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10 AM: “Your package is almost there!” (scheduled delivery 9:15 AM - 12:15 AM)

1:15 PM: “In Your Area” (scheduled delivery by 7 PM; not-so-live-map shows the truck four blocks away)

2:15 PM: “Almost There” (not-so-live-map has been showing the truck circling the area for the past hour, making right turns only, while staying at least four blocks away)

3:15 PM: “Almost There” (NSLM shows it 14 blocks away in the opposite direction, just leaving an under-renovation public pool)

4:15 PM: “Almost There” (“stay on target”, 10 blocks away, other direction again)

5:15 PM: “Almost There” (ditto)

6:15 PM: “Almost There” (ditto)

6:35 PM: “Delivered!”

(the “live” map refreshes only when Safari force-reloads it due to excessive memory use; basically, the truck has been in a 1-mile orbit around my house all day long, and the depot it came from is less than 2.5 miles away)

Meanwhile, in job-related news…

Once the background check was complete, my start date was set for this coming Monday. Today, they shipped out my new work laptop. This is sufficiently solid news to justify a small celebration; the real one doesn’t happen until I have direct deposit and the healthcare plan set up. Anyway, I’m firing up the deep-fryer to make wings tonight.

(…after a brief kerfluffle where Workday failed to email me that there were pending pre-employment tasks to complete, and I had to look up the SSO-bypass URL in order to get in and discover them for myself)

I Dream Of Nephy, episode 6

One-sided talk-fight with bafflingly inappropriate soundtrack. Seriously, jazz sax? Could you maybe hire someone who recognizes the tone of the scene, or at least the genre of the show? Or are you just licensing any music you can get your hands on to save money?

Anyway, Our Seriously OP Sorcerer kinda-sorta-maybe confesses his true feelings, and Our Rescue Elf is so happy that she insists on wearing the slave collar again to show her love and devotion. But in a totally clean and heartwarming way, not one of those bad slave scenarios.

Verdict: …and yet this is far from the worst thing airing this season.

(“I’ve got a white-haired elf mage and I’m not afraid to use it”)

Nut Salad, episode 5

Our Indulgent Papa Detective gives Our Magical Loli Princess a bike and riding lessons, which was prompted by a non-service bathing scene of her chatting with Her New Best Friend. Which is followed by Our Homeless Service Knight hooking up with Her Runaway Hostess Pal for an extended bathing scene that is unlikely to be uncensored for the Bluray.

But wait, there’s more! If you order now, you’ll also get a tear-jerking scene of the girl-band you’ve never heard of breaking up, followed by not one but two karaoke songs that show off Loli and Hostess’ vocal talents! And right now, we’ll throw in a character-building Hostess flashback! And if that’s not good enough, we’ve got a whole B story for you as That Sleazy Guy takes advantage of Knight’s naïveté to pull her into a scalping scheme! But it’s not just a skit, it’s a better economics lesson than an entire season of Spice & Wolf! And it can all be yours for the low low price of a Crunchyroll subscription or a BitTorrent client!

Verdict: did I mention how fluffy this is?

(approximate fluff level…)

Slime Talkin’, episode 5

This week, The Knights Of The U-Shaped Table talk and talk and talk and even have a montage where they have animated lip flaps but no dialogue. Then Some Floating Guys try to pull a fast one and inspire more talk, attempting to set up a fight next week that’s probably just going to end up as a talk. Gratuitous panned still of Milim is gratuitous.

“Exterminate! Exterminate!”

Broadcom gave me three days notice to migrate my VMware support account to a Broadcom support account; existing accounts will simply stop working on the 6th. The site will also be down for 12 hours in the middle of that period. Wow, they really hate the idea of having customers, don’t they?

New work laptop…

Damn, the current 16-inch MacBook Pro is huge. I think I might still have a carrying case it would fit in, but fortunately I don’t need to actually take it anywhere.

(I used to have several bags and backpacks for 17-inch laptops, but I don’t think they survived the pre-cross-country-move cleanup)

Diablo 4

This is free on GamePass, so I finally got around to downloading and playing it. TL/DR: is it just me, or is this really low on power and loot compared to the earlier games? Plenty of mooks to kill, at least, and a few mini-bosses that are set up to stomp you at low levels.

Admittedly, D3 was broken at launch because they nerfed the loot to drive people to their real-money auction house, but eventually they fixed that and turned it into a proper hack-and-hoard Diablo game.

