a painful end to the weekend

 i don't think i did anything particularly constructive this afternoon, and for my sins i had to deal with a classic mr smear regression: getting him to come rollerblading became very unpleasant, and he refused to stop escalating, and he didn't climb down off the hill until we'd already made it to the port, and he'd already lost a few hours of screen time and three days of access to the youtube music app.

this was me being conservative with the punishments, and it was really hard to keep him moving forward and coerce him to stop being so damned obstructive.

once we got to the port, or to the main stretch of it, at least, we stopped for a moment outside the outdoors club which was playing some pretty solid beats... music soothes even the savage beast. the rest of the route (which was essentially the way home from there) was smooth sailing, with positive vibes and for the most part good conversation.

...

we got home, showered, and sat down to gd's vegan sushi. it was a good dinner. then we spoke to my mom, who dropped a bombshell - one of our american cousins' kids committed suicide yesterday. i don't have words.

we (myself and gd) tried to explain how disastrous the current situation is for teenagers, with social media and online bullying and AI chatbots assisting kids in offing themselves and malicious anti-west propaganda confusing them and making them ashamed to be normal, decent people.

we're fucked in general, and as family, devastated.

...

after that, it's been a weird evening. i read some more of the light fantastic to mr smear, lost myself in youtube and sudoku for a while, then did some research into online multiplayer game development. now it's almost midnight, though in a couple of hours it'll only have been almost 11pm (i can't believe the democrats in the US are so dumb as to fight trump on cancelling daylight savings time), and i'm going to bed a bit nervous about how i'm not feeling like i'm handling my missed deadline very well.

jackals and mechs

yesterday:

we got up early, with gd having had another (as usual) rough night and being too out of it to join us. i've had a week or two of reasonably good nights - the caffeine trouble on sunday night notwithstanding - and i'm honestly finding it a little disorientating.

i had an amazing idea for a game while drinking my coffee [which i really should have been working on today].

we left at 7.30, walked to the supermarket, and found what we needed for the class picnic on our first try, so we headed straight from there to the park. with most of an hour and a half to spare, we walked instead of taking the bus, so i got in most of my day's steps in by the time we arrived, half an hour early.

firstly, my body didn't take that well and i was tired and sore by the time we arrived.

but secondly, the walk gave us plenty of time to have a real conversation, which was a fun dive into evolution and epigenetics, triggered by the sudden enthusiasm for darwin awards, probably precipitated by dumb ways to die.

before we arrived, we passed a jackal just chilling by the side of the path, minding its own business and unconcerned about ours. after a little while we walked up to some fields to watch the sprinklers and marvel at the architecture of one of the tall buildings nearby, and another (i assume) jackal trotted past and flopped down in the shade of a tree.

as we walked off the large patch of grass we'd been standing on, the sprinklers turned on and we narrowly avoided getting soaked!

there was some awkwardness at the picnic. mr smear's lice friend is sporting a short haircut, which i assume is related. i chatted with some parents i have no relationship with about not much, but at least a few of the others and i had things in common to discuss so it wasn't all bad.

with one of mr smear's friends' parents, i gave a scary recommendation to watch rick & morty so that they know what kinds of talk to have with their son... on the other side, though, i told the dad about what i'm trying to do, and described the game idea i'd come up with earlier, and a bit later he caught me to say that (after giving it some thought) it really was a great idea ^_^

mr smear made himself two rolls, and we snuck a cup from another class table (because none of us had brought any) so we could have a little to drink, we did a round to see school activities (some of the kids were dancing, some were playing really good music), and then we crossed the road to catch a bus home.

i made myself an iced coffee, and then the three of us headed to our new favorite supermarket for the weekend groceries. i was sooooo tired...

[stops to make another coffee, just writing about this is exhausting]

during the remainder of the afternoon, mr smear and i watched three more episodes of evangelion, and then i put quite a lot of time into generating images for a video for my spoken word piece, preacher. preacher is a piece that i have a very powerful memory of from performing it - it was getting a decent response (this was at divan orange sometime in 2013) and i was very proud of it, but about halfway through something special happened: one of the audience members got so caught up in it they literally yelled "YEEEEAHH!!!" and that's one of those magical moments when you feel you've elicited the response you wanted, even if there's delicious irony in the part that got the response being something that the poem is essentially ridiculing.

