getting stuff done

 it's been a busy morning! we failed to get gd's canadian crypto account reactivated (their verification is broken), but i managed to get my israeli one sorted out. this was after discovering yesterday that ethereum gas fees have finally normalized after all the upgrades, making it worthwhile transferring money, and that compound has been generating far less interest than promised.

i mean, with our amounts of money it didn't make a huge difference, but still.

while doing that, i managed to get the blast window for our shelter roped up so that gd can close it herself in case of emergency. gd and mr smear cleaned the house yesterday, specifically worried about all of us (including my sister and potentially mr smear's friend) having to sleep in our shelter bedroom together. apparently things are heating up, though i've been completely disconnected from the news cycle these days.

then i called and made an appointment for her to see the dentist, because of course she's in pain after her root canal and crown were done... at least her stomach seems to be doing a bit better today.

i think i've sent my insurance broker the documents she wanted - turns out my previous employer forgot to update the insurance companies that i wasn't working for them any more 🤔

finally, gd found our boxing gear (whew!) and i posted the mongoose's guitar hero guitars on the facebook marketplace.

so, all in all, it's been a morning.

[chokes on a raisin bran raisin]

opportunity

 well, my shoulder's hurting this morning, but my eyes are feeling slightly less irritated and my teeth are feeling slightly less sensitive, so overall i guess i'm doing okay.

i'm feeling quite offended right now that putting money into mr smear and my shared compound account costs far more than we'll earn in compound interest over the next few years. i'm offended because crypto's been a big thing for so long already and it still doesn't make any sense for small players. and our physical banks don't have any incentive to compete.

mr smear just freaked out and dumped a really cool animation he made in flipaclip (after much struggling to determine that bluestacks still sucks and that flipaclip's pricing is extortion), but i got him to reattempt and learn what he should have done and he did. so at least one parenting win for the morning, not including him playing or singing iron maiden's two minutes to midnight every time he thinks something's going to be in two minutes :P

...

i walked into the office yesterday and sat down for a while with bigtalk to help him strategize. that was followed by a morning full of random shit, mostly frustrating, and i felt like my brain was melting (like i was maybe coming down with something, but in retrospect i think i was just tired and depressed).

the biggest downer was learning that bigtalk's definition of "fine-tuning" is completely out of sync with mine. he's been promising to deliver the Big Important Thing "today or tomorrow" since last week already and i'm just getting more and more frustrated.

the company retro was interesting, and i felt useful and needed. which makes me feel a bit weird about my position in the new org chart, where i'm just a devops and my "coach" is someone with less experience than me...

happy hour turning into an opportunity for a conversation about determining company culture (documentation and being remote-first), but that conversation led to someone even more important which was me determining the root cause for our algo team's difficulties and getting buy-in for my proposed solution from our de-facto tech chief.

and then i came home, without any issues with protestors (thankfully i don't have a car), and the evening was pleasant and we all went to bed pretty early. fortunately i was the only person who was awoken by the protestors flooding our neighborhood...

chores and childhood

saturday:

i went to bed, got up a bit later to pee and caught mr smear on the computer... i warned him that that had lost him screen time, got him to go to bed, and then returned to bed myself.

i was in the middle of a dream when he woke me up to ask if his punishment time was over yet 🤦‍♂️

by the way, i have to note that he's been reading the wave and is really enjoying it.

when i eventually got up (i didn't get too much more sleep, unfortunately) we sat down to play some space quest v together, which was fun and got a lot of laughs until he decided he was getting bored 🤷‍♂️

i moved over to the playstation, and began playing nier automata. i managed to get through the first sequence, it was a lot of fun and the game world is gorgeous, but by the time i got to the save point i was feeling worn out...

mr smear's german friend came over for a few hours, while i played some more final fantasy vi.

in any event, the day was mostly spent quietly indoors. we were all exhausted.

