mid-day update

 i'm sitting here on the carpet in my little office, back against one of the nice new beanbags that finally (!) arrived this morning, in a state that's a solid mix of coronavirus light-headed dizziness and post-meeting euphoric relief.

our meeting went so much better than i could have anticipated. after i presented my findings, the boss made it clear that he believes the new data to be more accurate than the old data, and that he's happy to overrule the product team's requirements. this means that the bulk of the work i've been wrestling with simply falls away, and what's left is a very small effort for bonus points, and pulling the trigger. the only new thing that came up that needs doing happens to be something i've already built for as part of my investigations, so all-round this has been a massive windfall, a huge stroke of luck for me.

...

gd's really traumatized. she made an effort to wash her toe again this morning, and i just inspected it while she's resting and it seems to me to be looking less angry.

i just chatted with my mom, who i was delighted to discover has actually taken the day off. i hope she's able to have a good rest and recover.

...

right, now for a coffee and another meeting, and then i think i'm going to go for a walk to pick up some replacement watch straps that were just delivered to a courier pick-up point.

sleep journal entry + nerves

most of the night my nose and throat were calm, but i felt like i wasn't getting enough oxygen. i woke up with lower back / hip discomfort in the middle of the night and i had to stretch hard before i could get back to sleep.

gd's in pain and scared, her toe doesn't really look much better than before. it's deeply worrying.

...

i've spent the past hour or so adding functionality to my telephony side-project. i guess i'm distracting myself because i'm nervous about the upcoming meeting i have, in which i present a whole lot of information that i neither fully understand nor care about. i mean, it's not fair to say i don't fully understand it, but from what i've read it's two ways of looking at similar data that give different results, and my take-away is that the whole marketing industry is mostly based on a load of horseshit and hand-waving.

...

in the middle of the night i had a thought: metacognition is the ability or skill that protects someone from being caught up in a cult or modernist ideology

a moment of semi-clarity

 today was psychologically tougher than it was physically. i'm fucking done.

trying to be supportive of gd while protecting her from her own terror almost got me sent to sleep on the couch instead of her (she has to sleep on the couch so she's less likely to injure her toe while she's unconscious).

trying to get mr smear into bed on time was simply impossible; i'm still trying to figure out where the hour and a half went between finishing dinner and saying good night to my mom and actually saying good night to him and having to explain the word c*nt and subsequently learning that he heard it in a video gd showed him 🤦‍♂️

i hope i can sleep tonight. i pray i don't get sicker. as i type this i'm developing a bit of a headache...

...

i finally got the network issues sorted out, hopefully for more than a while (one of our neighbors must have triggered a channel conflict). also, the above facepalm emoji was done with a keyboard shortcut, i finally figured out how to get karabiner to map a "globe" key from my windows keyboard!

i had one (million) job(s)

 while i wait for my token scopes to update, and try to make it clear to my child that it's not advisable to be argumentative with a gorram textbook... (the textbook, in this case, is not wrong)

gd and i took a taxi to the clinic, where we faced off with the unhelpful receptionist, and then tried to negotiate our way in to an early visit with the nurses. we gave that up when we realized that there was only half an hour to go before she could get helped without any favors, so i walked over to the pharmacy to pick up some of her meds.

somebody a few numbers before me had given up and put their ticket on the side of the machine, so i switched the tickets and felt guilty even though i'm pretty sure i wasn't doing anything wrong. irritating, yes, but not wrong.

i managed to get gd's meds, even though she'd given me the wrong prescription. thank $#%! i had a digital copy of the right one accessible.

i picked up a teff pita from the neighborhood bakery, then rejoined gd just as she got called in. the nurse was super-kind and helpful, and even though gd screamed when he tugged off the pad there was very little blood and he bandaged the toe up very gently.

we returned home, and after a quick breakfast i crashed for an hour and a half. i got up, figured out how to request doctor's permission for being sick (it's actually quite a reasonable system), and after two coffees and a bunch of chores dived in to work. or, i would have dived into work if i hadn't run into a whole bunch of networking issues.

i'm deeply regretting the whole networking appliance story right now. i don't know what's changed suddenly, but i think maybe i shouldn't have returned it after all.

i promised my clients a report by this afternoon, but the more i've prepared it the more questions i've found unanswered... i'm still going at it.

at least i'm feeling better (overall). having said that, this is probably just like those other covid times when i've felt like i was getting better and then suddenly it's gotten much worse. my mom's having a really difficult time, too.

sleep journal entry

i spent most of the night coughing and barely able to breathe. i did get a couple of hours' sleep before waking up.

gd's unwrapped her nail and is soaking it, the pad seems to have fused to the wound, though, and isn't coming off :(

i'm now trying to rush mr smear out the door after he did another negative test. and then i have to head to the clinic to get a doctor's permission for my work (first time in my civilian life), and inform my client that i'm sick, and that i was sick yesterday.

and i already sent a message to our old neighbor that we ran into yesterday to inform her as well :(

of ******* course

 

aaaaand it's covid.

more than rough

 firstly, i've been so thoroughly exhausted today as to be dysfunctional. to be honest, i can't tell if this is because i didn't sleep last night, or because i'm just through-and-through sick.

in retrospect, i shouldn't have hugged our old neighbor when we bumped into her at the clinic.

oh gods.

after sending mr smear off to school, i accompanied gd to the clinic. the doctor was very understanding, and we booked an appointment with a surgeon. we went home, had a visit from our upstairs neighbor, who amongst other things informed us that they're going to get started working on building a metro station under our building and we're going to need to replace all the doors and windows for soundproofing.

after breakfast, i crashed for a very short nap and tried to get some work done, but was constantly distracted. some of the distraction was about my previous employer; the lead i felt betrayed by has apparently left the company (though he got some of his options), and someone i served with asked me about an opening so i told him what had happened.

then i was time to accompany gd to the surgeon. aside from his poor bedside manner, he didn't convince us that he understood the problem, nor that his solution made sense, so we thanked him and asked the receptionist for advice. she was very kind, and made gd an appointment with the surgeon i had been *hoping* we were going to see.

i'm going to remember his name this time.

so back home we went, i napped again, and got a little work done before we headed out a third time.

the surgeon immediately knew exactly what was going on - there were two possibilities, with the same treatment - and i advised gd to take his offer and get it taken care of immediately rather than wait for it to continue to fester.

we waited for a while, but he eventually arrived. he was clear in his explanations, and made me feel confident; unfortunately, when it came to the procedure itself things went south. the local anaesthetic did not anaesthetic, and i've never heard gd scream like that before. it was painful and nerve-wracking just going through it holding her hand, so i can't imagine what it was like. except that i would probably have fainted very quickly.

he bound up her toe, and sent us on our way. every step was agony, and only got worse as we proceeded towards the street. fortunately, we managed to order a taxi and jump in very quickly, and the toughest walk was getting her from the parking area to the couch.

in retrospect, i don't know how i managed to get any work done before dinner.

gd didn't manage to keep her dinner down, so that unintentionally accelerated her getting her teeth brushed and ready for bed (or rather the couch, i suspect), and fortunately i came up with the idea of wheeling her around in the office chair, which has made all the difference.

as the afternoon and evening have worn on, my nerves have worn thinner and thinner and my throat and my brain are clamoring for bed and threatening to keep me from sleeping again.

and it looks my mom's not doing so great either, health-wise, but at least she got back to cape town safely.

oh! and just prior to gd's procedure, my boss - my actual employer - called to ask me how i'm doing. i asked how he thinks i'm doing, and suggested that we schedule a sync. i hope i'm not in shit...

sleep journal entry

 i was up all night with a painful post-nasal drip (painful swallowing). no lower back / hip discomfort.

i was expecting today to be rough, but it really didn't need to be this rough.

prophesy

i left later than i should have to pick up the car (of course), and arrived at the address to find no cars, having been explicitly informed by the app that no further instructions were necessary. i tried calling the car sharing service, but their lines were down, and it took a while (and some helpful people) before i happened upon the vehicle and realized that the directions were simply wrong.

i made the pickup, and told waze to get us to the airport, and it gave us all sorts of weird directions that neither my mother nor my son were able to read. so my stress levels were kinda high by the time we finally made it onto the highway going in the right direction. when we finally arrived and parked, the signage led us astray (it's incorrect on shabbat, at least, i'm not sure what happens during the week) and sent us in circles with broken elevators before we finally entered the terminal.

at least from that point things went smoothly, and we had time to be ripped off for coffee and sit down with my mom before her flight. after we saw her to the security checks, we made our way back to the car with only one incident (i didn't realize we could only pay for parking at the exit, and made the mistake of getting out of the car and walking all the way back to the locked up pay machines), and aside from the shock of how expensive an hour or two's parking was the drive home was uneventful (fortunately, because we encountered some really insane drivers on the way home). i dropped mr smear off at home, returned the car, and on my walk home managed to get hold of the service hotline and complain and was offered a voucher as compensation.

this afternoon, after returning from the car ordeal, we watched the starship troopers movie together. i've always loved starship troopers; it's not a perfect movie, but it's a fun action film with some interesting ideas. so i'm embarrassed to admit that it took me this long to finally get around to reading the book.

in addition to what i wrote earlier, it's also surprisingly prophetic, considering that it calls out the kind of irrational 20th century ideology that's infected the west and the movie producers who tried really, really hard to misrepresent, subvert and undermine everything the author was trying to say. that's not an adaptation, it's a deeply disrespectful bastardization. thank god the original ideas hold up so well that so many people didn't "get" the "satire".

