October 27, 2024 - bloghan 18
This week was kinda tiring, boring, and work-filled, and honestly, this bloghan will probably also be that. I'm aiming for a slightly smaller bloghan this time around.
...is what I would say, if I didn't know anything about what happened on Sunday, or what I did relating to "weird turns of phrases in cow-patterned squares? (7, 9)," or the results of me not bringing lunch to work three days in a road! This bloghan is probably going to be just as long as the others!
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: types of wordplay seen in cryptic crosswords. I've been getting more and more into them, and getting faster and faster at them, but some clue types feel better to solve than others. Here's the tier list:
Ordered tiers, but unordered within tiers. I rated them mostly on how frustrating these clues are to encounter, with more frustrating clue types closer to the bottom. I also rated them on how cool/impressive-feeling they can get, with cooler clue types closer to the top.
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
The first half of this week was honestly not all that rememberable. Really, all that happened on Monday was just whatever work I was doing at work, celebrating Eli Ayase's birthday, and finishing off 'Bocchi the Rock!' It was a great watch from the first to the twelfth episode, with so many memorable characters and a somwehat relatable main character. Among the very well cared for animation, there were so many instances of what I can only think of to call "absurdist shots" that always had me flabberggasted at least once or twice per episode. Such a fun, memorable watch, that actually taught me some new things about guitar and modern indie bands. It was also nice that it wasn't really all that fan-servicey as a lot of more recent things coming out seem to be. I can usually tolerate a little bit of fan-service in shows and such, but it was refreshing to not have it be present, which i think helped to not "flatten" any characters or their moments. Except the drunk lady and her alcohol fueled happiness spiral, that can stay, and I hope she gets worse (said in the most affectionate way possible). Tuesday looked to be shaped in a similar way: D&D with my coworkers was cancelled that day too, so I thought I could be a little more relaxed. However, the director decided that could not stand (well, he probably didn't decide that specifically), and came to my desk, asking for an update on what I've been working on for the various managers the past two weeks. After I did that, reporting that I had finished the task from my work rival's manager, and half-finished a branch of that task given to me by my actual manager, he explained that he had a problem. Specifically, he was tired of having to go through the records of some very complex tool that did a whole bunch of things to do one tedious small task, and he wanted me to automate that process, or at least have it go through and flag things for manual review. Oh, and he gave me a week, since I "have about 80% of what you need already." Judging my own work so far, I thought to myself that it was more like 60%, but I can't really say that to the director, now can I? He laid out the expectations for what I was to do (on Friday, a mini version working at 5% capacity, next Tuesday, the full thing working, in a way that anyone could perform it on their own in less than 10 minutes), and thanked me for working on it. Well, that's just wonderful. I was a lot more quiet that day, just from the amount of stress that I felt from this. The other tasks the director had given me were time sensitive too, yes, but what set this apart was that this was a probelm that was really bugging him personally, and not just a problem that one of the managers that he managed was being bugged with. The whole "under 10 minutes" thing was kinda scaring me too, because the tool that I primarily used for all this stuff I've been solving the past few weeks takes about 10 minutes to setup. Near the end of the day, my work rival and I somehow got in a little conversation about spelling, and I decided to test some of his spelling skills using an official spelling bee list. We went to the desks of some of our coworkers, and began asking them to spell things, and that little game was fun for a while. When we went back, my work rival wanted more tests of his spelling, so I gave them to him. He couldn't get "aqueous" or "nautilus" or "nihilism," and then demanded that we go test some of the other coworkers of our position to see if they knew the spellings for those specific words (they did). I tested all of those that were there with more words, and I decided then and there, that someday, I'd host a spelling bee. Maybe at work, maybe in another period of my life, but it seems pretty fun. I put a sign up board for a spelling bee hosted by me, and said "Prize TBD," but I don't think I intend on having a prize (tee hee). After staying an hour later than usual, I got a ride back home from another person who stayed in the office late for work. I was constantly mulling over the problem and how I could solve it on the way, and even at home, and right before falling asleep too. I did manage to settle on some solution then, and I tried it on Wednesday morning.
As I was working on implementing that solution on Wednesday, I got a visit from someone I worked with before. He's one in a more permanent position than I have, but not with a rank like manager. He wanted me to help him with a task that he had been doing manually every year, and he saw my experience with the tool-
I'm tired of calling it "the tool I keep getting asked about," but I'm not allowed to discussed what it is (signed some fun forms to work here!). I think it's also starting to get confusing, like when I called my manager "my boss" and the director "the boss of my boss." So, I'm going to start calling this tool by a codename that doesn't actually reveal what it is: "Absconder." To clear things up, over the past few weeks at work, I've been making heavy use of a tool which I will call Absconder, which has many utilities that can be used by people in my line of work to automate many tedious, manual tasks. I've become somewhat known as a guy who's usually not too busy and has experience with using Absconder, since the other people who have way more experience with Absconder than I do are the director (too busy to be bothered with requests for Absconder based tools), and a guy who helped design Absconder, but isn't on my team. So, when you see Absconder with the capital "A," I'm referring to this tool that I can't discuss.