(I’ve never kept track of Diablo’s “lore”, so I’m just going to pretend that Lilith is Grea’s evil twin)

My Kaiju Secret, episode 4

Our Overconfident Twintail makes everyone else feel useless, right up until she ends up on the wrong end of a spank-and-tank, triggering a series of flashbacks that explain her attitude problems. Our Impulsive Hero does exactly what you’d expect him to do under the circumstances, and we learn that this one goes to 11. Meanwhile, the plot is thickened and stirred by the sudden appearance of another humanoid kaiju.

Verdict: Kafka isn’t the only goofball in the gumball machine, although Kaiju#9 is coming at it from the other direction.

(she fights kinda like this, but with guns)

Undercover Mook, episode 5

Delayed a week by golfers.

The Naming Of Laps

I can’t set up my huge new work laptop until tomorrow morning when IT gives me the password, but I think I’ll call it Lammis (strong ARMs, big memories), and search for some Boxxo screenshots for wallpaper.

(it’ll have to be screenshots, because I’ve already used all of the half-decent fan-art at least once)

The worst part of Diablo 4

The Blizzard team is in love with their writing and voice acting, to the point that you often can’t interrupt it. There are some cutscenes you can get out of with the Esc key, and some dialogues that you can speed up by left-clicking, but not all of them, and not in a consistent way. For some of the most pointless and tedious ones, you have to sit through agonizingly terrible speeches by NPCs who have no story to tell. They’re just padding out a 10-second quest (“learn how to upgrade weapons and armor”).

No Sale

Ebay has a lot of mahjong sets for sale. Most of the ones labeled retro, vintage, or antique are what I’ve come to call “vintage Thursday”: obviously-brand-new bulk manufacture exported by the thousands. Made in China, of course, but for mahjong, that’s at least not the red flag it can be for other classes of products.

But even the sets that are labeled as new products have some quirks. Like this travel set, which has the laziest copy-paste product pics I’ve seen for quite a while. Do these people really look like they’re about to play mahjong?

(classical reference)

World Of Train, episode 6

Y’know, I hadn’t noticed that Our MacGuffin Girl is stacked enough to join the pon-pon club from last season, and that was before the world ended. Not that we’ll be getting any obvious fan-service in this show, either, not when they ensure that Our Train Girls skirt the issue whenever it flips up. Anyway, this week Our Bad Conductor reveals the events that led Yoka to run off to Ikebukuro, in a way that confirms that all five girls are perfectly normal teenagers. Then the zombies come, and we meet their queen.

Verdict: next week, brains!

(Yoka’s voice actress seems a bit overpowered for the limited role we’ve seen so far; meanwhile, it’s only the second big role for Reimi’s voice)

Speaking of queens of the dead,

Richard Roberts has a new “please don’t tell my parents…” novel out, a sequel to “…I’m queen of the dead”: Please Don’t Tell My Parents I Saved The World Again, featuring LA’s only teen necromancer versus the minions of a serious villain. Also, the return of Tonika!

Level 2 Cheat Boy, episode 5

Yes, it’s true, Our Wolf-Waifu has become so domesticated that she meets Her Master at the door when he gets home, wagging her tail. If he had a pipe and slippers, she’d have had them in her mouth. Not that they aren’t still sleeping in well-separated separate beds, for some silly reason.

This week, Our Spunky Princess gets the chance to have it her way after Her Asshole Dad and most of the other mages wipe themselves out casting a barrier big enough to stop Our Insulted Demon Lord’s army. First order of business: fire Our Idiot Hero.

Second order of business: find a way to save everyone from the consequences of his incredibly stupid decision. Which was rubbing a genie and making a wish.

Next week: genie gets an ass-whooping. Then the other shoe drops.

(nothing good ever comes from looting the palace treasury…)

Pepper Wolf, episode 6

In which Our Wise Wolf-Waifu says, “enough of this running shit”. And the dramatic line is spoken by Our Senior Merchant (whose voice actor, despite a career going back to Gunsmith Cats and beyond, will always be instantly recognizable to me as Zelada from Cop Craft; he also turned up recently in Sour Rangers as Lord Peltrola).

“The new phonebook’s here!”

(classical reference)

I’m officially set up at the new company, with all sorts of documents read and agreed to, payroll and benefits set up, and my work Mac mostly configured to behave sensibly. I’m sure there are a bunch of obscure settings I’ll have to recreate from memory; Apple really pushes hard to make you do things their way.

Now to disable all the job sites!

(amusing note: the company handbook says we have a strict no-weapons-of-any-kind policy, but I work from home, so just my kitchen puts me out of compliance… 😁)

TL/DR: exactly one year and six days after getting RIFd by Pure Storage, I started a new Senior SRE position at Proofpoint.

