blackeiderdown | Recent Entries

Wait, what is my vocal type again?

People without a background in singing (see: me a decade ago) sometimes think that voice types correspond to vocal ranges. Rather, you should use your best notes when trying to identify your type. You have to take into account that 1) the system describes parts in opera and choral music, not contemporary; 2) the vocal types overlap; and 3) each voice is unique.

Take me for example: I can squeak out notes between A2 and A5. However, I probably feel most comfortable singing E3 to F5. That range places me in the uncomfortable gray zone of contralto/alto**...but I lack that rich dark tone synonymous with contraltos. So, am I mezzo grieving over my missing high notes?

(Nevermind I have so many other points of confusion:

Different sources assign different ranges to each vocal type?
Should the vocal range include head voice?
Do women have falsetto?
And etc.)

Why should I care? I only want to rock!

My personal heroes are Freddie Mercury and Josh Ramsay. They sing higher and lower than me. They kill it when they sing. They harmonize brilliantly with their bands.

Very little brings me as much joy as singing "Springtime Rendezvous" or watching Dungeon Meshi AMVs set to "The Killing Kind".

(I wrote a letter to the higher powers about how I lacked the range to sing all of Marianas Trench's "A Normal Life".

The higher powers wrote back with cryptic instructions on throat singing.)

Aside from vocal range and type, what else do I have to consider?

I can carry a tune and have very little to no formal training. Consequently, I have very little understanding of my own strengths and weaknesses. My vibrato is effortless. I can't growl. My head voice and chest voice still sound very distinct.

Furthermore, I have yet to sit down and learn to sight read sheet music. I should learn it. But you know what? Computers only care about doing a Fourier transform over a sound sample to find the base frequency. Human voices don't translate to pure sine waves. I apologize to my friend's son...but I should probably be taking ODEs rather than trying to learn the treble and base clefs. I want to accomplish my goal of understanding computational analysis of the human voice.

(This is how I speak to my dentist. I remind him of old movies and pseudoscientific theories about the periodic table of elements.)

I offer these parting thoughts:

"Never gonna give you up" (aka the Rick Roll song) is a great song to do in group karaoke.

**Contralto is a voice type. Alto is a choral part. The ranges are not necessarily identical.

Current Music: A Normal Life

Track 01: Drunken Mushrooms

I sort of learned how to sort of make championes al ajillo from YouTube some time right after the pandemic. The second or third time that I made it, I think that I only had brandy on hand. After adding brandy that time, I started adding brandy exclusively for the next couple of years instead of white wine and sugar. I call this variation of championes al ajillo "drunken mushrooms".

Come 2023, I stayed with my sister for a week and almost killed her kitten. My sister had made asparagus wrapped in bacon for dinner. After eating a couple of batches, I also had bacon grease on my fingers. The kitten wanted to play fetch with one of the rubber bands that had bound the asparagus. I indulged her...and she inevitably ended up eating the rubber band.

The kitten politely informed me the next afternoon that she was going to throw up the rubber band and subsequently vacated the offending object from her gut. After a round of panicked phone tag, my sister finally came home from work and told me to fix drunken mushrooms instead of expressing my guilt over the situation.

I had trouble remembering that I used brandy at home. My sister pulled marsala from the cabinet and handed it to me.

I find it easier to cook yummy mushrooms with marsala. So now we have "drunken mushrooms" variation no. 2.

Track 02: Cilbir

If you like watching videos about making shakshuka or poaching eggs, YouTube will route you to videos about cilbir. This dish, purportedly once made for kings, combines poached eggs with paprika butter** and Greek yogurt.

In other words, the dish combines wobbly slime + viscous liquid + goop.

** I am aware that paprika is actually a substitute for another kind of spice.

End Result: Championes con Huevos Escalfados y Yogur

Cilbir and drunken mushrooms have two things in common: they both have garlic and paprika oil or butter. I decided to remove the raw garlic from the yogurt and introduce garlic back via adding drunken mushrooms. The drunken mushrooms marinate in a garlic-paprika oil while they cook.

