sense of accomplishment

 today was pretty solid. it started off with me finally closing the PR i opened on january 4th because i'd gotten to a point where i had an enormous number of changes by AI that i knew i couldn't trust, and in addition to feeling like the project is ready to proceed in an orderly fashion, i also think i've leveled up in my agent orchestration skills.

i managed to get mr smear set up for his remote classes today - he had four of them - and for the most part he participated. gd took over when it came to his phys-ed class, and apparently worked him a lot harder than his teacher ever manages to 🤣

i feel like i got in a good day's work, though it's kinda hard to tell these days.

i'm still feeling dumbfounded by the fact that my network issues were primarily about a bad cable connection. i ordered a network bridge to replace my router, at big data's suggestion, but when i spoke to the technician this evening he convinced me that that's not such a hot idea.

i had to book a ticket to the comics library, pandemic-style, and i had an oddly emotional moment when mr smear started listing the books he wanted and i asked him to send me an email. and, gosh darn it, he did. he figured it out by himself, and then proudly came over to my desk to see what it looked like on the receiving end :)

after a bus ride and a walk - which i realized halfway i'd been watching random shit on my phone instead of appreciating being outside - i arrived there just in time for an attack. one week into the war and i'm already spoiled, because ten minutes with no network connection was hard.

i was amused to learn that while all the books mr smear wanted aren't available, they're all on order already because he asked for them. i picked up a few that looked interesting, and then i walked to the second-hand bookstore in the hospital complex.

now that i know it's a second-hand bookstore, it's selection and vibe make so much more sense! i picked up my copy of my name is asher lev, and then found myself purchasing a hebrew translation of a new mike maihack spider-man comic (we loved the first two) and then i waited for a bus for too long before walking off and being passed by no less than five of them all at once.

so i walked home, and became thoroughly engrossed in completing my wife's phone swap before beginning my son's phone swap. it's a lot of effort - primarily when it comes to not signing up for stuff we don't want - but eventually i got to the point where i could set up paybox young for mr smear. it's an awful UX, everything about the program is to trap kids and parents alike, and i was extremely frustrated and irritable by dinner time. but after dinner - after boring my mom so much with the money stuff that she had to excuse herself from the conversation - i finally managed to get his money into his savings account, and i think there's a way to make it work without costing me an arm and a leg.

there was stress at shower and bedtime - mainly about mr smear moving too slowly, as usual - but i read to him and it was a markedly improved experience from last night. now i've sent him an email - to the other email address that he won't have access to until he's much older - and posted this, and i think i'm pretty close to being ready for bed.

the hummus mistake

 yesterday:

i picked up the books on my way to the office, the original french version of asterix le gaulois along wiith roald dahl's dirty beasts).

it was a bit of a weird day, in that it was quite relaxed :P

the most important thing i did was sync with bigtalk about finishing his current task in time to demo it to the team this afternoon, and i really hope we're going to be ready.

a bunch of things made me get around to lunch quite late, and i got it into my head to cross the road and pick up hummus. and chips. and falafel. it was great, but i ate way too much (and that's without touching the pita), and when i started falling apart i decided to make a break for it and go home early.

i was almost home when my alarm went off reminding me of a meeting with our security providers. i died inside.

i arrived home, and immediately jumped onto the call, only to realize very quickly that it was a marketing lecture and i was trapped. i immediately shut off my video and spent the next hour barely holding on to consciousness. then i hit the bed for a proper nap.

i woke up in time for dinner, but i didn't eat anything, just joined mr smear in watching wish dragon, which turned out to be a great movie (mr smear shed a tear or two). the rest of the evening went pretty smoothly.

at 10pm, i jumped on a call i'd invited myself into for the test deployment of a feature that one of our contractors has been working on for about three months now. i'd intended to be there just to back-seat drive and make sure that nobody was engaging in deployment shenanigans while we're busy refactoring everything, but after a while it became clear that they were 100% dependent on me to get the job done.

two hours later, we'd successfully deployed and configured, and i was beyond ready to go to bed.

today so far:

aside from a fight (over video call) with mr smear about using his phone at summer camp, it's been a pretty relaxed morning so far. now i'm having an early breakfast and getting ready to face the day.

winding down

 it wasn't too bad a day. i rollerbladed to work, which was very quiet because i was the only one in the office. in spite of things getting a bit hectic at one point, i managed to complete the frontend work that's been upsetting me for the past couple of weeks and returned home for lunch before taking mr smear to his jiujitsu class.

