down

 burnout? probably. sick? possibly. slow and clouded? definitely. yesterday was still rough, i walked in to the office (with mr smear) into a production upgrade that hadn't been prepared for, and that was missing a critical element. and then, on top of everything else, it took forever to understand that something in my personal environment was broken. it would take three hours before we were confident that the upgrade could be done and that somebody else would be able to take care of it.

at lunchtime, the salad group made salad. it didn't even occur to me to ask them to leave the walnuts out, which mr smear couldn't stand :(

the afternoon was full of interruptions. and when my boss informed everyone that bigtalk's out of the picture, he tried to take the sting out by joking that i'd "be happy to tell you the details" 🤮

happy hour was pretty good, mr smear loved the massive savory crepes and i made the mistake of drinking an 8% cherry beer right before heading into a nasty hour of troubleshooting with our frontend lead and a canadian contractor.

eventually, mr smear and i headed out and home, dropped our bags off, and jumped on a bus to join gd for dinner. but due to the protests the bus got stuck in heavy traffic, so we jumped off and practiced live location navigation (gd was a bit panicky about it), meeting up relatively quickly and then continuing to look for a place to stop.

...

the first place we sat down didn't have much that we were interested in, but then mr smear refused to ask a waiter for something he wanted and the ensuing argument made me get up and go. a short while ago we just had a repeat of that, and with everything else i'm dealing with i've explained that i'm taking a "parenting break" for at least a few hours.

...

the second place we found was rainbow burger, which was already one of our favorite spots. they've just introduced yo! eggs to their menu, as well as their new "sensational" seitan burgers, so we ordered one original and one sensational with an egg and the new won out over the old, and everyone was happy.

tired and grumpy, but happy with the food, at least.

the rest of the walk home and the evening was fine, though i was thoroughly drained. everyone hit the hay early, and aside from waking up and playing slay the spire for a few hours i was in bed until quite late.

...

i sent bigtalk a message this morning, even though i'm feeling completely out of it right now, to let him know i want him to succeed and offering him (when he's ready) to talk. i really hope his path corrects quickly.

...

i'm probably going to lie down again soon.

processing

 i'm feeling less physically and emotionally drained today, but i'm still struggling. mostly emotionally and in terms of desperately needing an uninterrupted day off.

yesterday:

starting to write up my experiences with bigtalk

mr smear and the drone workshop - he kind of shut down the moment he encountered the other kids, which really sucked. but my coworker who was running it was kind enough to do a private drone session later, and mr smear had an amazing time ^_^

...

making progress with the new devops guy, but uncovering layers of bigtalk's bullshit (amateur-hour and AI vomit). my boss informing me that bigtalk's hearing was basically him begging not to be let go, which is heartbreaking. i really feel bad for him, and i feel like the whole world has let this dude down; and he is one courageous dude.

...

a big moment with mr smear about tearing up artwork he doesn't like

planning to get dinner with mr smear (gd was getting her hair cut), and his friend inviting him to play table tennis. accompanying the two clowns on the bus, sharing hummus, falafel and chips for dinner, and occasionally jumping in to play some ping pong.

my mom's laptop being expertly stolen from her car

getting the kids home late (because his friend realized he'd left his phone by the tables when we were already on the bus we'd waited a while for)

a very late bedtime for mr smear, and therefore for us too

today:

i slept alright, but woke up early with my thoughts. continued writing.

we had a family meeting in the morning (regarding mr smear's workshop behavior, and his looking-at-his-failures behavior), and mr smear was very angry with me. but on our way home this evening, we had a very mature discussion and he acknowledged what we were trying to get through to him.

gd took mr smear to have bloodwork done while i had a meeting, apparently mr smear handled it impressively well.

it was a quiet day at work, though jam-packed with meetings and included a very intense lunchtime debate about israeli politics. it also included a two-hour long demo by a contractor, and i found it very validating that the new guy and i both came up with similar alternatives to his architecture and we both feel that what he's put together in two months is something either of us could do in a matter of hours... and better.

i came home, and took mr smear to dizengoff for their japanese food. we had dumplings and onigiri again, and mr smear ate the dumplings with chopsticks this time, and then we walked home picking up ice cream on the way. and talking a lot.

a lot of the talk was about bigtalk, and why this is such a difficult experience for me personally.

...

on an unrelated note, but running in parallel through the day, is responding to a south african connection on linkedin's anti-israel propaganda post. i felt i couldn't let the lies stand unchallenged, but the experience is gross.

