Half day leave

Next Monday is replacement holiday, and since if I don't take it, the leave will be burned given that I have reached the leave accumulation limit, so I took half day leave today.

Yes, that makes a 3.5 days long weekend. But no, it's not a break at all, as I will be working through the long weekend. No thanks to the project on hand.

I do, however, allow myself a half day off, and that's the second half of today.

Had three back to back meetings before my half day leave, immediately after the third meeting I continued to meet up with colleague friends for a tabletop gaming session.

Wonderful way to start my half day leave, really. =)

Last we played was September of last year, so it's a long eleven months of inactivity. It's good to reconnect and we played a new game called Pixies, which we figured out the scoring as we played.

Love the trash talk and banter, which made the session fun and lively. This is a group of colleagues who are for all intents and purposes, friends. We have met outside of work, we ate, we gathered, we sang, we played, we laughed together in many occasions throughout the years. Happy fun times. None of them is in the same department as I am now, but no ice breaking or warming up needed.

I did not resume work after the tabletop gaming session, and nor do I intend to tonight. I had a leisure afternoon surfing the net, played computer game, watched variety show, and after I posted this, I intend to do more of the same.

Work can wait till tomorrow, today is my half day off, and I shall honour it.

Other |enjoyable events| category entries.

二十八

情人老婆仔，一转眼在一起二十八年了。

拍拖二十八周年纪念日快乐！

记得还是要继续牵手，抱抱，和互相开玩笑哦。

莫忘初衷，继续经营。

“关冷气哦！”

心语细述 |系列|

听说

听说，我加入公司那初期几年内认识的老同事们中，有好几位将要离开公司了。

遣散配套或退休配套的数额应该很可观…

都不知道自己是不是羡慕他们，还是最近忙得太烦太累了？

只知道自己不能没有工作，家里不能没有收入。不用几个月银行里的存款就会支付不了每个月的开销。

唉～

很快公司里认识的老同事又要变少了。虽然工作上也几乎没有接触，反社交的我也没有私讯他们什么的，但还是见了面就可以谈得开，见了面会有那亲切的熟悉感的人。

就是有那又要失去些什么的感觉。

有那自己会变得更加孤僻的预感。

随兴随想 |系列|

Getting too old for this

No thanks to the workload, I worked till late night on Wednesday, well, till the wee hours of Thursday morning, that is.

It's Friday today, and I am still suffering from that.

Plus all the stress related stuff. The headache, the IBS, the sleeplessness, the indigestion, et cetera.

I am writing this blog entry with a headache, with that acid reflux or heartburn feeling, and fatigue.

Getting too old for this shit.

Other |temperamental thoughts| category entries.

1 versus 3

Spin it however you want, the fact is we are doing three projects. The desired end results are three products out in the market some time next year.

Call it common chassis, fungibility, compatibility, reuse opportunity. Whatever. It does not change the amount of work I need to do, and that's three projects worth of workload.

To be generous, let's say it's 2.5 projects worth of workload, even though we need to specify which of the three clearly when we present our reports and assessments. Whatever.

Different mechanical engineers are assigned to work on different designs, but one thermal engineer for all three.

One thermal engineer (me), three projects, one deadline.

Funny it's the thermal engineer who found out from the deliverable from other functional teams that things don't fit.

Life would be easier if thermal assessment comes after the others are ready, instead of being the one who is running at the forefront, who has to keep updating and redoing the assessment as the information becomes available.

Set whatever deadline you want, disturb me at the end of the day as you like, it doesn't change the fact that thermal model generation and simulation takes time. Stressing me will not make it faster.

Probably slower instead.

Other |wretched workaholic| category entries.

Granted!

Received an email today informing me that one of the invention ideas approved for patent filing, and filed back in 2021, has finally been granted the patent.

This is the first time I received such email, so I happily shared the good news to a few close friends, saying finally I have a patent being granted.

Then out of curiosity I went and checked the tool that tracks our invention idea submission and patent filing status, and noticed there is in fact another filed patent already being granted.

I am positive I never received email informing me about patent granted prior to today, so I wonder if it's because the one I got notified today is filed in US while the other one that I wasn't notified is filed in Europe, hmm...

