rock on!

örmagörd! gonna see foo fighters in cape town (^_^)

freakin' AWESOME.

fly-by

monday:

the very moment that i flopped into bed after finally getting through a weekend of illness was the moment that the universe decided that it was my turn to feel nausea.

have i mentioned my ability to purge at will? i was shocked at how much it took but i soon returned to bed feeling considerably better and hoping that it wasn't the start of another story.

...

an incredibly difficult morning to get out of bed to, but a beautiful wakeup nonetheless

dredd soundtrack leading to gd rewatching the movie

a pleasant and productive morning

meeting of awkward putting me and big junior on the same page: there is a gorilla in our midst

being the jew in charge of the team's christmas tree was odd

gd teasing me with scans of her illustrations during the day - things are coming along!

hours more debugging live, finding even more crazy bugs that shouldn't have made it through qa, eventually leaving and continuing to test using my phone until getting halfway to the supermarket and uncovering a huge issue

...

a long night of war hats and comic strip production

tuesday:

late start but a good one

finally getting the job done

league of legends introduction game

generally positive afternoon

killer kickboxing and ice cold showers

first comic published! (see previous post)

wednesday:

tough getting up, but a great morning nonetheless

deployments, rollbacks and unchartered territories

counterstrike fun... and a surprisingly well-times steam sale on the complete cs pack!

a whatever afternoon, aside from learning that ffvi for ios is an excellent investment to take on the plane with me alongside perdido street station

good boxing, nutrition education preaching

pizza and jodorowsky's dune: beautiful, magnificent, utterly disappointing. horrifying to hear him speak of marriage as rape.

thursday:

physically exhausted.

it's ALIVE!!!

gd and i have finally turned our first comic loose: adam 'n ari. it's just a first step, but it's an exciting one!

so much for anonymity...

somewhat funny

last year i helped kickstart a documentary on the boundaries of humour by mike celestino called that's not funny. we finally got to watch it tonight, and i'm super pleased that it's been made and hopeful that lots of people will be exposed to it!

summarizing

dredd on netflix! it was awesomely dredd. hellboy after that was a bit of a let-down. aside from a shopping run and food, today's been a day of comics, movies and games. i like this version of a winter weekend in. 

linkage

self-lacing! just ordered my pair :)

also very cool, but only makes my i'd-like-someone-else-to-buy-one-for-me list, is a swinging backpack

poo-powered buses ftw!

anonymous seizing kkk accounts is even more amusing in context.

breaking up the nsa does seem like a good idea.

programming sexism fail

here's wishing you vegan holiday treats

running out of chocolate does seem about as bad as zombies

i don't know if i agree with elon musk about a robot uprising, but we can only pray that he's wrong.

an emotion wheel?

designs for mental disorders

plasticine art

raw meat

an insurance company that i closed an account with about a year ago wants to refund me NIS 33 (about 8$), but can only do so by sending me a cheque. when i suggested a direct deposit or paypal seeing as i'm not in the country to either receive or deposit it, i was told that that's not possible. clearly because 2014.

i told the representative that she can keep the cheque herself. perhaps she can use it to buy herself something nice, in exchange for making me feel like my business was so greatly appreciated.

yesterday:

thursday is unavailable for streaming *anywhere*, so we rented peaceful warrior from itunes. i was skeptical at first but even the few obvious hollywood treatments couldn't take away from what is a wonderfully made, insightful and inspirational film.

galaxy quest and indian food
a night of web hosting fails
super meat boy and fez

sunday:

the second night seemed worse than the first and brought out all sorts of tensions. the morning's been okay, since deciding not to call an ambulance. i've just discovered that super meat boy was right, playing with a gamepad is far more rewarding (and far less strain on the wrists). it's only complicated to connect a ps3 control to a pc if you don't know to go directly to motioninjoy.com, install the latest version, and load the driver through the driver manager of the ds3 tool before connecting the device.

you're welcome.

crash

yesterday:

an excellent start to the morning, but my emotions still fragile enough to be damaged by one clearly unintentional expression

"even if i was in israel, i would find your refund in cheque form to be in bad taste"

my left knee's really hurting suddenly

extreme metro heat

frustrating morning work, thinking about gd and then getting a message to say she's in the hospital

three hours to hear we have gastro - i say "we" because it's highly contagious and we share everything... i told my manager i was on my way back and he told me to take the day off and stay with gd, so the two of us played crash bandicoot warped for a bit and then i did some emergency shopping

my little pony (fim), video game high school (the movie), more crash

today:

a long night of shared discomfort, eventually calming down. my first time taking care of a really sick partner. i seem to be in the clear, i hope i'm right

a slow start to the day with angry birds and crash, then investigating internet provider alternatives and going out on an electrolyte mission

down down up up left right

tuesday:

forgotten phone!

