ripped and bearded

two things noticeably ripped today: me and my mr. price '99 specials. the latter on a desk drawer as i got up, i'm really unhappy about it. the former i might be exaggerating somewhat but i'm definitely feeling strong, solid and muscle-y.

on a style note, i've been under pressure and lazy this week and i'm sporting a light beard again. i'm trying to decide if i should keep it or not.

---i started the day by confronting the poor building secretary with my laundry issues. apparently the whole reason for the closing hours is for security and that it's security from whoever's tampering with the machines. it's 2013, FFS, i told her that security cameras are super cheap to install and their closing hours obviously aren't making a difference anyway. i hope she'll pass along my complaints as she promised.

on the one hand, dealing with shit like this is why it's easier to own one's own condo, but on the other i've now heard things about the hidden costs of ownership that make me wonder if it's truly a good investment in montreal...

---before leaving for work i checked my email and was disturbed to find a message from megaman informing me that an urgent case i opened yesterday was about to be delivered into the dark clutches of our backlog. i couldn't understand what wasn't clear about its relevance until i read over what i'd written and realized that i'd taken a pre-approval email and copied and pasted it, and without context it had ceased to be the explicit task i'd had in mind at the time.

it's been that kind of a week.

dealing with that made me late for work... nobody cared, though.

---jira fail: a predecessor had custom-defined a resolution called "unresolved", which atlassian specifically advises not doing. rescue seemed really complicated and unpleasant from the few sources i found online and i was super-proud of myself for finding a sneakier, simpler way to handle it ^_^
[if you've read this far you probably care, all that was needed to untangle things was to rename the custom resolution. i don't know why nobody else thought of that]

i caught cls struggling with a method i'd asked him to implement, and we got to play on the whiteboard for half an hour until we figured out how to handle it. it's the most complex issue i've worked on in ages, and it was a lot of fun!

during the past week i've asked dang for the task list for the current project a number of times and today he finally sent it. once i'd looked at the wireframe, i realized that i've actually been assigned a huge task requiring skills i haven't exercised since last october. hah! i spent an hour or so visualizing use cases and designing the underlying data structures, all the while trying to figure out how i'm going to handle my regular responsibilities in addition to actually developing software. i'm only half-complaining ;)

i was already in a hurry when the ceo called me in for a personal chat; he wanted my opinion on where we stand and how i feel about things, but he also wanted to discuss the secret project i was introduced to yesterday. the evangelist in me came out. i explained to him that he shouldn't even think about what we could do with it until i've had a chance to study it and figure out what it really is: he appreciated it when i told him that while our current plan would be served by it, it could produce a whole other business and anything he learns about it now will only serve to pigeonhole what might be capable of breaking the box.

i hope i'm right about all this.

---i arrived a bit late for training, and there was only one guy kickboxing so i joined him for the warmup as we'd be sparring. but then the slow guy showed up a few minutes later and we certainly wouldn't be sparring with him around, so i changed shirts again and hit the bjj mats. the kid instructing us put me with two real beginners so that i could help him out; amidst all the advising i did actually learn a thing or two.

a cute girl from the bjj joined the advanced kickboxing class (there's a half-hour with no overlap) and threw the numbers out, so i volunteered to do impact with her. she wasn't hitting me very hard so the instructor came over to demonstrate... until now, that's meant knocking me out. while he did wind me with one of his liver shots, i was totally stoked to find that i've toughened up enough over the last couple of months that i can now take his soft punches. i'm pretty sure i'm not ready for his real ones yet, but it's a big improvement nonetheless :)

the beginner's class was good, i worked with the beast and after the way he finished his ten straight minutes of power kicks i felt ashamed with what i'd done with mine. he was visibly wiped out and then suddenly went into beserker mode, each kick harder than the last and i was so taken by surprise he almost broke through the thai pads into my face!

that shit was inspiring.

i got home to a very slow evening. i called bnw to plan our next meetup, and finally got a working version of a prototype for horseman delivered. i've been listening to all sorts of music (finally adding linkin park - hybrid theory to my earlier purchase of godsmack - good times, bad times) and i really don't understand how it's now 1.30am already O_o

my salads are perpetually improving; it's funny how washing and chopping leaves bothers me but chopping the green beans and broccoli from the microwave stir-fry doesn't.

anyway, scrapper's returning in six hours. gotta crash.

---(slowly) rebuilding my music collection on itunes gives me some startling insights into what i truly value and what i merely enjoy listening to. one of those insights is that nostalgia plays an enormous role in deciding whether something will make the cut. case in point: foo fighters. i love a lot of their stuff, but for me nothing beats their foo fighters album (1995), which was how i discovered them.

and that i'd rather buy an album that individual songs. i think that points to me being a bit cheap.

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!

revisiting: monday

i'm splitting these up. it's been a crazy week.

