blown fuse

 today was fucking miserable. i spent most of the company hackathon just wanting to be anywhere else, questioning my life choices and feeling very, very shit about myself and the situation i found myself in.

yesterday:

after significantly more effort, i managed to push monday's changes, and then follow that up with more changes. sitting next to the AI experts has become a legitimate challenge, because we have really interesting conversations all the time, and i need to keep awkwardly bowing out to get some actual work done.

i came home for lunch yesterday, gd made me more sushi, and it was a great escape from the office. just as i was preparing to head back, she received a phone call from a very worried mr smear - he admitted that he'd drawn IN MARKER all over the book we'd had to re-purchase for him a couple of months ago. the day before they had to return all the books.

fortunately, we had plenty of time to coordinate our responses, so we could keep on him on edge while figuring out an appropriate punishment that's harsh enough for his being on edge to be warranted, and for him to learn the lesson, of course, while still being fair enough to reward his being honest and upfront about it.

when i was finally able to get home from the office, i dropped my bag and immediately took him to the bookstore to purchase another copy. the walk there and back was long enough to have a bunch of conversations, including follow-up talks about what to do if he gets lost again, and the rest of the evening was another sushi dinner (and starting splash), and random mindless shit until climbing into bed.

today:

i woke up late, which was already a terrible start to the day. and my stomach was doing a thing. i left with mr smear, saying goodbye to him halfway to the school and walking to my office from there. i arrived having not had a cup of coffee yet, so i made one, immediately remembering how much i dislike their coffee options.

there was a large spread for breakfast, but i didn't see any vegan options so i found my team's station and started trying to get set up. of course encountering lots of weird issues that i hadn't had before.

the office manager told me to stop being a nerd (it was her expression for the day) and go eat, so i got up and asked her if there were vegan options. "of course there are", she said, and aimed me at one of the caterers. he walked me around, showing me that a) he didn't understand what "vegan" means and b) that the only options that seemed trustworthy were all buried in cheese. no, i didn't want him to wash them for me. that whole ordeal was worse - more insulting - than them just admitting that there weren't any options.

having started my day thoroughly on the wrong foot, i then began to meet my teammates. two of them were very clear about not wanting to be there, three of them arrived late, apologized, and then promptly fucked off for the rest of the day. that left five of us altogether, with exactly one guy being enthusiastic and two in total being productive (not including myself).

to be fair, though, the lack of productivity in the two guys who weren't interested in the first place was largely due to my lack of planning. it wasn't until a short while before demo time that we had the general architecture locked in, and at that point i learned that i was supposed to have been putting together the presentation and presenting our efforts to ~100 people.

this was a rock bottom moment for me.

there was nothing i felt right about presenting, everything was utter dogshit, after a lousy, miserable day that included navigating some pretty shitty attitudes. i was so stressed that i - only half in jest - tried to get anyone else in the team to take charge, and eventually one of the more experienced guys suggested that i ask the organizers to skip our team.

which they did, but then everyone seemed disappointed, the enthusiastic team member especially so.

most of the demos were really good, but i couldn't enjoy them properly because i was so nervous that they'd forget they agreed to skip us and call me up anyway. by the time i left, i felt absolutely disgusted with myself and with the day, completely demoralized, and full of bitterness.

i called gd and let her know how i was feeling, then i called my mom, and then i tried to get my head into a better place while on the bus home but to no avail. one of our upstairs friends walked into the building with me and made the mistake of asking "how are you?", and then i automatically responded with the truth and immediately felt bad for doing so. i sent her an apology a little while later.

our landlord and his handyman had been sending me voice messages all day, which i detest, and they became more and more confusing and annoying until eventually we spoke (just after i put mr smear to bed), and i went downstairs and discovered that the aircon has been on, and isn't dripping. he said some stuff that confused me, which i'm too tired to care about, and now that gd and i have finished the first episode of ludwig (which is really fun) and i've posted this, i'm going to try to wind down and fuck off into dreamland.

entangled

i posted something this morning, and i'm disappointed that it hasn't got much attention:

nobody's talking about something that's really important: regardless of whether you've been retrenched or not, how do you trust an employer that would throw your fellow employees under the bus for the promise of cost cutting AI? how do you return to working for a company that did that to you? where's the incentive to work hard and behave as if you and your employers have a shared stake in the future of your company?

the accepted behavior of our industry leaders is nothing short of psychopathic, and nobody is calling them to account.  we've all just accepted that this is what business looks like now, and it's hurting not just the human beings who do the work and have families to provide for, but also the businesses themselves, and also our economies.

...

the pharmacy run was stressful. after waiting about half an hour, listening to music and knowing there were another ten numbers to go, i was suddenly yanked out of my reverie as i registered that my number was suddenly, unexpectedly up. i rushed to the counter, struggling to turn the music off (the button just didn't work) and get my paperwork out, only to find myself standing there waiting for someone who turned out to be a technician and not a pharmacist.

he was trying to fix the queue number system.

what followed was chaos, with a couple of us keeping track of the numbers because nobody - including the pharmacists - understand what was happening. as my meeting time got closer, i was approached by a woman who was also in a hurry and wanted to trade numbers.

anyway, that wasn't the worst of it. the worst of it was my credit card being declined, and having to set up gd's on my phone wallet with her validating it from her phone while the pharmacist became impatient and a large crowd was suddenly behind me. i managed to get it done in record time, but not without a high level of stress.

i managed to catch a bus and get home and join the zoom call one minute late.

...

after the daily, i ate a quick breakfast and headed to the office. it was a complicated day, with me untangling a mess of work that needed to be reverted, then replayed. i thought i'd done a good job of it, but around 5pm i learned that one of the reverts broke the CI pipeline and nobody (least of all me) could figure out how 🤦‍♂️

at least my sync with my mentor went positively, although a bit later my fellow contractor paid me a visit, distressed, because everyone he's spoken to about the hackathon has given him a different answer and none of them seem fair or right to him. i gave him some advice, but i'm glad i'm not in that position.

during the day it crossed my mind that there's a huge difference between standing on the balcony of a top floor of a very tall tower, and seeing a photo from it, so i walked home, picked up mr smear and walked back to the office to give him a tour of the four corners of our floor. he was thrilled, and it became a powerful lesson in perspective ^_^

we sat down to dinner soon after getting home, and watched the second third of little shop of horrors, which to my delight he's thoroughly enjoying and is completely invested. i must admit, though, i'm finding it more and more amusing that he often pauses to describe what's happening as if he's just had some deep insight or epiphany; like, he's just stopped us to demonstrate, unwittingly, that he understood what just happened on the screen 🤣

