sleep journal entry

last dream: track listings on the sides of containers, a shul service with someone i know who'd recently been released from prison (and who was clearly a traitor) being loudly disrespectful, and a container tramsporting a carnival covered in sheets and i could see ninjas (the irony) hiding all across it.

i slept through - minus successfully turning off my alarm - until i was woken up to say goodbye to mr smear. i don't know when last i managed to sleep like that.

gd's back is sprained, so instead of finally getting ready for the hackathon and a pressured day, i'm quickly drinking a coffee then heading off to the pharmacy...

delays

 i kinda feel like i'm in a pinball machine, being smacked around by flippers and bouncing off random objects and trying hard to avoid falling into the hole.

it took me too long to get out the house, so i stayed for my morning meeting and then went to the office, leading a lost stranger i encountered along the way to his destination.

in a nutshell, i basically wasted most of today on fixing up a repository in a way that the owners didn't like, and nobody cares enough to just finish the job. i think i handled the discussion at the end of the day appropriately professionally, though it was clearly awkward for both me and the guying reviewing my code.

in the afternoon, someone reached out to me to inform me that some of my earlier changes had broken something - eight days ago. fortunately, it was already a different kind of broken by someone else 🙄

fixing it was quick and easy, but then something in databricks went wrong and i had to manually reset it, which led to another issue with the other code i'd been working on... eeeeeverything is broken....

last week my rollerblading experience was disrupted because i'd consumed dairy, and i wanted to make up for it. i came home, for some reason stewing over something protoplasm and i had had to deal with in goa many years ago, and when i walked into our apartment my son jumped out and yelled namaste!, which he had no idea what it meant, and then when i'd calmed down a little and we went out for a quick walk before dinner, we encountered two indian women in beautiful traditional dress.

so that all happened.

we started watching little shop of horrors at dinner (mr smear grumbled about it being a musical, but calmed down quickly because it's good), then spoke to my mom, and then waited for mr smear to get ready for bed... by which stage i was running late for the rollerblading, and my stomach was doing a thing, and i decided that tonight's not the right kind of night.

so i've done very little of value, it's already late, i'm going to go to bed now. hopefully tomorrow will be more constructive.

homeschooling

 six day war... twelve day war... twelve hour war...

bizarrely, yesterday felt like a return to routine.

שמים את השיגורים בשיגרה 

we put the rocket launches in the routine

mr smear's biggest lesson for the day was helping gd clean the floors; the first half was a nightmare until i got involved, and once it was done we had to have a family meeting and discuss how we help others (mr smear) and how we handle provocations (gd). we then had a bit of a repeat episode when he was supposed to help her with the dishes before dinner prep, but for a different reason, and i found myself explaining to a ten year old techniques for getting off the toilet quickly 🙄

my workday was alright, and ultimately successful. i'm still really behind - way past deadline - but i'm making some progress and certainly learning things along the way. i don't really have a solid mental model for what i'm doing, though, not yet at least, but a big part of that is how uninvested i am personally.

i also "wrote" (AI) a bunch of bash scripts for a CI workflow, and now i'm thinking i really should rewrite them in python...

i got stuck waiting on others in the evening, and mr smear and i took our fluxx collection upstairs to play a couple of games with our upstairs friends. it was fun, but more than that it was intended to be an educational experience for the kids, and as many annoyances as there may have been, overall it went well.

mr smear and i came back downstairs for dinner and macgyver, and gd's mushroom-soup lemonade (she followed the mushroom soup recipe, it's a terrible recipe), and then a hilarious chat with my mom (cemeteries can be dramatic), and then a night of intentionally doing nothing of value.

this morning we woke up (myself a lot more slowly than everyone else), and sent mr smear off to school, and then i read a little bit (a mix of stranger in a strange land and watchmen), and now i've posted this while singing along to synthknot, and now i guess it's time to get moving and go to work.

...

i've been putting off a bunch of preparation work that i need to do for the upcoming hackathon, it's not feeling good. but having published my extension and the related articles, i feel like a weight has fallen off my shoulders.

return to routine

 more war. i mean, back to routine! shit, are we at *war* war or just the usual level? i mean, the kids are home but are adults going to the office today?

gods help us.