yesterday:

after dropping mr smear off at school, gd and i took the bus to dizengoff center, then walked to the shuk. we enjoyed a cup of coffee on rambam street with no pressure, we picked her up a couple of bags (custom prints, she's happy with them) and a couple of nice t-shirts for me, i picked up some wired speakers for my windows machine, and then we checked out the book store looking for a gift for the mongoose's daughter (whose birthday we've missed, twice) and hit the jackpot - a large piglet plushy and a hebrew translation of winnie-the-pooh.

after we got home, gd went back out to meet up with urchin, so i had to pick mr smear up from school. i arrived there just as he was leaving the gate with a friend of his we've never heard of before, informing me that they were going to take the bus to his place and asking me to pick him up by 4pm.

so... that was a moment. i made sure i had the address, and that his friend knew that mr smear is vegan, and off they went, leaving me feeling a little bit anxious but very proud at the same time.

gd, however, didn't take mr smear's independence so well... to be fair, though, if we were in canada or south africa i definitely wouldn't have felt so safe about it.

i spent the next while setting up my new work accounts, and discovering that the cheap speakers i'd bought were terrible, and then gd and urchin arrived and we chatted for a while, and then gd and i left together to pick mr smear up from his friend.

he was fine, they'd had a nice afternoon. we took the bus home, picked up the gifts, then took the bus to the mongoose's. and discovered that his daughter already had the matching winnie-the-pooh plushy, but their copy of the book they had wasn't as nice so she'd been bored... on our way out i overheard them reading to her and they later sent an adorable picture of her hugging her new friend.

all good ^_^

from there we went to market vegan for dinner. i had the hand-made couscous, which i really didn't enjoy the texture of, and they shared kebabs which were delicious, but there was an embarrassing incident with mr smear trying to spit out a mouthful of food because he didn't like the peanut butter sauce 🤦‍♂️

we got home pretty late, had a struggle to get him to do some of his homework, and then just before bedtime he decided he was hungry again.

ay carumba.

today:

another difficult day getting mr smear ready for school. while saying goodbye, some guy walked his kid past me and the child wet-coughed openly into my face. i was literally stunned, and i really wish i'd said something because i spent my entire walk back fighting with the shitty parent in my mind :/

i took the speakers back for a refund, then ended up meandering until i found myself at a nice coffee shop on ibn gvirol, where i stopped and took care of a bunch of chores.

it feels good crossing things off my list.

it didn't feel good learning that mr smear had absolutely refused to cooperate with his teacher until the third lesson of the day :(

then i walked home via the mall, where i picked up some urgent groceries and found a pretty decent bluetooth speaker that was on sale for even less money than the cheap ones i'd returned. they work well, although the windows machine itself is pretty shitty so they're not as good as they could be...

mr smear had left school with a friend of his who was performing in a piano recital at the conservatory. i was told that he would be ready to be picked up around 3.30pm, but on my way there i saw that his phone was on the other side of the city, and when i checked in with his friend's parents i was told that the recital was only scheduled to begin at 5pm, and that they'd have mr smear home by 6pm.

color me frustrated.

i'd been in the middle of a meeting with horseman, who was trying very hard to explain a complex crypto scheme of his, and i took the opportunity to make myself a coffee and reset my brain a little. in total we must have sat for about two hours on his presentation, arguing non-stop about how all the mechanisms work together, but by the end of it i think we had a good handle on the design and we'd also both learned a some things about crypto that we hadn't fully understood before.

mr smear eventually came home around 7pm, just while i was talking to our kibbutz cousin for the first time in ages, and we dived into dinner because he hadn't eaten anything all afternoon. he apparently had a really good time, though :)

we had a long good-night chat with my mom, some of which was stressful (regarding aliyah), and now that mr smear's in bed and i've knocked this post out, i think i'm going to start winding down for the evening.

the first of three

 i honestly don't know what i did yesterday, although some of it was dedicated to getting started with the google maps API and some of it wasted on trying to push something to a personal repository from my work computer (it's complicated by the fact that we use a special SSH agent for work).

in the late afternoon (relatively, for winter time) mr smear and i went out for a walk. he wasn't too into it (as usual) until we agreed to get some vegan hamburgers, but the state of the burger king toilets put me off completely so we walked around until rainbow opened (5pm, just as it got dark). the walkabout until then was nice, and we had some cool moments.

dinner itself was excellent, we both ate too much and enjoyed it immensely. then we picked up a meal for gd to go, and walked home, and i was really sleepy. i ended up crashing on the couch and going to bed early again.

