more buck for my bang

i'm going to start with the bit that i still haven't internalized: it's kinda weird news.

let's start with the immigration lawyer: the lawyer costs a bomb even though we paid substantially less than the full fee; at that price she didn't even get to go over our forms. she just sent us a list of things we need to give her to review, and that list included a super-critical form that doesn't appear anywhere on the immigration website. she also told us what we have to write on the envelope. apparently this is an important detail and we'd written the wrong thing. in my defence, i wrote precisely what the guy on duty at the ministry had told me to.

instead of completely redoing the application, we fired off an email to the ministry with the new form and an explanation that we'd fouled up the envelope, what we got in return was a reassuring phone call and helpful instruction. part of the instruction has to do with the salary offered: in order to hire a foreign worker, the company must pay the provincial average salary for the posting / experience level of the applicant.

there was a sensation of "oh, shit" when i was informed that i've accepted (and gratefully so) a lot less than average, and we're talking about enough of a margin that the difference could cover most of a year's tuition at graduate level over here. the sensation wasn't a positive one because everyone up the chain would have to approve the new salary or the entire deal would be off.

i tend to lose confidence in that sort of situation.

and then... relief! i have been given the impression that this will not be a problem. so while i'm not going to be totally relaxed until i actually walk across the border with papers in hand - otherwise they could agree to pay me millions and it would mean nothing - but the outlook on both counts, future employer and the province, is really, really good. it's very exiting stuff!

---thursday and friday:

the weather over the past couple of days has been a little too warm: here in montreal the word "balmy" is used when the temperature rises above -5. no jokes, i find myself opening my jacket and removing my tuque if there's no wind to bring relief. hands feel the cold if they're not protected, but that's about it. it's been so warm that i've actually opened a window, and slept with just a sheet: wtf?!

on thursday i walked into the office to find the snow / salt stains on the floor cleaned and my shoes neatly placed on a small square of a black plastic bag. how sweet :)

in the office, i've been feeling like my hands are tied. i can't work until i have my permit, and there's so much i want to do and get involved in and play with! it's exciting and pleasurable and frustrating all at once.

in the meanwhile, i've been messing about with my own little projects and one of them involves using curl and jira apis. i couldn't figure out what the problem was, and tried everything, and then suddenly yesterday morning i had an epiphany and realized that the issue was security configuration, not software. this led me through a chain of fixes from which emerged a solution so much bigger, better and easier than what i'd previously planned that i ended my day well pleased with myself.

i woke up on friday morning early for a long skype meeting with sorter and -someone. i was five minutes late, -someone was about twenty. the meeting went better than i anticipated but i'm still left with not much faith that anything's going to happen.

i don't know why, but i suddenly felt distant with pg over the past two days. it's better now, but it was disquieting.

playing through on the rain-slick precipice of darkness on the ipad, even if it's the second time because saves are shared between devices, is nothing short of grand! i'm not a fan of their d-pad implementation, but it's not a big deal. i do feel a bit awkward about the ipad in general, though: between games and wired magazine i'm getting great use out of it, but pg's just not getting into it. at least i know she's got the hang of reading comics.

---this morning, i woke up three times from three vivid dreams, each connected somehow to the last.
1. i return to sea point with SxS and ru55 from a party on the same morning SxS and i have to fly. i get ready with the help of pg but SxS is nowhere to be found, i'm late for the flight, i can't find my passport anywhere and nobody can help me print my ticket.

2. walking down to an alternate mouille point on a long road. i help an old indian woman (dots, not feathers) and we start talking, then we're walking along a bridge past the most intensely beautiful scene: i look to my right straight up a giant, calm river flowing through a vast, golden city of skyscrapers. i stop to take a photo and somehow i can see below the waterline, where there are giant turtles swimming downriver towards the bridge and then turning sharply to follow it giving me great turning shots, but now when i look up the bridge seems infinitely long and is slowly sinking. the two of us continue hurriedly, i'm holding my phone above the waterline and eventually, when the water reaches my neck, we give up and swim.

3. i'm on a hollywood-like college campus and it's a gorgeous day for skiing, so everyone's getting ready. but i'm having trouble finding my gear.
then i'm with a family and we're getting ready for the bus to the slopes: they've brought me my gear and i'm expected to hurriedly put it all on because the bus is leaving. we're dressing in a glass booth on the edge of a square where some kind of celebration is going on; the announcer conflates new year's with [the weekend? i don't remember] and suddenly the square explodes with a powerful house beat that makes it difficult to do anything but dance like a wild thing. only the younger members of the family get me. we drag ourselves away to find the bus.

---i caught a link from hido yesterday morning to tri-force Live at ageha 24.03.2012, and i've had it playing while posting this. what a groovy, adrenaline-filled mix!

to quote scrapper on extra credits - god does not play dice: "it's a unique feeling, to hear someone state your own opinion, especially when it's one that you've had such trouble expressing, and when he does it so well."

dramatic return

pg's back! but the story of her return wasn't an entirely happy one. in fact, it was quite traumatic.

---yesterday:

i got up slowly, and was supposed to meet with sorter and -someone online, but they were both ignoring me. it turned out that one was sleeping and the other had (usefully) turned skype's notifications off.

i wasted some time labelling blog posts (as opposed to tidying up a bit), and walked out into a beautiful, sunny, warm -5 day without pavement access. i spent my morning playing with css (my favourite, he says sarcastically), chatted with SxS, and enjoyed vegan cookies that newk'd made.

i left early with a smile, for the magnificent weather and the exciting knowledge that pg would be back soon. i helped a little old lady over a snow-pile and onto the pavement, and entered the metro.

egads - it was hot down there! so much so that i was sweating, and had to remove my jacket and blazer. meanwhile, everyone else kept their coats and hats on and their scarves around their necks... what gives?! everyone made me feel like i must have been having a hot flush or something.

