fuerza bruta?

it was kind of what a semi-decent party would look like to someone who'd never been to one. the dub-step in the beginning was awesome, the rest of the tunes were standard crappy night-club fare. they weren't ecologically thrifty with the polystyrene and the cardboard. they didn't actually do anything impressive.

each time the crowd clapped and whistled, i wondered why. i was a bit embarrassed at the end, because i figured that maybe i was just being an asshole and i didn't want to rain on everyone's parade, but pg's mom summed up what i was thinking pretty succinctly so i felt much better about myself.

fuerza bruta? for that money, we could all have gone into the desert tonight to a real party. i'll still go if one of the people i contacted earlier could help me with a ride...

---
last post, work, work, end-of-semester party*, sleep, work, work, fuerza bruta, now. no progress made on my papers. that's not cool. what is cool, however, is that i finished an interesting bit of the project and now that's it's done i'm quite proud of it. it's still a little buggy, but the important stuff's complete.

* co-conspirator didn't make a scene. the long argument about strippers with the feminist who believes in absolute morality made us both hoarse [whores? sorry], then they made the loud music even louder and the place was packed and the waitress took a long time for everything and i wanted to drink my rum before paying and then someone else wanted to join us in the shots and i've just realized that i kept getting his name wrong and then i was outside, back in the cold, stopping on my short walk home to pick up crisps and ice-cream and wonder about the shifty shady-looking character lurking in the back of the store.

after watching mystic river - i knew i'd enjoyed it the first time - and a couple more episodes of community, it's time for bed. tomorrow i can work / play with my papers.

---
sixpack shortcuts: i don't agree with the "why", but the core [sorry] concept is really interesting!

iranian ninjas. just when you thought reality was safe. they seem pretty good!

something like work

advantages: less distractions.
disadvantages: more distractions.

go figure.

in the evening, pg got home from an exam and we went out to dinner. after a pleasing hamburger at etnachta, we split up and i walked down the road to the creative writing workshop that i've been unable to attend since i was invited a few weeks ago. it was quite entertaining!

i met up with sammy and we walked to cafe noga, going past the israel dental association's doors: there was something menacing about the four or five security guards lurking there. i can't help but suspect something vampiric.

the playlist was amazing, including tool and marilyn manson, and we spent the evening playing pool and engaged in amusing conversionations. it was a fun evening, and it will be kind of weird now that this group of people who've shared so many intimate hours of the morning together is no more.

washing the smell of smoke from one's hair without shampoo is a bit difficult.

i slept like a baby, woke up early, spent the first couple of hours feeling the after-effects of last night (and making travel arrangements for switzerland ^_^), and the next few working. now that i've had a break - and enjoyed another interview from world war z - i'm gonna get busy with the interesting side of the project.

---
marilyn manson reading william blake: made of win.

the home factory floor

most of the last seven hours have been spent desperately trying to figure out why code that does the expected when run manually doesn't succeed in context. and that's seriously painstaking labour. the boss was virtually breathing down my neck (it's a good thing i worked from home today - the breathing was entirely imaginary) because he's in a huge hurry, and this is not the kind of thing that being in a hurry helps sort out.

say "no" to say "no" to stripping!

in response to a call to protest legitimization of the strip clubs:

WTF?! what are we, puritans now? stripping is not a slave trade, it's a serious way to make cash for women who are willing and able. i don't personally understand the excitement with these clubs, but there are a lot of men and women who do. maybe feminists should spend more time worrying about single mothers who can't pay the rent and are unable to find work, instead of screwing things up for the single mothers who can and are.

i'm not saying it's wonderful work, but trying to stop it is nothing short of stupid.

i don't know a lot of these girls, but i know enough to be able to tell you that for some of them it's a really good job (money wise), and while i agree that it's probably an unpleasant thing to do, that's what all of us do when we don't have other options.

are you planning on adopting these girls, and giving them monthly wages? or do you just want to shut them down and let them go hunting for other jobs with much less money and possibly worse conditions? maybe we should start protesting garbage men, it's demeaning labour too. i wouldn't want to have to handle other people's waste, so why should they?

...

besides - if something is legitimized, then it can be observed and controlled. just saying.

calmer, and a bit sore

the earlier issues with my pc turned out to be with logmein hamachi - a great piece of software, but for some reason windows gave its network priority and because that wasn't connected properly i didn't have 'net access. weird.

i had to take care of another emergency rush job, then paid the dentist a visit. he was very, very specific about my needing to floss better. he explained this a number of times, in a number of different ways, really slowly, and it was hard for me to concentrate because there was really awesome psychedelic rock playing in the background and i was all sleepy to begin with.

i had a great lunch reading max brooks - world war z, which is great fun and i can legitimately claim that it's for one of my papers. i'm intrigued by some of the glaring cross-cultural errors he's introduced (there's sort of a base assumption that all people think and talk the same, unless that's a meta-comment on journalists, in which case he did a bang-up job), and even more so by some of the things that he most definitely got right. i suspect he may have done a little more research than i originally gave him credit for, and i have to say that with or without these issues, the stories are generally well told. this is a man with a great feel for zombies.

