November 24, 2024 - bloghan 22

I'm trying something new, starting with this bloghan. I have been primarily writing these bloghans on Saturdays and Sundays, where it basically absorbs my entire day, leaving little time for other things on those days. While it's nice leaving my regular weekdays evenings free, it also causes me to lose sleep and rush through typing things out on the weekends. So, for this bloghan, I'm going to try to write the 'Personal updates' section each day, with that day's story.

Tier list of the week

This week's tier list: Roman numerals! They're on a bunch of old clocks, and are very popular for version numbering, but I also quite like using them to hint at specific letters in cryptic crossword clues. Here's the tier list:

Ordered tiers, ordered within tiers. "I" for "1" just makes sense, since it can be written as just one stroke, just like "1," while "M," "C," and "X" are just real classics in my eyes. Also, these four numerals form the basis of the base 10 places, which is probably why I like these best. The ones that fill roles between these base 10 places are alright, with "V" being the best, but I don't feel as strongly about "D" or "L."

Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)

This section will actually start at the late night of last Sunday, focusing on the period after posting last week's bloghan. I ended up picking up the 3DS again, and restarting the trial section of the fourth case in 'Justice for All.' I think now that I was a lot less frustrated with a game, I was able to do better, but there was some stuff which was a bit iffy, or still just straight up confused me. However, the case and the courtroom dialogue was written so much better than the last one, so I didn't really mine. I also really appreciated the tone of despair that Phoenix was displaying and how it started to increase and get worse throughout the trial, as he desperately tried to get acquittal, though the judge tried to end the day's proceedings early. That last shot after the judge finally delays the case to the next day, with Phoenix hucnhed over, hands in hair, in full despair, was so perfectly placed. It really took me aback, and the rest of the case made me really excited to continue futher with it. I headed to bed soon after, and my thoughts drifted towards my education and my career, when I realized something: am I really doing what I thought I would be doing when I chose my specialization? I started to think of the components and technologies I had learned about it, and realized that I haven't actually been doing any of that on my own, just learning from or watching others do that. I started to feel cheated by my education: I was taught how to do math well, how do well on tests, but did I learn how to design things? Did I learn how to design things using the stuff, the technology, the concepts that I spent all that time studying? I was keeping myself up for a bit, really trying to figure out if it was too late for me to develop such a design sense, or at least start to show I had the potential for it. I think I was still thinking about how to accomplish that, and ways I could save myself time so I could start doing it sooner rather than later, until I fell asleep. I woke up on Monday, got to work, and proceeded to work on both my last 5x5 mini cryptic, and the Absconder stuff for my work rival's team. I also got a couple of new requests for things from the not-manager, and the overeager guy on my work rival's team, request that I chose to leave on delivered, for now. Before we went down to lunch, my equivalent on another team talked to me more about his creative writing class: apparently, they were now doing peer feedback sessions, and it was very clear that one person he was paired with was using GenAI to produce his story. He showed me some excerpts, and I was realyl amazed at how non-sensical and unparseable it was. There were words that haven't been used since the 1800s, random details and names that never actually had any significance, flashbacks and flashforwards just put at the most jarring points, and the "tension" between the main character and their mother was only touched on once. The sentence structure gave it away, and it's so strange to me: why take this kind of class and just use GenAI to write it all anyways? Lunch came and went, and I started on a 6x6 grid, while trying to fix up something with the Absconder task from that morning. When I initially made it, I made a simplification to the way it reported warnings and such, to keep the length of reports reasonable. Now that most of the errors and warnings in the project had been fixed, it was time to go back and change that simplification into something more useful. Actually, this was something I had been working on since Friday, but I was just struggling, since my solutions would either cause things to fail, or fill the logs uselessly. After a while of trying (after putting up the day's crossword), my work rival announced he was finished with his tasks for the day, and that he had nothing to do. I then decided to keep him busy so he wouldn't start anything new by "commissioning" him to figure out a solution. He immediately started working on solutions, but it took me quite a lot of time to accurately explain what exactly was the problem. He starts working on it, and then later comes to me with a solution... that he got from GenAI. I test it anyways, and surprise surprise, it doesn't work at all. We workshopped the solution anyways, and fixed it up, and it worked! My work rival went around to gloat a bit to other people about how it all started to work, and that wrapped up the day at work. When I got back, I put this plan to write bloghan portions throughout the day into action, received some chicken steam buns from my landlord (I took her up on her offer to grab me things from the Asian supermarket, and requested barbeque pork buns, but somehow they were out? I'll try these, I suppose), made dinner (pesto pasta with chicken and zucchini, but it needed less pasta and more chicken and zucchini, maybe more or better pesto), and finished off the final investigation phase of the last case in 'Justice for All.' It's so thrilling! This case, with its higher stakes of Maya's kidnapping and the trope of "defence lawyer protecting a murderer" work so well together. The twists are working really well for me, and even with knowing details like "it was the butler all along" that the characters don't know, each twist, each clue, each mechanic and friend we get the support of still feels as exciting as the last. The reveal of the full truth of the past, along with the reveal of the true Engarde, and the potential of a new character realization for Wright, mirroring Edgeworth's - aaaaah, this case is really good! I really wanted to do the trial segment to finish it all off, but I realized it was pretty late, so I headed to bed right after.

