Tag: office

In the office again, for Chick-Fil-A and meetings about support for the ~Special~ customers, which the now-sacked Boss R was supposed to have gotten sorted and which is not sorted. Also my custom of commuting home in the middle of the afternoon is now officially approved.

Read: Ruby Finley vs The Interstellar Invasion (K Tempest Bradford): An 11-year-old black girl who likes bugs finds a mysterious bug and trouble ensues. Even though it’s set in the present (smartphones, Twitter, etc) the main character gets to ride her bike around the neighborhood and visit her friends without having an adult and a car and a schedule.

Read: “The Star-Bear” (Michael Swanwick): I think I’m not Russian enough, or not Russian-lit-reading enough, to get this one. Pretty sure the bear is a metaphor, though.

Written: 102 today, 1215 for the week, 2862 overall.

Back to the office for no good reason. American restaurant pasta for lunch. Light customer activity, which would seem lighter if we weren’t missing so many people.

Read: Spell Sweeper (Lee Edward Fodi): It’s the anti-Harry Potter, where the main character has tiny magical powers so instead of learning real magic at Secret Magic School, she’s on the janitorial track, and her hated rival is the Chosen One, a magical prodigy, tall and beautiful, beloved by everyone, etc. Naturally they have to work together to save the world, despite the unhelpfulness of the adult wizards.

Written: 229, 1113, 2760.

Taco Wednesday in the office.

New (minor) Minecraft version, but I only logged in enough to make sure my main world still works.

Read: Some Desperate Glory (Emily Tesh): Yes, the MC is supposed to be that awful at the beginning, because she is starting her story of personal growth (and saving a lot of people) from the very bottom. Much of the plot could have been avoided if the aliens had a better concept of security, but that wasn’t really the point.

Written: 305 for the day, 878 for the week and overall.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Back to the office yet again. This week’s weather isn’t so bad, despite my whining. Also it’s been a fairly quiet week on the customer front, at least compared to the past couple.

Trundled around in Minecraft getting murdered by zmobies.

Read: The Slaughtered Lamb Bookstore & Bar (Seana Kelly): She’s a werewolf who survived a serial killer and now runs a bar and bookstore for San Francisco’s secret supernatural community, he’s a hot and surprisingly nice vampire. Together they fight crime, and are kind of adorkable, and also kick ass. There’s a lot of plot and violence, but also a HFN (I assume, based on the existence of multiple sequels) so is it PNR? I dunno how genres work.

Read: By A Silver Thread (Rachel Aaron): Set in the same magic/cyberpunk future as the dragon books, this time our MC is a fae changeling in thrall to a blood mage. It goes downhill from there, in ways that revolve around the nature of fae in this setting. There is a kissing subplot, but it’s definitely not a romance book.

Written: FAIL.

Back to the office, despite Coworker L, who was there last week, being down with Covid and HR sending out a notification and everything. At least the trains are back to normal this week, although that doesn’t necessarily help when the busses are late.

Grass successfully spread into my dye gardens, so I was able to create some additional dye. Still need to find red and blue flowers, though. With red, blue, yellow, white, and light grey, I can get every color of dye except black. That still requires hunting squid, since I’ve never seen a “wither rose”.

Written: FAIL.

Instead of waiting until the usual quitting time to start commuting home, I commuted back in the middle of the afternoon. I felt obligated to work later after that, but at 18:30 I was home, in comfortable clothes, hydrated, and full of ice cream health, which is better in every way than 18:30 yesterday.

Because I took it into my head to make a great hall of red sand and/or orange terracotta (not actually red sandstone), I spent most of the evening digging and making stone pickaxes and digging some more. Eventually I decided the main hall was grand enough, so now I know how large to make the side halls for proper symmetry.

Written: Still FAIL.

Trains still weird this week, which is inconvenient, but I’m in favor of electrification. Renewable renewable OK!

The office is still uncomfortable and annoying, even though they gave us sandwiches. My masking is definitely slipping. 🙁

Read: Fog of War (JN Chaney, Terry Mixon): I think the authors just like writing about this new character, because although he’s given a lot of important exposition, he didn’t need to take up that much of two books. But it’s always good to have additional doom placed on the mantel.

Written: FAIL. I didn’t even manage to waste time on anything specific, I just got home and ate a dinner and then suddenly the day was over.

