winding down

 it wasn't too bad a day. i rollerbladed to work, which was very quiet because i was the only one in the office. in spite of things getting a bit hectic at one point, i managed to complete the frontend work that's been upsetting me for the past couple of weeks and returned home for lunch before taking mr smear to his jiujitsu class.

while there, i did a little more work - but nothing too serious - and when his class was done we returned home. as we stepped off the bus, the sirens sounded and we scrambled through narrow stairways into a deep bomb shelter along with a large number of coffee shop patrons, most of whom were clumsily wielding their dairy-based drinks in a way that made it anxiety-inducing to navigate to a safe corner while keeping mr smear out of contact.

god damn.

anyway, it was unpleasant but we didn't have an incident, so that was a win.

we both showered quickly when we returned home, and there was time before dinner to fire up the vr.

gd and i agreed that we could afford to get him one of the vr games, and he decided on battlezone, then he discovered that i'd downloaded a bunch more vr demos, so instead of buying something we dug into those instead - and we had a really good time. there were two games in particular, which caused a bit of a fight at first because we didn't understand what was going on or why mr smear needed us to tell him what was happening, but once we did get it they were brilliant. and then i took a turn, and i was absolutely blown away by how good the vr experience was!

after dinner, mr smear went to bed, i posted my two books on gumroad, and then gd and i settled down to re-attempt deadpool & wolverine. we made it a bit further before we were both falling asleep. it's really fun, we're just really tired...

i haven't slept well in a while, and i know that going to sleep early will cause problems, so i carried on fine-tuning all my online offerings and i'm now pretty happy with how things look. i think i'm about ready for bed now. i hope i am.

i'm very excited that i'm going on vacation tomorrow evening.

back to front

 yesterday was a bit shit, i'm really hating working with pure frontend and for the entire sprint every time i've resolved an issue another one has sprung up. i haven't been this unhappy with not-exactly-coding since i quit my job with mmf at the end of 2011.

anyway, it's not my usual job. and i had a conversation with my manager wherein i explained that i understand frontend dev enough to know how much i don't understand, and that while everything the contractor did makes sense within the confines of his employment the solution wasn't built in a way that inexperienced frontenders like ourselves would be able to make massive changes to its scope. none of us are really qualified to work on this, nor interested in it, and we're burning money and demoralizing ourselves. if we really feel like this is something we should be investing in, then we need to hire a frontend dev. if not, then we shouldn't be offering to build this stuff for our clients when it's far outside our competence.

in the middle of the day i left the office to pick up mr smear and taking him to his therapy session. while he was occupied, i tried to find a place with coffee that i could get some work done. the aroma's bathroom was unusable, and then i witnessed one of the kitchen staff walk out without washing his hands, so i noped on out of there. the next place didn't sell coffee, then the next place did have a place to sit and the employees were smoking right at the entrance. the next place, cafe taizu, doesn't sell coffee, and i finally landed on maafiyat lechamim. the atmosphere was cool, but the service was really shit and the coffee mediocre at best.

i'd spent so much time looking for a place that i got about five or ten minutes of "work" done before i had to get up and leave to pick up mr smear. i didn't really get anything of value done.

...

our financial situation's better, but not good, and i was really hoping to be able to put down the money for a proper keyboard for mr smear this month. and now i've been looking at vr video games and equipment as well. and gd wants a clothes dryer. fuck.

...

mr smear was only too happy to continue watching the original x-men series, but that's because he's seen the trailer for x-men 97 and he's really excited to see that... aaaaand i just realized we still have two more seasons we haven't watched, and everyone's groaning :(

...

i just went on-call ten minutes ago. hopefully it'll be a quiet day.

someone's on vacation

 a pity it's not me. mr smear's off for the yom kippur / sukkot vacation, and i'll be joining him from wednesday next week. in the meanwhile... at least i'm off for the weekend.

work-wise, yesterday and today were punishing, and i'm still not out of the woods yet. and it's all css bullshit. i told my boss today that i'm willing to bet that backend / application developers will be replaced by AI long before frontend devs, primarily because none of that shit has any sort of logic to it and there's no way to know which signals make things work and which signals interfere.

i have made progress, though, but it's been really, really slow. otherwise, between my manager and my boss i kinda feel like things are good. i hope i'm right.

gd's been in trouble, pain-wise, much worse than usual. she's managed to pick him up from school, but both yesterday and today i've taken him to mma. the travelling together has been fun. he's been mostly good with his classes, but not very focused and not particularly well-behaved :/

i'm sad that the fight camp has been cancelled due to insufficient numbers, but he's happy about it, and it certainly uncomplicates our holiday times.

...

one of ze germans posted about notebooklm yesterday, so i took a stab at it and it's the first time i've used an AI tool that has absolutely blown me away. i spent a good chunk of yesterday evening making "podcasts", interrogating sources, and writing up my experience, and this evening i've been throwing more stuff at it, mostly with superb results!

