psychological wargames

 omfg. it's 3.40am and i've spent the past hour or so struggling to sleep - i'm tiiiired. at first it was mental restlessness, then it was lower back and hip flexors, i'm a complete mess.

...

it took me too long to get ready to leave this morning, so i had to remain home for my daily. then i headed to the office for a day largely defined by arguing with AI.

the good news: this three-month project that's been dragging out for the past couple of weeks? the current phase is done, i finally got my latest fixes in, tested everything, and it came out clean. this is huge!

the not-so-good news: i'm still working on the golang stuff, which is tiring, but it looks like i'm in the final stretch.

the other good news: i started working on the interruption ticket for our previous client team, and the most troubling chunk of work appears to have been done already.

i had lunch with the client team, which was fun, and then a long chat with sailor; mostly about protoplasm, but i also apologized for arguing when in reality we were both talking about two very different things - it was comforting that even after i explained where we diverged, it still required clarification, which meant it wasn't like i'd missed something obvious :P

i had to cut him short in order to get back to work, but to be fair we were both excited by a direction i'd given him for a therapeutic game...

in the evening, i left the office and warned mr smear we'd be going out rollerblading, which was met with a bad attitude. gd and i together managed to navigate it, i rotated my wheels while he got his on, and by the time we left the apartment he was in a good frame of mind.

he actually did rather well - he's exploring downhill control and becoming an ambi-turner - and it was a fun ride. on the way back we happened past two guys with pit bulls, and omg i miss my brother's twins. mr smear's introduction to one of them was it pushing itself up against him, i think he now has a better sense of what raw power feels like :P

we showered, talked to my mom, and had dinner. dinner was great, but i may have made a mistake dipping a marshmallow into the scorpion pepper sauce. i found the place where melts in your mouth meets melts your mouth, and aside from my tears i could tell you precisely where in my digestive tract the results were located for quite a while after.

i was tired, but i knew that i wouldn't sleep well if i went straight to bed, so i sat down to slowly but surely figure out how to get AI playing with unity. it took me about two and a half hours to get an agent using the unity mcp, and then half an hour to go from being impressed by the results, to being absolutely, literally amazed.

this is a game changer.

[pun not intended]

out and... out

 my niece has been waiting for attention in an NHS hospital in london, things are becoming... tense. i guess that's what happens when your healthcare is at a third-world level...

my mother, gd and i bussed to ikea, stopping for a few minutes between buses to walk through the mall in glilot. we arrived with some time to spare, found a surprisingly nice coffee shop where i plugged in, enjoyed my coffee and had my daily with my team.

then i joined gd and my mom at ikea itself, and settled near a plug-point in the food court while they did the slowest part of the shopping.

i actually got some work done. including getting my client to change their substack profile name; as soon as i pointed out that it didn't look good, nobody argued (it looked like something a pornographic site might be called).

a bit later they joined me, and i continued to work until i received a reference phone call for my british devops coworker, which i really hope helps convince them to make him an offer.

my cousin arrived, with a very stiff neck, and we sat and talked for a while, which was lovely as always.

from there we headed downstairs and through the second part of the gauntlet, then through the warehouse, finding pretty much everything we needed, including a really nice big carpet for the living room.

the wait for the cashier was long, but i guess not as long as it looked from the back of the queue. i bought fries while we waited, and it wasn't until i picked them up that i realized they sell falafel too, but i ended up getting a falafel later so it's all good. a bit dry, but for NIS 5 it tasted pretty good :P

once we paid - with a lot less drama than last time - we very quickly got called to the delivery counter. while taking care of that and also severely instructing mr smear to do what he was supposed to (what was written in his temporary diary) before coming home, there was some kind of incident between a couple next to us and a very angry dude with a particularly dark energy who i'd noticed at the cafeteria earlier. just after two of the mentally handicapped staff almost came to blows. weird times.

on the way out, waiting for gd and my mother with my falafel in hand, i noticed a tall, heavy, older security guard angrily speaking in french while eating a small ice cream. i didn't take a photo, 'cause that would have been rude, but i have that image in my head now 🤣

they wouldn't deliver the big heavy carpet, so i had to shoulder that along with my heavy backpack for the not-inconsiderable walk to the train station. it was okay for me, but my mom and gd were both feeling a bit sore (for different reasons) by the time we eventually got home.

