morals and dilemmas

 i'm quite upset right now, and the current upset is triggering an earlier upset and everything's getting mixed up in my head.

[takes about half an hour to trawl the interwebs to see if he's referred to aethersmith by "name" before or determine which to use]

so a couple of days ago i heard about the studio ghibli filter, and i ran our family photo through it. the result was gorgeous, and i'm really pleased with it. today, aethersmith post the following comment on my photo: "this is gross. and shits all over artists." and then tahoma reposted something about how miyazaki is deeply upset by the use of the filter, so we shouldn't use it. 

aethersmith and i have been arguing about generative ai since it became a thing, he's very upset that training models on artists' works without consent or compensation is unethical. he's not wrong.

having said that, though, the use of generative ai is - to my mind - not quite so cut-and-dried. art has been cannibalizing art since its invention, and the only real difference between what ai models are doing and what human artists have been doing is that they're commoditizing it and doing it at a scale that's making us a lot more sensitive to it. imagine banning the sale of painting equipment, or preventing people from reproducing others' artworks... that could never make sense.

i'm sad that miyazaki hates it, but whether he appreciates it or not i see this whole ghibli filter trend as a beautiful tribute to his works. i believe a lot of other people do too.

pandora's box is open, and it's not going to close any time soon. i hope that this is simply a growing pain and that we evolve to a place where we have amazing tools that work for everyone, not just consumers. i believe that we can get there, and i believe that we must get there.

...

and that triggered upset over the brief conversation horseman and i had earlier regarding the zombie apocalypse that's been rapidly emerging around the globe. the hysterical destruction of tesla vehicles and infrastructure by people who believe that climate change is an emergency is mind-boggling. the complete rejection of facts or any level of rationality and fair-mindedness with regards the war in israel is mind-boggling. everyone has finally lost their minds after decades of "active measures" and disinformation campaigns and enemies of the west infiltrating its media and its universities.

gd and i were discussing this morning how a hidden aspect of the trans agenda is self-sterilization, and that there's a sibling component to that in how the west is leaning more and more towards tolerating and encouraging people who don't have children, and in doing so opening the doors to enemies performing a "land and expand" conquest, while convincing themselves that tolerating their enemies' intolerance makes them morally superior and anything else is racist bigotry.

i hope we all wake up from this dystopian nightmare before it's too late.

...

i didn't sleep much last night, and i didn't sleep well. we had some unpleasantness getting up in the morning, but it passed quickly, and after mr smear left for school i took care of a couple of things and then accompanied gd to her dental imaging appointment.

we arrived on time, at the right place, but there was no appointment. i tried getting hold of our dental clinic but there was no answer, and we were in the middle of resigning ourselves to having to go there in person to make a new appointment when the technician (or dentist?) picked up the phone and intervened, taking no prisoners and making it clear to whoever was on the other end of the line that it's not fair that patients are blamed for receoptionists not doing their jobs.

he handed me his phone and my jaw dropped as the woman on the other end informed me that we had an appointment booked, but hadn't paid. when i translated for gd, her jaw dropped too. this is all very literal jaw-dropping, by the way, we stared at each other, mouths agape, because we both remember very clearly paying for the appointment.

regardless, we instructed her to deduct the payment and she released our booking, and five minutes later we were out of there, having thanked the man profusely for going to bat for us.

...

the workday began with a rocket attack, so i took my coffee down into the basement for the first time (previously i'd just hung out in the stairwell, but i was curious).

...

highlight of my day: i helped our security consultants secure authorization for a contract for an important tool. afterwards, i overheard one of them discussing password policies, and i
(respectfully) got into it with him. i was getting some support from his coworkers, but then their Big Boss arrived (he looked vaguely familiar) and he asked him to step in.

he didn't hesitate to agree with my assessment - that password policies should enforce complexity and be easy to remember, not check arbitrary industry-standard compliance boxes that only cause people to behave in counter-productive ways. and any developer will happily accept occasionally using a second-factor authentication method (like fingerprints) over having to regularly reset their password.

after another round or two, they were enthusiastically on the same page and i really hope they manage to figure out how to implement a policy accordingly. as i told them: if they can get this right, every player in the industry will have their backs and be excited to work with them.

...

a couple of us interviewed an applicant in the afternoon. i'd prepared pretty well - though i've learned a bunch of things through the experience - but the actual interview was a bit awkward and it was only when pressed (afterwards) that i was able to put my finger on what was bothering me.

...

i didn't accomplish what i'd set out to, but i did learn a lot. i came home and had barely enough time to get mr smear through a page of his math homework, but he did such a good job and with such a good attitude that i was happy to put on an episode of the simpsons (homer the vigilante) in spite of it being too late for screentime.

after mr smear went to sleep, gd and i resumed watching slow horses. this is because i mentioned to my coworker how disappointed we were with its politics, and he threw me a spoiler that made us want to give it another chance. so i guess we'll see.

...

i've been playing inscryption again (tonight's the first night i've been feeling alright about taking things easy in days). i ended up doing a ridiculous run, with an unkillable geck (x2 thanks to goobert) and a reptile totem with an ant spawner sigil, and then an ouroboros that i was forced to sacrifice that was offered back to me, and then i put a morsel sigil on it, for completely OP combinations.

blame it on someone else

so the past couple of days have been all about imposter syndrome. i've been working very superficially with our tech stack, and i'm now knee-deep in shit with no idea where the shit is coming from. i did some studying today and i'm currently running scripts in the background, over and over, tweaking what chatgpt and claude have been giving me and praying that they're not running me in circles.

because today has not been a great day for AI for me. i tried making a simple game in the morning using claude - "vibe coding" - and all i got was a thorough waste of my time. i'm now repeating that attempt on base44.com, hopefully that'll be better.

thursday:

i slept poorly.

i went to work early, while gd went to get her foot x-rayed. it was a weird day, it included some really good conversations but not a lot of success. and by not a lot of success, i mean if i look back at the chats with my lead, i feel completely useless.

at least i managed to get something done before shabbat, though, and i seem to be understanding a lot more tonight.

happy hour was... happy. the big announcement was excellent news, but it's weird to me that we skipped another announcement that was just as big to me - my previous CEO has signed on with us, and if i understand correctly he's going to be my new CEO as well. that's pretty good news :)

yesterday:

i slept poorly again.

yesterday was exhausting. not only did i get up with a significant to-do list looming over my head (and it still is), but we had a couple of real issues with mr smear.

i walked him to school, talking him through which buildings to run to if a siren goes off and what to do if their doors are closed. then i picked up some snacks at the grocery store and came home, dropped them off and caught a bus to ramat aviv because that's where our clothing order ended up. so that burned an hour of my friday morning, and all the while i was stressed about how long it was taking because i expected mr smear to call me about his juggling class.

he called me *just* as i hopped off the bus next to our apartment. i grabbed a banana (to prevent hanger) and walked to the school.

he was sitting with his best friend and his little sister, and it was extremely difficult to convince mr smear to try a different class when the sister was doing her best to convince me that mr smear really likes being at home and i should take him with me 🙄

i eventually - magically, almost - managed to get him to try photography. he claims that he enjoyed it, but now that i think about it there's a good chance he might not have actually gone.

i say this because at the end of school, he called me to report that the kid who'd bullied him a couple of weeks ago had attacked him again. this time getting physical.

just before mr smear arrived home, he explained to me what happened and i sent a message to the boy's mother. she responded that it sounded like there had been an incident, but that it wasn't his instigation. his friend's dad dropped him off, so i scrambled downstairs and asked him if he could describe what happened... and the story came out, well, different.

family meeting.

it didn't take long to get the full story out of mr smear, at which point i was thoroughly embarrassed both by his behavior and by his lying to me about it and by having written what i wrote to the boy's mother. so we called them up, and mr smear apologized.

it wasn't the most authentic-sounding apology, but it was good enough.

