thursday already? part wednesday night

holy crap, i'm gonna be due a paycheck in a moment. it's just past midnight and i'm risking a late night just to post this, but it's looking to be another busy weekend and this is the only real quiet time i have...

---monday:

i suffered from rls and generally not resting enough. i woke up to chilly not-summer weather threatening rain and was frustrated by my hoodie going missing. for some reason it was an aerosmith morning.

an hour or so spent with big junior taught me that i need to be careful with him: he's the gatekeeper for the system i've been assigned to fix and he's really sensitive... smart guy, nice guy, but inexperienced, lazy in the wrong way and a little averse to change.

on my way to lunch i had another think about my middle east solution.

i got stuck with the stupid woman at the supermarket, who mumbled something to me so i had to take my other headphone out:
"that's mars," she said, pointing to my fruit fucker shirt.
"it's an orange, actually."
"no, mars is much more interesting."
...
"an orange ball, maybe, but not an orange."

*facepalm*

the next weird thing was one of my co-workers giving me a "gift" of an image of one of our porn service's girls wearing cat ears. that was a weird gift, and i tried to politely decline and [failed]. at least a couple of the others jumped in to the rescue.

pet peeve: relying on a specific build of something that's used in production and not knowing why nor how to go about building it? that's dangerous. that was my motivation to uncover the whole story of ffmpeg and libav in all its politically pathetic glory. what followed was two days of writing a build script that works, and learning a couple of really cool script tricks that resulted in something i was proud to commit to the team's tools repo ^_^

the rain outside was demotivating but i trained strong in spite of my desire to just go home. on my way out of the gym i realized i'd forgotten my headphones at work... which is really not a problem, my office is on the way to the metro :D

as i left the metro, aerosmith - walk this way came on and i couldn't not sing joyfully and add a bit of a spring to my step.

dinner was awesome in spite of a misunderstanding about a couple of disparate things i'd told gd about work and my co-workers. it's weird working with pornography. it's less weird than i'd imagined, but big junior told me a story about a creepy guy who used to be in the team and the very same day some odd guy from the company tried to friend me on facebook :S

we started watching expendables in anticipation of the third installment coming out. gd hadn't seen it, neither of us have seen the second. it's time.

---yesterday:

a gorgeous morning to chase the miserable one, but rendered uncomfortable by all the antisemitism in our feeds. i tried finishing my chapbook, but the software i tried to use (bookwright) has a minimum of twenty pages. seriously?!

after a month of silence, i disconnected ff from the project and sent her an email explaining why. i just received a message apologizing, responded by making it absolutely clear what the problem is and invited her to rejoin *IF* she thinks that'll change. hopefully that won't be the last i hear from her.

during the day i had a meeting with the team lead for an overview of the system, and i discussed my pet peeve about naming things "new" and "old". he proceeded to demonstrate that i was totally right and he and the manager have agreed to address my concerns.

my team-mates have explained to me why physically visiting a bank teller is an unnecessary waste of time, but that was only after i complained about my bank needing a lunch hour express teller. after withdrawing the cash and paying my rent for august i was left with no time for lunch and i rushed back to a long, boring meeting :(
at least it's the last of the "this is what these meetings will look like" and they'll be quicker and more relevant from now on...

an afternoon of script wizarding whizzed by and i suddenly developed a headache just before kickboxing. that sucked. but in spite of that, and in spite of badger abandoning me to work with the sweet, slow and weak older guy, i managed to spend my hour and a half training hard and really pushed myself. badger and i were talking afterwards and ended up going shopping together so i could show her what to get now that she and her partner are considering a plant-based diet. the talk moved on to politics; we never really got into details about the middle east before and she now has as solid an understanding as anyone's going to get.

when i got home gd told me that she's spoken to nystire who'd told her to tell me about the game. i had a good laugh at that, because i'm not playing but it's rather special considering his usual bashfulness and the fact that he and gd don't know each other from a bar of soap. nice try, mate. nice try.

we finished watching expendables, which i already knew was terrific, then went straight to bed.

[to be continued...]

to let be, or not to let be

i just got off the phone with bnw, it turns out that for the past week and a half she's had no internet access from home and her telephone was bust. and this was precisely when she and her husband were experiencing severe marital troubles and they thought that everything was falling apart.

so apparently that's over and she'd like to be on the project. i spoke to her just after hearing from ff for the first time since the meeting, who also had a busy week.

i'm going to give everyone another week to make some more progress, because the past few days have been quiet, and if things don't leap forward then i'll consider reinstating bnw, but with a test-run first. otherwise, i'll put her on the second issue.

...

why can't everything just be simple and straightforward?

looking back - part i

(last week) wednesday:

of course it was chilly and wet when i rushed out of starbucks to join gd in looking at some apartments. we saw three really nice ones, then returned to my apartment for my meeting with the illustrators.

i'd set the meeting up based on bnw's availability, so i was really angry when she messaged me to say that she wouldn't be coming because she'd already made another "more important" plan. i've realized since that trying to work with her is a mistake, and it's better that we just stick to being friends.

otherwise, the meeting was great! we came up with a good plan and we all seem to be on the same page.

...

i apparently wasn't feeling well at all on wednesday night.

