July 20, 2025 - bloghan 56
This was a week where things got better, I think. More back to normal within this new normal I've found myself in. And for once, not a checklist type of week! No, something much more worse: a bland one. I can describe it with paragraphs, oh yes. But. But but but. Well. Not very big ones. I guess you can see for yourself:
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: IKEA plushies. Here's the tier list:
Ordered tiers, unordered wthin tiers. The octopus is my favourite, but I think they really knocked it out of the park with the aquatic animals. The sharks and the whales are just the perfect size for holding, and so is the body shape. Unfortunately, I do not feel the same for all the rest. The small cat and the husky are still holdable-seeming, and the giant bear is up there for its own reasons. The alternate color octopus I just don't really vibe with, but the polar bear? He's cool, he can stay. All the rest though? Like, just why? Why dinosaurs for such a comforting thing? They are literally covered in spikes! And the overdetail in a lot of these animals really just makes them clash with the better designed plushies, like the owl and the snake and the penguin as compared to the shark and the whale. Glad I could finally give my opinion on these. By the way, I own none myself, nor do I care to get any of them anyways.
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
When I said I wanted a week that wasn't all that "checklist-y," I didn't mean one like this which was too drab for a checklist. I mean, yeah there were cool things that happened, especially towards the end of the week, but now that my manager was back I had actual work to do, and when I got home I was still stuck on catching up on bloghan and playing lots and lots of 'Balatro.' So I guess I'll just say what little happened this week, and you can fill in the blanks. Is this what my life will be like once I'm a full-time? I hope not. And if it is, I hope there's a way I can get out of it.
When I got into work on Monday, I was hoping that I would finally be able to submit all those changes I had queued up to the newest project. I had tried eveyr dya last week, after all. Surely by now it would be open, right? And it was! Wahoo! In fact, my go-to had submitted some stuff. I wonder what it is... then I looked at the files and realized: she done did submitted all the stuff I was going to! What??? That was MY task! Now I look lazy! Like I wasn't doing anything! I COULDN'T!!! Agh... I decided to just force my submission through against the advice of Steve, because there were some slight differences. I'm not letting this happen to me again. Later on in the day though, I realized that it wasn't showing up on the website we use to track submissions, and this was way after lunch too. That's not great... Steve was in a meeting, so I talked to his replacement. My changes were in the master version of the project files, it jus twasn't showing up on the site, so at least I didn't break things too badly. Steve's replacement (maybe I'll start calling him Swarm? because that's how I envision his mind to be honest... it scares me but in a funny way) managed to force the site to redetect stuff, and it worked! Thanks Swarm! After that I had to field some questions about the re-import I did last year from my successor's go-to (crazy how far I've come) and some from the old guy about what I did with the files I made last week (they are still there, you're just looking in the wrong folder...), then a random "hello" I got from the antagonizing manager. I didn't grace that with much more of a response because all he said to me was "hello," so I just said it back to him in the group chat (with the not-manager and my own manager). There was not further communication in that group chat for the rest of the day. Now I haven't really been mentioning any conversation with other temps so far because my work rival was sick today, and because I was not really getting up to visit the others at all, and they weren't really doing that for me. My predecessor did visit at one point though, and I helped him set up our workplace Music League (I got to influence most of the categories! what fun, what fun!! oh, the work rival is going to hate me!!! vwee hee hee!!!!). I also took that opportunity to message my work rival that my predecessor drank the entire honey bottle that had now taken up residence on my work rival's desk (he stole it from the first floor break room because???? I don't know????? why did he do that?????), and soon after a lull in the conversation, my predecessor let me be once again, but only after I made sure the Music League was all set up. My successor was the next to talk to me, this time online though, asking about some flow that the newest new guy was supposed to be fixing or something like that. Apparently, the newest new guy was not doing that, and when my successor tried it, it didn't work at all. Eventually, I told her what I thought the error might be, but she gave no repsonse to it. Okay. I then talked a bit to the full-time that helped me with reimport stuff last year (this time, not for a reimport but for adding some branches to the new project that I should've done quite a while ago... I better ask my manager for permission), before I got entirely sidetracked by the old guy AGAIN! He needed me to rerun the Absconder I made on the fly again becuase he made some more changes I guess?? He also requested that the old Absconder I made like last November be run again. Well ok, I need to do a little more work for the latter, but I can get the former running. I managed to get those results to him just before I left, hurriedly running out because I did have plans with Blue-haired and Grey-haired. When I got back to my place and hopped on call, only Blue-haired greeted me. Grey-haired had an exam, one of those take-home exams you can do online. She had previously told me her plan was to do it earlier in the day so that she could join us tonight, but apparently she recently got a new phone (wonder how long until her Break-Break Fruit powers activate on it? I give it... a week?) and immediately started the new phone setup, since her last phone had somehow deteriorated into complete non-functionality. As a consequence of both of those events, the multi-factor authentication for her school stuff was acting up and giving her a hard time accessing her exam until now (she found the ONE device that was still logged in and was doing the exam on that). Well, I guess that's just how Grey-haired things go I guess. The plan was to do that alternate route of 'Deltarune,' so while we waited for Grey-haired... well, you already know what me and Blue-haired get up to when alone together: I get weird and he gets gambly ('Balatro.' it's just 'Balatro'). When Grey-haired was ready, she couldn't even join us unless she was on mute, so ended up taking it upon herself to look up a route for doing the alternate route in chapter 4. We messed it up quite a few times because of her lack of direct communication with us. Texting us instructions was slow and unwieldy for the one time-based choice we had to make, but it was so much worse when she decided to just use the soundboard to answer our questions after we brought up issues with the texting strategy. Once we're past the time-based choice though, the texting strategy works, but I have never felt more like restricting Grey-haired's access to the soundboard like then. Eventually, we get to a point where there's not much difference between the regular and the alternate routes, but we're still kept on our toes by Grey-haired, just in case there's a tiny bit of difference in dialogue that she has to interject randomly, but we progress correctly either way. Before the boss we decide to stop and save the rest of the route for tomorrow, or whatever next day we have. We all drop off the call after that. This alternate route is a bit weird, but I'm liking where it's going so far. I still end up going to bed pretty late, but I think it's worth it if it's because of these two.
