throttled

wednesday and thursday were full of technological failures, on friday morning i spent hours trying to get hold of telkom to sort out our internet and eventually lost patience and decided to shut down my service and move to a different provider. it was during this process that i learned that telkom had been sending sms warnings to our router that they were going to throttle our account.

a) not a helpful way to communicate.

b) i have no way of knowing *why* they're throttling us, and there's literally nobody to speak to - telkom's support lines were completely unavailable.

hopefully the throttling will be reset at midnight tonight as it's the beginning of a new month, and then we're hoping to get the new router and SIM by the end of next week. once we've established that works, then it'll be through telkom's hoops to cancel our account - i'm expecting a struggle.

i did get some work done on friday, albeit not very much. i was very glad to sign off at 5pm, have a drink and zone out for shabbat.

...

yesterday was my mother's birthday. the celebrations were fun, mr smear was really funny (can't keep a secret), and that's in spite of the fact that my mom and i went grocery shopping in the middle of the weekend, the best time to see crushes of useless people.

mr smear and i played a lot of lego: harry potter yesterday. he played about five hours today. i'd be concerned but i'll be damned if it's not teaching him to read, and his problem solving skills have been dramatically improving.

i watched a "live" steampunk production of a midsummer night's dream by an amateur english troupe last night. it wasn't actually live, it wasn't steampunk. some of the acting was alright. there were tech-fails aplenty. but overall, it was an inspirational attempt, even if most of the inspiration was generated by train-wreck moments.

also, all the power in the cbd went out last night with no warning. kinda worrying.

...

mr smear and i got up early this morning, he played lego: harry potter for the first five hours and then gd took him to the waterfront with my mom for his first proper outing since mid-march. i spent the entire day trying to solve the problem of integrating aws' cdk and sam tools for local development; if you can't explain something in simple terms, you don't understand it, and i do *not* understand how to get all these things playing nicely together.

what i finally accomplished a short while ago is using a cdk-synthesized template to create tables on a docker-contained instance of dynamodb-local and providing a reasonable useful interface for recreating those tables on the fly. the next step is getting lambda functions to point to that container when invoked locally with sam while also performing correctly when deployed in the cloud.

now to get my head out of the cloud (had to) and do the regular school-night evening routine.

poor taste

problems with working from home during lockdown #5734983: i was in a meeting this morning, my boss is working on a python project and gd overheard me say something to him that included "if you're fiddling with your package...". i realized as soon as the words were out of my mouth that that was NOT the appropriate phrase, but i managed to shake it off and move on, and my boss and coworker on the call didn't seem to notice so i chalked that up to their being german - i mean that in the sense that the phrase probably doesn't translate.

but gd heard. and gd began giggling uncontrollably and loudly, and i - in the middle of a very serious discussion - had to move my meeting to a different room with my boss and coworker laughing at me cry-laughing hysterically until i could get a hold of myself.

###

i came up with an original joke today:

A man dies, but has no recollection of his last moments. Death greets him with a television screen and a box of tissues and says "I want you to come to your own conclusions".

###

unexpected banking experiences:

1. on my way to the bank to close my account, it suddenly occurred to me that i might have more money that i hadn't transferred, and i did. so i transferred the paltry sum, then purchased R900's worth of solidarity fund vouchers with my non-transferable ebucks. having emptied my account, i was then informed that i couldn't close it without paying the (unlisted) outstanding account fee. it was R30. i NEVER have cash on me, but in a flash of desperate inspiration i checked my wallet and found R40.

2. i never thought i'd enter a bank wearing a mask and feel like i was being robbed.

3. i walked out of the bank and attracted the attention of a man lurking between shops.

"hey, big man, you look pissed"

"yeah, i've just been robbed by the bank"

"robbed by who?!"