And interesting how the patent system in Europe works, besides one main body that oversees the whole Europe, the patent is also filed in countries like France, United Kingdom, et cetera. One patent filed in five different places.

Well, regardless, I now have two granted patents out of the four filed. I hope I will get plaques for them, that's actually what matter most for me.

Don't get me wrong, the award money is nice, but I care more about getting the plaque. Something solid and tangible to commemorate the achievement is a boon to people with goldfish memory.

Other |hyped up heads up| category entries.

如果…

如果被裁员了，应该做什么好呢？

草草算了算，拿得到的也不多，根本不能拿来做生意什么的。

是不是足够开个小贩档口都说不定那种。

更不用想可以退休养老。

这样的年龄了还要从头开始，只是想想就很累。

唉～ 烦。

随兴随想 |系列|

Rat race results

The Risk and Rally event in Diablo Immortal has ended a few days ago.

I did surprisingly well and managed to secure the second place among the other wizard players competing in the event.

Woot! Second place!

By the end of the event I was 20 points behind the player in the first place, meaning in four dungeon runs I was not in the same score group of the first place player. Basically that means I wasn't in the top three shortest time group in those four dungeon runs, but was in the top 4th to 20th shortest time group instead.

Like I mentioned in the previous blog entry, the playing field for the event was fairly, but not totally, even. The Pay to Win players still have advantages of one-shot killing everything including the bosses, and whatever useful benefits from the high level 5 stars legendary gems over a Free to Play player like me.

First place player, 5k Resonance.

The first place player has 5k Resonance and fully upgraded primary gears. The third place player has 4k Resonance, also with fully upgraded primary gears. Those Resonance levels at this time of the game life are only achievable by Pay to Win players.

Third place player, 4k Resonance.

Resonance is a multiplier for primary gears base attributes, namely damage and life. So higher Resonance means higher damage and life.

Playing since Diablo Immortal launched on PC as a Free to Play player, I currently have 1.5k Resonance. I think it's reasonable at this point of time for Free to Play player to get up to 2k Resonance, but that's just my guess.

My 1.5k Resonance.

So I think I have proudly represented the Free to Play players in this Risk and Rally event, sure feels good to beat a 4k Resonance player, probably many more players with higher Resonance than mine down the ranks but I only checked the top three.

Other |geeky gaming| category entries.

Power outage

Blackout around 16:00 hours today, sudden power outage without prior notice.

It's not just my condo, but surrounding area as well.

Nobody knows why, but someone must have reported because there were traffic police at the traffic light keeping order.

Went out for dinner and to pick up elder son from tuition, and when we came home, the TNB personnel was in the car right in front of us. After we passed security, we saw the worker talking on the mobile phone while unlocking the door to the TNB room that's within the condo compound.

And by the time we reached our unit, the power has come back on. So basically within five minutes of the TNB worker arriving, the issue was resolved.

Only thing is, it took TNB 3.5 hours to get here to fix a less than five minutes thing, probably just flip a switch or something, that caused power cut to the whole area.

Such horrible service, such appalling efficiency.

Other |runaway rants| category entries.

One more down, many more to go

Conducted two training classes to external customer on Monday and Tuesday, two hours session on each day.

That closed another one of those "extra" tasks that's not my core job but have to do for one reason or another.

This one wasn't so bad, because it's just knowledge sharing and it's about the things I am very familiar with.

Still need extra time and work to prepare the training material and extra time to conduct the classes. Not to mention I went on site purposely to conduct the classes, even though it's online session, because I don't want to be blamed for any internet issue, and commuting is always a big waste of time.

Well, many extra tasks besides the numerous tasks for core job. Oh, in fact also closed another miscellaneous thermal support task yesterday.

Work is never ending. Well, maybe when the company ends my employment.

Who knows, right?

Other |temperamental thoughts| category entries.

人心惶惶

公司又要大裁员，这几年有太多次大大小小的裁员，真的还有足够的人数来实践公司转型大计划吗？

又，不禁让人猜想，这几年的那么多次裁员后，自己这次是不是会被点中？

我是家里唯一的收入来源，我不能没有工作。

但这也不是我可以控制的事，所以除了烦，还是烦。

廉价打工仔的无奈和辛酸。

唉～

心语细述 |系列|