game/sleep journal entry

 i slept surprisingly well last night, having gone to bed around midnight (after slaying some of the spire) and waking up a little before 6am. then i sat outside, enjoying my coffee and completely oblivious to the world around me while being sucked into the drama of my favorite thing is monsters. i feel like it's inappropriate for mr smear for a number of reasons, but also not, and the artwork is incredible.

now it's time to work on my presentation, so i decided to screen record my game menu so far and post it to the very quiet async game jam group. i'm very proud of how this is going.

 

is it art?

 we were excited for the end-of-year exhibit, and mr smear was apparently excited too, as evidenced by him phoning us from the secretary's office ten minutes before it started to ask us where we were.

but once there, he wasn't interested in letting us go through the exhibit - which is what we did last time - he tried to rush us through and made it quite unpleasant. eventually, we got to the very, very, very last corner of it and found his works. his class had three pieces up, and mr smear only had two of his on the boards, and of those pieces one of them was upsetting to gd because it involved roblox horror with a rabbit being chopped up.

so... not the greatest morning we could have imagined.

we bussed home, then went out to do the weekend shopping. about halfway through i suddenly felt ill, most likely caused by nerve pressure in my neck. the rest of the expedition was unpleasant to say the least - i despise friday shopping on a good day.

we came home, i lay down for a while, and felt a bit better when i eventually got up again. good enough to try taking apartment the shower head holder that's been bothering gd since we moved in.

it was gross, badly rusted, and it took a while for me to get it off the wall. leaving this:

but is it art?

see that shiny eye? that's the sharp remains of a screw that's not coming out.

i then returned to the store with mr smear to pick up a sixpack of water that i'd been in too much of a rush for earlier, and gd called me, distressed, because she'd bought the wrong kind of rice flour for the dumplings she and mr smear have been desperate for. a bit later, there were yells from the kitchen, which rapidly made their way into the office - gd had figured out how to turn the rice flour into sweet / sticky rice flour on her own!

and there was much rejoicing.

it's now erev shabbat, and i'm not quite sure what i should be doing, nor what i want to do. but i will post this:

AI slop, AI slop of horrors, AI slop, AI slop of terror...

weekend vibes

sleep journal entry:

i had four coffees yesterday. prior to my third coffee, i was falling apart, foggy and tired and sleepy and having trouble concentrating, for at least forty five minutes.

i woke up this morning from a dream in which i was arguing with schwarzenegger's terminator over how to approach an accounting problem.

yesterday:

i had some stuff to do in the morning, but i ended up having a long chat with urchin instead. i feel bad, because i think i made her feel bad about her new corporate employer when i talked about the trust issues in our industry that i previously posted about...

...

on my way into the office i had an idea: i think a lot of what's wrong with western society comes down to having been raised to believe that we can be anything and we can do anything, which, when taken literally, ends up with people who cannot bring themselves to accept and deal with reality. it's a societal illness.

...

the team i sit with was off volunteering, to it was a quiet morning in the office. it was still kinda quiet after they came in, so it was mostly a relaxed end to the week and i seem to have gotten a handle on the current phase of my project.

i came home for lunch, ate a couple of lotus cookies and fired off a troll message to mr smear thanking him and implying that i ate them all. when school ended, i received the following response:

both hilarious and scary - on the one hand, it felt like a "we need to talk about kevin" moment, on the other i was highly amused by his emoji fluency 🤣

we discussed the upcoming exhibit, and he told me he was only missing one piece that got lost a couple of months ago, and i asked him to recreate it when he got home. as much for me and gd as for him.

a while later, i received a picture of his recreation, and it was brilliant ^_^

the office happy hour started less happy because i inadvertently raised the issue of them not having any vegan treats when i, personally, wasn't interested in the temptation. but my boss is also vegan (apparently), so the organizers were quite stressed about it.

i grabbed a beer, and approached one of the AI gurus about my openspec experience (which we'd briefly discussed a couple of months ago), and he offered to sit with me for a bit. we ended up spending most of an hour and a half in a flurry of installations and experiments, and i was pleased to see his enthusiasm when he finally grokked what it is i want to build. i learned a lot from the conversation in general.

i had an awkward interaction with my boss on my way out, he wanted to know my project timeline and i began explaining what i'd already explained to my manager, "assuming no more surprises, and every step along the way we've learned new and surprising things"... and he cut me off: "first the estimate, then the disclaimer" :P

i came home, mr smear and i strapped on our blades, and i took him for a round. he was really nervous and scared, but we got through it and he had some really good moments. we also had two encounters with really sweet dogs; the first, a puppy who was peeing himself constantly with excitement, the second a huge, fluffy, very nosey girl. i very much appreciate the additional positive vibe injection into mr smear's early experiences ^_^

just before we got home, he tried to roll a bit on a downhill and hurt himself as he fell. he was upset and started sulking away, and i caught him and told him he had to show himself he could do it - i'd been telling him the entire ride that his body's capable, it's his brain that needs to be aligned. surprisingly, for the state he was in, he went "fuck it", turned and rolled and t-stopped beautifully!

i was so proud of him, not just for the physical success but for the attitude, and for not ending the ride on a negative note.

we finished watching little shop of horrors over dinner, and got him into bed, and then i sat down with gd and we talked about something that she's always done when we watched tv or movies together that's really unpleasant*. it feels like we got to the bottom of it - it's more a communication thing than anything else - and it was a relief.