Anyway, I was being asked if I knew any ways I could use Absconder to help him with this task. He didn't yet want it in a way that would automate the process, but would at least make the manual process less tedious. As he described what exactly that process was, I could envision in my mind which parts of Absconder he would need, and in which order. I started to explain, but I think I overwhelmed him a bit, as he went to go grab his laptop so that he could note it down as I explained. I walked him through it, and also helped him find out how to get around Absconder not working due to the unfinished state of whatever my team was working on. It was honestly quite nice that someone higher up and more experienced than me (but not like manager level) were coming to me for help on something, when I expected that it would normally be the other way around. After I helped him, we went for lunch. This day, I didn't end up bringing a lunch, and I was more so hoping to just power through and complete the task. However, my coworkers convinced me to go with another who was going to some restuarant to get take-out, a Mexican place. I went, ordered a pulled pork bowl, got humiliated by the salsa guy (I thought he was saying sauce the entire time, and I just kept saying "yes" when he asked me about which salsa I wanted), and then we left. When we got back, my coworkers commented that my bowl was the emptiest they've seen from that specific restaurant, and that I should fight for more next time. I've worked food service for a long time, making me really not want to approach such an encounter at this restuarant with the "fight" mentality. I ate, got to work, and realized that I didn't get an email for the Wednesday team meetings. I was used to getting an email, but I guess this time, they didn't? Me and my work rival walked into the room at the regular time, and my manager was there with another important figure on our team. He asked us if there was a meeting in here, and we replied with the regular one. He and the other guy started laughing, and then they told us it had just finished. I was shocked, and I think the look in my eyes told him that I genuinely didn't know and that I really regretted missing it. He told me that he was free for the next little bit, and that he'd like to have a quick chat with me. We did just that, and I demonstrated my progress on his Absconder task that he gave last Friday, and how the director's Absconder task would essentially include the functionality that my manager wanted. He approved my decision to hard focus on the director's task, and just asked me how things were at work. I got to tell him about someone coming to me for help with Absconder, and he told me that he was glad that I was liking working on it. To be honest, it's getting a bit tiring now, only working on Absconder stuff, but maybe I'll get a chance to do other stuff soon. After work, I just went home, ate, played a bit of the first case of 'Ace Attorney: Justice for All,' and went to bed.
Thursday at work was mostly uneventful. I didn't bring lunch today either, but I lucked out, since another subteam had some sort of event or celebration. There was a ton of leftovers, enough for a very filling meal. Thursday evening was D&D with friends from home, probably the most frustrating session I've experienced in these Thursday session. While investigating around, I was quite impressed with the way they decided to solve the problem of the trapped drawer, but I was not prepared for the aftermath of them discovering half a recipe. I described it to them as a ripped piece of paper with a title, a bullet point list, and a numbered list, all cut off because the page was the lengthwise tear. What followed was a good 10-15 minutes of "Izuku" choosing to deliberately misinterpret the recipe and every statement told to him for the duration, and "Harold" trying, in vain, to teach logical thought to "Izuku." It was infuriating to listen to and observe, so I tuned out for the last 8-9 minutes and caught up on some of my messages. Once that was over, the session went pretty well, though a bit of awkward. I was waiting for some cues to have the goblins in the rafters to drop down and attack the player characters, but somehow, the players never did those things, so there was some dead space where it felt like nothing was happening. Eventually, I just had them drop down, but apparently, "Izuku" wasn't done with playing dumb, and "Harold" couldn't get any good rolls to get the alternative signs I made up on the fly. Eventually, they fought the goblins that I creatively named Meg, Stewie, and Chris, knocking them out and tying them up. I was impressed as well at how quickly they did it... or at least, how quickly "Izuku" did it. The 2024 rules seem to have made the Monk class very good at just dishing out damage, while it seems like the Bard class has been given better support abilities that are harder to use (by this, I mean that it feels like you have to "optimize" a Bard to take better advantage of the changes to its support abilities, and that with a Monk, it doesn't really feel like you have to "optimize" it as much). "Harold," the Bard, had not gotten a finishing blow, and had barely dealt any damage to anything during this adventure. "Izuku" was the one always taking out enemies and actually doing anything, and I think the player of "Harold" was starting to get a little frustrated with how unlucky they were getting with their low rolls during combat. But when they fought the goblins in the final room, Peter and Lois, "Harold" one tapped Lois with a Posion Spray. The player got really dramatic and morbid with their description of the killing blow, and was happy to let "Izuku" finish off Peter, but not before Peter woke up the final boss that I had planned for this adventure: the goblin boss named Seth MacFarlane. This boss had triple the health of the regular goblins and way better AC, but I was surprised at how quickly the players got through him, as well as tanking his attacks. This fight with Seth was their third fight in a row, and they were hurting quite a bit. I thought it would be more difficult, but Seth rolled low, they rolled high, and "Harold" even got the killing blow by using an illusion of a previously slain goblin named Cleveland to totally break the boss, mentally and physically. It was somehow even more morbid... maybe it was for the best that "Harold" typically rolled low in combat. Although, that moment at the end where the player just started singing 'Stronger Than You' with the word "love" replaced with "Harold" made me burst out in laughter. That adventure is nearly done, just a couple more threads to tie up, so I hope they actually try to have some awareness of their surroundings next time.