---monday:

i mentioned winter coming back for a visit - my windows have been open since the temperature began to rise, and in the middle of the night i woke up feeling frozen.

later i'd wake up absolutely exhausted. it felt appropriate to walk through the rain with folk and blues accompanying me. i was also accompanied by a little trepidation, because i'd received authorization for my south african holiday but megaman did express concern as company policy is not to take more than two weeks consecutively and not to take any holiday prior to CES.

as aota said, though: if it's been authorized, then that's that. i guess in my head i'm still under military conditions regarding holidays...

one of the interns invited me to go white water rafting this weekend - i wonder if it'll materialize? it does sound like fun...

there's nothing i dislike more than crazy last-minute fixes, and being informed that with the amazon server we now have access to metrics and that these metrics show our server operating at 100% cpu after we've already hit showtime... i was not happy. it didn't take long to find the source of the problem, an infinite loop that moonlighter wrote. funny story: i had trouble trying to find a way to perform the same logic using interrupts instead of constant polling, and after a lengthy search discovered that he'd overridden the default operation of the function he was using so that it specifically wouldn't use interrupts. by the time i made that discovery, made the change and tested it, it was too late to put it into production.

not - happy...

to make matters worse, the office had been going completely nuts right until the end of the day, and i was about to pay the price for bad delegation. i asked cls, who'd helped me test my fix by making an important fix on the client, to send out the email to inform megaman and the cto what we'd done. unfortunately, cls misunderstood and thought that we were modifying our production environment to match the testing, and the cto spent the next few emails (spanning a couple of hours) shouting at us for something we weren't planning on doing. no matter how many times i explained. he wasn't reachable by phone. the whole thing was pretty infuriating.

i wasn't feeling great, so i spent the evening cleaning up a bit and trying to write posts. copywriter, my mother and overclocker all made that last bit really tough.

1. copywriter told me, in a rather circuitous fashion, that making the sacrifices that i'm making in order to establish myself as canadian is the right thing to do. on the one hand, i didn't need him to tell me that. on the other, i did need someone to tell me that. by sacrifices we're talking about things like not studying right now, and not going to burning man, and not really focusing on my comics. that sort of thing. essentially, the sacrifice of working full-time as opposed to freelancing and owning my schedule.

2. my mother and i have established what's wrong with me! well, one of the things that's wrong with me, anyway. i have information ocd. that explains why i can't not update my blog, why i need to present myself (and you) with all the details of my days that normal people would simply gloss over. and why i feel terrible when a conversation goes one way without going the other, or why i have to get the whole thought out or prevent you from continuing your story without clarifying things that i can't assimilate. <see asperger's>

i made an enormous salad, grabbed a beer and settled down to watch loads of the it crowd. i needed the beer. i was just about to get into fixing my wraps when i got blocked: it appears that pg took the sewing kit i bought and left me with a different one, one that didn't have any needles in it :S

---something that occurred to me on saturday while listening to stories about our forebears travelling through the desert (for forty years): people who travel through the desert would have to become nocturnal, which would nicely explain why the jewish calendar is lunar, why the jewish "day" begins in the evening and why unlike most cultures jews consider the moon to be masculine and the sun feminine.

it's also easy enough to imagine that the whole blood libel story might have stemmed from the passover retelling of the painting of blood over the doors to ward off the angel of death. but let's ignore the blood libel aspect and return a couple of thousand years to when the jews emerged from the desert and into the land of israel. how quickly did they return to being collectively diurnal? would their enemies (or neighbours) not have found their nocturnal behaviour strange and begun to believe them to be nosferatu? could this explain their miraculous conquest of canaan?

just a thought.

extra long weekend

when i began this post i was locked in to my apartment and the building's water pipes were closed. i'd just gone for a walk to do some shopping, and came back with a sensation that spring is here. i'd just got off the phone with godmother, who had let me know that considering everything i've been through it's really okay to just wallow for a bit. that was confirmed by my mother later. i'm very, very glad that i get passover off.

i am resuming this post after returning from the second passover "seder", very nice, if a little awkward (i was, at least). the continuous loud buzzing in the background is me attempting to run down the charge on my clippers, which i used today and which come with an advisory to empty the battery once every two months or so. the battery life appears to be really, really good!

---thursday:

the day began with the faculty dean; the man is a phenomenon, with the most fascinating personal history and incredible achievements. he's the real deal, fighting corruption and playing the game simultaneously - talking to him is inspiring. talking to him about his plans for our product was reflexively inspiring: our product has tremendous potential, and the developers are so deep into tweaking its core that we don't get to appreciate the forest for the trees.

the shock of the day was discovering that the woman i'd ranked as dumbest in class is the woman in charge of the phd program - i spent a good deal of time replaying our quick q&a's in my mind and hoping that i hadn't been too flippant. so it wasn't that she'd been struggling to figure out our system; she was observing and evaluating. damn she's good.

after a long day at the end of a long week, i returned to the hotel and immediately shaved off my beard. i then sat by the pool and consumed half a bottle of myers's. which is a heck of a lot of rum. it wasn't too late when i stumbled back to my room and collapsed.