Tuesday was quite an interesting day at work. Most of my morning was spent in porting over an old version of the Absconder task for the not-manager to an accesible place, and redoing it in a different way. He gave me a suggestion yesterday which made a lot of sense, and would save a whole lot of time, and asked if I could get it done sooner rather than later. At the same time, I was struggling through filling out my first six letter by six letter cryptic. The down clues were easy enough yesterday, but the across clues I had chosen were really giving me a hard time. I think I have also gotten worse at solving cryptics, and that my clue writing style has gotten stale, so I might soon have to take a break to do some more cryptics. The thing people say about how you become a better write by reading more is actually true, and it's not just about prose: anything you create, you get better at by being more exposed to high quality examples. Maybe I should get myself a physical book, so I can do them on trains and buses and such. About an hour into the workday, someone came to tell me and the work rival that there were cupcakes in the break room. We got up, and when we got there, he took two, even though everyone else took one. Other coworkers filtered in, saw that the tray was empty, and I offered the one I grabbed to some of the people I know, but they said it was alright. I felt pretty bad for them, but a coworker I'm really friendly with said that I needed to eat the cupcake to gain weight, so that if we ever fight, it'll be a bit fairer. One of the managers on her team walked into the room right after that, and she quickly stopped talking and walked back to her desk. I was still giggling about it when I got back to my own desk. Lunch came and went, and I had a meeting with someone on my work rival's team, to update her on my bug fixing for the Absconder task I was doing for them. It was a good meeting, I explained how one bug was completely fixed, and how the other two were really the same, and had to do with the perspective that Absconder takes when looking at the project. She asked me to preapre a message to the director to ask him what we should do about it, and that I should prep a diagram as well. I didn't really feel like doing that at the moment, so I began to make my update to what the not-manager asked me to do. I also added two additional tasks to my to-do list, which I fully don't intend on doing for a week or so. I put up my next crossword, and it wasn't as good as some of my older ones, so I got some complaints about some clues. The complaints were fair, I could have chosen a better word to replace "airwaves" and I didn't know that a jaw technically doesn't hold the teeth. After erasing the puzzle so that my work rival could do it when he got back, I got back to work myself, writing a new six by six cryptic and working on Absconder stuff. My work rival joined me a bit later, and asked if he missed the puzzle. I sent him the link so he could do it on his own, and he got stuck on the two clues which the others complained about, which was understandable. After this, we got back to work, but it only lasted for a little bit. Someone came to my desk, telling me that the VP just solved it with the director of another team. I went over there and sure enough, the grid was refilled, with a comment left by the VP on the worst clue: "this clue sucks!" Couldn't have said it better myself, Mr. VP. Apparently, what had happened was that he had walked out of a meeting, passed the whiteboard the empty crossword was on, stood there for 30 seconds thinking, then went and brought that other team's director over, solving it in front of him, explaining how they work. And the coworkers who I gave the puzzle to initially told them my name and how I do this every day, and that director said I "must be a smart guy to do that daily." I don't really think that has anything to do with it, but the fact that they gave him my name was a bit stressful. After that, I continued to work, trying to figure out how to adapt my Absconder stuff properly, avoiding contact with my own director. My work rival and I were going to go to a warehouse store after work, courtesy of my co-DM, so we waited for her to be finished before going. While we waited, I mostly did work, but my work rival decided he would try his hand at making his own cryptic clues, all of them having "friend" as the straightforward part. It was pretty awkward when he had to tell me that he put the names of our coworkers as the solutions, and even worse, when I looked at the clues, they were all kinda... terrible. An attempt, for sure, and according to him, his last ever. Once my co-DM finished off her last call of the day, we headed out. When we got there, we saw someone in the return lineup with a giant plush of Pikachu. After we entered the store, we saw the very plush right at the entrance. My co-DM looked at it for a bit, and announced she might come back for it. We looked around the store, my work rival searching for granola bars, big chips, and pasta sauce, and me just checking for pesto, more in the style of what I saw in Switzerland, unlike the coarsly cut stuff I got last Saturday. I found this absolutely huge jar of it, and though it was pretty expensive, I decided I would probably just freeze most of it and use it over the next few months. My work rival couldn't find pasta sauce, so we went to the register, then got food at the food court. I told my work rival to "surprise me" with my drink selection as I held down the table, and he came back with this mix of lemon lime soda and iced tea, which somehow had flavours that almost perfectly cancelled out. The co-DM left, then came back 10 minutes later, carrying the huge Pikachu plush over her head, which was quite an amusing sight for everyone in the food court. We left, and our co-DM explained she was getting her new Pikachu plush as a birthday gift for a friend, so she didn't want it to get it dirty. I was asked to hold onto it in the back seat, so that it wouldn't have to collect contaminants in the trunk. It was massive. So much more massive and heavier than I was really expecting. I don't think the driver could see out the back window, and I could only see yellow. On the car ride back, my work rival started asking if any of us those "would you date someone if such and such," which I tried to stay out of as much as possible. I really don't want to think about that kind of thing right now, not when there's so much stuff for me to do. Eventually, I got dropped off at my place, headed in, wrote bloghan, made dinner, and trie to finish off 'Justice for All.' I knew I had to be on the last day in court, since there was just so much evidence and so many character motives revealed, and in indeed in the court, Wright's desperation was at its max. I was doing really well in the trial too, finding every little hole in the prosecution's argument, but right at the most crucial point, the point where you have to point out something to keep the trial going because the prosecution forgot something, I choked. I had no idea what they could have forgotten, and essentialy lost then and there. Frustrating, yes, but once I get back there and try it again, we'll see if the "correct" piece of evidence is "correct" for a satisfying reason or not. I made half of another six by six cryptic, and headed to bed.

