the real puppetmasters

mr smear woke me up this morning with a surprisingly long talk about dealing with life, and school, and bullying. amazingly, he seemed genuinely open to what i was saying and appeared to appreciate how i tied it into how video games work*, even if he was a little confused at first :P

* that our emotions dictating our behavior make us like an NPC, and that he's been taking more and more control of his character's actions and learning how to navigate the world

mr smear woke up coughing again today, but we medicated him heavily and sent him off to school. i got a bunch of small things done, then arrived at the office with my biggest goal being to wait before tucking in to the breakfast. fasting is harder when the FOMO kicks in.

the day was an interesting, exciting, and sometimes confusing mix of tasks, but there was a common thread between a bunch of them and over the course of a few conversations we may have hit on a viable solution to something that's been gnawing at me for a while.

there was a little drama when i got pulled out of call by a notification that i couldn't make sense of, then pulled into a reference call for a candidate that i had nothing to contribute to, and then the next meeting ended with me trying to be calm and rational and end the call quickly because i suddenly and violently needed to pee.

i arrived at a plan of action in time to rush home and take mr smear out for a "walk"; literally just to the electronic recycling across the road as an excuse to talk about his day, but he derailed that plan with his favorite new game of trying to come up with dumb ideas. he liked my idea of "cold sauce", but i liked the idea of a digital broken telephone even more :P

we watched some more asterix & obelix - the big fight (it's really good!), and while mr smear got ready for bed i ordered the next two illustrated harry potter books (did they only publish up to book no. 5?), and once mr smear was in bed and i'd watched random shit and showered i sat down to do some work.

i was displeased to have to explain to a coworker how to extricate himself from a mess of his own device - well, a bunch of devs, but all of them doing stuff i've explicitly informed them is undesirable and dangerous - so it seems like we're going to have "a talk" tomorrow. but i was pleased to stumble (pretty quickly) on a solution to the most immediate issue that was much simpler than what i had in mind.

score!

the rest of the evening would have been very quiet had my mother not sent me and gd something politically triggering, and after the argument gd and i had yesterday i immediately called her to explain the situation... we're living in what feels like the end times, where being jewish is unsafe no matter where you are in the world, the jihadis have taken control of the media, and even patriotic israelis who should know better have become mouthpieces for jihadi propaganda.

plus, the south african situation is spinning faster out of control than ever.

i think i need to go to bed soon.