finishing strong

 now i'm not so sure that walking to acupuncture and back was much better than taking a bus, because by the time i got home my hip was hurting... but the acupuncture itself was another good experience.

i stretched hard when i got home, and ate breakfast, and then all of a sudden i was running late for my last day with my current client.

the work day went as follows: i managed to figure out the final issue from yesterday's testing, and it turned out to have nothing to do with the data or the code. there was much rejoicing! i then proceeded to spend the rest of the day preparing the handover documentation, discovering an issue that required a backfill that sharpened the procedure documentation significantly. i had lunch with my client team, which turned out to be a really good idea because happy hour ended up being cancelled. and i managed to say a proper goodbye to pretty much all the people i have relationships with.

and then... and then i was done. i left my computer and my keycard on the IT guy's desk, and i packed my bag (with the headphones they gave me, i asked my manager the kit-bag question and he assured me i could take them), and i sent a farewell and thank you message to the boss and my managers, and then i left.

it's been eight months, some of it rough, all of it educational, and to finish on a good note with a delivered project on my unexpectedly last day feels amazing.

i came home, picked up mr smear and took him for a walk, which was going great until we had an argument about drinking water in the park, followed by a much heavier fight about him being an asshole about other people's music, which pissed me right off and made me want to throttle him.

we managed to get past the bad vibe about halfway home from there, and arrived in time for dinner and the simpsons.

now we're getting ready to go out, and gd's just informed me that she's going in spite of the fact that her stomach's doing a thing again today 🙄

hopefully it'll be a fun evening.

rituals

 it's just after 6.30am, i'm sitting on the balcony with a clay-colored mug full of turkish coffee, having just woken up and performed the ritual brush gum guard - brush teeth - open windows - wipe down chairs and table, it's a beautiful morning and in about an hour i'm going to be off to my second acupuncture session.

i had a puff last night, which helped, but it didn't stop me from waking up almost an hour ago and being unable to get back to sleep. i'm still feeling a bit tired, but overall not bad, and i think the biggest thing i'm conscious of right now is how i hold my left shoulder. years ago (back in south africa) i realized that my left shoulder's always lower than my right, and when i remember and i make an effort to bring it forward my neck hurts less. but holding it forward is conscious effort, and if i get too comfortable and forget then i go right back to where i started...

i noticed last night that my mattress dips deeply in the middle. i don't know if this is good for me or not.

...

huh, i just noticed: someone put the word ritual in spirituality.

...

i started yesterday with doomsday clock, which so far isn't bad, but... it's not watchmen. and it's weird, in a not-good way. it's not bad, though, as i said, so i'm going to keep going and hope to not be disappointed.

i've been listening to marty cagan's transformed, at high speed and with skipping, and it's got enough interesting stuff in it to make it worthwhile. i think i'd prefer a summary, though. i mean, a book on this stuff seems a bit much.

the work day involved a lot of waiting (PR frustration on my second-to-last day!) but the results were worth it - five months down the line, a ridiculous number of lessons learned, and the "new" analytics data is being delivered and rendered almost exactly like the "old" data, but via a completely different technology stack. it's arguably better, definitely cheaper, and i've managed to overcome insane obstacles (mostly self-inflicted by the organization) and deliver just before my last day.

there is absolutely no way i'd have been able to do this without AI. this was a massive up-skill with big lessons in corporate engineering bureaucracy, and i'm really, really glad that i'm delivering the solution with a repo full of handover documentation and useful scripts for testing and generating reports. working with a project repo turned out to be one of the most important things i did.

...

on my way out the building, i chatted with two of the guys about a sensitive topic: the guy who disappeared almost two months ago (though it feels like only a few weeks) was fired mere days after his wedding. which reminded me of an incident a couple of years ago when a coworker was fired right after his wedding, and though i can't find my post about the actual layoffs (which is weird) i made sure to talk about my feelings on the matter.

i only realized that i'd essentially bad-mouthed my client after i'd described the behavior as cruel, and impossible not to take personally whether it's personal or not 😫

having walked, rollerbladed and then barely slept the night before, i was too tired to do anything physical when i got home. in any event, i came home right in time for a big sushi dinner and the wonder years, and after the bedtime ritual we sat down to finish crocodile dundee.