When I got into the office on Tuesday, I saw a bunch of messages spammed at me by the old guy about some errors that my Absconder was giving him. To him, it was ignoring things in all caps? In addition, my manager had sent me a message telling me not to do that branch adding thing because the list of branches to add hasn't been finalized yet (but the work rival's manager told me the finalized list while you were on vacation...). And finally, as soon as I was online, the newest new guy came up to me to ask about where he could find some file. I didn't know the location of where it was by heart or anything, but just by a bit of logic and pattern recognition, it was pretty easy to find..? Ok then? Then, the old guy asked me about his spammed messages again, and even though what he told me was the issue was completely innacurate (it WAS reading those all caps ones!), it did lead me to find another issue, so I went ahead and made some quick fixes to how my on-the-fly Absconder processed connections. Swarm messaged me about how the current master files of the project were failing the tests, and I told him that I was working on it with the old guy. I had no idea if that was what we were doing, but I didn't feel bad about saying this. After I finished those modifications and sent the results to the old guy, he wasted no time in spamming me even more with things that he saw repeated in the report. We had been through this once before! That's expected! He would go on to send me these messages for 5 straight minutes, and when I reminded him of the issue, he topped it up with an example of something that should've been included in my Absconder results that wasn't: and when I looked at the actual project files to find what he was talking about, it straight up was not even in the files being considered! What are you on about my man??? When I point this out, he immediately acquiesces and lets it go. ?????? What was the point of that???? While I was sorting out those messages, I worked a bit on that form for starting up the newest new project (the antagonizing manager visited me at my desk for 10 seconds to tell me that date thing that I needed, so... thanks for that), but if I'm being honest (which I mostly am here, my only lies are by omission and de-emphasis) I didn't really focus on it. INstead, I ended up getting sucked back into reading 'One Piece.' Even at lunch, where all the temps managed to convince me to join them downstairs for once, all I did was read more of the Egghead arc, not quite finishing it before heading back up. Of course, once I did get back to my desk, I couldn't fully focus on work because I just had to know what's next. The stakes just keep on rising and rising, the mystery of the history and the history of the mystery keep growing and growing and- I'm going to stop giving full length reviews of 'One Piece' arcs now that I'm in the stuff that's just coming out now in the anime and manga. Just know that I absolutely adored the characterization of characters we had only heard about or seen purely the exterior of, and that I think it was an excellent way to kick off the final saga of this manga. Once I finished that arc and managed to regain some focus back towards the form to complete it, I ran all the details by that group chat of the not-manager, the antagonizing manager, and my manager. I would like to note that I included info about the extra branches, specifically that they lacked any numerical identification. The antagonizing manager (who was in charge of the newest new project) signed off on it, and neither of the other two said anything. I submitted it, and thought that I'd get a nice little break from working on stuff that I could spend on bloghan. I was wrong. Apparently, there was a meeting downstairs that was going to start in 5 minutes from when I submitted that form. Well, I guess I'm not going to get a seat, so I'll join online. It was a meeting that discussed each subteam's initiatves for the upcoming year. These initiatives weren't specific things about what's going into the project, but more about what sorts of things the team will do to make their work faster and more secure. For example, making more stuff with Absconder do double check or replace manual work. My subteam was first, with my manager explaining how our team did on all our initiatives from last year's cycle went. And I was extremely surprised by all he was saying, because a very large chunk of it (in range from 50% to 75% of the previous initiatives) was stuff that I had made over the course of this position. I had no idea that the stuff I was given were these initiatives. I felt so much better about the things I was doing with this team now. Really, I didn't realize how much I had done for the team, but this made it pretty clear. I was literally taking screenshots of the slides with the tasks I had done, and sharing them with my predecessor. Felt like that one Leonardo DiCaprio scene where he points at the screen. My manager proceeded onto the initiatives for our team in the next cycle, and I mentally tapped out around here, but came back in as the antagonizing manager brought up my name multiple times in random succession for one specific task, saying I started working on it. What???? No???? I haven't???? After my subteam was my work rival's subteam, with my work rival's manager being the one to list our her subteam's initiatives. Unlike my own manager, everytime a new initiative was brought up by my work rival's manager, she almost always got interrupted or questioned aobut the initiative. I don't know if it's because she was a woman and most of the leadership on the team were older men used to doubting her, or if it was because the actions of her subteam have more consequences on the project than the others. WHen it rolled around to Steve's team, I got mentioned a couple times too for that one Absconder thing I made for the not-manager. As soon as it came to my Japanese coworker's team though, with their manager saying he would use every second of time he was given, I fully checked out and decided to chat with the people around me. Funnily enough, even though he was at the meeting, I got a message from my manager. THat feeling of humour quickly fled though, because it was a message asking me to add those branches to the new project (NO not the newest new project, the NEW project, pay attention!). He had literally told me not to yesterday, but now he was saying yes to it in a group chat??? He literally saw me confirm it for the newest new project so had the gall to make it look like he was suggesting me to do it? Even though I asked him if I could already and he told me it wasn't confirmed and and and and and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH.
Man, I love this team. This is real design work. And, no, there's no sarcasm in either sentence.
I met my manager's message with a polite one of my own, letting him know I would send the email to the folks who we need help from, asking him who to CC on it. And he said: "the usual people." Oh, that's just wonderful really. That's why I asked, you know. To find out who the usual people are. It doesn't actually hep, your answer.
Man, I love this team. This is real design work. And, yes, there's now sarcasm in both sentences.
Once I sent my email, I had to head out, a bit early. I had scheduled a grocery delivery for today so that I could get free shipping, but I couldn't guarantee it would come in by the time I got back if I left at my regular time. My buses lined up nicely, and I picked them up right after I got back (because of course they'd slot my delivery in as soon as possible, of course, of course). After this, I spent a little more time at home working (to make up for the lost hour), then into bloghan (though as you know, I got pretty distracted pretty quick). Oh well, I'm sure nothing bad will happen if I go to bed really late!
