the needle

[currently battling a mosquito and losing]

 well, i did sleep last night. i had horrible dreams, though. involving really gross public toilets, amongst other things.

i gave up on reading dragon ball. it's like a pre-teen fever dream. combined with dragon ball: rick & morty i'm now pretty confident i never missed anything important.

our subwoofer situation: i was so excited the past couple of days, because it looked like the subwoofer was finally stable for the first time since we bought it. but today? garbage. i finally bit the bullet and ordered a new one, which will hopefully hook in to the shelf in the same way 🤞

work ownership mystery: i asked my manager to investigate, and he managed to get someone to approve my pull request. but then we learned that they didn't have the authorization to merge, either. a bunch of us (virtually) ran around trying to find out who's in charge, and so far the answer appears to be "nobody".

in the afternoon, my employer team had to sign in to a presentation that went on about an hour longer than it should have. i had to turn my camera off halfway through so nobody would have to keep seeing me rubbing my eyes and yawning.

mr smear had a regression today, and homework turned into a massive, unpleasant thing that got him punished. as part of the cooldown, i took him to the park to use the exercise equipment (i was too pissed off with him to train him, and i'm pretty sure he wasn't in the mood either), and then we continued on to do some sweet shopping.

i'm not doing to well with my weight situation lately. something about war and lockdown and yada yada yada.

dinner (we were forced to order in because my employer doesn't let me use my food allowance to buy vouchers) was much calmer, getting mr smear showered and toothbrushed and into bed proved stressful and stretched our patience completely, and that was on top of two attacks launched in that exact window. and i still had a little more work to do after he went to sleep, so i was even more annoyed.

now i'm playing catch-up and calm-down, as i type this i realize it's already past midnight :/

...

gd's friend (the glassblower who made us massage tools and gifted us with some bitcoin a couple of years ago) has been contemplating suicide for a very long time, and gd's finally reached a point where she can no longer bring herself to keep trying to talk him out of it. she's upset about this, and she wants to be a good friend, and i told her to just make her feelings crystal clear and deal with whatever may come.

you can't help everyone.

the masses move through the tent city

 the nights have been relatively quiet the past few days, but i've been sleeping worse. physical nerve discomfort, primarily, but also mental disquiet.

we got up yesterday morning at 10am, which felt wrong somehow. it was only in the evening that we learned that it was wrong, because daylight savings time. it took us a remarkably long time to get out the house, by which stage the weather had turned to cold and wet.

we were nervous about traveling across the city and getting caught in an attack while outside, but fortunately we were caught once while at the mall, and the second time while waiting for the bus home, so we had time to get down into the parking lot.

man, the tent city is an experience.

between the mobs of mall people, and mr smear being generally disagreeable, and a siren catching us before i managed to get myself a second coffee when i was already feeling twitchy desperate, i had zero patience by the time we left. but we had managed to get the two things we needed the most: a kettle cord* and a smaller (and less permeable) shower curtain.

* how the hell did we end up with one less than we have appliances that need them?!

and gd's hair-care products, and also a large container of cholent, which mr smear finally tried and liked ^_^

once we got home, i spoke to two cousins, declining the still-open invitation to a pesach seder because there's no way we're traveling far with the war still on.

big data's been doing a lot of work on the building these days, and in the afternoon he came over with his tools to give me a hand with putting up a shelf to tidy up our modem / router situation. not only was he a great help with getting the shelf up easily and neatly, but he had a brilliant idea of attaching our sound bar underneath it, and we now have the solution we should have had for the past four years - it's awesome!

unfortunately, while we did get the projector set up "well enough" (using polystyrene from the electric hob's box that we hadn't tossed yet), it's clear that it's seen better days and that at some point we're going to need to upgrade it :(

i mean, it's served us well for a decade already...

a bit later we went upstairs to join them for dinner. good food and plenty of it, and aside from some issues with mr smear we all had a very pleasant evening. it was very late by the time we finally went to bed**, but between the achievements of the day, the company, and a fair amount of alcohol, i went to bed feeling quite relaxed.

** after watching the first episode of rick and morty with gd so that she could be reminded of why mr smear shouldn't have seen it

so it would have been nice if i'd been able to sleep better.

...

it's been a peaceful morning so far. i sorted out the playstation in preparation for mr smear's friend coming over, and i've watched some random things, and maybe i'll do something productive now or maybe i won't.

the purim decree

 today is tuesday? yesterday was monday. it is purim today, i read (the translation of) megilat esther last night and mr smear is dressed up - wildly successfully, especially the scar which he did himself - for a day in which we are following mordechai's edict to the letter, destroying our enemies before they can destroy us.

sunday night was a lot quieter than saturday night or sunday (i'm obviously not speaking on behalf of those who've been affected, an ex-coworker of mine lives next to a building that was struck, and another missile landed next to mr smear's school, and iran is using cluster bombs again, which is a real war crime), and i got up yesterday somewhat in shock at having rested. it was mostly a work day, which was weird, but i did manage - between attacks - to get to the store and buy a "mickey mouse" cable so that i could set up a mesh network because switching from wifi to wifi was driving me nuts.

unfortunately, the speed of my now-stable network is disappointingly low :(

i got mr smear to come upstairs to our friends, where he and their daughter got on well but the younger son was having a very emotional evening... us adults had a reasonably good time, though. and gd stayed downstairs and got a bit of a break.

oh, yeah - the technician arrived yesterday morning to look at the electric hob, which was playing nicely, of course. he fiddled with the triple-phase outlet, hopefully it'll remain stable.

i'm going to be diving into work soon. i'm very disappointed about the state of my hair, which was supposed to be cut on sunday evening. i'm sporting harry potter vibes of my own :P

a tale of two incidents

 yesterday:

i did sleep, but only briefly, waking up an hour or so before our alarms to jump right back into AI cat wrangling. because my brain was on fire imagining all the cat wrangling i wanted to do.

so i began my day putting together a PR for my boss (not my client) which basically said "this is how it's done", and i was relieved to find it merged by this morning, so he obviously wasn't too offended :P

then i rushed off to the 24/7 to pick up mishloach manot for mr smear to take to school, and afterwards gd and i headed to the dentist for the first part of her two-part root canal, which i had to be there for because her dentist doesn't understand a word of english (or french).