---i arrived about ten minutes after pg's plane landed, and i wasn't sure if i had enough time to find coffee or flowers... so i just stood there and watched the doors intently. i had my ipod going most of the time, but minutes turned to hours and there was no indication of what was going on.

i kept expecting her to walk out any minute.

most people were waiting around an hour or so.

by the time i got to two and a half hours i was losing patience. the thought that pg had somehow slipped past me, not found me and gone home arose, as did my irritation that her phone was off.

what i didn't expect was a phone call from an immigration officer. identifying pg and giving details wasn't a problem, but then i found myself being grilled properly about why we "hid our intent to find a job and settle down" from them the first time. what?!?! as far as we knew, we hadn't done anything wrong. she had all my details from my permit application, and it took quite a bit of explaining while being dressed down.

i'd love to say i kept my cool, but i was panicking and there was even a moment where i was asked a question and my brain froze, leaving me speechless for a few seconds. by the end of the conversation i hoped i'd convinced her that we've been doing everything by the numbers (we have!), and she told me she'd take my words into consideration and call me back.

...

the next few minutes were very, very tense. if they'd have sent pg back, i would have had no choice but to pack up and leave. i had no idea what pg had said to them and i prayed that she hadn't freaked out and said anything that didn't fit - as it was, she used the word "tourist" instead of "visitor" and i had to explain to the officer that english isn't her mother tongue and that either way we'd both thought they meant the same thing to them).

...

she called me back to inform me that they were letting her through, with a stern warning to be entirely open with the border officials in the future (we thought we were!). i was reminded of something that's written on the cic website and that i entirely appreciate: entry into canada is not a right, it's a privilege. and these officials have to authority to deny that entry, regardless of what the government thinks.

about fifteen minutes later a thoroughly harassed pg walked out the doors. we'd dodged a bullet, but my swiss princess was decidedly stressed and unimpressed with her treatment. it didn't help any that it was at the end of a long day of travelling.

---we both had the blues on the bus home, we got tears instead of the joyous enthusiasm that i'd expected from our reunion after such a long time apart. i suppose my anxiety / relief / disappointment / having been on my feet and alert so long all contributed to my feeling very weak and having difficulty carrying the giant, stuffed, officially violated suitcase.

we got home to discover that the caretaker has done absolutely nothing about our doors or our busted toilet. on the plus side, that gives us an easy enough out with the contract (or do i have to complain in writing?).

my plans for dinner were bust, so i ran out to the supermarket and picked up the first thing that looked alright for two people with little appetite: supermarket sushi (i'm pretty sure it was vegetarian, but i didn't care).

worst sushi ever.

---today:

we went to bed early last night and woke up late. aside from a few snarky comments about my housekeeping, cooking pasta for lunch and a few episodes of one piece, we did nothing but lay about or, in my case, label old blog posts while pg rested.

to blog, or not to blog

my blogging is not as much about sharing as it is about hoarding precious moments of the past. sometimes i find myself digging through old posts for a reference, and am delighted or horrified at the weird little nothings i noted and promptly forgot. but there's a dark side to my habit, and that's that it's become ingrained that everything that prompts an emotional response gets written down and must be compiled later. it's totally ocd. i thought that twitter would bear some of the load, but when twitter stopped playing well with blogger (and everyone else) that option went out the window.

i have too much stuff to do and plenty of time to do it, if i focus on those tasks instead of trying to juggle all the elements of the big picture simultaneously. on the one hand, blogging helps me by letting me put everything down. on the other, does it really help me? i mean, here i am, on pseudo-holiday, contemplating whether or not my journal is of any practical value to me any more.

---thursday:

thursday began slowly: you know that feeling when it's cold outside and warm under the covers, and your body's in a perfectly comfortable position and the last thing you want to do is move?

the news of the day: hearing that the big guys all think i'm the bee's knees and will have my back if the work permit application starts dragging too much. that feels good.

after much struggling, it was exciting getting a linux box up and running on my laptop. vmware versus virtualbox? suck it, virtualbox. vmware totally kicks ass.

also, i wrote a perl script to transcribe svn logs into a database, and i was pleased when it worked first time as intended and didn't take very long.

i went to my aunt's for a great dinner; yin had just returned from bc and everyone was in high spirits. her friend brought dessert, decadently delicious chocolate balls. i was the only one who wasn't ashamed to have more than one, and so scored the leftovers when i left :)

zenstar invited me to try out rad soldiers: in the past four days i've become enthralled. it looks good, it plays well, the challenges are fun and the soundtrack gets stuck in your head and makes you want to play some more.

---friday:

how do normal people pick up dry cleaning between 9-6? i had to choose between getting it on the way to the office or not going snowboarding on the weekend. so if i'd been able to see the future i wouldn't have ventured out in the slush (and then rain) to pick up my trousers.

---i tried and failed to imagine what doing work that entails digging through slush to enter a manhole must feel like. i briefly watched, and felt humbled.

---the metro was overheated, and there was a man nonchalantly clipping his nails on the train.

friday was a day of speeches, wishes and alcohol in the office. it was a little disorientating (the latter in particular), but very pleasant. i was invited to interview a potential new employee; he got my thumbs up, and i'm impressed that my inebriation didn't make things awkward :P

we had a christmas lunch at the indian restaurant, and the spicy eggplant was so delicious that i couldn't stop eating. that held me up until i got home, when i pigged out on junk food and watched one piece and passed out.

i slept too long, waking up around midnight to make dinner and go back to bed.

---saturday:

i woke up early enough to hit the slopes, but was so exhausted that i chose to get back into bed. making such a choice between fresh powder and sleep is pathetic, and i'd pay for it thrice. once, in the actual price which doubles if you're not on the first bus, twice because all modes of transportation were packed. long queues and uncomfortable rides. thrice because, well, fresh powder. there was still a lot of snow when i arrived, but a lot of ice was exposed too :(

and all of that for what? i wasn't feeling good, no matter how incredibly beautiful the day was, and i have to admit that the disadvantages of being alone outweighed the advantages. to make matters worse, my boots didn't sit right and that made everything a lot harder. to make things even worse, when i sat down for a cup of hot chocolate there was a fire drill and we all had to go outside.

my last two or three runs were better (i'd figured out that i needed to redraw my laces each time) and were fun, and i fortunately saw a clock an hour before the bus was to arrive and so i knew to scramble. i had just enough time for the last run, a sandwich, and the walk to saint sauveur's village. i gotta tell you, that village is surreally charming with its quiet, snow-covered streets and cheery christmas jazz music gently playing through synchronized speakers. i didn't want to wait outside (-13 at night, with wind) so i entered the macdonald's and ordered their crap coffee (the good machine was being cleaned), and took it outside to wait with me for the bus.

the relief of getting on the bus home was intense. if you miss the 9.30 bus, there's no fallback, and getting stuck out there would totally suck.