Guess who woke up really late on Wednesday! Well, I did wake up on time at first, at the first alarm, but my sleepy self decided that I would end up just fine if I slept in for another 5 minutes. Well, I woke up a half hour before I was supposed to be in the office, and there's nothing like waking up late that gets me moving quickly in the morning. It was nice that I wouldn't need to prepare a lunch in advance though, because the building owners were hosting a barbeque event today. The lines would be huge for that, so it wouldn't look too off if I looked offline for a good chunk. I hurried to the office (well, actually, it was a bit more leisurely than I'd like to admit), ending having to walk halfway to it again, but diverting my path once in the parking lot to avoid getting spotted by anyone in a barbeque line. I based that diversion off where it was last year, heading towards the back door of the building... and of course, of course, the barbeque had been moved to the back door area. Well, just great! After yet another quick diversion to head towards the front door, then up to my desk (my Japanese coworker was sitting at his desk already in a meeting, but he told me to head downstairs for burger), then right back down to wait in line. The line was pretty long and the only people that I recognized in it were Swarm and some other new temps, and the not-manager behind me somewhere. There were a lot more people from other offices in this line but I didn't mind waiting so much. I wasn't that hungry yet and I got ample opportunity to be the strangest person present. When I got to the front of the line I had to wait a bit extra than others because they needed to cook up a fresh batch of patties (YES! YES! YES!). I turned down the soda though. I wanted to get root beer from the fridge on our floor, because it's a burger?? Root beer is the perfect pairing, obviously. I ate the salad pretty quickly, but my successor wanted to visit me really quickly. It was mostly just to catch up since she was sick for most of last week, and also to ask advice on some task that she had. Of course, it ended up as more than that, a lot of me dodging questions and answering dryly when she started probing down certain paths. She did eventually start talking about her own work, about how she ended up having to travel from cube to cube to cube yesterday to get an answer to the question I gave a suggestion of an answer to. I ended up in that conversation for a good while, and I felt like I couldn't just eat my burger while there, so I let it go cold. I did however, FINALLY pull off the cinnamon candy Tylenol candy prank on her. She was asking me if I was feeling ok before hand, becuase I told her about the little amount of sleep I was getting. That's when I pulled out my Tylenol bottle filled with "Tylenol" and shook out a good 6 "pills." My successor's happy face immediately dropped, and all concerned-like she started saying "hey that's not healthy." She saw that the chariot (my hand) could not be stopped and started to lean forward to stop me. Now I do actually like these cinnamon candies and I would be quite mad if she knocked them out of my hand for my "safety," so I offered her one. She was not a big fan of the taste (whatever...), and I like to think it was because she wanted to spit it out that the conversation soon wrapped up afterwards (but the real reason was that she had a meeting with someone). I quickly ate my cold burger and finished off my root beer, because I had a meeting with my manager coming up real soon. Before it though, I knew that the other temps would have gone down for lunch already, and it was the perfect opportunity to plant the dice I got as a gift for my co-DM on her desk. The traitor did not go dow, but I got him to swear to secrecy. Once that was done, I went to the meeting room, showing up early with my internal brain radio blasting 'Deltarune' music. As my manager showed up and saw my tapping foot and tapping fingers on teh keyboard, we both saw the people currently using the room were my successor and her go-to. Huh. My successor looked like she really wanted to say something and I'm very glad she chose not to. My meeting opened with my manager asking how I was, and I described to him that feeling of comfort with the position that I gave to people at the amusement park last weekend, and he was pretty glad to hear it. The rest of the meeting was more of the same as our other monthly meetings, with me just describing what I had done for the last little bit, the tasks I still had open, a minor issue that exists in one of my Absconder works, all stuff he's heard before. The only new thing was the comparison tool documentation I wrote out of rage (he told me to just make it part of the project files??? but people still won't read it????), and near the end I asked about the initiatives meeting yesterday. He revealed in that meeting that one of my Absconder works was used extensively near the end of the project to identify cases where something was labelled incorrectly, which affected some really important piece of the design that I'm not relaly all that familiar with. Apparently, those were some really serious errors that could cause significant issues when we submitted our part of the overall project and the whole thing gets produced. Now, I don't know how serious those issues would actually have been if they had slipped through, but just let me have this delusion of grandeur, of "saving" the project. Soon after that, we realized we didn't have any time left in the meeting room, so we began heading out. My manager asked me if there were any more documents or forms he ahd to sign regarding my position, but all I actually have left is to successfully complete my time here and get shipped back to my home region. He laughed and asked about if I was excited to go back. I'm not, not really. I really like how things are right now, and I don't really want them to change too much right now. I'm honestly a bit scared right now. About going back, I mean. I've changed so much since I've been here. I've grown quite a lot. Will the people in my life back there... will we still be friends? I shared that sentiment minus the concern at the end with my manager, and he laughed and said "that's good, good to hear." I think he cares? It's hard to tell sometimes. From here, there's not much I did except bloghan, random chatting with other temps and young full-times (especially about Music League, getting people recruited into it and my work rival REALLY pushing ), and a smattering of work here and there. For example (of that smattering), I had to deal with that request to add branches to the new project, and whoever was the support staff that day needed direct permission from my manager to do it. So chasing that down was a struggle, but at last, I got it and could (eventually) get those branches working. Closer to the end of the day I got a call from the antagonizing manager about that Absconder application he wanted (remember the meeting from last Thursday that cost me lunch? yeah that), and I told him that I wouldn't be able to make quick progress on it since I never touched Absconder's editing tools, only its analysis ones. There was also a confrontation at my desk by my co-DM and the fanatic, wondering if I had forgotten the dice on her desk, as if they were mine! She was actually surprised that it was a gift from me to her, and once I made it clear she seemed very grateful. I am grateful for her too. Our campaign wouldn't have been nearly as good without her developments and her spur-of-the-moment ideas. We talked for