* she just fucks off, while we're waiting for her to continue. anyway, it's a little complicated.

i did nothing last night, and went to bed relatively early because my eyelids were feeling particularly heavy.

this morning so far:

i got up late, finished another chapter of watchmen, and finally replaced the UV light and purifier of the tami 4. something went egregiously wrong, though, and now we don't have a tami 4 for the weekend and a technician is (thankfully so quickly) coming in on sunday morning.

now that i've posted this, pausing to tear up at the opening sequence of darwish - desert adventure 2025 (quoting udi kagan's הלם קרב), we're about to leave for the school for the end of year exhibit, very excited to see what mr smear's been up to!

delicacy

 night has fallen, the candles are lit, the challah-peño dough is rising. i have a shot glass of rum i'm slowly sipping, and tool's lateralus album is playing, and mr smear is on the couch behind me reading moon knight after having finished the hebrew translation of lightfall.

nobody knows what's happening with iran and china tonight, or tomorrow night, or next week, but we're happy and grateful to have a calm moment right here, right now.

...

mr smear struggled last night and all day with a stuffy nose, but we had a really nice morning together and he was well enough to go to school. then someone came to look at the apartment and decided she wanted to proceed - coming in on the 1st was a problem, but gd and i talked it over and we agreed that the 15th was acceptable. not only does it mean someone taking over our obligations, but it gives us a couple of weeks' breathing room which is meaningful.

gd and i took a bus to the school, which was packed with families milling around appreciating all the artwork. mr smear guided us through his grade's stuff, he only had two pieces on display but they were really good, and we were amazed by a lot of what we saw - there're a lot of really talented kids there.

aside from the awkward horror of watching one of his friends' train-wreck family in action, and a couple of awkward moments with some other parents as well, it was a very good experience for all.

and then i managed to corner mr smear's teacher for an impromptu parent-teacher discussion, and confirmed that she's noticed and is appreciative of mr smear's efforts to sort himself out over the past week or two 🙏

mr smear got gd to point and laugh just as a bunch of his classmates were told "NO" when they were trying to leave early without adult supervision, and it was awkward for everyone.

we took the light rail to the hospital complex on the way home, stumbling upon an actual spar along the way and buying delicious candy-like dried strawberries, amongst other things, and then it was time for pharmacy and shopping. the pharmacy took a ridiculously long time, but mr smear set himself up in the food court and worked on his new comic idea.

once gd and i were done, we had lunch (i'd been passing out from exhaustion, but i managed to scarf down 

[pause mid-sentence to fight with my wife over "letting" mr smear read moon knight - he just asked me what "evisceration" means - after i explained that i already told him i haven't read it and i don't approve of him reading it. i can't force him. gd just asked if there's any sex stuff in it, and he said no, so she just raised her hands and gave up]

a really good falafel pita (mr smear had a "salad pita", gd sampled the rice with peas and dill she bought for the weekend) and then we walked home.

the rest of the afternoon had been pretty relaxed, and hopefully the shabbat will be too 🤞🙏

...

right, those dried strawberries aren't going to eat themselves.

the gaping maw

 what the hell happened today?

the morning started well, i had less dishes to do because i'd done half of them the night before, and my biggest distractions from reading more planetes came from mr smear engaging me in interesting conversation.

i got some offers for moving companies, and while i think i jumped on one too early, the guy sold me with his pitch that they're mostly olim and miluimnikim, it was the best price that still included all the "basics" (like insurance), and they did have good reviews (assuming they weren't bots).

a little more than half the price i was previously quoted.

otherwise, lots of communications surrounding the apartments.

i got to work in time to make coffee before my meeting, and while a lot of my day was frustrating (obstacles hidden behind obstacles, it was obstacles all the way down) i did enjoy some successes and i got confirmation from external sources that i'm on the right path.

lunchtime was weird; i went with a small group to the same shuwarma place, but they were clearly drowning in lunchtime demand and nobody seemed to know what they were doing. so it took a while before i finally got my order in (for the same thing i got last time, the poor cashier had to call his boss to clarify that what i wanted was legit) and then it took forever to get served, and then the high-strung server "did me a favor" by putting four things in a tray with three spaces and warned me this would be the last time.

i was more amused than anything, but one of the other guys got way worse treatment and was so pissed off that he's now on a mission to properly boycott them.

my client / boss sat next to me at lunch for a personal conversation. he seems cool.

i was uncomfortable all afternoon, i've developed a rash that i don't have time for :(

i called in the data engineering cavalry at the end of the day, and left on a note of partial success. also, complete bewilderment that an entire field can be at the mercy of cruel tooling that makes every step unpleasant guesswork.

i came home, unburdened myself (i'd fielded calls and messages all day), and then entered some drama with our landlords. only to be served a good helping of humble pie, because i'd apparently misinterpreted her responses last week and she is willing to keep the rent the same for the new tenants' long-term! that was an enormous relief.

oh, and mr smear had his own drama - some kid or kids has been destroying the bathroom taps, and the grade supervisor apparently made it clear she suspected him when she talked to the class about it. he seems genuinely upset ("i've do some really bad things, but i've never destroyed school property!") and i almost wrote something to his teacher, then realized that there is absolutely nothing i can write or that he can say that doesn't make him seem more suspicious.

