September 15, 2024 - bloghan 12
Bloghan 12 is actually being written rather early: instead of being started 3 hours before Sunday ends, it's being started 6 hours before!! It was a much busier week, and there was a lot more going on at work (socially, not in terms of work done), and off of work as well.
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: a selection of Kirby characters, specifically judging if they would jaywalk or not. This tier list is keeping behaviours in mind for each character, and specifically considering the levels in 'Kirby: Planet Robobot' which have a crosswalk with crossing lights. Here's the tier list:
Ordered tiers, but unordered within tiers, although I will note that I believe Kirby is the most likely to never jaywalk ever, and Marx is the most likely to exclusively jaywalk always. Also, I don't know why that image was used for King Dedede.
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
Monday was not a great morning but got better all through out. It turns out that on Friday, I ended up making changes that broke a lot of major things that were supposed to be not broken on Monday, so some other staff had to clock in on the weekend to fix it. I came in on Monday to a bunch of emails asking me why things were like that, in addition to having my boss copied on them. I eventually had a call with one of them, and he asked me about my process and why I did things in a certain way, before he gave me some suggestions on how to do it more consistently next time, and to also not bother doing it next time and wait for other people to do it, even if my manager was the one who specifically requested it. Every time I get a merge task something like this seems to happen. After that, I got to work on some other tasks, and just kind of chatting about it with some of the coworkers I'm closer with. Made me feel better about what happened, but it's still not a great thing to be known for within the team.
Tuesday was D&D day, and I was pretty nervous for it. But before that, there was an online event hosted by HR... Codenames online. A bunch of my coworkers were participating, but I was not expecting them to all come by the corner where my desk was. Apparently, they all wanted to collude and troll the event, since only 10 people actually signed up for the event, and there were four of us. The first game, we all loaded into the same team, but two other people in the company were on the team too (HR guy hosting the event went on the other team to keep it even). For our first round of trolling, we decided to just completely throw by pretending to be absolutely stupid. We could all see the screen of the Spymaster (my work rival), so we would collude on what clue he would give (that were still applicable to the correct clues), and what completely wrong clues we would suggest. Instead of voting on each clue, then tapping it, after random discussion, one colluder would just tap it and say "my bad guys!" My bit would be to guess a clue one above or one below the clue everyone else was voting for, then say "sorry, my mouse sensitivity made me misclick" whenever I was asked about it. We frustrated the guy on our team that we didn't know a whole lot, and we had the HR guy remind us so many times that we could vote on cards instead of outright select them. Eventually, with a very enthusiastic, "my bad guys!" the assassin card was selected, and we were onto game 2. Game 2, we managed to convince everyone that the Spymaster should be the same since "he was giving good clues, we were just not interpreting them well." It started off a lot like the first, until I suggested that we troll the other team by guessing all the clues in a single word. Using Copilot, we eventually got "HEAVENLY (7)" as our clue. We got some easy ones out of the way, and then I had a great idea. I started rambling about Dante Alighieri's 'Divine Comedy' and how the clue "Jupiter" was one of the spheres of the heavens that Dante explores with Beatrice in 'Paradiso.' I called it a long shot soul read, and I managed to convince the non-collluders. In the same way, I got the clue "space." I tried to convince them that Jupiter is where spirits of protection resided in 'Paradiso,' (which would link to the clue "security") but they stopped me due to being more unsure of that one. When control passed back to us, I first apologized, since the sprits of protectors were on Mars, not Jupiter, but afterwards we were stumped on how we could convince the non-colluders that "marathon" was a part of "HEAVENLY (7)." I then looked up the justification that Copilot gave for it, then realized that I could spin this. I then started to ramble about the poem "The Battle of Marathon," and how if the "Jupiter" clue connected "HEAVENLY (7)" to classical poetry, perhaps the heavenly fortresses featured in "The Battle of Marathon" (I haven't actually read the poem) could count towards the clue, and that the Spymaster was giving us classical poetry clues. The HR guy started chuckling, but as I was convincing the non-colluders of "marathon" (it wasn't working), we noticed that "Eden" was the assassin clue, and that it would fit in with "HEAVENLY (7)." So when the non-colluders finally noticed "Eden," we stayed silent, and let him tap the card himself, losing us the second game. Right as the loss was confirmed, and all the clues were revealed, my work rival unmuted and then said, "come on you guys, you don't know 'The Battle of Marathon'?" It was golden. It was amazing. The HR guy eventually said "yeah, I remember reading 'The Battle of Marathon' a while back," which we all thought was him making it up (but who knows?). He set up one last round, and for that one, the new Spymaster gave the clue "YOLO (infinity)," and my work rival guessed every clue correctly (gave a short justification for each one too!) while looking at the Spymaster's screen, then on the very last one, hit the assassin card, and lost us the third match as well. Overall, an excellent hour of trolling. I missed that feeeling. I missed it a lot. Later, I got a voucher for food delivery for about 67 dollars, just for particpating in Codenames.
