March 23, 2025 - bloghan 39
What even happened this week? I feel like this week happened to me more than I happened to do things in it. Here's what past me says happened, I guess:
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: writing advice. The stuff in this list seems to be more geared towards fanfic and other fiction, but I think a lot of it can apply to jsut general writing skill too. Here's the tier list:
Ordered tiers, unordered within tiers. Proper grammar is the most important thing for me by far, and even going beyond it - if a sentence has proper grammar but still sounds or comes of the mental tongue weird, it needs to be rewritten. Spelling mistakes are fine since they can be caught later and they don't often get in the way, but grammar can easily throw readers off. Speaking of readers, no I don't trust them to get it because I have spent time looking through subreddits of shonen manga fans and seeing that no, they can't read unless something is laid out explictly for them. Other thoughts: "cut the pointless fluff" is pointless itself, because if there's stuff that's pointless in there, make it not pointless. Every sentence should do something (otherwise, why have it?), so there wouldn't be any fluff that's pointless. It's the perfect place to flesh out a character (or your own character) without it being through some sort of development (that's what I think, I bet Steven King would have strong words about that, but suck it King! I've never read ANY of your books!). Also, I don't want to write daily, even though I recognize that it's probably the best way to start building tha habit, which builds practice, which makes you better. Also, I don't feel like I really need a thesaurus since I, like my work rival would say of girls, "have lots of words," but I can't lie and say that I don't use a thesaurus when I feel like I'm overusing a word or when I know there's a word for something and I can't remember it. Difficult words aren't difficult usually, just make sure they're not obsolete, and you will not catch me handwriting any story as much as possible because I won't even be able to know what I wrote the next day. I have more thoughts on this, but my fingers have thoughts of their own (they're all yelling "youch!" or "make it stop" or "go to bed" or "never listen to 'Free Bird' in the shower again" and more general groaning and agnoizing wails... this really hurts...).
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
I stayed up real late to write bloghan last night, and I was feeling it quite strongly this morning. I reasoned with myself about the sorts of things I could do this morning, and settled on buying lunch at work, focusing on everything else. Work that morning had a rocky start, since I got to my floor door and realized I had left my badge at home. The process to get a temp badge was a bit embarrassing, as I had ring the door bell for the floor admin to even notice me. She explained how it all worked, and that I better not forget on a day that isn't Monday or else she'd beat me up: Monday was ok because I just came out of the weekend. What does she think I do on the weekends? Go clubbing? Nah, I'd write. And I guess talk to my friends... but more writing than that, probably. Once I head upstairs, my email shows me that my manager has sent up a monthly meeting with me. Ok... sure. Once that's registered with me, I focus on finishing my documentation for one Absconder work (I hate OneNote even more now, somehow), and also figuring out which subclasses each player wants for D&D. I always knew there were a lot of options, but seeing an actual numbering really put it into perspective. 9-10 for each class feels like a lot! I helped people choose before, through, and after lunch (which I did go down to join, but end up skipping out on buying it... not really feeling it, you know? at lunch I also taught my work rival how to play 'Aces Up!' which he won on his second attempt, and I informed my co-DM about what happened last week). I wasn't feeling as productive in the afternoon, but I did start another bit of documentation for a different thing I made, focusing more on writing stuff for D&D, getting distracted on my phone, the works. My Japanese coworker needed a lot of information about the mechanics to come to a decision, my equivalent already knew what he wanted, the compatriot did research when I told him about subclasses and told me at lunch, and the cable guy chose the first one that fit with his character's backstory. I tied in the level ups to their experiences in the last session, and I was planning on working on bloghan when my work rival asked me to distract him with a game on 'Pokémon Showdown.' He was hungry due to his fast, and I was kinda hungry too thanks to skipping lunch. He was bored though, and I had lots of things to do, so I yapped at him about D&D until Steve came to me: apaprently, his manger had given him a task and referred him to me? I don't really do all that much for Steve's manager, more for his not-manager, but as Steve described the task, I realized why I was to be involved: it's a perfect application for Absconder. The rest of the work day, up until the last hour and ten minutes, are me walking Steve through making his first work with Absconder, sometimes bouncing back to D&D planning or more documentation work when he was making parts that didn't require Absconder. Honestly, his needed application of Absconder is a lot trickier than his manager is making it seem, but I walk him through as best I can. The reason we didn't do that up until it was time to go is because he had a meeting one hour before then. The last hour was 45 minutes of work, and 15 minutes of me talking with the compatriot at length about his character's options, and explaining mechanics and synergies with everyone's choices. It's a very complicated game, with so many rules that seem so so vague, but I think my interpretations are alright enough, and he's ssatisfied as well. As soon as the minute digits go from 59 to 00 though, I'm outta there, dropping off my temp badge and heading to the bus stop. It's sunny and not windy for once, and once I get off my first bus, I find out I'm going to have to wait 15 minutes. Wow I do not want to do that. At all. I'll walk partway though, I'm good with that. Soon after starting I see there's a shawarma restaurant nearby, and I pop in to reward myself: I got 100% on that data visualization assignment!! It's a small restaurant, seemingly manned by just one person, but the wait isn't too bad. I leave and get back to the main road, expecting to have to walk all the way back, but I see my bus just behind me. My dash towards the closest bus stop is successful, and I get home pretty quick after that. "Never punished," as they say in the business. Once at home, I eat and I slack off (as always, as always, hm?), finding it hard to find the motivation to write bloghan. I don't find it hard to cook rotini and meatballs though, and I decided to cut my losses and catch up on today's bloghan content tomorrow. After a long conversation about recruiting a sixth member for a year-long project once I get back to my home city (the sixth person that I wanted is already in another group), I create the updated character sheets, take the compost out, reflected on how nice the stars looked tonight, and start making motions to head to bed. Before I do though, I decide I nned to make a to-do list, one of all the things that I need to write this week. While I do like writing, I really do (please believe me), it is still a time-consuming process for me. Poring over what I've done in the past, critiquiing to no end, no matter if the past is 5 seconds or 5 years ago. I'm sure there's words to say about considerations for the future when you write, but I don't think I've thought those specific words yet. With the list guiding me for tomorrow, I head to bed.
