Author: alohawild

Today was my first time playing games with the group in Portland. I have not played in over a year. We all kept the masks on. It felt safe and it was so nice to play again with more than two players!

The drive back from Portland was pleasant as usual on a late Friday. Richard hosted a game at his house not far from the Boardway and the mall in the same area in Portland. Four of us played On Mars. This is a worker placement, engine building, and resource management game. The theme is building the mars colonies, and the winner is the player who best helps the colonies. This is a giant game of such complex rules it took an overview video an hour to cover the basics. It is also a Kickstarter game, and thus there is some added complexity you don’t usually find in games that go straight to retail sales.

I had a grasp of most of the basic rules. According to my records, I had played once before, and that and a refresher video stopped me from making mistakes. I could not understand the strategy, and I did not understand the engine building of combining blueprints and scientists. I have to play again and try some of the engine building. Nonetheless, coming in dead last, I still enjoyed the game and look forward to another chance to work out the game’s systems. I spent my first turns building for mars and helping to uplift the colony to a better life. I pulled ahead for a while, but I did not buy the scientists and blueprints I would need later for the high-scoring end-of-game items.

One small complaint, the game is not immersive. The player must pay more attention to the game mechanics than the mars theme. There is nothing simple in this game. Even turn order is complex.

All of this happened before I took Susie to Taco Bell. As usual, we drove through and then parked the car and had our in-car picnic. I wanted Susie to have some dinner before I headed out to Richard’s at 5:15. The trip to Richard’s had some traffic, but I managed to be on time.

I stopped working for the shoe company in the late afternoon. I had finally finished all the patches requested (SAP OSS notes for those who know this stuff) and created a request to check my implementation to the vendor (a high incident again for those who speak SAP). This started, again, about lunchtime and went on for hours as I applied each one after another.

I had to get special access for some fixes, and for others, I had to request others to do the changes. I can make software changes, but I won’t change the software setting (config, again for our folks who know SAP). I am happy the base changes are in.

I have a meeting with India time on Sunday night (10PM PDT).

The day started at about 7:30ish, and I was dressed and ready for the first hour of Zoom meetings at 8:30. I did miss one status meeting as I was busy trying to fix one issue.

777 people in the USA died from Covid-19 today.

Today’s hymn is Saranam, Saranam from Pakistan.

My day started about 3:45ish for a meeting with India which then got rescheduled to 6:30. I am drained today, working on only a few hours of sleep. I took a nap this evening; I will likely regret it when I try to return to sleep tonight.

Today was the end of my least favorite pine. The blue pine was once an ornamental blue pine with all those lines suggesting a hard life on the mountains. It had grown into a monster block, the light for my roses, dropping needles everywhere, and attracting woodpeckers and other wildlife.

After it broke, after being trimmed with care, and dropped a huge branch on my neighbor’s house, it had to go. The weather here is damp and windy. Non-native trees fall and break. So today, they brought in some incredible equipment and disassembled the tree like it was a kit and ground it and its stump to a pile of wood chips.

It is always sad to see a tree come down. But this one has been a hazard and a nuisance for years. The birds will miss it most.

My other roses are starting to flower. I suspect I will have pictures from the moss roses soon.

Today it was cool, and it did sprinkle a few times. The Oregon mist was heavy for a few moments.

I managed to return, fully dressed, to the Zoom meeting at Nike IT this morning at 8:30. The early meeting with India took only 15 minutes. It cost me three hours of sleep.

I reheated the Chinese from a few days ago for lunch. I had a bagel and coffee during the early meetings. Dinner was a Pappa Murphy’s Take-and-Bake pizza and a chicken caesar salad.

I picked up Corwin’s dry cleaning once work let-up at about 3:30ish. The local dry cleaners are now out-of-business. She cried when I paid. Ours was her last order. The pandemic claims another family business, a small Philipino family’s business.

I took a nap, as I said above. I watched email, and nobody needs me at the shoe company. I took more naps.

The stock market went up again. Wood, steel, and other construction-based materials have increased by 3x, according to some reports. There is concern that the economy will overheat. My thought is that I am really looking forward to a too good economy.