...

i slept alright last night, although at one point i was restless and found myself on a thread about "unmissable" games, which led to me purchasing three new games this morning on steam's winter sale: planescape: torment, journey, and what remains of editch finch.

i'm very excited to try them.

...

the problem money finally arrived in our south african bank account, so we paid off the credit card debt and i initiated the closing of the account!! now the only outstanding debt is to my mom, it's a huge amount but we're finally able to start chipping away at it.

...

gd and mr smear accompanied me to the barber shop. i thought my usual guy would cut my hair - the guy whose haircuts gd doesn't like, with the ex-saffer mom so we have fun conversations. instead, it was someone who appears to be new - he's not mentioned on their website - and he was awkward, and he misunderstood me when i said i needed the cut to look professional which made things more awkward.

anyway, at the end of the day his cut satisfied gd, so we're good.

we continued down the road so that gd could start the process of getting her vape device fixed, and then further down to the mall. aside from using their restrooms, we were pretty much in-and-out and on our way home again. we stopped at home for about half an hour, then all left to take mr smear to his therapy session.

gd and i had coffee while we waited, and although i had plans for the half hour or so i ended up failing to troubleshoot why my computer couldn't connect to my mobile hotspot.

we picked up mr smear, took the light rail to azrieli, and mr smear and i had lunch* while gd shopped. and then we came home. the past hour or two has been all about mr smear getting through his holiday homework (most of it's done), and taking care of random chores.

* mostly vegan - the only way for their vegan shuwarma to be delicious is in their challah, which unfortunately has some egg in it :/

quiet morning

 during dinner i began to feel nauseous and faint, and at one point i just had to lie down and try to get my neck released. i'm pretty sure something was pushing on my vagus nerve. i ended up miserably going to bed early, and was fortunately able to sleep through most of the night (there was an attack by the houthis, but our area wasn't threatened).

i woke up this morning to an alert that the money i accidentally sent to the wrong account has been returned to the right place, which is a huge relief. i was very careful when entering my details to withdraw it to the new account 🤞

gd and i started the day watching grave of the fireflies, we stopped it when mr smear woke up. then it was watching a few episodes of house until one of them looked like it was hitting inappropriate material, and now mr smear's playing human fall flat while i try to figure out what i want to do.

performance

yesterday:

the big deal in the morning was getting gd to her follow-up therapy session (i mean, it's been more than a year since the war broke out and this was her third actual meeting). while i waited for her, i worked a bit from the hospital food court. she arrived afterwards feeling rather proud of herself - with good reason - because as part of unpacking All The Things for a new person she realized that she's been through a lot of crazy stuff and she's still trucking.

...

the work day was pretty "standard", although it was interrupted by a message from mr smear's teacher informing me that he and his bully had had to be separated physically. i called him and asked him what had happened, and he told me his version, and i sent an angry message back to his teacher.

only to discover that his version of the story had been missing some important details.

it turned out that he'd done the instigating, and "happened" to wander to his bully's side of the class, allegedly not realizing that he was really close to his desk. so the bully got upset and yelled at him to go away, at which point he decided that he should stand his ground because - as he put it - "technically, he doesn't own the whole class".

🤦

parenting is hard.

i made it very clear that he was in the wrong and that he's supposed to be helping me get moved to a different class, not tricking me into making a fool of myself to his teacher.

but, in the evening, i couldn't help myself: "did [your bully] really cry?"

"yeah, he always does when he doesn't get his way"

i feel like there's a grey area in there where i'm allowed to enjoy this mean-spirited moment with my boy.

