a week to reflect - i

let's see if i have what it takes to summarize this past week. it's been a bit nuts.

---work:

when the network goes down i become my own email.

...

ceh caught me when already really tired and droned on and on about things that don't interest me to the point where my vision blurred and i was struggling to stifle my yawns. all i wanted to say was "i don't actually care, can we just finish with the work?" but he's a bit nuts and i didn't want to upset him. the cto already complained about walking past his cubicle and finding him repeatedly and violently slamming his keyboard on the desk...

...

we have a new front-end developer who lacks in experience and education but makes up for it with enthusiasm. unfortunately, that cost me a good hour or so trying to explain how svn works. it was emotional.

during happy hour yesterday we were playing lunch money and really enjoying it. one of darn's developers asked for suggestions when playing a "humiliation" card. we'd gone with pantsing and a wet-willy before, the last thing we were expecting was for the new guy (creeper) to ask "how about fingering his asshole? that'd be pretty humiliating!"

we were all stunned. he's tying with ceh on inappropriate things to say to co-workers.

...

last week we said goodbye to our interns and one of our star players; i handled the exit interviews. it's nice to close a term on a positive note in both directions!

...

at one point during the week i needed to get stuff done and was told to work from home to avoid distractions. unfortunately, that meant leaving darn in charge and that's a recipe for disaster. what actually happened, though, was that i spent hours at home trying to decipher one of darn's developers' code (he's a great coder, but not into readability) while unable to use our software or development tools because mac.

i have been suffering my macbook since february and i can't believe i've lasted this long. i returned to work, interrupted darn sharing his opinions on a technical issue he wasn't familiar with, and spent a few hours configuring a new windows machine. i'm now off mac, all that's left to do is wipe it properly and return it to the company. the new machine has shitty battery life and i'll miss mac's touchpad, but otherwise it's perfect and lets me get shit done!

...

overall this past week has been unbelievably frustrating and demotivating. darn has not only been a right prick (i've actually felt like hitting him on more than one occasion) but he's been sidestepping me and keeping me out of the loop. he and the two developers megaman brought in have done a bang-up job of forming their own private team. moonlighter and the cto are still into secrecy and merging surprises into our codebase. i don't have the energy to deal with this kind of shit.

newk'd has been disappointing of late, considering that we're friendly out of the office i felt bad dumping on him when he didn't perform. having said that, it's not like he's not trying and there are some things he does very well. when i told darn to get him to do one of those things, darn responded with "he's not credible". not only was that absolute bullshit, he said it in front of a new intern and that's not cool at all.

during crunch, there were days when i was in the office for more than eleven hours. in order to train and spend time with scrapper i was going in early, and there were a couple of late nights. since the arrival of darn and the institution of arbitrary deadlines i've found myself entirely uninterested in investing more hours in the office. it's actually become quite depressing. yesterday we demonstrated our progress and everyone was very excited, but leaving the office i found myself thinking about how disconnected i feel and wondering how much i've actually contributed to the current project. the hours i spent on development were mostly spent struggling with the environment and not actually coding, and most of my input has been in advising others or working on the tool chain. darn's developers are good even if they're not amazing, and they're at least getting shit done.

not only is this all not particularly fulfilling, but it doesn't amount to much when quantifying my involvement in the project. i'm not satisfied at all.

[continued...]

profiling

this weekend has been all about anime, with a short break for mixed martial arts and a little bit of sightseeing and family. overall, it's been great!

---friday:

at 5am scrapper walked in, two hours earlier than expected. i wasn't in a state to greet so i'm glad i'd left him a note the night before.

in the morning i'd spent some time preparing for otakuthon by going through the schedule to highlight points of interest. they used the guidebook app which is really clever.

when switching trains on my way to work one kid sprinted across, not realizing that the other train would leave at least five minutes later. even so, the transport system is reliable and i don't feel that it's worth one's dignity to run.

---when i got into the office i spoke to megaman about my contract. i don't know what his deal is, this is the fourth time i've spoken to him about it and the third time that i've explained to him that the issues i originally had with it are non-issues and that we can proceed. it's weird dealing with a director who doesn't recall important details. in the afternoon i finally got a copy of it and we signed it: i'm finally officially working. and now i can get my options package :)
[now i just need to hang in another half a year until some of them vest]

---i walked in on darn giving the developers a hard time, and i'm annoyed that we didn't discuss it first. he's taking a hard line on the team and in one fell swoop he's flipped our culture. not necessarily for the worse - i won't say it's not good to have someone crack a whip - but i'm worried that the suddenness might over-stress the already stressed.

regardless, i think my role has been de-facto redefined and that's actually okay with me.

---ceh wanted to move because he claimed there were too many distractions on his side of the office, so i invited him to make the cubicle next to mine his. later he approached me and darn to complain that he couldn't work under those conditions, and we followed him while sharing puzzled looks as we suspected that he was hallucinating. it turned out he wasn't, but what was bothering him so much that he simply left the office was an intermittent and soft electrical snapping noise coming from the ceiling. he was shocked that it didn't bother me. we were shocked that it was distressing him.

---i went in for a massage, and about halfway through the massage therapist and i both registered that there were muscles in my back that when pressed were causing me to reflexively raise my legs. it was weird. anyway, it turned out that i needed that massage even more than i thought.

