pre-work work

 okay, i seem to have gotten a relatively good night's sleep, even though i could have used a heck of a lot more. i drank coffee and read some more watchmen (i'm nearing the end), said good bye to mr smear, and then dived right in to fighting with the municipality and the car rental company, which so far seems like an expensive, losing battle.

then i climbed over the balcony divider and discovered that our end of the blockage from last night is rock-solid.

then i paid the electricity bill.

then i had a tiff with my wife over my enthusiasm for the news that the EU has voted to deport illegals and terrorists. then she left for her first sewing lesson in about a year 🤞

now i've had breakfast, and i've posted this, and i'm about to switch machines and hopefully finish up the work i've been trying to push since wednesday 🙄

common ground

 it's been a long ass-day and i'm exhausted, but i'm sure i won't have time to post anything tomorrow so i'm going to jot down what i can before i crash:

i accompanied mr smear to school this morning, then hopped on a bus to the post office to pick up a package for gd.

i was on my way home this morning from dropping my son off at school, it's a beautiful morning and the world feels a whole lot more right than it did just a few days ago.

and then, out of nowhere, my brain started pulling up flashes of trauma from the past two years. not the horrors of october 7th, not the endless sheltering from rocket attacks, not the immeasurable loss of our soldiers, not the endless defending ourselves from all the lies, but the "friends" who turned out to be evil scum. the traitorous jews who think that our enemies would spare them if they promote their evil agenda.

i don't know if there will ever be a reckoning. terrorists, jihadists? we know why they do the evil that they do. but those who support and are complicit in their evil? you're worse human beings than the terrorists. at least they have *some* integrity.

on my way to work i arranged for a technician to come and check out our washing machine, which has been leaking :(

i spent the work day jumping between interesting things, getting some minor stuff done along the way. the biggest and most surprising elements of the day were meeting a bunch of the new people and finding lots of different common grounds.

oh, and i reviewed and discussed the investigation results from our security company, it was satisfactory but we're still going to try to bring it in-house.

for a couple of hours between happy hour and me getting home i felt painfully bloated. but only for a couple of hours. i don't know why.

i rushed out a bit late for my hairdresser's appointment, i ended up five minutes late but it was alright. the haircut itself was good, and i only nodded off a couple of times (i tried really hard not to). the poor guy can barely understand english, never mind hebrew, so our attempts at small talk invariably resulted in him holding up his translation app to record me asking questions or making comments that really weren't important :P

although gd had a really rough day with mr smear and his homework, my experience in the evening was pretty calm. once he was in bed, i sat down to get some work done, which took about an hour and a half. i'm not quite sure what i've been doing for the hour since then, but i'm almost done with my chamomile tea so i guess this is it for now.

...

i'm a teensy bit paranoid because i either cut myself on, or got a splinter from, a hand grip on a bus this morning :/

unceasefire

 how the hell was yesterday only tuesday?

we woke up to sirens (i'd barely slept, i was feeling more broken than ever), and the fuckers slow-dripped the missile attacks so that we were all up and down the stairs for a couple of hours. the old lady across the hall was really, really struggling :(

we were in the shelters when we learned the disappointing news that we'd agreed to a ceasefire.

as much as it would be nice to have some respite from the missile barrages, anything short of total victory against their terrorist regime is a terrible mistake. they're ideological zombies, they will never give up trying to destroy us, they are incapable of surrender, and they will never accept peace.

anyone who thinks negotiating with terrorists is a viable strategy is a fool.

hearing tom nash's analysis does make me feel considerably better, though.

i crashed on the couch for an hour before dragging myself to the table for breakfast and heading off to the office, where our first actual devops guy was waiting. we spent the morning getting quite a lot of onboarding done, but by lunchtime (with two of my previous teammates joining me and my old boss) things were starting to go wrong.

i was there with a job to do, and everything was broken. what followed was a frustrating endless loop of trying to uncover the root cause with a few of the others. by the time i needed to come home for dinner we'd gone through a list of theories and found something that might have worked, but we couldn't figure out how to make it.

my break for dinner was pretty good, we did have some rough moments but not due to any malicious intentions. as soon as mr smear was in bed, i sat down and continued my investigation...

... i finally, after seemingly infinite iterations, found what i was looking for around midnight, and just before 1am successfully deployed a new release to our dev environment.

just in time to get a few hours of sleep (hopefully 🤞) before taking mr smear to school (🤞) and rushing to the office early to initiate a deployment before rushing to our test site to do a deployment...

