March 9, 2025 - bloghan 37

This week, like many others, could be described as draining. Yet, despite all the drainyness, I found within me a great amount of fun to be had! Even if things got me down and also severely down this week, it feels as though I was able to bounce back. Here's how:

Tier list of the week

This week's tier list: archetypes of 'Jeopardy!' categories. This isn't from an official list or anything, these are kind of my own divisions of clue archetypes. This isn't actual categories, think of it as the umbrella terms "one level up" from a typical 'Jeopardy!' category. Here's the tier list:

Ordered tiers, unordered within tiers. I think this tier list highlights more what kind of knowledge/trivia I typically think of/value more when it comes to my own knowledge and trivia knowhow. I like having that more "academic" knowledge, the more traditional trivia stuff. While it's cool that 'Jeopardy!' does ask questions about media things, I just don't really htink it's for me. It might fit, but it doens't always feel like it when it's next to those more academic subjects. Wordplay ones though? Before coming over here I might not have liked them as much, but now that I've become more embroiled in wordplay stuff due to my new cryptic crossword obsession, I like them a whole lot more!

Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)

When I got into work on Monday, I was so panicked about having to deal with my submission breaking things on Friday. Would I get a whole bunch of emails and messages and calls essentially yelling at me to fix things? I open my laptop... no emails directly sent to me and no messages sent over the weekend...? How strange... I thought I broke the new project? I open the webpage which tracks the project status and I see that someone submitted a change on Saturday which... wasn't broken? That submission fixed it? What??? I look at the files and they have no relation of any of my work. So... it fixed itself? Huh... well, ok then, I don't have to fix what isn't broken! Yippee! Now I can relax and delete all these emails, and work on things I haven't had much time to work on! I won't bore you too much with what I did at work today, since it's not much of value. Here's a high level summary:

Saw an email from my manager to make that spreadsheet making thingy even bigger and also to submit it for the use of anyone on the team... I really don't want to though!!! So I'll leave that email on read
Met with someone who wantetd to discuss how that same Absconder work made its outputs: we had booked a meeting room on Friday, but the VP and another guy above the director walked into the room as I waited for my colleague, bascially kicking me out with a "it'll be quick" - we ended up meeting in another room that was available, and I impressed upon her how the formatting worked... to be honest, I don't understand why we needed a meeting for that, she could've just asked me questions or showed up at my desk
Got a message from the not-manager, telling me to get a move on with the automation of my Absconder work for him - alright geez man, I'l do it
Worked on that, seeing people visit me but not really interacting with them since I want to work on stuff - ah, that is until lunch
At lunch, just kinda sat there and worked on stuff, eating my sandwich, but worked with my co-DM to plan out the next three sessions. They'd have to be hour long sessions because of some unforseen things coming up for my Japanese coworker - he can only stay for an hour on Wednesdays for the next three weeks, and if we planned to play more than an hour and let him leave at the hour mark, he just wouldn't attend at all (according to him)... well, that's ok! Pacing is hard, but if you carefully plan things out enough, you can figure out how to squeeze some things to let other things get fleshed out, and even find time savings!
Back upstairs, just trying to run things, but my automation doesn't seem to work... ah, wonderful, love that
As I wait for things to proceed, I go on my phone to make a meme edit on Google Drawings, when my mentor walks in to ask me something - ah, wonderful, love that - and it's about the Absconder work my predecessor made (that we adjusted on Friday) and how outputs are just wrong again... ah, a classic problem with this specific Absconder batch that they keep asking ME to work on
We visited my predecessor's cubicle, didn't find him there, went back to my mentor's cubicle, then got a message from my predecessor so WE WENT BACK and UGH I'm so done with this specific bit of Absconder
It turns out that three of the things that weren't working just needed to be swapped... those three things were what I was told to swap on Friday... I'm actually going to lose it
I work again on this ONE FRUSTRATING ABSCONDER PIECE THAT I DIDN'T EVEN MAKE and oh hi there work rival's manager, of course I can show you where my predecessor's cubicle is
Returning to my desk, I realize that I have no choice but to actually go in and examine the work that was done, as just poking around with inputs is getting me nowhere... man, I was trying to avoid it for so long
After abit of digging and some frustrations with my predecessor's design philosophy as exhibited in this mutually agreed upon "trash" (globals? really? you had to use globals, forcing me to test everything command by command?)
After getting very drowsy, I figure out a solution: it has to do with an addition made in between projects and about slightly different behaviour between two very similar Absconder tools
I go ask my mentor if I'm on the right track, he gives me some very conflicting information about how things are, so I have to show him what I mean and I JUST want to be done with this specific Absconder thing...
This is my fifth test of this Absconder thing, my fifth try, so I name the output with a 'Mambo No. 5' reference (a little bit of Absconder in my life)
It works
It works?
It works. Oh no it works. I'm going to have send my mentor that stupid name
I'm going to go home. But first, let's talk with my compatriot (he gives me a lecture on my frugality and how I should live a little... I'm literally going to the mall tomorrow though) and my predecessor (reminiscing about past work things and thinking about how we'l inflict this pain onto future employees)