while there, i did a little more work - but nothing too serious - and when his class was done we returned home. as we stepped off the bus, the sirens sounded and we scrambled through narrow stairways into a deep bomb shelter along with a large number of coffee shop patrons, most of whom were clumsily wielding their dairy-based drinks in a way that made it anxiety-inducing to navigate to a safe corner while keeping mr smear out of contact.

god damn.

anyway, it was unpleasant but we didn't have an incident, so that was a win.

we both showered quickly when we returned home, and there was time before dinner to fire up the vr.

gd and i agreed that we could afford to get him one of the vr games, and he decided on battlezone, then he discovered that i'd downloaded a bunch more vr demos, so instead of buying something we dug into those instead - and we had a really good time. there were two games in particular, which caused a bit of a fight at first because we didn't understand what was going on or why mr smear needed us to tell him what was happening, but once we did get it they were brilliant. and then i took a turn, and i was absolutely blown away by how good the vr experience was!

after dinner, mr smear went to bed, i posted my two books on gumroad, and then gd and i settled down to re-attempt deadpool & wolverine. we made it a bit further before we were both falling asleep. it's really fun, we're just really tired...

i haven't slept well in a while, and i know that going to sleep early will cause problems, so i carried on fine-tuning all my online offerings and i'm now pretty happy with how things look. i think i'm about ready for bed now. i hope i am.

i'm very excited that i'm going on vacation tomorrow evening.

big days

yesterday:

after dropping mr smear at school, i went home to send my wife off to her first sewing lesson in israel and then went to misrad hapnim to see if i could find a human being to talk to. i was duly informed at their information booth that there are no human beings to talk to, although i suspect that it wouldn't be in a lawyer's best interests to encourage doing things without them.

it's a lucrative business, immigration lawyering... anyway, i got some helpful information from her, and from the woman that i'd contacted on wednesday, and those two sets of information gave my mother some direction, and relieved a lot of pressure. so that's good.

the work day was mixed, but ended on a really high note - and by high, i mean manic. after hours of bashing my head against a wall, i finally found the missing piece of the puzzle (thanks to a coworker stumbling across a chatgpt answer that was completely wrong, but unwittingly included a hint that i could  make use of) and got everything working smoothly.

then i rushed home, picked up mr smear and my rollerblades, and we headed to the climbing wall. the rides were good, there was minimal resistance from mr smear, and all-in-all we had a really good time.

gd's sewing lesson went really well, and she's extremely excited. which is very exciting for me, as well.

today:

dropping mr smear off at school, then wasting an aggravating hour trying to get technical support from our internet provider. then gd joined me to afeka to pick up the puzzle book that finally arrived: aleksandra artymowska's around the world in 80 puzzles. and buy some nice stuff from the store the post office uses as a front.

then we bussed to the mall, did some grocery shopping while i became progressively hangrier and less patient for all the friday morning mall people, then walked home in the oppressive heat to eat breakfast, then picked up mr smear from school and walked up to do a quick pharmacy / hardware store mission before finally coming home, doing lots of dishes, and then relaxing.

i mean, doing a little work, then watching random stuff and playing a bit of inscryption. act iii is hard.

ending the day riding to meet the mongoose and his daughter and go with them to the beach, mr smear not only riding well in both directions - and appreciating how quickly we got there and back - but also really enjoying a beautiful afternoon / evening chilling in the water.

a big dinner, and delicious dessert (the chocolate halva from the grocery store is amazing), and now we're full and sore and tired and ready for bed.

s'not

 godsdammit, mr smear and i are definitely sick with a sinus / nose / throat / chest thing. AGAIN. it's been non-stop struggle since the last round of covid. this thing started at the beginning of the week and i was sure it was allergies, but now i'm convinced it's not.

i took mr smear to school this morning, but we turned around once we got there due to the nose thing. so the day started with me sitting between gd and mr smear, gd retranslating the text i worked on last night into french, and mr smear doing his hebrew homework.

it was another battle - as always - to get him to accept the fact that he was going to do it at all, a lot more effort than was actually needed to just do the thing. after all the nonsense, he breezed through it.

...

the work day was long, but i feel good about how it went. i bought the first volume of one piece on kindle - it's not a great reading experience, sadly - and i canceled my subscription to midjourney in favor of trying out GPT-4o. it looks insanely powerful.

...

i'm disappointed to have seen a moroccan ex co-worker doing the "free palestine" thing.

...

i'm falling apart.