Blog

I am fatigued tonight, so this will likely be a short update.

I started the morning at about 6:30ish as I had a 7:30 meeting. I rushed a bit this morning. We had a meeting with the Chief Digital Information Officer on Zoom for the main project I am working on. Ratnakar Lavu talked about how the pandemic is affecting him; his parents have Covid-19, and that he can not travel to help them. Ratnakar found a hotel that offers medical assistance for them. He set up a Slack channel to share ideas on how to help people in India and anywhere. It was hard to hear how hard things are in India.

Work was hours and hours of Zoom meetings. Today we had the workshop that means multiple two-plus hours stints on one subject. It is funny, but before the pandemic and lockdown, we would often have maybe three people in a conference room all watching Zoom together. We have at Nike, in many conference rooms, a video system that would zoom in on the person talking so those on the phone call could see who was talking. It’s funny how things have changed; now you know who is speaking because you see it flagged on Zoom. It works a bit better.

Nike also had a new policy back before 2020 that people should use video conferences instead of driving to meetings. Before the push to use video conferences, many of us would spend 1/4 or more of our time commuting to meetings in different buildings. We, before the pandemic, were already in endless video conferences. We have “hotel” rooms in the office that are just largest for one or two people,closet-sized, with a hard-wired phone and a nice monitor. These allowed you to do those hours of calls without some poor people having to listen to you. Headphones were also distributed by the shoe company, so you could not hear the person next to you, if unlucky to be at a desk, that was doing a call. You would listen to your tunes when not on a call. I am not sure I really want to go back to the office. We have only lockers and open seating to return to.

The pollen is terrible today. It is a wonderful sunny warm 80F+ day in May in Oregon. The coughing and the caregiving, and the long meeting are wearing on me.

I had the workshops run into lunch; I made a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch. I made Susie breakfast when she got going this late morning.

I had a few crises of the moment, but mostly I listened and tried to clarify a few items in the workshop.

I finished a wonderful book today once the meetings stopped. I managed to not nod off this time. I would recommend The Children of Time. The book by Adrian Tchaikovsky is a hopeful dystopian (if you can say that) novel of deep space travel, sci-fi. The earth is lost to us. The last humans are in an arc space ship searching for a home while a terraformed planet brings rise to different children of earth, spiders. A virus reprograms the spiders to be larger and smarter, and social, but they are spiders. I really liked the mix of SciFi and epic storytelling from two person’s points of view, a human from earth who studied old earth and a spider that keeps being reborn with many of the same memories. It is a dark retelling of some events in human history relived by spiders and a dystopian arc ship of humans trying to find a home. I loved it.

I went to McDonald’s for dinner as I was too tired to cook or paint figures. I brought it back. Susie had her fav of a McDonald’s Happy Meal. This one comes with a tiny pather toy that Susie loves. I had two cheeseburgers with fries and a chocolate shake—Dad’s fav. I was thinking of dad today, and so I got his fav for lunch. I like the cheap small burgers with cheese.

Susie and I watched 1/2 of The Addams Family episode, the old black and white version, while eating our bounty from McDonald’s for dinner. I think Susie thought it was silly, but it made me laugh as the jokes are often unexpected. I just love John Astin as Gomez. We then watched the very depressing 1/2 hour of BBC news.

My other roses are beginning to flower. I have a few pictures of them starting up.

 

That is all I was thinking about today.

743 people in the USA died of Covid-19 today.

I am tempted to list the Addam Family’s theme, but instead, I picked Lean on Me.

 

 

 

I received a bill for $990 for a magazine subscription con that Susie has been a victim of for years. I have asked Susie to not speak to the people again as they are con and cons are easy to fall for. Susie claims she only talked to them to cancel the subscription, but I sure the con persons have a recording of Susie agreeing to everything. I do not know if they tricked Susie or just edited the recording to say what they wanted. It does not matter as I once again have to try to fix this. The last two times, I ended up paying the bill.

I wrote the subscription people a letter saying that Susie believed she had canceled the subscriptions. I believe they will tell me, like the last two times, that my wife had agreed to a new subscription, and once the subscriptions exist, there is no way to cancel, and I must pay.

