Paying for a Moment's Folly

One more day, and it will be the weekend.

Meanwhile though, I'm paying the price of a moment's folly. So it is not really a secret that I have bad skin, and part of the badness of my skin comes from some allergic reactions to certain types of food. The actual list is confusing, but it can be easily reduced to this list:

• No crustaceans;
• No cephalopods except for octopus;
• No peanuts.

So the moment's folly was to accept the soup-of-the-day from the Swensen's at Junction 8 where I had gone to for dinner on Tuesday.

Oh yes I'm paying for it. I'm getting rashes, and it itches like hell. It also doesn't help that the [ambient] temperature is going up as well---last I checked, the indoor wall temperature at around this time is still a toasty 31 °C.

Mind you, this is at 2319hrs local time, also known as ``roughly reaching stupid o'clock''.

I have my ways of mitigating this mess, but damn it will it take a while and lots of metaphorical bullet-biting discipline to keep things going.

That's all I really want to write; just a small note to remind myself that I cannot let up even for a moment when it comes to matters like this.

Till the next update.

Control and Another Experiment

So I completed the main story of Control. The end-run was a little unexpected---I thought there was going to be a major fight with some end-boss, but it ended up being a gauntlet followed by another gauntlet instead.

Don't get me wrong---the bosses in Control are bullet sponges, but judicious use of a maxed out Launch skill trivialises many (not all!) of them. In many ways, the gauntlet fights of the Hiss are much more aggravating, with each type of Hiss having their own ways of defeating them over and beyond just blasting away at them with Shatter (Control's name for the shotgun). It doesn't matter if the Launch skill is maxed out---some of the mobs have enough dodge that the Launch skill is completely mitigated, requiring some careful gun play to take them out.

But perhaps Control's true end isn't at the end of the main story; I have started on the other DLC, aptly titled Foundation (I've completed the other DLC ``by accident'' as part of the exploration phase before advancing the latter parts of the main story). I'll probably continue that some time later this week as I have other things that I'd like to work on in the meanwhile.

------

Today it was cool and humid, well, cooler than what one might expect from what SIN city has to offer. It rained heavily in the morning as I was making my way to PPCC, and it rained intermittently thereafter. I find that it really isn't the temperature that annoys me, but the humidity.

In other words, cool but humid is still terrible. It took me a good 15 minutes just to cool off enough to stop perspiring all over Aurelia and screwing up my embouchure.

I ran another experiment today---instead of keeping Aurelia fully assembled on the stand and waiting for 45 minutes (or however long it takes for the sermon to complete before the closing hymn is needed), I took the headjoint off when I went to sit among the pews, having it wrapped up on the microfibre cloth and held it close to me to keep the whole headjoint warm. The reason for this odd behaviour was to reduce the amount of condensation that would gather within the headjoint when my humid and warm breath contacts the cold metal walls when playing that last hymn after having Aurelia sitting out in the cold. Condensation within the headjoint near the embouchure hole made controlling the intonation at least twice as hard, and that was something I didn't want to have to deal with.

The experiment was a success---the condensation occurred nearer the C♯ vent hole, and I found that I retained control of the intonation much better than when I didn't do that.

So that's something new that I learnt.

I suppose that's about all for now. Till the next update.

Saaaaaaaaaaturday~!

Ah... it's a nice-ish Saturday once more, and I'm mildly annoyed at how Eileen-III's keyboard is always doubling the letter `m' as pressed ever so often.

Is it something to do with the timing from my change in typematic rate (I've since set it to 168 ms delay with 8 ms of repeat)? I don't think so---I suspect it is more likely to be related to how I conduct myself on the keyboard, i.e. my index finger when going for the `m' key on the keyboard isn't retracting fast enough for some reason. Recall that the keyboard of Eileen-III isn't quite as centred as I would like, due to the extra column of utility functions that are available on the right side.

It's not completely detrimental yet, but it is definitely rather irritating when it does occur. Funny enough, the letter `m' doesn't really appear all that of often enough like any of ``etaoin shrdlu'' characters that it becomes a massive deal-breaker.

In short, I should ``git gud''.

