June 29, 2025 - bloghan 53
Another week, another week, you know how it is. To be honest, I think it hasn't been until now that all this work stuff has set in as "normal." So, I guess here's a look at a normal week:
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: ice cream flavours. Here's the tier list:
Ordered tiers, unordered wthin tiers. I feel a bit unsafe posting this one to be honest, because people could attack me for it for sure. But I do prefer simpler flavours for sure (and mango). Vanilla used to be my favourite until this week happened. All the rest are flavours I like, but honestly a lot of them just taste too artificial or just feel kind of... overdone and general? The rest I just don't like the flavour of. And no, I'm not saying which flavour fits into which category. I've still got some months left to live.
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
I'm hoping to keep this one short, simply because the notable things at work this week was stuff that was "out of the norm," or so it felt. Just know that in the in-between moments at work, I was doing what usually occurs: water cooler chats that don't occur around a water cooler, the compatriot or my work rival saying something out of pocket, Steve not being in the office once or twice, my equivalent never being in the office, and stuff like that. Oh, and of course, the actual work I do in between all that other stuff. Monday morning was a sunny one: a perfect day to write documentation! That's what I did all day at work, just writing some documentation on how to use that comparison tool. I was doing it out of frustration over our own team's lack of documentation on how we use it. Well, ok, we do have that documentation, but it's buried in the docs of projects made in years and years past. I had had enough. I wanted to write documentation on each of the use cases I was aware of. As for other happenings in the office, one of those guys who was previously a temp last August had returned in a full-time position! Another from my home city, essentially one of Steve's two predecessors. He and I exchanged messages of good will and all that, and once I finished one of my documents on the comparison tool, I sent it to him for feedback. I'm really glad to see another familiar face back in the office, and another person who I can relate to because of our mutual home cities! Another thing of note: my successor came to my desk to talk to me about what my manager said to her. There was that joint task that we had gotten, one involving the removal of stuff that our projects are doubly dependent on (we only need to depend on stuff once, after all), but apparently our manager had caught wind of us "struggling" with it (read: my successor blabbed to him about how we asked the not-manager to give us the command for it, but talked about in a way that made my manager think we needed the not-manager to teach us how to do the whole thing... because of course she did), and he wanted us to set up a meeting with him. Now apparently, my successor needed me to show her how to set up a meeting, so I did so for the next day, as my manager had reportedly said to her. After some tarot readings and a little bit of stress over writing a Jeopardy board and writing it well, I went home. First thing I took care of (after a shower, because the sunlight had me caked in sweat) was my stomach with a good old batch of ice cream. I had bought cookies and cream flavour ice cream yesterday, but it was only now that I could have some. I pulled it out of the freezer and began prying on the lid... no luck. It was sealed. But I couldn't figure out how to get at the delicious core inside, the meat of the oyster, the pearl-like pieces of cookie. I was wailing, left to wallow in full and total despair. Then I looked up a YouTube video on how to open these cartons of ice cream and got it first try. I hurriedly scooped some ice cream into my rectangular bowl, then headed outside and ate. It was like an angel's song, but not in the way of torturing a fragile, mortal mind. It was a song of comfort and of Holiness in the highest order, a taste that simply connected me to the divine, one that made me know that everything was going to be all right in the end, that it was all by design. Is this how Mother Mary felt when Gabriel told her to not be afraid, and she actually listened? Is this how it must have been when Alexander the Great looked over his entire empire and wept? Is this what it's like to chew 5 Gum? And then, just as quickly as it had started... my bowl was empty. Oh. Well, I guess it's time to head back in, work on some bloghan, get frustrated with my lack of progress, and go to bed after some microwaved biryani (it's so annoying when you try to eat a chicken drum stick that you made and the meat keeps falling off the bone! Makes me think I undercooked it, especially since it looks pinkish... but my dad said on the phone it looked fine, so I'll trust him). What a set of conditions to go to bed to, huh?
Now I went to bed pretty late last night, so when I woke up an hour after my alarm went off, I knew that things would have to change. Eventually. Not soon. I ended up sending an email to my team that I would be starting late today, and eventually ended catching a later series of buses. When I got into the office, my first task was to adjust one of the flows my team uses very often for the new project. I wanted to make it less dependent on hard coded paths to things, so that we didn't always have to change it everytime we started a new project. I asked my manager about it, but he told me that my mentor might have already made changes to related flows, so I need to consult with him first. Oh. I guess this is just a part of my mentor moving teams, huh? As I consulted with him, I made the changes, because I knew they wouldn't interrupt any normal functionality, but throughout the day my mentor would constantly ask for more and more checks and tests to ensure that functionality wouldn't change. Fair, yes, but a little more faith at this point in my time here would be appreciated. Just after lunch (which I forgot to eat) was the meeting with my successor and my manager, so I headed to the room 5 minutes early. 5 minutes after the meeting had started, no one had joined me. That was strange... the two people who wanted me to make this meeting weren't here? I messaged the two of them and neither answered. Yet... I can hear my successor down the hall..? She's at her desk, yapping up a storm with the other temps in the cell. I rush over there, a little mad that I seemed like the only one who cared about this meeting. I get in there... and she's talking to her boyfriend. Ugh. I really hope this doesn't become a pattern. It's already enough that I usually have to go to her desk to get her to do something I message her about... Once I let her know that we have a meeting right now (I was a little too harsh with my words when I said this, so if you're reading this, my successor... sorry!), we head back to the meeting room, with her apologizing profusely. I don't really care for her apology. In my mind, she's already lost so much credibility, but in the end, it doesn't really matter what I think of her. That's a job for my manager. My successor got impatient after 5 more minutes of waiting, and went to collect my manager from his cubicle. The two of them walked in, with my manager apologizing about being late (well, I guess I can respect that busyness a little more... still a little mad about this whole debacle though). The meeting was a lot simpler than I thought it would be, as to me it was a whole lot more explaining of what to do, all over again. Like, I knew how to do it, but I guess it must've been somewhat new to my successor? But I thought I explained this already to her? There were some fields in a relevant spreadsheet that I needed explained anyways, so this meeting was pretty convenient for that. We got through what we needed to discuss a little bit before the meeting ended, and I was about to follow my manager out the door when my successor stopped me. Now what? She tells me she just wanted to hang out a little bit, since no one has this room for the next little bit. Oh... ok? I stay in that room with her and she brings her chair real close (...?) and talks about how sorry she was for forgetting about the meeting. As long as it doesn't happen again, I suppose. She's lucky that our manager forgot too, and that I decided to collect her first. She talks more about the task we have on hand, and the "dumb" question she asked (if you have a question, just ask it? what's the big deal, our manager's not going to crucify you for it...), and after I answer, I go silent. There's nothing to talk about in my eyes, but there's still work to be done. She then brings up something I talked about in the cell earlier. Back in my home city, I would often be the butt of a lot of femboy jokes. It stems from how I want to learn the Rust programming language and from my more feminine character traits. I don't really mind it, because at a certain point it was actually pretty funny to me. But my successor thought it was just terrible! Unfortunately, it's kind of a norm in my home region to treat those kinds of (for lack of a better term) "wokeisms" like a joke, and when I told my successor this she was shocked. What came next was the most uncomfortable I've ever been in the office since I started here. She told me some very personal details/history about herself, and after I just nodded and "mmhmm" and "wow that's crazy"'d her statements to avoid further discussion of something I REALLY did not want to discuss in the office, she asked me point blank if I was straight.