The first half of the morning was relatively boring. I finally started doing that diagram to explain to the director the bug I was encountering, and filled out more of my crossword. Once I finished, I realized that the length of the message was basially that of an email, but I sent it over the group chat anyways, just in separate messages. I tried a new drawing program in order to make that diagram, but to be honest, I prefer Google Drawings way more. I can't use it for work though, but the one I am allowed to use is workable, at least. My work rival also didn't show up at all today, and I had a sneaking suspicion that it was because he got the pizza at the warehouse store again, even though it gave him food poisoning last time. Once I had finished that, I started to finish off my stuff for the not-manager. It was a lot simpler than I thought it was going to be, and once I had ironed out the thing that was blocking me the most, I was able to port over some old work into what I had just made, and it just worked. There were some things that were not being reported correctly, but that was just a textual thing, with the actual stuff behind the scene happening properly. We went for lunch soon after I got that finished, but I couldn't yet share that I had finished since I needed to test it just a bit more, and it takes a while to test. Our regular lunch spot was really crowded, so we ended up going to a different lunchroom on our floor. One of the people in a higher up position spotted me with my laptop open while eating lunch, and asked what team I was on, and who I was under. I responded, and he jokingly asked if my boss really kept me that busy, as well as asking my co-DM, who was in the same situation. My test finished during lunch, which was really quiet today: makes sense, given the work rival was not around. I sent the not-manager my results, expecting him to not read it for a week, like usual, but he actually replied in less than 5 minutes, saying there was an error. I realized it might be because I had based it on older version of files, and sent that reasoning to him at the exact same time he pointed out that it might be that I had an older version of files. We kinda just looked at each other's message, waiting to see who would respond first, before I ended up doing that ten minutes later. He didn't respond, or even read it, so after lunch, I started working on a new task all together, based on Absconder work I did for my work rival's team (the guy who I was doing it for I'll call Mr. Excited, who absolutely loved that Absconder stuff I did that saved him a ton of time). It was a little bland, a little frustrating, but he's a pretty nice guy, so I'll do some Absconder for Mr. Excited. Honestly, while I wasn't expecting to mostly be doing Absconder, it has been nice becoming the guy on my team who people have started to go to if they want somehting done with it. Still, when my manager gives me something completely new, I will be very excited. As I worked on it, I felt really proficient with Absconder, just pulling out each thing as I needed it without checking previous work or any documentation, and it was all working. I put the next crossword up to, thinking that this one would get solved pretty easily, but it gave everyone a lot of trouble. Of everyone who solved it in front of me, they all got stuck on the same letters, just from not reading the clues very carefully: making assumptions about letters without bothering to figure out what the cryptic part was, and not paying attention to word tense, made the puzzle really challenging for them, making them fail it about 5 times. When they finally got it, I was expecting to hear some harsh feedback, but they were really happy with this one, saying it was my best yet. If that one was my best... I think they might be disappointed tomorrow. I did get feedback from my work rival (I sent him an online version), complaining that the puzzle was too hard, specifically the easiest clue, a homophone that everyone else got. We erased the solution on the whiteboard, so that the VP could solve it himself later, and while he stopped by at one point, he just looked at it, asked if it was solved, and left when we said yes, shaking his head. Eventually, I got interrupted by a message from the not-manager, telling me that he wanted me to upload my Absconder work so that anyone could use it, telling me that another guy was asked to use it himself in conjunction with something else. I actually knew this other guy, since he sits on the opposite side of me. We started on the same day, and while he's on the same team, he's on a different subteam. He's a really smart guy, and I respect him and his work ethic a lot, but man... the not-manager piles so much work him, he's constantly grumbling and working. I'll call him Steve, since the carrying he's doing for our team rivals that of the main character of 'Minecraft.' Now Steve was expecting that his position would be more focused on the actual project, but recently, he's only been tasked with things that have to do with checking things that people submit to the project, barely actually doing things with the project. He's been ranting to everyone who will hear him out on this topic, but he does the work anyways, and he does it well: probably why he keeps getting those kind of tasks... maybe that's why people keep giving me Absconder stuff? Anyway, after Steve taught me how I should do my upload in the best way, I spent the next half hour trying to figure out one thing: if I were to completely upload my relevant work, would anything else also accidentally get uploaded, possibly causing the project files to get messed up? I was sort of panicking, with Steve telling me that it was fine and I should just do it, and another guy from a different team trying to give me suggestions, slowly realizing that my team apparently does things in a much different and much stupider way. After making no progress, I ended up just doing it... and it turned out to be completely fine. Exactly what I wanted to upload was uploaded, and nothing else. I got a message shortly before that point, telling me that the VP came back with a notebook. I visited to inquire about the whole story: 1. he walked in holding an open notebook. 2. He looked at the notebook once. 3. He wrote in solutions to all five across clues. 4. He made eye contact with the person closest to the whiteboard. 5. He received a thumbs up because his solution was correct. 6. He nodded, then left. All of this was completely wordless, completely silent. I think he hates that he can't get his mind off of them when he glances at them, so he begrudgingly takes a picture and solves eahc one in his offtime. The rest of my workday was writing documentation on my recent upload, so that people using it would know how to do so. At first, I only said the location and the way to start it, for a guide of less than 10 words, but apparently I need to "put a summary" and "an explanation of how it was done," so that's probably what I'll do tomorrow. I got an offer to get a ride back, and I graciously took it, getting back to my place and repeating almost exactly what I did yesterday. This time, however, I actually did finish 'Ace Attorney: Justice for All.'