---friday:

it was a tough stomache morning, and i'd be in pain and uncomfortable for the entire weekend. the moment spent staring out the window at the fog-blanketed rainforest was not enough. my only meal in panama that wasn't amazing was that last breakfast, which was awful.

we were almost late for the flight, and the double security and frisk (!) wasn't appreciated. the flight itself was long and sucky. i felt horrible when we arrived in newark, my head felt screwed off and i just wanted to get home. five hours of nothing, with a touch of irritation with the idiot tsa guys forcing me to remove my plastic belt and raise my hands to go through the machine.

shit! i'm such an idiot!
*facepalm*
here i am complaining about indignities, and what i *should* have done is simply removed my pants and put them on the conveyor. what would they have done? arrested me for indecency?

the short flight to montreal was spent in agony. my belly was hurting, and no amount of time spent in restrooms was having any effect.
regardless, immigration into montreal was such a surprising pleasure! their welcome back made me feel really good. i was so happy to be back!

---saturday:

aside from household chores and a bit of fallout, i spent my day with k-twang and cls who were visiting. cls showed me that my projector issues were focus related and not resolution related (hooray!), our visit to godmother was amusing and silly, dinner was huge and drinks were fun (i hope i didn't talk too much, but i think i might have :( ).

---sunday:

brunch with godmother: it was hard to get into tiffany's, but the food was good and it's a comfortable place. afterwards we visited the old jewish quarter in an unsuccessful quest for kosher-for-passover gifts.

the rest of the day was a day of nothing: george carlin, star trek ii, a little bit of shakespeare in busan's to be or not to be and johnny mnemonic. only a little of to be or not to be because it kinda sucks.

i finally went shopping, and the slow, quiet walk was time for reflection, on my being alone and on my motivation in general.

---monday:

monday was full of woe. work-wise, i had a few meetings and a training session for a new developer who i'm excited about, and the director and i had an important chat about my responsibilities.

i tried to transfer cash to pg to pay my imaginary social security fine, only to discover that her bank branch has two SWIFT codes. why does everything have to be complicated?!

leaving early on such a beautiful day made me feel a little better, and i was amused by the beery pub smell of the guy entering the metro in front of me: it was the perfect afternoon to be out drinking with friends.

the passover "seder" was really nice, not quite what i'm used to but fun nonetheless.
i played fallout into the night, and was totally exhausted when i finally dragged myself off to bed.

---tuesday:

i already posted about the important stuff.

---gun control: oh, shit. in one fell swoop, the case for controlling firearms has just been relegated to the irrelevant box. our options? have full government control of all technology and our uses of it, OR try to educate and instill values so that we can be free and reasonably safe.

we'll never be 100% safe, but as long as we can offset the dangers we can maintain a good balance. that offsetting cannot include big brother without causing more dissatisfaction and frustration and thereby increasing the threat level.

deeply sighing

today was satisfying, although only at the very end. and the end was late.

i've established with everyone short of the cto and moonlighter that we share the concerns and i'm not a single point of failure. we've sorted out payroll issues, i've been given optimistic advice by the lawyer and pretty much confirmed a visit to SxS in florida next weekend. that's so that we can meet his girlfriend and respect pg's visa limitations simultaneously, then apply for her work permit on the way back in.

two of the interns worked through their issues with the builds with my and cls's coaching; the builds were finally ready around 5pm. so was the one i worked through with newk'd: that was a tricky fix that's been a thorn in our side for a while now. i think he's got the message about comment-driven coding now. even cam2 made me happy today, demonstrating that he's taking my last instructions seriously.

the only thing that didn't work involved our web hosting: they're not only expensive, but they're greedy and unhelpful when the tools we're paying fees for don't work. switching from them is now an item on the to-do list.

...

dinner at godmother's was really nice (and pg organized swell gifts), and aside from putting up the curtain rails (we finally have the need) i've ordered myself moo minicards with my canadian number. it's an exciting purchase.

---
my emotions took a dive this week, but i think i'm already back to manic. this delegation stuff is pretty darn cool.

pity for the netbook

it's late, and i've been spending a lot of time configuring my new toy - now that i'm going to be properly working for the company, they've bought me a spanky new macbook pro. having spent some time with mac development, i'm comfortable enough to be enjoying the experience of setting this up!

it was a relaxed friday which was mostly pleasant. cls presented me with a brainteaser, totally boosting my ego by asking me for help. newk'd found a terrible bug that moonlighter had created, and cam2 is easier to deal with when you tell him precisely what to do, which is not a compliment.

the new technical writer is a pleasure to talk to, it's nice to talk tech with someone who's got a degree in literature :P

big deal for the day: planning a trip to boston to visit overclocker. all very exciting :)

dinner at godmother's was delicious and busily loud; the rest of the evening / night has been quiet by comparison.