"the bank. they rob everybody."

he tried to sell me ecstasy and marijuana. we're still in level 4 lockdown until next week, but i'll be damned if that's not "essential services" in these trying times...

thursday already?

the week's been a rush. even the good parts have been exhausting. it's been half days work-wise, full days of everything else. the biggest highlight of my work week so far was today - two meetings in which i managed to redirect development efforts with buy-in from my peers, and an invitation from my boss to work on a project that i'd be only too happy to.

today's drama: my old bank wasting my time unashamedly, to the point where i told the cashier to destroy my card before withdrawing all my cash, and now i've got to get them to close the account which i assume will be a story. that's the second bank that's burned me since we've arrived.

i spent sunday setting up a project for aws deployment, which was mostly successful but i ran into some issues. when i checked in with our resident expert the next day, i was not as surprised as i should be to learn about the existing packages that do what i need which are inexplicably hard to find out about. now that i've played around with them - sam and cdk are good solutions - my next step is figuring out how to use them together. and then, if i'm lucky, i'll be able to actually Do The Thing because the architecture and the code itself were definitely, definitely the easy part.

apparently my back's in better shape since i started rounding my shoulders, the physio's happy with the improvement. what i'm not happy with is that i've noticed that since the lockdown began my legs have been shrinking again...

games and cloud

yesterday i stated that the paw patrol game was worth every penny... this morning made me change my mind. by the fifth hour mr smear had completed all the missions, been awarded most of the badges and was totally bored - i've never seen him bored by an expensive game before, it was very disappointing.

lego harry potter, on the other hand, is brilliant - we played together yesterday (he really doesn't *get* how to use arrow keys properly), i found the puzzles entertaining and challenging and he loved just wandering around randomly or watching me play.

gd's big discovery yesterday was that our cousin's amazing pumpkin pie isn't vegan. i think it's even more disappointing when it's an intelligent person who forgets that eggs don't grow in the ground...

shadowslight and i played thunderstone last night, just the two of us, and it was the first time i've ever played with traps. and i got hurt by them, big time. i made a few mistakes but overall i played well enough and had fun.

...

i have spent the vast majority of today setting up a project that allows me to locally test lambda functions using dynamodb, and i'm perpetually shocked that i haven't been able to find any guides or projects online to doing things as simply as what i've arranged. i'm *this close* to getting my sample function up and running (i ran into an IAM issue after sorting out all the other bits and pieces), and then my next step is to create a separate repo so that others can Do The Thing without the headache and hassle i've been stumped by for the past couple of weeks.

lekker vegan for dinner was a great idea. a hot bath was a great idea. the 2014 teenage mutant ninja turtles movie is becoming a family favourite.

what about bob? i found the characters so distastefully unfunny that after half an hour i had to call it quits.

calm down

it's mid-saturday now, and to be honest i haven't really worked since wednesday. i went to bed so late on thursday night that i didn't take mr smear outside for his daily yard time, and my biggest achievement of the day was posting the gif i made.

not to suggest that i'm working now - it is the sabbath, after all. it's just that the past day has been a bit of a blur. is it because i'm only having a coffee a day? is it because my neck's been really sore and i'm not comfortable working anywhere in the apartment at this point? am i still slightly foggy from last week's procedure? i am feeling much better, at least.

the temple service last night was better than usual, and we enjoyed video-conference kiddush and dinner with some friends before settling in to a couple of episodes of gargoyles and bedtime. we're getting used to bedtime reading with my mom using caribu, they've got great books and the experience is... usable.

i passed out immediately after putting mr smear to bed, woke up a couple of hours later and decided to stay down. i definitely felt better for it this morning.

mr smear and i took a walk to grumpy & runt, picked up a couple of doughnuts and sat at a bench outside making a complete mess eating them. it was one of those very rare moments for which i'm gushingly grateful.

my mom arrived MUCH sooner than expected with my upgraded machine, and mr smear has spent the last couple of hours playing the paw patrol game we bought so many weeks ago - worth every penny! in particular because he could play over *there* while i captioned a comic page, went through reviews of a piece i submitted to my creative writing group last week, bought tickets to next week's live online steampunk production of a midsummer night's dream, donated to support a fight against our government's tyranny, and was generally distracted by Random Things.

it's been a good saturday, so far. except for the bit where i learned that a good friend was robbed at gunpoint this morning. another not-so-gentle reminder that it's best if we go live somewhere else.

holiday

was it a day off? not intentionally. i spent the majority of my morning dealing with various government agencies and then the afternoon setting up my mom's windows machine (which i'm effectively buying from her) so that i could complete a form for my new bank which is behaving badly (okay, and also so that i could set mr smear up with the paw patrol game). that took forever, and eventually i realized that it's got considerably less memory than we thought, so we need to sort that out.