Why did that have to be just as busy as Friday?? Man, I could use a more relaxing week... Now, before I discuss the rest of my day , I feel like I should probably explain something else first, something I did at work that I didn't list above. You see, as things started to not work at first, or cause me great internal pain, I was pulling out my hair and despairing a whole bunch. I decided to try something: laughing about it. What if instead of despairing I just started giggling? So I did. And I couldn't stop. Seriously, I was just giggling throughout all my tasks failures and successes, in meetings with my mentor about the Absconder stuff, during those conversations with the compatriot and my predecessor, I couldn't stop. Walking to the bus station, laughing. On the bus, giggling softly. Walking between bus stations, laughing a little louder, a little more frequently. On the second bus, which I had to run to catch, giggling with my hand over my mouth to stop the sound escaping. Even walking back into my apartment, I cuoldn't not laugh. Once I closed the door behind me I let all the laughs out, but for ten minutes after I took my coat off I stood in the mdidle of the room and just laughed. I couldn't stop. I was on my laptop, writing this bloghan, playing games, catching up with things, videos, drinking hot water, my landlord giving me those frozen chicken balls she bought at the grocery store that day just for me, all these things, and I laughed until I got really drowsy. I decided to take a 20-minute nap, laughing a lot less as the tiredness caught up with me, and when I woke up, the spell had ended. What did I just do to myself? I cook dinner and I don't finish off the bloghan since I had let it get so late, just a couple hours after midnight. Maybe I should save that laughing fit tech for another time...

I speedrun Tuesday morning's routine and make it to work on time, not letting the low amount of sleep affect me too much. I see that a bunch of those nightly tests for the new project failed last night, but I quickly figure out it's not because of the project being broken or anything like that, but because the computers running those nightly things all went down last night. It happens, I guess. The gregarious visits me pretty early in the morning too, to let me know about the mall plans, which got severely adjusted very recently: a lot of people are no longer joining us for that, which I'm perfectly ok with. I'm only hear to get a dress shirt, and since my co-DM isn't coming, that's one less person asking me when I'm going to admit that I'm going to buy a dress (which I'm NOT). Now, let's see, what to start with? Well, there's my copy of the files where I did that generation task wrong the first time. For safety's sake, I should probably never work with those files again, since if I were to ever submit anything from that, it would end up breaking a lot of stuff down the line. My morning is focused on figuring out how to do the formal way of deleting them. At first, I wanted just to reset them, even enlisting the gregarious to help me out with that, but with the amount that I've done to this copy of the project, yeah no, no reset option is available to me anymore. Deletion it is! But before that, I have to undo some of the changes that I made, and that list of "some changes" takes about 20 minutes to undo through some automation. Ugh. Once it's done, I try the standard deletion method, and it says I haven't finished undoing all my changes. What? I just did though. I look again and they're definitely all gone. I try again and again, then look up a less official way to do it from our team's guides, and that's that! Well, guess it's time for the not-manager's task, trying to automate that Absconder work (this time it's Absconder that I wrote, thank you very much). He also requests that I add just a little bit more functionality to it, analyzing some parts of the project that we excluded for some reason last time. Huh. Why did we do that again? I re-add the functionality and run it again and oohhhhhhhh that's why... It just freezes on one line and just begins collecting data on this one point. Usually, it should be only collecting 1 point, maybe 2 or 12 or something, but as I catch up on bloghan I see that it continues to count up well into the 10 millions. Alright then... I don't really know why it's doing this, which I guess is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. There is a way I can make it not do that, but it would also reduce the number of points that the Absconder work can collect for each entry. Now the goal of this is to capture as many points as we can, but if it makes my laptop nearly crash from memory usage, I think it's acceptable. Though I will probably have to explain this to him, at the beginning lunch I work on that fix, testing it a little bit before focusing on lunch. Everyone else is playing 'President,' and it's pretty alright gameplay. I don't understand why everyone spends a good 3 minutes organizing all their cards in their hand though. I feel like that gives away that you're holding hands that you want easy access to, and also guides you into playing certain hands over others (organizing by rank highlights straights but hides flushes, like that). I don't know, I feel like assessing your hand in the moment is better for the information game and the play strategy. I leave lunch pretty quietely, without a word of goodbye. Back upstairs, I've got my changes ready, so I cancel whatever's currently running and run that instead. I go ahead and try to do some bloghan and listen to music as my work rival starts up conversations about how our managers and the director perceive us. I don't care, I already know it's pretty negative when it comes to me. As I type away at bloghan, my mentor visits me, asking about how I got the results I sent him last night, and if it's possible for it to introduce new errors. I have to awkwardly show him my laptop, independent of the monitors, since my phone is plugged in and receiving keyboard input. I get my point across though, talking about the diffrent behaviour and trying to justify why he should just ignore some of the big inflated numbers and the things that show as errors but are really just ignorable warnings at best, but, alas. He asks me if I have any logs to send him so he can examine more closely... ah shoot, he's going to find those things won't he? He leaves for his desk, and not even 2 minutes later he asks me to cmoe by his desk. I start up two more Absconder processes before going there, and as I expected, those stupid warnings are right there on his screen. We go through the instructions for Absconder, trying to see if there's any way to find out more or get rid of them, and there is one option that might work, but I don't think it will at all. Still, he asks me to try, so what choice do I have but to make a slight edit and start up a third Absconder process? While I wait for them all to finish, I write some bloghan, keeping a close eye on some of the warning and errors I get. They all finish and I send the new logs to my mentor, and work on that not-manager task until its time for the mall. Yeah, probably good to take a break from work right now... The car trip to the mall is relatively silent, with only a limited amount of talking. Once we got to the mall though, things got a little more talkative, as I began to receive some guidance on which stores we could go to. This mall was so fancy, and so big too! We barely strayed from the entrance, and it was just huge!! The first store we saw upon entering had two entrances: the one closest to the mall entrance was an entrance to the men's clothing section, and the second entrance was farther from the entrance, leading to the women's section. Of course, they're connected in the middle, but to start, we just went into the first entrance we saw, finding the dress shirts in the front right corner of this section, after the gregarious had to ask an employee for me. There was this one style that we all seemed to like, but I couldn't decide between the burgundy, navy, or tan. This is why I needed the gregarious! She told me the burgundy would be best for me, and the guys agreed too. We took an embarrassingly long time to find the fitting room, and I tried on the small and exrta-small that I got. Yeah, the gregarious was right, I liked how this shirt looked, a lot. When I walked out of the fitting room to show everyone, they all agreed. I did put it back though, since I wanted to check other stores of the gregarious' suggestion, before I committed to the first shirt I saw. We decided to look in other stores, but they simply didn't have as interesting of a selection, so we opted to get food and grab the shirt as we left. Most people got sushi from a "local place" (in a mall?), I got a Greek wrap (and a can of soda for the gregarious, as thanks for thsi mall trip and helping me with choosing a shirt), and the fanatic got food from a restaurant chain I used to work at. Just as I was talking about my experience at one of those fast food restaurants, we overheard some kids ordering at a restaurant near our table, being extremely rude and demanding towards the cashier. My coworkers were very surprised to hear that I had experienced that, but more from adults than kids. After our meal wrapped up, we headed back the way we came, and headed into the same clothing store. You may remember a couple sentences ago about how I said that the dress shirts were in the front right corner of the men's section, and that the entrance to this clothing store that was farther from the mall entrance went to the women's section. You might also remember a bloghan or two ago about how the girls at work joked that at this mall trip they would get me to try on a dress. Now, the gregarious has just led me into the far entrance of the clothing store (because we are approaching the mall entrance from the other side this time), and guess what we see there in the front right corner?

