moving forward

 dinner and spider-noir, deconstructing this year's jigsaw puzzle, and then me getting back to my projects while mr smear got ready for bed. i paused, around 11pm, to go and read him to sleep (we're sooooo close to finishing the first discworld novel!), then returned to long conversations with AI, involving lots more typing than usual, as i dived deep into why its database design was wrong, what it should look like, and how to climb out of the hole it had dug itself into. at the same time i finally, a few minutes ago and after a couple of hours of mind-bending fails, managed to get the AI to make a rubik's cube function just like a rubik's cube, and i'm elated!! ^_^

between prompts, i've been drinking tea and watching youtube. i think i should probably hit the hay soon.

indecision

 well, here we are. past midnight on saturday night. between last night and tonight we have finished watching small prophets (brilliant, btw, completely unhinged and brilliant), and mr smear and i completed the jigsaw puzzle, and the day was generally quiet, indoorsy, and involved a lot of me working on, well, mostly on the bird game, with which i made plenty of progress in spite of the fact that most of it was dealing with the agents being slow and dumb.

that slowness also meant just watching a lot of stuff on youtube and doing minesweeper challenges and snacking heavily 🤷

in the evening i took mr smear out for a particularly long walk, it was a great evening for it and aside from strategizing about games, i also successfully conveyed to him what my social media side project should feel like and he was excited by the possibilities ^_^

and along the way, we sat in a sukkah and said the blessings and we got an amazing view of the enormous harvest moon.

after watching the first episode of season 2 of ludwig with gd, after mr smear had at least theoretically gone to bed, i played some aces of the luftwaffe and am now trying to decide whether to go to bed or not.

i'm having a little trouble decided what i actually want to do.

pushing on

i guess i'm on vacation for a week? i'm starting to write this just before 1am, while babysitting an agent working on my social media project and i *just* want to have a reasonably good result before i turn in for the night. also, i'm finally down to 6% of my weekly limit, which is good, i guess?

...

i slept alright last night, and began my day on the balcony, writing. i actually wrote something i felt was worth sharing.

i helped gd make a couple of appointments this morning and did a little more work on the project and the bird game, and then i switched modes and started working. today was mainly about managing my dev environment, fine tuning and troubleshooting and rediscovering that intellij is horrible software even on an m4 pro with 48GB of RAM. i literally almost burned myself holding my laptop because of the indexing, which was my primary complaint for more than seven years now.

visual studio code with claude code is a much better deal, and so much more effective.

i got my first PR out, and by the end of the day i had the second one ready to go. i had a pleasant one on one with my lead, and although i almost kit-bag-questioned my way out of vacation he assured me that it makes no difference to how much pressure this project has whether i take the days this week or the next, so 🤷‍♂️

i'm particularly pleased with how well my devex (that's a thing now) is now that i'm getting a handle on all the tooling, and getting the tooling to play nicely together ^_^

while i worked, mr smear and gd seemed to have a pretty relaxed day, but mr smear did give gd a hebrew lesson from the madregot book my mom delivered a while back, second day in a row and i'm proud of both of them :)

he also got through (with a little encouragement from me, some positive reinforcement and some not so positive) a tough piano lesson based on these boots were made for walkin', and practiced afterwards, and did himself proud.

otherwise, i ate a LOT today. lots of healthy food, but also lots of less healthy food (i've got a problem and i know it). once i was done with the work day, mr smear and i strapped on our blades and went on a mission, we didn't find what we were looking for (reflectors) but we mostly had a good time and got some good exercise.

we got back to great sushi, the second episode of small prophets (painful to watch, but we're all invested), and mr smear and i made great progress on the puzzle together before bedtime.

...

i hope i'm going to bed soon. i'll probably crash soon regardless of my dev state...

redirect

i took horseman's recommendation to heart last night, and as a result i went to bed particularly late and invested a significant amount of my energy (and tokens) on three different projects, in parallel with burning my client's tokens on the project they're actually paying me for.

then i discovered that the "reset" wasn't going to happen automatically, that we've been given an additional one to use when we like. oooooooooooooh.

but i got a hell of a lot of stuff done today, including massive improvements to the game (mr smear was overjoyed) and reviving the stalled social media experiment i've barely touched since december. i used a lot of AI back then, too, but i've leveled up considerably in the past few months and the experience is now completely different. also, the new models are completely different as well.

