No Summit activities today (everyone is flying or touristing or whatever), which is good because I have no braincells left.
Watched (live-action TV): The Librarians 2.3: Hey, look, it’s Stone’s backstory! Also, an extremely annoying monster of the week.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 390.
Third and final day of the Global Support Summit. We had some more lightning talks, some recorded by the people who stayed back in Europe and Asia to, you know, support customers. If I had pushed, I could have given my presentation, but nah. We also experienced a lesson? demo? of the Rust client, which was well-intended but I do not feel like I learned anything useful to my job.
This time, we split up into groups each with an exec. I ended up with Coworker N and some of the UK guys including Boss² A at Chef Chu’s (where I have actually been this decade, maybe) with the Chief Marketing Officer, who was very extroverted at us but not otherwise terrible.
Back really late again, but tomorrow I don’t have to commute.
Read (graphic novel): Girl Taking Over (Sarah Kuhn, Arielle Jovellanos): A modern origin story for Lois Lane, contending with corporate destruction of media. Not as good as the other modern DC things I have been reading, but not bad. Possibly excessively heterosexual.
Written (anything): DAY JOB.
Second day of the Global Support Summit, this time with more presentations on being a good support unit, lightning talks for people to practice their public speaking, and some attempts at projects that all ended up being AI-based because it’s 2026 and we live in hell. Also I am way too old and not interesting enough for this job and should probably quit and die in a cardboard box behind the bus station.
For dinner, the entire Support team went to Amarin Thai, which I have been to, although possibly not in this millennium. It’s moved across the street to less fancy digs, but that’s fine.
Home after 21:00 again.
Read (manga): The Lying Bride and the Same-Sex Marriage Debate vol 2 (Kodama Naoko): It’s amazing what can happen when you use your words!
Written (anything): DAY JOB.
I not only played tug of war today, my team won.
First day of the Global Support Summit. I met several coworkers who were previously only words in Slack, if even that. We only had a little bit of actual summit activity, because we were dragooned to the company picnic and then after that everyone was flat to do anything before dinner. Today was the day of dining in the existing teams, so we went to the Indian place right across the street from the office, where I had never been despite my many years of living right over there, and Boss T ordered enough food for multiple barbarian hordes. Eventually I made an excuse and left, but still didn’t get home until after 21:00.
Read (graphic novel): The Night Eaters vol 3 (Marjorie Liu, Sana Takeda): That ended up being much more epic than I originally expected!
Read (blog post): An interesting idea for a kind of character hook.
Written (anything): DAY JOB.
This should be a bigger holiday, or a holiday at all. Instead, we have a bunch of holidays celebrating murders.
Instead of going to the office to get a head start on meeting the coworkers who flew thousands of miles to be here, I stayed at home and trying to keep the department going. I presume now everyone hates me for being antisocial, but by tomorrow they’re going to hate me for being me, so it hardly matters.
Read (manga): I Wanna Do Bad Things With You vol 7 (Yutaka): Although they confessed to each other in the previous volume, they still have to spend a couple of hundred pages figuring out what to do about it because they’re both dorks. But, male lead overcomes his family problems, the two of them decide maybe they can do something about being in love with each other, The End!
Read (manga): Common-Sense Monster vol 2 (Warugi Wanai, Shinobu Shinotsuki): Mysterious returns, more lessons in fake-humaning, school trip, more murders, no yuri yet.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 484, mostly moving stuff around and throwing some of it out.
I slept in too much, went shopping, accomplished almost nothing. I followed a link to a skeet and got trapped doomscrolling for like an hour, which reminds me why I avoid social media.
Watched (animated): Helluva Shorts 1-13 + Shark Boy Summer Music Video: Most of them were pretty entertaining!
Read (comic strip collection): I Left the House Today! (Cassandra Calin): Slice of life humor about being uncool and having a female body and life and stuff.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 201, but I think I may have to redo it on account of it being dumb and horrible.
Also Perfect Sour Candy Day.
As always, I slept in too much and went shopping, but did not go to anime because Dave is sick.
Watched (live-action TV): The Librarians 2.2: The new villain invades the Library in search of a magical upgrade, but Flynn is still master of the Library. Also Baird made some kind of deal with the minion, because there is exploitable tension there, but we’re not sure exactly what it was.
