Author: Trip the Space Parasite

Slept all morning, on call all afternoon. There was some customer activity but not much, and yet I did not accomplish anything. I think I mostly read webcomics and pushed my inbox to the top of a hill.

I did play more Minecraft, and finally, after tunneling all the way down to Y=-58, I found some diamonds! Now I can make a diamond pickaxe and then an enchanting table! I even almost made it back to the surface, but the cave I broke into that had a climbable slope also had monsters, so I died at about Y=+15.

Read: “Pretty Good Neighbor” (Jeffrey Ford): Terrible people get terrible ideas about terrible things.

Written: 143.

Went to the office, found out New Boss R has been canned after six months, not much work got done after that. Details are scarce, but apparently he just wasn’t measuring up. I hope these times are not going to be too interesting.

Read: The Witch King (Martha Wells): Much more like the Raksura books than Murderbot, of course, but still pretty good. MC is a body-switching demon, magic is complicated, imperialism sucks, human customs vary. (At least, I think they’re human; no mention of intermarriage, though, so maybe it’s a zillion different species like the Raksura books.)

Written: 187.

I slept terribly, so getting up was no fun, but eventually I did it and did a work and complained to my boss about things and blargh. Then I ordered a pizza and gave away half of it, so maybe I won’t die of cheese poisoning. Or maybe I will anyway.

Played: Nothing, Ken is busy with capitalism stuff this week and next. By the time we play Lancer again, Vivian will have had her brain upgrade!

Written: 183. Also I signed up for Pizza for Pages (pizza not included). I think I’m going to set my weekly goal at 1000, which is 143 per day, or 167 if I miss one day a week, so it’s good that I can sometimes beat that even without cowriting sessions.

Today I had to be on call from some poorly-defined time around 7:00 to an equally poorly-defined time around 19:00, but the customers were fairly quiet, so it turned out okay. I slept next to my phone a bunch, and also tootled around in Minecraft finding villages full of villagers that only want to trade for vegetables. Actually I found one guy that wanted to trade for string, but there weren’t enough giant spiders. I eventually died and had to respawn back home, so I could get some string and row all the way out there again, I guess, but it’s a long ways for emeralds that I’m not sure what to do with.

Written: 210 words.

No gaming, because even though we aren’t going to Roseville, we cancelled too late to reclaim the time slot. Instead I got up before noon to go grocery shopping, and then went over to play Minecraft with everyone. I’m working on a 9-Channel Lavamatic, because every town needs one, but the most accessible lava is way off thataway, so I spent most of the afternoon being very bad at Cartesian orienteering and too stubborn to just build a landmark. If I ever make it back to town, I think I have enough lava to finish filling the reservoir, but I still need enough iron to build nine cauldrons, some more stalactites, and more polished diorite and water to build the safety moat.

Since Ken, who does most of the cooking, is still at Kublacon, we had Thai food and pizza and repletion and happiness.

In my own world, I replaced some poorly-organized chests with slightly better-organized barrels. They stack better, and also don’t autocombine.

Read: Valkyrie (Craig Alanson): And then everybody died! Not really, we’re only like halfway through the series, but that was quite a twist.

Written: Only 93 words, boo. Maybe it’s okay if I write 107 tomorrow.

There’s no going to Roseville because there is only sickness, but It’s not like I gave up having today off. Mostly I slept stupidly, though.In the evening, Marith came over for anime and pizza, but the pizza was bad. The anime was good, though.

Watched: Mob Psycho 100 3.3-5: You know it’s bad when calling yourselves the Giant Broccoli Cult would be a step up.

Read: Bones of the Past (Drew Hayes): Further supervillainous adventures of Hephaestus and friends. Includes superheroes being butts, supervillains being terrifying, and an extremely ambitious plot for vengeance. Also, the secret origin of Fornax!

Written: 154 words

Yuck, commuting. Managed to do a work or two, though.

Read: Armageddon (Craig Alanson): Oops, they ran out of charmed life. Also, it seems like sooner or later Skippy is going to get his wormhole transit card proactively revoked.