...

i don't want to take vacation days unless i can actually enjoy the vacation, and i don't feel like that's going to happen anytime soon :(

off a low base

 well, to be fair today was easier. but i felt completely exhausted, and disorganized, and my brain seems to be seeping down my spinal column and into my butt.

i started the day with a walk to the post office to pick up my new phone covers - the three of them cost less than gd's failed one, and they're all awesome. so i'm proudly sporting the hunter license:

(ugh, those nails 🤮)

on my way home i stopped by a mor clinic. it was uncomfortable that i couldn't even get a number for the receptionist because i didn't have an appointment. when a receptionist did become available, she informed me that they can't help me with what i'm looking for. when i asked if there was anyone i could speak to about gd's cannabis story, she shrugged and complained that she, too, has difficulty getting human assistance and she works there.

i came home, completed the deployment i'd triggered on my way out, picked up my gear and walked mr smear and gd to the clinic (he was supposed to get blood tests done, but we hadn't realized he'd needed an appointment). i bussed to the office, where my future team was already waiting for me, and we spent the following few hours strategizing and getting some work done.

two jumpy dogs + a bunch of jumpy kids = distraction.

i spent the remainder of the day being set upon by various coworkers, constantly context-switching and generally feeling worn out and slow. i did get some good stuff done, a few good things, actually, but at least twice i got told off by my boss about not having taken a holiday.

i definitely need to take a holiday. it would be nice to not literally be the only person holding the devops fort right now.

at 7pm i told gd i'd be leaving in ten minutes, and ten minutes later it was 7.30pm, so i don't know what the hell happened... i came home, joined my family for dinner (accompanied by a shot of rum) and some of the fifth harry potter movie, was shown some of my son's amazing artwork (his "realistic" minecraft characters), and after showers and toothbrushing (i'm being very cautious about brushing as softly as i can) i read a little more of the neverending story.

sometimes mr smear isn't in the mood, but tonight he was upset when i stopped reading.

it took me a little time to decompress enough to write this, now i'm not sure if i'm ready to crash yet.

facing the music

 i slept surprisingly well, all things considered. but i woke up feeling wired, so i skipped my first coffee and had a tea instead.

i'd woken up to the sounds of protesting, so i was surprised by how quiet everything was on my way to work.

i went past the clinic to try and make an appointment, but the receptionist didn't know how to help me. i walked to the closest bus stop, but didn't trust the public transport app and walked on, which turned out to be the right call. i did take the light rail for a single stop, but that was mainly as a break from the already rising heat. (still nowhere near as harsh as the last week)

i walked into the office just as my boss had informed bigtalk that he was going home until his hearing. i offered to speak with him, which in retrospect may have been a mistake, because a) he really has no idea why he's being let go and b) he blames me for my reporting to the boss and c) i realized, helplessly, that no matter what i say to him he's only going to hear what fits his narrative, which is precisely how we got here in the first place.

so... i tried not to say much, and i tried to be comforting, but doing both those things was literally impossible and it was just shit feelings all the way down.

and - since last week - the more i think about it, the more i think about how much of what he's told us is fake-it-till-you-make-it self-deception. all i saw today was a scared little kid, raw vulnerability, trying to make sense of something in a way that he's not going to be able to make sense of without a much deeper level of self-awareness.

as i said to my boss afterwards, if we were big enough to afford it, i would offer to mentor him.

the next hour or so was fully invested in disabling all of his accounts and rotating shared passwords.

...

at lunchtime i walked to meet up with gd and mr smear for his psychiatrist appointment. the intention of the appointment, to my understanding, is for the "doctor" (see the attached summary) to determine whether his social anxiety (which we now believe is no more severe than any kid's) warrants an "accompanier". but, of course, "it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

the meeting was okay, mostly, although there was a fair amount of awkwardness in mr smear's discomfort answering his questioning in hebrew (and the questions were uncomfortable questions in any language) and then, after he'd repeatedly mentioned his english not being great, he became offended when mr smear responded in english that he has "intrusive thoughts" and i asked if he was familiar with the term :/

...

i returned to the office for an hour or two of frustratingly difficult IT (security) work, then a couple of hours working with the new devops guy trying to restart the project that bigtalk never delivered.

and then the day ended (kinda) with me and another team member running through all our accounts to make sure we'd caught everything in the morning.

...

the protestors were gathering by the time i went home, and i walked through crowds of more and more people whose behavior (and placards) just upset me more and more. they're protesting against our government "abandoning" the hostages, as if there's anyone reasonable on the hamas side of the table to negotiate with. while i certainly appreciate their intention and their desperation, in practice all they're achieving - in my opinion - is demonstrating to hamas that the time for playing games isn't over.

...

the evening was pleasant, although i'm struggling with radiating nerve pain down my right side. and while gd had a much better day today in that department, she's also been struggling a bit this evening.

i'm exhausted, emotionally and psychologically. i hope tomorrow's easier.

fairy tales

 it was a hot walk, even if it was less hot than the previous days. we walked past a store and picked him up a malt beer, which made his day (up until that point), and eventually got to a coffee shop where i ordered a vegan dessert that was so over-the-top that it really made his day, and i read a brothers grimm story (the golden goose).

then we walked back home, where i picked up a (free) copy of joseph jacobs' english fairy tales and read jack the giant-killer while he played minecraft. then it was dinner time, and a smooth evening including more of the neverending story at bedtime.

after he went to sleep, i synced with my boss about tomorrow, which (confusingly to me) looks like it's going to be spread over a couple of days, so my plans for taking a day off this week are clearly on hold. i've spent the rest of the evening just trying to wear myself out with youtube and slay the spire in order to get some sleep, but i'm not feeling too confident right now.

i probably shouldn't have had that late iced coffee...

thinking

 well, mr smear did it - he handled his fears and he went to bed 🙏

i stayed up pretty late, but finally crashed and slept a bit. not enough, apparently, because i've spent most of the day uncomfortably alternating between reading and napping, with only a couple of longer periods watching an episode of doctor who and giving up on acquiring the zerg campaign in starcraft ii and ending up installing the original starcraft instead.

i've been making a lot of progress through elana gomel's nightwood, and it's riveting fairy tale horror.

now, to mr smear's usual chagrin, we're going out for a bit.