...

the rest of the afternoon was alright, i guess. i managed to get him through a couple of pages of homework, and he came to shul without any fuss. the experience was pretty good, and the walks there and back were good. and we had a very pleasant evening.

today:

i slept a bit better, but not well.

it was a slow day, and it was another day of stomach issues. but we did re-watch the original rocky, and although most of it was too slow or adult-themed for mr smear's sensibilities, he did join us for the iconic training montages and the fight, and he really enjoyed those.

i took mr smear out for quite a walk this afternoon, it was almost all good and he agreed that the lotus cream and salted oreo ice cream was worth it :)

after getting mr smear into bed, gd finally watched the second half of the first slow horses episode (i've now seen the first half three times), and it's political angle that i'd successfully ignored on my first watch really got under gd's skin, and now it's under mine, and sonofabitch i'm out.

goddamnit.

...

it's past 1am and i'm still seeing red on my deployment attempts. i'm calling it a night. thanks for nothing, AI. or... thanks for not enough, AI. i should be grateful for all the assistance, but it would probably be better for me to just have struggled with documentation and tutorials instead of leaning on a perpetual sense of false hope.

gurgle splat (and a review of our son)

 i did get a (literal) couple of hours' sleep before my alarm went off this morning. most of them, anyway.

mr smear was great this morning. he was rewarded accordingly, with multiple reminders that it's a special treat. gods help us.

the skin under my fingernail is splitting again. this is the third or fourth time since winter started and i'm so over it.

gd is very much over her damaged toe, but she insisted on not going to the clinic and instead going to her sewing lesson ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the work day was a struggle and a half, it was very frustrating and a lot of what i had issues with made me feel rather dumb. otherwise, i had a couple of good syncs with coworkers, i finally got to sumsum for lunch (one of the syncs in question, fascinating talk), and my stomach gave me trouble pretty much the entire day. also, i'm regaining weight... i have definitely not been eating responsibly.

...

in the late afternoon gd and i met with the guy who did mr smear's psych evaluation for a feedback session. it was very comforting hearing that we've already got a good understanding of his abilities and his struggles, though it's heartbreaking that so much of his hardship is trauma response, primarily from immigrating and bullying (but also his fear of coming into contact with dairy).

we've been given some helpful recommendations and we'll continue doing what we can. and the school has absolutely no validation for medicating our child.

...

i left work pretty late, but got to enjoy some of my leftovers dinner (i avoided tonight's pizza) with gd and mr smear, and after we got mr smear into bed the two of us watched about half of john wick (neither of us have seen it before). and then i got back to working, after forty minutes deciding that i'd had enough.

i suspect that tomorrow's going to be a reckoning of sorts.

quiet

 i've been having trouble sleeping tonight, after crashing pretty early (i finished watching the first episode of slow horses, sonofabitch i'm in). after randomly scrolling through reddit threads* i lay quietly thinking about stuff.

quiet in mind, as much as in body.

i've been thinking a lot about having to face the polygraph, and as i said to gd earlier - i don't know how it'll go, and i don't expect going through this to magically resolve anything from the previous trauma, but in a way i feel like it's facing something big and that in itself would be an achievement. i'm psychologically ready to face the music, and i'm at a point in my life where what will be asked of me really isn't much of a price to pay.

i've been thinking a lot about alignment recently, and how long i've been operating professionally from a baseline misalignment, and while i'm certainly stressed about integrating well into my new role and impressing my employers and coworkers, i'm in a better place than i've been in what feels like an extraordinarily long time.

* why am i still looking at reddit? mainly for inscryption posts, and i added a few movies to my watch list.

...

our day could have started well, because gd's back finally relaxed a bit. but our day didn't start very well, and that's to say that it started off pretty badly... but by the time mr smear needed to leave for school we were all in a better place for it. it feels like the theme of the last week, to be honest. i accompanied him to school, and that served like a really pleasant reset to the day.

then gd and i hurried to misrad hapnim to continue renewing her passport. the clerk we were supposed to return to was on reception duty so it took a little while for us to get to him; while waiting in line, a lady told me how it was my "lucky day" because there were relatively few people waiting, and i turned to gd and said that after everything we've been through, i feel like any day that we're here in israel, that we're able to come to misrad hapnim and expect service, is a lucky day.

the clerk gave us a name and told us to tell them that we'd been there the day before, which made me pause, but i shut my mouth and did as i was told. we found the person - i think she's a manager - and when i told her what he'd told me to, she said "yes, i remember, i'm the one who signed it yesterday."

i couldn't stop myself from starting to say "huh, but we..." before realizing what was happening and shutting my mouth accordingly 🤣

she sat us down in front of another clerk, and we were out of there about five minutes later. great success!

...

my work day was alright. i ran into trouble with cdktf - it's documentation is arguably worse than AWS documentation, which is saying something - and just set up what my coworkers needed manually and left "the right way" for another day.

startup life.

i wanted to go find the closest sumsum salad bar, but then got diverted to the hummusia equivalent of a dive bar. the hummus was alright - not amazing - but the atmosphere was excellent 👌

it was a troubleshooting / headscratching sort of a day. i left the office at a reasonable time, got through a page of maths homework with mr smear without any bad feelings, we continued watching the fifth harry potter movie over dinner, and - aside from navigating an emotional outburst from gd* - the evening was relaxed.

* it was about not getting treatment for her foot, and i think we're going to need to visit the clinic tomorrow and try to get her an emergency appointment. we've been so concerned about her back the past few days we completely forgot about it.

...

i've been up for a few hours now, and i'm not sure if i'm going to be ready to go to bed anytime soon, but every time i think about sleeping i hear the sirens going off in my mind. fucking houthis.

entering overtime (again)

 it took me a while to get to bed last night, and i think i slept alright. my wakeup, however, was startling.

mr smear got up early, brushed his teeth, and made himself breakfast.

i literally had to bite my lip to keep from saying "who are you and what have you done with my son?", gd woke up in even worse shape than before and he really made our morning so much easier.

i knew that rewarding him with screen time was the right thing to do, and he appreciated it, but i also know that that's a slippery slope...

... meanwhile, he installed something all by himself and it was a panicky few minutes making sure it wasn't malware :/

i walked him to school, then returned home, and barely had time for anything before gd and i joined our scheduled parental guidance session.

considering how wild the previous week had been, we had a lot to talk about. some of the conversation was tough, but i feel like we both got a lot out of it.

i then immediately left to pick mr smear up from school and take him to the doctor. i managed to get some work done while waiting, mainly because the doctor was running about half an hour late. she took one look at his eye and told me we need to carry on the treatment... i don't think we really needed an appointment for that.

i dropped him off at home, had a quick breakfast, then hopped on a bus to work. most of the bus ride was spent breathing into my arm and staying as far away as possible from the smelly homeless guy who was arguing with himself.

the work day was... not bad, i guess. but i've got urgent stuff to catch up on tonight, and it's 11pm already :(

homework time wasn't perfect, but we got through it. dinner was nice. watching most of the first episode of slow horses while trying to help gd with her back was fantastic. listening to these two videos of eric weinstein while doing the dishes was.. comforting. people are understanding.