i ran out so quickly to pick up our special delivery that i forgot to put on a mask. so much for not attracting attention... 

i spent the evening - after another pleasant bedtime - turning the pictures urchin took of me once upon a decade ago into a stop-motion animation. my hands are stiff from drawing on a touchpad but i'm as happy with the result as i could be considering we didn't know what we were doing and it ends rather abruptly. although that could well just be because it's been so long that i couldn't remember precisely what it was i wanted to do in the first place :P

clearer

yesterday morning began with a pickup of hebrew children's books across the road from a couple of soldiers who either didn't notice or didn't care, so we were glad for that. i had one main job to do, and my work day involved a variety of tasks distracting me from that one thing until i was totally run down and unfocused... and then i realized that i didn't know if my mother had managed to pick up mr smear's school pack. i walked most of the way there before she called to say she'd got it, so the mission became one of a pleasant exercise and giving away a bunch of energy bars to random beggars. i thought i'd treat myself to donuts on the way home but they were sold out.

i arrived home in time to let the physio in, while she treated gd i taught mr smear some boxing and kicking, which was fun. then it was my turn, and after a quick examination she informed me that i'e got to re-learn how to stand and walk - i've been doing it very wrong. she was horrified by how stiff my neck and lower back were, and spent the rest of my session hurting me.

after dinner / shower / putting mr smear to bed early, i went straight to bed myself (around 8.30pm), zero energy to do any of the things i'd expected to.

i slept well for the first few hours, then woke up feeling bruised, sore and uncomfortable. i feel like i barely slept the rest of the night. 

another early morning walk with mr smear, this morning he karen'd out over some markings on the pavement then became distressed when he saw the ice cream shop closed - i feel like this is the first time he's really registered what lockdown means.

i was pretty productive work-wise today, nystire providing a welcome distraction in the morning, and the afternoon not being quite as mind-numbing as some of the previous days.

dinner and gargoyles, shower, a failed attempt at reading with my mom, and then a miraculous moment reading a book about a sleep fairy which had mr smear relax and drop off in the span of about two pages!

lots of paying bills and cleaning my desk this evening, followed by an episode of rick and morty and now, finally, after a long posting from my phone, going to bed. 

the dream

i woke up this morning with my heart beating in my throat from a particularly vivid dream: i managed to convince the commander of the space teams to let me switch from the ground forces moments before the city came under attack. our position was on an enormous concrete rooftop far beneath a massive bridge, and we watched as gigantic battlemechs in decepticon livery came over the distant mountain accompanied by lines of artillery and infantry. we were amazed to discover that we had our own 'mechs, one hiding behind a skyscraper just in front of us, and then suddenly the battle was on and we witnessed it close in frighteningly quickly. i suddenly realized that i only had a single ammo clip and there was a distinct possibility of being flanked.

i semi-awoke just after getting the magazine in and realizing that i was seriously out of practice, and spent the remainder of the half-asleep state contemplating how the space teams should have been launched immediately before the fireworks started. anyway, the scale of the battle was mind-boggling.

...

i'm feeling much less foggy today, but still foggy and i felt dazed until mid-afternoon. i spent the day working on things that were much more interesting than what i got stuck with the past couple of weeks, and i was inspired by a guy i studied with in tel aviv to get hold of the first season of gargoyles so we all enjoyed the introductory episodes.

i finally finished my workday around 10.30, and i'm feeling overwhelmed by the stack of todos that just keeps growing with more and more urgent stuff. i'm freaking TIRED, man. i even missed a community meeting this evening and only realized two hours later. three different entities want me to go out and pick up loads of heavy items to carry home when i don't have a car and we're not allowed out for non-essential travel anyway.

wtf.

foggy

i underwent a minor procedure on friday afternoon, the sedation included opioids. the first four or five hours afterwards were horrible, but i've been feeling alright since. except for the brain fog, i'm really not very functional right now.

it's been almost two weeks since i last posted? these past few weeks have been mad, the last one particularly frustrating with a lot of work hours being sunk into a project that's past deadline and we still haven't ironed out all the kinks. it's a devops project, and while i appreciate that it's all related and a real part of my job i'm *so* over fiddling with shit that really should just work.

