official

 i didn't take a puff on sunday night, but i slept pretty well nonetheless. i started my day completing my favorite thing is monsters volume ii.

the artwork is no less phenomenal than the first volume, but overall it just isn't as satisfying, none of the elements that were "wrapped up" make much sense, and there are a bunch of events that were more focused on being anachronistically inclusive and less on the actual characters and story.

it's full of wonderful creations and interesting moments, though, and ultimately I enjoyed it a lot.

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a significant chunk of my morning and evening were spent worrying about finances. we're barely scraping through this month, and as a result of gd's panic (and her refusal to use cheap, effective but gross solutions) we've spent an enormous amount of next month's money on lice treatments that may or may not work.

it's not clear right now if we're done with this super-lice saga yet. we've established a protocol that we're going to stick to, wartime or peacetime, and we're going to hope for the best.

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i started listening to the audible* audiobook of marty cagan's transformed yesterday on my way to the office, at 1.5x speed and trying to skip as much fluff as possible. so far, my biggest takeaways are that transformations are whole-org things that require buy-in from everyone, and that *gasp* small, frequent release cycles and CI/CD need to happen together or they're meaningless.

* i think audible should consider selling lifetime memberships and then charging a small amount per audiobook, rather than huge amounts per audiobook on top of expensive memberships.

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a truck just drove past and made a sound like a quiet sneeze.

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my first encounter in the office was dx, and when i shared my thoughts on the map generator lessons from sunday night and what i thought might be the next step, he told me something encouraging: "i wouldn't be surprised if that's what everybody's doing in a few months from now". so now i'm motivating to figure out a good way to make a spec library so that i can tell my agents to insert a <pattern> in whatever project i'm working on and have it pre-loaded with everything it needs to ask instead of having to describe what i want from scratch.

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i was sitting with my new manager, and we were discussing how we were both taken by surprise by yesterday's news that this is my last week, when my previous manager from bulgaria suddenly walked up and joined us - i've never met him in real life before! so that was cool.

the work day was mostly scrambling, because that's what this week is all about, to close up everything. and a break for an employer's group meeting. and another break to talk to one of the data guys after learning that a bunch of them have just been retrenched*. and, towards the evening, buying tickets to gd's and my first date night since my mom visited last year.

* i referenced the town hall here, but couldn't easily find my immediate thoughts on it, which were all around gratitude that this is my client and not my employer, because i would not have felt in the least bit safe.

i got home relatively late, and we watched the wonder years over gd's second delicious attempt at daal, and after catching up with and saying good night to my mom we did the shower and lice protocol thing and then settled down to watch about half of crocodile dundee together.

i was tired, which usually meant going to bed early and then waking up for hours in the middle of the night, so i took a puff, and actually slept well until morning.

some of the surprises were good

 i had a rough hour or so last night with my hip flexors, but otherwise i managed to get some pretty good sleep (going by the fact that i remember that i dreamed)

i started the day with volume 2 of my favorite thing is monsters, and aside from that and grocery shopping online i don't recall doing anything interesting.

work began with two conversations about game development - dx has apparently begun trying his hand at it, and one of the other guys showed some interest as he worked on simulations as part of his degree - and a little bit of jumping between tasks.

at noon, i received a phone call from the immigrant employment woman - i'll call her pioneer - and we talked for about an hour, this seems a natural fit for a partnership and she appears to be on board with my vision for a digital kibbutz. immediately afterwards, i received a message from a high school teacher i met last week informing me that she might have found some interesting people to work on another project of mine, one that ties in with the former.

this is all very exciting.

unfortunately, i learned that a meeting i was trying to set up with someone at my alma mata isn't going to happen, and i'm pretty disappointed because it should be something totally aligned with their values...

i came home for an employer group meeting, some of which was quite enlightening, and after an hour or two of more work i called it a day and mr smear and i strapped on our rollerblades and went for a ride.

oh, i watched a couple of my more recent spoken word pieces [1] [2], and i have the strangest sensation of wonder that i wrote those, because for years i've been feeling less than inspired and capable.

dinner was delicious, and i ate plenty, and then i gorged myself on chocolate, liquorice allsorts and whatever the fizzer-like candies are called. then we had a chat with my mom, which included a big discussion about mr smear's barmitzvah plans, and after saying goodnight to mr smear gd and i watched a bit more of ludwig.

i was already in bed, but then gd walked into the fan carrying a cup of water which was somehow my fault, so now i'm cooling off and hoping to get back into sleep mode soon.

nodding

 i guess the advantage of having a nerve pinched in the middle of my back is that it seems to be blocking my hip flexor discomfort. "conditioned pain modulation", huh? i'll take it.

i got up with my alarm, remembered (thanks to gd's note) not to drink anything but water, and walked to the lab, arriving early enough on a quiet day to be out of there within minutes. i went past my clinic on the way back, picked up my "not sleep" meds (i still haven't bothered to see what they are) at the pharmacy, went looking for mugs at the mall, didn't find any, and hopped on a bus home.