...

i did manage to sleep last night, but instead of being kept up by the usual pain or discomfort, or just restlessness, it was a nightmare that i awoke from with adrenaline pumping through my veins, and it must have taken about half an hour to calm down enough to get back to sleep.

the nightmare: extremely vivid, with lots of grim parts, ending in a chase scene (i was in the back of a flatbed truck being shot at, and some of the bullets struck centimeters from my legs), followed by a narrow escape after being discovered (and abandoned by one of my "friends"), which involved a favor (some random guy deciding to look the other way) and then sneaking into a secret passage i was sure he didn't know about.

the morning dream: i woke up from another epic dream that ended in me cleaning an oven (and scratching it accidentally by using the wrong tool) then finding out i was covering for some kind of crime. the last person i encountered as my alarm went off was a cartoon daffy duck (à la who framed roger rabbit) but man-size, which was pretty intimidating.

aside from work - one of my biggest achievements being getting my client's environment playing nicely with my personal skills and sandboxed playground - and all of the token burning, i feel like a large part of my day was spent snacking, and trying to help gd get through all the food she's made (we both decided, spontaneously and simultaneously, that she should have frozen half of it), and in the evening she accompanied me to my haircut.

she's *not* happy with my haircut. neither am i...

dinner and the wonder years and me and mr smear working on the puzzle together until late, followed by this post and a cup of tea, and now i'm trying to decide whether it's bed time or more work time. my brain's feeling a bit fuzzy...

from fasting to hardcore hiccups

 the fast... went by quickly. i made it, albeit is very lethargically and with a caffeine headache. 

i listened to a bit of the shul service, but after the rabbi began waxing political i shut it down and took mr smear out rollerblading. it was awesome, we had a good ride, good chatter (in particular a quiet break on a bench staring at the stars and having a serious talk about something that was bothering him), and his biggest concern was that not all the highway roads are completely smooth.

i showered, but i didn't hydrate. we went to bed soon after.

i woke up pretty early yesterday morning, and i was sad and anxious to see a surprising number of vehicles on the roads. i can't imagine what could be so important as to be driving on yom kippur, but apparently tel aviv isn't the only city that saw a sharp increase in this happening, which is disappointing, and feels ominous.

my day was primarily spent napping, reading comics, and working on the jigsaw puzzle (we got quite far!), and the absolute highlights of my day were playing a full game of pokémon with mr smear (he beat me with a surprisingly good strategy) and him participating heavily in the puzzle ^_^

sadly, gd wasn't interested in it and barely so much as looked at it, which i'm trying not to read into too much...

i broke my fast on chili and dill rice (a fresh, better batch), and then sat with mr smear - regretfully not recording - as he playtested our bird game with absolute, unadulterated full joy for about forty five minutes straight.

i managed to sleep last night, even though i woke up multiple times i was able to get back to sleep relatively easily.

this morning saw me starting my day on the balcony, writing in my notebook, and what was intended to be another comic script turned into a journal entry that was slightly more prosaic than this one. my fingers are too tired to transcribe, though, so 🤷‍♂️

i went to the acupuncturist, the session didn't feel quite as productive as the previous ones and i struggled to not snore during the treatment. fortunately, i didn't have any problems getting home this time. i shipped off to the office, where my work day was essentially a lot of social interactions punctuated by investigation, and i think i've got a proper handle on using claude the way my client intends without losing access to my user skills.

i came home early, had an early supper (disappointed to be eating alone), then took mr smear to the comics library to return some books. i said goodbye to him before he got on the bus home, but he clearly didn't understand what was happening and ran out of the bus when he realized i wasn't on it with him, and in the time it took to re-explain and turn him around the bus driver had already closed the doors... fortunately, he let him on again.