---sunday:

i got home at midnight, watched one piece and showered and passed out, exhausted. i was too tired to hit the slopes, and more importantly, i wasn't feeling it. i could say the same about today. i feel kinda guilty, but if i'm not in an agreeable mood then screw it.

i stayed in bed late, played rad soldiers and read the new lookouts comic, fell asleep listening to a french lesson podcast, and then eventually got out of bed to talk to pg for a bit.

i left the apartment to take my boots back. the guys at poubelle du ski are heroes! we eventually found boots that fit, or seem to fit, perfectly, and although they're an upgrade the salesman gave me the slip with a wink and told me that if anyone asks i returned the same model ^_^
they're ridiculously purple, but i think i can live with that.

the weather was cold, but beautiful, and i didn't mind discovering that i'd walked in the wrong direction (boy, was i not concentrating) and i eventualy made my way back. i stopped at subway for a sandwich - it wasn't good at all - then dropped off my boots at home, had a long chat with sorter, and went shopping.

the chat with sorter was a bit dark; -someone sent a mail during the week and it basically said that he was investing time in making the code, and the coding process, more complicated than it needed to be and that everything he's done until now is fine as a proof-of-concept but needs to be redone if we want an actual product. sorter was upset with me because my response was less than enthusiastic. i'm deeply disappointed and i hope we can salvage something.

copywriter called me up on skype and i made and ate dinner while we chatted. i'd finally watched the first part of the century of the self which he'd suggested a while ago. i can't recall watching something so distressing and so riveting at the same time. depressingly enlightening. it certainly puts things in perspective, and it's only the first part :(

---today:

i went to bed early hoping i'd be good for the mountains today, but i woke up feeling uninspired. now that i'm up, and i've talked to my mum (who's also on holiday), and posted this, i'm ready to pay my cousins a visit and do the same stupid christmas eve shopping as everyone else: i have only one gift i'm giving, and i didn't think to buy a card :S

week flip

i'm cross-eyed and mind-melted and feeling tremendously uplifted from watching "het leven uit een dag". what a fantastic movie!

---yesterday:

i've come to the conclusion that if it's hot enough to rain instead of snow, it's too hot for me.

on the metro i stood next to a little kid crouched over a giant book of calvin and hobbes, and i wondered how a kid calvin's age appreciates him. i read a bit more of food of the gods, and once terrence mckenna got me considering the transition to agriculture as the fall from eden i got stuck in a downward spiral. his argument is stupefyingly logical and yields so many interesting and compelling implications that i find it hard to focus on any one aspect. i do believe that i need to list this book as a must-read, and i'm still near the beginning.

i sat in on a video conference, presumably to bear witness and nod sagely at appropriate times, but at some point in the middle there was a long pause, and then someone asked me directly what i thought. i kind of fumbled, because they were waiting to hear the answer to a question that didn't make sense. i think i side-stepped well, but it made me nervous.

i've been trying to build something for weeks and i've been distracted non-stop - yesterday, i finally completed it! and it was extremely satisfying. i could feel the stress that the week had begun with simply melt away, as if there was some sort of connection. the art director came to take a look, and i think that was the point where he decided that we think alike :D

i spent an hour with pg's photos, cropping and resizing them so that they'd be just right for photo-quality passport prints. then i hurried home to change and visit the printers at walmart.

did i mention rain? it was raining. it wasn't cold, though, implicit in the previous statement, so i put on my ski-jacket and relatively water-resistant pants, tucked my disk-on-key with the photos into a dry corner and my headphones into my ears, fast-walked to the metro and from the metro to the walmart.

i must have spent forty-five minutes with the guys there trying to print. firstly, my cellular internet sucks and it's even worse when i really need it. secondly, they will print almost any size except passport size. so if i want to print passport size, i'd have to resize the photos to pad them enough and then cut them back down to size afterwards. it was all rather silly.

this seems like a great time to point out one of the iphone's most remarkable flaws: if i close my phone while i'm reading a web page in safari, and i unlock the phone to continue reading that page, safari will attempt to reload it. even if i have no internet connection. that's the sort of behaviour that makes me want to step outside and find out just how far i can fling the phone.

having nothing better to do, and already being in that area, and wet, i decided to locate the dollar cinema. has google maps ever led me wrong? yes. do i have much choice? not really. so i walked under the bridge (it was really beautiful), and found myself in the medical center. google maps said it wasn't there, so i walked south before finding myself too far south even for google maps, and then walked back north to discover that the medical center was the right place after all.

great! he says sarcastically.

i went in through a different entrance and walked around the ghost-mall, never finding a single sign that so much as suggested at a cinema. i hit the dollar store for a couple of things, then headed home. the walk back seemed to take much longer, but that might be because it rained a lot harder and by the time i returned to the metro even my ski-jacket was beginning to soak through.

i'll be honest, though: i did enjoy walking in the rain.

i chatted with k-twang, whose troubles with canadian bureaucracy seem quite intense, and then made dinner. i'm fairly certain the salad would have come out better with cucumbers, but the entire pack was soft and mouldy. ugh. and to think i'd eaten one the night before - perhaps i shouldn't have let the softness slide...

either monday or tuesday the skin in front of my thumbnail split, and it's very much like a cracked heal: it hurts like crazy, and it's lekkerseer, and it's just not healing :(

---today: wednesday: how the heck is it wednesday???:

it occurred to me this morning that my while my statements that got me into trouble on monday night were valid apropos general psychological troubles, they weren't so valid regarding autism. because autism really is a disease. umm. as far as regular humans are concerned. umm. it's debatable. anyway, i think i need to mention my hesitation to the doctor i was trying to discuss it with when my uncle got upset.

i can tell exactly at what point my day got good - as i was getting ready to leave i was compelled to open the glove box [sorry, i had to]. the gloves cost me more than i expected, but still far less than my old ones, and holy-crap-they're-great-gloves-and-a-perfect-fit!!! that's very, very exciting, by which i mean that i'm greatly relieved that i have such a good excuse to keep them and not regret having to sell them off after all i went through to get them.

i sat with the art director this morning to discuss icon design; the concept art that he produced off my little script was nothing short of astounding, and if the big boys like it i'll get my name tagged as "copywriter". i like the sound of that :)
on a different note, icon design is complicated.