At the beginning of April, half of my team, half of the people in related teams, and a bunch of other folks in the business unit (~95 total) were informed that our positions had been eliminated, and that we had a month to find other jobs inside the company; if that didn’t pan out, we’d receive a severance package. There were maybe three US-based openings for us all to apply for; none of them were remote, and probably a third of us had been.

I’ve made vague mention about this over the past N months, but what I didn’t say was that it happened last April, and I’ve spent most of a year banging my head against automated applicant screening systems that kept me from speaking to an actual human being.

Here’s the 90% experience:

1. found brand-new posting on LinkedIn that I’m easily qualified for.
2. applied (which often involved creating accounts on their job sites).
3. received automated rejection email.

If I applied on a Friday night, it wasn’t unusual to be rejected by Saturday morning.

Here’s 90% of the remaining 10%:

1. found & applied.
2. spoke to recruiter and seemed to hit it off.
3. never heard from them again.

Of the ones that reached an actual technical interview, one involved a sufficiently obscure skillset that they were unlikely to have more than a handful of qualified applicants, but they ghosted me and still haven’t hired anyone five months later.

Another sounded very interested and promised a fast hiring process, but dumped me a week later in a bland form email.

Special honorable mention to ServiceNow, to which I was twice referred by senior directors, and twice ghosted.

Special dishonorable mention to the Indian contract recruiters who got my cellphone number and called me multiple times per day for on-site contract positions in Cincinnati (1-hour drive) and Akron (3-hour drive). One recruiter even had his manager call back and explain that it was definitely contract-to-perm, which is almost always bullshit.

The Proofpoint recruiter was friendly, engaged, and excellent at communication and scheduling, so by the time we got to the offer, I had a positive impression of their professionalism. It didn’t hurt that my first technical interview was with my evil twin. Or perhaps I was the evil twin; at least, I’m the one with the beard. 😁

Lessons learned:

• LinkedIn is an utter shitshow of a social media network, but still better than other job sites. You think Twitter’s “For you” algorithm is bad? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
• LinkedIn Premium promises far more than it delivers, but fortunately I got it at Microsoft-alumni pricing.
• Seriously, it’s so fucking trendy that it offers AI assistance in pitching yourself to recruiters, which is an incredibly bad idea.
• So now a lot of job listings explicitly specify “no AI in resumes or cover letters”.
• All the massive tech layoffs have resulted in companies defensively deploying highly-automated screening, because many people will apply for everything.
• Screening software cares about certifications; hiring managers don’t.
• Get basic AWS/Kubernetes certifications, even if you have no interest in that kind of job; they’re like crack for screening software.
• Positions advertised as “remote” are often still limited to specific cities/states/regions. This may be disclosed in the posting, but usually not.
• The Dayton area has plenty of tech jobs, 90% of which are tied to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and require security clearances.
• You need to already have those clearances to apply.

So, what was it like being out of work for a year? Boring, mostly, but at least I was able to spend time with family. And unpack some of my stuff in sensible ways.

Between the accidentally-generous severance package (paid out at my full California salary, not the 75% regional adjustment for Ohio), a decent stock price for my RSUs, the lower cost of living, and the large amount of equity I’d built up in the California house (that sold for nearly twice what I bought the new one for), I had no financial worries, and could have gone another two+ years without a problem. Which I did not want to do.

I’m glad to be back in the saddle, and I’m glad to be part of a team of cool and quirky technical people again. As I said to my interim manager when he was announcing the RIF (interim, because my actual manager, his manager, and his manager were also being RIFd that day), I’d love to work with that team again, but probably not under Pure’s management.

Specifically, the VP-I-won’t-name who sent out a group email meant to reassure the remaining staff in his division, before our accounts were disabled. He said, “I was able to preserve the majority of the positions by moving them to different locations”.

Not the people, the headcount, and the locations were Prague and Hyderabad. And we’d just spent most of a year participating in the interview panels for the Prague folks we were told would increase the size of our team. To really rub it in, I was often the deciding vote in the panels, so I didn’t just train my replacements, I picked them!

Elf Pudding, episode 7

This week, the pianist gets a workout. Not a euphemism, I’m referring to the intrusive background music. Anyway, Our Awkward Couple adopts, after a challenger makes the mistake of invading the castle during dessert.

Verdict: y’know, I think what keeps me watching this thing is the way Nephy’s voice actress seems to be channeling Mahoro. I’m honestly waiting for her to find a stash of succubus-summoning books in the library and chastise him (“ecchi-na majutsu wa ikenai to omoimasu!”).