---i opened up thunderstone for happy hour and we had a good game. afterwards scrapper and i headed off to the convention. forget the videos, the stalls, the events, the panels, the videogames, and the karioke cafe. the biggest draw by far was the cosplay! it was unreal. literally. some of it was jaw-dropping, so ridiculously well-done that it seemed to distort reality! there were plenty more reasonable attempts that were clever or entertaining or both, some inappropriate or boring and some that were so bad and so wrong that we couldn't help but find them endearing.

we went to a panel entitled "the bad fanfiction panel: whathastobedone" that was, for me, quite disappointing. i was expecting it to be led by authorities who had something to offer and it was basically a handful of nobodies who weren't really good with talking to an audience. they didn't really share the horror stories, they just explained how much the horror stories had horrified them. such a tease! some of the readings were funny but they focused on "bad english" and not on "bad writing".

we focused more on a gorgeous jill valentine in the row in front of us. i was attracted even though she was vocally reminding me of annoying girls i've studied with.

i did walk away inspired to write some very specific fanfiction, and talking to scrapper about it had the two of us putting together a crazy crossover universe that works beautifully and would be so much fun to write! added to the list of things i really need / want to do. maybe it'll serve as a distraction from some of the others :P

---we got home really late and hadn't done shopping, so we ate at harvey's again. it's insane how slow those people are. i appreciate that it's not a bad burger at stupid o'clock in the morning, but still... they made us feel that if you want a reasonably good burger done reasonably quickly you'd do better to make it yourself.

i was exhausted but scrapper had been talking about a "dib shirt"... so i headed to vistaprint to put it together. between vistaprint and pixlr it really is fun and easy to put a good shirt together :)

---saturday:

i got very little sleep, i don't know why. i went downtown for a quick haircut and received very positive news about some offers on my apartment. after sending back instructions scrapper and i had lunch at subway and i picked up some good coffee before we headed back to the con.

we walked into the 404's improv, some of which was funny and some of which sucked. meh. we walked out of that and into an interesting-sounding panel covering academic enquiry into anime. the first panelist was interesting but the second spoke in french, which was unfortunately a deal-breaker. we walked in to a screening of fan parodies: some of it was unintelligible, some of it was cute and amusing and a couple of things we saw were absolute masterpieces, brilliant and hysterically funny. we had to skip the "masquerade pre-show" to reach the other side of town in time.

as the weekend progressed i felt less weird about ogling beautiful girls dressed up ultra-sexy. i (wishful thinkingly) feel like we're getting closer to a time when dressing that crazy will become normal...

---switching to fight night mode was awkward, but manageable. from giant herds of nerds to tough guys and mafiosos with real-worldly well-dressed women. it was a night of great fights, very few disappointments and some incredible action: all but one tristar fighter won, and seeing as we were there to support tristar we were pretty excited! it helped that we had excellent seats right near the octagon and could actually see what was going on without looking at the screens.

...

scrapper and i took great pleasure in coming up with inappropriate nicknames and entry music for fighters. like calling oneself "the hobbit" and stepping into the octagon to michael jackson - bad, for example.

---it was a surprisingly chilly night. we were tired. we went to a pizza place near saint laurent for "dinner" (i ate crappy fries) and then went home. as we walked in scrapper realized he'd lost my spare keys... serious bummer :(

---sunday:

a good night's sleep, but it only felt that way after i woke up early and went back to bed.

we left the final day of the con having arrived at the following conclusion: overall, the lesson learned this weekend was that buying tickets was a waste of cash as most of the fun can be had in the public areas where all the cosplayers congregate anyway.

we walked around the port for a bit and then headed up to the plateau. we walked through the tams and it's the first time i've seen it! it's really, really cool. i love how montrealers celebrate summer and just generally being in montreal :)

i may have gotten a bit too much sun. i went to godmother's for dinner, i joined yang for a long walking of the dog that included excellent sorbet from yeh, and yin drove me to the metro station and we said goodbye as she'll be returning to vancouver tomorrow morning.


---after a couple of conversations today i decided to try dating online. i spent ages setting up an account at match.com only to discover how expensive their subscriptions are and that you can't do much without them. jdate at least lets you make initial contact without paying them...

heavy weekend part i

friday:

i walked in to the office feeling good on friday, but apparently looking terrible.
"look at you, with bags under your eyes!"

the day was good and pretty relaxed, the only discomfort being an aggressive and condescending "figure it out yourself" when i asked him for advice on auto-remounting samba shares. if we weren't so desperate for server devs i'd have fired him then and there...

up until last week happy hour was drinks at l'artere, and last week's in the cafeteria playing pool was considered successful all round. this week we repeated it with board games - not everyone stuck around, but most did and it was a lot of fun! it also engaged a few of the usually shy and reserved devs. cls is usually really quiet and polite, and we all laughed when i put down a tile in carcasonne and he responded with "i hate you" and we could see that he was really enjoying himself :)

friday night boxing is usually a fantastic way to close the week, but with scrapper it was even more fun. the best part was impact / conditioning at the end, and that's very different when you're striking or being struck by a friend! i don't recall what it was, but something made me laugh soon after he started hitting me and once that started i was hard to stop :)

officially, that was how the weekend started. unofficially, it began on our way to an insanely delicious chinese dinner with the discovery that the sleeper couch had been hit by fleas and that scrapper was developing a rash and wasn't feeling well.

yang had sent me an invite to a party at the belmont, so we decided to check it out.

on the way we witnessed a guy play his flute at the police as an act of defiance, and walking past a statue on a street corner i "thought the buddha was a beggar, but i was wrong".

after saying hi to yang and meeting a cute and amusing friend of his who also got excited when she heard there was a trance party happening and that there was a chance we might hit it, scrapper felt so bad that he grabbed a taxi home. i stayed, and the drum 'n bass was delicious! i had a very good, very sweaty time.

