Randomly Monday

I'm on leave at the moment !

Don't worry. Not going anywhere. Just needed a period of not thinking about work for a while, for disconnecting from the world for a while. Although it does feel like the world has disconnected from reality as well and we're living some parallel timeline from a disaster movie or book.

More like a book because books have a longer timescale than movies.

I've been in the self isolation for quite a while now. I have actually talked to people but it's been over the phone with work stuff over the last week. They've been a bit worried about me coughing over the phone ... It's not so much a cough, more allergy season kicking off.

Yep. Allergies and dust issues aren't good around now and they've definitely been in my lungs. I don't think it's anything more sinister than that although I think the issue that'll make this current situation continue is that if isolation doesn't continue for long enough, the outbreaks will keep re-emerging.

As far as I go, I've been out of the house maybe 5 times in the last 3 weeks. A couple of those were to top up on supplies, 3 of those saw me in work. So instead of getting out and about in somewhat fresh air, I've been breathing in that dust in the house ... dust which is worse due to the skin condition I'm pretty much just recovered from.

Most of dust is actually us ... and I'm dusty.

But after massively overheating and suffering from breathing in dust on Saturday (an attempt at cleaning !), I'm breathing fairly ok at the moment. I'm probably scaring the neighbours too with some of the coughing that's been happening. And it's not as bad as the bug I seemed to pick up around the start of the year.

Apart from that though, light stuff happening at the moment is seeing me in Elite, in Mass Effect Andromeda and in Motorsport Manager as well. I also tried out a little bit of Torchlight too.

I was sorting out the problems of the Planet Of Deadly Holes yesterday. I'm still enjoying the game but kinda want to move on to something different now ... but I also want to finish it.

Over in Elite, I've been bringing Tea to thirsty miners in return for very rare stuff that goes in to modifying the components of your ship. The Tiamat's Chariot is a very powerful beastie at the moment and due to get even more powerful when the current target in the game is complete. (unlocking Powerplay shields) But that's a rather boring grind and I stepped away from it today to do some roaming trading.

Here's another of the places where I found myself :

o7 Commanders.

I'm a little concerned about the state of the game at the moment though. There's a new update coming very soon for Fleet Carriers, which don't seem nearly as good as what people were looking for. I'd kind of like them to be a kind of player station, which they're implementing mostly. But they do seem to be a money sink instead of something actually useful. They'll have commodity markets and other services but what I'd like to see are things like refinery stations or manufacturing stations (like the X games and Eve have) so that the station/carrier can be used more like a hub to passively make you money ... instead of being a money sink that you can't do much with.

I'll have a look in the Beta though. Need a name for that imaginary carrier that I'll check out for a short time in that beta testing phase.

Apart from that, it feels like I'm approaching hitting all the goals I had in the game. I'm in my end game ship now, I've been to places like Beagle Point at the other side of the galaxy again. I've acquired almost all of the ships. Where to from there ? Outside of maybe another reset. I'd consider that ...

Outside of that, there is a huge amount of music listening going on ... even more now that I'm on leave and not working from home. I have a few rules for Working from Home when I do it :

No music. Because this is one of my separations of Work Time vs Me Time.
TV doesn't go on. Because daytime TV is a route to insanity and daytime TV ads are even worse.
I keep to normal working hours as the pattern and switch modes when the laptop goes away.
Lunch is important and while I'll keep an eye on what's coming in through email, I'll look at doing something different for that 30 minutes or so. (I'm not good at this and have been working through that lunch doing a few quick tasks !)
Breaks happen because you have to top up that coffee mug or otherwise keep yourself hydrated.

Other people do the working at home thing better but it was good to not think about work at all today.

Apart from that, I've been attempting to read through Ignition! More about this in a later post but while I'm learning stuff from it, the book definitely requires A-Level Chemistry to understand it and I suspect it's going in to degree level Chemistry as well.

It will be good when we get past the isolation period. It's sad that the live events like the sporting schedules have been pretty much stopped completely. But they'll start up again at some point. That's for sure.

I look forward to London Comic Con and the Lords cricket every year. Not sure if the cricket will happen this year and I'm uncertain about the Comic Con too. Same with the motor racing on the telly. Motorsport Manager is a poor substitute for watching the races !

It'll be good to see actual people as well. I've been missing a few people in particular.

We'll see what happens over the next few weeks with the curve of the cases.

Back to me again, my game playing has been limited by a couple of things :
State of my arms. It kinda feels like I've been getting a tennis elbow thing where my arms don't want to fully straighten ! Weird. My wrist was complaining bitterly as well and threatening to go on painful strike (I think this was from holding my phone awkwardly for a teleconference).
Interest in the games. I'm maybe a bit burned out on Elite and don't want to put the mental effort in to learning new games. It has been good to watch the videos though. At the moment, it's a Starsector video by Man The Maker.

I've been tempted to order some things as well. Like marshmallows from the posh marshmallow place. Like upgrades for my Elite control stuff. Amazon stuff (although Amazon are a really nasty company towards their work force and I could do with finding an alternate). I'd like another Ugears wooden model, also down to just one unbuilt Lego kit.

I'm not ordering anything online at the moment though out of respect for the Postal workers. They're in a really bad situation as well at the moment with not enough protection and a CEO who needs a butt kicking. I don't want to make that situation worse by ordering stuff that could easily wait a while.

I do miss pizza as well. When I'd get pizza, it would be on a £10 for any pizza any size collection deal, which isn't available at the moment. Pizza's expensive ! And it's mostly about pizza for multiple people too and I'm just here on my own.

I think my first non-me meal after the isolation will be from our local Chinese takeaway though. They're a wonderful bunch (disclosure note - I occasionally get free bonus prawn crackers from them) and that's why I've been going to them for over a decade.

I think that's enough for me for tonight. Am doing ok, although the dust and other allergies have been affecting me consistently over the last few weeks.

Hope you're doing ok as well. Stay safe, be well.