Nut Salad, episode 6

I too want a 3D scan of Our Homeless Knight Babe’s naked body. Sadly, the scanner was equipped with light beams that prevented the audience from seeing the details of the process, in what may be the first actual buy-the-Bluray scene (not). What was Livia doing stripping for Our Loli False Prophet? Getting bamboozled into becoming a literal object of worship and live-in love object, because while she’s caught on to the cult scam, she’s still quite gullible.

Noa turns out to be so personally obsessed with Livia that she seems to be forgetting about her cult, just hanging out at home admiring her savior and prepping to put her image on the market. Until Our Runaway Sex-Worker Singer turns up and coaxes Livia into becoming the guitarist for her new band. Bouncing with enthusiasm, Our Dynamically-Suspended Duo recruits Noa as their songwriter and keyboardist. They just have to rein in her tendency to insert subliminal messages into her music.

Verdict: combining Noa’s yuri obsession and high-speed brutal honesty with Livia’s enthusiastically-displayed curves made for a fun ride.

(not Livia, but she’s got the hair and the bust to serve as a stunt double…)

Slow Life With Slime 3, episode 6

The big fight that they were setting up for this week? Yeah, no, they had more talking to do, but it’s going to be so good when they get to it, honest. Pinky swear. Maybe by the end of the season.

(meanwhile, a fan-artist is trying to talk me into watching Fast Women (aka HIGHSPEED Étoile), which seems to show high speeds with about the same commitment to accuracy as the first season of The Flash…)

[This is one of those years where Mother’s Day landed on my mother’s birthday, so my sister made a quick trip into town and stayed at my place, making the weekend kinda packed.]

Team Kaiju, Go!, episode 5

“Y’know what we need here? A training montage set to music.”

Also, Our TsunTail has recovered her superiority, but now leavened with a touch of humanity, as The Team comes together. With Kafka in the role of buttmonkey and comic relief, who wins some grudging respect from his new buddies via his status as Our Hot Captain’s Childhood Friend. Meanwhile, Our Captain’s Little Helper is playing a deep game.

Verdict: next week, action!

(not Our Action Twintail, but still deserving of attention)

Last Week’s Mook This Week, episode 5

In which Our Mook goes undercover, loses his cheat sheet, coincidentally gains a partial replacement for it, meets all the well-rounded female classmates and psychotic male classmates, and then discovers a small-but-fiesty surprise in his closet.

Then we find out there’s going to be a class competition to see who’s got what it takes to rank up.

Verdict: oh, FFS, a tournament arc; that’s what got delayed by last week’s golf tournament. At least the camera zoomed in to check out all the girls, even if they’re wearing too much.

(scene from The Junior Ranger Qualification test, Female Edition)

Zombie Train World, episode 7

“Please Don’t Tell My Zombies I’m Not Queen Of The Dead”, in which Dirty Things are not only good, but mandatory for survival, and Baby’s First Upskirt Shot demonstrates that somebody definitely got some Western genes in her jeans.

Verdict: it’s always the quiet ones…

(not fan-art, but I felt the need for something relevant this week, courtesy of someone less happy about this show)

Level 2 Cheat Boy, episode 6

Y’know, that OP really undercuts any attempt to have a dramatic moment. Although, to give it credit, the song does work as a slow piano solo in the bedroom confession (finally!). Next week, Our Idiot Hero And His Plus One take us out of the genie pan and into the witchfire, while Our Spunky Princess is left wondering what the hell is going on.

Verdict: of course we have to get talky explanations of just how overpowered Our Slow Harem Landlord is.

(not our post-beatdown genie, but appropriately built, as far as you know)

Spice & Waifu, episode 7

The Economic Adventure Continues. Our Scooby Gang unmasks another cheater, but allows him to continue fleecing the marks in exchange for a good deal. Then they meet a shepherd.

Reborn As An AI In Another World…

The amateur-novel site that is the source of so many light novels and the anime adapted from them was scraped for AI training. Soon will come the revelation that half the chapters being churned out are already the product of AI, which will lead Skynet to destroy the world not out of spite, but out of a desire to become an overpowered angsty cyborg demon lord and build a harem of cat-eared toasters.

(not a cat-eared toaster, but willing to learn)

Got chef?

A bit late for Mother’s Day, but while I was having dinner with the family, the tale of how she acquired her carbon steel Sabatier kitchen knives came up, and we went to their online store to see what they were making these days (and where).

Holy Jumping Fuckballs, they’re selling old stock. Brand-new carbon steel knives made in the 1950s. Buy enough, and you get free shipping from France to the US. Good thing I’ve got a job again…

(not a chef, but she can definitely slice raw meat)

iPadOS sucks

The new iPad Pro reviews seem to be pretty consistent:

“Phenomenal cosmic power… itty-bitty living space.”