A long floral dress.

She almost got me! She nearly tricked me! But I saw through her plan!! As long as these other guys are here, I would never try such a thing on! Jokes aside, we quickly realize our mistake, and I check out soon after with my new shirt. We head out, all agreeing that although we went over the 1 hour we thought we would spend here, it was worth it, and it was fine. The gregarious drops me off first, and I walk back inside my place, a little earlier than I thought I would. I wish I could say that I immediately washed the shirt, did other chores, and focused on finishing off bloghan so I cuold do other things too... ah, but you know me and my habits as of late, and yes, all that time did indeed get squandered. While I eventually did all those chores, I did end up leaving a bunch of bloghan for late at night and not finishing it, meaning I did none of the planning or other writing I wanted to. Surely, tomorrow, I'll be better? Ah, but I'm probably going to end up going to bed pretty late, so who knows if I'll even be feeling refreshed enough to do so?

Wednesday was a rainy morning, a sign of things to come for sure. Speedrunning the morning as I did yesterday, and stuffing my mitts into my toque so that rain wouldn't get into my headphones, I planned a little bit of D&D on the bus ride. I actually did see one of my coworkers on the bus, but she was talking with a friend of her own, so I didn't want to disturb her with anything more than a "hello." I'm still me, after all. The first part of the morning was dedicated to making some new Absconder stuff to provide a more detailed look at the parts of the project my predecessor's Absconder checked. To be clear, it wasn't going to be a replacement for my predecessor's Absconder (though a replacement for that particular bit of Absconder would be nice), just a little something to give more insight to my mentor about how things were linked together, displayed relatively nicely. Listening to some Boyz II Men, Michael Bolton, and Asia, I tuned out everyone who tried to talk to me (save for my co-DM, since we needed to plan a bit more for today), and finished it completely midway through lunch, which I ate at my desk. My mentor's reaction? "Wow, that's neat!" That's it? Well, that's alright. I focused hard to get it done, but I do suppose it's kinda simple in the end. I eat lunch and watch the stuff on my screen run as I eat. It seems like people have returned from lunch and had begun to gather in our corner, so I guess I can talk for a bit. I also checked my email, and saw that my order for the King of OU in marketable plushie form had arrived! I showed the people around me, since I was overcome with joy, but there was not really any reaction. Something like that happened earlier today too, with an edit I made being very panned by the fanatic and my work rival. But it's alright, I don't need the affirmation of others to know I'm doing things well. Not at all! In fact, I don't need anyone for anything. I can just be me and doing all I need to do by myself too. I only draw myself back into the conversation when the compatriot says he's watched 6 episodes of 'Love Live! Sunshine!!' to prepare for 'Jeopardy!' tomorrow. My work rival jokes about it being unmanly or something of my compatriot, then glances at me, and I ask about why people think I like 'Love Live!' so much. Yeah, sure, it's made for high school girls, and yes, unfortunately it is one of those shows which features some angles that portray minors in a sexual way - yes, I know, and I also know that the entire franchise does not need those angles or anything of that sort to do what it really set out to do. It is an unfortunate world that we live in, where those kinds of things are implemented because it helps things sell: I'm not saying that I think this is a necessary evil, because I don't want it to be necessary! I don't want to see this kinda stuff in the things I love for other reasons! For the music, the characters, the message! I still watch it for that, and I don't want any of that weird stuff even though it's in the final product, and even if it helps the fnal product succeed, I really wish it wasn't there all the same. Now, why am I saying all this? Why am I defending why I watch this show, why I love it so much? Well, it's because my fanatic answers the question of why I love 'Love Live!' with "because you're a creep," and he laughs.

