it's after midnight, and i've just spent the past couple of hours working on my AI harness. but using AI, so also watching random shit on youtube. some of it important shit, like ex-climate activist speaks out - lucy biggers on triggernometry. some of it like angine de poitrine.
my AI skills skills are leveling up. i've got skill evolution and troubleshooting baked in to my project now, and i'm feeling just how much it's making my life easier.
i'm replaying today over and over, and no matter which way i turn things over, i'm in shit. and it's absolutely my fault, regardless of context.
there's something magical about the accumulation of various anxieties and stresses, and bad decisions made under high pressure, and now i've just broken the cardinal rule of my employer by grossly misjudging my time estimates and having to ask my client for an extension, which i'm praying i won't need. this is literally me praying for a miracle, and lots of extra hours.
but my life doesn't allow for focusing. that's not how things go.
i spent most of my hours today laser focused, in high gear, generating reams and reams of code and then reviewing it with a fine-toothed comb to make sure i didn't miss anything with my own eyes. with one agent doing a fix-and-detect cycle, and another ensuring that the first agent's changes still fit into the grand scheme of things, a task that i thought would be quick and easy and had scheduled for sunday evening past, i finally completed its first subtask after 6pm on wednesday.
and this is just the prep-work so that i can get into the real stuff.
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gd's toe's looking and feeling much better, so much so that she decided not to see the surgeon today. let's hope it keeps getting better 🤞
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mr smear had a good day today, although he's already doing his usual thing of latching on to any bad memory he can grab hold of and ditching the fun parts. his class went on their annual hike, a proper tour through the cave system at beit guvrin, and from the photographic evidence it seems like he had a good time in spite of himself.
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i started my day today reading a bit more of stranger in a strange land. so far, it has not aged well. i'm now ending my day trying to make some progress on my AI harness, or climbing into bed at the earliest opportunity. i actually slept pretty well last night, which was amazing, and shocking too. but my lower back / hips were doing their thing all damned day instead, and i'm nervous about what tonight might bring. at least i was able to shower without triggering hell's itch again. i think i'm starting to peel now...
it's half-past midnight, and i honestly didn't realize it was so late already. i just put together and posted my hackathon presentation, and i'm actually quite proud of it :)
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i don't know what possessed me to "experiment" with moisturizer this morning - i thought it was over, but after i put a little on one of my shoulders, it burned terribly (while the other didn't) for at least a few hours afterwards 😫
i managed to make some progress on my side project this morning, but i got into a flow state and then suddenly it was a rush to get to the office before my team daily, so i stayed home until after the meeting and then went out. the work day was pretty good, but my own work was delayed by a fair amount of lending a hand to other projects.
and then i found myself consciously asking my boss the exact kind of thing that i suspect my now-ex teammate might have asked, and hoping that it's not giving a bad vibe. but i *did* find a reasonable workaround for something that's been bothering me - manual dashboard editing - and now i've got AI agents building and modifying version controlled dashboards even without corporate support.
so there.
i came home early (although having done plenty of hours), had a good leftover lunch, then got some more work done before we all headed out to catch a bus to the school for the parent/teachers evening.
peak rush hour. we managed to get off the bus a stop early and walked the last leg, which was a bit much for gd but we didn't really have a choice.
meeting mr smear's new homeroom teacher was encouraging. the problems he has are real, but the improvements are real too, and - as i said to gd and my mom earlier - he's no longer in crisis mode. he's got shit to learn, like discipline, and apparently some of his "funny" mannerisms are offensive to his teachers and peers (like his tendency to "air quote" when he doesn't agree with something), but from what we heard tonight he's doing okay.
although... we also have a follow-up meeting with the full team on sunday, so perhaps not? who knows.
the meetings with his art teachers went well, and it was then that the penny dropped that there's only one arts track from the sixth grade onwards, and mr smear is talking about switching to music which doesn't make any sense. i've got no clue how this story plays out, but even if they did accept him, which they probably won't, i don't know if we literally are able to afford the lessons :(
we had a really funny meeting with his math teacher - she called mr smear a "good student", and then gd and her both burst out laughing - and then light-railed and bussed back home. i got some more work done and mr smear showered while gd made dinner, then we ate and finished the highlander movie (which barely made any sense), chatted with my mom and got mr smear into bed. once that was done, gd helped me sponge bath myself to avoid triggering hell's itch again, and then i dived in to the presentation.
