February 23, 2025 - bloghan 35
I didn't feel super on top of things this week, and I didn't feel all that "on top of the world" as I like to be. Be that as it may, I think I recovered some of that spirit in the latter half of the week. Here's how:
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: the subteams on my general team. I can't actually share the names of these teams, but I can say who's on which. I am on "D," along with my mentor, my go-to, my predecessor, and my manager. My Japanese coworker is on "VI," the compatriot on "A," and my work rival is on "I." Steve and the not-manager are on "DV." This is a rating of how much I respect these teams, not just as team players, but for the work that they do. Here's the tier list.:
Ordered tiers, unordered within tiers. I respect "VI" the most, since they seem like the busiest and also most removed from my own team. The other teams are just as respectable, though I don't really interact with "A" that much. My interactions and work for people on "D" and "DV" are engaging for the most part, and I feel like I learn the most from them in a general sense. But don't get me started on "I." It's already enough that my work rival is on that team, but the amount of work I have to do for them, and the amount of times they ask me to do something and never get back to me about what they actually want? It's such a frustrating team to work with. I don't wish to work with or for them, ever!
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
There's a lot of things I need to do on Monday, things that aren't on last week's "Future plans" section. I've written them down on a list, in the hopes that it will encourage me to get each thing on the list done. It's sunny outside, with the long snowfall finally over. After quickly opening my work laptop to double check that today actually is a holiday, I make my breakfast and tea, work on setting up this upcoming week's bloghan, then start on that list. Laundry, shaving, then slicing corned beef for my work sandwiches. This turned out to be a nightmare. First, I had to open the can, and if you don't know how corned beef cans work, they use some sort of rottaing key system to open. I don't know if I was just doing it wrong or if I'm really just not strong enough, but I could not get that key to rotate and open the can. It broke off the metal tab, ad I couldn't get it open. My next thought was to somehow use pliers to get it open, and I looked around for pliers in the laundry room. There was a hammer, some screwdrivers, but no pliers. Hmmm.... maybe the garage? I put on shoes and head outside to get there. For some reason, it seems like the sky decided that it was time for more snow. In my t-shirt and sweatpants, I headed out to the , but there were no pliers in there too. Man... Eventually, I asked my landlord if I could borrow the can opener, and as I as unloading the washing machine she brought them down. She told me she could help me open it if the can opener didn't work, but that I'm probably a smart enough guy to figure out how to do it with the can opener. Maybe, but I guess I'm not smart neough to figure out how to do it the normal way. I use the can opener on the small side first, and it manages to cut through it enough for me to peel off that top panel. I can see the meat, but I can't get it out of the can. Prying with the knife is destroying the structure, so now I start using the can opener on the other side of the can. This side doesn't get cut as smoothly, but after quite a lot of effort I mange to pry open a small portion of the can's bottom, and stick a spoon and a knife under it, using them to push out the meat. It's a lot more crumbly than I would've liked, but I cut it into some very thick slices, and use the crumbled out parts as protein for a fried rice lunch. Following this, I washed up and helped my friend with her own... free game acquirement needs. Once that was all wrapped up (I had no idea how much more complex some of these older and bigger games were for cracks and such... I mean, it's still very simple, but moving things between ISOs and the C drive is new to me), I shoveled the snow outside to the tune of some energetic songs, picked up my groceries, did some riddles, showered, and swept the floor. My to do list was shrinking down to mostly the cooking stuff and the more menial, like updating this blog and the random thoughts page. Once I had run out of stalling methods, I decided to do the next most fun thing on my list: downloading more 'Love Live!' songs on my phone. This took a while since I insist on using Linux tools to do so, and I hadn't touched my personal install of Linux on my laptop in quite a while. However, things I've learned at work made things go faster in other asepcts, and aftter some quick FFmpeg and manual editing of tags, I added another 22 songs, bringing my hours of 'Love Live!' songs on my phone to just above 15 hours. Still rookie numbers, but we'll get there. It had gotten a lot later than I thought it did, so I went straight to cooking, trying to balance the baking of two potatoes and the cooking of penne alfredo that I wouldn't be eating tonight. The potatoes finished way before my pasta did, and I think I used way too much cilantro in both dishes, but for the baked potatoes that's alright! I'll just lob on an absurd amount of sour cream so I can pretend the problem isn't there. It worked too! I had quite a visceral and euphoric time with these two potatoes, and quite a lot of... well, quite a lot ended up around my mouth too. Maybe I should calm it down a little bit. Afterwards, I worked a little on my assignment, and went to sleep quite late because of it. Man, I just really don't want to do it...