we're about to enjoy a late dinner, mr smear and i have showered and taken out the recycling, and my nervous system is bouncing up and down because i keep thinking about tomorrow's tasks.

i guess i'm really grateful for having had a couple of days off, a lot of which felt like actual days off even though i was pretty busy.

a calm before the farewell

my mom and i caught a bus to azrieli, we picked up a couple of things and then moved on to try and meet up with the mongoose. we got off the bus at dizengof center, walked up to the square to pick up a coffee, then walked all the way back to the square to meet up with the mongoose, only to end up having to leave again to meet him on the way back to the square again :P

at least we managed to see the baby and deliver her gift! the catch up was quick, and then we were off to do some last-minute shopping before coming home for the afternoon.

gd wasn't able to go anyway - isn't able to go anywhere, with her toe being so bad - so my mom, mr smear and i walked to an unfamiliar synagogue (relatively) nearby.

at least i wore pants and not shorts? i was hands-down the least appropriately-dressed there, everyone else was in white button shirts. the liturgy and nusach were familiar from my youth, and it was really nice not only to have a shared singing experience but to hear mr smear singing along as well :)

for mr smear, his reaction to the baby right behind us and the woman with tourette's on the other side of the mechitza was (relative, for him) admirable, my mother seemed comfortable enough from her side, and although i did feel like an outsider it was overall a good shul experience.

i'm not sure how gd would handle it, though. she's softened on the sitting separately thing, but i think she'd find following along a bit tough with her own marked siddur (she wouldn't be the only one) and i think the biggest obstacle is how far away it is.

kiddush and dinner were quite late, but both were lovely. even though my mom's been here for two friday nights, this was the only one where it was just us doing it our way, together as opposed to on a video call.

we were all pretty tired last night, but to keep things interesting my mom started getting sick and we have to take her to the airport in less than half an hour... FFS.

and gd's toe is only getting worse...

and mr smear still not 100%...

i just finished reading starship troopers:

"Controversial". I've read some suggestions as to why it may have been called controversial. I'd heard many times before how one of my favorite movies was intended to be satirical, and failed.

I've also served in the military, and am living through a crisis in the west where the people yelling loudest "for" democracy and "against" fascism have no idea that they've succumbed to communist, terrorist propaganda and are, in fact, begging for the opposite.

With that in mind, there's nothing "controversial" being peddled in this book. What is in this book is a phenomenally accurate depiction of military service, warts-and-all, a compelling notion of civic duty, and - barring one technically heavy pre-battle scene - it's a thrilling glimpse into what galactic war could be like.

...

someone proferred the name of the 2D side-scrolling aerial combat video game where you battle waves of enemies and shoot down ducks in between levels that we used to play on the ps3: minisquadron!

sleep journal entry

 the extra coffee was really strong, i was tired but had a lot of trouble actually sleeping for the first few hours. i didn't have trouble with discomfort, though. after getting up, drinking a decaf and reading starship troopers, i napped hard on the couch for most of an hour and just got up to write this down and start being functional.

mr smear had a better night, though he's not quite ready to go back to school (and certainly not be near any newborns). gd woke up with her toe in a lot of pain.

ikea day

 the first two pieces of furniture went smoothly, and didn't take long at all. the third one, i asked - nay, compelled - mr smear to be my assistance. that did make it take considerably longer than it should have, but i wasn't in a hurry and he actually participated and engaged; there were very few aspects of the build he couldn't handle.

but then we got to a part that wasn't machined correctly. fortunately, it was a minor piece of the overall build and we could try a workaround later. but then we encountered a metal bar that didn't fit correctly, which i hammered in to a point where it almost broke, after which the whole build failed and it was impossible to put the pieces together.

this was an expensive piece of furniture, and heavy, and i did not want to return it to the store for customer service. i called their number, and spoke to someone, who assured me that unless ikea workmen were doing the build, returning the item to the store was my only option.

i was upset, we were stuck, and then suddenly i had an epiphany: i deconstructed to before the bar i hammered, and switch two of the two seemingly identical pieces around. and it worked! i'm not pleased that it was so easy to get it so thoroughly wrong, but i was hugely relieved that the build was salvaged without great expense.

once that was done, we decided that my mother and i would head back to the store to look for window blinds, and along the way try to get the poorly-machined part replaced.

getting there by bus was quick and painless, and after our previous visit it became immediately apparent that taking the train had been a mistake, so we didn't do that again. i was pretty tired when we arrived, so we picked up coffees, and i (in retrospect) probably made a bad call choosing a double espresso when i'd already had my three cups for the day...

we started off at the customer service desk, and they were very helpful once they established that our claim was legitimate, in spite of the fact that it's an item i purchased just over three months ago (and never got around to opening until now). we went upstairs to look for blinds, learned that the blinds were downstairs, and entered the lower labyrinth. not only did we manage to quickly find what we were looking for, but we stumbled upon a number of items we'd previously agreed were bonus finds and not worth the side quests.

from there, getting through the cashiers and back to customer service was unusually quick, and although it took a while to get the replacement part extracted from a new item (which enabled us to eavesdrop on the very angry, racist french women yelling in a combination of hebrew and french at each other and the staff) we we out of there in excellent time and boarded the bus home with everything we wanted precisely one and a half hours after disembarking.

mission accomplished!

we got home pretty quickly, completed the build and moved things around and cleaned up. i also got the ball rolling with the landlord about getting the door replaced.

my son is going to be responsible for my aneurysm, or at least for accelerating it dramatically. he just told me unsainted is boring. BORING. not "i don't like it". this is even more disturbing to me than when he called led zeppelin muzak.

i complained to gd, and she was shocked too (and asked me to send her a link, we'll make a slipknot fan of her yet!)

i finally beat slay the spire 2 with the necrobinder against the doormaker just before dinner (they waited a couple of minutes for me), which was really exciting! dinner was nice, and afterwards while mr smear was showering i received a call from the mongoose which was very welcome; we'll try to see him tomorrow and give them something for their little girl :)

mr smear's bedtime was late, but smooth, and i watched a bunch of random shit and played through the plague inc: evolved tutorial. it *is* interesting.

it's half past eleven. i'm hoping i actually managed to sleep tonight. i'm still feeling a bit wired, but i *am* yawning, so... we'll see.

sleep journal entry

 i watched a couple of youtube videos, then played slay the spire 2 until 1.30am (i feel like i might finally on a winning run with the necrobinder, but i'll probably get my ass kicked by a regular monster soon).

between my brief wake up just after 3am and my alarm going off at 6.30am, my hip discomfort returned. the hour and a half i spent trying to get back to sleep was disturbed my son being loudly sick and lower back pain. all-in-all, it wasn't a great night.

i've just had my coffee while reading more starship troopers (it's always an experience reading something that gets the army), gd's just informed me that our balcony door is going to need replacing soon and my stress levels just spiked.

my only real, personal plans today are to build ikea furniture that's been sitting around. or do whatever my mom wants to do, and be sad that she's leaving this weekend already. not only is it great spending time with her, but in spite of the rare friction she really does make our lives easier even when she's just hanging around.

a day off

 according to dr google i'm at risk of developing a stroke because i used a massager on my neck. i'm not sure that's true, but i'm definitely scared off doing that again as the back of my head's been feeling a bit numb since i did it.

...

i got a relatively good night's sleep last night, minus waking up in the middle of the night with my neck / shoulder locking up and needing more than half an hour of work to be able to return to bed, but little-to-no lower back or hip discomfort.

mr smear, however, did not have a good night. he's clearly properly sick, regardless of yesterday's RAT outcome.

the three of us left him home alone as my mother and i dropped gd off at her physio appointment, then walked about florentin looking for blinds. we eventually found a place, but were rather put off by their charging approximately NIS 500 per small window, and double that per door. we have quite a few windows and doors.

as it is, i'm feeling decidedly financially unstable lately...

we met up with gd and went to meshek barzilay for a really nice lunch. speaking of financially unstable :P

we then returned home for a while - disturbing mr smear's full day of screen time - and a bit later my mom and i paid a visit to the library, where i checked out a better (though not pristine) copy of my name is asher lev. we meandered all over the place until catching a bus home, then meandered between the shops to find vegan marshmallows, then returned home for a relaxed evening.

i mean, it was relaxing for my mother and i, for gd and mr smear not so much. him because he's sick, her because in spite of a good physio session her shoulder's been locking up the whole afternoon.

my mother made - and taught gd to make - her pea soup for dinner, which was delicious ^_^

i've just put mr smear to bed, reading between his coughs, and i'm amazed to see it's 11pm already (O_o)

...

aside from contesting my parking fine, and opening an investigation into our bean bag purchase (after holding for half an hour to be told they'll call me back, after more than a week of trying to get hold of them to find out where our bean bags are), and holding for half an hour with social security to be told that i should just ignore the last message i got from them, i've been made very uncomfortable by the idea that there are authors warning other authors not to so much as quote a lyric of a song - even if it's clear that it's a quote - because that's not considered fair use. i cannot believe that's true, but if it's true, then the state of copyright law is even more awful and even less aligned with its spirit than i thought.