*SPOILERS* we were all upset by sue's shenanigans, but also puzzled by the question of "why in hell would either of them think that taking mick to new york would be a good idea?". we see him being led through the city and put on display in the rudest, most disrespectful way... but then i had a revelation: it's the australians who've made the movie, which means that the movie is actually as case of the australians treating the americans like weird creatures in a zoo, and our mick's as much the curious visitor as he is the curiosity. *END SPOILERS*

and then it was bedtime. now i'm off to my acupuncture appointment, and then it's on to my very last day with the client i've been working with for the past eight months.

shifts

 i've just got out of a cold shower after cooling down enough to get into it in the first place, having just said good night to mr smear having come in from the rollerblading group around midnight to find gd fast asleep and him still awake reading...

i feel like i barely survived the route tonight; it was *not* a "social" route, and more than the first hour was predominantly uphills. the wet bulb temperature is around 24°, and i don't know if that's why but when we stopped for a short break i was sweating so much that i felt like my eyes had flooded with seawater and i couldn't open them for a few minutes.

...

i had a somewhat productive morning this morning, planning out my repository, and i continued earlier before i left and i think it's looking good. the implementation has caused me to hit my 5-hour token limit for the first time since i signed up for codex, usually i'm only really focused on my weekly limit.

...

work was alright, though i am in scrambling mode while also trying to say goodbye without bumming anyone out. one good thing that's come out of this week so far is that one of their engineers needed to make a fix in the golang project i worked with a while back, and because i modernized it he was able to get the work done pretty painlessly and we were able to determine that the work was good pretty quickly.

...

around lunchtime, i jumped on a call with the teacher and her friend that we scheduled a week or so ago, and it was *not* the kind of call i expected. it looks like there's serious potential for something big here, and i've been left with a fair amount of homework to do.

also, i had to (metaphorically) sit my wife down and have a real-talk moment with her about what the implications are. she's got serious trust issues that i'm going to have to work around, but she assures me that she'll have my back and put her big-girl panties on for this.

i don't know what the chances of any of this becoming real are, but if they do it's going to be one hell of a ride.

...

we watched a particularly cringy episode of the wonder years ("steady as she goes"), which upset mr smear so much that he stormed off halfway through 😂

before i left, we watched a video on nuts and i learned that my regular handfuls of brazil nuts at the office might well have been messing with me! those things oughta have warning signs...

official

 i didn't take a puff on sunday night, but i slept pretty well nonetheless. i started my day completing my favorite thing is monsters volume ii.

the artwork is no less phenomenal than the first volume, but overall it just isn't as satisfying, none of the elements that were "wrapped up" make much sense, and there are a bunch of events that were more focused on being anachronistically inclusive and less on the actual characters and story.

it's full of wonderful creations and interesting moments, though, and ultimately I enjoyed it a lot.

...

a significant chunk of my morning and evening were spent worrying about finances. we're barely scraping through this month, and as a result of gd's panic (and her refusal to use cheap, effective but gross solutions) we've spent an enormous amount of next month's money on lice treatments that may or may not work.

it's not clear right now if we're done with this super-lice saga yet. we've established a protocol that we're going to stick to, wartime or peacetime, and we're going to hope for the best.

...

i started listening to the audible* audiobook of marty cagan's transformed yesterday on my way to the office, at 1.5x speed and trying to skip as much fluff as possible. so far, my biggest takeaways are that transformations are whole-org things that require buy-in from everyone, and that *gasp* small, frequent release cycles and CI/CD need to happen together or they're meaningless.

* i think audible should consider selling lifetime memberships and then charging a small amount per audiobook, rather than huge amounts per audiobook on top of expensive memberships.

...

a truck just drove past and made a sound like a quiet sneeze.

...

my first encounter in the office was dx, and when i shared my thoughts on the map generator lessons from sunday night and what i thought might be the next step, he told me something encouraging: "i wouldn't be surprised if that's what everybody's doing in a few months from now". so now i'm motivating to figure out a good way to make a spec library so that i can tell my agents to insert a <pattern> in whatever project i'm working on and have it pre-loaded with everything it needs to ask instead of having to describe what i want from scratch.