* eric weinstein sees something in hamas’s strategy no one else sees

* you’re in a war (and you don’t even know it

and now that i've typed this all out, back to wrestling with cdktf.

sunday

we had to have some more conversations this morning, but it does feel like there's some progress going on. really slow progress.

oh, and around 7.30 there was another rocket attack.

i spent my morning getting a bunch of random things done - including helping gd, whose back is giving her real trouble - and at 9.45am i suddenly realized that i had an important in-person meeting in the office at 10am.

good grief.

i was ten minutes late, but fortunately i wasn't the latest person to the party :P

our two hour meeting went on for three hours, at which point i needed to head home for lunch and to take mr smear to his therapist. then i returned to work, and once he was done he made it most of the way to the office before getting stuck :P

i think it was a partially successful afternoon, though the most effective work i did was after putting mr smear to bed. although, to be fair, i think i did a fair job of selling my boss and coworkers a hardened communication design that i picked up a few years ago while contracting.

mr smear did a fair amount of homework while we were there, and then continued after dinner. his bedtime ended up getting pushed a bit later, but he did the work without complaining and he did it well.

i've done a bunch of the dishes, i've watched a bunch of random youtube videos (playing a lot of minesweeper games while doing so), and it's not after midnight and i think - i think - i should probably head to bed.

blowin' in the wind

thursday:

i was right about thursday morning being intense, but we didn't expect it to begin at 4am with another rocket attack.

i spent a good chunk of my morning trying to get midjourney to make me a picture like this one, but with the right number of toes so i could do this:

my favorite failure of the bunch:

i took mr smear to school, and then accompanied gd to misrad hapnim to apply for her new passport. at least the coffee was good... we arrived on time, waited a short while, and then discovered that i'd made a big mistake by not checking what we needed to bring. we didn't have gd's expired passport with us.

she had a doctor's appointment right after that, and we both understood from the clerk assisting us that i could just come back later with the passport itself, so i made sure she got on the right bus and i stopped off at home, picked up mr smear's meds, rushed to the school gate, administered the meds, rushed back home, scarfed down a bowl of muesli, and headed back to that counter with gd's passport.

i may not have had to make an appointment, but i did have to wait about half an hour for the clerk to finish with the previous couple, by which point i was way later for work than i thought i'd be. and then, to make things even better, the clerk looked at me in astonishment when he realized that gd wasn't with me.

...

so we have to go back again one of these mornings 🤦

...

the work day was crazy. it began with an all-hands with a lot of interesting news, not least of which being that i'm going to need to go through a polygraph experience again. on the one hand, i'm okay with that. on the other hand, i'm not okay with that. this is going to be... an experience. but i guess it's best to get into it and over it as quickly as possible.

...

i completed the thing i'd been working on, and moved on to other stuff, beginning to work "organized" for the first time in ages - not only getting into the new ticketing system (notion-based, it's kinda weird but not bad) but starting to track my hours like i did when i last worked as a contractor. really more for me to understand what i've been doing and how much time i've spent doing it,.

i don't know if it was wise to drink a beer at happy hour, but i definitely felt it and my lead's comment about reviewing code after a beer seemed less funny when i was actually doing that :/

[i don't recall much about the evening]

yesterday:

i spent a good chunk of yesterday updating an old encryption package i maintain, most of the effort being rewriting code "the right way" only to discover that that's still unsupported by modern browsers and needing to revert it :P

gd and i took mr smear to the doctor in the morning, which got weird because i couldn't make heads or tails of what the doctor was trying to tell us and she laughed at my confusion. gd seems to understand what was happening, at least. we did some shopping and came home, and we were all in the mood to not get up again for the rest of the day.

but then i learned that mr smear hadn't brought his homework books home, so we ended up having to walk to the school to pick them up. we ended up having a massive fight, which started because he didn't want to do any homework in the first place but ended up getting really ugly. i ended up walking out of the school without him, but i called gd and she talked me down and i returned to give him another chance.

it took a little while for us to get through things - we were both feeling hurt and angry - but we did, and the rest of the afternoon was quiet. and we even had a positive experience with the homework.

gd has been having trouble with her back lately (i mean she's always have trouble, it's just been worse than usual) and we ended up ordering dinner, which is very complicated on a friday night. it worked out alright, though.

afterwards, everybody crashed.

today:

the weather wasn't nice at all today, so we all stayed in. i got some stuff done in the morning, and the big event of the day was us watching the original karate kid movie. and boy, did i feel dumb: i haven't seen the movie itself in decades, and at some point after the bro mitzvah, i guess i started believing the troll about larusso being the movie's villain.

anyway, not only did mr smear really enjoy it, but there are strong parallels between larusso's experiences and his own, and i think that might prove helpful.

over dinner we began rewatching the fifth harry potter movie. the last few hours have mostly been me trying to build a set of scripts for work, stopping when i felt too tired to carry on, finishing a run of kaycee's mod that i began recently (water tribe, with a mighty ouroboros with double-strike), posting this, and now going to bed praying that we don't have to run for the shelter tonight.

quieter

 i definitely slept better last night. it was weird, though - i got a phone call earlier with the results, and aside from a recommendation to visit an ENT for my snoring i was informed that my sleep was just fine. but i slept horribly. so i don't know what to make of that.

this morning went pretty smoothly in spite of mr smear's failed attempts to stay home. dropping him off at school was pleasant - lately i'm making a point of taking him because it's the best opportunity for us to just talk - and i managed to fix up one of my side projects that i'd neglected.

and then... take care of the massive crow turd on the external air-conditioning unit outside mr smear's window. and it's neighbor, the windowsill turd we hadn't noticed before. gd was gagging, and i was upset: there's a massive difference between cleaning up one's child, or picking up after one's pet, than doing the same for somebody else's. or somebody else. or something else.

i felt violated. it was about the size of a border collie poop and i had to scrape it off in multiple attempts 🤮

...

it was a bit cooler today (and it was quite rainy this evening), so i regretted not wearing a sweater to and from the office. the office vibe was totally different today, as most of the org was either in the field or working from home, and at peak there were four of us in a large open space. it was strange, but not unpleasant. very quiet.

at lunch time - while scarfing down a mixture of leftovers that gd had put together that worked out surprisingly well - i ended up talking about our aliyah experience and about the state of south africa. i don't recall how the conversation got there, but i really brought the guys down and every time i tried to spin into something positive i managed to make it somehow worse :/

i couldn't stop snacking all day. most of it was the fruit platter that i effectively had all to myself :P

work-wise, i left after getting really good results that i'm very pleased with ^_^ (although i literally couldn't believe it when i finally got everything green!)

...

i came home a bit earlier than usual, hurrying to avoid the rain, and there was just enough time before dinner to do some of mr smear's hebrew reading with him and a page of his geometry homework. he did it all without the usual battle, and it was actually a good experience for both of us!

so that was cool.

we watched a disturbing episode of delicious in dungeon over dinner (episode 23 - griffin soup), and we had a smooth shower / bedtime. gd and i watched an episode of two of seinfeld after i saw a relatively recent interview with michael richards - the standup bits aren't funny, but the stories are great - during which i passed out on the couch and woke up to her watching a show in which a kid gets arrested on suspicion of murder.

i've been watching random stuff, and drinking tea, and i think i'm going to crash soon. tomorrow morning's going to be intense - gd's applying for her proper israeli passport, after which i have to go to the school to administer mr smear's meds (he's having another outbreak around his eye) because she's got a doctor's appointment - hopefully it'll go smoothly.

...

this is jd vance saying something brilliant and obviously true: outsourcing manufacturing has hurt the west immeasurably.

and here's boston dynamics showing off a robot that's more athletic than an australian breakdancer

dreams and nightmares

 i slept horribly last night. like, way worse than usual. i was wired and restless, physically uncomfortable, and the entire experience sucked. i even got up in the middle of the night and faffed around for an hour or two, but the remaining hours of the morning before getting up weren't much better for it.

i vaguely recall the morning going alright. [gets to the end of the post and remembers that the ceasefire ended this morning. i'm grateful we got some of the hostages back, but we always knew that this was just a ploy by hamas to stall and survive and mess with us some more]

i walked mr smear to school, returned home, and then all of a sudden it was later than i thought and i had to rush to get to the sleep lab to return the equipment.

fortunately, i was only a few minutes late. i dropped off the gear, then hopped on an unfamiliar bus to work. it worked out fine.

...

my work day was intense, but overall great. it started awkwardly with me trying to help the new guy get his computer sorted out and not understanding that he was calling a thumb drive "DOK", proceeded with me starting to execute a plan my lead and i had come up with together, and before lunch we were treated to a surprise visit and talk by one of our customers. it was eye-opening.

after lunch, i finally got hold of one of the guys whose name everyone knows and we sat down to chat. his story was riveting, as is his job. mind-blowingly cool.

i got good work done in the afternoon, and was getting ready to go home when one of my coworkers caught me for a five minute conversation that turned into an hour-long intense discussion. although i was very eager to get out of there (which was duly noted), i feel like it was a really good discussion and that i managed to bridge two decidedly different approaches and attitudes.