i was just getting off the bus when gd realized where i'd gone and called me to ask me to pick up her prescription 🙄

[i've seen the bloodwork results already, it looks like i might well be anaemic]

i had a quick breakfast, got in touch with another plumber, then headed to the office.

over the course of the day, the plumber and i exchanged messages and it looks like he's coming to install a much cheaper cistern than the other guy was interested in arranging. now the other guy's upset that we're going with the cheaper option. either way, we can't get a solution quickly enough, as the leak has escalated...

funny story: the plumber coming tomorrow is an arab who keeps saying "baruch hashem" and "be'ezrat hashem", and i don't know what to make of it :P

two things happened when i arrived at the office: the first, i agreed to schedule a meeting with the new potential client tomorrow evening, and was subsequently informed that it was to be this evening. the second, i had a chat with a doctor from the complementary medicine section at our clinic which resulted in appointments being scheduled for acupuncture and feldenkreis.

the morning was a bit messy, but included my client putting me on a claude subscription instead of the pay-as-you-go plan. i got a chance to burn through some tokens in the evening, and i used opus for some real planning, and i've gotten the feeling that not using opus might have been my biggest mistake since optimization for it a week or two ago 🤷‍♂️

my manager and i had agreed that they'd make an announcement about my contract ending tomorrow, and that i'd let dx know before the formal announcement, so after the two of us talked with the other contractor (who seems to be in a less certain situation than me) i asked him to join me on the balcony and i broke the news to him.

initially he was devastated, which was really heartbreaking, but we managed to put some positive spin on things and by the time we returned he seemed to be in better spirits. while he was talking, he happened to drop an interesting piece of information, and that was how i discovered that the interview i had scheduled for the evening was with his previous employer!

then i came inside and received an update from my manager that they'll make an announcement about me leaving some time next week.

i went home for lunch, then caught a bus to the office, surprised to discover that since they completed the work by sha'ul hamelech there's now a simple line switch instead of a ten minute walk in the heat 🤘

my interview simulation was comfortable and useful, after which i went to work on a design / planning session for my client team (we've all agreed on a set of compromises that seem to be coherent). by the time i decided that i wanted to do the introduction interview from home it was already deep rush hour, so i made myself a cup of tea and found myself a quiet space.

the interview went smoothly, rather well, in fact. the group lead called me afterwards to advise me against it on grounds that it seems boring, but in my estimation the real challenge will be leading / guiding them in process hygiene and AI adoption. she agreed that it was work a second interview, at least.

as i've said before, and i'll say it again, i'm extremely passionate about having food on the table and a roof over my head :P

i bussed home, marveled sadly at my son's new haircut, talked to gd, fired off a message to the guy who used to be the head of my study program, had an encouraging text chat with one of the educators i spoke to on monday night, then headed out with mr smear for a walk to the park. we stopped along the way to watch a worker throwing building debris out a third-story window, discussing all manner of things, and when we were almost home mr smear said something random that gave me some inspiration for my tarot game.

i described it to gd, and we got into the weeds a little bit, and i think it's the first time my wife has been as legitimately excited about an idea of mine as i am ^_^

we watched another couple of episodes of the wonder years over dinner, spoke to my mom between them, got ready for bed, completed a run of slay the spire 2 i've been doing in stages over the course of about a week now, rested a little, posted this, and now, i think, i'm just about ready to sleep.

low drama

 apparently mr smear's friend left us a gift... gd's currently cutting his hair in the bathtub because he's got an active lice infestation that a treatment earlier had no effect on. mr smear's been growing his hair for a long time and it just grew out long enough to be really cool.

but the treatments are seriously expensive, and we can't house lice, so...

i need a fucking break. gd, too, judging by the cursing that's been going on.

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getting to work means walking across the bridge, and in this heat that's become a thing. i spent $0 of AI tokens at work today, but that's because i wasn't able to log in for most of the day and i ended up using my personal account for the little bit of work i did. and then, when i finally asked for a code review, one of the guys asked a question that made me realize that i probably didn't need to do this work after all 🤦‍♂️

i did learn how to do the backfill cost exercise, though.

my 1-on-1 with my manager was pleasant, but they're being really weird about not announcing to the teams that i'm leaving, even though i understand that quite a few people already know. it makes it especially awkward for dx, whose lead has quit and is leaving on thursday and now i'm on my way out as well...

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the highlight of our day was dinner, and introducing mr smear to the wonder years. not only is it a wonderful series, but it's aged so well and it's so perfectly age-appropriate for an 11 year old!

alright, i'm fasting for tomorrow morning's bloodwork, it's late, i've slayed some spire while the drama's* been going on in the other rooms and now i'm going to bed.

at least we gave the guitar hero guitars away.