...

i was sitting with my new manager, and we were discussing how we were both taken by surprise by yesterday's news that this is my last week, when my previous manager from bulgaria suddenly walked up and joined us - i've never met him in real life before! so that was cool.

the work day was mostly scrambling, because that's what this week is all about, to close up everything. and a break for an employer's group meeting. and another break to talk to one of the data guys after learning that a bunch of them have just been retrenched*. and, towards the evening, buying tickets to gd's and my first date night since my mom visited last year.

* i referenced the town hall here, but couldn't easily find my immediate thoughts on it, which were all around gratitude that this is my client and not my employer, because i would not have felt in the least bit safe.

i got home relatively late, and we watched the wonder years over gd's second delicious attempt at daal, and after catching up with and saying good night to my mom we did the shower and lice protocol thing and then settled down to watch about half of crocodile dundee together.

i was tired, which usually meant going to bed early and then waking up for hours in the middle of the night, so i took a puff, and actually slept well until morning.

shorter notice

 t'was a weird day. first and foremost, because i received a kickoff email from my employer informing me that i'll be starting work at my new client in a week, when on thursday my current client assured me that we still have a month together. i inquired, but i haven't yet got a response.

i reached out to my new client, who quickly responded positively and said that i have an advantage if i like shuwarma. i asked if vegan shuwarma counts, and i got silence... for just over an hour... before he responded with a "lol" followed by a "no" 😅

i struggled today with tiredness, motivation, and caffeine efficacy. and snacks. i've been putting on weight again. in spite of all that, i managed to put together two strategies for one of the projects i've been working on, and ran an investigation to confirm my troubling findings from thursday, and took the next step in the big project i've been working on for months and now need to bring to a close even faster than i thought.

once i was done with work, mr smear packed his borrowed books into his bag and we walked to the library, along the way stopping to marvel at all the glass skyscrapers that are effectively being built on sand. my favorite part of our walk was having to assure him that although his hormones will make him think and do stupid things when he hits puberty, all he has to do is be aware of them and try not to make things worse than they need to be :P

i did a little more work on the map generation for mr smear's project, then we had a good couple of math fluxx games before dinner, and then we watched a couple of episodes of the simpsons, and then - post shower and toothbrush time - i invested more time in the map generation.

i'm just now discovering just how much of a waste of time a generic map generator might prove to be, as i'm struggling to make it make sense for both mr smear's horror game and my tarot game. this might just be one of those expensive lessons i've heard so much about...

first and second blood

 i've been distracting myself all morning, now that i need to get to work i just realized i haven't posted anything and i'd like to "clear my desk" before i get started, so:

yesterday we watched the first two rambo movies (first blood, and first blood part ii). which were both enjoyed immensely, and both discussed heavily.

additionally, i took mr smear out on our rollerblades and he's improved dramatically, which was great fun to see.

otherwise, i spent a whole bunch of hours working on and writing up my map seed generator algorithm, and fixing a bunch of incidental bugs, so i feel like we made some progress on mr smear's game and that i have something to show for the past couple of weeks of being all over the place.

i took a puff last night, and i slept well, in spite of the fact that i went to bed with hurting hip flexors and i'm also struggling with them now.

this morning began with now-routine comics and coffee on the balcony, then i accompanied gd to her new dentist and did some work while i waited. she had a good experience, it looks like we've found our new clinic.

aaaand scene.

anxiously quiet

 we did a lice treatment last night before showering and going to bed very late, a very oily treatment, and my eyes are still irritated and they feel oily :(

yesterday morning was all about the pharmacy mission and weekend shopping. and monitoring and responding to the comments on gd's post, some of which were very angry at gd's observations on the neglect of children's hygiene, and some of which were very validating.

i ended up spending a good chunk of the day* on the auto-doc project, and then a very little bit of time before dinner on the map generator's seed algorithm before dinner. while that was happening, i also got mr smear to draw a couple of sketches of me because i want him challenging himself and practicing portraits, and hopefully i'll be able to get him to do that again today.

* i mean, a legit work day's worth of hours, though a lot of working with AI is firing off a prompt, switching to youtube, and then reviewing the results a few minutes later. but i also used a "teach-me" skill i've been working with since thursday (inspired by one of the guys at the game dev meetup), and i used it to verify that one of the big changes i've made to my auto-doc project actually makes sense.

