ticking boxes

 this has been an intense week.

i'm still struggling with the post-nasal drip / horrible coughing. it's been relentless, for weeks. i'm so over this.

i didn't manage to get any rest on tuesday night, i just lay in bed miserably tired and wired until i had to get up in the morning. not wake up, mind, because i was still wired and didn't need any caffeine until wednesday afternoon - the trigger for that cup being desperation after an hour-long all-hands that i struggled to keep my eyes open for.

everyone left was in the office on wednesday, and the office had already taken on a completely different vibe. we're a tiny startup now, less than a company, and our department is now a team. it's a palpable difference, and it's bizarre.

yesterday, i was the only developer in the entire office for the first half of the day, and only a single coworker joined me for the second half. counting the product dude who's also a dev, there were three of us in the wide open open-space.

the morning hours were lonely.

my ex-team-lead-now-boss had forgotten that i have c# experience, so i volunteered to give him a hand with a .net bug-hunt and found myself with a new task. i'm not used to working with visual studio on a mac, which is weirdly different from the windows offering, and i'm not used to working on an x64 project with an arm64 computer, so it took a little while to get a handle on where everything is and running the tests.

it was late afternoon by the time i found *the* bug. which was just one amongst a bunch of others, but while i was trying to figure out what was broken and where (it actually looks like the code might be fine but the tests are badly-written) the product dude jumped in demanding that we release the fix urgently (on a thursday evening, which is a friday evening for the rest of the modern world) in time for a call with the complaining customer.

we assessed the risk, and pushed the button. and then i had to leave - taking some FOMO with me - to pick up training gear from scrapper before they leave for canada (tonight!). let me tell you, the update a bit later to say that we'd successfully solved the customers problem and delighted them with our performance was a fantastic start to the weekend!

also seeing scrapper and partner and picking up a whole box of awesome (if very dusty) stuff and just happening to be there when another friend of his explained that he'd take the bass guitar but wouldn't actually be able to do anything with it. so i returned home with a box of gear and comics and books, ate quickly, said goodnight to mr smear, and then went back for a guitar and amplifier and twenty minutes of tea and an interesting book club reading that i'd walked in on.

it was a great evening.

this morning began with an hour of yelling at idiots*, then i walked with gd to the clinic to make an urgent appointment (she's having trouble with a prescription) and picked up a couple of household items before coming back home, scarfing down breakfast and then heading out to the barber shop. it's not the best haircut, but it's fine.

* my cellphone company has been blocking my twilio messages, and when i asked them to remove the block they contacted twilio and informed them that i requested a block; our medical insurance company sent gd an sms with a link to their app, but the thing we were supposed to find in the app wasn't available because reasons

while gd and i were shopping, mr smear's teacher called us - mr smear was throwing a proper wobbly because they made latkes in class and the other kids were using eggs. we're trying to teach him to lead by example and take the soft approach, but it's hard not to empathize with a kid who understands just how evil the egg industry is.

...

finances: mistakes have been made, and we're trying to navigate the fallout. if we miraculously get through the next few weeks without surprises we'll be okay *knocks on wood* but we're in a really dicey position and we have to make dramatic changes. the good news is that after a couple of long and sensitive chats with gd, we have a plan and we think we can handle this.

the sad part is that we wouldn't be in this situation if it wasn't for the ridiculous levels of debt we incurred emigrating, we'd actually be doing just fine. i think i may have mentioned this before, but our income to expenses ratio is much better in tel aviv than in cape town because the economy here, while tough, is still far more reasonable than in south africa.

...

anyway, as crazy and rough and heartbreaking as this week was, i feel like i've taken care of the most important stuff. now to try to get the paintings hung before shabbat comes in.