I took the bill, a copy of the letter I wrote to cancel, copies of our passport photo page, and a nice letter to the FBI and sent them to the Portland FBI in a large envelope. Susie has already received and forgotten requests from the FBI in the mail. They contacted her as a potential victim of the magazine subscription con. This time I will help her fill them out and send them in.

I started this rather sad day with an emergency call at 5:55 from the shoe company. In my robe, I was online at 6:00 with India. The vendor wanted me to reverse the 60 or so vendor patches as the code was not right. Somewhere in the last month, we had done one or more of the manual patches in the wrong order. Their solution was to spend the next two hours removing every patch (OSS notes to those who speak SAP). I reversed out everything they asked. It took until past 8AM.

In India, the vendor will try to re-apply all the changes and fix the software.

That left me drained. I was online with the same folks at 10PM the night before for the initial review. I was tired now.

I did get Susie ready in time for her driver to take her to Zeriada’s by 9ish. Today was nails, hair, and so on.

I was busy taking my shower when I would normally take my walk. It was a tough start for a week! Lunch was a spicy chicken sandwich and mashed potatoes from Popeye’s. Corwin joined me for lunch in Air Volvo. We park and eat in the car for a Covid-19 world.

I participated in a few more status meetings. I then was tired; I found my electronic reader, read for a bit, and nodded off.

I got going again and picked up some prescriptions and supplies from RiteAid. They are now giving vaccination for Covid-19. I was out just for a few minutes.

I got the mail, and that is when I received the bill from the magazine subscription people. I wrote the letters and drove to the post office to mail a large envelope of the information to the FBI. That is really all I can do for now.

I had one more unscheduled alignment discussion. We will try to get folks together to solve the issue on Tuesday.

I read a bit more, trying to get my frustration back under control. It is not really Susie’s fault; these are crooks. I just hate having another thing to deal with, and the FBI is not something I want to deal with being from the Pacific Northwest. It nodded off while reading again; exhaustion is setting in.

I made tacos for dinner—my fav. I remember when mom and dad Wild while would make them as a treat. I still think of them as a treat—something to make the day a bit brighter.

Sorry, it was a downer blog, but it is good, I think, to be honest.

We have a meeting about India’s situation with the Chief Digital Information Officer, our boss, Tuesday early. We have many co-workers and partners will with Covid-19 in India.

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

I went with Many Gift, One Spirit as it seemed to fit.

I managed to get going about 8ish this morning. Evan had spent the night and headed out soon after that for some more pickleball play. I then watched a few more Game of Throne episodes of season 2. I am now on the third episode and have noticed that the storyline is slowing. There are so many items happening simultaneously, and new characters (and actors) have been added, slowing the story development. I am quickly losing interest if this is the new pacing for the show.

I did some laundry. I then spoke to mom Wild, and she loved the Olympian Provision heart filled with sausages–very Pacific Northwest. I spoke to her, my sister Linda, Bill, her boyfriend, and other folks over there in Michigan to have Mother’s Day dinner. I later spoke to mom Guild (Leta), and she liked the tea and honey from Upton Tea Company.

Today I have housework and various maintenance things. I got gas for the car, bought groceries at Whole Foods, and got them home. I stopped by the gaming store and picked up some washes to paint Richard’s figures. I worked last weekend and did a lot of off-hours coverage–I am still tired from it.

I then rested and read a bit. I made a beef stew for dinner.

Susie watched movies on DVD most of the day.

I will stop the blog a bit short today as I want to paint some figures, and I have a 10PM call.

India is having terrible Covid-19 issues. Our hearts go out to India.

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

I found this Afghanistan 🇦🇫 Song. A school was destroyed by a car bomb, and many girls died. Their parents buried them today and yesterday. I thought we should hear some from that part of the world.

Evan and Mariah met me this Saturday at the Golden Valley Brewery for lunch. I had started Saturday by attempting to sleeping in, but my attempt failed, and I was up at 7ish. I had coffee and a bagel and watch the last of the first season of Game of Thrones. I was surprised by the number of cast members that would not return as their characters died. I have not read the books; so much of the story is a mystery to me until it unfolds in the TV series.