Excuse me?
I really don't get it. I really don't. Maybe I'm in the wrong for this, and I'm open to being corrected, but it struck as very contradictory for her to be so offended on my behalf at being called a femboy or a girl, and then ask me if I'm straight. Like, if I am or if I'm not, that's not your business? Especially in the field I'm in, letting that kind of thing spread can really damage your future career aspirations, since there's still so many people in management who already have their minds made up about those who do not fit in the norm. Now that I think of it, this isn't the first time she's implied this kind of thing about me either. There was a moment yesterday where I was talking about how I have some friends who are transgender or gay (don't know anyone's who is both though, not yet), and my successor pointed at me and said "wait, are you... like that?" What??? I was talking about my friends? And even if I was, it's still not your place to ask? If I am, and I'm comfortable with letting people in my life know, and the office too, and especially if I want you to know, I'll tell you. Yesterday I answered her straightforwardly, telling her "no, I was talking about my friends." Today, since she had gone ahead and done it again (and made me feel a bit cornered with it too), I decided to troll her a little. I started at the wall for a good ten seconds, tilted my head to the side in the next five seconds, then answered "yes." My answer was always going to be "yes" (pretty much), but I won't lie that a lot of this time was actually processing my disbelief that she asked me this in the workplace, and only the second half of it was the trolling. She then said that I don't have to tell her if I don't want to (oh, so now it's in my hands, mm?) and invited me to join her at a Pride parade on Sunday. Hmmm... I'll think about it. I headed off to me desk soon after that, still internally reeling a little bit from that, even while I did a little more work. I couldn't keep at it though, because I had yet another meeting coming up, this time with my work rival's team. It was a meeting I wasn't really all that relevant to, or so I thought, but I was actually brought up when my work rival's manager discussed that comparison tool (ah, but she was referring to my predecessor's use of it, not mine! phew) and when my mentor was asked about the flows he was examining, one of which being the one I was looking at this morning. My manager joined online, and he let the team know that I was actively working on it. Well uh... I finished it, I'm just waiting for everyone else to let me know if it was done correctly or not (it should be though!!!). I headed back down to my desk after the meeting concluded, working on my Jeopardy board until my mentor could get back to me about the flow change I was making, but also having to negotiate out of a minor improvement (suggested by the not-manager, as always) the Absconder I made for the not-manager and helping out the new returning guy (I'll figure out a nickname for him later) with his own test runs. And to those of you who think I'm not doing anything at work, I was actually working on a little bit of stuff too!! In this newest project, I needed to get one suite of checks working, and I did! I submitted those to the newest project, let my successor know that she could start doing the removal stuff. There was also a small hubbub related to some shirts being handed out to everyone. I grabbed a medium, but apparently there were shortages for most of the sizes, so I guess I was pretty lucky in getting my size? Before I left the office that day, I rendezvoused (does that word have a proper past tense like that? more importantly, do I care?) with the crossword cubicle folks, since apparently there was a site-wide event tomorrow, early into the morning. We all wanted to walk together, so once I got the timing information I needed, I left. At least when I left the office today I got to ride two buses! After I feasted on my ice cream, I poured some more time into bloghan stuff, feeling oh so woefully behind. There was also a bit of a mess around me too, but I couldn't focus on sweeping just now. I needed to do laundry, because no way am I wearing this new shirt to the event tomorrow without washing it first. You never know what chemicals and bacterium are on new clothes. I wanted to do a lot more, but... agh, I need to get to bed early today though. I'm going to have to take my bus an hour earlier than normal, aren't I? Eugh... so much more I could've done, but surely I can wake up an hour earlier if I go to bed half an hour earlier in return?
I had set my alarms early so I could catch that bus an hour early, but this guy slept through that! I had to rush through breakfast and getting all ready for the event, but I managed to at least get onto one bus. The time that I ended up leaving at meant that I would have walk the rest of the way after disembarking from that first bus. And you know what? It was marvelous! I saw blue jay's and cardinals and starlings, I saw butterflies and purple flowering plants that looked like lavender but are probably not lavender, and the sun, the sun, the sun was out and shining and oh man that's actually really quite warm and bright and I probably should not have kept my sweater on the whole time but... it's ok. That was a very nice walk to the office. Much shorter than I thought it would be. But I do suppose more than half of my commute to the office today was by bus anyways so... it's not really that impactful, huh? Though if I had swapped the order, walked first, than taken a bus, the walk would've taken way longer. 80-20 rule in action, I suppose. Just as soon as I got there and unloaded all my things, we left the office: the gregarious, the fanatic, the compatriot, my co-DM, my Japanese coworker, and the cable guy. Steve and my equivalent were nowhere to be found, and my work rival told us to wait for him as he was running late. Well, it's my work rival, so of course no one listened. We all started to walk out, and once we were outside my work rival decided to show himself, walking alongside his situationship. Ahhh, that makes sense. He runned over to join us, and while I didn't really talk to people as we walked (the most substantial thing was about my encounter yesterday with my successor, the whole "are you straight?" thing. they told me to report her to HR, but... she just doesn't know any better, I'm sure. I'm sure of it. but... no, it's just her adjusting to the workplace still, there's no reason to think it's anything more that), I did do a whole lot of appreciative thinking. As much as I regret how I initially treated the fanatic and what he said about 'Love Live,' as much as the compatriot says some quite off-putting things, as much as my work rival exists... I'm really glad this group of people are the ones I had around me these past few months. In my mind, I did whole lot of appreciative thinking. As much as I regret howly preferring to stick around the people I'm already familiar with anyways. That, and the amount of people who skip out on our events. But I got a lot of them to promise they would come to the Jeopardy this Friday, right? So it can't be all that bad. At that moment I looked to the right and saw that very group on the other side of the road, and Steve was with them for some reason. Our groups sort of merged (to the chagrin of my work rival and the con Patriot) as we approached the hotel, but we slowly all began to separate as we went inside the hotel and headed to the banquet hall. Walking in, I grab myself a raffle ticket, and spot that all the temps of my generation have snd one table, with the addition of the stoned, who apparently has become the new favourite of the compatriot and my work rival? What? Well, whatever. The fanatic breaks the news that my equivalent is running late and that he thought this event was tomorrow (yeah, checks out), but since people are still filtering in, he still has time to get in I suppose. I'm kind of half focused on the conversation around me right now, as I'm on my phone writing more of my Jeopardy board as we wait, so I don't even notice it when my equivalent shows up, and also when the event itself actually does start. It opens to about 2 hours(-ish) of presentations from all the different teams in the building, and my team's presentation was second or third (can you tell that I paid a lot of attention to these preseNations?). To be honest, some of the stuff they were discussing about my team's future was pretty interesting, and it does actually make me want to come back and work on the upcoming projects. Ah, but as soon as that was over, it was back to half-paying attention and half on my phone writing Jeopardy clues. There were some funny moments I guess, but really it was just well-placed jokes in a pre-prepared script, so whatever, right? After so many hours it just becomes drivel when you're not particularly invested in how that team does things. When it was over though, there was at least something somewhat engaging at the end: a Q&A period with a bunch of important people from HQ, which we could submit questions for. Our table "agreed" on submitting a query about getting a swimming pool for the office, but the panelists ended up ignoring that request. For some strange reason, they also ignored the 100th question about setting up an office clover to the downtown area of this city. I really don't get it. Why keep asking if they've ignored it every time before? Also, they're not just going to up and move out of the building they're currently in! That makes no sense. They did answer some more technical questions about where the company was going and things like that, but I can't really share anymore. Yes, even if you don't know where I work, which I imagine most of you do? Sometimes, I wonder if I've already shared too much? All in all though, I'm sure that I've been very careful, and careful enough. Now it was time for