[goddamn i love chocolate-covered pecans]

i dropped her off at home and continued on to the office, where i was completely manic and infected a data engineer and my client with my enthusiastic idea for an AI cat-wrangling IDE extension.

and then i ran a test that my cat-wrangling had produced, confident that it was ready and that i'd had good results from the dry runs.

...

i was pretty bored while waiting for missing user permissions to complete the tests we were running in production, so i took care of some other stuff while i waited.

while i was making myself a cup of coffee, an unknown employee began interrogating me as to why he didn't see me at the company purim party that i didn't go to. he obviously thought he was being funny, but at no point did he get the hint that it would be wise to drop it, and in front of HR staff brought it to a point where had i been so inclined, that could easily have earned him a warning for harassment.

then i was brought into a call with my client team for an incident i knew nothing about and had nothing to do with - let's call it incident B - only to be informed, as i was explaining to them that my coffee wasn't working yet, that it wasn't an issue for us.

at that point i realized that i was falling apart, so i finished my coffee and left for home.

on the way home i tried to pick up a frying pan from kikar ha'medina, but i couldn't find what i was looking for, all the while struggling to get hold of mr smear and then threatening him to get his ass home to assist me on a mission to dizengoff.

...

and then i got home, and learned that the test i'd run earlier in the day had led to an incident.

let's call it incident A.

it took me about ten minutes to figure out what was happening, and another five to realize it was my fault. another two minutes to decide how to fix it, at which point i saw that one of my teammates had already pushed a fix and i'd been typing into silence for five minutes.

over the next twenty minutes i was in contact with my teammate but had received nothing from our client team (who were presumed to be dealing with the incident), and nothing seemed to be happening so i rushed out with mr smear and a washing basket that needed returning to catch a bus to the center.

we were halfway there when my phone started buzzing again, and i'd left my computer at home 🤦‍♂️

the bus was packed, with non-compliant riders arguing with the conductors, and a stop too early i jumped off with mr smear and we raced through the crowded sidewalks, scrambled down to the store, where i had trouble finding a frying pan, eventually giving up and taking an expensive induction one.

we rushed through the center to catch another bus home, and when we returned it was to discover, to my absolute horror, that i'd taken our production services down completely by running a test that i had literally forgotten i hadn't reviewed yet.

i cannot believe i did something so utterly irresponsible, i was mortified and humiliated to post the list of things that had been unnecessarily affected, a danger that i would easily have spotted had i checked it beforehand.

while i scrambled to figure out what was happening - i was in a flat panic, and had no idea where to look for monitors or logs* - my bulgarian teammates were quietly working with AI chewing gum and duct-tape and getting things back online.

* in retrospect, nobody does. and there isn't a lot of monitoring or logging going on to begin with...

all i had to offer were my apologies and volunteering to write up the RCA.

i continued freaking out until my mentor called me (i'd messaged him), and he was very reassuring ("if somebody had lost their life, maybe i wouldn't have called you"). still very shaken, i went to bed early knowing that no good was going to come of me getting less sleep.

today:

surprisingly, i did get some rest.

mr smear gave us some trouble this morning - he's been doing the slow morning thing since we moved, and he's been talking back whenever he gets in trouble - but by the time he had to go to school we were all in a better place.

except for gd, who was pissed off at the new frying pan because it's not as non-stick as it says.

(alanis morissette) ironically, the technician for the stove was due to come this morning and the element was heating up fully. fortunately, they called to tell us he'd been delayed and so we rescheduled for monday, which gives us a chance to test if it's really working or not.

the appraiser for the household insurance came back, an elderly man (a biker, i should say) who was impressively professional and efficient.

finally, the technician from the internet company arrived to sort out internet in our in-home bomb-shelter (our bedroom).

it took a long time. it took a lot of assistance from us. at one point he left the apartment, and then returned but forgot to take his shoes off.

he took so long, that i had to stop following him around to join my morning post-incident meeting with my teammates, which was really important because i knew i had to be able to discuss my disastrous fuck-up while looking them in the eyes.

by the time he was done, i was extremely frustrated. firstly, because the wiring isn't what i thought he was going to install, it's simply a single, very long ethernet cable from one end of the apartment to the other, instead of two wall jacks. secondly, because the outlet in the bedroom doesn't fit properly, so it looks terrible and it was squashing the cable he'd just installed, and i had to explain this to him. thirdly, because as relieved as i am that the network appliance in our bedroom is now working well, the speeds we're getting are inconsistent and surprisingly low. finally, because goddamnit when i tell you you're damaging both my screwdriver and the screw by using the wrong bit, fucking stop.

jesus h. christ.

anyway, so gd and i washed the floor, and there's internet in the bedroom, and on that note i left for the office. it was lunch time already, so i had to skip lunch. on the way i caught up with my mother who'd just had an interesting conversation with the new head of the jewish agency in south africa.

i hope something positive comes out of it.

the first half hour at work was fighting with IT network issues.

the next two hours were a complete mess; trying to understand the impact of incident A as a step towards getting started on the RCA, strategizing with a data engineer, and, amongst other stuff, being dragged back into incident B.

i never did get started on that RCA - i spent five hours on incident B, and was somehow assigned to lead a task force and only walked out of the office a little before 9pm.

not only did i bear witness to a member of my client team - the only guy who legitimately knows what he's doing - threatening to quit, and being mollified by the team lead, but at every step of the way i learned more about the system architecture and was stunned by the absurdity of it all. it's shit, deep shit, all the way down.

also, the guy who just left the team last week? he'd convinced us all that the migration i took over was ready. tonight we discovered that it really wasn't.

oh, and i wasn't home to receive my son, who - in spite of a bit of a freak-out because he'd waited at the wrong bus stop on the way home - had managed to take the comics back to the comics library all by himself, by bus ^_^

my "dinner" was two slices of happy hour vegan pizza (it wasn't bad) and a beer, but when i got home i had gd's ramen (with bok choy and a yo egg) and dessert. after assuring gd that if i do lose my client over calling it quits for the weekend (with the rest of the task force backing me) it'll make him look bad, i immediately sat down to get all this down before i jump in the shower and probably climb straight into bed.

tomorrow's a big day, mostly in preparation for taking mr smear to a purim family trance party on saturday. we have no idea what's happening with iran - obviously if things go crazy we'll have to stay home - but whatever happens i'm mostly confident we'll be fine 🤞🙏

compressed

 today was weird. i don't know if it's related to me getting more sleep than usual, but i felt buzzed.

after seeing mr smear off to school, gd and i had a conversation about whether he really needed a new round of therapy or not. i checked in with his teacher, who assured me that he's participating a lot more in class, and communicating much better, even though academically he's not doing so well*. all things considered, i think the incidents from the beginning of the year can be attributed to him adjusting, i really don't believe anything's nearly as urgent as the school team thought.

