Lots of work, crazy deadlines, busy family, and then a chest cold.  Makes for a great weekend of flop sweats and 12+ hours of sleep a day, still feeling exhausted to start the week.  Good news is that there’s light at the end of the tunnel.  It feels entirely achievable.  Plus, the VP here sees the work being done and the need for additional resources/structure.  That bodes well long-term.

My eldest had 2 hockey games this weekend.  On her team, 11 other girls are first-time players, so the understanding of the game just isn’t there yet.  They lost Saturday 10-0 on  team that had that understanding, and won 3-1 on Sunday when you could see it start clicking.  I spent some time watching a men’s league game on the other ice pad, folks mostly in their 40s-50s.  They were smart hockey players.

I played about 12 years when I was a kid, but I’ve been back on the ice for another 12 since.  All of that pretty much competitive play.  The skill is less important than the thinking now.  We have a few skaters on one team where even though they are young, they just don’t have that mind-set.  Great skill and effort, but that 6th sense just isn’t there.  Work smarter – not harder.

Full circle a bit then.  Work is in the same bucket.  I’ve had enough crazy deadlines and projects to have a decent sense of what is actually important and what is noise.  I know some members of my team are concerned at my lack of attention on some things, and deadly focus on others.  It’s a practical thing.  Tough calls are needed, and there’s only so much good will to go around.  It’s difficult, but sometimes you need to let those spinning plates fall to the ground.

Warframe

I read Isey’s comment on my last post and want to extract the gibberish.

When I found that I had Liths via the codex (bur no clue what to do with them) eventually I noticed the prompt on the NAV screen, found the mission, jumped in with others, and got my 10 reactants to unlock.

This reminds me of 90% of Wilhelm’s EVE posts.  I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.  Then I played a bit more and unlocked Venus (the 2nd planet in the unlock chain).

Ok, that sentence makes more sense now.  Liths are lockboxes that can only be completed by doing a certain mission (Void Fissures). In those missions, enemies sometimes drop “reactant”, and after 10 pickups and a successful mission, you get to open the Lith.  These missions are not terribly common (at least at the start) and the one I did was quite difficult.  Next topic.

I don’t understand what the levels mean on missions.  I have a level 11 Warframe (the class, Excalibur, good with swords).  I have a level 12 Braton (automatic rifle).  There are some mods on each to augment certain things.  The Warframe has + health and + shields.  the rifle has a flat + 40% damage.  Taking on a level 5-8 mission is a challenge.  Not so much that I am very worried about kicking the bucket, but more so that enemies are bullet sponges and I need to pay a lot of attention to ammo levels.  No ammo – little damage.

There are missions on my map.  I complete them to unlock more nodes on the map for more missions.  I am not seeing any power curve (or rather it appears logarithmic) and future goals are not all that clear.  Some missions are 5 minutes, others are 20.  Wave defense is fun.  Spy missions are not.  Overall, the feedback loop is good so far.  But I’m thinking I need some viable measure of progress in the next 4-5 hours to keep me going.  Using the same class, same skills, same gun for 10 hours…there’s a limit.