That minor annoyance aside, let's talk about what happened this week in retrospection. My final team member has finally started on the second week of their tenure, and the team's first big deployment for a project is coming within 7 weeks. It's exciting, it's scary, and it's a trial-by-fire moment. I have a healthy level of expectations of the team that has been put together, and I sincerely hope that they rise up to the occasion and build up sufficient expertise and esprit de corps to pull through as a team to be ready for the larger and more scarier projects to come. As a first time manager working with more than a handful of subordinates, I am definitely full of trepidation, with a healthy dose of fear that my ineptness will let the team and subsequently the entire department/pillar down.

It's that scary thought that keeps me up on some nights.

But that aside, the week marked the end of the parts of the annual appraisal process that were relevant to me. All my subordinates' appraisals have been reviewed and sent in for calibration, while my own with my reporting manager has also been done and fired off. All that is left now on this front is the waiting, and since I'm not really in this job for the purposes of BEEEEEEEEEG MONEY, as long as the outcome is sufficiently fair enough, I'd be happy.

No girlfriend, no wife, no car, no apartment means no matter how shitty the cost of public transport goes up, or how high the CPF ceiling is being pushed up, or how fucked the two-step GST hike will increase the number and magnitude of unscrupulous price increases using the GST hike as a fig leaf, my actual cost of living is low enough relative to what I'm paid that I will come out generally fine.

Not great, not luxurious. Just fine. I dare not go as far as saying comfortable, for the sole reason that I'm still living in an apartment with no air conditioning even as SIN city's mean temperature keeps rising over the years.

But I didn't come here to rant about those things (or did I?). I just wanted to sling some thoughts about here for a bit, even as that thrice damned Amazon.com bot is still scraping my blog.

To that shithead: why?

``But MT, you could always walk away!''

For what? It's not exactly harmful, nor illegal, but is definitely being a shithead. I don't walk away from legal harmless shitheads---I just get mildly annoyed at their audacity, and just move on with life.

I mean, if I didn't want to quietly share my thoughts, I wouldn't be keeping a blog (or three) in the first place, let alone having this one kept alive since 2006.

------

I went back to trying Halls of Torment again, and it wasn't too bad after the fixes. That Agony system still felt really rough to me, and I've not really decided if I liked it or not. HoloCure is still the best execution of the quasi-twin shooter variant of the formula that Vampire Survivors popularised, even though that Stardew Valley-esque ``HoloHouse'' bit is a confusing addition---on the one hand, why a farm simulator in the middle of a reverse-bullet hell game; on the other hand, it does help with the gold meta due to a half-decent ``passive income'' set up through the ``hiring'' of gold miners that need to be fed with either fish or farm-grown produce.

I think I'll try to push Control as far as I can today, and once that is done, I might go back to my solo-world Minecraft to build yet more railways, this time to one of the new biomes having sakura that comes from release 1.20. I know that version 2.0 of Cyberpunk 2077 has released, but it's still a bit too close to my last playthrough for me to be interested in going for it again. I do have one last life-path (Streetkid) left to try, which can justify playthrough number 3, but I have other games in my stable to play through as well.

And I suppose there's that for now.

Whelp, the 1.5× coffee (3× for regular folk) is finally kicking in. Time for some Control, then some practice for the hymns for tomorrow's worship, perhaps on one-key flute (I haven't decided), then TGCO rehearsal in the evening.

Till the next update.

Experiment: Success!

The scraper that lives on Amazon is back, and there's nothing that I can do about that. I just hope that they aren't using what they scraped for nefarious reasons.

Anyway, I ran an experiment earlier today while playing during worship service. Instead of playing Aurelia, I switched over to the AF-1 Grenser one-key traverso. Three of the hymns we played were ``simple'' keys (C, & F), with the only problematic one being A♭. Since its a one-key flute, the single toughest note on the simple flute system, E♭/D♯, is easily handled with the single key. As for the other chromatic notes (A♭, B♭, and D♭) are ``easily'' handled with cross-fingering patterns similar to the ones I put up for the AF-3 Stanesby Jr.