* did i really need to tell her that if she lets me know where he's struggling, i can try to help him?

i lost my temper a little bit with the support agent who called to request further proof that the stove isn't working properly. as in, in addition to a photo of a quarter of an element clearly not heating up.

gd found my watch strap, but now we've lost the watch charger. she found the adapter for mr smear's keyboard, though! in addition to getting back into his music "homework", just before bedtime he was reading an illustrated harry potter book (the fifth one) and came running into the office to try playing the sheet music in one of the illustrations - and it was pretty good ^_^

i decided to start my work day by going past the hardware store (i picked up a shower head holder, but the other two items on the list were a no-go), arranged for a technician to install an internet point in our bedroom on thursday, then sat down* at a coffee shop for about an hour of work.

* i sat down after a disappointing service experience, being ignored for a while before i could order. then i sat down next to the coffee cup lid and sugar stand, which was close enough to smell the other patrons (one of whom i described to gd as "smelling like a heavy, sick fishy down-there infection", but fortunately out of line of sight of the large homeless guy who charged in demanding that someone buy him a coffee)

i downloaded gd's id thingy (sefach), then had it printed at the art supply store (all-round, it was cheaper than going to the ministry of the interior), then returned home to work a bit.

i snacked and ate too much today. surprisingly, my weight's been pretty stable lately, hovering around 77kg.

i wrestled both with and against my AI copilot today, and spent a lot of time thinking about the AI vampire article i read this morning.

i lost a half hour this afternoon to mr smear's allergy appointment being brought forward a week without anyone contacting me. and then, when i tried calling the clinic to resolve the issue, someone kept lifting the phone and putting it back down again 😡

i discovered that yesterday, when mr smear was in his room with the door closed, he'd been using the browser on his phone which gd has accidentally left unlocked :/

okay, look - it's not alright, but his reaction IS funny 😂

i took a bus to the clinic, had a funny altercation with the security guard (poor guy was only trying to help, but in a clumsy way), and managed to get gd's prescription and authorization sorted out relatively quickly before returning home.

more work, more of the same.

speaking to my mother after she received the email i forwarded her from yad l'olim, understandably and justifiably furious because they're continuing to mess her around, but making out like it's her own fault.

a "family talk" with mr smear, generally going well (explaining to him that integrity is doing the right thing when nobody is looking).

a very nice dinner.

chatting again with my mom, then reading more of the colour of magic to mr smear (he really enjoyed the gods playing dice with rincewind and twoflower), then showering (with the new showerhead holder), and now... getting ready for bed, i guess?

the ex-coworker at the wedding

 my beard's just hit itchy phase. i'm tired. after sending mr smear off to school this morning, and making a tech support call for an issue with the new electric hob, i caught a bus to ace and traded in the thing gd didn't want after she assured me she wanted it for a perfectly-sized laundry basket, two more small trash cans and a welcome mat.

gd suggested that we leave one of the toilet brushes that come free with the bins behind the concrete block for whoever keeps pooping there.

i had just enough time for a coffee before leaving to pick up the car and drive north to the wedding.

there was a lot of traffic. i needed to pee pretty badly for the last twenty minutes.

the place was right next to kfar ha'ro'eh, where the yeshiva i lived in for four and a half months in 1996 is.

the wedding was really nice, the ceremony itself very sweet. while there were two *yecch* unavoidable hugs with people i don't like (the HR woman and one of the team leads that didn't want me on her team), and my relationship with my old boss is freaking weird, it was great seeing everyone and i'm glad i went.

the food was good, too, and i made an effort to drink responsibly (one drink, which i put down halfway through because i wasn't able to get out of a shot), and i'm pretty sure i was fine for the drive home.

i have since snacked too much.

aside from helping gd with the challah-peño, i've done very little of value. i think this is good.

post-birthday different-kind-of-special

 dinner last night was nice - gd's first home-cooked meal in about a week. a little slower to cook with the borrowed plates, but it didn't bother me or mr smear.

the rest of the evening was all about getting into bed as quickly as possible, the shower was amazing, and i crashed pretty much immediately after.

in the middle of the night, i awoke from a sequence of nightmares: nightmares of being trapped trying to get home from work in a cavernous escape room (that was part of the office on a bond-like villain's mountain fortress), then of living at the docks and catching mr smear skipping school to hide amongst cargo loading equipment to play on his phone.

so that was me getting up at 3.45am with my nervous system on fire, raging at the afterimage of my dream son fucking up his imaginary life.

i did get back to sleep, a bit, but then i spent most of the rest of my time until alarm o'clock uncomfortable, and ultimately woke up with a stiff neck and the dizziness that often accompanies it. i mean, i might just be sick - gd's feeling similar today, in addition to the stuff that's been messing with her for months already - but still.

i think she might have been right on friday, that i shouldn't have let the mattress guy convince me to give it another week or two.

at least gd's happy with her side of the bed.

over coffee, i started putting together an article about producing comics with AI, but then i spent a large chunk of the morning sorting out address changes. and struggling - not for the first time - with the fact that we have money in our bank account but are unable to use our credit cards because we can't pay them off whenever we want.

not right now, but i think we need to consider finding ourselves a new bank.