it's been one heck of a week so far. please god let me sleep tonight 🙏
it was a miracle i was able to sleep at all. and i cannot begin to describe the depth of my gratitude that "hell's itch" only seems to be affecting the relatively small and accessible surface area of my upper arms and shoulders.
between uncontrollable, violent spasm reactions to the sensations, i tried moisturizing, damp cloths, and running cool water over it, but nothing helped longer than a few seconds. it got so bad that the thought of tossing myself out of a window crossed my mind, like, i can totally understand an experience like this driving someone to injure themselves (or worse).
so believe me when i say that i have no idea how i alighted upon the idea of "confusing" my nerve endings my lightly brushing or tickling my fingers over the affected area. i had to do that for a long time (most of an hour), and i was expecting to just have to keep doing that until i passed out from exhaustion, but i was able to actually get to sleep in spite of having to position myself uncomfortably to do so.
i woke up twice in the night with the sensation returned, did the same thing again, and ultimately slept until about twenty minutes to my alarm clock. i'm feeling pretty beaten up this morning, but also magnificently relieved. i hope this part of the story is done - or at least, almost over - and i pray i never, ever feel anything like this again as long as i live.
i've never experienced anything like this. according to dr google:
hell's itch is a term used to describe an agonizing, agonizingly intense, and relentless itch that occurs roughly 24 to 72 hours after a sunburn. victims frequently describe the sensation as feeling like "fire ants" biting beneath the skin, or a stabbing, deep pain that worsens dramatically if scratched.
while a standard sunburn is painful, this specific condition is a form of severe, non-histaminergic neurological nerve malfunction triggered by UV damage.
FML.
psychologically, i'm really struggling. it wasn't a bad day, i think, but it was mentally tough and now that it's just about 10pm mr smear's finally gotten into the shower after only just finishing his hebrew homework. it has been extremely trying for me, even though i did finish my first ascension in slay the spire 2 while i sat behind him alternately coaching and chiding him.
i got a surprising number of hours in at work today, in spite of the fact that i had to take two hours to bus to the other side of bnei brak and back for a (literal) two-minute ultrasound.
it's always an experience seeing how those people live. bnei brak, a city as beautiful as its people. i arrived there with the back to the future theme in my head :P
my coworker who i spoke to for a couple of hours last week pitched some ideas this morning. this afternoon, our manager contacted me for a quick meeting and informed me that that coworker is no longer with us :(
the explanation he gave seemed reasonable, but didn't quite match with what my now-ex coworker said in a linkedin message (his company slack had been disabled by the time i found out).
apparently i'm okay? i guess we'll see.
we had a Q&A with my client's COO, which was edifying, but really, really long and boring. i'm really glad my client is not my employer, i'd be nervous for sure.
["i'm done showering!" | "really? the water's still running" | "well, if that's how you define if someone's still showering, then fine"]
i came home to hound mr smear (his homeroom teacher informed me today that he was trolling the hebrew teacher about his assignment which he'd claimed to have completed), and then we took a break for dinner (and highlander), and now...
... i have so much stuff to do, but i'm tired, and i don't feel like it. also, it's been two days and i'm sooooo damned sunburned it's ridiculous.
bad vibrations, that is. not only did the last month hurt financially a lot more than i was expecting - it's been a while since i was this stressed, and we have summer camp expenses to worry about - but it appears there's been some kind of mix-up with our municipal fees so i have to deal with that now.
[chokes suddenly for no apparent reason]
and then i just spent more than half an hour fighting with my new headphones only to come to the realization (after upgrading the firmware) that the microphone is dogshit and i get better results from my laptop mic. i was finally getting through a really good recording, with good flow, when a series of honking horns and ambulance sirens wailed, because i live on a fucking highway.
so i guess i have to record my hackathon "ad" at night only, then.
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gd seems to think her toe's doing a bit better, and i don't know if i should be relieved, or concerned that a new surprise is in store.
it was still difficult to sleep because of my sunburn, but iron and magnesium supplements seem to be helping with the lower back / hip discomfort.
i got up early this morning, even after waking up much earlier and trying to sleep in. i've subsequently learned that mr smear *did* complete the assignment his name was on the board for (that caused concern last night), and that we have a mystery pooper in the house (nobody will admit to having used the bathroom last night before i discovered it in the middle of the night).
what a weird day. it began with me walking in on mr smear brushing his teeth to angine de poitrine, gd's not a big fan but the two of us were loving it. i watched their davie504 response (mr smear hasn't seen it yet) and it's pretty freaking cool :)
i spent some time making a change to my AI harness that i was proud of, but discovered later already has a better cross-IDE solution. so 🤷♂️
we managed to get gd an appointment with the doctor, but we had to wait quite a while so we walked across to the mall and i got some work done. halfway through, i was having trouble concentrating so i went and bought myself a new headset, like i've been meaning to do for a while now. ugreen studio pro, pretty good and not too expensive.
