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|

One down, more to go

Today's the day to close one of those "extra" tasks that's not my core job but have to do for one reason or another.

Decided to stop rejecting and just do it once to get it over with, else manager will repeat every year.

Time consuming and highly reluctant, but have to give it my best shot anyway because that's principle.

So I drafted, bothered others for references, bother more people for feedback and review, modified the draft and bothered people a few more times, and finally submitted.

Oh, and practised enough times until I can probably do it without the material. Well, good for today and until my goldfish memory kicks in, which is probably tomorrow.

Think I did well with the presentation. No idea how I did in the questions and answers, because questioners don't seemed to have thermal background and I am not sure what they are really after.

Don't really mind though, I just want to get it over with, the outcome is not important.

Done my part so that's that, way too many tasks demanding my time and attention.

Other |temperamental thoughts| category entries.

Rat race

So Diablo Immortal has this Risk and Rally event happening now that is basically a race for fastest solo dungeon clear.

Usually I do not care about this kind of events since I am a Free to Play player, and the game is primarily for Pay to Win players.

However, there is a nice twist this time, the game tries to level the playing field in the sense that the event can be done in any difficulty, so naturally everyone will pick the lowest difficulty. The event description actually recommends this as well!

In the lowest difficulty where monsters die easily, usually with just one hit, the Pay to Win massive killing power simply becomes overkill. Okay, maybe still beneficial in killing tougher bosses but Free to Play players can handle the bosses as well, perhaps with just a few more hits.

The time for that few more hits probably means a few seconds longer, which actually is a big deal in the top few ranks but at least the playing field is not overly skewed towards the Pay to Win players in this event.

Every twelve hours there is a change in dungeon, and a score will be given to players based on their fastest clear time, as well as some token reward. The ranking is class specific so that removes the class imbalance issue, and the score from each dungeon change is cumulative until the end of the event. At the end of the event, players are awarded differently according to their final ranking, with the top three having the best award.

The thing is, competition is fierce, and missing any dungeon on the twelve hours time frame means you are 50 points behind the top score player, which is a huge deal as score is on a 5 points increment. Missing any twelve hours dungeon race pretty much means you are out of the race, well, at least out of the top 50 ranks, probably more.

Not surprisingly, the top few high score players are fairly consistent, most likely the Pay to Win players with all sorts of gears and legendary gems to min-max. But surprisingly, I am doing fairly well thus far, but of course it's just a few days since the start of the event, I am sure more and more Pay To Win players will overtake my score as the days go by. The event ends on 11th of August, way too long to go for my liking.

Also I am not sure if I can keep up with the twelve hours dungeon change demand outside of weekend, so perhaps I will be out of this rat race sooner than I expected. Oh well.

Other |geeky gaming| category entries.

Extra trips

Since the outbreak of Covid, I have been working in hybrid mode. I no longer have a permanent cubicle in the office and have set up a home office instead.

As a significant portion of my work is thermal modelling, which I run on workstations residing in the office, and which I interact through remote desktop, I have no real need to go on site.

In fact, going on site is a drop in work efficiency for me, the commute time alone is already a huge waste of time, and also the single external monitor set up in hybrid cubicle is just not sufficient. I need at least two big screens for thermal modelling and post-processing, laptop screen is too small.

Suffice it to say that I don't go to office unless I really have to, like for face to face meeting, for hands on work in the lab, when workstation died and remote command no longer works and nobody is there to help, et cetera.

Last Wednesday I had to go in to clean up the cubicles where my workstations reside in, as they are making them hybrid cubicles. Whoever uses those cubicles best not to mess with my workstations, they run 24/7.

Last Thursday I went on site for the bi-weekly staff meeting, this is the number one reason why I go to office, so usually I only go to office once every two weeks. Last Wednesday was the unfortunate extra trip.

To make things even more unfortunate was the CrowdStrike's Blue Screen of Death fiasco last Friday, which brought down my laptop. I went in office hoping to get the other laptop my manager has recently bought for me to use when dealing with a specific customer, but IT said they couldn't complete the setup due to CrowdStrike BSOD. So a total waste of my time and effort, and the third trip to office of the week.

Well, received notice late Friday night that IT has a workaround and affected employees can go on site on Saturday to recover their laptop. So ya, I went in yet again on Saturday to get my laptop up and running, making it four trips in a week that I went to office. No, I am not a happy bunny.

This week I should not have to go to the office, as the next bi-weekly staff meeting is next week, but the CrowdStrike fiasco also brought down one of my workstations, bollocks!

Getting the workstation to IT for support will take forever, and incur a charge as well, but thankfully a self-recovery step by step document is available and now that my laptop is working, I could look up the recovery key myself.

So I went in to office to sort out the workstation this week, making a trip that I rather not have to do. Too many trips to office in too short a time span. Absolutely not a happy bunny!

Other |temperamental thoughts| category entries.

Random thoughts

Finally completed the second material for the upcoming training that I need to conduct. Spent too much time on it. Training in a few weeks, can't wait to get over with it.

*****

Another thing I spent way too much time on is the career advancement stuff the manager roped me into. Interview is next Wednesday. Same thing, can't wait to get over with it, whatever the outcome. Just don't bother me any more.

*****

Lunch out with wifey. Just the two of us. Korean. Don't get to do this often.

*****

One of the workstations is down from that CrowdStrike screw-up. Too busy to go on site to handle it. Too tired too to be honest, to get up early to go to office to avoid traffic and to get one of those severely insufficient parking slots. Have to do it soon regardless, as struggling with simulation output with only one working workstation.

*****

My tummy the size of three months pregnancy. Or thereabout, as wifey couldn't be sure, saying her tummy size was different during her pregnancies.

Other |temperamental thoughts| category entries.