while there was a stretch of fighting with mr smear just before dinner - due to his "sensitivity" to "cringey" music (johnny clegg) or any level of noise that isn't silence - for the most part he was compliant this afternoon and did a fair amount of math catch-up.

when i threatened him with punishment, i tied it into his homework - he's just learned about the fibonacci sequence, so i explained that he would lose hours of privileges in accordance with it. he found that funny just before he realized i was serious :P

dinner was great. mr smear ventured a drop of scorpion pepper sauce this evening and did just fine :)

...

i've really struggled this past couple of weeks, and i'm anxious about the coming one. i've worked a lot less than i should have, mostly due to the combination of family surprises (gd's health and mr smear's schooling) and me being sick and losing a heck of a lot of sleep.

i've taken my supplements, and i've turned my brain off for the day. hopefully tonight will be smooth.

not enough drama!

 it's late, and i was already tired a while ago, but i've spent the past couple of hours putting together messages for our current and future landlords and i'll send them in the morning.

...

last night would have been far less stressful if i hadn't seen the response from our current landlords to my earlier message, which was offensively stupid. i wish i hadn't seen it then, and i wish i hadn't read it to gd, because we were both shocked and furious. we rushed to get to our friends (soon-to-be neighbors) with the freshly baked challah-peño (it was a bit of a flop - great challah texture but unexciting taste), realized when we finally got there that we'd left the ice cream at home, so i rushed back to grab it and chatted with my mom along the way.

the evening was great, largely cathartic, dinner was excellent and i drank just enough wine for my nervous system to calm down a bit. mr smear had a great time with the kids, all was well.

we got home late, and sleepy, and everyone went to bed pretty quickly.

today:

this morning i got up early-ish, pretty much finished ping-pong (it's great) and got most of the dishes done. gd and i were both surprised when mr smear woke up and informed me that he wanted to go to the swimming pool. NOT by bike.

so i had a quick breakfast, grabbed my second coffee and off we went. it was a very nice walk there, through a park we weren't familiar with, and we spent about an hour and a half in the pool, mostly just splashing about. before we left the pool to brave the cold air between the pool area and the locker room in order to shower, mr smear told me he might be willing to go back to jiujitsu training if he doesn't have to do mma.

i'll take it.

the showers there are great. once we were done mr smear decided that he really wanted a laffa for lunch (breakfast, really), and the only place open was the shuwarma place by the port.

it was a loooong but entertaining walk to the port, and then we had two huge laffot, preceded by mr smear eating pickled carrots without complaining  (he usually hates carrots) and even about half of a really hot hot pepper.

[omg my hands are so freaking dry, my skin's cracking all over]

halfway through my laffa i had a suspicion that i may have overpayed - google pay doesn't show you the amount when it verifies - and after an only-slightly uncomfortable back-and-forth we determined that he'd charged me 200 shekels for an 80 shekel meal... at least i caught it while still there.

we both enjoyed the meal, but mr smear really shouldn't have forced himself to finish his. we had a long walk home (with a couple of minor incidents of being rained on), most of which was him complaining about a sore stomach...

gd prepared the bath before we arrived, and he warmed up and soaked for a long while. then scrapper's niece came by to pick up his bass guitar and amp, which i'm sad to say i've barely touched since he left it with me, and after sorting out mr smear's toenails scrapper called, and we both had a lot to talk about (during which time, i later realized, mr smear was sitting in his room, drawing and listening to tool on his phone). then it was dishes time, during which time we discovered a really gross mold situation that needed a lot of cleaning, and then i cleaned the area where the guitar had been sitting for ages and accidentally pulled out one of the hooks for the fibre cable.

neither mr smear nor i really needed dinner, so we ate some fruit and the three of us played pictionary for a while before he had to go to bed.

another really good saturday together, he said ^_^

now it's my turn. tomorrow's scaring me, hopefully i'll get some rest before it begins.

...

the situation in iran is horrifying. the fact that nobody's swooping in to help the persians is horrifying.

still waiting...

 the threats from iran are escalating (while they're massacring the persian people), and there's been a (literal) storm brewing (i was supposed to meet with tahoma earlier, but cancelled when i realized that i didn't have an umbrella on me), and i'm supposed to finish a PR i started this afternoon...