Read: Chamomile #1-323 (JezMM): I couldn’t remember where I was, so I had to start from the beginning. Oh no, such a burden, reading about silly cute people.

Written: 207 words, somehow.

Lots of meetings, including a long customer meeting that finally ended with getting them working again. That was satisfying, even if it was new boss R that found the important information.

I got Friday off, just in time for the Roseville trip to be cancelled due to illness. I think I would not have trained up on Friday and back on Sunday, because that is too much time on the train for time spent visiting friends.

Played: Lancer. No fight this time, which is probably for the best since Vivian had no internets and wouldn’t have been able to teleport and teleport and teleport. Instead we worked on fixing our spaceship and some other stuff that’s clearly not as important, and ended on the cliffhanger of the city being attacked. Time for a giant robot battle!

Played a little Minecraft, dug up some of the wooden parts of the sand mine, pillaged a couple of mine cart chests, and also dug up all the track I could find. Then I avoided the zombies and found a village, or maybe a dead village since it contained pillagers that shot me.

Written: FAIL. Gaming and getting ready for office tomorrow instead.

Monday, Monday, Monday! How I hate capitalism! But at least I don’t have any meetings today. Or any brain.

I found a big sandy pit with an arch over it, and what looks like a mine half-buried in the sand. I’m afraid that means all the mineral wealth is completely buried, but the numerous zmobies are definitely not buried.

Written: 227, which is almost a real number.

I did in fact go shopping today (after sleeping in a lot). I also got a hair cut (this one, right here, see?) and paid too much to have people prepare food for me. I played some Minecraft, but mostly just wandered around the northeastern end of the giant mesa visible from home, which had regular white-sand desert, some biome with grass and sheep and  no trees that I guess is meadows, and of course caves full of monsters. That wasn’t super-productive, but when I got back, I had enough wheat to breed some new cows, which will eventually grow enough to be murdered harvested for their leather. Still no diamonds, though. Maybe I should go back and start mining around the bottom of that deep shaft in the desert.

Written: 158. So far, so good.

I got up and almost went grocery shopping, but then went back to bed instead. Social Minecraft is today because Nonny and everybody are busy tomorrow, so I can shop then.

This week, I explored the desert some more. It turns out to have two rivers, which may explain why I couldn’t find the riverside cave I found earlier. It also has at least two wells, which are pretty but mostly useless since thirst is not a thing, a bunch of cactus, and some suspiciously rectangular skylines that are not desert temples. I bought some custom banners from Nonny’s banner shop,which now has a colored sheep breeding program as part of its supply chain. After we finished, I went to my own world and finally found two cows to lead back to my paddock. Once my wheat crop comes in, I can make them smooch adorably and spawn new cows, and finally I will have a steady supply of leather for books.

I was on call all afternoon, but the customers were quiescent.

Read: Renegades (Craig Alanson): Immediately upon returning from their last expedition, the PCs have to steal their ship back from duly-constituted authority and set out to save Earth by doing the impossible. Again.

Written: 152. If only two points were enough to draw a line…

Marith is still dead from impending travel, so no anime this week either.

I tried to explore overland, but kept getting distracted by caves. It’s not like I have any shortage of minerals, but I keep looking anyway.

Read: The Idaten Deities Know Only Peace vol 1 (Amahara, coolkyousinnjya): Sure, the major characters don’t care about what individual humans do to each other, but there was no need to cut to a graphic rape scene to prove the point.

Read: Lords of Uncreation (Adrian Tchaikovsky): Conclusion to the trilogy, in which our heroes manage to do the thing despite everyone around them trying to do the other thing, or maybe ignore the question by having a war they understand instead of screwing around with the fundamental nature of the universe. It is pretty tense even though things are mostly as the reader would expect, and the Divine Essiel are still great aliens.

Written: 262 words over the past however long, but 101 of them were tonight, so apparently I can write 100 words a day without dying. Unimpressive as that may be.

More office, this time Chinese food in honor of AAPI Month. I wasn’t a complete idiot in the technical meeting, so yay? I managed to both commute without delay and pick up my prescription on the way home, so I think I’m pretty much sold on this routine even if sometimes transit betrays me cruelly.

