lower

 i woke up yesterday morning really bugged by the shell behaviour from thursday that threw me off, and i set about writing up an article about it. in order to write the article, i put together a script to showcase the offending behaviour... and unlike on thursday, it worked the way it should have.

this sent me into a panicked "i have to test this in my work environment and fix everything before my code's reviewed" mode, so that's how i spent the next hour or two. i felt so dumb, having realized that whatever it was that hadn't worked must have been a combination of different things, and just as dumb for having done my testing in a suboptimal way.

and aside from the sheepishness, i felt completely burned out. i've been feeling this for a while - it's been years since i was enthusiastic enough about what i'm doing to care enough about "diving deep" and investing time. everything's always under artificial time pressure. very little of what i do is stuff that's actually exciting, most of it's made up of things that i inherit because nobody else wants anything to do with them either.

so that was how yesterday started.

mr smear had two playdates yesterday, the first was a rip-roaring success with an english speaking friend, and another a partial success with a hebrew-speaking one. i say "partial" because it started and ended well, and i was super proud hearing mr smear "breaking his teeth" and having mini-conversations in hebrew! but at some point the two of them were playing rayman: legends together and mr smear went into griefer mode, gd and i were mortified and had to get involved.

not cool.

...

yesterday was not october 31st, but our neighbourhood celebrated halloween anyway. gd took mr smear out trick-or-treating with some friends, and they had an amazing time right until one of the houses included two human jump-scares that absolutely terrified him. in the meanwhile, i stayed home, dressed up with two giant bowls of candy, but nobody came. not one person. i don't know if it's because our building is out of everyone's way, or because our neighbours closed the doors a couple of time - which was totally our fault for not warning everyone :(

i watched an episode or two of she-hulk while waiting. it's entertaining, but my gods: its feminism is about as subtle as a brick to the teeth and it really detracts from the experience.

...

this morning has been a gaming morning with mr smear. so far: limbo,  readyset heroes, thomas was alone, hollow night, and currently tron run/r. this ps plus subscription does have value. (it's also how we discovered the ffvii remake and the oddworld: new 'n' tasty! remake of abe's oddysee).