Looks like that pattern of "stay up late, wake up late" seems to be continuing, but since the local transit board is so insistent on making the first bus I take in the morning only be driven by new drivers, it gives me all that time back. I don't know how long it's been since I saw a blue sky here with not even one cloud. It's probably closer in time than I think, but I'm not entirely sure. This extra time even means I don't forget to take out the trash and recycling too! I've done the basic minimums of living! My work in the morning was just finishing off the documentation for the extra little wrapper that the not-manager asked me to make, but my attention was mostly captured by reading an SCP story. This is one of the -001 proposals that's been getting talked about recently, 'Black Adytum,' an article which I adored so much. It's genre was of the occult historical/archeological canons, which are easily my favourite on the site (probably because of how narrative-focused I am). The themes were fascinating too: having an immortal and an AI discuss what it means to be human, about power and corruption, and about slaves and masters, humanity and its gods. And of course, the character writing was so on point too! Something I wasn't expecting is how much I would enjoy a different sort of character writing: specifically, about the character of a culture, which I think the author really nailed. Making them so foreign and only portraying them at first from the eyes of outsiders, but slowly showing that there's not so much different between "normal" cultures and theirs - ah, if only I could write like this! This story was so riveting that it slowly became the only thing I did before going to lunch, and even through lunch I turned down the daily card game of 'President' to read it to its end. It had hooked me, I needed to know how it ended, where each character ended up, and with teh way the ending was written, I knew that there were other entires that I would need to read for some conclusion that was upcoming. I'm glad that in this whole saga, I had read the second-last. If I had read the last, the other entires would not be as satisfying for me, since I would know what the ending was. When we went back up, my work rival asked to see the results of the runs I've been doing for his manager, the ones that had failed. Once it opened we looked through the errors and saw thousands of errors. But I recognized their single source... you see, one of the seniors on my team brought in some new component or whatever to our project, in the midst of a period when we weren't supposed to make any functional changes to it. We weren't supposed to because we had given all our project files to another team to insert stuff - the new stuff wouldn't impact any sort of function, but since that senior added stuff before that other team got back to us, it seems like there was a substantial difference. I didn't bring this up because I thought everyone on my work rival's team already knew about it. Why else would they ask me to do this check, these runs which check if things are the same, if they knew this change would throw things off? To me, it was clear that they thought it wasn't relevant - ah, but I guess it was now, wasn't it? Well, if my work rival's manager asks me if I've tracked down the error, I'll let her know then. Once I finished the 'Black Adytum' article, I finished off the wrapper's documentation, and decided that I would do bloghan next. People started to visit our little corner though, and a conversation started,as it ALWAYS does. It started with my work rival complaining about some money he lost due to reporting his living place as here. This sparked a conversation about where people working in this city coming from other cities are supposed to report their living place, but somehow it quickly morphed into a coversation about housing prices and all that AGAIN. They were discussing how the issue could be solved, but I knew I wanted out of the conversation as soon as my work rival started a sentence with the words: "No more immigrants..." Nope nope nope nope not entertaining that, and I don't particularly want to think about my future (bleak as it is) right now. Right now is primetime to write bloghan, catching up to all of today's events, then all of yesterday's. My headphones are on and noise-cancelling as I write, with 'HAPPY PARTY TRAIN' being looped so I don't have to hear what the others are saying. At the quieter intro and outro sections I hear what they say: at some point they've moved from housing to international students and immigration, then later to the amount of kids they want. Eugh. Topics I don't care for. I live for myself now. Don't need anyone else in my life, not really. It's nice to have, sure, but at the end of the day I alwasy end up alone anyways, so what's the difference? Once I had fully caught up, I looked around and saw nearly everyone had left. Ah, good. It was just the gregarious and my work rival, still talking about the future but now on the topic of securing full-time jobs. I'm also choosing to not think about this right now!! Yippee!! The rest of this workday was rather boring, with me staring at the screen, writing a bit of documentation, and experimenting a bit with Steve's new Absconder task. I'm kinda just waiting for things to happen right now. I end up making the mistake of starting to read the 'Whole Cake Island' arc of 'One Piece,' which completely enraptures me until it's time to go. When I get back, I get a little time to make a snack and such, then get into two calls back-to-back. The first is a long one with my co-DM, planning for tomorrow, and the next is one of my friends from my home city, in which we just talk about what's been going on in our lives recently. After these, I feel the itch to write something (that's not bloghan or an assignment) but I restrain myself: I need to cook, and I better start using those bone-in chicken thighs I bought and froze ages ago. I throw them in a plastic bag, then put in a whole lot of pepper, a bit of salt, and a good spoon of curry powder, and I shake it for all it's worth (about $5). Once it's all thouroughly mixed, into the air fryer it goes! I wash dishes and cook some stir fry noodle as I do, and man... it actually smells so good. I haven't had that experience with cooked food in a while. When it's time to flip, I'm expecting it to stick to the tin plate that I used, but it's not stuck at all! Also, there's a ton of oil that appeared at the bottom of the pan. Weird... 