...

i raced home, way too late for dinner, and scarfed down some of the leftovers. mr smear told me about some bullying that happened - on top of the fact that his best friend refused to go to school today because he's being bullied too - so that was that first bit of a shit feeling to bring me down from my work-high. then mr smear was a bit rude to my mom during their good-night chat, and another bullying incident surfaced that he'd handled poorly, which brought me down a bit more.

and then we discovered that he's having another herpes outbreak - it's been a year and four days since the first proper one - and that just brought the house down.

...

after saying good night to him i complained about how the evening had turned out, which gd misinterpreted, and then we had a fight. it took a while to get out of the fight, a part of which was gd remembering how distraught she's been since the morning news about the war resuming. we had a good talk about where we are and how the world looks right now, which turned to spirituality and religion.

and then a conversation about how the day went. and now... it's past 11pm and i don't know if i'm going to be able to sleep or not, but i'm pretty confident i'm not feeling like doing anything constructive right now. i kinda wanted to go to the purim (post-purim) rollerblade, but between all the emotions and the slight chance of rain i just couldn't.

and, of course, my eyes are feeling itchy now.

stealth mode off

 i slept fitfully last night. in the middle of the night, i got up to pee and found mr smear with his light on again, scared. i managed to handle this without a fight (in spite of his initial irritation that i was telling him stuff he already knew...), and i offered him a way of dealing with his fears that amused him. he then took it a step further into what was disturbing for me, so i informed him that he could do whatever he wanted in his imagination quietly, and left him to it.

it worked.

i woke up this morning to a surprise: my company's out of stealth mode! much quicker than planned - it turned out our hand was forced - but the attention is very exciting nonetheless. i've spent a lot more time on linkedin today than usual.

gd and mr smear both needed to go to the clinic this morning, both for issues with their big toes 🤔

on our way in i ran into the man who was the dean of computer science during my first degree, a man who had an enormous influence on my career - i think he felt a bit awkward, but he took my number 🤷‍♂️

we got some emergency appointments sorted out, and then headed to the pharmacy together. i paid a quick visit to the pain clinic to get gd another emergency appointment, then returned home for breakfast before heading out to the sleep lab.

i had time for a cup of coffee and to fix a coworker's PR before heading in. i feel oddly proud of myself for not commenting on the fact that their television was hung really skew, i think watching so many episodes of monk may have had an effect :P

on the way out i made another appointment for gd (standing up for her women's rights along the way), then hopped on a bus to work. on the bus, i chatted with my mom who informed me about my niece and her boyfriend and why my sister's been referring to them as dumb and dumber 🤦

work was pretty cool today, in addition to the out-of-stealth excitement. lots of little moments, and one big moment getting the biggest piece of the puzzle i've been working on locked in. and making plans with my lead.

i came home on a wired vibe, and the hebrew reading with mr smear was going great until it didn't... in spite of the unpleasantness, we pushed through and he apparently learned a lesson.

dinner was great, and we had a pleasant good-night chat with my mom which turned hilarious when i asked my sister (who's still staying with her) if she thinks it's possible that the reason she hasn't suffered any pain from her dental surgery is that she's gotten so much work done on her face 😈

we managed to get mr smear into bed peacefully, i reviewed my bloodwork results (nothing decisive, but i may be slightly anaemic and it looks like i have antibodies for mononucleosis), spent a good while rescuing gd's phone from her bad-user negligence, and now that i've posted this i'm starting to feel like i might be ready to go to bed soon.

it's been a pretty productive day.

bad language

i slept a bit better last night, but still tossed and turned a lot.

mr smear was off school today for shushan purim, and i left for my blood tests, which got off on the wrong foot because i couldn't register my arrival, and i waited impatiently for very slow people before finally getting to counter and discovering that i'd been using mr smear's card instead of my own :/

fortunately the wait for the blood test wasn't long. the drawing itself was a bit unpleasant, not terrible but not good - the guy left the needle loose and it was mostly hovering around a 90° angle. then i went to the pharmacy, where i learned that one of gd's prescriptions was incorrectly entered into the system, and then back to the receptionists to find out that the message i'd received regarding mr smear's therapy authorization was meaningless.

anyway.

i got home, and gd and i confronted mr smear about his hebrew teacher's report. we were shocked to discover that mr smear hasn't accepted his new reality at all, and that he's still been holding on to the idea that he doesn't need to learn hebrew, that he's going to give up being jewish and go live in america.

what followed was a long and brutal affair, but eventually we seem to have gotten him to understand that a) we have nowhere else to go and b) you can't give up being jewish and c) without hebrew and good school grades in general he's not going anywhere, least of all america.

good grief.

work today was alright, it began with a chat with lipgirl about south african violence (i didn't know she'd worked as a stewardess and had naively walked from a hotel to a mall in johannesburg), then a fight with file.pizza as an alternative to scp (but it refused to begin downloading on multiple attempts), then a very pleasant walk on another beautiful morning to the hardware store to pick up a modern flash drive.

the rest of the work day (and another hour or so after mr smear went to bed) was spent getting a very important part of our installation working. i think i'm about halfway through at this point.

i picked mr smear up after his therapy session and brought him to the office, where he mostly did his homework (reading hebrew comics and a few pages of maths). he also made a funny comic which uses the word "motherfucker", and as always it's very hard to admonish a child for bad language while you're actively laughing both at how he's used it and at how pleased with himself he is for straddling the boundaries.

good grief.

we ran into one of his classmates' dad on the light rail home, and amongst other things we talked about the allergy drama and he was supportive.

dinner was good, delicious in dungeon is still going strong.

i'm tired now. i didn't take the alpha lipoic acid and tomorrow i'm picking up my "home sleep lab" kit on my way to work. i think i'm going to hit the hay soon.

the perfect beach day

yesterday:

we all went off to dizengoff, which was a lot less festive than anticipated. having said that, there was plenty festive outside, and it was a gorgeous day. we took care of a couple of minor things, including picking up a bunch of hebrew comic books, and then took a slow meander up to dizengoff square, where we stopped for a very nice lunch.

we all enjoyed the food, and we all had a good experience.

then we caught a bus home and had a pretty relaxing afternoon.

in the evening i took mr smear to the synagogue, he came without a fuss and in addition to some generally pleasant talks along the way, we had a pretty serious conversation about the weekly portion (which includes the story of the golden calf), why we're supposed to pray so often (specifically, the shema), and how those two both ultimately have the same moral: no matter how smart we may think we are, that we *get* the lessons from the torah, we're descended from the same morons who *forgot* about god after witnessing his miracles directly, after hearing his voice directly, and we need to keep playing our history on repeat so that we don't forget it and lose our way.

today:

i slept horribly last night. i hadn't taken my new nightly pill (alpha lipoic acid) and my hips hurt constantly, so i was in a lot of discomfort and i barely got any rest.

i started the day a bit antisocially trying to catch up with private instagram messages - the result of ignoring them for most of the week - and then i put down for satisfactory which is on sale right now and sat with mr smear while he got into it. so far, pretty damned awesome.

without a fight - remarkably - we began moving out for our ride to the beach around 10.30am as planned. it did take us about 45 minutes to actually start riding, but there were no bad feelings and it was turning out to be another beautiful day.

we enjoyed a good ride to the beach, which was easier now that half of arlozorov is open again and with decent bike lanes, found a good shady spot, completed the sunscreen ritual and headed into the water. the side of the beach we were sitting on was too rocky and cold, so we went to the other side which was easier on the feet but absolutely freezing.

we had fun in the water for a little while, then returned to our spot where mr smear insisted on me burying him a couple of times (it's his favorite thing), and after a lot of time trying to convince him to come into the shade i got to lie down for a bit. after we had agreed that it was a good time to go and find food (and coffee for me), it took about an hour to get him into the water to rinse off some of the sand, then out of the water, then through the showers, and eventually we were ready to ride again.

we tried a very busy coffee shop near the corner of dizengoff and ben gurion, but the service was shit and the menu vegan-unfriendly so we pushed on to eazy cafe, for our favorite salad and a generally good vibe.

we eventually got home quite late, took turns showering and then chilled the remainder of the afternoon away. the evening was pleasant, dinner was good, and after getting mr smear into bed gd and i watched a lot of andrew schultz - life, which is mostly just amusing but does has some really good stuff in it. we're a bit disappointed that monk's been taken off...