We couldn't use the conference room we used last time (there were some guests or something in there??), so we went to the very top floor we could access and used a conference room there. Three players were brand new and they had a little trouble adjusting. The paladin named... "Kite Yagami"... was played by my work rival, and he had an issue of speaking and deciding for the whole party when decision hadn't been reached. The fighter, "Nikon Sony Canon," was played by someone who learned English as a second language, so he was pretty out of his depth and a bit confused about what was going on (not his fault, but mine for being a bit too superfluous). The cleric, "Celeste Rennoth," was a little unsure of things but got her bearings fast, but got caught up in requesting specific stats and worrying about resources a lot. Overall, the group worked well together and they started to figure stuff out, and even get into a bit of role-play. I do need to make combat more fun and exciting, and also have more plans for more unique checks that can be rolled for. It was overall a fun night, to the point where we didn't realize we had gone over time by 45 minutes. Now that I know what the group is like, and what kinds of things they want to see, I'm pretty excited to see what happens next. If they even make it to the next stopping point I have planned...
After D&D, we did a run to the Asian supermarket. I was in the car with the player of "Celeste" (she was driving) and my work rival, who both gave me feedback on the game, which I will try to implement. On the way there, my rival questioned our driver if she noticed that one of our former coworkers "had feelings for her," which she was uncomfortable about. She pretended like she didn't realize, but felt like she accidentally revealed that she did. I don't really remember, I got really tired of the conversation and my work rival's instigating ways. We headed into the supermarket, and I bought myself some dumplings and some steamed buns, while telling our driver that she didn't have to answer any more questions from my rival, becuase OF COURSE he kept bringing up inside the place. We made our purchases, headed out, some of us ate some of the ready-to-eat stuff, then went back in for more because we felt like it. I picked up some prepared noodles to eat with my dinner and we headed home. On the way back, my work rival brought it up again, and then our driver revealed that she felt like she overshared, even though I'm pretty sure she didn't at all? My work rival began to press for more information (and she almost gave it to him too), so I made a joke about phishing emails and the phishing training emails the company keeps sending us, as a hint to the driver that he was fishing for more information. Thankfully, she got the hint, and the conversation finally ended.
Wednesday was more chill. I attended a meeting and no one was mad at me for Monday's events, so I guess it's all fine for now. It was the 23rd anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in the USA, and I was a bit down becuase of it. You can see a sampling of my thoughts at the time in bloghan 11. My work rival had no work to do and so he lied down on the floor, so I stacked licorice on his stomach. Later that night, my landlord came down and gave me some pencils and notebooks. She told me that she saw from the receipts in my recycling bin that I had bought pencils and binder recently (that was for D&D!), and that if there were small things like that that I needed, I should ask her first before buying it. A bit weird, but I'll take it in good faith for now.
Thursday was quieter, after the morning has passed. That morning, my work rival challenged me to a game: we would take turns listing Japanese words, with no repeats. The coworker who played "Nikon Sony Canon" is actually originally from Japan, so he would be verifying. My first word was "yume," meaning "dream." Now, my work rival firmly believed that he would win. After all, I hadn't watched as much anime as him, and when I read manga, it's always translations. However, he underestimated me... and my 14 hours of music from the 'Love Live!' franchise. Once he realized that it wouldn't be as easy as he thought it would be, he changed the rules to include "you have to know what the word means." Not a problem for me, since I really like listening to the songs while looking at both the Japanese and English literal translated lyrics, and matching which words in both languages meant the same. Plus, for a lot of the titles, it's easier to refer to them in the English literal translation. My final advantage is that some of the character's have names that actually mean things: "Honoka" means "subtle," "Nozomi" means "wish," "Umi" means "sea," "Kotori" means "little bird," and so on. He got stumped at one point, especially after I took out "murasaki" ("purple") and "aka" ("red"), removing the last words he'd know from 'Jujutsu Kaisen' that he had left. I offered to let him base it all on the next five words in a row, but he knew immedately that I would absolutely destroy him with that (I was going to say "omoi yo hitotsu ni nare" or "may our feelings become one", a great song from the first season of 'Love Live! Sunshine!!'). He finally forced another rule change by saying "ok, we'll get someone to choose a specific category, and we have to list words in that category." The category was set as food, which I only know "gohan" ("rice"), "dango" ("rice flour dumpling"), and "mochi" ("rice cake"), while my rival just listed English words with "ooo" at the end. Apparently, that's alright for only some words. Eventually, I tapped out, and my work rival celebrated his "victory," while I was trying to not laugh at all the rule changes he had to put in place to pull it off. What a guy...