This reminds me, my 401K was re-org’d to work by age. Yes, you give your age and expected retirement, and then you get pre-balanced and risk-appropriate investments. I am now much younger as I overrode the investments to more risky and higher return investments–much like I used for the last three years. My annual return has fallen to 3.6% this year-to-date. I managed an insane 16% last year and 26% in 2019. I am not ready to move to debt instruments with low-interest rates.

860 people died in the USA today.

I found this Crown Him With Many Crowns yesterday when I was searching for music. An  Acappella version. I hope you like it.

Tonight we went to the local Mexican place, Mazatlan Aloha, and celebrated that they were still open for in-restaurant dining and that we all made it to Cinco de Mayo 2021. There was no celebration for 2020, of course. I remember the day in 2020 passing without even a taco.

Today I had the Mazatlan plate and a huge margarita. I finished with flan.

It was a wonderful sunny we-must-have-moved-to-California spring day. It is 80F+. And the pollen is crushing me. I slept into 7:15ish and started my first Zoom meeting, fully dressed and showered at 8AM.

I spent the day listening to status meetings and trying to work out some issues in data egress. As strange as this sounds, now that my one team has got all that into the systems, another of my teams must provide egress of much of the same data to other non-SAP and some SAP targets. Truly, there is no rest of the wicked or, in my case, for data flow. I was on four calls on issues with pulling the newly minted data.

I am happy to report that the Zoom meeting at 9PM for India’s morning ended this week. I have a problem with a vendor patch (an OSS note for those who speak SAP) and have a Zoom meeting scheduled for India’s end-of-day: 4:30PDT! Ugly.

The day at home working was full of crises of the moment, but I resolved most of them. Lunch was Aloha Teriyaki in the strip mall just around the corner from our house. They were open for lunch–most places except fast food are now closed for lunch, and I thought I should, after more than a year, pick up a chicken bowl for Susie and their bento box for me. It was good. Susie was surprised as it has been a long time since she had a chicken bowl from Aloha Teriyaki.

This is from last year’s blog on May 5, 2020:

The reports follow the same pattern of the last few weeks, and the counts of deaths from the virus increased by a thousand from yesterday: Two-thousand three-hundred-fifty. Unfortunately, the number of deaths is not decreasing yet. 

There is no hint of celebrating in the blog. I had no sleep and worked all night, and was suffering from a migraine last year, May 5th.

So a better year so far!

1.3 million people in Oregon out of 4.2M are fully vaccinated.

743 people in the USA died from the virus today.

Last May 5th, I picked For All The Saints in the middle of the first terrible surge of death and infections in the USA. Let’s go with that again and the same version too. The USA has lost more than 1/2 a million souls (saints) to the virus since I wrote the May 5, 2020 blog entry. Tears fill my eyes as I listen.

Today I managed to sleep to about 7ish. I was up at 6ish and checked my email, and I could sleep a bit more. Usually, I can’t fall asleep when I do this. I woke just past 7 with a start. Mostly, I was startled that I was asleep and did know where I was or why I was waking up. This left it a hard start this morning.

I had Zooming meetings all day. I also had two calls to align on some issues. The crises of the moment multiplied until I was working on multiple issues and doing a bit of Zoom-email-slack juggling. Nothing exciting but much on critical paths, so it is all a crisis. When everything is an emergency, it is hard to focus on solving issues.

I went with my normal approach; I took a break and went out to get lunch. I got a Whopper meal. I picked up a McDonald Happy Meal and asked them to ensure that it had apple slices. I got an eye-roll, no really, when I told the McDonald person getting me the Happy meal it was not for me, but my wife and she is only happy with apples.

Yes, I got attitude from a Portland Greater-Area McDonald’s. I thought it funny. The pandemic may have ended the overly and slightly passive-aggressive polite Portland! I thought I had noticed a bit more aggression in waiting in lines, six feet apart, lately in grocery stores, and getting seated in restaurants. The pandemic seems to have removed the Portland polite.

Back to Zooming at Nike. I continued with more work and more crises. I start to slow down but try to work through it. I am coughing non-stop from the pollen. I did take a few short breaks. I took some pictures of our flowering bushes during the break. These plants came with the house, and I understand they came from another house, so many maybe 50+ years old.

 

The coughing wears on me. By 4PM, I am done. I will be back online this evening to work IST (India) time.

