cross-ay-eyed

mr smear took the graphic novels back to the comics library yesterday, and i couldn't figure out what i wanted to read before my screen time and then... oh, yes, i wrote up my previous day's adventures, and got not-a-lot done before heading out (back) to the office.

i did not focus on my primary task today. i mean, i made some progress, but for the most part i was heavily invested in the distracting work of resurrecting a retired dependency so that i could fix a bug in it that i need to make the project i resurrected yesterday work properly.

and we had two important meetings yesterday. the first was an engineering all-hands that sounded eerily familiar, with zero irony. i had a little trouble with feeling sleepy, but i woke up to ask a question and had the VP come bouncing up to where i was sitting with the mic, and then very much not like my question about how metrics for velocity conflict with demanding accountability in terms of quality.

at least i managed to catch him for a positive chat immediately afterwards :P

i had a meeting in a fridge phone booth a few minutes later, and i realized just as i signed in that i couldn't find my hoodie. so, on the call but muted, i rushed around the office trying to find it, eventually guessing that it had fallen behind the stands where i'd been sitting, and managing (with enormous relief) to snatch it up and find a booth in time to follow everything.

my new manager is cool - i've worked with him before - but it's not clear how aligned we are on the mission so i had to be really careful to raise all my points in a way that didn't feel confrontational. i think i did alright, but i've now told everyone very clearly that i'm hoping to be able to start experimenting with integrating my hackathon solution by next week; both because it gives me a deadline i have to stick to, and because i'm nervously in a race against time to get *my* opinionated solution in before somebody comes and up with something irresponsible instead :P

when i left the office, i called gd back and we got into it about whether or not we can afford a dog, or will ever be able to afford a dog. that had to be put on hold while i travelled to my employer's office by light rail. there was a lot of tension, but we managed to move through it and had a heavy but important conversation about the challenges gd's been facing with language, community and work over the past few years, and how to approach them.

the meetup at the office was pretty good. not only were the talks not boring (i learned a few things about agentic ai and agentic memory), but i made small talk with a guy who turned out to be another ex-saffer (he went to school with one of my cousins' kids) and the conversation ended up going off the rails in our unique saffer way. it made the eavesdroppers (and there were a couple) a little happier about the hardships they're forced to endure :P

i had a good chat with the head of our group afterwards, though i said something in a clumsy way - i'm sure she doesn't remember, but it's bugging me - and then i bussed home just in time to say goodnight to mr smear and have a bit of a chat before he went to sleep, and watch most of another episode of ludwig with gd, and now...

... i dunno. i think i'm too tired to do anything productive, but also not tired enough to go to bed and actually sleep 🤷‍♂️

homeschooling

 six day war... twelve day war... twelve hour war...

bizarrely, yesterday felt like a return to routine.

שמים את השיגורים בשיגרה 

we put the rocket launches in the routine

mr smear's biggest lesson for the day was helping gd clean the floors; the first half was a nightmare until i got involved, and once it was done we had to have a family meeting and discuss how we help others (mr smear) and how we handle provocations (gd). we then had a bit of a repeat episode when he was supposed to help her with the dishes before dinner prep, but for a different reason, and i found myself explaining to a ten year old techniques for getting off the toilet quickly 🙄

my workday was alright, and ultimately successful. i'm still really behind - way past deadline - but i'm making some progress and certainly learning things along the way. i don't really have a solid mental model for what i'm doing, though, not yet at least, but a big part of that is how uninvested i am personally.

i also "wrote" (AI) a bunch of bash scripts for a CI workflow, and now i'm thinking i really should rewrite them in python...

i got stuck waiting on others in the evening, and mr smear and i took our fluxx collection upstairs to play a couple of games with our upstairs friends. it was fun, but more than that it was intended to be an educational experience for the kids, and as many annoyances as there may have been, overall it went well.

mr smear and i came back downstairs for dinner and macgyver, and gd's mushroom-soup lemonade (she followed the mushroom soup recipe, it's a terrible recipe), and then a hilarious chat with my mom (cemeteries can be dramatic), and then a night of intentionally doing nothing of value.

this morning we woke up (myself a lot more slowly than everyone else), and sent mr smear off to school, and then i read a little bit (a mix of stranger in a strange land and watchmen), and now i've posted this while singing along to synthknot, and now i guess it's time to get moving and go to work.