Friday is usually a work from home day for me, but I decided to go into the office. I wanted to focus more on the Absconder task the director gave me, since Friday was the day he wanted me to have a portion of it finished. I worked and worked, and I made the most progress I had made all week. I also did not bring lunch today (I brought just one teabag), but I got bailed out yet again, as at lunch, a bunch of coworkers were going to the same Mexican place. This time, I very confidently ordered the medium salsa in my bowl, and asked for the free extras that are never offered to you, and my bowl was a lot more filling. I saw that the director was apparently in a time zone eight hours ahead again, so I decided to have a little longer of a lunch. We talked about things like LinkedIn, and people who harass you on LinkedIn, and other topics like that. As the conversation cooled down, I opened a New Yorker cryptic on my phone, and it caught the attention of everyone for some reason. I explained how they worked with the clues, "Cub and bird loudly make cabinet (8)" and "Home's spotless, hiding clutter (4)," and they seemed really impressed. Honestly, cryptics are hard, but with enough practice, anyone can solve one. I don't really worry too much about using a thesaurus when I play, or bothering with the timer: my interest is more in the wordplay and how it's used to extract one word from the nonsense of other words. The group wanted to try, but I wasn't sure about it being this specific puzzle, since it seemed like it was going to be one of the harder New Yorker ones (my fastest New Yorker cryptic solve was 13 minutes, my slowest was about 45 minutes, and this puzzle ended up taking me about 40 minutes). Eventually, they managed to get "Separate blended tea oils (7)," and then they wanted to keep going, when I got a message from the director: "hi, are you in the office today?" That made me really nervous, so I rushed back up to my desk, and replied with a "yes," to which I got "I will swing by in a bit." So much for being eight hours ahead. I was nowhere close to being done with what he wanted done for this Friday, but I showed him where I was getting stuck, and he gave me some very good suggestions for getting around it. We talked more about the requirements, like the . Then, he went on a little 5 minute ramble about how "even if you don't come back to this industry, you'll be using [tool that is not Absconder] in whichever career you end up in." My first thought in reaction to that was "so, he expects me to come back to this industry?" I think it would be nice if I could come back, it would save me a lot of job applications and time spent in interviews in the future. He ended up finishing with "good work," and that he would visit my desk again on Monday. Once I got home, I felt the same as I did on Tuesday night: unsure if I could actually finish this thing by Tuesday, and trying to solve it in my mind the whole day. I worked from home for about two to three hours more, trying to get things to work, but I realized that my approach was flawed in a pretty significant way, so I called it there. I set my mind on using the weekend to put my mind off it for the most part, saving the work for Monday.