...

i saw a couple of disturbing things today: even "educational" tech is interfering with our kids learning, and this guy's quote is heartbreakingly powerful: "do you know how hard you have to abuse a mammal to make them not have children?"

we're in serious shit as a species right now.

it's difficult to wage war on reality...

 ... because reality always has the home team advantage.

it's been a long day, but not unpleasant - bar the lower back / hip issues that usually plague me at night, which today, after leaving me in peace last night, came back with a vengeance and harried me all afternoon.

i generated a comic this morning that i'm pleased with, and another one this evening that i'm somewhat pleased with.

i arrived at work a minute late for my team's daily, and i regaled them with the tale i'd been planning on telling our manager, with which they could all identify. i very fortunately was able to keep my head down and work hard today, and ask the right questions, and by the time i had my meeting with my manager i not only had real progress to report, but also additional information that i'd luckily stumbled upon that made the required business decisions much clearer.

it's a mess, but it's clearly a mess, and my manager understands why i've been struggled and what our options are. i took full responsibility for "falling in the bin", as we say in hebrew, by being caught out again following documentation and paying attention to what other developers and managers say. the saddest part is that aside from getting through my own poor AI usage, the architecture, the data and the code are all completely misaligned.

i guess if there's one thing to be grateful for - assuming they like me and don't terminate my contract before i do - it's that this is one hell of a training ground for learning to work with AI when the stakes are low and the state of the entire organization's a complete disaster with or without me :P

my mother took our hypochondriac mr smear to the museum today, though he was "too sick"to go to the museum she wanted to go to (but managed to walk a while after they got lost on the way there). he just did a RAT and it came out conclusively negative, he spent a good chunk of his time before bed trying to convince us that the control line showing clearly means he's done for 🤣

my neck's been giving me trouble, i'm hoping my time with the massager makes a positive difference. it certainly feels good, at least.

dinner was great, progress with starship troopers was great, bedtime was particularly great - not just laughing at the colour of magic, but segwaying into a talk about sacrifice, cain and abel, and the value of the old testament (and our mission as a people to carry it into eternity, just like shakespeare's sonnets).

and now, physically and psychologically, i'm about ready for bed. which means another couple of hours of reading, gaming, possibly torturing myself by watching the news for the first time in at least a few days.

sleep journal entry

i had a remarkably good night's sleep last night. i took an iron supplement yesterday, but not magnesium. i did have a drowsy period in the afternoon (during a meeting as usual, i struggled to keep my eyes open both in the booth and in an open space) but no nap. i went to bed after midnight, and slept through until just before alarm time.

i guess i have enough evidence to assert that i have developed a meeting (or presentation) sensitivity, possibly even an allergy.

also, that i'm not enjoying my work at all. and that i might even be depressed. i wonder if this is somehow a war thing, or an extended war thing, or perhaps if this just has to do with the past four years of work being mostly shit, and feeling trapped as a wage slave while constantly juggling constantly mutating family responsibilities.

maybe i should just finish my coffee.

asshole accumulation

today - post posting - continued with four assholes. i called the jewish agency to find out something for my mother, and was stuck with their hold muzak while running around the supermarket looking for a product that they didn't stock. as i gave up and arrived at the self-checkout, an agent answered and promptly refused to answer my general question because my mother wasn't with me. while i was being pissed off about that, the checkout assistant came over and insisted on interrupting my call to tell me about a special on one of the items i was purchasing, to which i responded sharply "i really don't care" but i really wanted to scream it. the answer i got from the agent was basically that the people in cape town are continuing to waste my mother's time. i tried to reset emotionally, but almost got run over by an irresponsible cyclist as i stepped onto a crosswalk (he was coming up behind me, and decided to go around in front of me instead of behind me. or slow down a moment, as i had right of way. a few seconds later the crosswalk was blocked by an impatient taxi driver while it was still green for me to cross, and he got angry with me for indicating that he was doing something wrong.

later, i'd learn that half the kids in mr smear's class are sick with covid so tonight's lag b'omer bonfire isn't happening, so that was all for nought...

working from the office wasn't unpleasant, though i was very frustrated by the coffee machine situation. not only do people move the pipes between the dairy and non-dairy milks without cleaning them, and leave milk pouring onto the grid our cups are supposed to go on, but there's no decaf coffee anywhere.

my work day was... well, it was successful in the sense that i eventually managed to run the tests i needed to run (and that i arguably should have run weeks ago). it was unsuccessful in that i uncovered even more of a hot mess beneath the surface than i already thought there was. i worked a longer day than usual, and my last findings before stopping for the night stressed me out. i've sent an update to my manager so that he's not surprised, and i'm overall feeling pretty shit about it.

...

anyways. i came home for lunch, primarily because krybabie's widow (what a weird thing to type, even years later) had come over to pick up some stuff my mother brought with her. it was nice to see her, and it seems like she and the kids are doing quite well.

it turns out she recently met up with some old mutual friends, and that they have pictures of teenage me at summer camp, so i've just awkwardly reached out to them to ask if they'd do me a favor and send me a few of them... i don't have much from before i made aliyah, a handful of photos from my party days is just about everything.

...

mr smear once again came home without having done what i asked him, and i gave him the twenty minutes it took for me to get home from the office to rectify the situation. i spent some of the walk home wracking my brains trying to think of an appropriate and effective punishment if he didn't, and i was deeply grateful that he managed to get his assignment off one of his friends and i didn't have to come up with a solution to the problem 😅

dinner was great, as was the evening in general, but he started coughing just at bedtime and i'm hoping he's not doing the covid thing himself. i actually suspect that that's what my last week was about, and that perhaps mr smear was patient zero when we sent him back to school a couple of weeks ago because he only had symptoms when getting out of bed.

...

i don't have energy or bandwidth to be functional tonight. i'm really enjoying starship troopers and slay the spire 2, one (or both) of them will suffice.

sleep journal entry

 i made a point of staying up late* even though i was really tired. i took an iron supplement during the day, skipped the magnesium. during the night i experienced intrusive thoughts and hip discomfort, though not particularly intense.

* some development, and another failed run of slay the spire 2

i was traumatized by mr smear's alarm going off in our room at top volume, i was dreaming and the dream exploded into a nightmare of violated anger, with no recollection. so that's how i woke up. i combined my morning coffee with some starship troopers to calm down. it captures the concepts and atmosphere of basic training superbly.

and then i sat down to take care of the usual morning admin stuff and received an email that i'm being fined for traveling in a public transport lane even though i'd returned the car prior to the incident being recorded. dammit.

it feels weird to be going into the office today.

somniferous

 i'm making an effort to stay awake tonight. fortunately, after the weekend progress i made on my AI harness i'm inspired to move forward. there's a lot of stuff going on, and i'm definitely learning.

...

i accompanied gd to the clinic this morning, from there were went to the hospital, begged for an in-between in-between appointments appointment, and returned to the clinic to see a doctor who gave gd a referral that formally begs for an in-between in-between appointments appointment. later i received an email from the hospital that says "okay", with no further details.

it's all very confusing.

i was falling apart after we came home, so i made myself a coffee and napped for half an hour, sipping it before closing my eyes and finishing it soon after. i was still a mess for a little while after that, but i eventually managed to sit myself down and dive into the work.

i feel like i did some real work today, even if a lot of it was being told by the AI agents that none of what they said before made any sense :/

i called mr smear after school had ended, and was pleased to hear that he'd found the last missing book. he gave me a bullshit story about not being able to bring home a workbook without bothering the janitors more than he already had, which i decided to let slide...

today was a mix of healthy and unhealthy snacking.

my mom and i took a walk to the immigration lawyers' office for a free consultation. the weather today was weird, and there were a lot of detours, but we arrived on time for a very pleasant meeting, and we were assured that ours is a "slam dunk" of a case should the need to use their services arise.

we returned home, i ushered mr smear into the shower so that i could spend some time on my AI harness before dinner, we enjoyed a really nice dinner, and a smooth bedtime (i resumed reading the colour of magic for the first time in a while).

my brain's a bit foggy. i'm not sure how much constructive effort i'll be putting in, but dammit i'm staying awake.

sleep journal entry

 it was a bad idea to go to bed so early.

i think i didn't take an iron supplement yesterday, only the magnesium at night. i went to bed really tired, but could not sleep, primarily due to lower back discomfort and general restlessness.

it was a horrible night and i'm tired.

abandoned beer

 well, i guess i was wrong. a minute after posting i received a message from one of the birthday moms, to say that they'd tried to get mr smear to stay...

i packed up, abandoned my beer ($#@%!) and stalked out the coffee shop, calling gd to update her (and vent). she quickly convinced me to avoid being reactionary and hold a family meeting when we got home. i was furious when i found him, i made sure to send him back to apologize and say goodbye, and we began the walk home.

it was good that we walked. not only were our public transport options limited - and i didn't want to pay for another taxi ride - but it gave us a lot of time to talk once i'd calmed down (fortunately, that only took a couple of minutes and i didn't say anything that i ended up regretting).

his behavior was less bad than i initially thought, though it definitely wasn't wise, and it seems like there was a lot more at play than just pop music and food smells. amongst other things we spoke about the importance of integration with whoever you're studying, working or serving with. during the family meeting gd and my mom both helped drive that home, and i feel like we got through to him 🤞

there were a bunch of other things, but that was the most important one. i'm pretty glad we handled it relatively calmly and constructively.

