2024-01-04:

Fri:
Nothing happening at work.

Took the day off writing, I was just reading a new story. How can someone write like 80 chapters and only cover 6 hours of the story? It's nuts. The entire first book is just the one day of this character's life. But somehow it worked out, and now we're onto the second book, which is basically the second day of the character's life. After they get powers I mean, she's not a tiny baby.

Still no haul or missing package. Still empty building. But that's going to change pretty quick.

Got the calendar, went to the bank, did the shopping, and saw my parents.

Came back here, checked sites. Then did game. We beat up the oni and that's about it. I got his soul though, we'll see what comes of that.

Sat:
Quite productive in the morning. Cleaned a bit.
Took the tree and other decorations down.
Took the outside lights down. Snowed off and on, you're a bit late buddy! You missed it, come back next year. I mean my mom and sister were talking about flowers coming up and trees blossoming. Pick a lane. Either be spring or winter. No middle ground.
Checked sites.
Did some reading for tomorrow. Still had a bit of time before leaving. Hummm...
Don't actually remember what I did in that space of time.
Left for game. Actually had a fairly good session, my plan worked which is always nice. We got the McMuffin we were after and at least some ghosts survived the process. We did some stuff in town too, maybe enough for two chapters? (The entire thing was actually three chapters!)
Sean mentioned doing warframe when I got home but there were no messages for me when I arrived there and so I figured he changed his mind or Mizzy fell asleep but he was actually waiting as I found out the next day making me the worst. Friend. Ever.

Sun:
Did the rest of the reading. Checked sites. Had lunch.
Then did the paperwork for the end of the year. Two for last month, 3 for this month. Certainly felt busier than that.
This brings my total "official" jobs to the year to a mere 55. Last year was 72, the year before that 97. It stayed at that level the previous two years going up to 133 and 184 two more years back. Yipe. But in good news I "officially" made $192 more than last year. Neat. (I kept track of money people sent me or gave me without receipts separately to help avoid a loss this year) so it looks like I only missed my $6,000 goal of IRA payments by $2,000 this year. As in, had I made $2,001 more I would have made $1 because the $6,000 isn't officially income until I retire and start taking it out. Wow.
Set up Sean's gift... well, made room on the shelf first and then put it up.
Put the new sheets on the bed. They are sewn together, which confused me a bit. I managed in the end.
Wrote a chapter of the emberhaven story. Just got up to the assault of the ship, so it's even more than I hoped for. The fact I wrote up something my character didn't do in game because it's not something directly related to plot and I didn't want to have to go through it with everyone there as it was only related to me helped. So there's even more content than in the game. But next chapter we can assault the ship and then get back to town. So that could be two chapters by itself.
Got ready for tomorrow.
Wrote the next chapter. Yup, got through the ship stuff, now we're back and going to do the in town stuff for selling the gems we got. Usually a throw away plotline in the game but I'm turning it into a whole chapter. It's about helping someone with a problem, and you know I'm alllllllll about that thug life.
Did game with the others. They forgave me because their hearts are mighty.

Mon:
Happy another year has gone by and what have you done that's so great Day. Man, these holiday names are getting longer and longer.
Wrote the next chapter.
Had lunch.
Was proofreading what I had written and it was time to go.
Went to Sean's, had a nice time. Kim and Alyx left so I came home too. Got ready for tomorrow and then did xbox as I had left earlier than I had thought.

Oh, made calls too, ssd guy wants Thursday, didn't reach new email button where is it lady.

Tues:
I tried to start writing the next chapter. Trouble is I don't have a bunch of stuff written in my head about it. I think I've decided I want her to talk to a bird. I want there to be 3 attacks, as she's getting closer to the middle of the kingdom and thus, more attacks are likely. But do I want something to happen in town? Something the group can do? I'm not sure yet. So I just read my current story more. Hang on, maybe I can have a couple of dark elves recognize Midnight and learn more about her past. I have only a vague "this happened in her past!" idea so I could develop that. It's an idea.

