groans, good and bad

what was next was me reading count zero in bed until i passed out, which didn't take very long. i'm enjoying it, but i'm not getting very far :P

in the middle of the night i awoke from a hyper-realistic zombie nightmare which began with me leaving a group of strangers huddling around a reservoir to go to a lecture in an underground facility with what looked like bleachers (grandstands), finding a seat at the back of the class and realizing that i wasn't wearing a shirt and the people in front of me were making a thing of it and taking (or pretending to take) photos.

then someone sitting a couple of meters to my left said something, and i responded by making a kind of popping sound with my lips, and unwittingly and accidentally spat at him. so that was awkward.

and then all hell broke loose further into the darkness, and it became apparent that some kind of riot was taking place, and i joined the people fleeing through the bleachers and up towards the light. i woke up just as i stumbled across a guy lying curled up on the steps, seriously wounded and looking like his guts had been pulled out of his ass.

i got up and spent a little time imagining what i could have / would have done for the poor guy under the circumstances (circumstance being trying to save my own life, not wanting to go near him but not wanting to leave him to die or be trampled).

i spent the next couple of hours researching printing services, compiling a table of costs and scaling, and eventually returned to bed having picked out two viable options.

the dream resumed from a later point in time. i was coming in from the outside, with someone else, and there was an enemy of some kind behind us. the compound seemed abandoned, but as i reached into a medical cabinet for a spray that would somehow serve as a zombie-repellent, i considered that the zombies must have been sensitive to light and that the "riot" may have been confined to the darkest depths.

i got up, caffeined myself, and began trying to put the test prints together. one of the services' sign up process is completely broken, so that leaves a single service, lulu. i tried reading through the guide, but as soon as i realized that i was out of my depth i sent it to mr cat to ask him if he can make heads or tails of it (in theory, it's his field of expertise).

mr smear has finally decided on a birthday present: battlezone gold edition. i played a little myself, and it's gorgeous.

out of office

 yesterday:

starting the day at the mental health clinic, for an appointment which took most of the last year to arrange. heaven forbid that should be drama free - mr smear and i were waiting outside when we heard lots of shouting, and it turned out that the psychologist, who's supposed to be dealing with people with psychological issues, greeted gd both rudely and aggressively.

WTAF?!

so gd was upset, the "doctor" was behaving like gd had done something wrong, and i had to jump in to the rescue... fortunately, the manager made every effort to fix things and, miraculously, an english-speaking shrink with a good attitude and a free slot arrived and the morning (and months of waiting) weren't lost. mr smear and i parked ourselves outside, reading and chatting, and gd was able to use her time and we're one step further down the road.

...

a surprisingly productive day at work in spite of the fact that i did *not* want to do any work. also, i was still in a mind-blown state from the vr experiences from the previous evening. i did have an argument with a coworker in the afternoon, and i was honestly really irritated by him not seeing things my way, but eventually i was able to put my finger on why each of us felt the way we did and realized that he was, ultimately, in the right.

it was a huge relief to leave the office, and (on-call notwithstanding) switch off for the next ten days.

i don't remember whether we tried to watch anything last night.

today:

i slept a bit better last night, but that's off a really low bar.

today was a big day, we set out to buy mr smear a proper synthesizer and we achieved our goal! we also tried to pick up some vr games along the way, but nobody seems to be interested in stocking them. we also looked at some books, then decided to get the entire bone collection on kindle instead.

the afternoon was spent playing with the new toy, and trying to watch a 3D movie on the psvr. that proved way more complicated than i was hoping... no success yet :/

mr smear played a vr space simulator that made me queasy, which led to a shitty mood, but eventually i got over it. kiddush for sukkot with my mom (virtually), followed by a nice dinner, interrupted by a hilariously crazy call from my sister who got herself into a particularly dramatic situation with multiple job applications and in addition to being entertained, i was actually able to give her some useful advice.

i hope she takes it :P

we put mr smear to bed, and i mindlessly/compulsively played did an idle run through kaycee's mod (only the final challenge enabled), and now it's anyone's guess what's next for the evening.