I find that the show has grown on me, but I am not sure I could spend hours watching it. I only watch it when I am tired and on weekend mornings. I think I like British murder mysteries and cooking shows more.

Before headed out to lunch, I finally had some time to paint Richard’s figures. I spent about an hour on them. I hope to have more time on Sunday. I managed to finish the base colors on one set. The other set has plants growing out of a SciFi mech, and I tried a green ink over the dark green on one of the figures. That really added to the look. Again, Sunday, I will be doing the touch-up and some more ink work.

I had a cobb salad, it has their homemade bacon in it, and I like the local blue cheese they also include in the salad. Mariah went with a salad with chicken. Evan had their fantastic avocado bacon sandwich. I forgot my hat and later picked it up. They kept it for me; it was not the first time!

Mariah went off to have her film developed. Her camera, an old Pentax, had jammed. She loves the old manual camera and has enjoyed the good work it has done for her.

Evan and I headed off to Wildwood Tap House. Evan, a beer. I was still tired from a long week and stayed to just one beer with lunch. Evan then beat me at the board game Concordia. We use a few elements for the Salsa add-on. Playing a two-person game that works well with the game. I once again over-focused on building than collecting cards. I lost by six points. I enjoyed the close battle. Me building as fast as I can and Evan collection cards. It was interesting to me that the score was so close.

Concordia is one of the best newish games and is ranked 18th at boardgamegeek.com. You are running a roman trading house, and you are trying to build the most powerful and capable trading family business. There is no war, no armies, just trading posts and colonists. You collect resources and then use them to build various trading posts. Each ancient city has a random resource, with cloth and wine being the most valuable—tools and food with more than bricks. You need to sell goods to get money to pay the cost of the new trading posts, but those same resources are needed for the trading post and cards. This is a deck-building game, and you play a card from your hand each turn to do an action, including an action to get your cards back and be rewarded for using waiting to restock your hand. The cards also control end-of-game scoring, so the more you have, the more you will score (thus my loss to Evan).

The game is a bit hard to learn as the cards and all the relationships of money, resources, and trading posts take a few games to get a clear understanding. But, once you have the clarity, it is a good game, and for every turn, you are trying to make it work for you. Every decision is important, and every trading post built and every card purchased to bring the game closer to the end. When you buy the last card (a special card) or build your last of your 15 trading posts, the game ends after everyone, but the person who ended the game gets one last turn.

We paid our small bill at Wildwood, who were happy to have us at our “gaming table” inside. Most folks were enjoying the patio and the sunny but cold day in Oregon. We headed home.

Susie was ready, and we, Susie, Evan, and I, headed to our first return to a local movie house! Evergreen Regal! We bought tickets and popcorn to watch Raya and The Last Dragon. I thanked Nathan, the guy who sold us tickets and consumables, for getting us our drinks (he could not quite get the right seats for us, but we managed when nobody else came). He said, “I am just happy to be back.” So were we.

The movie is a mix of Mulan and The Last Airbender in my mind. I liked it, but it was not quite the straight Disney production I am used to. This is a fantasy world from a kid’s viewpoint. The best line I remember was from Wong when he describes what he will do with the captured Raya and friends: “It will be so bad it will take two weeks to clean up.” Yes, there were some funny lines in the movie. The sword and fight scenes were, without the blood and gore, fun to watch. I would recommend Raya and The Last Dragon for a good bit of pandemic-forgetting fun.

We went to Mazatlan Mexican Food off of 185th for dinner. They always have good food and drinks. I had a margarita, as did Susie. Evan had a house drink. Susie eats very slowly, and we were there for almost two hours. I drove us home and took a nap.

It was a full day. With masks and distancing, it was a busy day like I used to have on weekends before Covid-19 came.

Gov. Brown of Oregon announced that the hospitalization rates stabilized in Oregon, and the surge may have peeked for us. Also not covered by Gov. Brown, there are now plenty of places to get the vaccine shots in Oregon; some are drop-in now.

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

I went with a fav of mine. Please enjoy this version of Lord, You Have Come to the Lakeshore.

 

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.