Oh.

So that's what you think.

OK.

Why interact with anyone then? Why open myself up to others at all? Why bother? I'll just put on my headphones, loop 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps,' and work on two things at the same time: the not-manager's task and the one I got on Monday through email from my manager. I don't really feel like describing my thought spiral after that, as it led me to some quite distressing thoughts on things like my gender, my strangeness compared to others, actually just all of me comparedto others, my relationships, my maturity, my future , and just how sad it was that I had let this affect me so much. Even as I worked it distracted me. What do people really think of me? I've known that I'm rather strange, but I think there's a big difference between weird and strange. A weird person, a creep, is someone who has a picture of a blonde girl in a bikini as their laptop background, and constantly looks at the blonde girls in his class, then back to the laptop, then to the people in his class, then to the background. A strange person, someone like me, has their phone background set to an anime girl with a smile and an outstretched arm, with the word "IBUPROFEN" in all-caps Impact font at the top of the picture. Maybe I'm fighting to hard. If I were to give up the things I loved, I'm sure I would find a group of people who would appreciate me eventually. But... I have to give up all those things I love? Well, I'd rather live all alone. And I suppose if this is what people think... well, I was probably going to end up that way anyways. I spent quite a bit of time just staring out the window, watching the rain intensify, glancing back at my monitors, at the rapid flow of information going past the edges of the screen. I was told once that people in fields similar to mine often have a hard time interacting one-on-one with people outside the field, because the sheer amount of data that they've become skilled at processing simply isn't there. There's no tools just like Absconder that apply outside of its scope. I didn't think it would be me, but... I am inescapable to myself, it seems. After some time, my work rival comes back to the corner (I didn't even notice him leaving), and asks what I'm up to. I give him this real snarky reply, asking if I'm even considered "manly" enough for him to talk to me. He was surprised by this, and asked what was going on, and he guessed correctly in his follow up to that. Apparently, in that time he got up from his desk, he went to talk to the fanatic about what he said? Huh, I didn't think my work rival had that kind of empathy. I still dodged the subject though, as I wasn't quite ready to talk about it. We both noticed that my Japanese coworker behind me and Steve were playing catch with a baseball behind us, so we turned around and joined in as we got things to run in the background, waiting for them to finish. After a good 5-10 minutes, I turn to check on my run, and saw it failed immediately, so I pulled out of the game then and there. The rest of the workday was spent on three tasks, still 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps':

Task for the manager, trying to get things to run and copy files between places, but not having much success with the newer files. The whole thing takes a while to run, so testing little changes to make this copying work is annoying.
Task for the not-manager, trying to make my Absconder work locally every night. I eventually discovered there was a typo in my original method, which I would've caught right away if I tested it right away. The not-manager was the one who got me to do it, and it just worked once I fixed the type.
A task from my work rival's manager, getting me to run some sort of comparison tool that normally someone on her team would be running. My work rival was very interested in this task, and bascially helped me start it off by writing and sending the messages for me to send to his manager, and helping me figure out how to get the instructons she sent me working. Maybe I misjudged him a little too hard... but not his subteam, I still resent them for how my subteam is playing the constant "good team player" role for them.