 ...

mozambicans: suffered the highest recent casualties, with at least five citizens killed during violent mob attacks and arson in coastal towns, displacing nearly 600 people.

malawians: hundreds forced from their homes, seeking emergency refuge in community halls and mosques while awaiting state-sponsored evacuation.

ghanaians: hundreds voluntarily repatriating via state-chartered flights out of johannesburg due to severe harassment and safety fears.

zimbabweans: facing intense harassment, unlawful evictions, and workplace discrimination as one of the largest migrant populations.

nigerians: dozens requesting emergency flights home, prompting government airlifts and formal diplomatic interventions.

somalians: small business and shop owners facing widespread looting, vandalism, and economic displacement.

congolese: refugees and asylum seekers experiencing systematic exclusion from public healthcare and targeted harassment.

if this is what's happening to black africans right now, it's not going to be long before it starts happening to white africans. and in the current political climate, it's probably going to begin with the jews :(

...

after saying goodnight to my mom, i discussed my fears with gd, which led to a conversation about how she's been handling the years since october 7th and her relationship with the news. along with everything else, i'm glad she's starting to feel a bit of relief and see the light as other nations begin to wake up to what's been going on under their noses all this time.

the perpetual trauma train

 sleep journal entry: i was so tired i didn't record the precise times. i got up in the middle of the night from a combination of things, part of it was minor lower back / hip discomfort, but mostly it was restlessness and belly discomfort.

i'm really tired, and after a relatively good sleep (even if it was in two parts) i feel like it's just from being psychologically and emotionally on edge for too many days straight.

...

i never left the house yesterday. my team daily referenced the outcome of my sync with my manager - we had two items on the agenda that were affected - and afterwards one of my teammates contacted me and we sat on a video call for almost two hours, discussing the challenges in our work environment, debating viable approaches, and i guess a bunch of me reframing things to motivate him as much as myself.

between those three morning talks, i feel like i'm starting to shape my "mic drop" for when i leave; i told my mentor and my boss that i don't want to end my contract without having had some noticeable positive impact, and i feel like i'm starting down the path.

my afternoon was spent doing "more of the same" ticket preparation work, where, unfortunately, "more of the same" refers to going around in circles with AI and uncovering missing aspects that i somehow never encountered before. i took a break for dinner, and then had to put in another hour after, but i think i've done sufficient scoping. it worries me that it's real work, across a wide range of aspects of unfamiliar moving parts, and i only have two weeks to get it all done...

...

gd's thoroughly traumatized. not only does it look like the surgeon didn't get all of the nail out, but she's been reliving the surgery itself because the anaesthetic didn't take. she's terrified of losing her toe, and her foot with it. so we're heading out in an hour or so to see a friday doctor and hope that there's someone who can help her.

i felt really bad all afternoon after an incident; she was venting, and i was trying to be supportive and constructive, but at some point she yelled stuff that was so unhinged* i couldn't take it any more. so in addition to not being supportive when she needed it, it took additional time for things to cool down enough for her to resume and get through what she needed to get through.

* it may be unhinged, but it's understandable. all i needed to do was STFU

"the universal pressure cooker" - i feel like our family's a microcosm, and the world just keeps raising the temperature of the stove while lumping more shit into the pot.

...

at least mr smear and his friend sorted themselves out yesterday. they both apologized, and hopefully they'll both be better to each other.

over dinner we finished watching dead poets society. it's generated some very interesting discussions, but regardless we all enjoyed it (or, appreciated it, it always feels weird to say "enjoyed" for a tragedy) and i was surprised by how much i remembered for a movie i haven't seen since i was mr smear's age.

...

i don't know if elite's turkish coffee is "good" coffee by whatever arbitrary standards the world has, but i really enjoy it. it's a taste and smell that makes me feel like there are wholesome constants in the world. with all the madness around me right now, opening a fresh bag is like an emotional override.

schmooze

i was really tired before i left for the house party, and anticipating awkwardness and feeling very out of place. but while there were a couple of awkward moments, i met some incredible people and had some very interesting conversations.

i'm really glad i went.

...

on my way to the bus stop i ran into one of my now-ex co-workers. it was good to see him, but when i asked how he's doing his face fell. they really messed up when they fired us, they broke everyone's spirit. if you want to follow netflix's model (which you shouldn't), you don't onboard people without telling them what to expect, you give regular feedback, you don't surprise-fire, and you compensate (with extended severance) accordingly.

otherwise you're just being a shit employer building a toxic workplace that nobody wants to work in.

a hard day's night

 i'm really struggling tonight, though i guess there's an upside in that i've spent the past hour or two working on the language project and the frontend is starting to take shape.

i walked to the pick-up location, which was about 200m from where google maps said it was. the detour was fascinating because i didn't realize how much residential development has been done on the other side of the train station from us, and the guys at the store were grateful to be notified about the map issue and for me updating it. i walked to the closest light rail station and headed to work.

i arrived, sweaty, to a birthday celebration followed by a day that was predominantly me trying hard to balance letting the new guy do his thing and me (micro)managing him into making his thing actually help us. and trying to do it in a way that didn't feel shitty.

for the most part, though, the level of stress was so much less than the previous days that i found myself with a long list of things to do but a weird sense of being lost.

at 5.30pm, i decided to put my outside shoes on and go home.

precisely at that moment, one of the new guys arrived in desperate need of help. i had no idea how to help him, so i left, but i felt really shitty about it.

i arrived home, handed mr smear his new roald dahl books and enjoyed him reading me a story, then we had dinner, which was interrupted by someone calling to ask me for help. i literally didn't understand who he was or what was going on, and then suddenly i felt myself crashing and i rushed to brush my teeth and climb into bed.

where i spent a good few hours not sleeping due to a combination of dark thoughts and lower back pain.

the cat in the rat race

i'm in such good spirits after almost thirteen hours in the office! decent rum is one way to take off the edge. after yesterday's drama i started the day in a much better mood in spite of still feeling out of sorts. it might have had something to do with the perfect summer's day that was taking place outside:

oh, man - am i really on my way to work today? the sun's out after the rain and walking outside feels like when you pull the blanket over yourself a little more on a cool sunday morning...
- standing outside the metro, hesitating

in the office, machinations seemed to be gearing up in all directions. i kept myself safely in the eye of the storm and actually got a whole lotta shit done.

i witnessed an attempt to tear our qa manager apart and didn't feel that i could say anything without properly antagonizing the monsters - more than i have been already at any rate - and when he responded calmly and reserved and rationally they reversed themselves and behaved as if he'd been making the prior claims. i wish i'd been recording the ordeal, it was really pathetic and i felt bad for not being in a position to stop them.

