December 29, 2024 - bloghan 27
This is it. The last bloghan of 2024. Sure, next week will just be another bloghan, right, but there's still something special about this one, I guess. It's still ust going to be a regular bloghan, probably a bit more dreary than last week's, but this really is it. I think this has been an extremely important year for me, one that served as a good foundation to go into the rest of my life with. I've grown, I've learned, I've realized, and now I know where I want to end up. Here's the context of this week:
Tier list of the week
This week's tier list: the tiers themselves. Oh, you thought it was going to be something insightful, something about my year, or like a year in review? No. No, I won't be doing that. I don't have to explain why, because I don't really have an explanation for why. Is this an old, boring idea that's really not all that exciting and has been done to death already? Yeah, of course. It's only funnier the second time, after all. Here's the tier list:
Ordered tiers, unordered within tiers. "E" tier is the worst because no one uses it. Why have "E" tier when "D" and "F" tiers cover basically everything? It just overcomplicates things, further splits things when I feel like it's not really necessary. "D" tier is as high as it is because it really communicates how the bad things in its tier still have some sort of good, redeeming quality, one that gets drowned out by the bad. The other tiers are tiered in similar ways.
Personal updates (achievements, reflections, and antics)
Monday was just a regular work day, where I woke up, got everything ready, and got to work. The sky was cloudy, but the sun from the last little bit had melted about half of the snow that was still left. The regular bus driver was not there for me today, but I still got to work on time, and once I did, got straight to work. Almost everyone on my subteam was out for the holidays, with some members of other subteams being online, but working from home. I get in and start doing a little bit of work, but I'm more focused on trying to finish off every clue in my big "holiday" cryptic. I don't relaly have much to do right now, since most of the things I'm working on are in this "waiting" phase, where I justt need some input or further instructions to proceed. I had things running in the background, but really, with no one here to ask for things, it's a pretty chill day in the office. I initialy was going to do a winter or Christmas theme with the clues, but I ended up just going for more normal ones, just to get it done quickly. I had talked about this special crossword before, this 12x12, and in truth, it had "died in development" before. I did want to give something special to my crossword obsessed coworkers today though, since I wouldn't be coming into the office tomorrow. This was the one that I had spent the weekend perfecting the fill (the selection of letters in the grid) for, since there was a special hidden phrase I wanted in the diagonal. I knew they were expecting this hidden phrase in one of the rows or columns, so this would be a bit of a surprise, at least. Sometimes people would visit our little desk corner (only I and my Japanese coworker were in the corner today, Steve was feeling sick, and my work rival was abroad for a day), but these weren't full time team mebers asking us for things, just other coworkers in similar positions, having not much to do. The exception, as always, was my Japanese coworker, who was constantly busy, and constantly stressed, and had something due the next day. Eventually, we all went down for lunch, and instead of the usual silent conversation, we ended up playing 'Monopoly Deal.' We all taught someone who was new to the game, and I was partnered with him to help him along during the game. We have an alright position, but the guy on my right pulls out his phone, and puts on the first episode of 'Love Live!' His gambit was to distract me, so that the player who I'm helping, who's still learning the game, won't get my assistance and will make a slightly weaker play. His ploy works. The guy on my right ends up winning, and our team ends up getting fourth. Well. He got me. Once we headed upstairs, the others and I started to figure out how we were going to put up a 12x12 grid on the whiteboard. Currently, there was a 7x7 grid in blue marker, with the word 'Theme' written on its right in some very fancy word art. Both of them were drawn up by the coworker who shares a name with my landlord, who was currently also out of the country, albeit for longer than just a day. We figured out that we could use red marker to extend the grid out with the same spacing as the 7x7, with one guy using a sheet of paper as a ruler to make it even. He failed miserably, but it looked alright from a distance. We did have a problem of space, where we couldn't expand on the left side too much, so we had to get permission to erase the fancy 'Theme' to make room. I filled in the black boxes with green asteriks, and the numbering in a black marker, and once that was done, the grid was very... loud. Colourful. Grating to the eyes. But, most of all, it was overwhelming, which I secretly wanted out of this sudden jump