the appointment went alright, but it was good i was there. then we walked to the bigger clinic to try and arrange the prescribed ultrasound, but discovered that wasn't possible and gd didn't want to see the surgeon without it. unfortunately, we found out later that the earliest opportunity for an ultrasound is months away, and she just can't wait that long :/
aside from desperately needing a nap - i'm so grateful we have our bean bags - and an interesting conversation about our company hackathon which i unwittingly signed up to lead a team for - i managed to get a fair amount of work done.
after mr smear got home and ate something, i took him to the oral hygienist. overall, the trip was positive, minus narrowly averting an incident with his phone, and we were in good spirits and chatting away the whole time. right until we arrived home, when i saw his bike, parked across the walkway chained to itself, with his helmet over the handlebar.
i cannot believe my son a) is such a dumbass, and b) lied to my face when he came upstairs yesterday and i asked him about it. i mean, maybe i can believe it. maybe he is a little bit brain damaged 🤦♂️
anyway, the evening was nice, dinner was surprisingly delicious (another really good gluten free pasta), and we finally resumed watching highlander.
i did some more work after getting mr smear into bed, although it was mostly me squaring off against google's AI and losing dramatically (notebooklm fails). i guess i'm going to have to do the hackathon presentation myself...
i think i got a reasonable amount of sleep last night, but as i'm very sunburned, while i didn't get out of bed i did spend a lot of time awake and physically uncomfortable.
i feel so freaking stupid.
washing the floors was a real mission, and it took so long for mr smear to be ready that we had to pause towards the end for dinner, during which time gd threw a fit because she didn't like how unclean the uncleaned floor was 🙄
we finished dinner late (it was partially davie504's fault) and then i had to complete the floor after mr smear went to bed.
that was when i started understanding just how sunburned i am. i am burned. it's not just painful, but it's embarrassing. i can't believe i'm so freaking dumb.
anyway.
i'm nervous about tomorrow. i have two weeks to complete an enormous amount of work, but tomorrow begins with taking gd to the clinic and then the surgeon.
i didn't lie down, i did have a beer, and i managed to finish the PoC for my AI harness in time to play some more slay the spire 2 before kiddush. and i just had another beer now, that's two down and too many to go :P
we watched some random videos over dinner, one of which led to us watching a bob ross episode in awe.
we ended up going to bed very late, with me getting into bed just after saying good night to mr smear.
then i woke up in the middle of the night for an hour and a half...
this morning started off alright, but turned sour after mr smear not only broke the screen time rules, but hid in his room to continue breaking them after he'd been given a warning. so he lost his privileges for the day, which led to drama... gd didn't agree with me entirely, but at least she understood (and explained to him) why it was important and i wasn't undermined.
then nystire messaged to say he and his family were going to the port, and i managed to herd mr smear out and onto his bike, and we arrived at the port in good time and with only mild complaints. until we crossed a bridge, at which point the complaints became a total meltdown. once he'd calmed down (a bit), i agreed that we can give rollerblades a try, but that he has to have wheels.
and if that doesn't work out, then maybe his bike just isn't a great bike and we need to invest in a good one.
the afternoon with nystire was very pleasant, we sat on the edge of the beach while his kids played in the sand and mine read under some shade, but unfortunately i never did get around to putting on sunscreen and i ended up getting pretty burned :/
after we split up, i took mr smear for a laffa, which we both enjoyed immensely, and then he - true to his word - walked his bike the entire gorram way home. walking on rollerblades gets painful, and i think he knows that, and i was done by the time we finally made it home.
so i showered quickly, cracked open that beer, and now that he's showered i'm waiting for him to be ready to help me wash the floors...
we took a taxi to the clinic, getting out early because the road was blocked and almost having an incident with a street cleaner. i decided to try reading stranger in a strange land while we waited, and was very busy nodding off just as gd was called in to see the nurse.
the nurse was very sweet and helpful, but the most helpful thing she did was inform us that her daughter had recently gone through a similar thing with a toe and the local anaesthetic hadn't helped in the slightest. so i looked it up when we got home, and discovered that it really is a thing, and i know what to suggest to the surgeon next time we encounter him.
after we got home i spent some time fiddling about with an ai side project (it's building right now) and learning about some more devious google nonsense, which introduced me to helium: i'm trying it out right now, so far, so good. i played an act of slay the spire 2, tried to nap (but didn't get in more than five minutes), and after mr smear got home i went out to do some shopping, which turned out to be quite a mission.
i'm tired, but i can't decide whether to lie down or drink one of the beers we bought for lag ba'omer. not because i particularly want one, but because it's hard not to have one just because i keep seeing them whenever i walk through the kitchen.