---(last week) thursday:

after a good, late sleep, i woke up to a video chat wherein i was introduced to a friend of gd's who's a bit of a recluse and a total conspiracy theorist. nice guy, but a little out there...

i put together the infrastructure for our comic collaboration, then went to look at a beautiful, far-too-expensive apartment next door to gd's. gd and i had an argument on the way back, ff kept rescheduling our meeting and i was already stressing about the looming weekend, so i was irritable and frustrated and incapable of coherent thought for a while.

i decided to try taking a nap, and i did feel a bit better afterwards.

i called up my building manager and was totally disappointed by how callous they are towards good tenants who need to leave before their leases are up :S

it was miserable and tense and hot and rainy when i left to meet with ff, and two stops before hers - about 100m or so before the second stop before hers - our train ground to a halt and we'd be forced to evacuate the metro.

seriously, if you're going to evacuate? DO IT QUICKLY. we were stuck in our dark, hot cars for about ten or fifteen minutes, which gets pretty claustrophobic when everyone's impatient and it's hard to breathe. even harder when some idiot farts. they evacuated from back to front, so we got to witness a line of smartphones lumbering past, filming the rest of us as if we were a zoo exhibit.

i stepped out into the pouring rain with no sense of direction, and eventually sat down in the subway across from the metro and waited for ff to bus it.

our meeting was good, she was happy with what we'd all agreed upon the previous night, and her sketches were excellent! we didn't need to sit for too long to cover everything, and then she was off and i returned to pick up gd from her gym.

i went back to my apartment for dinner and to sort out some papers. gd was on her way home from shopping and we were talking about something on the phone when the scariest thing happened: mid-sentence, i heard her suddenly gasp and then the call dropped. it would take a minute before i could get hold of her again and she'd inform me that she'd simply dropped a whole bunch of things, including her phone, but i was imagining the worst and that was terrible :(

the slam team was meeting at casa del popolo, and the weather was cool and cloudy and dark; with no wind it would have been perfect! it was too loud there, so we went to halogen's instead and our first meeting was quite enjoyable.

---(last week) friday:

i arrived home late, and went to bed early in order to be ready to pick up supertongue at 6.40am for a wild weekend.

of COURSE i'd spend the next few hours suffering from rls, it was a sleepless night and i eventually got up feeling pretty wasted. and walked out into a miserably rainy morning, not quite ready to face the day.

antisocial gaming

or could i call it masturgaming?

---friday:

friday was not a very busy day for me. i've been feeling exhausted until today, and that was my second day of too-broken-to-move. i spent it playing dragon coins, and another case solved released a new series of cases so that's a thing again. i started reading the dr who comics i bought in the humble bundle, which is just like watching the series.

i also spent a large section of the day going through my inbox. i'm back to december, and have finally got less than 1000 unread emails in my inbox.

i can summarize my day with the question i asked myself as i walked out of my apartment on my way to gd's:
"did i shower today?"

---yesterday:

more rls suffering throughout the night. i got up twice in the middle of it, and was so wiped out that i almost passed out. that wasn't cool, especially considering that i'd been sleeping a bit.

i finally entered a deep slumber just an hour or two before we had to get up.

#$!@.

as it flipped to summer, so it flipped back to winter. the rain accompanying me home was cold :(

...

the late morning was consumed by short napping and dragon coins and neil gaiman and charles vess - stardust. it's a great read, though i expected a graphic novel and not an illustrated text from comixology.

did i mention stumbling across the last halloween? i'd totally forgotten about abby's thing. the good thing about that is getting to read a whole lot of it at once ^_^

---horseman wanted to introduce me to an illustrator, and we agreed to meet at the starbucks near berri uqam. i arrived there and didn't see them, and they then told me that they were waiting for me at second cup. second cup is not starbucks, and it's much closer to the station so i'd actually walked past them. so i wasn't on the happiest or most relaxed of vibes when i finally did catch up to them.

introductions were a bit awkward, much like a professional interview, and i only learned later that one reason for this is that the two of them didn't know each other. i was loathe to share all the juicy details of the project without first gaining a sense of whether i actually wanted to work with her or not, but it quickly became clear that we're a fantastic fit. i'll call her "ff" for that.

her work's excellent, her attitude's perfectly matched to the job at hand and we're excitedly on our way. just as soon as she signs the nda, of course. now that i have one i'm going to use it.

---it was a stunning afternoon, and i headed off to meet gd at her place. due to a miscommunication i arrived an hour earlier than i should have, so i spent that hour on the front steps playing another case solved in the sun.

when she arrived we went to p.m., surprising ourselves by being hungry enough to finish everything we ordered. vfmp and his boyfriend were delayed, so we did some quick shopping and stopped at yeh! for sorbet that tastes far too good to be vegan (but i'm assured it is).

a cold wind had risen by the time we were on our way again and so we took a taxi to vfmp's. we enjoyed our hour or two there even though we didn't get much gaming done (vfmp and i played chess, he crushed me); gd really can't do weekend evenings so we're either going to have to figure out a good day for all of us or we're going to have to do gaming nights without her...

we left early, with me doing a chivalrous run from the metro to her place in just a shirt because she needed my jacket. it's not summer yet. oh, no.

the rest of the evening was consumed by iphone gaming and an episode or so of sherlock.

---we've had a perfectly groovy morning, i slept well last night and i'm feeling quite rested and relaxed. i even sorted out the last few issues with gd's ubuntu installation - everything's excellent now - and got my own installation on my netbook updated (it was causing trouble).

now to go Do Stuff. we're pretending to be productive if only for the excuse to go outside :)

---word lens works pretty well. i'm impressed.

please help out solar roadways if you can. they're making progress but the faster the better for all of us!