...

i'm on a water-only fast now for blood tests in the morning. i hope i sleep alright.

the festival of everything being upside down

ugh: it got worse before it got better.

around the time i finally went to bed, mr smear woke up needing to go to the toilet (so there was much messing about with lights). i closed my eyes and let gd handle it.

then, around 3am, i got up to pee, and found mr smear with his light on reading harry potter. i stood in his doorway and (gently but with a disapproving tone) made it clear that that was unacceptable, and that he needed to be sleeping so he could get up at 6.30am.

and that was when he started arguing with me. and on top of the bad vibe, once i got him to put the book away he then complained that he couldn't go to sleep because he'd read something creepy.

that was when i lost patience, and he was fighting back, and i'd been exhausted already, so i called gd in to handle the situation and tried to go back to sleep. but i was too angry, and i couldn't bring that anger down, and then i remembered jordan peterson talking about not letting your kids do things that make you dislike them, and that anger with him slowly morphed into fear for him.

i never really got any rest, and in addition to the psychological/emotional struggle my lower back started giving me trouble too.

i was a wreck come the morning.

i managed to avoid dealing with the issue until mr smear and i were both "awake" and doing alright, and then i took him aside and told him what i'd been feeling and worrying about. he seems to have heard me, he responded well, and the rest of the morning went well.

after mr smear went to school, gd and i left to meet up with one of my los angeles cousins' kids who's visiting israel from new york, and who i haven't seen since i was a teenager and he was little. we had no idea what to expect (turns out he did a little jail time at some point, so maybe both of them did?), but after arriving at his hotel (and taking a quick tour of a tattoo studio / gallery, it's kind of our thing) we found him and walked to a cool little coffee shop, and spent the better part of two hours enjoying a beautiful sunny morning chat with a really decent guy who turned out to be quite a kindred spirit ^_^

afterwards, gd and i took the light rail to my office from where she took a bus back home, and i walked in and immediately began to fall apart,

the coffee didn't help. the fruit didn't help. the hummus for lunch was delicious but certainly didn't help. and then a long meeting in a stuffy meeting room on top of all of everything made the struggle to keep my eyes open very, very real.

not counting the happy hour (and unveiling of our new logo, which is actually pretty cool), i spent the rest of the afternoon in a fatigue haze trying to compensate with lots of sugary snacks and i'm not quite sure how much i actually achieved.

after finally arriving back home, i helped mr smear with a couple more pages of math homework (with no drama!) and we watched an episode of delicious in dungeon while eating "drekfast" (dinner + breakfast), took care of some random things after getting mr smear into bed, and then went to bed myself and passed out.

...

aside from very long, very scary, very real dreams about a dinosaur apocalypse, i slept relatively well. now we're all up and coffee'd and breakfasted, we're off to dizengoff center to see what's happening there for purim.

chag sameach!

purimon haul

i'm feeling absolutely exhaustipated. probably going to bed soon.

...

today started off well. i helped mr smear get himself and his mishloach manot to school, he was very happily dressed up as a knight. i helped gd with the dishes, and then left for work early because i knew i was going to be out of the office for a couple of hours in the afternoon.

a lot of my work day was dealing with a broken machine and some software issues, but i did make a little progress by the end, and i did help my lead get his work done on time which was really important.

gd went to her sewing lesson today, and we'd planned to meet at home and then pick up mr smear together, with her carrying his mishloach manot home and me taking him to the orthopod. what actually happened was that mr smear called me much earlier than expected to inform me that school was out already and he needed help getting everything home, and on my way to get him i realized that with all of yesterday's drama i'd missed the memo informing us that school ended early :/

he had to wait for me for about half an hour, but he has a phone so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i found him and his impressive haul in very good spirits. i've seen photos from the day, and it did me a lot of good to see him full of smiles and having a good time ^_^

we carried everything home together, and at that point the day had become hot enough that i needed to switch to shorts. while we waited for gd to return, i talked to him about some things. some dealing-with-life things.

when i came home, i tried to help him with his homework but he blew up over a misunderstanding - those dealing-with-life-things became immediately relevant, but he didn't give a fuck and he refused to throw away the spade he was digging himself a hole with.

gd and i must have fought with him for at least an hour before he finally returned to his senses and could be reasoned with, and the experience was not only utterly insane but also thoroughly exhausting.

i helped him with a couple of homework questions, and then we ate dinner, and by the time he finally climbed into bed it was already 8.25pm and i had a meeting with gco and a potential partner at 8.30pm.

holy shit.

we went in to the meeting with little in the way of expectations, and i'm excited to report that it was a very constructive meeting. hopefully they'll start making some magic happen, and if they play it right there'll be exciting steps to follow.

drama allergy

 well, shit. today was pretty dramatic, my workday isn't over yet but i need to do a quick mind dump to free up some bandwidth for what remains...

yesterday:

i slept better on sunday night. i'm wondering if the alpha lipoic acid the doctor recommended is having an immediate effect. seems too good to be true, but if it's working i'll take it.

i rushed to the office early to return the keys i'd accidentally left with, and started the day on a zoom call with gd and mr smear's therapist which was generally optimistic.

the work day itself was tough, and i got home pretty frustrated.

mr smear did some good reading with me, and as a reward for doing it with a good attitude i started teaching him how to play minesweeper :)

after dinner i managed to make a little progress on a dev tool before settling down to watch an episode of monk with gd, after which i watched a few random youtube videos until realizing i needed to go to bed.

today:

i slept relatively well last night. lots of dreaming.

today started off pretty well, between the time mr smear left for school and the time gd and i left to meet up with him and his teacher i managed to make a bunch of appointments (from sunday's meeting with the doc).

the meeting started off awkwardly, as they wanted mr smear to introduce himself and tell us how he's doing. my gods, i wouldn't have been comfortable being put on the spot like that either, certainly not at his age, but after a brief silence we got things moving forward and lots of things were said.

in summary: mr smear's teacher seems really solid, and they appear to be off to a good start. i think we covered all the things that have been going on, where he's coming from and what he's been learning to deal with, and it was pretty optimistic. once he'd left the room, we talked about some of the heavier stuff.

of particular note was the councillor informing me that she received a call yesterday from the organization i spoke to, and she was offended that i'd reported that we didn't feel like they were doing anything. i made it very clear that our second complaint was about bullying, violence and harassment, and that until i informed the principal that we intend to go to the police the next time mr smear is injured we never saw any real response from the school. we talked about that in depth, and i think both the councillor and his new teacher understand where we stand and what's at stake.

i managed to keep my mouth shut when the councillor told us how important communication is, when we're the ones who've been begging them to communicate...

from there i went off to work. my lead and i came up with a plan, but my boss' request to prepare what i've been working on for a third party took up most of my day. and random conversations surround our procedures and practices too, i guess.