Thursday evening was more fun. I hopped on a voice chat with some friends back home to explore the new D&D 2024 rules. Apparently, one of the content creators who got an advanced copy of the book showed every single page unblurred in their video on it. The video got taken down, but that didn't stop people from going through the video and grabbing every single page and reconstructing the entire 'Player's Handbook' as a still somewhat blurry PDF. I found some replications of character sheets, and we got to work making some new characters under the new rules. Honestly, while it seems like it hasn't solved the issue of it being very daunting for new players to make their character, it does seem to be a lot more generous with abilities, starting equipment, and the choices people have in building their character. Stat boosts are no longer linked to your species and genetic ancestry, but now linked to your background and lived experience. Also, everyone just gets a feat at first level, which is pretty powerful. The new character sheets are not so bad, they look nicer and have all the most important info at the top, but it's strange how much room they give for weapons, and also strange how inventory is on the back with spells. So if you're playing a class with no spells, then a good 40% of your character sheet's back is just going to be blank. It's interesting, but I think I like the old sheet better. Though, I will say, the new way features are split into class and origin and feats, instead of them all being on the same page, is rather nice. Some of the classes got a ton of power-ups (except ranger and paladin who got nerfs), and a bunch of species got more fleshing out and abilities, so we'll see how things go. One player made a lightning dragonborn monk named... "Izuku Yagami"... (it happened twice becuase of course it happened twice) and the other made a tiefling bard named... "Harold?" To be honest, I don't have many memories of this call, since halfway through, the person creating "Harold" started playing a bunch of bass boosted music that I had a hard time understanding. After "Izuku" introduced his character to the one NPC I have planned (I'm not sharing his name), he left the call, leaving just me and "Harold." We then proceeded to watch some gameplay of 'Shadow the Hedgehog' (holds up not that well but it is from 2005 Sega, I suppose),, and after that, we said our goodbyes, I ate a pizza pop or two, then headed to bed.
Friday and Saturday were pretty chill as well. Excepting working from home on Friday (where my manager left me on read when I asked him for more work), I focused most of it on cleaning, sweeping, mopping, going out on walks, cleaning the bathroom floor, bathroom sink, toilet, and shower very aggressively, you know how it is. Saturday afternoon was when I got my hairuct. I walked in, and this very nice old Asian lady cut it very very short. I really miss my hair, and my head looks like an egg now. She also kept trying to show me the cut as she was cutting, but since my glasses were off, I couldn't see it. She commented on how it's becuase I spend too much time on my phone. However, I didn't have a phone when I first got blurry vision. Anyways, I'm wearing a beanie everywhere I can until I get some of my hair back. Later on Saturday night, I used my voucher to get groceries delivered to me, and I saw rosee sauce on sale. I still had some spaghettini left, so I decided to get the rosee sauce and some mushrooms, in addition to the eggs, milk, and bread that I was running out of. I also got three heads of romaine lettuce; these will become relevant in bloghan 13. Friday, I made pasta with garlic, Montreal BBQ chicken spice seasoned mushrooms, and rosee sauce. It was good, but very sweet. I cut down on it on Saturday by preparing the mmushrooms with way less Montreal spice, and instead using more garlic, more onion, more pepper, and a bit of soy sauce. I also added some fresh tomato that I cut that day to the sauce. It was way better, but still a bit too sweet, and missing... something. I have a feeling that something is ground beef, so I will eventually perfect that recipe. I also did my closest attempts at the True Arena in 'Kirby: Planet Robobot' in the evenings of Friday and Saturday. On Friday, I made it all the way to the end of the gauntlet. Then, the last attack came out. First was a red energy strike hitting the top third of the screen. Second was a similar strike hitting the middle third of the screen. I decided that I would actually try to dodge this attack instead of trying to cheese with the Archer ability's infinite i-frames, so for the third strike, which targeted the bottom and top thirds, I hovered Kirby in the middle. However, I hovered just a bit too high, and I died. I felt dumb for not using the Archer ability, but then I looked it up and learned that those attacks apparently hit through invincibility and do 90% of your HP. Actually rigged. On my Saturday attempt, I did it correctly, and beat the True Arena, getting the 100% completion and unlocking the secret cutscene. I'm going to miss those late nights spent on 'Kirby: Planet Robobot.' It was so designed so excellently, from a music, gameplay, narrative, lore, and visual perspective.