...

i'm not sure about what i'm going to do now, but i don't want to go to bed too early. speaking of sleep, mr smear's been going to bed without a night-light the last week or so, although he's been asking for the airconditioner on which serves as a very dim night-light, but i guess it's a win. he's definitely going to sleep faster, that's for sure.

down

 i'm tired. i'm still feeling shite, and there's a definite edge of depression slicing into everything. i slept on the couch for most of last night, mainly because i was too tired to get up until around 4am, and then i spent a couple of hours flooding my brain with war and politics.

i was tired today. i took mr smear to school, then stopped at home to pick up gd and my bag and we went to the therapist. it was a pretty good meeting, i think? then gd and i got breakfast at the azrieli food court before i headed to work and she took a taxi home because her legs are hurting again. on the way pissing off an oversized dog owner who was dragging his little greyhound behind him on his scooter with the leash around his neck.

fucker.

i was alone in my room at the office today, and i spent the day squaring off with the particularly ugly frontend jobby i've been landed with. the more progress i make, the more i understand where i should have started - too late :/

my mother was informed today that one of her contracts won't be renewed, so she's stressing about that :(

mr smear had a couple of rough moments today, so when i got home we sat down and talked - gd's right, though, we definitely talked for too long, but i feel like he got most of it.

i'm really struggling to stay awake so that i can sleep, but i'm completely uninterested in anything. i've just picked up a copy of gibson's count zero, hopefully that'll help.

sky cry

 yesterday morning we learned that six of the hostages were executed. on our way out of the apartment, mr smear told me that he could smell rain coming.

"i PROMISE you it's not going to rain", i said.

on his way to school he informed me that it was the first time in his entire life that he was excited to go to school.

after dropping him off at his new class, i walked straight to the pain clinic to accompany gd to her appointment. the appointment was positive, and she's (amazingly) scheduled for a nerve block for tomorrow evening.

we left the hospital and went straight to the clinic to organize authorization. and that's when the skies opened. and they opened for a long time. and they opened *hard*. it bucketed down on us. and even as it raining down hard on us, the weather app continued to suggest a 2% chance of rain.

so mr smear was right, and we're taking it as a sign of the world's heartbreak.

we tried to walk home, but got trapped between rivers and had to call a taxi.

by the time i left for work - minutes after getting home - the weather was mostly back to normal.

work: another long, painful day dealing with frontend shenanigans. to my relief, my changes we merged by the evening, and i managed to push a fix for a mistake we'd missed before leaving the office.

in the evening, i had a meeting about a project, and it was way longer than anticipated. it was also considerably more productive than anticipated. additionally, i have a meeting with a VIP scheduled for wednesday evening 🤞

today:

i woke up from a weird series of dreams into a relatively subdued morning. the biggest issue of the day was the general strike and protests. i fully identify with the frustration and anguish that everyone's feeling, but i also feel confident that everything that's happening is just dancing to our enemies' tunes.

it took a while to get into work - partially because of an argument with some of ze germans about the situation - and shortly after i had to go pick mr smear up early from school. i made it home in time for a zoom meeting with the same guys i met with on thursday, this time they managed to resolve the issue (or at least give me a workaround while they acknowleged and promised to fix the bug). afterwards i uncovered a different bug, just as weird.

i hope i'm not the one who introduced it.

i took mr smear to his hebrew tutor, worked while i waited, then came home and dove in to the biggest ticket of the sprint that i've barely touched yet. i mean, i tried to, but i must've eaten (or drank) something that disagreed with me and i estimate that i spent about half the afternoon on the can. 

it was very frustrating.

the work i did get done is a move in the right direction, but everything about it is complicated and unpleasant or weird and broken. i'm not going into tomorrow with good vibes, but i do need to go in with a more professional tone than i've been expressing since i started working with css again.

it's been a weird evening, now i'm going to read to mr smear and try to figure out where my head's at.

...

oh! and i did some banking this morning. we're not in a good place, but i feel like we're in a better one than last month 🤞

ugh.

i rollerbladed to work this morning, after a relaxed start to the day. i arrived at the office and realized i'd forgotten my wrist pads, and sandles. so that's where my head was at, at the beginning of the day.

fortunately, the security guard let me roll into the building.

i don't recall how many "i hate my life"s came out of me today, but let's just say that me and frontend dev are not vibing right now. and it didn't help that for about three hours - between lunch and "happy hour" - i was repeatedly disturbed by sudden and aggressive needs to go to the toilet every few minutes. wtf? i was trying so hard to solve a real life puzzle (which i didn't really manage to solve by the end of the day), by the time i left the office i was done in multiple ways.

i got home, showered, and played rayman: legends with mr smear until dinner. then we continued watching x-men, and then it was bedtime, and then it was pay bills time, and now it's i-don't-know-what-i'm-doing-or-want-to-do-but-i-feel-shitty time.

tomorrow's the last opportunity to sort out school shopping for mr smear. tomorrow evening i have an exciting call scheduled with sailor. right now, though?

ugh.