Blog

My mother asked me if we were OK. The fire is in southern and easter Oregon. The smoke is blowing east into the Rockymountain states. It was a sunny hot day.

I started the day about 6:45ish and did more normal emails and Slack messages. The issues found in the data conversions were worked overnight in India, and the move of the fixes was started as I was getting going.

I was dressed in time for the start of hours of Zoom status and alignment meetings. I went to about 10:15 and then took a short rest. After that, I was back monitoring the progress of the data conversions until about 11:15.

I did manage a short walk. My legs are very sore, and I am having trouble bending my right leg. I figure exercise will help. I walked my shorter walk and felt much better after. The pain in the right leg is still there, but the left leg is better. Use it or lose it!

The local school is serving meals and now on summer break.

Next door and sharing a parking lot with the school, Reedville Presbyterian serves free dinners every Thursday. There is real hunger here in Reedville (Reedville was not incorporated and was part of Aloha before Beaverton decided to take us). With all the changes and consolidations, Reedville is only remembered now in the name of some places.

I drove Air Volvo to Pastini’s in the Cedar Hills Crossing mall near Beaverton’s Powell’s Books. This is a chain, but this one seems just a cut above the rest. The garlic bread is to die for. So I had spaghetti carbonara with garlic bread extra, and I ordered to-go ravioli for Susie. Tiramisu was also ordered to go. I skipped a dessert for myself as I had work to do and did not want a nap. Also, instead of their fine wines, iced tea for me.

I spoke to Pastini’s manager. They are only partially staffed as they are not getting their full set of customers. Nike WHQ is just a few minutes away so they are hoping the Nike WHQ will reopen soon. A lot of their regular customers worked at Nike WHQ. He told me that even with the limited opening, they cannot keep staff. They are “constantly hiring” is what they told me.

Back at it this afternoon and watching mostly and taking status meetings.

My Mister Lincoln rose has fully bloomed. A second bloom will soon start.

I had a ham and cheese for dinner after the large nice lunch. Susie had her dessert for dinner. I think she got the better deal!

I am still online watching the data conversions.

I returned to my Hell War Machine model for Dungeons and Dragons. I have repaired the breaks caused by the glue spill in the model, and I will return to working on it this evening.

No death counts as the totals are not being updated by many states, mostly Republican governed.

I turned to My Faith Looks Up to Thee in the Methodist Hymnal.

I started this morning at about 6:30 as I had a 7:30 status meeting. I was dressed and ready for the Zoom call. I then proceeded with hours of status calls, all on Zoom.

Next, I had a review of new Vision or tracing tools and software now working at Nike. This had me then chat with the architect on Master Data and see if we can use some of them. It was nice to be back to architecture and design. I will need to draw some pictures and make a presentation.

Susie has her normal Spa day at 9ish. Her driver picked her up, and she had a nice time with Zerida. Susie got her fav at McDonald’s. A happy meal with apples plus a hot apple pie for lunch.

Lunch was out. I drove Air Volvo to the Gyro House. They were happy to see me. I did wear a mask out of respect for folks who still need them. I was the only masked person. I ordered my fav of lamb kebobs. Lamb kebobs remind me of Istanbul and India.

There they gave me back my hat. Apparently, I left it behind last time I had kebobs! So my Indian Jones hat is now back here in the house!

I brought back baklava for Susie (and maybe one for me).

I took a break and a rest. I am still tiring during the day. I also found time to walk to the end of the street this morning. Not a great walk, but I wanted to do something.

Back at it for the next meetings. More status, and we get a signal to start at 7PM. So I am now online watching, and so far, so good as we begin one of the hardest data conversions I have ever been part of in my career. I am watching until midnight or later. It has been years to reach this point.

While waiting, we served up yesterday’s leftover pizza for dinner. We had that with store-bought egg potato salad.

While all this was going on, Mister Lincoln, my newest roses, has started to bloom. The plant has two blooms starting. They are smaller as it is mid-summer, but they still have the wonderful tea rose look.

The plant is mostly long canes and nothing more than a collection of sticks if you cut the flowers. But, I am happy to finally get multiple flowers this year. Next year it should be huge! Grows to eight feet tall, if you let it.