15 minutes after flipping and cooking, it comes out, and the currently face up side is nice and crispy. I normally don't eat large chicken portions, usually just chopping it up and having it with other things, but considering the price and the ease of preparing these thighs, I might do this a lot more often. A shower, then a shave (I have a meeting with my manager tomorrow, after all!), then catching up bloghan and a little bit of 'NUMAZU in the MIRAGE' defined the rest of the night for me. Right before going to bed, I started re-updating the random thoughts page. I got busy, yes, but this week I have a little bit of relaxed time to do such a thing. With that, I went to bed.
On Wednesday morning, the first thing I saw in the morning was a request from my go-to about those nightly runs (a transfer from her to me) and yet another request from the not-manager about that one Absconder thing I did for him. I JUST finished the documentation for it too. Now I'm going to have change it after testing things. I wanted to get to the documentation of the other Absconder stuff, the one that the director had me make all the way back in November, but instead I put all my morning efforts into this tiny-seeming change which threw off quite a lot. In between edits of that, I went to the Absconder for the director, making small changes to make it run faster. There were things in it that went twice that really didn't need to run twice, and also a bunch of stuff related to time that also didn't need to be there, but I had to be very careful aobut what I remove: a lot of what I had written was a long time ago, and those were the parts that had these extraneous things I was looking to remove. Work on these two things kept me busy up until lunch, which today was the pizza lunch that I've now figured out is monthly. I grab some of the snacks I missed out on earlier and only a couple slices of pizza (not that hungry tbh). My work rival can't eat right now, and he watches on jealously (I think after 10 minutes he gave up on socilalizing in front of the food and heads upstairs). I have a few conversations with my equivalent about Albert Camus' 'The Stranger' and other absurdist works, and also listen in on some chess discourse and help the compatriot and the fanatic with a New Yorker cryptic. Once the conversation cools considerably, and some people start playing 'Secret Hitler' (in the office?) and ping pong, I end up reading 'One Piece' as the compatriot plays 'Osu!' I don't know what that says about us, given that we are from the same region... This lunch is scheduled for 120 minutes, but I leave after 90 minutes, since that meeting with my manager is coming up. After a quick washing of my hands, I head to the meeting room, and he shows up right on time. He opens with the classic "how are you doing," and I give him my regular "I miss the snow." Fear not, those who worry about how my manager sees me: I get the feeling he knows I'm insane (in the bad way), so I quickly add on "all this sunlight isn't too bad though." That'll make me seme normal. For the content of the meeting he mostly just asks about what I'm currently doing, very focused on thos runs I'm supposed to be doing for my work rival's team. I have to explain to him how it works (even though I think I'm not quite doing it correctly - but I can't share that, now can I?), and he seems somewaht satisfied with my answers, and tells me that he'll talk to my work rival's manager about it. Ah, great. Wodnerful. Just what I don't need right now. He also asks me about my various Absconder bits, and chuckles when I say that it feels like the not-manager will ever be satisfied with what I do for him, and is impressed that I'm making improvements to the director's Absconder without being asked to. At the end of the meeting, he asks me if it would be possible to use Absconder to create a map of the whole design, which could be used to link some parts of the project to some of the other names they go by. That's... quite trivial to do in Absconder, and I tell him so, and I receive my next task: to do just that. We've run out of time, and quickly have to leave our meeting room, but we talk on the way out about what exactly it'll look like, and he gives me the go ahead to prioritize it. That sort of permission will be nice to have in my back pocket. At my desk, I have a short call with my predecessor (he's sick right now, got it from my work rival) about how to set things up to run nightly, but that all comes to a halt when my work rival's manager brings me into a group chat. It's about the runs I'm supposed to do for her, where she's getting us to all come together and share all our information together to figure out why things aren't working. My work rival warns me that she'll call me pretty soon to see the results more closely, and soon enough, I get a message from her... to go to her office? Our meeting there is pretty quiet. Her desk is a lot more barren than I thought it would be, and she's only using one monitor. She's not even using it to extend her screen, just to mirror it, and even then, she's set up her laptop right in front of it. She mostly just looks through the results up on my laptop