a good while about D&D and dice, about where to get them and all that, and some encouragement for her to play and DM more. Most importantly though, we made a pact to stay in touch even after I get shipped back to my home region, just to update her on how this campaign goes on Blue-haired and Grey-haired. Aftter they left, I had to reconnect with the old guy once again about what exactly he needed from me with regards to my old Absconder stuff, since he wanted me to apply it only to two csv files instead of every single one. Sounded simple enough, but I asked for a simple confirmation that he just wanted two csv files to be checked, and that was a mistake: from that statement, he decided that I simply did not understand what was being asked of me and ended up visiting me 10 minutes before I left to explain to me what I already know. Once he was gone, I could start working on it... for like 5 minutes. Then it was time to rush home (I accidentally got stuck in the zone while working on what the old guy gave me, so I had to run for my bus), where I got a message almost as soon as I got back from Blue-haired, wanting to know if I was available in two hours. Well, for you and Grey-haired, yeah, anytime! Except during work hours. This time, Grey-haired joined us on time (well, mostly), and after some initial discussion about our group's Music League and listening to some classic Black-Eyes Peas and Fergie music (I even started to write a parody of 'Fergalicious' using my name! hee hee!), we finally finished off our playthrough of the new alternate route content in 'Deltarune.' Honestly, I was expecting a lot more out of it, but I guess it made sense that there wasn't all that much. The bulk of these chapters is tied up in the Dark World after all, and Noelle just isn't in those Dark Worlds. But I do find it fascinating that endings are now finally starting to change with the alternate route. Weirdly, maybe it's no longer true that our choices don't matter..? I'll be reserving my thoughts on this for later though, probably when chapters 5 and 6 come out. If I end up not continuning bloghan afte rmy last day as a temp here, and you're really that curious, well. You know how else to contact me. After we had finished, us three needed to figure out what we were doing tomorrow for our actual regular call of the week, eventually settling on the long-awaited continuation of 'Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc.' Honestly? I can't wait! I do feel a little needlessly restricted by those two when it comes to this specific game, as they won't let me play it unless I'm on call with them, but I don't mind it all that much. I get the feeling. Felt it with 'Ace Attorney,' even with 'One Piece' a bit. It's so much more special watching someone you're close with interact with a thing you yourself love, seiing how they react, how they are the same and how they are different compared to yourself. After the call ended I made a quick dinner, then stayed up late writing mroe and more. This time though, I decided to cut it short a bit earlier. I didn't want to show up late tomorrow, like I did this morning.
Thankfully, that last line wasn't some heavy-handed foreshadowing. I actually got up on time and made all my buses. That morning at work was quite interesting because my work rival had bought and brought in a 'Yu-Gi-Oh' blind box of packs. He was hoping to draw some high-value cards for reselling. Hearing him say the price of the blind box, I knew he'd need those high-value cards to even begin breaking even. He got the memer and the fanatic to join him in the opening. As they were doing it, the newest new guy came up to my desk to ask me yet another file location question (how many files do I need to find for you????) and he noted those cards. "I didn't realize they were still popular" he said. Yeah they are buddy, just not in the way you expect. Then, my work rival started talking to him more about 'Yu-Gi-Oh' and what he was looking for, and I realized what soon to happen. My work rival was going to attempt to bring the newest new guy into the fold of the temp friend group clique thing. Geez... another mouth to feed... As for actual work I did, I started the day off with an urgent message from the old gmy, telling me that I had some files changed on his computer that were preventing him from a submitting. He let me know about that yesterday, about 5 minutes after I left. Whoops!! After I removed them and let him continue on with his work, I could continue with mine. My manager wanted me to use Absconder to check if something existed in our project (well, ok I guess...), and my successor had changed an important file that really should NOT have been changed in the newest project, so I had to track down what was going on with that. I also had to start getting those new branches fully folded into the newest project, and my work rival's manager and my own manager were marginally helpful with that... guess I'm doing this one mostly on my own too. Well, alright, I guess I've got those instructions from the support staff and what my successor's go-to told me to at least get started... While this was ongoing, I ended up talking to my successor and the newest new guy simultaneously about that file that the former changed, and how it affects the tools that the latter was learning to use. I hope the info I gave them was correct... I'm pretty sure it is, and I'm pretty sure I know why there's a strict rule in place on that file my successor changed (oh yeah, she submitted changes to that file because she forgot she even changed the file? so when she submitted something else for a different task, she unintentionally also submitted what she changed about that particular file). That file basically defines a lot of the stuff that each person's computer looks up when it's doing whatever tool or flow or accessing a particular file that's not hosted by us. Right now, a lot of those links to tools, flows, and particular files aren't quite ready for the newest project, so we're using bits and pieces from the last project and our own manual little corrections. We have a flow that can regenerate this file with all the latest, which is what my successor did, but remember: the latest isn't even out yet! That's why when she submitted it, it immediately sent the project into the failing tests state. Once that was dealt with though, I could get back to my desk and go back to my work of bloghan and yapping. Oh and also the branch thing. But it took a while and I had to wait for people to respond during their lunch, so you know... it's alright... The topic of conversation was the Music League. My work rival had finally gotten everyone to submit a song in the category (2000s music), and votes started to come in. Most of the songs were ones I didn't recognize by title, but upon hearing them I knew I had heard these songs before. I liked the melodies of what was familiar, but some of the ones I hadn't heard at all before got one or two votes each. I listened to the songs as I worked, but since I don't really use Spotify (which is what Music League runs off of), I had to use my YouTube client to play each one individually. Halfway through the playlist I got interrupted by my predecessor, because that weekly Thursday meeting was up once again. We collected my successor and my work rival's successor and headed to the room. Unfortunately, only the whiteboard shenanigans at the start (the same "camera on! camera off!" bit as last time too) was mildly noteworthy, since the project that this meeting was for was bascially done by now. There was nothing