'Justice for All,' while weaker than the first 'Ace Attorney' game, is still phenomenal. Some cases are less compelling in their narrative than others (looking at you, case 3), but the other cases have a really interesting "truth behind it all" that makes sense and is satisfying, as well as great callbacks to prior cases from the last game. The characterization work in this game is amazing as well, whether it be for new characters like Franziska and Pearl, or main characters like Wright and Edgeworth. The build up of those new characters complements the changes that already established characters are going through, and with each one, you feel with them when they're going through something. Even characters that don't show up in multiple cases (mostly) have conversations that bounce well off these established ones, and while some of these characters are "simple," they are not flat at all, sometimes hiding more depth than expected. For examples, seeing Franziska tell Phoenix that her goal is "revenge" in case 2 makes you think "oh, this is a rehash of Manfred from the last game, which is why she wants to defeat Phoenix," but at the end, you realize that the situation isn't what you thought: the actual reason is a turnabout of what you thought, not getting back at Phoenix for winning against her father, but getting back at a different prosecutor by defeating Phoenix. This game really does love its whole theme of a "turnabout," taking one situation and flipping on its head, seeing some other side of things. It's not just the technique that Phoenix uses in court to find the truth, but the technique you're meant to use to find out why the characters are the way they are. I also really liked the overall journey presented by this game, asking and answering the question of "what i s a lawyer?" It starts with Phoenix having amnesia, literalyl remembering how to do his job, but then goes into how he deals with different clients, like people he's close with who might have done something in self defense, people who are scummy but innocent of murder, and people who are very much not innocent, each case essentially asking "what is a lawyer meant to do?" And the answer I think it shows to us and Phoenix is "whichever action leads to an outcome that's fairest for everyone involved, or justice for all." The dialogue and the humour is well placed and feels natural and funny at the right times (except in case 3, of course), and I really appreciated that it seemed like the little jokes in the middle of serious court cases was toned back a bit (except in case 3). The core mechanics of the game still feel good, and while some evidence points really feel like great reaches, and others feel like they could be presented at certain points since they would make about the same point, at most times, the evidence and arguments felt fair and logically consistent. I really think the music in this game is weaker than in the first game, but the sound effects stood out to me: they made the tracker, the transceivers, and the multiple cell phones all distinct, and I was always able to tell which one of those devices was going off, which might not sound that impressive, but it was something I especially noted. The animations of characters was really great too, with Franziska's whipping, and the whole demeanor shift with Engarde being stand out examples for me. This game's final case is clearly the best out of all of them: I absolutely loved all the parallels between Edgeworth and Wright, and the reversal that took place too. The take on the "lawyer defends guilty party and knows it too" trope was pulled off so well, and the fresh twist on it being the whole kidnapping saga was really compelling. Wright pushing Edgeworth to develop last game, then Edgeworth pushing Wright to develop in the same way this game, and also pushing Franziska to make realizations, and seeing her true persona - all that moved me. It was pretty cheesy, yes, Mia whole line about how Phoenix has developed allies and friendship that will help him out in the last trial day of the game, but it all works out! His miracle does exist! The greatest weakness of this game is just its writing quality inconsistency: the fourth case is amazing, probably my favourite in the franchise by far, but the third case is the absolute worst. The first and second are good, not the best or worst, but each have their highs and lows. The first game was consistent in just how enjoyable each case was, and in its character writing as well. This game's greatest strength, however, is surely its characters and their associated development. In the limited time that you see in this game, only three days of various months in the lives, it really is remarkable how natural this progress is. You really feel for the innocent people caught up in the crimes, and for the lawyers going through the motions, for the killers who had some sort of tragedy that draws up the rarely used empathy reserves you have, but also vindictiveness towards the killers who did not have such a tragic backstory. Honestly, I really like this franchise so far, so if this one is the weakest of the main trilogy, I'm excited for the third game, which I have been told is "all bangers."