Read (short): The Price of Meat (KJ Charles): In the middle of alt-C19 London, there is a region where the law does not apply, and the worst of the worst take refuge to plot their criminal plots. Our Heroine has to infiltrate it to repay the coppers for saving her girlfriend from an oubliette for the insane, and it is about as bad as you expect from the title.
Read (graphic novel): The New Girl vol 2 (Cassandra Calin): Now that she has a friend group and is getting better at French, our main character can experience more advanced forms of middle-school suffering, like mean girls and romantic ambiguity and medical misogyny. But she does make it to the end of the school year mostly intact and still cute!
Read (manga): Mii-chan Wants to be Kept vol 1 (Waka Takase): Hapless male MC rescues a cat, who turns out to be a specific kind of werecat and won’t go away even though her being gorgeous and immodest is very upsetting. Unnecessarily heterosexual on multiple levels.
Read (manga): Common-Sense Monster vol 1 (Warugi Wanai, Shinobu Shinotsuki): A social maladjusted highschool girl discovers that her popular classmate is actually an anthropophagous horror in a girl suit and asks her to teach her how to fake being a functional member of society. This doesn’t go quite as badly as it could, since the human girl is cunning and the monster is pretty risk-averse.
Read (game): Picaro! (Wythe Marschall): Allegedly from an unsigned manuscript found tucked into a used RPG book from the 70s, rewritten to the finder’s preferred system because game design in the 70s was… not advanced. I have read too many books from the 70s and earlier that started “dunno how this manuscript made it from Mars to my PO box, but here you go” to believe that, but I guess it’s not actually impossible. Anyway, you play cunning rogues sticking it to the Man on behalf of the people. There is one stat that is both how much the people like you, rolled by the players to get help/equipment for their heists, and how much the authorities hate you, rolled by the GM to add more opposition to their heists. Also, many feats/supernatural powers/spells, that all use a single pool of points that decreases throughout the adventure. I am not sure what I think of games that use that mechanic.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 142. Is this scene really accomplishing any goals, though?
But not where your mother can see it.
Played (Changeling the Lost): Berkeley 94. Our Changelings use a whole bunch of powers to break into a specific dream of Crappy Vampire Dennis (who may actually be a mid vampire but will never get respect from any of them) and discover that the whole Grail Viral Quest is tied up with Thessaly’s faerie trauma. Now there are a bunch more questions, including “how do we get out of this” and “are the rotting apple dreams a sign of weakness we can exploit” but everyone is clear that apples are the balls of the tree.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 113.
That sounds bad, but really snek is frond.
I accomplished more work than yesterday, possibly because the meeting was cancelled. However, Sunday’s gaming is also cancelled.
Watched (live-action TV): The Librarians 2.1: Introducing the new season villain and his henchman right up front!
Read (graphic novel): The New Girl vol 1 (Cassandra Calin): A Romanian girl moves to Quebec, where she has to attend learning-to-français middle-school and has no friends and her horrible periods have just started and her little brother is learning French faster and also is a git and everything is terrible, at least to start.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL. I read half of a very thick thing, but did not complete anything.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 235. Something that had been going to happen later fit now, so I put it in. That means I have to come up with something even worse for later, right?
I can take myself to work, thank you very much. But not to the office today.
Read (light novel): Sword Saint Aedel’s Second Chance vol 1 (Hayaken): The blind dark knight who won the war but could not save the princess gets himself reincarnated back in time as a beautiful young girl, and proceeds to run roughshod over everything to protect her beloved princess. Has a magic system slightly more sophisticated than “spend MP to cast spell” but is still very silly.
Read (manga): Yakuza Reincarnation vol 13 (Hiroki Miyashita, Takeshi Natsuhara): Surprising everyone, the reincarnated yakuza is good at dealing with low-life criminals, but the darkness is still rising throughout the land.
Read (novel): Alien Olympus (Glynn Stewart): An extremely middle book, where the things set in motion in the previous book are moving forward, but not coming to fruition. Only moderate levels of violence.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 150.
Went to the office, listened to management talk about how well the company is doing, did some work, ate some falafel and olives and assorted Mediterranean bits, learned little Kubernetes but some jpath.