---saturday:

i realized that i'd need to call it a night at some point and i wanted to check out the other party. i didn't see yang anywhere but his friend appeared right next to me, so when the music cooled a bit i asked her if she was up for the other party - whoops! i must have pressed her "creep" buttons because she rushed off with a disdainful and dismissive "maybe".

*sigh*

yang told me he'd only be leaving in an hour so i called it a night. i needed cash for the taxi home, promising myself that i'd learn the night bus routes.

inside the bank there were two homeless men sleeping right next to the atm, which is really not cool as there was plenty of space not close enough to completely surprise a potential victim :(

scrapper was sleeping so i didn't want to turn on the lights when i got back, and that meant tiptoeing and not eating :(

i'd somehow hurt my neck again, which really sucks. it didn't matter too much during the night because i fell dead asleep, but in spite of a long, physically demanding week and getting to bed at 3 / 4am i woke up around 8am :'(

it was from a dream of entering a naval base and finding my commander abusing a sexy soldier. i kicked his ass and he turned into a small dog; i was terrified he'd screw up my release with a court-martial but he knew his career would be destroyed. so i got the girl.

concerned about mixing caffeine and creatine (turns out it doesn't really matter, the tin's just paranoid), i elected to forgo the latter to coffee up for a call to the real estate agent.

i was very pleased to hear that within a week he already has buyers lined up, and at prices not too far from what we want! this is extremely good news ^_^

that made recovering from the short sleep a lot sweeter, and it was boosted when i found that scrapper was feeling much better and that the flea problem was restricted to the couch cover.

i finished another section of my mars one application (only the personal motivation letter remains), we handled the laundry* and then went to walmart to pick up spare bedclothes, towels and something for fleas. all the flea stuff (for pets) come with dire warnings and it's hard to believe it's okay for pets - we decided to try stuffing the couch cover in the tumbledryer and hope for the best.

* sadly, the laundry basket's handle has broken

instead of returning home we went to my office to drop off the shopping and print our heavy mtl tickets, taking the opportunity for a decent lunch and coffee at l'artere.

---heavy mtl:

every type of metal freak imaginable and in huge numbers. beautiful weather. great infrastructure (free drinking water available, port-a-urinals, loads of food, drink and ice-cream stands), excellent stage set-up.

we arrived at the end of steel panther; at first we thought they were just crass, but aside from their music being good they have a great sense of humour and i'm convinced that all their crap is intentionally ironic.

black label society is excellent, they didn't wow us but we enjoyed their music. except for the long guitar solos that made us feel like we were watching someone masturbating on stage.

when a day to remember came on i said that it would have been funny if they'd been wearing madonna or michael jackson shirts. i don't know what made me say that, because the early part of their show was pretty hard stuff with lots of growling and a sense of lostprophets. but then that transformed into a sense of blink 182 and their shit just got cheesy pop. big props to them on their showmanship, though, and the way they interacted with the crowd was excellent - they beat crowdsurfing spiderman with a crowdsurfing inflatable raft, and the free t-shirt bazooka was the shit.

danzig. danzig! he's awesome. his freakishly large monster guitarist dude made for a cute gimmick, but unfortunately we couldn't really hear him and he looked like he was having a lot of fun.

in spite of the bad taste left by avenged sevenfold's (talented, i'll admit) reduction of metal into teen pop, my overall impression from the day at heavy mtl was from megadeth.
the megadeth experience was as mind-blowing as it was bad for the eardrums ^_^
their visual setup turned everything they did into stunning art, the peak of which was their background to kingmaker.
in spite of my awkwardness about them they actually managed to bring out the devil horns in me };)

scrapper and i were discussing psychiatry on the way home: "diagnosing mental disorder with a list of symptoms is insane. oh, wait, i mean it's completely sane and totally crazy... which is normal".

in spite of an excellent day, the buzzing i left with wasn't confined to my ears: it entered my brain and i was exhausted, restless and in a snappy mood. we ate a quick dinner and then turned in early, certain we'd be up early again.

---i think i'm a bad host; i'm terribly ocd about order and tidiness, which i'd forgotten while living with pg and compared to her i'm a bit flippant myself. there're so many little things!
speaking of pg, some guy posted a comment on one of my pictures of her on facebook calling her a lush. i don't know if she's seen it and i don't know if i should say anything...

...

facebook: i don't understand why my macbook can't handle it anymore, it's weird, and i'm stuck using my phone for everything. which led to a security fail: i had two-stage authentication set up, facebook's sms'es weren't coming through, accessing through a browser doesn't give you the code generator and the access codes i was shown simply wouldn't work when i tried to set up the facebook app on my phone. the only way to install the app was to disable the two-step authentication. that's pretty dumb, facebook.

on a related note, my new iphone's battery life is so much better than my old one! it's so weird that i don't *have* to charge it every night.