from 7x7 to 12x12. They got started, and it took them about 2 hours to complete, and while they found it challenging, they really liked the fill and the clues. Honestly, I do think this is my best work yet. The improvement from my very first practice ones, in my eyes, is quite obvious and I'm glad that this hobby is something that's really panning out successfully for me. They didn't ever spot the hidden message in the diagonal until they had finally filled it in, and gotten the confirmation. It's a hobby that takes time and care, but I think a lot of hobbies do, so I will continue with these. I'm not sure if any of the people reaading bloghan try them, but I would say if you're curious, mine are easier than some of the ones you can fin dpublished by major newspapers. Once the crossword was all finished off, I spent time in that crossword cubicle doing a little bit of work and little more chatter. The keyboard thing came up, and I shared that I was still way out of my depth when it came to those, but I had the will to carry it through to the end. Once I did, it awakened something in some of the people in that cubicle, and they immediately went to Monkeytype to test their own typing and keyboards.. I guess. I got to use someone's mechanical keyboard to actually try one out for the first time, but I found it to be a very frustrating experience. The keys felt so slow, so... stuck? When I was trying to type, it felt like the keys weren't returning back to position in the way I expected. I had long since passed any semblance of a good WPM score, and it was then that I was informed that it was probably not the returning of the keys that felt slow, but the actual pushing down of them. It was a mechanical keyboard, so apparently that means it takes more effort to push down the keys for the mechanical switches, so it felt slow because I had to take more time to push them down at the same force I'm used to with other keyboards. In other words, my fingers are too weak for mechanical keyboards. I'll be making one, I guess, and ordering it too to have a tangible record of my work, but we'll see about actually using it. I was still trying to figure out that joint task my mentor and I were doing, trying to reduce the 2000 errors it was finding down to a reasonable amount. I knew that it couldn't be 2000 errors, but I couldn't understand where they were coming from. I thought I had set Absconder to look through enough things to assess this, but I did want to open up the entire project to Absconder. Everytime I had previously tried, it always gave some sort of error having to do with the memory on my computer, which is why I limited the scope of how much it could see of the project in the first place. Then I had a thought. Was it possible that somewhere, I was also unintentionally limiting the amount of memory that it could use on my computer? I looked around and found that indeed, I was. After increasing the memory and letting it run, and some more chatter too, I saw that it worked. Through giving Absconder access to the entire project, it brought the errors found from about 2000 to about 1100. I sent a message to my offline mentor, to updat ehim on my progress, then went home. I was so glad to see to see the relatively heavy snowfall, and it didn't look like this time it was going to melt in a day. I had the uironic thought that it was "a Christmas miracle.' Man. So cheesy. It's nice though, to have those kinds of moments. I'm not sure how many more "Christmas miracles" I'll have left in my life, but I feel like it's not many. When I got back, I didn't do much, even though I had a lot to do. I oculd have shoveled, could have wrote bloghan, could have done laundry, or swept the floor, but I didn't. I just slacked off really, before going to bed.
Tuesday was Christmas Eve, but it was also a work from home day. Unlike other work from home days, I woke up early today. I had a package at an Amazon Locker waiting for me, and I needed to go pick it up. I couldn't do it yesterday because I had work in-person, and I didn't want to be late to work, or to grab it after dark. I quicky make breakfast and get dressed, and head out. It was still snowing, but it was at a very low snowflake frequency: maybe 1 snowflake every 20 seconds? I had to trudge through quite a bit of snow, which I knew I'd have to shovel pretty soon. My landlord and the upstairs tenants were out, after all, so I was responsible for shoveling the front. Not right now though, I had a bus to catch. After 30 minutes or so, I make it to the station I needed to, and started walking towards the lockers. It was said to be by this restaurant, but when I looked on Google Maps, I couldn't see it. As soon as I approached the restaurant though, I saw it right away: it was inside. Well, I tried to get inside, but the doors were locked. I looked at Google Maps, confused, and realized that both the restaurant and the lockers were labelled as opening in 2 hours. In my planning last night, I did not consider that one bit. I ended up deciding to just head home, and during lunch I would step out for an hour and try again. I got back and started working again. While 1100 errors was much better than 2000, I noticed