reception

 i'm sitting here on the balcony after a surprisingly good night's sleep, in spite of mr smear's incessant creaking through the night on his air mattress next to my side of the bed.

i spent a good couple of hours yesterday morning working on my auto-doc: i'm very happy with how it's going. i'm so relieved that the presentation went positively that i'm in "calm down" mode. i'm under immense pressure to include certain improvements, write out a one-pager for my team, and get it out the door. all at the same time.

...

i had my quarterly roadmap meeting with my mentor yesterday morning. the roadmap bit went very well, although there was an awkward moment or two when discussing my auto-doc because he suggested that i could have done it without AI generating the documentation. then the real awkwardness began, when he asked how i felt about the company and we got into it over me feeling disconnected and not seeing the bigger picture. it turns out a) linkedin's algorithm just doesn't put all the usual stuff in my feed (granted, i don't use linkedin very often) and b) that while i've been complaining about there not being a company newsletter, i've been receiving a company newsletter in my email - my gmail inboxes were configured by default to only show my primary inbox, and i've been (unconciously) ignoring everything else 🤦‍♂️

once the meeting was over, i flipped through my emails and discovered, to my immense gratitude, that i'd missed an urgent and important email that had a deadline of a couple of days: choosing a gift for rosh hashana. if my mentor and i hadn't gone down that rabbit hole i might've lost my opportunity to pick up a significant shopping voucher, which in our current financial situation makes a very big difference.

a couple of hours after my roadmap meeting, the thing that my mentor had suggested for my auto-doc popped into my head, and i remembered that just that morning i'd read an article on the topic. i reviewed a couple of well-known packages and sent them to him, and was surprised when he immediately called me. not only had he only learned about one of those very packages about half an hour before, but when i explained that it might very well be a good dependency to build in to what i've got i could almost hear the penny drop for him, and he seems to have suddenly understood what all the excitement for what i'm building is about ^_^

...

the rest of the work day was finally uncovering the root cause of the golang service crashes and fixing it, and it was REALLY satisfying seeing the memory usage flatline when i finally deployed ^_^

i also managed to make some progress with my primary project, and after months of shenanigans i'm at a point where i've pretty much finished everything end-to-end but now have no idea how i'm going to actually test it :P

...

i left the office about twenty minutes before we had to leave home to do the airport run, and called gd to make sure she and mr smear were ready to go. of course, that was when she had just decided that she needed to wash the floors in honor of my sister's arrival 🤦‍♂️

i'd left the office in the middle of getting code reviewed and deployed, so in the literal few minutes i was at home i continued, and on the train i continued, and at the airport while waiting for my sister to clear border control i continued. border control gave me a little more time than expected because they had to hunt down her entry in the population registration - she hasn't been here for thirty years, and she left her ID in london - but she got through it eventually and our reunion was fun, funny and emotional :)

we took the train home, and the girls decided that walking the few blocks from the station was fine, which it totally was. the rest of the afternoon / evening was setting up, catching up, a really nice sushi dinner, a long chat with my mom*, and mr smear enthusiastically trying out his present of a beautiful box set of acrylic pens, then everyone getting ready for and into bed really, really late.

* although a bit intimidating, as she brought up the fact that mr smear's barmitzvah is in two years' time and we're not members of a synagogue and celebrations are a big deal that cost quite a lot of money.

...

while getting ready for bed, i saw that the summer camp organizer had registered the refund, which is a big relief.

...

i've been up since before 6am when i heard the front door close as my sister headed out to join our cousins for a day trip to metzada, and i can't believe it's thursday already. it's been a big week. so far. i'm very excited about so many things! a bit anxious, too, but mostly excited.

detour

 there was a lot of kitchen stress last night, and some very serious (positive) conversations with mr smear about life in general in its wake. gd had ridiculous trouble with the gluten-free dumpling recipe, but the ultimate result was much better than the store-bought frozen ones...

i did nothing of value between late dinner and climbing into bed a bit after midnight. then i woke up, restless and sore, and for about two hours lay in bed, distressed but too tired to give up on trying to fall back to sleep. eventually i got up for a couple of hours of mindlessness, then finally returned to sleep for a couple more hours.

i didn't feel great this morning. i read some watchmen, i napped a little, and then i was going to start getting into the things i'd been intending to do today* when my alarm reminded me that i was going to one of ze germans' daughter's bat mitzvah...

* i'd intended - like most people - to put down money for claude in order to have access to the fable model to do some experimentation. i woke up to the news that that wasn't on the cards any more.

i had a long chat with horseman about AI and middle east politics before and on my walk there, broken only to get dressed and make coffee, and when running into our old neighbors and learning that there're a lot of kids in the building now and they've managed to force the building management to renovate the bomb shelter. too late for us, but i'm very relieved for them!

the bat mitzvah was really simple and tastefully done, all i consumed was liquids (only one alcoholic drink, though) and a little bit of the fruit salad, and i had a good time chatting with ze other germans (irish/swedish + austrian).  i got a ride home, realizing only at that point just how late in the day it was.

i'm now having a late coffee, mr smear's just completed a second hour of "productive" screen time (making animations) and is now having a bite to eat, and then we're going to head out for a bit more rollerblading.

sleep journal entry + the game of life

 i haven't finished my first coffee yet, it's 10.15 on a saturday morning and all that i've done so far is have a long family meeting that began about mr smear not following instructions, and clean the balcony from the masses of bird poop that's been piling up since the birds decided that our immediate upstairs neighbor's balcony is a great place to hang out.

the architect of this building most certainly did not take birds into account :/

...

i had a pretty good night's sleep, although i did wake up around 5am to stretch because my lower back and hips were giving me trouble again.

last night was pretty cool. mr smear sang with us wholeheartedly (and nicely) for kiddush, and we're all thoroughly enjoying the first season of infinity train, and after dinner mr smear and i had a long talk about the stories in the tanach and our history as a nation and what it all means, and then we ended the day with me segwaying into (re)introducing him to conway's game of life which blew his mind (and gave us some really cool inspiration for a game).

it's difficult to wage war on reality...