---sunday:

i'm guessing the early wake-up is related to the amount of sunshine streaming through my windows. the big news for the morning is that someone has already made an offer for our apartment, so hopefully we'll sort that out soon and then i can find an apartment in montreal that's facing the right direction :P
the offer's good, not exactly what we wanted but if we hurry we might not need to pay capital gains tax on it...

i woke up from dreaming a successful dream, but once the story was over i realized that i was still wearing a skullcap that i'd put on at some point and was embarrassed to be seen as jewish. i don't know how i feel about that dream.

we stuffed the couch cover in the tumble-dryer and ran regular laundry alongside it, then i went to get a haircut. no haircuts on sundays - d'oh! - so i sat at starbucks for an opportunity to write most of this undisturbed, cashed a cheque and came on home to prep for another festival day and discuss the apartment offer with my mother. we have a plan, it feels like stars are aligning, i'm feeling positive.

now - time to rock!

high powered

i made it to muay thai yesterday, with scrapper in tow. while he sorted out gloves, wraps and a month pass i headed into a class that would turn out very special... i was partnered up with one of the monsters. aside from a damaged left shin from a badly executed check, and almost learning an unpleasant lesson (my response was to put in my mouth guard, things went much better after that), the training session was alright. not amazing, but definitely not bad.

but the impact training... oh, the impact training! that was awesome. he was actually harder to hit than our punching bags, and when the tables turned his "gentle" almost wiped me out.

i spent the next hour and a half relaxing with scrapper and the punching bags, teaching him boxing basics. by the time class started he was ready to go, and our instructor was well impressed with his performance :)
the class was really good, the overall satisfaction level when we left all hurting and exhausted was fantastic ^_^

---tuesday:

i woke up exhausted, feeling really weak. i felt like that all day and it was only during training that i'd learn that when you use creatine you need to drink LOTS of water. i was really dehydrated!

scrapper needed a computer and i suddenly remembered an abandoned netbook stuffed into a drawer - still good enough :)

work: a very long day of meetings upon meetings. it was pretty draining.
notes for the day:
1. pg sent me a photo of a predator statue to say it reminded her of me. i don't know how flattering that is :P
2. my LEAP controller arrived! i'm actually too excited to open it without having a few hours to really play...
3. the iphone 4 came back from the repair shop, and my 3gs backup restored beautifully! i'm very pleased, the only annoyance is that the casing doesn't lock properly. last night i put together a gir phone cover using vistaprint. i was really glad to learn that i can reproduce any previous orders, they've stored my syndicate shirt design so if anyone wants to buy one i can just click a few buttons and ship it :)

i arrived at the gym intending to do jiu-jitsu and then kickboxing, but only one guy had showed up for kickboxing so the instructor invited me to join for a sparring session. i didn't have my headgear and i couldn't contact scrapper so we didn't end up sparring but we essentially shared a private lesson which was pretty hardcore. it was much easier when i discovered that i needed to drink more water, i spent some time at the spout and my performance improved dramatically quickly.

finished for the day, i hung around for a while talking to some guys and then went home. as i crossed the parking lot gg was getting out of her car, and i haven't seen her since i was all awkward and that was a while ago. she was all smiles when she saw me, we exchanged a few sentences and i walked home feeling good about myself.

i'd learn later that scrapper was at home when i arrived, but in the shower so he didn't hear me throwing stones at my kitchen window because the building entrance was locked (it usually isn't) and i still don't have a functional buzzer. after a few minutes of that i got frustrated, believing him to be fast asleep or something, and i jogged back to rejoin to beginner's class.

round two was awesome, i'm really glad i went back! in addition to training with gg again i was partnered with a really tough dude who made me work hard. i finished the day on a great note and then scrapper and i headed downtown for great chinese and a couple of beers at a nice little pub on peel.

we eventually got home around 2 / 3am. the iphone 4 may be vastly better in a lot of respects, but it's public transport routing system totally sucks.

---wednesday:

in my earlier drunken state i'd failed to set my alarm correctly, but miraculously woke up by myself with just enough time to get organized and get to work on time.

ceh: i don't care if he has personal issues he's dealing with, the look he gave me when i tried to discuss a task i needed to hand him made me want to fire him on the spot. if we weren't desperate for backend developers... later he joined a few of us for lunch and regaled us with grossly inappropriate tales involving drugs and disturbing psychological details that made a couple of the guys visibly uncomfortable.

otherwise, it was a decent day at work. the it guy was kind enough to hand me a waterproof iphone cover (which i needed just over a week ago :P ) and another cover that converts the phone into a radio receiver. nice!

then i left early for muay thai, and had that magnificent evening, and scrapper made dinner and i crashed. i'm really pleased that he's now had a taste of tristar. and i'm really pleased with how good i feel.

first world problems

it was a really difficult weekend to post. i was too busy! now i'm sitting here on a monday evening trying to wrap this up quickly so as to disturb scrapper as little as possible.

---thursday - the forgotten moments:

neck and back still hurting.

1dollarscan.com is a fantastic idea, but it's a little costly if you're not sending your book / documents to a local address. the pdf i'm looking forward to will ultimately have cost me around $30.

i should open a local branch! all i'd need is a p.o. box and a scanner. shit, there's a lot of things i'd like to do with my life. i need more of me.