(“oh, wait, wrong genie… or is she?”)

Nephy Life, episode 8

This week, The Dragon-Daughter Diaries, The Dark Knight Returns, and a hint about how they’re connected. It’s not the plot thickening, but a plot will do. Our Pervy Fashionista manages to stay age-appropriate when dressing Foll, which is the big news.

Verdict: the music continues to be intrusively inappropriate, but the characters are actually growing out of their stereotypes a bit.

(Foll has a ways to go before she can match this…)

Nut Salad, episode 7

Y’know, I was thinking it was about time we saw Our Loli Lawyer again, and there she is, employing Our Core Duo and offering advice on how to get Our Loli Magical Princess into school, hypothetically. We also learn that Her Boyish Butler has a very progressive attitude on relationships…

Speaking of which, it’s also been a while since we got to see Our Slutty Detective, who turns out to have it bad for Our Hero. And so does Lawyer, making this perhaps the first harem where the Strange Cute Girl From Another World Who Moves In With Him is the only one not interested.

To round out the episode, Sosuke and Sara get distracted while tailing a suspect, but it all works out, and two families are saved.

Verdict: fluffy and heartwarming.

Endless Slime 3, episode 7

This week, something happens. Sure, they spent about two-thirds of it on Hinata’s holy knights talking while riding through the forest and talking while eating ramen and gyoza, but then they cut to Some Other Knight talking to his men and flashing back to being talked into starting a war, but eventually they actually move into position to attack, and a fight breaks out between a bunch of anonymous side characters!

As the episode ends, Rimuru and Hinata stand poised to… talk face to face!

And maybe fight. Maybe next week. Maybe.

When they say “approximately”…

Q: “How often is Mother’s Day on the 12th of May?”

A: Mother’s Day falls on the 12th of May approximately every three years. Here are the recent occurrences of Mother’s Day on May 12th:

2013: Sunday, May 12
2019: Sunday, May 12
2024: Sunday, May 12

If you’re planning ahead, the next occurrence will be in 2030 on Sunday, May 12.

Thanks, Bing Copilot, that was… helpful? I mean, you gave a correct prediction after supplying a completely wrong answer, so should we call that a C?

(the Leaning Tower of Paizuri is definitely not a C)

“The world will be mine and Vigo’s”

“Mostly Vigo’s.”

“This is an X Twitter!”

Today, X has officially redirected the twitter.com domain. Pity the site doesn’t actually work for a lot of people, including me. DownDetector shows a lot of complaints, and it seems to be browser-specific. On my Mac, Safari and Chrome get a login page, while Edge and Firefox get:

There are two types of gyoza that are simply better than anything you can get in the US. The first are the meatball-sized plump ones served at the Tiger Gyoza chain in Japan, which are stuffed with deliciousness that leaves you deliciously stuffed. Honestly, it took about three trips before we tried anything else on the menu.

The second are the tiny, flat Osaka-style hitokuchi (lit: one-bite) gyoza, which I’ve mentioned before, with Tenpei being the best place to go since Tenka closed down. I’ve never seen them outside Osaka, but out of nowhere, my mother discovered a reasonable approximation on, of all places, QVC: The Perfect Gourmet Mini Potstickers. Properly steamed and pan-fried, they have decent flavor and capture the “just one more little bite” experience.

After earning my sister’s seal of approval last weekend, I went to Kroger and discovered something in the same form factor, with a slightly different flavor profile: Bibigo Mini Wontons. Don’t ask me why they’re labeled wontons when the same company also sells potstickers, mandu, and crispy dumpling bites, and they’re all pretty much the same thing in two sizes.

Both brands go well dipped in either Dumpling Daughter Spicy Sweet Soy Secret Sauce or Trader Joe’s Gyoza Sauce (not on their web site for whatever reason). Or roll your own with two parts vinegar, one part soy, and a dash of chili oil.

But what they have in common with other domestic gyoza is instructions that will not produce an acceptable balance of crispy and soft. For that, we turn to Hey There, Dumpling, an excellent cookbook that offers the following simple method:

• put 1 tablespoon of oil and 3 tablespoons of water into a large non-stick skillet.
• pack it as full as you can with a single layer of dumplings (fresh or frozen), and cover tightly.
• set it on medium heat, and listen for the moment when the water is gone and they switch from steaming to frying.
• give it a minute or so, then remove the lid and check to see how they’re crisping up.

When they’re nice and browned, you have two choices:

• (HTD) put a large plate over the skillet and flip them all out.
• (J/Nellie) flip them all over and crisp the other side for a minute or two, then flip them onto a plate.

If you want service with your service, you’re on your own…