screen, then tries to find where a previous employee (one of those who left in August) left some of his results because I've got something in my setup a little wrong? I mean, perhaps, but she's pointing to one of the things I didn't touch. Once she's somewhat satisfied with all this, and gets me to send her a quick screenshot so she can send it to someone else, and with that, I'm back at my desk for my regularly scheduled programming. I get a good start on this new Absconder thing, and I work on it and make the changes to the not-manager and director's Absconder tasks. While the latter is not too bad and I manage to get them working, the former takes a much longer time to run. I'll need to figure out a better way to do what it needs to do, but that's a task for tomorrow. Right now, it's time for D&D! This is the first true dungeon that the plaeyrs will experience, and they spent quite a lot of time in that dungeon playing very carefully. They barely took any risks and they just tried to get in and get out with little risk. Now, we had planned some puzzles to block their way, but a lot of them fell flat and were a little too difficult. Yeah, hindsight is a a very clear thing. The players were a bit frustrated with their level of scaredness and the puzzles being a little too out there and difficult, but they really did appreciate the world and events we were cooking up. It was a fun session, and the whiteboard has turned out to be an excellent addition to our presentation for the game. I got driven back, and I spent my time back at home squandering time (I'm now at 5/8 on the last request in 'NUMAZU in the MIRAGE') but also doing a bit of writing: some bloghan here, a little random thoughts updating there, then a break for dinner (those chicken thighs again, yum! even though I burned them...). After one more partial run in 'NUMAZU in the MIRAGE,' (I'm at 6/8 now!!) I went to bed.
Work the next day was a little quieter, probably because it was raining this morning, not sunny at all. The rain was quite annoying, as my walk between the final bus stop and the office doors involved having raindrops fall directly into my eye, TWICE! The distraction proved to be enough to almost get hit by a car as it pulled into a parking lot. Let's just start this day first, mm? There was this meeting I was invited to with a whole bunch of big players, starting in 5 minutes after I got to the office, but when I asked my manager if I should attend he left me on seen. So... I guess not then? It was back to checking all my Absconder stuff was working, and it seemed like it really wasn't. That's quite unfortunate. One thing was technically working but super super slowly, so I began to try and optimize it as I figured out why the other one was just straight up not working at all. My work rival showed up soon after, and he asked me about my meeting with his manager yesterday. We go over the things she told me to do, and the files she wanted me to double check, but soon after I'm just back to Absconder. I really don't want to consider all that stuff for his team right now. I have a good period where I work, but then a bunch of people from the crossword cubicle visit for some reason. Well, the headphones are coming on now, and this time I think I'll loop 'Waving My Dick in the Wind' because it's a great song!! After a bit of time they tap me on the shoulderm and my work rival offers me a chocolate cake pop? Where'd he get that from?? Apparently, he made it earlier this week with his girlfriend, and it tastes really really good (though maybe that's mostly because I'm a real sweet tooth). I don't know why he's brought these, but I decide to tell him something nice for once. I Eat it a little too slowly and a lot of it drops onto my hands, but once I clean up, I get back to work, trying to tune out all the conversation that happens to filter in with 'Waving My Dick in the Wind.' Soon though, it's time for lunch, and at lunch I watch as they play a huge game of 'President.' I've started testing out my project mapping Absconder thing, and it's taking a really long time to run, so there's not really any point in bringing my laptop down. After the first round, the gregarious switches spots with Steve so that she's sitting right across from me, offering me a "hi." She must've seen me just looking at my phone broodingly, my lunch still untouched, and I asked if this was some sort of intervention. She laughed and said "no," then got really self-concious about her laugh. Someone had told her recently that is sounded fake, and she asked if I thought that. I made the mistake of replying "I don't know if there's a good answer here, but I don't really know what a fake laugh sounds like." My co-DM turned to me and then gave me an example, which showed me that all her laughs at my expense were genuine (is that a good thing? I sure hope so...). I have only a little conversation with the people around me, as I feel like I really should be doing something. Some sort of writing, anything! But I only have my phone, so I decde to finally start prepping April's 'Jeopardy!' board, which I do all the way up until lunch ends. I haven't been eating much though (not hungry), so I'm still eating when eveyrone else leaves. It's quite striking to me: if someone else in our group hadn't finished yet, I would've stayed with them until they finish, but none do that for me. I guess it makes sense, me being who I am. I can't really imagine someone willingly waiting for me like that, so who am I to wonder why no one did? This is simply the way things are meant to be. Once I finish, I head back up, and for some reason, that mapping Absconder task is still going. This is going to be a challenge, isn't it? Right now, I'm still feeling like being in the break mood though, so I finish off half of the 'Jeopardy!' board before continuing. That got interrupted