...

tuesday's "talk" has been playing over and over in my mind. that dodgy bastard, accusing me of not working enough hours when i was in the office, sick, the whole weekend and where the hell was he? how come he doesn't do the hours he demands of everyone else?

---one positive part of the day was going out for lunch with newk'd and clearing the air after last week's mess. another was working closely and comfortably with darn's developers. the weaker one was feeling awful when i walked in because he was struggling with debugging his code... when the fault wasn't with his code. he's brutally overworked and i don't think he understood me when i told him to take a walk. i think he was shocked when i complemented his efforts - i don't think darn has anything nice to say even to his own crew. the stronger dude joined me and moonlighter for a technical talk in the afternoon and between that and the support i've been giving him of late i get the feeling that he's come to appreciate my attitude and the way i solve problems.

it's almost like trying to befriend a beaten dog. these are human fucking beings, and all their work experience is megamen and darns :(

---even moonlighter and i got along famously today. it was a stupidly long day that began with meetings and ended with solid grind, and although i walked away satisfied i was also exhausted and had a bit of a headache. so much for getting personal shit done :(

---while eating last night's leftovers (which i forgot to take to work for lunch) i finished watching reincarnated. aside from a bit of awkwardness it inspired to check out the album... snoop lion - reincarnated sounds much better in the documentary than off the album. bummer.

a "no" recovery

i tried to get some work done yesterday in spite of the holiday and began by synchronizing my code with the svn... which somebody had checked in to with broken code. when i got to the office today (yes, saturday, i know, thanks), one of darn's crew was there and he told me that's it's been like that for two days and nobody knows how to fix it.

in case that doesn't give you a hint as to the quality of developers i'm working with, let me say that the more hours i work with our code directly the more i realize that these assholes have either misunderstood or overcomplicated all of the solutions i've provided them with and i now understand why everything's taken so long.

"if you want something done right": well, i don't have enough man-hours in me. quite frankly, i don't think i have what it takes to get good code out of these guys. some manager *i* turned out to be :(

---yesterday:

i tried to nap because i felt terrible and had the shivers and ended up just lying wrapped up and praying that i wasn't sick. i can't be sick. not now. unfortunately willing myself to health isn't really my thing. i dragged myself out of bed and took the metro to de la concorde, which is "across the border" in laval and is an absolutely stunning metro station. i sat waiting for bnw on a bench in the sun, which warmed me almost enough to offset the cold breeze. i don't know why i left the house without my sunglasses. i really needed them.

so: bnw. she's almost done with the convention circuit (next weekend is montreal's comiccon, we'll both be busy with that), but she's decided that she's in ^_^
i'll be paying a symbolic fee per page and we'll share the rights* and the profits. super-exciting!

* to the artwork, not the project. the project is mine.

she's colombian and she made really, really good filter coffee that tasted just how i'd expected it to taste - magic! after spending some time playing with the outlines for the first few pages we talked a lot, mostly about the social differences between quebec and the countries we come from but also about israel and the middle eastern conflict. always a sensitive issue :(

i was planning on returning home for dinner but we talked so much her husband came home; bnw wasn't wrong, the two of us have a lot in common. and all three of us have similar tastes in music and gaming, in addition to aerospace (he works for one of the big ones i'd like to work for). hah!

we would have carried on talking but he was hungry and they weren't eating anything i would have, so they forced their copy of bioshock 2 on me (even though i'm pretty certain i won't get a chance to play it) and walked me out.

it was cold, but in spite of my still feeling awful and headachey i was in good spirits.

---flesh & blood is pretty cool. i wish i'd finished eating dinner before watching it, though. i usually have a strong stomache for gore but a couple of moments shocked me enough to make it hard to swallow. if the words "testicle piercing" have any effect on you, consider yourself warned.

---i went to bed relatively early, and got up relatively early. i had breakfast and tylenol before returning to bed for a while. still feeling rough.

eventually i got up and dragged myself off to the office. it didn't really make a difference where i was (now that i have a keyboard at home) but it was easier to focus and i guess if i hadn't been able to talk to anyone i would've wasted more than just an hour or so on finding the last unbroken version.

i spent all day on my task, properly consolidating my opinions on megaman, darn, my team and my company. let's just say i'm not deeply satisfied with any of them, but as my satisfaction is not what they're paying me for i'm going to keep on trucking.
i got through a sizable chunk of what i needed to get done and then called it a day.

at least i'm feeling a little better.

i came home to do laundry and watch a bit of trigun and community, but the plan changed a bit because netflix seems to have removed season 4 of the latter while i was halfway through! not cool, netflix, not cool.

i watched most of in time instead even though it stars justin timberlake. he's not an unwatchable part of the film, for once, but the script is quite bad. better-than-mediocre idea with uninspired writing: i'm surprised i sat through so much of it.

i seem to be getting used to the online dating world and it looks like i might be going on an actual date soon. the worst part of this scene is not knowing how your date looks in real life...

---shakespeare with a shakespearean accent? that sounds righteous!

de-stress

or re-stress. through a series of intriguing random links i stumbled earlier upon kelly mcgonigal's how to make stress your friend, one of the single most directly useful and important pieces of data that i personally need. you might well need it too. watch it!

---yesterday:

i woke up from a lucid dream of fighting scrapper gladator-style in an arena with an evil and violent relentlessness and horrific self-awareness. i don't recall the context but it set a dark tone for the day. the darkness continued lightly with my "new" headphones breaking (the right ear's cable's damaged), and deepened when i found myself responding impatiently to a problem newk'd was having. granted i was stressing out about the work i was doing and was irritated by his imprecision in describing the issue, but darn's assessment and report the day before brought to the fore a level of intolerance that i was quite ashamed of after i settled down.

that led to even greater distraction when i tried to get back into my work and could only think of "the newk'd problem". i tried discussing things with him over messaging while getting some work done, which ultimately proved to be a bad idea. now that i've heard darn i'm a lot more sensitive to his petulance. trying to get past this and find a fix, i came up with a solution that i'm pretty sure offended him even though it's in his best interests; i need him to start investing himself in studying theory - data structures, algorithms, design patterns and alternative paradigms and methodologies. and then i need to coach him personally.

either way, i feel poisoned by megaman and darn. if we're going to add significance to the jewish new year then this has been an ugly way to begin it.