that those 1100 errors seemed to have a lot of commonalities with one very specific part of the project. I worked on trying to figure out how things worked with that little piece, espically in conjunction with the other stuff mentioned in those errors I kept finding. Once lunch time came by, I set my status on my work laptop to "stepping out for an hour," and ran it back. Except... this time I noticed that my place was the last one on the block to have shoveled their sidewalk, so I decided to shovel instead. I don't know how the neighbours had completely exposed their sidewalks, with no little bits of snow leftover, but I think my shovelling was serviceable. Once that was all done, I stowed the shovel away and headed for the bus stop once more. The entire bus ride, I was internally panicking about one thing, and one thing only: did I close the door? Once I got to the restaurant for the second time today, I went in and headed straight for the lockers. There was a bit of a line, and I used my phone to unlock the locker... and it was the topmost locker. Luckily, on the tips of my toes, I could barely reach the package, but I could not see into the locker to see if there was any more in it. I had to ask one of the people waiting in line if there was, and he told me I got it all. Humiliating. Absolutely humiliating. Once I had stowed my package in my bag, I was about to leave, but I decided that I might as well grab a cheap lunch from this restaurant. Once that was done, I headed to the bus station, holding my lunch, filling out another cryptic, making it back to my place uneventfully. The door did indeed turn out to be closed, which was good. Once I got back, I finished off that cryptic, sent it off to those cryptic crazy coworkers, and went back to work on the error stuff. I realized something about those specific project parts which were causing the errors, mainly that they were all connected to each other by the same part, copy and pasted into each specific placement. That copy pasted part was controlled by a certain set of values, which I couldn't change in the project, but with Absconder, I could tell Absconder to consider a sort of "what if" scenario where those values are under my control. This wouldn't change those values in the project, and with the right set of values, I could make it so that Absconder might more accurately examine the parts of the project that I wanted to, without any interference from the copy pasted parts. After some more working, and hearing back from my coworkers on the cryptic (pretty good!), and a Christmas message from Steve, I saw the results: from 1100 errors, to 19. Nineteen! Now that's a reasonable number of errors to take a closer look at. I sent one more image of my progress to my mentor (he's still offline, so it'll be a nice surprise for him on Monday), and logged off for the day. The rest of this day was spent on some games (had one of my best runs in 'Numazu in the Mirage' ever, and I did some 'Freezeria' too), cooking chicken alfredo for dinner, doing very little amounts of bloghan work, and somehow still going to bed very very late. Strange how that happens, huh?
I woke up on Christmas morning, then went back to sleep. I woke up around half an hour later, and ended up just staying in my bed for a good while, on my phone. Honestly, I wasn't really feeling like doing anything, even though I was quite behind on bloghan and other things I wanted to do. I got a call from my dad wishing me a merry Christams, but he realized I was still half asleep, so he told me to call him later. Eventually I got up, and prepared my breakfast. For the next 5 days, I'd be enjoying the bacon I had recently bought, which was a real treat. I didn't really eat bacon as much back in my home city, just due to perceived cost, but I got it this week as a treat for myself, which I've been enjoying a lot. I made a pretty big breakfast, and tried to do bloghan stuff, but I was really struggling to find the will to just go ahead and do it. The distractions today were rampant as well, with me opening a bunch of games, a bunch of videos, a bunch of things to "take a break" when I hadn't done any work. After eating my lunch, I still failed to get into working on the things I wanted to. I was getting caught up in the things I was watching and playing, and never feeling like doing anything. At some point, I found myself reading something new. Well, it's actually pretty old. Some may find it aggrieving, some may want to abscond from it, some wish for more abjuration against it, but the last few? They accede to its call. Let me tell you about 'Homestuck.' It's a webcomic that uses Flash player for telling its story in many different forms of audible and visual media. It's a huge thing for many people, with millions of readers (according to Viz Media), and so many people working on art, story, and music. For example, the indie game developer Toby Fox worked on a lot of the music for the series, and it's often joked about how he stayed in the main author's (Andrew Hussie) basement to write this music, also finding time to start coming up with the basis for 'Undertale' and 'Deltarune.' Now, 'Homestuck,' at its core, is a story about a boy