 ... because reality always has the home team advantage.

it's been a long day, but not unpleasant - bar the lower back / hip issues that usually plague me at night, which today, after leaving me in peace last night, came back with a vengeance and harried me all afternoon.

i generated a comic this morning that i'm pleased with, and another one this evening that i'm somewhat pleased with.

i arrived at work a minute late for my team's daily, and i regaled them with the tale i'd been planning on telling our manager, with which they could all identify. i very fortunately was able to keep my head down and work hard today, and ask the right questions, and by the time i had my meeting with my manager i not only had real progress to report, but also additional information that i'd luckily stumbled upon that made the required business decisions much clearer.

it's a mess, but it's clearly a mess, and my manager understands why i've been struggled and what our options are. i took full responsibility for "falling in the bin", as we say in hebrew, by being caught out again following documentation and paying attention to what other developers and managers say. the saddest part is that aside from getting through my own poor AI usage, the architecture, the data and the code are all completely misaligned.

i guess if there's one thing to be grateful for - assuming they like me and don't terminate my contract before i do - it's that this is one hell of a training ground for learning to work with AI when the stakes are low and the state of the entire organization's a complete disaster with or without me :P

my mother took our hypochondriac mr smear to the museum today, though he was "too sick"to go to the museum she wanted to go to (but managed to walk a while after they got lost on the way there). he just did a RAT and it came out conclusively negative, he spent a good chunk of his time before bed trying to convince us that the control line showing clearly means he's done for 🤣

my neck's been giving me trouble, i'm hoping my time with the massager makes a positive difference. it certainly feels good, at least.

dinner was great, progress with starship troopers was great, bedtime was particularly great - not just laughing at the colour of magic, but segwaying into a talk about sacrifice, cain and abel, and the value of the old testament (and our mission as a people to carry it into eternity, just like shakespeare's sonnets).

and now, physically and psychologically, i'm about ready for bed. which means another couple of hours of reading, gaming, possibly torturing myself by watching the news for the first time in at least a few days.

the purim decree

 today is tuesday? yesterday was monday. it is purim today, i read (the translation of) megilat esther last night and mr smear is dressed up - wildly successfully, especially the scar which he did himself - for a day in which we are following mordechai's edict to the letter, destroying our enemies before they can destroy us.

sunday night was a lot quieter than saturday night or sunday (i'm obviously not speaking on behalf of those who've been affected, an ex-coworker of mine lives next to a building that was struck, and another missile landed next to mr smear's school, and iran is using cluster bombs again, which is a real war crime), and i got up yesterday somewhat in shock at having rested. it was mostly a work day, which was weird, but i did manage - between attacks - to get to the store and buy a "mickey mouse" cable so that i could set up a mesh network because switching from wifi to wifi was driving me nuts.

unfortunately, the speed of my now-stable network is disappointingly low :(

i got mr smear to come upstairs to our friends, where he and their daughter got on well but the younger son was having a very emotional evening... us adults had a reasonably good time, though. and gd stayed downstairs and got a bit of a break.

oh, yeah - the technician arrived yesterday morning to look at the electric hob, which was playing nicely, of course. he fiddled with the triple-phase outlet, hopefully it'll remain stable.

i'm going to be diving into work soon. i'm very disappointed about the state of my hair, which was supposed to be cut on sunday evening. i'm sporting harry potter vibes of my own :P

purim ii

thousands of years later, in the same week of the hebrew calendar as the original purim, we turned the tables on a modern-day haman: khamenei is dead. and with him, his family, and his generals. the antisemitic anti-west coalition has begun to unravel.

so this purim we tell the story, and we live the story, and we will celebrate in the streets and drink too much, and possibly come up with a new baked good like "ayatollah's beard" (or "ayatollah's glasses"), and possibly add an appendix to the original megillah.

but, hive mind, i have to ask you: in this retelling, who is mordechai, and who is esther? trump is achashverosh, clearly, but is bibi our esther?