dinner was great (gluten-free-gd's getting good with daal), and although mr smear took a long time to get ready for bed, it gave my mom and i an opportunity for a really interesting discussion about pluralism, contrasting my experiences in japan and india with hers as a foreign exchange student in the 60s.

i'm not sure how functional i'm going to be right now, perhaps i should start moving towards going to bed.

a mixed feelings moment

 i'm sitting in a coffee shop with my laptop and a beer, listening to chilled music on a beautiful afternoon while mr smear plays laser tag with his classmates. the walk over here, over the bridge across the ayalon specifically, was cool - all the skyscrapers and the construction provide a great sense of scale, and it reminds me of my fantasies of returning to tel aviv while we were trapped in south africa during the pandemic.

we didn't go swimming today because mr smear didn't get up until really late. i (easily) managed to get a large set of shelves up while listening to synthknot, and i spent a good hour and a half working on the AI harness and made some very real progress. the rest of the

[oh, fuck. he just called me to ask me to pick him up because he doesn't like their music. and he asked them to change the music - which i've warned him countless times will backfire, and it apparently did - and i've just threatened him with a month of punishment if i come back and he's not downstairs trying to have fun]

afternoon was spent doing not much, including a very brief nap midway through reading a chapter of starship troopers.

we took a taxi to the party, i've just settled down, and godsdammit i'm finishing my beer at my pace and trying to get something productive done.

new family update!

 i completely forgot to include this in my previous post! last night, we received an update from my sister than her new grandson has (finally!) been born. it was an intense couple of days - mostly due to NHS incompetency - but everyone seems happy with the resulting bébé.

i hope he has a good life. i hope his older brother has a good life. i feel really bad for both of them for having such shitty parents. i hope the new parent combo works out better than the last one.

sleep journal entry

 no lower back pain, and no (or not much) post-nasal drip. but my sleep was fitful throughout the night.

...

we had a lovely night last night, we ate too much, talked constantly and the kids all got along great.

i climbed out of bed after who-know-how-long deciding whether i was awake or not, and finished reading never again will i visit auschwitz over coffee on the balcony; partially because it's so good, partially because i was in a hurry to finish it so that i can focus on starship troopers.

the ending triggered some feelings, and gd and i don't exactly agree, and then my mother got pulled into it, but here's my review:

i'll start by saying that this book is a bit contentious in my household because of the author's political leanings and interpretations; as israeli jews, we're both scared by and scared for the jews in the US who have been convinced that trump is a fascist when he's the one leading the fight against communist-jihadist fascism.

setting that caveat aside, what a remarkable, insightful, eye-opening, and - dare i say - important look both at the holocaust itself, and at the differences between the german and polish reactions to it so many decades later. it's a fantastic graphic novel experience in and of itself, an excellent work of art, and the stories it tells are both heartwarming and heartbreaking.

we're currently living through a time of great anxiety and confusion - between the wars we're waging to protect ourselves from genocide again, and the pogroms against jews all over the world - and this book does an excellent job of connecting us to the victims of the sho'ah and understanding that we're facing essentially the exact same things as before.

now mr smear is starting to wake up, and he was making noises about going swimming this morning. we have furniture to build, and he's got laser tag in the evening, and i'm hoping to make some AI harness progress today... i guess this is going to be a busy day!

pause

 i'm a bit anxious because other apartments are anxious, we've just moved in and people are beginning to worry about metro construction that's supposed to be taking place beneath our building. sometime. no concrete dates or approximate timeline.

i don't want to even think about moving anytime soon. we're invested.

...

i got a little bit of work done on my first AI harness attempt, learning openspec (in general simple to use, but lots of nuances for people who care about the potential implications of esoteric configuration options), and i read a bit more of never again will i visit auschwitz, which i'm preemptively annoyed by because until it gets to the TDS part, it's a brilliant and important work. i also read a little bit of the sample i got of heinlein's starship troopers [pauses to purchase the full book on kindle and complain how the pricing in canada is a lot more than in the US], which has long been one of my favorite movies and i've yet to read it.

our ikea delivery, which was scheduled for sunday, arrived early ^_^

my mother, wife and i took a bus to the mall, picked up a few things and had an emotional and dramatic experience picking up her new glasses - first bad dramatic, then good - and we were considering stopping for coffee when we realized that we were running out of time to pick up mr smear and get home and get to the museum of illusions "on time". so we hopped on a bus that turned out to make things more complicated (thanks, transport app), and ended up getting off at a supermarket to do some last-minute shopping for tonight, discovering as we entered that the supermarket is in the process of selling off its stock and shutting down.

we got home, mr smear got home, and then we realized that's gd's toe was in no condition to go anywhere :(

so my mother, son and i caught a bus to the port, stopped for a coffee, and arrived at the "museum". unexpectedly, there was a lot of activity and a queue, and when we arrived at the head of the queue we were instructed that no food or drinks were allowed beyond that point. so we went back to the tail off the queue, and i uncomfortably drank my coffee as quickly as i could, gave up the last bit when we got to the front, passed security, and only then learned that we'd been in a queue for the wrong thing, and that the entrance was around the corner, and that there was no actual "time slot" in spite of what our tickets said 🤦‍♂️

that aside, the museum of illusions was fantastic! it was especially cool seeing all the illusions i saw jason pargin talking about just this week in real life, and we got some great photos, and the three of us almost lost our cookies in the "vortex", which was hilarious :D

we came home to put together a shoe stand and make challah-peño (my mom's first!), mr smear's been "doing homework" (pretending to read his history texts), i've been fiddling around with my first AI harness, playing slay the spire 2, and we're about to start getting ready to visit our upstairs friends for a friday-night barbecue.

sleep journal entry

 another difficult night, though no more post-nasal drip or cough. hip / lower back discomfort on the right side only, but persistent until waking up. this in spite of continuing the supplement regimen.

i'm so fucking tired. the shitty nights compound, and last night was a classic case of too uncomfortable to sleep, but too tired to get out of bed. i feel dysfunctional. i would love the universe to just give me a fucking break, pretty please with a cherry on top and chocolate sprinkles.

...

"you're an angel"

"so where are my fucking wings?"

"you don't get them until later. but i wonder if the neck and shoulder pain isn't due to them being trapped in your shoulder blades"

- gd consoling me

out and... out

 my niece has been waiting for attention in an NHS hospital in london, things are becoming... tense. i guess that's what happens when your healthcare is at a third-world level...

my mother, gd and i bussed to ikea, stopping for a few minutes between buses to walk through the mall in glilot. we arrived with some time to spare, found a surprisingly nice coffee shop where i plugged in, enjoyed my coffee and had my daily with my team.

then i joined gd and my mom at ikea itself, and settled near a plug-point in the food court while they did the slowest part of the shopping.

i actually got some work done. including getting my client to change their substack profile name; as soon as i pointed out that it didn't look good, nobody argued (it looked like something a pornographic site might be called).

a bit later they joined me, and i continued to work until i received a reference phone call for my british devops coworker, which i really hope helps convince them to make him an offer.

my cousin arrived, with a very stiff neck, and we sat and talked for a while, which was lovely as always.

from there we headed downstairs and through the second part of the gauntlet, then through the warehouse, finding pretty much everything we needed, including a really nice big carpet for the living room.

the wait for the cashier was long, but i guess not as long as it looked from the back of the queue. i bought fries while we waited, and it wasn't until i picked them up that i realized they sell falafel too, but i ended up getting a falafel later so it's all good. a bit dry, but for NIS 5 it tasted pretty good :P

once we paid - with a lot less drama than last time - we very quickly got called to the delivery counter. while taking care of that and also severely instructing mr smear to do what he was supposed to (what was written in his temporary diary) before coming home, there was some kind of incident between a couple next to us and a very angry dude with a particularly dark energy who i'd noticed at the cafeteria earlier. just after two of the mentally handicapped staff almost came to blows. weird times.

on the way out, waiting for gd and my mother with my falafel in hand, i noticed a tall, heavy, older security guard angrily speaking in french while eating a small ice cream. i didn't take a photo, 'cause that would have been rude, but i have that image in my head now 🤣

they wouldn't deliver the big heavy carpet, so i had to shoulder that along with my heavy backpack for the not-inconsiderable walk to the train station. it was okay for me, but my mom and gd were both feeling a bit sore (for different reasons) by the time we eventually got home.

while there was a stretch of fighting with mr smear just before dinner - due to his "sensitivity" to "cringey" music (johnny clegg) or any level of noise that isn't silence - for the most part he was compliant this afternoon and did a fair amount of math catch-up.

when i threatened him with punishment, i tied it into his homework - he's just learned about the fibonacci sequence, so i explained that he would lose hours of privileges in accordance with it. he found that funny just before he realized i was serious :P

dinner was great. mr smear ventured a drop of scorpion pepper sauce this evening and did just fine :)

...

i've really struggled this past couple of weeks, and i'm anxious about the coming one. i've worked a lot less than i should have, mostly due to the combination of family surprises (gd's health and mr smear's schooling) and me being sick and losing a heck of a lot of sleep.

i've taken my supplements, and i've turned my brain off for the day. hopefully tonight will be smooth.

untethered

 sleep journal entry: after two hours of fitful sleep, i woke up with lower back and hip pain again and it took 45 minutes of stretching to calm down. this is the first time since i began supplementing with iron and magnesium, and i woke up feeling particularly poorly rested

meanwhile, gd woke up on the wrong side of bed this morning and her temper's on a hair-trigger.

all that aside, my niece is supposed to be giving birth in an hour's time at the latest, and we're all in a weird state of wanting to be supportive while certainly not being supportive of the fact that she's having another kid at all. i feel bad for both the siblings and the little one hasn't even come out yet.