stunning sunny morning

in trouble for using the wrong uml tool at work, the right one being much easier

shadowrun returns intensity

long short afternoon

yoga chill

crap movie seats so skipped film, closed copper branch making it hard to enjoy a wonderful snowstorm 

p.m. perfection 

exhaustion but laundry

dr horrible's sing-along blog

wednesday:

explosions and sharp edges

shameful deployment fails

finishing shadowrun returns - EPIC base story!!! and now i can make my own?!

more deployment woes, but finally getting it right

boxing glove purchase fail, borrowing shitty ones that stained my forearms red

decent training

wintery shopping 

dinner and the rest of dr horrible's sing-along blog 

early bed

thursday:

naming animals: my depression. at least partially related to my unprofessional conduct last week. talking to my boss was helpful.

israel / media bias / isis sympathy and arguments on facebook

shameful copy paste errors of mine that somehow got through all our qa

boxing glove fail: round two, correction, with awkward sneaky sale skip

never-ending post-deployment fixes; everything's great except the status monitoring:S

hard kickboxing definitely necessary

plaster protecting my thumb coming off in the gym shower and re-slicing it while paying at the supermarket- very kind first aid much appreciated 

a night summarized by too much garlic in the soup, video games: the movie and angry birds. gd's more supportive of my gaming habits than i realized...

blizzard

it snowed the whole day. it was gorgeous, even if everything's a bit slushy now. there will be no more leaving the building without winter boots, he says, after realizing that the hard way.

the day was mostly hard work, with a longer-than-planned pause to get sucked in to shadowrun returns. i admit that i will be a little sad when i finish it. and that it will be a tough call between starting with something else or trying to buy or unlock new stories.

recuperation

feeling much better this morning 

shadowrun returns fantastic progress

haircuts and laying about

rushed p.m.

sharx pool is the shit!

vega's new protein bars are awesome!

p.m. again

shopping then frozen: meh. i don't get what all the fuss was about, and gd and i are both glad we didn't pay to see it on the big screen

suddenly very late to getting to bed

stuffed nose, stuffy, dull headache

wednesday:

nightmare: trying to escape from a mass slaughter by a general and his army when visiting friends living in an unnamed african country

weather on says "nice day" because of the temperature but i stepped out into rain

another demo fail, this time because of a bad preset

realizing that i'd managed ANOTHER GORRAM VIDEO RETURN FAIL

i shouldn't listen to awesome psytrance at work. it might make me want to not work.

we need a nap room, coffee didn't help
catching a bug during demo prep, magically figuring it out in time to make a smooth demo presentation
chilled distracted evening

solid boxing, way too bombed by the end to do little more than a third of the exercises

of course our coach will be fighting next door to my office when i'm out of the country! :S

the end of a good day spent relaxing

on landing on comets and just mayo lawsuits: fascinating news!
to quote zenstar: "we have landed a probe on a comet 500 million miles away using an orbit that took 10 years to intersect. can the planet just stop its infighting and bickering for a moment and maybe acknowledge that science does some amazing things. imagine what they could do with serious funding and backing."

post-boxing very sore deep sleep

thursday:

jamiroquai - runaway wakeup
laundry heap traversal algorithm differences
pickup artist disgust
street shopping!
beautiful morning

chilled start
still feeling the boxing
newk'd pushap lunch
brainslow exploration into supershitty code, learning that i can't focus on illegible code while listening to steel panther

unintentionally insulting big junior... it may have been shit when he inherited it, but.

not feeling kickboxing even though all prepared to go

dinner, les revenants, bed

yesterday:

family nightmares and somehow ending up negotiating with a very un-hagridy hagrid

soft attempt to uninsult big junior
jaw-breaking in a meeting

serious shadowrun returns ass-kickings that i had to work hard for, getting the theme music stuck in my head

snowstorm! brief but good

elaborately sharing a dyslexic moment with a co-worker... rather unprofessionally in all respects

hitting the gym with a sore arm and not much motivation other than "end this damned week", finishing feeling super strong after a grueling personal class

gd accidentally overmedicating, but quick resolution
absolute exhaustion, ordering indian and television

today:

zombie-state pre-wakeup
super late sleep, canada's smartest person dairy ad disappointment (it's really inappropriate that the dairy industry can push dairy as healthy)
shadowrun returns goodness
quick godmother chat
resting pre-poetry perk production with saga
heart not into anything right now

meeting gd to go out but returning home for a quiet night instead
watching neurons to nirvana: psychedelic medicines and then the first few episodes of neil degrasse tyson's cosmos: a spacetime odyssey was inspirational
i don't know why i watched an entire volume of red vs blue but i found it surprisingly amusing even though i was constantly conscious of the fact that i would never have found it funny if it was live acted

lessons learned

i don't know if my world-view is informed by my experience working with software or if it's the other way around, but the following i know to be true:

1. never do things just because that's the way they've always been done.

