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.

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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.