"there aren't a lot of guys like you," he told me.
"well," i responded, "i guess we need to make some more!"

after he invited me out to a great little indian restaurant next door - i ate far too much - aota got focused on my permit application while i essentially backseat-drove. that woman is an absolute blessing, i tell you: after a back-and-forth with all the bureaucrats and my personal information, she discovered that for various reasons i'm exempt from everything except the application that i've already made! win!!!

i might still have to go to new york, but we're not sure, and there's actually the possibility that i'll be sorted out and can start working in one or two weeks' time! hooray!!! now i just need to make a good impression on the officer at the border crossing. i considered taking him doughnuts, but if i was him i'd grab the doughnuts and kick me out.

it fascinates me how, in jobs-speak, i can connect the dots and see how important every little step along my way has been. from the trial-and-error svn abuse that i went through with -someone to the git expertise i gained from the tail end of my last job i have become a repo-master. this is a very good position to be in indeed. also, the junior came to sit and discuss his future plans, which involve running a gaming company. as i've told him, when i have a say in things i'm going to want each developer to dedicate a portion of his time to building apps that we're going to use ourselves, and it doesn't matter if they're tools or games. we kind of got side-tracked and i pitched the idea i've been sitting with for about twelve years now (inspired by neal stephenson - snow crash and johnny mnemonic), and the thing is is that everything is not only doable and has been for decades, but it's now so simple and feasible that it would be silly not to do it!

i spent an hour or two going through open-source solutions to see if i could find anything interesting, established my next goal and then left to come home. since lunch i'd been suffering a bit of a sore belly, and it intensified to the point of agony as i travelled on the metro, then relaxed just before i arrived home.

*sigh*

how is it so late already? all i did was watch a movie and write this!

---my favourite part of the form i need to return to hydro-quebec:

important information to ensure the safety of our meter readers
your file indicates that you do not have a dog.

zombie morning

firstly, i think i'm properly over the idea that shakespeare's "dark mistress" was narcotic. there's too little supporting evidence, and more than enough pointing to something else.

and that something else was not - *GASP* - a woman. now that i've finally gone through the entire sequence, i can say with confidence that shakespeare's reknowned and respected critics are all a bunch of perverts. how everyone takes note of the sexual language but misses its figurative nature is beyond me.

---friday:

1. the day began with an unpleasant email that led to an unpleasant phone call - our company has a client that has thwarted our best efforts to keep our sources hidden, and this endangers our bottom line (regarding this client in particular). there's not much that can be done about this without crossing the privacy boundary and doing what is essentially hacking our users, and even if the purpose of that "hacking" is to make the user's browsing more secure* it's not on. other possible tricks available to us are considered inappropriate. i don't know if i care enough for this kind of problem, but i guess i'll have to come up with something. *sucks thumb*

*weird, right?

2. the eblt toasted sandwich for breakfast from the cafe next door was a brilliant call.

3. a meeting with sorter and -someone in the afternoon: i'm trying to impress a sense of urgency upon co-worker, and sorter's being too kind and forgiving. i *think* everyone knows what they need to be doing, but i suspect that i'm going to need to be policing and i'm not fond of the idea. shit, if i didn't have papers to write (and other work to do) i would have finished the job ages ago!

4. dinner at pg's folks' was great. i ate too much, and talked less than usual :)

5. a few episodes of futurama, then bed. my back's not 100%, but i slept much better than i have in at least a week.

---saturday:

now studying diagrams and protocols for the job interview in a week and a bit. about to step out for coffee with nystire and later, we'll be boarded by ric.

---i've just finished reading max brooks - world war z. it's not the most well-written work i've ever come across, and a number of cultural inconsistencies bothered me, but in spite of those minor flaws the book is magnificent, both in its scope and its coherency. he covers everything one could ask for in an oral history, from the grand, global scale of a species making a desperate last stand for its survival to the minutia of personal struggles.

i'm not entirely certain what i'm going to write about, but whatever aspect of zombies i choose to focus on, i know that mr. brooks will have provided me more than enough material to say whatever needs saying.

poor bill

i am feeling wired and inspired, because i just discovered something absolutely incredible while preparing for my final assignment in our sonnets course. i'm not going to go into detail, because there might be fame and fortune in keeping it on the down-low (that's the second time in a week - awesome!), but i can say with certainty that shakespeare was not gay.

i'm not saying that being gay is a bad thing, only that poor old shakespeare's sonnets have been completely misunderstood for a very long time and i aim to show that they are far less ambiguous and mysterious, and far more intimate, than we've suspected.

---i've just returned from a meeting with our student rep - there were three of us altogether, out of five departments, and i was the only one who'd done my homework and had a list of issues that need dealing with.

it looks like all of the issues i raised are shared throughout our side of the faculty, so we're about to start pushing :)

yesterday:

i slept almost until noon [does that seem excessive?] and around 2pm sorter and -someone arrived for a really good meeting! i'm quite amped, because we now have an idea that really is special and could change the way we watch videos online ^_^

after dinner i was exhausted, but we watched the original a nightmare on elm street. some of it was kinda scary, but what ruined it was the early 80s lack of understanding vis-a-vis the function of dreams.

i slept like a baby.

saturday:

i spent a lot of time staring at the mock french exam and thinking that we have not been prepared for something so complex. i'm not happy with it at all :(

i'm on a total high from these sonnets. at least i know i definitely have something to write for the final paper that's due in a week =D

enthusiasm

but undone prep for tomorrow's classes. it's about 2am and i've spent the past few hours playing with visual studio... and actually getting somewhere. i love working with things that, umm, work.

...

french class was alright. "that guy" in our french class got me thinking: "if you ejaculate each thought as it occurs, you limit the speed of your thoughts to that of your flapping gums". i didn't say it out loud.

a few hours in the office, getting advice from scr (who's pretty much my team leader now) and discussing terms with the bosses - i *like* these terms - and then i returned to campus to get some reading done before the second class. which was another mind-meltingly interesting one.

i stopped by the old office on the way home to perform a code review and chew out -someone (as usual), then returned home to Get Stuff Done. only, Stuff ended up in the singular, which wasn't the plan...

better when moved

i feel much better now that i've had some exercise. the rest of the day went well, from laughs with the head of the department to a very serious code review and demonstrating the basics of QA to my co-worker; to gathering players for this idea of mine. i'm now comfortable and ready for bed.

worst 13th

we've been having issues since friday, so celebrating this evening was a bit of a downer. although i think we're okay now; "celebrating" was a good excuse to talk things out. not a small part of the issues is the idea that i want to get out of israel - it's most certainly a lot to think about.