...

i've been putting off a bunch of preparation work that i need to do for the upcoming hackathon, it's not feeling good. but having published my extension and the related articles, i feel like a weight has fallen off my shoulders.

the square hip

 not so restful, but i did eventually manage to get my hip to stop bothering me enough to get some sleep. but then, when i was woken up by the third alarm for an all-hands event that had nothing to do with me, i got up to find that my hip was totally locked up, front and back.

i started my day on the carpet on the floor trying to stretch it out while sipping coffee and reading the importance of being ernest - i've owned my copy for years, how have i never opened it before?

i guess today was pretty constructive, all things considered. i think i've finally nailed down the upgrade of a service to the latest golang version (from 1.11), and i think i handled my RCA ticket being irrecoverably deleted by someone who didn't know what it was quite admirably.

i took mr smear with me to witness my very painful limp and call me a cripple pick up the internet cable outlet plates and return the comic books to the library, but arrived at the library to discover that they'd been closed for half an hour. because holidays. and war.

getting through the mall gauntlet was alright. there were a few cosplayers doing their thing, but i don't think mr smear noticed much.

after we got home and dropped off the box, we went to our new 24/7 to pick up a couple of things, then returned home for more work, to receive the new soundbar, and then to dive in to a dramatic homework session.

ultimately he did well, and he was pleased with himself, but the journey there was fraught with him doing everything he could to sabotage himself. i truly believe he can do anything he puts his mind to - and i don't believe that of many people. but omg getting him to put his mind to anything is nigh impossible.

dinner (and strip search) was great, gd rushed him through shower and toothbrush time surprisingly rapidly, he read while i showered and brushed my teeth, and then we said good night.

gd and i spoke for a little while - mostly she's feeling bad about stuff that's totally normal for all of us right now - and i tooled around (mushing my brain with trash) until posting this, and now i think i'm going to try to get some rest.

again. my hip's still acting up.

when life gives you a permeable shower curtain...

 ... double up. as i begin this post mr smear is taking a turn after me, after we put in another one of the same on top of the one from yesterday. so far so good, and i'm enjoying him singing to himself and having a good time 🤞

today began with a boom - a building or three a few blocks away got hit with a missile, a few cars got hit as well, and the next hour or so was an orchestra of emergency service vehicles. but, miraculously, the building in question was evacuated a while ago for reconstruction or renovation, so while there was a lot of damage, there weren't any serious injuries 🙏

not-so-small mercies.

so the morning went straight in and hard on social media and news.

my work day was far better than yesterday, even if it ended on a droopy note with me listening to a recording of someone who mumbles monotonically with a difficult accent.

three call-outs for the day: losing the spider we weren't sure was venomous (we don't think it is now, but we weren't sure), and way too much snacking, and trying to find out where our new couch is, and losing my temper after learning that the package i paid to have delivered to a specific address in ramle was delivered to a store nearby and they want the addressee to pick it up.

from a mr smear point of view, the first day of holidays went quite well. i cancelled his matific subscription - he hasn't used it in months, and it's a great practice tool but not very good for learning - and his "homework" for today was to play human resource machine. (on gog, so i'll link that edition too).

[the shower experience was good and didn't wet the floor! score!]

i was so proud of him! especially of him being proud of himself whenever he figured stuff out ^_^

the evening training was mostly really good - checking and roundhouse kicks - but the biggest challenge was him not responding when told to stop responding. i honestly couldn't tell if he was trolling me, or literally couldn't control himself, but he eventually got a hold of himself and we had a constructive conversation about it while stretching.

overall, he's doing really well.

dinner was delicious. dinner was interrupted by an attack. dinner was extended to include an extra episode of strip search, and more of panda's dubai-style chocolate with vegan marshmallows. it's kinda like peanut butter and marshmallows, but even better!

i'm not making any plans for tonight, but i'm tired and sleepy and i think i might go lie down soon.

a power day

 well, the next part of the day was pretty rough - but in a fun way, i guess? it certainly was an experience. 

firstly, mr smear is now full-on into counter-strike, and it's nice to see him not giving up and getting excited by his successes. so it was a cool tone to set before we head out to his regular allergist checkup.