Of course, the flavors clash since I also add marsala to my drunken mushrooms. I don't care. I want to spoil myself silly.

I went to Andalucia last spring and tried multiple gazpachos. At this point, I think that small fish restaurant in France still has the best gazpacho. Some restaurants over-salted their gazpacho. Flavor, in part, appears to scale with vegetable quality.

I have vague plans of buying heirloom tomatoes from the farmer's market one day and turning them into soup.

I also had mazamorra, or bread-almond-garlic soup, a couple of times. Recipes for the corresponding soup online seem to refer to it as ajo blanco.

I'm feeling drained.

I survived the pandemic without getting covid. Like a lot of other professionals, I started working at home and established that I could work remotely from other locations than my main address. Working at home has its perks, including freeing me from office drama and from hearing my boss talking on the phone. On the other hand, I lost much of my ability to form human connections. I essentially became the person I had been in college, spending my hours exclusively either browsing the Internet or working on assignments.

Not much has changed. I still work remotely 99% of the time. Since I have calls at 8:00 in the morning, I feel very little motivation to get up and get stuck in rush hour traffic. Somehow rush traffic hour is still a thing and has only gotten worse.

On the upside...

I took Jazz singing class and poetry class and romance writing class and Japanese 1 online. At this point, I only plan to continue Jazz classes in person. People keep telling me my two-and-a-something octave range is remarkable.

(On the contrary, my low and high registers just sound really distinct. I will still enjoy the ego boost.)

My new career goals now include

to become a background singer for a Queen cover band or
to become a QA for the Pokemon Go team or
to be a prophet for the god of computational geometry

I got an expensive tablet for doing digital artwork. Then I broke it. Then I bought an IPad Air secondhand.

I write StarTrek fanfic instead of drawing on my fancy new secondhand tablet these days. (So Vulcans supposedly have few emotions and yet are often the ones who struggle to adapt to life on a StarFleet ship?)

This summer, I did an autopsy on malware and watched deer piss on the lawn of the British Columbia Parliament building.

Sirs and madams, I fear that your roses are deer munchies. Godspeed.

On drawing in perspective:

Measure perspective with just one utensil:

The tool you draw with, be it marker or pencil.
Hold it point up to the sky.
Rotate counter-clockwise.
Your brain rebels. (Brains aren't essential.)

On the tools available to young gods:

If you have a piece of clear acetate
And also a world to reanimate

Look through the sheet
And now trace the street
Or the gods, I swear, you will agitate

'cause my dog tore it up

no, I'm serious

I think that we gave him the green light

when we gave him toilet paper rolls as toys

'cause my computer crashed

yeah I know about backups

(I forgot to back up your assignment)

this is a tragedy, you know

I lost all my save points

'cause my homework spontaneously combusted!

I blame my sloppy mad-scientist step uncle

see the bandages on my fingers?

I can prove I'm telling the truth!

my uncle is researching the color of lies

(by the way, my uncle says next Tuesday's

|homework assignment is gonna go missing as well)

'cause we are stuck in a time loop

and I'm the only witness

everything that I do

becomes undone

in the grand scheme of things,

your assignment is

is just a small

speck

of dust

(when I grow up I'll become a welder)

'cause artificial intelligence

MTV

indulgent dancing

'cause inside (inside me)

I see space ninjas

I often went to see the old man Mio after school. He sold clay animals and textiles to tourists on the island. The animals reminded me of the tattoos on his arms.

I sometimes had trouble locating him because he moved around the port a lot. Today I found him in the shadow of a big cruise ship. He was talking to an old woman who wore a floppy hat and carried a large black purse.

I knew better than to interrupt Mio as he charmed a potential customer. I went to go buy a snow cone.

When I came back, I found him drawing in one of his design books. I watched him sketch as I sucked cherry syrup from my snow cone.

"What is it?" I asked. A lot of Mio's sketches only bore a passing resemblance to real things. This drawing looked like a mutated 'S'.