Oh, nothing work wise yet. Don called to see if there was anything from the meetings, there wasn't, the last one only had 2 other people in it. Besides us.

The cases were emptied out. Not much left though. Nothing put in? That's odd. Why not restock them? Everyone is back. Weird.

Came back here, checked sites. No calls, but the lady from yesterday who said she would probably be out again today. So there's that.

Wed:
Food back in the cases. Looking forward to the 5th when I can have it. Well, maybe the 8th as that's the monday.

But I have to tell you the news. The big, big news. Got an email from our CEO about how it's so great the work we've all done the last year and so many challenges overcome and oh by the way in the coming months were cutting 15% of our workforce.

Wait what?

Yup. And it "so hard" to come to that decision too, according to this email. Yes, I'm sure it was so tough to count all those millions you make as CEO about 9 million a year, according to google. So you make more in a year than I will see in my life. Seems fair, I'm sure you deserve it. Anyway, juggling that phat stack of cash while you clicked the mouse on the button that increased the amount of your workforce you were going to chuck in the bin must have been so hard. "10%? No, doesn't seem high enough. Whoa, keep the stack steady, click click click click click that looks better." Not to worry though, I'm sure you'll get a bonus for your brave action of tossing people out on the street.

But it gets better. How you ask? Stick around and keep reading. The very next paragraph, and I'm going to paraphrase just a tiny bit was basically "but if you would like to be laid off early, email us at this address and we'll expedite that for you." I'm not kidding! Now I get that a CEO is going to be out of touch. I get that. But so much so that you're asking us tiny rats to start throwing ourselves overboard early? Do you understand exactly how stressful it is to lose your job? No, of course you don't. You're a CEO that makes nine million dollars a year. How could you?

So that's the fun stuff going on. Wow, the NY times doesn't mince words: "Xerox to slash 15% of workforce in bloodbath that will eliminate 3,000 jobs"
You Go, NYT!

From the article "Following the news, XeroxÕs share price tumbled nearly 10%, to $16.26, as of Wednesday afternoon."

Nice. So in touch with things. We made 7.1 billion in 2022. Yeah, we sure needed a "restructuring." Looks like our stockholders were not pleased with the news.

Ha! We even made Slashdot!

Enough about that pleasant business. I did get the next chapter written today. Then made sure my machine was set up for the demo I have to do tomorrow. Should be fun. Friday I have to walk over to building 208 with the USB key thing we're trying to make work, so I can show it to the person designing the plastic cover to house the usb hub we're attaching to the machine because we made the built in usb port so difficult to replace should it wear out. Neat. We thought ahead.

Otherwise, yeah, not much.

Came back here, had one call but it was just the vet, wanting to move Tinker to a little later. That's fine with me.

Checked sites, videos.

Watched episodes of season 2 of strange new worlds. Some good ones!

Thurs:
Have to make this sort of quick. I got home at 8:30 because reasons.
Suffice to say, HP gave their laptop am M.2 slot for very fast SSD performance. And then loaded the machine with a 5400 RPM drive. Neat. It took 2 hours. Yes, TWO HOURS to transfer 40GB worth of stuff. So the entire appointment, plus driving, took 4 hours. Neat.

Demo went fine. Which was lucky because the machine messed up just as I was done and I had to reboot it. But nobody saw it. They might have thought our products were crap.............. haaaaaaaaaaa........ they were all support so they already know.

Wrote most of a chapter. I'm back to the original problem, that idea I had didn't actually move the story forward it was more backstory. So now I have to move it forward. But it is inching there.

Tomorrow is the USB key demo. It got moved to 8:30 so I'll basically get there, put my stuff down, and head to 208 to try and find the place.

Otherwise should be fairly quiet?

Not sure about game this Friday, Sean is waffling. I'll do the shopping, see my parents.

Then this weekend, nothing much planned I guess? We'll have to see. Hope your 24 is going well so far, but it's early days so don't get too something or other.

See you next time.

Ugh, promise I'll post pictures of what I got Sean and Company, I didn't get to yet. Sorry. Oh you don't actually care? Neat.