...

i've spent a lot of today thinking about tomorrow's dealings with bigtalk. i occasionally feel like things are going to be alright, but for the most part i'm quite anxious.

stretch

 today was almost entirely spent hiding at home with the A/C on, aside from a few minutes taking mr smear to the corner store to pick up some stuff, most importantly tortit ice creams.

if it wasn't for the discomfort in my neck and legs - possibly a sympathetic response to gd's difficulties - it was a quiet day. we all watched american pop together, which is an absolute masterpiece. there were two moments in the entire movie which were a little too edgy for mr smear, but overall it was thoroughly brilliant, beautifully animated, and wonderful.

before we made kiddush - this is becoming a tradition - mr smear and i played through another level in starcraft ii. he *really* wants to skip to the zerg, though, while i want to play the story through sequentially, so we agreed that next time we'll take turns between zerg and humans.

over dinner and until (late) bedtime, we started watching the doctor who reboot. great experience, and now we're back into mr smear needing to be brave at bedtime because he found some elements disturbing...

the good and the bad

 i don't remember how well or poorly i slept on thursday night, but last night was alright... until about 4 or 5am, when my hips started hurting but i was too exhausted to physically get out of bed and try to sort myself out.

bigtalk and i actually had a conversation about sleeping yesterday, he suffers from PTSD and he takes ritalin for ADHD and he was proposing melatonin, when i told him some of my stories about treating my RLS-like issues he was mortified - there's no feeling quite like winning the victim olympics :/

...

i woke up to a message from my boss letting me know that he's initiating a process to let bigtalk go.

i feel bad for him, but it's a relief. it's also scary, because the longer the week's worn on the less predictable he's become, and he's a security expert, and i'm nervous that might be able to do a lot of damage once he finds out. so when i got up this morning and spent twenty minutes writing up a protocol for his "offboarding".

still...

i really like the guy, but if you put a gun to my head i wouldn't be able to make a call as to whether he's for real or not. i want to mentor him, but at the same time i don't feel he's capable of receiving advice that doesn't already fit into his very narrow view of our field.

...

mr smear and i accompanied gd to the pharmacy on our way to the office in the sweltering heat. we moved from airconditioner to airconditioner, we took the light rail, and we arrived to find my vegan avo bagel untouched. so mr smear had a solid breakfast (parenting score!) and thoroughly enjoyed it :)

...

the big effort of the day was trying to deploy with bigtalk's new system, and trying to fix it, and becoming more and more convinced that this was an incredibly bad idea. the deal-breaker for me - the final, tiny straw amongst a host of others - was discovering that all of his work wasn't even based on our original scripts and didn't account for some very important behavior.

for anyone who works with code, the above is real, and it's not even the worst part.

that all came to a head - me explaining to him that we weren't going to merge, and that we were going to park his PR and rebuild a solution piece by piece that can hopefully salvage it for parts - while mr smear (remarkably patiently) waited for me to go and get him some lunch. the ensuing argument was painful, and went on for about half an hour, with him continuing to try to convince us that we were making a mistake.

...

mr smear put together a good salad, and enthusiastically demolished it. later, at our happy hour, the two of us hovered over the vegan sushi platter. at first, i handled feeding him with chopsticks, but at some point i managed to convince him to give them a try. he followed the instructions, and within minutes he'd got the hang of it!!

i don't know which of us was more excited ^_^

i didn't really get to participate in the game hacking event because it was a thursday evening and i was busy breaking our test site with a new release candidate. it was the perfectly horrible ending to a perfectly horrible day (for me), but mr smear had overall had a great time and even participated along with the two guys who were doing the game dev (although he got them into trouble with chatgpt because one of his proposed ideas wasn't safe for work :P)

we came home pretty late, and found gd in a rough state - she's basically been bedridden since yesterday morning due to nerve pain in her back that's radiating into her chest :(

after getting mr smear into bed, i played some slay the spire and then went to bed (relatively) early myself.

meat popsicle

 i didn't get back to sleep for another hour or two, and even then i didn't sleep very well, although i was able to get up later than usual.

my mouth guard is starting to fall apart :/

i was really tired today. really tired. like, possibly coming down with something tired. i arrived at work for another full team meeting (although bigtalk wasn't around), and it went on for a couple of hours, so we missed the daily with the rest of the department.

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

then i rushed out to meet up with gco and co, we ended up at the top of the building and had to rent a meeting room to get going, which was surprisingly expensive. getting sorted out took us about half an hour in total, but the hour that followed was very interesting and constructive. all in all, i'm very glad we did it.

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

i made it back in time to help out a couple of guys with random things, and then went into another hour-long meeting. at least this time i had coffee and a slice of cake with me :P

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

at this point, i was falling apart and i made myself a fourth cup of coffee. i needed to sync with some coworkers on our priorities for the next few weeks, and that was when i learned that bigtalk wasn't working on what we were working on, which is absolutely insane. i was completely stunned, and i lost my temper in front of half the office, and my coworkers ushered me into a meeting room where i explained to them why i was so deeply affected. they heard me out, and they were very supportive.