Note that the word is ``similar'', not the same. Have a look at the PDF of the fingering chart. Due to the different tuning (A440 vs A415) and possibly different geometry (AF-1 is based on the Grenser, hence the name, while AF-3 is based on the Stanesby Jr., hence that name), the cross-fingering patterns for the AF-1 Grenser is much simpler and systematic as compared to the AF-3 Stanesby Jr. I actually derived quite a bit of inspiration from the one-key flute fingering patterns while building my own 12-tone fingering chart for the 笛子.

Now, the reason to raise all that allegedly diversionary tangents is just to point out that I was really in my element when doing all the funny chromatic stuff on my AF-1 Grenser, even for the A♭-key hymn.

The experiment was a success. No one complained about intonation and other issues, and I found that even without the much louder set up that was Aurelia (and other modern concert flutes), I could still play the upper envelope without being drowned out by the four violins, one piano, and one electic organ. I suspect that was due to the other instruments staying out of the upper octave that I was in than how the AF-1 Grenser was ``loud enough''. In fact, the music coordinator remarked that when I was doing my runs for warm-up before the quick group rehearsal sounded much smoother than when I was with Aurelia.

I think that smoothness just came about because the reaction time of a simple system flute was always faster than that of any keyed ones.

I was really afraid of intonation, but thanks to what I have realised to be non-broken ears, that was within control. And therein lies on of the reasons why the one-key flute isn't as well used these days as compared to the concert flute. The music ministry group that is playing at the worship service is sufficiently small that I could still control the intonation carefully, and I can see how it can get progressively harder to do so as the number of players increase.

All in all, this just means that I have other options to bring to the table whenever I'm rostered to play.

Till the next update.

3rd Day ART Positive---So It's 7 Days Now

So I retook the ART once more at the stupid o'clock of Thursday. It was still positive, though the T-line was so faint that even under lower light (with HDR enabled) conditions, and colour inversion, it took some serious effort to see it.

I then had to make the call: to accept that it was a positive result and therefore keep myself confined to quarters for the full 7 days (ending with my return to office on Tuesday), or not. The pamphlet that explained the use of the ART was very clear that any line, no matter how faint, that showed up at the T-sector, when the line at the C-sector is also present, must be considered a positive result. On technical grounds, there was nothing to make the call on, but on personal grounds, I did feel like I wanted to pretend that it was negative just so that I could carry on with my life and do the things that were lined up/scheduled for it.

In the end, following the technical outcome prevailed, and I am now still on a 7-day home isolation. This meant working from home for both Friday and the upcoming Monday, where I have a new staff coming on board.

Today, it is Saturday. I'm still at home, and going a little stir crazy. I had to head on out to run quick errands of food and supplies (masked up, mostly), but other than that, I had been quite obedient at staying at home, in my room even. Both parents are doing better from their bouts of COVID-19, though there was a drug allergy scare yesterday that had since been rectified.

Here's to hoping that no other stupid thing happens in the meanwhile.

Con Plague? But It Was I, COVID-19!

So, that con plague? Turns out that it was probably COVID-19 with high probability. And I only knew it after the fact when I tested positive on the ART near stupid o'clock of Monday, or 0000hrs-ish on Tuesday.

And I only did that ART only because Mum got all uncomfortable, and tested positive on the ART.

While technically today is the third day of the 72-hour self-isolation from first positive ART, it probably isn't the third day of actually being afflicted with COVID-19.

Because all I'm left with is just a shitty cough that comes at a variable rate of between 12--300 mHz. The cough had been moderately productive for the past couple of days, but it has gotten on the shitty side today, with very little phlegm to show for it. Thankfully though, the rate did fall closer to 300 mHz, but if it is going to continue being unproductive, I'd rather it stop, just so that I can move on with life.

Rate of coughing aside, I suspect that the hell I went through on Wednesday night all the way through Friday morning was the actual COVID-19 attack. There was fever, delusions, some headaches, running nose, cough---the works.

Thus, despite all the hermiting I had done to stay away from the damn SARS-CoV-2 virus, I got done in by the mandatory course that HR sent me.

(shakes fist mockingly at HR for breaking my evasion streak)

No sick leave for me though---I was just working from home. I hadn't been in a state of ``too sick to think'', and that's just fine for me.

``But MT, if you're working from home, why are you writing a blog entry in the middle of the work day, today?''