"A seagull, Arthur," Mio pointed helpfully at a handful of seagulls following tourists with food. One of the tourists caved and threw a piece of his bun on the ground. While some seagulls mobbed the scrap, others started to stalk the tourist with new intensity. "We only have spoiled seagulls around here.

"Are there any unspoiled seagulls?" I asked.

"A few. Some actually travel long distances and show up in surprising places." Mio didn't elaborate.

I had trouble imagining any of our seagulls going far. They could just stay around here and get fat.

Mio let me look at his design books and mold clay to pass the time. I also liked watching the tourists go by. By late afternoon, most tourists were making their way back to the cruise ship. Their arms tended to look pink like partly done meat. The least sunburned carried plastic bags emblazoned with jewelry store logos. Those tourists had probably barely ventured past the port. Jewelry shops ringed the port like hungry predators.

Most tourists ignored Mio. About a half-an-hour passed before a young woman stopped at the booth. The woman had tucked her tiny, fluffy white dog under one arm. It studied the ground longingly while the woman studied Mio's things. She carried several shopping bags on her other arm.

"How much for this?" She held up a woven dish towel. I saw a design of a tortoise lazing about in the mud.

"60.00," Mio named an aggressively high price. Rather than bartering Mio down, the woman handed Mio the dog. Mio failed to hide his shocked expression as she fished her wallet from a well-hidden pocket. The dog tried to wiggle free from Mio's grasp.

"No need to bag it," the woman told Mio. She took the dish towel from him and stuffed it into a shopping bag. Then she retrieved her dog and went on her way.

Mio sneezed several times. When he recovered, he commented vaguely, "She's cursed."

"Cursed? As in she's gonna die for robbing a tomb or something?" I thought of books about vengeful mummies and sudden plagues.

"No," Mio shook his head. He was inspecting the money that she handed him carefully. "She seems out of place. A few of these bills have issue dates in the future."

"She is a tourist," I pointed out. Mio silently passed me one of the suspicious bills. The Queen Elizabeth staring back at me looked really old.

................................................................................................................................................

This bank was sucking out my soul.

When I had decided to start working here, I thought that I would enjoy the steady pay. My brief stint as an artist had ended in failure. I could only make money seasonally. As tourism to the islands declined, the little that I made failed to cover expenses the rest of the year.

I gradually climbed my way to branch manager of this bank. Ten years later, I was regretting that decision. I had little time or energy to pursue my creative passions.

I often wondered how Mio had managed to balance family, art, and finances. He had disappeared from my life before I had the chance to ask.

His art had also disappeared with him. In my opinion, a museum should have acquired at least some of it and preserved it for eternity.

Very little had happened today. My phone rang just as I was contemplating leaving early for once.

"Arthur," Marisol, one of the tellers, addressed me, "A customer wants to speak with you. She seems a little strange."

"I can handle her," I volunteered before I even fully considered the problem. I needed something to do.

Marisol had pulled the customer to the side. She carried a tiny white dog. The woman stood out both because she had brought a personal pet into the bank and because she had come to the islands off-season. Her stylish sunglasses and bright sundress would serve her poorly in today's rainy weather.

The woman probably had no interest in investing with us. Rather, she looked like that she wanted to cause trouble. I positioned myself supportively beside Marisol. "I am the manager. How can I help you?"

She studied my name tag briefly. I tensed as she addressed me familiarly. "Arthur, your ATM gave me fake currency."

The woman handed me several 20s. I held one up to the light. As I expected, a ghostly blue sea turtle appeared to the left of King Andrew the 3rd's head. "I can have an expert look at these later. Why do you call these bills fakes?"

"Queen Elizabeth should be on those bills. Who is King Andrew? President Andrew Jackson?" The woman--Crazy lady with dog--held up a 5 emblazoned with a stately, mature female face. That bill was clearly the fake.

I smiled blandly and tried to think up a solution. While I would like security to throw out Crazy lady with dog, I could resolve this more simply.

"We will investigate the issue with our ATM. In the meantime, we can replace your withdrawal with a prepaid card. Would that suffice?" I wondered if Crazy lady with dog would find a way to argue with my proposal.