...

after lunch, though, was when all hell broke loose: mr smear's teacher dropped a bomb on the parents by demanding no dairy in the mishloah manot that the kids are supposed to bring tomorrow, and a lot of the parents were furious. not just because they'd already invested in and prepared the packages, but on principle, too.

my immediate reaction was flat panic because we do not want the parents or the other kids to resent us or mr smear due to his allergy. let me tell you, it's very difficult to navigate a situation like that tactfully when you want the teacher to know that what she's doing is appreciated (and correct, considering dairy is supposed to be banned on school grounds just like peanuts) but you also want the parents to not hate you.

i sent a message to the teacher to that effect, then i posted in the parents' group that i'd done so and that we had no intention of making everyone's lives difficult.

what followed was surprising: the mother of the bully from last week reached out to me, along with another parent, and both of them were stunned to learn that his allergy is a real danger and that he's been isolated from the other children because he's (justifiably) too scared to eat with or near them. i spoke to the mother on the phone, and she almost brought me to tears: she remembers being an isolated olah chadasha when she arrived, and she was deeply upset that mr smear has had to deal with the food thing on top of everything else. she's determined to use this story as a way to teach her son, and insisted on putting together mishloah manot specifically for mr smear.

she also convinced me to clear things up for the other parents. so i wrote a post in the group as follows:

hi everyone, i just spoke to some of you and realized that <mr smear>'s situation wasn't so clear until now.

<mr smear> has a severe allergy to dairy products. not a sensitivity - an allergy - at a life-threatening level. he has to carry an epipen with him at all times, and he is (rightly) afraid of other people's food that contains or may contain dairy products, so he usually avoids eating with the other kids in class or stays away from them because he is afraid that there might be an incident.

there are even kids in the class who take advantage of this fear to hurt him. just so you know.

we are very grateful to the parents who are considering the social implications of this, and those who contacted us - you touched us deeply. those of you who already understood and always cared - we thank you very much.

we're happy that <the teacher> is taking this matter seriously, but i promise that it is not our intention to make things difficult for you or your children. this is not an easy situation, for both us and you, and i hope we will continue to cooperate (and tolerate as much as possible) so that we can all be as comfortable as possible ❤️

the responses that followed were positive. and even if only some of the parents are with us and supportive, that's huge, and for the first time we don't feel so alone with this and we understand that the lack of consideration has mostly been from ignorance, not apathy. and now there's a bit of competitive overcompensation going on and it looks like a bunch of kids might be bringing vegan mishloah manot for mr smear tomorrow, so of all the directions today could have gone in i ended up having to give him a talk about showing gratitude for any gifts he receives even if they're from kids he doesn't like.

to underscore the first lesson, though, when i discussed it with mr smear after i got home he told me that he'd been really angry to learn that most of his class - after three and a half years with him - didn't understand what an allergy was. so today mr smear and their new teacher taught them. and maybe some of their parents learned, too.

...

that whole story took about two hours out of my work day, i went from terrified to overcome with gratitude to awkward and anxious and it took quite a while to come back to earth and be able to do some work. and then it was time to come home (late), i was supposed to help mr smear with his homework but between our talk and his stomache really hurting that didn't happen.

he'd better be doing okay by tomorrow morning. his best friend sent photos of himself hand-making oznei haman with pistachio cream for him. holy shit.

accounting

 well... this morning could have gone better, mr smear was his usual uncooperative-in-the-morning self and our day began unpleasantly. although we did eventually have a (relatively) good talk, he was still unhappy for most of the walk to school. then i dropped him off and told him i was off to the doctor, and he very aggressively demanded that i tell him why which was kinda cute.

[jackals going mental, i've shushed them twice tonight already and i feel like they're not caring much]

i walked to the clinic and sat with our doctor. by the time i left, i had referrals for a sleep lab, a neurologist, a psychiatrist and blood tests, along with a prescription for alpha lipoic (supposedly for my pseudo-RLS hip issues, at least it's not psychotropic).

i came home, helped gd with some stuff (her back's giving her trouble), then got sent out to draw money for her. i was feeling a bit woozy by the time i got back up the stairs, so i hurriedly wolfed down an early breakfast and headed off to work.

i think my work day was pretty good, but it could've been better. i'm very excited by how we're performing as a company, though, the results of our weekend efforts were particularly exciting ^_^

i picked mr smear up from his therapist and he hung around the office - mostly pretty chilled - and i feel like the end of my day was alright. then we came home for dinner.

...

gd and i had had a discussion about his eating habits this morning, it's something i've been bothered by for a long time: he only eats symbolic amounts of the food he really needs. tonight i was proud of both of them; in spite of the drama (mr smear claims it was the most traumatic experience of his life) he ate three whole slices of zucchini.

...

we had a good chat with my mom and sister while mr smear got ready for bed. one of my cousins' kids is coming to tel aviv and we're making plans to meet up. and it was a little bit of a relief that it's his brother who was the jailbird and not him. we saw my nephew for a half a minute, and were shocked because he's not looking too good at the moment - his health situation's been terrible, he's been having a really hard time :(

after putting mr smear to bed, brushing my teeth and showering, i settled in for some phone calls to my canadian bank. it took a few tries, but eventually i got them to close the account and it looks like we're properly done with them!

it feels good to close the chapter on that.

i just realized how late it's gotten, i'm going to try going to bed now.

breaking the cycle

 it was the first real weekend in three weekends, though i was really, really tired last by yesterday afternoon. i think that's just because i'm working really hard these days.

i slept awfully and far from enough on what remained of thursday night, woke up yesterday and took mr smear to school, and then shortly afterwards gd dragged me to the mall to do some shopping. i was starting to feel worn down by the time we returned home, and was relieved to have half an hour to myself before picking up mr smear when he called to say that the juggling teacher was MIA. again.

*sigh*

i convinced him to calm down and just wait by the gate, and once the school day was officially over i picked him up and brought him home to change bags before we all headed out to the ayalon mall for purim costume shopping. after some bus shenanigans - waiting almost half an hour before giving up - we grabbed a rental and were there in no time.

we couldn't find a costume mr smear wanted, but we did find him a fake executioner's axe.

which he can't take to school because since october 7th, no costume weapons allowed :/

anyway, i dropped them off at home and returned the car and returned home, and napped hard, and took a hot bath, and then it was dinner time, by the end of which i was literally passing out at the table.

today:

mr smear and i got up around the same time, and i restarted buddy simulator 1984 which he'd begun last night. we had a great time together, but some of the events were quite disturbing and he had trouble going to sleep tonight...

the game's ESRB rating being for teens is... appropriate. i'm only a little way in and i'm first and foremost impressed by the use of lazy writing to disguise a very carefully crafted experience. secondly, what begins slightly creepy is only becoming creepier.

son of a *****, i'm in.

we had a bit of a fight about him coming out with me today... as usual. but he did, and once he was out he was great. we paid our friends a visit for a while - it was only supposed to be a quick stop to drop off the extra calvin & hobbes books and a hand-me-down onesie - but mr smear and their kids were having a good time and then we got into some conversations. eventually, it was time to go and they asked if they could join us, so we all headed out together on our bikes, through the park to the port.

we began at a playground, with mr smear uninterested in using the facilities and deliberately sunning his "herpes eye" (wtaf?!), and afterwards we biked through the port (big mistake) until the crowds proved too much and then we took a quick detour to get to babylon park. as we turned off the main stretch, right after two large women had just walked right in front of us while mr smear's temper was reaching boiling point, he angrily yelled something to the effect of "i HATE that obese people existing is a thing!" [laughs and dies inside simultaneously]

babylon park was a great idea, except that about 45 seconds in mr smear's friend burst into angry tears because her father wouldn't pay for her to use one of the gambling machines. that tantrum went on for a long time, while mr smear played some cool games (he's surprisingly good at the shooting games and he's getting good at the motorcycle ones too), and mr smear and her little brother and i played air hockey, and generally had a good go.

they left before we did, but when we decided we were done we found them still outside, with her refusing to leave. she agreed to go home with us (although we didn't agree to that :P), and we were almost out of the park when mr smear stopped and i had an opportunity to give her a talk about how her dad was protecting her from herself... it seemed to have landed, but she still didn't want to ride home with him so we all split up and i made sure she got home before mr smear and i came home ourselves.

overall, i'm really pleased with mr smear's attitude today and the two of us got exercise and sunshine and had a good time together, and i feel like i parented well even with the other kids. we had a good evening, with a less insane episode of delicious in dungeon, followed by a good chat with my mom and big sister (who's just arrived in cape town and is staying with her for a week).

and then it was bedtime, and the remaining half of an episode of monk that i'd fallen asleep during, and then comforting mr smear, and now... it's late, and we're about to lose an hour of sleep to the clock moving forward.

