DIY & Rainy Weekend

It has been a bit of a miserable weekend, super stormy and pouring down rain. However! I've still managed to have a pretty good week!

Work wise - I've mostly spent the entire week planning, researching and building a proof of concept project that's pretty cool. It's nothing user-facing, so I can't share details, but I'm enjoying the challenge it brings. I'm hoping to have something production ready by late next week but time will tell :3c. We also had a new starter at the company I work at on Wednesday!

It's actually someone I've worked with in the past. It just so happened we ended up catching up for drinks, I mentioned that I was stressed hiring, which he mentioned being stressed job hunting haha. I didn't end up interviewing him since I didn't want to skew the teams opinions, but he got along well with the team and passed the interview pretty well! I'm excited to continue working with him.

Other than work I actually did some cool things with friends this week. One of my friends works at a store that houses an e-waste drop-off point. Often cool things come through, and she'll grab them (since most things still work). But this time she managed to snag an old stereo/radio/CD player thing. It's nothing crazy but the vibes it radiates made it worth the snag. Sadly one of the speakers was really quiet, and when opening it up, she had literally no idea what to do.

She sent me a message with pictures of it's guts and asked if I knew how to fix stereos, and I lied and said yes!¹ We organised an "e-waste pizza party" at my place and her and her partner (one of my rlly close friends) came over, and we got to it. We gave the whole thing a good clean and scrub - lots of corrosion from batteries on the inside, but no real visible damage. However - just the clean seemed to make the quiet speaker slightly louder.

I poked and prodded around for a little bit but couldn't pinpoint the exact issue. Which is when I tried a hail-mary. "The right side speaker works right? But the left doesn't? Are you cool with no left channel?". She was. So I daisy-chained the right speaker to the left and it worked! We played a few CDs, and it all sounded fine (if you don't mind missing out the left channel :3c).

After fixing the player we ordered pizza and sat around the TV while we scrolled AmiAmi looking at anime figurines. During the repair, I'd mentioned that I'm a little bummed I never caved and bought my own cool big figurine like my partner has (multiple times :3c), and that I'd like a big figure of my own in the cabinet that lives in the living room. We ended up pulling up a figurine I'd actually wanted but passed on before ... a figurine of New Jersey from Azur Lane in her Oath skin.

Being surrounded by friends - and a lot of back and forth umming and ahhing about budget etc... I ended up pulling the trigger. Since it was on sale for only ¥28,000 down from its retail ¥43,780 (What a steal!). However, if you've shopped with AmiAmi before you're likely aware of the issue here - shipping. After placing the order, a few days later I was forwarded the quote for shipping. ¥17,410 with EMS or ¥42,100 with DHL... Needless to say, I gritted my teeth and selected the EMS option. Making the figurine come out to ¥49,951 in total.

I think it's worth it though. She's one of my favourite ships from Azur & I've wanted the figurine in the past (I'm treating myself²).

Other than all that though, the week has been a bit slow - my partner and I spent the weekend indoors avoiding the storms & working on world-building/lore for a future project! I'm excited to share more details eventually... but not right now!