It’s a good thing Marith doesn’t live here any more, because she probably would have died from seeing the giant bug in the bathroom. The cats were definitely freaked out by it. I’m pretty sure it was an outside bug, because I haven’t seen any smaller ones like it in the apartment, and hopefully it has returned there on its own, because I could not catch it.
Read (manga): This Monster Wants to Eat Me vol 6 (Sai Naekawa): All about the mermaid’s horrifying past.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 202.
But also Embrace Your Geek Ice Cream Day: It’s not made with real geeks (probably), but it is made with real LN2!
Did some work, I guess? Did not really accomplish anything else.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 191.
On call again, but I got moving substantially earlier than yesterday, and also the customers didn’t call because I fixed them good yesterday. I was able to do my shopping and read my Maidens of the Fall even though it is clearly too hot. That’s all I managed to do, though.
Read (manga): I Won’t Let Mistress Suck My Blood vol 1 (Paderapollonorio): Sure, it’s a haunted house, but the pay is good, and so our maid falls into the unwilling clutches of a vampire who would rather not bite anyone. But they both kind of like it…
Read (novel): Dungeon Dogs (Matt Youngmark): The sequel to Tavern Rats. Our hapless PCs seem to be on the edge of getting their act together, but then disaster strikes yet again. Dungeons, betrayal, horrible secrets, vast magical power not deployed to their advantage, some kind of conclusion!
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 304.
For no sensible reason, I am on call both days this weekend, so I just have to take my computer everywhere during the day and cross my fingers that I don’t need it. I completely failed that by going back to sleep for about four hours after taking handover and feeding the cats, and then as I was starting to move toward going out, the customers attacked. It wasn’t terrible, but it did use up the entire afternoon. I guess I’ll have to try again tomorrow.
Watched (anime): Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End 1.14-16: Side quests, old friends, Stark and Fern’s relationship progressing , Stark and Fern suffer while Frieren eats donuts.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 171. No good plan yet, although some bad plans dismissed for being unethical or impractical.
Not like in The Prestige, though!
Watched (live-action TV): The Librarians 1.10: Hey, look, everything they’ve collected over the season is important in the finale! Also, the usual ethical questions with respect to timelines that now never happened.
Read (light novel): A Livid Lady’s Guide to Getting Even vol 1 (Hagure Metabo): The traditional young-lady-dumped-by-the-crown-prince-in-favor-of-some-floozie opening. Since this young lady has actually been doing all the work of running the kingdom, she’s happy to have a vacation in jail while waiting for the king and other alleged adults to appreciate how wrong things are going without her, but then she learns they’re off faffing about because of course she’ll take care of it. Then she runs off to the enemy kingdom to set up her own cosmetics empire and not have anything to do with any of those idiots ever again. Unfortunately, she is too perfect for it to be interesting. Also, when war finally comes, we didn’t need that scene.
Read (novel): Tavern Rats (Matt Youngmark): An apprentice wizard who suddenly learns she has to pay off her student debt or leave school formulates a terrible plan to loot a dungeon, assembles the worst adventuring party ever, gets completely lost within a day’s walk of her hometown, and then things really go off the rails. It is extremely D&D (orcs, cantrips, dark elves, tree kraken, druids, etc) but manages to be funny anyway.
Read (comic collection): Doom’s Division (Yoon Ha Lee, Minkyu Jung, Mattia Iacono): I figured anything written by Yoon Ha Lee would be great, but I know nothing about the continuity and am not invested in the characters, so meh.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 154. My MC needs a really good plan now, and I don’t have one for her.
Depending on how many eggs you have, that might be a very large sugar cookie.
Watched (live-action TV): The Librarians 1.9: I guess this is another universe where mad science is indistinguishable from magic, but we saw that with the STEM fair episode. Surprisingly, the math doesn’t completely fail to work out for the Infernal Device, although the engineering does.
Read (novel): Bones in the Dark (TF Warden): A just-graduated mage of an unsettling magic system gets assigned to be a cop in a provincial city and finds out that real life is more complicated than theory. Also, she kicks a lot of ass, gains even vaster eldritch power, makes friends and enemies, etc.