[goes away, comes back a bit later, eyes feeling a little bit of relief]

the two puffs i took last night were very effective, and i slept.

today so far: reading some more of my favorite thing is monsters, doing a little more cleaning of the top of the kitchen cabinet (the third round in eight months, making progress), and then a whole bunch of nothing (minesweeper while "catching up" on youtube), now it's breakfast time and then... who knows?

the end of a week

 i took a puff last night before bed, but it didn't make me sleepy and i ended up waking up much earlier than i wanted to. but i didn't struggle with my back or hip flexors, whether that's because of the acupuncture or because of the weed doesn't really matter.

i was actually going to try the medication the doctor prescribed me, which sounds great on paper but turned out to be an anticholinergic, and i'd quite frankly rather continue with my possible sleep-deprivation path to dementia than take a practically guaranteed path. just sayin'.

...

most of my work day revolved around completing the backfill, and discovering that an external tool that's recently been introduced has been starving the processes, slowing everything down and then killing them when they hit an arbitrary timeout 🙄

one of my client team came to me to discuss the fact that i'm leaving - he'd just found out - but later the boss told me everyone had been informed on tuesday. i don't know what's going on, but whatever. dx and i discussed a game idea he had when he was a teenager that's absolutely brilliant, hopefully one day we'll collaborate on it :)

i got home, emptied my bag and took mr smear to the school to pick up his books for the next year. on the way home, we came across a really nice kitchen store and i found mugs!

the bus ride back was apparently mr smear's best ever, mainly because he was so excited about how modern and clean it was :P

we arrived just in time for dinner, and the simpsons, followed by a conversation with my mom (including teaching her some AI fundamentals) and... letting mr smear play plague inc before showering and then going to bed just as late as we did...

...

so i got up early this morning, and enjoyed my coffee while reading more of my favorite thing is monsters on the balcony, put together the new fan, freaked myself out by looking at our financial situation, and am now getting ready to make myself breakfast [i got distracted, now it's eaten already] and do some game dev / ai experimentation.

...

"super lice". of course. fan-freaking-tastic. gd's just sent a warning to the class parents' group which basically feels like posting a sign on mr smear's back :/

circles

having barely slept the night before, and with my hip flexors threatening, i took a puff. i'm still tired from the sleep deficit, but i slept really well. it's weird to sleep well and not remember dreaming.

i got up, had a coffee, looked for an didn't find my last MRI, then i walked to the bus stop and went to the clinic for an acupuncture session. my body was profoundly calm for most of the duration of the treatment, though i did develop a random itch that made my leg twitch, and i've just gotten home (trying hard to stay in the "comfort" bubble in spite of the world around me, i think next time i'll walk instead of taking a bus) and am having a quick breakfast before heading to the office.

...

i made some progress on the map generator problem before going to the office, and the work day was mostly completing the backfill (it still required some fixing). i came home for lunch, then returned for a talk by a south african "CTO" that turned out to be a thorough waste of 45 minutes of my life that i'll never get back. the title of the talk had been misleading: i thought it was going to be around organizing a company's structures around AI, and instead it was about how a junior dev became a senior dev with a fancy title and how the south african tech industry is years behind us in terms of working with AI.

a little later i walked past my client team and inquired after the weirdness that was going on - my client / the boss was standing there with tears streaming down his face, and i was offered a piece of a little yellow pepper to try.

it turned out to be a reaper that the boss had home grown. the first little piece i took hit me hard in the throat, but i barely noticed it in my mouth. the second piece was substantially thicker and full of seeds, and i made a point of chewing it thoroughly. it had a delayed action, and i ended up regretting it. it must have taken about an hour to completely stop burning...

i had a good sync with my manager, and on my way out made a suggestion to dx for the problem he was stuck with, which i hope helped.

i came home early, and walked with mr smear to the library to switch out a couple of his books. while there, i had a fun conversation with the librarian, who lit up when i talked about how we'd just finished the eighth season of the simpsons and the importance of monoculture especially with regards bridging the communication gap between parents and their children.

the walk there and back was full of interesting conversation, and by the time we got home i'd put in 17K steps in addition to the hour and a half of rollerblading the night before. i stretched a bit before dinner, after which i had a little too much dessert and some arak for good measure. i was ready to go to bed, but i still had to wait about an hour for mr smear to shower and brush his teeth 🤦‍♂️

...

well, the calm has been slowly seeping away and i'm feeling my "wry neck" again. oh, well.