...

 holy shit. last night's sleep was heavily interrupted by missile attacks, and mr smear had to stay with us, so it was even more interrupted in between the interruptions. and then it was morning, and between attacks we tried to be functional, and i somehow managed to get some work done, and everything was really just a mess.

all my coworkers, israeli and non-israeli, are being very sweet.

i educated horseman and his girlfriend on middle east politics and anti-west propaganda today; it's one heck of a way to introduce oneself to new people :P

the most exercise mr smear and i got was a walk around the block to take down recycling. he was bored today. but also antisocial. and i could barely keep it together, and went down a savings / investment rabbit hole...

gd, in addition to everything else, is really struggling. if her situation worsens, we're going to have to head to the nurses tomorrow.

at least the groceries got through.

the latest attacks have been particularly intense, and it looks like they're using cluster bombs. as i just told my brother: we need to be grateful, as we need to be for every single war since 1948, that our enemies are so ideologically blinded that they’re incapable of discipline. imagine how much harder this war would be if iran hadn’t attacked ALL its neighbors!

really tough fighters get in the ring. pathetic fighters bully non-fighters.

shabbos

 the first week in the new apartment is over. it's peaceful, the air-conditioner is on, gd's on the balcony smoking a joint, watching the highway traffic, mr smear's in bed (he told gd that since we've moved, he's excited to go to bed - i suspect it's the combination of his door not closing and him enjoying the night-light view of bright skyscrapers), we've all eaten well (or, possibly, too well) and the apartment's feeling a step closer to home.

gd managed to cook us dinner on the borrowed electric plates, we lit candles and made kiddush and mr smear joined me for benching (he started falling asleep at the end, i guess he totally caught the vibe) before showering, and i just got out the shower feeling pretty darned good and just about ready for bed.

...

it was a busy morning, lots of stuff about aliyah bureaucracy. and old trance friend (one of the doof crew) who's a lawyer called me to give me some advice (gd was bothered by the fact that he barely let me finish a sentence, but i got useful information out of it), and i had a chat with one of my cousins who's trying to help my mom out as much as she can and might be able to connect me to someone who can do or say something.

...

gd came with me to the ace hardware store, first stopping by the pharmacy. we subsequently had to return to the pharmacy because she didn't realize that the protein in the "protein water" she'd picked up was dairy 🤦‍♂️

we didn't find the main thing we were looking for - insulation tape - but we taxied home with a full kit comprising of "babushka" bins (they had toilet brushes inside), a complex-to-assemble stand for fruits and vegetables, a drying rack for dishes that i made sure she wanted but she now doesn't seem to want, and a couple of small things. then i hopped on a bus heading to south tel aviv, but we were on the highway when half of us realized we weren't going the right way.

"i didn't have the energy to yell at you all to get off the bus," the bus driver said when i asked him why he hadn't told us he was taking a detour. [there was a bad bus accident this morning]

after being encouraged to stick with my current mattress for another week or two, i ended up walking quite a ways around the area and happened to find a hardware store with insulation tape!

i grabbed a coffee, caught a bus to dizengoff center, looked around a bit for cheap air tags for mr smear's new key, gave up, took a bus home, and then we went shopping.

our local supermarket is completely shit. our 24/7 is great, but expensive :/

we came home, rested, coffee'd up, and i began building one of gd's kitchen ikea units as our upstairs friends arrived, and gave some much needed help. aside from putting together furniture, and our kids playing nicely for a while (in both apartments), we had a pleasant afternoon of adult discussions until eventually it was time for our respective dinners.

i built another small kitchen unit by myself - taking breaks to help mr smear put together a birthday card for gd - and that was all i wrote.

delicacy

 night has fallen, the candles are lit, the challah-peño dough is rising. i have a shot glass of rum i'm slowly sipping, and tool's lateralus album is playing, and mr smear is on the couch behind me reading moon knight after having finished the hebrew translation of lightfall.

nobody knows what's happening with iran and china tonight, or tomorrow night, or next week, but we're happy and grateful to have a calm moment right here, right now.

...

mr smear struggled last night and all day with a stuffy nose, but we had a really nice morning together and he was well enough to go to school. then someone came to look at the apartment and decided she wanted to proceed - coming in on the 1st was a problem, but gd and i talked it over and we agreed that the 15th was acceptable. not only does it mean someone taking over our obligations, but it gives us a couple of weeks' breathing room which is meaningful.

gd and i took a bus to the school, which was packed with families milling around appreciating all the artwork. mr smear guided us through his grade's stuff, he only had two pieces on display but they were really good, and we were amazed by a lot of what we saw - there're a lot of really talented kids there.

aside from the awkward horror of watching one of his friends' train-wreck family in action, and a couple of awkward moments with some other parents as well, it was a very good experience for all.

and then i managed to corner mr smear's teacher for an impromptu parent-teacher discussion, and confirmed that she's noticed and is appreciative of mr smear's efforts to sort himself out over the past week or two 🙏

mr smear got gd to point and laugh just as a bunch of his classmates were told "NO" when they were trying to leave early without adult supervision, and it was awkward for everyone.

we took the light rail to the hospital complex on the way home, stumbling upon an actual spar along the way and buying delicious candy-like dried strawberries, amongst other things, and then it was time for pharmacy and shopping. the pharmacy took a ridiculously long time, but mr smear set himself up in the food court and worked on his new comic idea.

once gd and i were done, we had lunch (i'd been passing out from exhaustion, but i managed to scarf down 

[pause mid-sentence to fight with my wife over "letting" mr smear read moon knight - he just asked me what "evisceration" means - after i explained that i already told him i haven't read it and i don't approve of him reading it. i can't force him. gd just asked if there's any sex stuff in it, and he said no, so she just raised her hands and gave up]

a really good falafel pita (mr smear had a "salad pita", gd sampled the rice with peas and dill she bought for the weekend) and then we walked home.

the rest of the afternoon had been pretty relaxed, and hopefully the shabbat will be too 🤞🙏

...