I have noticed that certain states, all Republican, are not reporting infections or deaths. So I will make this my last time to report as the numbers are wrong now. 129 people are reported to have died in the USA today from Covid-19. Six states are not reporting.

I turned to The Prayer of Saint Francis today in the Methodist Hymnal (#481).

The words:

Lord make Me an instrument of Your peace
Where there is hatred let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
Where there is sadness joy.

O Divine master grant that I may
Not so much seek to be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand.
To be loved. as to love
For it’s in giving that we receive
And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born…
To eternal life.

Amen

I slept poorly, and thus the 6AM alarm on Sunday morning was received without welcome. I turned off the alarm and rested for a few minutes but was up and moving early.

I did not get dressed and watched some Game of Thrones, season seven, and noticed I was late! I managed to be in a Zoom meeting, no video for me, late, and it was a tiny gathering.

This was followed by the general status meeting at 8:30. There we reviewed what is happening on the data conversions. One was running way over and, to get it done, they were using nearly 90% of the system. This meant that our data conversion might not go forward tonight. We did at 4PM have a go-no-go meeting (go!). And that this was followed by the general status meeting, where our data conversions, even with the go decisions, were delayed until Monday noonish.

Before the afternoon events, we got dressed and made it to church again. This is Aloha Methodist nearby. Unfortunately, our church, Beaverton First, is not yet open. Wayne reminded me of the church in reply to the blog email, so I managed to remember and get Susie and us there on time.

Masks are required, and strict distancing is maintained. No singing but humming was suggested. They were happy to see us twice in a row. We will not make the next Sunday there as we will help open Beaverton this coming Sunday.

We then took Air Volvo to lunch at Applebees. Wayne and Anne Weld-Marton had not been there in over a year, and Susie and I had not been back to this Applebees in over four years!

Even with four years, the menu was familiar but slightly more expensive. My Southwest Salad is still missing. I used to order it every Sunday. I believe the Applebees in Lansing, Michigan, still make the salad for my mother-in-law Leta. She has a special deal on iced tea and salads with the managers. Before the pandemic, Leta ate there and had a Southwest Salad most days. They were happy to see her. She has been picking up a salad there now a few times a week.

Our waiter told us that they are having staffing issues. Every day she comes in to learn who decided to quit that day. She explained that somedays she might be working with only a few people. She said it was hard, but they make it work.

Our food was good, but the delivery of drinks and food was slow. We even ordered a dessert, and their blondie brownie with ice cream, apples in sauce, and walnuts was great. We shared it three ways.

After dropping Wayne and Anne off home after an extended lunch, I was only 90 mins away from my meetings. So I took a short rest and started.

Once the conversions were delayed, I closed my Nike laptop and took a nice nap. I ordered dinner from PizzaHut and had it delivered. I did not wake up until 8ish at night, so I ordered out. It was too late to work something out at home.

 

This evening I am surprised to report that I actually won a board game, a deck-building game, at Richard’s in Portland. I am often invited to join in an evening game, but my goal is to understand and play. In essence, avoiding mistakes and trying to enjoy the ride. I am often coming in the last place as I am not a very good Euro or Engine builder like my friends in Portland. So again, it is hard some nights to not win and worse to be in the last place. But I can still say the experience is worth it.

Tonight Dominion: Intrigue hit the table and I had played it once before, but I mix it up with other games with cards and deck building. So it took me a few hands before I got the mechanics down. You can do one action, usually playing a card, and buy one card for each hand of five cards. You then can get cards that, when played, will give you more actions or let you bring more cards into your hand to use on this turn. You need to balance buying cards to help you play more cards and have more money while adding to your stack cards that do nothing but give you end-game points. Mostly, that is the only way to win.

I managed to get the mechanics down and I added enough action cards to give me more actions (thus more cards to play to do more things) and more money. About 3/4 through the game, I started buying victory points cards. Finally, I had enough money most turns to buy the more expensive cards. I bought the last set of large count victory point cards and ended the game. I won by only one point!