[goddamn, the lemon pie soya yoghurt is delicious]

we then made kiddush and had dinner while video-chatting with my mom, gd made an amazing sauce for the gnocci and the challah-peño not only came out great, but complimented it really well. in addition to the kiddush wine, i'd had a cherry beer that's 8% alcohol, and i was tipsy. the rest of the evening was basically me briefly passing out on the couch, then getting up to do a half-assed job of wrapping the remaining challah and brushing my teeth and dragging myself into bed.

today:

i slept alright. i began my day with evangelion - honestly, the manga is better than the series, but it's a shame to experience them as an either/or - and then i dived back in to the preacher video. omg that took a lot of work, and after pouring quite a lot of energy into it i gave up trying to improve the audio quality. i used audacity, but really, all the non-professional tools with non-professional experience just suck.

once i was done, mr smear and i watched another three episodes, and now i'm getting this all down and potentially doing something constructive before taking mr smear outside.

apparently this is the last week of summery weather for a while?

the week is over

 today was pretty exhausting, and i'm probably going to go to bed soon. the work day was slow, and a part of it was due to the same cause i noticed yesterday... my AI agents were running full regression tests for practically everything, and i had to go through multiple iterations of instructions and skill tweaking to get it to stop.

i didn't feel good about the day of client's work went. not for the quality of the work, not for the quantity of the work.

...

i started the day with more evangelion (book 2), and i'm excited to see the episodes again. i took care of some admin, mostly paying bills, and then it was work, work, work until it was time to leave for my evening class.

i already know a lot of the stuff from the course i did at the end of last year, but there are interesting things i've picked up nonetheless. and it was an opportunity to play-test the daily challenges i've added to my sudoku. and i had an important couple of conversations with my coworker who's working two (or more) jobs...

mr smear had a good day, meaning that he enjoyed it and also that he behaved well enough to earn screen time. also, his "homework" involved shading techniques that turned out amazing. *and* he used a whole lot more of the page than he usually does ^_^

right, the only thing of real value i've done tonight has been building a scraper and a wrapper website for the darwin awards to make it navigable so that i can read them to mr smear :P

negative, i am a meat proxy

 i guess today wasn't great? from a work perspective, at least. i mean, i'm learning a lot and things are moving, but i missed my deadline and that doesn't feel good :/

i read some more evangelion this morning, asuka and shinji fighting together was really fun :)

i made some design progress on the game i'm working on, and put the finishing touches on daily challenges in my sudoku game. i'm really pleased with how it's feeling, and i've made design choices i'm proud of, some of which i think are leveling me up all-round.

as i arrived at the office, i received a phone call from someone from the transport authority, who assured me that we haven't fallen through the cracks and agreed that if we can get power of attorney from our landlord they'll have no problem interfacing with us instead. so that's a huge relief.

after lunch (which was preceded by a too-long group meeting followed by a rush on the toilets), i spoke to the coordinator for the arts track. over the course of the next twenty minutes, i managed to walk her through mr smear's story, why his behavior is understandable, and how we all need to deal with the situation. she was understanding and appears to be on board. immediately after we finished talking, she sent me an update from today's art class teacher who reported a dramatic improvement since he faced an actual consequence yesterday, and it was an enormous, validating relief.

i made the mistake of eating a "go" vegan yoghurt, and i'm now convinced that it upsets my stomach. i have to check its ingredients to see if i can figure out what, but i'm definitely not eating it again.

i applied for the license renewal on monday, and it was authorized and sent today! i'm still in delighted shock, that's another weight off our shoulders (and money in our pockets).

ironically, the money we save will go directly to paying the next person who contacted me. in may, we were asked to reach out to an psychology clinic to manage mr smear's inappropriate behaviors. in june, i asked for intervention by the school councillor because they weren't reachable. just over a month ago they finally contacted me and asked us to fill out forms. this evening they called to get a description, and direct us to one of their therapists. so i guess things are actually moving now...

i took mr smear to the park to play frisbee, though it was a bit dark and less fun. on the way home we had a serious talk about the stuff that's been going on, and i explained to him that our main focus right now is teaching him discipline, and that him doing stuff he doesn't want to is really the whole point of the exercises we're going to be giving him (specifically in art and music).

dinner and a weird episode of the fall and rise of reggie dinkins, and then getting mr smear into bed (still reading the light fantastic), and then having a long conversation with my sister, who i think might be struggling more than we are...

it's too late and i'm too tired to do anything functional, so i'm going to just chill a little and go to bed and try to get stuff done in the morning.

all in all, today was a pretty good day.