right, those dried strawberries aren't going to eat themselves.

the horror

 today began with preparing a document for mr smear (and gd) to learn the hebrew months, and getting mr smear out of bed to do math homework. there was some tension, but nothing too serious, and we got through it. i flipped our mattresses, did some dishes, (finally) checked that we had authorization for wednesday's allergy challenge, and left for work.

after a long chat with my mom about aliyah, i entered the office for a day filled with interruptions of interruptions.

highlights/lowlights:

a) finally getting in touch with a potential partner after being assured they'd been updated by their superiors, and they hadn't.

b) discovering that our outsourced security team had updated a policy without asking for our consent, or informing us, and it disconnected everyone in rnd, some of whom were engaged in mission-critical tasks. i lost my temper - i've never cursed that much or that loudly in the office*. i informed my boss that they'd crossed a line (not exactly for the first time) and we need to bring our security in-house. i think he heard me pretty clearly this time.

* and, oddly enough, in hebrew. i don't think i've ever done that before, i've always found cursing in hebrew awkward.

c) by the end of the day, after hours battling buggy docker behavior, i finally got to the bottom of our devcontainer / vpn issues. ironically, they were caused by a misconfiguration by my british coworker when he originally tried to fix them, but for some reason everything seemed to work well for almost two weeks before wigging out.

so at least i can move forward with my real work now.

...

i travelled most of the way home with our tech ops guy (there're two now, but whatever), and i was shocked to discover that he's a jewish israeli that was born and raised here but has zero connection or comprehension of judaism. i gave him a bit of a lecture on why i think it's important for non-observant jews to understand the history of our beliefs and practices, and he was totally shocked by what i had to say.

i arrived home, picked up mr smear, and the two of us went off to the mall to buy sleeping bags for the class camping trip this weekend. heavy cigarette smell in the bus notwithstanding, we had a long conversation during which i was shocked and dismayed to learn that he'd spent a good chunk of his day on youtube, behind gd's back, watching really disturbing horror videos.

i've now seen his watch history. i mean disturbing. thanks, youtube, for managing kids' content so safely. and thanks, also, for not enabling parents to block desktop youtube over family link.

on our way home, we sat down for some really good falafel (and i awkward didn't realize why ze british german's wife looked familiar until she'd already greeted me and walked past), then picked up a sandwich for gd, and came home.

another late night for mr smear (his antivirals), but thank god getting him to sleep went smoother than anticipated. i've spent most of the night playing more shadowrun, and now i'm going to bed, trying - continuing to try, at least - not to think about the war / hostage release situation. and now that i've typed that, i'll probably check the news and fuck myself up a bit :/

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.

holy dad joke

hello darkness my old friend...

it's now 3.45am and i haven't been able to sleep for a while. but i'm really tired. i actually feel like i have legitimate reason to be, but in addition to everything else i believe that this morning (or during the night) the flu vaccine side effects kicked in and i spent most of the day feeling weak, slow and irritable.

i accompanied gd to the clinic for her flu shot (reading blindsight on my kindle app whenever the opportunity arose). we walked to the mall to try and get mr smear's school shirts printed, but they didn't have the correct logo so they referred us to a different branch. we headed to the bakery for a coffee and a sandwich, and picked up a couple of yummo's vegan protein bars (which are delicious!). we returned to the clinic so that gd could get a prescription made, then returned to the mall to pick it up. on our way out, i was inspired to write a post to my israeli "hive-mind" asking for assistance with the comic printing.

by this point i was long over the morning and feeling shitty and impatient.

we returned home, then almost immediately left again to get the shirt printing done at the other mall. and then finally return home, dragging in the delivered groceries when i arrived.

by that stage, mr smear had already finished school for the day. i tooled around until he got home, and the rest of the afternoon was a combination of napping (crashing), helping him with his reading and tanach homework (which went relatively smoothly), and doing dishes.

...

for years, i've been begging gd to make challah-peño: challah with actual jalapeño in it. this evening, in addition to giving her a hand in the kitchen because her shoulder's out, we actually made the thing and it came out beautifully. i'm extremely proud and excited: not only did we invent a fun idea, and actually execute it, but the execution was a raging success and the challah-peño is spicy and delicious ^_^

...

during the afternoon and evening, i began receiving some solid advice and leads regarding the comic printing, so i've got homework to do but it's feeling positive. amusingly, a friend put me in touch with someone, who it turned out i had a conversation with trying to recruit him to the project in 2012!

i also had a chat with our kibbutz cousin, who's finally given notice and is going on pension soon. and her eldest son (a few months older than me), with his severe learning disabilities, just completed his bagrut for a job which is pretty darned impressive.