...

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

i found another meeting room, and sat down to be interviewed for a talent spotlight. i was still very upset about bigtalk, and i spent the few minutes i needed to wait just trying to calm myself down and get into an appropriate headspace.

i wasn't prepared (they'd only sent me the questions this morning) so everything was off-the-cuff, but by the end i felt like we'd all had a good experience and they seemed happy with what they had. i felt relieved because it went a lot better than i could have planned, and i feel like the resulting story they have to work with is good.

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

the next couple of hours were me trying to get work done with providing support to others, and eventually i left the office having encountered confusing errors with bigtalk's changes.

on my way home, i spoke to the incoming manager and informed him that i've completely lost faith in bigtalk's ability to function in our organization, and i made an appointment with my boss on sunday (when i'm on vacation, but he isn't) to let him know that this experiment is over.

...

i got home wired and overwhelmed, and needed to vent the day's stories to gd before i was able to calm down enough to eat. we had a good dinner, we enjoyed two simpsons episodes, and mr smear's bedtime (after putting in a few additional minutes of work) was pretty smooth with more of the neverending story.

the rest of the evening has been peaceful, not least of which being completing a fun run of slay the spire, and i think i'm just about ready for bed. caffeine-allowing, of course...

crash

 i woke up early to go to the hygienist. the experience was less painful than i anticipated. apparently i need to use a softer brush.

i bussed (very actively enjoying my music) to work, where i made the regrettably awkward decision to not go for coffee with our CEO because i'd just been at the hygienist (like, i didn't have to buy anything).

my new coworker and i spent a good ten minutes troubleshooting the coffee machine, and i was shocked to discover that he'd been unwilling to toss the extra trial-and-error coffees so he was drinking them (O_o)

i spent a chunk of the day completing the 1am story, and for the most part it looks like i succeeded. and, for the first part, it looks like the work i was doing before i encountered that stuff was good. the central part of the work day was a meeting for our algo team that i'd initiated, which was generally productive. unfortunately, bigtalk kept suggesting solutions to problems nobody has, which was a bit awkward.

amusingly, i found myself unwittingly describing the act of connecting, enabling and disconnecting as "tune in, turn on, drop out". two people in the meeting laughed, for everyone else it went over their heads , which would have been fine but they demanded an explanation. fortunately that was only a little bit awkward and passed quickly enough :P

the salad group's salad was great. the post-salad leftover chocolate-and-peanut-butter cake was also great. i feel like i'm doing a pretty good job of getting others to help me with it.

the most important piece of the work was a bit intimidating, so as part of gearing up for it i made myself a non-caffeinated drink; the only one i could find that tasted good was a vanilla chamomile tea, and then all of a sudden (probably because drinking chamomile is my go-to i'm-going-to-bed-soon move) i felt really drowsy as the previous couple of days caught up with me all at once.

so i left early.

it was hot.

the tech ops guy called me as i was about to get home, already feeling faint, with more problems.

i was feeling faint, and in desperate need of a nap, but i was so sweaty from the ride home that i had to shower before i could nap. i napped to the first episode of hunter x hunter, and woke up to mr smear playing insanely difficult levels he configured for himself in spiderheck.

dinner was delicious. afterwards, while mr smear prepared for bed, i ran tech support for my mom whose old email address had suddenly stopped working. we eventually came right, but not without some big feelings. then i read some more of the neverending story to mr smear and gd, and then arsed around as an excuse to drink another chamomile before finally going to bed.

...

and then getting up at 3.30am after being restless for a fairly long while.

...

the incoming manager reached out to me for an update, and i found myself in the weird position of trying to explain to him that the situation with bigtalk isn't entirely straightforward. i think i have a pretty good handle on him, he's not a bad guy and his work - when he understands the requirements - is excellent. but his ability to understand the requirements is clouded by his ego and inexperience, and his second-languageness in both hebrew and english, and his attention disorder. while at present it's safe to say he's better off as a one-man show, it's not going to be good for him in the long run to not have proper mentorship.

1am

 wow. we figured out some important stuff, and then i proceeded on my own. i got a lot of stuff done. and i mostly succeeded.

drama flare

 oh. shit. it was such a ridiculously dramatic day (so far) that i didn't even remember having trouble sleeping last night :/

...

today was mr smear's last day at summer camp. i received not one, but two hilariously inappropriate animations from him. he made it through the summer camp, and in spite of his protests had a generally good time!

...

this morning was very stressful, primarily because although i started out relaxed and in good spirits, it soon became pressured, with the main source of pressure being an upgrade to brave that made online grocery shopping impossible. i left without completing the orders.

...

the day didn't begin well. we had a devops gathering with our incoming guys, and while some of it went well, some of it was a shit show and i ended up having to be the adult in the room (reigning in both bigtalk and the new manager). the new manager called me in to a private discussion afterwards, where he not only made it clear that bigtalk's not going to be around long but that the woman i had issues with a couple of weeks ago is a proper dolores umbridge...