left for me to do. The comparison tool was used up. She was used up. I was used up. Well, I was, she was, it was, in terms of this project. While in this meeting and ignoring everything that was said (and like the one joke made by the director? funny guy, I guess) working on the new branches. Except... something's off. Three of them aren't having their folders show up in our project? But the other two do... I leave the meeting pretty soon after it ends (by that, I mean not quickly at all becuase I love lying less than three) and head to my desk to try and start figuring this out. I ran the commands I was given, I made sure that I did it in the right places, but it wasn't showing up? As I tried to get this problem solved by asking my successor's go-to (I think she's done similar stuff before?), there were all sorts of happenings in the corner: the newest new guy came to us a couple times as the idealist was visiting to ask how he could recover some files that he deleted by mistake and that weren't version controlled at all (he magically found them on another computer system in GOD knows where so good for him I guess??), my work rival and the idealist got all dramatic about the songs that were winning the Music League because they were all insanely popular songs that everyone knew and that the point of the League was to get exposed to new music (I thought the point was to win... not like I was winning with a top hit of my own, 'Fireflies,' down in 9th out of like 13), and my successor came to me personally to ask me about a message she would send to our mutual manager. This last one was quite interesting, as our manager was questioning her about that recent mistake she made with that one file causing the entire project to fail, and if she tested it with the usual pre-submission tests before submitting. Which she did not, and she didn't need to tell me for me to know. When changing THAT file, it doesn't matter when you run those tests, they will fail. She didn't know what to say to my manager, and her first instinct was to lie to him. On one had, attagirl. On the other hand, please don't. I chose the other hand when I asked her to "just tell the truth," and ended up nipping a whole "accidentally throw someone else under the bus" moment during the exchange too. It's ok, it's the beginning of the project... and you fixed it right away after, so I don't see why you have to worry so much about it. Though in one sense, I do understand what it's like to be on the receiving end of messages like "did you even test before you submitted" back when I first started too, so I get where her fear is coming from. But I feel like telling the truth to your manager is just the better choice overall. I don't know why her first instinct is to lie, but I can't really fault her for that because my first instinct is also to lie to him (and the other difference is that I would get away with it and she wouldn't, but that's neither here nor there). After she left to go back to her desk, my work rival gave me a strange look, saying how "suspicious" her character was for wanting to lie to her manager about her fault in whatever mistake she made like that. Whatever man... it's not that deep. ...right? Now, like I said, while all those happenings were happening, I was trying to figure out what was going on with those branches, and my successor's go-to pulled through. Apparently, the only responsibility of the support team who created the branches is to create them, not to organize and fold them into the project. I had assumed that they folded them into the project already but in the wrong place, necessitating someone (me) folding them into the proper place. Now that I knew that the branches weren't folded at all, well, things got easier. But once I did the folding, I noticed still that some directories weren't present. Only two of the branches were functional? I tried to ask my successor's go-to about this more, but she had to go offline for some sort of appointment, so I had to give it up for the day. Guess I'll do it tomorrow. I still had some time left to kill at work, so I spent it on bloghan or misc tasks, but just half an hour before I left, it happened. The newest new guy showed up in the corner, and this was while a bunch of other temps from other cubes were around too. There was a large group discussion that splintered into concurrent discussion just about work and school and what people were passionate about, and then my work rival struck. After introducing everyone who was currently in the corner to the newest new guy, he went ahead and formally "welcomed" him into our group. Just great, another person to consider when we make our little plans with the high-school-esque invitation system we use. I have no quarrel with thee, newest new guy, but I do have quarrel with my work rival over the most trivial of things, so unfortunately you're caught in the crossfire here. Well, I guess my work rival sees no issues with adding just one more person to all our plans, so I guess I'm just going to have to be the one who adapts. Soon after this incident I started heading home (and I accidentally jaywalked while doing it this time!). Once I got back and put some ice cream into my system, I started a call with Grey-haired and Blue-haired so that they could watch me play more 'Danganronpa.' For those "school life" sections, I constantly tried to go visit that white knight character (Byakky or something like that) mostly to get Blue-haired to do his voice, but there's just so much ridiculous and inane stuff in this game that I can't decided if I even like it. That's why I'd rather stick to interactions with a couple of the more level-headed characters and comparatively grounded characters when I have the choice to in this game. I get that the game's got a really cool setup and... interesting... characters, but sometimes strange plot contrivances on the least-important stuff really frustrates me. For an example of one such contrivance, Byakyy won't talk to you in this chapter's social segment because he's "too rich" and "too smart" to talk to you. I'd think that's hot if a girl my age said that to me, but if some affluent rich-boy high schooler like my compsci friend said that to me? Well, he will end up with broken toes. I instead talked to the detective-esque girl Kyoto (is that her name? I can't recall...) and I appreciated how real she was. She has her oddities, but let people have their hobbies I guess. One other issue I had with the game got solved in this session though. I was frustrated with how you had to explore all around the large-ish map by foot at first, but Blue-haired taught me how to use the fast-travel in the game, so the navigation aspect I didn't really like is a complete non-issue. Now the scene with Mondy and Kyotoky (I think those are their names) was- actually I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to know about it either. It was around this point that Grey-haired experienced, yet again, debilitating and terrible issues with her router, eventually calling on us on her (new) cell phone to let us know that she was going to have leave early. Well, I can't say that I was surprised by this. When she logged off, me and Blue-haired continued to play until the next murder was revealed (I'm sort of glad that the character which unnerved me was dead but also felt... well, unnerved), and so happy that Byyake was finally talking to my character. We stopped there because we want to see Grey-haired's reaction I guess, and we left the call afterwards. After a quick dinner and a long game of 'Balatro,' I went to bed.