---the end of the workday felt like an epic fail. while explaining to darn the situation i was leaving for the two-day holiday in, i thought about how i would hear the words i was saying if i was him, and as the words left my mouth i thought "credibility blown". it didn't help that he misunderstood my description of a bug that could be treated as a feature and was left with the impression that i'd been wasting my time implementing the "feature" instead of focusing on the core design...

---on my way home i picked up wine for dinner gifts and added a bottle of rum, downing a solid splash on arrival the same way i used to do during my interrogations. it was through a light haze that i got dressed, feeling awkward about putting on nice clothes for the first time in almost half a year, and walked out to a mind-bogglingly stunning sunset, all bright yellows and pink clouds streaked across the lightest blue of skies.

dinner was great, if a little awkward. there were a couple of interesting conversations amidst all the regular smalltalk, a significant note being struck by someone telling me that it's somehow possible for me to begin the canadian citizenship process directly bypassing the quebec one. something involving interviewing across the border (the us border) that wouldn't require me to speak french.

i strongly suspect that that's not a relevant avenue anymore, and in any event i really need to learn french so i don't know if i'd care to add layers of complication to the process.

by the end of the evening everyone was sleepy, so the goodbyes were said spontaneously and quickly. i was, as usual, very uncomfortable with waves versus handshakes versus kisses, on the way out i thought i'd gotten it right for once but then suddenly realized that i'd kissed another guest i'd never met but skipped the hostess. aw, crap :(

---today:

the windows are open and i'm sweating in spite of it only being fifteen degrees. during the night it dropped down to six, and while i pulled out my duvet cover i didn't actually use it. oh, canada: what have you done to me?!

i think i like it ^_^
as i walked around running errands today, i was struck emotionally by how the weather exposed a sense of spring that i can only connect to cape town on its best days.

...

i woke up to a chat with pg culminating in her holding up all my israeli clothing to the webcam for me to choose which to throw and which to keep. the video quality was terrible and some of the items were hard to recognize, but either way i sent most of it to be donated: we were both proud of my ability to let go. heck, of all my band / experience shirts and hoodies i think i kept only one. my claws shirt, because it's an awesome shirt and it's the fraternity that i will always identify with the most.

when she turned the light on at the end of the chat the video quality improved drastically...

*sigh*

it looks like we have another potential buyer for our apartment! i hope this all goes smoothly and quickly, may the best (first) man (couple) win.

i walked to the computer / surveillance store next door to discover that a simple, good motion-detection / video camera solution costs $150 (should i waste my time pitching it to the building manager?) and that their keyboards are *way* cheaper than what i'd find at walmart. on the way to walmart to price-check i discovered that there's another subway and it's much nicer and cleaner than the one i usually go to that's only marginally closer.

...

i tried to get something done at the post office and was surprised to hear the woman ahead of me explaining to the guy how to do his job. good thing for her she knew all the ins and outs of international postage, he was utterly clueless and wouldn't even admit that he was lost. he could easily have cost her the package she was sending! when i stepped up afterwards and asked for something simple, he asked me to come back in fifteen minutes when his manager would be around.

huh.

he was of middle-eastern origin with a heavy accent, i suspect there was an honour thing going on there.

...

i had a quick cup of coffee at the starbucks, did some serious supermarket shopping and then arbed around before napping an hour or so. i woke up with more of a headache than when i'd started...

---i think i'm addicted to penny arcade: gamers vs evil. seriously.

...

i'm listening to the new nin album i pre-ordered. i'm not blown away :(

---happy jewish new year, everyone.

peak to trough - part ii

[... continued]

so after a long day i was tired to the point of feeling ill, and slightly wired to boot. i babysat the cto through a big two-part integration, with the second part being delayed until the following morning. i got a ride from our qa manager because a crazy thunderstorm was brewing, and all i wanted to do when i got home was crash.

unfortunately, i had laundry to do. i kept myself occupied with stargate sg-1 and jackass 3 while it ran, but then had a problem: it was too hot and humid to sleep. seriously. i've been living in the middle east, the ultimate hot and humid, for twelve years and this here felt way worse.

i guess i'm a winter person now.

to my mind it's plausible that a part of the heat came from within: even hours after my laundry came out the dryer it was still piping hot. perhaps i have it the other way around. whichever.

---i'm picturing a future civilization figuring out how to play an unearthed copy of jackass 3 and treating it as a cultural artifact representative of the times. if it's a choice between jackass and cartoons, the cartoons would make me proud of my species. they're kind of the same, only one's a little more focused on bodily functions.

---thursday:

after a sleepless, uncomfortable night i got up at 6am to complete the integration. it took an hour and wasn't at all fun*, plus i pissed him off because i made a comment about some badly written code and it apparently wasn't my place to do so.

* although i was praised for my patience and my ability to teach

i did manage to pass out for an hour after that, which made dragging myself to work all the tougher. as i stepped outside the building i found myself refreshed! if the apartment's worse than outside, i need air conditioning.

the quote of the day came from newk'd: "the internet connection is up and down, and i've come to accept it. it's like i've been born into poverty".

i was super-busy in the morning, i had a lot of hands to hold and some big decisions to make; at noon i needed to put my eye drops in before heading out to the clinic for my follow-up appointment. at noon i was called in for a surprise urgent meeting with the cto (who was supposed to be on holiday, which was why we did the integration at 6am) to go over a bunch of things we've already gone over three times. i was not amused.

---technician: "oh! what happened to your eye? that doesn't look so good."
me: "actually, i like it."
technician: "ha, ha! you're very funny!"
me: "no, seriously. it's grown on me! i'm going to be sorry when it gets better."

i don't know why she thought that was the funniest bit. afterwards i saw the surgeon, who asked me how i feel. "so you're good? and you've just come to confirm? excellent."

i began reading wil wheaton's just a geek using the kindle app and i gotta say, i'm quite surprised at how entertaining it is. he's basically done what i wanted to do with all of my army posts. erm. with his own blog posts, i mean.

i had some personal meetings with a few developers in the afternoon and it became a good boss day for me: i'm sorry i didn't do this before. i learned some very important things, in particular i discovered a monumental miscommunication between megaman and one of our remote workers that changes our game significantly!

i entered an email time warp, slowly catching up to the present. jock was kind enough to take me to the walmart - he needed something and i wanted an a/c. walmart was a total failure, not just because they were all out of reasonably-priced units but because comms were down for the area so it was all cash only. we then went to canadian tire, where the units either required permanent installation (heck, no) or were way more expensive than i'd like for something i'm hoping is only short term. i eventually walked out with a window fan, which isn't the same at all but it's still pretty cool. it also makes a loud humming noise, which i find helps me sleep better :)

i had a long chat with my mother in the evening, and it looks like we're both managing well lately. this is good!

late night shopping wearing sunglasses is weird.

hovek olam - star sounds orchestra popped up on my playlist and i had to share the smile. i haven't heard it in a looooooong time...

i was a much better night, i declined posting in order to get into bed quickly.