on the way to the office i called social security, who informed me that the unemployment office hadn't updated them as they're reported. at the office, i remembered that nobody goes to the office on sundays, and according to the cleaning staff there was some kind of power outage as well. on my way back from the office i called the unemployment office, who after a very long time informed me that social security was lying. so then i called social security again, and the agent told me that the unemployment office was lying, and then i got really upset. eventually i got through to a manager, who "helped" me by directing me to the website to request that they look into it 🤦‍♂️

all the while in pain and dizzy.

i spent the rest of the day - until now - fixing the first iteration of my changes and learning how to test them. and eating and snacking a lot; i guess after yesterday's exercise (on top of the past week's) my body really needed more calories.

aside from pain and dizziness, my only real distractions were the electric hob installation (hooray!) and getting mr smear and his friend to come home on his way to the comic library to return the books (today was the deadline), and on their way from here i managed to catch them heading to bat yam by mistake in time for them to turn around.

parenting in 2026 is hard. navigating screen time, inappropriate content, lack of exposure to nature…

… but holy shit, being able to see where my kid is on a map, and know that i need to intervene so that he doesn’t end up in a different city by accident? priceless.

it's dark, the two of them should be making their way back soon, god knows how i'm going to get his friend home 🤷‍♂️

...

i have to say, slowly but surely our new home's starting to make sense. and it's huge compared to our last one, or at least it's much, much longer, because i've discovered over the past day or two that it's more sensible to call gd on whatsapp than to try to yell to each other, or get up from whatever i'm doing :P

under new management

mr smear going to school on his own. the walk to the post office. the washing machine technician coming for nothing.

the long devops meeting with our new "captain", who really isn't much of a leader and who doesn't seem to understand that the business is more important than the tech. a meeting with our security team, with the new captain, which gave me a sense of being (positively) outside the team.

lots of onboarding assistance. and coworker consulting. and a very late lunch + hot sauce run, which was interrupted by a delivery guy who'd been stood up by one of our coworkers.

syncing with the brit after his 1:1 with the captain, and being relieved to hear that it was considerably less combative than we expected.

leaving later than planned, but earlier than usual. not being able to help mr smear with his maths - both because he didn't write down the exercises properly, and because matific was down. a pizza dinner watching the first part of the hercules movie (so outrageously disneyfied that we had to stop mr smear yelling at the screen), a pretty pleasant experience between dinner and bedtime.

then a whole lot of struggling with the windows machine (the high heat and fan speed apparently may be because i use brave, but it seems to happen with chrome too, and even when they're closed).

i'm tired.

the rescue OST

it's bothering me a little that i've been so focused on getting through the days that i haven't done any of the hanging out with friends i was intending to...

tuesday:

tuesday was very intense. firstly, while waking up i heard that there was some kind of illustrator's fair happening in nahalat binyamin. it was obvious that we should take mr smear, but in addition to her injured toe gd's been feeling wrecked since the drive in our kibbutz cousin's car. and i had to go to work. but figuring out logistics wasn't enough, we also had to contend with mr smear deciding that he didn't want to go because - as always - it's not fair to make him leave the house (and screens).

like... ever.

we're explaining to him that while he's convinced we're terrible parents for making him go anywhere, we're already terrible parents for having raised a child who doesn't want to go anywhere, and we'd be terrible parents if we let him grow up to be a "basement boy".

once he got over his initial huff, we had a really nice morning, saw very cool art, had an awkward conversation or two*, and it was a great stroll through a beautiful morning in tel aviv.

* he complained to one of the illustrators that everyone "makes the mistake" of drawing aliens that are humanoid when they probably aren't humanoid. the artist admitted that his comic strip had been commissioned by an outlet that wanted aliens, but his original story was humans so he just redrew them to look weird 🤣

he came with me to my office. when he got bored, and gd wasn't able to fetch him for a while, i invited him to come with me to pick up lunch at sumsum. aside from an additional bit of a walk in pleasant weather, he loves making his own salads and we both enjoyed the meal together.

...

gd arrived to pick him up, and was very nervous about coming in to the office and meeting everyone. turns out she's been developing social anxiety, and now we have another Thing to deal with... anyway, it was a quick and uneventful tour of the office, and she met my old boss (apparently) for the first time, and then it was back to work.

...

two big things happened yesterday, one interfering with the other. the first is that we've finally got security management set up, so a big chunk of my day was setting up vaults and helping others get theirs configured. the second was that our dev environment fell over.

this appears to have happened because we've switched to a new deployment system that the dev server wasn't yet prepared for, and my lead advised another coworker to use it even though i'd explicitly told everyone not to touch anything until we'd reinstalled it 🤦

what followed was a mad scramble that lasted into the evening, which i quipped was the kind of "real" incident to make me truly feel like a part of the team :P

by the time i left the office, we were up and running and with a functioning backup tool that had been sitting in my to-do queue for weeks.

reading i, robot to mr smear at bedtime, and slay the spire into the night.

yesterday:

anything not explicitly mentioned about my waking hours infers that i was playing slay the spire.

cubase success: figuring out how to record sequences with the MIDI controller, eventually figuring out how to record audio with the mic (hint: alway check if the mic is muted before frustration sets in)

homework battle: less about the homework, more about mr smear behaving aggressively / rudely and then responding poorly to the consequences...

...

the big event of the day was us receiving our new oven. gd was freaking out because she was worried i'd hurt myself lifting it, and i'll be gracious and admit that the old one was really heavy. and the new one needed to be lifted from the floor. but the biggest difficulty was in cleaning around and behind the old one before the new one arrived.

i'm becoming convinced that there's no way that our landlords lived here as long as they did, and also that they never cleaned or maintained anything, ever.