Read (novel): Stealing Light (Gary Gibson): Same sub-genre as the “Architects of Earth” series: cyberpunk or post-cyberpunk space humans, aliens of various levels up to Completely Overwhelming, weird human factions, alien conspiracies, the scourge that will destroy all, etc. In this case, the scourge hasn’t quite manifested yet, but humans are enthusiastically poking it with sticks in the hope of gaining a tiny bit of power over other humans. Don’t trust the fish-guys.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 164.
Didn’t go to the office because there was an early meeting, did do some work, did learn some Kubernetes, did not become an ice cream sundae, did listen to Sage yelling up a storm.
Read (manga): Sakamoto Days vol 1 (Yuto Suzuki): A retired hitman who runs a convenience store and has a wife and small kid gets dragged into trouble and vigilantism by an old coworker. Since he has pretty much infinite fighting power, the only thing that’s a problem is his wife threatening to leave him if he kills anyone. It’s amusing, but not really my thing.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 233.
Went to the office, did some work, ate a chicken tikka masala burrito instead of any kind of macaroni, poked a Kubernetes with a stick.
Read (manga): I Wanna Do Bad Things With You vol 6 (Yutaka): Finally, they admit they love each other! Not that either of them has any idea what to do about it, but the male lead definitely doesn’t like that people are noticing the female lead.
Read (novel): The Princess Knight: Dimensional Shift (Invayne): A teen genius accidentally isekais herself, takes over the body of someone who just died, becomes immensely OP in every way, attends maid school, etc. Does not advance the genre or even show the most adequate of it.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 160.
Opposite of Kiss the Sun Day.
Having cleverly taken today off work, I was able to both go shopping like it was a weekend and do laundry like it was a Monday. But tomorrow I have to go back to work.
Read (manga): After God vol 9 (Sumi Eno): The secret of time is getting out, and the power of time is getting used up. Are we near the end? We’re seeing antagonists with weirder powers, too.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 189.
Up before 6 to pack and ablute so we could catch the early train back to Santa Clara. Al was a Hero of the Revolution for also getting up early to take us to the train station; I hope he got to go back to sleep after that.
Rather than hide in the shade and wait for a bus, we slogged through the blazing sun to the Gollubs’, because Dave likes that kind of thing, and were still extremely early for gaming. Also extremely sweaty. There were amazing fruit tarts, because Jeremy was experimenting or something. Chrisber did eventually arrive, but was sick.
Played (Hero 6E): Kaiju Academy. As foretold last session, this was the boarding action on the French dreadnought, Emperor Napoleon. For some reason, the cohort got to fight off the elite French marines and the lady in the powered suit while the SAS took care of the crew, but it went okay except for the part where May got stabbed with a white-hot sword, and Mal and Irina were clobbered so hard they flew across the drydock and slammed into the opposite wall. No one found out what happened when they were branded with a combustion rune, and they all liked it that way. After the dreadnought was successfully hijacked, the Brits did try to get the cohort back into the cloud Labyrinth, but instead they collided with the rest of the expedition coming out. Now reunited, the group surveyed Baryite, but neither the Fuzzies nor the Tappy Spiders found it entirely suitable. Onward, to the mountain in the Pyrenees where the Labyrinth to the planned next universe will touch down. Surely nothing noteworthy will be in a lost valley high in the mountains where no one has visited for millenia.
I don’t think the cats appreciated being taken care of by Marith, but they should have, because she did an excellent job and neither of them ran away or starved to death or hid so far under the bed they couldn’t find their way out.
Read (from the shelf): VACATION.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 109. I didn’t use Stellarium, but I could!
Also Explode the King Day.
As is the custom of the land, we had burgers and then spent a long time trying to park at the fairground early in order to get shaved ice for the children. It seemed like the fireworks portion of the evening was very short, but that was probably enough explosions, especially for the kids in the crowd. All children now have noise-cancelling headphones, like we’re in the future or something.
Played (board game): Terraforming Mars. After getting a card for slave labor, I tried to do a heel turn, but it didn’t do me any good and, as usual, Ken dominated.
Played (board game): Sagrada. A much more even game. We all ended up with one space unfilled by the end, although I still lost.
Read (from the shelf): VACATION.
Written (anything): VACATION.
