diagnostics

i've just gotten up, after going back to bed post-breakfast. the two and a half hours spent not sleeping, but pseudo-dreaming, were absolutely crucial - i feel like my brain's had a chance to relax and iron out some of the kinks of the week... weeks... months gone by, heck, i just realized now that switzerland was only a month ago and it feels like a lifetime has passed.

this past week has been badly run, in the sense that i've achieved much less at work than i'd have liked (and i'm still not done) and i've done practically nothing to advance my papers that are due by the end of july.

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thursday:

i woke up to my alarm informing me that i'd forgotten about a meeting with a professor... i had an hour to get there, and my head and stomache were spinning and i barely had the energy to perambulate. the meeting was a pleasure nonetheless, and then i was off to work.

i've touted the wonders of the new azure upgrade, but there's a problem. and it's the same old problem with microsoft. they've built diagnostics integrated into the platform, but they've documented it badly and by the time i'd figured out which changes to make to take advantage of it, it was late to discover that the features don't work reliably.

the boss has been in a hurry to have this project complete for well over a month now, and i suspect that if we'd built a non-cloud system from scratch we'd have had an operational and more stable system up and running ages ago. that's really sad.

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the day ended with a headache, induced by a co-worker who's joining my team of one. his attitude really upset me, both towards the system and towards me: he's arrogant and sarcastic, he doesn't give a shit about correctness and when i tried to explain to him that i'm happy to go with his style if he can justify it he turned passive-aggressive. i almost threw my toys out the cot, but in the heat of my frustration i explained to him that my job at that moment was to help him and i wasn't going to stop just because he was being an aggressive douchebag.

i'm not sure, at the end of the day, how the code's going to fair; on the other hand, i'm not willing to take responsibility for any damage he does. by the time i'd arrived home, i'd had enough opportunity to reflect on his suggestions and i'm not sure he's correct. he wants the code to be so generic that you don't have to know what you're doing in order to modify it, and that's a fine ideal except that i want code that uses meaningful variables so that it tells you what's going on.

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we watched hugo, and then went to bed. it's an absolutely magnificent movie in spite of jude law, and forms a beautiful and fascinating tribute. i was only vaguely familiar with georges méliès, and hugo drives home just how intensely brilliant the man was.

it was upon falling asleep that i was inspired to write my own diagnostics instead... in the morning...

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yesterday:

i got a good hour's work in before pg and i went off to celebrate her nephews' circumcisions. it was the first time that i've met her grandmother - long story - and also the first time that i've been entrusted with holding the kids. amusingly, everyone was impressed at how naturally i did so. i guess i'm sensitive about necks and heads because of my own issues.

i was reminded of freud's screen memories: notice how you don't photograph the circumcision itself, but rather the before and after pics? you know it's a circumcision, but even though that's what you're documenting it's the last thing you actually want to see. the same goes for childbirth.

after far too much cake and apple pie, we slogged back home through the furnace that is israeli summer. the rest of the afternoon was spent manipulating and debugging my new diagnostics, eventually coming to the conclusion that azure's table storage is unreliable.

microsoft: you have given us simple, practical tools but with no documentation and pathetic error reporting. well done :/

due to my working until the very last minute, i was in a hurry to buy something for my cousins. my take on the weirdness of purchasing alcohol:
you're damned if you don't, but if you don't know anything about wine then you risk buying an embarrassingly inappropriate bottle. and last minute whiskey is a terrible idea, both in terms of cost and quality.

i eventually went empty-handed :(
i'm very glad nobody seems to care :)

on the drive there i had a long talk with her - it appears that she's really chilled out since she got married. i'm glad things have finally normalized between us. i might have said this before.

the evening was great, with excessive consumption of juicy steaks and delicious salads and vegetables. what was even greater was reconnecting with a cousin i haven't seen since i was a little kid, and aside from beginning to catch up i enjoyed meeting her husband and their two super-cute kids. i came back home with them, discovering that i have much to learn about conversing with five year-olds.

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right. it's lunch and work-time.