Before I went to bed I set my alarm volume to maximum. This was a good and a bad decision, because I woke up not too late, but woke up a bit earlier than I'd like too. Ah, but having time to do things in the morning makes a big difference, and so does making your buses on time (even if the renewed snowfall was making them late). Getting into work, I got a request from my mentor to rerun the Absconder stuff with things reversed, and a short conversation with the fanatic about 'One Piece,' our mostly dead 'Minecraft' server, and the weather in California. The Absconder is running, I'm getting messages from team members, embroiled in conversations with the others in this little corner, and I take some time to organize my 'Love Live!' playlist to account for the 22 new additions and also to write a little bloghan. Absconder is still running, so I also write some clues for my next cryptic and also stress out a lot about the latest submission of files. The confirmation email I get for that submission looks very strange, but Steve assures me its alright. I don't go with everybody to lunch, eating it at my desk instead as I waited. It took quite a bit to finish, as did following the instructions that the not-manager left for me on Friday, but once I stumbled through them, things were alright. The not-manager called me at that point, tellingme what to run next, and I filled the awkward gaps in out conversation with questions about how things worked and were done on his subteam. Technical questions really. A lot of the commands he gave me just straight up didn't work, so he ended the call to go ahead and fix those. At this point, I was slacking off a bit since no one was asking me for anything, and once the not-manager got back and told me what I needed to do next (wrap up this entire process into something easier to do), I was feeling good. Then, my manager messaged me, asking about the error clearing process for the new project. I had not forgotten about this, but I hadn't been thinking about it at all. After quick updates, he went in hard on the one thing that I had given up on to focus on other erros, and I was floundering. There was only an hour left in my work shift today, and I spent it frantically trying to find out why the error was occuring. At every statement though, my manager would tell me I was looking in the wrong place. At the same time, I realized that I was supposed to be responsible for remaking a very complicated part of the new project that would also fix the error. I was asking the people who were supposed to help me, but they weren't being very responsive. My manager kept pressing me on this all the way up until I had to leave, and I had 0 progress to show for it. I thought of staying for longer, but realized that I could just work the rest of the night at my place. My first bus had already passed, so I quickly hurried out to catch a backup option, which I made. At my stop though, I couldn't tell if he was at the stop or if it was just a red light since I don't normally take this bus. He yelled at me about how slow I was to come up to the front, and my frustration with the latter half of the day was only increasing as I waited for my second bus, which kept getting delayed. Yeah, I love winter and the cold and the snow, but even I don't like to stand outside for too long in the cold, just waiting. I should've gotten back in only half an hour, but all the delays made it 45 minutes instead. When I got home, I started work right away, but after only another half-hour, everyone I needed to talk to went offline. I don't get it. I keep hearing about people on my team working late nights and weekends on days of deadlines, and here we were with one today, and no one was online. Did the deadline get extended? Are we just going to accept that it's going to be submitted late? With no one able to respond, I was gated, so I reluctantly shut off my laptop and began doing other things. Like eating, and working a bit on my assignment. Once I started to fall asleep in my chair though, I knew it was time to just go to bed. I had barely gotten any work in on my assignment and on the error checking, and I was severely dreading tomorrow. I woke up this morning feeling refreshed. I was literally singing to myself in the morning, and giggling as I walked through the snow. What happened?
The trip to work the next morning was nothing really, but it did feel real good to catch busses on time and walk on giant mounds of snow (take that, you lowly humans who stick to the curb and walk around the dunes). There weren't many messages in the morning to take care of, which I thought was strange. Didn't we just miss a deadline? Why is no one chasing after me for it? There was a message from my manager, timestamped at last night, but I didn't feel like opening it quite yet. I started off with a little delving into the what I was asked to look into last night by my manager. I poked around for a little bit, trying to figure out where exactly the errors were. It was so strange: the whole test overall was reporting as a pass, but just one aspect of it was not giving an overall status code. If these errors in the log were the issue, then why was the test overall passing? Steve and my Japanese coworker let me know of snacks in the break room, so I went and saw none were left. It was unfortunate, but I couldn't just leave: my mentor was here refilling his water bottle, and he greeted me. I awkwardly grabbed a paper cup and filled it with hot water, as he talked to me about the Absconder stuff that my predecessor had made. My predecessor was supposed to make some updates to it, and I was supposed to provide the results to my mentor, and neither of us had done that. As he began to talk about those very steps, I told him the truth (well, only the parts of the truth he needed to know), and he asked me to contact my predecessor about it. Back at my desk, I do this whole updating of my predecessor, and finalyl open my manager's message... it's about the very error messages I was just poking around in. Oh. Guess I could've opened that earlier. Updating him on what I was up to, I proceeded to work further, only getting distracted by two things: my go-to asking me about another set of errors that I have to fix (not going well, the people I need to help me with it are on my work rival's team, and they are ignoring my messages), and the fanatic asking if I could host 'Jeopardy!' on Friday. While I wanted to work a LOT on my assignment on Friday, since I had planss for Saturday already, I was a bit nervous at first, but I ended up saying yes. Why not? I did it last time, and that assignment had a hard deadline of the next day. This one's a deadline of Saturday only because I want to finish it this Saturday. My go-to ended up asking me to let any of the managers know that I needed support from those non-responsive team members since this needed to get done, and so after providing my manager with that update, I went ahead with investigating what I had been in the morning. Lunch happened around this time, but I decided to stay at my desk for it once again. The difference today was that I let lunch be a bit of a break from the work I was supposed to be doing, which I did by doing a whole bunch of bloghan and cryptic crossword clue writing, and it was right back into error tracking afterwards. The distracting conversations got smaller and smaller thorughout the day, as the fanatic, compatriot, and my co-DM all visited but quickly left when they saw how busy I was. That's not to say that I didn't participate in those conversations. The one with my co-DM was most important, since very little planning had gone into tonight's session. Eventually, I grew tired of trying