but we headed out right in the heaviest part of a massive thunderstorm. fortunately, we both had our big-enough rain boots on, the water levels were high everywhere and my waterproof shoes would have been flooded from the top. and we had a time avoiding cars spraying water onto the sidewalks, and we got pelleted with hail (his first time outside in hail), and the walk from the bus to the hospital was just ridiculous - a real urban jungle adventure - and of course, the sun came out just as we arrived at our destination.

from that point on it became impossible to close my umbrella...

there was a bit of confusion (which was to be expected) at the reception, but we made it through the bureaucratic gauntlet and went upstairs to the allergy clinic. it was war-time very quiet and there were only two other kids there, surprisingly calm and extremely cute children, so off the bat it was a much less stressful time with mr smear. at that point my tiredness and lack of caffeine began catching up with me, but the allergist and her nurse were efficient and mr smear managed to distract himself from the prick-test itching with games on his phone, and pretty soon we were discussing the results.

it seems like, sadly, his allergy level is stabilizing rather than going away, we'll know better in the next year or two. but even so, the level it's stabilizing at is far less dramatic than before, so while he'll still need an epipen and to be careful not to consume dairy, we don't need to be so scared of accidental contact.

it's / it should be fine.

we went through the hospital mall, where i picked up an emergency coffee just as the attack warning sounded. considering the fact that the roof is made of glass, i get why the safe area was three floors below ground... there was nowhere comfortable to sit, so the two of us walked around the parking lot full of people occupying themselves on their phones and amused ourselves playing word association games.

then we returned to pick up a couple of things at the supermarket, and a couple of bottles of sublingual b12 at the pharmacy (while waiting in the uncomfortably crowded aisle for the self-service checkout, gd called twice while i was holding an umbrella that refused to stay closed, a cup of coffee, and two bottles of b12. i was not in my happy place.

mr smear and i took a bus home - to his chagrin, he always wants to walk these days to get some exercise - and he signed on to his remote classes while i finally got wednesday's code review approved and got started on the follow-up improvement. gd has managed to schedule me a haircut, so a short while late i headed out to catch a bus to sheinkin.

i had some time to spare, so i got a little more work done and drank a coffee that i must assume was soy milk (because they said so, and i honestly can't tell). i arrived just on time for my haircut appointment, and another attack warning. everyone headed across the road to a hotel shelter (the same hotel my cousin threw his farewell party in on mr smear's birthday), which was an interesting experience, and then we returned to get into it. i thought the coffee would keep me from nodding in the chair, but...

... i'm really happy with the haircut. gd's happy with it too. i'm very enthusiastically grateful that i'm no longer sporting my jew-fro / isro :P

it took a long time to get home (i shouldn't have gotten off the bus when i did), and while i waited for the connection mr smear had an accident while helping gd and the two of them had to deal with a smashed plate. so that happened.

the evening was me completing the work and studying a bit (data engineering), and mr smear playing more counter-strike, and then a pretty intensive training in which mr smear admirably demonstrated that he not only could STFU when being given instructions, but that he could redirect his anger and frustration energy into the drill we were doing (a liver shot combo) (even if he did feel the need to tell me that he was imagining that he was hitting me), into continuing the work through discomfort, into stepping into his first impact training (feather-light touch from me, but a big deal for him), into pushing himself through difficult post-training exercises (like planking, diamond push-ups, crunches and burpees), into taekwondo-style stretching.

all the while holding himself in check, even when it was clear he was emotionally at the edge. when we were done, his pride was quiet but visible, and he didn't argue with me the first couple of times i told him how proud i was (he did a bit later, though :P).

a great dinner (double yo-egg, both types as a very successful pre-pesach experiment), and everyone into the merch episode of strip search with lots of pausing to discuss. shower-time and tooth-brushing time were very positive (gd and i were loving him singing along to my playlist at the top of his voice), and his bedtime was earlier than it's been for a while and much more peaceful.

after saying good night, i went on a hunt for vitamin d resources that someone asked me for regarding testing / screening and dosage:

there're a lot of studies that discuss the unreliability of testing - this one's pretty clear - check out the "sources cited" button beneath this video (it's really worth watching). 

see also the "accuracy of screening tests" section of the US preventive services task force report.

and then i watched a whole lot of youtube videos (war news interspersed with random shit), and now this, and then... maybe i'll go to bed soon.

