Went to the office, learned how to do the thing, ate some hummus with chicken and pita, did some work.
Read (graphic novel): Queens of the Crypt vol 1 (DOM&INK): A high-school enby in a creepy town accidentally summons a squad of terrifying-yet-personable undead ladies for help when the local cryptid abducts half the people in town who understand them. Spookiness ensues.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 190.
Went to the office, cheered for the 17th(!) birthday of the company, ate a million pounds of catered Chef Chu’s but no cake, did several works, watched some recorded training sessions. I still don’t like videos, although they’re not as bad as live phone calls.
Read (manga): Lynx vol 1 (Samuel Sattin, tokitokoro): A widowed detective in the obviously corrupt police force of the last remaining(?) city and her bioenhanced black cat partner try to find out what’s going on with the monsters in the back alleys while taking care of her late wife’s kid.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 110.
Despite insomnia, I was able to gather my energy or gumption or executive function and go to the office to do some work and eat Mayan pork and plantains and rice and veggies and read about Rust (I don’t understand it) and Golang (I don’t understand it). Probably I should have worked on finishing off the Kubernetes course instead.
Read (graphic novel): Clara & the Devil vol 1 (Olivie Blake, Little Chmura): It’s probably not good to be the librarian when the Devil comes in to get a library card, even in watercolor.
Read (manga): Breasts Are My Favorite Things In The World! vol 2 (Wakame Konbu): Turn-about is fair play! Also, the heart wants what it wants, but Busty Girl really needs to develop better taste in women. Maybe this other girl who she is confiding in? No, she’s a perv too.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 139.
Went to the office, attended some meetings, ate some Mexican food, did some work.
Can I do it again, though?
Read (manga): Dandadan vol 20 (Yukinobu Tatsu): Momo being two inches tall does not exempt her from going to school, which is unexpectedly full of weirdos and monsters.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 111. This main character may count as a thrift store cutie.
Surprisingly, I did go to the office and eat my yesterday burrito. I was also there in person for the company all-hands, but meh. The new CEO is a pretty generic white guy, he said generic business things.
Read (graphic novel): Constantine: Distorted Illusions (Kami Garcia, Isaac Goodhart): John Constantine as a teenaged bisexual punk visiting America, insulting every mage over 30 he can find, and conducting deeply unwise rituals because what could go wrong?
Read (short): The Wednesday Witches Book Club (Sarah Beth Durst): The new book witch in town has joined the reading group, but everyone keeps getting turned into cats!
Read (short): The Lion’s Tusk (Robert Jackson Bennett): An Ana and Din story, entirely in the form of Ana bending Din’s ear about historic biology crimes.
Read (short): A Labyrinth of Honeybees (Heather Fawcett): Divine honeybees, in fact, tended by a priestess and threatened by the invading empire’s law enforcement.
Read (short): The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious (Scott Lynch): Murder mystery at the meeting of the seven most powerful wizards in the world, and only the one who never(?) uses magic can solve it.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 227.
So, we’re doing better than that, probably?
Went to the office, had some meetings and attempted meetings, ate some Mayan pork and rice and plantains, did some work, learned a little of a specific corner of Kubernetes.
Read (comic collection): The Many Deaths of Laila Starr (Ram V, Filipe Andrade): The human who will invent immortality is born, so the Goddess of Death is rightsized and cast down to live as a human in future(?) India. Life and death and life and death ensue.
Read (short): “There Will Come Soft Rains” (Ray Bradbury): I guess one advantage(?) of our actual 2026 is that all our robot servants depend on constant Internet connectivity, so it will take only about three days of sysadmins not showing up for work before they all grind to a halt.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 200 exactly. At least the MC is back to plotting instead of just listening to the radio girl, although she’s not getting very far.
Also Wear Lipstick in the Rain Day.
I did successfully go to the office and do a few works and eat a paneer tikka masala burrito. Yay me, I guess.
Read (graphic novel): Ladies of the Knight (Fiona Marchbank): Jousting and knightly combat as sport, with commercial sponsors and no murders. A grumpy knight lady takes on an enthusiastic squire, light interpersonal drama with rivals and fellow squires ensues. Lots and lots of knightcore fashion.
Read (novel): Love, Politics, and Other Acts of War (MH Foster): The retired demon overlord just gets more and more involved in more and more village stuff, plus new stuff apparently imported to the village just to annoy him.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 139.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Went to the office, did some work, ate a chicken tikka masala burrito, reviewed some Kubernetes troubleshooting.
Read (graphic novel): Zatanna: The Jewel of Gravesend (Alys Arden, Jacqueline de Leon): An origin story for Zatanna as the daughter of a stage magician at Coney Island, not apparently related to the Galaxy books and also unnecessarily heterosexual.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 141.
When they get all hopped up on those tiny brine shrimp, there’s no telling what they’ll do!
