August 24, 2025 - bloghan 61
The penultimate. Perhaps, where the climax would go. Well, I guess this week sort of was a climax for me. Not always necessarily in the pleasing direction, but there were events. Lots of exciting things, lots of late nights, lots of hard work, lots of hardly working. It was tough, but I've gotta say: I loved it! Here's why, here's this second last week:
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: Linux distros I would use and that I've heard of, that happen to be on this website. Here's the tier list:
Ordered tiers, unordered wthin tiers. Honestly, there's really not much I feel like saying here (but Bazzite would be in A or S tier). I don't really want a Linux distro that I have to configure tons and tons of like all thsoe Arch and Arch-like ones, and a lot of the variations on Ubuntu that I could use just feel a bit superfluous. Like, why don't I just use a distro that uses the desktop environment it was designed for/with? Instead of just using a distro but with a reinterpreted env? A lot of the ones in the middle of the pack have that issue, or are just filled with bloat, or just don't really appeal to me for one thing or another. For example, Puppy Linux is based on a whole bunch of distros all at once? Sounds messy, I'd avoid. But yeah, that's kind of how I decide. That, and experience with a couple: Ubuntu, Mint, Raspios, BunsenLabs, Zorin. That's about all.
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
Monday morning was a rough one. I woke up late, set another alarm and went back to sleep, then slept through that alarm. I end up having to rush out of my place to try and get to work on time, to catch the bus that would get me to work only a half hour late, passing by that older guy who keeps visiting my landlord. Actually, I think he lives with her now? That's not important. I get to the stop, and wait. Wait some more. Where is this bus? I check my phone app, and it tells me the next one is in like 45 minutes. Well, it usually says that right before the bus comes because it can't always know when the last one showed up but.. 10 minutes late,r no bus. I decide to use the stop number on the sign to text the schedule line, just in case the app is off, but it says the stop does not exist. Huh? That's funny... it literally is right here, and I'm not typing the number in wrong. I decide to walk on back home, but something rubs me the wrong way about that sign, so I call the transit support folks and let them know that for some reason, their text line doesn't recognize that stop. The answerer looks up the stop, and tells me that it doesn't exist. What?? I describe the location to her as I'm walking back in (had to tell that friend of my landlord that I missed the bus... unfortunate), and she informs me of the actual stop number, which is one digit off from what I read out. I tell her, "no, I saw it had this number," but she tells me that I proabybl just misread it since the digits could be easily misinterpreted for the other. Now I am pretty tired form the constant late nights I've been pulling recently, so I must've read the sign wrong, I guess. I apologize for taking up her time and hang up, waiting for the next pair of buses. The next one will get me there so I arrive an hour later than I usually do... fine. I at least did a little bit of work while I Was at home waiting out an appropriate time for this bus, and when it comes, I walk on out to get to this other stop. Coincedentally, travelilng to this new stop will take me past the stop I waited at this morning, and WHAT DO YOU KNOW?? IT'S PRINTED WRONG ON THE SIGN!!! There IS a digit mix up!! I actually got gaslit... what a cruel world. I get on the new bus, fuming, then on the connection bus, fuming less, until I get off and start walking to the office, pretty calm. I re-call the line, get a different agent, and eventually get a support ticket opened up for this just as I walk up to the place. Once at work, I have to get things figured out with the situationship taking my chair once again, and I don't get much of a chance to do some work before I get an email from my manager. His email essentially tells me that there's a mismatch between a file in teh old project and the new project, one that really should've been there as it was quite a critical difference. He ends the email with "now I'm wondering what else you forgot to change" (not his exact words, but that was the tone). I'm pretty livid about this actually, and I immediately prepare to fire back until I remember that I should probably not try to wreck my professional relationships when he's the one who helps decide if I get to come back to this company or not. I check through the history of hte new project to find the spot where I copied over this change, and emailed him those results. He's right in that the most recent version of the new project does not feature this stuff at all, but back when I first did it, it was there; someone must've removed it between then. As I wait for him to respond, and still feeling pretty upset with the transit gaslighting and the incompetence accusation I just received, I can't really focus on my work. I end up just writing a ton of the clues for my final cryptic instead, and eventually I see that my manager asks some senior full-time about why he removed that change. Apparently, it was set to eventually be removed in this new project, and he acted on it very recently. That whole conversation gets spun off into its whole other thing that I'm not really relevant to, and I continue my crossword clue wriitng well into lunch, which I eat at my desk. But as I'm doing it, I realize something. The new project... it's not showing failure right now! I can finally, FINALLY, bring in those files from the old project to the new ones, those ones that belong to my work rival's team. I've been wanting to do this for a month, but I just needed a time when things were passing and all a-okay with the new project so that I wouldnn't receive more false accusations of breaking stuff. I try and submit... and I'm blocked. Turns out, they restricted who can submit files to a list of like 5 people. I guess that's how they were finalyl able to control things so that they could get it all passing. I ask a manager on that list (not mine, someone elses's) if I can be added to that list for now so I can do this, and he lets me in after making sure I did all the tests I need to do on my end. FINALLY! He does tell my managaer that I'm planning on doing this though, and I have to explain all that to him, but all-in-all I'm so excited to get this in! And then... the progress bar on my screen for the submission just... stops. For about half an hour. I was doing other stuff so I didn't notice until that other manager asks how the submission went. I tell him that it just looks like it's stuck, and this unleashes a whole can of worms. Apparently, I'm supposed to make sure I have the most recent copies of the files before I try to submit, as being even one file change behind can just sometimes randomly break our submission procedures. This other managers coordinates to others on his team (one is Swarm! love that guy) to help me get things unstuck, but no matter what solution they try, it stays stuck, or in a state where I can force things in. I mean, it would be ok to force things in, but that's when my manager reads my message about what files I'm changing, and asks me to remove a couple of them and double check the others with people like the newest new guy and some full-times on my team. They tell me to run some stuff to test it, but then my manager asks me how long this will all take. Apparently, my submission being stuck is blocking other people from submitting, and now they're all complaining to him about it. I tell him we could wait an hour for the additional tests he wanted to run, or that I could submit it now; he chooses the latter. It was quite a long path with a ton of rockiness at the end, but finally, I'm done with the reimporting from the old project into the new. And I'll be gone by the time they want it in the newest new project. Finally. From here, my work was smaller: what I did end up doing is asking full-times on my team more about what my manager asked me, getting distracted in the corner by the others constantly visiting, seeing that I've guy from a year ago return (he's the one who got his basement flooded so we couldn't go to lunch... I'm so excited to see him again!! welcome back) and writing lots of clues for the final cryptic. There was also a meeting with my work rival's team that got cancelled, but me, my work rival, my work rival's successor, and my predecessor decided to go to the room anyways, just for