I take Corwin’s suits to be cleaned at our local dry cleaners. Masonic meetings are running again; he needs to look sharp on Thursday. The owner of the store takes my order and then recognizes the name Wild. She is so happy, and her eyes are damp. “I have so missed my customers,” she tells me. She remembers me–I used to have suits for church I would clean every month. The dry cleaner store is closing, victim to the pandemic, she explains. “Nobody has come,” she tells me. She says she feels so alone. But, she is overjoyed to take my order and that I remembered cash or check only. We are sad together but so happy to meet at least one more time.

I return home a bit sad. I read and take a short nap. And I poured a glass of wine.

I make dinner. Schwann’s steaks browned in butter on the stove and finished in the stove. I remembered to put an oven mitt on the pan’s handle, so I did not burn myself! Instant mash potatoes and Schwann’s green beans, microwaved, almond slivers with salt cooked in butter in another frypan, and green beans stir-fried in the hot butter and almonds. Steaks removed from the pan, and the juices and butter mixed with a bit of water and corn starch to make a small pan gravy while using the oven mitt and not burn me on 350F pan. I added a bit of wine, a few tablespoons still left in my glass. Spoon over meat and/or mashed. Good!

I was watching the old classic Doctor Who for lunch and while making and eating dinner. I have a copy of the famous Shada lost episode. It was never finished, and some filming was never completed. The new version includes computer-animated sections for the missing sections. The original actors mostly voice the animated sections, including Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor. You have to be a Who fan to watch this.

Back to work at 10PM on India time. More data conversions. Corwin does the dishes for me.

853 people in the USA died from the infection today.

I opened the hymnal, and it just turned to Here I Am Lord. I found this happy church-service version of a giant British choir.

I managed to sleep until 6:30. My first meeting was at 8:00.

The data conversions are running today, and we watched them all day.

I had a muffin and coffee as I started reading email and Slack channels on status. The muffin was a gift in the bagels box I bought from Einstein’s Bagels on Sunday.

I managed to slip out and take a walk. I did my shorter Monday morning. No bad coughing, but my legs felt like they were wooden. Use it or lose it!

Work was mostly status meetings and giving some advice here and there. I followed up on a few items and got some traction, unusual for a Monday. So it was a bit of a frustrating day as everything that is simple required meetings and approvals, but some actually got done.

Lunch was delivered by GrubHub from Gyro House, a lamb gyro. Susie was up about noon, and I got her breakfast and coffee.

I had some more vendor patches, and I was finally able to make some progress. The patch failed, OSS notes to those who speak SAP, and I have to manually code some of it. I tried three times and decided I should try this after getting some more rest.

Monday was busy and full of Zooming.

Today we played Roll20 Dungeons and Dragons 5E. This is online with live video with e software providing a desktop that looks like pencil and paper 5E. There are six players now, including me, the Dungeon Master, that runs the game.

I was tired, so I ordered Chinese Food from Happy Panda. They make a Chicken Cashew that Susie likes, and I tried their spicy Kung Pao Chicken. It was familiar and good. They deliver, but you have to pay when they deliver. I had the credit card to the driver and have them put a tip and sign. It works and is safe.

When food is delivered, I put the bags on the counter, take all the food out of the bags. Throw the bags away and wash my hands. The food is hot. I use our plates and silverware.

The big battle was the end of the huge series of adventures we have played for about six months or a bit longer. They faced the Mad Mage and won. Some luck on their side helped. If they turned over all their loot to him, the Mad Mage did offer they could escape with the Astral Ship they wanted. This was my own idea–it is not part of the text of the adventure, but I thought it fit the theme. They did debate the offer for 30 minutes and decided to pay, but for fun, we played it anyway. We kept that ending anyway when they won. I knew they could beat the Mad Mage, but it would be close.

Cory, their wizard, managed to get two maximized fireballs into the Mad Mage. I missed the saving throw both times. It was a good plan. The Mad Mage fell.

We begin the new adventure, the Candelkeep Mysteries. We will skip a week as one of our players is traveling and then resume the following week.

That is about all. I was back online Zooming at 9PM to work India hours. The data conversions were running well, and I was only Zooming for 15 mins or so.

445 people died today in the USA from Covid-19.

We remember all the people we have lost with a hymn or song. Today I went with the hymn attributed to Gregory the Great: Father We Praise Thee.