i picked up humus for pg, then returned home to deliver it and to get some work done. i got a little bit done. then i rushed off to cafe noga to say goodbye to my co-workers (the official farewell, our department is having a separate "do" tomorrow night because the official one hijacked our plans and made them uncomfortable for most of us). i have done my schmooze, said my goodbyes on good terms, and got paid for it in beer and munchies.

i hurried home, got ready to go rollerblading, and went out for one of the best routes we've ever had - two and a half hours of tough uphills for exercise, and multiple payoffs of solid high speed gliding downhills on a beautiful wintery night ^_^

i did suffer a spill or two: the first when i jumped over something that was a little further than i'd launched for, and i tipped backwards. i managed to land relatively elegantly on my bum and hands (as opposed to back and head), and the guys behind me applauded. i was kinda embarrassed. for the second, i had an ice-cream in one hand and water in the other, and i stopped concentrating for a second and *BAM* discovered that whichever asshole paved the route in the park staggered its height. sharply. that doesn't make any sense! at least i managed to keep my ice-cream clear :)

i've stretched, and showered, and gobbled down proteins, and begun working on a poetic exercise for tomorrow evening (i've been invited to a group, and had to decline three weeks in a row now)...

i'm discovering (late, as usual) creedence clearwater revival. good shit, so far.

the last day of class

yesterday:

1. handing in the paper at 3am, checked and fairly confident.

2. waking up early enough to go past the post office and pick up my certificate.

3. discovering a palette of cheap amstel.

4. birthright taking over campus, hunting a class. discovering what a total bitch co-conspirator can be.

5. first beer. everyone being awkward about passing around food.

6. break between classes. MA class brought in tons of delicious goodies.

7. second class: already exhausted (food overdose?). a milton goodbye.

8. off to work. two hours of design arguments. an hour discussing shakespeare and the underlying issues of israeli society.

9. an evening spent doing NOTHING. as i told my boss - the semester is over, it was a long one, and now i need to recuperate a little.

10. zoning out in front of community until bed. great series :)

today:

no 'net. repeatedly.

1. roof and plumbing inspection, and payment. lots of cash, and i'll be concerned until the first proper rain demonstrates how well the job was done.

2. saying goodbye to the old office. walking out with a large whiteboard (can one ever have enough whiteboards?) and a cable for my new monitor.

3. more 'net issues, and they appear to be with my pc. i must work. i just want to go back to bed. this might hurt.

the end of the conspiracy

i just sent this to co-conspirator because i couldn't rest without some of these words flashing before my eyes: this morning she repeatedly called the pregnant girl a whore because she wasn't cooperating with her desire to make a picnic outside on the grass out of our last lesson.

i'm writing to you because i want you to understand how i feel, and i don't actually want to argue with you about it.

i am deeply disturbed by your attitude: it doesn't matter whether it's the pregnant girl, who has every right to a normal make-up class regardless of what the rest of us want, or B.A. students in general who had every right to another course with one of our favourite lecturers, or TAs who have a lot more responsibilities than you're aware of and really don't need added pressure and commitments from the university for their measly wages, or even our lecturers who have every right to choose what they want to teach, you seem to think that anyone who doesn't want to do things your way should know better.

for me, you represent everything that is wrong with israeli society - [a culture of deserving] - and aside from being shocked and disgusted by your behaviour this morning in particular, in general i would rather not have anything to do with someone so selfish and inconsiderate. it's one thing to be egocentric - hell, i'm as self-centred as anyone - but it's quite another to piss all over anyone who doesn't bow down to little miss gets-whatever-she-wants. we're all human beings, each of us with our own lives and our own problems. we're not all here to serve you, nor to be slandered by you.

we really don't need to discuss this. you will be welcome to whatever cooperation you require from me as a fellow student, but i thought i should make it clear that we are no longer friends.

good luck with everything.

responsibilities

my plan this evening was to get trashed post-french exam and watch a movie or something before crashing. suddenly i remembered that i still have a paper to write, due tomorrow morning, and my boss infiltrated my evening with emergency work that i'm not entirely certain i agree with. and i had some webmaster duties to perform.

the news for the day:

1. my sister got married! and apparently she liked my speech in absentia (^_^)

2. the french exam wasn't as bad as we expected, but that's only really because my dictionary has verb tables and pg's too... i found out the latter about two minutes prior to the exam beginning, so that was quite fortunate =D

an hour and a half, it took me to translate the comprehension bit, and that hour and a half was considered fast by everyone else's standards. what a pointless exam :(

3. work - a whole bunch of "oh, crap". at least i finally got paid for november! i billed them for december and january, spent an hour integrating changes i'd made during the weekend, and as soon as everything was done and i was in a major hurry to get back to my apartment, the boss arrived for a chat.

only when you're *really* in a hurry.

it appears that our ideas of who's responsible for what were incongruous. it appears that he didn't make any use of the testing system i constructed for him, so the live data is being assembled using random test data that i threw in on a whim instead of carefully calculated algorithms. and the company's paying for each and every mistake.

not my problem.

now that i know that it's part of my responsibilities to manage this stuff, i'll do it happily - it's just unfortunate that that wasn't made clear until now.