laughs. My work rival and his successor basically just talked to us about the temp drama surrounding the new generation of temps, as the girls in the pair wanted the nice seats in the corner with the windows, and they were techincally assigned to it. However, my work rival's successor wanted to be assigned to one of those seats because it would be next to my own successor, and they could genuinely work together on a lot of stuff. While the pair will also be working on the same stuff, they spend the majority of their workday not at their desk?? I don't get why they're so excited about a desk that they're not going to be sitting at for the majority of their time here. According to my work rival's successor, they were also being very mean and judgy about the issue to him, asking things like "oh, why do YOU deserve that desk" as if it was clear why they did? I mean, I have no way of verifying if what I was being told here is true, but... I don't really know if I care that much? My predecessor left this "meeting" a bit early, and eventually I followed suit. The pair actually did visit in the corner at one point too, just to scout out their assigned desks, and my work rival was throwing shade at them the whole time about how they don't really seem to want, need, or deserve these desks. One of the pair told him "you can just say you don't like us." I am actually suddenly very glad I am leaving this position soon. I don't like where this is going, and I'm tired of playing peacekeeper. Closer to the end of the day, I visited the cell to see my successor all alone in there, and her boyfriend was there too. We had a kinda short conversation about the terrible things that happened to me and the terrible things that happened to her this day (hers were all related to the antagonizing manager), and I also got her to try out my little index thingy (she loved it!), but soon after I left the office. I worked on my cryptic even on the bus, and it and the next Jeopardy board were all I worked on once I got home. Honestly, today felt bad, but I don't really want to complain too much about it becuase of my success in getting that reimport struck from my task list. Finally finally finally.
I'm pretty sure the theme of this week (not theme... recurring event? yeah, recurring event is better) is going to be waking up late and going to the office a half hour later than usual. At least today, I was in control of that: I chose to wake up a half hour later to get a half hour of sleep back. Today was a much greyer day than yesterday's really sunny one, but it wasn't grey to the point of rain. Honestly, it was quite nice to walk that usual distance to the office without generating as much sweat as I would on a sunny day. I started out with working on the crossword, but when I got listless I would get up and walk around, talking to some of the temps I wouldn't be seeing very soon. Also, inviting some of them to Jeopardy if they weren't in the group chat. When I got listless of that listlessness, I wandered back to my desk and looked at my sticky note of remaining tasks to see what I could do. Hmmm... there was this little thing I could do with one of my Absconder works. That thing where my work rival's manager wanted me to make that Absconder thing run every week or so. I did something similar for another Absconder work of mine (that one runs every night), so I set upon doing that. It actually turned out to be way simpler than that "something similar" so it took less than an hour to complete and get working. Why didn't I do this earlier?? I let my work rival's manger know about it and what it did, but I think I just overwhelmed her with info she didn't need to know. What I really needed from her was the name of the person who would be managing this, who would be running this thing overnight. I end up asking someone else on that team, and they say it's probably best if my work rival's successor is the one who takes it on. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Once I finish with that little visit, I put my nose back onto the grindstone with this cryptic and writing its clues, which is coming along much nicer than I thougt it would. Taking a long break from cryptics must've been the secret sauce or something, because I was making good clues and a pretty quick rate. Not churning them out, but at a much more practiced one than before. I still got it! I had a meeting about 2 hours after noon or so that was with HR and a bunch of other temps leaving next week, just to brief us on what we needed to do to prepare before we left. I didn't really pay attention to it, staying focused on my crossword writing. If there was something important, another temp on this floor would let me know if I asked. After the meeting, I did decide to mix in a little work with this clue-writing, as I was actually writing a lot more clues than I was expecting, reaching pretty close to my goal for the day. I did a little bit of fixing of that Absconder work that I would be getting my work rival's successor to do nightly, because there were some slight changes to the new project as compared to the old one (for example, two parts of the project that this Absconder thing refrences are now functionally identical, so I have to feed in their data to Absconder multiple times, hoping that wouldn't break anything I'd written previously where that never happened), and I also did a single file's worth of reversions from the reimport stuff. So I guess NOW I'm done with it. I better be. I had another short meeting with my successor at her desk, describing how my day was slightly better today because no one bothered me directly, and I heard her story about the slightly less than good day she had. I actually intended on only going to her desk to tell her about the Absconder work I made changes to, since she will be taking that maintenance work over from me once I'm gone, but that's sort of what our conversation became. At least the information did get lodged in her notebook, so just in case this happpens again or I mess it up this time, she knows what the issue is and can start working on a fix. We also organized to have a meeting tomorrow (just to talk more handover stuff), and with that, I had decided I had done enough work today, and wrote crossword clues until it was time to leave. Because it was pretty close to rainy, a lot of people had left earlier, but not me and my predecessor. We had made plans earlier to go to this mall so I can get some shoes. My work rival was going to go with us, but at the farewell lunch he had today with his team, he got into the pizza again and ended up with an upset stomach (he's gotta stop doing this kinda thing...). The only day that works this week to get new shoes is today, so we do have to go without him. Just me and my predecessor in the car, just talking, sharing stories, talking about similar companies to ours as we drove past them, until we got to it: this giant Chinese mall. We walked in, and I realized I had seen this before. In my home city, there's a mall formatted just like this one, with little glass cubes containing their own store, all laid out in a grid pattern just like a standard Chinese mall. OK, this was sort of broken by the upper floor looking just like your standard American mall and the bottom floor being the entrance to a parking lot with a Japanese dollar store kinda attached to it, but for now we're on the ground floor. We explore around this mall quite a lot; visiting a general goods store and finding no shoes I liked, an electronics store with a bunch of stuff but nothing I would actually want, a candy and sweets store that looked interesting but not what we were here for, a giant food court that you had to cross a ceremonious bridge for, and this little arcade-like place with tons of crane games. None of this was helpful in finding me a pair of shoes that weren't falling apart though, so we explored around the highways and avenues of the lower floors, not finding anything. This was very cool mall though, don't get me wrong. There was so much to look at, and me and my predecessor were talking quite a bit about whatever came to mind. It just feels so natural, talking with him. I've already said this in bloghans before, but I really do love talking with him. I'm so glad we became more than just coworkers, but genuine friends. At least, I hope he sees me that way too. What we decided on was to go to another store, one dedicated to clothing, to get these shoes. We also thought to go back up to the food court to grab some dinner there, but the restaurant we were interested in was sold out for the day, so we just left. A fun place for sure... would've liked to go with other people too, but it was just