I woke up extremely late on Friday, but it being a work from home day made it completely ok. My focus (after breakfast and other morning prep) was writing bloghan on my own laptop as I stayed online on my work laptop, but since doing my actual work was easier in my mind than bloghan, I spent quite a bit of time chasing down answers to the problem with those branches I had yesterday. Later in the afternoon, my successor messages me, wanting a call. I wanted to boil some water first, and after we argued a bit about boiled water tasting better than tap water or filtered tap water, we eventually called. Her problem was that her setup and reference files for the new nightly runs she was developing weren't being runat all, and she said it was due to a mistake in the setup of this new project. As you know, I was the one who did the setup of the new project, but when we started talking and debugging, it bexams clear that it had nothing to do with the setup of the project. This isn't the first time it's happened, but this is the first time I really began to notice the language that my successor uses when talking about her work troubles. She often (not always) prefaces her issues as if it's caused by something else, as if it can't be in her work. I'm sure that it's because she checked her own work but was blind to her own habitual mistakes like most of us are, but it does seem to happen quite a lot... I would think about this more, but I got an interruption from the not-manager then, messaging me that I will be asked to do the re-import on Monday. Great, just great. Well, I guess that can focus me back onto my successor, and we explore through a bunch of stuff that might be erroneous, including some slight inconsistencies in the field she made herself. After telling her to get back to me once she's tried it again with those suggested edits, I got back to work. Talking with my successor's go-to once again, I finally get an answer on that branch thing: apparently, three of the new branches are considered to be part of the last project. What??? I requested they be created for THIS project. I con plained a bit about this complication with my predecessor, because I started to realize what was going on. I started to suspect that I needed to request those branches with the number of the project in their name, otherwise we would just be using the ones from last project, which could lead to some cross-contamination if we start using them in the new project. Forgive me if it's confusing, because I don't fully understand it myself (I am not the understander). I brought up this issue with my manager, the antagonizing manager, and the not-manager, and decided to have them choose what to do next, but they didn't really understand the issue either. Now, we could get those branches moved from the last project to the new project, but the problem is that when I will be gone, the team will be working on the new project and the newest new project at the same time. If we move the branches into the new project, how will my team be able to use them in the newest new project? Especially since their contents will be different. I think I need to request more brand new branches. Then, the not-manager starts looking into things and realizes that some of the new branches point to projects from 4-5 years ago, and my manager just gets confused. Now I'm confused too. What's going on???? My successor then jumps back into my messages to let me know that her changes are not passing the tests even though they are not changing any sort of functionality at all, and I don't even know where to start with that. We end up having another call, but this time I'm all out of ideas. Looking at the logs, I just don't understand what she did to end up like that, and I end up just telling her to get help elsewhere. My mental capacity for dealing with all this is slowly shrinking, and that's when it happens: the not-manager messages about what those branches look like in the last project, and my suspicions are confirmed. The branches had the project number in the name. I am so mad. I mentioned the names of these branches to all three of these guys MULTIPLE times, and they even messaged me back about adding them with those numberless names too, and NOT ONE of them noticed that they were numberless. NOT ONE of them noticed that those branches should've had numbers. Even the other branches had them, so it's partially my fault for not realizing it too, but one of them should have seen it earlier. My manager literally gave me the list without numbers. AAAAAAGH!!! Next week, I'm going to have to get these numberless branches removed from this project and request some new ones with the number, but at least it's almost the end of the work day. I'm about to relax when my predecessor messages me "hey, wanna go to a furniture store's restaurant." Apparently, his wife was craving that specific restaurant, so I said sure. After around 20 very hurried minutes of getting extra-ready to go out and be preceived in public, he texted me to come outside. Oh... I got a new ringtone and wanted to test it out, but I guess a text is fine too... I hop into their car, and we're off. Now I'm perfectly content to remain silent while in the car, but my predecessor's wife is having none of it. She begins talking about the Music League that my predecessor and her are in with their own personal friends, and they're both complaining about how their friends keep picking the most popular songs, sometimes even repeats from the same albums or covers of other people's songs. She gives some exsamples of categories and asks what I would submit, and she seemed very pleased with my eclectic choices. I mean, she'd be the only one I suppose. Actually, maybe my predecessor would? As we go down the larger highway there's more talk of music, such as showing me her pick for the parody category (I would submit 'Karkalicious' of course, but she chose 'Parked Out by the Lake'- hilarious!!!), then introducing me to this weird 'Wordle' and music decomposition app. It plays you one aspect of a song, such as the baseline, then slowly adds more instrumental as you guess incorrectly. The first one she showed me had a baseline that I was so sure was used in 'Stand By Me,' and it was! The correct answer was Sean Kingston's 'Beautiful Girls' because of course it is. The next song was 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' and I would've gotten it with the third instrument if my predecessor hadn't gotten it with the second instrument. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to do a third one, but I was saved from having to make that choice by our arrival at the furniture store. And man, this thing was sized like the average American mall!! Like, I get that furniture is big, but do you really need this much size??? Then I remembered there's a whole restaurant in it, and it still made no sense. Why do you, as a furniture store, need a restaurant???? We go in and head straight to the restaurant, but the whole time I'm looking around and realizing that the insides ALSO look like the typical modern American mall. What??? Why??? And why is it so packed? Surely there can't be this many people shopping for furniture on a Friday evening??? We head straight up the escalator, with me looking around frantically trying to gather all that there is to see here into my eyes, as my predecessor and his wife just look straight ahead and at me in amusement respectively. As we walk towards the restaurant, we note that there's discount today, 50% off if you've got the family membership thing, which my predecessor's wife has. We walk in, and I'm immediately taken back to last May. This looks exactly like the cafeteria setup in Swiss university I visited. The same tray pickup and dropoff, the same rails, the same "pick out what you want from these glass shelves and we'll charge you later" strategy. We all got Swedish meatballs with a double serving of mashed potatoes, a cylinder made of veggies, some weird red jam, and a WHOLE ton of gravy. Since it was only about 6 dollars per plate, my predecessor decided to pay for me. Thanks guys!! Those two also got some