---
the french lesson this morning was alright - although i suspect that i should have taken the "quick" course and it's too late to switch. oh, well.

the interview was fascinating, and i'm definitely interested in working there. also, the test they've sent me in the mail is interesting! i have a day or two to do it, so i'm going to focus on tomorrow's reading instead...

i returned to the office for a quick sort-out and meeting, then bussed back to campus. i had time to read before class, but it was squandered arguing with my classmates about the greatness of terry pratchett and neil gaiman. tough times. the lesson itself was edifying as usual.

---
i skipped back to work to be horrified when the QA team leader waltzed in to show us how it's done - -someone had invited her because he wanted help, instead of asking me first. i'm not sure that he really understands what i was trying to tell him (after i dismissed her) - they don't have any "easy" methods to do QA, and having done my own for years i'm not only in a perfect position to teach him how (which i've already tried to teach him, but he's too damned lazy and unmethodical to actually listen) but doing it without intervention means plausible deniability when the boss asks why we're not filling out QA forms.

frikkin' kit-bag questions. they don't pay me enough to participate in bureaucratic revelries.

---
after getting a bit of work done i came home; botchman cancelled on me, so pg and i "celebrated" earlier rather than later at one of the better sushi / ramen bars. it worked out for the best. now for the class prep.

discretion

how strange to read about a kid who used to be in our taekwondo group dying, without any context. i was sitting next to him on a bus a short while back, and he seemed alright to me...

also, i forgot to mention that anti-1 resurfaced... only to disappear again. and nobody seems to know what's up.

---
i left work in a bit of a state - i'd rewritten a whole bunch of code in my attempt to clear up the mystery of the untouchable database, and was successful. it turns out -someone had turned off the auto-commit feature of the database connection in order to solve a particular problem, and hadn't thought that this could possibly affect every other use of the database.

the mail i sent him was as explosive as i was feeling, but that didn't help me to calm down.

...

pg post-surgery is in dire need of assistance... i came back from the supermarket half-crazed by the infuriating stupidity of all involved in its operation, made a chicken-breast salad and took off an hour or so to drink a screwdriver and read more harry potter.

oh, and i went through the books i got back. all sorts of great stuff, in particular the cookbook that my grandmother bought me and the funkiest book on discrete mathematics: rosen - discrete mathematics and its applications. *boy* was i upset about losing those!

---
i've only just started watching garbage warrior, but i've already decided that this dude is made of win.

aches and fortune

i got to work early this morning, and spent most of the work day finally getting my development environment set up. it works! now i need to back that shit up. no clue how to do that simply in ubuntu :P

my wrist's been hurting me since last night, so i included it in the check-up with the orthopaedic surgeon. so now i have to organize a cream for tendinitis and an ultrasound scan of my feet; the latter puzzles him as much as it does me.

work this evening was fun; not only did i make some good progress, but i discovered that -someone's mother is an architect and she was most helpful over the phone - she's even offered to have a look at my building plans so she can let me know who i should be in touch with ^_^

pg and i did some heavy shopping when i got back, so my hand's hurting even more now. i'm left with a department website to update, a journal to transcribe and... something about sorter's project...

good thing i've been fasting since 8pm for the blood tests tomorrow :P

twingling nerves

yesterday was exciting! well, the second half at least.

i got up stupid early (7am) to get some work done on the event website, and was fairly productive until i had to leave for work. the meeting with the insurance guy was set for 11am - it was only about noon when he finally rocked up. turns out he's from the same company :S

i got a bit of work done, but not enough that i don't have to do anything on the weekend. my 4pm meeting on campus had completely slipped my mind... boy, were we all surprised when i jumped up at 3pm, explained the situation, hurriedly handled most of a meeting that had been deferred from the morning while simultaneously packing up...

i made it to the university in good time. unfortunately, i arrived without my beloved phone cover: i'm guessing i must have dropped it on the bus. as soon as i realized it was missing i called up the bus operators, who registered the details but explained to me that they have no way to contact their drivers.

REALLY?!?! and this on the bus line that has wi-fi? so the drivers have internet, the drivers have cellular phones, but the company can't get in touch with them??? bloody liars.

the worst part of this story is that the bus line goes past our apartment, and i only realized that i could have simply called pg and asked her to hop on and check after i'd finished talking to the monkeys. by that time it was too late :(

it was super-heated on campus. the walk up had me disgustingly sweaty. i was surprised to discover that the girl that i thought i was going to meet was the *other* girl-with-the-same-name from the master's students...

the hand-over was very different to what i expected. i thought i was going to get a bunch of info, tips and tricks, who-knows-what - instead, i was informed that i already know everything there is to know about the content management system and that i already had the keys to the department's blog (it's on blogger).

i gave her a lot more info than she gave me: i'd been talking to the head of the faculty's IT department in the morning and the english department on the way from the office, and i've secured permission from both sides to join the faculty dev team for the express purposes of moving our website from the completely unusable and unsupported cms to joomla. the alternative? waiting for them to get around to it during the first semester... i don't think i'll really have enough time to do stuff then :P

on the way to meet the dev team, i ran into gco's girlfriend and she offered to arrange the meeting for me (it turns out everyone had left for the day anyway) - then i headed to the bus stop to go to the old office.

that didn't work - wr and co-conspirator caught me waiting for the bus, and there went an hour of my day. it was a fun, interesting hour, though - we've got a candidate for class rep and a platform on which to push her; wordsworth and i have found a way to let co-conspirator participate in the orientation course (i had reservations at first, but we resolved them in the interest of avoiding group politics), and she taught me a thing or two about the master's course registration process... it's good to know people who have time to harass the entire faculty :)

our enthusiasm for the course is contagious, apparently: wr, now going into his final - no really, his FINAL year* - wants to take the course too :P

* he has one course left to go to complete his degree... he's been studying the same degree for about seven or eight years now.