---friday:

neck and back still hurting.

the massage therapist was in, and she *really* helped! i got up disoriented but with my neck and back feeling like jello. unfortunately, that sensation lasted all of five minutes before the muscles started tightening up again.

i gave my iphone a try, plugging it in to my macbook. charging! amazed and excited i was, until i realized that it wouldn't charge more than the thin red line meaning that it wasn't actually charging at all. being plugged in wasn't enough to turn it on and access the data...

friday was the end of a long two weeks stabilizing a build, and i joined the happy hour late but in a celebratory mood. we held it in the cafeteria which was more fun that going out, although i played terrible pool.

i made the boxing class on time, there's a cute new girl from ottawa and we were set to work together. turns out that in spite of her hesitation, she's been teaching kickboxing and she put me under a lot of pressure... i cannot express how satisfied i am with myself for keeping up with her pace, doing all the combinations correctly at high speed on autopilot ^_^

why is it that every time i'm paired with a girl we do impact training? she forgot to inform me that she had a belly piercing and i hit it a few times. hard. i was totally embarrassed afterwards :$

regardless, i was on an absolute high from the class when i left the gym and walked out into a beautiful, cool summer sunset.

orange is the new black is cute at first, but then it gets better :)

foufounes electriques. newk'd and jock invited me to join them for a night out. they were both pretty drunk by the time i arrived and i didn't know where to go. at first they sent me in the wrong direction, then i returned to sainte catherine and was told to go right. so i did, and i walked while on the phone with newk'd trying to figure out where he was in relation to me because he'd apparently been waiting outside for me and was walking to meet me. in the end we discovered that this was the case... he'd instructed me to turn right when i should have turned left, and actually unwittingly followed me at a distance for about twenty minutes before figuring out what was going on. wtf??!
drunk people.

anyway, i've been there a couple of times before with yang but until friday night i didn't realize that it's the very same club wp and i went to back in 2006! i felt a circle close. i also drank a lot. i was far from drunk, but i was certainly going to feel it in the morning.

while there, i was informed that my soul patch is unflattering so i've decided to drop it. on a completely different note, i walked in to the dancefloor just as rob zombie - dragula went on and i joined the crowd rocking out and growling along... the next song was marilyn manson - beautiful people which was followed by disturbed - down with the sickness and nirvana - smells like teen spirit. it took me back a good six or seven years and i thoroughly enjoyed myself even as i was already concerned that my throat was going to hurt the next day... which it did...

i said goodbye when i had just enough cash left for a taxi. the taxi took an inexplicably long route so i jumped out a couple of traffic lights early. overall i'd had a very good night indeed.

---saturday:

neck and back still hurting.

otherwise, i was feeling pretty good. i went to godmother's for lunch in the sun, then returned home feeling the previous night. i was offended by the guy on the escalator in front of me as i headed to walmart because he wiped his feet almost into my face - one asshole can ruin your whole day! (okay, i got over it fairly quickly)

i managed to get the last cheap-ish everlast headgear in stock and returned home for some more orange is the new black and a solid afternoon nap. i got up from a long, perfect moment lying in bed on a cloudy evening with the window fan's deep hum keeping me sleepy.

i love the window fan's white noise. i really do.

horseman came over for an overly long evening discussing investment theory, stats and math. some of what he had to say was intriguing, but i was tired and i wanted to be in top shape for sunday's sparring session.

---for a few days now facebook hasn't been working on my mac. i've established that it's not my internet connection and it's not facebook, but no matter what i do (restarting, etc.) i just can't see my feeds / pages properly. the hell?

---sunday:

neck and back still hurting.

tapout versus everlast: this and and this? it wasn't me, the problem is that everlast's mouthguards SUCK. the tapout instructions were easy to follow and even though i fit it skew the first time it handles reboiling and i just did it again. no problem!

my first sparring:
gloves? check.
mouth guard? check.
protective cup? check.
headgear? check.
shin pads? check.
commitment? ... check, but with reservations about how smart i was being.

1. my boxing defense is awful and i don't breathe correctly.
2. i eventually did start striking properly.
3. even though we were all being responsible, speed and accuracy make up for a lack of power. one particularly well-placed strike gave me my first insight into the accuracy of the expression "he rang my bell".
4. after an hour my arms were really, really sore.

in the end there was no blood to clean up and i have a very good idea of just how much i need to improve before getting in the ring again, so i consider the session a great success!

the guys were shocked that i weigh 90kg as a vegan. i evangelized for a short while and then returned home to do laundry. i would have done laundry if the gorram laundry room wasn't out of order! what a way to ruin my plans :(

i went out to the market to pick up clif builder bars, then returned home for a big nap, big shopping and some more orange is the new black. i finally completed my sketches for the first chapter of my comic! i'm really excited about how i managed to resolve an issue that was troubling me ^_^
then i clicked on xkcd's time post and checked out the easily accessible version before reading randall's explanation: shut up and take my money! i bought some merch in a gushing show of support because that man is one of the most committed and inventive artists and is totally deserving of the highest praise.

---i can't recall how long ago or why i was searching for this, but i found it: lewis black on water. he's rather clever.