the buffet. Finally! What we were really here for. We were at table 30, right in the middle of table 1 and 50, and no matter how you sliced it, because they started at one of the ends of the count, we would be selected to grab food way later than most. Just our luck... Well, nothing to be done. It was my work rival's fault that we were slightly later than expected, and couldn't grab a table farther up the count, but I can at least wait for my food. Everyone else seemed to be of the same sentiment for about 10 minutes. When they were calling people in tables 20-25, my work rival decided that he had had enough, and just got up from our table to get food out of order. The compatriot, the stoned, the fanatic, and the gregarious all followed, leaving myself, the cable guy, my co-DM, and my Japanese coworker to shake our heads at their greed. After a little bit, one of the organizers came by our table and saw that half of us were gone, so assumed that we had already been called or something. Oh, great. Actions and consequences or something like that. The food was the exact same as the buffet from last year (not the Christmas one but the one that also took place in July), but you know what? It tasted good, save for the chickpea salad, which tasted annoying. The best part was that I didn't grab any meat pieces with bones, so I didn't have to embarrass myself in front of the other temps by not knowing how to deal with that. Most people went for seconds, but I was satisfied with just the one round. Just as I was finishing my food, the raffle began. There were tablets and laptops up for grabs, but also smartwatches, coffee machines, and juicers? An interesting spread... the system worked like this: upon entering the hall (on time), you received a raffle ticket. If your ticket is selected, you draw randomly from the seven prizes available. Before the raffle draw started, my co-DM grabbed up all our tickets and told us we would split the reward (which everyone agreed to except for me), but once we saw that the prizes were discrete, we just went back to using our own tickets. None of us ended up winning anything, but apparently my work rival's ticket was 5 off from the winner of the juicer. The whole time the raffle was being drawn, I egged on our table by talking about how I hoped my equivalent would win. I tricked some of them into thinking that he got a raffle ticket despite being late, and it was quite fun to see my work rival get so heated over it. In the end, my equivalent didn't win anything, but I still got to see my work rival get heated. My successor's boyfriend ended up winning a prize, the smartwatch specifically, and my work rival was absolutely letting this affect his mental significantly. The raffle ended, and with it, so too did the main events of this whole thing. There was just one thing left, a photo area thing with a giant line. Every generation of temp joined this line, and I weaved through it all to talk to a whole bunch of them. To my work rival and his new full-time friends whow had recently come back, to the fanatic and the compatriot about how my co-DM and my Japanese coworker left early because of a meeting they had to go to, and a bit to Steve and two of the new temps about which between me and my work rival was his favourite (apparently, he can't choose, but I know his answer is really me). When we got up to the photobooth, we were joined by another couple of full-times that we talked to occasionally, I guess in replacement of my co-DM and my Japanese coworker? We packed ourselves into the frame, and in order to even appear in the photo, I had to peak out from between Steve and the cable guy's shoulders, standing on my toes. My work rival could just stand in the back and smile effortlessly. Tall men... my worst enemies. The picture-takers took two pictures of us, but we basically looked the same in both pictures because we didn't get all that much time in between. Like, why would you take the second photo seconds after the first, and not give any verbal warning?? Whatever... Our group skipped out on the 3D photo booth thing (where you stand on a circular platform and a phone is swirled around you by a mechanical arm... it's a video at that point...), and began to walk back. Our group was broken up here, as some people decided they wanted to go in the cars of some full-times. It ended up being myself, the compatriot, the cable guy, and my equivalent walking back together, but it was a good time, and a nice vibe. Nothing wrong with a small group, I suppose. Would I have preferred to walk back in the larger group? Yeah, maybe, but this at least forces me to not hide away. When we eventually got back to the office, well it was business as usual. I got back to my work on setting up the newest project, and I was feeling pretty well set up to eventually do some more documentation today too. Of course, those hopes would have to be dashed, or this wouldn't be a real bloghan. My successor wanted to meet once again to talk about the removal task, but I didn't feel like going to her desk to do so. I had just made myself some tea, and I didn't want to drop any before it reached the perfect temperature. She was so eager to come too, so it all worked out in the end. Our conversation ended up with... me having to explain the task all over again? This is the third time now... I also told her that I would be open to going to the Pride thing, but she seemed surprised since I told her no last time. Oh. Did I? Maybe I did? I don't actually remember. But yeah, it's mostly because I was curious about what it was like and didn't just want to go alone. If I went with my successor, I'd at least have someone by me who knew the place. She started talking to me about dress code, and she was quite surprised that I didn't have things like a tank top or a rainbow tie-dyed t-shirt. I don't wear t-shirts out in public ever. Only shirts with collars, and always with a sweaterm over top. I don't know why she thought I would have those. She relented on this topic of clothing after I really emphasized I didn't have any of those items back in my home city either. I think if I'm going to go, I'm going to do it while wearing all black, just to troll her. After she left, I did a little bit of work before doing a quick tarot reading for my equivalent. I still don't know how to feel about this new hobby of mine, but I can't lie about how fun I'm finding it. The others (actually, it's the boys only... curious) in the office seem to like it a lot, though everytime they interpret a card by its face value it bothers me a little bit. But I guess it shouldn't matter all that much anyways because it's not real in the first place!!! Now just as I'm finishing the reading off with the fourth card, my mentor walks in, freezes, and asks if this is a bad time for me before deciding to just walk out. I immediately gather up the cards and tell him it's not a bad time and that I'm actually quite free right now, explaining that sight he just saw all away as a bad and stupid hobby. He's wise enough to not ask questions. Or, maybe scared? Or just over how odd I really am to the normal person. Well, I like being odd, but I think if it's affecting how I'm perceived in the workplace (specifically, "this guy doesn't do work at work!!"), maybe I should be more normal than odd. He was talking to me again about how I've been checking my change to that one flow. He was very very worried about it changing ever so slightly and causing lots of headaches, and I decided to just straight up ask him how he wanted me to actually go about and test this. He gavew me some instructions, just to rerun with and without, and he left right after. I started doing it, making a copy of the flow that I could run with my little edit, and it seemed like for some reason it was about half a second faster than the old flow. That's weird... what I'm doing should increase the processing time by at least a little bit. I start looking more in depth at what this flow produces, and realize that there's way more than just the stuff it was printing out on my screen: it was producing a whole set of files too, a lot of them at that. The reason why my test runs were faster was because it didn't have to spend time making new folders to put them in, since it would reuse the old flow version's previously set up directories. Ahhhhh... I had previously reported to my mentor that I sped up the process with my change, so I had to let him know that there was a whole bunch of other stuff I had to compare, which sort of sent him into another little spiral of unsureness about my change. I went ahead and ignored that, and started testing out the stuff in the folders, making sure it was the same between my version and the old version. Each time I tried though, I got the result that one spreadsheet inside the produced folders were slightly different. Ugh. Of course. There's not really an easy way to compare if two spreadsheets are identical either, because of Microsoft choosing it to be like that all those years ago. Agh!!! I got some suggestions from my mentor and from the compatriot of how to do it, and eventually it was StackExchange that helped me figure out I can "unzip" a spreadsheet so that the contents can be compared. But... the unzipped spreadsheets didn't have a difference? What??? Where was this difference coming from then? The compatratiot, who had decided he had a pretty strong interest in this problem being solved, had an epiphany: could it be metadata? That would line up, since I didn't run both version of the flow at the same time, so at the very least all the datetime information would be different. After a bit more convoluted testing, involving cloning a spreadsheet, then changing and not changing one copy, proved that he was right. Once I presented the proof to my mentor, I got my approval, and this 5 minute change finally got ready for submission nearly 8 hours after I first completed the change. Well, I guess that's just how