[continued...]

peak to trough - part i

well! i cannot express just how much of a relief this weekend is for me. i mean, i've just spent most of my day today either reading or contemplating where i am and how fascinating it is that all of the things causing me to stress in life are in the niggling details while the big picture is looking fantastic.

the past three days have been intense; i'm supposed to be healing, and i spent them suffering sleep deprivation (partially due to the absurdly uncomfortable weather we've been having) and a pile-up of responsibilities that pushed me to a new level. i'm really proud of how i managed to keep it all together!

---wednesday:

i got up stupidly early for an appointment i've waited over a month for - which was set for tuesday. how did i screw up the calendar entry?!?! this was a really good start to the day. there wasn't enough time to get some sleep before work, so i got in to the office an hour and a half earlier than i usually do.

everything was quiet and peaceful until cheshire cat lady rocked up. i don't particularly like her at the best of times, and to have her suddenly popping into existence behind me while i was trying to focus on bigger issues didn't push my sympathy buttons. i dismissed her, telling her to let me know when imperieux became available.

instead, she brought imperieux over to my cubicle which was not what i asked her to do, once again disturbing me and giving me a sense of having my personal space invaded. fine. i locked my computer and walked them over to her space.

i have a job to do, and that job is to solve problems. the first part of solving any problem is determining what, precisely, that problem is. so i began the interview. cheshire cat lady is not one for precision, in fact she's one of the least technical / rational people i've come across. i have no idea how she ended up in the field of technical writing and i'm pretty sure she's the worst possible candidate for the job.

her first claim: "the interface is terrible and it doesn't do what i need it to do." the sad part is that she participated in the design and its iterations. as i drilled down in an attempt to uncover the underlying causes of her distress, i began to pick up on specifics and offered her solutions to those so that we could focus on finding the rest of the problems. it was terribly frustrating to have her repeatedly return to the resolved issues, and just as frustrating having her instruct us on technical aspects of a solution that wouldn't actual help anybody.

my job is to solve problems. my job is to determine underlying causes and then to figure out how to resolve the issues in a manner coherent with the big picture. the user is always right, but that extends on so far as to say that the user knows when something is wrong with the experience. it doesn't mean that the user knows what needs to happen behind the scenes and it certainly doesn't mean that one user's needs can override any of the others'.

so i pressed on in my quest to put all the pieces together, and she pressed on with complaining about everything being wrong (there were three issues in the end, the rest of this rather complex piece of machinery was designed perfectly adequately). not only was she repeating herself and constantly returning to the already-resolved issues, which was frustrating, but the more she repeated herself the more frustrated she became and the louder her voice got. very soon this escalated into her screaming at us, so loudly that the entire building could hear full well what she was thinking and this upset a lot of people.

now, i'm no angel. i kept my voice down, but as much as i didn't want her to shout i cannot say that my dislike for her and her idiocy didn't extend to my holding back on making her feel cared for and appreciated. it's hard to refrain from gently pushing someone over the edge when they're highly unlikable and talking utter rubbish. i was on a path to being entirely dispassionate, and while i knew that this was upsetting her i wasn't about to begin pandering to a fool. i don't play nice when i'm being shouted down by incompetence.

i say i was on a path to being entirely dispassionate, but the shouting soon devolved into personal attack. i went from cold to super-heated anger in a flash, at the same time keeping an iron fist clenched around remaining professional.

"i'm trying to help you, " i said behind gritted teeth, "and you're antagonizing me. it's very hard to think straight when you're doing that."

just then, megaman stepped up to the cubicle. he stood for a moment, while cheshire cat lady screamed on, and then made a quieting motion with his hand. what happened next made me do something totally unprofessional; i simply couldn't resist such an appropriate response to her (perhaps unwitting) moment of clarity. she continued her rant in her loud voice, this time directed to megaman and with me behind her back.

"... and i'm sure everyone thinks i'm mad..."

and in full view of imperieux and megaman, i opened my eyes comically wide and nodded my head furiously in agreement.

megaman invited us to join him behind closed doors, and with all of her perpetual noise it took the better part of fifteen minutes before he understood what we had already homed in on a while before. i explained my plan of action and told him how and when we'd execute it, and once he had ever-so-sweetly managed to get our message across to the idiot, imperieux and i made our escape.

i needed a few moments to explain to everyone else what the drama was about in the most politically correct "we just had a miscommunication" way possible without sharing my true thoughts on the matter. when it was time to get to work on the fixes, i took imperieux for a game of pool first to put us in a better mood (he won) and i sat with him the entire time to make absolutely sure that there was no way for any more miscommunications to interfere.

it took an hour or so, but by the time he was done i knew that this was everything cheshire cat lady needed. i called her over for an acceptance test, sighed deeply when she approved and then went back to my otherwise pretty busy day.

...

a few hours later she approached me again, with that extra-special super-sincere cheshire smile of hers.
"everything's great, thank you. now, is it possible to have all the items in the menu listed in alphabetical order?"

fuck you.

"i don't know, but it's really not a priority right now. i'll discuss it with <imperieux>."

boy, was i ever pissed when she approached imperieux directly and he made the changes on the fly!

petty? sure.

---the qa manager came up to me later on to inform me that he was buying sports supplements in bulk if i wanted in. l-carnitine was on sale, i don't remember if i ordered it or not. i just found out that l-carnitine is bad.

[continued...]

it's not stupid! it's...

[this posting backed by sundance - psymorocco]

today was my first lesson in advanced boxing. for the first time i understood what our instructor meant by "you need to relax": it's not my shoulders, it's that "every jab you throw is set to 'destroy', you can't throw knockout strikes every shot".

... or can i?
}:D

damn, i'm now so pleased with myself that i can't decide if i should listen to him or not, and i'm *pretty* sure he knows better than me.

...

oh, the second handle of my cheap skipping rope broke today. each time it gets a little shorter, so the first break made it perfect and now... i don't know how i feel about it. but i do think that my footwork and rhythm are getting on track.