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when he's not doing his homework, mr smear's been playing minecraft with stabbity-stab-stab, which is how gd and i have been calling his classmate who allegedly threatened another friend with a knife. and they're still friends. so either someone's lying, or everyone's mad.
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i've been listening to if pink floyd played the entire ocarina of time soundtrack today, and it's amazing.
sleep journal entry: i was so tired i didn't record the precise times. i got up in the middle of the night from a combination of things, part of it was minor lower back / hip discomfort, but mostly it was restlessness and belly discomfort.
i'm really tired, and after a relatively good sleep (even if it was in two parts) i feel like it's just from being psychologically and emotionally on edge for too many days straight.
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i never left the house yesterday. my team daily referenced the outcome of my sync with my manager - we had two items on the agenda that were affected - and afterwards one of my teammates contacted me and we sat on a video call for almost two hours, discussing the challenges in our work environment, debating viable approaches, and i guess a bunch of me reframing things to motivate him as much as myself.
between those three morning talks, i feel like i'm starting to shape my "mic drop" for when i leave; i told my mentor and my boss that i don't want to end my contract without having had some noticeable positive impact, and i feel like i'm starting down the path.
my afternoon was spent doing "more of the same" ticket preparation work, where, unfortunately, "more of the same" refers to going around in circles with AI and uncovering missing aspects that i somehow never encountered before. i took a break for dinner, and then had to put in another hour after, but i think i've done sufficient scoping. it worries me that it's real work, across a wide range of aspects of unfamiliar moving parts, and i only have two weeks to get it all done...
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gd's thoroughly traumatized. not only does it look like the surgeon didn't get all of the nail out, but she's been reliving the surgery itself because the anaesthetic didn't take. she's terrified of losing her toe, and her foot with it. so we're heading out in an hour or so to see a friday doctor and hope that there's someone who can help her.
i felt really bad all afternoon after an incident; she was venting, and i was trying to be supportive and constructive, but at some point she yelled stuff that was so unhinged* i couldn't take it any more. so in addition to not being supportive when she needed it, it took additional time for things to cool down enough for her to resume and get through what she needed to get through.
* it may be unhinged, but it's understandable. all i needed to do was STFU
"the universal pressure cooker" - i feel like our family's a microcosm, and the world just keeps raising the temperature of the stove while lumping more shit into the pot.
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at least mr smear and his friend sorted themselves out yesterday. they both apologized, and hopefully they'll both be better to each other.
over dinner we finished watching dead poets society. it's generated some very interesting discussions, but regardless we all enjoyed it (or, appreciated it, it always feels weird to say "enjoyed" for a tragedy) and i was surprised by how much i remembered for a movie i haven't seen since i was mr smear's age.
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i don't know if elite's turkish coffee is "good" coffee by whatever arbitrary standards the world has, but i really enjoy it. it's a taste and smell that makes me feel like there are wholesome constants in the world. with all the madness around me right now, opening a fresh bag is like an emotional override.
sleep journal entry: a couple of hours of restlessness, but no breathing troubles and no physical discomfort. the nights are definitely getting warmer, though, and we had a mosquito in the room...
the back of my head's still a bit numb, which is worrying :/
i woke up from a dream in which i was with a bunch of people playing sports (frisbee and ball sports) around an open light rail station. my alarm woke me up, and i got out of bed, but my mind and body were still in sleep mode for quite a while after.
yesterday:
my biggest issue yesterday was motivation. i was finally feeling better, tired but better, and i got a few admin tasks squared away before sitting down to work. my primary task yesterday was reviewing an incident that i'd been told about a few weeks ago, and my work day was essentially reading through a month's worth of messages and documents, and the deeper i dove (dived?) the more tragic i understood the situation to be. by the end of the day i was literally shocked to discover that the incident, a fundamental break in a critical component of the business, and the efforts to get things back on track are still ongoing and being blocked by the company's lack of any meaningful ownership.
i'm heartbroken for these guys, they're good people and they're working hard, but they're trying to fight their way uphill in an avalanche. i don't see how this company survives if it doesn't have a dramatic shift in culture.
i want to set up a meeting with my client and manager and explain this to them, but i'm struggling to come up with a way of approaching this without causing offense or throwing anyone under the bus.
