opportunity

 well, my shoulder's hurting this morning, but my eyes are feeling slightly less irritated and my teeth are feeling slightly less sensitive, so overall i guess i'm doing okay.

i'm feeling quite offended right now that putting money into mr smear and my shared compound account costs far more than we'll earn in compound interest over the next few years. i'm offended because crypto's been a big thing for so long already and it still doesn't make any sense for small players. and our physical banks don't have any incentive to compete.

mr smear just freaked out and dumped a really cool animation he made in flipaclip (after much struggling to determine that bluestacks still sucks and that flipaclip's pricing is extortion), but i got him to reattempt and learn what he should have done and he did. so at least one parenting win for the morning, not including him playing or singing iron maiden's two minutes to midnight every time he thinks something's going to be in two minutes :P

...

i walked into the office yesterday and sat down for a while with bigtalk to help him strategize. that was followed by a morning full of random shit, mostly frustrating, and i felt like my brain was melting (like i was maybe coming down with something, but in retrospect i think i was just tired and depressed).

the biggest downer was learning that bigtalk's definition of "fine-tuning" is completely out of sync with mine. he's been promising to deliver the Big Important Thing "today or tomorrow" since last week already and i'm just getting more and more frustrated.

the company retro was interesting, and i felt useful and needed. which makes me feel a bit weird about my position in the new org chart, where i'm just a devops and my "coach" is someone with less experience than me...

happy hour turning into an opportunity for a conversation about determining company culture (documentation and being remote-first), but that conversation led to someone even more important which was me determining the root cause for our algo team's difficulties and getting buy-in for my proposed solution from our de-facto tech chief.

and then i came home, without any issues with protestors (thankfully i don't have a car), and the evening was pleasant and we all went to bed pretty early. fortunately i was the only person who was awoken by the protestors flooding our neighborhood...

luna park ftw!

 this morning was AMAZING. i slept pretty well last night, and spent some time organizing my google drive folders now that i've switched from sync. so far, so good. then mr smear woke up (he'd moved himself to the couch in the middle of the night 'cause he couldn't sleep), and after breakfast asked to be (re-)introduced to iron maiden. happy to oblige, we both enjoyed it.

then his friend rocked up, and we headed out to the luna park. getting there was easy, finding parking was easy, getting inside was easy, and getting on the rides was easy - it was the *perfect* day and time to go! out of the couple of hours we were there, the kids got to have fun and do almost all the rides they wanted (except the 140cm minimum rides) without waiting, and they even went on the anaconda!

i "dadded" well for both the kids - mr smear got freaked out by the black mamba, and his friend by the anaconda, and i managed to get them both back on track (mr smear psychologically, his friend physically and psychologically) - and i'm feeling really good about that. i even went on the final ride myself, which was great fun ^_^

everyone had a fun morning, and i dropped mr smear off at his friend's place on the way home so now we've got the afternoon to rest up before taking my mom to the airport tonight.

we're sad she's leaving us, but happy we got some good times in in spite of being sick for a lot of her visit (as always).

the sammich

 the morning started off alright, but then we suddenly got hit with an attitude issue that was on-off until we got to the lego store (including on our mission to the shuk, which mr smear also isn't a fan of, although we did find him the white hate he's been whining for in spite of his protests and we got an iron maiden shirt made for him which he's ridiculously excited about - so i guess that was a bit of a corrective experience).

then we hit the lego store. i gave him explicit instructions to remember that it's *his* birthday present (not his mom's), that *he* has to choose what *he* wants, and that he has to be under budget (it's a big budget - we may be under financial stress, but we believe he deserves a birthday celebration just like everyone else). he was excited, and he went from section to section but couldn't decide.

then, suddenly, he cut and ran. i realized what was happening before anyone else did, and chased after him, catching him outside, hugging him tight, and explaining that he didn't need to make any decisions right then, nor even get his present from the lego store. he started calming down, and asked if he could just wear his new shirt, so i took him to a quiet store with a changing room and he came out pretty much fully recovered.

we caught the bus home, and the rest of the afternoon was nice. a/c, and after watching a couple of jonas tyroller videos, we decided to reinstall will you snail and remembered just how much fun it is!

it was generally a really nice afternoon. we had a break from doing things together - he played rain world, and watching him bouncing up and down while he played was wildly entertaining for all of us - and then i was inspired to put on the truman show. at first he didn't seem interested, but pretty soon he joined me on the couch and really got into it.

we had a wickedly delicious friday night hotdog dinner - didn't know that was a thing until tonight - and he rushed through his shower so that we could watch another half hour of the movie. it's an excellent movie, and it's really fun watching it with him.

bedtime was mostly okay but ended on a silly sour note, not the worst bedtime but still not a great end to an otherwise great day. then i sat down to some more inscryption, and it *really* made me feel shitty. two runs where i was getting everything i wanted, and got demolished anyway with zero ceremony.

i think calling the game "evil" is absolutely fair. it doesn't change my obsession/addiction, it just qualifies it a bit more...

now to plan tomorrow's luna park mission and go to bed.