---i always thought it was a cape town thing:
"what do you call great weather after two lousy days?"
"monday."

well, turns out it's a montreal thing as well - today was absolutely stunning, warm but not sticky with the sun shining and the birds singing.

---the day began with a disturbance in the force: ceh was unimpressed with his mandate and megaman was equally unimpressed with ceh's strategy. these two are old friends, and about halfway through i recognized their professional relationship being similar to that of mine and spot's. megaman's giving the guy a break, the guy's smart but out of sync with his role, and for a moment i almost saw sparks flying. i felt super-weird getting involved, and almost made a joke along the lines of "now, now, children", but instead took an arbitration position and managed to get everyone playing the same game.

i was very proud of myself just then. we actually managed to take something positive out of the bad, i snuck in a little of my agenda at the same time (which is kind of in line with what ceh wants) and megaman was satisfied.

...

later on i'd get megaman and the cfo considering investing in a decent videoconferencing setup instead of having employees / executives flying regularly between offices. it's 2013 already, you know? just saying.

---i spent most of my morning resolving issues with our recent ip change and trying to figure out why godaddy never stops sucking. the first support agent i spoke to was a moron, the second was sweet but essentially blew me off. i hope her advice was on point.

the best part of dealing with them? prior to being put on hold while waiting for an agent, an option to not hear muzak was offered. good show!

---i spoke to the laser clinic and they've assured me that it's only one eye and that they know which one it is. so it looks like we're on for thursday!

i didn't get to take lunch until 2pm, and never had a chance to drink my morning coffee either. this was fine, great even, until about 3pm when i suddenly developed a withdrawal headache :(

i'm intrigued that nystire's considering the possibility of working in montreal. i don't see how he could possibly go wrong doing that, but then we've never seen eye-to-eye when it comes to making big life decisions :P

a friend of a friend sent me his resume to pass on for an opening we have. i sent it back and told him he needs to run it through a spell-check. wtf?! do people really not realize that these things matter when you're trying to make a good impression? i suppose spelling errors are better than wrong-word-chosen-by-spell-check errors, though. i've seen some funny ones lately.

i was exhausted by the time i got on the metro home, so much so that i could barely stand. what a pleasure to walk into a clean apartment (the cleaning lady's leaving the country this week for a month), quaff an energy drink and head out to boxing!

...

it's been a very relaxed and unproductive evening. i think i'm ready to go to bed early again. i have dreams to catch up on.

anguish sandwich

today was an exceptionally good day. grand, in fact! the exception to "exceptionally" only lasted about half an hour and it was cheshire cat lady. that woman is not only deranged and creepy, but she's bloody annoying and not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

that tone i got into trouble for when i used it with cam2? that's my i-can't-deal-with-your-incompetence tone. it came out in full force today and i'm not sure that anyone in the office didn't hear it. i'm pretty sure they all heard precisely what was causing it, too. her idiocy is relentless.

after trying to explain to me why i should make design calls when it suits her and not bother with our lead designer (hmm, perhaps she thinks we should fire him?) she then finished everything with a bang: "you always have to have the last word!".

this is not a bloody domestic argument about who's doing the fracking dishes. i'm in charge of development and everything we do needs to make sense in context of what we produce. my fracking job is to get the last word and to make sure that that word is the right bloody one.

what an asshole.

---otherwise, it was a very good morning. everything was operational, ceh and i are both enthusiastic about node.js and i showed megaman and our qa manager how real qa is done (i broke something during a dry run and my method totally took them by surprise).

i finally, after much deliberation, made an appointment for laser surgery. it's next week! in a few hours i'll go for my pre-op eye exam and get my prescriptions.

megaman and i seem to see eye-to-eye on our organization chart and on seating, which was a little worrying for a while. and he acquiesced when i suggested that the project manager he's bringing on board should not be lumped together with his previous teammates* but rather be dealt with according to his functions.

* have i mentioned my conspiracy theory?

it was a late afternoon of successes and hand-holding (it's what i do), followed by back-to-back kickboxing that was killer but excellent. well, the advanced class was tough but i had to work with the slow dude again (way before it's relevant he comes up to me to ask me personally, and i don't feel comfortable saying "no" even though i really, really want to work with anyone else). the class ended and i still had pent-up aggression from cheshire cat lady so i decided to join the beginner's class too.

hardcore. i worked with a new guy who's come from a traditional martial arts dojo and is crazy-polite to the instructor and to everyone else. he's also an absolute beast and after delivering full-power strikes non-stop for seven minutes he pushed me really hard to deliver the same.

i returned home soaked through and feeling amazing. i had a quick, hot bath (my back was hurting) and then sat down to... try out the card hunter beta. shit, it's fun! great concept and beautifully executed.

it's almost 2am. i've got sleeping to do. oh, crap... i didn't really eat dinner...

level up

LEVEL UP!

ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG. after three months of hard work, i finally made it to the next level in boxing! now i *KNOW* i have to get my mouth guard sorted out.

is there a way to emote :D with a missing tooth?

---i almost missed my stop this morning because i was so into my comic script. why does it take me forever to get around to something i love so much?

there's nothing less professional than having to explain to a client that nobody in your organization has any idea what's going on with your product. our build automation was on hold, there's no backwards compatibility for what we needed to showcase and the latest code (thank moonlighter) is full of bugs. our network was up and down and our showtime developer didn't have access to our file server* so by the time we entered the meeting we had zero experience with what we were going to teach the guy. and then we discovered that the code he had wasn't just incomplete, but contained a showstopping bug.

* i made him send out an email to all the other developers repeating how important it is, lines-on-the-blackboard style.

in addition to all that, we went out for indian food to welcome a new guy and i ate so much that i was falling asleep during the meeting :$

...

it was not a good work day. it ended alright, however, as moonlighter gave us what was missing from our tool chain at the end of it (so we can now control the builds again), research that jock was doing for me came up positive and the world didn't come to an end. even though montreal lost power for a while and everyone thought it was going to.

---it's been a while since i left the office last. the power outage had disabled the metro so aota offered to give me a ride home, and we detoured via walmart where her daughter helped me find exactly what i was looking for! i now have a cheap equivalent of rash guards. very cool.

i arrived home with a lot less time before training than i'd attempted to engineer.

1. why the hell does rockst*r "punched" taste so damned good?! it's weird to enjoy the flavour of an energy drink that's essentially good for you (it has guarana, b vitamins and ginseng in addition to the caffeine and taurine).