mr smear update: some wins, some losses, mostly okay. we've all played through the story mode of little big planet, which just got better and better, crazier and crazier, and last night we finished the harry potter movies. i sobbed uncontrollably at the end, for two reasons in particular: the first, neville longbottom growing into such a Big Damned Hero, and the second, the naming of harry's child. *all* the feels.

gd's been having a really rough time, and she's panicking more and more about the political situation which has continued its relentless descent into comically villainous madness. the ANC have taken the pandemic as an opportunity to introduce a traditional african dictatorship, and while there have been some legal attempts to rein them in nobody knows how far things are going to go. people are starving, for the first time in decades kids are showing up at hospitals with malnutrition, and the only acquiescence to rationality has been that on thursday they finally allowed all e-commerce to operate instead of just their arbitrarily selected product categories.

it doesn't help that sorting out our documentation is a bureaucratic mess, and we're fortunate enough to have places to run to. and then our dishwasher packed up, which significantly added to our stress levels, but luckily a technician made it through yesterday and we seem to be okay again.

i'm tired, i'm going for a nap.

EDIT: oh! and i read infinite vacation this week, it inspired me to read stuff i actually enjoy because the last book has been dragging for months and i should've quit it a long time ago. 

good start

i've been tired the past couple of days, i'm feeling like i need a vacation... i'm pretty sure everyone is, at this point.

highlights from the past two days:

1. i've just published a new version of my simple-free-encryption-tool that includes signature handling, and i'm stunned by how hard it was to find gather all the bits and pieces i needed to get it working for all three cases. considering all the open issues and forum posts i've encountered, i'm pretty sure i'm not the only one who needs this.

2. donuts! vegan cinnamon donuts from the deli next door, i know i shouldn't have gotten a whole box but there're only two left for tomorrow anyway...

3. the plumbers finally came in, we're lucky we insisted because it turns out the drip tray they installed was broken...

4. some minor work successes, even though it's another two half-days in a row

5. we're all enjoying the harry potter movies. no, they're nowhere near as good as the books, but they're still excellent in their own right.

right, now to see who's going to be the most uncomfortable about going out in the early morning. mr smear will probably fight to stay inside, but he'll probably enjoy it more once we've walked out the door.

6-9

oh! i almost forgot, our ingenious government has decided that we can go outside for exercise, but only between 6 and 9am every morning. not only is that utterly counter-productive (everyone's out at the same time), but it's still dark at 6am and it's freaking hard getting my kid out the house that early. it's tough enough for ME to get out that early. i want to smack everyone responsible in the mouth. with a brick. 

time warp

it's sunday night / 00.30 on a monday morning, i've just finished a game of thunderstone with shadowslight and vfmp, another week's calendar pages have flitted by and the weekend flew past even faster.

i managed to last week's money stuff sorted out, there're still a couple of minor things to be taken care of but things are generally feeling positive.

we had haircuts this week: gd cut mine, and then her own. i've uninstalled bacterial takeover again, it's a dangerous waste of time...

another sonnetcomix page is up!

it was a weekend of harry potter (movies 2, 3 and the beginning of 4), two bedtimes in a row have been chapters from the magician's nephew, and mr smear (with one or the other of us) has spent a lot of time doing pretty cool things on little big planet. one remarkable moment: we haven't played it in months (at least), and when i arrived at the grappling hook level he yelled "go over there! go get the grappling hook!"

"grappling hook" is not a term we throw around in the household, how the $#@! he remembered that word or where i was going to find it just blows my mind.

otherwise, i've spent a fair amount of time looking into various cloud solutions for my bank card application, it was really hard choosing a platform and it's a bit frustrating that i have to get the hang of managing the component services manually before i'll know what i need to be able to put together infrastructure-as-code scripts.

anyways.

the last work-week was broken again, but one thing stood out: i hurriedly put together a presentation on security and customer privacy that i felt was trash, and it was received surprisingly enthusiastically. then i spent hours reviewing code and had a lot of criticism, which felt pretty good considering that it was code by the guy who's been giving me a relatively hard time and i got to feel like i'm a bit more on an equal footing.

hopefully this next week will be more constructive.