[attack warning]

less than minor disruptions

 so far today we've had two warnings of incoming attacks, one attack with a siren, and one without. but we got to go to south tel aviv, visit some furniture stores and find a couch we're excited about, order it, and learn that it *should* be here in time for pesach.

hopefully my mom will be too 🤞

gd wasn't feeling so good - it was pretty impressive that she managed to make the mission at all - so mr smear and i dropped her off at home, stopping for a siren warning and breakfast (we were both very hungry by that stage), and then took the (delayed due the war like all of them) bus to the apple store, where there regretfully informed me that gd's ipad is too old and too scratched to be worth much in trade :(

so i guess it's hail-mary time, we'll try to back it up and completely reset it in the hopes that we can ugrade its OS...

we had a very pleasant walk home, picking up liquor, running into an old colleague friend and his dog (abahd - a boy and his dog, referencing the movie he introduced me to when he learned i'm a fallout fan), and picking up a sorry-we're-at-war gift from my employer of half a kilo of ice cream for (theoretical) dinner tonight.

then, as promised - after a cup of coffee, of course - mr smear and i went into MMA mode and i taught him taekwondo side kicks. which he did surprisingly well for a first time!

he's also - in fits and bursts - getting used to the idea of discipline, shutting the fuck up and taking instructions whether he agrees with them or has something to say or not. and it's really help that the motivation to do the work is coming from him because he's fixated on losing weight and we don't want him dieting...

i'm developing a karate kid fantasy of teaching him to a point where i can take him to my old master and see him holding his own :)

we took turns showering, and then there was an unannounced attack - lots of booms but no sirens - and now we're busy making dinner plans. it seems like the challah-peño's going to be good tonight ^_^

and i'm listening to moby - for the nostalgia - and figuring out what to do with my brain.

feedback

 alright, let's see what i can remember from today:

i did rest a bit after finally returning to bed, but obviously not enough.

i finished mr smear's pancakes this morning, surprised that they had vegan goat cheese inside. i still feel a little bit betrayed.

mr smear's been begging me to let him use google during his art classes for inspiration. i don't know why it took so long, but i connected all our calendars and set up his schedule so that i could set alerts before and after his art classes accordingly. and evening alarms to go through his browser history with him...

that was significant effort.

once again, i arrived at the office *just* in time for my team's daily. there were issues with yesterday's deployment, and i was briefed on them, and i met a new teammate. one of my client team brought his beautiful two year old giant puppy lab. most of my day was a mix of wasting time trying to get java tooling working for one of the projects, advising one of my teammates (apparently finding the root cause of the issue), tweaking monitoring dashboards, and mentoring a junior in the client team.

then there was the "family day" present. i was very confused when i learned i'd been registered for "fondue" (that doesn't sound vegan), then there was a whole story about whether the dark chocolate was actually vegan or not. and then i had to carry the basket home, which was awkward and heavy (oh, poor me).

i came home early after dealing with a discipline issue with mr smear over the phone - he'd been messing around with homework and gd was getting upset - and spent the next hour gearing up for the call with my client.

the call went surprisingly well. he thanked me for the direct and open feedback, explained the context for the craziness, assured me that we're aligned in where things should be, and informed me that i appear to be having a positive effect on my bulgarian teammates, which i take as high praise.

so that's good, and i feel grateful to be in a position where i have a team (my employer) behind me.

i immediately caught a bus to the mattress store - pausing only to report to the municipality what appeared to be a massive human poop about 50m away that was causing an eye-watering smell all the way to our apartment building - on which there was almost an incident as some big guy with a shit attitude got in someone's face, allegedly for staring at him.

i got to the store just in time, and lay down on the mattress. it seemed less aggressively anti-me, so i confirmed that i was willing to give it a try. the delivery guy arrived, and making arrangements for tomorrow got complicated, but i was pleased when he called me back from my way to the bus stop to ask if he could give me and the mattress a ride home right then and there.

i enthusiastically agreed, and we stopped at a gas station so i could draw the extortion money for the mattress and the delivery, and then we made the switch, and then a worker from the municipality called to inform me that the poop had been taken care of - he sounded traumatized, and sending me photographic evidence that it was cleaned seemed important to him - and mr smear completed his homework with much pride and joy, and then it was shower time [remembers to turn off the boiler because we had cool showers], and then dinner, and reading time / admin time, and a short attempt to rest, and now this, and then who knows?