...

mr smear's "play therapist" arrived unexpectedly while we were having a fight about homework, and after i'd told him that we were going out soon. so that was awkward. but getting him out the house proved relatively easy, and we went on a mission to find oven trays because our old ones don't fit.  we walked, bussed, and then walked a lot (through pesach tourist crowds), and though we didn't find what we were looking for we did have a generally good experience and we finally found a place to pick up black salt along the way!

between arriving home and eating dinner (cooked in our new oven, great success!) i opened cubase and learned how to turn a recording into a playable sample ^_^

i continued reading i, robot to mr smear at bedtime, then passed out.

today:

it was an uncomfortable night overall, but i did get some sleep. now i'm waiting for my family to see if we're going to jerusalem today (i doubt it, in gd's current state). and i'm going to need to take care of some work this morning, which i'm honestly not looking forward to because it's interfacing with third parties i have no relationship with, while on vacation :/

pains in the neck

 wednesday was rough. i was fine in the morning - i took mr smear on an "outing" to pick up a parcel, which was nice* - and i was fine until i got into the office. but at some point something in my neck / shoulder spasmed and started pushing on a control nerve, which immediately triggered a painful headache, dizziness and nausea.

* he made a point of carrying something heavy because his new "resolution" is to not be lazy. that last all of a day, and then the next day he made a new "resolution" to be lazy again 🤣

and then i had to navigate two arguments with coworkers, mostly in a position of having to calm them down.

after a while i realized that i was on the verge of fainting, and i packed up and wobbled my way home.

i felt a it better after lying down and stretching and massaging my neck for a couple of hours, though i managed to bruise myself rather severely. i spent the afternoon / evening learning the hard way that my lead's warnings about never modifying git submodules directly were bang on the money.

...

yesterday was better, though i was still sore (as well as bruised) and my neck was threatening to go bad for its entirety. a coworker leant me a small but surprisingly powerful massage tool that i tried a couple of times, but that literally made my eyeballs bounce in my head and made me start feeling nauseous...

i started the day trying to read a canticle for leibowitz, which starts off well enough but i was still too sleepy to get very far.

on the way to the office, gd and mr smear joined me for a mission to the appliance store where we ordered a replacement oven (even with delivery it's cheaper than a repair attempt) and picked up a blender to boot. which i carried to work in the unexpected dribbles of rain that started when i left the building and only stopped once i found cover again.

it was a long and intense day, beginning with me moderating squabbles between my teammates and trying to keep everyone with eyes on the prize in spite of personal differences towards approaches. there were lots of feelings.

i warned everyone that we needed to rip the bandaid of our old tooling as soon as possible, and for my sins they complied. we're running into a lot of teething troubles, but rather sooner than later ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

my interview with one of the investors was postponed, which turned out to be a good thing because i spent most of my work hours running between people to give them assistance. or cheerlead. or commiserate, such as when my lead got irritated by a linter i'd introduced and somehow managed to deep-six hours of his work.

anyway.

we received some nice passover gifts from the company.

lipgirl had put me onto a midi controller (the akai mpk mini mk2), and i really wanted to pick it up before the weekend. at 19.45pm, i had just sat down to dinner when the seller contacted me to say he'd be at azrieli at 20.15pm, so i ate too quickly and scrambled to get there on time. in spite of the evening bus schedules and regular protests, i arrived with a few minutes to spare...

... and then had to hang around for another half an hour before he showed up :/

but he was cool, and i was happy to have paid about half price for a piece of equipment that looks really good and is in really good condition.

on my way to catch a bus home i walked past an old grocery store cashier who's always very kind (she's taken a shine to mr smear) and waved to wish her a chag sameach, and she called out for help - she's injured her leg, and was having trouble carrying heavy groceries to her bus stop. i gave her a hand, but as we arrived she suddenly realized she hadn't swiped her card when she left, so i quickly ran back to take care of that.

so it was with a good vibe that i caught an unfamiliar bus, with the driver making sure that i got to the right stop. and then i came home, chatted with my mom**, showered, put my son to bed, opened the gift bottle of gin and tried to continue watching redline. gd got bored, and wasn't interested in akira, so we ended up watching some of nightcrawler before going to bed.

** oh! my brother's oldest got married yesterday. none of us were invited :P

...

today: i think i must have spent about three hours trying to figure out how to connect the midi controller, create the requisite accounts, install the basic software packages... i'm sure there's a whole bunch of stuff we've yet to learn, but by the time we left the apartment for a gift-shopping run i'd at least managed to get mr smear able to play with samples in cubase elements, and he was making pretty cool noises.

[gd shatters a bowl in the kitchen]

we walked down to ibn gvirol, where gd got additional holes punched in her belts, we picked up a bottle of cognac as a gift for the seder, tried and failed to find someone to cut a new house key for us, gave up waiting for laffot, scarfed down sandwiches at cafe eva (and found black salt!), made it back to our local hardware store in time to pick up dehumidifying slabs, and have spent a cozy afternoon doing not much.

mr smear just got through his homework for the day without a fuss, and he did it well, and now we're settling in to skip shul and watch prince of egypt instead.

...

i just finished watching dave smith and douglas murray on joe rogan, which i found deeply disappointing. if nothing else, murray could have talked about the outrageous efforts israelis make to avoid civilian casualties, but either way he wasn't on form, and his manner rendered him less than effective. looking at the comments, he didn't convince anyone of anything.

gritty

it's almost 2am and i just opened a pull request for something that i really felt needed to be done by morning so that other devs can get to work without us continuing to do the wrong thing immediately after holding a kickoff meeting and telling everyone that we were no longer doing the wrong thing.

mood: shit, after a pretty exciting day and a pleasant evening (though long, and with some shitty parts), gd and i had a fight. while mostly resolved, i'm left feeling really sad for her because she's making it harder for herself to build a community around her than it needs to be. in addition to it being really hard to do so when you're barely able to go out and do things and in pain all the time.