as good with just my predecessor. In the car we agree on the restaurant we'll go to after our trip to this clothing store, passing the time with talk of yearlong projects that I might be doing next year. At the store (apparently my predecessor absolutely loves this place), we navigate to the very limited selection of shoes for men and start looking. There's no all black shoes here, but the shoes here seem to mostly be very very gaudy and loud. I mean, all white with gold highlights? Really? There is one shoe that catches my eye pretty quickly though: it's navy colour with tan sections, and a white sole. I don't really like the white soul, but I do quite like how they look. I first grab a pair that's the same size as my current shoes, but they squeak just like them. This will not do. I go up a half size, and while they don't squeak, there's something slightly less annoying that I notice: one of my feet is smaller than the other, and with this shoe I REALLY feel the difference. It's a perfect fit on my right and just a bit too big and loose on the left. But... I had better get new shoes and fast, and I did like their design. I'll take them! My predecessor also decided to do some shoe shopping while he waited for me to pick, and he actually ended up getting the exact same shoe as me excpet bigger and in green. We checked out soon after, and then pretty quickly we were on our way to the restaurant. On the way, we talked about the current temps present in the office, about who was leaving soon and who would be staying. I'm sure the office won't be as lively without my work rival (to stir up pointless drama) and me (to provide fun puzzles and games!) around, but there are the new temps too! I'm sure things won't be all that bad. I asked him about what he thought about the new generation, and he didn't have as high of an opinion on most of them except the new compatriot. He went on to list some of their eccentricities, and when I asked him which was the most eccentric he answered with my successor's name. When I asked him who the most eccentric of my generation of temps was, he faked being indecisive for a bit before turning around and telling me "it's definitely you by a long shot." Gee thanks, predecessor. At the restaurant we don't spend all that much time (I don't forget the sour cream this time though! Ha!), as we're in and out thanks to the impressive speed of the employees. It feels like barely any time passes by when we're talking to each other, because it felt like right after that I was back at my place. Well, back to work I guess. Once I got inside, I started out in full Jeopardy clue writing mode, writing a whole category before turning my mind to something else. Today, I really appreciated my predecessor for how he helped me out and how he was showing me all these places, something he's been doing ever since I got here! I thought of getting him a gift, one of those Jeopardy calendars, where you flip the page to the next at the start of each day, and a new Jeopardy question is available for you to answer. I manipulated my compsci friend into buying it for me (don't worry, I'll eventually pay him back), sending it with my name on the order to a post office nearby my place. I just know he's going to love it. Once that was taken care of, I stayed up until 5 hours after midnight alternating between crossword work and Jeopardy work - no bloghan! It's alright, I'll get that all figured out soon enough.
I woke up a little easier on Wednesday, which I had designated as my work from home day this week under the guise of an appointment. While I did have an appointment to make this day, it wasn't until well after my work shift. Well, that and the Jeopardy testing that would take place after, but that was also a good amount time after work. Anyways, that's not important. Once I woke up, I dragged my laptop into bed and worked from bed for a bit. By that, I mean that for the next hour or so, I put my finger on the trackpad and slept in bursts of about 10 minutes or so, just to keep my monitor awake and make it seem like I was online. I know that's wage theft or whatever, but consider the fact that I've gone to bed 5 hours past midnight for four days in a row now. I think I need to do this in order to make good/effective things with this company, this team! When I was finally ready to be productive again, I still worked a little more in bed, mostly interacting with my work rival. He was complaining about a typo I made while updating the Absconder version for our Absconder tools, and that updating it in the first place was breaking his tool. So, not only the typo, but the version update itself broke things too? That sounded strange to me, as Absconder should be mostly backwards compatible with stuff made in old versions of itself. He threatened to revert it all but I told him that it would mess with my stuff (I didn't really know if it was true, but I need to stop this brutish reaction). Then I realized: if he's saying it's breaking his tool, then that means that Absconder now works in the new project! Exciting news, it means I can start testing all my things out in the new project! My work rival continued to complain about why I wanted to update (it's good to be up to date, plus this version of Absconder is way faster than the last), and eventually I convinced him to try and get it to work with the updated version. I would also try my own stuff in the new version, and that's when I finally got up and moved to my desk table. Over the next hours, I would primarily work on finishing off the 15x15 cryptic (all finished!) and the Jeopardy board themed around my interests, but I would fiill in the lulls between with a bit of work or my breakfast after noon. That bit of work really only involved running my Absconder stuff (the thing that my work rival partly relied on for his tool) to see where errors were. It turns out that things were indeed breaking in the tool, but none of the breaking actually happened because of the version update changing something. Instead, and I confirmed this with some full-times, it was failing because it was looking for a part of our project that had been completely removed in this project. It was present in the last project, but no longer. Once I got rid of every mention of that part, everything worked fine! I reported both of these facts to my work rival, and he finally conceded, asking me to submit the fix to the typo that sparked this all. Another work smattering was me reporting a bit of a critical project error that this Absconder tool could find now that it wasn't getting stuck looking for one part of the project was no longer there, and starting to fill out the exit survey form. The last page of that form asked me to meet with my manager and discuss if he wanted me to come back. When I asked my manager for a meeting sometime next week to do this, he left me on seen. Can't say I'm surprised... Well, I moved on to another task and finally got that wrapper for the Absconder tool I just fixed working and submitted. I'll get my work rival's successor to put that on his nightly task runner thing, and that one should be all done! I guess now that Absconder is working in the new project, I can maybe try and make that tool the antagonizing manager wanted? Ah, but I still have those more important changes to make to parts of the project directly, and I haven't even had a chance to talk to my mentor about those like I said I would. The project has also advanced so much since I started those... yikes. I've gotta do that this week. Now that the final Jeopardy board and the final cryptic are done though, well, I can definitely get re-started with those. But it's now the end of my workshift, and all I've had since breakfast is an ice cream sandwich. I mentally check out of my work mode and start thinking about what's later today, as I type up a little bloghan and do a little shaving. First on the agenda is the Jeopardy testing. I had called Grey-haired and messaged Blue-haired to be sure, but we were going to do it a day earlier and an hour earlier to accommodate Grey-haired's surprise work shift tomorrow and my yearlong project meeeting today. This game session was fine, I suppose. They were a bit sad that this was supposed to be the last Jeopardy I would ever make, and Blue-haired was absolutely pissed at the 'Love Live!' reference I snuck in, but overall it was a fairly balance board on the harder side of things. Grey-haired really liked this board because there was a ton of random things that happened to overlap with her weird knowldge base, and Blue-haired was very disappointed that there was no question about 9/11 in a certain category. Also, he went all in on every daily double