...

yesterday was a day. i took mr smear to school, deciding once i got home that i have been being paranoid. i guess i'll wait for the homefront command to advise.

i did get a bit of work done in the morning, and i had a great (short) sync with my mentor. the afternoon, however, was a complete mess as far as work was concerned. i managed to get a whole lot of personal admin done, and i had a half hour meeting about the urban kibbutz idea that went really well, and certainly gave me some food for thought.

...

mr smear made some drama yesterday. when i dropped him off at school, it was with instructions to find out what work he needed to catch up and to bring home his workbooks. i called him after school to remind him. he arrived home without doing either of those things.

aside from the bad vibes, he's now under threat of losing weekend privileges if he doesn't shape up. i got him to write up what he has to do today in a temporary diary, including the instruction to start using his actual diary, and hopefully today will see him more functional.

after he did his chores, and a whole lot of music practice, he fired up human resource machine before i could stop him. technically i've made it homework, but practically speaking it's a video game, so i kinda screwed myself on that score :P

he spent a lot of time staring - his usual "i don't wanna think" mode - and there was a bit of tension, but i refused to give him the answer even as i gave him all the hints he needed to solve the problem. when he finally put 2 and 2 together (or 8 by 3, in this case), there was much rejoicing!

...

dinner was delicious, shower / bedtime went pretty smoothly, and i went to bed shortly after he did.

the twelve tasks of tuesday

sleep journal entry: technically a decaf coffee around 3pm. i still struggled with post-nasal drip and coughing for a lot of the night, but towards the morning i was able to sleep properly for a bit. now everything's starting to come out again...

earlier i had a dream in which i, along with a squad of sorts, entered deep into a terrorist's nest. one imbecile made enough noise to call attention to us, another (a kid i detested in primary school) did something even more dumb and suddenly we had to fight our way out. the battle was vicious and bloody (and involved shooting a lot of people in the eyes), and then i awoke.

...

i didn't get a lot of hours in yesterday, but i did end up with enough of a handle on the situation to be confident in how i move forward. the theme (or tantrum) of the day was due to ownership insanity - the devops who had seemed receptive to my initial proposal pushed back with the argument that there are two sources of truth, both valid even if contradictory, and that's on top of the situation in which there's no leadership coming from management and nobody knows what the situation should be.

it feels like the twelve tasks of asterix.

we weren't sure if we were picking mr smear up or not (he ended up going to his friend's place), but just before school ended his teacher called me for a long conversation - which needs a follow-up face-to-face meeting - with the fantastic starting point that they found all of mr smear's books! all but one, so my mother and i took a meandering walk through fascinating architecture to the bus, found the right book store, bought a copy of the missing book, sat down for a coffee, then walked home.

i didn't get much work done in the hour or so i was at home.

a potential impactful talk with my mom on the bus about my urban kibbutz idea.

one of the guys from my second team was looking through old stuff yesterday and sent me a picture of the gift i presented them during my farewell - it was such a fun memory!

mr smear met up with us at the mall after hanging out with his friend, we bought him a headband (his hair's been in his eyes) and he dutifully made sure it wasn't from adidas (i can't believe they're still operating in israel), then he sat down to eat his school lunch (?!) while my mom and i found a surprisingly good dollar store and picked up a bunch of things we'd been looking for.

mr smear wrote his name clearly in his new math book, dinner was great, and the evening was pleasant (including learning that the UAE has pulled out of OPEC).

i actually got a couple of practical things done before playing a bit of slay the spire 2, before hitting the hay.

sleep journal entry

 it was a horrible night, coughing and choking. and then a gross morning, with a sinus infection and a lot more expectoratin'. i'm so fucking tired.

in the middle of the night, after i did managed to fall asleep, i woke up choking from a dream about fighting drones with cyberpunk weapons. it's been a couple of hours, i wish i could remember the details.

i took mr smear to school this morning, and we talked about shaved heads (he has to wear a band for school while he grows his hair long) and tattoos (about not doing them without good reason, and not doing any that can't be covered up), and as i dropped him off i showed him a picture of myself with my head shaved. he was mortified :/

since getting back home, i've had breakfast (for my supplement regimen), watched a video about elon musk's tweet about UBI that's made me think the following: if the US could figure out how to enforce corporate taxes and shuts down loopholes for them and their wealthy elite, they'll have more than enough money to provide UBI and a stable, healthy economy.

brain fogging

 once again, as it gets later and i get ready to go to bed, my nose and throat situation begins to worsen... on the one hand, the antihistamines seem to be helping a bit. on the other, this really can't be just allergies.

i'm enjoying the excuse to accompany mr smear to and from school these days, even though it's awkward and getting more awkward by the day. are we at war? will the bombing resume? or should we be living our best lives?

limbo is uncomfortable.

i told my team what i've been thinking, and that i essentially needed to go back to the drawing board, and they were understanding. in spite of a fair number of distractions, i did manage to be productive today and i'm understanding considerably more than i did before. i'm not quite sure how to formally introduce AI tooling into what i'm doing - i may have to treat it as local harnessing only - but at least i'm feeling a little less lost.

a couple of months ago i began the process of setting up paybox for mr smear, and then a few weeks later got his account set up. since then it's been unclear whether he's actually earning interest, and today i got in touch with their support. after they initially lied to me, it became apparent that children's savings accounts do not, in fact, earn interest. so the whole exercise was one in futility, and i've now withdrawn all the money and we're going to have to find another option. and, just like every other thing we've tried, this has cost us; not just in cash, but i've now got two credit cards that need to be cancelled :/

assholes.

i snacked a lot today. today was all about snacks. even if some of the snacks were essentially just an extended lunch :P

the supplement routine is getting a bit ridiculous, though. it's complicated, and i've kinda given up on intermittent fasting the full 16 hours (though i guess i've been unofficially doing less for a while now) because it makes it even more so. i can't drink tea or coffee for an hour before or after taking my iron supplement (or eating something with a reasonable amount of iron in it), and i've got to take vitamin D in the morning with food, and magnesium at night with vitamin C (but not vitamin D), and i have to have my handful of walnuts (or pancakes, if i'm in time for gd's breakfasts) for omega 3, and not forget to regularly take b12.

after my mom and i picked mr smear up from school, we returned home and then walked across the highway to find the supermarket. it really is well-hidden! mr smear's whole thing for weeks has been hunting for lotus biscoff cookies, and i honestly wasn't expecting to find them there.

but find them there we did :)

on the way there, i'd charged him with paying attention to the route so that he can he gd find the place, to which he'd responded in a decidedly uncooperative manner. i warned him there'd "be a test", and on the way back i quizzed him, putting the lotus cookies on the line. he was not happy when i "failed" him and assured him there'd be no biscuits until i got a map, at which point i went home and my mother volunteered to accompany him to give him a hand.

which he apparently didn't need 🤦‍♂️

it really is all about motivation with this kid. he got home, drew me a map, took half a biscuit and promptly forgot about the ones i'd offered him as a prize, and then settled down to try and improve his previous solution in human resource machine.

that was effectively the end of my work day :P

while he didn't exactly post the correct solution himself, he did work through it really well, he made a real effort and stayed focused, made a bunch of modifications that he was pleased with himself about, and when i sat down with him at the end, he was clearly on board with me every step of the way.

this is exciting stuff ^_^

just before dinner his new teacher called me, and our chat was pleasant. funny, even, in a distressing kind of way, because the story she told me was that she'd loaned mr smear a book for the lesson, and he'd somehow managed to lose it by the end of class even though nobody had moved.

my child is certainly talented.

eventually, i got the full story over dinner and everything made sense, nothing had been lost.

dinner was really good, gd and my mom worked together to produce a lentil curry that even anti-lentils mr smear found edible.

bedtime was smooth, i finally read a bit more of the colour of magic to him (we're so close to the end!), and i've now spent a couple of hours doing nothing of value (including some spire slaying). now i'm taking my cough to bed and praying to get some rest.

sleep journal entry

 most of the night i was kept partially awake by coughing and a post-nasal drip. the last couple of hours i actually slept a little. i'm paying for that now as my body tries to eject everything that pooled in my lungs.

i've had an ear-worm of dream theater's pull me under since i woke up yesterday morning, and it's still going strong. i suspect that it was triggered by the vampire water tank.

...

i did a lot of spire-slaying last night, winning a daily challenge run with an outrageously OP set of cards and relics (regular monsters dropping relics, all acquired cards doubled, and powers powering up powers). for the amount of entertainment and escapism i've gotten from it so far, slay the spire 2 has been well worth the early access.

of course.

 of *course* i'll get the work done after putting mr smear to bed. of course :/

as usual, the sinus thing hits harder after dark, even though i'm taking antihistamines at dinner and they do seem to be helping considerably.