it was on that note that i left (again) for work. the first person i ran into was sorter, and we sat outside for coffee and business for a short while - i was happy to report progress, he had a lot to say about financial sources, and between the two of us this little project has rather a lot of potential. the best part is that as soon as this month is over i will have time to dedicate to it, and it's fun regardless of whether it succeeds or not. we don't have to invest in anything else until we're ready to release an alpha version... so an even split of the profits might be good pickings :)

i'd had a long email argument with -someone in the morning about the way i'd written one of the classes, and it continued as soon as the two of us were sitting together. much flurrying on the whiteboard later, and i finally managed to untangle my proposal into a flow diagram. it's funny how the second it was drawn up properly it became so simple and sensible! and how important it is to have two people working on the same code.
that freed up my next hour or so for documenting things before grabbing the bus home.

i decided i'd spend some time with pg before working, and we sat reading together after dinner, then playing tekken... tekken was interrupted, though, by a phone call from pg's ex. she disappeared for a while, then returned with a pile of cash, a guitar, and a retelling to raise the hackles. at least she told the creep off, and explained that she never wanted to see or hear from him again. story over - i'm glad i didn't have to intervene.

we played a bit more, and then i did a *little* bit of work... but sleep overpowered me. and not just any sleep - a complete, deep, *satisfied* sleep in appreciation for a week well done and *knocks wood* my life being in a good place right now. it's taken what seems like forever, but i'm financially stable and doing jobs that i like, i'm reading and gaming again, i'm making time for friends in addition to being in a fantastic relationship, and i believe that if i work really hard i might be able to keep this up ^_^

---getting up at 7am was night impossible, and 7.30 was only slightly easier. i've now posted, done the translation for the event, and am off for breakfast with urchin.

[twingling]

lazer

i'm sitting here, behind my desk, it's warm because the air-conditioner's not working too well. i'm tired, probably because i haven't slept a good night / day's sleep in ages, and also because we just got back from lunch and i need a siesta. there's so much i could be doing right now, but all i want to do is lay back, and close my eyes, and drift off...

---
i got to the old office yesterday in time to catch a group of managers for a political debate that ended up taking about an hour. the outcome - an understanding that essentially what needs to be achieved is a conglomeration of all the little parties whose platforms don't contradict each other. and there was a brilliant suggestion made by one of the managers that would solve a lot of problems but i can't for the life of me remember what it was...

i got all excited when i found a good spot for a foot massage on my desk - -someone laughed and made a comment that may be the key to ending my suffering! it is possible, nay, highly likely that the cause of my distress is my wearing sandals in summer. i can handle barefoot, and i can handle shoes, but keeping sandals on my feet while walking is a strain and they don't offer much in the way of support...

after a successful deployment, and much pleasure taken in the knowledge that my changes over the past months have made doing so intuitive enough that -someone didn't require instructions, i left for home.

pg and i watched the 1984 version of 1984 last night. it's brilliant. it's dark, maintains the sense of the book even without hearing his thoughts all the time, and i really enjoyed it. funny thing: this morning, i couldn't for the life of me recall what it was we'd seen. i drew a total blank, and had to sms pg from the bus to ask her :$

i spent a while transcribing my travel journal, watched a couple of hysterical episodes of friends with pg, then went to bed.

surprisingly, i slept most of the night (read: 2-9am), in spite of waking up a couple of times with an unpleasant bellyache. waking up was really tough, though. it seems i'm going through the same nightmare every morning. i really need this holiday to begin and to sleep until afternoon every day.

i repeated the search for my headphones, but eventually gave up. it's good thing i have a spare set, but it's driving me crazy that i can't figure out what i did with the others!

getting into herzeliya this morning was disorienting [you see what i did there?], we took a detour that had most of us wondering if we'd taken the right bus. the ride to the bank was looooong, and there was a wait, but it wasn't so bad and i walked out fairly quickly with what i need to take to my mum. in south africa. i'm going. soon. whoa.

when i got in to the office, i fired off an email to my tenant reminding him that rent is due - does this get old? it's strange. the morning was slow and the fixes were few, everything i had to do before i left is pretty much done.

*breathes out deeply*

---
i haven't mentioned nuclear power since the debate with scrapper, but i read the bill gates article this morning and it's inspiring. a little despressing, too. but that's okay, there's hope.

undead cash-centric

i met wr outside the main library, introduced him to the noise room and we spent most of the hour on ideation. then a little while on failed research before we had to go our separate ways. he has given me good food for thought, at least.

on the way into class, i spoke to the flash boss and we agreed that we'd meet between 1pm and 1.30 so i could drop off the tax document. he promised he'd be available and, just in case, gave me a phone number to call.

the poetry lesson was great fun, in particular when studying adelaide crapsey. last semester we learned to the dead in the graveyard underneath my window, and today we studied song. once i put the following (blacked-out) idea into your head, that she's making the shroud because she wants to be the best-dressed zombie, try to read the former without seeing what i saw. when i shared with the professor, she looked at me oddly for a moment and then burst into laughter :)

after desperately declaring bankruptcy to yogi over the phone (his father's out the country, so if i *am* working for them then i need to know how much and when i'm being paid), i had lunch with wordsworth and we discussed my seminar topic. he also had interesting things to say.

on the way off campus a girl wearing a greenpeace shirt asked if she could have a moment, and i told her that she was welcome to follow me to my bus stop.
"where're you from? you have an accent."
"south africa"
"oh! it is you!"
she raised her sunglasses, and became the girl from the specialist encounter. she informed me that she had, in fact, checked out the disturbing things i'd told her, and found me to be correct. we discussed nuclear power and left / right polarization of environmental issues (i hate it when political leanings interfere with universals), and then she surprised me again when the bus came by not only remembering my name, but knowing my surname too. what gives?!

---on the way to my once-upon-a-time primary base to meet with the flash boss, i called his phone. unreachable. i called the other number, and left a message with the secretary. when i arrived, i tried calling again, but his phone was still unreachable. i perched myself on a wall, and spent the next half an hour alternating between reading, calling his cellphone, or calling the other number. the secretary wasn't answering any more, and i was transported back to six years of frustration caused by military secretaries simply ignoring calls.

that's one of the reasons it's always better to do stuff in person. but there i was, no authorization (nor desire) to entire the base, and looking so suspicious that one of the GSS dudes approached and began an interrogation. producing my high-enough ranking reserve duty card wasn't enough, i had to prove knowledge of the base to push him to friendly mode.

all that, for nothing. i left for my interview in a foul mood.