the (big) little things

 today had some pretty important achievements.

after mr smear left for school, i had breakfast so that i could take some ibuprofen for the leftovers from yesterday's migraine and registered for unemployment for the first time in my life.

then gd and i walked to the pain clinic. it took a while to get to see the doctor, but he was in and available and he sorted us out with the recommendation we needed. afterwards, while advising gd not to see an osteopath for her shoulder issues, gd said something and he suddenly registered - apparently for the first time - just how disabled she is. and that was when gd's floodgates opened, because almost nobody we've dealt with really gets it.

i hung around and chatted with horseman while gd got a prescription, and then we walked to a copy shop to print a return label for a pair of shoes. i followed the instructions - sending an email from my gmail account to the shop's gmail account - but they claimed that "sometimes it can take a while" which doesn't make any sense. i half-jokingly asked if maybe their internet was disconnected, and the manager took offense and made a few snide remarks. while i was standing there trying to figure out whether it was worth being offended or not, i realized that the customer-facing computers were logged in to the same gmail account. so i hit "all mail" and lo! my email had arrived.

fuckin' idjits.

so i spent 10 NIS on poor service, a single printed page and a plastic sleeve.

then gd and i walked home, had a bite to eat, and after a few failed attempts to request her cannabis license renewal i made myself a turkish coffee for the road and walked the shoes back to the post office.

with everything that's been going on, i've needed any excuse for a walk and think, even if there hasn't been a whole lot of thinking going on.

i arrived at the packed post office, and tried to set the package down because usually they don't make us wait for that. except that now they do, and the clerk made me feel pretty shitty for not waiting my turn...

when i got home, i sat down at my desk and cranked out some improvements to the language app i haven't touched in months, and although gd got a bit frustrated while testing it i feel like it's actually on it's way!

i went to pick mr smear up from the school to take him gift shopping, encountering the unhinged mother and making a point of neither looking at her nor avoiding her. then mr smear came out and we enjoyed a pleasant walk to the mall, where we found some posters but not the right one. the guy at the store had a south african accent, and we ended up talking, and i ended up learning that we could do custom prints! so we found a perfect image, got an amazing print made, and hopefully tomorrow i'll be able to pick it up with it's basic mounting.

the owner of the store told me some weird stories. i'm not sure i really understand what was happening in them.

mr smear and i bussed home, and settled in to homework. the hebrew homework went well. the math homework started off pretty well, had some rocky moments, and then mr smear took a toilet break and when he came back he was completely unfocused and uncooperative, and i got upset. and then gd got upset.

and then i started thinking about how i got called out for getting upset with skippity in the office, and about how i wasn't modeling well, and i explained to mr smear that i wasn't upset with his homework performance, but with his uncooperative behavior, and that even if it was reasonable to get angry after having all my patience worn down, i wanted to get back to the positive vibe from before when he and i were both so excited by his progress.

and between the two of us, we did it. his behavior over the next half hour or so wasn't perfect, but i managed to keep an even keel and focus on the good stuff and we both learned some cool stuff; he learned about exponents, and we learned how to use prime factorizations to make large numbers easy to reason about, and he was super proud of himself ^_^

dinner was... i overate.

bedtime went similarly to yesterday - the new plan is working, hopefully it'll keep working 🤞

finally, after putting mr smear to bed, i tried one more time to renew the license, and this time realized that i was using brave with its shields up. so i took them down, and voilà! done. what a thoroughly different experience (not using machon mor).

ocular migraine two

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

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

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

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

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

at least mr smear's bedtime went smoothly.

yom ha'aztmaut 2025: everything is on fire

the devastating eco-terrorism fires set yesterday seem to be relatively under control, so we can at least open the windows and go outside for yom ha'atzmaut.

this is a tough one.

a beautiful prayer has been written for it: a prayer for yom hazikaron and yom haatzmaut 5785-2025

saturday:

mostly resting, with mr smear finally feeling better. watching big, which has aged surprisingly well. an afternoon walk which turned sour, but managing to rescue it by the skin of my teeth (and a mix of forcefulness and letting some shit slide).

explaining to mr smear that there are four types of authority (power, knowledge, leadership, and dependency).