that he got, and failed at each one. Just... why??? At least he wasn't too surprised about it. We did a very extensive review at the end of the game, and I thanked them for sticking with me for testing all these boards. Blue-haired was a bit beside himself about losing very badly in Jeopardy once again, yet strangley fought for me to do a "season 2" of sorts with it once I got back to my home city. Well... sure, why not? We'll see how it goes. We ended the call, and not even 20 minutes later, I was in another. Second on the agenda: that yearlong project meeting. This was with some of my other close friends in my home city, the ones tha I do a lot of school-related and electrical-design-related stuff with. Here are their nicknames: Riko, the one who I think I'm closest with and has so much experience in everything circuits; Hanamaru, a guy from abroad who's extremely reliable, even if it takes him a bit more time to "get" concepts whenever we're all together; Mari, a rich guy who's slightly older than all of us and goes to bed extremely early, but also really good at writing firmware; You, one of the guys who came with me to that e-sports event and extremely flexible in any role; and finally, Yoshiko, a guy who literalyl has two sides to him (one's a gamer, one's a very locked-in good student), but is an extremely good project manager. We were to meet online with a potential sponsor for this upcoming yearlong project, but we joined in first with all our cameras on. I hadn't seen all these guys in FOREVER, and there's so much for us to talk about. Also, everyone looks slightly different from when I last saw them, most strikingly Riko, now rocking bangs over one eye. But Riko's the last to join, and right after, our sponsor joins the call. We all immediately straighten up our posture and go quiet, and for a moment the sponsor doesn't say anything and has his camera off. Then, we hear some shuffling and he turns his camera on. He looks to be at home, not bothering with blurring the background I guess, and he's quite young looking. Last week I looked him up, and he did not look like that at all! This meeting was all fine I suppose. Yoshiko opened up by asking for a general description of the project, and none of us were really expecting him to give such a short one that didn't really cover all that much new information. Next was our question period, which we had been preparing for for about 3 days or so. I had a couple questions, but I didn't really answer them after I feel like I embarrassed myself with my first two. Looking back though, they weren't bad questions. The sponsor's reaction was literally "I hadn't thought of that uhhhh..." Well, I guess it's nice that this project is going to be relatively open and free? THe others asked questions related to their specialty, and it made me think about how I really want to end up doing embedded electronics work one day. But listening to what they were asking, really in-depth questions about the stuff? I have quite a lot to learn, and I don't think I'm going to just learn it from a class or a website. After our question period ended (which got extended because my team members were confused why I wasn't asking all my questions), the sponsor began to show us all some of the design files, and they were actually very simple! Lots of room for us to innovate if we so choose, but also a little concerningly empty given that this is supposed to be for powering devices? Like, I feel like there should be more stuff involved here for safety reasons? Well, I'm sure Riko and You will have something to say about that later. At the very end of the meeitng we prompted the sponsor to ask us questions, and he only had two: first was asking what kinds of things were needed from the people managing this whole yearlong project course thing, and now it was our turn to be caught off guard by a question. That's really only relevant if we're the chosen team? Yoshiko then responded, starting his sentence with "I'm assuming you're choosing our team then, so-" and the sponsor interrupts "yes, I am going with your team." We couldn't all celebrate then and there because the sponsor was on call, but I could see the smiles, the mouthed "yeses" that every one of us took on at that moment. We don't have to stress about finding a project anymore! We got one!! Now I don't have to cold call people anymore!! And it's going to be such a chill project too! The sponsor proceeded to explain to us about what he envisioned for the project: essentially, it's not super challenging unless we want it to be. We will be able to learn what we want to learn, with the direct supervision of someone with years and years of embedded electronics experience. Freedom to choose and implement what we want (with approval), the chance to do some open-source work! It's just what I wanted, and there was also quite a lot that I didn't know what I wanted until we were told about it! After that little bit of tangents, Yoshiko told him about the required documents, now with a clear smile on his face given that we confirmed we had a project. Next, he wanted to know how we were going to split the duties, so that at marking he can give people what they deserve in case one of us was a slacker; I don't think that'll be a worry for this group since we've all worked together before, but it was nice to hear him say that he's not here to fail us and be really tough on us. Once all had been asked and answered, the sponsor left the call. What proceeded was our group talking amongst eachother about getting the project and what we REALLY thought of the project, but aside from our safety concerns with the power side of the device, we're all super excited to be working on it. We did a lot more casual catching up now, with Riko sharing stories and spoils from his position, Yoshiko ranting about some of his technical courses, and the rest of us commenting on things about our own jobs and courses. People began to drop off, and while I wanted to talk to them for HOURS more to catch up on every little bit of drama and stories, it was getting late for all of us. We ended the call, and I couldn't help but smile for a good few minutes after. Man, I'm now excited to go back! Can't wait to see them all. But before I can, there's things I need to take care of. Now we can move to the third agenda item of the night some macro cleaning that could be described as hiding evidence. The shoes with giant holes, the unused depilatory, those were getting trashed. A pair of jeans that got a little small, my very telling teeny-tiny short shorts, other clothes, those went in a reusable grocery bag, which I snuck out of my apartment with on my way to a clothes donation box. Night had fallen by now, and the crickets were out in full force. I dressed in all black, or as much as I could, and headed out. This also served as a nice little test drive for my new shoes, and they're serviceable. While my right shoe felt bigger than my left (because my right foot is smaller than the left!), I do like how these shoes look. I walk somewhat quietly (especially as I pass by a skunk in the park I took a shortcut through: I'm not even entertaining that inconvenience), and after passing a father and son duo on the sidewalk (at this hour???), I make it to the clothing donation bin. It's actually surprisingly jam-packed, but I manage to shove mine into some empty space in the corner. Mission complete: I now head back to my place, passing by the father and son duo from the other direction (hopefully I didn't scare them too badly), then deciding to take a different shortcut through a different park on the way back. This shortcut is nearly pitch black and in the cover of a whole bunch of trees, so I really get to soak in the dark hours atmosphere. Everything seems more alive at night, and seems even more dangerous because of it. The fear of "what goes bump" - that's real for sure. There's something exhilarating about that fear though, especially knowing there's very little here that could hurt me. For a moment, it felt like things didn't matter at all. Just point A to point B, trying to be silent and not attract attention from some invisible threat. Well, ok, as I got back to the first park and the first shortcut, the threat of the skunk was quite visible, but I think you get what I mean. Maybe. Once I cleared the low visibility areas of my walk, now back in my neighbourhood and its streelights, I whistled 'Snake Eater' and returned successfully. I was pretty hungry now though, so after my dinner (the last, the last of the biryani) and some gaming, I decided to write this very bloghan entry for this very Wednesay, and go to bed right after. A very productive day, if you ask me!