and his friends playing a game, and the consequences that the game has on themselves and on the world. The humour in it is both very aged (some like wine, some like milk), and can also be very technological, and it can start off very slow too, but I'm really enjoying it so far. I've become more and more inundated with mentions and references to it, with the straw breaking the camel's back being the non-existence of the song 'Penumbra Phantasm,' which was planned to be in 'Homestuck' (and referenced in many 'Homestuck' music pieces too) but never got finished, and subsequently never got put in it. It's rumoured to instead be finished and placed in one my most anticpated games that will come out in a century, 'Deltarune.' So now is the time for me to get into 'Homestuck,' to finally witness this proclaimed wild story for myself. My eyes were kinda of hurting today though, so I opted to have one of those "Let's read Homestuck" videos play while I had the website open. They would be reading out what happens, and I get to look at the illustrations and animations! Yippee!! Except... when I got to the pages with music, it just didn't work? Apparently, I was on a restoration of the Homestuck website by Viz Media, which tried to get around Flash being unsupported by modern browsers. However, even the restoration was not able to load up the audio, so I had a feeling that more advanced things later down the line might also not work. I eventually stumbled upon the unofficial 'Homestuck' collection, which is its own browser that can only display Homestuck assets, which is what I will be using from now on. I read up to Act 1's end, and so far, it's pretty tame and engaging. While I'm unsure of how exactly it's going to pan out, it seems like its going to be a good and worthwile read, that will probably take more than a year. Once I had gotten my 'Homestuck' fix for the day, I put my mind back on doing bloghan, but... I just couldn't. I was just feeling so tired, so drained. I looked over to my bed, and decided to take a nap, something I never do. I think the last time I had a nap was from before my university days. I woke up from it after half an hour, and decided to grant myself another 15 minutes. I would like to say the rest of the day had some sort of work being done, some sort of bloghan work or whatever, but. No. More games, more alfredo, and more reading. As I ate, I decided to watch the new side story of 'the Christmas Comeback Crisis,' 'Cognitive Dissonance,' which focused on the Joke-Explainer 7000 doing a 'Earthbound Halloween Hack' reference to the one Dr. Andonuts (the one in the 'CCC' continuity, of course). It hit hard, really, especially the last Guilt that had to be taken down. It also tied in to the new lore dropped from the SiIvagunner ARG, which was really cool to see. Honestly, I'm not yet ready for the finale episode of the whole thing, and the side story was fully peak! So I'm quite alright with it. That side story made me stay up quite late, and I went to bed really late. This was my first Christmas that I spent entirely alone. I barely talked to anyone this day, only a couple phone calls with my dad, that's all. And I did learn something from it, that I can do it, again. I'm sure that many more of my Christmases from now on will be just like this one, spent alone, just doing things to keep me entertained, keep me active. Being alone in my future life is an inevitability in my eyes, but knowing that I can get through a holiday so focused on families and such while in that state is comforting. While I don't wish to live alone, or to be lonely all my life, I don't see any other way for me to exist. Of course, I know it's considered better to "live," but do I really have to? Isn't it enough to be alive?
Thursday and Friday were honestly very similar days. They started the same way, with waking up in bed really tired, staying in it and rotting away on my phone, then making eggs, toast, and bacon for breakfast. Mostly, these days were about catching up on bloghan, watching all these videos (long form documentaries on horror games, for example), playing more games (also my right hand hurts a lot when I play 'Freezeria' now... I may need to take a break), cooking some food (periogies, egg fried rice, pesto spinach pasta, pizza pops), having mental breakdowns in showers, reading the epilogue chapter of 'Jujutsu Kaisen' (pretty good, makes me wish that some of this stuff wasn't saved just for the epilogue), shaving, and talking with people about the things I was up to, and sending out well wishes for the holiday season. Lots of hot water was drank, lots of music was listened, lots of maniacal laughter came form my mouth, and lots of frustration was uttered at quite a few things, and there was even some sweeping done too. I do wish I hadn't spent so much time getting distracted while writing these bloghans, so I could do things that were more intensive: things like PCB design, or reading 'ACOTAR,' but these were fine days all the same. On both of these days, I ended up going to bed late, thinking about how I was living: really, just surviving, just being alive. I could do it. I really could do it. Do I want to? I'm leaning towards yes.