and no matter how i feel about it, i really can't know for sure.

we had a good dinner, a generally good shower/bedtime routine (tool - ænima) and mr smear sung himself to sleep after i said goodnight, very excited that we're coming to see his artwork on display on friday ^_^

after that, i read through the revised contract the new landlord sent, which is almost ready, and then handled some random shit. including learning that there's a school website i didn't know about, filled with all sorts of reports including some of mr smear's misbehaviors... i'm very grateful it's only the minor ones so far :P

t-minus 12

 i didn't sleep enough last night, but i did wake up feeling less wrecked than the past two days. after doing a ton of dishes, and exploding at my family because there'd been a whole conversation about mr smear switching art streams and nobody had thought it worth discussing it with me*,  i actually had time to read makoto yukimura's planetes over coffee.

so far, planetes is really interesting hard sci-fi, and the artwork is amazing.

* i feel horrible, too, because he wants to do music and aside from burning a huge amount of money on this move, i have no idea what we'll be able to afford once we're there.

after mr smear left for school, we had a brief window of quiet before our alarms went off reminding us of an important appointment about nerve blocks that we'd both completely forgotten about. thank god we had the authorization ready already...

we walked to the pain clinic, and the doctor was very understanding and sympathetic. it was good that i went, though - gd's communication issues aren't always around language :P

from there i said goodbye and walked to my client's office, arriving in time to make myself a coffee (every morning there's an issue with the coffee machine on our side of the building, so it's a whole thing) before my daily meeting with my bulgarian teammates.

i'm under a ton of pressure, and (along with a bunch of others) lost hours of work today due to wifi issues. i even went home thinking it might work from there - also taking the opportunity to eat lunch, and discover that gd's been using our supposedly vegan fridge to store eggs, which upset me because we explicitly agreed no animal products in our kitchen - and when i couldn't get it to work from home i returned to the office and found the poor IT guy and got in line and eventually got sorted out.

the rest of my day was investigation in ML models, and learning how to run opensearch instances locally, and syncing with the two teams (overcoming a massive, weird communication problem with the only team member with tribal team knowledge), and having a massive info dump with a new face (fortunately recorded), and being unexpectedly hugged by my client / boss when he saw me 🤷

[oh, yeah - there was an "incident" last night when he chided me for introducing myself in a chat as a contractor. but i'm definitely a contractor 🤔]

i called mr smear after school ended to check in because gd made me paranoid that he'd skipped / gone to the wrong arts class. he freely admitted that he might get into trouble for touching his teacher's computer, but he assured me that he'd received permission from another teacher. you'd better believe i messaged that other teacher to confirm, and i was relieved when she not only confirmed, but also praised his behavior 😌

when i got home, it was to discover that gd and mr smear had gotten most of the way through his history homework - alexander the great, and military formations - so i took over from her and we managed to complete it before dinner, with only one minor incident that involved me convincing him that procrastination is poison and that it would feel much better to get it over with as soon as possible.

i was amazed when he agreed, relieved and pleased when he finished the work, and then we could sit down and have a very pleasant leftover dinner before heading into shower and bedtime.

i don't know which i'm more excited about: mr smear getting on my psytrance vibe for most of the routine, or him asking me (just prior to toenail treatment time) to switch to tool - pushit.

his toenails. i don't know if they're getting better. they're so fucking damaged it's horrifying, it's been horrifying to do the treatment every night. i really hope they're getting better somehow.

...

after receiving a ridiculous quote from a mover this morning, gd and i spent a large chunk of the evening trying to get quotes to compare. now it's 11pm and i need to decide whether i should go to bed (i definitely should), or do something entertaining. lightly entertaining, because i've been (obviously) watching lots of streams about iran, and today i learned about the british government agreeing to install the CCP in london, and then about the kurds in syria which i can't figure out if it's good or bad, and holy shit the world feels scary and messy.

if there must be ballistic missiles fired our way, it would be amazing if they could hold off for another 12 days so that we have an in-apartment bomb shelter 🙏

waiting for news...

 today was a weird day. mr smear woke up from a nightmare in the early morning, and his yelling woke me up from my own nightmare, from which i didn't get back to sleep.

one achievement was getting mr smear to agree to post his cartoon from yesterday, and after frustratedly trying a bunch of apps i ended up using gimp to crop it correctly. at least i had gimp.

it took a while, but i managed to get an answer regarding my unemployment, and i've put in a request to the employment office to submit my status to social security like they were supposed to...

i don't remember why i ended up having to rush to get to the office (my employer's office, not my client's), but i arrived *just* in time for a call with an insurance agent. after that, i found a desk and got to work.

it was a very quiet morning, but i did have a chat with a coworker who i learned is on contract with the company i was interviewing with when i signed my contract, which was interesting.

i went to sumsum for lunch, which was an opportunity to have a proper sync with my mom about mr smear's situation and warm up in the sun.

in the afternoon, we had the third session for our AI workflow course, and i was a lot more focused than the previous one. we ended a bit early, which gave me time to get home in time for my phone appointment with mr smear's doctor, who's apparently written me the referrals i asked for.

apparently mr smear had a good day, meaning he didn't get into big trouble.