slightly by my predecessor coming to visit us, asking some work-related question of my work rival before just normally talking with us about whatever. Before he leaves, he asks if we are going down for employee appreciation day. What? That's today? Sure enough, there it is, listed in my calendar. Now if only all the team meetings that I'm supposed to have would be listed on that calendar too... We head downstairs, lured by promises of cake and being part of a video. It ended up being cupcakes, and the "video" was just a picture of everyone holding them, so after Steve and I learned what an eye stye was, we all headed back up. My cupcake isn't really appealing to me, and I already had that cake pop earlier which is a lot sugar-wise, so I decide to give my cupcake to my Japanese coworker, who missed the event because of a meeting. I attempted to get back to work on my Absconder, as I realized that I really needed to do something about this runtime. There has to be some efficiency I can make here. Now, I said "attempted" because very quickly, an entire congregation of people from the crossword cubicle (and also some other people too) came to discuss the dinner plans happening tonight. What???? What dinner plans???? I was not made aware of this until this very moment! They discuss (mostly argue) and end up cancelling the plan for today since my co-DM very suddenly dropped it (I technically did too, since I had plans that night) and because of all the contention and tension around the plan. They discuss even further about how they'll make up for it next week, and after what felt like a good 20 minutes (where they were being very loud too), they finally left. Huh... sure. Throughout the rest of the work day, I focus on making my Absconder more efficient, which I do pretty handily once I figure out where exactly the slow down is coming from. My work rival is bemoaning the cancelled plan, and is also now convinced that my co-DM is upset with the group, while everyone tells him that she does this pretty often anyways. In all honesty, I don't really care, and I head out pretty soon after finally giuring out the most optimal way to use Absconder to map out the project. It looks like it won't take 10 hours this time! The ride home starts off unpleasant, being very slightly rainy and very not-slightly windy, but once I get on the bus and the precipitation turns to snow, I'm satisfied and back in a sing-songy mood once I get back to my place. And "sing-songy" I do as I change out of my work clothes, until my landlord knocks at my door, which is slightly ajar. This isn't my front door with the windows, but the one that connects to the laundry room. No window, so she didn't see me changing, but... I just hope we both ignore how I was singing about falling in love at the aquarium. She shows me that at some other Asian supermarket she found a pack of 6 BBQ pork buns for a cheaper price than the ones I usually get. I'm a bit worried about these, since I have a feeling I'm going to strongly prefer the ones I'm used to, but I can't argue with monetary savings. Once this interaction is over, I sit myself down and get ready for my plans of tonight: a call with my friends from my home city. Half an hour after we were supposed to start, I start to wonder where they are. I've already completed my dailies in a mobile game I play while waiting (though I had a massive tilt that mad eme feel pretty badly about myself, as in "who wants a loser around" and such), and I'm wondering if they forgot about this plan? Should have gone to the impromptu dinner that my work rival planned for today? My thoughts begin to wander as I stare at the screen even more. Is this what being stood up is like? If I ever were to have a date scheduled with a girl, I'm pretty sure she would probably stand me up. It just feels logical. Natural, even. I'm shocked out of those thoughts by one of those friends ifnally texting, saying they're on the bus. Well, those thoughts can go away for now, I suppose. To pass the time until then, I start up 'NUMAZU in the MIRAGE' and start grinding again, and by the time my friend has joined me, I'm only one enemy away from beating the 100% of the game. I'm about to enter the last enemy encounter of the map, and I'm starting to think that I'm not going to find this enemy on this run, forcing a reset... but the game heard me, and gave it to me!! And as I land the finishing blow with the card I've probably played the most in the 60 hours I've spent in this game, I get the last two achievements. Job well done! After this, we have some terse discussion about me missing the dinner and where the other person who is supposed to be in this call is, and I get a bit disappointed with the fact that this call won't really be much fun, since the friend who did show up just wants to study. That's fine, I'm not too busy, so I'll just boot up 'Balatro.' Since I only recently bought it, I only have the baginner deck and stake available to me, which should be easy for me to win right? I lose, constantly, and I'm jsut getting more and more frustrated with myself and quit. Really, who could want some incompetent bungler like me aroudn in their life? After a little bit of talking, and both of us realizing we're kinda hungry, I suggest that we just end it (the call). What's the point anyways? I just want to go to bed. I'll make dinner though, more stir fry noodles and air fried chicken thigh. This time, I only cook one thigh, but I use a different mix of pepper, salt, curry powder, and now sdome additional spices. Tonight though, it didn't end up mattering because guess what? I also bungled the fry time and completely burned the exterior of the chicken! What happened to me once I got back? I can't even find the answer to it myself. It's probably for the best if I just went to bed. I have things to write tomorrow anyways.