Finally, we come to today. I woke up around noon, made breakfast, and put on all black clothing, as well as my beanie. Throughout this week we had been planning a trip to do some pottery painting and then go to a fancy burger place. As the week went on, the plan kept changing and more and more people started to bail. Well, I showed up at the potery place 15 minutes early, but everyone arrived 5 minutes after we were supposed to start. We then spent 10 minutes disucssing if we should wait for the last person to show, but we everntually went in and just started. The way it worked was that you chose a certain ceramic thing (such as a tile, a mug, a dragon, or any other strange blank ceramic sculpture they had), and then you got to paint it! I needed a coaster since I can't keep using receipts for that role, so I grabbed a 4-inch tile and started thinking about what I would make. I settled on Kirby, actively sucking in air. I had Kirby on the mind since beating 'Robobot' the last night, and it would also fit well for a coaster, since it would be like Kirby sucking in my drink, mug and all. Also, Kirby's not so bad to draw, and I knew that the cover to 'Kirby: Triple Deluxe' would be a great starting point for the perspective I wanted. I managed to draw Kirby not too badly, and the painting was a challenge for my motor skills, but not completely unmangeable. It was actually a lot of fun (and my work rival was very quiet while doing painting his mug, which I was very happy with), and I really loved seeing my design get filled in with paint. While it isn't on the level of official merch, it actually came out so much better than I thought, especially my shading on the grass, and on the swirls of air surrounding him. It's going to get fired in a kiln some time this week, and then I'll be able to get it sometime after the 20th. I would do it again! I truly locked in, and that state of focus and feeling of satisfaction I got from finishing the design felt amazing. The burger place we went to after was expensive and really nothing special. Yeah sure, it had a nice bun, and the freshly ground beef patty had a nice crunch on the outside, and the sauce was well made, but to be honest, it was just a fancy burger. Some fast food places migth taste just as good to me if they had that bun, which my work rival was very unhappy to hear about. I got back, prepared a dinner of dumplings and lettuce, and started writing this bloghan.
Future plans
Things weren't too bad this week, but I didn't expect to be as obsessed as I was with beating the True Arena in 'Kirby: Planet Robobot,' which drained a lot of my afternoons after work. That being said, I did get some stuff done:
- More D&D prep: So it looks like I'm getting as much done this week for this task as I did last week, except somehow a bit less??? I did manage to read through a bunch of the new rules doc, seems to overall be a change for the good, but some things are still a bit weird, like having no Artificer mention.
- Haircut: I look like an egg now :(
- Chili: Made mushroom rosee pasta instead. Room for improvement.
- 'Kirby: Planet Robobot': I BEAT IT!! 40 minutes for each of my attempts that reached the end, and two tries at the part with the slash that cuts the world (and thus, the i-frames).
- Kotori Minami's birthday: All I have to say is remember the phrase "The little bird's wings have finally grown, it's the day to take flight (6)"
This week, I've got to still plan out a bit more for D&D stuff, since I will be running the same campaign twice, one in-person, one online. When I really think about it, it's not so bad, I've just gotta do up some character sheets, heal up another set of sheets, plan out a couple more encounters, and that should be good for where we'll end up. I also have to use up the last of my food delivery voucher. I'll try to actually make that chili sooner rather than later (the ingredients have been piling up!), but I think I'll add some mushroom to it this time. That door will be dealt with this month, not neccessarily this week, but I'm sure of this month. I've got a ton of stuff to do with all that romaine lettuce. Also, Riko Sakurauchi and Ruby Kurosawa have birthdays on the 19th and the 21st respecitvely, so I've got to do something for that.
Song of the week
'The Noble Haltmann' (https://youtu.be/l9t7z09lCOk), featured on the SilvaGunner album 'Rips of Christmas Past' and based on 'The Noble Haltmann: Final Recital' from 'Kirby: Planet Robobot' is the song of the week. When you 100% 'Kirby: Planet Robobot,' you unlock a secret video, wherein Susie sings the anthem of the Haltmann Works Co. to President Haltmann. For the 'Christmas Comeback Crisis,' the backroom team of the SilvaGunner channel actually put words to it that flow well lyrically to the tune. To be clear, in the actual episode of the 'CCC' it's not Susie singing it, but Haruka Amami (singing it while dressed as Susie), but that's just the 'CCC' being the 'CCC.' Seeing as how I finally completed the game to its entirety, I gave it a re-listen, and man, I'm going to miss that game. It's become one of my favourite video games of all time.
Until next time
That's all for bloghan 12! A packed week last week, and probably just as packed this week. It's been nice having this time on Sundays to sit down and go back through my week and talk about what's been going on. See you next week!
- bubbler