As soon as I walked into work on Thursday, Steve alerted to me to the fact that I got added to a group chat with him and the not-manager, requesting that I produce some results of my work and hand them over to Steve, to test if everything was working. While that was all well and good, Steve wasn't quite ready to do that yet, so I just worked on documentation and other Absconder stuff for Mr. Excited, as well as some more cryptics. Our Japanese friend walked in a couple of times, and his team is completely overworked, with the one we were talking to putting in 8am-8pm days. He was super stressed, and he wasn't sitting next to us at his usual desk, instead in one of the temporary cubicles closer to his manager. I wasn't really all that busy: I had lots of things to do, yes, but no one was really asking for their request right away. I worked until it was time for lunch: I owed my work rival money, so I bought him lunch at the building restaurant. We got there, and we see the director ordering food as well. After I paid for it, we waited for a bit, and the servers brought out my work rival's food, along with the directors, since they coincidentally ordered the same thing. The director went over to the condiment table to get ketchup and such, while my work rival looked over there, then came up to me and offered a fry. I asked if if he was stalling, waiting for the director to leave so he can get condiments, and he admitted to it very quietly. After that, we went up to grab my lunch and our coworkers, then down to the lunch room. I was excited to talk with my equivalent (recap: he's on a different team, but we have the same position essentialy, and we are also very similar in our tastes), since I just finished 'Justice for All,' and wanted to talk about it with him, given that he's such a huge fan. He was really curious about what verdict I chose, how I felt about the characterization at the end, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Our work rival, playing 'Exploding Kittens' with some other people, then paused, and interrupted us, saying that I and one of the people playing 'Exploding Kittens' were basically polar opposites: the other guy was "normal" and I was so "unnormal." How heartwarming, really. He then said he would be so excited if we had a conversation, since a conversation between two polar opposites would be "so interesting." However, this lunch, I wanted to mainly have discussion with my equivalent, someone who was basically not my polar opposite at all. It was silent at the table for a bit, as people debated if two like people could have an interesting conversation, compared to two polar opposites, when my equivalent asked about the bread I used in my sandwich: whole wheat. We then had a discussion about how whole wheat bread had that extra depth and flvaour to it: where white bread would accentuate peanut butter and jelly due to its blandness, whole wheat bread would bring its own little flavour to the mix. I admitted that I always get whole wheat because it's just what I've always gotten, and that led into futher conversations: pesto chicken sandwiches, choosing deli meats, times I've eaten white bread. It was a conversation that enraptured my work rival, until someone told him it was his turn in 'Exploding Kittens.' Well, I'm very glad he was proven wrong in front of an audience. I continued to discuss with my equivalent, about Hong Kong and English accents that come out of it, high school teachers (I realized I was very very lucky with mine), about software defined radios and analog circuit design, and some work stuff that I cannot disclose. This brought us to the end of lunch, and since this time I had no appointments right after lunch, I could put the next crossword up. I thought they would really like this one when I wrote it, but after thinking on how much they really liked the difficulty of yesterday's, I felt like they wouldn't really appreciate the novelty of the main seed word in this one. I was right: after they had solved it (through a bit of brute force too, since some of my clues were good but not great), there was this awkward silence, with no expressions of "this one was really good" or anything like that. Well, they can't all be winners, I suppose. The rest of the workday was just that: work. Working with Steve (hearing him complain about the type of work he was getting to) to do what the not-manager wanted us to do, working on that Absconder stuff for the not-manager because I realized I could speed it up a lot based on something another coworker did with Absconder once, and getting an infodump from Mr. Excited about ways I could do his Absconder task. That last one didn't actually give me any ideas, just some pointers towards how to do a thing. I left some things for the next day, and headed home. It would've been a D&D day, but "Izuku" gave us pretty short notice to move it to Friday, so we instead made it a 'Danganronpa' stream. Before it started, I fully intended on writing the bloghan portion for the day, but I got caught up in researching PCB stuff: costs, if there was any way to not have to order 5 at a time, potential projects, things like that. While there are so many things I want to watch, read, play, and write, I think becoming more proficient with PCB design is the most important thing for a more satisfying future career. But today waas not the day to start, because the voice channel was starting to get populated with my friends from my home city, and my 'Danganronpa' stream was about to start. I treated it like a Twitch stream almost, and while the game is a little dry for now (the plot is still interesting, but it was a bit disappointing that the whole thing with the washroom door didn't actually pan out to be a clue that something was amiss from the start), I'm both a little nervous and really excited for the actual part of the game, with investigation, deduction, and the whole trial segment. The social aspect feels a little awkward for now, and doing the voices for each character strains my throat a bit (I am NOT "the throat goat," as the kids say nowadays), but the characters seem alright for now. Some of the more sexist and sexuality-focused elements distract me a lot during the game, but I guess it was made in 2010, so it check out. I had a good amount of bits that stream, and I think the viewer and the mod were both happy with it. After we ended, I made some pizza pops and went to bed. My thoughts wandered quite a bit before I could sleep though, and although the day had gone well, some very concerning and drastic thoughts were flooding my mind. By the time I wrote this though, most of those have become forgotten.