...

sunday:

after we got home, i decided to take him to dizengoff center to look at MIDI controllers. their cheapest was too expensive, but we passed the tabletop gaming store, grabbed a box of star munchkin and a table, and mr smear and i had a fantastic game which he thoroughly enjoyed in spite of the smell of unwashed teenagers surrounding us.

score!

gd was finishing up at the dentist (racking up a bill that literally left me in shock - most of a month's rent), so mr smear and i found a spot to eat a falafel and he was really happy with it.

yesterday:

the day started alright, with me getting up early and deploying something so as not to block anyone while on vacation. my coworkers apologized for disturbing me :P

gd and i had our parental guidance session and halfway through my neck spasmed. i spent most of the rest of the day in pain on the couch.

pain is exhausting.

mr smear started practicing ma nishtana, and i'm hoping he won't chicken out again at the seder this year :P

i also helped him get through one of his homework assignments, and in spite of himself he pushed through. by the time we were done he was refusing to only listen to the part of the podcast episode on harriet tubman they were asking about, and actually seemed to appreciate it in its entirety.

we started watching paddington over dinner. it's good.

today:

i slept a bit better, my neck is still threatening but it's been mostly alright.

it was a busy day in the office. the coworker i was talking to on thursday morning dragged me in to show me the direct results of our conversation; i only have a vague idea of what they're doing but it certainly sounds cool. my lead and i ran a kickoff meeting to get everyone onto our new tooling, and we prepared for an investors visit, and i had a 1-on-1 with one of the founders which was really great.

he liked my re-framing of what we're doing, and half of lunch time was spent pitching my vision to more people :P

pretty much the rest of the afternoon was spent setting up a devcontainer for my team, which was an exercise in frustration that had me stress-eating (my old boss called me out when he noticed). i then paused to pick up gd's new passport (accompanying and assisting my heavily pregnant coworker along the way), then tried and failed to find kala namak for a stretch before returning home for dinner.

as soon as mr smear was in bed (and after reading some more of the colour of magic), i resumed the devcontainer mission. i'm really glad i finally got it working, and i hope that the lessons i've learned will prove useful somehow.

...

there's a lot of random personal stuff that needs to get done all of a sudden, and i'm having a really hard time getting through it. like, picking up post and fighting medical bureaucracy is one thing, but it looks like our oven just died, and we have no idea what to do about mr smear's extramural and holiday activities...

sleep deficit

i certainly could have used some more sleep. i say that, but it's approaching midnight again... one of my bosses asked this afternoon if not sleeping could be making him stupid. i suggested that not getting sufficient REM sleep prevents our brains from processing information.

"so... you're saying i am stupid?"

aside from getting mr smear up and to school in good spirits (and reading my kindle instead of looking at screens), i managed to get some work done and have a meeting with my (direct) boss before gd and i headed out for our meeting.

the meeting went pretty well. gd had a couple of emotional moments, one positive (the new principal gave her a hug) and one negative (the old principal got a lambasting in absentia, with gd comparing her to a "hair on a soup"). we learned that mr smear's chief bully is on the spectrum and mr smear takes it personally when he makes faces and noises that - allegedly - are him self-regulating 🤦

we've agreed that mr smear's current shit class is probably the best place for him, primarily because they made the other classes sound even worse. i'm not sure how i feel about that.

i walked gd home, then continued on to work, completely forgetting to help her prepare to cut mr smear's hair after school. which in retrospect must have been a good thing, because the washing machine technician arrived a day early to examine it and decide that gd had simply been using too much soap 🤣

most of the work day - the bits that i was in the office for - were straightforward and productive, though i am a bit unsure as to whether what i'm doing really qualifies as meeting my deadlines. and i received my first full payslip today, which was less than i was expecting. i had to go over it earlier this evening and i'm hoping my insurance broker will agree with my assessment...

between my morning chat with my boss and an afternoon chat with our (unofficial) head of communications, i feel like that was the most productive part of my day.

i left the office early to meet gd at the orthopaedist's offices. we arrived early enough to buy new pillows and get a few groceries, and eventually found the clinic itself. the examination was brief, and now we're on to the next specialist (the one we knew from the beginning she needed to see).

we got home just as the play therapist was leaving, and after unpacking the groceries that had been delivered i sat down with mr smear to continue The Homework. but that took longer than anticipated, mainly because we had a couple of in-depth talks about All The Things.

the simpsons over dinner - gd's experiment with making vegan chopped liver for passover was a complete success - and then a fairly relaxed bedtime / finishing john wick (it's a well-executed 80's-style action film) / run on kaycee's mod / and now this before going to bed.

service with a _____

overall, i think it was a pretty good day. i didn't sleep enough but the sleep i got was good, and the morning started off well, albeit uneasily. i dropped mr smear off at school with a good feeling. i flipped our mattresses, and took care of some paperwork and other minor things... and then tried to book a technician for the washing machine.

...

i tried their whatsapp account first, but at some point - after gathering all the data i needed to get through the menu system - it seemed to freeze.

so i called. i was number ten in the queue. after about ten to fifteen minutes of muzak, with a tone every few seconds to make you think someone's about to answer you, there was a pause, a real tone, and then the sound of a call being hung up.

furious, i called again. this time number twenty in the queue. the number's seemed to be going down pretty quickly - one or two each minute - so it was only another ten to fifteen minutes of that muzak with the tone... when a woman's voice finally answered, i yelled just to make sure she had no excuse but to talk to me.

after all that, all she would say was "give me your number so we can call you back". i fought down the urge to yell at her to be ashamed and gave her my number.

later, i'd see a response to the whatsapp messages and learn that i needed to go through the process with a different service 🤦

...

on my way to work i noticed that the unicode code for the tiny heart fingers emoji (🫰) is FAF0. i'm not going to forget that in a hurry. i message an ex-coworker who loves that sign to share the weird discovery :P

it was my old boss' first day as my new boss, kind of. our roles and reporting aren't clear (intentionally), so i guess he's more like one of my bosses.

aside from trolling my team with an april fool's daily report, a very positive check-in with my boss (my direct boss), and a pleasant walk to grab lunch with one of our other bosses (oy) along with an interesting lunch time conversation about parenting and screens, i spent most of my work day getting an installation done over an unreliable network and when i eventually left the office, it was after much celebrating because i finally got the damned thing to work (i was actually starting to suspect a hardware failure).

pre-dinner was quiet, mr smear had apparently had a good day. and nystire and i spoke for a bit and might end up doing something interesting together.

dinner was nice, although we did get into The Discussion again about him accepting his reality - who he is, where he is, and what he has to do - which may or may not have had an impact, but i'm pretty happy with the metaphor i came up with: a heavy car is rolling inexorably down a narrow hill dragging an impassable wall behind it. you can try to stop it, but at some point you will get run over. you can try to go back up the hill, but you will be dragged painfully in the direction of gravity. or you can try to run alongside the car and try to direct it by pushing it to the left or the right.