"I suppose," Crazy lady sighed dramatically. Marisol went to make the arrangements. Crazy lady found a chair and set her dog on her lap.

I went back to my office. Now I had something to contemplate until closing. Had Crazy lady with dog acquired the strange 5 from a game or printed it herself? Who was her Queen Elizabeth?

The last Queen Elizabeth had died about fifty years before England acquired the islands. However, the face on that 5 had looked nothing like any portrait of Queen Elizabeth that I had seen.

Ah, Mio, you would have loved to hear about Crazy lady. Maybe we can laugh about this incident in the afterlife.

................................................................................................................................................

Many years ago, I would often meet Mio on the beach at sunrise. The habit stayed with me long after Mio disappeared from my life.

I still often went out to the beach early. Some small, childish part of me always hoped that Mio would be waiting for me.

This morning, the woman on the beach distracted me from my typical morning routine. She had dragged her suitcase out onto the sand and sat on top of it. A small white dog quietly slept in her lap.

She painted an odd picture. If she had her suitcase with her, the woman had potentially sat out here overnight. Did she have accommodations?

Had I come out later in the day, I would have missed her. The crowds would have hidden her completely.

While I would give my first boat tour later this morning, I had enough time to let my curiosity get the better of me. I detoured to get a better look at her and the dog. Although she touched her dog gently, her body shook as she sobbed.

"Excuse me. Are you alright?" I had to ask.

She turned to look at me with red eyes. "No! Nothing works!"

"Some things work," I said encouragingly. "The sun rose this morning. Time marches on."

She only glared at me, "None of my credit or debit cards have worked since yesterday. My hotel key stopped working. When I went to complain, the hotel told me that I had no reservation and threw me out."

I wondered if I should walk away now. However, Crazy lady with dog seemed more inclined to vent than to try to mug me. I decided to let her continue. Although her story sounded utterly implausible, I also found it entertaining.

"On top of all that, my cell phone lost service. When I did manage to make several international calls, strangers always picked up. I am almost out of cash too." At this point, she looked like she might burst into tears again. "You can tell me if I am carrying the correct currency."

"Why me?" If she decided to include me in her story, I had solid reason to back away. She pulled her wallet out of her jacket and thrust an ordinary 5 toward me.

"You all but threw me out of your bank the other day," she pointed out. I had no memory of ever slaving away at a bank.

"We have never met," I tried to argue calmly, "and I run boat tours most of the year." I took a second look at the money in her hand. "That 5 looks legitimate?"

She opened her wallet and slipped the 5 back into it. "Of course you don't remember me," she mocked. "Of course you have a completely different job."

Crazy lady with dog went silent. I took the opportunity to study her more closely. She wore a necklace that reminded me strongly of Mio's interpretation of a begging seagull. If Mio had ever felt inclined to make jewelry, he might have produced a necklace just like hers.

"Where did you get that?" I pointed at the necklace.

She waited a few moments to answer the question. Crazy lady with dog probably chose to answer only to distract herself from her situation. "At an art gallery in Black Bay," she named a town on the other side of this island. "called New Moon, I think."

"I have to go see that gallery," I said. A horn blared in the distance. I checked the horizon for the ship, "You have no idea--"

When I focused again on the beach, I found that woman, suitcase, and dog had completely disappeared. I still saw evidence of her presence. The woman's suitcase had left a depression in the sand.

The next weekend, I took a day trip to Black Bay. As soon as I walked into New Moon gallery, I instantly recognized Mio's stamp on much of the jewelry and the textiles. Someone had even framed pages of his design books and hung them on the walls.

As soon as I walked into New Moon, I knew that I would finally find out what had happened to Mio.

I am back--perhaps temporarily--in the Diplomacy and Propaganda department. I design the pretty pictures that tell other agents about their success or failure in the endless war against walking, talking sentient numbers.

This time, I have to do a lot of elementary school level math. (Granted, we have to use that elementary school math to track the numbers' movements in many different dimensions.) My commanders told me that I had to do the elementary school level math on an ancient magical machine. It supposedly simplifies the "elementary school math" for the lay person.