sunday:

a really good night's sleep

waking up to surprise renovations downstairs while trying to get stuff done, including lots of time on the phone learning that my debit card issuer can't cancel our debit cards

successfully getting our freelancer to deploy, then discovering that my son had informed his therapist and mother that he was suicidal. a long, serious but mostly positive talk with him and gd at schnitt's

homework help: after some fighting, establishing that he'd done the book report properly, making a lego pizza slice

spending the evening mindlessly doing minesweeper quests until way later than i should have

monday:

a very positive morning after a short but relatively good night's sleep. surprisingly good yoga start. surprise water outage, but at least an apology / acknowledgement from the apartment owner that he should have warned us beforehand

a reunion lunch with my previous teammates, no vegan options but a manager who took the feedback well

rushing to get the car and pick up gd and mr smear, surprise trucks blocking the pick up point after mr smear misunderstood that "meet us here" meant "meet us here now", parking too early, gd getting an answer about her toes (her toenail seems to be disconnected from the matrix, and might be infected)

fucking up the installation, a panicked hour or two with my lead on the line trying to help him (through his panic) to do stuff he doesn't want to do while simultaneously trying to get anydesk to work so i could rescue the machine i'd auto-deleted from our vpn

leaving the office around 9pm, getting on a bus with a suspicious package and getting off at the next stop because the driver didn't care. the next bus driver doing me a favor by dropping me off where he shouldn't have

getting myself cleaned up and then diving right back into work. making some progress but grinding until 3am before giving up

tuesday:

3.5 hours sleep, good quality sleep but waking up feeling broken

crazy day of non-stop support and phone ringing, exhaustion, napping before a sezchuan lunch, everything still broken but eventually somewhat successful (our test site, at least), the simpsons and pushing bedtime back a half hour (possibly a bad idea)

our whole family at the door putting shoes on to rush to the shelter before realizing that the siren was for yom hazikaron

an early-ish night

wednesday:

a proper good night's sleep

starting the day with a massive wake-up fight (see previous comment about possibly bad idea)

a clinic mission after dropping mr smear off at school

visiting the bank on the way to work: "you could have just sent me a message". getting the cards cancelled pretty quickly.

my son the asshole ("secretly" erasing the board every day, then threatening the kid who told him not to - the kid whose mother he insulted, and whose artwork he tore up, and who he hit with a rock - then calling gd in tears to say he was being bullied by the whole class, then kicking "the usual" bully, then telling the teacher she's an idiot that's being manipulated, then finally apologizing)

jesus fucking christ.

over the course of the day i managed to defuse the situation with my lead by agreeing to walk back a change he was unhappy about, and we're going to have to find a different way to approach it. and i expect that we'll know soon enough if that was what broke the deployments...

ordering lunch was a mess, wolt took the wrong payment method and the two agents i spoke to were completely useless. but the lunch itself was absolutely delicious (yellow curry), and i should only have eaten half of it.

the rest of the workday was smooth, cursor's "assistance" was a mixed bag (90% of the code was ai-generated, but it was also 90% wrong and needed a lot of iterating). i learned a lot about kubernetes, though :P

on the way home i needed to mask up because of the ash

a long "family meeting" that was very intense. parenting is hard.

a quiet start to yom haatzmaut playing minesweeper and slay the spire and thinking a lot about everything.

today so far:

mostly quiet, but now heading out with mr smear. we had a fight about heading out - as usual - but this time i warned him that we won't tolerate this shit any more. if he doesn't change this behavior, i'm going to start deleting his game accounts, like roblox and minecraft. i'm done.

chag sameach.

rage against the machines (and little boys)

 i didn't sleep well, and a meaningful contributor to that was reading aethersmith's message that included the phrase "if someone came to with with the argument you are using re the israel / palestine conflict, would you feel the same way?" right before going to bed.

i took my time considering my response, discussing my thoughts with my family and my coworkers, and this evening sent this in response:

firstly, no. but that's because we're literally fighting against armies of genocidal maniacs who not only want to wipe out me and my family and my people, but have successfully infiltrated western media and academia and are convincing everyone that wiping us out is okay. let's contrast that to "you're stealing my art and hurting my livelihood".

nobody makes art without stealing art, and very few artists in the history of art have consented to their art being studied and practiced and cloned. if your art's good, people are going to want to copy it. up until now the only ways your artwork has been protected has been when the copies are clear attempts at forgery and are being passed off as authentic, and the barriers to entry in producing art being really high. 