Saturday was a day for shopping and for laundry, and for writing up parts of this bloghan, but also a day where I got distracted with trying to write my own cryptic crossword. It wasn't easy to get a grid and a fill that I was satisfied with, but it was so much fun coming up with some of the clues (I'm not spoiling any of them because I will share it here once it's done and I'm happy with it, not that anyone would try it) that I felt like I had to keep going. Sunday though, was a great day. I had been recommended a specific park in downtown to visit in the fall, and I thought that I should probably visit it sooner rather than later. I made breakfast, got ready to go out, packed the book I was reading ('A Court of Thorns and Roses,' still), and headed to the bus stop. A bus ride and subway ride passed me by, and I made it to downtown. I started to walk in the direction I thought was right, realized it was wrong, resolved to make a turn at the next road, then missed that turn, and repeated that process about three more times. When I finally made it to the park, I was quite impressed. It seemed to be in the middle of some university grounds (honestly, I think the university I went to clears in terms of the overall vibe: less couples, nicer and safer building internals, and nicer seeming grounds), but it was still a very pretty sight. The fall leaves were quite the sight against the blue sky. That's something I've noticed with trees here ever since I got here; I've never seen such red reds and gold golds in the dying leaves, until here. Once I was satisifed with the amount of walking I had done around the park, I sat myself down on a bench, and read more of the book. I wasn't really expecting this book, which I had previously thought of as just an escapist romantic fantasy, to make me ask myself questions like "what would make me happy," or "do bites really leave bruises," or "why couldn't it be me but like in a role reversed way?" It reminded me of why I stopped reading romance in the first place, which happens to be the same reason I strongly disliked the couple on the bench across for me that was just hugging in various positions (I counted four) for about two hours. I read the 10 chapters I scheduled this weekend, and I'm growing more and more appreciative of Maas's vivid imagery, and less and less appreciative of how the progression of the attraction between the hero and heroine was going. Once I finished, I walked around a bit more, until I saw a sign that looked familiar. I remembered then that by chance, on Friday, when I used the elevator at work, the TV screen inside it had a little news banner announcing a used book sale somewhere downtown. It was complete coincidence, but this used book sale was in a university building right next to the park I jsut visited! I wandered around the block quite a bit, since I couldn't figure out where the front entrance was. I passed an outdoor stadium too, and some of you will be able to guess why my eyes were averted from it the whole time, and why I sped up to get past it faster. Once I figured out how to enter a building, I went up to the room where the booksale was being held, and I was immediately taken aback. That smell of old books was strong, and the crowd of people in here, poring over the selection, was very surprising to see. Apparently, today was the very last day of the sale, and there was a discount because of that. They had something from every genre imaginable: history, drama, militaria, philosophy, poetry, and a whole ton more. I think I spent more than an hour there, just looking around, looking through the books, listening to the ambience of the room. People were walking around with boxes filled with books, and in some of those boxes, people must have been lugging around 10 kilograms of books. I ended up picking an anthology of John Milton works (I've always wanted to read 'Paradise Lost'), a copy of Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing' (my favourite Shakespeare play), and a collection of John Clare poems. When I went to the checkout, and the price was given to me, I was genuinely surprised at how cheap it was: it was only 50 cents more than my transit fare! I was so shocked by this that I said, "Really?" a bit too loudly to the person telling me the charge. I think it came off as "wow, that's way too expensive," even though I was surprised at how relatively cheap it was. I'm really glad I went, it was such a wonderful experience. There is something magical about a used bookstore, but a more impromptu sale like this one has that same magic, mixed with that little bit of sorcery known as "being time limited." After this, I headed back to my place, and wrote up this bloghan. And now, I will go to sleep, with a literary air, new books on my shelf, and new worries for tomorrow.
Future plans
With reference to last week's to do list, it turned out that the LaTeX installation ended up finishing that Sunday, so it didn't bleed into this week. As well, I did commit to 'Ace Attorney: Justice for All' as my next game.
- 'Ace Attorney: Justice for All': Completed the first case, just began the second case
- Door: no progress
- Reading: re-read 'One Piece' up to and finishing the Thriller Bark arc, and read up to and including chapter 25 of 'A Court of Thorns and Roses'
- 'Bocchi the Rock!': Completed!
- Eli Ayase's birthday: All I have to say is remember the phrase "Like a painting drawn within a dream (8)"
This week, I'm going to finish case 2 in 'Justice for All', and of course, more reading of what I have been for the last little bit. Rin Hoshizora (from the first 'Love Live!' like Eli) has a birthday this week, and I'll probably start watching something on my list, but I'm not yet sure what. Finally, I will try to finish writing my own cryptic crossword this week!
Song of the week
'Oyasuminasan!' (https://youtu.be/2fmZqdiTPG4), sung by Hanamaru Kunikida from 'Love Live! Sunshine!!' is the song of the week. The title of the song is the equivalent of saying "goodnight, everyone!" in a country accent, and I think it applied well to things I did and didn't mention this week. For something I haven't mentioned, this week, I really tried to commit to getting more sleep, in the realm of seven to eight hours each night instead of five to seven. It worked wonders, and it made me feel the best I've ever felt while waking up in recent memory. Saying goodnight earlier really makes a difference. I fell off that a bit with the weekends, but the weekend is the weekend: cna you blame me? This song also contains a couple allusions to reading and books in general, something that this week was full of: re-reading 'One Piece,' reading more of 'A Court of Throns and Roses,' buying some new old books on Sunday, and also all that stuff related to cryptics and reading about different kinds of wordplay, while trying to make my own. The whole "country" vibe of the song (I don't know much about actual Western country, please forgive me Swifties) makes the song feel a lot more homey and cozy, which is how I'm really starting to feel about this place and this city. I might not have listened to this song very much this week, but I think it fit the most with that I was doing this week overall.
Until next time
Well, thanks to needing to finish bloghan 18, I broke my streak of healthier sleep times. Although, I guess it's more my fault for not putting as much effort into bloghan on Saturday... maybe bloghan 19 won't have that issue? Maybe I could even branch out to Friday contributions to it! Hmmm, I'll just have to see about it then.
- bubbler