But I did not start eating choco cubes, because I was in Roseville and there were too many other things that needed eating, such as the newly-invented Cerritos sandwich (jalapeñ0-artichoke dip, avocado, pastrami, and cheddar) and grilled chicken and tofu. I went swimming with Ken and Non and learned the secret to knowing which stars rise where and when, which is Stellarium.
Played (card game): Race for the Galaxy. Dave got 76 points, which is an insane score for RftG, but Ken still beat him with 84. I had like a quarter of that and was completely irrelevant.
Played (board game): Daybreak. This time we got our act together and started shedding dirty power generation right away, and won on turn four.
Played (card game): Star Trek Fluxx. Had all the important TOS bits, including mirror-universe doubles. The new gimmick in this one is cards that attach to other cards, usually Creepers. We played until after midnight, because who needs a brain anyway?
Read (from the shelf): VACATION.
Written (anything): VACATION.
I slept in until 10, which left me plenty of time to pack and then catch the 16:17 train, which performed its duties admirably, and then Dave and I were in Roseville (which is not Roseville) eating Chinese food and playing Daybreak. Due either to complacency or a shortage of cards with the Grid icon, we lost! It took until turn five, but the writing was on the wall much earlier.
Everyone in Roseville is doing well, or at least as well as can be expected. Toddler is still a big fan of fans and other things that spin.
Read (from the shelf): VACATION.
Written (anything): VACATION.
Went to the office, did some work, ate some corporate barbecue, didn’t learn any Kubernetes.
Read (manga): After God vol 8 (Sumi Eno): Mmm, drugs.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 203, but maybe it’s all bad and needs to be redone.
And yet, the Earth continues to support both life and data centers.
Went to the office, ate a burrito and some birthday cake, did some work, learned no Kubernetes.
Read (manga): After God vol 7 (Sumi Eno): Well, now we know what his deal is. But everything is still terrible.
Read (novel): Unaccounted For (AE Dooland): A heroic search-and-rescue butch in Australia accidentally becomes famous and gets stuck with an infuriating goth PR consultant. They have differently-terrible families and very different risk tolerances and yet there is still smooching. Also intrigue, crime, emotional conflict, and more smooching. I liked Under My Skin better, but this was still pretty good. Also, Froggy.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 125.
Bonus points if it’s deluxe.
For no reason except coincidence, work was extra-full of customers.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 193.
Also CAPS LOCK DAY.
Did some shopping, but mostly a lot of nothing.
Read (manga): Mysterious Disappearances vol 9 (Nujima): Is it the part of the story where everything spins out of control? Could be!
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 174.
But not me, don’t marry me.
The cats helped me stay in bed, but eventually I did manage to get up and do an errand and read a Maidens of the Fall and go to an anime.
Watched (anime): Witch Hat Atelier 1.12-13: Into the snake cave of the ancient chrysomorphs! Accommodations for trauma brought on by bad pedagogy! Plummeting and doom!
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 179.
Your dog deserves a Thai-Ethiopian fusion wrap!
Did some work, but sadly would have done more work if I were in the office, I suspect.
Watched (live-action TV): The Librarians 1.8: It wouldn’t be a haunted house if they didn’t make all the mistakes. Serves them right for sidelining Cassandra, though.
Read (graphic novel): When I Arrived at the Castle (EM Carroll): Catgirl vs vampire, in a hallucinatory castle full of blood and doom and corpses and nudity.
Read (novel): The Ethersmith vol 2 (Matias Kallio):MC finally makes it to a city where she can wow them with her ethersmithing skills, but surprise! Her grandfather isn’t dead, so there’s a quest and also impending doom.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 224.
I was technically working today, but feel like I accomplished about as much as a fairly drab catfish.
Watched (live-action TV): The Librarians 1.7: An obvious antagonist, given the Arthurian connections, but not where one would expect her to be.
Read (novel): I’m Not the Chosen One (Richard Roberts): She’s the Chosen One’s little sister, so of course she takes the magic ship and catgirl follower for a joyride. The quest to restore the broken world ensues.
Read (comic collection): Eat the Rich (Sarah Gailey, Pius Bak, Roman Titov): Not subtle, but that’s fine, because fuck those guys.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 176.