to figure out these non-failing errors, and it was a good thing that my go-to asked me then about my permissions in accessing them. Permissions? Well, I guess I did try to open some files relevant to the errors before, and I thought my lack of permission to access them was already assumed by everyone else. However, it turns out that the exact same files were copied in another place, that which I could access. I went back to reread some earlier messages from my manager, and I understood a lot more of what he had said in those messages, which I had skipped over in my initial reading. He wanted me to do a quick little hack/workaround to get things working, by switching everything to refer to that accessible location. The problem with that location is that it doesn't get updated as the source we're supposed to be using, but for now it's ok. Taking into consideration what the two of them had told me, I started to look into it, comparing all these really long and complex filenames to see if things matched up. Around this time, someone on my work rival's team raeched out to me about the other error. I'll explain a bit more about it. This new project that I'm trying to fix is based on another project that I never worked on. The new project is very very similar to that old project, but it does differ in a few ways. One difference is a section of parts, which have two specific parts - project specific and general. These parts need to be generated for each project, and that is usually something my work rival's team should be doing. Now though, they're just helping me do the generation myself. The first person assigned to help me gave me some things to try, but would always leave me on read for my questions and concerns. The person who ended up helping me was someone that my mentor suggested, and while he didn't respond at all in the morning, he finally got back to me now. The best part? Everything he told me worked. It just worked! Now I was frantically doing two things, as these messages filtered in. Before D&D tonight, I wanted to get half of those parts generated, and I wanted to completely finish this name checking thing for the other error. People in the D&D group came to visit me occasionally, and I kept pushing the start time back only a little bit to get things done. It was the most amount of progress I've made on these tasks since being asked. Once I was happy with all the progress, we headed down for D&D, and let me tell you... this was quite the session. It was mostly a social session, meant to be a bit shorter and use no combat. Things were going as we wanted to, until my Japanese coworker's character got robbed. All it was was a street orphan doing the classic "mustard scam" but with dirt, and all his money was taken. What followed was the most murderous 10 minutes I've seen out of my Japanese coworker and the compatriot too, for some reason. Cable guy's and my equivalent's characters were left behind, but they were invested in hearing about how the two most aggressive people on the team were going to maim, burn, suffocate, shoot the feet of, and skin alive a whole bunch of children, just to get about 80 gold pieces back. The 10 minute mini adventure that was supposed to show the cruelty of the slums in this fictional city turned into a 30 minute revenge quest, and I don't really know how to feel about it. I've never really played with a group that was this murderous, and I'm not sure how much I like it. The ridiculous overreactions are funny, yes, but at the end of the day, I feel like if this is how they want to behave in a fantasy game, it's kinda... boring? Like, I'm sure they could come up with more creative solutions than "threatening torture" or "hit really hard" every time. Eventually they got the gold back, but my Japanese coworker was still mad, so he forced the kid who robbed them to follow with him. He took a short break and had to walk away from the table for a bit, because he was actually feeling the anger of being robbed. That was... certainly something. I never took him for someone who could get that into a character like that. After this, the party reunited and actually tried to progress things, trying to pick up on the guards lying by omission and questioning the boy. As they walked up to the higher class part of the city, I knew it was my chance to get rid of the side effects of the robbery. I am not having a random street urchin kid accompany them throughout the entire adventure, so we made sure that the city guards did not let the poor into the upper districts. My Japanese coworker was very very resistant to this, and almost tried to fight the guards, but once the guards had a show of power and kicked the boy so hard that my Japanese coworker's grasp was broken, I got the kid to run. This wasn't enough though, as my Japanese coworker was considering running after the kid, but everyone else convinced him to just give it up and join them. He was a little disappointed about it, but don't think I don't have plans brewing in my head for this boy. The rest of the session was mostly tame: a nice 'Avatar' reference with a cabbage cart, some connection to the compatriot's noble character (clearly not as a trait, but instead a background), and a bit of setup for the existence of plasmoids. We ended once they got their accommodations sorted out, and I collected feedback on the way home. Overall, a good session, proving to the players that we don't need combat to keep things interesting and packed with stuff to do. We also got an explanation from my Japanese coworker about his extreme reaction: this was the first time in his life he had ever been robbed. I guess it's good that it happened in a game first..? I collect feedback as I get driven home by my co-DM, and I'm feeling pretty alright about the day. That is until I get to my front door, which is slightly ajar. Well, that's fine, right? It just means that it's going to be extra cold inside. I go to turn on my laptop as I prepare a buttered English muffin and some hot water, when I see that it didn't turn on. Weird... maybe I missed the power button? I try again, but it immediately shuts off. Oh, I guess last night I must've let the battery run out? I plug it in, but the battery indicator says full... what? Looking at it closer, it's full at the ripe perecentage of 0%... well, ok, probably just a glitch I guess. I do a little work on some stuff before my curiosity gets the better of me, and I look up if the cold had anything to do with my battery issues. My desk is very cold to the touch, as is my laptop. The results? Oh no. The cold can just straight up kill a battery if you try to charge it while it's cold. I turn off my laptop right away and wrap it in some blankets. Looks like I won't be getting much work in for bloghan or my assignment... The rest of the night is spent on playing the tarot version of 'Aces Up' a couple of times, cooking my alfredo and baked potato for dinner, practicing my 'Jeopardy!' board to refresh myself ont he answers, and then actually eating my dinner. I also have my work laptop out during this time, re-running some tests this late at night just before submitting a change. This change is the one that involves my manager and my go-to's suggestion, so I need to make sure it's all correct before doing so. I do my submission, and check on my own laptop. At first, it feels like its battery life has suffered quite a lot, but I quickly realize that it doesn't seem all that affected in the first place. Huh... After a lot of distracted video watching to see just how much it had suffered in the cold (only a little, maybe?), I decide to go to bed. It's a bit later than I should've let it get, but here I am, living with and by myself again.