it is. At least this task only required a day of turnaround, mm? Soon after completing this was another D&D session. We're getting really really close to the end, and while I thought we could actually get really close to finishing it today, it just wasn't going to happen. We had to have a little exposition glue to get them from one site to the boss site, and that took a lot longer than I expected. I had a feeling thatm y co-DM was slightly frustrated with that too, but once we got to the final boss encounter, she brightened up a lot. I think I finally realized that she really likes combat in D&D. I can't believe it took me this long to notice, and if I had known that I would've asked her to help make a lot more combat stuff than exploration stuff. Exploration and social encounters are more the bread and butter of my campaigns, and I don't always do combat stuff as much. We did at least get through the first turn of the boss fight, but yeah... we're going to have to take another session to do this, unfortunately. Everyone is breaking out the big guns though, with the exception of my Japanese coworker, who is saving all his abilities for... something? But the compatriot and the cable guy are using all theri benefits as much as they can, and my equivalent... well, he's trying to use his entire arsenal to pull off insane combos, but a lot of the time it doesn't work out. For example, he wanted to use the spell Find Steed to summon an owlbear to ride and do a ton of damage with. He spent 15 minutes planning out what movement spells he would cast and ensuring he would have advantage on his attacks. This theorycrafting went on for 15 minutes on his turn, which I do not think was helped with him being on his phone for everyone else's turn (he wouldn't have needed to research creatures on his own turn then!). When I got tired of his 15 minute turn, I reached over to his spell sheet to maybe help him out with his planning, and relized that the casting time of Find Steed was 10 minutes. Each turn in combat takes 6 seconds in this game, so he would be spending 100 turns getting this steed in here. He begged me and my co-DM to let him have this, so that the last 15 minutes of plannign wouldn't go to waste. I didn't really want to do it, but my co-DM thought we should, just this one. To that, I suggested we give him a bad condition. Just this once, his paladin's deity will let him rush the spell, but as a consequence of the spell being rushed, it gets dispelled as soon as he gets off the owlbear. He was satisified with that, but right after he ended his turn, it was basically time for people to leave. Strict bus schedules and all. It wasn't very satisfying for me to leave it there, but I kinda had to. Man... After my bus and walk home, I couldn't decide on if I wanted to eat ice cream or not (just kidding! I decided immediately that I would get a big scoop today!), but I did decide on writing a lot more and once again, crashing and falling asleep. One of these days... one of these days...
On Thursday morning, I walked in to the office to a message from my work rival's manager, asking me to run that comparison tool once again. This time, it was between something that my go-to wanted to do and the current files in the project. Well.. ok? I kicked that one off in the morning, after I contacted my go-to and got all the details. Now that I started that, it was back to my phone to really start finishing up that Jeopardy board, since I'd be playing it with everyone tomorrow. Well, I thought it would be everyone. One full-time we invited had to drop out because of some "order" her parents gave her for errands on Friday, and when I talked about Jeopardy being the next day with the gregarious at lunch, she looked at me in shock. Apparently, she had forgotten that she agreed to the plan 2 weeks ago, and made plans over that day this week. It just kind of rubs me the wrong way that she would not even bother any further to make it right, but I guess whatever friends she made plans with tomorrow are more important than her coworkers, so... sure! When I went back up for lunch, I saw that the comparison tool had failed, because of that same thing with my computer apparently being unable to access the files in my go-to's. Yet, when I tried it out outside of the tool, it worked perfectly fine. You know what? What if I reversed that? What if I did it from a "different perspective," or from my go-to's computer's files? I thought I was so smart for that, and fourty minutes later, I got another failure result. Ah, well, worth a try, right? Right after this was the regular Thursday meeting for the specific project where I was being requested to do this comparison tool stuff in. ANd oh boy. Apparently what had happened was that someone brought in updates to another team's project into ours, but there was a significant change that looked very minor in that other team's work. Apparently, this was causing all sorts of things to function a lot differently, which is something we didn't want to see this late into the cycle. Luckily, because the change looked very minor, it was very easy to turn it off and see if there was anything else. But the way all these managers and seniors talked about in the meeting felt like pure panic. There was the director of the director and the director asking about how this wasn't caught before and what we were doing about it, and all the managers of the subteams kind of trying to defuse and say how they were fixing the issue, trying to avoid the "how it happened" the whole time. Me? I was sitting in the very corner of the room like I always did, trying to get another run up and, well, running. I was referenced a couple times by various managers about getting this comparison tool running to deal with this whole debacle, and I thought it was quite funny that right after the meeting I got a bunch of messages and emails asking me to get it going. While I waited for it to pass (it kept failing), I started finishing up my Jeopardy board, and had a couple moments where I needed some additional info on what exactly they needed me to do with the comparison tool. So after one more failure, I had to go around and ask the managers what exactly needed to be compared, because the manager who knew the problem best and asked me to make specific changes (by vaguley referring to some specific changes) went offline. Eventually, one manager finally gave me an answer, and I could start running it... and, it didn't fail quickly? Huh, maybe this one will actually pass! My go-to also needed to make some changes in various places in our files (I'm pretty sure she is the "how did this happen" that the directors were looking for with regards to this situation), but I didn't want to get sucked into anything by this point in the day: it was time to go down for the archery tag event that would be starting soon. I signed up for it as soon as it was announced, but now that it was the day of the event I didn't really want to go anymore. I was feeling all tired and sluggish just from how the week had been going, and also because it would intrude on my time with Grey-haired for our Thursday call (Blue-haired was busy). Yesterday though, Grey-haired encouraged me to go, so I began to scheme about how I could leave early. First though was a little mingling session before we headed to the venue with a ton of temps from every floor and building, but as luck would have it, as I was going down my latest comparison tool run failed. On top of this, my go-to wanted more info about how long it would take. This was very strange because it was failing for incompleteness, which I've never seen before with this tool, because of course! Of course..! So while all these temps were pouring in to collect snacks (including the compatriot, even though he wasn't going) and chat about archery tag, I was assuring the go-to that I would get this done, and trying to restart the tool but with different settings. It's gotta be a memory thing, it just has to be... At the same time I talked with my successor and got a ride secured with her and her boyfriend, and they went off to find other people who they said they would drive. Once I started the new run, the snacks were all gone, but at least the admins organizing the event were handing out extra shirts from the ones we were told to wear yesterday. I had thought there was a shortage of them, but... ok? I grabbed an extra large size, the began to head out with my successor. They couldn't find one of the people that they wanted to drive, but did find the other: it was a guy from the other building, the one that my work rival hated during the last Jeopardy. He was only hated by my work rival because he wasn't originally invited to that event, and stole the game away at a pace almost equal to that of my predecessor. In other words, if he had been on my work rival's team that day, my work rival would've loved him. Back in the now, I was headed right to the back of the car as my successor and her boyfriend played that stupid game of deciding if she gets to sit next to him or be banished to the backseat (she got banished... but did they really need to play around like that? yuck). Finally, we were off. I wanted to try my best to stay quiet in this car too, as I had started to become a little more aware of what I say around my successor, just in case it ended up in my manager's ears. Now I was fully intending on answering questions if anyone in the car asked, but what my successor did next made me want to hide and become as unnoticeable as possible. She started talking about the Jeopardy event, the one that was for our floor only, with the people in the front seats who worked in the other building. That was already a bit concerning to me, because we had all specifically agreed that it would be our floor only. I thought she was about to socially force me, the organizer, to invite them, but then she started saying this: "you guys should be mad that you weren't invited! Be mad!"
