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.