...

my mother and i accompanied gd to the clinic. along the way, my mother almost got run over by a reversing truck - gd had to pull her out the way - who'd stopped in the middle of the intersection.

jesus.

the nurse was pleasant and helpful, and referred her to the doctor on duty who was pleasant and helpful. gd's been prescribed antibiotics and told to come back in a few days if the symptoms don't improve.

between the two visits, i spoke to the manager who was just as concerned by the lack of professionalism and the mysterious disappearing poo sample, and who apologized and thanked me for bringing it to his attention. so that was good.

we picked up a not-awful gluten-free bread from our favorite bakery, then walked to the mall, picked up a coffee (because i'd forgotten to get one at the bakery) and did a little moseying while gd hit the pharmacy.

we then walked over to the dermatologist's offices to try and bring her toenail appointment forward, but she couldn't wait that long so we promptly returned home.

after breakfast, i sat down and actually made some progress with AI harnesses. i also sat down with gd for a few minutes and laid out exactly what's been on my mind lately, and how i feel about her and the situation, and expressed that even if she only understands it intellectually that's fine by me. so i think i  managed to make her feel safer, and less of a burden, which is something she often has trouble with.

have made some progress - and then a little more - *i* felt a bit safer. or less anxious, at least.

my mother took another walk around the area we visited last night, and she found the hidden supermarket! it's literally well-hidden, no signs, and i'm now very confident that that's on purpose to keep us riff-raff out.

too bad, fancy-pantses, we're coming for your groceries.

my mom joined me on the pick-up run for mr smear, though he didn't come home after all because i agreed to let him and his friend go to the comics library. so we returned home - the long way - and i think my mother finally understands that me being concerned for her safety on public transport (specifically vis-a-vis holding on to things at all times to not get thrown due to heavy acceleration) has nothing to do with her age :P

i seem to recall getting a little more productive time in, but i didn't record it so i'm not sure. perhaps not, i think the hour or so between getting back home and then leaving again to pick him up from the library was a bit of a random mess.

i found him reading, chatted briefly with the librarian while he got ready to go, and then we returned home.

he had "homework" to do - human resource machine and music practice. he did really well on the programming, so much so that he was so thrilled he's decided that maybe coding stuff on the projects he wants to do *is* something he should be handling ^_^

i spoke to my mentor about pivoting towards AI harnesses, and he was both assuring and encouraging. i'm not sure how i'll approach the same topic with my teammates at my client in the morning, but i guess i'll cross that bridge when i get there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

dinner was nice, gd testing out a gluten-free pasta that was at least a palatable vehicle for her vegan pesto, and mr smear and i made a joke about putting black salt (kala namak) on clementines and were shocked to discover that it was weirdly nice (O_o)

showers / toothbrushes / bedtime went pretty smoothly. including getting started on never again will i visit auschwitz which i understand ends with some heavy TDS but at least starts very well.

...

i've got a cough and a post-nasal drip, and it's unpleasant. i'm going to do a little bit of nothing and then try to get some sleep.

bloody sunday

my allergies were more under control, but it was still a difficult night with a post-nasal drip so most of the night i was awake to some degree. between the iron and magnesium supplements, my lower back and hips haven't been causing me any real problems at night, although i did have some trouble during the day...

my last dreams were difficult: a massive attack on my armored corps unit with a zangief-like russian doing a lot of damage. then fighting to hold a vampire in a huge tank of water, assisted by an our-side vampire. something about making sure he didn't die, but not giving him enough oxygen to escape. and then she left me in charge, and aside from him wounding me in the underwater scrap, i accidentally gave him enough to get out.

i wonder if the vampire isn't AI.

...

after posting last night, my mother and i did our traditional annual try-to-find-out-what's-wrong-with-her-computer. i installed O&O ShutUp10++, and disabled all the recommended things, and it does seem to have helped. unfortunately, i then learned that she's still on windows 10 and her computer's too old to upgrade. so she either has to trade it in, or switch to ubuntu, neither of which are ideal.

and i can't give her my windows machine because the screen's too small :/

...

i woke up this morning to learn that there was a stabbing attack in our neighborhood yesterday by a south tel aviv gang of refugee / foreign workers' kids. i don't know how to break that to gd or mr smear.

i dropped mr smear off at school this morning, he's had a great idea for a front-door image!

i arrived home to learn that we're having hot-water cylinder troubles, which pisses me off not only because it's just another thing to deal with (i'm about to accompany gd to the clinic and hospital, her toenail issue has fast become an emergency), but because we just had a plumber in a week or two ago and he couldn't find anything wrong.

i'm so fucking over this week already.

artificial unintelligence

 an anxiety has been stirring. i've written about it a fair amount the last few days, and it's crystallizing.

AI is making me dumber. lazier, more than dumber, but a laziness that's rendering it harder and harder to activate my brain.

it's not *just* all the leaning on AI, though. it's also the fact that my life is being constantly railroaded and derailed by all sorts of unexpected, mandatory, urgent side-quests that are nobody's fault, but that put everything on my shoulders.

and then, when i finally manage to get part of my sleep issues sorted out, i get hit with this horrible sinusitis bullshit. so i'm completely exhausted and i don't have the energy to sit and focus and climb out of this hole.

i hope it's not covid again.

...

i read comics, played more slay the spire 2, made at least two attempts to make some progress on AI harnesses, went for a walk with my mom and mr smear, rearranged our bookshelves, and went for a walk with my mom around the soulless neighborhood next door before saying good night to mr smear, posting this, hopping in the shower, and praying for an easier night.

respite

sleep journal entry: i just got up a short while ago, after a terrible night's sleep due to acute sinusitis. i slept very little during the time in bed and got up frequently due to intense nasal and throat congestion.

...

my throat had ceased to feel scratchy, in fact i was feeling fine yesterday morning. it was a beautiful day. gd's stomach was giving her trouble so she couldn't join us, but my mom and i ventured to south tel aviv for a stroll with a shopping list.

we had a nice coffee when we arrived - both of us were approaching dire need - after which we meandered through the streets, eventually looping back to pick mr smear up from school. from there we went past yuka monsters so i could ask them (again) for a contact for their printing house, after which we walked past an ethiopian restaurant and decided to give their vegan "tasting plate" a go; not least because my mother had had to stay in a hotel in addis ababa at the beginning of the week and her culinary experience had left a lot to be desired.

...

firstly, ge'ez smells really good. it's clean and has a nice vibe. the food took quite a while to prepare - which is fair, considering it was a whole bunch of dishes in one, and in retrospect i'm really glad we only ordered a "single" because we weren't that hungry and it was a decent amount of food for the three of us.

secondly, it was not only a "corrective experience" for my mother, but my son dug in, tried everything without any encouragement ("it looked really good!"), and we all left pleased, sated and in good spirits ^_^

...

we traveled to yehuda hamaccabi, and proceeded to do the shopping. the fruit seller had great stuff (we were responsible for bringing a fruit platter to dinner), and we found a decent food scale at the hardware store, and we managed to find everything else between all the supermarkets.

we did have some bad vibes with my mother insisting on buying a dairy gift and keeping it in our apartment until the evening. mr smear is still dangerously allergic, even if it's less dangerous of late, and we are a vegan household.

that mini-drama was compounded a little later by her discovery that a coke she'd put in the freezer and forgotten about had exploded. what followed - after the initial anger (mostly at herself, but merged with her frustration over the previous dairy issue) - was a full family effort to clean out the freezer, which became progressively more light-hearted except for when mr smear thought it appropriate to begin trolling me.

the rest of the afternoon was a mix of playing slay the spire 2, and another episode or two of tokyo ghoul.

gd still wasn't feeling okay by the time we left for our cousins', so she sadly stayed behind.

the evening was very pleasant, mr smear was well-behaved and generally quite complimentary about the food, and the only thing i'm uncomfortably regretting was telling the story of how i got fired. not because it was inappropriate - there had been a point to the story - but because i was halfway through the story when i realized that it's a very long story and there's no way for me to "get to the point" without adding so much more detail...

we came home pretty late. right before leaving i coughed for the first time, which was the first indication that something was coming. by the time we arrived home, it had progressed to a proper, troubling post-nasal drip.

after showering i played more slay the spire 2 until mr smear went to bed, which took him so long that i eventually agreed to let him shower in the morning. which i'm kinda glad he did - he jumped into the shower first thing this morning with none of the usual bedtime time pressure, he didn't take too long, and for the duration was living his best life with his music blasting but not waking gd up because there were two-and-a-half closed doors between them.

for all its issues, this apartment is such a huge upgrade from where we were it's ridiculous.

while he showered, i finished reading the day everything changed. the artwork is fantastic and the stories are powerful, but i feel like the writing doesn't always do the stories justice.

sleep journal entry

my first two coffees of the day yesterday were decaf because i was still wired from the day before. the sleep i got last night felt broken, but i did dream, and i haven't been experiencing my usual leg/hip discomfort, which is probably due to the iron and magnesium supplements.

the last part of my last dream involved following someone to the "entrance" of his house, which included a terrifying jump around a corner at a dizzying height, and some kind of "bridge" which i couldn't see and didn't figure out before i woke up.

gd's other toe is looking scary. only this year (it was about this time last year), there wasn't any "accident" to explain why.