In reality, the machine unnecessarily complicates the whole project it. My team takes more time to patch and extend the machine than to programming it to make the pretty pictures.

The other thing that complicates this project? Someone had the bright idea to take photos of the walking, talking numbers and store them forever. Those photos take up a lot of room.

Once the ancient machine produces the pretty pictures, I have to compare them to the photos in our archives. In fact, I spend about 80% of my time comparing the pretty pictures to the raw data that we have in photos.

Consequently, I spend about 80% of my time in the photo archives.

.
.
.
.

It gets kinda lonely down here. I sometimes take breaks and try to hit ping pong balls into awkwardly positioned trash cans.

(Most depressingly, someone has stolen most of the ping pong balls.)

I think I have incarnated partly to learn to make Spanish food. My favorite ingredient is garlic. My obsession is getting a restaurant-quality gazpacho. (You just need to cut up fresh vegetables and blend them together. That should be it, right? Right?????)

Last week, I tried making croquettes. While I frequently go to Spanish tapas bars on trips, my home town seems to lack one.

Croquettes proved fairly easy to make. A croquette is essentially fried, battered bechamel. You can put lots of different things into the bechamel.

Since I lacked some of the ingredients that I needed, I added too much milk to the bechamel. My croquettes could have had a slightly firmer consistency. They still tasted really good!

I have just learned how fallible my childhood memories are.

In elementary, I borrowed The Emerald City of Oz from my school library. Their edition had color illustrations with shiny green ink.

I just purchased an edition of The Emerald City of Oz that should have also contained similar illustrations. When I picked up the book, I thought that the illustrations lacked the metallic green ink. In particular, the illustration of Dorothy holding a broom seemed drab in comparison to the illustration that I remembered seeing in the school library book.

Bad advertising provokes my ire. Even the book's afterword highlights its similarity to the 1910 first edition.

I have revised my opinion since I acquired the novel. Both the cover and the illustration of Auntie Em staring down the Cowardly Lion shimmer a bit. The afterword also mentions 'gold glitter'...It might appear in the washes?

So, either A) I have an erroneous memory (which is likely) or B) the publisher has changed how much ink that they layer on specific illustrations in the last 20 years.

I like the version in my memories better. At the same time, I have difficulty justifying sending an email to the publisher about missing ink.

On another note, what does my choice of book for 2018 mean?

( Spoilers ahead )

I experienced big changes in 2017. Although I kept the same job title, I assumed two different positions within four months. I had to say farewell to multiple coworkers. A sibling moved away.

Many things also remain the same. I drown in clutter. I watch Netflix DVD in the evenings. On weekends, I read fan fiction until noon in bed.

Rather than making an attempt at levity, I will try to set out some realistic goals for this year:

1) Get rid of two decade-old desktops gathering dust in my house. Both have a GB or less of memory. Although I might use them for something interesting, they run painfully slowly. (If I could get a VM to run Darkened Skye properly, I could also rid myself of the third old tower too. Hm.)
2) Learn something about ~~dirt~~ soil while I read through my sibling's thesis.
3) Review functional programming fundamentals.
4) Buy a new pair of walking shoes.
5) Finish mending my shirt.
6) Finish either A) the corgi with scarf sketch or B) the scary fish statues sketch.
7) Attend a folk singing or folk dancing event at least once.
8) Research investing.
9) Learn to use Google maps + GPS without walking around in circles.

I am starting off my New Years by buying The Emerald City of Oz from Walmart. In elementary, I borrowed it from my school library. My school library version had color illustrations with green glitter on the edges.

I knew for years that I read a 1993 reprint of The Emerald City of Oz. I only recently discovered that Walmart sells a book with the same ISBN as the 1993 reprint.

Walmart is selling a book that I have wanted for over twenty years? I can walk to Walmart and pick up my order.

FYI: I can't cook. Unless the dish is scrambled eggs, it flops in one way or another.

~~September 10: Mushroom Bourguignon with Brown Rice~~
I bought $6.00 worth of mushrooms. Let me get back to you on this.

