Now I’m really quite lazy these days, and it has been a long time since I updated. I’ve gradually become a yearly blogger. At the start of a new year, I’ll also write about recent happenings, after all the essence of a blog is to record things, and the original purpose is to be able to look back later at what happened.

The Old Man at the Frontier Loses His Horse: Who Knows If It’s Not a Blessing?

In June 2024, the company offered a chance to transfer roles to operate the US-Canada line (hereafter referred to as the US-Canada Line). I had been in a document-processing role, which wasn’t very valuable and could be replaced, because there were rumors in the company about dissolving the documents department. Many peers’ companies were indeed gradually developing web-based systems to dissolve similar departments, so I was quite anxious; if there was an opportunity to transfer, I would try to move.

My former supervisor also mentioned in the group chat that there was such an opportunity; if anyone was interested, they could speak up, and she would refer me. I applied as well. She said the operations manager would likely contact me soon; after waiting past office hours with no word, I became anxious, because I feared the opportunity would slip away. Our staff turnover isn’t large and is fairly steady, so we didn’t know when the next opportunity would appear. I worried the company would hire externally because this position is relatively important and experienced people matter.

Then I proactively initiated a self-nomination mode. Of course, as the title suggests, if I wasn’t selected, the neighboring colleague (the senior female colleague) would get it. This colleague is very nice, a bit introverted and gentle, and she taught me a lot. She is one year older than I am but already has four years of work experience, and at that time I had just been promoted less than a week earlier. So from the company’s perspective, emotionally and rationally, selecting her was very normal; stability in work is more important than anything. Disappointment is natural, but it’s understandable.

Then in November, the company held a meeting and decided to establish a new department. The old supervisor proactively recommended me during the meeting; this new department handles all product types, across sea, land, air, and rail transportation. It will require more skills and is more valuable than the previous US-Canada Line operation, a frontline assignment. I didn’t hesitate and agreed; later the new department’s leader spoke with me and chose me as well. I was very happy, and we discussed salary and benefits, which are much better than the old position; base salary plus bonuses increased by quite a bit. Most importantly, the experience. Our company is a group, so salaries may be lower than those of small companies, but experience is very important. I chatted with a peer sister; in their local Yiwu city they can place frontline staff, and salaries can reach around 10,000 yuan.

I’m quite happy, and perhaps it’s one of those “blessing in disguise.” If I had missed one opportunity, who knows whether the next would be better?

Frequent Outages?

Last year my blog frequently went offline, including at the start of 2025 when it was offline for two days. Sigh, that’s only four days now. There are always 502, 504 errors; there isn’t a real reason, I’m just quite amateur. I hope those of you who exchange links with me won’t drop me, haha; I won’t go bankrupt or run away. Although I didn’t sign a ten-year pact, I will stick to my ten-year plan. I really love the Shiro theme, but I am quite amateur, constantly tinkering, and sometimes inexplicably encounter errors that I can’t resolve by myself.

I’m usually busy at work and don’t have much time to fix things; I typically carve out late evenings to work on it, and even after installing it again and again I can’t restore it. I want to sincerely thank JiuYue 大佬, who often helps me solve problems; I’m grateful!

But here, I’d like to say that the Shiro theme genuinely has strong interactivity. I’d like to recommend a few features to everyone, which might enhance the interactive experience. I personally find them quite fun and practical…!

• 1: Font switching: The default font is a bit too thin; I don’t really like it, but it’s good that you can switch. I usually use the second option, which looks a bit brighter and more readable.
• 2: Social accounts: It has enabled social account login, which can record comment data, with an Easter egg progress bar (though it seems it can’t modify nicknames and will directly use the GitHub name, so you can’t edit each person’s site. Sigh, good features are good features. But if everyone uses GitHub names, I might not recognize you and we can’t visit each other’s sites. Oh well—use it if needed. Except for 2B Brother, who is really special, haha, he never leaves site information, which is funny. When I see comments, I manually enter the website to follow up, which is pretty fun.)
• 3: Subscription feature: A newer feature that replaces RSS subscriptions; every article triggers an email. But I worry it might bother everyone. Currently there are subscriptions from [2B Brother] and [Little Grey]; this feature is questionable, and perhaps one day I’ll turn it off. But you can opt out, maybe; for now I’ll leave it as is.
• 4: Perhaps you’ll notice that on the content pages, my background color has a gradient. Hehe, I really love this theme. If you like it, you can scroll to the bottom to view the theme. I bought the closed-source version, which is quite worth it!

Finally, I wish everyone a peaceful and healthy 2025!