Frustrating moments at work

Oct. 9th, 2025 07:52 pm
queen_ypolita: Woman in a Mucha painting (Mucha by auctrix_icons)
[personal profile] queen_ypolita
While I welcomed the reshuffle in my work responsibilities in February/March time because it meant I could get more and broader experience in the tasks I'd done less until then, giving up the other half hasn't always felt that easy. The hardest part has been watching somebody with a significantly shallower level of product knowledge struggling to get to grips with doing that half. And product knowledge is a funny thing anyway: you can be effective even when you don't know that much but you do need to be curious and use the opportunities you get to learn. And exercise some critical thinking and judgement. Not seeing a lot of those is probably what feels hardest at the moment. The setup that this colleague works in is different from the one I had previously, but even so, stopping to think and question rather than just regurgitating without understanding would come in handy so often.

Wednesday reading

Oct. 8th, 2025 05:07 pm
queen_ypolita: A stack of leather-covered books next to an hourglass (ClioBooks by magic_art)
[personal profile] queen_ypolita
Finished since the last reading post
Beyond the Door of No Return, which was really enjoyable all the way through.

Mystery in the Minster by Susanna Gregory, taking Bartholomew and friends to York to claim an inheritance for the college, with the usual amount of intrigue and bodies piling up.

Currently reading
When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson. Some slow progress with Jonas, Dennis, & die Liebe

Reading next
Not entirely sure, I've got a bunch of new books at home, so probably try to pick up one of them.
trobadora: (tea & books)
[personal profile] trobadora
I just discovered that you can make the perfect peppermint hot chocolate with Ritter Sport Peppermint. (I expect After Eight mints or similar would work too.) It turned out super delicious, so I need to share the joy!

Proportions: 250ml milk / 25g Ritter Sport Peppermint.

Just put the chocolate into the milk and heat in the microwave in short bursts, stirring thorougly in between, until it's entirely melted. (It pays to use a glass and not a porcelain mug, so you can see whether it's fully incorporated. *g*) Add a little sweetener to taste. YUM. :D

Success at the dentist

Oct. 7th, 2025 04:43 pm
queen_ypolita: Woman in a Mucha painting (Mucha by auctrix_icons)
[personal profile] queen_ypolita
I had my appointment today and it went fine. The specialist found the third root canal and was able to treat it. He didn't seem very impressed with the way my dentist had gone about looking for it. But given he's the specialist getting the referrals, he must be seeing things he doesn't agree with all the time. So my dentist was right to refer me to him and reassure me he was good, and I was right in going ahead with the treatment rather than opting for having the tooth out and getting an implant instead. And I'll be going back in two weeks for him to finish things off, and then eventually back to my own dentist for the crown.

I was properly numbed so didn't feel a thing at the time, but it seemed to take forever for it to fade away. Talking on a call after coming back home and starting work again was a bit of a challenge.
trobadora: (Guardian - SID team)
[personal profile] trobadora
Woohoo, [community profile] guardian_wishlist revealed this morning with over 60 new Guardian & related works!

There is so much fantastic new stuff, and I haven't had time to properly look at much yet, but I need to share the three fantastic gifts I got:

So so many thanks to all of you, and everyone else who is part of this fest! You are all amazing! ♥ ♥ ♥

A new appointment

Oct. 6th, 2025 07:37 pm
queen_ypolita: Woman in a Mucha painting (Mucha by auctrix_icons)
[personal profile] queen_ypolita
I had a call from the dental practice where I'm due to see the specialist at lunch time to say they had a cancellation available and would I like to bring my appointment forward. So I said yes, as my original appointment is still two weeks away and I didn't have anything on my work calendar that I can't miss. The only difference really having to switch an office day from Tuesday to Thursday, but that's fine. I have a second appointment in the calendar too, so that's moving to my original slot on the 21st.

The tooth hasn't actually been that troublesome for about a week now, but that was preceded by a week or so when it was so sore I was taking painkillers at least twice day. I can only hope the specialist can find and treat all the root canals still currently untreated.

Sewing and music

Oct. 5th, 2025 07:37 pm
queen_ypolita: Painted, happy-looking elephant (Norsu by later_tuesday)
[personal profile] queen_ypolita
My project to turn my worn corduroy trousers into a skirt didn't go as smoothly as I hoped, but in the end I got something that I'll probably wear. I was half ready to give up yesterday when I was unpicking the same seam for about the third time.

From the transformation I moved on to the summer top. I'm still not sure if I understand the instructions for sewing a concealed zip but for now I think I'm on the right track. But I won't know for sure until I continue another day.

And in the early evening I went to see a concert by a local orchestra at the university campus, which I enjoyed even more than I expected.

(no subject)

Oct. 4th, 2025 08:25 am
queen_ypolita: Purple flowers with a little white swirl (FlowerIcon by roxicons)
[personal profile] queen_ypolita
Happy birthday, [personal profile] oursin!

Things

Oct. 2nd, 2025 10:16 pm
vass: Small turtle with green leaf in its mouth (Default)
[personal profile] vass
Books
Still rereading Stargazy Pie.