Thursday continued the trend of making the late bus. Today though was exceptionally worse. That's because I ended up sleeping through my morning alarm, because of how many nights I had stayed up awake as late as I had. I woke up more than an hour after I usually left! I immediately logged in to my laptop to seem online, and first opportunity I got, I left for a bus. Once I got to the office I was a lot less stressed about it, but the situationship of my work rival was sitting in my chair, and she had readjusted my monitors to her liking. Why would you do that? That's someone else's setup! Bah, whatever. I'm done in a week anyways. I guess it makes sense why they thought I wasn't coming in today, because when I got here it was past lunch time, but... ok, ok, itme to cast that out of my mind. I scheduled a quick meet up with my mentor to just discuss things related to the project change that would actually change how something in it works, then sat at my desk and worked on littl ethings surrounding my remaining tasks, but not too overly focused on them. I'd get up from that desk an hour later to look for others to chat with since I wasn't all that busy, but they were all still at lunch I guess. Well, this is as good a time as any to put up the final cryptic on the whiteboard in the crossword cubicle. They had prepared the grid for me, so all I had to do was put the crossword link, the black boxes, and the numbers. Nice! Honestly, I was really looking forward to everyone going ahead and solving the thing just like we used to, but they were still not back yet so I had no choice but to return to my desk. I also shared the crossword with the people who preferred to do it on their own (work rival, existentialist, predecessor), and did a bit more work until it came time for the regular Thursday meeting on that one project I'm not important to anymore. Except... well, I scheduled my meeting with my mentor for that day, so I didn't have to go! Our meeting only lasted like 15 minutes too, as he just recounted some additional steps that I needed to do just to make sure everyone's stuff all worked well together as I made this change. It would be a lot of work and a lot of just running stuff and hoping it worked, but I'm not trying to cause the project to fail in my last few days here. A good impression is the best one I can leave, no matter what time. Throughout the rest of the work day, I would just struggle through figuring out the order I needed to run things in, as well as figuring out what data I needed to insert in some extra files that my mentor told me to fill out. It was good that I was told to do those though, because it informed me of a small assumption that I made with one change that was incorrect. I thought I could condense 4 parts of the one chunk of the project down to 1 as it connected to the larger part outside it, but those docs showed that the minumum condensation I could actually do there was from 4 to 2. Close call. As I started up runs of stuff, I would walk to the crossword cubicle to see if they had started the cryptic, but they just... didn't. I guess with the compatriot gone, one of the people who pushed for the group to do it together, people weren't as interested in solving it together like they used to. My co-DM wanted to do it alone, and because my work rival had now become slightly tired/jaded with the other temps of our generation, he also wanted to do it outside of that bigger group context. I guess all of us are sort of tired of some people more than others, but I don't really feel the same. And to be honest, that's just the vibe I was reading from the group. I'm not really the strongest at sensing social group undercurrents, but it kinda made me sad. Guess I learned that just because a group of people is constantly around each other for a long time, doesn't mean they'll be good friends by the end of it. Friends, yes, but not necessarily good friends with everyone. That's alright though. I've made my peace with not needing people to like me, so I don't need all people to REALLY like me. But... that would be quite nice, frankly. After my afternoon tea run with Steve, I decided to go talk to my successor for a bit. She was with her boyfriend once again, but still all alone in the cell here. We talked for a good bit as I told her about what had happened with my sleeping in this morning using the most concerning vocabulary I could, and her boyfriend joined in to comment. He then proceeded to practice his rubber band sharpshooting as we all talked about the things that were stressing us out, and for her it was still the antagonizing manager. Somehow, he had gotten worse: yesterday, he had asked her to email him an update on all that she did that day at the end of every single one of her shifts, and she didn't do it yesterday because she assumed the direct message she sent before that request would be enough. I feel so bad for her. I got lucky with my avoidance of the antagonizing manager early on, as he didn't really interact with me until much later in my time here. After me and her boyfriend gave her some advice (we settled on "be so detailed and say it took you an hour to write the email so he asks you to not do it anymore"), she thankfully got a little cheered up. Then, there was a shift in the conversation to younger siblings and the scars we got from ritual cmobat with them. Actually, my successor's sister was visiting the office today due to a volunteering event that the company was having. My successor and her boyfirend described this sister to me in the weirdest terms possible, with things like "witch nails" and "witch makeup" and "asks you questions and willfully ignores your response." Wait that last one sounds like me... to some, I'm sure. I'm sure. Pretty soon after I left the cell to go back to my desk, I ended up talking to my predecessor in his cubicle, and my successor and her sister popped by. Her sister seemed... completely normal? I guess she really only said hi to me, so... yeah, no clue. I did a couple more check ins on the crossword cubicle and talked to my co-DM about the theme I hid in the diagnol, before going back to my desk to finally resume work on that project change. I had finally figured out the order of what I needed to run, so once they were done I kicked off some tests and headed out. As I walked out in the sunshine, my successor and her sister spotted me. Looks like they were about to leave too, so they walked with me to my bus stop. My successor mostly talked about the whole thing with the antagonizing manager, asking if it was normal. If I had experienced it, if it was going to be like this for the rest of her time here. I had no answers for her. I didn't lie to her though. I had no experience with working with this manager to the extent she has, and he didn't treat me nearly as much like this. I had to break the bad news: unless there was something to prompt a change, this would be her experience for her entire time here. She was a bit saddened by that, but I don't know what I'd do differently if I could repeat that conversation again. She soon left me be at the bus stop, and soon enough, I was back at my place. There's only a few more of those bus rides left for me, huh? Once I got back, there wasn't much to work on except bloghan. That's why I did just about anything but that: some stuff to prepare for the yearlong project we confirmed yesterday, fixing the Final Jeopardy question to make it just a tad bit easier, some word puzzles, some Music League shenanigans; then, somehow, it was 4 hours past midnight. Well, going to bed now is at least better than doing it at 5 past...