2. as i was walking out the caretaker's wife served me with a rent increase notice. boo!

i arrived late for the boxing warmup and joined another guy doing 50 pushups and 25 burpees. it was humid as hell and we started class feeling like we'd just stepped out of a swimming pool. the floor was slippery and by the end it was ridiculously difficult to gain traction for anything.

i cannot describe in words just how proud i was when the instructor came up to me to quietly invite me into the advanced class. i am deeply satisfied today.

meeting seating

i woke up today with my leg hurting even more than yesterday. locking up and burning, but not a skin sensation. considering it was worse than the day before, and the bruising is black, i decided that i needed to take it to a doctor. i wasn't panicked because the black skin is warm to the touch, but i'm unable to know what's going on a few levels down.

i didn't want to be the first person who was kicked so hard his leg came off.

i caught megaman to address any potential issues so that i could arrive late, and headed to the clinic. when i registered i was told i'd need to wait about 45 minutes, so i went out for coffee. my inability to answer a simple french "how are you?" from the barrista made me uncomfortable. the lack of internet access through the wifi even more so, though after friday's experiences i'm almost certain it's my macbook and not them.

i returned to the waiting room and proceeded to wait another hour and a quarter before finally being called in to see a doctor. a nice man, he was pretty thorough and after five minutes had determined that my leg's healing well and that i've got nothing to worry about.

i was satisfied to hear that, upset about waiting two hours to hear it.

---our cto was in, and i spent the next six hours with him and megaman in various meetings. the weekend misunderstanding was glossed over and everyone was cooperating despite some disagreements about our corporate road map. i think it's all going to be fine.

i spent some time with moonlighter, who'd been given instructions by the cto that didn't fit with our requirements. i'm *sure* he'll remember to discuss things with me next time </sarcasm>

---kickboxing was great, in spite of my being paired with the guy who the instructor doesn't feel comfortable kicking out of the advanced class. as sweet as he may be, he's definitely not advanced in any way but the zim way, but he's been in the class since before our instructor took over from the previous guy...

i haven't done a lot this evening... yet... short of talking to my mother, hearing that the company that wanted me could only take me as a canadian citizen, and performing a couple of menial work-related tasks... also getting high off house: ron hagen & pascal m. - take you there (1999) lead me into a large pool of classic uplifting tracks.

but the real thing i need to do is node.js. there's no time to get coding done when you're managing.

healing

1. jiu-jitsu partnered with a man slightly shorter than me and about twice my weight. i couldn't get my legs around him and my leg was hurting so much i had to pause to breathe through my teeth a few times.

2. kickboxing totally loosened my up and by the time i got to working on the bags i was ready to kick the shit out of it. i think i might have relieved myself of a little of the work pressure that built up this week, i walked away totally satisfied and ready for more.

3. wall stretching: the tall, strong dude i was partnered with was working harder than i was, to the point where someone else noticed and laughed because it was clear that i was using him to stretch myself instead of being stretched. and he was shaking more than i was :P

4. during a break i asked a question and got a really helpful answer. plus a solid shot to the liver for my troubles.
"that's so you remember".
scrapper's influence on me: stumbling, not falling, and wheezing "thank you sir, may i have another!".

---the day began with a double "you done good" from the cfo and aota: the way i dealt with botswana was appreciated by everyone. i also had a little chat with my team and made it clear that they're to report to me both professionally and personally.

the network will be down at least until wednesday, so i took ceh out to l'artere to eat and use their wifi. firstly, their vegan take on shepherd's pie (sweet potato and lentils) was delicious and too much for me. secondly, ceh's attitude towards documentation and project constraints doesn't fit with mine and it's going to take work to bring him to a compromise. at least i think he realizes now that i'm not simply being anal about everything.

while he was playing with a remote server i was being told by k-twang how bad my blog design is. so i took his advice and modified my template accordingly, i hope it's a better experience for everyone.

the cto arrived and we had a number of different talks throughout the day. they were all positive and i think he'd forgotten how organized i am since he's started interfacing with megaman. one of our talks was quite exciting, especially as i had his attention long enough to pitch an idea i had ages ago that developed into something even more awesome as i was speaking. we may not see eye to eye on everything, but there's a shared vision for where our tech should go that makes me feel like all the annoying and frustrating things that have happened over the past couple of months were totally worth it.

the rest of my day was broken into small fires and management. overall things are going smoothly and i'm happy with how this week's ending. also, amazed at how quickly it's gone by and how much i feel has happened!

on my way out i realized i could control my limp at the cost of each step hurting (which is subconsciously where the limp came from). the last thing i wanted was to stop using my muscles correctly.

---right, it's 11pm and i've had much less sleep this week than i've wanted. i've also got a big stack of things that need doing, including making dinner.

training and protections

shit, it's past bedtime and i needed to go to bed hours ago but i had two reports to write and they took forever.

---i had to train someone outside the company this afternoon and i woke up this morning with no idea what i'd be teaching him because the cto had ignored me yesterday. at 8.30am, pre-coffee and before leaving for the office i managed to catch him and we spent the next two hours going over everything. it wasn't bad, but it was tiring.

---i was on my way out when i realized that i'd made a grievous error: on monday, the drying machine was bust and it completely slipped my mind that the pile of underwear i dumped on a chair (i'm a bachelor!) was wet. this morning i finally got around to sorting and folding and it was still wet and quite smelly. not cool at all :(

so i was already stressing about how complicated dealing with that was going to be (i've been informed that it's not normal to have time limits on laundry nor to have to pay for each cycle) when i hurriedly took my shoes out the freezer (see previous post). as amusing as it was to remove two shoe-shaped blocks of ice, they were obviously still going to be waterlogged when i got home. i stuffed them with newspaper and chucked them on the patio.

[oh, shit! it's summer and i have a patio. i totally forgot.]

---my office day began with bad multitasking - there's nothing like having everything going wrong all around you and everyone clamoring for your attention when you need to focus on creating a lesson plan. and our network issues were at least as bad as they've been the past few days, which was frustrating for all of us.

the training session actually went a lot smoother than anticipated, and it inspired a little chat with the cfo afterwards. he was surprised to hear me evangelize (apparently he wasn't aware of our software's potential) and asked me to put together a memo, which i've just done. it includes marketing suggestions and it's been hinted that this might be good for me, whatever that means.