This Friday was my first work-from-home Friday in a while. I got up and made tea (no breakfast today, unfortunately), and got to work, further improving things with my Absconder material. I saw some tension between Steve and the not-manager which made me chuckle (Steve later complained to me that he had done exactly what was asked of him), and worked on various Absconder things, while also interspersing bloghan writing in there too. I ate some of those chicken buns that my landlord got me (yeah they were good, but the barbeque pork buns are my favourite), got a message from one of the coworkers who was in the office asking if I would make another crossword, took 30 minutes to make a very easy 4 by 4 cryptic, and got back to work with another Absconder thing. I had made good progess with it yesterday, but now there was something I wasn't sure how to do. It was unrelated to the actual working with Absconder, but with stuff just related to the design, specifically from another team's stuff. I sent a message to Mr. Excited, the one who commissioned the task, and he gave another whole infodump of stuff that did not actually solve the problem, so I just re-asked the question in a different way. He eventually asked if I just wanted to call him to discuss (this was after another infodump which was closer to what was needed, but still not answering what I needed), and I ended up talking with him for an hour. The first half hour was me asking one question and receiving information that did not answer that question at all. Everytime he switched to a new topic, I would lean back in my chair and begin pounding my forehead in frustration. He would say things like "oh yes, it's essentially the same process" as I screamed out in my mind "NO IT'S NOT!!" He would also sometimes go on little tangents about how "we both know how things are done on this team, they've been doing it like this for 15 years," while in my mind, I just wanted to ask him to answer my question. The second 30 minutes was me asking the same question, but in a different way, with a concrete example, and he actually did give me a bit of useful information, but not without a whole lot more yapping: about how things have been done for 15 years, about how things are scattered throughout the files, all that. Listening to what he had to say, it made me think that what he wanted me to do with Absconder was not going to be impossible, but it would be so much more difficult and nuanaced than both he and I expected. It's just that he hasn't reached that realization yet. After that call, I was basicalyl finished with the work day. He told me that he'll be online over the weekend if I want to message him more questions (no, I won't be, actually), and that he wants this done before Christmas... oh, joy. I turned off my work laptop, and started getting ready for that night's D&D session, where the two players were still investigating the mysterious deaths of five children just after the town's harvest festival. I was expecting them to be a bit more aggresive with people they suspected, but it turns out they were more interested in collecting evidence and actually building up a whole case. I tried to accelerate things by turning the fire that one of them started (why, "Izuku," would you start a fire with the evidence???) into a whole event where a bunch of townsfolk would come out, so they could gather witness testimony as evidence points, but they were still being very cautious. I guess it is partially my fault as well, for really expecting them to just go for it, with bluffs and lies to get other people lying, but at least it gave me a good idea of what I wanted to do for the next session. If things had gone how I expected, we probably would've finished this adventure, but it's D&D: what you expect will never happen. They are really liking the mystery that I've set up so far, and they mentioned a bit about how they appreciated how much I had planned, though I'm sure they suspected the truth: I made up half of the mystery on the spot. After the session ended, "Harold" had to leave, so I just rambled with "Izuku" for a bit, talking about 'Coffee' by Supersister (mentioned more below), about my despise for tall men, my non-ideal nature, making references to media, types of careers I could go into, discussion about how becoming better at making things can be helped by processing examples made by professionals, and about his coworkers, his desire to stream a game on YouTube, his less than 10/10 opinion on 'Coffee' by Supersister. After that, I headed to bed, wanting to wake up a bit earlier so I catch up the next day on bloghan stuff.