To my successor, I'll say this lightly: what the hell? I've always been defending you with the fact that you just didn't know better when it came to situations like this, but I refuse to believe that you didn't realize that the organizer of the event and the one who manages inviting people to it was in the car of the people you were telling to get mad. Even if you didn't intend for them to be mad at me, you have to realize what I must've felt like that in the moment, and that the two people in the front could've taken it like that too. I felt more than uncomfortable, I felt unsafe. How much more can I really say that you just don't know any better, really? The rest of the car ride, I pretended to be very sleepy, and waited for my successor to note that I was to make my fake sleep state seem more realistic, just to avoid anything else coming of this line of conversation she had started talking about. On the inside, I was still reeling over what just happened. It seems silly but... I just don't know what to think anymore. Listening in in their conversations, it seemed like they had quickly moved on from these topics and were actively making plans with a rather large friend group, and asking people they knee if they wanted to join, seemingly at random. My successor kept asking me questions about plans, forgetting that I was supposed to be asleep (perhaps she saw through my ruse? or realized that I wouldn't fall asleep that fast). I honestly can't imagine having a friend network as large as that. how do you manage analysis of all your ties and bonds? Or remembering which friends should not be around which other friends? Then she mentioned that she totally forgot to pick up one person that she promised to give a ride to... huh, I guess that answers my questions: it's just ridiculously hard. When we got to the archery tag place, same as last year, it felt a little strange. None of the people that I had really built up friendships with during my time here were present. The temps who went other places or came back as full-times weren't supposed to come to this event, and the temps of my own generation that were still here all skipped out on it due to boredom. And to be honest... yeah, it kinda was boring-ish. I think I would've had way more fun if I wasn't as tired and sluggish, but what I did enjoy quite a lot was all the talking I got to do! Talking with some guys back in my home city and getting even more info about what's going on back home; talking with some natives of this city and traitors of my own city who came here, and realizing just how alien I was for not enjoying going out very often; multiple conversations with my successor talking about the Pride thing on Sunday and asking if we're friends (she doubted it because we never hang out after work... I need to reevaluate a lot it seems); my successor's boyfriend offering me a ride back to the office; and some more stuff with the cable guy's replacement, the new compatriot, the stoned, and the traitor about how they were enjoying this evennt (not really, a lot, alright, a lot); those were the convos I had between rounds. The rounds themselves were just shooting the targets with bows and arrows (my successor and her boyfriend targeted me the whole game, but thanks to my Lithe perk, I had a good amount of Haste to play with and dodge all their attacks. But... I did also fail to do anything related to objective...), then some rounds of President with bows (I pretended to be the President by utilizeing Lithe as much as possible, and since my whole team was playing like me, we kinda just accidentally constantly won?), before switching it up to Nerf guns for Zombies (how are you supposed to tell if you get hit by one of these little ball pellets? and why is it so hard to load and prime the weapons? it just seems hype to use Nerf guns but in implementation it feels bad). At this point in the evening, I was really feeling bored. I would much rather head back to my place and socilaze with Grey-haired way earlier. I'm bored to the point that I'm checking my online portals for school (it's during this event that I learn that my instructor for the communications course gave me 100% for the final report?????? Excuse me??? I mean, I GOT A 100!!! YES!! Also, WHY????? That paper was AT MOST an 80%... I'm not going to complain or question it, but... was it because I emailed the instructor so much, and impressed him with my tenacity? I won't ask, so I'll never know, I guess). The cable guy's replacement (he's getting this title now: the memer) was feeling the exact same way, and as I was examining my bus options, he offered to let me ride in the rideshare he had coming. We actually live pretty close (not as close as me and my work rival by walking, but closer by bus for sure), and if I got to his place I could easily take the bus right back to my place. I let my successor's boyfriend know that I was heading back with the memer, and headed out with him after all the other goodbyes we had to say. In the car, we talked about that event quite a lot. It's not that we didn't like it, it's just that it wasn't really our thing. For me, the big thing was just how tired I was that day making me feel a lot worse, but a lot of it was also the fact that most of the people I've become really close with at this company were simply not here. They give me a lor of energy. I was expecting to be flamed by the memer when I shared this with him, but somehting that really surprised us about this ride was how maturely the memer talked. He was very nuanced in teh way that he talked, and I actually regret that I sort of dismissed him because of all the memey stuff he usually says. He gave some more intelligent discourse about the tag event, and I really agreed with a lot of his points. It was definetely more fun with your closer friends, and it just kinda wasn't for us. We talked a little more about work and school in general, and after he succesfully diverted his rideshare to actually go to his house and not drop him off in the middle of a busy roadway, we split ways. Honestly, he changed my mind. I really like being around the memer! He's a funny guy, hip with the times, and he brings a lot of hidden depth to the conversations he's in. As I walked to my bus stop, basically right next to his house, I decide to ujst walk most of the way back because the timing of the bus was slightly off. After all, why wait 10 minutes when I can walk for 5 minutes and only wait for 5 minutes? Well, it was more like wait 20 minutes or walk 18 minutes and wait 2? And while it was cloudy and not all nice out, it wasn't raining so it's ok! Around the 15 minute mark I decided to call Grey-haired ahead of time and let her know that I left the archery tag event early and that I was currently trying to beat the bus, jsut talking random stuff. Apparently she was talking while riding on her bicycle which I feel isn't safe, but her powers to break things seems to be limited to electronics for now (but if she achieves her Paramecia awakening... the thought makes me shiver...). She did actually go over a very large bump at one point and went silent for a bit, but as soon as I cracked a 'One Piece' related joke she immediately complained, confirming she was fine! This proves that Grey-haired hates my humour or that my humour can bring people back from the brink of death. It's... probably the first option. Even when I was on the bus, I kept talking with her, and upon getting home we finally got ready to do what we had plan: another day where we watch an episode of 'One Piece' and an episode of 'Kamen Rider OOO.' Just as we were about to begin (and after I ate my ice cream allowance for the day), Blue-haired joined the call. What??? He said he wasn't available. But apparently the plans he had made weren't starting for a good while, so he was free for the next 2 hours. This meant that I could actually test my second Jeopardy board!! Woohoo! Now it was actually very evenly paced to start with, but it got very frustrating very quickly afterwards when Grey-haired's technology trouble actually started to impact gameplay, then cause her to drop from calls randomly. It was the worst it had ever been todya, and it just immediately ground the game to a halt every single time. What's worse is that it provided a distraction every time too, and she would launch into some other story, eating into the little time we had to keep Blue-haired in. But this complaining gets me nowhere. I can't control Grey-haired's Break-Break Fruit powers, and I can't control how she uses them. I can control how I deal with the issue as it arises, and instead of laughing awkwardly every time she gets distracted, it was much easier to just remind her we were on a time limit. Honestly, don't know why I didn't learn that lesson until now, but at least I learned it, right? The game was very close, and in the end it was a Blue-haired victory! Probably not because of the tech troubles, but you never know with Grey-haired sometimes. After completeting a round of feedback, I went right to bed. There wasn't much more I could stay awake for. Except... I did want to check in on my comparison tool run, and I didn't have this thought until late at night. I mean, I did tell my go-to that