---monday:

neck and back feeling a bit better.

it was early morning in august. the temperature was... 9 degrees. seriously. it was AWESOME. i was even a little chilly while waiting for the second airport bus (the first was full).

i had to wait a long while for scrapper to come out, he described the officials as "thorough". we had a quick bite to eat before taking a taxi home, i briefed him non-stop until we parted ways on the metro.

my jaw hurts from the sparring. the muscles more than anything!

first order of the day, arguing with the cto in a video-conference when i was the only person on screen, and couldn't facepalm or make the faces that everyone knew i wanted to. after eventually coming out on top and feeling guilty for pushing back hard when everyone was listening in, we closed the call and the guys in the room showered me with sympathy :P

aside from a lunch break with some time outside to enjoy the stunning weather and discuss dragons and terminators, it was a day filled with meetings. one of the meetings was for all the developers, and after being shocked by ceh's brattiness (which was commented on by the project manager too) we were treated to a long and very boring presentation. presentations need to be engaging, and they need to be managed properly. as it finished, i sent an email to the project manager to say "we should never do this again".

boy, was i surprised to see the email summary pop up on the screen in front of everyone! serious faux pas, the project manager was not amused and i was super embarrassed.

my eyesight's griefing me, but i suspect it's related to how tired i am. my brain still hasn't gotten used to two eyes focusing so differently... but i certainly wouldn't want to give up my right eye's near-sightedness. reading would be really tough otherwise.

i got home in time for muay thai but i really needed to do laundry. i showed scrapper the laundry system, i took him shopping, i had a short but desperately needed nap before dinner, made dinner, we played fluxx and then he went to bed while i wrote this post. it's now an hour and a half after i began and it's my turn to tuck in.

PHEW!

cyberpunk day

it's late on a friday afternoon as i begin typing this all up. i have spent the afternoon glued to my monitor, catching up on comics and news. mostly gaming news. two items are particularly exhilarating.

1. shadowrun returns came out yesterday, and it looks really, really cool!

2. satellite reign's pitch gives me goosebumps. shut up and take my money!!!

also, bionic contact lenses? pretty rad.

---wednesday:

wednesday morning was cloudy with the sun peeking through and a cool wind blowing. it was the perfect morning to skip work to hang around coffee shops and comic book stores! but that's not what i did. i went to work.

after long hours in a design meeting with all of the developers getting excited about quickly and correctly getting out of the mess moonlighter's left us, megaman vetoed with a "fuck it, nothing's going to change on such short notice". "anguish" is a word that accurately sums up my feelings. we eventually managed to compromise, but on this topic we are not playing the same game.

aota has turned wednesday into "office wellness day" by bringing in a massage therapist / acupuncture specialist. usually skeptical, and always cheap, i went in for a half hour session. that woman took little time figuring out what was troubling me and how much pressure she could get away with applying, and after a severely painful experience (through which i almost fell asleep, i had to explain the concept of lekker-seer to her) i floated out of there feeling like my neck and back were made of jelly. it was nothing short of blissful!

strangely, that didn't motivate me to work. ceh's job was to migrate a server setup from windows to linux, and i babysat him through several headaches until very late. it was only after he left that i'd begin to understand just how sloppy he'd been, and we'd spend almost all of my working thursday dealing with that :(

---a reflection in my monitor made me spin around just in time to see the cleaning lady throwing the paper bag containing my eye-drops in the trash. jesus!

---i went to my favourite chinese restaurant for dinner, which would have tasted a lot better if i hadn't burned my tongue on the first bites. why do i do that? it's not like i don't know better, and it's not like i forgot. my brain can be so stupid sometimes.

i watched about half of kung fu panda 2 when i got home, then went to bed early. i was too tired to pack.

---thursday:

a morning of epically long dreams involving bullying and tribunals. i woke up with my eye behaving strangely: was i treating my eye okay? could the way i'd had my face pressed against the massage table done any damage? were my sleep goggles protecting me?

after my ordeal with leap motion, i was most upset to discover that my pre-order had failed anyway. they sent me a code to re-order with the pre-order conditions, but i'm not satisfied by my experience. i hope *this* attempt doesn't get screwed up.

packing was fairly simple, work was super-stressed. only because i was trying to get everything together before leaving and not a lot was going right.

---megaman's made me feel a little uncomfortable by splitting up the team and assigning me to web development. he has a tendency to pigeonhole and aside from not wanting to be left out of our core tech i have a feeling that if that's what happens we're going to end up in deep shit.

having said that, it's not my company and it would be a relief to have less responsibility. i want the company to succeed and i want everything to be great, but most of my job is hand-holding and that's tiring and not very exciting.

---aota played chauffeur and drove me to the airport, allowing me an opportunity to vent before flying. everything was smooth as all i had to worry about was my backpack. i had plenty of time to finish this month's wired and begin reading mitnick's ghost in the wires. walking through the airport in atlanta with pj harvey - when under ether playing was pretty surreal.

it only takes one asshole to ruin your day. or flight. the well-dressed gentleman sitting next to me turned on his ipad as the plane was taking off. now i know there's talk of dropping the rule, but in addition to it being a rule it made me quite nervous. i turned to him and told him that, asking him to please wait until we were in the air.

"i'm just going to continue reading," he told me, quite condescendingly.
"thank you," i responded, immediately wanting him to die a horrible death. the exact thought was "die in a fire," but then i had a vision of that fire being caused by us hitting the ground and instantly regretted it. i hated him for the rest of the trip, at least whenever i wasn't transfixed by kevin mitnick.