...

stupid thoughts for the day:

marching to the beat of someone else's drum

 i slept pretty well. i got up and sat outside (wearing a shirt, it's getting colder) with my coffee and starting to read the second evangelion book, a harsh reminder of how distasteful asuka's character can be. we sent mr smear off to school fully loaded with all the books he was supposed to have taken weeks ago, along with our usual recommendations to be a good student.

i sent a message to the woman i spoke to a while back about educational game dev, hoping for some advice on moving forward seriously...

i don't recall what i spent the rest of my home-time doing or working on, but i do remember suddenly realizing that i was late for leaving for the office.

the first thing i did was meet up with my officer's course friend - let's call him "hobbyist" - who gifted me a freaking awesome purple tentacle that's glow-in-the-dark and turns pink when heated!

it's so cool!!

then i joined my team for breakfast, they ate bourekas and i had stuffed vine leaves, which were pretty good. then we worked for an hour or so before heading out to our team activity.

i honestly expected our "drum lesson" to be sitting around in a circle with bongo drums or something, not a room full of proper drum kits (dampened) and a serious hour-long introductory lesson in which we got to practice the fundamentals - we had a really good time! drumming is awesome ^_^

from there we went to lunch at a restaurant in midtown. to be fair, the restaurant experience and its food left much to be desired, but the experience overall was nice. it would have been nicer if gd hadn't called me to deal with a school incident that not only wasn't urgent, but that i wouldn't be able to do anything about until i got home anyway.

so that kinda brought me down. never a dull fucking moment.

eventually we returned to the office - a few of us, at least - and i did a sprint to try and complete as much as possible before due-date, which is technically tomorrow, but it looks like the customer's fumbled something so i might have some reprieve.

i'm a little concerned that my team lead thinks that what my agent uncovered might be pure hallucination, so i have some early morning research to do tomorrow...

i came home and interrogated my son, grilling him for the details before the other kid threatened him with a glue gun. seemingly armed with facts, i messaged his teacher who quickly called me back, and explained what happened. one of the things we discussed was how ridiculous we both find it that mr smear still doesn't know his teachers' names, so she had to investigate... he figured it out about the same time she did, though. when she called me back, it was to inform me that mr smear hadn't told the whole story, but that they were taking his report seriously and promised to keep an eye on both of them.

also, that i can expect a call tomorrow from the head of the art stream, because as apparent as his talent may be, he's just not putting in the work 🙄 🤦‍♂️

god help us.

we got through the evening [i just realized i forgot to call my mom so that mr smear could say goodnight :( ] and i've spent the last while working on my sudoku game, which i guess can technically be considered warming up for the bigger stuff? probably not.

laid out

 i - did - not -sleep. holy shit. like, at all. i skipped my first coffee, sat outside scribbling furiously, apparently coming up with a pretty compelling game design. said goodbye to mr smear, reminding him to be a cooperative student as we usually do, and then dove in to a bunch of chores.

i seem to have successfully applied for gd's license renewal, which was no mean feat... at least partially because my password manager had the incorrect credentials for her account 🤦‍♂️

i didn't feel i had enough time to head to the bank and the phone repair place before my team daily, then discovered around the time of the daily that it had been cancelled a couple of hours prior. i got a good chunk of work done instead, and then left the apartment for a "long lunch" involving bus rides there and back, and 45 minutes waiting politely. i was still buzzing from last night's coffee when i sat down, but halfway through the wait i crashed. hard.

then, when the two old people ahead of me finally finished and left, my "personal" teller checked my ID, heard me out, and regretted to inform me that there was absolutely nothing he could help me with.