[sends message to manager, receives an immediate call and proceeds to discuss concerns and strategy for 35 minutes]
well, that went well - i was a bit clumsy in how i expressed my concerns at first, but we aligned relatively quickly and he appreciated my suggestions; i think the most crucial element is ensuring that all the developers are aligned with what ownership of a project entails, and unblocking unofficial ownership by "outsiders".
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i had a good sync with my mentor in the afternoon, and a pleasant one later with my actual boss. gd laughed at me afterwards for the "awkward sweats", what evolutionary purpose that serves is utterly beyond me.
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aside from taking a walk to do some shopping, that was pretty much my day. the evening, however, was a different story.
when mr smear came home, i asked him how his day went, and he assured me nothing interesting had happened. as i finished work, while i was processing the bizarre work situation i'd just finished reading about, i noticed that the father of one of his friends had sent me a voice message, that the two of them had had a massive fight that got violent.
we then spent the next couple of hours alternating between talking and yelling, trying to get the story out of him. he eventually admitted that he threw the first punch - making him the biggest asshole - but the most concerning thing is that he claims he doesn't remember the sequence of events at all. i said that he's either lying, or brain damaged, and he's now latched on to the latter and is trying to convince us that he's actually brain damaged 🤦♂️
we had another talk about it this morning, strategizing, and i hope he takes our advice. in the meanwhile, i've just sent a message to his friend's dad, who just responded positively. i really hope these kids manage to settle this in a mature way...
my nose was stuffed by the time i climbed into bed, and i had difficulty getting enough oxygen the entire night. i struggled to get out of bed and i feel as if i slept well, and didn't sleep at all, at the same time.
"patience my ass, i'm gonna kill somebody" - the vulture
i must be getting better, because it's almost 1am and i'm only now getting ready to go to bed. one of my nostrils is a noticeably blocked, but otherwise i'm doing okay. for now...
the next meeting was run by the guy responsible for my current project, but related to an aspect of my previous project, which is owned by a team that doesn't really know anything about it. he mumbles, and even if he didn't mumble it would still be difficult to understand him - not the greatest communicator. and the team lead who didn't know why she was in the meeting doesn't have the best english, so i was amused when i saw that she'd sent me a message thanking me for summarizing - i explained that it wasn't for her, i really did need to verify that i'd understood what we were talking about for myself :P
mr smear came home, and he was absolutely taken with the bean bags; as gd pointed out, he's all cat.
i was supposed to leave the apartment at that point, but then learned that i had a meeting with my employer team. which turned out to be an hour long presentation, or sales pitch, for software i really don't care about. i was so bored by the halfway mark... it was basically an unpleasant minesweeper session for me.
i took a walk through to the courier pick-up point, which was quite a long walk, but it felt good to be out in the sun (even on such a suddenly hot day) with my brain switched off. then i caught a bus home, and between the bus and our apartment took a quick detour to hunt down gluten-free pastas for gd.
the good news is, i found some - and the spaghetti which we tried tonight was surprisingly decent! - but by the time i got to the self checkout i was already sans patience from all the tourists and leisure class people in the store and i had a really hard time keeping my cool while waiting for two women moving in slow motion and with entirely suboptimal bagging strategies.
i came home, oversaw some of mr smear's progress (he did well this afternoon) and got back to work. once done, mr smear called me over to demonstrate that he'd solved the multiplication level in human resource machine all by himself, and he was rightly proud of himself ^_^
i received a very strange email this evening, apparently from an investment research company who are offering to pay me to answer questions about my previous employer, answers which, if honest, would explicitly violate my termination agreement and i'd owe them my severance pay back. i wonder if this is a case of entrapment?
dinner and some more of dead poets society was nice, although by the time we got to dinner my patience had been worn down to nothing; i did lose my cool with my mother while trying to help her, and as much as it was partially her fault i was upset my reaction certainly wasn't appropriately measured. mr smear also did a little patience testing, but for the most part he continued behaving well.
after dinner i did a little more work on my telephony side project - i'm rather pleased with the results - and after watching a few videos i decided to allow myself some spire slaying. i've just completed my first run with the defect, so that's all the characters done (no ascensions yet), and some of the relics and cards i picked up were completely insane!
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some good news, at least - it looks like gd's toe might be starting to heal 🤞
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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
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!
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.
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 :(
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...
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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