...

after a long, long time using brave, i've finally reinstalled chrome and copied everything back over. there's so much good about brave, especially the vertical tabs, but i've finally lost patience with not having address history, and the syncing doesn't work as well...

...

aside from a fight with gd over musical tastes (it's a long, decade-old story), the evening was smooth, dinner was good and - oh, yeah. mr smear only went to bed around 9pm because he still had a whole lot of studying to do for his greek history test tomorrow.

oh! mr smear spoke to me in hebrew this evening, entirely of his own volition.

now i'm watching revolution updates from tousi tv and being devastated to have learned tonight that cory doctorow is jewish and has fallen hook, line and sinker for the palestinian genocide lie, and we're praying that we don't need to enter the bomb shelters tonight (or at all) because gd can't breathe down there...

the persian people have to win this. their bravery is incredible.

snapping

 i didn't sleep much last night, i was super uncomfortable. then i got up, did dishes, had coffee while updating my linkedin profile and email signature for my new employer - which turned out to be considerably more complicated than i expected - and then we did grocery shopping and then i left for work.

i was cold when i left the apartment, i was very cold by the time i arrived at the office. i found myself a gorgeous spot in the sun with a cup of vanilla coffee and a beautiful view over the city, and did some more onboarding (i counted, there're four different onboarding processes and a lot of the material is outdated or irrelevant, especially for a contractor), and then there was a presentation about a new AI integration, during which i struggled to keep my eyes open, and then it was noon and i was tired, and decided to go home for lunch.

...

i was waiting for the elevator when my phone rang. it was mr smear's teacher. he was okay, she said, but... they'd put him in this "social group" - a privilege and an attempt to help him acclimate - but he was so disruptive and disrespectful that they threw him out of it. but that wasn't enough, oh no... one of the girls brought a beautiful cloth banner for the class that said

"HOUSE RULES: 1. BE KIND 2. MAKE ART 3.  LAUGH HARD 4. DANCE 5. BE YOU"

and mr smear decided that it needed a finishing touch with his marker so that 2. became NAKED ART.

i'm so fucking ashamed.

and it's not the first time he's damaged someone else's art.

i contacted the girl's father and offered to try and fix it, he was very gentle in his response but hasn't responded to my insistence to try and make things right (and to get mr smear to make things right).

regardless, mr smear has been suspended from school - tomorrow - and he's going to be responsible for catching up any work he misses... which means we are going to be responsible. 

...

the rest of the afternoon was a mess. partially because i'm obviously distracted, but also because it's now day three and i'm on the back foot with my new job. i feel like i'm drowning, and it feels pretty clear that a) most of my first three days have been a waste of time and b) that their onboarding is a hot mess.

so now i'm entering desperation mode, which means i need to make some progress tonight.

and then i came home to have a "talk", or "family meeting", or whatever-the-fuck, and then help him with homework and get through the dinner and bedtime routine without strangling him.

...

i'm fucking tired, and fucking furiously disappointed in my child, and i've got to come up with a blessing for my kibbutz cousin's 70th birthday by tomorrow morning and we've got to start apartment hunting, and i guess i just wanna curl up and cry but i can't.

being an adult is basically just saying "i''ll get to it in a week or two when things calm down" until you die.

constructive behavior and eating out

on monday night, i balatro'd for more than a bit. i went to bed late, but having understood just why it's such a big deal - it's as intricate and unhinged as inscryption, only without the story.

i mean, i love the story of inscryption as much as i love the card game(s), but they're both really intriguing once you get deep enough.

...

yesterday:

mr smear didn't have an easier night, but we realized in the morning that his workshop wasn't yesterday after all, it was today. so that was a relief.

the first thing that happened was a conversation about the previous evening's drama, and for the most part it was pleasant and constructive.

the main part of my day was preparing for a work meeting, and then the work meeting itself. and in the evening, another conversation with my lead/mentor about a different contract, where he made it clear to me that it's entirely on me to pick contracts that i want.

i still have to wrap my head around this.

in the afternoon, gd and i took mr smear to get his chest x-rayed. the x-ray was quick, but the wait was kinda long and in spite of his not feeling great mr smear and i had fun wrestling a bit :P

on the way home, we stopped at donattelo's for surprisingly good vegan pizza, and a generally good experience during the break in the rain.

we watched most of equilibrium last night, which was really fun. oh! and our taster's box of hot peppers arrived ^_^

i read another chapter of the ocean at the end of the lane to mr smear, putting myself to sleep as much as him. i almost woke up completely between saying goodnight to mr smear and brushing my teeth, but in spite of it being relatively early i did fall asleep after a short while, and i did sleep through most of the night.

today:

i woke up from a long, convoluted dream that ended with me and tahoma chanting enthusiastically at some kind of work event.

i opened the first of my sunglass lens replacements to arrive, the photochromic ones. i'm convinced they're a scam, because they seem to change tiny slightly in the sun but they don't seem to be protecting my eyes from anything.

we weren't quite sure about sending mr smear to the manga workshop until about an hour before, by which stage we'd decided he was fine to go and he still seemed to want to go - which is surprising, considering his track record of nope-ing any activity outside of the house.

while he did that (with one of his friends), i sat upstairs and spent a couple of hours working on helper scripts for one of my projects. one of my now-ex co-workers came over to say hi, which was nice, and i find it interesting that he chooses the library when he needs quiet time during the workday.