Thursday morning was pretty much the same as Wednesday morning, but getting into work, things were slightly different. Now, multiple managers and my go-to were all asking me about my progress on this generation thing. Looking at what I had done before and after D&D yesterday, I could tell them that it was half generated. It was tough work though, not because of any physical effort, but because of how rarely I would get responses to my questions. Sure, I was getting correct responses that were helpful, but I wasn't getting them very often or very quickly. This shouldn't have been my responsibility in the first place, but here I am yet again as Christ's least favourite. My predecessor comes to visit our corner, and there's a little bit of discussion about flights and things, about his wife too. I let myself get a little distracted, but I'm called back to attention by a meeting starting... oh yeah, I had a check-in meeting with someone outside of work, just to make sure I'm doing alright in the position. It wasn't all that long of a meeting, and it was mostly a discussion on how I was liking things. It was a bit funny how whenever I started off with something that wasn't immediately positive, the person I was talking to would adopt a concerned face and tilt her head right away, so I'd have to pivot with a "but then I..." statement to make her shfit right bck into that positive mood. I really don't want too many negative feelings reaching my manager, and she's going to talk to him next. She did tell me some very important things that I really have to consider. This meeting got me to consider what the best part of my position is, and I think it's the flexibility I'm offered. I really like being given tasks and trusted to just come back with results once I've got it done. Of course, I've still got to do it in a timely manner and all, but my manager isn't breathing down my neck asking for updates constantly (unless it's deadline season, and even then, he's not doing it all that much). Also, the work from home day I get every week is just really nice. I wasn't expecting it to be as impactful as it was, but it really makes a difference. I still get most of my work done anyways. She told me to not just apply willy-nilly to companies in the area I'm interested in, but to really reach out to people in those companies and find out about their flexibility options. This honestly brought back all my panic about not having much time to respec myself to those industries. With my course and work, I had let that all slip to the wayside. The call ended pretty soon after I shared some feedback on how they gave us assignments and evaluations, and from there, it was back to work. I was still waiting on the one helpful person on my work rival's team to get back to me, so while I did, I focused hard on making clues for my big cryptic. I probably should've been working on bloghan or my assignment, but I didn't get much of a chance to do it any other time this week. We went down for lunch a bit later, and Steve and I had to sit at a table a little bit away from everyone else in our little lunch group. Steve was occupied with his sushi videos or something, and I was talking to my equivalent about 'Jeopardy!' tomorrow, showing him the Mesopotamia questions from last time. He seemd strangely combative about the answers to some of the questions, which I hoped wouldn't carry over into tomorrow's game. Once I actually started eating though, I was pretty glad that I was not at the main table, because my work rival started stirring up some discourse about religion or free will or something, and I really don't like participating in that stuff with him. I headed upstairs silently once my lunch was done. As I waited for my instructions, I decided to catch up on a little bit of bloghan, occasionally distracted by some conversation caused by my work rival, by the compatriot, and the fanatic. Just on some random things honestly, like gacha and the meaning of the term "girlypop" (which apparently my co-DM and the gregarious both agreed describes me... figures). I also let everyone know of my plans to not show up to the office tomorrow until it was time for our planned event, and while they didn't really want me to, I knew it had to be done. I was kept waiting even longer, so I ended up reading the next few chapters of 'One Piece' (not many, only about 5). I thought I would have nothing to do until I left, but it was at that point that I finally got another response, so I could actually finish all the generation of stuff. Tonight, maybe I'd check in on my work laptop to see if any tests I rurn pass or not, but it's probably better to just go. When I got home, I tried to get myself to work on something, anything, but... well, an assignment after this data visualization assignment got cancelled, so I ended up slacking off, not doing all that much of anything. Cooking and passively just watching things go by on my screen until it was late at night, studying my Jeopardy board for tomorrow, collapsing into bed. That's what ended up happening. I think I have a better understanding of how people can come back home from work and feel drained. When I first started out, I think I literally said that "every day feels like summer vacation," but now, that sentiment is gone. I'm sure it's just a side effect of becoming more integrated with my team, but this seems like this is just going to be how it is from now on. Well, I do think it can be challenging work, so I'll just have to adjust. Though I suppose... maybe next week will be my productive week. Please. Let it be.
