September 22, 2024 - bloghan 13
In the midst of "I'm procrastinating so hard," I found there was, within me, an invincible "hey I could write bloghan 13 instead." So, that's what I'll do! Bloghan 13. Instead of all the other writing I've got to do.
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: Maslow's hierarchy of needs, specifically this more fleshed out version I found on Wikipedia. In that version, the order of needs is: physiological needs -> safety needs -> belonging and love needs -> esteem needs -> cognitive needs -> aesthetic needs -> self-actualization needs -> transcendence needs. Here's the tier list:
Ordered tiers, but unordered within tiers. Honestly, I think some of the things I've said on bloghans previous could back up these placements. Also, don't mind if it looks a bit strange, the website I normally use for making these tier lists isn't working for some reason. So, I guess that mahjong tile tier list will have to wait. Unless that tier list gets banished for all eternity...
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
It was supposed to be a quiet week. I came into the week knowing that D&D would be cancelled, so I only had the online session to worry about. I was just doing normal work things at work when I got a message. Now, in previous bloghan posts, I refered to someone I called "the boss of my boss," but I have a feeling he'll become more and more prevalent in these bloghans, so I will now refer to him as "the director." He is still the boss of my boss, but this is more accurate to who he really is on my team. He manages the overall project, and my boss manages a certain team working on that project, which I'm on. Anyway, on Monday, I got a message from the director, asking me if I knew about a certain task that another coworker had left unfinished before leaving the company. Now, I did know this task, but I had completely forgotten about it, and the fact that I was technically assigned to it, even if there was not really any sort of document saying that. I didn't want to tell the director that, but I also didn't want to throw that old coworker under the bus, so I said I had been told about it, but hadn't really been focusing on it due to other tasks I had been given. The director asked if I could take it on or if he should give it to someone else, but I told him I'll do it. The only problem was that I didn't really remember the details of that task, so I asked him about the requirements. And in response, he scheduled a one-on-one meeting for the next day.
That's a pretty huge deal where I work. The director is essentially the busiest person on the team, on the floor even. He's constantly in meetings, and usually his one-on-ones are with managers and such, not just regular employees, especially with my newness to the company. And here I am, getting a one-on-one with him. It was pretty terrifiying. I've only seen him in the Wednesday team meetings, and he's the one who is usually the most mad/upset about some setback that the team finds. Also, he's the one who has the final say on whether someone gets hired on this team, and the first say on who gets fired from this team, or so I've heard. My other coworkers tried to help me calm my nerves, but I had to prepare. I had a song playing in my head from here on (check the song of the week), and I started studying up as much as I could about the task I had forgotten. I did find a whole bunch of pervious work by the former employee who I inherited the task from, and I was very lucky that I had that, since it seemed to have almost everything ready to go in there. It wasn't working, sure, but it was something, and quite a bit of something too. I went home that night, and I really don't remember what I did, or if I cooked at all. I was pretty nervous. I went to shave, just to make sure I looked presentable for the director tomorrow, and put on said song of the week on loop as I went to bed.
I spent the next day at work going over eveyrthing I had written down on the task, and all of lunch looking it over too. I remember now that I was eating a burrito, that I got with the last of the food delivery voucher. It was cold. Tasted good though. An hour or so after lunch, I headed off to the meeting. My coworkers wished me luck (made me feel better and worse about the whole thing) and I headed over to the meeting room.
I got there about 1 minute before it started, taking off my toque (I've been wearing it since the haircut, none shall see egg-me), he walked in right on time. He asked me for a refresher on how long I've been on the team, where I'm originally from, if I've been busy (I told him things have quieted down and he said in response to ask my boss for more work), then jumped into the task description. And wow. I really overprepared for this. He came into the meeting assuming I knew basically nothing, and with an attitude that assured me that it was ok that I didn't know anything (even though I did know a lot of it). He was even explaining general concepts that I had learned from classes not even a year ago, and a lot of the things he wanted me to do with the task were already done in that previous employee's incomplete work. The director then veered into a sort of "justification of why we want this," going on about how it woudl really benefit my team specifically, and how it would save time. To be honest, I didn't really see the point in him justifying the task to me. He's the director, if he tells me to do something I'm going to do that. I got to ask him some questions, and he was very willing to answer them all. He was so much more chill than I've seen him in meetings, but I guess that's just how he is when the thing he's talking about isn't time sensitive. It was a bit weird that he took off his shoe in the middle of one of his sentences, scratched his foot, put the shoe back on, and went on like nothing happened, but again, he's the director. Who am I to say anything? As soon as our 30-minute time slot ended, he thanked me, said bye, and was out of there. It was a pretty productive meeting, and now we're on a "smile and wave at each other in the hallway" basis, which I feel is a pretty good spot to be in with the director.