Friday broke the trend. I got in to work on time, though I will admit just barely. I took a little extra time with my outfit today because, well, you know. I like to dress up in dress shirts and such for my Jeopardy hosting duties. This time, I got my tea with Steve in the morning. He's always so entranced by the way I make my tea, but I guess this is really it, huh? There won't be much more of this any longer, not anymore. We head back to the corner (where Steve decided to join us for the last day! yippee!), and I get back to my task from yesterday. I need some help from my work rival at one point, and he tells me to come over to the crossword cubicle where he's staring at the crossword on the board, filling in a couple clues. He gves me some straight up false info about where I can find a file, and that's that. He then receives a message from a manager on Steve's team, sort of out of the blue, asking if it's his last day. I let those two talk, but as I walk back I see that I get a message from that same manager asking if it's my last day too. I tell him no, and that he still has time to ruin my life with one last task, and he repsonds with a promise to ask my manager about it. Oh no... Well, after that I see some errors in the thing my mentor asked me to run, and after a quick call he says he recognizes the same errors from his own stuff, pointing me to another full-time to talk to about it. She tells me that I just need to update my files to capture some changes made by a different person who fixed it. Well, I'd rather not update the files like this unless absolutely necessary. These are really finicky ones that I'd rather just remove my chnages from entirely before updating my version of the project files, just to avoid complicated merge conflicts. I do the update, cursing in my mind the entire time, crashing out a little too. I get so caught up in replicating these changes that I forget that I have a meeting with my successor, and work through the first 10 minutes of it. It's only until I get the cancellation email that I realize I miss the meeting. I apologize over messages, and she tells me that it's ok, she was only waiting in there for a little while. I rush over to the meeting room, but she's not there? I look at my laptop; she's edited the message to say she wasn't waiting for a while, and then she walks into the room behind me. I tell her we can do the meeting now, this meeting where I hand off my stuff, my leftover work to her, but she tells me I Should just go back to my desk and finish this task since I was so focused on it. I decide to instead visit her in the cell here, where her boyfriend is here once again. Also, there's strangely a whole bunch of snack wrappers all over her desk? She shares just how excited she is for Jeopardy today, and we all have a quick conersation about normal things such as pregnancy and how me and her boyfriend have being a woman in common unlike her (I still don't get this bit, what was that guy cooking?). She's obviously hiding some sort of upsetness, not one with me but with something (probably work related, probably related to a certain manager...), but there's nothing much I can really do. I head back to my desk, and continue on with the task. The compatriot is back in the office today after his trip to Cancun (he didn't acually go to Cancun, but I'm going to talk about his trip as if that's where he went to see how long it takes him to correct me), and he offers me the jellybeans he bought recently. That purchase was the one prompted by our cinnamon candy conversation from AGES ago... gee, I'm going to miss the new temps as well! But those are sappy topics to discuss later. Right now, I'm at my desk, trying to do work and other not work that is still busy work. To avoid more distraction from my work rival, his situationship, and the idealist, I set them up with my newest cryptic crossword (the situationship tells me that I should be selling these or making an app out of it or something, she's very impressed... uh, thanks?). As we all do what we do, my co-DM and her replacement visit my desk as well, letting me know that they've been feeling a bit sick after my co-DM's goodbye lunch. My work rival has been overhearing this, and let me know after those two left that he's not surprised that people are trying to get out of Jeopardy once again. Give it a rest man. It's literally because they got driven really fast after eating sushi, not because of sushi itself! It'll be fine. I think. I'm sure. We all get back to work (except my work rival, not doing work because he's basically done with everything now), and I manage to get yet one more thing done, a task that my mentor wanted me to do for the last little bit! Yippee!! There's not much that I have to say about this stretch between now and our evening activities. My successor and her boyfriend show up in the corner to see off my work rival and Steve, and they leave. Weren't they just so excited to attend Jeopardy tonight? Huh??? Strange... As the time approaches for my work rival and Steve to hand in their laptops, Steve starts dropping these anime gifs in our Jeopardy group chat and some of the girls call him cringe for it (the equivalent and I defend his honour), but even after sneding their final goodbyes on our company software, they still show back up upstairs with guest badges on once everything's been all handed in. One more hour of me working and those two basking in their new work-free life, and then I start The Wrangling. The hardest part about running Jeopardy is always getting people to go downstairs for it, to get into the room and off their laptops (and even once they're off their laptops, out of conversations and down the stairs!). This time though, it wasn't so bad! No, because the trouble was actually in waiting for people before we could start. My predecessor hadn't arrived yet, the cable guy had a meeting that he swore would be done soon, and people were beginning to wonder when qw coudl start. We're playing this final Jeopardy in that large meeting room once again, and all but one person wants to start. Can you guess who? Yep, it's my work rival! I do really respect his commitment to relationship with others. It annoys a lot of people I think, but for me? Well, it very rarely annoys me. What a guy... (affectionate). To try and appease the crowd and my work rival, as I contacted my predecessor to get him down here and to delay for the cable guy to do the same, we did a little thing similar to pictionary or skribbl.io. I opened MS Paint and started drawing random things for them to guess, and it was enough of a delay for my predecessor to show up, but not the cable guy. Eventually, the crowd wore me down enough to the point where I decided to start the game, but as I was listing out the categories for the first round, the cable guy showed up. Perfect! Then I remembered that I promised that friend from the fifth floor (the guy who bought all that fish that one weekend) that I'd invite him, so I quickly messaged him to come on in. Also, the entire group forgot about another friend of ours, the guy who returned as a full-time on Monday. Oops... Well, I can't let that bother me too much now! This board was the most personal to my own tastes and likes, and as such it was probably the most fair and most fun and most funny board to me. Everyone else seemd to love it too, and I got lots of cheers for some of the categories (strangely, I got booed for not including a quesiton on 9/11 for