(or maybe jumping in and steering is a better analogy. needs work)

...

then we had to do the homework page from yesterday that hadn't been completed, and what started off alright rapidly turned to shit. fortunately, we got out of the shit, but not without some serious feelings (and threats).

it took a few passes over the question, but then there was a magical moment where mr smear *clicked*, and he understood what he needed to do, and he enthusiastically Did The Thing. and he did it well.

i told him to hold on to that feeling, and understand what caused it. i pray he does.

even though it was a little after his bedtime, something inspired me to read a little the colour of magic to him before saying good night.

gd and i watched most of the rest of john wick, and i've spent most of the remaining evening updating my macbook, watching random youtube videos and playing inscryption.

holy shit, i didn't realize it was approaching 1am already and we have a meeting with the school in the morning.

rage against the machines (and little boys)

 i didn't sleep well, and a meaningful contributor to that was reading aethersmith's message that included the phrase "if someone came to with with the argument you are using re the israel / palestine conflict, would you feel the same way?" right before going to bed.

i took my time considering my response, discussing my thoughts with my family and my coworkers, and this evening sent this in response:

firstly, no. but that's because we're literally fighting against armies of genocidal maniacs who not only want to wipe out me and my family and my people, but have successfully infiltrated western media and academia and are convincing everyone that wiping us out is okay. let's contrast that to "you're stealing my art and hurting my livelihood".

nobody makes art without stealing art, and very few artists in the history of art have consented to their art being studied and practiced and cloned. if your art's good, people are going to want to copy it. up until now the only ways your artwork has been protected has been when the copies are clear attempts at forgery and are being passed off as authentic, and the barriers to entry in producing art being really high. 

you're upset because there's shit art. weren't you upset before?

you're upset because artists are losing work. that's fair, but everything's being disrupted lately, and that's not just because of AI or the current method of training models. and if anyone's livelihoods are being compromised, trust me - us software developers are the first in line for the chopping block.

am i worried about what's coming? honest answer: somewhat. but at the same time, we can choose to embrace and adapt or we can choose to fight.

i do NOT, in ANY way, condone you taking the fight to the users of the new technology and trying to coerce us into boycotting something we simply don't agree with you about. you think it's unethical? that's okay. we disagree. and that's okay too. your fight isn't with me, but maybe i'm just an easier target for you than the AI companies and people who are training their models without compensating artists. maybe you should fight with them about it.

and maybe you'd be more effective in getting people on your side if you showed a little bit of empathy, tried to understand that they're not evil scum because they're on the opposing side of a debate that you've decided shouldn't exist. sometimes it doesn't matter whether you're right as much as whether you're effective, and i promise you you're not helping your cause by gunning for individuals who aren't responsible for the things that are scaring you.

i'm not your enemy, and neither are any of the other end users of this incredible-but-highly-flawed technology.

...

this morning was okay, i walked mr smear to school and then continued on to the post office to return a bunch of stuff we bought that doesn't fit.

thoughts for the walk to and from the post office: the generative ai thing, and "real mean pick up after their dogs".

i cleaned out more crow poop from a windowsill 🤮, then gd and i did some grocery shopping, interrupted halfway by a visit from a friend. i ended up leaving for work a bit later than planned, but it was fine.

it was a busy day. my lead decided to pause the project i've been stressing over the past few work days, which doesn't feel very good but i understand it. a few of us walked to sumsum for lunch, which was nice. my lunch break, which usually lasts about twenty minutes, turned into an hour because someone got me talking about shakespeare's sonnets and someone from each subsequent lunch group caught the tail end of the conversation and then started a new one :P

we had a long presentation on "nonviolent communication", which wasn't very exciting, but had some interesting bits nonetheless. that triggered a political discussion with my lead that got a bit heated, but i think i managed to deescalate effectively.

i left early to pick up a handheld vacuum cleaner because ours finally died. they were out of stock, as was the closest store. [in retrospect, i could have tried their competitors across the road]

oh, yeah - and our washing machine's leaking. so i have to take care of that in the morning :/

i walked home, and tried to get through mr smear's homework with him.

that... did not go well. it went very badly. it went a lot worse than usual. he still doesn't get that this is home, and that he can't escape being jewish, and that refusing to integrate is only hurting him.

and this was all before we addressed the fact that his hebrew teacher sent me a report today informing me that he still hasn't been participating.

we had dinner, while gd simmered with rage.

we tried again with the homework. things got even worse. gd lost it. on the one hand, she was really, really harsh with him. on the other, i believe he needed it. he's developed a bizarrely warped view of how the world works and what's fair and what's not, and it's really not serving him.

hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

i played through inscryption, then responded to aethersmith, and then decided that i didn't have it in me to get any work done so i've been doing minesweeper.online quests while watching youtube videos. i'm starting to fall asleep now. maybe tonight will be the night 🤞

i might be coming down with something

i don't feel sick, i feel wired, but i feel like i might be in a holding pattern with a bug or virus waiting to land. then again, it might just be general fatigue, physical and/or mental. it certainly doesn't help that i've been having trouble sleeping the past few nights, nor that there've been a lot of incidents of emotional stress, both ups and downs.

...

getting mr smear to school this morning was good, but then i got a message from his teacher that he wasn't cooperating in geometry. and he wasn't: he was insisting that drawing pixel art of a circle was geometry.

jesus, fuck 🤦

hopefully that was the only incident. while gd was at the doctor getting prescribed more antibiotics and meds because she's got a full-blown lung infection in addition to what looks like a virus, i was at home doing online chores (like reapplying for her cannabis license), juggling a bunch of recruiters, and trying to get something productive done.