I would do so, but... I mean, she didn't message me earlier, so it's fine that I'm checking in on it after midnight right? But, I wish I hadn't because it looked liked my last one failed before I even headed out to the archery tag place. Wonderful, just wonderful! I started a new run and did some other stuff around my apartment to prepare for bed, and by the time I got back to my laptop it had already failed. At this point, I was frustrated. This kept happening, and this time it didn't look like the whole "files can't be found" thing would fix itself within a week. I probably didn't even have a week to get this running! They needed these results as soon as possible. In my frustration, I randomly started exploring the files behind the comparison tool itself, looking through the literal code of it in a desparate Hail Mary play and... hold on. Is that..? There's a line that I randomly scrolled to in this code that seems to relate to something you input in the configuration for the comparison tool. However, I hadn't seen it before, and it seeme dto relate to exactly what I wanted to do: inputting two different user's list of files. I explored more in the code behind the tool, then the place where the tool's code was, and found some documentation that explained more about that option I could include in the configuration. And looking at it... well, shoot, it does exacly what I need. It's literally in-built functionality of this tool that no one on our team knew about. Well, I should try it out first, just to make sure it works. I set up all the new configuration stuff, and then went to bed. Working better at midnight strikes again!
Friday marked another day where I woke up too late to catch my specific chain of buses on time, so I ended up taking a slightly later bus that didn't connect very well with another route, and walking half of the way along the sidewalk once again. First thing I checked when I got into the office was the results of my comparison tool run, and it failed. But it wasn't a failure due to not being able to access files!!! It failed after being able to find everything and actually start the comparison! It truly is a miracle. As soon as people saw me as online, they messaged me or emailed me about results, and I promptly got an email out with the results. They won't see my struggle to get the tool to work in the first place, or the discovery I made to trivialize the problem, but they do get to see the quick(-ish) turnaround upon being given this task. Now that feels good. Now there was one message that I got from someone in the morning, one that didn't relate to the comparison tool. IT was from my successor, asking about if it was ok to work from home today if she needed it, since there was a very important meeting today. But there was someting else said in that question that neither of us needed to acknowledge, and neither of us needed to talk about. By asking me if it was ok to work from home today, it was her telling me to my face that actually, she didn't want to come to Jeopardy today, even though she had promised to about 5-6 times in the last 2 weeks. After all that? After what happened yesterday? And at the last Jeopardy you were at?
I see. You have made yourself completely clear. Understood, even. I, in being humbly cordial with you, will follow this direction to the utmost.
And we shall never meet.
There's not much else to say about the work I was doing today, as a lot of it was mindless set up for the newest project, and dealing with the emails I got in response. That one manager who always seems to antagonize me sent me a message asking me if my comparison tool run finished (my answer was yes), and that he would then add me to the email chain (we are both on this email chain???). He sends an email to that steadily growing stack of replies asking for the results of the email, asking for every little detail that's suppsoed to be in the run... and if you scrolled down that email by just two replies, you would see my email that reported the run had finished including all the details he asked me to confirm were placed. I tell him this over the messaging app, that I already said all that info in the chain, and he just sent one back telling me to mention that in the chain, again. The director of the director also sent me an email asking me if my run had that one tiny little change made in it, which was ALSO DETAILED IN MY ORIGINAL EMAIL. IT'S ALL THERE!! I had to go get hep from the other temps present when it came to drafting the reponse email, because I knew that I would end up saying something very unprofessional about the reading comprehension skills of my superiors if I didn't have someone watch over me as I wrote that response. Soon after that was lunch, and myself and the gregarious had a plan. See, I wanted to get a gift for my co-DM for putting up with me so long as a co-DM for that campaign, and also because I think she's pretty well equipped to start DMing her own campaign. Well, to do that, she'd need a good set of dice! The gregarious had gone with me to that game store to get dice way back in 2024, so I enlisted her help to do the same for my co-DMs set. We headed out in the guise that we were getting something from the restaurant downstairs, because my co-DM sits very close to the gregarious, but the compatriot overheard us and went with, because he was intending on getting a lunch from that restaurant. Uh oh. Ok, it wasn't actually as bad as I thought it would be, as when I explained it to him and asked him to keep it a secret, he obliged. I was mostly worried since he was one of our players, but I guess it makes sense that he'd be supportive of my way of giving appreciation to my co-DM. We drove there pretty quickly, but spent quite a lot of time just searching for the dice once we got there. They weren't in the spot they were last year, and while the vibe of the store was great, I Knew that the longer we spend here, the more suspicious our excuse gets. Eventually, the compatriot had to be brave for me and ask the front desk guy where the dice were. There was a stand right in front of that desk, placed there because they just got a fresh batch from the manufacturer. Oh, very nice, very nice indeed. I couldn't stand to look at the stand because of all the amazing combinations that I wanted to get for myself. If I looked at them and thought for too long, I would end up buying 5 sets for myself. The gregarious and the compatriot helped me pick out a nice purple and silver set that they said stood out to them first as something my co-DM would like (I would've gone purple and gold, but I will trust their judgement), and after quickly buying the dice, we left. This was the compatriot's first time in a store like that, and he seemed to like it just as much as the gregarious did on her first time. To be honest, I feel like I should visit these types of stores more often, but... eh, I don't know. I've already got most of the stuff I need anyways to run D&D, and I already have friends that like playing with me. I don't need more stuff for it or new people, and I usually can find a good location for sessions anyways. When we got back to the office we did actually go to the restaurant that we said we would go to, and I grabbed myself a chicken wellington (one that my equivalent doubted was a chicken wellington... me too, is it supposed to be crusty and crunchy?). I joined everyone downstairs for lunch today, mostly just on my phone as everyone else talked. There were some new temps who decided to tell me then that they were cancelling as well, but at least these were ones that I neve got a promise out of, just a "I'll see if I can make it." The numebr of attendees was slowly shrinking down to a miniscule number, but I didn't have much time to worry about that, since that big meeting I was talking about was soon to start. Me and the compatriot headed upstairs to grab our juniors and our laptops, and then back down. This meeting was all about the very nitty-gritty details of the newest projects which I was still in the process of getting ready for the team to use. There were snacks in the back, but not many people were attending this meeting on acocunt of it being a Friday. Honestly, why did they schedule this meeting for a Friday? Almost everyone is NOT going to be there, and yes I know they'll join online, but... I don't know, I was present for the last meeting like this last year, and it was very exciting having almost all of the team present for it. Speaking of people who weren't here, Steve wasn't! I mean, that's to be expected since he's very adamant about getting one work from home day each week, but I thought he would be here for Jeopardy. But when I asked if he was arriving after the meeting, he said that "Unfortunately, I cannot make it to the office today." Well, I was receiving a slew of cancellations for today's Jeopardy, so I was alright with this. I ended up joking back "not even coming for dinner" (we did not plan a dinner we did not plan a dinner we did not plan a dinner), but to everyone's lack of surprise except my own, he immediately changed his tune to "see you soon." Huh. I will leave making dinner plans to my work rival, and get my eyes off my laptop screen and back to