My "long weekend" went better than expected. Even though there ended up being some extra worries along the way. I'm still glad it's over, but I thought I would be completely exhausted in all three ways at this point.

Having these gaming weekend getaways are quite intensive. The focus is really in playing. Sometimes we play mostly more complex boardgames, other times, like now, we focus on role playing games.

There isn't much time for anything else. Once first game is done the next one starts. Even the eating is done on the side. Only other activity not involving playing is sleeping. And even that is usually filled with dreams influenced by the games from the day.

Spending a day with the team is always nice. There is completely different dynamics on real face to face meetings no matter how much we have been doing the remote meetings. It's more natural which makes everybody more comfortable to talk even the tough matters together.

Having two consecutive trips back to back has some practical challenges beyond just having to spend extended period of time surrounded by people in social situations. I also need to think what, and how to back all my stuff.

Each occasion requires a bit different things to pack. They also have some things in common I need for both stays. So separating these three class of stuff efficiently so I don't need to carry everything everywhere required some planning. There was also a chance to miss out more things because of the sheer variety of things to pack.

My (normal) work week is practically over. For the next two days I will be once again spending with my fellow management team members on a retreat planning our company's future. Sure it's still work, but it's still different enough from the daily grind. It also means I won't get back home after the day "ends". We'll be spending the evening together as well and staying at the venue overnight. It's good to have some off duty time together as well, but it means there won't be much rest to recover from the social exhaustion.

A boss can tell you what to do, leader will do it for you if needed. There are some though, uncomfortable tasks you might need to do from time to time. Thinks that need to be taken care of even if nobody wants to do them.

Being sustainable is a big trend nowadays. Every tech company is promoting their commitment to environmental sustainability. But how many are actually doing everything they can for the sake of this quite necessary cause?

Big tech has bold claims on their current sustainability and ambitious goals reaching net zero emissions in various timescales. But especially in hardware business these companies want to sell you their latest gadget version every year.

Finally finished the bedroom renovation today. I really like the result! It feels like a completely different room now. The only thing left from the old room is the floor, everything else is brand new. Now if we just would get our new bed it would be perfect.

Our bedroom renovation was supposed to be done last weekend. But due some missing materials and running out of time I had to leave some finishing tasks for this weekend when all those missing materials would have arrived. I was also planning to finish the pending tasks already yesterday, but decided to postpone it until today.

This is one of the post I think I have written every year. It's the time of the year when shops start to fill their shelves with Christmas candies. I saw that with my own eyes today, and it's not even October yet! Christmas is still three full months away and you can already buy all the traditional (and new) Christmas chocolates and everything.

Besides the personal AI assistant another form of tool the AI development can bring us to help manage our digital life is a digital twin. When the language model can access all your digital communication it is able to learn your personal style of communication and provide more natural answers that will sound more like you.

AI personal assistant isn't a new thing by any means. There has been Assistant from google or Amazon Echo already available for years. But so far these applications have been rather limited and only capable of doing tasks that have been preprogrammed to them. The biggest thing they brought was combining such task based agents with speech recognition.

I have been trying to find a streaming- or online rental service that would have the Lord of the Rings trilogy extended editions available. I could even buy a digital version of them if available. But it seems no company offers those on their catalogs that are available here in Finland.

I had to do some last minute changes to our renovation plans yesterday due to the fact that the wall panels to our bedroom wall didn't nicely lineup nicely all the way to the ceiling. The last full panel didn't reach up all the way to the top. I could have split one more row there, but cutting the panel isn't that easy and it was just a matter of few centimeters so I decided to leave it as is and instead put a bit wider molding there.

After three days of working on our master bedroom it's still not quite ready yet. I think it would have been possible to finish everything today if only there would have been all the materials ready. I had also underestimated the need of the screws for the ceiling panels so there is still some things to acquire before the job can be finalized.

Our bedroom is still not ready, but there was steady progress today as well even though I felt rather tired throughout the day. Maybe I shouldn't have worked that late yesterday, or maybe it was due not sleeping well in the first place.

Day started with a pick up of remaining missing materials and rental tools. I was hoping to get the wall panels done before the rental place closes to be able to return the nailgun already today. But they were open only until noon so there was no chance to finish before that, so need to pay an extra day's rent for it.

We finally started our master bedroom renovation today. This was the earliest weekend available for such activity since we ordered our new bed. This was also the earliest week it could have been delivered. Luckily it didn't arrive yet, no need to move it back and forth. Unfortunately there is still no word on the delivery so we still need to return to our old bed in our new bedroom.

Using glue or tape to attach things together has two problems:

1. They don't hold together and eventually fall apart
2. The residue from the glue or tape is near impossible to remove from the surface

Most often these two things happen on same occasion. The thunga you were hoping to stick together come off and then you are left with two sticky things, or even worse the surface of where you tried to do the attachment comes along with the glue.

The classic hit series from the 90s - X-Files just celebrated it's 30th anniversary recently. It's yet another of those thinks making me think "it can't be that long ago". Of course back then there wasn't any streaming services or global releases so we only got it two years later here in Finland. So it wasn't that long ago.

Manila folders are used to store documents. But where does these sturdy folded pieces of paper get their name?

The paper originally used for the manila folders was made using abacá hemp, a species of banana native to Philippines also called manila hemp. The manila name in turn coming from the capital city of Philippines.