...

i tried watching the charlie kirk and netanyahu southpark episodes with gd after getting mr smear into bed, but i passed out about three quarters of the way through the first one. in theory, i should have enjoyed a good night's sleep...

sweet-and-sour new year

the theme of the past two days has been strongly aligned with the past two weeks; lots of fighting with mr smear because he doesn't appreciate the relationship between cause and effect. specifically, his bad behavior causing negative consequences.

 yesterday:

yesterday was mostly a combination of pre-chag shopping runs. a mall mission to find a backpack for mr smear to replace the one he left in the street, a grocery shop, a neighborhood store fruit and veg run, and gift shopping. then we stopped for lunch (gd and i for a vegan sandwich and fake-greek salad, mr smear wolfed down an entire laffa), and then we returned home in time to get started on preparing the choc-chip challah and other dinner contributions (mushroom pie).

in the evening, i learned just how much damage the mongoose's physio had done to gd, not only hurting and bruising her, but also scratching the shit out of her with her fingernails.

everything was ready in time for dinner at our friends. the evening was generally lovely, though all four of the kids (ours included) took turns being offensive and upsetting their parents; mr smear's most offensive moments included running down his old class as "garbage" when his friend's still struggling with being in it.

and shit vibes from mr smear as we arrived home, super late.

today:

today started with me helping out a contractor, then playing games and reading while mr smear was very bored and quite unappreciative of the fact that it's his own behavior that got him into this mess (not just being rude, but he made a new hole in his leg). it also included gd's arm going out of joint again and me needing to cancel our participation in our cousin's dinner tonight :(

this morning included a lot more shit from him, culminating in a pillow fight with me smashing him over the head repeatedly trying to get him to understand cause and effect. this had the strange effect of calming him down, and afterwards we went out on a flour mission that turned into a very pleasant, long walk culminating in a really nice lunch.

mr smear was being playful on the way home, and we were almost all the way home when his mood suddenly turned sour but he continued to provoke responses even after i warned him to stop. this led to some very serious, horrible moments, and when we got back it took a lot of fighting (on both my and gd's parts) to bring him down to earth and get him to see some kind of reason.

it was literal insanity.

and then, just as everything seemed to be resolved and becoming peaceful, gd came in and "misread the room", effectively undoing all of the progress. i'm still in shock, but mr smear seems to be more aligned in spite of that so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

the rest of the evening so far has been good. now it's dinnertime. hopefully tonight will set a better tone for the new year.

day 5

 i managed to make myself a cup of coffee to take into the shelter with me this morning.

i made a mistake and pulled a coworker into what i thought would be a quick win, but dragged into three hours. it was important work, but it wasn't nearly as urgent as what either of us were supposed to be doing :(

mr smear had some hiccups, but he was mostly cooperative and had another good day. his attitude is slowly but clearly changing and his approach is becoming more and more positive, and it's really exciting to witness!

he's also been reading voraciously, and i've just place an order for a bunch more roald dahl books. which i hope will actually arrive, because gd's latest clothing order was cancelled due to our closed airspace...

i didn't get much work done today, but i am feeling a bit better (less brain-fog, the hours in the shelter have been stressful but are getting shorter and less frequent. hopefully we're already seeing the end of this part of the story...

my wound seems to be healing nicely.

...

someone posited that the american sniffer plane has been deployed because iran might actually have nukes already and might fire them in a last-ditch attempt to hurt us. i have a different theory: i think they're looking to take out fordow, and i think the americans are moving on iran for two reasons: the first, to have boots on the ground and make "deals" with the iranian people (revolution assistance and reconstruction for oil). the second, to prevent russia or china from swarming in.

i - like a lot of israelis - are a bit offended by his claim today that "we" have air superiority and that american tech is responsible. it's our people who've put themselves on the line and done the most insanely literally-fantastic things to take down the IRGC in a matter of days. and it's not just american tech that's achieved that; sure, a lot of it is, but there's a lot of joint development we've done and there're some very special things that only we have.

but whatever. trump is trump, and it looks like we're writing a new story for our descendants to celebrate by eating too much to.

"they tried to kill us. we survived. let's eat." - famous jewish saying

bonfires

 ah, i remember the conspiracy theory now: trump is burying israel so that he can bring us all in to the US as refugees where we'll rapidly integrate and give them a huge tech and manufacturing advantage.

...

yesterday:

another rough day, much less intense than before but with plenty of intensity left to go around. and lots of surprises / factually incorrect theories that led us down rabbit holes while we were trying to get something urgent (literally) out the door.

i ate too much vegan cake at the happy hour (and forgot to bring the rest home), while a new coworker regaled me with inappropriate tales about his parenting approach during covid. and i shared inappropriate stories with some of my coworkers about the horrible things my son has said to me over the years...

we managed to be "delivery ready" just after 6pm.

as it was lag ba'omer, i tried to find a bonfire but none were reasonably close / guaranteed to include actual bonfires. so instead, i took mr smear for a long, really good walk to the beach, where we had ice cream, and then we had a long, mostly good walk back (minus rushing into a stairwell in a random - but very nice - building when the houthis attacked).

today:

i didn't sleep very well. what made it worse was waking up in the middle of the night to pee, and seeing a notification from threads (which i've tried to opt-out from) for a particularly nasty and libellous antisemitic claim. it took me a while to calm down after that.

the morning started off pretty shit, with another fight with mr smear about screentime even though he's been punished with no screentime. that got ugly.

then i put in some work hours, figuring something out and then fixing a different thing, and then i took mr smear out for a walk. we went to the museum, where we saw some really interesting stuff which triggered some very big feelings (motherland), and although he needed some "herding" he came to the party and we left the museum with a good vibe.

the next part of our walk went really badly, but after he understood what the dynamics needed to be (i can't believe this is what we're doing these days) we made some good progress. our walk continued to the mall, where we had falafel for lunch and picked up two heavy bags of muesli which he carried most of the way home.

on the way home, we passed the war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness monument, and appreciated its structure.

i was really tired when we got home, but before i could nap i had to have a massive fight with my wife over trust issues, and i'm extremely grateful that in spite of all the feelings i managed to express myself well enough that it was resolved in a really positive way.

i did some more work in the afternoon, i managed to make some progress but nothing satisfying, and now the sun's about to set and we're about to make kiddush.

shabbat shalom

"hummus thursday"

 "hummus chamishi" - lipgirl's started a pretty dangerous tradition. miraculously, i was fully functional during the post-lunch meeting in spite of it, and i only began to crash around 4.3pm when leaving the office for the weekend.

i taught mr smear how to construct beats in the morning.

it was a tough day, although less than the previous ones since my wednesday night achievement, and us agreeing that the other stuff on my plate was more "nice-to-have" than bona-fide requirements.

our friends' son's barmitzvah was intimate and pleasant.