i made my way to the game dev meetup, which was again quite constructive. i met some nice people, got some extremely good tips from an entire talk built around a single slide, and had some interesting conversations. then i came home, not expecting to find my family having just watched the daredevil movie without me (i haven't seen it! [oh, wait, i have. i guess i had better things to bother remembering]), 

i played a bit of aces of the luftwaffe - squadron while mr smear ate his late dinner as slowly as possible in order to watch me [stops writing to write down some ideas that game him, look up the binding of isaac and wishlist rebirth, learn from horseman that i should be burning codex tokens before tomorrow's reset, and develop a weird and particularly intense case of the hiccups]

i had a weird argument with mr smear over him wanting to write something down, but not enough to do so with pen and paper (he wanted to use google docs, and it was late), and then i told him he was being a schmuck and he responded with "no, you're being a schmuck" so he's down an hour of screen time tomorrow and i'm questioning whether i did the right thing or not. at least the next time i tried to talk to him about what happened (a few minutes later) went well, he got the upper hand by deliberately answering my rhetorical question in a way that was so incorrect that i had to stop for both of us to laugh, and then regroup, and then think up a different approach 😅

after putting him to bed, i sorted out some minor things on my work laptop, agreed to what appears to be the go-ahead for my project's action plan, read some news articles and then began posting this.

god damn these hiccups.

happy 5787!

 our puzzle and board game mission was successful, gd and i picked up a gorgeous zozoville puzzle and a copy of cascadia, which hopefully will be interesting for all three of us 🤞

on the way home we did a last-minute grocery shopping for some items we missed yesterday, and then we returned home.

i upgraded my codex subscription in order to experiment with astra, and the experience of generating my trauma game has been pretty good so far - i initialized it with astra, and have been using terra and luna for the tweaking.

really good news: the work i've been doing on my boss's pet project was accepted this afternoon, with a recommendation to open an upstream PR for it as well 🙌

[pauses to help gd in the kitchen. i've now made two round challot, one choc-chip and the other chilli-choc-chip, and prepared the vegan meatballs]

there was a bit of drama in the kitchen earlier (mr smear wasn't helping gd in a particularly helpful way), but we're just about ready to head upstairs.

shana tova and chag sameach! hopefully this next year will be calmer and more reasonable 🙏

grind break

this morning we completed the pokemon puzzle (including a few frustrating minutes hunting for the final piece that was resting, camouflaged, on top of the puzzle), i helped mr smear through the first page of his holiday homework, i did the dishes, and headed off to the office.

it was a weird work day, lots of syncing and strategizing, and keeping my nose out of the bunch of kids hijacking the office, and by the time i got to the important, urgent work that needed to be done i ran into some big issues that thoroughly blocked me. and then it was time to leave the office in order to be able to take mr smear to the swimming pool.

mr smear and i arrived at the pool in good time, only to learn that it was closed. the nice lady printed me out some sheets that are much easier to parse than their schedule boards, so now we have an idea of when we're welcome there...

the past hour or so has been all about helping gd in the kitchen (and being upset to learn - or relearn - that the hand blender we bought months ago never worked), and struggling to update the dell device drivers (i'm typing this on the same machine while i continue to struggle), and being frustrated because i decided earlier that i didn't want to go swimming any more, but now mr smear's all-in and he's never all-in so now i have to go.

*deep breaths*

waiting quietly

 we did very little yesterday (aside from cleaning the floor). we did the puzzle (we're mostly done at this point), read / napped / played (mr smear was overjoyed to discover that subnautica runs better on my m2 macbook than on our shitty dell xps), we made challah-peño again - which was an amazing success, again - and after kiddush we ate a simple dinner and watched a couple more episodes of futurama (even gd's getting won over).

this morning has been pretty chilled so far, but i just had a realization about mr smear's screen time/downtime protocol: it's been bothering me for ages that he sets an alarm to the end of his downtime, and it bumps him out of whatever he's doing. he was just making fantastic progress on his day 4 inktober entry, and his alarm went off and he just tossed it aside to go look for a screen.

so no more downtime alarms, only screen time alarms.

we learn.

...

in political news, i've read the hamas response to trump's peace proposal and it doesn't seem like they're going to do what's being demanded of them. which isn't surprising. but i'm nervous, because if they return the hostages, we don't know what they'll do to the hostages pre- or during delivery, everything they've done has been calculated to maximize psychological harm to israel. but if all they do is mess around, at least we have clearance to go in and get the job done.

slow and steady

 the fast itself wasn't hard, but on a normal rest day with caffeine i'm tired and need lots of naps, so yesterday i was tired. 

mr smear wasn't feeling well (he still isn't), so instead of taking him to meet his classmates for a bike ride in the evening we all stayed at home and had a very quiet night. in the morning i went to a service close by that i've been meaning to check out for ages, and i arrived just in time to make a minyan for shacharit. it was a pleasant service, with a bit of a wishy-washy sermon, but by the time one of the leaders said "it's not mandatory to leave for yizkor" i - along with half the congregation - got up and left.