---my mood was improved somewhat when the direction ru55 gave me took me to a building called camera obscura, but i then discovered that i was on the wrong street :P

did the interview go well? the guy seemed satisfied, the work looks really cool, and i felt... a fit. i would love to work with these guys. and i have relevant experience up the wazoo :)

---i headed to care to have my eyes tested for laser surgery. i had no idea what to expect, but the first battery of tests was funky as hell. lots of pretty swirling colours, retinal-scanner-style wiping, and that strange, amusing machine that tests both your eye-pressure and your courage simultaneously.

the opthalmologist who did all the differential testing shocked me with the results: i can't believe how awful my left eye has become. he put drops in my eyes and told me they'd make my vision blurry, but nothing happened and i sat outside reading until they called me.

just prior to them calling me something happened. it was barely perceptible, but suddenly i was having trouble with the words on the page and i had to hold my iphone at a strange angle to be able to follow the line. when i mentioned this to the doctor, he told me that when he was done i could look at myself in the mirror - so *that's* why the experience seemed familiar! my pupils were completely dilated :P

it appears that i'm an ideal candidate for laser treatment (gosh, i'll bet they say that to all the guys) and it would totally sort me out. the only problem is that it would sort me out in another sense as well: NIS 7800 after the NIS 1000 student discount? damn.
that seems an awful lot for bothering them for thirty seconds.

---work: i did a good night's work. as i said to one of the managers on the way home - i shouldn't be working so well for such a small amount of money; my conscience is screwing me over in the grand scheme of things. [see previous post]

i was horrified to discover that -someone's screw-up (and mine, that i didn't perform a code-review) was way worse than i originally thought. on sunday we have to rewrite what he did completely, and there's me at 10pm sending off reprimanding emails to him and tactful emails to the boss to explain without getting the guy into shit for the damage his lack of experience and guidance caused.

...

good news, good news, bad news. the good news is that my poetry paper scored me a 99! the other good news is that i scored a 92 for the narrative analysis course... the bad news is that it's a six point drop from what i understood was my exam score. it's not clear if my mark was penalized; but if it was there's nobody who won't stand for my having been the most active and vocal member of the class. and i suffered every - single - class. wordsworth called me up devastated, but there's not much i can do short of a few inane condolences. i hope he doesn't have to redo the course...

i got home, put a load in the washing machine and headed to pg's, who's already complaining about barely seeing me.

*sigh*

i need a cash infusion, a decent job, and for the world to right itself without my intervention for a while.

on ismism - part i

[post divided retroactively]

in prepping for my paper on literary theory, i'm studying modernism. it's taking me a long time to wrap my head around all the different isms, and here are some wonderful little bits i've uncovered. a diligent reader may notice that some of my references are to wikipedia. "hey! that's not a good source!" one might very well exclaim. maybe not, but it's an excellent source of sources. and it has some useful summaries.

compare:
• baudelaire's politics with bon jovi's self image
• the fourth freedom with high school carnage
• and freud's state of mind while coming up with those theories

oh, and lenin on anti-semitism (another popular ism, may have had some impact on behaviour during the second world war) made up for reading a version of jewish / egyptian history that denied us hebrews had *ever* been slaves in egypt. this man isn't entirely wrong; but he seems to forget that herodotus wasn't the most reliable of sources, and that the israelites wandered about in the desert for forty years. deserts have a habit of not holding evidence as well as other types of terrain.

and in almost related news: why the suggestion that drug use in arts departments shouldn't be met with antagonism (there were wild accusations made about freud, then about freud's students), and whether or not i'm allowed to express my personal theories in a course being set up for the next semester.

---wednesday:

after posting, i crept over to pg's and slept like the dead. getting out of bed was tough, and i lumbered home to get my gear and head off to campus. i wore my new trapper beanie (something like this), and when an idiot taxi driver honked right next to me i automatically made tapping motions to where my ear would be visible had i not been wearing it. my attempt to make it clearer scored me a look that informed me that i'd made the same impression as obelix tapping his head saying "these romans are crazy".

i made those well-known last-minute on-campus pre-print corrections, and then my paper was served. what a great sensation! i handed in with one of the other in potentia master's students, and our chat on the way out was interesting. i paid wr a visit, still stuck in a freudian (huh, my phone auto-corrects to "fraud") loop...

i ran into sorter on my way into the office, and we walked and talked to pick up seeds and lunch. while waiting for my delicious schnitzel sandwich, some guy in the street held his hand on the hooter for twenty second intervals for at least ten minutes. it was driving everyone crazy, but as my manager said: not the area where you really want to say something. i considered calling the police, but they'd probably just laugh at me :(

---having learned a very serious lesson about code reviews, i sat with -someone and had a really productive session. i have learned to articulate the use for comments: they're not just for making the code easily readable. they do that too. but they more importantly provide the only convenient way - for both programmer and reviewer - to know if the code does what it's supposed to do.

"i didn't comment this because it's so obvious what it does"
"why does it do that?"
"ummm... lemme see now..."

no. none of that. by the time we were done his code was readable and we knew exactly what he had to fix and why. there were a couple of i-can-hear-angels-singing moments when he launched into a commenting frenzy pre-emptively, and i *think* that means he got the message. i taught him a few other tricks along the way, but that was the one that counts.

[continued...]

exam times - part i

[post divided retroactively]

wow! the semester is officially over, and my first final is in five days. of course, it's the horrible one - all the rest are take-home papers and i'm rather looking forward to those :D

---wednesday:

i awoke to the sounds of construction, interfering with my dreams even more than the alarm clock could. i was nervous, too - my first poetry reading was fast approaching. as i prepared for the day a storm of ideas broke, and i caught them on my iphone's notepad to the pitter-patter sound of my fast-beating heart.

pg's doppelgänger was waiting for the same bus - what, is she also a neighbour?! that's just ridiculous.

wednesday was wr's birthday, so i called him up to wish him a happy one. as it turned out, he was on his way to say hi... we sat watching robot chicken star wars and chatting, and i was going to walk into class a little late but then all my classmates began to walk out the building; she'd stood us up again, and in her place the TA was taking Q 'n A. a few of us missioned to buy beer and drink it in the park while spinning on a carousel. it was as good a start to the day as could be.