SxS arrived to pick me up just as i left the building and it was a long, chatty drive to his place. it was quite late when we eventually called it a night. i put in my drops for the last time before going to bed.

---today:

i woke late after non-stop dreaming. entertaining dreams! i took my morning slow, beginning an internet catch-up that's interminable even if i have found myself at the end of the day with a much clearer to-do list.

one important part of that list was making contact with the agent taking care of pg's apartment. pg left for europe after scaring my tenant off. the tenant will be leaving in a few days, and pg's brother and mother will be handling the hand-off. my mum and i want to sell the apartment, but until it's sold we don't want it to stand empty. so if this man can make our lives easier or organize a buyer, that would be pretty neat.

---SxS took me to whole food market, and my mind was blown. not only by the selection - vegan heaven! - but by the quality of everything available. everything i've tasted from their prepared foods has been delicious! i haven't stopped snacking all day :)

we went out for lunch and i ordered a vegan burger, not realized that "pepper jack" is a type of cheese. all the other ingredients were listed! so it was a vegan burger with cheese. which i had to scrape off, leaving me with just a patty and buns.

*sigh*

the weather here in florida has been surprisingly comfortable. i've been indoors and air-conditioned all day, but those moments outside have been decidedly pleasant. this being on holiday thing is pretty cool, too.

it's not stupid! it's...

[this posting backed by sundance - psymorocco]

today was my first lesson in advanced boxing. for the first time i understood what our instructor meant by "you need to relax": it's not my shoulders, it's that "every jab you throw is set to 'destroy', you can't throw knockout strikes every shot".

... or can i?
}:D

damn, i'm now so pleased with myself that i can't decide if i should listen to him or not, and i'm *pretty* sure he knows better than me.

...

oh, the second handle of my cheap skipping rope broke today. each time it gets a little shorter, so the first break made it perfect and now... i don't know how i feel about it. but i do think that my footwork and rhythm are getting on track.

---i always thought it was a cape town thing:
"what do you call great weather after two lousy days?"
"monday."

well, turns out it's a montreal thing as well - today was absolutely stunning, warm but not sticky with the sun shining and the birds singing.

---the day began with a disturbance in the force: ceh was unimpressed with his mandate and megaman was equally unimpressed with ceh's strategy. these two are old friends, and about halfway through i recognized their professional relationship being similar to that of mine and spot's. megaman's giving the guy a break, the guy's smart but out of sync with his role, and for a moment i almost saw sparks flying. i felt super-weird getting involved, and almost made a joke along the lines of "now, now, children", but instead took an arbitration position and managed to get everyone playing the same game.

i was very proud of myself just then. we actually managed to take something positive out of the bad, i snuck in a little of my agenda at the same time (which is kind of in line with what ceh wants) and megaman was satisfied.

...

later on i'd get megaman and the cfo considering investing in a decent videoconferencing setup instead of having employees / executives flying regularly between offices. it's 2013 already, you know? just saying.

---i spent most of my morning resolving issues with our recent ip change and trying to figure out why godaddy never stops sucking. the first support agent i spoke to was a moron, the second was sweet but essentially blew me off. i hope her advice was on point.

the best part of dealing with them? prior to being put on hold while waiting for an agent, an option to not hear muzak was offered. good show!

---i spoke to the laser clinic and they've assured me that it's only one eye and that they know which one it is. so it looks like we're on for thursday!

i didn't get to take lunch until 2pm, and never had a chance to drink my morning coffee either. this was fine, great even, until about 3pm when i suddenly developed a withdrawal headache :(

i'm intrigued that nystire's considering the possibility of working in montreal. i don't see how he could possibly go wrong doing that, but then we've never seen eye-to-eye when it comes to making big life decisions :P

a friend of a friend sent me his resume to pass on for an opening we have. i sent it back and told him he needs to run it through a spell-check. wtf?! do people really not realize that these things matter when you're trying to make a good impression? i suppose spelling errors are better than wrong-word-chosen-by-spell-check errors, though. i've seen some funny ones lately.

i was exhausted by the time i got on the metro home, so much so that i could barely stand. what a pleasure to walk into a clean apartment (the cleaning lady's leaving the country this week for a month), quaff an energy drink and head out to boxing!

...

it's been a very relaxed and unproductive evening. i think i'm ready to go to bed early again. i have dreams to catch up on.

anguish sandwich

today was an exceptionally good day. grand, in fact! the exception to "exceptionally" only lasted about half an hour and it was cheshire cat lady. that woman is not only deranged and creepy, but she's bloody annoying and not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

that tone i got into trouble for when i used it with cam2? that's my i-can't-deal-with-your-incompetence tone. it came out in full force today and i'm not sure that anyone in the office didn't hear it. i'm pretty sure they all heard precisely what was causing it, too. her idiocy is relentless.

after trying to explain to me why i should make design calls when it suits her and not bother with our lead designer (hmm, perhaps she thinks we should fire him?) she then finished everything with a bang: "you always have to have the last word!".

this is not a bloody domestic argument about who's doing the fracking dishes. i'm in charge of development and everything we do needs to make sense in context of what we produce. my fracking job is to get the last word and to make sure that that word is the right bloody one.

what an asshole.