it almost feels like the most productive thing i got done today was snacking a lot :P

i picked mr smear up from school, brought him home to switch bags, then took him to his therapy session. i headed to the cinemateque for a coffee and to work, the barista was curious about my tattoos and i ended up on a tear about the injustice of how shakespeare's sonnets are taught when her initial complaint was that she hates the sonnet form. i hurriedly scribbed sonnetcomix.com on a piece of paper, grabbed my coffee and hid behind my laptop :P

i picked mr smear up and we took the light rail home, where i got some work done but i also crashed and burned in a chat with a recruiter about expectations (which i'm still feeling a bit gross about). then gd needed help with the washing machine, and got angry with me because she thought i'd broken it while i was trying to help, and that made a pretty gross feeling too :/

anyway, my son's sitting across from me and playing beautiful melodies on the keyboard, and i've managed to complete a piece of work that wasn't trivial at all, and gd's making pizza for dinner, and i think i'm done trying to be an adult for the rest of the day.

enter the wet season

what. a. day.

i dropped mr smear off at school with the usual pep talk, and it began raining just as soon as we said goodbye, as it almost always does when it rains. fortunately it was brief, and i had an umbrella, and i made it home pretty dry.

gd and i moved everything out the way for the delivery. the poor guy who wanted our old machine was upset that we couldn't wait, and i was upset that he couldn't make the arrangements in the (unreasonable) amount of time he'd been given. so that was a sad experience for all parties.

the delivery guys eventually arrived, and boy, did they charge us. but, to their credit, they handled everything from A to Z and left us with a combo washing machine/dryer ready for its first run. so far, so good 🤞

shortly after a bit of a breakthrough - i've been doing annoying work this sprint so far, and with all the distractions it's been harder to do the shitty things than usual - i picked mr smear up from school and took him to his math tutor. it began pouring down on our way there, and it was a joy to see him tooling around and enjoying the rain while we waited.

my usual coffee spot was washed out, so i went to a bakery and sat inside, warm and cozy, free wifi, nursing a really good latte that was significantly cheaper than the other place. i've think i've found my new place.

by the time i was ready to pick mr smear up, it had been bucketing down for a while and i struggled to get there without getting my feet wet.

it was wellington boot weather, and we were in our sneakers.

i made it just on time, mostly not soaked, but when crossing the next road with him we both stepped right into a deep puddle :(

the afternoon was a cross between me eating and snacking, trying to get work done, and being entertained by mr smear doing his keyboard practice.

and then his homeroom teacher called me.

...

it was such an emotional call that i had a hard time not crying on at least three occasions. it turns out the woman i wrote to yesterday wasn't the right address at all, but she did forward those messages to her and that saved a lot of time. it was a massively affirming to hear her confide that mr smear's class is a known problem case, and that the school's experience with the problem parents is the same as ours.

we don't have to prove anything to anyone.

it was also hugely affirming to hear that up until these past two weeks, during which mr smear has been making a concerted effort to improve his record, she'd been worried that he had an undiagnosed learning difficulty; but now, two weeks into him actively participating, it's clear to her as well that his only issue has ever been a motivational one.

i'm so freaking proud of my boy.

i asked her for her help in understanding the process of moving him to a different school, and while she's not happy that we want him / he wants to move to a different class in the interim, she's on the same page and is willing to do what she can. i think i made it pretty clear to her how appreciated she is personally, even while i expressed how little faith we have in the school as a whole.

...

i barely got any work done after that.

...

after dinner and most of the second men in black movie, but before mr smear went to sleep, my mom called to inform me that she's going to be hospitalized on thursday while they do some testing, it looks like the cholesterol problem she's been maintaining is starting to get worse.

her diet's been better than western standard, but still quite far from plant-based, and i really, really hope i can help her shift it further towards healthy. i sent her links to food choices and what the health, and i'm praying that she actually gives them a chance.

...

our conversation was interrupted by a rocket attack, which caught us out completely - mr smear and i only arrived at the shelter just as we heard the unusually loud explosions. we had a full shelter and it was raining, which was oddly cozy.

...

i'm tired, but overall i feel pretty good about how today went. tomorrow's the day gd's been afraid her - she has her dental appointment in the evening - so i'm praying that everything goes smoothly 🙏

eating (us up inside)

 yesterday:

after a night filled with anxiety and running through conversations and arguments in my head - i had to get up on multiple occasions to just try and calm the storm, but for the most part i couldn't sleep no matter how exhausted i was - i woke up yesterday morning and immediately got to work contacting his homeroom teacher and their "integration teacher" (whatever that title means).

i ended up writing a small wall of text during the day, both to the "integration teacher" and mr smear's therapist, because they didn't have time to actually talk, and i think i conveyed pretty much everything. i have a meeting scheduled with his homeroom teacher this afternoon, hopefully it'll be constructive.

at the same time, i spent a fair amount of time yesterday trying to arrange for someone to pick up our old washing machine, but it ultimately turned out to be too complicated. there really needs to be a service for this sort of thing.

work itself was a long day trying to understand the mysterious failures we saw on thursday, but which have presented themselves entirely differently. it's been driving us all nuts.

...

ultimately, when i got home and interrogated mr smear i learned that he'd had himself a pretty good day. that was a huge relief. and i believe it's in large part due to the idea of him working to get out of the school, and the conversations we've been having in which we've made it abundantly clear that we understand what he's going through and that we're on his side.

...

last night we finished re-watching spider-man: no way home, and we disconnected and wiped down the washing machine. i expect this morning is going to be complicated, i'm relieved that it's a monday and that i'm working from home for it.

...

in other anxiety news, gd's been diving down a despair spiral worrying about tomorrow's dental work. it's really hard to confront someone else's demons and *feel* supportive and not confrontational at the same time. i've made it clear that with all her hypnotherapy training, i expect her to *immediately* prioritize either finding a way to treat herself, or finding a therapist, to deal specifically with a stress response issue she's been suffering from since childhood that really messes with her - it's a big part of the reason she's been struggling to eat for the last couple of weeks and it's really scary.

...

speaking of unintentional weight loss, i'm still struggling with intentional weight loss, along with accumulated financial losses. it doesn't help that our friday evening plans were cancelled last-minute leading to us eating an expensive meal in a restaurant right after we just dropped a couple of thousands shekels on a new washer/dryer and before a day of car rental, and that left our freezer with three tubs of delicious vegan ice-cream in it. it doesn't help that mr smear left saturday's birthday party early after we bought two large bags of marshmallows and two slabs of dark chocolate,

we're being as careful as we can be to ration these desserts. as careful as we can be.