September 11: Coconut juice
Hammered a nail into a fresh coconut at 6:00 in the morning. Shook coconut until the juice dribbled into tupperware.

September 16: Mushroom Bourguignon with Brown Rice
I boiled the bourguignon too much. It had a disturbingly creamy texture and tasted too strongly of oregano. The missing moisture would have balanced out the oregano and the butter-flour mixture that I used for thickening.

September 23: Kitchen Sink
I had other things that I wanted to get done this weekend. After buying groceries for the mushroom bourguignon, I had lots of leftover vegetables and a jar of tomato sauce to dispose of.

October 1: Baked sweet potato, gazpacho, garlic-almond lamb
I attempted to bake sweet potato fries twice this weekend. The thinnest pieces always burned before the larger pieces fully dried out. Thankfully, I liked the sweet potato regardless of the texture.

On Oct. 1st, I was on call all day and had to stay near a computer. I got out of bed to make gazpacho and to bake sweet potato. The gazpacho--one of my few repeat projects--turned out edible but a bit too watery. I probably put one too many tomatoes in the blender.

One of my dreams is to make restaurant-quality gazpacho. I had really good gazpacho in France at a restaurant that specialized in fresh fish. I have yet to actually find a recipe that provides more insight into gazpacho than my mother's European recipe book. If I ever locate a superior recipe, then I might actually make progress on my ideal gazpacho.

One glass of that French gazpacho probably cost me as much as all of my grocery store ingredients. At least I have that going for me.

Alternately, maybe I need to move to Kansas and grow tomatoes. Homegrown Kansas tomatoes are lovely and might improve my gazpacho significantly.

(Given that I have yet to actually visit Andalucia and eat the genuine article, should I even be writing about gazpacho?)

I also tried baking lamb. Since I had raw garlic and almonds sitting in the fridge, I threw both into the marinade along with rosemary.

I probably overcooked my lamb. (Rare? Medium rare? What do these terms mean?) The lamb drippings proved rich enough to almost make me nauseous. Maybe I used too much olive oil?

October 8th: Sriracha Lamb Bone Kitchen Sink Soup

Before I started cooking the soup, I sauteed vegetables and almond slices. Then I let the bones from last week's lamb sit in a simmering sriracha broth for a couple of hours.

Even if I put some distance between myself and the broth, it made my nose and sinuses itch for about an hour. The broth also stained everything that it touched.

After the broth simmered, I put in a can of black beans, a can of tomatoes, and the sauteed vegetables and almonds.

Although the broth made me sneeze, it actually tasted really good.

The NNIA faces down a new threat: mice.

The mice got into our desk drawers and ate any food. They also chewed holes through plastic packaging, consumed foam ear plugs, and gnawed on plastic or metal. The mice even went after one agent's tampons.

Although the NNIA has hired amazing talent, we have to employ more mundane methods to deal with mice. Our many variations of coffee-bean magic have proven useless against this threat.

I hope that we eventually get around to putting wire mesh in any suspicious holes. Mice periodically infested my home until pest control blocked all of the gaps in my brick walls.

As for traps? My house mice seemed smart enough to avoid traps. Could I have even ended the infestation if I failed to catch the entire breeding population?

At work, breakfast scones will be sitting out in the office kitchen over Labor Day. The office will be quiet this weekend. Those mice will have ample opportunity to explore.

When I get back to the office next Tuesday, I will probably discover that all of the breakfast scones have gone missing.

This infestation spikes my ire. That amateurish attempt to make a Cheerios box read every agent's mind? Not so much.

That renegade agent has animated the fridge, the microwave, the water dispenser, and the sink! Whenever I go into the kitchen, the appliances just stare at me without blinking or making any noise.

I am honestly surprised that they all still work. Normally inanimate objects stop performing their original functions after someone magically gives them life.

My commanders have warned that they will put me on the front lines in the future. For now, they have conscripted me as one of their several odd-jobs guys. I am doing the magical equivalent of

repainting signs
rewiring the facility
updating forms
fixing leaks in the plumbing
etc.