I couldn't keep up the pattern of going to bed really really late and waking up at my regular time for Saturday. Unfortunate, but it was bound to happen. Well, I started it the same way as last few days, making that big breakfast and all, and sitting down at my laptop to do stuff. This time though, I didn't immediately get to work on bloghan things, since I was all caught up. That would be a responsibility for later tonight. For now, it was time to relax a bit, to take stock, to just do what I felt like. I decided that I did have two things that I wanted to do today: watch 'Sonic the Hedgehog 3' in a movie theater, and go to the grocery store at some point to stock up on stuff. I didn't really have aynthing in my fridge that I felt like making a lunch out of, so I knew that both it and dinner would come down to the groceries I bought. For now though, I was more than content to sit and watch things, sit and play games, start a little planning on PCB things, and look into some of the things that interested me. For example, there's this RPG called 'YIIK' (I pronounce it as "yeek," as does every yeekhead), which I heard was being revamped and overhauled. This game was known to have very surreal visuals and confusing, postmodern narrative and dialogue. I do believe that those things were fully intentional and were part of the whole premise, as I felt like they mirrored the convolutedness of the mind belonging to main protagonist, a whiny manchild who is extremely flawed in more ways than "whiny" and "manchild." The other thing it was known for was being a total slog, with a non-exciting battle system which makes every battle feel like a complete slog, clunky menus, and an experience curve that's not great. However, this new release, this new update, fixes most of those mechanical things: the combat looks to be a lot more fun and more engaging, random encounters don't want to make you drive yourself into a wall anymore, things like that. Honestly, good for the devs. Good on them for sticking with the game even through all the criticism. and believe me, 'YIIK' got a lot of it. Stuff like that makes up the rabbit holes that I've been explore just on my off time. I headed to the grocery store after some of that, just grabbing some simple things, some veggies, some frozen things, just like that. Asparagus kept causing the self-checkout machine to freak out, like when I weighed it, used its item number, and when I put it in the bag, and the grocer watching over the self-checkout seemed to be more annoyed with me choosing aspargus than anything else. On my walk back, I couldn't help but think more about my situation, my future, but I did get distracted by some guy passing me, motioning towards my hand as if asking for something. I was really confused, but he passed me right away, and it shocked me back into thinking only about the song playing in my headphones. Getting back, I mostly just did the same as usual, which I wish was more productive, but it just wasn't. After enough waffling about doing that, it was time to start heading towards the theater. It had already gotten really dark, which made me nervous, but I feel like this city is a lot safer than my home city, which made me feel a bit more comfortable. I had already figured out which busses I was going to take, but I took a little too long deciding on an outfit (I ended up going with all black), so I had to quickwalk to the first bus station. As I left my place though, opening the garage door to get out, I noticed that there was someone walking around my landlord's car. Getting out, I saw that it actually was my landlord! I thought she wouldn't be back until January, but there she was. She told me she got back just that night, and that she was immediately getting her car ready to head to a friend's holiday party. Once I told her that I was headed to the movies, we parted ways. It was nice seeing her, even just for a moment. Getting to my first bus stop, it was really remarkable just how foggy the area was. I hadn't seen fog this thick since Switzerland, or maybe Liechtenstein? Getting on the bus really put the fog into perspective, as I could not see anything beyond 2 meters of the windows thanks to the fog. At the first "layover" stop, I wondered how anyone driving could really see much through the fog, and if the next bus would even see me. It was a bit nerve-wracking to stand there as long as I did: I've already had one kidnapping scare while over here, and the darkness and fog would have made it even easier for a guy in a white van to capture me. A white van did pass by me once, prompting me to stand back from the curb as it approached, but I eventually did make it onto the next bus, and to the movie theater. Movie theaters must have changed since April 2023, since the ticket booth was replaced with kiosks, which was convenient for me as a single adult going to see a kids movie. No confrontation with a judgemental box office staff member, no one in the line behind me overhearing my request. After some wandering around to just take in the exorbintantly priced... everything, I went into the theater, bearing the ads until it started. That movie was peak. Absolute cinema. I'm pretty sure I was grinning for most of it, especially whenever there wa sa reference. That's how I am, anything is funnier the second time. While I admit that it had some pacing issues, and that for me, the Jim Carrey screentime was a bit too much, it absolutely does not bring down the sheer hype of what was happening on screen anyways. The references and Ian Flynn writing were fanservice-y, as they always are in 'Sonic' media, but I am still such a sucker for direct quotes from songs and prior moments that I loved it. The amount of time the 'Live & Learn' leitmotif/riff of those four descending notes was so good to hear all the time, and of course, actual 'Live & Learn' playing too? While I think the story of the film should have pulled a little bit more from 'Sonic Adventure 2' (to avoid some of the more awkward additions and scenes that really didn't make sense as to why they were happening), I was still pretty satisfied with the story we got. Even if I see the writing team as complete cowards for not shooting a 12 year old with a gun on film, I guess how the backstory changes for Shadow were still good. Those changes got around a lot of the issues that would cause the plot of this movie to only be about Shadow, given the runtime. To also give credit where credit was due, the change they made to Maria's death made it so that no one in the theater would be laughing I won't spoil it at all, but the mid-credits scene features a character that looks just so-good, and I already know I'm seeing the fourth movie in theaters too. While this movie would've felt better paced with just a bit more runtime, maybe another 15 or 20 minutes (with less human characters that I really don't care that much for), what we got was a fitting end to "the year of Shadow." After geeking out about the film online wth my friends from home, I headed home. The day ended with making some pesto/asparagus/chicken/spinach pasta, and going on a 5-20-0 tilt in 'Brawl Stars' that made me very frustrated, before going to bed.