shouldn't have told the universe my plans

 gd decided to clean the bathrooms and floors today. i tried to nap for a short while after breakfast, though i really didn't get much actual rest, and then our kibbutz cousin arrived for a visit. it was great to be able to host her for once! it's the first time in the twenty five years i've known her :P

just before she arrived, i registered a flurry of activity on our classroom whatsapp group, and we were horrified to learn that mr smear's homeroom teacher was riding her bicycle to the school earlier this week and was run over by a truck. she's been hospitalized and is in a serious condition, it doesn't look like she's going to be returning to the school this year 💔

we had a great late lunch ordered from jars and bowls, after which i jumped on a bus to pick mr smear up from school. we walked all the way to the light rail, hopped on the light rail, and only then did i learn that he'd left his locker unlocked again. so we turned right around at the next stop, went back into the school and i made him unpack his locker and search for his books while i searched above and in all the open lockers in the same row.

we didn't find anything.

we then took a quick walk to a bus stop to ride to the dentist to join gd, who was very nervous after her last visit. by the time we arrived she was almost done, and we she came out she was (rightly) very proud of herself for having told her dentist exactly how she was feeling and why; the dentist responded professionally, and gd says the experiences were night and day.

i wanted to pick up a decaf coffee on the way home (it would have been my third decaf today), but the guy at the coffee shop took way too long. we caught a bus home, and since we got back i've been struggling to stay awake so as not to have a hard time getting to sleep tonight.

so, braindead, i played slay the spire 2 until dinner, ate a great dinner with my family, showered, and have just tucked mr smear into bed. now it's time to go to bed myself.

the alternative

a scratchy throat all day that caused trouble all night. it's still scratchy, but feeling slightly better right now so hopefully that's a trend.

i wasn't too sure that ze germans were doing the yom ha'atzmaut thing, and i made the mistake of only asking ru55 if he was going, and he didn't get back to me until this morning. so instead of going, i cancelled the car we'd rented and we had a "barbecue" hot-dog lunch at home that was really good.

a bit later, my mom and i dragged mr smear out to the beach. there was a chill wind on the beach itself, but once mr smear (mr inertia) was on the sand he didn't want to leave the beach, nor the sea. in retrospect, we should have brought him a towel...

otherwise, it was a beautiful afternoon. we took a slow walk down the beach and then up to allenby, where mr smear decided we should have hummus. that was a fantastic decision, we had a fun experience with the shifka and the meal was delicious.

then we walked up sheinkin, picking up some coffee along the way to the bus home.

unfortunately, i accidentally ordered a regular coffee instead of decaf. so it was around 6pm that i drank my fourth cup for the day.

we got home, and there was no argument from mr smear about jumping straight into a hot shower. afterwards, we started watching the tokyo ghoul series. which is really cool, but i did nap through half of the second episode...

dinner was the "barbecue" burgers, also delicious.

we got mr smear into bed, unsure of whether to expect a disrupted night or not because the ceasefire was supposed to end.

i went to bed pretty late (played slay the spire 2), and simply couldn't sleep. i estimate that it took me more than an hour and a half to finally fall asleep, after which it was fitful with claustrophobic dreams of an in-house rollercoaster with one of ze germans.

i struggled to wake up this morning, with my throat still doing a thing, but mr smear certainly helped as he made horrible noises (his throat) for the longest time. over coffee / his breakfast, we discovered that he's been avoiding going to school because he's been getting into trouble for not having his books. he's lost most of his books, apparently, and also never thought to report back that the lock on his locker is broken, and that he doesn't remember the code for the old one.

i don't know how much of any of that is actually true.

we explained to him that the books are expensive - they are - and that he's going to find them. and that all privileges are to be withheld until the situation is sorted out. on the bus to school, i explained what he needs to do and found his old lock's code, and sent a message to his homeroom teacher. on my way back home, he called to assure me that he's at least started the day off making an effort, so 🤷‍♂️...

also, on my way home, i thought some more about my work situation which is starting to freak me out. i've been trying to get a job done with AI that i have little context for, and the AI is leading me around in circles. not only do i need to change tack and focus on building the context i need, but i also *have* to  begin experimenting with AI harnesses because i'm feeling like i'm getting left behind on the most critical issue of our (engineering) time right now...

~3000 + 78 years old

our celebratory dinner was in order, with gd a little jealous of our desserts even though she usually doesn't participate, and the insanely good halva is naturally gluten-free anyway.

we learned this morning that the internet advises not to stop eating gluten until you have a diagnosis, to avoid a false negative. holy shit. so we've just had a talk, and agreed that *if* it matters to the medical establishment that she has a diagnosis on her record then she should put herself through it, and if not, then there's no point in getting scanned in the first place.

...

after dinner, and before leaving the house, mr smear turned our apartment into a dance floor with the bee gees' you should be dancing (followed by some kool & the gang), and then joined me an my mother for a bus ride to the museum to see what was happening. what was happening there - on the evening of a national day of celebration - was a gathering of sadness, all the woke lefties who are so bitterly opposed to our current government that they can't spare a moment to be grateful to be here and alive.

we quickly moved on from there, through throngs of tel aviv revelers going from party to party, to habima, where the concert's music was good, but not very upbeat. we walked about, marveled at the decorations and art installations, and continued walking until we got to a bus stop to come home.

the bus ride was very sweet, the bus driver and a bunch of guys behind us were all in great spirits, and we arrived home quickly and with more than 12000 steps on our watches.

after getting mr smear into bed and showering myself, i slayed the spire (i lie - the spire slayed me) for a while, then dragged myself to bed.

...

i didn't sleep particularly well, and was woken by my poor child at 6.10am (his groans indicated that he wasn't feeling well), and 8am was when i gave up trying to get back to sleep. i had coffee with my mom and mr smear while gd stayed in a bit longer, read a bit more of the day everything changed (which hits really hard), and am now relaxing while thinking about what we're going to do today.

...

from our saddest day to our happiest day, but both very, very strange days this year. to our fallen heroes, our terror victims, and to our persian counterparts: may this war bring us victory, and more than just independence: freedom from tyranny.

chag sameach, am yisrael chai 🇮🇱

frustration + anxiety

 it's been a very frustrating day. gd decided that mr smear was too sick to go to school - he really wasn't - so that gave me a bit of extra time to take care of some adulting admin. unfortunately, not only did i need that extra time, but i had a number of highly aggravating encounters and that really set a tone for the day.

then i dove into work. work sucked. four hours of highly frustrating work, and i'm confident using AI has ultimately made this whole project (so far) take considerably longer than it should have. i feel like i'm wading through a pool of raw sewage, being led by a broken compass that keeps swinging in a different direction any time i get close to an exit.

i've also been hungry / snacking all day, and my stomach's been unhappy.

while i'm going through whatever agitation i'm going through, gd's been having a really hard time. apparently a bit of wine last night has reset any of the healing that avoiding gluten was doing, and to add to that her shoulder's locked up. she's (understandably) pissed off now that my mother forgot some of her meds back in cape town that she really needs right now.

...

by the time 2pm rolled around, i decided i was done for the day. it's been an absolutely gorgeous day, so i took a walk with my mom and mr smear through the park to get some exercise before turning back, picking up coffee (decaf for me) and a malt beer for mr smear at our favorite dog-friendly coffee spot, then passed a supermarket and did some shopping on the way home.

and then took another short walk to the 24/7 for the stuff we couldn't find at the supermarket.

after mr smear and i had some chocolate weetabix (not bad for a "boring" additional iron source), i lay on the couch and finally started reading the day everything changed. then i got up, antsy as all hell, to post this.

it's independence day (shortly), i've no idea what we're doing tonight, and i've no idea what we're doing tomorrow. it's a very confusing time. the ceasefire is supposed to be over tomorrow night, but i'm more nervous about it being cut short than i've been since it started, and i haven't trusted it in the slightest.

sleep journal entry

 during two separate meetings yesterday i began to feel myself nodding off, one in my home office and one while sitting outside. definitely not lack-of-oxygen related, but also not the most severe cases.

otherwise, i was pretty comfortable when i climbed into bed last night, and my sleep was mostly uninterrupted.

mr smear's not feeling good, so he's staying home today. it's a half-day working from home because my client company's israeli office is closed for yom hazikaron, which seems a bit weird to me.

breaking points

 i accompanied mr smear to school this morning, and on my way back accompanied him through a video-call hunt through his locker and classroom to demonstrate that he's legitimately lost his math equipment 🤦‍♂️

the first part of the day can be summarized by the half a minute of me, exasperated, yelling furious and impotently at the sky trying and failing to navigate my mother's iphone while trying to set up her esim. what a fucking nightmare UX, steve jobs must be spinning in his grave.

i went to the office today; there were two friendly dogs, and i think i'm getting paranoid because the moment i petted either of them i developed a crawling sensation across my skin. all my skin :/

aside from a team lunch with the boss - good talk, delicious lunch, i only had half the meal which was still too much food - my day was extremely frustrating as i continued to get hit with code ownership problems.

i took a break to pick up mr smear from school, and joined another employer meeting (it's poor timing to say the least) about adding more work hours to my week to get AWS certified...

eventually mr smear and i got home, he took my mom to the comics library while i was brought to boil by the sheer idiocy of my client company's current state. to the point where i wrote an "angry letter" to my client and my manager in which i essentially let rip, though i did pull my punches (professionally) and tried to be constructive.

the response was... not exactly comforting, but not negative. and the thing that pushed me to breaking point - a team gatekeeping its contact channel by demanding anyone with questions do a small quiz first - did provide a couple of helpful responses to my auto-rejected queries.

it was a long afternoon and evening, with very little progress. at least i was provided with something positive when i called my mom to find out how they were and learned that the two of them were just sitting in the comics library and reading quietly together :)

it's yom hazikaron, so we watched the masa ceremony on the big screen after dinner, which was moving as usual. in spite of us fighting with mr smear throughout to get him showered and his teeth brushed and him into bed.

i can't believe it's so late already. i'm going to try going to sleep.

the nights are getting warmer.

sleep diary / politically asleep

 i've been using the consensus sleep diary for the past couple of days, and i've just gotten stuck on the fact that you can review your sleep stats dashboard, but not the comments you made - unless you're adept with the developer tools. so, for myself, i'm copying my comments here:

i'm not sure how long before 6.30am i woke up, i feel like it was a long time though. yesterday was my first time using both iron and magnesium supplements and i didn't suffer from the usual discomfort, just a bit of restlessness

on multiple occasions throughout the night i giggled at trump's absurd and acerbic humor.