Friday morning was just so nice. I got to wake up much later than normal, and I felt rested for the long time in a while. Now that the third assignment was gone, I felt like I could relax a lot more and focus in on work and bloghan. I wake up and make my breakfast, logging in to start figuring out what's next. I update the people who require updates, eat and drink, then do bloghan and watch some stuff until I get the repsonse that I need. The response is what I expect though: my guess of "just copy over things now lol" was correct, and I start doing it. For the non-specific stuff I generated, it's very easy, and there's not much to do. For the project-specific stuff though... it's a nightmare. There's just so much of it. I spent quite a while looking over them and copying them over, which was quite the tedious process. This continues through many messages and even lunch, but I do manage to get about half of it done by the time I wanted to get it half-done. The next half-hour is getting myself ready for the work event happening tonight. I want to dress up a little nice for hosting 'Jeopardy!' and I also want to shave, but going a little too fast when shaving has always had negative consequences, and I don't know why I thought this time would be the exception. 10 minutes later, sustaining multiple cuts all over my neck, I rush around to get into a nice dress shirt and such, and double-check my buses. It's going to be tight, but I think I can make it? Looking at the time though... oh, I started preparing way earlier than I needed to. Well, I guess I'll do some more work. There was a new message in the time that it took me to get ready, from my work rival saying he can't go tonight, because of "food poisoning." I knew it. I knew he'd flake. After setting up some things for easy copying once I got to the office, I went outside to catch my first bus. It was a very sunny day, though with a very chilly wind too. There was a weird amount of high-schoolers out and about too. Was it some sort of day off? Checking the time.... ah, no, they probably just got out of school, and there's literally a high school down the street. Getting to my bus stop, I see there's a whole bunch of parents parked in front of it. That's strange... they're in high school, yet their parents are picking them up? Back in my day... well, nevermind. The bus is late (strange, this bus close to my place is almsot never late, but I guess that must only apply in the morning?), and I find some of the things I see the high schoolers do and wear in this weather very amusing. Brings me back to my high school days, full of what I see now to be lost potential, but also some great growth regardless. Unfortunately, all the cars leave before the bus finally gets here, so I don't get to see any funny interactions there, but that's fine. There might be other times. The bus makes so many stops on the way, and these high schoolers on the bus are so noisy and also so... tiny? Did they get smaller over time? Strange... I scheduled my leaving time to catch my second bus right on time, but I missed it. I'm lucky this one isn't one of the hourly busses though, and within the next 15 minutes I walk into the office. And my work rival is there too. Wait, what? Wow. He got me. He boomed me. I always think that modern bait is no logner believable but he really got me here. He's pretty proud of it too. Before our event starts in an hour, I dedicate myself to finishing off this copying over of generated files, as the people around me talk about.. well just about whatever. I don't relaly pay attention, because there's just so much to do! It's so tedious, but as I do more and more of it, I get a lot faster with it too. However, with teh sheer amount of stuff that I have, I'm still working by the time our event time rolls around. Everyone goes down to whip the cream for the tiramisu (they are obsessed with that stuff here!), and I get things done. Near the end, I would have to wait for all the copy and other operations to finish since I started doing it on a mass scale, so I will admt that it didn't look like I was so busy while on my phone - but I was! I was. People came back form whipping to collect me, watching my progress and my complaints at doing the work of my work rival's subteam. Why don't they have him doing it?? Once it was all done, I kicked off some tests to run, and we all went out for dinner. There were twelve of us: me, my work rival, my predecessor, the fanatic, the gregarious, a guest (the boyfriend of the gregarious), Steve, my Japanese coworker, my equivalent, the compatriot, some other coworker, and my co-DM. We had almost everyone, only missing the cable guy. We would've done 'Jeopardy!' first, then dinner, but Steve really wanted to eat first, and only agreed to turn up if we did dinner first. I'm going to be riding in my predecessor's car, and while he was mostly using the GPS to get there, near the end we followed the others... into the wrong parking lot. Well, that's fine, we can just walk to the restaurant... oh, there's a fence in the way. Ah, but it has a gate! We'll just go through that. Three of us (me, predecessor, equivalent) make it through, but the third person accidentally shuts the gate, and it locks behind us. Oh... well, the other 9 people end up going back in their cars and driving away, to the rigth parking lot, with my work rvial being trusted to drive my predecessor's car. The three of us who made it past the fence go in the restaurant to go get a table, and we only realize now that it's pretty busy in there. There isn't space for 12, but there are two tables of 6 on opposite sides of the place. Well, we might as well choose that. Dinner proceeds as normal, with us conversing about the pork dishes that my work rival can't eat (that I was eating), having some talk of how 'Jeopardy!' will work, awkwardness with the servers (sorry, we didn't know we could just tell you our number for non-soup dishes), and about cash, about snow. Dinner was pretty good, but I was getting abit nervous over 'Jeopardy!' Will they like this round of it? I really hope so... We leave pretty quickly and get back to the office, where I check out my tests. They seem to not have run in the first place. Lovely. Once they restart, we head down to a meeting room big enough for all of us, and split into the teams. These teams were randomly assigned, but my work rival demanded rerolls of the team until he was happy. I was surprised at the final results of the rerolls, as I thought he would've declared the current setup unfair. The teams were team Ginger Ale (gregarious, her boyfriend, Steve, Japanese coworker), team JJK (co-DM, other coworker, compatriot, equivalent), and team Bubbler (work