you're upset because there's shit art. weren't you upset before?

you're upset because artists are losing work. that's fair, but everything's being disrupted lately, and that's not just because of AI or the current method of training models. and if anyone's livelihoods are being compromised, trust me - us software developers are the first in line for the chopping block.

am i worried about what's coming? honest answer: somewhat. but at the same time, we can choose to embrace and adapt or we can choose to fight.

i do NOT, in ANY way, condone you taking the fight to the users of the new technology and trying to coerce us into boycotting something we simply don't agree with you about. you think it's unethical? that's okay. we disagree. and that's okay too. your fight isn't with me, but maybe i'm just an easier target for you than the AI companies and people who are training their models without compensating artists. maybe you should fight with them about it.

and maybe you'd be more effective in getting people on your side if you showed a little bit of empathy, tried to understand that they're not evil scum because they're on the opposing side of a debate that you've decided shouldn't exist. sometimes it doesn't matter whether you're right as much as whether you're effective, and i promise you you're not helping your cause by gunning for individuals who aren't responsible for the things that are scaring you.

i'm not your enemy, and neither are any of the other end users of this incredible-but-highly-flawed technology.

...

this morning was okay, i walked mr smear to school and then continued on to the post office to return a bunch of stuff we bought that doesn't fit.

thoughts for the walk to and from the post office: the generative ai thing, and "real mean pick up after their dogs".

i cleaned out more crow poop from a windowsill 🤮, then gd and i did some grocery shopping, interrupted halfway by a visit from a friend. i ended up leaving for work a bit later than planned, but it was fine.

it was a busy day. my lead decided to pause the project i've been stressing over the past few work days, which doesn't feel very good but i understand it. a few of us walked to sumsum for lunch, which was nice. my lunch break, which usually lasts about twenty minutes, turned into an hour because someone got me talking about shakespeare's sonnets and someone from each subsequent lunch group caught the tail end of the conversation and then started a new one :P

we had a long presentation on "nonviolent communication", which wasn't very exciting, but had some interesting bits nonetheless. that triggered a political discussion with my lead that got a bit heated, but i think i managed to deescalate effectively.

i left early to pick up a handheld vacuum cleaner because ours finally died. they were out of stock, as was the closest store. [in retrospect, i could have tried their competitors across the road]

oh, yeah - and our washing machine's leaking. so i have to take care of that in the morning :/

i walked home, and tried to get through mr smear's homework with him.

that... did not go well. it went very badly. it went a lot worse than usual. he still doesn't get that this is home, and that he can't escape being jewish, and that refusing to integrate is only hurting him.

and this was all before we addressed the fact that his hebrew teacher sent me a report today informing me that he still hasn't been participating.

we had dinner, while gd simmered with rage.

we tried again with the homework. things got even worse. gd lost it. on the one hand, she was really, really harsh with him. on the other, i believe he needed it. he's developed a bizarrely warped view of how the world works and what's fair and what's not, and it's really not serving him.

hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.

i played through inscryption, then responded to aethersmith, and then decided that i didn't have it in me to get any work done so i've been doing minesweeper.online quests while watching youtube videos. i'm starting to fall asleep now. maybe tonight will be the night 🤞

the good place

i think i slept okay last night, but i was a bit too warm under the duvet (spring is coming). my sinus situation seems a bit better, but it's still not great. i don't know what this means, but whatever it is it's been going on a ridiculously long time now and i'm quite over it.

i know mr smear can get himself to school now, but i quite enjoy walking with him. on my way home, i picked up some stuff from the grocery store. then i ran into one of the parents - i still don't know his name, but it's way too late to ask - and we had a quick chat during which i learned that he works in an adjacent field to mine, which was interesting.