...

i've been doing holidays wrong, so i don't know how this one is going to turn out. my first priority is to rest my mind, kind of. and spend some quality time with my family. my second is to make some progress on the side project that i discussed with dod. my third is to try to arrange some test prints for my comics.

anything else is bonus.

winding down

 it wasn't too bad a day. i rollerbladed to work, which was very quiet because i was the only one in the office. in spite of things getting a bit hectic at one point, i managed to complete the frontend work that's been upsetting me for the past couple of weeks and returned home for lunch before taking mr smear to his jiujitsu class.

while there, i did a little more work - but nothing too serious - and when his class was done we returned home. as we stepped off the bus, the sirens sounded and we scrambled through narrow stairways into a deep bomb shelter along with a large number of coffee shop patrons, most of whom were clumsily wielding their dairy-based drinks in a way that made it anxiety-inducing to navigate to a safe corner while keeping mr smear out of contact.

god damn.

anyway, it was unpleasant but we didn't have an incident, so that was a win.

we both showered quickly when we returned home, and there was time before dinner to fire up the vr.

gd and i agreed that we could afford to get him one of the vr games, and he decided on battlezone, then he discovered that i'd downloaded a bunch more vr demos, so instead of buying something we dug into those instead - and we had a really good time. there were two games in particular, which caused a bit of a fight at first because we didn't understand what was going on or why mr smear needed us to tell him what was happening, but once we did get it they were brilliant. and then i took a turn, and i was absolutely blown away by how good the vr experience was!

after dinner, mr smear went to bed, i posted my two books on gumroad, and then gd and i settled down to re-attempt deadpool & wolverine. we made it a bit further before we were both falling asleep. it's really fun, we're just really tired...

i haven't slept well in a while, and i know that going to sleep early will cause problems, so i carried on fine-tuning all my online offerings and i'm now pretty happy with how things look. i think i'm about ready for bed now. i hope i am.

i'm very excited that i'm going on vacation tomorrow evening.

back to front

 yesterday was a bit shit, i'm really hating working with pure frontend and for the entire sprint every time i've resolved an issue another one has sprung up. i haven't been this unhappy with not-exactly-coding since i quit my job with mmf at the end of 2011.

anyway, it's not my usual job. and i had a conversation with my manager wherein i explained that i understand frontend dev enough to know how much i don't understand, and that while everything the contractor did makes sense within the confines of his employment the solution wasn't built in a way that inexperienced frontenders like ourselves would be able to make massive changes to its scope. none of us are really qualified to work on this, nor interested in it, and we're burning money and demoralizing ourselves. if we really feel like this is something we should be investing in, then we need to hire a frontend dev. if not, then we shouldn't be offering to build this stuff for our clients when it's far outside our competence.

in the middle of the day i left the office to pick up mr smear and taking him to his therapy session. while he was occupied, i tried to find a place with coffee that i could get some work done. the aroma's bathroom was unusable, and then i witnessed one of the kitchen staff walk out without washing his hands, so i noped on out of there. the next place didn't sell coffee, then the next place did have a place to sit and the employees were smoking right at the entrance. the next place, cafe taizu, doesn't sell coffee, and i finally landed on maafiyat lechamim. the atmosphere was cool, but the service was really shit and the coffee mediocre at best.

i'd spent so much time looking for a place that i got about five or ten minutes of "work" done before i had to get up and leave to pick up mr smear. i didn't really get anything of value done.

...

our financial situation's better, but not good, and i was really hoping to be able to put down the money for a proper keyboard for mr smear this month. and now i've been looking at vr video games and equipment as well. and gd wants a clothes dryer. fuck.

...

mr smear was only too happy to continue watching the original x-men series, but that's because he's seen the trailer for x-men 97 and he's really excited to see that... aaaaand i just realized we still have two more seasons we haven't watched, and everyone's groaning :(

...

i just went on-call ten minutes ago. hopefully it'll be a quiet day.

day of atonement

friday:

aside from grocery shopping in the morning, we were pretty much at home all day. the biggest achievement of the day was finally (finally!) setting up the psvr system, only 2.5 years after the mongoose loaned it to us. the pad at the back of the headset is falling apart, but otherwise it's in good nick. unfortunately, the paddles won't hold a charge so we're limiting to games that work with the regular gamepad.

either way, mr smear is over the moon and we both thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and the biggest challenge is going to be finding good games that don't cost an arm and a leg and being solid about limiting time with the headset on.