mr smear seemed to have had a good time, even if the two of them had found the workshop a bit "childish". it took some effort to drag him out of the comic library (and lose the argument about him reading chainsaw man), and we did some urgent grocery shopping on the way home (most importantly, for gloves to handle the peppers).

and stop for a quick chat with the bakery owner, who's been getting into south african documentaries and was surprised to learn that chris hani's murder was such a big deal for all of us. and to hear confirmation of what he thought were exaggerations of the load-shedding and the crime.

and stop for a quick chat with ze irish german's wife; turns out they're all the same kind of sick as we've been (with the parents seeming to just have colds, and the children being knocked out of commission entirely).

mr smear and i had lunch and watched a king's quest playthrough together, and then a short while later we all headed out again to gd's check-up, from where we walked together to the dentist so i could pick up my new mouth guard (which fits!). we wanted to try a vegan place next door for dinner, but they only had QR code menus and the QR code wasn't readable, so in frustration we gave up and continued to lebowski, where we enjoyed a really nice dining experience.

mr smear got to taste shakshouka (not amazing, but decent), and gd's shuwarma (apparently great), and although my curry wasn't as intense as i would have liked, the experience overall was solid.

we just got home, mr smear's showered and soaked his feet and i've sorted out his toes for the night, and now we're going to light the candles and get ready for bed.

steps

 surprisingly, i went to bed pretty soon after posting and i slept relatively well. and we all survived getting up before dawn, and mr smear and i caught the bus on time.

bussing through bnei brak in the early morning was an anthropological experience full of teachable moments.

the surgeon inspected mr smear's toes, and made it abundantly clear what terrible parents we are for making him responsible for his own toenails. it was a relief to hear her say that they weren't bad enough (yet) to justify surgery, and that she wouldn't want to perform the surgery even if they were because that would require putting him under general anaesthetic.  she gave us a prescription, along with a list of instructions, and hopefully in the coming weeks we'll see some improvement 🤞

we walked to the light rail and i took him to school, then returned home for breakfast (and lots of responding to emails and messages) before leaving with gd on a shopping mission.

first stop: printing out her cannabis license and picking up acrylic markers for mr smear.

second stop: the shoe hunt. we went through a bunch of stores, on the way purchasing waterproof timberland shoes for myself*, and eventually ordered boots from katalina.

* expensive, but it's a much more professional-looking option than my humongous wellies, which i'll save for the more dramatic days

having (effectively) completed our mission, we walked to one of our favorite hummusiot and enjoyed a really nice lunch. and then - because for once gd was feeling up for it - we walked home, past a stationary store where we picking up a new school sketchbook for mr smear (he's filled the last one already).

i rested and read a little, and then took off again to go to the dentist, missing the bus and needing to hail a taxi. i arrived on time, but the dentist was super late... and then he had trouble with the scanning machine...

but the great news is that i didn't need to do an imprint! instead, there's a new optical scanning device. it's a lot less intrusive than an imprint, and when he eventually (half an hour later) managed to log into it i was blown away by how cleverly it's designed.

i came home, already having exceeded 20000 steps for the day. mr smear was very excitedly drawing deadpool with his new markers. the evening went smoothly (although gd's struggling with stomach issues due to some medication she's on), in spite of the fact that gd made me responsible for the post-soak toe treatment which freaked us all out.

i read the final chapter of the neverending story to mr smear. the entire chapter, so he ended up going to sleep really late, but it was totally worth it. what an insanely intellectual and entertaining story!

i didn't cry.

(i almost cried. i choked up a bit. but i didn't cry)

...

today was a good day. gd and i essentially got to go on a "date" this morning, i got a fair amount of stuff done and mr smear had a good day. additionally, i treated myself to a copy of blue prince, and i'm going to give that a go now before i go to bed.

meeting

 this morning started off a bit rocky, as i explained to mr smear the "new rules" which he immediately declared unfair and "evil". by the time he got to brushing his teeth, we were deep into synthknot territory* which is an excellent mood-transformer, and by breakfast he was ready to talk. he left the apartment in relatively good spirits.

* mr smear and i have both had psychovirtual stuck in our heads all day

i spent most of my morning updating people post-contract signing, i did a little bit of post-interview digging to understand where i went wrong (i failed yesterday's phone screen because i struggled with the details of a threading issue, which sucks, but whatever), and 

[omg we just received gd's renewed cannabis license! what an enormous relief!]

then i hopped on a bus to a part of ramat aviv i never remember exists to meet one of the guys i got fired with. i had a good vegan burger experience, and we talked shop, and it was very interesting hearing the story of his career and potentially connecting on a variety of side-projects.

he gave me a ride home, where i almost immediately crashed on the couch and remained out for quite a while. then i grudgingly got up (in stages), and got in touch with swordschool to discuss our december project. so far, i don't really understand the business side of things but it's very exciting stuff.

afterwards, we all went to the school for the parent-teacher evening. i just realized that we never spoke to his homeroom teacher, which is a bit embarrassing...