...

mr smear left for school seeming prepared for his history test, which he reported went well. he's also reported that he behaved well at school all day, but we never know until the reports come in...

the biggest thing about this morning, aside from a whole thing about gd and her dentists, was that we finally started looking for a new apartment. which caused a fair amount of distraction throughout the day.

it was a mostly-positive work day (half work day), except for me forgetting my sunglasses in the office when i hopped home for lunch, and high winds were making little dust twisters all along the way, and then me getting back to the office late for a meeting with one of my teammates... and then the train station entrance i needed to get to my employer's office was closed, and i *just* made it in time for my meeting with my mentor, or would have had he not cancelled at the last minute...

the rest of the afternoon was a lecture, some vegan dimsum and a proper seaweed salad, an awkward "game" debating technology opinions with no context, and chatting with some of my coworkers before heading out.

...

i was very relieved to make it home without being rained on. mr smear's hebrew reading homework was good, dinner was great (mr smear impressing me with his improving heat tolerance after having spilled too much habanero honey mustard sauce), and the rest of the evening went pretty smoothly. now i have to decide whether i have it in me to finish the PR or leave that until morning.

i should probably leave it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

extra steps

 after getting home soaked yesterday, we took turns showering, after which i recall very little of the afternoon. i'm pretty sure i napped under layers of blankets, i read a bit of taiyo matsumoto's ping pong, and i helped gd prepare the challah-peño taking our neighborhood baker's advice.

it came out much better quality in terms of the challah itself, but it didn't taste quite as good (intense) as it smelled :(

dinner was really nice, and the late night was mostly due to watching iran revolution-related stuff and tool / a perfect circle reactions.

i slept alright.

this morning was a lot of reading, and watching stuff, and then mr smear woke up (late) and we got into breakfast time. did i nap before we went out, or afterwards? i don't know. but we did go out for a nice walk (we were going to join nystire and co. but they got rained in) without argument, during which i convinced mr smear to draw a comic he's been thinking of.

he did that when we got back - oh! that's when i napped - and the outcome was excellent (and funny) but he doesn't want it published and he won't tell me why... *pouts*

i finally sat down to work on reviewing a whole bunch of the AI-generated code in my side project, uncovering really strange hallucinations (eg. a nonce that's generated immediately before being checked within the same function) and fixing a few actual bugs, and then suddenly it was 3pm and mr smear and i geared up, grabbed the vegan hot dogs gd had prepared for us, and walked to my new employer's office for his friend's laser tag birthday party.

most of the parents dropped their kids off, but i'd walked so i hung around for the almost three hours chatting with mr smear's friend's parents (good talks) and at one point putting in a few minutes of productive work on my side project. i didn't actually go into my office, though, because i felt very uncomfortable figuring out the alarm system over a weekend when i had no real justification for using the office :P

it was a long walk there, and a long walk back, but those were two long walks with good father-son talks, and we both had an enjoyable day overall. also, it helped that it didn't rain on us.

we got home pretty late, which meant that after all the shower/toenail stuff mr smear got to bed very late, and i'm already feeling like i'm going to crash soon even though i know i've got tons of stuff to do and i haven't been doing any of it...

...

"the revolution is being streamed, not televised" - tousi tv, "pahlavi announces plan to return to iran - declares final battle"

firstly, "media" outlets like the BBC are exposing themselves clearer than ever as nothing more than propaganda shills for oppressive, tyrannical, anti-west* regimes like iran, qatar, russia, and china.

(also anti-semitic)

secondly, anyone notice how the iranian people, resisting after fifty years of REAL occupation and REAL oppression, aren't raping women or murdering children?

the pause

life feels like a hurricane at the moment, so it was nice to be able to spend a day in the eye of the storm.

yesterday:

our friends (plus parents) actually tried the challah-lina reaper with me, and it was a great success. both in that nobody suffered too much, and in that i wasn't the only one to go back for more.

dinner was great, the kids had a good time together, and although gd and i are always on our guard with the parents due to the political divide, we had lots of interesting conversations with zero friction. it was a lovely evening overall.

we got home pretty late, lit the candles (with my mom), and got mr smear into bed before passing out ourselves.

today:

the early morning was slow (we all got up late), and i spent a little time checking out last call BBS which i picked up last night in the steam sale.

cm got back to me with an invitation to bring mr smear over to play with his kids. getting mr smear out the house is complicated at the best of times... but he came, willingly, and aside from a section through the park that felt too much like a hike to him, we enjoyed a pleasant walk and he kept us both entertaining by singing psychosocial's chorus with ice age's sid's lisp the whole way there.