[writing paused to write a complaint at the discovery that all the construction noise today is from a new project]

this morning so far has been mostly alright, although there was a bit of a meltdown over writing a mother's day card (i still haven't got a clear answer as to why there was yelling and tears). i woke up and used the massager this morning, and my neck's still tender but feeling markedly less so.

...

we're retaking gaza. we should have done this well over a year ago, instead of pandering to the american left and letting the situation get worse. all the land from egypt to jordan belongs to israel, it's in everyone's best interests that we reclaim it and put this jihadist's wet-dream of a  "palestinian" experiment to rest.

psychosis

 the past couple of days have been schizophrenic, and utterly psychotic.

thursday:

the fight about going out notwithstanding, thursday was amazing. it was a gorgeous day, we rode to the port and sat down for far too much ice-cream. which was amazing.

then we rode to babylon park, where mr smear did a VR ride and the two of us played a shooting game, both by raw thrills and both brilliant experiences.

then we came home via the dog-friendly coffee shop, where he made a new four-legged friend named "cheesecake". (and where i witnessed the horror of a woman with a big dog who, after she'd waited for ages for her two coffees, yanked her so hard that all the coffee painted the sidewalk)

inspired, we came home and re-watched jurassic park with gd, and ordered rainbow burgers for dinner, and all-in-all it was just a magnificent day.

yesterday:

i went to bed quite late, but slept alright. i took mr smear to school in the morning (it was a pretty relaxed morning), and by around 10am gd and i were ready to head out. that was when i first looked at my messages, and learned that on thursday night, my lead had had a heart-attack and died.

this is utterly devastating. not only professionally - we're a new company and he's the chief architect for our central platform - but personally as well; we've been working closely together for the past two and a half months and he was a personality and a half, insanely smart, larger-than-life and full of obscure knowledge about the world in general.

to add to all that... this last week was particularly rough on him, and i know that a decision that i made was the cause of a lot of his frustration.

jesus christ.

so that was the background for yesterday, and today, and the next while as we not only mourn, but also scramble to take over his responsibilities.

today is shabbat, and i'm loathe to work on shabbat, but that effort begins today.

...

gd and i picked mr smear up from school, dropped everything off at home, and then headed to the shuk to find him shoes. this was a rough experience on two fronts: the first being the shuk itself on a friday, and the second being the usual difficult involved in getting mr smear to try on shoes.

the experience was not in any way fun.

but we did manage to get him shoes and sandals for his class hike next week. although to balance that, we also got some shirts with prints and the prints are already flaking off.

we stopped for coffee, then walked to the bus home. then decided to walk to a different bus stop rather than wait for twenty minutes. we had a pleasant walk down sderot chen, arrived at the stop in time... and then gd saw the hummusia next to the stop, so we sat down there instead.

we "opened a table", and while it wasn't the highest quality food, the experience was great.

we got home with just enough time for a quick rest before getting on a company call just to be together. and then i took mr smear to shul.

the walk there was fine, but the shul experience itself was... difficult. mr smear was mostly alright, but in two separate incidents behaved so badly that i had to punish him (he's just finished brushing his teeth and the punishment timer has started), and once again got into his "i hate babies" mode and glared at any infant that made a sound.

add to that the hard-left political stance of the rabbi's sermon (we must be united, so let's fight the fascists) combined with inappropriate re-gendering of the litergy, and i left the synagogue totally over it.

but then things got more wrong, because mr smear - as usual - got angry with me for talking about stuff he doesn't like to hear as a consequence for his own bad behavior.

at this point, i dropped my bad language filter and went all out.

on the one hand, things got loud enough that i was half-expecting someone to call the police. on the other, i eventually and miraculously got through to him and we had a very honest, very clear discussion about his behavior and what he's doing to himself and others.

the rest of the walk home was hand-in-hand, and peacefully positive.

we got home, he jumped in the shower and i caught gd up on the events, and we called up my mom and said kiddush. things were going just fine... until mr smear - lounging backwards in a way we've been telling him not to for many moons - tipped a plate full of food all over himself (in his clean white shirt) and the floor.

and that was the straw that broke gd's back. she absolutely lost her shit, and while i think there were things she said and did that may have been a bit harsher than warranted, she wasn't wrong to be completely (and scarily) clear with him on how fucked up he's been.

so the rest of the evening was under a dark cloud, but the good night wishes weren't met with fighting and landed well.

i went to bed soon after.

today:

i got up groggy, and spent the first hour or so on the couch with the body massager crushing into the connective tissues in my neck (i've been having trouble with the muscles below the left side of my occipital bone for the longest time) and the eye massager doing its thing, feeling very futuristic.

now that i've got this down...