Listened to the audiobook of Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice. Yes, my first time with this series. I didn't read them back when they first came on my radar (late 90s, early 2000s) because I heard unpleasant things about the author's attitude to fanfic, and held a grudge. They came to my attention again recently because a Tumblr mutual was reading them and kept reblogging pretty fanart and also made me aware of the gender stuff.

That certainly was a 90s fantasy novel, for better and for worse.
After I finished, I read this person's shitposty summary of Assassin's Apprentice, and decided on the strength of it to put a hold on Royal Assassin at the library so I can read the next summary after I finish that.

Games
Hades II launched, and I went back to playing it (having set it aside back in March.) On a new save. Which is how I reminded myself that gaming for a long time really hurts my neck and shoulders and back and everything. Got as far as Granddad.

Crafts
sekrit!cross-stitch still in the drafting phase, but I did make some progress.

Tech
Still playing through Reeborg's World. I switched from the original levels to the Saskatchewan CS20 set to give myself a bit more practice before tackling Rain 2 and Storm 2 through 4. Currently I'm on level 19 of the Saskatchewan CS20.

Also dug out an old monitor with the intention of plugging it into my laptop. Couldn't find a DVI or VGA cable (I did say it's an old monitor!) and ended up buying a new DVI to HDMI converter cable. After which I couldn't find a power cable for the monitor. After which I found where I'd been storing the spare IEC connectors. You'll never guess what else was coiled up with them... oh, you guessed. (No, not a snake. A DVI cable and a VGA cable, of course!)

Garden
Impulse-bought and planted a couple of heirloom tomato seedlings (Tigerella and Cherry Roma.) It begins.

Cats
Wrestling and face-biting. All in good fun.

Nature
Saw a couple of magpies investigating some yellow leaves which I'd pruned from the broccoli and left to mulch.

Misc
Unwisely kept working on the miniblocks pumpkin after I'd run out of concentration, and started skipping steps without noticing. Disassembled it and started again. This is what audiobooks are good for.

Rarepair Exchange delay

Sep. 30th, 2025 09:23 pm
trobadora: (Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan - broadcast)
[personal profile] trobadora
Just in case someone else missed it too - [community profile] rarepairexchange reveals are delayed. Instead of 5 October, they're projected to happen on 19 October.

The reason I missed it: the delay was announced at the top of a pinch-hit post the day after the deadline (which was 21 September). I didn't even think to look at it at the time because I knew I didn't have time for any pinch-hits.

If that's you too, now you know. *g*

(Yesterday I happened to notice the new pinch-hit deadline, which is after the original reveals date, and got very confused. But the sticky post is up to date, which cleared up the current schedule, and then I tracked down the original announcement.)

Things

Sep. 27th, 2025 06:45 pm
vass: Small turtle with green leaf in its mouth (Default)
[personal profile] vass
Books
Listened to the audiobook of Yevgeny Zamyatin's 1921 dystopian SF novel We, translated by Bela Shayevich and narrated by Toby Jones. I don't have any basis for comparison for this particular translation, but I thought it was good. The narration was exceptional.

This edition also included a forward by Margaret Atwood, an old review by George Orwell, and an essay by Ursula Le Guin, 'The Stalin in the Soul'. By the time I'd finished the novel, I had forgotten the Atwood forward. The Orwell review was interesting. The Le Guin essay got up my nose: it was about how market forces can suppress ideas just as effectively as state censorship (a valid point), but somewhere along the way became about the dangers of unserious writing.

Read Victoria Goddard's newest novella, Olive and the Dragon, and her previous ones Clary Sage and Traveller's Joy.

Currently rereading her second ever novel Stargazy Pie, because the fan server I'm in is doing a reread of the Greenwing & Dart series, and I'm hoping it'll lend me the momentum to read the rest of them.

Fandom
Still working on the concluding chapter to the fic I posted part one of at the start of this month. I've added at least a thousand words to the draft, and struggling with it.

Missed the nomination period for [community profile] trickortreatex and, subsequently, the signup period. Things have been difficult.

Did my Yuletide nomination a couple of hours before the AO3 server outage.

Games
Achieved A10 with all four characters in Slay the Spire and also killed the Transient before it faded; am now taking a break.

Tech
I've been working through the original levels of Reeborg's World, a gentle guide to programming using Python. As of this post, I've completed all the original levels except Rain 2, Centre 1 and 2, and Storm 2 through 4. (Edit with breaking news: I beat Centre 1 and Centre 2.)

Garden
Harvested some broccoli, purple and green varieties.

Hired a mower to come do what I was not managing.

Misc
Got out my old Lego Classic set, sorted the contents, and started working through the instruction booklet in order. I've never been into Lego: as a kid, I had my older brother's hand-me-down bricks and half an instruction manual with crayons scribbled across it. In my early teens I was in love with the short unit we did at school, using Logo to program Lego Technic sets (this was long before Mindstorms), but I couldn't get my parents to buy me Lego Technic to have at home. And as an adult the Lego kits just seemed too expensive and also too specialised. Recently I've been thinking I'd like to give Lego another look, in particular the less... "spend a lot of money on a playset to assemble and then dust" side of it.

Subsequently bought myself a "miniblocks" Halloween pumpkin kit from KMart, and have started building that. Much swearing has ensued. The quality really isn't as good as Lego, and the smaller size does not help.
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