*sigh*

i crossed the road, paid for my phone repair (mr smear's smashed screen couldn't be replaced), and came home.

i sipped coffee and lay down for a twenty minute nap, augmented with some dub. then i dragged myself to my desk and put in an hour's work, and then signed in to an hour and a bit of a talk by a coworker in thailand who's constructed a fascinating setup with grokbot that i'm thoroughly convinced is a dangerous, very expensive mistake.

i work with AI a lot, and i do not believe for one second that it's a good idea to take my eyes off the code entirely. also, my best senior engineer refused to use AI for one week. by friday, he said something nobody on the team wanted to hear.. i've been thinking about it a lot since i read it. i think it's spot on.

i was interrupted twice during that talk, for the same thing: the first was gd yelling at mr smear over the phone, the second was his teacher calling me to discuss his behavior. after the talk we had a family meeting, and things didn't seem too bad, and then his teacher got hold of me again and they seemed very bad. someone's apparently having a massive regression and doesn't remember how being a student works.

we have a lice protocol, now we have a behavior monitoring protocol. at least the teachers seem to be doing their part this time, actually making an effort to inform us and involve us 🙄

i took mr smear to the comics library, which was as much an opportunity for a little exercise and fresh air as to discuss his behavior, and gd's response to his behavior, and how i feel.

i'm excited about the books i took out: the second evangelion volume, the first volume of hellsing, and - hidden away from mr smear - book one of kick-ass. i flipped through it while there, it's hardcore.

we got home in time for dinner, with gd's delicious not-sushi rice-paper rolls, spoke to my mom, unpacked the groceries, showered, put mr smear to bed, and (after i spent some time thinking about stuff, after spending a little more time researching stuff) gd and i tried to watch an episode of ludwig, but we both passed out on the couch and i only realized it when i came around again and found myself aware enough to laugh at something, then noticed gd wasn't laughing :P

i've just finished my tea, i've written all this, and i'm going to try to catch up on last night's sleep.

buzz

 i started a course this afternoon, and slugged a fourth cup of coffee to get through it. i'm regretting doing that, now. it's around 11.30pm and i'm kind of getting stuff done, but i'm psychologically and emotionally tired and i know i should be trying to get some rest...

...

i slept alright last night, woke up pretty early again this morning. my morning was predominantly spent "clearing my desk" in preparation for heavy focus on - essentially - just one thing. i think i know what that one thing is, but if i'm honest with myself i'm kinda scared that i'm making a dangerous decision.

i also had a good idea regarding printing the sonnet comics, and i've just sent off a request to the illustrator accordingly.

in addition to desk-clearing, i helped gd out with making some appointments, and then headed out to work.

i feel like my work day was pretty productive. if nothing goes wrong, i suspect we'll manage the wednesday deadline. also, i've now asked two of my teammates to test my wrapper for the company's claude code harness - so my harness harness harness - and i'm hoping they have good experiences 🤞

one of my teammates has a hornet problem at home. jesus.

after years of pushing gd to post her thoughts online, she finally got started today, and IMO she's off to a good start ^_^

it rained today, so instead of going straight to my class at my employer's offices i stopped at home to switch to sandals and grab an umbrella. on the way, i read a report from one of mr smear's art teachers... i'm struggling to wrap my head around the fact that he has catch-up homework because he didn't work in class on a project that is literally the coolest thing he could be asked to do. when i asked him about it later over dinner, he had no answer.

anyway, the class was long but interesting. i didn't get an opportunity to speak privately with my coworker who's doing three jobs about how he's doing it, which i need to do because i need to understand how i can do it too...

i got home to the tail end of dinner (mr smear watching casual geographic), and we discussed the school situation, and then it was shower and bedtime. i read a little to mr smear (which always knocks me out), and now i'm done a bunch of random stuff and i think it might be worth me attempting to sleep.

this is me wishing myself luck...

retrograde

i just read the disease of optionality: why smart people stay poor before dinner, i'm in that article and i don't like it. i've been saying for a long time that i'm constantly working on a million things at once, and this article has made me realize i need to stop and focus. especially now, this couldn't have been a more timely intervention.