Ironically, I have gotten a pay raise and a higher yearly bonus after transferring to a position that arguably requires less specialization. (The pay raise has little do with my transfer. Everyone in my unit is getting a pay raise.)

Although numbers have stepped up their attacks on humans' magical systems in recent months, morale in my unit remains high. Someone was animating all of the electrical appliances just yesterday. Our water dispenser stared at me with wobbly black eyes as I attempted to get to water for tea.

My commanders moved me to the front lines...I lack the training for this job. X0

My old art is still on LiveJournal. At some point, I may upload some of it up to this blog.

In the meantime, have some newer art.

(I really need to get around to drawing a real subway or a light rail.)
( Character studies )

Everything that I cook is some variation of melted cheese on toast. I just baked mushrooms, onions, and tomatoes after tossing them in salt, olive oil, and worcestershire sauce. I put the mix on toasted sourdough with melted cheddar cheese.
I really want to know what anonymized browsing histories look like. If ISPs in the US eventually release so-called 'anonymized' browsing histories for all of their users, could those third parties cross-reference Web addresses in browsing histories with links in social media and blog posts? Someone might figure out how to do this even if ISPs aggregated browsing histories in order to avoid linking browsing histories with a particular user ID. (If an ISP does associate browsing history with a particular user ID, then browsing histories and social media posts become much easier to compare.)
If someone has to invent technology that can read my brain, please, please come up with a way of recording my dreams before I die.
I need to come up with some life goals other than "Make enough money to survive in retirement".
Somewhere along the line, I tied my sense of self-worth to how many algorithms I understood and how many technologies I learned to use. At the same time, I would rather watch television than study in the evenings.
I would like to ask a video game programmer how many algorithms that they know just to find out where objects are in relation to each other in 2-dimensional space.
I would also like to ask the creators of Darkened Skye about all of the silly bugs in the game: falling through an invisible hole in a cave to my death, discovering the underside of pond graphics, letting me skip battles by allowing me to climb over the top of a flying ship...

Other agents fight on the front lines in the on-going war against walking, talking numbers. In my line of work, I rarely see the powerful impact that they can have on business operations and infrastructure.

However, numbers are closely allied with Time. If a report takes too long to run, the numbers can swoop in and cause the report to fail entirely. When numbers cause a report to crash, they cut NNIA agents off from valuable intelligence.

Another agent is working on a defense for our report generator. I hope that his solution will provide me insight into how I can prevent my own spells from becoming a similar weak point.

I am in the process of migrating a blog that no one but bots ever read. Regardless of whether I have readers, my new URL sounds cooler.

So what am doing now?

As I mentioned in the past few posts, I finally decided to graduate the NNIA academy and join the war on walking, talking sentient numbers. Given my background in Diplomacy and Propaganda, I gravitated toward communications. My spells assemble reports for agents who monitor the NNIA's magical architecture for weaknesses.

While I often find my current assignment challenging, I also miss the NNIA academy. My assignment involves a lot of routine. As a student, I had to constantly cram new information into my brain and take on difficult projects. I also liked being able to walk around campus and to take the bus every day to academy.

Now I have a car that has too many unnecessary features such as Blue Tooth and a moon roof. I sometimes even dream that my car can fly and float on water.

What are the pros of working? I get to associate with competent, brilliant people and to gain experience working on production spells.

What advice would I give to students at the NNIA academy?
Hunt aggressively for internships.

Current Music: Cold by Maroon 5

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Thought Migrations

What is the next destination?

Recent Entries

My Current Relationship with Music

The Evolution of Championes con Huevos Escalfados y Yogur

On My Quest for that Mythical Soup Pokemon

I'm not sure what this is about

Excerpts from the Manual for Young Gods

I can't turn in my homework

Crazy Lady with Dog

Back to the Department of Diplomacy and Propaganda

More Cooking

2018 -- The Emerald Year

New Years Resolutions (2018)

Cooking Project Vacation

They Invaded

They have eyes

I'm OK (I think)

Uh oh

Rough Sketches

Stupid Random Thoughts

Life of the NNIA Desk Jockey

A Real Update