Before we played Dominion: Intrigue, we played my first game of KanBan EV. I had been watching videos on how to play this mind-bending complex game over the last two days. In this game, you are a new employee or intern at an electric vehicle plant (EV), you need to get designs to build new enhancements for various car models. The designs allow you to add a car to your garage to test your enhancements or implement a type of enhancement. But to test the enhancement, you will need the parts which are in the warehouse. So you will have to go there to get them. And to get the car to test your enhancement, you need to get a car from research and/or create the enhancement (now that you have the parts) there. You are successful once your enhancement is attached to a car that matches the enhancements (there are many different kinds of cars) and thus now tested and worth many victory points. But to get the car, someone has to manufacture one. So someone (you or another player) will have to get some cars made in the plant. Parts are also needed to do that! Making cars gives you victory points too.

KanBan EV is a worker placement and resource management game. But, it has a twist. Sandra is also in the plant represented by an extra-large meeple with a clipboard. She will evaluate the employees (you and your fellow players) on how well you are trained in each area of the plant. If you are the least formally trained player and have not worked hard in the plant to succeed in this specific area, you will disappoint Sandra and lose victory points.

This is not the normal Euro game process and makes the game much more interesting. You need to do all you can to complete tasks by ordering resources and efficiently generating victory points, but also you need to avoid falling afoul of Sandra’s disapproving eye!

I was in the last place when the game ended. Sandra docked me a pile of points almost every round at first. So my score was zero for a while. It appears that the training and the vast benefits it grants were something I missed out on.

In my defense, I thought the videos showed that education options were more optional. Instead, you need to follow the flow of the factory AND do the education steps to be certified.

Also, there are staff meetings, no really, and there you present your work so far by putting speaking bubbles (really!) on goals representing you presenting your success to Sandra. More victory points. These I managed to score in the first meeting. I had not collected enough speaking bubbles (really!) to present at the end-of-game.

I will have to play it more and focus more on education and not have Sandra docking me repeatedly. I also need to better understand the relationships of the design-car-enhancement flow in the game.

Sandra’s wraith is reduced by having extra shifts available to you or having built enough in the area that Sandra assumes you are trained. I managed to fail at both. Next time Sandra you will be proud of me!

On my way home, I drove through Portland. I saw a block party at Safeways (?!) and a line (not socially distanced) to get into a bar. Strange to see everyone without masks and not being careful.

Before I left for Portland, I took Susie to Black Widow; this movie is the newest Marvel film. I will say it was entertaining but not great. Susie complained she could not understand anything in the movie. We still liked it. I wait for others to see it–No Spoilers here.

I was up early as I had status meetings in the morning for data conversions, and I followed along for a few hours to ensure that I was not needed.

It is already beyond midnight; I will stop there.

I started about 7ish and worked the morning and then watched along as the software was moved into place that we need to do the data conversions at the shoe company. I was not needed for most of this, but I watched and followed along in case I was needed.

As I was busy all morning, I warmed up the goulash that I made a few days ago on the stove. As usual, it was a bit better a few days later reheated. Then, I made Susie a plate of crackers with different cheeses, nuts, and crackers. Something different, and she was up late today, and so breakfast just did not make sense.

We went to the Grand Lodge in Forest Grove for dinner. We picked up Mariah on the way. We wanted to sit outside, drink beer, listen to music, and eat dinner. No masks now. We went in without masks, and most folks were maskless. It was kind of weird. The music was rock.

Also, Richard in Portland has called together players this Saturday to play another game that I do not know: KanBan EV. This game is another second edition Kickstarter premium version of a successful game. This version has high marks and has you assume the role of a new employee at an electric car company. You are also chased by your manager to get knowledgable, or else be punished–so corporate! I have just watched the videos, and it is a very complex game. I will try not to come in last!

Susie fell in the kitchen. She is not supposed to be in the kitchen as her walker does not work well in our galley kitchen. There are sharp edges too. Susie, being the ice skater, fell without injury. I managed to get her back up. I was very frustrated that she was walking in the kitchen–she left her walker and was walking without a cane.

I will stop there as it has been a crazy day.