Yet again, Friday and Saturday proved to be similar days, yet different enough that I can't just say they were the same. Friday was a work from home day, but it actually began slightly distractedly. After I made my breakfast, I took time to wash dishes right away, and to sweep as well. Why? Because my landlord wanted to show someone my apartment again, but the only time that worked was the daytime. I don't really feel like I can tell her no since I would be home at the time, so I did some work as they looked around. I did forget to make my bed before the guest came though, so I was feeling a bit embarrassed as my landlord showed this prospective renter my sleeping area. As they did their thing, I was mostly spending time trying to figure out how one part of one specific Absconder tool worked, since I realized I could use it to speed up this new mapping task from my manager. I was delving deep into the gears of how it worked, but also running it in the background with various adjustments, just to see if my intial guesses were correct. The guest left, and pretty quickly afterwards, I saw my guess was correct! Near the middle of the day, I get that specific tool working in an adjustable way, and after a little more testing and working through report formatting, I finish the task! My mentor sends me a message about another ABsconder work I did, asking if I submitted it. I haven't because of the warnings you keep bringing up man!! He schedules a call later... fine, we'll see about it. After a quick lunch and some fiddling around in 'Balatro' (listen, I still managed to do my work, alright?), it's time for the call, which ends up being a 2-hour long ordeal where we discuss the challenges I have to submitting it for the team's use. One of them is because it depends on files I only have on my device, but he says that I should just leave a note telling people to grab that file for themselves later. Ok, sure, whatever you say. The second challenge is the warnings which my mentor seems to always be concerned about, which is what the bulk of this call ends up being. I watch as the sunlight outside slowly disappears as I explain in great detail about how specific Absconder tools work, about the way those tools report things about our project, and about how the greater work I have made with Absconder functions, both this updated version and the version from way in the past that the director made. It's only after about 75 minutes of explanation that we find there's been a complete difference in perspective regarding these errors and the way my work reports things. I knew from the beginning that the base "unit" of information reported by my work was a "connection" - the invisible string tying two parts of the project together. My mentor, this entire time, thought it worked on the base "unit" of a "node," which are the things from which the invisible string of a "connection" connect between. The warnings were warning of specific strings, but the strings we cared about were perfectly fine. My mentor was under the impression that the warnings were discussing things found midway along the strings we cared about. Once we figured that out, he was actually super ok with all the warnings, dismisisng them entirely. Oh, so now it's ok, huh? He asked me to make some documentation for it (I was going to anyways, but alright), citing that if they wanted to use my work before when I come back, they would need some instructions to begin using it. Well, yes, that's why I'm writin- wait, what? "When" I come back? Not "if?" My mentor did just say that. What. They want me back? And my mentor is fully expecting the director to hire me back? No, no, there's no way. The director has seen me slacking off too much, and I constantly am given work not from my own team. But... if they're expecting me to come back... hmmm... As my mentor talks more, he finally notices the dates on some of the files on my device, seeing that they're dated for December. He's actually a bit shaken by this, since there's been so so many changes to the project since then, and if I've only been providing files from December, it could cause some significant headaches if I didn't catch any unexpected issues for months. He asks me to re-run it all right away, just to make sure, and with that, my next hour of work is determined and the call ends. At this point, I'm feeling pretty drained from that long long call, and I just want to take a long long rest, but I have to let ABsconder run for a long long time and supervise it for the same. Once it's done running on the updated project and it shows that nothing has changed, I let my mentor know and turn off my work laptop. From here, the rest of Friday and the entirety of Saturday is the same: it's spent looking longingly at my laptop since I Want to do something fun, but I'm stuck writing 6 short and graded reflections for my course, due Saturday night. I know that in the right state I can just have the words flow out of me, but once you introduce a fundamentally boring topic, some very strict gudeilnes in a rubric, and examples of mediocrity that I have to beat, I find it quite hard to churn them out. On Friday I only manage to do two of them before just leaving the next 4 to tomorrow, making dinner, and going to bed. On Saturday, it's basically all I do, but whenever I get bored while writing these things... well, I'm sure you can figure out what word I would use to describe that time (starts with "s," ends with "quandered"). I don't really have anything exciting to describe to you about this day. Well, I guess there's lunch. I wanted to try those new BBQ pork steam buns, but I decided to actually do a bit more with their "steam" aspect. Before microwaving