[checks]

why the fuck did anyone say that the clocks would be moving forward today? it's another few weeks.

either way, i'm tired and i hope i get a good night's sleep.

a hard end to the week

[the jackals are at it again, it's become an all-night thing that starts really early in the evenings. i just caught a glimpse of one of them patrolling our building's garden.]

i'm in-between sleeps, and i can sum up today with a solid "ugh".

the morning was good. it was the first time in a long time that i didn't feel anything hanging over my head. i even played a little of one of the games i picked up yesterday while enjoying an early breakfast (i usually fast until noon), the path. so far, cool concept.

the work day wasn't easy. nobody had time for the PRs i worked on last night, although one guy made a very interesting suggestion which i'll probably look into over the weekend. lunch was delicious (green thai curry) but i ate too much, and the entire afternoon my stomache felt uncomfortable. i made some progress, but nothing that felt meaningful, and the most significant conversation i had (security posture and strategy) had good results, but some of it took place during happy hour when i was legit tipsy and some of it dragged and caused me leave the office late while i was deliberately trying to leave earlier.

and speaking of happy hour, one of our bosses was entertaining a colored-hair liberal and oh my god i'm praying that that's not a new hire. i really don't want to work with people who constantly feel the need to educate everyone on their political ideologies... i can't stop thinking how in the animal world, bright colors are a warning sign to others :/

...

coming home was flustering. i left the office in a rush - "escaped", more like - and immediately caught a bus that would take me home. the buses stop much closer to home than the light rail. but as i got on the bus, i realized that i'd left my computer on my desk. i got off at the next stop, and judged that it would be quicker to walk to the light rail than to an opposing bus stop, and i quickly returned to the office to pick up my laptop and awkwardly repeat my weekend wishes to my coworkers.

and that's when i made the mistake of trying to catch another bus home, because i waited forever (and even took two buses, hoping the stop further down would see a higher frequency), and by the time i eventually got home it was clear that walking the entire distance would have been faster. even though the light rail adds an extra ten minutes of walking, it's by far the fastest way to travel on average.

...

the evening went well, although we watched episode 17 of delicious in dungeon while eating and the level of violence was entirely unexpected. we actually had to check in with mr smear to see if he was okay, and have a talk about whether it was appropriate or not. i'm honestly not sure whether we should continue.

...

but at least he went to bed without drama, and when i was brushing my teeth i was amused to hear him singing himself to sleep :)

...

just as we were settling in for the night / weekend, my boss called me up, apologizing repeatedly for bothering me but informing me that we have a surprise installation. i don't think he was too pleased that i don't know more than he does about how to do the old installations (i've been working on the new ones), but i assured him that i'm happy to assist and then contacted my lead to make sure that he knows that i'm available if he needs anything.

i tried watching an episode of monk after that, but i fell asleep on the couch instead, woken occasionally by work messages though thankfully none of them needed any action.

...

my nose was still giving me trouble all day, this evening i wondered if sick didn't transition into hayfever... but i took antihistamines and it's been a couple of hours with no results so i don't think it's that.

...

i'm seeing antisemitic anti-israel propaganda being floated by members of our cape town congregation and it's distressing. and we're still reeling from the impact of the deceitful "documentary" winning an oscar. it's disgusting and demoralizing.

the good place

i think i slept okay last night, but i was a bit too warm under the duvet (spring is coming). my sinus situation seems a bit better, but it's still not great. i don't know what this means, but whatever it is it's been going on a ridiculously long time now and i'm quite over it.

i know mr smear can get himself to school now, but i quite enjoy walking with him. on my way home, i picked up some stuff from the grocery store. then i ran into one of the parents - i still don't know his name, but it's way too late to ask - and we had a quick chat during which i learned that he works in an adjacent field to mine, which was interesting.

[i've just spent about half an hour trying to find out his name on facebook and linkedin, and i've got nothing to show for it]

once i was back home and mr smear was at school, i discussed last night's shenanigans and gd and i are in sync about how it went down.

i saw that my coworkers were all busy for a lot of the night, and i made a point of enabling work notifications around the clock because i feel bad that i wasn't online for them. i fiddled around with my cibus card, and managed to write up some stuff for ze german, before leaving for the office. it felt good to get that off my to-do list.

the work day was busy, and pleasantly successful. my lead blew my mind describing how he worked around the bugs we'd been seeing - our code was fine, the tools we're using have some issues.

lunch was amazing (pasta via's "mythological vegan").

in addition to achieving another milestone on the project i'm working on, i've just (like, an hour ago) finished up two pieces of "side quest" work. it's fair to say that the lion's share of the work i did today was implemented by AI, and most of that was pretty good and only needed some minor tweaks.

mr smear's class went on a field trip today, and on the bus ride back he FA'd with his phone and FO'd when his teacher confiscated it. he was very, very upset - hopefully he'll learn from the experience :P

i came home "on time" today (for the first time this week, i believe) and helped mr smear with his homework. in general it was a great evening, and my absolute favorite part of it was during shower / toothbrushing time with the three of us singing along at the top of our lungs to kiss' i was made for lovin' you and queen's bohemian rhapsody.

mr smear went to bed without any drama, and then gd and i enjoyed another episode of monk before she went to bed and i got back to business.

relative

it's all relative. gd woke up at 4am freaking out about something and waited until i woke up to confront me with it. so our day began with a very intense talk about relationship stuff, some of which was very hard, but which ultimately ended up in a good place.

and then, on my way to work, i realized that i'd said something untrue. irrelevant, but still untrue. so when i finally got home, after a very long, very intense day, i told her and sparked a new round of freak out that also took a long and difficult argument to get through.

but we got through it, and we seem to be good, and the rest of the evening was fine.

...

well, it was fine until mr smear started being very aggressively scared of the dark. i'm grateful that gd went to bed and let me handle it, because although it took about an hour to get through, mr smear and i both went through some important steps together and he eventually turned in with a relatively calm vibe.

parenting is hard.

...

taking mr smear to school this morning was pleasant, gd and i had a good morning before i left for work. i stopped on the way to the office to pick up a bunch of meds at the pharmacy - half an hour of my life just waiting in a queue for the only pharmacist on duty - and taking those meds when i arrived but still struggling with being snotty all day :/

work today was, as i said, long and intense. i fixed an important typo that our AI copilot had propagated throughout our codebase, i participated in an important meeting and i feel like i contributed, i completed two important pieces of work, and at the very end of the day established that something we thought was working was, in fact, completely broken.

my lead was a bit distressed just before i left, we kind of agreed to figure everything out in the morning. and one of our coworkers was shocked when i couldn't help him with something in kubernetes, i wonder if i shouldn't take him aside tomorrow and explain that i'm still new to all this :P

i had stuff i wanted to do this evening but i've been... distracted. i think i'm going to go to bed soon.

the FO part

it's the middle of the night, i got up to transition from couch to bed and i just had to get this down first.

it's been a day.

...

i slept about half the night last night, which is half the night more than i expected to be able to sleep. around 6am i jumped out of bed in a combination of fear and rage, and the first thing i did as soon as i was able was to sit down with mr smear and review his report of what happened the previous day. i got him to demonstrate what he experienced, and i understood exactly what happened.

i sent an update to his teacher, and i wrote that i'm beginning to understand that they're listening more to the bullies than to the victims, and that mr smear isn't merely inventing things to be afraid of.

i was supposed to have a call with my doctor this morning about my sleep issues, but gd and i were in such a state that i missed it and had to reschedule. she had just raised a really good point - everything we're going through is precisely what everyone the world over is trying to call attention to: we all say "no bullying" and "no violence", but when it's right in front of us we want to believe that it's not happening right until it's too late and there's an injury or worse.

i called the anti-bullying org we spoke to a few weeks ago, and the councillor assured me that they would speak to the school, but also gave me advice about how to help mr smear directly. which was reassuring, because it's stuff that we're already doing as much as we can.

after trying to write (and arguing about) the right message in french to yesterday's bully's mother (because then gd and her could communicate in mother tongue) for a while, i took over and sent the following:

hi ___, i hope you're all well

we are aware that [your son] and [mr smear] are not getting along, but recently [your son] has been more focused on him and yesterday he threatened him with violence. we would really appreciate it if you could talk to him before things get out of hand 🙏

so... let me tell you that it was a very pleasant surprise when she responded in a way that made it clear that she would be dealing with this. 

i updated mr smear's therapist right before entering my office, and tried to focus on my work.