On Wednesday, I began work on that task, and it turns out some optional part of it (that I knew would impress the director) was more complicated than it seemed. Then, I got a surprise message from my boss. He said "hi" (he types in all lowercase almost all the time), then "are you in the office today," with no question mark. When I responded with "Yes, I am," he hit me with "swing by Meeting room 1 so we can have a chat." That message made me just as nervous as the director's did on Monday, but this time, I had no time to prepare for anything. My coworkers wished me luck for the second time this week, and then I headed over. I got there and he was already waiting for me. And for the second time this week, it turns out I had been nervous about a surprise meeting for nothing. He just asked me how I was finding things so far, and how my tasks have gone so far, and where I can go through them again to check if they've been succesfully implemented. I think the director must have told him that I felt like I've not been so busy, but my boss probably doesn't have much to give me at the moment. We also talked about how I broke a bunch of stuff and got a bunch of people mad at me last week, but he said he was a bit surprised at their reaction too, and that I should just consider it as a learning experience. Be that as it may, one of the guys who I made mad last week isn't responding to my messages about the task that he gave me way before that. Before we could talk more, some beeping started playing in the room, and then I realized that it was all throughout the floor. My boss sighed and told me "fire drill." We both left, and he showed me which way I'm supposed to go in case of an actual fire, before going back to his cubicle to put his laptop away, before going outside for the fire drill. I did the same (if the boss did it, why can't I?), and headed out. Everyone in the building was being herded out, and then told to go to the underground parking lot. After a bit of waiting, we were told that we would get ice cream later, and went back in. I went back to the meeting room, but I guess my boss considered the meeting over. Well, it was all good in the end, I guess, so I went back to work. About an hour later, the ice cream showed up, as an ice cream truck pulled up in front of the building. I went out as soon as I could with another coworker, and I got a chocolate-vanilla twist cone, and enjoyed outside. After about half an hour of conversation with the coworkers around me, we went back in. Then, we had the Wednesday meeting. I got to the room second, and the director third, and over the next 5 minutes, everyone who needed to be at that meeting was there, except my boss, who was the one who was supposed to be leading the meeting. He walked in late, and guess what he was holding? An ice cream cone. From that ice cream truck. He took his seat, held it up to the camera, and said "to the people online, this is why you should come into the office more." Then, we proceeded to have the meeting as normal, except my boss would just eat his ice cream occasionally. At some point, someone online interrupted and asked my boss if he was sharing his screen. He usually does during these meeting, but this time he wasn't. Before my boss could answer, the director said "he isn't sharing his ice cream with any of us in person here either." It was quite a meeting. I still feel like I don't fit in with the team as much, but laughing along with them during those sillier moments made that feeling go away temporarily.
Thursday, someone much higher up in the company was holding a pizza event for some of the younger hires, but this higher up was going to retire soon. HR reached out to us and asked us if we wanted to do something for him, and we all agreed. We did a whole shadowbox, a card signed by all the young hires, and a cake with his face on it. I helped with the physical layout of the shadowbox portrait (put his face over a picture of us in front of a globe becuase he's our world), and went on a shopping trip on Wednesday evening to get a paint marker for some calligraphy to be included in it. We all went to the pizza party, and waited for him to show up. Once we did, we got a call going from HR in company headquarters, and then we all lined up in front of him, and wheeled in the shadowbox and the cake. We gave some words of thanks for what he has done, as did HR, and as did he, and then we ate the cake. It was very sweet, and while I didn't really interact with him as much (although he did make me wear a balloon animal hat that one time...), I'm glad I particpated in that sendoff. Later that day, the ice cream truck came back. My work rival called in sick on Wednesday, so he was really happy that it came back for Thursday! I went down with him, and I got to talking with another coworker while we waited in line. For D&D with these company folk, we'll be starting a new campaign in October, and I will be sharing the DM role with the player of "Rhythm." She asked me when I would start planning the next campaign so we coudl start prepping, and I told her I would get to starting this weekend. Making two ideas for a story will happen this upcoming week, and then planning it more thoroughly will happen afterwards. We got our ice cream and headed back in.