on our way in, we noticed a couple of the art pieces on the walls that were definitely creepy / horror themed, so not only is mr smear not the only kid so inclined, but the art teachers are clearly not that concerned by it. the two art teachers we met with both made it very clear that mr smear's talent is rare, and that his behavior is generally okay and improving. we informed them of his backstory and the things we're concerned with, which tied in with their experiences of him, and we left with a really nice feeling that he's in good hands.

the other parents were mad because the second teacher spent half an hour with us while there was a queue forming (the meetings were supposed to be ten minutes each, and it was getting late). when one of them came in to complain, the teacher calmly told her: "you will wait, this is important". while she showed us mr smear's work compared to some of the other students', and suggested that she's going to start challenging him with some more advanced stuff.

we caught the bus home, but it was late so i took mr smear to get a laffa. we had some difficult conversations along the way, but almost all in good spirits. i almost got into a fight with a big guy who refused to move his car off the sidewalk.

i didn't get anything for myself, but i did take a couple of bites and it was excellent.

we got home, mr smear got through the bedtime sequence in reasonable time, gd went to bed early, and i'm probably going to go to bed soon because we have to be up at 5.30am, even though i'm not sure it's going to help me get much sleep...

downturn

 well. i went to the offices, and i sat down and talked for half an hour. it was a pleasant conversation, i think, but it ended on a bit of a weird note and i literally couldn't figure out whether he's going to recommend me or not.

i mean, i really hope he does... i even ate additional pasta this evening...

...

during the interview, we talked about mr smear's school, and his comment (based on his son having gone there) was that it's a bit too individualistic. to which i responded that my son was a bit too individualistic before he arrived there. when i left, i spoke to gd and learned that, on track with that assessment, mr smear had got it into his head to use a marker to turn his face into a skeleton's, and was promptly sent off to the principal's office.

[gd and i giggling hysterically for a minute]

i keep imagining the principal keeping a straight face, as she asked him the following questions: in what class did you do it? what would your parents think? [there's a third question, but neither of us can remember it]

so this evening we had to explain to our son that there is a time and a place for everything... and that perhaps he might want to consider switching from film to theatre...

...

pre-dinner was rough. we had some homework tension (confusing questions about magic squares), though he did recover himself eventually and did quite well. but the downer was me receiving a phone call from the company that mr smear was with me for the interview, which i was certain i'd done really well in, to say that they were proceeding with other candidates.

that doesn't feel good at all.

bedtime was mostly good, though it was the second night in a row that mr smear made the final good night unpleasant, and now i'm processing shitty feelings and thinking about tomorrow morning, when i begin an at-home technical challenge that sounds like it might be complicated.

ocular migraine two

almost immediately after posting, i developed another ocular migraine. it's been a rough day since.

lots of switching between reading (blindsight) and resting, a little bit of disco elysium, and (when he wasn't reading) a fair amount of fighting with mr smear because to his mind it's not fair that he's being punished two saturdays in a row 🤦

oh, and as for his reading: gd decided at some point that giger's artwork wasn't appropriate (lots of genitalia, but it was the BDSM stuff that crossed the line), and he got into swamp thing, and coraline.

i helped gd prepare dinner tonight, which was basically us sitting around the table and making attempts at putting together onigiri, with varying success. it was delicious.

i had a good chat with scr tonight, he's invited me to join him in a project... i'm not sure i'll be able to, but it would be nice if it worked out.

at least mr smear's bedtime went smoothly.

bother

🤦

today was a mix of me finally finishing nightwood, and being uncomfortably conscious of how i've been spending most of my downtime watching crap on youtube while doing minesweeper challenges, or playing relatively mindless games (slay the spire and hades), and not doing anything constructive that does my soul any good.

i've been becoming more and more disturbed by the influences of social media and AI, by the dumbing down of humans and by the geopolitics that are being shaped around these technologies. god help us all.

...

we had yet another big fight with mr smear today, which was exactly the same as yesterday's and exactly the same as we've been fighting about for the past couple of weeks. again ending in what felt like a breakthrough moment, but who the fuck knows?

otherwise, he did a pretty good job of putting together a miniature sukkah for school, i went outside with him to gather leaves and helped him with the construction itself, he did an amazing job of drawing the walls, and it was great watching him do it all with a good attitude and seeing him feel proud of his work when he was done.

...

i'm supposed to be on vacation tomorrow. assuming no work emergencies, after taking mr smear to school i'll need to take gd to the hospital to try and get her some help - her shoulder's really in a bad way :(

enter the weekend

thought for the morning: what we need is a modern-day roBEN yeHOODa to steal our kids' attention back from english tyrant tech by providing addictive hebrew games and localized tween/teen programming

yesterday:

it was a very relaxing morning, i feel like i got into weekend mode a little earlier than was safe :P

it was a very interesting work day, and almost entirely positive. not least of which being a conversation with an incoming devops who's making aliyah on monday, and a surprise visit by a guy who appears to be our incoming devops manager. and it turns out he's the one responsible for bringing in the star we interviewed a couple of weeks ago. we talked for a little while, and found really good alignment, and by the time he left he'd signed the contract, which is excellent ^_^

...

when i saw (we use google's family link) that mr smear was off the shuttle and on his way home, i gave him a call to ask how his day at summer camp had gone. "it was great!" warmed my heart, and then i had to laugh because he was extremely enthusiastic about how good the second meal had been 😆

it looks like he's making friends and having a really good time, i hope it continues like this.