...

we had vegan shuwarma for dinner, but gd apparently overcooked it because it was a bit too tough and chewy for both me and mr smear.

mr smear was feverish last night at bedtime. gd medicated him as much as she could.

today:

4.30am rocket attack, i slipped and skidded on my way to make sure mr smear was up and on his way to the bomb shelter and hurt my lower back a bit. it's manageable, but uncomfortable.

i neither know or care who these godforsaken "houthis" are, but they're making me genocidal. after the last jew in yemen passed away recently, after yemen successfully and completely ethnically cleansed us, i honestly don't understand why we shouldn't simply erase it from the map. i keep imagining god's hand wielding a giant hand-saw and just sawing that hellhole off the rest of the mainland.

...

we all struggled in the morning, and it was a rush to get mr smear out the door and to the school on time to prepare for the ceremony. i returned home, finished my coffee, and then gd and i went to the school to bear witness.

i made sure to get a (relatively) good spot to record mr smear, but i had no intention of taking any other photos or videos. unfortunately, it looks like the other parents saw me getting ready and assumed that i was doing the class photographer thing, and therefore didn't feel the need to take photos themselves, so i think i might have pissed a bunch of them off :P

anyway, mr smear was GREAT. i was so proud i was shaking, and he was cool as a cucumber! that was awesome.

the next forty minutes was a full-on show by their class, and i have to admit it was pretty impressive for a bunch of fourth graders. one little boy was hilariously flamboyant, and i *knew* (subsequently confirmed) that it's the same kid who sings (in mr smear's terms) "cringey" songs all the time :P

that kid definitely stole the show. otherwise, mr smear did all the things he was supposed to and everything went smoothly.

afterwards he convinced gd that he was too sick to stay at school, but i strongly suspect we got played because he literally skipped and ran all the way home.

i headed out to the office, and spent the rest of the morning fighting with aws credential caching. after a big leftover lunch (the vegan shuwarma tasted much better, somehow), we figured out a workaround for the credentials and i started making some actual progress.

then, half an hour before i was supposed to meet with the VP R&D of a company i've applied for, everyone sat down for a status meeting. i couldn't have been more obviously in a rush to leave if i'd tried, but fortunately i only ended up a few minutes late...

as soon as the meeting was over, i surreptitiously sneaked into the stairwell and let the guy know where i would be, and he met me a few minutes later. i was a bit nervous because it wasn't *impossible* to see us from my office floor, and when a guy walked into the area we were sitting in wearing a similar shirt to my boss he laughed at how terrified i looked :P

anyway, it was a really exciting meeting. i love what they're doing - my current employer could make good use of their services - and it sounds like they're looking for people like me. we agreed broadly on a way to make a technical challenge meaningful for both of us, and i left with a solid sense of alignment. 

let's see how this goes.

the rest of the afternoon was successful, the bones of the project i'm working on are complete and i've got a day spare to make it meatier.

...

oh! at some point during the day i realized why the crypto money hadn't hit our bank account! it's because i'm an idiot, and i withdrew it to my old bank account that i closed down. after a proper bit of panic, i spoke to my bank (who were surprisingly responsive for christmas day) who assured me they'd return the money to the sender. i then tried to get the sender on the line - luno - whose support chat is entirely "AI" automated, and figuring out how to submit a claim was hard. i eventually managed to get it done, though, and hopefully i'll get the rather sizeable sum of money back within the next week or two.

...

i headed home just after dark, picked up a couple of things on the way, and came home in time to make my son finish his math homework (which he continues to claim he already did, but the dashboard says otherwise), take turns showering and still have time to play his first "chanukah gift" - pikuniku - together.

it's a lot of fun!

i was really pleased that mr smear now knows some of the chanukah songs and joyfully sang them along with me ^_^

i read a little bit of the magic pudding to him at bedtime, after we'd spend about half an hour being amazed together by chino moreno and maynard james keenan's screaming abilities, and hopefully tonight won't be disrupted.

adulting

last night was... stressful. i played some of a particularly difficult mission in shadowrun: hong kong, and i honestly can't tell if my nerves were all from the game or not, but i was buzzing with anxious energy. then gd exploded out of the bedroom on the verge of a panic attack, desperately angry because she can't wait another month and a half for her dental treatment when she can't eat properly (her dentist warned her about bread, FFS) and her mouthguard has become a catch-22 (it doesn't fit properly with her temporary crown, but if she doesn't wear it there's a good chance the tooth will fracture).