*takes a deep breath*

... it's time to face the music. All The Music.

the end of the vacation

 the rest of yesterday evening went really well. going to shul together has become a very pleasant ritual, both for the walks-and-talks and the services themselves (even if mr smear refused to stay for kiddush).

today was really good, too. we had an issue getting mr smear out the door this morning (after we'd prepped for the beach and had been talking about it for more than half an hour), but that was resolved as soon as i promised that *i* would be the one to unlock his bike [shakes head in confusion]

we were about halfway there when he decided that going to the beach was too far, so i compromised and we rode to a dog-friendly coffee shop. we chilled there for quite a while, generally having a good time (except for an incident where i had to re-teach him about personal boundaries).

the ride back was cool, too, and the weather was just beautiful.

most of the rest of the day was alternating between video games and relaxing, we played a round of exploding kittens before lunch and i read some more of a canticle for leibowitz, which i'm starting to get into.

i really didn't feel like going to my old boss's place for mimouna, so i made my excuses and we ate pizza with black-salt avo and mushroom before taking a short walk before putting mr smear to bed.

and the rest, as they say, is slay the spire. i mean, i should be going to bed now.

the retelling

friday evening:

so we watched prince of egypt on friday night, and if i recall correctly we also watched the end of paddington 2. regardless of when we watched it, i interpreted the ending the same way as this guy.

gd was going to bake challah for shabbat but suddenly realized - once the dough was ready for the oven - that we don't have a working oven... so we did what we technically should have been doing anyway, and had matzah instead :P

yesterday:

we re-watched joseph: king of dreams in the morning, and while we didn't love the songs it wasn't as bad as we remembered. but the writers really added a whole lot of unnecessary stuff to the film and laid it on so thick, that afterwards i downloaded the sefaria app and started reading the original text.

i don't recall much from yesterday afternoon.

in the early evening we picked up the car, and almost left the gift behind... which worked out, because i'd forgotten to relieve myself before heading out and considering the traffic i would've been in trouble if i hadn't.

it was heartbreaking and aggravating seeing so many people protesting on erev pesach.

we arrived in reasonable time, and the evening was very pleasant. the seder was a lot quicker than usual (and less loud), and mr smear got "stage fright" when it was his turn to sing, and i struggled with the tiny font of the unfamiliar haggadah, but it was great seeing everyone and the kids were adorable and the food was great. (i agreed to let mr smear have half an egg on account of it being a very special occasion and ironically symbolic, but it bothers me)

and the drive home - ignoring having to duck my head to avoid super-bright LED headlights - was relatively smooth.

today:

i spent a large chunk of my day napping. leftover lunch was delicious. in the afternoon i took mr smear for a long walk through the park, we talked about storytelling and workshopped an idea of his. on the way home we picked up some snacks, and hid in the entrance of a building when the sirens went off for a rocket attack.

we watched the simpsons over dinner, and i started playing slay the spire, which is really fun. mr smear went to bed rather late, in large part because i picked up a copy of asimov's i, robot and started reading it to him. we're well into the first story and really hating the parents.

i played some more, until i died, and although i have to work tomorrow i'm contemplating playing a little more now...

... uh, oh...

pains in the neck

 wednesday was rough. i was fine in the morning - i took mr smear on an "outing" to pick up a parcel, which was nice* - and i was fine until i got into the office. but at some point something in my neck / shoulder spasmed and started pushing on a control nerve, which immediately triggered a painful headache, dizziness and nausea.

* he made a point of carrying something heavy because his new "resolution" is to not be lazy. that last all of a day, and then the next day he made a new "resolution" to be lazy again 🤣

and then i had to navigate two arguments with coworkers, mostly in a position of having to calm them down.

after a while i realized that i was on the verge of fainting, and i packed up and wobbled my way home.

i felt a it better after lying down and stretching and massaging my neck for a couple of hours, though i managed to bruise myself rather severely. i spent the afternoon / evening learning the hard way that my lead's warnings about never modifying git submodules directly were bang on the money.

...

yesterday was better, though i was still sore (as well as bruised) and my neck was threatening to go bad for its entirety. a coworker leant me a small but surprisingly powerful massage tool that i tried a couple of times, but that literally made my eyeballs bounce in my head and made me start feeling nauseous...

i started the day trying to read a canticle for leibowitz, which starts off well enough but i was still too sleepy to get very far.

on the way to the office, gd and mr smear joined me for a mission to the appliance store where we ordered a replacement oven (even with delivery it's cheaper than a repair attempt) and picked up a blender to boot. which i carried to work in the unexpected dribbles of rain that started when i left the building and only stopped once i found cover again.

it was a long and intense day, beginning with me moderating squabbles between my teammates and trying to keep everyone with eyes on the prize in spite of personal differences towards approaches. there were lots of feelings.

i warned everyone that we needed to rip the bandaid of our old tooling as soon as possible, and for my sins they complied. we're running into a lot of teething troubles, but rather sooner than later ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

my interview with one of the investors was postponed, which turned out to be a good thing because i spent most of my work hours running between people to give them assistance. or cheerlead. or commiserate, such as when my lead got irritated by a linter i'd introduced and somehow managed to deep-six hours of his work.

anyway.

we received some nice passover gifts from the company.

lipgirl had put me onto a midi controller (the akai mpk mini mk2), and i really wanted to pick it up before the weekend. at 19.45pm, i had just sat down to dinner when the seller contacted me to say he'd be at azrieli at 20.15pm, so i ate too quickly and scrambled to get there on time. in spite of the evening bus schedules and regular protests, i arrived with a few minutes to spare...