Finally, Sunday. I knew that if I wanted to do all those productive things that I said I would this week, it would once again fall on having to all be done on Sunday. I woke up late, as per usual for this week, and let myself sleep for longer, as per usual for this week, then spent a good chunk of time on my phone in bed, as per usual for this week. Tiredly, I made myself a big breakfast (I'm not going to say that phrase again, bits aren't as funny on the fourth time), and got straight to work on bloghan. I needed to take care of that first, before I could start on any PCB stuff or reading. This time, I found a way to get myself to focus on it: listening to music in the background on loop, instead of trying to multitask with watching 'Balatro' gameplay. It was as easy as that... Taking sundae-making and pierogi-cooking breaks in between, I managed to catch up, and even finish off the other little sections of this bloghan too. At some point, I hopped into a voice chat with some friends from my home city as just a little get together for the new years season, talking about 'Sonic,' about 'Kirby,' tier lists, other things like that. After that, I took some time to finally get that picture of an old prof printed, hoping that it would be done by the time my predecessor returned to the company. I sent off the request to the printing shop, and soon, it will be ready for presentation on my desk. Interspersing 'Freezeria' gameplay with bloghan writing, playlist making, cooking, and PCB stuff, I managed to get quite a bit done. I went to bed a little late, but felt better about what I did today than I did for a lot of the other days of this past week.
Future plans
I've had a bit of a week. It's been a while since I've had a bit of a week, but hey, I've got new year's eve and new year's day to catch up on things too. Here's this week's recap:
- PCB stuff: for my one-bit adder recreation, I did a little bit of schematic symbol work for the new header (though I did make a mistake: I was looking for a terminal block, not a header!). For the keyboard stuff, we've got a keyboard layout finalized, but we might not be able to get a 3D case ready to test the layout.
- Door: no progress
- 'A Court of Thorns and Roses': ...December 31. I will. I must.
- Cryptic crossword: Here's the ones I made this week, try them with these links:
- "Lock in" playlist: Made it.
- 'Sonic the Hedgehog 3': Saw it. Peak.
This week, I'm going to continue work on the PCB projects, make baked potatoes for New Year's, read more 'Homestuck,' finish 'A Court of Thorns and Roses,' and possibly start watching some show. It would be nice if I could start doing a bit more work on my LaTeX USB as well, and maybe prep some crosswords for next week.
Song of the week
'Forever U & I' (https://youtu.be/gcHOxTtRiq4) from 'Yohane the Parhelion' is the song of the week. This song serves as an opposite to 'Far far away' in the show. With 'Far far away,' the protagonist really sings about how she's going out on her own, and how the people she's left behind will still hear from and about her, and how she herself does not really know everything about what she will find in that plas, so far, far away. In 'Forever U & I,' the singer confronts her two halves, her identity, about new dreams that have been caused by large changes in her life, about the people she's met, within and without herself. This year's theme (for my own life, that is) was 'Far far away,' as I felt like it described what I would be doing for the majority of this year. As such, I feel like this song, the one that's almost like a response to 'Far far away,' is fitting for the end of the year. Indeed, forever, you and I.
Until next time
This year has really been quite something. I have spent the majority of it away from my home city where I grew up, but I feel like I've done just as much growing while over here, in these short 6 months (7 if you count Switzerland). Goodbye to a year.
- bubbler