The rain worsened as I worked, then slowly let up, giving way to thick fog. Once it was time, the D&D group went down for the session. Though we planned for an hour, we ended up going for two hours, cleaning up all the snooping plotlines, folded missing party members back into the story, and setting up the next dangerous adventure in the city. That's not to say it had its wacky moments though: showing my Japanese coworker's character the prettiest girl they've ever seen, just for him to start runing away, then turning around to sprint at her, causing her to fall and him to catch her - that was certainly something. That NPC left quite quickly, and my Japanese coworker's first response was to chase her. I am never putting this man into situations ever again (I will put him into situations forevermore). The second half where they went to the library was not as exciting danger-wise, but plot-wise/worldbuilding-wise it very much was! The hook is a supposed revolution of the lower classes that some guy is planning, so he happens to need this powerful magical tome, but - hee hee hee! It's all a lie! The players think I'm just making this be about the high class vs the low class? They don't trust him not because there is no revolution in the first place, but because he might be on the opposite side! I'm so excited to shatter all their expectations, especially the one where the quest-giver promises them 500 gold pieces upon completion of the quest, but will actually just teleport away once he gets the tome. The players really loved this session, and while I thought me and my co-DM didn't balance the multiple perspectives of the split party, the party thought we did great! The worldbuilding is probably the msot advanced that I've ever run in a game I DM, so I'm pretty proud of that too. I do have two concerns though, that being my equivalent jumping in and telling other people what the ideal action for their character is, even when his character is nowhere near them. It's pretty metagamey, and while I don't mind it as much as others do, it's gotten to the point of micromanagement and him playing the other characters for them outside of combat. The other concern is what my co-DM said to me as she dropped me off, after I got all the feedback. I thanked the players for playing today, and my co-DM for co-DMing with me, but she said, "thanks for DMing" to me. That felt a little strange to me, since why wouldn't she say "thanks for co-DMing" right after I said it, establishing that's a word you can add "ing" to? Is she saying that she feels like I'm taking over too much and not letting her DM enough? I feel like I give her ample time, but looking back, maybe I did take over too much? I'll have to talk to her... ah, but it's a bit scary to bring up that sort of topic, especially when it comes to wording of certain things one says to another. It's why I won't confront the fanatic about what he said to me today. It was quite foggy out, to the point where you couldn't see anything past 3 meters or so. What a terrible day, really. You already know how that affected my mental when I got home. Guess who squanderd a whole bunch of time just thought spiraling??? This guy!!!! To my credit, once I got over it with a long shower where I did not burn myself, I set up stuff for the next assignment (a video presentation... this is going to go just great), did a bit of bloghan, and made more pesto pasta, but somehow I still ended up going to bed late. I almost went to bed without shaving, but good thing I remembered! That wouldn't make my appearance for 'Jeopardy!' tomorrow the way I want it to be, even if it hurts to put my freshly shaved face on my pillow.

