the forest for the tree

my mantra for the last week: if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, did it actually fall? in software, the answer is "no". if you've built an amazingly useful tool and you don't tell anyone about it, you may as well not have wasted your time.

last friday:

another good night's sleep and waking up to wonderful, cool weather

money and painting and pregnancy: i feel like we should be prioritizing food, healthcare and diapers over our walls looking amazing, but i guess the idea of financial responsibility is less powerful than hormonal nesting requirements. keeping my mouth shut through an irrational rant made me feel like i understand why married men age faster.

a day full of other people's problems. lots of reviewing, debating, explaining; getting to the end tremendously tired and having a hard time focusing, then spending an hour just logging my hours. at least there was an interesting break to chat with one of my old teammates about children

our boy's godmother's wedding gift of tons of baby equipment

remembering yael deckelbaum

funny people, still hysterical forty years later

house centipedes are freaky

saturday:

not much sleep, ipad frustrations and a little tekken before heading out with ratatat's mind control device (neckbrace) in my head. successful shopping but returning irritable and not in the right frame of mind for painting prep

when a paint product has two values that are both colours - the colour and the finish - it would be nice if they could be labelled as such so that us laypeople don't have to make complete asses of ourselves.

four hours of painting, then a few hours tuning out to arrow and getting to bed reasonably early

sunday:

how to make me lose my shit: send me off to shop for things i'm not familiar with and the store doesn't stock when there's time pressure and the staff don't know how to speak english

my brother-in-law is so tall he can paint up to the ceiling without a roller extension. a good starting pace, then a quick run to home depot and subway, then an afternoon of painting by myself (and doing a passable job).

learning that my ex-brother-in-law just passed away, not feeling much other than sorry for how much damage he did to my sister and their kids. it fascinates me that he's the only real alcoholic i've known, and until the shit hit the fan i had absolutely no clue.

walking out into hot, humid and rainy weather: my three most hated kinds. our iga, after a month of us asking that they restock an item in apricot flavour, finally restocked in blueberry flavour. i wanted to punch somebody, and sought out a manager who promptly ignored me and walked away. we wouldn't shop there if we had a choice... just like everyone else in the area.

gd's friends coming over to help us consume some of the wine horseman felt obliged to gift us; gd's dinner was awesome but she got pretty tired pretty soon after we finished eating

going to bed in an intense thunderstorm, but (mysteriously) no rain entering our open windows...

monday:

saskatoon smoker adventure dream

waking up to money troubles, looming tax filing, old iphone recycling prep

a long workday being forced to micromanage my junior. half an hour of shit-eating for following my managers' instructions about delegation, followed by an evaluation where my managers managed to surprise me by just how much i've disappointed them; not technically, where i score full marks, but in terms of project management and leadership skills. after six painful points i lost all interest in continuing, i'm not going to learn on the job with major challenges in addition to looming deadlines and babysitting troublesome juniors with no change in compensation which isn't really sufficient to cover the three of us anyway. they can find another sucker, i'm going to stick to what i'm good at.

lots of beers and shadowrun (sixth world), which was a *lot* of fun.

tuesday:

two tasks checked off the list, one tax-related and one putting up clothing hooks. stepping out with two thoughts:

1. promoting someone to a leadership role in a hostile environment* with no prior training and no compensation is counterproductive. and if every lead you have quickly becomes disaffected, perhaps you should reevaluate your process.

* it's hostile to authority. my team is comprised of a bunch of fun people, but they're "b" players at best and they're not the type to want to improve

2. i've had a lot of opportunity for self-reflection these past weeks, in particular about my aspie-ness, and i couldn't be more grateful to have finally found a woman who not only loves me as much as i love her, but who has as much patience in her as she does fight.

a morning of making myself clear to my managers

a good run, fun pads with a coworker but i learned to a) bring gloves and b) remove my wedding ring. tungsten carbide is tougher than i am...

a long reassuring chat with my mom, a quicker one with my toronto cousin, and an evening filled with the joy of discovering that our team's "star" who i was forced to delegate to / back off from completely fucked up the simplest of designs and i need to rewrite the damned thing.

the man on the metro guzzling down fast food: dropping a french fry on the dirty seat next to him and shovelling it into his mouth without hesitation

coming home furious at being completely drenched on my way home from the supermarket after having been blown away by an incredible sunset on my way there, spending the evening recovering with a beer and an honest liar

yesterday:

struggling to get out of bed, coffee with gd and my mom and figuring out circumcision stuff, receiving an email from pg informing me that i now have to cancel my israeli social security in a hurry

my manager's enthusiasm over two of my referrals

waiting until 2pm to call the embassy only to have them repeatedly put the phone down on me

a long, disconnected day switching from urgent project items to urgent client problems that left me scratching my head for hours over code that is the exact opposite of "optimized".

leaving at 8pm after investing time in configuring a code sniffer

second-hand pain from gd: of all the rough shit we've had to deal with, the final stage of pregnancy is the hardest

it's definitely time for a modernized version of labyrinth

today so far:

going to bed late, waking up early

the cleaning lady arriving with a huge bag of goodies for our child