rival, fanatic, predecessor). They weren't actually called team Bubbler, but in fact, something more along the lines of "Bubbler <3 his manager," so naturally I only called them that. The game went smoothly as far as getting answers to most questions. Balancing out the board to tackle more broad topics really helped quite a lot, and it seems like it made things way mroe enjoyable for everyone too. Now, that's not to say there were no issues. In fact, I very quickly came to understand why my work rival was satisfied with the teams as they sat before me. My predecessor was clearly a trivia titan amongst mortals, and while he may not be considered a true trivia god, in this group, he might as well be. Team Bubbler was dominating, but teams Ginger Ale and JJK were getting some near clean sweeps of certain categories. Team Bubbler was only kept in check by their gambler's spirit, as they would always bet everything in Daily Doubles, and lose it all. They did the same in the final round, and the win ended up going to team JJK. Every team got final round incorrect, but only team JJK bet everything but one dollar in case they got it wrong; the other two teams bet it all. Team JJK was a little unsatisfied though, since it didn't feel like a win to them. It was a strategic win, yes, they won that game, but they were getting trounced in terms of trivia. My work rival was gloating the whole time through, about doing some of the daily doubles wrong just to make it easy (he wasn't doing it on purpose, they really didn't know them), and also upon winning he got all victorious and proud too... it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, I'd expect a little more respect in 'Jeopardy!' Everyone agreed it was so much fun, and they wished that there was another board since that one didn't take as long. Well... I did have another board. It was not as tested and I hadn't memorized the board as much, but I had it. I prepared things as they served everyone tiramisu, and once everyone was ready and had rejoined the lobby, we went ahead. This time, there were a bunch more mistakes occuring, with the website sometimes glitching out and displaying the answer right away, or with me not remembering if an answer was "summer" or "winter" Olympics, and granting points when I shouldn't have. The game was pretty scuffed, and team Ginger Ale started to complain about being the farthest away and unable to react as fast to questions, while team JJK was frustrated with just barely being behind in buzzing in every time by only 2 or 3 milliseconds (and my equivalent was a bit exasperated at some of the answers because of his misreadings of clues). My work rival was loving it a whole lot though. He wasn't even answering anything, he was only buzzing in for his teammates, and the fanatic gave no answers: it was all my predecessor. This time, two teams got the final round question, and team Bubbler won by getting the answer right. However, because of their low bet, they were guaranteed to win. There was a round of applause started by the compatriot, congratulating only my predecessor (I sure hope this doesn't cause any tensions...), then a round of applause for me, for hosting. Hosting is a lot of fun, and I do like dressing up a little fancier for these events too, so you already know that I'd do it again. I quickly finished my tiramisu (it was alright... I'm a bit tired of tiramisu though), and we left shortly after that, with my predecessor driving me and my work rivla back. We talked about how the event went, this time and last time, and we talked a bit about how we could balance teams in the future, and how I could change up boards to include others more too. Once I got home, I knew I wanted to work on my crossword and on another 'Jeopardy!' board, and on bloghan, and I came up with a plan to spread those out. I ended up hard focusing on completing about half of my next 'Jeopardy!' board, working way up late into the night. Dissapointed in myself, I went to bed.
The weekend was a great chance for me to catch up on quite a lot. That's why I squandered most of my free time on Saturday. Woke up late, then took a long while to wash dishes so that I could make breakfast, then hopped on my laptop to catch up on all the writing that I needed to do and ended up doing very little, deciding to play games or make 'Jeopardy!' boards instead. After lunch though, I locked in (only a little bit though) and wrote some more bloghan, until it was time to go. Today was the day that I would go out to the theatre and see 'The Merchant of Venice' with my compsci friend from home. He was working closer to downtown and only for a few months, and somehow, this ended up as our first get-together. The first half of the trip was a pretty standard trip to downtown, writing a little bit of my crossword on the bus and reading a good amount of chapters of 'One Piece' on the subway. Once I got off the train though, and made it out to street level, I had no idea where to go next. I was looking for another bus, but I couldn't tell if I was supposed to go left or right on the street, and I ended up missing it. If I just had a compass, I would be able to tell which way I was facing, without needing to walk a couple meters in one direction to see which way the arrowhead on my map apps is pointing. I pivot quickly, and speedwalk towards a different bus that would let me get there on time, walking past a whole bunch of couples and students. How annoying, these slow walkers of the city. I have to run to cross the road and make it on, even though there's like three of the same bus number stopping at the same station, and ride it for quite a while. Getting down at my stop, I have to walk some more, but now it's started to snow. It takes me through this residential area, and something about this area just feels off. I don't know if it's the material of the houses or just how tall they are, or something else (maybe the spacing?) but I think I really prefer the area I live in. Passing by yet MORE couples and a group of adults lining up by some random door in a brick wall (in these conditions?), I make it to the theatre. It's a pretty cozy environment, but it's a bit busy at the same time. I turn to the bar on the far wall, and realize: this is actually the first time I've bene in a bar environment like this. And all I can do is to stand off to the side, watching along as time goes by. My friend isn't here yet, and I ask what I do with my ticket. Apparently, I just have to wait by the doors and they'll scan me in, no extra steps. I know that's the norm with online tickets, but it still surprises me that there isn't an extra step there. Over the next 15 minutes, a line forms and I resist the urge to