them, I threw some water in the bottom of the bowl and covered. The results were not great. The parts of the bun that were in contact with the bun were soggy and I couldn't stand the texture (rare for me and food), and it didn't taste nearly as good as the ones I usually get. I'll still eat it though. I guess there was another relatively exciting thing, and that's me discovering that packages for foreigner to go see Aqours' last live show were up for grabs. They do the foreigner packages like a lottery, and I decided that I might as well put my hat in the ring. They're only drawaing 300 winners, and the 'Love Live!' subreddit has about 400 thousand people in it, so I'm probably not going to win anyways. I was actually getting more and more excited about this, about the "what ifs" of winning, when one clause stopped me: to even apply, I needed to have a Japanese phone number. Well, shoot. Guess that's it. I ask my friends who visited Japan once about their phones, but apparently they just used e-SIMs, which my phone can't take, and also don't work for this application. I look it up on the 'Love Live!' subreddits and they say you have to have a friend from Japan who's willing to lend you their phone number, or to go visit Japan before applications close and get a SIM over there. Well, I probably wasn't going to win anyways. What's 0.000003% vs 0%, really? There was something exciting in the shower (I will spare you too many details), where I had 'Free Bird' playing on my phone and decided to rub the shampoo into my hair/scalp to the rhythm of the entire guitar solo, which made my fingers hurt, a lot. That's 7 minutes of bieng in that scrunched up state, constantly moving at the 118 BPM of the song. Even as I type this on Sunday, they still ache. Why oh why did I choose to do that? 'Free Bird' makes people do wild things, I swear. But yeah, those are honestly the only exciting things that happened to me on Saturday. I did finish all of the reflections, and I think they're all worthy of full marks on the rubric, but honestly, who knows? They went a little long, but I don't see how I'm supposed to articulate critical thought on big and complex topics with big and complex phrases that can't just be made into words. I am so done with this class, and I'm glad that there's only two assignments left in it, even if those assignments are worth 25% of my mark. Once I was done and dinner was made, I just wanted to go to bed. But something drove me to stay up just a little longer. Those cinnamon candies from my youth had resurfaced once again, and I thought I was going to just buy them on Amazon, but something in me said to look them up in stores nearby one more time. Before, this had given me a ton of candy stores that didn't have these things. But now, here's a store that has escaped my eye thus far - let's check it out, hmm? Just a little exploration, some sorting through hierarchies and menus - oh, those are cinnamon candies. The ones that look like red little pills, just like a common painkiller drug. Ah, yes, this will do nicely. I haven't been entirely honest with what I want these candies for. Yes, hard cinnamon candies that are red are pretty nostalgic for me, but you see. I'm in the scheming phase. Straight up "planning it." And by "it,' hee hee, well. Let's just say. A rather "foolish" idea. With my plans written up for tomorrow, I head to bed, quite excited for what feels like the first time in a while (but let's be real: it's probably only been a day or two - ah, but a day or two is a while for someone with emotions like mine, I suppose).
I wanted to wake up early to get a headstart on Sunday, but I woke up before my alarms, then went back to sleep just to stay in bed after my alarm. What a great start to my day. Eventually I got over the rotting that set in and made my breakfast. The plan was simple: leave my place,, get a haircut, go grocery shopping, walk back to my place, drop off all the stuff I bought and shower off the loose hair, eat lunch, then go to the candy store. Ok, maybe not that simple, but how could I mess it up? Ah, well... I didn't plan on this per se, but I did end up taking a shower right before my haircut just because, and I also realized I should shave my face too. If I went in unshaved, and during the haircut the hairdresser decided to shave it for me, they might upcharge me! No no no, can't have that. After this, I finally went for the haircut, which was just fine, I guess? What do I really say here? I got a haircut. That's that. I mean, I guess there was this young kid that was picking up all the stuff from one of the hairdressing station and just throwing it on the floor. That was a whole thing I guess. The haircut felt good, but it was more of the same with the grocery store. Just went in, then went out, got all the stuff I needed. Once back at home and all the groceries were put away, I ate lunch (more BBQ pork buns but this time without adding water to the bowl), then it was right back out to catch a couple buses. It took about 30 minutes to get to the candy store, and once I passed the terrifying field full of geese (don't make eye contact don't make eye contact), I was there. I walk in, and I could tell right away that this is definitely a smaller business. If you were to take a kid here under the premise that this is a candy store, they would surely be disappointed. That's not to say that it was a bad candy store by any means, I just think its mission is way different than your typical candy store. I'd say that most candy stores have the goal of having tons and tons of different yet popular candies, and having an experience which feels like your in a candy's land or something. This store was more about