2. always leaves things in a better state than when you found / inherited them.

3. if things seem complicated, or they're not documented in an easy-to-read format, or nobody's willing to explain them to you... you're being fucked.

emergency linkage!

firstly, today: russell brand on florida's clampdown on being nice to the homeless

from this month's wired:
don't let uncle sam invade your devices
content moderation takes a toll on humans: surely they could - in most cases - employ techniques like pixellation and cartoonification to take the edge off? gods, what a horrible job.
cynical people seem smarter - put *that* cognitive bias in your pipe and smoke it.
brain/power is an exciting look at the near future of ai and transhumanism

hand-cranking your cellphone?

this relationship insight actually makes sense. although more in terms of the other way around: if the relationship is healthy, then the couple will do these.

and the rest for next time, i have to get to work.

futures

clinic visit, opportunity to finish this month's wired (so much good stuff!) and be informed that everything's fine 

salt and vinegar start

fms is an fms that protects against spaghetti code

pushap lunch

walmart run

videotron call hatred - i'm sorry, did you just inform me that you can't help me because you're a soulless automaton?

pistachios at the desk are a terrible idea, once you pop...

great meeting dry run and long-term strategy

mom chat and documentation duties

an artist i know invited me to a pro-palestinian rally where she'll be adding legitimacy to a cause she knows nothing about

and in a flash forced me back into politics i'm trying to avoid 

a good evening but no yoga, eating far too much good stuff

transcendence is conceptually brilliant but there's so much wrong with it that it left a bad taste in my mouth

the rest of yesterday

it was a good afternoon with a significantly lowered stress level, in particular because all the testing went smoothly

quick shopping, twice, and an evening of comics, indie game: the movie, shredding gd's old hard disk and strip search.

my 21 gunmen salute video is online*! it's also available on soundcloud.

* along with all the other performances from last weekend. it's a playlist. let it play!

it's been a good night's sleep and not a terrible garbage-day morning. it's been a real psychedelic rock morning because i've rescued all my ipod's music. may it continue to be... this kind of a day.

not exactly transcendental

saturday night:

early to bed with comixology shopping

1am rls

weird dreams

good slow morning

opening up a bank account online (well, mostly)

comic progress

stretching tingling

clinic visit fail

sukiyaki gluttony 

busy with chores and inappropriate behaviour modification

double shopping in cold weather

really feeling my abs and my lower back, walking in to sneaker pimps and incense and cooking smells for a bath

örmagörd gd's first soup (carrot, ginger, garlic, almond milk) was AMAZING.

saga awesome

the most (un)coordinated person i know

transcendence interrupted by quite the opposite

...

a good night's sleep, a good monday morning and not seeing the doctor because his hours start later than advertised 

weirdly comfortable cold weather 

excellent work pre-lunch

quiet

pleasant skate shop experience 

simple chores and returning home to spend way too long in a bad ergonomic position working on my twilio project to enable gd to send me  secure messages easily without a phone

it's been a week since the clock moved forward but today i feel jet-lagged 

p.m. and cancelling movie plans

deliver us from evil just took the genre to the next level: when i wasn't scared i was horrified

finishing strong

thursday:

weird morning, mostly good. in part from hearing that my mom's doing well, is finally ready to start dating again and the south african police have actually managed to find a couple of suspects (regarding the massive fraud / hack).

long, tough day, made tougher by my taking too long to get hold of the right tools for the job, made tougher by finally learning that my upgrades are performance killers, made tougher by IT [fine, that needs capitals] restrictions preventing my failsafes from working, made tougher by the production server dying on me at the same time as an old faithful and critical app died on me in an unrelated environment...

upsetting big junior during a code review and learning that he's "not interested in optimization" because he's got no experience with it :S

realizing on my way to training that i'm totally not prepared for friday's exam and deciding to forego. shopping and duolingo offline frustration (wasn't it supposed to do offline?)

great salad, washing machine DIDN'T make things red again, the returned is a super creepy series

yesterday:

bathroom space explosion 

meat market pharmacy experience

pocket dialling freakout for 15 minutes (apparently not charged, though)

rewriting smart logic to dumb it down

...

örmagörd the exam was horrible. again. and the woman in charge was a total bitch! again.

at least it snowed a little.