the slides that the director had started going over. These slides and this meeting were seemingly even more detailed than the similar ones from last year though, and there were a couple guests from other teams that would ask "interesting" questions to boot. One guest would ask very simple, basic questions that he really should have known. The director, who was running this meeting, even cracked a joke about how our team stretches the defintion of a term that one guy asked for, and I was so proud of myself for getting it. The other question asker, on the other hand, was extremely inquinsitive. He was constantly askign questions about one topic, and every time he got an answer he would just keep asking the same question with a small little twist, stretching the length of the third slide (out of 100) from the director's planned 3 minutes to about 30 minutes. And he. Kept. Doing. It. The director and other managers couldn't do anything about it for the first 2.5 hours (out of 3 hours planned), but at least after that point the director banned this guy from asking questions until the very end. But in that stretch of time, I got struck with a sudden wave of tiredness. OH no. Not now. I can take it if the tiredness catches up with me sometime later but please not now!! I don't want to fall asleep in this meeting! Especially with all these managers and the director here! Now, I regretted my teasing of my successor's habit of falling asleep in meetings (only a little bit though). I tried desparately to start doing some work, started thinking up dremay scenarios, planning D&D stuff, anything, but it wasn't working. I was going to fall asleep. Then, one last idea. One last hope. I turned my brightness way down, opened up a New Yorker cryptic, and sent the collab link to the compatriot, and we started working on it together. Immediately, I woke up, and we were still solving as the meeting came to an end. Should I have paid more attention? Yeah, yeah, yes. But staying awake by not paying attention was a much better alternative. The meeting did end up going overtime after that one guy was allowed one more question (he got cut off early, thankfully!), and I headed back up to my desk to continue solving with the compatriot... until he got dragged somewhere else by his replacement. I ended up getting dragged into some more work too. Apparently, when I provided those details in my email, my manager and my work rival's manager actually did read those details and did some investigating of their own, finding out that whatever files my go-to edited weren't being captured by "something" (are they hiding what it is becuase I wouldn't know? or for something else? ...probably the first one). She had a fix though, and she asked me to rerun with one modified file she provided to me. My work rival had also finally arrived in the office, but he was working away from his desk for some reason? When I heard he was here (not by someone telling me, but by the sound of his voice), I went over to apologize to him. I always give him so much trouble over him trying to plan out events the day or weekend of, and those events always flopping. Yet, when I do things my way, by planning two weeks in advance, it all falls apart. THe compatriot and I went to some other people's cubes, those we invited two weeks ago, and they all cancelled on us. It was down to 9 people out of the original 20-ish. So, I went to apologize to my work rival for insulting him so much over his style, because what I was purporting was not working either. He laughed and accepted, and I decided to sit next to him for the remainder of the work I had to do. I restarted my runs with my work rival's manager's change, and right after I confirmed with her that I started, she called my work rival. His headphones were back at his desk, but I was still in my phase of feeling bad for how I treated him and ran to his desk in his place. He had his call, and as soon as it was done and the headphones came off, the crashout began. He was currently doing a course on logic, and the content for this week was tripling compared to all the other weeks. ANd on top of that, his manager just gave him a huge task that involved the comparison tool, but way more complex than what was being asked of me. At least I could help a little with that second one though, as I gave him the docs I found yesterday night. From there, I had nothing to do but wait around for people to be ready for Jeopardy, and as I waited at my laptop, my work rival started complaining about just about anything: the new temps, the pay he was currently receiving, the course he was in, the task he got, stuff like that. The compatriot joined in on this too, but in front of all this (very loud) complaining was quite a lot of joking around and some inside jokes too, and a lot more heartwarming stuff too. It's hard to believe that I've worked with all these guys for a year now, and near the end of it all, I am really glad it was them. The promised time for Jeopardy had finally arrived, and I started going all around the office to start collecting people for it. Most of them were gathered at the crossword cubicle and being very busy with chatting, but I got the new compatriot in the corner to start heading down, and the stoner and Steve in the cell to head down too. I told the crossword cubicle guys multiple times as I made my 5 rounds of the floor to go, but they just continued talking, even through my various passes around the office. Whatever... I headed down after that 5th time anyways, and when I got to the meeting room that we always used for this, I saw the new compatratiot, the stoned, and Steve there already. They seemd a bit annoyed that I was late compared to them, and a bit more that the others were not down here yet. They didn't end up coming down until half an hour after we started, and in that moment I knew that we wouldn't be able to get through both boards that I had prepared. It would just take too long. Even getting everybody sorted into teams and getting everyone ready to play took a while, as they were all still very busy with chatting and fooling around, especially Steve and the stoner. They had decided that it was the funniest stuff ever to play 'Ai♡Scream!' as loud as they can as I'm trying to calm everyone down and get things set up, while there were still people working outside of this meeting room. Man. I do love 'Love Live!' but now is not the time. Once everything was ready and people were logged into the site, they ended up choosing to play the board about beetles, and for once the game was actually extremely well balanced. There were many moments where teams were neck-and-neck, and though there were some tech troubles and a moment where I didn't hear what one team said (or in this case, did hear them say something they didn't say) because of SOMEONE'S loud mouth (ok, it wasn't just him, but it was mostly him), I think this is the most fun the group has had with a Jeopardy board. We had a Final Jeopardy round where only one team got the answer and came from behind to win it all, and it was hype! My Japanese coworker also showed up in a rush and panting near the end of the game. Poor him... he's ending his time with this company soon and his manager is really piling it on recently. I'm sure some of it is just my Japanese coworker's really strong work ethic, way stronger than mine, that keeps him doing work very late into the night, but... agh, I feel bad, but at least he was able to join at the end. As for the balance of the board, I'm still not sure if it's because I've gotten way better at making Jeopardy boards balanced, or if it's because my predecessor was on vacation and did not attend. In the moment, I thought it was the former, but writing this now, I feel as though it was a mix of both. And honestly, thinking about this Jeopardy event compared to the last one, I preferred this one way more. Smaller teams meant a more warm vibe, and we all laughed and had fun way more than in the one with like 40 people. I had awy more fun presenting clues with this one too, and it just felt so much more easy to manage too. It was way more fun for everyone involved with less people, so maybe it's actually somewhat good that this many people ended up cancelling? But that's not really my concern right now, becuase the next Jeopardy won't be until July. Back in the moment, everyone started to pack up to leave for dinner, with the exception of my co-DM and I, who were going straight home. My bus ride home (and the 15 minute walk back when I didn't want to wait for the bus for 20 minutes) was quite warm, and through my dark burgundy dress shirt I sweated a lot, but I couldn't help but reflect on that day. It had started out somewhat negatively very early in the morning with that run failure, and all the dissapointment of people cancelling had me down too, but it ended up being the most fun I had with Jeopardy in the evening. I guess I'm not really a person who needs a lot to be happy, nor do I need to be around a lot of people too. At least, that's what I was thinking when I went to bed that night (of course, only after I engorged myself on a large couple of scoops of cookies and cream ice cream). A pretty good day, if I do say so myself.