...

then, first thing this morning, i woke up to respond to an instagram thread with a highly intelligent, educated man whose political extremism has been distressing me for years:

him: A blockade is an act of war. That's why during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis the US referred to it as a quarantine. Both the action, its intricacies and the specific wording were discussed and debated thoroughly. Oh well. Clip from Thirteen Days. I like it.

me: did you know that the irgc was blockading the straits up until a few days ago ? why didn't you post this then?

him: Of course I knew. I don't know of any historical analog, especially one with a dramatic Hollywood adaptation that includes the US principals discussing the blockade. Is there?

me: interesting - the timing of your post suggests that when the americans do it it's nefarious

him: nefarious means wicked or villainous. If you consider war as that, then yes. I don't. I think it's an act of war. Which requires approval from Congress.

me: ah, so it's okay that americans are using force to protect american interests, it's just an issue with protocol? cool, cool

...

[i'm] just perpetually curious how someone so intelligent and educated always seems to be pushing an anti-west agenda 🤷

him: Showing the lunacy and abhorrence that is the Trump administration is anti-West? Color me anti-West then.

me: if you can only see lunacy and abhorrence, then yes, you're anti-west. a pity.

him: I see much more. Terror. Abuse. Fascism. Sadness. Democratic decline. Mental decline, not to say dementia. Fear. Spinelessness. Systemic failure. At a glance.

...

what are you seeing that I don't? (I forgot grift and open corruption on an unprecedented scale, just came to mind as well)

me: a whole different side to the internet, and history. it begins before the end of the cold war, with the kgb inventing "active measures", and evolves into decades of unholy alliance between the russians, chinese, qataris and iranians to destabilize the west and create a massive, well-funded disinformation army that infiltrates western institutions and makes the media (traditional and social) push out propaganda at a terrifying scale. and that all rides on the back of social media algorithms that are financially incentivized to raise engagement by any means necessary, generating mass psychosis on all sides of the political spectrum as we learn that "folie à deux" scales. i recommend trying to balance out your media diet, the other side isn't all lies like you've been led to believe. also talking to your fellow israelis without assuming that everyone with a different understanding is either brainwashed or a bad actor (that's a general statement, i'm not accusing you of anything - it's possible you just don't happen to have people with different opinions in your circles).

smooth landing

 today's top stories: gd is rapidly evolving into gfd (gluten-free dragon), and my mother landed safely in tel aviv, and the mongoose is now a father of two!

i wouldn't say i slept well last night, but i did sleep for the most part and, after an initial struggle at alarm time, i was relatively rested and functional. so that was good.

after dropping mr smear off at school, i came home to take care of a bunch of stuff, including grocery shopping with gd* and scheduling a meeting regarding the impact investing from the other day. i'm a bit disappointed that my cousin hasn't responded :/

* an expensive, exploratory shopping for gluten-free products. it turns out that a few days without gluten have had a dramatic impact on her health, not just the debilitating stomach issues she's been suffering from the past few months. we've got to schedule a scan to confirm whether it's celiac or not, but at this point it's clear that it's meaningful. and meaningfully ironic that we've both been complaining about and laughing at non-celiac gluten-free fanatics for years.

i decided it made more sense to work from home until the last minute, so i did. a different coworker gave me a different direction, which i continued working on on the train to the airport, and while waiting for my mother to get through customs. later in the afternoon, we had a conversation that led me to understand that every moment i've spent on this aspect of the project was a complete waste of time as the whole thing's essentially deprecated...

it was an enormous relief to see the update that my mom's plane had landed, and obviously great to see her. we hopped on a train back to tel aviv, on the way booking a car to get the baggage home. something was misconfigured in the car which made it make an awful high-pitched alarm the entire ride home and back (which i dutifully - and angrily - reported), and we took a light rail from the train station to pick up mr smear who'd been hanging with his friend outside the school.

the bus ride back took forever...

after getting my mom settled, eating a late lunch, and getting mr smear onto some homework, i did enough work to figure out that i was wasting my time before heading out with my mom to pick up a few things. we ended up walking rather a lot - we picked up brussels sprouts, gin & tonic, and oat milk (neither of us can drink "barista" versions) - as well as sitting over a coffee (and tea), and then caught a bus back just in time for dinner.

full family dinner was really nice :)

we got the mattress inflated and mr smear into bed (eventually), handled two sets of groceries that arrived quite late, laughed at a bunch of different news items (most loudly over rogan losing it behind trump), and i'm now getting myself ready for bed.

downside up

 we were all relieved that mr smear made the sunset deadline yesterday!

it's day two of gd not consuming any gluten, and she's already starting to feel a bit better. we tried to make gluten free challah yesterday, it came out a bit like soggy rusks and i don't think we'll be doing that again. certainly not the same way.

we watched the second macgyver episode, which was a bit camp but mr smear was clearly into the experience :)

i don't recall too much after dinner last night, though it was definitely a late night.

what i do recall - because i'm now keeping a proper log - is that i went to bed just after midnight, took a long time to fall asleep, and then woke up about an hour later for about five hours of restlessness and discomfort.

i slept like shit.

in spite of that, i was kind of functional this morning. i started the day making an important firefly gif and sleep-journaling, then spent most of the morning playing slay the spire 2.

the afternoon involved finishing the first part (the colour of magic part) of the graphic novel, and sort-of napping for half an hour. it also involved finishing terminator 2, which was a much better experience due to the sound upgrade even though the projector  quality is garbage. after that, i sat down to learn how to make comics with kindle create, documenting each and every step along the way.

[stops to witness a large mosquito being zapped and going up in flames in the zapper behind me. and be dismayed to see what looks like a crispy flea.]

it's fun to see the guided view experience take shape, though!

between working on that and dinner, mr smear and i did some boxing training for the first time in weeks. not only should we be doing it consistently anyway, but today was another dust-stormy indoors-only day... i'm actually quite impressed with how well my post-workout stretching went.

we started watching dead poets society over dinner, not speaking to my mom because she was on a flight to ethiopia (she's staying there overnight), and tomorrow after dropping mr smear at school i'm going to go set myself up to work at the airport so i'll be there when she lands.

...

please lord let me sleep tonight 🙏

dust mouth

 firstly, omg i didn't realize it was my turn on crosswalk duty at the school this morning 🤦‍♂️

so that's a bit shit.

also a bit shit is our financial situation this month...

i dragged myself out of bed this morning, and immediately completed my first sleep journal entry. i found it a bit confusing at first, not just because of whether 12am and 12pm are midnight and noon or vice versa, but also because it's weird documenting the night's sleep and only afterwards documenting any naps from the rest of the day before the night's sleep. either way, it amuses me that the first night of sleep journaling and i actually slept pretty well.

it was a warm morning, first day of shorts and vests. i dropped mr smear off at school, returned home for an early breakfast, and then accompanied gd to the clinic. she got an appointment for our doctor, and so until then we burned our time waiting in line at the pharmacist. we picked up a coffee at "our" bakery, and then sat down with the doctor for a very unpleasant session.

gd was not happy, because the doctor doesn't agree with her assessment of something she's dealing with and so refused to prescribe medication for it. after much drama, gd's managed to get our old doctor in cape town to prescribe it in a way that my mother can pick it up... it's all very weird.

after that, we visited the nurses office to find out what happened to a sample gd delivered over a month ago, and learned that she'd never provided a "permission" (which nobody had told her about) so somebody had collected the sample and... made it disappear? so we'll be complaining about that on sunday, when she brings in a new sample.

jesus.

we returned home to drop off the groceries and then head out to the mall to pick up gd's new prescription specs, at which point we realized that we'd forgotten about mr smear and that school had come out already. i told him to meet us at the mall, which he dutifully did. he arrived just as gd's eyes were being re-tested because her very expensive specs were completely useless - she literally couldn't see anything - and entered the lego store which i chatted with my big sister.

during our chat, i learned that someone in a group i'm in is doing something related to the impact work i've been thinking a lot harder about since wednesday. i've just sent the guy an email, hopefully it'll lead to something.

after gd came out, we went downstairs and had a delicious hummus lunch, then gd failed to pick up another pharmacy prescription (part of the doctor drama) and we headed home, stepping outside into a massive, choking dust storm.

i read a little bit of the the colour of magic graphic novel while listening to tool before crashing into a semi-conscious nap for an hour, then made myself a coffee, used the massage tool on my neck, and then settled down at my computer to try and do something productive, even though my brain's offline, while i listen to mr smear humming to himself and appearing to make enough progress on his homework that he might actually be done before the sunset deadline.

i don't know if i'm going to get anything productive done.