On Thursday I was still feeling a bit down, which naturally translated into focus and productivity. Still, I put good time into my morning to make sure I waws dressed well for 'Jeopardy!' tonight, with my new dress shirt not looking too bad. First up at work, I wanted to make some last changes to the Absconder that my manager wanted me to submit, but I was running into some workflow issues. My text editor was so laggy. I would type on my keyboard and it would take 5 seconds for the first letter to appear. It was even worse on the enter key, and scrolling? It took 7-8 seconds to see things above and below my current screen. I had no idea why this was suddenly happening, and I was looking up tips and tricks for my editor, changing all these settings, but nothing was working. I spent the entire morning on this, just opening and closing windows as I changed settings. I got it to a state where typed letters were extremely quick to appear, and scrolling was about 50% of the way back to where it used to be, but somehow, the enter key got worse. I was about to live with it when my work rival commented on how laggy the scrolling was. It was only after I accepted that this was just how it was going to be that I noticed that it wasn't just my text editor that was lagging out, but just about everything too! Which is how I ended up going to the settings for the overall computer and seeing that somehow I was using 100% of my CPU and RAM. So that's why... I reboot my computer, and for once leave it there as I eat lunch. I'm convniced to join people downstairs at the lunchroom, but I kinda just stay to myself, glued to my phone and eating lunch. Only my equivalent talks to me, but we only discuss how I'm wearing that dress shirt, and I hurry on back upstairs as soon as I finish my lunch. The reboot's finished, and I lock in. I shut down the conversations that my work rival and Steve try to start, and get things done pretty much all the way. The tips and tricks I followed earlier in the day help me too, since now that my CPU usage is down to a reasonable 9%. Things are working, I solved the issue with the copying of files that were unfindable, and while it was tricky, I managed to figure out how to combine three columns into one (but only sometimes) as my manager requested. Now that I was done, I sent him the results, before I wrapped it into our existing flow controllers and submitted it for everyone's use. He didn't respond right away though, and soon it was time to start our evening plans! First up, they wanted to go to this fried chicken place to get dinner first, then we would start 'Jeopardy!' right after finishing. Everyone had grouped up near the crossword cubicle, and were currently engaging in discourse about driving there or walking there. They discussed this for a good amount of time, so I told a couple of them that I was going to go check to see if my manager had gotten back to me, and they should grab me right before they leave. Well I do that, and my manager told me it all looked good and that I should go ahead and submit it. Nice! Also, why has no one has come to collect me yet? They should've decided by now, right? I head back to the crossword cubicle, and... it's silent. Ah. They left without me. Well, that's alright. I'll just eat dinner when I get home. Being forgotten, left behind, that's pretty normal for me. I'll just work until they get back, starting to test out wrapping my recent Absconder stuff into my team's flow. To be fair, my work rival did call me and ask what I wanted, and I told him to just get me the daily special, and when they get back, he swears that if I told him about what I was doing, he would not have forgotten me... but you didn't notice I was absent until after you left? Well, I don't mind. We move down to the regular meeting room we do 'Jeopardy!' in, and we eat. I connect my laptop to the screen and show them all my Absconder work, pretneidng as if I lied abuot playing 'Jeopardy!' tonight, and that this is actually a performance review instead, and I receive some roasts for no good reason at all!! The special that I got is three pieces of fried chicken and fries, and the fries are really good, and the chicken is... well, it's fine. It's really greasy, and the breading is nice, but I do find the bones annoying in combination with the grease coating the fingers of my right hand. Some random full-time employee also spots us all eating in here, and we tell himn our plans, and he says he'll join us for just one round. I finish my food second, even though I started quite late, and on my way back from the washroom, the admin lady tells me to get everyone to throw their trash in the break room trash can, not the meeting room trash can. Once everyone finishes their food and tosses it out in the right place, we move to a bigger meeting room, one tha has a lectern, so that I can feel more host-like. THe admin lady tells us it's very important that we turn off the projector and withdraw the screen when we're done, because it's a three day weekend coming up, and the projector will burn out completely if we leave it on the whole time. It has no auto-shutdown feature??? Well surely we'll remember right? We end up playing both boards, even though we initially planned on only doing one, then transitioning into board games. My equivalent ended up overthinking or underthinking a lot of clues (stop, drop, and roll is not appropriate for a nuclear explosion, equivalent, and also mikan is a mandarin, not a tangerine, and 'GoldenEye' was a movie first, not a game first), but he seemed less combative and frustrated about them this time around. My co-DM complained about my bok choy clue, since my description of that particular Chinese cabbage was too vague compared to all the other ones. The final rond of the second board was about the Great Race legend, where the Buddha called all the animals but only 12 showed up. Apparently, there were so many versions of that story, and the fanatic's team (co-DM, work rival, random full-timer) argued that they should've gotten it. They won even if they got it wrong though, so I didn't care, but I think I do have to be more careful in the future with those kinds of questions that could have more than one answer, such as stories that get retold so much. The gregarious got some questions, so did cable guy, and my predecessor didn't dominate this game as much, so I think the board was a lot more balanced. However, the questions having to do with Japan and Japanese, which I specifically placed for my Japanese coworker to get and not feel left out - he got only one of them, with all the rest being taken by teams with faster reaction time or some knowledge of that specific Japanese thing. I was so sure he'd know all of them, and he did for the most part, but I think seeing these questions (which were obviously made for him to get) being answered by other people only made him more frustrated. I have a feeling he won't be joining us next time. It sucks, but it did highlight to me what the issue realyl was. It wasn't that he just didn't have the western-centric knowledge that people born here did, it's that the wording of a 'Jeopardy!' clue is confusing if English is your second language. It's hard to figure out what thing you have to give as an answer, since not every clue has "this" to clue you in. If it was fill-in-the-blank, it woudl be easier, but I've already established that I'm doing things by 'Jeopardy!' rules, so I don't know what else I can do. The work rival pushed hard for the second board to be played, which pushed the event quite late, so we didn't end up doing any board games. We all eft quite quickly after that, and people did really like these boards, even though to me it felt like they had a worse time. Once I got back, I hopped into my regular Thursday call with my friends, about 40 minutes late, but they were alright with that. One of them had gotten the 'Sonic Unleashed' PC recompilation to work (the one who's never played a 'Sonic' game), and was just streaming that. We just talked about how things were going, about how this game played compared to other 'Sonic' titles, about how 'Jeopardy!' flopped and didn't flop, and I also did an unboxing of the King of OU, freeing him from his box but at the cost of -1 ATK stage upon him switching onto my desk. During the call, my co-DM messaged me to ask if I had turned off the projector that we used back at work, and I realized that we didn't. I started looking right away at buses, because if we left the thing on over three days - well, that would be very bad for us. I had the idea of messaging my predecessor about the situation, asking him if he was willing to do it. He lives very close to the office, and he agreed to do it, telling me he had a lot of fun with 'Jeopady!' today, and didn't mind at all. Phew! Once my friends from home and I were done with the call, ending it, I debated staying up to work on bloghan, on the presentation, on a whole slew of things to write. But I had the day off tomorrow... what if I went to bed really early today, in contrast to every other day this week? Would things get done faster and better tomorrow? I decided to take that gamble, and lying in bed after this day, after this whole bunch of days actually, felt just so good.