...

i did not know that pushap's meals include dessert. i did not know that they have a vegan dessert. i did not know that chickpea flour fudge is a thing.

i certainly didn't know that chickpea flour fudge is a wonderfully delicious thing.

...

thought for the day (fortunately not inspired by actual events): i have been on this earth almost thirty four years, and in that time i've learned that almost everyone, at some point or another, thinks to themselves "why couldn't that just have been a fart?"

the discovery that the biggest issue in my code was introduced by my manager, and the ensuing blazingly-fast and excellent performance made me want to jump and skip and dance and sing

fantastic boxing to finish the week; two of us put in charge for the final drills and receiving lots of gratitude from the guys i coached

today:

good wakeup, relaxed morning

clinic non-visit (i'll wait and see if my swollen gland is a serious problem or just a cold rather than wait two hours for nothing)

negative weather! excitement 

currently in starbucks waiting for the skate shop to open to see if they can sort out my bag...

peaks and troughs

deep sleep and epic dreams

slow wake with a stuffed nose and a hint of a temperature

a huge fight over the flu vaccine

good morning progress

good shadowrun returns progress 

manager meeting of the minds (not talking about big junior)

having actual production data led to insights that kept me in my chair until quite late

all my ipod music transferred well!

finishing the fisher king (amazing!) and eating too much pizza, gd poking me and making me laugh until it was literally too much for me to handle

early to bed, early to rise

french exam studying and pre-exam panic

braindead

good morning, drizzling aubût mission, comic scanning, introducing gd to another case solved

morning debugging

javascript asynchronous is SLOWER for filesystem calls... the bastards.

screwing up my first commit to master :$

"town hall" meeting boredom

fruit failure 

big system breakdown: staring at crazy things until i had the dumb and felt like my eyes should be bleeding

quick shopping

great dinner / ipod recovery

braindead movie watching and intense rls with exhaustion

the silliest bed-dressing

day one / t-32

a good night's sleep, feeling a little better about daylight savings.

french examiners changing the exam time at the last minute :(

to the man that coughed in the elevator without covering his mouth right onto my plate: #%!@ you.

gd messages about bonza and her invite to a game of gamers vs evil? sweet :)

friday's issues turned out to be a hardware problem...

my project is finally production worthy! or almost, there was some late afternoon weirdness...

... accompanied by feeling shitty. after work i went straight home and into bed for a few hours.

midnight dinner, some batman forever when i shouldn't have, the 100 looks pretty cool

keeping score

yesterday's blood donation was rejected because i was tested for hiv recently, even though there was no reason to suspect anything. it's weird living in a country where the act of being tested is cause for suspicion.

i did a walmart run - it's getting cold, fast - and shadowrun returns in the office before heading to godmother's for coffee and returning with a craving for indian.

pausing chasing amy to introduce gd to penny arcade: gamers vs evil and having her beat me. simultaneous play is pretty cool!

...

bnw and her husband separated? the more details we've heard the less likeable he's become...

bloody hell, totally forgot last night's washing :(

rls hitting hard 

disturbing horror dreams

a slow sunday morning of highs and general irritations

shopping meh but we did find gd an awesome winter coat

a too-short rest at home

headache and bellyache giving way to an excellent but short and intimate night of poetry

singing on the metro

camino mint chocolate feels just like peppermint crisp 

gd just finished drawing our first comic strip!

growing pains

bonza is simply an addictive kinda-crossword game

pre-coffee bad reaction

it's the people you can't be sure have dressed up that make halloween creepy

a day of caution, over-engineering, and getting everything working *except* the control interface :S

twenty minutes in line for a three-inch sub :/

booking a rental car for cape town next month ^_^

enough time worked this week to take a proper hour for shadowrun returns: i *did* die, and i *did* use the opportunity to start again. from a troll with a machete to an elf with an smg and a deck :)

boxing: the third day of intense training after a couple of weeks of nothing? wow. i had to be careful with my neck and lower back, but i still worked really hard and i was put in charge of a dude who i watched getting his nose bashed on wednesday night. i was amazed to discover he's only been boxing for a month! and i loved watching the lights go on when i explained technique to him.

after class north-me reported that his developers have been giving him shit.  i explained to him that he needs to use contract labour until he finds someone employable, and his acceptance test needs to be that he can read and understand the code himself. right now he's stuck with a prima-donna and non-operational code nobody else can work with...

shopping - and asking gd what she needed before forgetting it anyway :$ - dinner and a failed mission to find flight of the conchords online.

today:

i slept in because i can literally feel my body healing. i'm going to make breakfast, deliver gd hers, donate blood and pick up my halloween mask which i left at work. i have a feeling we're not going to go out tonight, but just in case...