fountain drink and regretted it, but I was just having a good time eating my meatballs with all the differnt flavour combinations: the jam plus meat, the the jam plus grazy plus meat, the veggie plus meat plus grazy, you get the gist. My predecessor and I mostly ended up talking about work, with a little contentious conversation about my successor and another about my work rival, and still more with the potential of me returning to the company. That's when my predecessor's wife chimed in and asked what my thoughts on it were now. And you know, what? I'm thinking I'm coming back. I'm trying to, at least. That would be helpful for getting to where I want to go eventually. After we finished eating and put our trays away... well, the real journey began. I still can't quite believe the sheer scale of the whole thing. There multiple bedroom displays and kitchen displays and bathroom displays and living room displays and just about any type of room display, pretty much like multiple mansions worth or something. Every little nook and cranny was filled with some other product to sell. Mason jars in cupboards, tea candles in drawers, desk accessories everywhere! And chairs. So many chairs and sofas. There were a couple chairs which my predecessor and his wife wanted me to try and I thought they were find chairs, but I guess they were bad chairs becuase they sagged too much or something? I don't know, I'm pretty easy to please I guess. We followed along the yellow pointed arrows to all the different districts, just looking at all this random stuff. In the desk area, I find a work desk with an adjustable height. It's got a little electrical panel that can be used to raise the thing nearly 2 meters off the ground, and it's been paired with a gaming chair that's actually quite short. I sit down in it and test the limits of the console. A family of three pass by and look at the desk, asking how high it can go. Saying nothing, I sit down in the chair, hold down the "raise" button, and once it's at max height I reach my hands up all the way to the top and pretend to type. The table part of the desk is literally over my head. Everyone laughs, and we move on. After adjusting one of those hand model things to display eye shapes with its fingers, we walk on past this section (it had cute plushies... I'm not one to care for plushies but... hmmm) and end up back near the restaurant. At this point I'm somewhat relieved. Ah, we're almost done then? After my predecessor's wife returns though, she breaks some bad news to me: the first floor is just as big. My horror was a bit overblown though, since the first floor is nothing like the second. The second floor was very showcasey, having all these different rooms and collectison of furniture arranged together in a nice pleasant way. On the first floor, things were more like an actual store, with stuff on tons of racks and shelves, hung up on walls, in display cases. It was still extremely big, but at least it seemed to make better use of its public storage space. After my predecessor's wife excitedly showed me how the wheels of the shopping cart can rotate 360 degrees (ok?), her immediately grabbing about a fistful's equivalent of small plastic bins, and me becoming entranced by the display knives for about 5-10 minutes, we eventually got to this giant area dedicated to picture frames. My predecessor's wife goes around grabbing a bunch seemingly at random, saying that she can just make the pictures fit if they don't, while I'm wandering around this little section wondering how there could possibly be a need for this many sizes of picture frames. I'm sure my predecessor agreed with me, though he didn't show that with childlike wonder, but instead, frustrated dad energy. All that to say, he just started wheeling the cart away into the bedding section. Seems like he's done with the store, and to be honest, so am I. We go through the bedding room (so many fluffy pillows..!), then some patio furniture one, then some weird one with a bunch of strange lighting fixtures that look like Suleiman the Magnificent's hat and mirrors too, but eventually my predecessor wins. We make our way to this warehouse-esque region of the store, with shelves going up at least a storey. It's such a marked difference from everything else in this building. Everything else was so polished, but this part of the store seemed... brutal. The checkout line was just up ahead but there was one other stop before we could join that line: the used/returned section thing? There were some couches and tables on display here, as well as this fancy handholdable mirror and a whole ton of boxes. This spot was enclosed in some scrappy plywood wall setup with no ceiling, and there was a little window in this plywood section to a whole catastrophe of destroyed wood and furniture and shopping carts. Felt like looking behind the curtain of a regime trying to hide something. We got in the line, and after a small little teaching moment from my predecessor's wife to me about the maximum largeness of a tote bag, we got to the self-checkout machine. I wasn't expecting it to be one of those, but I guess it makes enough sense. My predecessor was the one to do the scanning of the items, but he got a little too impatient with the scanning, accidentally scanning more than one of an item as he was trying to rush through the manual scanning. He literally just took the handheld scanner thing and spammed the trigger just enough to scan one more time than necessary. We had to call a staff member over to delete one instance, and then we could proceed. Right at the end of the store was a little European grocery store and hot food producer place, and my predecessor's wife wanted to grab some sauce and frozen goods from it. There was no cashier manning the grocery store portion though, and she waited at the abandoned till for a while, before deciding to just line up at the hot food producer. Me and my predecessor just kinda stood around in silence as we waited for her to come back, and as soon as we did we were out of here. This is the first and last time I will go into that type of furniture store I think. Well, we'll see. On our way out we passed by this twine dispenser (even outside the store they're still giving stuff to the purchaser???), and my predecessor grabbed some. I thought we were supposed to take some, and I struggled at first to cut it on the sharp hook thing. Once I received coaching from my predecessor and his wife, I got a nice long section of twine, and asked what I'm supposed to do with it. They looked at me somewhat confused, because they weren't sure why I grabbed it. It's apparently for bags or something like that? I didn't even buy anything so I guess I just have some twine now? I wrapped it around my fist as we walked through the parking lot and as we drove back to my place. This time, the car ride was a lot more empty in terms of conversation. I didn't really have much to say, and the scenery I was seeing outside was pretty fresh to me, so I was perfectly content to just stare out the window. I mean, sure there was a little bit of conversation about how my predecessor's wife wants me to go to karaoke again (sure, but we'll see if it happens), and also just more asking about plans and such for the future as well as my general feelings towards my new self-confidence. When they dropped me off at my place, the sun had already set, but there was yet sitll a lot more work left to do. After doing some more work on bloghan, and even more work on it, I began to get distracted at around 3 hours past midnight with looking for gifts for my coworkers who were about to leave, especially my Japanese coworker, going in just two weeks. I spent quite a lot of time on this, time that I probably should've spent on this blog, but that's alright because I thought it was worth it for him. I looked for pins and enamels and stickers of Linux stuff for him (he likes Linux), but everything I saw was very very expensive after shipping or wouldn't come in before he left for Japan. I stayed up for another 30 minutes doing this research, and after I realized how late it had gotten I went to bed.