Usually I keep my computing devices quiet unless I have explicitly asked for a noise, but I finally tried turning the sound on while playing Minecraft and it was okay. Knowing monsters are around doesn’t seem to help me avoid them, and hearing distant zmobies while digging through the dark rock of the moderate depths was more creepy than useful in any case. I got no diamonds but a lot of redstone, and also found clay while boating around on my way back. Plus, I now have a paddock for cows, and a wheat field that will eventually give me the materials to lure them into my paddock and force them to reproduce. Bookcases, here I come!

Written: FAIL.

 

 

 

Office, bleah, but I managed to successfully commute in the afternoon after eating Togo’s sandwiches.

I kept digging for diamonds, but found everything else, including an amethyst geode. I don’t think amethyst blocks or shards are useful for much, but they’re very pretty. I’ll have to go back later and see if the crystals have regrown. (I know they regrow, I don’t know how long it takes.)

Kindle has taken to choking on epubs I get from Kobo, so I guess I’m switching to the Kobo app for reading (except Kindle Unlimited). Probably for the best, but annoying.

Read: Mavericks (Craig Alanson): Sixth or so in the series, this time mostly a cut to another group of humans making their way in the hostile universe while the series MC and his glowing beer can are waiting out a problem. Even the aliens that have engineered themselves to be genetically superior are pretty dumb.

Read: Season of Skulls (Charles Stross): Further adventures of the former henchwoman of a Bond villain in the dark future of Britain under Nyarlathotep, as she keeps trying to disentangle herself from his plans after murdering him a book or two previously. Most of the Laundry books put the characters into another genre to make them suffer more, and this one is Regency romance but meta and with more necromancy.

Written: FAIL.

Early meeting, ugh. Not as early as some, and not requiring any input from me, but still ugh.

We almost had gaming, but then Ken had some kind of child-shaped emergency so instead I played Minecraft. This time I did remember to put my travel bed near where I was mining, although I didn’t get killed much because I was in the mine tunnels I dug, not monster-infested caves.At -50, I was hoping to find diamonds, but instead found mostly redstone and some lapis and gold and iron.

Read: The Beacon at Barrington Light (Mike Watson): Space mystery that turns out to not be very mysterious or interesting.

Writing: FAIL.

There’s no gaming, because Rachel is having Mother’s Day instead, so I was able to go grocery shopping and get a lunch and play Minecraft with Nonny and everyone (albeit remotely). I spent most of the session running around a desert (normal sand, so weird after the badlands of my primary world!) and exploring caves along the riverbank, but I was able to mine stuff so I can buy banners from Nonny and Ayse’s Banner Shop.

After we had to knock off group Minecraft, I splooted around in my own world (er, my copy of Marith’s world) and moved my sugarcane farming from the edges of the Dye Gardens (where stalks fall into the zmobie soup ocean) to the top of the mesa. I had to haul water up in buckets for it, but I don’t think it ended up being 52 buckets, which is nice.

Written: FAIL.

I was on call from 7 to 19 o’clock, because capitalism, but the customers were pretty quite so I was able to sleep in next to my phone, and also visit Ayse & fam for Eurovision 2023. Earl and Cat also put in an appearance and we ate bread and roe and borscht and pelmeni and watched ridiculous stage performances and had a good time. I didn’t like the songs as much this year; I remembered some of the spectacle, but little of the music. However, agreement was universal that Finland was robbed.

Because there were technical difficulties, it took a lot longer to get to the replay of the finals, so we spent some time watching the first semi and part of the second, and didn’t finish until well into the evening, but it’s not like I had a better use for the day.

Marith was not there because she is dead in anticipation of an upcoming trip with her abusive mother.

Written: FAIL.

Back to the office again, only sandwiches this time. Also I didn’t manage to hide in a conference so I had to wear my mask a lot, but I tried going home in the middle of the afternoon and logging back on, and this time it worked pretty well.

Read: Forging Hephaestus (Drew Hayes): A small-time superpowered thief gets drafted for the villain’s guild and assigned to a retired high-level villain. The guild minimizes conflict with superheroes by having a few rules, and even fewer penalties for breaking them. Shenanigans, crime, and betrayal ensue.

