blistered

today... was really tough. it was harsh and tense and frustrating, so much so that a couple of times i found myself jumping out of my seat in case i literally smashed a fist through my beautiful monitor at work...

breakfast with my aussie cousin was a bit weird, because they were packing and the kids were in serious whinge mode. i wouldn't have minded if we weren't in a coffee shop - but these parents at least make an effort to keep them calm. unlike the patrons i'm used to.

after that i went to the post office, which was a madhouse. the numbers weren't working and the teller couldn't give a crap, just sitting there and waiting for people to approach her. seeing as we were all holding on to our numbers... apparently, none of us had anything better to do. i sometimes wonder... if *i* had a job as demanding as a post-office teller, would i be as friendly and considerate of my customers? do they send these people to special training to turn them into such inconsiderate bastards?

i grabbed my copy of bizarro heroes to the bus stop. [i'm punting him because he's funny, clever, and kind of needs the sales boost]

i looked at my watch just before i got there, and it was 11.15am. by the time i walked into the office it was 1.30pm. i don't know what the hell all the traffic was about, but it was nuts from the centre of tel aviv all the way to herzeliya. more convincing evidence that human beings (and israelis in particular) shouldn't be allowed to drive cars.

the sweltering heat didn't make the travelling any more comfortable.

i spent two hours going crazy over github: everyone uses it, it's widely touted as being a best-of-breed, and yet the forums are filled with people like me discovering that some of the fundamental things just aren't there. or don't work properly. after about two hours i gave up, because i only had two more hours to go before i had to be on my way to a meeting.

bonus motivation: once again, trouble with my paycheck :/

i began carefully putting my integration plan into effect - it was a complex plan, because i had to modify a lot of sensitive and fragile production procedures. the extra caution was warranted, because i *did* miss things in my planning phase... and those things made me check and re-check that everything was functional at every stage. so this took a long time, and was very tense, and i was not impressed when my internet connection suddenly died (and only mine) and wouldn't come back without a restart. a number of development environments and remote desktops were behaving badly too, lagging and so on, and the combination of it all was driving me demented!

finally, at 6pm - the time i had to leave - i uploaded my worker role to the azure platform and set it in motion. it registered just fine... and then nothing happened. i had no time to debug, and it cost me fifteen minutes to determine that it really wasn't working and that everything else was fine; then another fifteen minutes to explain (not very calmly) to the boss that i had to go and that we weren't finished yet.

just then dropbox's service went down. convinced that my computer was continuing to harrass me, i tried restarting the application multiple times before giving up and restarting the computer.

all this was the universe's way of making damned sure that i'd be late for my meeting. i arrived twenty minutes late, with a desperate need to pee, and drink alcohol, and not necessarily not at the same time. once i got settled and we'd ordered the world began to make a bit of sense. at least until my soup arrived, when i scalded my lips and tongue (i'm right now trying to avoid anything like teeth contacting the inside of my lips, and failing miserably).

the meeting was intriguing.

after dinner, i bussed home to make a desperate attempt to debug before going rollerblading... we were almost late, but in spite of badly behaving software (at home? at work wasn't enough?!) i managed to find the problem and get things up and running.

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the rollerblading route was fantastic.

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sunday:

the morning was great until pg and i had a tiff that came out of nowhere and was really silly. that feeling bled into a long*, ugly day at work building an unrelated worker role because of some service issues instead of deploying the one i'd been constructing all weekend; it finally went away when i got back home to watch the new star trek movie with pg (who hadn't seen it). i'd forgotten how much i'd enjoyed it!

* essentially a 9 to 5, only shifted three hours

in the middle of the night i found myself with a new recruit (he's going to build one of my projects for me while i mentor him) and finally getting around to scripting the comics. i got a first draft of half an episode done before finally hitting the sack at five in the morning...

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monday:

... and waking up at 10am with pg because i had Stuff to do. i began by firing off my cv to a number of companies and getting in touch with an important person i got excited about a month and a half ago (he got back to me later in the day, on a positive note), then went off to work.

instead of spending the two hours at work integrating (the stuff i did today - good thing i didn't, in retrospect) i spent it "collaborating" with my new team-mate. at least we're finally turning the same pages.

the heat was oppressing and the sunlight was painful, so leaving the air-conditioned office to meet pg at the cinemateque was a crazy thing to do. even crazier? watching redline on the big screen! it's amazing. and apparently i didn't miss much even though i had trouble reading the hebrew subtitles :P

i had a bit of a narcoleptic episode in the middle of it though... haven't suffered that in a while.

while still mind-blown when we walked out, the boss called to describe a new customer that required urgent patches to be made to one of our critical systems. the man just doesn't learn :(

after being struck by the sudden, terrifying realization that i have four weeks to put together four papers and no direction, i took a short nap, quaffed an energy drink, plugged in my headphones and zombies, ran!. i'm now convinced that it was a worthy purchase, but i sent them an email to tell them that their pricing is stupid.

i also asked them about the zombie pursuits. they kind of *forgot* to let us know that the zombies are always behind us, and that evading them demands increasing one's previous thirty seconds' pace by 20%. now that i'm armed with that data, i don't need to wonder if i'm running right into the horde :S

either way, their detailed breakdown of each run is excellent.

i spent the evening coaching my new recruit, animus, and getting some of the teamwork work done. i tried going to bed early, but it was too hot to sleep. i turned on the air-conditioner and that only helped a little... i ended up lying in bed, huddled over my iphone scribbling notes about paper topics. at least it was something productive, the rest of the time until i finally passed out at 5am was spent tossing, turning, getting up every so often to stretch my legs...

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this month's wired makes a number of strong cases for ridding ourselves of regulating bodies. in particular, the interview with peter diamandis. in case you're not planning on reading it, here's the quote of the day [select the text in order to read it, i just didn't want to spoil it for anyone who clicks the link]:

how do you maintain your optimism amid the deadening barrage of bad news from around the globe?

diamandis: our brains are wired to look for negative information. the amygdala is the danger center. our senses are routed through it before they get to the cortex. when we heard a rustle in the branches, we thought tiger, not wind. that’s why, in the news, if it bleeds it leads. but the facts are absolutely clear. the world is getting better at an extraordinary rate. the technologies available for solving problems are becoming more powerful and empowering more people. will there be problems? disasters? pandemics? terrorist attacks? of course. but humanity picks up and keeps moving. in this country, lifespans nearly doubled in the last century. per capita income more than tripled, and the cost of food, energy, transportation, and communications have dropped exponentially. that’s my source of optimism. that and a realization i made early on that if there’s a problem, i’m going to solve it. once you see the world that way, it’s a different place.