...

emotionally, today was rough. i'm a mess. but in retrospect it was nonetheless a pretty good shabbat. i finished writing up an article on using AI to build models in freecad and blender, even though i'm not thrilled by how my print model came out.

then we headed out in the rain - with our broken umbrellas from last winter - to meet with a friend from cape town who's here on a program for a couple of weeks. she brought mr smear watercolors and a really good quality sketch book, which he showed genuine gratitude for, and we talked non-stop until she had to go, and gd had consumed too much caffeine :P

after we got home, ate breakfast and relaxed for a bit, mr smear - with a lot of patient harassment - helped me wash the floors, after which we sat down to watch akira.

the movie is not the same as the manga. there's a scene where one of the girls is "lightly" violated, and holy shit, we had to have a talk about what we'd just seen. the violence is intense, but after total recall, well... 🤷‍♂️

i took mr smear out to throw the frisbee again, and it was a fantastic opportunity to talk about some serious stuff; afterwards, we took our now "traditional" little walk over the bridge and around to return home, and mr smear confided in me that he doesn't know how to process the fact that as anti-sport as he is, he's enjoying rollerblading and frisbee 🥹

while doing a bit of cloud-watching, he also came up with something inappropriate that made me feel bad for laughing, so i made a meme of it (which he's not happy about, he doesn't like my concept for his joke nor the fact that i used AI to generate it):

anyway, i made a model of it, perhaps he'll be able to do something with it:

after showering, we watched the wonder years over dinner, and every episode just amazes me more and more that something of this calibre and this educational value ever made it on air for so long. it's magic.

we chatted with my mom, and then i read a little bit more of the light fantastic to mr smear, who called me a "weenie" because i started falling asleep while reading again :P

...

right now i'm not sure if i'm clearing my desk, thinking about focusing, or going to bed.

a path less travelled

 maybe i am stupid.

i mean, this certainly isn't the first time i've mused on this, but the fact of the matter is that most of my life - honestly, some of the biggest moments of my life - is based on dramatic series of poor decisions. in most cases, i've kind of come out on top alright, but not for any particularly good reason. providence, i guess.

here i am, it's saturday morning, early enough that the streets are mostly empty and i'm surrounded by the blind-friendly ticking of a pedestrian crossing and occasional engine noises* and a glorious orange-cloud sunrise, the air calm and cool enough for me to be wearing a vest, and gd and mr smear (apparently) asleep.

* a surprising number of non-electric vehicles, which feels weird after yesterday's spectacular reveal of tesla's "flying" "roadster".

here i am, trying to do damage control and figure my way out of living beyond my means, struggling to make a decision because my resume can't handle me looking for a new job right now, but also i can't professionally and in good conscience leave a new contract i've barely begun without burning my employer, and moving apartments right now would be a nightmare, and it's unlikely to find a viable one in tel aviv that's cheaper anyway, and we can't leave tel aviv without pulling mr smear out of a school that's legitimately good for him both socially and artistically...

a sports car zooms by, a crow cries, and here i am, typing this up and sipping on my coffee and wondering whether i have what it takes to pull myself up by my bootstraps - an apt expression for the sheer impossibility that it seems to be - and find a way forward.

...

here comes the sun.

...

thursday:

thursday was a work from home day. while wednesday was fulling of hitting walls, thursday was awkwardly, slowly, sliding up and around them. my AI context seems a lot more reliable, but being thorough demands running a lot of long prompt sessions which means a lot of (human) evaluation, recalibration, and then a lot more waiting until the next cycle of the loop. it makes for long days, and an almost arbitrary level of productivity, but i did feel like i ended the day with a sense of accomplishment.

...

in the early afternoon, the landlord's air conditioner guy arrived. he checked out the ducts, and arrived at the conclusion that we don't have a mold problem, just a dust problem, and i *hope* his assessment is correct. either way, his explanation of our experience made sense, so we're going to follow the new protocol and see how it goes: for heat, air conditioner only goes on *cold*, colder than outside and colder than 24°, and immediately afterwards we use fan mode to keep the humidity out of the ducts from condensing.

i still haven't received a response from the landlord after i sent him an update.