---otherwise, it was a very good morning. everything was operational, ceh and i are both enthusiastic about node.js and i showed megaman and our qa manager how real qa is done (i broke something during a dry run and my method totally took them by surprise).

i finally, after much deliberation, made an appointment for laser surgery. it's next week! in a few hours i'll go for my pre-op eye exam and get my prescriptions.

megaman and i seem to see eye-to-eye on our organization chart and on seating, which was a little worrying for a while. and he acquiesced when i suggested that the project manager he's bringing on board should not be lumped together with his previous teammates* but rather be dealt with according to his functions.

* have i mentioned my conspiracy theory?

it was a late afternoon of successes and hand-holding (it's what i do), followed by back-to-back kickboxing that was killer but excellent. well, the advanced class was tough but i had to work with the slow dude again (way before it's relevant he comes up to me to ask me personally, and i don't feel comfortable saying "no" even though i really, really want to work with anyone else). the class ended and i still had pent-up aggression from cheshire cat lady so i decided to join the beginner's class too.

hardcore. i worked with a new guy who's come from a traditional martial arts dojo and is crazy-polite to the instructor and to everyone else. he's also an absolute beast and after delivering full-power strikes non-stop for seven minutes he pushed me really hard to deliver the same.

i returned home soaked through and feeling amazing. i had a quick, hot bath (my back was hurting) and then sat down to... try out the card hunter beta. shit, it's fun! great concept and beautifully executed.

it's almost 2am. i've got sleeping to do. oh, crap... i didn't really eat dinner...

healing

1. jiu-jitsu partnered with a man slightly shorter than me and about twice my weight. i couldn't get my legs around him and my leg was hurting so much i had to pause to breathe through my teeth a few times.

2. kickboxing totally loosened my up and by the time i got to working on the bags i was ready to kick the shit out of it. i think i might have relieved myself of a little of the work pressure that built up this week, i walked away totally satisfied and ready for more.

3. wall stretching: the tall, strong dude i was partnered with was working harder than i was, to the point where someone else noticed and laughed because it was clear that i was using him to stretch myself instead of being stretched. and he was shaking more than i was :P

4. during a break i asked a question and got a really helpful answer. plus a solid shot to the liver for my troubles.
"that's so you remember".
scrapper's influence on me: stumbling, not falling, and wheezing "thank you sir, may i have another!".

---the day began with a double "you done good" from the cfo and aota: the way i dealt with botswana was appreciated by everyone. i also had a little chat with my team and made it clear that they're to report to me both professionally and personally.

the network will be down at least until wednesday, so i took ceh out to l'artere to eat and use their wifi. firstly, their vegan take on shepherd's pie (sweet potato and lentils) was delicious and too much for me. secondly, ceh's attitude towards documentation and project constraints doesn't fit with mine and it's going to take work to bring him to a compromise. at least i think he realizes now that i'm not simply being anal about everything.

while he was playing with a remote server i was being told by k-twang how bad my blog design is. so i took his advice and modified my template accordingly, i hope it's a better experience for everyone.

the cto arrived and we had a number of different talks throughout the day. they were all positive and i think he'd forgotten how organized i am since he's started interfacing with megaman. one of our talks was quite exciting, especially as i had his attention long enough to pitch an idea i had ages ago that developed into something even more awesome as i was speaking. we may not see eye to eye on everything, but there's a shared vision for where our tech should go that makes me feel like all the annoying and frustrating things that have happened over the past couple of months were totally worth it.

the rest of my day was broken into small fires and management. overall things are going smoothly and i'm happy with how this week's ending. also, amazed at how quickly it's gone by and how much i feel has happened!

on my way out i realized i could control my limp at the cost of each step hurting (which is subconsciously where the limp came from). the last thing i wanted was to stop using my muscles correctly.

---right, it's 11pm and i've had much less sleep this week than i've wanted. i've also got a big stack of things that need doing, including making dinner.

studious

wow, what a day. and it's already past my bedtime and i haven't done even a tiny bit of what i'd had planned.

being enjoyably distracted by a track from horseman didn't help :P

---day begins: sunshine through the windows and the strip search finale. the series was excellent, and while the contender i was gunning for didn't win (i'm a vasquez fan, it was a no-brainer :P) i'm really pleased to see all the good things that have come out of it! heartwarming stuff.

work:
1. rollerblading to work and spending the day in shorts and flip-flops. very cool.
2. splitting the development team into three to reduce scrum time. it was a little awkward for the first time.
3. botswana - i didn't shout "don't touch my developers!" at him but i should have. he upset one by demanding things that made no sense when he has no authority to demand anything. and he can't understand why i find him irritating.
4. the building's network has been terrible for two days now, and their (not our) it guy is not only a dumbass but he's leaving soon and doesn't care. we had to go out to l'artere for lunch just to use their wifi.
5. one of the new guys (ceh) came to me at the end of the day for a php bitch session. i could totally sympathize. he really wants to move to clojure.

blading back: to was faster than metro, back was with the wind. and a bit of inspiration from it being a beautiful afternoon. and the fact that i'd left work early and was on my way to muay thai.

muay thai was crazy, the warm-up even tougher than before and the training really good.

i spent the evening learning ruby on rails, stopping after realizing that it's most likely not as good a fit for my needs as python. dammit.