since mr smear's finally conceded that speaking hebrew has utility, he had no issue communicating with cm's kids and the bunch of them got along well. so the kids had a fun afternoon, the few times they didn't had nothing to do with mr smear, and the adults had a fun afternoon.

eventually, we said our goodbyes and i walked mr smear to his other friend who lives close by, and then i came home, rested a bit, did some dishes until mr smear got home, when he very begrudgingly helped with the drying, and then it was chill time (balatro, it's dangerous) until dinner, and then we enjoyed dinner and the end of equilibrium, lit the candles (with my mom), and got him through bathtime / ingrown toenail treatment time / bedtime.

i spent the next couple of hours balatro-ing, showered, spent a little time last call BBS-ing, and am now about to put myself to bed. i've got a haircut scheduled for tomorrow morning, and gd's developed another dental issue (obviously she's bored) so we'll have to deal with that, but otherwise tomorrow's all about preparing for my technical interview on monday.

spicy

i type this post with burning fingers. i used gloves on the carolina reaper, so i'm pretty confident that it's the jalapeño i prepared before...

yesterday:

i woke up from a disturbing dream yesterday morning: my mom and i on a pier in a massive storm, me in the car and her standing about 20ft away. i yell "look at the horses!" and then realize we have a massive tsunami incoming, i yell at her to get in the car and she makes it just as the wave hits. and then the car is pushed right over the edge of the pier and i wake up as we're falling, trying to recall how to not get trapped in an underwater vehicle

i began the day publishing the article on git worktrees and devcontainers, then mr smear and i accompanied gd to the neurosurgeon to look at her shoulder. we had about an hour and a half to wait, which i used to finally start preparing for my client meeting.

the doctor was pleasant, and he tried to be helpful, but gd left very discouraged and feeling like he didn't hear her (although, in my opinion, he did). i hope we get to the bottom of whatever's giving her trouble sooner rather than later, but it's already becoming a process...

after that we came home, and i spent the hour i had until my meeting preparing some more.

the meeting itself seems to have gone well, and i was glad to get good feedback from my lead. having said that, i was a little surprised to learn that i'm going to have to go through a proper technical interview with them on monday - i'm a little bummed out, too, because i didn't realize i'd need to spend another couple of my "unemployment" days doing work.

at least my employer's agreed to pay me for my preparation hours, but i was kinda hoping to have a few weeks off :/

after the meeting, i ate some food in preparation for the next big item on my agenda: the eating of my first carolina reaper.

OMFG. i just asked mr smear to record a reaction video to me eating a carolina reaper, i thought it would be a fun father/son activity. i survived - i only took a couple of nibbles, that was enough pain to convince me that eating the whole thing may have incapacitated me - and now that my system's calmed down (and i can breathe not-fire again) i just learned that he somehow lost the more than five minutes recording of me struggling 🤦😭

so... that happened.

it took an hour or so for my mouth and stomach to calm down after that, and between the meeting (and its prep) and the previous days' not sleeping enough and the reaper, i was completely exhausted. all i remember from the rest of the day was passing out watching an episode of jujutsu kaisen with mr smear, and gd deciding she doesn't like dinosaurs after we watched episode 7 ("family challenge"), and going to bed right after reading some more of the ocean at the end of the lane to mr smear.

today:

lots of weird dreams. it feels like it's been a while.

after a long chat with horseman - we talked about AI and game dev, but more about internet psychosis - we all went to the mall to pick up some groceries, and then the corner market, and then mr smear played among us online with his friend while i watched educational content (ha ha - most of the stuff i watched today was trash), and then i did the dishes so that gd and i could make the challot together; we have our first challah-lina reaper incoming :D

i was reading a bit more of the department of truth when i got the sudden urge to write this, so here we are.

i'm tiiiired. and we're going out to our friends tonight. i should nap a bit.

constructive behavior and eating out

on monday night, i balatro'd for more than a bit. i went to bed late, but having understood just why it's such a big deal - it's as intricate and unhinged as inscryption, only without the story.

i mean, i love the story of inscryption as much as i love the card game(s), but they're both really intriguing once you get deep enough.