I got back home, and logged onto my laptop to get ready for D&D online with my friends from back home. The big difference with this group and the work group is that these friends have played D&D with me before, and that we were trying out the brand new 2024 rules. The first hour was filled with one person streaming their 'Splatoon 3' gameplay while the player of "Harold" finished off their charater sheet, mostly just deciding spells and such. Once that was done, we got into the session proper. And the dynamic was... certainly something. "Izuku" was played as if he was a very extreme cariacature of the main character of "My Hero Academia," always whimpering and talking about the hero he idolized, and worst of all, incessantly adding all those honorifics to the NPCs and "Harold." And speaking of "Harold," "Harold" woudl usually only say "Harold," and if he wasn't saying his own name, he was usually giving only one word responses. My despair was so great during this session. While they got through the first part of the story much quicker than the work group did (as a reminder, I'm running the same adventure for both my work group and my friends from home group), the personalities were teeth grating. I expressed my anguish by sending gifs of characters from 'Omori' with some very... "concerning" words superimposed on them. Whenever "Izuku" spoke, they wouldn't stop coming. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely despise the way these two characters are played, but it's so amazingly funny that it wrapped back around and I loved the dynamic. Especially once the rough patch was over and the personalites became more succinct and solid, and the dynamic between the two characters became more defined. It made me want to commit atrocities in real life, yes, but this form of expression that the two players were participating in was too good to stop. Once I played into it a bit more, using tools like "background music" and "dice rollers" to enhance the online experience, it was actually pretty solid. Mechanically, I noticed that the players had a lot more options for combat and for exploration, and they were using them pretty well. In combat especially, I noticed a big difference in power with the players. They had a ton more items as well, and it felt like they had more spells too. "Izuku" got the finishing blow on the blink dogs (they weren't able to figure out that there were two dogs unlike the work group did), and he started to play 'You Say Run' as he described how his character did a "Detroit Smash" to end the combat. I wanted to get up and grab a knife from my kitchen drawer during that whole sequence, but I couldn't because I was too busy laughing and enjoying that whole debacle. "Harold" had their moments too, mostly in missing a ton of spells, and then just up and grappling "Izuku" and throwing them at the dogs. I'm sure "Harold" will get more time in the limelight, they just need to figure out their abilities more and use their Bardic Inspiration dice. Honestly, I'm really excited to see where the chronicles of "Harold" and "Izuku" go next, but I will be keeping the 'Omori' gifs handy everytime one of them opens their mouth on their next call.
I wish I could say that stuff like the above happened in the next three days of the week, but it really didn't. Nothing eventful for the weekend, mostly lazy days waking up at noon, writing and cooking and watching stuff until the witching hour, then wash and repeat and go to the next day. I talked to my landlord a bit about rent and can openers, made my chili with mushrooms, and started writing out stuff for the Ocotber campaign. I had some freezies outside in my landlord's garden, but I don't think I've left the property boundaries for three days. Just a restful weekend to do stuff in. It was nice.
Future plans
So I did some stuff! But I think I really need to take a look at how I spend my time because I can't keep putting off some of these things. Specifically, just the amount of time I pour into watching stuff, versus writing stuff, versus cleaning stuff.
- More D&D prep: Well, I began to write out storylines for the campaign I'd be starting in October. Not much is in them yet though... I did the character sheet stuff though!
- Chili: Worth making. Yum. Mushrooms made a great addition.
- Romaine lettuce: A great snack, goes well with the dumplings, and the best lunch to troll coworkers with.
This week, I've only got door related things to do, and D\&D things to do. I think I will need to go to the grocery store and get some pre-prepared frozen foods that I can quickly air fry for warm snacks, since I'm doing a lot more things (brainwise and movementwise!) nowadays. Also, I will try version 3 of my mushroom rosee pata recipe, this time finally adding in ground beef to see if I can make it work with that.
Song of the week
'Loveless Command' (https://youtu.be/cMWow7WXRkM), from 'Kirby: Planet Robobot' is the song of the week. When I had a meeting with the director and my boss, all in the same week, with very short notice, this was the song playing in my head. In the original game, this is what plays just as Kirby meets President Haltmann, and Haltmann tells him about all his plans for Planet Popstar, as well as the other planets he's mechanized. It's got that foreboding atmosphere, as well as literally being an in-office theme. I've got a sticky note on my desk that has a link to the track, labelled "song that plays in my head when I meet one-on-one with the director." It also makes for a great track to listen to when I need to lock in at work, especially if it's something directly related to what the boss or the director wants.
Until next time
Here, bloghan 13 ends. I'm pretty satisfied that this one didn't take me as long to write, but I do feel a bit bad that there wasn't as much in it. Just know that here, in this place and time, was that setting in which I have been able to live for myself the most. Thanks for reading this bloghan, and hopefully, bloghan 14.
- bubbler