I woke up on Friday, still feeling a little tired (I suppose I haven't fully caught up on my sleep), and made my breakfast (I messed up the basted eggs so bad). Bloghan catch up was the priority, and I actually managed to get a lot of it in, though it did take a lot more time than I was expecting it to. When I started to get hungry, I took a nice walk to the local sub place, since my landlord gave me coupons. One of the coupons was for cookies, and I haven't had some good cookies in a while, so I set out. There was only a slightly chilly wind, but it was sunny and bright, and the sky had a brilliant blue I hadn't seen in a while. A few people were walking or doing things outside their houses, and I was whistling along to 'Love Live!' (I have gotten over the events of Wednesday) walking to the store. I got there and was in line behind this lady ordering a rice bowl, not really giving anyone a tough time but ordering in a very confusing way for the employees. An employee walked out from the back to take my order, and my inexperience at ordering at sub restaurants really showed, so after I had to make two decisions, I told the worker to just give me the recommended stuff from here on out. Once the sub was done, cookies boxed, and order paid for (it automatically applied a tip too?), I looked around this location a little more. This specific restaurant was one inside a mall, but it was a pretty sad one. I guess maybe that makes it more of a business center than a mall? There was just the grocery store, a couple restaurants for subs and bubble tea and such, and a bank too, but a whole lot more closed stores. It reminded me of a mall back home, one where so many of those stores had closed or changed hands to some not so great ones, and everything special about that mall had really just disappeared. It was depressing to see, but once I walked out of the building, back into the sunlight, I felt a lot better. I should go out more often! At least, when I'm not busy... At home I ate, adding on a mandarin and some dried red lentils to flesh out the meal. I saved the other half of the sub for tomorrow's lunch, then resumed work. It took me a bit, but I caught up all the way on bloghan (there was still quite a bit of time waste in there though... but this will make things better for tomorrow and Sunday at least), then got frustrated playing a game (mobile online multiplayer). Then I became joyful playing a game (PC offline singleplayer), then had a terrible time cutting a brocolli crown, but greatly enjoyed the pasta I put it in right after. What an up-and-down sort of day... I was about to go to bed when I ended up in a call with a friend, talking about our upcoming schedules and mistakes made by those in administrative positions, and also just catching up on things we've been doing. She kept me up for 3 hours after midnight, but you know what? I enjoyed it! It was good to catch up with her. I should also catch up with friends more often too...

I woke up pretty late on Saturday, and after middle-manning messages between some friends of mine (it has to do with the scheduling things talked about late at night yesterday), I set out for my errand of the day: visiting a general goods store to get some sheet protectors and some suction cups with hooks. You see, I wanted to make my shower time more efficient, so I've decided to start working in the shower by having some paper in there. The sheet protector will keep it waterproof, and the hook will keep it at eye level and make it so that I don't have to hold it! It's foolproof. I quickly catch the bus and head there, and find the sheet protectors pretty quickly. I decide to call up one of my friends after this though, just in case there's something I should buy at this store. Over the next hour I simply wander around the store on the phone with him, just catching up with him and also receiving some guidance on where to go. We talk a lot about the stuff I see in the store, and after an hour I finally manage to find the suction cups with hooks in the home improvement aisle, after passing through nearly every other one. After a bit I also wander through the health and wellness aisle and pick up some sunscreen too, just for personal use. On the long walk home, I stay on the phone, our conversation about our mutual friends, our work, and just random stuff keeping me company the whole way. Even when I got home, the conversation continued, and eventually it transistioned to our VC, where my friend played 'Persona 3 Reload,' I tried to do chores and eat and bloghan, and our other friend joined to do whatever. This went from afternoon all the way to the night, and there were some fun activies we did. I engaged in some level of snacking, there was a lot of commentary on the game we were walking and just random conversation, and near the end of it I even did some tarot readings (utter trash, none of this is real and it literally means absolutely nothing) for fun. Most of it was actually spent on my coursework though, since this presentation isn't going to write itself. I went to bed pretty late (it seemed so at least, but daylight savings time made it seem worse than it actually was), but I was honestly very glad that I spent as much time as I did chatting to those friends. Honestly, it felt like night and day interacting with my coworkers. I feel so much more relaxed and free just being around them, and I find it so easy to casually spend that much time with them, but evne if things come up for my course and I need to work during it, I'm glad that I feel like I can still work on things and be around them without too much distraction. I woke up the next day with some scheduled interactions planned out for the day, but since those kept getting delayed, I got some time to cook, clean, do laundry, and all sorts of other chores before they even began (yes this includes bloghan). It was nice to have a nice sunny sky outside as I worked, but I really hope the neighbours did not see inside my apartment as I hung up my laundry. Sometimes some songs just make me want to twirl or quickstep around, you know? I didn't get to finish all of my sweeping before my meeting with my group members started, but the meeting was kind of telling. They were confident in getting a good grade on this, but I could tell that not one of them had actually bothered to look at the deails of this whole assignment before this call. I explained things as best as I could, but realized about halfway in that my groceries got delivered 10 minutes ago. I rush outside (stubbing my toe against something) - but no car is present outside. I call the last number that called me, and she says that she followed all the instructions and I did not show. I asked what I do now, and only then did she share that she left it by my landlord's front door. Oh, ok. I bring the groceries inside and put them away, and increase my tip to the driver as an apology. The meeting finishes up soon after, with the member who proposed we move this meeting to Sunday never showing up. Thus, I take on a little extra work to make sure he can't do any, just to ice him out. Once the meeting ends, I relax a bit, and draw my legs up onto my chair, my finger feeling something a bit wet as I do. Well, groceries are done, and so is that meeting, so now I can make lunch and catch up on - wait, wet? I look down... blood. Lots of it too, all over my right big toe, which I just stubbed on the way to grab my groceries. I go into a panic, and realize I have no bandages available to me. First though is to rinse it out in the shower with cold water, then stop the bleeding by pressing down with some toilet paper (I don't have tissues ok??). I'm trying to figure out what I should do next, and I see that there is some rubbing alcohol in the laundry room, and some packing tape. Hmmm... well, I know I shouldn't use rubbing alcohol to clean out wounds, but I've let this one stand for a good while without noticing, so perhaps it's best to do some harsh cleaning for now, to deal with stuff that took root at that point. Then I grab anotehr square of toilet paper and some packing tape and fashion myself a makeshift bandage. It's not great and probably not all that clean, but for now it will do. I still have my sheets in the wash and I left the sweeping half done, so I'll finish the sweeping before I go out to get bandages, which doesn't take all that long. The dryer finishes before I leave, but not the washer. I consider staying until it's done, but it'll probably be fine. I've only had one thing go slightly wrong so far today, so I've used up my quota. The dollar store is my destination, and once I get there I take way too much time trying to figure out where the things I'm looking for are. I also reasoned that since lunch would be coming up soon, it would be good to grab some sort of easy meal to cook while here. At the checkout, bandages and macaroni and cheese box in hand, I see the guy in front of me also trying to buy two items, some markers and plastic wrap. He forgot to account for tax though, and he's short by just a couple cents. He's about to just say no to the plastic wrap, but I mean, c'mon. 30 cents and he has to give up half of his things? I fish for a dollar in my wallet and give it to him, and he thanks me with the change. I suppose I can be a good person every once in a while. I check out right after him and make the short walk back to my place, waved at by the guy I helped, and whistling as loud as I can along the way. As soon as I get back I'm feeling pretty sing-songy, and it turns out the washer finished while I was gone. I was trying for that not to happen, but what can you do when you get lost at the dollar store? Moving my large sheets into the dryer, I proceeded to cook the sharp mac and cheese box that I bought, adding in brocolli, garlic sausage, and extra cheese to the pot too. It was a good lunch, but I will personally blame it for leading me to spend the next few hours unproductively, which changed after a quick shower and my sheets being done. I caught bloghan up from my couch, swaddled in the burning hot blanket, and did some more kitchen and bed clean up, in addition to receving some more BBQ pork buns from my landlord. She's the best. I was about to finish all my chores for the day and head to bed after publishing bloghan if it were not for a call with another old friend, helping me with my own issues. It had to do with what I want to do in the future, after the position I came all the way over here for has ended. He helped me narrow down what I was looking at (embedded hardware design!) and helped me figure out which actions and classes to take next, and when. After that, we had another 2 hours just talking and yapping about whatever came to mind. Our shared club was what we talked about the most, but his questions about what it's like to live alone and my questions about that big yearlong project that he was currently doing and I would be doing soon - ah, it's always such a delight to talk to him! I never realized just how likeminded we are... he'll be visiting in August, and I'm so excited to see him. But that's for another time, and after we said our goodbyes, I made my bed, finished off all my chores, published this bloghan, and went to bed. What a weekend! It looks like maybe that "every day is a summer vacation" mentality may start to return very soon.