Went to the office now that I have my brain pills, somehow walked all the way up the stairs without taking a break, attending a work meeting, spaced on a remote doctor meeting, ate some coconut chicken noodles, finished learning about kustomize, started practicing troubleshooting Kubernetes.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 147.
Okay, I probably shouldn’t make jokes about International Sex Workers Day. National Leave the Office Early Day is fair game, though.
Went to the office, did some work, ate some chicken nuggets, learned to do some Helm to a Kubernetes, left slightly early, dropped off my ballot. Seriously, Democrats, this is the best you come up with for top two in a jungle primary?
Read (comic collection): Hawkgirl: Once Upon a Galaxy (Jadzia Axelrod, Amancay Nahuelpan, Adriano Lucas): Yes, the same Galaxy as in The Prettiest Star, although not on her like that. Apparently I don’t know anything about Hawkgirl. I thought she was an alien, but in this continuity, at least, she seems to be some kind of interdimensional reincarnator. She has a creepy nemesis.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 250 exactly. But soon, I am going to have to pick a date and then try to do astronomy.
Went to the office, did a fair bit of work, ate some falafel and hummus and rice, finally succeeded at the kubernetes thing. When they said, “we’re going to do X” I thought they meant, like, on that first page of the test. But no, they only wanted the very first steps done on the first page. Instructions and prep scripts for all the rest of what I was trying to do were on the later pages.
Read (comic collection): Supergirl: Being Super (Mariko Tamaki, Joëlle Jones): An origin story for Supergirl, in the small-town Midwest. I have no idea how it fits with any other canon, since it’s modern (smartphones) but Superman appears to be also pretty recent. Whatever, a foolish continuity is the Green Goblin of small minds, as they say. At least acknowledges the existence of the question of where Kryptonians get all that energy.
Read (novel): The Calamity Queen Saga vol 1 (Calder Finnix): An extremely OP MC headbutts her way out of the Abyss and is promptly declared a world boss by the System of the comparatively fragile world she finds herself in. Overwritten angst, friend adoption, supervillainy, database crashes, and widespread destruction ensue.
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 156.
Went to the office, did some work, ate some chickeny stuff in a box, failed at kubernetes again. Do I know what I did wrong? Maybe!
Read (manga): Yotsuba&! vol 16 (Kiyohiko Azuma): Augh Yotsuba is going to be in first grade soon! Also, cameo that suggests terrible things about book 17!
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 206.
Went to the office, ate the lunch I successfully ordered, watched some training videos, flailed pathetically at kubernetes again. I think I need to learn to take notes.
Read (graphic novel): Galaxy: As the World Falls Down (Jadzia Axelrod, Rye Hickman): The same purple alien transbian Galaxy as in The Prettiest Star, now in Metropolis with the intent of going to college, but there’s this world that needs saving, and Superman can’t do it, so… (But he can give superheroing advice.)
Written (Geometry for Mutants): 136.
With triple-entry bookkeeping, of course.
Went to the office, calculated that it’s only 120 steps to the seventh floor which is nothing and yet I still can’t do it in one go, attended an all-hands and heard news that is probably very important to investors and other people who think they can control the future, forgot to finish submitting my lunch order and had to eat leftover breakfast burrito, did the mandatory anti-harassment training that should be obvious to anyone and yet, and doinked around with some Kubernetes. That sounds like a lot, but most of it was sitting down.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Written (second rewrite of Geometry for Mutants): 325, which pretty much eliminates the first draft. There are a couple of lines left as notes for later, but that’s all.
There’s one right behind you!
Went to the office, experienced the new ticketing system which in a surprise reversal of standard corporate practice really is better than the old one, ate a deconstructed chicken samosa, tried to learn some Kubernetes.
Read (graphic novel): Colossal vol 1 (Rutile, Diane Truc): Originally a French(?) Webtoon. A young noblewoman in a modern-ish setting, who really needs to marry well for the sake of her family, has no interest in being femme or meeting vapid boys when there’s lifting to be done and sick gains to be had. Probably heteronormative, although I hold out hope for the rival noblewoman.
Written (second rewrite of new project): 158.
One can invent a bigger word than “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, but is it better?
Went to the office, coughed a lot, did some work, ate some Filipino fried chicken and assorted foods but didn’t enjoy them much (definitely a me problem), tried to learn some Kubernetes but didn’t do a very good job, coughed some more.
Read (manga): A Bride’s Story vol 12 (Kaoru Mori): Looks in on every group we’ve met so far, but mostly about Smith and Talas and party and their now photography-enabled journey, with a long stay in the house of the guy with two wives who adore each other.
Written (new project): 165.
Honestly, it’s probably One Piece.
Went to the office, tried to meet with customers but failed, ate a burrito, did some work, learned some kubernetes.
Read (from the shelf): FAIL.
Read (novel): The Faith of Beasts (James SA Corey): The humans are kind of fitting into the imperial alien ecosystem, but that doesn’t stop them from getting into trouble and learning things that are surprising and possibly upsetting to them. More upsetting than everything else in the galaxy, that is. Interesting idea for the “deathless enemy” of the imperial ecosystem.