having rare candy, sodas, and other snacks in stock. They didn't have much stock, and the place was quite tiny and had bare (yet, painted robin egg blue) walls that didn't go all the way up to the ceiling, but the stuff I found there was wild. White chocolate bars of popular brands which I didn't think would go the white chocolate route, vanilla colas, vanilla float colas, coconut colas, chocolate dragées with caramel and PB&J flavours - it wasn't a candy store that made you go "wow!" until you looked at their selection. Then, after "wow," perhaps "what the" and then the swear word of your choice, followed by a question mark. I got my cinnamon candies, laughing a little evilly to myself as I did, then just let myself wander around the store. I ended up getting a packet of those chocolate dragées with caramel in them (they were on sale, why not?), and checked out. I thanked the cashier for having them in stock, sharing my story of trying to find these candies, loving them as a kid, and realizing that since I Have a job and live alone I can just go out and buy candy. I will probably go back to that place. Man I really do have a pretty bad sweet tooth huh? Maybe I should bring my work rival too! Once his fasting period is over, that is. On the way out of the store, and even in the bus station, waiting for the next 10 minutes, I'm giggling to myself. I haven't been to a candy store in so long, and what I bought is going to prove very amusing for me in just a couple days, and also rather good tasting too. Another 45 minutes passes by, and I've returned to my apartment. Now would be a great time to finalize this week's bloghan, but you know me! I love to write, I really do, but man I have such a hard time starting. Naturally, once I reach the conclusion that I should be doing bloghan right now, I go ahead and do literally every other chore available to me first. Sweeping, toenail cutting, a shower to wash my hair after the haircut (I only remember after I start my third shower of the day that I already did my post-haircut shower... oh well! I could use the warmth), cooking, remembering that I should keep track of my budget: only after all this, do I start to work on this, and completely regret not doing it earlier. Ah, what can ya do? As much as I try to fight it, I'm only and always me. And as much as I can muster up reasons to resent that fact, I think that at the end of the day I can't really say that I 100% hate myself. And even if I could truthfully say I hated myself completely, I can't say that I hate my lifestyle, and how I choose to live, because I love to live the life I live, actually. It took a while to get to a state like that, but it feels real good to say it. Years back, I might have thougt a little too seriously about Hamelt's line 'To die, - to sleep.' But now? How could I die, if 'To sleep! Perchance to dream?' It's currently not the time for such thoughts, natural as they may be, but for, maybe something like 'To sleep, - to awaken on the morrow, - to awaken! Perchance to deal with a bunch of stuff then' shall suffice.
Future plans
Here's the results of last week's plans (with an additional few things being thrown in there because I forgot about them!):
- Reflections: done, painfully and dreadfully so, but done
- 'Jeopardy!' board: half done, and planning for the broad archetypes of each category too (no final round preparations though)
- Door: no progress
- Suction cup and sheet protector scheme: Still sitting on my side table, didn't put them up. Even though I showered thrice on Sunday. Oops.
- 'Homestuck': Sorry John, not this week either either
- D&D: planned it, leveled up the characters, had some ideas for next session that I did not write down!
- More fun than the grocery store: It was still shopping for food but the candy store was more enjoyable than I thought it would be for someone of my age
This week, I'm starting work on the last team assignment for my course way earlier, and I promise I'll read 'Homestuck.' I'll also set up the suction cup plus document sleeve thing in my shower this week (just one more week bro I swear I'll do it), and I'll finalize D&D plans for this week too. I'll try finishing that next 'Jeopardy!' board too, but I probably won't get to it. I'll look into the whole Japanese phone number thing too, see if there's no way for me to buy a SIM card over there from over here. Oh, and I guess I'll try to win on red deck white stake in 'Balatro,' maybe?
Song of the week
'Free Bird (Extended Music Version)' (https://youtu.be/bwqfwieV-mc) by Lynyrd Skynyrd is the song of the week. To fly as freely as a bird is to know when to coast on the wind, when to flap for thrust and lift, and when to dive for either getting something done or for exhiliarion. This week, I felt as if the air was crackling with freedom, and even if things are going super well, or if they're going super not well, or somewhere middling and irritating in between, I know that right now, I'm feeling as free as a bird. Oh, and also, I can't change. I knew that about myself before, but now I know even more that I don't really want to change much from what I am now. It all feels so... powerful? Enlightening? Or maybe, just maybe, it's really really late when I'm writing this and I no longer know what I'm typing. That's possible, given how much my fingers like 'Free Bird,' right? For sure.
Until next time
Honestly, I don't really know how to feel about this week? So let's do a soft reset of sorts. We'll consider this week the 0 standard, and see how the next one measures up. Or maybe it's just better to not do this whole song and dance of "oh this week was great overall" and "oh this one wasn't." Whatever, I'll see you later.
- bubbler