I know I said this week's content would be short, but I guess it didn't really turn out that way, huh? Well, at least it will be for Saturday and Sunday, says where I stayed inside for pretty much all of it, writing bloghan and playing games on the 'puter and 'phone. Oh, and both days, I ended up working at the same time, monitoring a bunch of consecutive runs of the comparison tool. They really needed these, and there would be a bunch of little changes mentioned by someone in between my runs. I sent emails over the weekend to about the comparison tool runs, so I hope that my manager and the others on that chain view me positively. Because of this work stuff, I planned to not take up my successor on her offer to go to that Pride thing on Sunday (on Saturday she ended up uninviting me anyways). I did not feel bad about it. Or anything, at all. Aside from all that, if you really want to know about something notable I did, on Saturday morning I had ice cream for breakfast like any other well-adjusted human being in our society, mostly because I didn't have much food left in my fridge at this point in the week. I was living off of random leftover chocolates and peanut butter on toast and... well, ice cream. THe grocery order on Sunday at least made this more manageable, with me being able to enjoy actual food for my meals this day. My bloghan work this weekend consisted of catching up on bloghan's from 2 weeks past, as I had let things slide a lot due to my course. I did get that 100% on the final report, and achieved a very high mark that I'm very happy with, but it came at the cost of being behind. I really hope it doesn't devolve into a situation where I write about two weeks ago each week... it just might for a while, since I'm still a bit tired of writing. But it's more than just a struggle between an obligation to write and a desire to write. I have both, and I struggle with both, but at the end of it all, I'm still glad I went ahead and produced something. I hope that by the end of each bloghan post, you can say the same about what you read. On Sunday evening, I finished (mostly) the bloghan from two weeks ago, and rewarded myself by finishing the second case of 'Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations.' And man, what a frustrating case! The behaviour of the defendant was one thing in the frist day of the case, but at least that was mostly ok on the second day. Day 2 was the frustrating one, especially right at the end of the trial segment where you get ONE chance to press a single statement, out of a testimony made of 11 statements, the most amount of statements per testimony we've ever seen! What's the point of that?? And it sends you so far back if you get unlucky and fail becuase you get one chance. Also, there were just small details in the case that never really went anywhere, or should've been relevant, or were weirdly not shown when they should've been. It made me feel like I was working with a different set of information than what the writers thought I would have, leading to all these frustrations. I thought the whole vibe of the case was so cool, and the characters we see returning were great too (well, except Larry, who hasn't seemed to learn a thing... but you'd think he did by this point?). It's just that all these details, the missing detials, and the missing missing details aligned in a way to give me a not so great trial experience. I think this would've really benefitted from being a 3-day trial instead of a 2-day one, so that some of those loose ends and the details I was talking about can actually be used and be relevant and be correct. At least the story shined well... And after the ice cream I had then, I think it was. This whole week was very sweet, both in the sugary and chocolatey sense. There's a lot to enjoy in life, it seems!
And maybe "people" doesn't always have to be one of them, but "friends" is.
Future plans
Here's the results of last week's plans:
- Beetles Jeopardy boards: Finished on time for Thursday and an impromptu testing sesssion!
- Door: no progress
- Archery tag: well, I went for most of it. Probably won't go again.
- Jeopardy event: Done, albeit a little dissapointingly, but in the end, way better than it really ever could have been.
Next up, I've got to start catching up on those bloghan's from weeks ago. That's the main focus. But... July 1st is a holiday for me, so I think I will go for a little stroll on that day too. And of course, the biggest thing is the convention I signed up to volunteer at this Saturday. One of the panels that I'm moderating at this convention will spoil me for 'Homestuck,' so I need to find someone to swap panels with me.
Song of the week
'Ai♡Scream!' (https://youtu.be/3yaab2_EEHM) by AiScReam is the song of the week. Each day this week, I got home and ate my new favourite flavour of ice cream, cookies and cream, and each time, I felt like I was ascending to heaven. I don't really know what it was that made me feel like that but I remember this week mostly for the amount of ice cream I ate. 1.5 liters, in just one week. Oh my weight is going to suffer, as are my teeth, but it was worth it... I really do love ice cream, huh? Such a sweet tooth... well, to talk a little bit about the song, while I have kind of given up on all things romance, the song really is quite cute. I do really like how it relates how the speaker feels like ice cream when face-to-face with the person they adore. But, it's a bit sad isn't it? Becuase for as much as they are sweet and lovable, they continue to just melt away, slowly losing hope and structure, as they beg for even a semblance of attention to the romantic feelings they hold. I was there once. Maybe more than that. But it is nice to be free of that, for the first time. But yeah, I love ice cream!!! Yippee!!! Yayyyyyy!!! VWEE hee hee! ...ice cream...
Until next time
Why do things feel like they're ramping up again? Oh man, I've got so much to write, and so much writing is not happening. Well, I'll get it done. And no, I won't repeat the "harder things, stricter deadlines" thing becuase I've been cutting it close. But... I guess it all feels normal now? And in that feeling normal, it feels strange. Huh... See you next week for when it becomes even more normal!
- bubbler