join it, as I'd rather go in when he's here, but eventually I cave and go in. When it's my turn to get my ticket scanned, the scnaner doesn't register it at first, so I try to zoom in. This ends up swiping to the next ticket (the one with my friend's name on it) and that one gets scanned. Oops... I take a seat, noting that it's not really a traditional theatre setup. It's more like a square floor with some props, and chairs lining three of its outer erdges, facing the center. Around this square bit of floor and behind the chairs is a raised platform of concrete, on which more chairs are placed. It's a lot more intimate than a traditional stage, and I think the actors used it very effectively. It wa sa pretty low-budget play too, not with fancy props and costume design, and no backdrops either. Just a table, some chairs, boxes, but not all that much more. People filter in as I text my friend, who says he's running late. Some people ask if the seats next ot me are taken, but since I don't know which seat my friend will take (on my left or on my right), I just say no. One lady actually comes up to me with a bouquet of flowers and asks the same question, and when I say no, she sits one seat away from me, waiting for someone of her own. That person never came. As for my friend, he did not come before they closed the room, so I watched the first half of the play all alone. Honestly, I didn't mind. Things will usually be like that for me anyways. I don't even know why my friend agreed to see me for the first time in months to see a Shakespeare play. So many people I know resent Shakespeare because they have to parse him for English classes, but actually being able to watch his plays is a whole different experience. Also, I love the stage and acting, so I think have a propensity to want to watch a stage play. But yeah, with all my interests, I feel like very few of my friends would really care for them too. Well, that's alright. I am me, after all, so it's totally understandable. This play though? What a good production, and what great writing by the Bard. There's a reason why his plays are commonly studied in high schools, and that's because of the character work that he so masterfully does! I'm so entranced with the performance, laughing with the interpretations of characters that we see here, and really confronting the whole thing with antisemitism and all that with this play. I didn't pick up a program before going in the theatre, so when the intermission starts and people start clapping, I'm confused. It's the middle of the climax! It can't be ending here! Is there a part two performance that I have to attend tomorrow? Because I will, if I must. Ah, but no, it's just the intermission. I head out of the theatre and see him waiting there for me. Before we catch up though, he asks for a plot summary. He had come in too late, so wasn't allowed entry until after the intermission. He was offered a ticket of equivalent value to tomorrow's show, but he turned it down, since he'd rather go in with me. Awww.... I think? The wording was pretty tricky. I give him a quick and dirty plot summary, and I think I surprised him a bit with the depth of the plot? Honestly, recounting back the plot of 'The Mechant of Venice' really displays the absurdity of Shylock's demands, and the viewpoint that Shakespeare initally paints of him. We head back into the theatre, and actually do some catch up, talking about each other's work and just how we've been getting along with living here, away from where we grew up. Ah, but hark! The lights went low and the rest of the play went on. The more intimate stage really allowed the actors to pull on the heartstrings, and the visceral expression of emotion that they showed all throughout the play (especially the trial scene) actually managed to bring tears to the forefront of my eyes. And the additional scene that the production team added, with Jessica freaking out over the deed, and seeing her father broken and forcibly converted..! Now that was skill expression if I've ever seen it. It felt so much more real than a modern movie. I'm so glad I went. The rawness of just about everything made it all worth it. My friend and I left the theatre right after the standing ovation and the thank yous from the directors, and we made our way outside to the trains. I would've stayed for dinner, but I had to catch the last bus/train/bus back up to my place. On the way to that first bus, I was asked about if I understood all of the Shakespeare-style language ("no, no, you don't need to, you just need to understand enough to understand what's going on, and actors'll also try to make it clear through actions what they are saying") and about how Portia and Nerissa got the rings in the end ("it wasn't doubling up on roles, it was crossdressing as written"), then back into just more general conversation as we got on the bus. It was nice, talking to someone who had known me longer than a few months for the first time in a few months. We reminisced a bit, we talked about current things in our life a lot more, and we talked about our future a bit too. A perfect balance of topics. Once we got to teh train station, we split ways. I'll definitely try to make time for weekends to go downtown more often, just to have fun honestly. I've spent enough time holed up in my place, when there's so much I can do with friends. In the future, I'm sure that I won't have any friends left to do such things with, but right now? That's a different story. I get back to my place quite a bit after midnight, and the walk up to my place from the last bus stop rally gives me pause, time to think. I think a lot about my relationships with others, and about romantic relationships too. I mean, there are three marriages that happen in 'The Merchant of Venice,' and just like how the actors were able to pull off real-feeling reactions to losing life and to losing money, the intimacy between married couples felt just as real. As much as I want to be touched like Nerrisa is by Gratiano, or cared for like Bassanio is by Portia, or feel as free as Jessica feels with Lorenzo, I get the feeling that such affections are not objects made for me. While I will never be adorned with those things, I still have myself at least; but, I'm sure my future will just be like the surroundings that I found myself walking through to get back tonight: cold, dark, and alone. When I get back, it makes me giggle a bit (as if I wasn't just laughing at myself out in the streets just now, thinking more about it), but once I heat up some alfredo pasta and get to work, another couple hours pass by, and barely any work has been done. Man... why do I do this to myself? Tomorrow better be a busy day.