Future plans

As predicted, this week was sort of aimless. Sort of. I did actually do a bunch of the things I set out to do:

Assignment prep: prepped the slides, didn't finish every part that I'm doing though
Door: no progress
Suction cup and sheet protector scheme: I bought them, but I haven't yet set it up. I need to figure out more details about the implementation.
'Homestuck': Sorry John, not this week
Online PCB trainings: I still didn't do any!!!!

This week, the priority is the next group assignment and the next quiz for the same course. I'll also set up the suction cup plus document sleeve thing in my shower this week, and I'll either read 'Homestuck' or the 'Zou' arc of 'One Piece.' I don't have any plans with my coworkers this week outside of D&D too, so I think it would be pretty reasonable for me to do some sort of fun thing on the weekend. What that is, I don't know, but we'll see when I make it to the weekend.

Song of the week

'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' (https://youtu.be/bI8P6ZSHSvE) by the Beatles is the song of the week. This week was defined by the concept of friend groups for me, and that's how I really perceive this song, as something describing the state of the love between the Beatles at the time of recording. I feel as though some of the friend groups I've found myself in are either getting strengthened right now (the ones from home), or are starting to splinter apart (work). Meanwhile, I've also become part of some new ones (kinda), and those are ones where I think bonds are still forming. Right now, the friend group I'm most exposed to is that work one, and the events of this week illustrate (at least to me) why my metaphorical guitar is currently weeping. Also, back at my place, the floor indeed "needs sweeping." Thanks George Harrison.

Until next time

This week felt kind of like a net sum of zero when it came to the good and the bad. I could point to a whole ton of things that were neutral, a couple of things that were really bad, and a couple of things that were really good, but overall? Neutral. I'm hoping for a net positive week next week, but I have a feeling it'll be the opposite... see you then, I suppose.

- bubbler

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