the kick

 i'm still kicking myself. last night i continued with the node 20 upgrade (phase one of the community manager project update), and i think i finally got to bed around 2am with zero progress, loads of frustrating research and trial-and-error under my belt, and a very vague idea of what to try in the morning.

in the morning, in spite of a bit of "the usual" early-morning stress (although i managed to bring some calm to the situation), i managed to put in an hour or two and get to a point where things were starting to make sense.

and then, the bombshell: almost everything i'd been doing had been due to the fact that i updated everything to work with node 20 lambdas and layers, but forgot to actually update the node runtime.

holy shit.

once i figured that out, things are really making sense. i'm not sure what i've actually learned from the experience, though. it guess it's just time i'll never get back...

...

i made two trips to the hardware store today, one after dropping mr smear off at school and one after picking him up. in theory, i should be ready to put up the curtain rail in the shower.

i wasn't going to work from home today, but this morning i accompanied gd to an evaluation appointment. it went well. on the way home, though, i almost got run over by an angry and entitled taxi driver - there's a good chance he wasn't angry before he encountered me - and i lost a fair amount of time filing a police report online. twice. along the way, i realized that my driver's license had expired ages ago, so i renewed it.

other than that, it was a difficult work-from-home day. the work wasn't the problem, though, just me having a very hard time focusing. on anything, really.

in the evening i joined a webinar with a prominent jewish south african professor/judge who explained the implications of the icj ruling. while i read it right the first time, there was an interesting nuance as to the possible reasons behind there being no mention of a ceasefire in the order, in that it might only be because a ceasefire requires two sides and hamas isn't expected to care about the icj. another thing was about the ugandan judge's argument that this war doesn't fall under their jurisdiction, and it looks like hers might be the most faithful to the protocol.

the general feeling i got from the rest of the speakers was a common cognitive dissonance about being proudly south african in spite of the egregious betrayals by the government and the south african people, and the ridiculous hope that there could possibly be a positive outcome from the upcoming election.

south africa's fucked. well and truly fucked.

...

met our new neighbors in the bomb shelter during today's rocket attack. it's been mostly quiet the last couple of weeks, i hope we're nearing the end of it.

...

i cut my thumb doing the dishes this evening and even though it didn't bleed and is only barely visible, it hurts rather a lot.

...

bedtime was surpising. mr smear was rude to me, i refused to read to him and started saying goodnight. he started trying to send me away, but then let me give him the nightly blessing (a rhyme i made up when he was a baby) and wished me a good night in return. that's a broken pattern right there, i'm still shaking my head but being grateful.