[i've just spent about half an hour trying to find out his name on facebook and linkedin, and i've got nothing to show for it]

once i was back home and mr smear was at school, i discussed last night's shenanigans and gd and i are in sync about how it went down.

i saw that my coworkers were all busy for a lot of the night, and i made a point of enabling work notifications around the clock because i feel bad that i wasn't online for them. i fiddled around with my cibus card, and managed to write up some stuff for ze german, before leaving for the office. it felt good to get that off my to-do list.

the work day was busy, and pleasantly successful. my lead blew my mind describing how he worked around the bugs we'd been seeing - our code was fine, the tools we're using have some issues.

lunch was amazing (pasta via's "mythological vegan").

in addition to achieving another milestone on the project i'm working on, i've just (like, an hour ago) finished up two pieces of "side quest" work. it's fair to say that the lion's share of the work i did today was implemented by AI, and most of that was pretty good and only needed some minor tweaks.

mr smear's class went on a field trip today, and on the bus ride back he FA'd with his phone and FO'd when his teacher confiscated it. he was very, very upset - hopefully he'll learn from the experience :P

i came home "on time" today (for the first time this week, i believe) and helped mr smear with his homework. in general it was a great evening, and my absolute favorite part of it was during shower / toothbrushing time with the three of us singing along at the top of our lungs to kiss' i was made for lovin' you and queen's bohemian rhapsody.

mr smear went to bed without any drama, and then gd and i enjoyed another episode of monk before she went to bed and i got back to business.

unusually me

yesterday:

a very positive start to the day, getting mr smear to his fight camp on time.

mostly meetings, with me forcing a retrospective that felt appreciated by most of the team. a good start to sorting out potential on-call rotation issues. very little time for my own work.

leaving the office early and coming home for an early meal with my family before heading south.

efrat gosh in levontin 7 with tahoma - an interesting catch-up, a very intimate performance that really blew me away, as i was simultaneously quite emotional about being in a show in levontin 7 for the first time in about twelve years.

getting home late, showering and snacking even later.

today:

3am mistakenly looking at facebook and seeing a post recommending that a tel aviv family consider relocating to cape town, finally going back to bed an hour and a half later

rough and rushed wakeup, but mr smear being pretty cool

a really good chat with his instructor when dropping him off

a surprising conversation with gd about spirituality.

meeting up with my cousin's kid for coffee to discuss career options, a sudden and dramatic plot twist into a romantic adventure story

arriving late for work, being dropped into an unfamiliar production issue for a customer. an emotional rollercoaster of an afternoon, with gd getting on the wrong bus and picking up mr smear late, and mr smear continuing his struggle to get out of the fight camp, and me getting lost trying to figure out all the pieces of the work puzzle, and then getting news that my nephew just received his british ancestral visa and is finally able to join his mother and sister in london, and then hours trying to decipher truly pathetic documentation (google's envoy) and figuring things out with trial and error (with the AI assistance being the opposite of helpful), finally being inspired to ask a different question and hitting the jackpot, then a loooooot of debugging implementing the solution and eventually leaving the office late, but in time to eat with my family, and feeling exquisitely exhultant.

the evening was great until bedtime, i tried to have a conversation with mr smear and it went south (for no obvious reason), and then gd and i watched the third episode of the new fallout series. it's full of fan service, even if i feel like the pacing's a bit slow it's really inspired me to get back into it.

f*** around, find out

the meme's been everywhere lately.

today it was mr smear's turn to find out.

he hit a girl in his class today, after harassing another kid who was just trying to quietly read a book. it's the first time i've ever spanked him. i wasn't emotional when i did it - gd and i agreed that it was due, and then it was a matter of picking the right moment - but i was emotional afterwards. i was pretty pissed off that he'd brought us to a place where i need to wield physical authority.

a short while later, after giving him some space to steam, i approached and sat down next to him, and asked him what he was thinking. god knows how effective this experience will actually prove to be, but he basically swore off violence and assured me that he's going to start listening to us.

we'll see.

it's heartbreaking to see him self-destructing. thursday's therapy session can't come quickly enough.

...

i slept alright last night, which was the first time in quite a while. i dropped mr smear off at school, got through the morning rituals, then wasted half an hour with my south african bank.

the weather today was somewhat improved, but still crappy.

work was interesting. i effectively lost a day due to a redesign triggered by a review comment, but i'm definitely happier with where the solution is.

i left work early to pick up mr smear, and we had words all the way home. correction: i had words, and he knew exactly how in the wrong he was and appeared to actually be listening.

we'll see.

i'm very glad that gd found my old keyboard, but this evening that's been the least of my concerns. i'm not sure if i'm having trouble because of the upgrade to windows 11, or because i haven't used this computer in such a long time... either way, slow and steady progress...

...

there's been a mosquito buzzing around me all evening, and i haven't been able to catch the bugger :/