... fuck me.

i then took the new guy in to a private meeting to explain that the tension we're experiencing is entirely out of the ordinary, and what precisely is bothering me. then i took bigtalk into a meeting, where i really had trouble keeping my cool but he responded in a surprisingly healthy way.

after lunch, i made him walk both me and the new guy through his code, and he did a pretty good job of convincing us that he hadn't gone totally off the rails like i'd thought. but what he's doing is irreversible, so we have to be very careful how we test it and how we roll it out.

...

i managed to grab hold of our UX guy to discuss some of my ideas from friday night, and when he'd heard me out he pulled me over to his computer and showed me that half of what i was talking about was already in the pipeline ^_^

he was impressed by my other suggestions, though, and i even managed to solve a weird design issue he's been experiencing along the way.

...

the rest of the afternoon was a bit messy, but i think i finally got a piece of work done that i've been trying to finish for a week already. which would be great, but deploying it took forever and then i ran into the same bizarre issues that a couple of the other devs have been loudly complaining about for the past few days. that really messed up my evening plans, and i ended up leaving the office way later than planned.

and after having succumbed to temptation and polished off another slice of the cake from thursday's happy hour. right before dinner.

...

dinner with the family (and the simpsons) was nice, mr smear's shower time was far too long and frustrating, and there were some bad vibes around bedtime caused by him actively not getting into bed, when i was prepping for two different meetings. at least things were a little calmer by the time i was ready to say good night.

...

my elevator pitch to our product chief seems to have gone down well, and again, there's a lot of convergence going on - i've been invited to get involved in two closely-related projects.

between meetings, this post. in a few minutes, troubleshooting with our canadian contractor.

a big bigtalk talk

 it's the middle of the night, i've just spent an hour or so playing slay the spire and minutescape (and leaving the following review for the latter):

after three hours, i don't know whether i recommend this or not. on the one hand, it feels like there's a story incoming, and it has a certain meditative quality to it (if i play late at night it's like a lullaby with achievements). on the other hand, i honestly can't tell whether i'm getting better or whether my improved times are just a combination of bonuses and luck, and it feels like a really, really slow grind either way.

otherwise, it's bothering that my eyes are still quite irritated after a week of the drops that i was given for five days.

...

after seeing mr smear off this morning, i went to the hospital where they printed out his most recent allergy test results, then took those to the clinic to request authorization. then i returned home, grabbed my gear and headed to the office. the morning was a hot mess, which included welcoming the new english devops, syncing with my boss*, arguing about scope with bigtalk in front of the new guy because he insists on not understanding how to work with others, and juggling a bunch of support requests from all over the place.

* about bigtalk, and my own plans. it was awkward to realize that he'd joined the meeting while on vacation in greece - i hadn't noticed he was on vacation, but he insisted on continuing because he knew that i wouldn't have set the meeting if it wasn't urgent and important - but we're clearly aligned on what's happening with bigtalk. and his feedback for me and my own intentions was very positive, so that was nice.

gd and i had a parental guidance session in the middle of the day, and it wasn't at all easy. mainly because we have very different ideas about screen time and socialization; i'm worried about undoing our progress with mr smear by fuzzying the boundaries, even while i don't think giving him more "holiday" is a bad thing.

i was surprised that he hadn't asked me for the next one piece volume today, until he sent a video he'd made in flipaclip which i'd forgotten i'd installed for him. i watched the video on my way to pick up lunch, and it was so well done - albeit eerily gen alpha - that i giggled helplessly the whole way out the building. i felt compelled to share it with some of my coworkers, which led to potentially bringing in another coworker to the game hacking fold :)

the next hour or two were more of the same from the morning, and then i left early to get my hair cut. i literally passed out in the chair while the hairdresser worked, and aside from one thing i needed him to fix it seemed to go well.

on the bus home i had to work to solve a weird networking issue, and a little bit when i arrived as well, but after taking the last tortit ice cream from the freezer (and having to share it with mr smear, who'd previously asserted that he didn't like it any more) and jumping in the shower, we had a great leftover dinner (more of gd's not-onigiri) and finished watching stargate (which we all thoroughly enjoyed).

i read some more of the neverending story to gd and mr smear after he finally got into bed, after which i soon passed out myself. and then woke up a couple of hours ago.

conditioning

 we went out for a ride, and ended up at the pipe track. well, at the kids musical playground next to it. mr smear entertained himself, i made the mistake of sitting down in the shade for a bit and my brain and body decided i was done for the day... the way back was good, we stopped for him to enjoy an ice cream, and the only issue i had was that my shoulder and neck started giving me shit during the last stretch... just like it did the last time we went out...

gd tried to make onigiri tonight, and it came out... not onigiri. but it was delicious, regardless, and we all tucked in and did quite a bit of damage (considering she'd made rather a lot of food). and we got started on watching stargate. mr smear's first time and he is loving it.

i continued reading the neverending story when he went to bed, although the swamps of sadness scene was dulled by the fact that our upstairs neighbors are psychopaths and were drilling and hammering until recently. i watched some random stuff and played another round of slay the spire, and now i'm going to crash early in the hopes that i'll be able to sleep and the expectation that i'll be up in the middle of the night to work through bigtalk's PR...

gods help me.