... and then had to hang around for another half an hour before he showed up :/

but he was cool, and i was happy to have paid about half price for a piece of equipment that looks really good and is in really good condition.

on my way to catch a bus home i walked past an old grocery store cashier who's always very kind (she's taken a shine to mr smear) and waved to wish her a chag sameach, and she called out for help - she's injured her leg, and was having trouble carrying heavy groceries to her bus stop. i gave her a hand, but as we arrived she suddenly realized she hadn't swiped her card when she left, so i quickly ran back to take care of that.

so it was with a good vibe that i caught an unfamiliar bus, with the driver making sure that i got to the right stop. and then i came home, chatted with my mom**, showered, put my son to bed, opened the gift bottle of gin and tried to continue watching redline. gd got bored, and wasn't interested in akira, so we ended up watching some of nightcrawler before going to bed.

** oh! my brother's oldest got married yesterday. none of us were invited :P

...

today: i think i must have spent about three hours trying to figure out how to connect the midi controller, create the requisite accounts, install the basic software packages... i'm sure there's a whole bunch of stuff we've yet to learn, but by the time we left the apartment for a gift-shopping run i'd at least managed to get mr smear able to play with samples in cubase elements, and he was making pretty cool noises.

[gd shatters a bowl in the kitchen]

we walked down to ibn gvirol, where gd got additional holes punched in her belts, we picked up a bottle of cognac as a gift for the seder, tried and failed to find someone to cut a new house key for us, gave up waiting for laffot, scarfed down sandwiches at cafe eva (and found black salt!), made it back to our local hardware store in time to pick up dehumidifying slabs, and have spent a cozy afternoon doing not much.

mr smear just got through his homework for the day without a fuss, and he did it well, and now we're settling in to skip shul and watch prince of egypt instead.

...

i just finished watching dave smith and douglas murray on joe rogan, which i found deeply disappointing. if nothing else, murray could have talked about the outrageous efforts israelis make to avoid civilian casualties, but either way he wasn't on form, and his manner rendered him less than effective. looking at the comments, he didn't convince anyone of anything.

gritty

it's almost 2am and i just opened a pull request for something that i really felt needed to be done by morning so that other devs can get to work without us continuing to do the wrong thing immediately after holding a kickoff meeting and telling everyone that we were no longer doing the wrong thing.

mood: shit, after a pretty exciting day and a pleasant evening (though long, and with some shitty parts), gd and i had a fight. while mostly resolved, i'm left feeling really sad for her because she's making it harder for herself to build a community around her than it needs to be. in addition to it being really hard to do so when you're barely able to go out and do things and in pain all the time.

...

sunday:

after we got home, i decided to take him to dizengoff center to look at MIDI controllers. their cheapest was too expensive, but we passed the tabletop gaming store, grabbed a box of star munchkin and a table, and mr smear and i had a fantastic game which he thoroughly enjoyed in spite of the smell of unwashed teenagers surrounding us.

score!

gd was finishing up at the dentist (racking up a bill that literally left me in shock - most of a month's rent), so mr smear and i found a spot to eat a falafel and he was really happy with it.

yesterday:

the day started alright, with me getting up early and deploying something so as not to block anyone while on vacation. my coworkers apologized for disturbing me :P

gd and i had our parental guidance session and halfway through my neck spasmed. i spent most of the rest of the day in pain on the couch.

pain is exhausting.

mr smear started practicing ma nishtana, and i'm hoping he won't chicken out again at the seder this year :P

i also helped him get through one of his homework assignments, and in spite of himself he pushed through. by the time we were done he was refusing to only listen to the part of the podcast episode on harriet tubman they were asking about, and actually seemed to appreciate it in its entirety.

we started watching paddington over dinner. it's good.

today:

i slept a bit better, my neck is still threatening but it's been mostly alright.

it was a busy day in the office. the coworker i was talking to on thursday morning dragged me in to show me the direct results of our conversation; i only have a vague idea of what they're doing but it certainly sounds cool. my lead and i ran a kickoff meeting to get everyone onto our new tooling, and we prepared for an investors visit, and i had a 1-on-1 with one of the founders which was really great.

he liked my re-framing of what we're doing, and half of lunch time was spent pitching my vision to more people :P

pretty much the rest of the afternoon was spent setting up a devcontainer for my team, which was an exercise in frustration that had me stress-eating (my old boss called me out when he noticed). i then paused to pick up gd's new passport (accompanying and assisting my heavily pregnant coworker along the way), then tried and failed to find kala namak for a stretch before returning home for dinner.

as soon as mr smear was in bed (and after reading some more of the colour of magic), i resumed the devcontainer mission. i'm really glad i finally got it working, and i hope that the lessons i've learned will prove useful somehow.

...

there's a lot of random personal stuff that needs to get done all of a sudden, and i'm having a really hard time getting through it. like, picking up post and fighting medical bureaucracy is one thing, but it looks like our oven just died, and we have no idea what to do about mr smear's extramural and holiday activities...