...

i still haven't received a response from the pain clinic doctor regarding the cannabis license renewal. i guess we're going to have to make an appointment.

...

the tax return situation: i acted on a couple of recommendations, and got good responses. it turns out the 15% fee the not-quite-nigerian scammer eventually settled on is a standard fee. i ended up going with dod's guy, hopefully they'll find something.

...

we watch the wonder years' "how i'm spending my summer vacation" over dinner, continuing to solidify what a remarkable, wonderful, helpful series it is. mr smear gets really upset by kevin arnold's behavior, so much so that he just wants us to turn it off...

yesterday.

... but then, like yesterday, it turns out to provide a perfect analogy to explain to him why his own behavior is problematic. halfway through the day i lost my temper with him because he started telling me off for not helping him with his chores, while i'm trying desperately to keep my shit together to find ways to feed my family. a little later, when i'd calmed down, gd suggested that it was kind of like how kevin was focused on his little problems while others' worlds were burning, and i sat down with mr smear to calmly discuss it. as soon as i talked about last night's episode he *got* it, and immediately thanked me (and gd) for making is clear :)

...

that was only one thing that upset me, though. i spent most of the morning and early afternoon upset with mr smear about something else... for years now, i've been telling him to keep his phone in his bag when he's not actively using it, and he's been refusing to listen. a few months ago mr smear cost us a phone by washing it after dropping it in a urinal - this was upsetting enough before we learned that we're in financial distress - yesterday morning his friend shoved him (or something) and he dropped his phone and it died.

oh, fuck :/

...

gd and i bussed to a supermarket in yad eliyahu (i don't think i've ever been there before) for friday shopping (and to use the gift card i received before the holidays), and i'm pretty confident it's the best one in the city. we had a pretty good experience getting what we needed, caught a bus home (a long ride, with stress after we'd been talking about potentially having to move house again), and then bussed to pick mr smear up from school.

i took with me a couple of our old phones, and after picking mr smear up (and being frustrated by him making us wait outside for ten minutes and then eventually go in looking for him) we caught a bus to a phone repair store, which turned out to be the guy from my old (pre-canada) neighborhood who i thought had closed shop, but had merely moved to the other side of the road.

of the phones i brought with, one didn't need any work done (it suddenly sprang back to life with 70+% battery after we plugged it in), two of them i left with him for evaluation, and the rest (i don't remember if that's one or two) he told us weren't worth the cost of trying to fix. what worked out well for us is that the one that came back to life was mr smear's previous phone (from before our experiment to use paybox before understanding that it's a scam), so after only a little bit if fiddling i was able to hand it to him, fully useable.

...

i spent most of the afternoon just processing and thinking, while experimenting with freecad and blender. by late afternoon i'd managed to hook them up to AI and gotten results that weren't amazing, but were pretty damned good nonetheless.

...

before sundown, i took mr smear to the park and we threw the frisbee around. with everything else that's going on, it was fantastic. we both got some exercise, we both had fun, and mr smear actually did surprisingly well. it was an experience to treasure.

...

after getting home and getting showered, it was time for kiddush with my mom. gd's gnocci dinner was great, we watched some interesting nature "documentaries" on youtube, and after we'd all eating our fill, we settled down to watch the original total recall.

i read through some of the other reviews, and apparently remembered this movie with less than total recall, because i decided my 11 year old could handle it.

let's address the sexual stuff first: there's so much, from the get-go, and it's SO inappropriate. not just inappropriate for an 11 year old, inappropriate for real human beings - from the hyper-sexual wife responding to her husband's nightmares and literally anything else, to the relationship between  ironside's character and his wife, to the cabby fondling the woman's breasts while waiting for quaid. it's weird, and boy, did that lead to a couple of conversations.

but then there's the violence. we're usually not that concerned with violence, but total recall goes far beyond what i remembered and is truly hardcore. gratuitous and extreme.

it's a phenomenal movie, really fun, full of iconic moments and with lots to think about, but i do wish we'd waited a few more years.

i put mr smear to bed afterwards; he wasn't that bothered by the sex and violence, but the mutants in the movie freaked him out 🙄