pivot

yesterday:

mr smear's cough was better, and he went back to school. but he was having and sharing a remarkably shit morning. so that sucked.

i continued on to drop gd's shoes at the post office to be returned, then walked back home.

my neck and shoulder gave me trouble throughout the day.

it was a slow work-from-home day, and i was on-call, and most of the work i did was on-call stuff.

around noon i picked mr smear up from school to take him to his hebrew tutor, and he was in a much better mood. on the way back from the tutor we picked up a few bags of walnuts, because i only just learned that they're a viable source of omega3 and we haven't been eating gd's flax-seed pancakes for a long time...

...

during a conversation with our product manager in the afternoon, i saw something in our designs that bothered me and i asked him if i was reading it right, and if we were actually pivoting as a company.

"100%," he told me, "this is the direction we're going in."

i was disappointed, and i told him so, and after the call had a bit of a crisis because the new direction really doesn't interest me. i discussed it with gd, and came to the conclusion that i'm happy with my team, and i'm happy with my bosses, and i'm happy with my role and my employment conditions, so if i'm less happy with what the company is doing it's not the end of the world, but it will mean refocusing on my side projects for my source of meaning.

...

gd made vegan-shwarma tacos for dinner last night, and we really enjoyed them!

after everyone went to bed i started looking into rewriting my mobile app, and dived in to a rabbit hole around security issues with local browser storage. at about the point i started finding useful material to peruse, my eyes started shutting on me.

today:

last night was our first night sleeping with a duvet since spring, it was cozy and i slept pretty well.

we all had a much better morning, and after dropping mr smear at school i replaced the lightbulbs in his room and then spent some time reading about secure storage while gd left to have coffee with a friend.

i didn't make much progress then, and i'm starting to become drowsy now, so i don't know how long it's going to take me to get a handle on this stuff...

while i was trying to read, i got distracted by the fact that the "palm rest" of my very expensive dell XPS was - and has been for a while - feeling annoyingly sticky. i tried cleaning it in a number of different ways, and eventually ended up (unintentionally) removing some of the surface. it clearly wasn't meant to be removed, so later on i'd look it up and discover that it's a known problem.

i regret purchasing a dell computer.

i found a couple of recommendations to purchase stickers that are cut specifically for my model, so i found some on ali express and i'm hoping they'll do the trick.

...

it was a slow day in the office, and i wasn't the only one feeling the particularly relaxed vibes.

the day began with me learning about my new task, and syncing with the coworker who's leaving soon to understand how all the pieces of the puzzle are meant to fit together. at some point - because it was relevant to what we're working on - i mentioned the pivot, and his response stunned me: our project manager was describing his personal vision for the company, but he's already pitched it to the bosses and they've already explained to him that they're not interested in leaving the (awesome) core business they've built.

firstly, what a relief! secondly, what a shocking revelation, that i literally can't implicitly trust my project manager and that he actually caused harm with his delusion.

...

i started the task without a clear idea of what needed to be done, and it had been assigned six working days. i started making slow but steady progress, and then all of a sudden pieces of the puzzle - especially pieces that i'd put in place a few months ago - started coming together and by the end of the day i was effectively done!

it's a great feeling, but also rather unexpected.

i walked home, arriving just in time for dinner and some x-men. then my mom called, finally ready to try out the account i created for her a month and a half ago.

...

good grief.

it was impossible for her to log in without me signing in first, and it kept not sending us verification codes until i signed in, set up her phone number, and flagged her sign-in attempts as recognized. that got her into her account on her computer, so i wanted to set her up on her phone as well to make sure she's not dependent on me. but she's an iphone person, and apple makes it ridiculously difficult to configure new accounts and know if they've been configured correctly. so, after more than an hour and lots of feelings, we decided to leave it at a hope and a prayer and deal with any issues that may arise.

it could've been worse. we could've not succeeded.

...

as i said, i'm feeling drowsy - i think i'm going to go to bed now.