dmxrated

Yesterday afternoon, our next-door neighbor Eddie and several other guys came to our frontyard with their leafblowers and riding mowers to spruce things up for us. I noticed from up in the apartment while fixing that script up, and assumed Mom was overseeing them.

Soon as I came down for dinner, she actually asked me if I was the one out mowing while she was having a nap.

Just now, we have just left a pack each of Body Armor and Gatorade at their doorstep, before Eddie and his family wake up.

Just discovered an ongoing Gemini thread to have truncated itself from up to the 9th, barely an hour before going to work.

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Arrived at The Bristal just in time to dip a few apple slices in caramel, chocolate, and butterscotch, in the aftermath of a party on the second floor, before starting my shift.

Yesterday afternoon, Mom spotted what looked at first like some bags of garbage on the neighbor's front lawn across Long Island Avenue, and asked me to take care of that at some point. She then went over, and they turned out to be sleeping farm ducks, who got up and waddled away from her.

Jonathan wound up discovering a pretty simple error in my original script by Raymond.

Perhaps I did waste an entire week, even with the silver lining of having refreshed my knowledge of 65C816, but AI-coding is still a better approach than waiting around for people liable to stop responding to me. (I haven't heard from Raymond himself after hitting him up a week ago, despite receiving month-belated thanks a month earlier for a happy 4th of July (forgot he lives in Canada), and my original request for help on Discord got buried twice.)

(I also got a couple of new ideas in my sleep, after revisiting the reason for that original change; those might have never come to mind if things worked as expected originally.)

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My buses each day had each arrived earlier than I scheduled them for.

To start with, it had been picking me up around half an hour before each shift ends, as I already mentioned for Tuesday. I get a 15-minute window to board once I receive the alert that it has arrived, but even after having waited half an hour on Wednesday after being alerted the first time that it was 15 minutes away (dunno what happened there), I still like to play things safe in general in case something crops up at the last minute, such as if I realize I have forgotten my drink or the lunchbox in the refridgerator before it arrives.

For that, I could start arranging for 8:30 the next time Mom goes on vacation somewhere.

Yesterday, though, I arrived more than half an hour early for work, without the chance to heat anything up for dinner (the app specified 19 minutes away), and went to Drago's Pizza for a meat stromboli and two garlic knots. Wasn't gonna wait the whole hour Patrick instructed me to work before helping myself to some ice cream, so I decided to grab a meringue in Fondue's Bakery, hoping to couple with some iced coffee in Bagels; turns out the latter closes at 2, so I decided instead to order a Nitro Cold Brew at Starbucks. Wasn't gonna bring both things back to work, where I would only be able to eat that meringue one bite at a time inside the kitchen (wasn't about to let it just sit around either, without a break to spend at the staff lounge).

And, I wound up clocking in at 4:09, four minutes after the on-time window.

Gonna need to plan better from now on, although it helps to know now when Bagels is and is not open.

My bus came at around 2:30 yesterday, giving me more than an hour to grab a bite for dinner before starting my shift. Went to Drago's Pizza and got a Buffalo chicken stromboli and two garlic knots, but wound up too full for the latter. Went to Fondue's Bakery to cool my mouth off with a cholado, something I've never had before.

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Quite by coincidence following Patrick's, yesterday was Peter's last day at The Bristal. He told me when I concluded my shift at around 7:20.

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The bus was already awaiting me, powered off, by the time I clocked out so early.

Mom has taken a trip to the United Kingdom yesterday. I had already arranged a bus to take me home from work.

Lately, I have been lucky just to get through one segment a day in Earthbound, with all that had been going on this past month and everything Mom has needed my help with particularly on weekends. Yesterday, I actually managed to play through two segments.

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Yesterday, The Bristal was supposed to host an end-of-summer staff party out by the swimming pool, but it rained for half the day, and was still overcast by 2:30. I wrote it off as cancelled, which someone did confirm early in my shift after I initially found the kitchen mostly empty. The person who confirmed, though, did explain that everyone was at a substitute event playing board games in the arts and crafts room upstairs.

Mom and I went to the beach to pick beach plums along the boardwalk, for her to make jelly out of soon.

Had our usual visit to Dad's grave and walk down the shore afterwards, the latter where we also spotted some seagrass and collected some for the plum tree near our front steps. Driving back home, though, she wound up stopping at an en route post office we don't normally go to, and that reminded her of a nearby diner called Varney's that she had been meaning to look into, which she stopped by to let me go read its hours of business.

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Back home, we had quite a few things to do that continued to eat up my day. Mowing ended up not being one of those, when the mower would start up but would die back down immediately. Google Gemini specified several possible causes, starting with the fuel having gone flat; not having had much fuel left in the can, Mom had me empty that onto the berm, along with turning the mower over to empty the tank out.

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At 4, we went back to Varney's for dinner. We got some baked clams as an appetizer, I got the mussels entree for my main course, Mom got a set of three shrimp tacos, one of which she offered me, and said entrees also came with a loaf of bread sliced up and buttered.

Went back to the beach after paying, to collect some more seagrass for the garden.

Went to Tiki Joe's after bringing our haul back to the car. I got a milkshake with crushed M&M's, colored sprinkles, and chocolate syrup, and Mom got a cup of rocket fuel. Being used to ordering solid ice cream, I grabbed a spoon instead of a straw, and when we got ourselves a bench, I took the lid off as carefully as possible and still wound up spilling some of my drink on my shorts. Mom sent me off to clean that up the best I could, and I grabbed a straw and a few more napkins on my way back.

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This morning, Mom offered me a choice between French toast and some pancakes for breakfast, after having already left me a bowl of fruit salad (I helped myself to some Honey Bunches of Oats yesterday morning, opting then not to wait for her to make anything before hoping to tuck into anything). She initially poured what would've been two small pancakes, but I asked for larger ones, so she poured some batter to fill the gap, resulting in the shape of an angel that I then took a picture of for Uguu Blue.

Had to go back two days ago to re-fighting the Sharks. For the better, because yesterday, Flash failed several times against some Black Antoids and then twice against Titanic Ant. At first, I chalked that up to the 1% immunity that Starmen.net specifies for them, but then I looked at CoilSnake's enemy configuration table, and it turns out that they each had an entry with 70% and 40% Flash resistance respectively.

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Here is this week's video, detailing my successful battles then against the Cops, recorded last week before everyone came over:

https://youtu.be/DieHHGrrzNE

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Yesterday was a resident's birthday named Henry. Those of us still around by 7:30 spent our last half-hour there in the common area to celebrate. There was this cake with a flashing "Happy Birthday" topper, and we each had a rather thin slice while watching some residents and staff alike perform karaoke.

Mom got me a new desk just for my downstairs desktop PC this afternoon, and I took a few minutes to set it up more permanently back in the office.