onigiri

 the clinic: learning that one of the receptionists' kids also has herpes in the eye. mr smear's paediatrician wasn't familiar with CRISPR but asked me to send her info. we're praying that someone will figure out how to remove herpes soon, and not just from a petri dish.

the bike shop: both bike shops were closed, so we tied up the bike and continued on to dizengoff. we returned later and were treated to a demonstration of the changing of the tube and addition of a new liner to protect it, which was fascinating.

japan month at dizengoff: mr smear was thoroughly amazed by the food, in particular the onigiri. that makes two of us - gd liked it, but isn't a fan of sweeter sushi rice so would rather make her own.

fine by me :P

some of yesterday afternoon was crashing, some of it was working, and some of it was reading and playing card games (uno and fluxx), and mr smear and i played a bunch of starcraft ii together. the evening was a pleasant shabbat evening (with pizza in honor of mr smear's birthday).

after putting mr smear to bed, i tried to get into cyberpunk 2077. i tried. but i had to repeat a section that really felt forced (perhaps you get more choices going forward, but i just felt locked in and bored), and the default controls don't make sense, and by the time i realized i was confused about how to set the controls up the way i'd like i was done, and i put in for a refund.

i played minutescape until it lulled me to sleep.

...

last night i had some really cool ideas for work, and i woke up in the middle of the night and had to get them written down (and book appointments with two of our founders, and book a few days off for long weekends), and then just did random things (including resuming a game of slay the spire) until mr smear woke up.

i tried to get back to sleep, but since then my lower back and butt have been really hurting me. i'm exhausted. emotionally, too, because i saw a message from our tech chief about bigtalk's PR and now i'm confident i need to share my new concerns with my boss tomorrow, which really doesn't feel good. i mean, i like the guy, and technically he's brilliant, but he clearly doesn't have enough experience with collaborative efforts.

we watched son of the white mare, which is fantastic and strange and wonderful, and i was surprised by how much gd and mr smear got into it as well - it feels more like something from a modern art gallery than a feature film.

i've been reading some more nightwood, it took a while to find its feet but i'm a quarter of the way through and things just started heating up.

my aunt's boyfriend rocked up a little while ago for a quick coffee, bearing gifts from my mom. mr smear was very excited in spite of gd almost spoiling the surprise yesterday (note to self: never tell her anything that's supposed to be a surprise, egads)

mr smear's playing spiderheck, i'm contemplating scrounging for some lunch, and then we're going to go out with the bike for a ride.

...

my eyes are feeling a bit better, but i still need the drops quite frequently :/

opportunity

 well, my shoulder's hurting this morning, but my eyes are feeling slightly less irritated and my teeth are feeling slightly less sensitive, so overall i guess i'm doing okay.

i'm feeling quite offended right now that putting money into mr smear and my shared compound account costs far more than we'll earn in compound interest over the next few years. i'm offended because crypto's been a big thing for so long already and it still doesn't make any sense for small players. and our physical banks don't have any incentive to compete.

mr smear just freaked out and dumped a really cool animation he made in flipaclip (after much struggling to determine that bluestacks still sucks and that flipaclip's pricing is extortion), but i got him to reattempt and learn what he should have done and he did. so at least one parenting win for the morning, not including him playing or singing iron maiden's two minutes to midnight every time he thinks something's going to be in two minutes :P

...

i walked into the office yesterday and sat down for a while with bigtalk to help him strategize. that was followed by a morning full of random shit, mostly frustrating, and i felt like my brain was melting (like i was maybe coming down with something, but in retrospect i think i was just tired and depressed).

the biggest downer was learning that bigtalk's definition of "fine-tuning" is completely out of sync with mine. he's been promising to deliver the Big Important Thing "today or tomorrow" since last week already and i'm just getting more and more frustrated.

the company retro was interesting, and i felt useful and needed. which makes me feel a bit weird about my position in the new org chart, where i'm just a devops and my "coach" is someone with less experience than me...

happy hour turning into an opportunity for a conversation about determining company culture (documentation and being remote-first), but that conversation led to someone even more important which was me determining the root cause for our algo team's difficulties and getting buy-in for my proposed solution from our de-facto tech chief.

and then i came home, without any issues with protestors (thankfully i don't have a car), and the evening was pleasant and we all went to bed pretty early. fortunately i was the only person who was awoken by the protestors flooding our neighborhood...

haunted birthday

 i've just been lying awake for a while unable to get back to sleep, with my brain running through a bunch of things from yesterday and unable to make sense of much.

first and foremost, our little boy turned ten yesterday! we've officially managed to keep him alive into the double digits, and his last year has been incredible in terms of how much he's matured and how well he's maturing. having said that, even yesterday he managed to cross some lines and that kind of put a damper on the way we ended the day.

second, work was ridiculous. it began with me arriving early so that i wouldn't have to rush to get to the office when the technician finally showed up, but then i received an email asking me to rate his service and i immediately started freaking out that he wasn't coming back had marked his job as complete.

it turned out, though, that a manager had decided to move his visit to a later slot. and not informed us. fortunately we managed to get them to switch the slot back, but WTAF? once he finally arrived, it took him and his partner an hour or two to get things working, but they refused to give us access to the controls without "proper" authorization... so that was a whole story. and once we did manage to get access back, we learned that we were in exactly the same situation as before i screwed everything up...