the category on 2001? what kinda person do they think I am???). Of course, one team pulled into the lead quite quickly, but then they lost it all by gambling it all on a hard daily double, but they made it all back by gambling their recovery in Final Jeopardy. Well played, my predecessor. Well played. Following this, a small speech from me about how nice it was to provide all these puzzles and games, and about how I did appreciate all these people I've met these last many months. Then, Steve gave his speech, very curtly but with meaning and intention lurking behind it. Then, my work rival, giving a bit more in his goodbye speech and making some big claims about how he was the only one who planned activities for us to do (lies), but with just as much sincerity and thanks and gladness in it. Once that was all done, it was time for dinner. My work rival and his situationship left to go back to his place, and that's probably the last time I will ever see him in the big 2025. Everyone else made motions to start walking towards that one restaurant that had big portions, but I hung around my predecessor and that one new full-time (the one who we all forgot to invite). They initially thought they were just going to go straight home, but after thye talked ot each other about the restaurant and the dinner plans (no input from me, I was basically completely silent, onyl talking about Jeopardy), they convinced themselves that they would join? My predecessor drove us to the restaurant, and we managed to beat all the other temps there. I didn't speak much during this dinner. I was glad to be around these people, my friends, living life quietly in the background. But this time, I wasn't just living in the background out of a desire to slowly permanently fade, but more in... more in satisfaction. The satisfaction around being around these people, eating dinner with them, seeing Steve demolish that same dish that he always gets from this place, overhearing the slightly dramatic things the others had to say about certain other temps (my work rival, namely), and to that I mean, the satisfaction I had in knowing these people enough to be able to sit there not talking to them while not feeling alone or lonely. Was this the life, the realm of the living, that I had been avoiding for so long? That I thought I wasn't allowed to be a part of? But now that I know how to live, on my own, and with others... it's freeing. I like being alive, and more, I like living. I like being around my friends. I like not being around my friends. I like talking off their ears, and I like sitting in a comfortable silence. Not numb, not mute, not hiding. But present. But there. And there again...
Sorry, I did it again. I did talk a little at the end of the dinner there, teaching one of the girls in the pair how to budget (how have you gotten this far in life living on your own without know how to budget???) and also managing to finally finish an entire plate from this restaurant in one sitting (I DONE DID BEAT IT FINALLY)! This dinner seemed to finish quickly, and while I wish we all had more time together to talk, relax, goss, eat, and be around each other in general... well, it's nice to live life to the fullest in the limited amount of time we have with each other too. Maybe your fullest looks like comfortable silence while watching others in your life interact as you'd predict, and maybe it comes from doing those predicat interactions with the people you know. But soon enough, it was time to say one last goodbye to Steve (I will probably never see him again, huh?), and walk out of that restaurant with the newest full-time hire. Just as a short refresher, he's the guy who was a temp like me when I first started, but on a different floor. You might remember him giving me a bunch of rides back to my place because he lives a couple streets down? And that in his last week here as a temp, we were going to go get lunch or dinner together sometime but his basement got flooded, so he went home early? Yeah, that guy. We walked back to the parking lot of the company building to get to his car, and I just kinda caught him up on everything that had happened in the months he'd been gone, and my honest feelings on my time here. I love my team, and I loved my position. Maybe not so much during the middle of it, when I didn't fully understand what the role entailed, but now that I had a more holistic view of what design is (and what our projects are), I saw my place and I saw how my team acted and realized that I wouldn't change a thing. However, I am glad to be nearing the end of me being a temp here. As much as I just waxed about how much I appreciate all my temp friends here, the amount of conflict that has been rising over the last little bit, the amount that I've had to play peacekeeper, and the amount of "stuff" that I've (willingly) produced for them all... I'm just tired of it. It's a lot, and while I'm sure a lot of it didn't have to fall on me, and I didn't have to become friends with all these people, I'm still glad I did it. It's like this blog. It became something just a little too large than it should've been, but at some point I knew that I had to keep it going for my own sake. I wish I didn't start it, but I'm glad it did. That was the bulk of what we talked about on the way to the car, and in the car we talked more about the future. What are we two looking for in the future? Where will we go, which dreams will we achieve? But as we pulled up next to my place, we constrained our discussion to the future of next week. We discussed the potential of finally keeping that failed lunch/dinner thing, but then my friend here revealed that he actually lied about he basement flooding thing becuase he wanted to go home early. Ah... maybe not then. I go inside, I laugh a little at my situation, and I get to being distracted, to looking around my apartment and the dirtiness around me, to cooking, and to a little bit of work that easily gets sidetracked right away, all occurring very late at night. I should work on stuff, yeah, but... maybe it'll be better if I just approach it all with a more well-rested mind? I prepare for bed, the slip under the covers. But just when I get comfy, I bolt awake. Those reward points that my manager gives the team, the ones we can trade in for rewards and stuff: I better use them or they're just going to go to waste! I scoop up my work laptop and get to work figuring out what's the most value for my few points (ended up with 30 dollars in Amazon gift cards, very nice!), placing the order. I'm about to go to back to bed, but I stop and think. I have my work laptop open here, maybe I can sneak in an easy task while I'm at it. Every task I complete looks better and better on my performance, so I try out that thing that the not-manager and the senior full-time (yes, the one who called me a good boy) gave me a couple weeks back. THe first part of it is pretty easy, just involves some processing of a little text, but the second part is devilishly hard. Things don't actually line up very nicely at all with it, and the things I'm supposed to compare in this second part don't actually do so neatly. I spend a good half hour, then hour, then 2 hours working on this until I receive the "burning eyes" status condition. Once I really start to feel that effect, I know it's time to call it. I head back to bed, a little disappointed, but at least on Monday I can tell them that I started the task instead of just letting it sit there.