Saturday ended up with me being mostly about being on my laptop, writing more bloghan, but with a bit of cleaning, making food, and playing games in there too. My landlord gave me back my houseplant, after moving it into a bigger pot when she noticed how large the leaves had grown. She also pruned some of the blooms, which makes me think that I actually killed those blooms by not watering as often as I should've been, and she spared me the disappointment of learning that. Either way, I did learn of it, so we'll see if the plant even gets blooms again. I woke up way earlier on Sunday, but ended up just staying in bed for an extra 2 hours, sleeping and also finally watching that 'Parkour Civilization' video that people were going crazy over on Twitter (I can't lie, it was pretty good storytelling, with strong attention to a consistent theme, symbolism, and allegory to today's society: I was not disappointed, straight peak). I wrote the last btis of this week's bloghan, went to the grocery store to top up on eggs and cheese (also for some reason there were some kids on the way just throwing a volleyball really aggresively and all wearing the same outfit? in November??), and tried to raise my laptop up with a stack of books to save my neck from looking down so much (it didn't work). Some sweeping, some cleaning, some cooking, some cryptic crossword writing, all with 'Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!' playing in the bacgkround, yet it didn't snow outside. I read the next few chapters of 'A Court of Thorns and Roses,' and while the trials are engaging, with action sequences that feel good to read and highlight the main character's skills and weaknesses pretty well, I don't really care for all that stuff with the mind-control, drugging, and revealing clothing that's going on. Sure, I now get a good idea of the manipulative nature of Rhysand, and how fae outside the Spring Court see humans mostly as objects, but did we really need it illustrated in that way specifically? It was honestly kinda just... uncomfortable. I listened to 'Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!' the entire time I was reading, even though it didn't fit at all with what I was reading, because the mismatch was really funny during the action sequences, and distracting in a good way from those... very interesting sequences. After this, I finally started looking into refreshing myself on making a PCB, and also started to look into electronics in general, before realizing it was pretty late already, and that I should head to bed.

