snow sstarted to fall outside. If that wasn't supposed to bring me great energy, I'm not sure what other signs could've been thrown at me. After gushing about the new project with a friend, then wasting time in that voice call with them, I realized that maybe it's time I make my lunch, even if it's evening. After overcooking some pierogies and burning some of the barbequed pork that I got my landlord to buy for me, I ate up over a long time. I was running out of things to do to run away from writing bloghan, so I decided to start making a new 'Jeopardy!' board as I cooked biryani and did my laundry, late at night. That took me many more hours, but as it got closer to the next morning than it did to last night, I finally started to write bloghan. It was too late though: I had just lost too much time by sleeping through the morning and avoiding bloghan until the farthest point. Unfortunately, I was going to have to delay the publishing of this bloghan by a day, once again. Why do I do this to myself?
Future plans
I had time to do stuff at the beginning of the week, but not so much the end. I tried to figure out how to stuff in the middle of the week, and ended up losing knowledge of how to do stuff at the end of the week, while not gaining any on how to do it in the middle of the week. What a bother... well, here's how last week's goals went:
- PCB stuff: no progress on the one-bit adder project, and some progress on the keyboard: we have a plan for a test PCB and already found some footprints for some components
- Door: no progress
- 'Homestuck': didn't read any this week, but talked a whole bunch about it instead
- Infographic: Finished it, but not my best work
- Cryptic crossword: made one this week: Original Mini Cryptic 15
- 'Yohane the Parhelion: NUMAZU in the MIRAGE': no progress made
- D&D prep: none done.... looks like it's time for asynchronous planning.
- Hair removal cream: bought it, and some tarot cards as well... for the game of 'French tarot,' clearly
- Biryani batch 3: done!
This week, I'm going to read some of the 'Punk Hazard' arc of 'One Piece' (probably won't finish it), maybe work towards a bit more of that 100% completion of 'Yohane the Parhelion: NUMAZU in the MIRAGE,' and if I have time on the weekends, try removing hair from my legs. I'll make another cryptic mini crossword, maybe two. The big priority though is that one assignment for my course. It's not too big, but it's also due really soon. We were meant to work on it last week... we didn't.
Song of the week
'Think!' (https://youtu.be/DTfmS6nHOyA) from 'Jeopardy!' is the song of the week. I think it's pretty clear why it's this song, because of all the 'Jeopardy!' related stuff that happened to me, but I think it also fits because I've really been thinking a lot recently. Granted, a lot of that has been on the more critical and analyitcal side, not on the memorization side like 'Jeopardy!' typically is known for, but I still think that music works well for thinking of any kind.
Until next time
What a year... oh, wait, it's been only one month. I can't believe this... And it's only going to get more busy??? I see... it's a challenge, that's for sure, but I cannot let myself be defeated by it. If I am, I will ban myself from having dinner for one week. See you next week!
- bubbler