it took some fiddling and plenty of trial and error, but two of us eventually managed to get our internet working properly. and there was much rejoicing.

lunch was great, but i didn't realize that one of the founders' PA was in on the communal salad and i almost didn't leave her any :$

the afternoon was a series of distractions, the main one being the incoming devops manager and minion coming in for a chat. we sat for a very long time, and things were very positive, and i apparently sold them on our vision in a way they hadn't even considered before signing on :)

oh, and bigtalk hadn't come in to the office in the morning because he was feeling so shit about the choice of devops manager. which i didn't mention, and i'm waiting to hear how his sync with our boss goes this afternoon because i want to discuss it with the boss but i don't want to affect or influence their meeting.

i left a bit early because it was mr smear's birthday, and we had a bit of time at home before heading out to my cousin's farewell bash. it's an amazing rooftop venue in the heart of tel aviv, the company was great (he's made some very interesting friends, and another cousin's kid was there as well - the one who i advised a while back to follow his love interest to los angeles - and the food was great, and overall it was a very pleasant evening right until mr smear started making faces about the rest of summer camp :(

the way home was a mixed bag of parenting (he didn't something gross, and -

OH.

i got distracted by all the other details, i didn't write about something that's been haunting me since last night. on our way to the farewell dinner, there was a teenager on the bus. after asking him and his friend a couple of times to turn their music down, gd signed to me to let them be even though they were generally behaving antisocially (like shoes on the seats). but this one kid, he had a massive, disgusting pimple on the side of his nose. and a couple of stops before he got off, he started picking at it. and wiping his hands all over the bus. and as i became more and more disgusted, and didn't know how to even begin approaching this, he stopped a foot away from me, turned to face me, looked me dead in the eyes while aggressively ripping into the thing.

jesus fucking haploid christ.

i definitely should have handled that more aggressively, and my mind's been getting stuck on that revolting scenario on and off since.

break everything

 today was wildly not fun.

step 1: wake up after a sleepless, though somehow not unpleasant, night.

step 2: try to find a newspaper for mr smear's paper mache activity on the way to his shuttle. discover that there's no demand in our neighborhood for physical news, and walk quite far to pay for one. then quickly head home, pick up my bag for work and take a bus to the summer camp. getting out too early (about halfway there), but fortunately only having to wait a minute before the next line came to the rescue.

step 3: get to work early, become convinced to go to the print shop before the day gets really hot. but the day was already pretty hot. i had an awkward meeting with the guy, but eventually left with an understanding of what to expect. i don't quite know how confident i am, but i guess it's worth a shot?

step 4: the day began in good spirits, but we had networking issues. i tried to fix them, but instead took the entire office offline and would spend most of the next six hours trying to get things working again. including hunting for a "console cable" in our warehouse and in two stores, to no avail. we managed to borrow one from our neighbors, but we weren't able to figure out what to do once we finally connected. all the while, the tech support was less than useless.

the above included half an hour to an hour of a distressing discussion with bigtalk, who's upset that the incoming devops manager is technically less capable than him and that he's effectively demoted himself by signing on with us. it was a complicated conversation, and i hope my advice helps him.

also during the above, two of us went to the new sumsum and it's waaaay slicker than the other branches.

step 5: the (work) day ended with incessant random things, and me not getting my tasks done.

step 6: coming home to a much-needed gin & tonic, a decent leftovers meal, and the realization that mr smear's going to be ten years old tomorrow.

he was very excited about me buying volume 3 of one piece for him. they didn't end up doing the paper mache activity. his eye seems to be clearing up.

oh, yeah - my eyes have been driving me nuts since sunday. what i've been doing seemed to have stopped the infection, but i'm still anxious that something worse might be on the way...

step 7: reading more the neverending story to mr smear (and gd) at bedtime.

step 8: our security consultant - after i've been complaining about one of their unnecessary decisions that's been causing me to be locked out of our password manager - finally did something she should have done from the beginning and completely turned the terrible experience around.

...

it's almost midnight, and the technician's supposed to arrive at the office between 8 and 11 :/

double vision

 i slept pretty well, surprisingly, but i woke up with crusty eyes indicating an incoming eye infection. because things weren't stressful enough. we headed to the clinic early, where i got off on the wrong foot by taking two numbers instead of one, which offended the clerks. then gd decided we had enough time to go to the pharmacy, and it was only through sheer dumb luck that i overheard my number being called after mr smear's had already been missed.

the doctor examined him, did some complicated math, and prescribed pills instead of syrup which makes our lives much easier. and he prescribed me drops and a cream, which i'm about to use for the first time and i'm a bit nervous about it.

my eyes are really itching all of a sudden, please god don't let it be herpes :(

we came home, packed his bag, and all left together to catch a bus to the summer camp. we dropped him off, confirmed that the councillors understood the importance of getting him the medication on time, and then walked to the bus stop and caught the bus home / to the office.

the sync with the tech-ops manager seemed to go well. i really hope it did.

it was a weird day, lots of kids and a really sweet pug and odd jobs and a walk to see the new offices and a late lunch after a big department meeting. then a few more odd jobs and packing up our old offices before taking a few items across with my boss and being amazed by the new digs (the showers are particularly impressive).