---except for the bit, earlier on, when i spoke to a financial advisor about the money the army took off my salary for my "pension". so i've been screwed twice - no, thrice by them.
part 1: NIS 9000 that i didn't get because i served 2.5 years with an inappropriate rank.
part 2: earning no more than one third of the minimum salary i'd have commanded if i hadn't signed on.
part 3: that pension money going nowhere. after almost four years, my army pension account is now sitting at a whopping NIS 500. that'd sort me out with lunch for... a couple of weeks. maybe.

---after the park we joined the study session in the library. the guy i'd argued with online sat down next to me, and the argument resumed - only much louder than before. at some point a girl behind us couldn't decide whether we were bothering her or if she wanted to take part, so three of us (not including the girl) took the debate outside (after i explained to her that arguments are for arriving at conclusions, and that we're still all friends).
we talked another ten minutes or so before the third guy jumped on my opponent: "ah-HA! you just contradicted yourself!"

it's so nice when others can do that for me :D

eventually we sorted everything out - he understood what i was getting at and agreed that saying things like that outside of one's private circle can be dangerous; in fact, the point the caused the aforementioned contradiction was him saying that he'd think less of any friend that called him "ashkenazi" because he was trying to better himself.

---after deciding that we'd understood shklovsky and motifs we took a break for lunch, joined by eidetic and a discussion about course workloads. then it was time to print out the poetry i was going to read and practice. nerves, you see.

---the reading itself was fun! and there really wasn't any reason to get so excited. it'll definitely be easier next time. i began with dead eye, shared my stream of consciousness and finished off with a compass. the more i read that last one, the happier i become with it :)

lessons learned: if only i'd thought to thank the organizers while on the stage! it seems to be the right thing to do. also, i guess it's always a good idea to put together a presentation so that it's easier to follow the words (i *hope* i read mine clearly enough, but one never can tell) and get the more obscure references (like the description of the petrified forest, or the "blood-sucking missiles", or the "steamy soprano fissures").

i've been informed indirectly by the sponsor that i'll be invited back at some stage ^_^

---pg and i took the bus home, and before going out i crashed for an hour. i don't know how long it's been since i kipped that deeply.

i groggily took the bus and a walk to "arthur's" at the harbour - no indication on the building that that's the place, which is a bit silly in my opinion. i'd brought nerds to share, and we all sat there drinking beers and staring at the victoria's secret fashion show. there were some crazy pieces! and i usually don't care much for that sort of thing, but that was simply smoking hot.

... one of my american co-workers made a decidedly uneducated remark on nixon, and i got stuck into explaining the origins and outcomes of the war on drugs...

i left just in time to catch the nine home, prepare a birthday present, stop by pg's to say goodnight, walk onto the five (two buses with perfect timing? no way!) and arrive in time to join wr for the third song of the evening. the show was absolutely brilliant, so much so that even the band members are a bit concerned about being able to maintain such a high level. we all loved it ^_^

we discussed running a pastafarian bar, where all liquor is considerably cheaper and the rum barely above cost. i think that might work.

---thursday:

epic, long complex dreams disappearing on a puff of sleep dust chased by peaceful alarm clock memories and crushed by adrenaline heart-pounding and failed, desperate clawing to hold on to fragments of their wisdom just long enough to write it down before such heady beauty is lost entirely

virginia woolf - mrs dalloway is growing on me. i'd gotten up super early (6.30am) to catch up on the reading, and after a quarter of the book i decided i quite like it. and it reminded me of bi-planes flying advertising banners. haven't seen those in many years.

i dozed and read on the couch under my warm blanket for a couple of hours, then got ready and left. as i closed the door, my recycling box jumped down onto the floor to remind me that i'd run a load of washing - thank you, cardboard box! that could've been an unpleasant surprise.

on a completely unrelated note: my iphone's camera is fucked. it crashes every time i try to take a photo, and most times without storing the snap :S

our first lecture, with the italian sick, was taken by his teaching assistant. after the class i was compelled to approach her and ask her why she couldn't have taken the whole damned semester. she was a vast improvement.
the study session was difficult to manage without becoming sidetracked. every time the guys got rowdy, i threw another reason at them and we continued. thank you, matthew!

have i asked the following question before? it concerns our italian lecturer: who understands humans and yet chooses to become a cultural anthropologist?
what we need is an anthro-apologist.

i was planning on napping before the last class, but instead found myself meeting new and interesting people instead. one of those people is the child of expatriate south africans, who suggested that i hit the telfed up for a scholarship...

odd that: my iphone corrected the word "telfed" to "gelded".

the last poetry lesson was hardcore: adrienne rich hardcore. that stuff's so potent and heady we didn't have much to say.

---work last night was alright, although my beanie appears to be gone. gone. gone. i loved that beanie :(

-someone came to talk to me towards the end of the evening, and just as we'd agreed on how he needs to proceed he said something that i felt, on my lip. spittle flying is never a nice thing for either party involved, but that was worse than usual :S

---i made my way home, relatively early (about 10pm), and dropped off my bag. then i took a slow walk to pg's listening to awesome psychedelic rock... [this bit censored on the grounds that it might give a bad impression of us pirates, but it does involve surprisingly piratey behaviour (^_^)]

we were going to watch a movie, but i passed out instead. i do that a lot, lately :S
hopefully the next semester will be a little less crazy.

---today:

i walked home via the bookstore, picking up the death of ivan ilyich & other stories, mysteries of celtic britain, great expectations, the great gatsby, heart of darkness, survival of the sickest, fragile things, and, because it seems piratey, pirate latitudes - all paid for using the gift card my employer bought me for my birthday :))

i hurried off to work - i'd agreed to spend an hour there helping out the unhelpful IT guy if and only if nobody else could - and was accosted by the caretaker of a neighbourhood synagogue who needed assistance changing a light-bulb. of course i would help; pity about the bus :/

so i got screwed for breakfast - my hands were cable-tied, as it were. i spent the first hour and a half waiting for him - at least i always have work to do - then the last hour sorting cables.

[continued...]