...

it was a really nice morning, weather-wise. i went to work without a sweater and i was comfortable. hello, march!

the new guy and i got a tour of the "warehouse" this morning. on exiting the warehouse, our guide let our a loud fart and i immediately responded with a "bless you", and i spent the next couple of minutes being amused that the other guys were being cool about it too 🤣

it was a productive morning, and i merged my first complete PR by lunchtime.

...

lunch began socially, but was immediately interrupted with full-scale drama. with everything else that's been going on, gd and i had forgotten that mr smear needed to leave school early today for a rescheduled appointment with his therapist, and so i needed to get the message to him even though he's not allowed to use his phone. at the same time, gd needed to drop her lunch and rush to the school because the security guard wouldn't let him out without a parent.

what happened next was a total clusterfuck.

mr smear got the message, but by the time gd arrived at the school he'd been let out without supervision and had disappeared. we use family link to keep track of him, and that was when we discovered that he'd left his phone at home this morning 🤦

gd was in pain (her legs are hurting a lot) and in a flat panic, and i sent her to check if he'd gone to his tutor by mistake while i packed up my lunch and got ready to rent a vehicle to go searching the streets for him.

i was putting on my shoes when she called to say she'd found him - he had indeed gone to his tutor's.

jesus fucking christ.

i was a shell of a man by the time i got back to the lunch table, trying to process what had just happened and follow the conversations and be sociable when demanded of me.

holy shit.

anyway.

...

follow-up drama: gd dropped him off at his therapist - on time - but then got lost trying to take a bus somewhere after i'd told her to take a taxi. at this point she was so upset that she didn't want to go to her therapist, but i convinced her that of all the times to skip a therapy appointment, this was NOT the time. i'm very glad she listened.

...

i picked mr smear up from his appointment and talked to him about what we'd all been through. i took him to my office, where one of my coworkers immediately jumped on the opportunity to show him some of our toys, which was really cool! right until he got into trouble for flying a drone in the office, but mr smear got a drone's eye view of our workstations before that happened and he definitely enjoyed it :)

overall, having him in the office was a positive experience even though we weren't prepared for it and he spent (in my opinion) way too much time on the phones (although i did get him to switch from games to reading by the end). and he even helped me a little with setting up one of the computers :)

the rest of my work day was setting up a computer that we'd thought was DOA, completing the first iteration of the scripts i've been working on and finally testing them out before handing over the remainder of the deployment to my lead. it was a real deployment that needs to be installed soon, and although it didn't go smoothly, i proved myself up to the challenge and i felt appreciated afterwards.

my lead and i drove each other crazy for a little bit, too, but it felt good-natured and we got everything working in the end.

i really do feel like i'm where i need to be.

...

mr smear and i had a pleasant time getting home, with him leading for the most part. we got home just in time for dinner and a delicious in dungeon episode, and a long chat with my mom while eating too much dessert* that i truly feel i deserved.

* not just salted oreos, but salted oreos with vegan marshmallows squished on top

...

between getting mr smear into bed and falling asleep watching another episode of monk, i had a long chat with mr smear's homeroom teacher and it was quite reassuring. when interrogated, the bully admitted to what he did and he received a very stern warning. additionally, it sounds like my message to the principal and contact from the org i spoke to have lit a fire under their asses, and it looks like the school's going to be taking additional measures to ensure the kids' safety.

we'll see, of course, but it's encouraging nonetheless.

...

it's been a day.

parents vs the school vs the bullies

 holy fuck. today was a mostly positive day, but it's been overshadowed by mr smear's bullying situation and i can't stop fretting and second-guessing how we're handling it (or how we've been handling it).

parenting is fucking hard.

so in today's entry in the bullying saga, one of the kids who was harrassing mr smear on friday tried to kick a football to his face. fortunately mr smear managed to dodge, but the fact that there was no staff around when they know there's a violence issue just blows my mind.

i wrote a letter to the new principal to warn her that from this point onwards, if any kid hurts my child physically we're going straight to the police. tomorrow morning we're going to send the same warning to the bully's mother (in french, because she's french so it's easier for gd to "connect").

*heavy sigh*

this is so fucked up. and i keep thinking of the kind of fuckery we saw in the series black space.

...

the above kinda takes the wind outta my sails, but i'll try to express how good today was anyway. i mean, it started shitty, with a fight with mr smear because he didn't understand that i didn't understand that his mouth was in pain from waiting for me to wash my hands when he hadn't finished brushing my teeth. we got through that, but it was unpleasant, and then on the way to school he started whining (as usual) that he was too sick to go (his cough has mostly gone, so i don't know if he was putting on a show or coughing for real at the time).

but it was the class party to say farewell to their homeroom teacher, so he couldn't miss it.

it also ended on a shitty note (separate from the bullying stuff) because he didn't want to do his homework, also as usual. but gd and i both threatened him, and yelled at him, and then yelled and threatened that if he doesn't learn how to learn and cooperate he not going to be able to do any of the crazy stuff he wants to do, and he eventually - sulkily - got through it.

brilliantly, i might add. learning math in a different language is hard, and when he stops fighting he's actually really good with the material. it would just be a lot easier for everyone if we didn't need to go through a shit ceremony every day.

parenting is fucking hard.

...

right, now i can finally talk about the good stuff. i've hit a kind of internal reset button, and i've got my mind around where i am and what i need to do. and what i need to do is work hard, and extra. that... that feels different.

lesson one: being amongst the earliest in the office in the morning means that the coffee machine doesn't coffee because it's not warmed up.

i had a meeting with my boss and lead, and both of them seemed happy with what i'm doing and how i'm doing it, which was very reassuring. i had a 1-on-1 with the woman who sits next to me, and aside from getting a handle on what she's about she was very appreciative of my approach to things, which was very reassuring.

over lunch i learned the ages of some of my coworkers, and one of them may have been slightly offended by me referring to them as "children"... but by the end of the day i was pretty sure we're cool. partially because i passed on the earworm for dumb ways to die which someone else had given me earlier.

i made really good progress, and i ended the day essentially having achieved my stated goal for the day. amongst other things. that felt really good. not least of which because the article i published two days ago proved crucial to understanding the problem i needed to solve 🤘

...

oh, and today i came up with a programming dad joke in hebrew that i'm particularly proud of:

אם אתה דופק את הקומפיילר, זה אומר שאתה מהדרפאקר?

...

i'm tired, but i've watched a fun episode of monk with gd and i'm going to try to make some script magic before going to bed. god knows if i'll be able to sleep tonight anyway.

...

while trying to publish this post, i received a message from mr smear's teacher, who claims that this is just another case of mr smear misinterpreting an "accident".

not today.

hacking

 last night i began a throat thing, possibly an infection, and i've been struggling since. i spent a lot of today resting, and i'm praying i'll be okay by tomorrow. and tomorrow morning is going to be early and complicated regardless of how i'm feeling.

it's bothering me that i've been sick pretty much every weekend for the last month.

otherwise, it was a day of inscryption (with mr smear on the ps4), and a heck of a lot of fiddling with powershell and devcontainers to get cdktf working on my windows machine. and gd and i rewatched yesterday's episode of monk after we finally got mr smear to go to sleep - he appears to be nursing a fever himself :(

everyone's going on about zelenskyy's brutal "talk" with trump and vance yesterday, but i'm just suspicious. nothing anyone is doing is making much sense these days...