...

gd prepared a feast pre-fast, and after dinner we put together a very basic 200 piece puzzle, and mr smear actually participated fully for the first time. afterwards, i managed to convince him to come out on his bike. we met up with his re-friend / her dad and brother for a little, but all the kids were being whiny, so we went off in different directions. mr smear decided he was done earlier than i'd hoped - but apparently that's because he needed the toilet and didn't want to go outside - but overall he got the yom kippur "vibe" and we had a pretty good experience.

yesterday:

i slept really, really badly. i barely slept - although i did sleep a little, because i remember having some weird dreams - but i got up in the morning almost as tired as when i'd gone to bed.

firstly, we're really impressed that yesterday went as smoothly as it did. not only did we not have issues with a day without screentime, but we had constructive conversations about what we were doing and why we were doing it.

secondly, i spent most of the day resting, or following the morning prayer service with gd, or reading. i was tired, and a bit dehydrated, but i didn't have the usual caffeine-withdrawal headache and i wasn't feeling hungry.

in the afternoon we went to a park to meet up with a new friend of his, by which stage i wasn't feeling too fresh. the kids were getting along great, which was a relief to witness, although at some point mr smear wanted to leave because he was being harrassed by mosquitoes. he ended up staying in spite of that, though, because he was having fun... right until he wasn't. his new friend's little brother accidentally bumped him off an installation, and he was hurt and angry.

the resulting outburst was thoroughly embarrassing. i made my apologies as i followed him out of the park, and about halfway home managed to get him to listen to reason (i'm sad that i needed to threaten privileges for that, but it is what it is). things escalated when we got home and i explained what had happened to gd, but refreshingly quickly he managed to figure out what we were trying to get him to figure out and the tone of everything changed.

i sent off messages to his friend's mom and hopefully there'll be more playdates...

we logged in to the prayer service for the ending of the fast + blowing of the shofar + havdala + singing of hatikva, then dug in to a big meal. mr smear decided that he'd rather vr than fantastic four, so we tried out some of the other demos and we both had a *really* good time. then it was bedtime, and bedtime went smoothly.

gd and i tried to watch deadpool & wolverine, but as much as i was enjoying it i started passing out quite early on.

...

so far, the day's begun well. i slept alright, woke up and did a lot of stretching (my hips and lower back are still really sore), and we've had a long a constructive conversation with mr smear that covered the plans for the holidays, and a big discussion about gambling and other addictions that ended up with all of us agreeing that if we had the money, we'd establish and run a doggy hotel.

now it's time for me to go to work. *i* still have a couple of schooldays to go before my vacation begins :P

dragonfall: complete

 i've just completed the game, i don't know if i'll be playing it again but i do understand why so many players do. there were some decisions i made - or that were made for me - that i didn't feel good about, but by and large i loved almost every aspect of the stories that i played through and i really struggled, both in role-playing and in personal morality, with a lot of the choices that were put before me.

it's a fun game, it's a set-your-nerves-on-fire game, and it's a make-you-question-yourself game. it's a fantastic game.

someone's on vacation

 a pity it's not me. mr smear's off for the yom kippur / sukkot vacation, and i'll be joining him from wednesday next week. in the meanwhile... at least i'm off for the weekend.

work-wise, yesterday and today were punishing, and i'm still not out of the woods yet. and it's all css bullshit. i told my boss today that i'm willing to bet that backend / application developers will be replaced by AI long before frontend devs, primarily because none of that shit has any sort of logic to it and there's no way to know which signals make things work and which signals interfere.

i have made progress, though, but it's been really, really slow. otherwise, between my manager and my boss i kinda feel like things are good. i hope i'm right.

gd's been in trouble, pain-wise, much worse than usual. she's managed to pick him up from school, but both yesterday and today i've taken him to mma. the travelling together has been fun. he's been mostly good with his classes, but not very focused and not particularly well-behaved :/

i'm sad that the fight camp has been cancelled due to insufficient numbers, but he's happy about it, and it certainly uncomplicates our holiday times.

...

one of ze germans posted about notebooklm yesterday, so i took a stab at it and it's the first time i've used an AI tool that has absolutely blown me away. i spent a good chunk of yesterday evening making "podcasts", interrogating sources, and writing up my experience, and this evening i've been throwing more stuff at it, mostly with superb results!

...

i'm not sure about what i'm going to do now, but i don't want to go to bed too early. speaking of sleep, mr smear's been going to bed without a night-light the last week or so, although he's been asking for the airconditioner on which serves as a very dim night-light, but i guess it's a win. he's definitely going to sleep faster, that's for sure.