Couple of things. One, when I post a blog entry isn't necessarily strongly linked to when I wrote it---one will need to demonstrate causality in a strong enough way first. Two, I'm actually on leave today, and the leave was originally taken to bum about at home, and so it was apt.

Actually, the leave was supposed to be taken in preparation for a performance that was originally supposed to happen in the evening, but it didn't pan out for a whole variety of reasons out of my control, and I just kept the date.

☝🤓️ Ackstually the leave was supposed to be for two days, but I had to cancel the second day to be on the waiting list of another course, which itself was a re-application of an alternative date for the same course that I originally waitlisted for August 31, which itself was originally planned then due to a change in the schedule the original schedule of the 3-day course that spanned August 29--30, then September 01, which was, of course an amendment of the original original 3-day course span of August 29--31 due to the trainer's unavailability, which was all moot when the Presidential Election was declared for September 01, causing the 3-day course's schedule to revert to the original August 29--31, but with different trainers.

Confused? Yeah, that was how fucked up the scheduling was. And I'm probably not going to play for worship this Sunday. Whether or not I'm going for rehearsal on Saturday, or even just to the office tomorrow will depend on what the post-72 hours of self-isolation yield.

Long story short, I'm on leave today, and decided to write a little about the recent nonsense on ART positive tests. That's about it.

------

Halls of Torment underwent two patches in the mean time, after I had completed the 201 achievements that were available then. Three big boo-boos happened:

1. The first new patch that came up made the game significantly harder and less fun, through over-powering the enemies while nerfing too much of the tools that the player had at hand.
2. The patch that came after that tried to address the issue by rescaling the enemies a bit more, but had a day-0 bug of destroying the save file and giving all 243 achievements.
3. A hot patch after that fixed the save file problem and restored the in-game achievements, but could not/did not restore the Steam achievements, to many people's dismay.

There has been some talk in the forums for Halls of Torment that the patch now swerved in the other extreme, in that the game was too easy.

As for me, I'm going to wait a bit before I go back to Halls of Torment. I do have Control to complete after all, and I am enjoying every moment of it. It doesn't have the same level of [destructive] satisfaction the way [Prototype] and [Prototype 2] have, but it still has a similar type of fun. The powers are not over-powering, but they are empowering, and the world itself is just as compelling.

Oh, and the ray-tracing crap makes Control look way better than it should.

I can keep gushing, but I want to go play me some games---just spent the morning taking Dad to see the doctor due to he getting tested positive on the ART.

Ah well.

Till the next update then.

Con Plague

Con plague. Got hit by it.

It was... inevitable.

You see, I was on course for three days. It was held in the Lifelong Learning Institute, in a small air-conditioned room that was pretty cold amidst 17 other strangers. It was therefore natural that con plague would strike.

I won't talk much about the course, other than point out that it was:

• Mandatory for us new managers;
• Surprisingly practical and not brainwashing; and
• Taught by a seasoned-executive-turned-coach, which meant that every anecdote was a much deeper view on how senior/upper management operates.

In sum, it was very fruitful, and once I am done recovering from con plague, I will process these more deeply later on.

Con plague does affect me in a few negative ways. I'm having doubts if I can go for rehearsal on Saturday, and more importantly, if I can play on Sunday as part of worship service. The fever is broken by now, the sore throat is under some control, but the cough is still going on, with thick phlegm being hacked out ever so often.

I'm giving myself till tomorrow morning to make the final call---everyone who's affected has been given a heads up already.

``But MT, if you were on course for three days, and you are barely recovering from con plague, how the heck did you fever break?''

See, the timing is a bit off because the course was from Tuesday to Thursday, while today (being Friday), is a day off.

And it's a day off only because it is the Presidential Election in SIN city.

I don't really want to talk about it---it's farcical at best, disingenuous at worst, not to mention that I've said all I wanted to in my previous post, and my views have not changed much since then.

Then, apart from con plague, what was I intending to write here on?

Honestly, no clue. I could write about the updated Halls of Torment, and how it nerfed quite a lot of what made it fun, making it a much tougher game. I could also talk about Trepang2, and how I tried the demo but it crashed halfway.

But that's about all. It's a short entry. Till the next one.

Oh, and happy September.