revelation

i'm too tired to write much down, and i'm driving a lot tomorrow. lemme just drop some notes.

yesterday:

mr smear's last day of school before the two week holidays. i finally remembered to move the furniture around so that gd could cut his hair in the afternoon before leaving for work. i struggled to make an appointment for her foot :/

i got to the office and took the opportunity to have coffee with someone, and he's doing what i think most people would describe as a dream job. (there're a few of those with us)

while i was explaining what i'm working on, we had a really exciting moment of inspiration (we're both into gaming and simulations) that chained into a podcast one of my bosses suggested and that led to a couple of really exciting conversations (with some other bosses). in addition to that, we had a retrospective during which i managed to connect a whole bunch of dots and received a literal "amen". and then, just before leaving the office but after managing to get something really tricky working, i overheard my lead grumbling (very loudly) and i literally took command of the situation and told him how we were going to handle it - in that moment it felt like a weird but significant shift in power took place.

i like working in an environment where our power structures are fluid, and i especially like being a part of an organization that might be making a sci-fi fantasy i've had since i was a teenager become a very real thing. and it's interesting to be feeling so aligned and in the right place when the beginning of this very week started off with me feeling frustrated and out-of-place.

i was super-excited by how the day had gone, but it wasn't over. after dinner chatting with gd and mr smear (they'd already eaten by the time i got home), i still had some work to do - it began with teaching one of my coworkers how to deploy something, but something went wrong. and then i learned that what i'd thought was working perfectly was missing an important piece of the puzzle.

today:

i slept rather poorly last night, mainly because the new pillows we bought suck.

it took me a while to get my day started. gd went to her sewing lesson and i left mr smear alone to go get my hair cut in a very fancy place. it's not an amazing haircut, but it's okay. gd's happy with the front but hates the back ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i didn't realize how much longer her lesson would be, so i sat around having coffee and listening to a podcast and reading random articles for a while, then rushed home when i couldn't get hold of mr smear (his phone was on silent) to pick him up and drag him out to join me and gd on a quick shopping mission... but to be honest, most of the time was spent in the harry potter pop-up store and with much enthusiasm on his part :P

we'd been trying to arrange a gift for our kibbutz cousin, who we're going to see tomorrow, and just as we left and were waiting on a bus i had an idea, said goodbye and rushed off to the sarona market where i found some south african sauces and spices, along with some of the saborito hot sauce range!

it was a great haul, albeit quite expensive.

the afternoon was spent eating delicious food, helping mr smear with his homework, and enjoying a glorious breakthrough with the work problem. i've handed over a working solution to my coworkers and in theory should be able to take sunday and monday's vacation without interruption ^_^

mr smear and i went to shul, and between the service itself and the walks there and back it's become a really nice way to close the week / start the weekend. after kiddush and a nice chat with my mom, we watched an episode of the simpsons, had a fun shower / teeth / bedtime ritual, and gd and i have been doing nothing ("parallel play" :P) since. but i think i'm going to go to bed very soon.

oh, look - i wrote a whole bunch of stuff.

sleep deficit

i certainly could have used some more sleep. i say that, but it's approaching midnight again... one of my bosses asked this afternoon if not sleeping could be making him stupid. i suggested that not getting sufficient REM sleep prevents our brains from processing information.

"so... you're saying i am stupid?"

aside from getting mr smear up and to school in good spirits (and reading my kindle instead of looking at screens), i managed to get some work done and have a meeting with my (direct) boss before gd and i headed out for our meeting.

the meeting went pretty well. gd had a couple of emotional moments, one positive (the new principal gave her a hug) and one negative (the old principal got a lambasting in absentia, with gd comparing her to a "hair on a soup"). we learned that mr smear's chief bully is on the spectrum and mr smear takes it personally when he makes faces and noises that - allegedly - are him self-regulating 🤦

we've agreed that mr smear's current shit class is probably the best place for him, primarily because they made the other classes sound even worse. i'm not sure how i feel about that.