...

in the afternoon our late chief architect's family came in for a demo of what we've been up to, and we had a happy hour (or two) in his honor.

...

i was amazed to learn that our office manager is one of the officers whose job is to inform families of wounded or killed soldiers. i accidentally overheard a part of a sentence that i wish i hadn't :(

...

i managed to get home in time for dinner and deathnote, and we spoke to my mom who seems to be getting better (but was very busy patient-zero-ing yesterday so i gave her shit about being irresponsible), and shower / bedtime was pleasant and smooth. i told mr smear how proud i am of him, and how happy i am for him, that he's matured so much over the course of the past year, and this experience is convincing me that if the art school places open up he'll actually be ready for it.

then i settled in to complete some work i needed to do for a couple of my teammates, and what followed was a series of broken deployments with me becoming progressively more sleepy until almost midnight, at which point i gave up and dragged myself off to bed.

today so far:

i slept so-so, but the last couple of hours weren't great. i got up, and after a while scrolled through my notifications, and then retried the deployment one last time with the intention of rolling back a version if it failed.

it succeeded.

mr smear's just gotten up a little while ago, i've got yesterday's main points written down, and today's big plan is going to an art exhibition (work off art) across from my old office and maybe helping tahoma and his husband move apartments.

not broken!

 everything is broken, and ai isn't helping. i'm now spending an enormous amount of time fiddling with eslint and typescript configurations that are all designed to be as non-interoperable as possible, and this is what i'm doing on *my* time.

...

i struggled to get out of bed this morning (again).

we had a parental guidance session this morning that went well.

i managed to register mr smear for summer camp. it's ridiculously expensive, but it seems amazing and they even have a shuttle to our area, which may be expensive but not as expensive as me or gd having to pick him up here and there. and the timing is fantastic, because he starts going the day after my mother returns to SA. and, also, we're out of debt and we can (kind of) afford it.

i think i may have done something useful at work today, although i'm not confident.

i mean, aside from bringing home the black salt (kala namak) which has been offending some of my coworkers every time i use it. meanwhile, i'm not complaining about them microwaving fish in the communal kitchen. i did, however, complain about breakfast being all dairy except for lots of delicious bread, i'm not losing any weight...

and getting a recommendation for an interesting-sounding book (tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow), and convinced myself that a replay of the (three primary) daniel mullins games is in order.

there was a bullying incident at school today, it's still not clear what happened but it sounds like the english teacher just shrugged her shoulders and gave up on taking any action.

i had a long chat with mr smear's art therapy teacher, who scared the shit of me (as she does every year) by calling mid-morning out of the blue and making me worry that there'd been an incident.

i don't know if i've just got really dry skin or if i'm being attacked by something, so i had a vinegar bath and i'm using moisturizer and hoping for the best.

i asked gd to prepare a "go bag" in case of iranian attack, it looks like things may be heating up. i'm praying we get on with it and attack them for real and shut the IRGC shit down. also, making greta thunberg watch hamas atrocities is a stroke of genius.

[OMFG i finally figured out the configurations and things are working 🥳]

bonfires

 ah, i remember the conspiracy theory now: trump is burying israel so that he can bring us all in to the US as refugees where we'll rapidly integrate and give them a huge tech and manufacturing advantage.

...

yesterday:

another rough day, much less intense than before but with plenty of intensity left to go around. and lots of surprises / factually incorrect theories that led us down rabbit holes while we were trying to get something urgent (literally) out the door.

i ate too much vegan cake at the happy hour (and forgot to bring the rest home), while a new coworker regaled me with inappropriate tales about his parenting approach during covid. and i shared inappropriate stories with some of my coworkers about the horrible things my son has said to me over the years...

we managed to be "delivery ready" just after 6pm.

as it was lag ba'omer, i tried to find a bonfire but none were reasonably close / guaranteed to include actual bonfires. so instead, i took mr smear for a long, really good walk to the beach, where we had ice cream, and then we had a long, mostly good walk back (minus rushing into a stairwell in a random - but very nice - building when the houthis attacked).

today:

i didn't sleep very well. what made it worse was waking up in the middle of the night to pee, and seeing a notification from threads (which i've tried to opt-out from) for a particularly nasty and libellous antisemitic claim. it took me a while to calm down after that.

the morning started off pretty shit, with another fight with mr smear about screentime even though he's been punished with no screentime. that got ugly.

then i put in some work hours, figuring something out and then fixing a different thing, and then i took mr smear out for a walk. we went to the museum, where we saw some really interesting stuff which triggered some very big feelings (motherland), and although he needed some "herding" he came to the party and we left the museum with a good vibe.

the next part of our walk went really badly, but after he understood what the dynamics needed to be (i can't believe this is what we're doing these days) we made some good progress. our walk continued to the mall, where we had falafel for lunch and picked up two heavy bags of muesli which he carried most of the way home.

on the way home, we passed the war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness monument, and appreciated its structure.

i was really tired when we got home, but before i could nap i had to have a massive fight with my wife over trust issues, and i'm extremely grateful that in spite of all the feelings i managed to express myself well enough that it was resolved in a really positive way.

i did some more work in the afternoon, i managed to make some progress but nothing satisfying, and now the sun's about to set and we're about to make kiddush.

shabbat shalom

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 :/

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 🤞

morals and dilemmas

 i'm quite upset right now, and the current upset is triggering an earlier upset and everything's getting mixed up in my head.