...

gd and i dropped mr smear off at school today - in spite of his now-regular protests - and continued on the dental clinic. it was a pleasant enough walk.

we didn't achieve a lot at the clinic, but the receptionist tried to help and gd was much more satisfied with the outcome.

we sat and enjoyed a slow coffee at lebowski, then walked back home, stopping on the way to pick up her new shoes from the post office (which she seems to be very happy with) and do a quick grocery run (the carrefour staff creeped me out today).

by the time we returned home i was pretty hungry, and i was stuck between instructions from my boss and a sync with my teammates, so i had a decent breakfast. after the sync i had a much better idea of what i needed to be doing, but the next hour or two i was generally quite distracted.

i picked mr smear up from school and took him across the road to his tutor - we sat together in the sun for ten minutes, it was nice once he stopped trying to get me to "compromise" on spending time together vs him playing games on his phone.

the coffee shop i wanted to sit in has rearranged their counter away, so i was forced to sit outside in the glaring sun at a table surrounded by flies :/

at least i managed to make a little progress on the work, although i was distracted by helping an old friend request donations for his unit and a man standing right behind me selling books to whoever would give him the time of day.

after picking up mr smear and returning home - witnessing some interesting construction work and having an awkward conversation with a stranger who recognized my saffer accent and had stories to tell of his time living in cape town - the afternoon went by quickly in a rapid-fire series of distractions with little pockets of work in between.

during the hour leading up to my phone interview, i tried to rest and prepare myself, but i realized that i'm not just burned out, but also bummed out (read: depressed), and i really can't afford to project that during my interviews.

at 6pm i got on the call, which ended briefly after we discovered that we don't just work in the same building, but that we're on the same floor, and we've agreed to meet in person instead.

i rushed off to dizengoff to pick up mr smear's new prescription glasses, and on the way back home received authorization from my boss to take three days off next week. i made a conscious effort to not look at my phone for most of the bus rides there and back.

the evening was pleasant, i ate too much, and around mr smear's bedtime i dived in to my work and achieved a flow state for the first time the entire day, and actually managed to finish off (the work day) around an hour ago with a satisfying commit.

at that point i closed my laptop and took my kindle to the couch, reading mona lisa overdrive until i passed out for a bit, then getting up with a sore back and deciding to write this all down before i head to bed.

...

shit, i was supposed to call my mother after saying good night to mr smear, we're trying to figure out the best way to manage crypto transfers and debt repayments.

channukah gelt

"when i'm older, i'm going to become a christian" - my boy, whose only reference is that christians get to celebrate christmas.

well. if you think we're above "channukah bushes" and channukah gelt bribery, think again.

...

today was generally okay, but long. and weird. after dropping mr smear off at school, and helping gd with the grocery shopping, i headed to the office, arriving just in time to find a phone "booth" and join gd and mr smear's therapist for a guidance session.

it went well, but we had a breakthrough moment about our influence on mr smear's fear of the dark that made us sad.

i heard back from the company i interviewed with last week: nope.

i yelled at a HOT sales representative for calling me, and someone on our floor who overheard tried to help... it was a funny moment.

i consulted with horseman about whether or not to trade thursday's bitcoin, then got involved with messages with mr smear's teacher and tutor, and by the time i was ready to get some work done, everyone was leaving to get lunch.

after lunch, i needed to sync with my boss, but he and my coworker were busy, so i tried to find a way to withdraw. i eventually ended up so suspicious that i gave up for now, and went to sit in my boss's office thinking that he'd get to me when he was done.

the two of them carried on talking until my boss put his backpack on, at which point i interrupted to ask if he was leaving, and they both expressed surprise to learn that i'd been waiting patiently for them to finish...