i walked gd home, then continued on to work, completely forgetting to help her prepare to cut mr smear's hair after school. which in retrospect must have been a good thing, because the washing machine technician arrived a day early to examine it and decide that gd had simply been using too much soap 🤣

most of the work day - the bits that i was in the office for - were straightforward and productive, though i am a bit unsure as to whether what i'm doing really qualifies as meeting my deadlines. and i received my first full payslip today, which was less than i was expecting. i had to go over it earlier this evening and i'm hoping my insurance broker will agree with my assessment...

between my morning chat with my boss and an afternoon chat with our (unofficial) head of communications, i feel like that was the most productive part of my day.

i left the office early to meet gd at the orthopaedist's offices. we arrived early enough to buy new pillows and get a few groceries, and eventually found the clinic itself. the examination was brief, and now we're on to the next specialist (the one we knew from the beginning she needed to see).

we got home just as the play therapist was leaving, and after unpacking the groceries that had been delivered i sat down with mr smear to continue The Homework. but that took longer than anticipated, mainly because we had a couple of in-depth talks about All The Things.

the simpsons over dinner - gd's experiment with making vegan chopped liver for passover was a complete success - and then a fairly relaxed bedtime / finishing john wick (it's a well-executed 80's-style action film) / run on kaycee's mod / and now this before going to bed.

service with a _____

overall, i think it was a pretty good day. i didn't sleep enough but the sleep i got was good, and the morning started off well, albeit uneasily. i dropped mr smear off at school with a good feeling. i flipped our mattresses, and took care of some paperwork and other minor things... and then tried to book a technician for the washing machine.

...

i tried their whatsapp account first, but at some point - after gathering all the data i needed to get through the menu system - it seemed to freeze.

so i called. i was number ten in the queue. after about ten to fifteen minutes of muzak, with a tone every few seconds to make you think someone's about to answer you, there was a pause, a real tone, and then the sound of a call being hung up.

furious, i called again. this time number twenty in the queue. the number's seemed to be going down pretty quickly - one or two each minute - so it was only another ten to fifteen minutes of that muzak with the tone... when a woman's voice finally answered, i yelled just to make sure she had no excuse but to talk to me.

after all that, all she would say was "give me your number so we can call you back". i fought down the urge to yell at her to be ashamed and gave her my number.

later, i'd see a response to the whatsapp messages and learn that i needed to go through the process with a different service 🤦

...

on my way to work i noticed that the unicode code for the tiny heart fingers emoji (🫰) is FAF0. i'm not going to forget that in a hurry. i message an ex-coworker who loves that sign to share the weird discovery :P

it was my old boss' first day as my new boss, kind of. our roles and reporting aren't clear (intentionally), so i guess he's more like one of my bosses.

aside from trolling my team with an april fool's daily report, a very positive check-in with my boss (my direct boss), and a pleasant walk to grab lunch with one of our other bosses (oy) along with an interesting lunch time conversation about parenting and screens, i spent most of my work day getting an installation done over an unreliable network and when i eventually left the office, it was after much celebrating because i finally got the damned thing to work (i was actually starting to suspect a hardware failure).

pre-dinner was quiet, mr smear had apparently had a good day. and nystire and i spoke for a bit and might end up doing something interesting together.

dinner was nice, although we did get into The Discussion again about him accepting his reality - who he is, where he is, and what he has to do - which may or may not have had an impact, but i'm pretty happy with the metaphor i came up with: a heavy car is rolling inexorably down a narrow hill dragging an impassable wall behind it. you can try to stop it, but at some point you will get run over. you can try to go back up the hill, but you will be dragged painfully in the direction of gravity. or you can try to run alongside the car and try to direct it by pushing it to the left or the right.

(or maybe jumping in and steering is a better analogy. needs work)

...

then we had to do the homework page from yesterday that hadn't been completed, and what started off alright rapidly turned to shit. fortunately, we got out of the shit, but not without some serious feelings (and threats).

it took a few passes over the question, but then there was a magical moment where mr smear *clicked*, and he understood what he needed to do, and he enthusiastically Did The Thing. and he did it well.

i told him to hold on to that feeling, and understand what caused it. i pray he does.

even though it was a little after his bedtime, something inspired me to read a little the colour of magic to him before saying good night.

gd and i watched most of the rest of john wick, and i've spent most of the remaining evening updating my macbook, watching random youtube videos and playing inscryption.