Saturday was a lot rougher than I wanted it to be. I woke up an hour or two before noon, but didn't end up getting out of bed until noon. I made my breakfast, the last set of two basted eggs, three bacon slices, and two brown toast slices I will have in this city (unless I come back later, tee hee!), and a vanilla bean black tea which was fine, I suppose. Now, I could've worked on bloghan. But guess what??? I didn't!! I'm just so tired from this past week. So many late nights, spent in service that I don't really know is fully appreciated or not. But I was glad to do it anyways. Today, I mostly ended up sitting around playing games, watching TONS of videos on Linux and getting gaming and development stuff working on Linux (I've decided that my next laptop setup will dual boot Ubuntu for development things and Bazzite for gaming things) for hours and hours at a time. I didn't even do any chores, no emails or anything! Just pure consumption. Well, at least at night I made an extra big chili, my last one here as well. I upped the amount of ground beef in it by 50% this time, and it still tastes just as good, but it just took a while to get fully defrosted and browned. I had to cut through the giant slab with a small knife just to get it all fitting in the pipe. It took me two hours from start to finish (though about 45 minutes of that was washing dishes for space in the sink later), and I got two large containers of leftovers from the pot this time, instead of the usual one. Perfect, perfect! Once that was done, the bowl for tonight's dinner eaten, and I was finally feeling ready to be productive, I got to work on bloghan, starting it on this day at the ripe hour of 3 hours after midnight. I need to hurry. I'm losing access to my work laptop next Thursday, so I can't let myself get this far behind anymore. Tomorrow will have to be an insane day of progress on all fronts. But, it's now 5 and a half hours after midnight, so perhaps it's best to sleep after this nothingburger of a day. This cannot continue. And no longer do my eyes, with regards to staying open.
Sunday had a pretty similar start compared to yesterday, where I woke up around noon and let myself rot around in bed for a good hour or so. I made myself one last over-easy egg for breakfast, a little bit of plain oats, then a tiny amount of bloghan work before I headed out. I am feeling much too tired for the aquarium though, so this is to the post office and the grocery store. The gift I had bought for my predecessor is a Jeopardy desk calendar. Each day, you get a new question and category posed to you, and since he's always clearing everyone out at Jeopardy, I thought it was a good gift. At this point, he's really the only one I know enough to really get a gift for, because of that aforementioned love of hanging out with him despite our age difference. It took me a while to actually get myself on out of my place, as I was constnatly seeing little things which I didn't want to bring with me back home that I went ahead and trashed or stored away, but once I did get outI made my way quickly. It was sunny, but looke dlike it was going to rain a whole bunch very soon. As I got close to the place, it did start to rain a little, but it's a good thing I decided to bring my beanie to cover my headphones. Now this post office is inside a drug store, so I head into that drugstore and make my way to the back where the post office is. As I walk through this rather quiet store, I am subjected to absolutely zero show squeaking sounds; it's so nice to not walk around like you're Spongebob! I make it to the post office counter, and I have to wait a good 10 minutes. It's not because there's a huge line, there's actually zero line! No, it's just... unmanned? I'm here half an hour before closing time, so there should be someone, but he doesn't appear out of the backroom until 20 minutes before closing time. I show him the barcode that my friend sent me as well as my ID, and he goes and grabs the package. I think that I'm about to receive the thing, but he notes that the address on file does not match the one on my ID. It's not because my address is still in my home city, and not in this city; no, it's actually because my address on my ID does not match the address of the buyer. We both live in my home city, but on different streets. The post office owkrer tries to help me out with solutions, but I don't have any of the documents or people present in this city to get this worked out. He gives me the support number for the post office so that they can help me figure something out, and I leave the store dejected. My friend who bought this (actually, its the compsci friend of mine... don't know why I didn't just say that) was very surprised when I texted him about it, because Amazon had told him that only my ID and the number/barcode thing was required. I headed out of the store and had a long call with the post office. The roboassistant was not very helpful and actually quite frustrating to feed delivery ID numbers, but once it connected me to an actual worker (rather quickly too!), we got somewhere. For example, I could actually tell him the delivery ID number this time! He was very polite and took all my answers in pretty quick, but it still took him quite a while to give me a solution: get this letter signed by my compsci friend to authorize me to pick up a package for him, then print it out and bring it to the post office. Well, at least it's something! I stalked on away, a little disappointed but knowing what I had to do next. I did a quick trip to the grocery store to grab some last week items from the grocery store (milk, bread, sandwich meat, pasta), then walked on back to my place. From here, I did chore stuff interleaved with bloghan writing interleaved with more Linux research and finally interleaved with getting the letter of authorization thing sorted out with my compsci friend. I had some chili over pasta as my dinner, played 'Baba is You' for HOURS, and went to sleep quite late. Busy week, but somehow, not busy enough...
Future plans
Here's the results of last week's plans:
- Jeopardy board: got it done for Wednesday, tested on the same day, and played on Friday.
- Door: no progress
- Cryptic: here's a final 15x15 for you: bubbler's last goodbye cryptic.
- Shoe shopping: servicable ones acquired!
- Aquarium visit: didn't really feel like going this week to be honest.
- Donate clothes: in the stealth of night, in all black, and not actually trying to be all that sneaky, the "package" was "delivered."
- "Reusable" shopping bags conundrum: I'm just going to bring them to the office I think.
- Deep clean: did some, not all...
This upcoming week, I just need to wrap up as much as I can at work. Packing up is a whole item too. And I still haven't figured out the full details of how I'm getting back either... there's also figuring out how to give that gift to my predecessor too. And more cleaning. Way, WAY more cleaning. And on Friday, at least me and the cable guy will go to the carnival thing. I'll go alone if I have to. That'll be fun. Hopefully, this will be a more relaxed week.
Song of the week
'Triple Baka' (https://youtu.be/HhN4wdpbPrg) produced by LamazeP is the song of the week. I don't listen to vocaloid stuff at all, but I think this song really describes my mood towards all the work I've been doing for myself recently. "Drowsiness snuck up on me" while I'm at the monitor? "Rather than coming up with something, I immediately gave up" perfectly describing what happened with the door that used to be on bloghan? "A creative heart won't break / That's what they say, but I've already collapsed" describing me these past two Fridays? I've had three things (a triple!) to create this week for my personal stuff: a Jeopardy board, a cryptic crossword, and these bloghans, and now that I'm at the end of this week, I just feel so drained from all that effort. And yet, it still goes incomplete. I probably should not have put all that on myself no matter how fun it was but... well, it was still fun, so it's alright I'm sure. Still, I may be just a bit stupid stupid stupid.
Until next time
This is it. We've journeyed so long together now, and it's going to be weird not doing so very soon. Also, quite relieving. I've loved doing this, I really have, but I think all who create eventually get tired of repeated creation going into one project. All that to say... See you next week, for the Final Bloghan!
- bubbler