[takes about half an hour to trawl the interwebs to see if he's referred to aethersmith by "name" before or determine which to use]

so a couple of days ago i heard about the studio ghibli filter, and i ran our family photo through it. the result was gorgeous, and i'm really pleased with it. today, aethersmith post the following comment on my photo: "this is gross. and shits all over artists." and then tahoma reposted something about how miyazaki is deeply upset by the use of the filter, so we shouldn't use it. 

aethersmith and i have been arguing about generative ai since it became a thing, he's very upset that training models on artists' works without consent or compensation is unethical. he's not wrong.

having said that, though, the use of generative ai is - to my mind - not quite so cut-and-dried. art has been cannibalizing art since its invention, and the only real difference between what ai models are doing and what human artists have been doing is that they're commoditizing it and doing it at a scale that's making us a lot more sensitive to it. imagine banning the sale of painting equipment, or preventing people from reproducing others' artworks... that could never make sense.

i'm sad that miyazaki hates it, but whether he appreciates it or not i see this whole ghibli filter trend as a beautiful tribute to his works. i believe a lot of other people do too.

pandora's box is open, and it's not going to close any time soon. i hope that this is simply a growing pain and that we evolve to a place where we have amazing tools that work for everyone, not just consumers. i believe that we can get there, and i believe that we must get there.

...

and that triggered upset over the brief conversation horseman and i had earlier regarding the zombie apocalypse that's been rapidly emerging around the globe. the hysterical destruction of tesla vehicles and infrastructure by people who believe that climate change is an emergency is mind-boggling. the complete rejection of facts or any level of rationality and fair-mindedness with regards the war in israel is mind-boggling. everyone has finally lost their minds after decades of "active measures" and disinformation campaigns and enemies of the west infiltrating its media and its universities.

gd and i were discussing this morning how a hidden aspect of the trans agenda is self-sterilization, and that there's a sibling component to that in how the west is leaning more and more towards tolerating and encouraging people who don't have children, and in doing so opening the doors to enemies performing a "land and expand" conquest, while convincing themselves that tolerating their enemies' intolerance makes them morally superior and anything else is racist bigotry.

i hope we all wake up from this dystopian nightmare before it's too late.

...

i didn't sleep much last night, and i didn't sleep well. we had some unpleasantness getting up in the morning, but it passed quickly, and after mr smear left for school i took care of a couple of things and then accompanied gd to her dental imaging appointment.

we arrived on time, at the right place, but there was no appointment. i tried getting hold of our dental clinic but there was no answer, and we were in the middle of resigning ourselves to having to go there in person to make a new appointment when the technician (or dentist?) picked up the phone and intervened, taking no prisoners and making it clear to whoever was on the other end of the line that it's not fair that patients are blamed for receoptionists not doing their jobs.

he handed me his phone and my jaw dropped as the woman on the other end informed me that we had an appointment booked, but hadn't paid. when i translated for gd, her jaw dropped too. this is all very literal jaw-dropping, by the way, we stared at each other, mouths agape, because we both remember very clearly paying for the appointment.

regardless, we instructed her to deduct the payment and she released our booking, and five minutes later we were out of there, having thanked the man profusely for going to bat for us.

...

the workday began with a rocket attack, so i took my coffee down into the basement for the first time (previously i'd just hung out in the stairwell, but i was curious).

...

highlight of my day: i helped our security consultants secure authorization for a contract for an important tool. afterwards, i overheard one of them discussing password policies, and i
(respectfully) got into it with him. i was getting some support from his coworkers, but then their Big Boss arrived (he looked vaguely familiar) and he asked him to step in.

he didn't hesitate to agree with my assessment - that password policies should enforce complexity and be easy to remember, not check arbitrary industry-standard compliance boxes that only cause people to behave in counter-productive ways. and any developer will happily accept occasionally using a second-factor authentication method (like fingerprints) over having to regularly reset their password.

after another round or two, they were enthusiastically on the same page and i really hope they manage to figure out how to implement a policy accordingly. as i told them: if they can get this right, every player in the industry will have their backs and be excited to work with them.

...

a couple of us interviewed an applicant in the afternoon. i'd prepared pretty well - though i've learned a bunch of things through the experience - but the actual interview was a bit awkward and it was only when pressed (afterwards) that i was able to put my finger on what was bothering me.

...

i didn't accomplish what i'd set out to, but i did learn a lot. i came home and had barely enough time to get mr smear through a page of his math homework, but he did such a good job and with such a good attitude that i was happy to put on an episode of the simpsons (homer the vigilante) in spite of it being too late for screentime.

after mr smear went to sleep, gd and i resumed watching slow horses. this is because i mentioned to my coworker how disappointed we were with its politics, and he threw me a spoiler that made us want to give it another chance. so i guess we'll see.

...

i've been playing inscryption again (tonight's the first night i've been feeling alright about taking things easy in days). i ended up doing a ridiculous run, with an unkillable geck (x2 thanks to goobert) and a reptile totem with an ant spawner sigil, and then an ouroboros that i was forced to sacrifice that was offered back to me, and then i put a morsel sigil on it, for completely OP combinations.