...

i got a bunch of admin stuff done yesterday morning, not least of which being registering and paying for mr smear's summer camp (is that even going to happen, now?) after realizing that i'd misunderstood the forms last time and stopped halfway.

UX matters, people :P

it took me a long time to get around to my actual work, but once i did i put in a good few hours and made some actual progress. one of my coworkers reached out for a half hour sync on maintaining dashboards in a healthy way, and i'm very pleased to see that the team is taking it seriously in spite of their initial skepticism!

i was a bit nervous about the "sync" that my manager invited me to - then learned why in a pre-sync meeting yesterday evening and was relieved to have been consulted before things get messy.

by the evening, i hadn't been out of my chair much all day, so i went to the library with mr smear for some exercise and fresh air (and to return a book, and pick up a few more interesting ones). it was a very pleasant excursion.

we watched macgyver over dinner, after which i made my extension look nicer and finished up the articles. then we learned that we're at war again...

... i spent the next hour or two trying to publish my articles (the medium website started throwing errors literally as i was publishing, and the emails were sent out with the articles in an incomplete state), then i played a little slay the spire 2, and then i finally went to bed.

[rocket attack incoming]

not the early bedtime

 after my previous post, i showered, and we sat down to dinner. we finished watching cool runnings, i totally didn't cry.

i was tired.

so i played a little slay the spire 2 while mr smear got ready for bed, said good night, and then made myself a last tea. i thought i'd read a little and then go to bed, but i happened upon an article about publishing vscode extensions, and thought i'd *just* set up my account in preparation.

TWO HOURS LATER...

i now have my extension published on both vscode and open vsx marketplaces! my articles are just about completed, so i was trying to get some good screenshots for them when i encountered a new feature in vscode (i believe it's "github.copilot.chat.copilotDebugCommand.enabled": true) that puts my little extension to shame :P

aaand now it's very late, and i've got a big day ahead of me tomorrow 🤦‍♂️

the rink

"omg you're making a face that looks like putin if he didn't have riz" - my son to me a little while ago, it made me want to die

...

we had a very pleasant evening, dinner and more cool runnings, then a visit from our upstairs friends, and then pure exhaustion and dropping into bed soon after they left.

this morning was chilled. i had a whole lot of stuff i wanted to do, but the thing i started with took hours. i did end up with the first part of a two-part article done and dusted, and i did quite a lot of it on the balcony on a lovely day (right until the sun started shining right on me, it was too hot).

then i got off screens for a while (i restarted reading watchmen again), and then i took mr smear our rollerblading. i was hoping to get to the roller rink at the sportek, but i did have any expectations. we made it though! and, in spite of his protests along the way, he did get on the rink and he did enjoy himself!

he had lots of little challenges to overcome, there and back, and we stopped for quite a lot of rests. at one point, we'd been sitting on a bench under some shady trees for longer than usual, and i suggested we move on; "no, dad, i'm enjoying this. we're very lucky to live here" 🌳 😍 🌳

so he's had a good time, and he's proud of himself, we've both had some exercise and rollerblading practice, and it's a fine end to a lovely day.

weekend incoming

 i still haven't fully recovered from tuesday and wednesday's dairy incident (i suspect my lactose intolerance has evolved into an actual allergy), so having a beer this afternoon has hit me surprisingly hard...

today got whole lots better. i was still a bit down in the dumps when gd and i left for the morning shopping run, but we found a nice little spot for coffee and relaxed and enjoyed ourselves, and the walk back to the shops and subsequent shopping trip were not unpleasant.

then we came home and had a nice, quiet, relaxing early afternoon as mr smear had gone to one of his friends (one of the two that he got physical with, the south tel aviv one). i was a bit nervous about picking him up and bringing him home on a friday afternoon, but the buses are running until relatively late now that it's summer.

the ride there was a bit stressful - some shitty kids for the first half, and lots of unwashed people for the second - and i was in a mode for the fifteen minute walk from the bus, partially because of the area (though it was fine, chilled, much less aggressive than the time i bladed through on a saturday) and partially because i was listening to slipknot.