... and all the while, urgent personal stuff has been piling up and i haven't had a moment to spare.

glassy eyes and smooth brains

i got a lot of work done before finally going to bed around 1am, but we were sent rushing to the shelter around 3am, and after we were finally able to return home i couldn't sleep and so continued to work for the next two hours.

i was bleary-eyed but satisfied by being able to push a clean, working solution before crashing for an hour or so, then waking up and working some more before our parental guidance meeting.

we talked a bit about how tech children communicate strangely, i had an interesting thought but i'm too tired now to recall it :/

oh! i forgot to mention yesterday - i finally got through to someone in the municipality regarding mr smear's art school application: he didn't get in, but he's no. 2 on the waiting list. we'll take it🤞

...

i'm disappointed to learn that there's some unknown issue with gd's cannabis license application. again. i fucking hate these people.

...

my mom discovered that godmother has the original copy of their maternal grandparents' ketuba! and their other sister happens to be visiting for the first time ever, so she's going to bring it back. i'm praying it gets into my mom's hands in one piece 🙏

unfortunately, i was so excited that i reported this piece of information to someone who's supposed to be helping us, and she immediately responded with "oh, nice, so just take that to them then". fuck.

...

i was just telling my boss how i couldn't go back to sleep after the "lame" missile attack in the night (one rocket?) when the pre-alerts went off, so we packed up and rushed downstairs. our sirens hadn't gone off, neither phone nor air-raid, for an oddly long period of time so i ventured outside for internet access to see what was going on and as the door closed behind me there was a massive explosion close by, so i rushed back inside and swore not to do that again.

the day was a mad rush of deployment testing and troubleshooting, being an "onboarding buddy" to a new guy (who's hopefully going to take some pressure off of me personally), and wrangling mr smear.

mr smear pushed hard today, and things got bad before they got better. the day ended on a positive note, but it was long and upsettingly shit until it got there.

...

did i mention the thing on my face seems to be healed (yesterday) already? i'm not complaining, just confused by the speed. and i'm struggling through my beard's itchy phase because i won't shave until i've really sure my cheek's alright, and it's getting hotter.

...

according to iranians, us striking the entrance to evin prison is their equivalent of the berlin wall coming down.

the IRGC attacking qatar (and everything else they're doing) is insane and suicidal, it feels like they're trying to martyr their way out to avoid surrender.

a whole kernel through a nostril

we woke up this morning to another massive barrage. in addition to discovering that our neighbors are also vegan, we also learned about the US strike on the primary iranian nuclear facilities during the night.

now i'm listening to how islamists are attacking churches... they're deep into phase FA, i can't wait to see them FO.

...

yesterday:

after the midnight attacks on friday night we had relative calm. it was a day spent reading (i read about half of danny the champion of the world), we played (or, more accurately, i picked up a copy of webbed and mr smear played a lot). and getting the basis of the frontend for my language project.

in the afternoon, mr smear was invited by his friend to play table tennis, and i joined them and his friend's mother, scouted the area for a bomb shelter, and then enjoyed watching mr smear actually get into playing - giving him breaks by taking turns, and i was quite surprised by how good his friend is!

he came home with us and joined us for dinner, and his mother and i both made the screen-time rules clear. until dinner the two of them legitimately played, amusing themselves in hilarious fashion, and it was a treat to witness it. dinner was nice, but i was concerned about getting him home before mr smear needed to start getting ready for bed (and before the expected iranian attack), so i accompanied him home.

and then felt super awkward when i returned home to find mr smear still eating (demolishing a large pile of corn-on-the-cob), so he could've stayed later...

today:

it was a busy morning, and i was a wreck even though i slept a little better last night (not well, but better). i spent my work day in meetings, and working on something that took a lot more time than it should have, so unfortunately i'm going to have to continue working after posting this.

on a positive note, my mother sent me a whole bunch of documents and images of her parents and grandparents, and aside from being fascinating it gave me what i needed to respond to the people who've offered assistance with her aliyah process.

the saddest reason for a lot of lost time today was mr smear, two days after getting his privileges back, losing them again over homework (and lying to me). so that sucks.

but in positive news, we received the next two illustrated harry potter books (books four and five). it occurred to me that purchasing more beautiful books while we're under threat of getting our apartment bombed might be a mistake, but thinking like that is just silly.

[knocks on wood]