my back was sore, my vision was doubling and i was starting to fall asleep.

we spent the afternoon alternating between reading the story of jonah, napping, putting together an awesome pokemon puzzle (we're more than a quarter of the way through the 1000 piece puzzle), and encouraging mr smear for his day 2 inktober entry.

in the evening, i took mr smear to hear the final shofar blow. it took us a bit too long to leave the apartment - we passed the service in the kikar just before they finished, arrived too late for the other service, and then returned past the kikar service after they'd finished too :/

i broke my fast on pancakes and some healthy leftovers, while we watched and enjoyed futurama. then it was a bit of a struggle to get mr smear into bed (no particular reason), and then it was time to pass out myself.

today so far:

my first coffee was accompanied by a long nap. so far today we've started cleaning our talitot, and mr smear's alternating between finishing up yesterday's drawing and helping us with the puzzle.

aside from cleaning the floor (post-cleaning lady) i'm feeling particularly lazy. i keep fantasizing about picking up a new speaker and possibly a gaming computer, but i'm honestly not confident it's the right timing for the latter.

day of atonement

friday:

aside from grocery shopping in the morning, we were pretty much at home all day. the biggest achievement of the day was finally (finally!) setting up the psvr system, only 2.5 years after the mongoose loaned it to us. the pad at the back of the headset is falling apart, but otherwise it's in good nick. unfortunately, the paddles won't hold a charge so we're limiting to games that work with the regular gamepad.

either way, mr smear is over the moon and we both thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and the biggest challenge is going to be finding good games that don't cost an arm and a leg and being solid about limiting time with the headset on.

...

gd prepared a feast pre-fast, and after dinner we put together a very basic 200 piece puzzle, and mr smear actually participated fully for the first time. afterwards, i managed to convince him to come out on his bike. we met up with his re-friend / her dad and brother for a little, but all the kids were being whiny, so we went off in different directions. mr smear decided he was done earlier than i'd hoped - but apparently that's because he needed the toilet and didn't want to go outside - but overall he got the yom kippur "vibe" and we had a pretty good experience.

yesterday:

i slept really, really badly. i barely slept - although i did sleep a little, because i remember having some weird dreams - but i got up in the morning almost as tired as when i'd gone to bed.

firstly, we're really impressed that yesterday went as smoothly as it did. not only did we not have issues with a day without screen time, but we had constructive conversations about what we were doing and why we were doing it.

secondly, i spent most of the day resting, or following the morning prayer service with gd, or reading. i was tired, and a bit dehydrated, but i didn't have the usual caffeine-withdrawal headache and i wasn't feeling hungry.

in the afternoon we went to a park to meet up with a new friend of his, by which stage i wasn't feeling too fresh. the kids were getting along great, which was a relief to witness, although at some point mr smear wanted to leave because he was being harrassed by mosquitoes. he ended up staying in spite of that, though, because he was having fun... right until he wasn't. his new friend's little brother accidentally bumped him off an installation, and he was hurt and angry.

the resulting outburst was thoroughly embarrassing. i made my apologies as i followed him out of the park, and about halfway home managed to get him to listen to reason (i'm sad that i needed to threaten privileges for that, but it is what it is). things escalated when we got home and i explained what had happened to gd, but refreshingly quickly he managed to figure out what we were trying to get him to figure out and the tone of everything changed.

i sent off messages to his friend's mom and hopefully there'll be more playdates...

we logged in to the prayer service for the ending of the fast + blowing of the shofar + havdala + singing of hatikva, then dug in to a big meal. mr smear decided that he'd rather vr than fantastic four, so we tried out some of the other demos and we both had a *really* good time. then it was bedtime, and bedtime went smoothly.

gd and i tried to watch deadpool & wolverine, but as much as i was enjoying it i started passing out quite early on.

...

so far, the day's begun well. i slept alright, woke up and did a lot of stretching (my hips and lower back are still really sore), and we've had a long a constructive conversation with mr smear that covered the plans for the holidays, and a big discussion about gambling and other addictions that ended up with all of us agreeing that if we had the money, we'd establish and run a doggy hotel.

now it's time for me to go to work. *i* still have a couple of schooldays to go before my vacation begins :P