i met up with gd and mr smear, introduced them to the pug, and then we (after washing our hands thoroughly because the pug is, to quote gd, a "stinky potato") walked to a hummusia for a big meal that i would've enjoyed as much as them if not for the intensely painful sensitivity of my new fillings.

otherwise it was a great evening.

we went past the mall to explore the harry potter store, sort out mr smear's phone, buy a new case for gd's phone (which she's promptly broken and is now my "new" case, i'm quite upset), and then rush (ha ha, wait forever at the bus stop while wondering who the protestors are yelling at) home to take meds and get ready for bed.

after putting mr smear to bed (with socks on his hands for the second night in a row), i did some work (about an hour and a half of it) and then watched youtube videos while playing minesweeper. and now it's midnight and i'm going to bed.

the good, the bad, the ugly

the good:

the swimming pool experience yesterday was just excellent. he followed instructions, and i came up with some new exercise ideas, and his swimming dramatically improved in front of my eyes. not only is his crawl technique significantly better, but he figured out how to get himself to the bottom of the deep end and we generally enjoyed our time together.

we both had a great time.

i napped well in the afternoon. in the early evening, we spent some time discovering bird flight simulators (such as birdz and aquila) - while the intention is to learn how to code them, i ended up feeling a bit overwhelmed...

while we were doing that, i installed starcraft ii (we're not really using our windows machine, so i was pleased to learn that it runs on a silicon mac!) and war thunder. the latter i tried out while mr smear was in the shower, but the former? mr smear and i have completed the tutorials and begun the campaign, with him playing each level first (and me kibbitzing) and me playing through after, and we're both having a blast!

we finished watching the boy and the heron during and after dinner, it's absolutely gorgeous and i was pleased that we all enjoyed it together.

i slept pretty well last night (until i was woken up by imagining the work conversations i need to have) and i napped a fair amount after everyone else got up.

more starcraft ii today, and we finally continued watching fantastic fungi which we started a few months ago. my late coworker had recommended it to me, and i was caught completely by surprise by the sudden shift in direction, and now it's too late for me to ask him what it is that made him recommend it to me. did i mention my opinions on terrence mckenna's food of the gods? or timothy leary's writings? did it have to do with veganism? or did he just happen to have seen it recently?

the bad:

on our way out to the swimming pool, we discovered that something broke the valve on his bike's front tire, so in addition to having to take the bus, we're going to need to get it fixed soon. that sucks.

my new filling is super-sensitive to cold. and it feels like i've been eating a lot of things that are much harder than expected - like the raisins in my muesli which are unusually small-rock-like.

i think my ingrown toenail isn't healing.

gd and i have unfriended some recently-added friends because they've gone from protesting the government to blaming us for the supposed famine in gaza and dressing their daughter in watermelon shirts. WTAF.

our afternoon walk this evening should have been good, but i left the house in a bad mood and returned in a bad mood.

the ugly:

as if the office politics from thursday weren't enough - they woke me up in the middle of the night and i never quite made it back to bed - while mr smear and i were at the swimming pool yesterday i noticed some redness around his eye.

it's herpes again. this time, there's a blister right on the edge near his tear duct, and i'm freaking out. and to make things more interesting, the timing couldn't be worse because now taking him to the doctor tomorrow and giving him his meds really interferes with his summer camp experience, which in my opinion is critical for him in terms of being a corrective normal-israeli-kid experience. (not to mention how expensive it is)

the tension

 my morning... did not go well. on the way to the office i talked to my mother about krybabie's wife whose been coerced into paying for and arranging an english police clearance for a child who was four months old when they left london, which makes my blood boil.

on the back of that, a couple of us spoke to lipgirl about the marketing lecture we'd been invited to on wednesday afternoon.

and then one of my coworkers dropped a bombshell - our tech ops manager is hiring someone to do a job that's essentially devops, in addition to "owning" the entire data pipel... nevermind the details. i tried to talk to her about it - this is after giving bigtalk a lecture about how we approach her - but she's a bit weird, and refused to talk face to face, and when i put everything in writing i tried to carefully step around the eggshells (and copied my text to my boss so he'd know what i said and how i said it), but i still managed to step on a landmine.

fuck.

so that happened. our boss has set up a meeting for the three of us on sunday, hopefully we'll resolve this.

it was a very busy day, with a few big meetings, but the end of it saw us quite successfully merging in the work from wednesday night and i got everyone excited about me interviewing the founders and first employees to start putting together our company origin story.

i happy-hour'ed a little too hard (from a sweets point of view), and i shouldn't have brought the knaffeh back home - i ended up being the only one to eat any.

about halfway through dinner one of my coworkers called me, and it took almost an hour to get him sorted out, by which time i was completely exhausted and had almost missed wishing mr smear a good night :(

the last thing that i recall from last night was a back-and-forth with a coworker who inexplicably refused to understand that the thing he did to solve a problem we didn't actually have breaks our deployments.

today so far:

i slept late, and relatively well. i've just finished my first coffee, helped mr smear enjoy his glow-in-the-dark lego that he just pulled out of somewhere forgotten, informed him that his bully's leaving the country before the new school year, and we're getting ready to roll our way to the swimming pool.