holy shit, i didn't realize it was approaching 1am already and we have a meeting with the school in the morning.

rage against the machines (and little boys)

 i didn't sleep well, and a meaningful contributor to that was reading aethersmith's message that included the phrase "if someone came to with with the argument you are using re the israel / palestine conflict, would you feel the same way?" right before going to bed.

i took my time considering my response, discussing my thoughts with my family and my coworkers, and this evening sent this in response:

firstly, no. but that's because we're literally fighting against armies of genocidal maniacs who not only want to wipe out me and my family and my people, but have successfully infiltrated western media and academia and are convincing everyone that wiping us out is okay. let's contrast that to "you're stealing my art and hurting my livelihood".

nobody makes art without stealing art, and very few artists in the history of art have consented to their art being studied and practiced and cloned. if your art's good, people are going to want to copy it. up until now the only ways your artwork has been protected has been when the copies are clear attempts at forgery and are being passed off as authentic, and the barriers to entry in producing art being really high. 

you're upset because there's shit art. weren't you upset before?

you're upset because artists are losing work. that's fair, but everything's being disrupted lately, and that's not just because of AI or the current method of training models. and if anyone's livelihoods are being compromised, trust me - us software developers are the first in line for the chopping block.

am i worried about what's coming? honest answer: somewhat. but at the same time, we can choose to embrace and adapt or we can choose to fight.

i do NOT, in ANY way, condone you taking the fight to the users of the new technology and trying to coerce us into boycotting something we simply don't agree with you about. you think it's unethical? that's okay. we disagree. and that's okay too. your fight isn't with me, but maybe i'm just an easier target for you than the AI companies and people who are training their models without compensating artists. maybe you should fight with them about it.

and maybe you'd be more effective in getting people on your side if you showed a little bit of empathy, tried to understand that they're not evil scum because they're on the opposing side of a debate that you've decided shouldn't exist. sometimes it doesn't matter whether you're right as much as whether you're effective, and i promise you you're not helping your cause by gunning for individuals who aren't responsible for the things that are scaring you.

i'm not your enemy, and neither are any of the other end users of this incredible-but-highly-flawed technology.

...

this morning was okay, i walked mr smear to school and then continued on to the post office to return a bunch of stuff we bought that doesn't fit.

thoughts for the walk to and from the post office: the generative ai thing, and "real mean pick up after their dogs".

i cleaned out more crow poop from a windowsill 🤮, then gd and i did some grocery shopping, interrupted halfway by a visit from a friend. i ended up leaving for work a bit later than planned, but it was fine.

it was a busy day. my lead decided to pause the project i've been stressing over the past few work days, which doesn't feel very good but i understand it. a few of us walked to sumsum for lunch, which was nice. my lunch break, which usually lasts about twenty minutes, turned into an hour because someone got me talking about shakespeare's sonnets and someone from each subsequent lunch group caught the tail end of the conversation and then started a new one :P

we had a long presentation on "nonviolent communication", which wasn't very exciting, but had some interesting bits nonetheless. that triggered a political discussion with my lead that got a bit heated, but i think i managed to deescalate effectively.

i left early to pick up a handheld vacuum cleaner because ours finally died. they were out of stock, as was the closest store. [in retrospect, i could have tried their competitors across the road]

oh, yeah - and our washing machine's leaking. so i have to take care of that in the morning :/

i walked home, and tried to get through mr smear's homework with him.

that... did not go well. it went very badly. it went a lot worse than usual. he still doesn't get that this is home, and that he can't escape being jewish, and that refusing to integrate is only hurting him.

and this was all before we addressed the fact that his hebrew teacher sent me a report today informing me that he still hasn't been participating.

we had dinner, while gd simmered with rage.

we tried again with the homework. things got even worse. gd lost it. on the one hand, she was really, really harsh with him. on the other, i believe he needed it. he's developed a bizarrely warped view of how the world works and what's fair and what's not, and it's really not serving him.

hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

i played through inscryption, then responded to aethersmith, and then decided that i didn't have it in me to get any work done so i've been doing minesweeper.online quests while watching youtube videos. i'm starting to fall asleep now. maybe tonight will be the night 🤞