Sunday is indeed a busy day! Only at the end of the day. That's the wonder of deadlines! I woke up at around the same time as Saturday, and also did the same thing for breakfast: wash my dishes, then cook. I sat down to write bloghan, but found myself continuously distracted and not making much progress. There's so much I want to do today, but I just keep getting in my own way! I take a look around me. There's so much stuff just piled on my couch, my desk is cluttered with books and papers and pencils, and there's laundry to be done. How long can I keep living like this? Actually, why should I continue living like this? Why would I? Why have I been? First order of business: laundry. All the coloured clothes go in first. Next, let's clear up my couch. All these bags, all these papers and pens that are ALSO somehow piling up on my couch? Get those to better, proper places. My desk too! It's so dusty, and so much space on it doesn't need to be taken up right now by all these papers and pencils. I end up tossing away a bunch of paper scraps that I had no idea I was still holding onto, and put all the pencils back in their case. Also, my mini sidetable has been hosting this oven that I haven't used in months! Move that to my storage locker. Oh, it's pretty full? Reorganize that too! I zip around my apartment, and everytime I find something that makes me feel like I'm living sloppily, I rectify it right away, or put it out of sight. This extends to the kitchen, all the towels I can find get washed too, the dust collecting on my couch, the various random cardboard boxes I kept because "they might be useful one day," some random glass bottle that I kept for nothing??? All of it gets cleaned up. I survey my work after all this. It feels so much... better! My desk actually has real estate for me to do stuff, I can sit on my couch now, my towels don't stink, and I'm holding on to one big box for no reason now. I feel a lot better about living right now, so while I have that feeling, I go ahead and write bloghan, 'Jeopardy!' clues, and cryptic crossword clues for hours. I fall into a pretty big distraction trap at one point, but once I get out of it nothing stops me... well, except for picking up my groceries, small snack adventures throughout the day and my landlord knocking on my door a couple hours after sunset. With the latter action, I open it pretty quickly, and she immediately starts yelling at me: "LOOK HOW LUCKY YOU ARE!" I'm confused and scared; is she mad at me? Did I forget to do something she asked me to? SHe then holds up the bag of steam buns, and excitedly yells "BEEF!" What? Beef? They make beef ones???? My disbelief is picked up by her, and we both talk real excited like about these beef steam buns. The BBQ pork ones that I liked so much were sold out, but there were two bags of beef ones, which she had never seen before at the Asian supermarket. I'd never seen these too, and we're both pretty excited about it, especially since it's priced the same as the pork ones. I thank her, and as I close my door I remark "Beef!" to myself once again; my landlord hears me, and repeats it to herself. More bloghan followed this exchange, and following it came a renewal in my cleaning frenzy in the form of floor sweeping, then finished the next 'Jeopardy!' board. After eating the last of my penne alfredo, I finished my 15x15 cryptic. With that out of the way, I finally felt like I could sleep.
Future plans
Honestly, my decluttering of my living space helped to declutter my mind as well. Although that did happen a bit late... Here's how this week's tasks went:
- PCB stuff: no progress on the one-bit adder project, a little progress on the keyboard (reset butotn circuit done, and people are working on some parts I think)
- Door: no progress
- 'One Piece': didn't finish 'Dressrosa,' made good progress all the same though
- That one assignment: Barely anything... yikes.
- Cryptic crossword: try it with this link - Original Nonchecked 15x15 2
- Online PCB training: signed up for it! Didn't start though
- Photo recolouring: no, didn't do it
This week, the priority is that assignment. I specifically finished the crossword and the 'Jeopardy!' board in advance so that I wouldn't have those to distract me in the week. I'll read more 'One Piece' in spare time, and additional spare time will be spent in doing those PCB trainings. However, I don't want to commit to doing too much right now, since the priority, like I said already, is that assignment.
Song of the week
'Thank you, FRIENDS!!' (https://youtu.be/t_IThrVKPyE) by Aqours is the song of the week. Yeah, yeah, I couldn't resist for more than a week to not make a 'Love Live!' song the song of the week, I know. It saved me though, so I hope that makes my obsession with it more understandable. But yes, this is the song of the week not only because I've been playing it on loop for most of this week, but because of the core message of it. It really just is a thank you to friends. From a week that started off quite lonely, that slowly got more colourful with friendship, and more free because of it too, I think all I want to say right now to a lot of people is "thank you, my friends!!"
Until next time
Oh this upcoming week's going to suck isn't it? It'll be rough for sure, but I've gotten through worse. I think. Probably. I'm totally not panicking internally right now. No, better to keep that in for now, and channel it out as part of my own efforts to do... well, anything. See you next week!
- bubbler