* oh, yes. and there's more plumbing drama too. the landlord doesn't want to spend any money and gd found a different leak in another bathroom 🙄

familia-rity

yesterday:

the last hour and a half of the night was the best hour and a half of the night. i actually slept, and my alarm forcefully ejected me from a dream and got my day off to a (literally) wobbly start.

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i accompanied gd to the hospital for her toenail appointment that she's been waiting for since april. i think we must have sat in the waiting room, surrounded by wet coughing, for about an hour before we were finally called in. i got a bit of work done, at least.

[stops writing to hunt for and then complain that the kiffness' balkan song isn't available anywhere]

the dermatologist doesn't believe the second toenail incident was fungal, just that gd is susceptible to whatever the fuck is going on. not exactly confidence-inspiring.

on our way out, we took the elevator down and as we were leaving it a 300 pound woman walking out in front of gd stopped suddenly and took a step backwards, landing squarely on gd's recovering toe. un-fucking-believable. after helping gd out of the elevator, and struggling to deal with the combination of her rage and the horror of her toenail likely being re-injured, we parted ways with me warning her to stay away from others for her own safety.

i hopped on a bus home, and was just calling my mother to update her when gd called me to inform me that some old woman had rammed into her in the supermarket - same foot, fortunately missing her toe - jesus fucking christ.

i understand why she felt the need to take a taxi home :/

...

hungry and tired, i stopped at home for breakfast instead of heading through to the office as originally planned, then crossed the bridge and went in for a couple of hours. earlier in the morning i'd threatened my teammates with an openspec workshop, and i took the opportunity to run a private training session with dx and his manager.

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i returned home for an employer meeting, which turned out to be a presentation by the boss explaining how the whole company is about to experience a massive shift in order to realign with the market trends. i already found our division into backend / frontend / full-stack strange - i've been having difficulty understanding the distinctions since before AI became a thing, probably because i'm a sort-of full-stack engineer, and devops engineer, but not a frontend engineer at all - but now things are getting really interesting and we're going to be divided into the kinds of building we do, and our proficiency with AI and depth of experience with harnesses is going to determine whether we cut it or not.

...

by the time we needed to leave for netanya, gd was certain that she wouldn't be able to join us. she's been properly sick (her stomach, mainly) for days now, and it's really frustrating and disappointing for all of us.

we left the city in heavy traffic, and it took us about an hour and a half to get there, with mr smear complaining about motion sickness the whole way and insisting that using his phone made it better 🙄

the evening with our cousins was just lovely. the food was a big issue for them, but we were fine, and there were soooo maaaaany kiiiiiids which was loud and wonderful. we also walked down the two minutes to the beach for an incredible sunset, and just generally had a great time.

the ride back to tel aviv was quick and whineless, with all of us singing along to my driving playlist (that spans most of a century of good music) and managed to shower and get mr smear into bed around midnight. my first "girlfriend" (who's married to the guy who introduced me to my friends in matric which fundamentally changed my life's direction) finally sent me the summer camp photos i asked for back in may, and they are AMAZING. i can't believe how young we all were!

so that sent me down a rabbit hole of looking through my and gd's photos, which was a trip, and then it was after 1am and i crawled into bed for a relatively good sleep.

nervous juggling

 i already forgot how i slept on wednesday night, but i can say that last night wasn't bad. the last hour and a half in bed trying and failing to sleep was a bit of a drag, but overall it was alright.

yesterday was a really, really long work day. and i was manic - i guess i've been manic for a couple of days now - and doing a lot of nervous juggling while being bombarded with interesting information by the guy next to me (dx).

i spent two hours in the morning on my autodoc project before going to the office. for our team daily, i spent a lot of it trying to nudge my new manager without being imposing. then i spent the day trying to understand the existing ai infrastructure, and pitching my agentic skills (in zip format) to the vp tech, and reviving and reconstructing old golang services (everyone's too scared to touch them), and finally (finally!) getting most of my data to land that i've been working on for so many weeks now...

... and pitching my vision to random strangers (and getting buy-in ^_^), and discovering that my blockchain hackathon idea from 2021 (which i've subsequently tried to pitch to a number of people) has dx so excited that he's decided it's his "fable project" for the weekend - it would be so cool if he managed to pull it off!

between getting home and dinner, i gave mr smear the choice of rollerblading or walking. i was disappointed that he didn't want to get on his wheels, but i was surprised that he decided he wanted to walk all the way to the comics library (without any intention of actually going into the library). so off we went, for a very pleasant walk, discussing some horror game ideas he's had which are actually pretty damned good.

we got home and sat down for dinner, and finished watching guardians of the galaxy. what a brilliant movie. drax definitely gets some of the greatest lines.

after getting mr smear into bed, and in spite of the creeping tiredness, i continued working on my autodoc project for another two hours, before finally crawling into bed just before midnight.

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now to dive back in until we all go out for the friday morning shopping.