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Memoriam the Second

My grandmother on my father's side passed away at 3am on Sunday. She had been sickly even before that; this was, I think, the fourth time in a year or so that she had been hospitalised with complaints of difficulty breathing. She had already been unable to sleep without the help of an oxygen concentrator, and her mobility was already extremely limited due to her breathlessness. We were informed of this by a group call on the family Messenger at around 6am. At the moment the immediate concerns were to pay off the remainder of her hospital bill and bring the body home, and then to alert everybody who was still sleeping and had missed the group call. This happened in Johor. A significant part of the family was in Singapore and unable to return: Fourth Aunt, Third Brother, Fourth Sister, myself, and various other cousins and in-laws. Others yet were overseas. As I told someone, geographical distance helps a little with emotional distance. But there always comes a time for remembering.
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Panthera Sapiens: A Pie ('Nuff Said about that)

It's... about three years and a half now since I started work, give or take a week or two, and definitely coming on three years since I was transferred into the QA department, so I think it's a bit of a good time to start, hm, taking stock of everything that's changed or not changed, that I can observe. A small thought occurs to me that I ought to encrypt this, so I will. But I'm too lazy to do the complicated key thing that I did before; I'll just use an online encrypter when I'm done with this, and if whoever's reading this is both curious enough to attempt decryption AND clever or fortunate enough to find the key, well, that's reward for motivation and intelligence, isn't it? What has happened in the company over the last three and a half years that I can remember, in non-chronological and non-alphabetic order: EnCt2c6b5a6bbe84890d1925f557bfedc741d237ada38c6b5a6bbe84890d1925f557brSMTQY+tvAJ igOUcGFV2R9ryNSk4mnzDxEswwbwI3HSTbNrq7fuVKzyyXIn
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...gah.

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An Evaluation of a Recent Course

I was sent to a training course last week, on Tuesday and Wednesday - incidentally the last two days of the last year. Which makes this the first post of the new year, and I haven't yet gotten used to writing dates ending in "15" rather than "14" - but I digress. It's not the first training course I've ever gone to, but it's certainly the first one to be quite so emotional and rah-rah, and definitely the first one to end without a course evaluation of any kind. This is therefore my rectification of that issue. Naturally, names and titles are omitted for obvious reasons; but you may message me privately for further details. The trainer was a man. He was articulate enough, and something of a showman - large exaggerated gestures, a wide range of intonations and expressions and humourous props, and appreciably good-looking. He didn't introduce himself other than to mention he was of mixed heritage (his name format seems, however, to contradict
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2014 in Review

So, the end of the year is upon me, and what a year it's been, I suppose. I've been regrettably lax in maintaining this blog so far this year; that's something to aspire to changing next year, perhaps. Arbitrary as the time distinction may be, however, tomorrow is a public holiday and I don't have to wake up early to work; so I have the luxury of today to perform a simple, hm, review of the year. So, let's get down to it. Fitness According to my logs, I've run something like 80+ times over the entirety of 2014, beginning somewhere around February. That works out to about 200 km run, and about 20 hours of it. If you throw in the times I spend on weights and swimming and so on, that works out to about 40 hours this year in the gym - and there were also the trips to the mountains and the islands, which I think I'm justified in considering as having been physically strenuous given the activities carried out there. Be that as it may, though, I didn't m
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Let's Play The Last Federation! playthrough 1, part 1

Right then! I recently got a copy of The Last Federation, which was introduced to me by a friend I visited a week or so ago... I'm just going to document this second playthrough. In my previous one I ended the game with a two-race Federation, so I'm going to try to better that this time. So - a bit of background - I'm the last of an alien race, that was bombed to death for being naughty to the other races in the local solar system, and now I want to unite all the races in Federal Solar Peace. To that end, I have a spaceship that zips about the solar system like anything, and lots of tech and things! The game randomly started me out with the Burlusts, who are more or less a Proud Warrior Race... Race. They have warlords and things, and I'm going to have to try to keep killing those off so they don't overtake half the system. I balanced out the space race by gifting space tech to the Andors (a pacifist robot diplomatic race that never ever takes over other plants)
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Pathing

So the parents are back, or they soon will be. This has led to the usual things, I suppose. Let's see if we can't go over this in an organised way. Things That Happen When Parents Turn Up 1. Unexpected changes. This means things like coming home one day to find that the parents have decided to move house the next day, and consequently having to pack everything into boxes. It also means things like never being able to find anything because everything's been squirreled away for neatness. 2. Increased food intake. I've gotten used to going without dinner most of the week - usually I only take supper once, on Friday nights - and go all day on lunch. On the other hand, my parents insist on family dinners. 3. Reduced time. My schedule, previously, was a relatively uncomplicated thing - wake, work, return home for exercise/ laundry/ computer time. Now I have to add in family dinner time, which takes up at least an hour, and then on top of that there's whatever random
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