...

yesterday:

mr smear didn't have an easier night, but we realized in the morning that his workshop wasn't yesterday after all, it was today. so that was a relief.

the first thing that happened was a conversation about the previous evening's drama, and for the most part it was pleasant and constructive.

the main part of my day was preparing for a work meeting, and then the work meeting itself. and in the evening, another conversation with my lead/mentor about a different contract, where he made it clear to me that it's entirely on me to pick contracts that i want.

i still have to wrap my head around this.

in the afternoon, gd and i took mr smear to get his chest x-rayed. the x-ray was quick, but the wait was kinda long and in spite of his not feeling great mr smear and i had fun wrestling a bit :P

on the way home, we stopped at donattelo's for surprisingly good vegan pizza, and a generally good experience during the break in the rain.

we watched most of equilibrium last night, which was really fun. oh! and our taster's box of hot peppers arrived ^_^

i read another chapter of the ocean at the end of the lane to mr smear, putting myself to sleep as much as him. i almost woke up completely between saying goodnight to mr smear and brushing my teeth, but in spite of it being relatively early i did fall asleep after a short while, and i did sleep through most of the night.

today:

i woke up from a long, convoluted dream that ended with me and tahoma chanting enthusiastically at some kind of work event.

i opened the first of my sunglass lens replacements to arrive, the photochromic ones. i'm convinced they're a scam, because they seem to change tiny slightly in the sun but they don't seem to be protecting my eyes from anything.

we weren't quite sure about sending mr smear to the manga workshop until about an hour before, by which stage we'd decided he was fine to go and he still seemed to want to go - which is surprising, considering his track record of nope-ing any activity outside of the house.

while he did that (with one of his friends), i sat upstairs and spent a couple of hours working on helper scripts for one of my projects. one of my now-ex co-workers came over to say hi, which was nice, and i find it interesting that he chooses the library when he needs quiet time during the workday.

mr smear seemed to have had a good time, even if the two of them had found the workshop a bit "childish". it took some effort to drag him out of the comic library (and lose the argument about him reading chainsaw man), and we did some urgent grocery shopping on the way home (most importantly, for gloves to handle the peppers).

and stop for a quick chat with the bakery owner, who's been getting into south african documentaries and was surprised to learn that chris hani's murder was such a big deal for all of us. and to hear confirmation of what he thought were exaggerations of the load-shedding and the crime.

and stop for a quick chat with ze irish german's wife; turns out they're all the same kind of sick as we've been (with the parents seeming to just have colds, and the children being knocked out of commission entirely).

mr smear and i had lunch and watched a king's quest playthrough together, and then a short while later we all headed out again to gd's check-up, from where we walked together to the dentist so i could pick up my new mouth guard (which fits!). we wanted to try a vegan place next door for dinner, but they only had QR code menus and the QR code wasn't readable, so in frustration we gave up and continued to lebowski, where we enjoyed a really nice dining experience.

mr smear got to taste shakshouka (not amazing, but decent), and gd's shuwarma (apparently great), and although my curry wasn't as intense as i would have liked, the experience overall was solid.

we just got home, mr smear's showered and soaked his feet and i've sorted out his toes for the night, and now we're going to light the candles and get ready for bed.

upgrades

 after teaching mr smear how to open hard plastic packaging and reset a modern combination lock, he left for school with the lock still on the table. i automatically ate the leftover half of his pancakes, apparently my body's still trying to make up for all the burned calories yesterday... i'm back up to 80kg again :/

i invested a bit of time tidying up my desktop and fleshing out a design for one of my side projects, and discuss (in broad terms) building a tarot deck with gd, and then headed out to draw cash, get an update about gd's scope appointment, pick up a coffee and order a tasting kit of carolina reapers (amongst other hardcore peppers), replace mr smear's watch battery, and then return home past the hardware store to pick up anti-mold stuff and usb-c chargers (now that i know).

i spent some time setting those up (rearranging things in general), then sat down to split up AI covers to add to my playlists (i've been obsessed with synthknot the past couple of days).

my new employer contacted me to set up work accounts, along with meetings to prepare for my onboarding. i mean, they could have just employed me a month earlier...

i passed out while finishing the incal, but i did finish it.

the unhinged ravings of a perverse amateur author with one of the most unlikeable protagonists i've ever encountered and a literal deus ex machina at every turn. BUT. fantastic artwork, incredibly psychedelic delirium at cosmic scale. as much as i might have been turned off by the writing, the overall experience was so good that i'm glad i didn't put it down.

i blocked youtube on the ubuntu macbook, but later caught mr smear using chatgpt thinking we wouldn't catch him...

lifting mr smear's toenails is traumatizing for the lot of us.

we've just finished eating an early dinner, i'm about to supervise mr smear's reading homework, and then i'm off to a "house party" that gco's organized...