More commuting, this time with bonus cascading transit failures. I made it in before the first meeting, so I guess that’s okay. Maybe I’ll get up even earlier next week, because the trains will still be messed up. It’s for the cause of electrification, which I definitely approve of, I just wish they could be better organized about it.

Read: Black Ops (Craig Alanson): Book four or so in the “Expeditionary Force” series, which Earl reminded me exists. A human fount of insane ideas and an absolutely terrifying ancient AI try to keep Earth out of the crosshairs of various asshole aliens, with mixed success but 110% shenanigans along the way. Has the problem common to MilSF where even the allegedly very advanced aliens have only incrementally better rifles and helicopters and whatnot, but who doesn’t like shenanigans?

Written: FAIL.

Couldn’t write this morning because as soon as I got up, I had to go to work.

Lunch at the office was Chick-Fil-A, but nobody asked me (possibly nobody was asked, I heard the lunch service just asks how many people and brings whatever they feel like)  and I couldn’t unspend the money, so I ate it. It wasn’t even good, although the fries might been better if they weren’t cold.

Read: Bianca Torre is Afraid of Everything (Justine Pucella Winans): Her list of fears is actually only 60 items long, but on the other hand it  covers most forms of human interaction, which is why she lurks in her room with a telescope and sees a murder. Traumatic hijinx and a side of gender euphoria ensue.

Written: FAIL.

More office. Not very many people mask, even in conference rooms, and I don’t think free burgers makes up for that.

Did some more mining in Minecraft, and finally broke into the giant cave from the side. It is only slightly less monster-guarded that way, though. Did find another abandoned mine, and also a lot of copper ore which should be useful but mostly isn’t. I guess I could compress it into copper blocks or cut copper and build a new house out of it or something.

Reread: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Work For a Supervillain (Richard Roberts): I liked this better on reread, maybe because when I first read it, I was hoping it would be more like the Penny books. I’m surprised we haven’t seen the new character who was introduced at the end in subsequent books, though.

Read: Fluff vol 2 (RavensDagger): More silly superheroics, this time LitRPG. The main character gets more externalized superpowers and is definitely growing into her supervillain role. It’s also increasingly clear that the Hero and Villain tags are completely spurious.

Written: FAIL.

Back to the office, although at least there aren’t constant customer meetings this week. I got my new laptop with working keyboard, and will try to remember to not eat over it. The automatic transfer app doesn’t work (probably because of the security software, which always screws up everything) so I get to have two laptops until I’m sure I have everything I need transferred over.

Read: A House With Good Bones (T Kingfisher): Not as creepy as The Hollow Places, but even more Kingfishery. I felt pretty bad for the monsters, though.

Read: What Moves The Dead (T Kingfisher): A Kingfishery retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher, which I have never read. I felt even sorrier for the monsters in this one, though. I did not expect to read two Kingfisher books in a row in which merely being horrific and inimical to humanity is treated so unsympathetically!

Written: FAIL.

Went to the office again, did a work, ate a Korean drumstick, came home, died in a pit again.

Read: Lilith’s Shadow Omnibus vol 2 (Benjamin Medrano): Three more books of superheroic adventures and drama, including more possible girlfriends for the main character and also one or more attempts at planetary subjugation/destruction. Still emotionally a little flat, but full of genre.

Written: FAIL.

Back to the office. Customers, why?

Today’s Minecraft accomplishments: added an emergency bath next to the lava-powered garbage disposal, mined some obsidian and crying obsidian (neither of which is super-useful, but they’re shiny).

Read: Lilith’s Shadow Omnibus vol 1 (Benjamin Medrano): Bioroid creation of a supervillain becomes a superhero, gets hot girlfriends, fights aliens and evil wizards and suspicious superheroes, etc. The romance seems pretty flat, though.

Written: FAIL.

Back to the office. I need better shirts and/or collar points. And an iron and ironing board, probably. Ugh. Clothes, why?

Instead of doing anything useful when I got home, I played more Minecraft. Not sure what this fire and lava and weird purple dirt is doing in the middle of my island, but I guess I’ll mine some of it.

Read: Beyond the Burn Line (Paul McAuley): The sophonts after the sophonts after the sophonts that succeed an extinct humanity might be better at society, but they have UFO weirdos too.

Written: FAIL.