There's not really much I have to say about Saturday, as it was a day entirely dedicated to bloghan, quite a productive one actually. Yes, yes, there were the Distractions: the games, the videos, the endless scrolling, Music Leage submissions, the wiki dives, all that, yes yes. But I did get quite a big chunk on that day done. Of course, it was all focused on one specific day, the day of the con that was two weeks back, but I truly didn't realize how much trauma I had accumulated from that day. Enough to make me stay inside the whole day and not interact with other the whole day. Sunday was quite a different story though. I knew that I wanted to get a haricut this day, and that I also wanted to pick up the special pack of chicken at my local grocery store that they refuse to list on the delivery websites. Since my regular haircut place and that grocery store were pretty close by, I thought that it would make sense if I did both around the same time. I had already made sure that I would get a partial grocery delivery earlier in the day (including butterscotch ice cream! exciting!!!), and once I collected that (going outside for the first time that day showed it was HOT and WET out... yuck), I got all dressed and everything and headed off for my haircut. In the time it took for me to get ready it had gotten slightly cloudy which was a lot nicer to walk in. Right before I left I decided to apply some sunscreen on my face, but I got a little bit in one eye as I was doing the eyelids. I walked out going towards the store, but about a third of the way there I had to stop. That little bit of sunscreen that had gotten in my eye was REALLY bothering me. I was constantly leaking tears out of that eye, and it just kept getting worse. I debated if I should just tough it out and continue to wipe my eye on my sweater's sleeve, but eventually I gave in and started walking back. I was glad I did, because it began to worsen to the point where I couldn't open my eye without a great deal of pain. Once I got home I rushed towards the sink and washed it all off with a copious amount of body wash, followed up with just cold water. I had to grip the sides of the sink and breath for a good while once I was done, then dry off and mentally prepare to go outside once more. I put on my sunscreen mroe carefully the second time around, and this time I had no issue. I'm very glad that no one in the neighbourhood observed me going, leaving, then going again. There was a guy who was washing his car, but call me Solid Snake the way I waited for his back to be turned before I proceeded past him, even though he could definitely hear the squeak of my shoes. At the haircut place there seemed to be a long line and a toddler walking around randomly grabbing things and disturbing the hairdressers, but a lot of the line turned out to be people waiting for family members to finish up or waiting for a specific hairdresser, so I got to get my haircut way faster than expected. There was also this random dog in the establishment that would occasionally come up to my chair and sniff around me and my backpack, always making me freeze up (no different than my regular haircut behaviour I guess), but once my haircut was done (I didn't like the front part but that's easy to cover up I guess), there were no problems with this dog. I don't know where it ended up, but I like to think the people working this store realized I didn't like the dog being around and got it in a back room or something, or that I just didn't know where it went and chose to live in obliviousness. I paid in cash nad made the mistake of asking for a receipt. They looked at me confused and I just hightailed it out of there, hearing all the employees laugh about it behind my back. Well, I'm not getting another haircut while I'm over here anyways, so I guess it's alright... I next went to the grocery store to pick up that great deal on chicken thighs, but decided to also grab a small bottle of shampoo while I was there, just to make sure I had something for this last month and a half. I'm a bit mad about how the smallest bottle were the most expensive, but I guess it was worth it to try and not throw out anything on my last day here. It felt strange only approaching the self-checkout with just two items, one food and one not, but whatever. Even so, the bag felt heavy, and I laughed out loud as I remembered why I get these delivered. Ah, but it's worth it for this deal on the chicken though. I am going to make a giant butter chicken serving tonight. Once I got back to my place, I dove back into writing more bloghan and finishing yet one more week's worth as another week passed me by, resulting in me STILL being two weeks behind. I think I need to take an extra sick day somewhere down the line to truly catch up, but when, oh when will I be able to take it? Well, that's not really something I want to worry over now. I make a giant load of butter chicken in the late late evening, deciding to save some of my leftover chicken for a biryani I will surely get around to making in the coming weeks (it's all coming to a not-so-wonderful rush now isn't it), and had a small portion of it with the basmati rice I bought that day. I really love basmati rice a whole lot, and it paired well with my butter chicken, even if it had a way higher sauce to chicken ratio than I would've preferred. Still though, I don't think my cooking is terrible or bad. I think it's actually quite alright, for someone mostly using pre-packaged sauces and spices. I don't really need to make my own stuff from scratch I guess, and I can always throw in my own spices that I got from my home city when I feel like making things a little better. After making sure the most recent bloghan page that got finished had its links live and all that, it was time for me to get to bed... after a whole lot of "earned" distraction time that is. I never learn. But I will. Eventually. We'll see.
Future plans
Here's the results of last week's plans:
- Bloghan catchup: only did one week's worth... man...
- Door: no progress
- Calls with Blue-haired and Grey-haired: I had no idea just how many there would be. Man...
I really don't have much I plan on doing this week either. But this next week is the week where I think I can finally do two bloghans in one week, or at least really close to it. We'll just have to see though... As for things that aren't boring like that, I'm not sure. If time permits, maybe I'll go see that 'Fantastic Four' movie? And if time REALLY permits, I'll cook biryani on Sunday again. But we'll just have to see.
Song of the week
'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' (https://youtu.be/neG5xgZbHOg) by U2 is the song of the week. Now that things at work are starting to heat up once again, and also because I'm realizing a lote more how I fit in the lives of others, and just how much better I feel about all of it, all of life- well, I still can't help but feel there's more to do. I still haven't done it all, and I'm just in a perpetual state of being behind that can't be sustained, both in personal work and actual work work. There's so much to chase, and I haven't really been doing that? But I'm on it now. I'm on it now.
Until next time
Well, that sure was a week. At least it ended in a fun way. So there's that, right? Right? Agh, whatever, see you next week!
- bubbler