... in parting, my boss asked me to do one more investigation.

i spent the remainder of the afternoon doing two things: sending some of the crypto to my south african bank account, and performing the investigation. it was roughly 6pm when i realized, while checking my results, that there was a much easier way to show that the investigation was pointless...

i walked home, we had a pleasant evening / vegan pizza dinner / chat with my mom / virtual tour around krybabie's mom's new apartment, which ended with mr smear's assertion (above).

we had a talk, and it's not clear if i handled it well or not. then we informed him, in the most confusing ways possible, of our new channukah tradition. at least he seemed happy about some of it :P

i didn't sleep well at all last night - both physically and psychologically - i've no idea whether i should go to bed soon or deliberately tire myself out.

the sufganya

 today was completely insane.

it began around 2.40am, where the missile alert sirens sounded, and we all struggled to get out and into the shelter, barely making it before the booms. i didn't realize until the afternoon that a school building near nystire was destroyed. mr smear couldn't get back to sleep after that, so i stayed with him... uncomfortably... for a couple of hours until i was reasonably sure he was actually going to sleep.

...

1. same wakeup pattern, but this time i was feeling completely broken, and no screen time for me either. i read desolation jones and we listened to music, and it was nice.

2. mr smear was complaining that he didn't feel well enough to go to school. he agreed to abide by the outcome determined by the thermometer. the thermometer suggested he was a bit warm, and so he stayed home. having reviewed his math homework dashboard, i'm satisfied that he's at or above his grade level, and apparently he did his other extra homework well, too.

3. on my way to the mall i received a call about a job. everything was sounding good, but before i agreed to come in to meet them i made sure that they could afford me. they can't, so... oh, well.

4. i'm glad i did a little research last night on kindles. i walked into the store, bought the right model (the basic 11th gen, the only one they had) at the right price (in ten instalments), and the experience was quick and painless. and then, for the cherry on top, i managed to pick up a bunch of soy yoghurts while they've been sold out everywhere for weeks.

5. my manager came in sick and coughing. again. it's really, really grating my cheese.

6. we had an all-hands today, which affirmed that the situation isn't dire. in honor of chanukah being next week, we had sufganyot. the ceo assumed that the one i got was vegan, and i took a chance - expecting it to maybe have egg, not dairy.

it was made with $#@!ing dairy butter.

that was around 11.30 this morning, and my stomache's only just started settling a couple of hours ago. for the first few hours after i had headaches and was really, really tired... so tired, in fact, that during an important conversation i fell asleep a couple of times and even dreamed. my coworkers found it hilarious that i tried to participate in the conversation when i woke up, even if i did have something to contribute :P

7. before the dairy took effect, i at least managed to finish my lunch. i'd walked past the hummusia on my way to work and just the memory of the smell made it a must.

8. in spite of everything, i managed to get the job i've been working on done by the end of the day.

9. i came home, just in time for a chat with an HR rep about another gig. it went well.

10. dinner was late, but we managed to squeeze in a simpsons episode before the new 8pm cut-off. dinner was ratatouille, gd's first attempt, and it was great. 

i can't explain why, but gd had informed me that a friend of hers wanted to lend us a hand financially, and i was inspired to do grace after the meal.

overall, the bedtime routine part of the evening went smoothly.

11. a two hour conversation with gd's friend, the conversation was all over the place but we graciously accepted the offer of help and he sent it to us in the form of some bitcoin. now i have to figure out how to withdraw that bitcoin into our bank account so that i can use it to pay off some debt...

12. that was just before midnight, when i realized that our sink was an absolute mess and in danger of triggering a blocked drain. i angrily un-jenga'ed everything and got the drain guard back in place, then sat down with my tea to post this.

i have a new kindle, and it's already set up. i think i'm going to read a bit before going to bed.