Future plans

This week, I did bloghan stuff throughout the week, but it didn't save as much time as I thought, mostly due to my own weekend laziness. Still, I felt like I did more things this week either way.

Well, now that I've finished 'Justice for All,' I'm probably going to take a break from games to work on either writing something or designing something on a PCB. More cryptics will be coming for sure, and I'll have to more stuff on the D&D campaigns, both for the one coming up and the one going on now. I also really need to do that last assignment, which involves me doing a video presentation, which is just so annoying... I will probably also finish 'A Court of Thorns and Roses' this week (this time for sure guys, this time for sure), and I might do that library violin thing, or I might not. Next week feels pretty crucial for some reason, no clue why, so I feel like something might happen that may cause me to throw all those plans out. I really hope not though...

Song of the week

'Coffee' (https://youtu.be/JjY9_RyIeQw) by Supersister is the song of the week. Yet again, this one is not a "the lyrics are just like me for real" type of song of the week, but more a "this song is something I can't stop listening to and I'm going to be very annoying about it" type of song of the week. Here's the stroy about it: this band, Supersister, is a three-member girl group that formed in 2000 in the UK, and they came out with three singles. Their first one was 'Coffee,' and it was an instant hit over there, with it being played on radios nonstop. They had an album, all complete, finished mastering and all that, and it was just waiting to be released, but the record label went bankrupt. This record label was the label for artists like Tears for Fears or Crazy Frog, and while they managed to move over to other labels, Supersister decided to not do that. They couldn't really break into a new country since this was very first album and had very little experience, plus they only had success with their singles in the UK, so the three of them decided to break up, cancel the album entirely, and go their separate ways. One of them, for example, retrained as an award winning hair stylist. Just a little bit ago, on their Instagram, they posted a video of the three members, nearly 25 years later, having dinner together, with the caption "not coffee, but wine," and in the description, the account name for a music festival in the UK occuring in 2025. Then, a couple weeks ago, they announced that they were reuninting to perform at said music festival, and that they were finally able to release their first album, 'Lip Service,' in the same month and year as the festival: June 2025. This song is just the perfect representation to me of 2000s pop, and I find it really amazing how they were able to fit in so many allusions to sexual stuff in this song from the base symbol of coffee. While I do not want a man who's "hot, strong, and sweet like toffee," I can't help but sing or whistle along to this song's chorus whenever it comes up. Other fun facts that make me like this song: its music video has some of the worst cinematography I've ever seen, to the point where it just makes me burst out laughing whenver I see it, and one of my favourite streamers bought a license to play it whenever he likes on his stream for 2000 USD. I can't stop thinking about this song, I already know that 'Lip Service' is going to be in my top 5 albums once it comes out, and while I myself am not into men (or a coffee drinker at all), there's few songs out of my range that make me want to sing aloud anyways.

Until next time

Looking back at the past few bloghans, I'm actually pretty embarrassed that I let the quality of those get to where they ended up. I really regret saving all those for Sundays, since it wasn't just me who was affected: the reading experience of all of you reading was probably impacted. I'm really sorry for presenting something so riddled with errors and rambling sentences, so hopefully, this is a bit better. That's all for this one, see you next week!

- bubbler

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