This is the week we have to start being in the office two days a week, so I got up much earlier than I wanted to (although to be fair, I never want to get up) and trundled up to Mountain View.

The customer meetings will never end, possibly because the customer will never accept that they have to fix their problems instead of us waving a magic wand.

Read: Without Mercy (Eric Thompson): More human-on-human violence in space.

Written: FAIL.

Nobody likes going into the office in 2022, but Ken very kindly gave me a lift to Mountain View, so I did not have to get up so early, and I hid in a small conference room most of the day so I did not have to breathe with people. I did come out and unmask to eat holiday lunch (salad, roast veg, mashed spud, roll+horseradish+roast beast, so not sure what holiday tradition that is, maybe British? Tasty, though.), which hopefully did not fill me with plague. I also got grilled a lot in the training meeting, because I was sitting right across from the instructor, but fortunately I knew many answers.

Read: Magister’s Bane (Yvette Bostic): The main character starts off ugly to the point of deformity but then is revealed to be actually super-hot as soon as she is brought into the magical world. I am not sure what think about that plot twist. At least she still has severe self-esteem issues from spending her entire life with people avoiding looking at her face.

Read: “Haley and the Miraculous Potion” (MCA Hogarth): Christmas episode, so of course it’s even more overtly Christian that usual. (IMHO, it’s super-weird how Christians take Jewish scripture telling ancient monoloatrous Jews not to worship the gods of other tribes and try to make it relevant to their monotheism, but this sentence could have ended after the word “scripture”.)

Read: Yakuza Reincarnation vol 3 (Hiroki Miyashita, Takeshi Natsuhara): Old-school yakuza reincarnated into a fantasy princess continues to beat the snot out of people doing crime wrong.

Written: 385 words, no kittens.

Had to get up early and go into the office today so we could have a team lunch with boss3 S. The office was just as hot and inconveniently located as usual, but I was able to hide in a conference most of the time and mostly avoid humans and their virus-spewing face-holes. I also drank canned coffee milkshake stuff that was probably very bad for me.

Apparently boss3 is persona non grata in Switzerland after running afoul of their draconian anti-speeding regime, which I would not have known if I hadn’t come into the office today.

I cleverly (not really) got pizza on the way home and watched TV with Marith, which was definitely better than being in an office.

Watched: Mob Psycho 100 3.1-2: Uh oh, Mob is thinking about his future. That can’t be good for Reigen’s business!

Read: Fluff (RavensDagger): LitRPG but superhero instead of D&D. An extremely anxious and repressed college freshman gets superpowers, gets randomly assigned to be a straight-up villain, and discovers that her power is summon little sisters who have actual powers. It’s all sideways from there.

Written: 214 kitten words.

Commuted into the office, spent most of the day hiding in a conference room so I could unmask, but then I didn’t have an external monitor so bleah. After getting home, Coworker K (who was in office yesterday but not today) announced she’s testing positive, so that’s 2/7 in our team so far. At least coming in to the office for the rest of the week is cancelled.

Read: Liching Hour (HK Tolson): Despite actions that could be construed as heroic, our protagonist is still pretty terrible. Just not as terrible as other monsters.

Written: 441 kitten words, total 921 for the week so far.

Last day of the superspreader event! Only one session for us today, so we didn’t have to be there until mid-morning, but then we hung around for free lunch and team bonding (mostly admiring coworker UK-T’s vacation photos). Aside from the ever-present risk of viral doom, it was pretty nice. I had to log in again when I got home, but the customers were mostly quiescent.

Rapid Test: Negative.

Played: Eclipse Phase 2. Still trying to manipulate Chi’s sister into abandoning nanoterrorism as a viable tactic for liberating the oppressed peoples of Mars, still not getting very far because in addition to being crazy, she’s also psychic. GML, who knows nanotech stuff, nerded out with Nadine’s pet mad scientist and made some discoveries, but I’m not sure I understood them. I’m not smart enough to play this game.

Written: FAIL. But I expected that.

More stuff relevant to my job, although it was hard to stay awake for it. Boss3 S is growing on me. She is also unimpressed with the sales bros, and works well with Boss2 B, who I generally admire. Nobody on our team is testing positive yet, but I think most of us skipped the dinner anyway.

Rapid Test: Negative.

Written: FAIL. I technically had hours, just not neurons to do anything with them.