i picked him up, and he appears to have been well-behaved and had a good time. we got to the bus stop in time, and everything was going just fine until halfway home he did something shitty and the entire week's issues with him came crashing home. we discussed it, we discussed my feelings and why i feel the way i do, but morale was pretty low for both of us by the time we returned home.

i dove into my AI "harness" - which, since yesterday morning's inspiration, has now been demoted to my MCP eavesdropper - and it's now feature complete and ready to be published. but not without some irritation: i blew through the rest of my github copilot credits and further into an additional budget i approved, and i didn't even have much to show for it.

i've parked the work for the day, and tomorrow i'll set about doing two things: the first, getting a local AI running again, and the second, publishing my extension. once that's done, i'll be more than ready to begin working on the actual harness i now have a design in mind for.

...

shabbat incoming. i feel almost surprised to have made it to this point in the week.

disappointment 2: the next level

 yesterday was fucking hard. i'm so over it right now, over everything to do with parenting and adulting and just getting through a friday fucking morning without having a breakdown.

yesterday continued to be shit. i didn't mention that i woke up yesterday feeling inspired, because i finally figured out the solution to a technical problem that's been causing me no end of consternation over the course of the past couple of weeks: i figured out what we need to gain visibility into our AI usage in general, not just eavesdropping on whatever our technological overlords haven't figured out how to block yet.

but that inspiration quickly faded with mr smear's friend's phone call*, and then i arrived at the office to discover that the previous day's incident was far from over. instead of working on my project - the one i'm past deadline for and drowning in - i spent all day (minus a break for lunch, thank god i took the opportunity to come home for a break) and until 10.30pm grasping at straws in the dark.

* later i'd get a phone call from his teacher, and learn that the situation is worse than we thought. so there's that.

at least i wasn't alone - and, in particular, at least the boss was involved. both because he had a lot of insights and provided a lot of useful guidance, and because he was a witness to why i wasn't working on my own stuff.

having said that, there i was, at night, in a dark client's office because the building's lights went off, instead of being with my family on a day that i really needed to be having a talk with my son. i'm a contractor, i shouldn't be effectively on-call, and i don't know how to navigate this professionally.

i almost sent a message to my mentor now, but i think it can wait until sunday.

as we left the building, the boss asked if i'd enjoyed the experience. the honest answer was that as much as i like the people, and i learned stuff, and i felt useful, and i'm grateful to have a job that pays me a salary, i also really, really don't want to be working long hours on meaningless stuff i don't give a shit about. he put me on the spot, though, and all i could come up with was "it's not all negative with you guys" and an awkward smile.

i arrived home exhausted and unhappy. i initially thought that my "liquid dinner" of a corona (that's the piss-water everyone else was drinking) would be enough, but then i found the sushi gd had left in the fridge.

my family was fast asleep, and i ate and showered and brushed my teeth feeling like a ghost in my own home.

i climbed into bed and fell asleep pretty quickly, and - for the nth day in a row - was woken at 6am by the god-awful sounds of my son spitting out toothpaste. so i woke up pissed off at him and the world in general, and try as i might (for more than an hour) i just couldn't get back to sleep.

we had our talk, albeit a short one, and sent him off to school. when i finally sat down at the computer to take care of what needs taking care of before we leave for the weekend shopping, i ended up having to troubleshoot the network issues again. i really, really shouldn't have returned the network device. when i finally got it all working again, i received an email reminding me that our physio insurance isn't ponying up, and now i'm pissed off and have sent an email to the brokers to ask if there are other companies we can use.

i'm so over these assholes making me work after i've paid them for a service.

...

i'm physically tired, and emotionally drained, and i don't know how i'm going to do the things i have to do today when i don't even have it in me to do the things i want to do.

the disappointment

 as tired as i was last night, i dived back in to a refactor for one of my side projects that i'd begun yesterday morning (that's where my token budget went) and finally published the new package around 1.30am.

i slept alright, if not enough.

just after mr smear left the apartment this morning, i received a message from his best friend's mother. during yesterday's incident, he attacked him as well. the gentlest kid you can imagine. during our conversation, i learned more about how messed up my child is than from anyone else, and we're fucking distraught.