Read: A Kiss of Light and Flame (M Owens): Described as a yuri light novel, and extremely light. One antagonist, no plot twists, but there are two girls who fall in love.

Written: FAIL.

Boo, commute. We had the good chicken tikka masala naan burritos for lunch, at least, and after I retreated to a conference room to eat, I forgot to come out, so that was slightly less unpleasant than many office experiences even if probably less polite.  Also I remembered to grab a burrito for dinner tomorrow, although I didn’t have a way to transport the tasty tamarind sauce.

On the upside, I finally found blue flowers for my Dye Garden! They were in fact just past the cave I died horribly in yesterday, and just before the cave I died horribly in today.

Written: FAIL.

Played: Lancer. This time, our victory condition was to get to the far end of the map, past the annoying enemy mechs, and rescue the civilians. Alas, Vivian had to drop right at the beginning, so we weren’t able to cheese it with teleports, and it turned out to be a lot harder than last session, or at least a lot more painful. We didn’t even get to tick a clock!

Instead of going to bed, I searched Minecraft for blue flowers, but found only  caves full of coal and copper and DEATH.

Read: Komi Can’t Communicate vol 24 (Tomohito Oda): Well, now they’re an item, but they don’t seem to know what to do except be even more awkward. All the other characters are way too invested in the ship.

Read: Somebunny to Love (Zoe Chant): Latest of Kit’s “Virtue Shifter” novellas (?), in which a rabbit shifter finds her fated mate and bangs his brains out, and nothing even slightly bad happens at any point.

Written: FAIL.

Did I do anything today? Probably not.

Read: Tista vol 1 (Tatsuya Endo): She’s an orphan with an inherited eye. They’re the Roman Catholic Church. Together, they shoot evil people in modern New York City. I picked this up because it’s by the same mangaka as SpyxFamily, but it’s gritty and angsty about its bloodshed and just not much fun. Also I think they must be printing manga smaller these days, because obviously my eyes can’t be getting worse.

Read: A Dark and Dirty War (Eric Thomson): Eighth book, well after the war when our heroine is about to get turfed out of the space navy for having found too many opportunities for improvement of tactical doctrine, lots of space and lots of humans who deserve murder, but almost no actual missiles or free-floating humans in the space.

Written: Back to FAIL.

Today I lay abed for most of the morning, but then played huge amounts of Minecraft. Despite the risk of horrible death germs, I went over to Monkeycats’ and we played in Nonny’s world all afternoon. I tried to do some mapping, but succeeded only in messing up Ayse’s giant map, so maybe I’ll stick to wandering aimlessly and mining things. Also Jus and Nonny opened their shops, bringing capitalism to the world of one-meter cubes, and we had a bonfire party. Then after a dinner of Ken’s Famous Turkey Chili, Nonny and I played in a copy of my world, and explored the alien landscape at the bottom of the big cave near spawn. It was blue and glittery and we never saw the actual ancient city, but the Warden saw us. Briefly.

Read: The Invisible Man & His Soon-to-Be Wife vol 1 (Iwatobineko): She’s blind. He’s invisible. Together, they work at a detective agency and flirt adorably.

Written: 207.

D’oh, I forgot to pay rent. Fortunately the apartment manager is chill.

Ran three separate errands, and also finally built a lava factory in my great hall. It took longer than it should have, because I kept getting distracted by caves full of gold and death, and then I lost a bucket when it popped free, fell into the lava, and was destroyed, but finally I had two lavas for the Dual-Column Lavamatic! (What do you mean, “what is it good for?”? It’s a lava-making machine!)

Written: Still FAIL.

Yay WFH. Yay salad instead of weird health burritos. Yay shorts.

I played a lot of Minecraft because I’m not very clever. I found red flowers, and then kept going until I pillaged the mountain range of mineral wealth, and made it back home without dying, but didn’t find any blue flowers. Still, I have enough iron to keep me in shears for a while, and as much red dye as I can get bonemeal to generate, and also I learned the water out front of my great hall is only an inlet, not a channel between islands. That’s got to count for something.

Written: FAIL.