4. the roof! i arrived home to see the final finishing touches. the asbestos has been removed, 90% of the plumbing has been taken care of, and hopefully that's the last i'll have to worry about this shit. it looks pretty good, too.

that was a lot of cash i slammed down on the table. *sigh*

it was a long day; hopefully i'll finish the paper soon and be able to get some rest.

[edit] should i have mentioned that today was a beautiful, hot, sunny day?

wasted

last night involved a few episodes of community: very cool series. then i slept for about ten hours, waking up to a wonderfully warm and relaxed mid-winter's spring day. most of it was spent re-installing my work pc and attempting half-heartedly to prepare for tomorrow's french exam.

after passing out in the late afternoon, i woke up to the uncertainty of where gaming night would be taking place. eventually things worked out, and i got back a short while ago* after a grand evening of pirate fluxx and thunderstone.

* i had to sprint to catch the bus, and i knocked on the glass of the door as it was closing on me. the bus driver opened the door, angry with me for knocking so hard that i almost broke the glass.
really???

the walk back home from the stop was silent. i'm beat.

---
the anatomy of a vegan infographic is fascinating! what it doesn't address, though, is the number of animals who have been treated better, the health status (primarily regarding energy levels, psychosis, that sort of thing) of those surveyed, and there's no reference whatsoever to the number of malnutrition cases of vegan children.

noooooooothing!

it has been a day of very little. i'm more exhausted mentally than physically, the end of the semester has come crashing down and i have to admit that it was a strain. it was an exciting, enlightening, awesome strain, but a strain nonetheless.

so i managed, this morning, to get everything working without the entire rewrite, and in the process understood the extent to how much i'd underestimated the quantity of data i was asking the system to push through. as soon as i limited it to a reasonable amount things started functioning...

i called up the boss to confirm success, and let him know that i hadn't received a single cent since joining them in november, which makes me uncomfortable. apparently that made him uncomfortable too, and he's promised to sort this shit out. it's been two weeks since i was supposed to receive the first payment, and while i may work for cheap, i most certainly don't work for free.

not without good alternative incentive, at least.

the good news from the morning is that the roofer called up the plumber, and on sunday they'll be joining forces to sort out the roof of my balcony. that'll reduce the pressure and concern about the weather turning ugly while there's still a hole in the roof :)

i strapped on my blades and rolled over to the old office to pick up a monitor and power cables, then came back to spend the afternoon staring at my monitor, playing with my paper like food on a disinterested child's plate.

after a nap and a paragraph, pg invited me to handle the chicken livers. it was a messy endeavour (covering them all in flour before frying) and i wasn't at all confident that i'd done them right, but after dragging them through the air from plate to mouth i was forcefully struck in the tastebuds by an absolutely delicious sensation. that's the second time i haven't screwed it up! ^_^

oohhhhh i see... twisted system - stark raver is based on eddy izzard. i thought the quotes seemed a bit weird :P

womanizing

today appears to have a theme.

an enlightening talk on women in popular culture. just like barbie nation: an unauthorized tour (you can read a review here)

and in south african news: zapiro on "corrective rape".

early friday

i slept wonderfully, but was woken by the primary school next door's end-of-term festivities. the last time was a bieber-fest, which upset me no end, so to wake up this morning to psytrance was quite an improvement :)

it looks like the world's catching on - or some people, at least: unlimited vacation for employees is healthy. and you laughed at the lazy man's manifesto.

and while i'm clearing my inbox instead of completely rewriting everything to do with what i was struggling with this morning: a fictional look at AI rights presents an interesting point of view.

needs brain massage

and a week of rest.

1. notifications of an elderly cousin's terrible mishap - rather a dark way to start the day.

2. improved teacher relations - i was worried i'd offended my advisor on the shakespeare stuff, but he was quite friendly and seems to have accepted some of what i said

3. urgent work call in the middle of class; there's me half-listening to the lecture and editing sql files in gedit, then sending and praying (i found out later it was all good :) )

4. the final class of the orientation course - not the greatest class ever, but overall the students are very happy with what they've learned and we're happy with our experience teaching. we're considering running it again next semester for those who couldn't make it

5. the anime viewing was a phenomenal success (and i consumed too much cake). panty and stocking with garterbelt is my new favourite show!

6. clearing our stuff from the old office, specifically taking office equipment. i got shafted out of a good monitor, but the rest of the stuff i took away is dandy.

7. i got home in time to go out with pg for ice-cream (it's cold, don't ask). she read a quora answer on dating someone with aspberger's that i'd sent her, and then looked up info on aspies, and now agrees with me that it definitely explains a heck of a lot.

8. i thought i only had a little fix to make on my project, but when i tested it i realized that there was a bigger problem that we'd missed. three hours later and i'm exhausted, my brain hurts and i'm totally frustrated at the completely illogical results i'm seeing. AND i'm having performance issues. i almost forgot i don't like database work.