Written (anything): FAIL. I did catch up quite a few days on my journal, which doesn’t count but is what I was doing all evening.
Went to the office, ate some miscellaneous Asian food, did some work, learned no Kubernetes.
Read (manga): A Bride’s Story vol 9 (Kaoru Mori): This volume is mostly about Amir’s friend Pariya and her boy and the fifteen years’ worth of embroidery she has to redo before they can get married. Do you think the manga-ka might like drawing fancy embroidery?
Written (new project): 178.
Probably an Angry Birds tie-in.
Went to the office, did some work, ate some garlic noodles, learned some Kubernetes.
Read (graphic novel): Forgive-Me-Not (Mari Costa): The princess is abducted by a strange butch and told she’s a fae changeling, and things go downhill from there (but in a mostly adorable way, with only some stabbing).
Written (game design): 111.
No, not like that! Well, maybe a little like that. No beaver-shaming.
Went to the office, ate too much falafel hummus shawarma pita, didn’t do too much work.
Read (graphic novel): I Am Not Starfire (Mariko Tamaki, Yoshi Yoshitani): In fact she is Starfire’s round, gay, goth teenaged daughter, who is not dealing that well with having a famous mom who doesn’t entirely understand Earth culture. I’m not sure I really support the way the end went, but okay. At least there were girl-smooches.
Written (game design): 175.
Sadly I’m not very crafty so I mostly just buy hats. Possibly I should buy more different hats, although then I’d need outfits to go with them, and that way lies madness.
Went to the office, had a lot of meetings, resolved a long-running customer issue by doing a different thing (that’s probably more in line with their policies anyway), officially received my 0% raise for not being a rock star, ate some brisket hash with fried egg for lunch, learned some Kubernetes.
Watched (live-action anime): One Piece 2.3: Yep, that was just about as doomed as it looked.
Read (manga): A Bride’s Story vol 2 (Kaoru Mori): Wow, Amir is so much better off away from her old family.
Written (game design): 210.
Went to the office, climbed some stairs, ate some spicy pork dumplings, did not eat any pecan waffles, spent all day working on TLS certificates.
Read (novel): Jett Jamison and the Secret Storm (Kimberly Behre Kenna): A middle-grade book about being a survivor of sexual assault and books about being a survivor of sexual assault and censorship of books about being survivor and also how much American “Christians” suck.
Read (manga): A Bride’s Story vol 1 (Kaoru Mori): It’s been a long time since I read this, but the fabrics and landscapes are still just as amazing.
Written (game design): 282:
Going off on another tangent, from the idea of conditions having
levels, the ultimate condition is Dead With a Body. (Dead Without a
Body is barely worse than Knocked Unconscious.) But does it have
levels? Does the Wounded condition turn into Dead at level 4? That’s a
lot like hit points, although to be fair, having 4 hit points when
attacks can do up to 4 damage is a lot different than having 200 hit
points when attacks can do up to 20 damage.
Probably a lot of conditions can take out the target, or severely
disable them at level 4, although if lower levels reduce the relevant
defenses, then it’s a death spiral. Possibly lower levels of Wounded
or Battered don’t impose any penalties general, because we are
heroic and full of adrenaline, and also just beating on people is not
what we want to encourage.
Even without a death spiral, if every die of a powerset is also 1
point of defense, then with a 9d6 or greater powerset, it’s possible
(though very unlikely) to inflict a level 4 condition against someone
defending with a 9d6 powerset straight up. Against someone undefended,
5d6 is enough to potentially-but-practically-never do it. This
doesn’t seem right; surely Xd6 offense vs X defense should produce
the same range of results, regardless of the value of X? Perhaps we
need Feng Shui/Nexus die minus die, or FATE dice, or something else
0-centered.
If all conditions were invented for the specific situation, we could
dismiss the notion of a condition coming in multiple levels, but if we
have to have a finite set of conditions, that’s a natural way to
categorize them. The effects don’t have to scale linearly with level,
though, so level 1-3 can be penalties but 4 can still be “completely
____”.
Which I celebrated by eating way too much pie. Also Flatmates Day, which I celebrated by having thrown my flatmate into the cold cruel streets to live alone.
For some reason I said it was okay for work to celebrate my birthday, but at least I got chocolate cream pie out of it. Also several people said “happy birthday” and I said “thanks” like a functional member of society. Also there was barbecue, although I didn’t get as much as I wanted because Coworker T talks forever on video calls. Not in person, though.
Read (graphic novel): Wallflower (Jasmin Omar Ata): An introverted and probably neurospicy middle-school girl in Florida can see people’s auras? souls? as flowers growing on them. This turns out to be related to why her family is kind of horrible to her and why the new kid at school is so weird. Not that it’s actually explained.
Written (game design): 182.