---it was the end of the day and i was in a hurry to get out in time for muay thai. i went past all the desks to make sure that everyone was on track and was horrified to find one of my developers on the verge of tears because botswana and our graphic lead had convinced him that he had to pull a surprise all-nighter because they'd switched the design after the project's due date. remember i mentioned his relationship with the developers?

i - was - pissed. as he's an executive, i was relatively careful with my tone but from his reaction i think he might have sensed potential violence. i have made it clear to everyone involved that nobody is to talk to developers without consulting me, and then i made it clear to the developer in question that he was to go home at his regular time and not a moment later for these assholes.

i'm going to have to have a little chat with the team in the morning, apparently our "chain of command" is not clear and i have been remiss in my duties if they don't feel they should come to me the instant anything causes them distress of any kind.

---aota relieved me of an enormous amount of stress by not only giving me a ride home but by offering to handle my problem laundry as well. thanks to her i made it to muay thai just in time.

i only barely survived muay thai today, limping away with my first injury in a long time and the knowledge that my assessment of my defensive skills was entirely correct: there's not much difference between gloves up or down, i just know how to put my nose and chin right into everything.

the injury is the deep tissue on my inner thigh, which was kicked hard and repeatedly by a fellow taekwondo graduate. i'm now sporting a rather sensitive limp, which i hope will be better in time for tomorrow's kickboxing.

afterwards i headed to aota's for a great "family" dinner with her, her daughter, newk'd and her daughter's friend from the other day. it was really nice and a wonderful end to a rough day.

i got home, found my unfrozen shoes to be dry but smelly and stuffed them back in the freezer.

...

after reports and an internet, i'm definitely, definitely ready to sleep.

royal highness

so... this morning began lazy and happy. still glowing from yesterday's experience. the weather was as fine as i felt.

it's a timing thing: i was working on scripting my sketches when metro sat down beside me again. apparently we both have favourite seats :)

speaking of which, office seating politics made shunting people around complicated. in the evening i'd have a long chat with our cfo about our environment and he liked what he heard and has promised to explore options that suit our team.

i have to train someone tomorrow in something i'm not familiar with - the cto was supposed to teach me today but i couldn't get hold of him in spite of my having made an appointment. huh?!

my plan for the day was to explore implementing something in node.js, but managing the team took precedence. there was a lot of it going on...

---i left work in time to shop before training, originally planning on jiu-jitsu and beginner's kickboxing but then switching to advanced kickboxing on the off chance i'd see gg. she wasn't there, but i'm so glad i changed my mind!

there's a fifty year old woman who trains with us who, just like the old guy, is a tank. firstly, i was fortunate to have her holding pads for me on the circuit because she wasn't afraid to tell me exactly what i was doing wrong at every step. and boy, was she right! i could the difference every time i got what she was saying, and it felt good.

i got to do impact / conditioning with her. i started, and her explanations of how i'm supposed to be handling my body were the first i've received. she was hurting me by the end, but i actually felt like i knew what i was doing and once the striking stopped i felt surprisingly good. a little more compact, in a sense :P

then it was her turn. not only did it feel like i was hitting a wall, but it wasn't hard enough for her so she taught me precisely how to angle my gloves and repeatedly corrected my strikes until i started getting through. the weird bit was feeling proud and ashamed simultaneously every time i landed a solid shot...

... shit, that's one tough lady.

---i came home to find i've been headhunted by another BIG company with a very interesting offer. how exciting and flattering! after thinking about it for a bit, though, it doesn't seem to be in my interests. aside from being in love with montreal and its people, this is not only the best place for me to immigrate to in terms of process but it's also the home of a lot of good aerospace; american aerospace cannot employ foreigners so even though spacex, bigelow and virgin have job opportunities that i'm perfectly suited for i wouldn't be able to work there...

i've spent my whole night talking on the phone with my mum or chatting on messenger and facebook. shit! i have stuff to do! and i almost didn't finish my dinner again :(

---two completely unrelated thoughts:

1. an ex-coworker has been ignoring me whenever he comes in to freelance, and i was informed that the reason for this is that he believes that my reaction to cam2 was borne of racism (as opposed to my complete intolerance of incompetence). i find this hurtful, and i'd try to take it up with him if i hadn't been warned not to. there's not much one can do to undo that kind of sentiment, though.

as my mom rightly said, though, it would be racist to have kept him on simply because of the colour of his skin.

2. i really, really, really have to learn french! it's ridiculous and irresponsible that i've been so unmotivated.

quick friday

today began with me feeling really good. it was sunny, i was relaxed... right until i realized that i was running late. it really is quicker for me to get to work on rollerblades (by about ten minutes, approximately) and so i made the call, strapped in and headed out. only i was about ten blocks away when i realized that i'd forgotten to bring another shirt; i'd actually taken one out and left it behind anyway.

after yesterday's warning newk'd about tardiness, i arrived fifteen minutes late and had to borrow a t-shirt from him :P
[to be fair, he's been consistently late by an hour]
megaman was not impressed that aota and i hadn't informed him (oops :$).

yesterday we'd put newk'd on a critical project that i'd been forced to give up (time constraints) and another developer had failed abysmally at: compiling code using 90s borland software. it took him the whole day, but his efforts were met with resounding success and we finally have a chance to take back control of all of our code! exciting times.

i spent a fair amount of the day dealing with seating arrangements. seating arrangements have a political component, apparently, and i'm not very good at that.

happy hour was a riot, and someone reminded me of a joke or two that not only had everyone in hysterics, but saw newk'd one-upping in such a big way that i was almost in tears! also, i have successfully used wikipedia to prove my point to our interns that liquorice means "black liquorice" and that "red liquorice" isn't liquorice at all:

"red liquorice, which is extruded in a way to resemble liquorice strings, but made with strawberry, cherry, raspberry, or cinnamon flavourings as the main flavourings rather than liquorice. ... while the common name for this candy has now become "red liquorice", or often simply "liquorice", it does not taste of liquorice."
- wikipedia

i tried to leave at 6pm for 7pm boxing, but somehow ended up strapping on my blades at 6.30 and pushing like a madman to get home on time. between the exertion and the alcohol in my system, i was not in the best of states for training but aside from a few mental blocks here and there i actually did quite well! and i definitely enjoyed it.

finishing a good week of training with boxing would only have been better if i hadn't had that beer beforehand. just as i was packing up and thinking "there's no better start to the weekend", i stepped outside into the most magnificent sunset, montreal in all its glory ^_^

now gearing up for a long drive to ottawa* to get myself comfortable before my quebec driver's exam. i guess it's as good a time as any to use those french audio lessons...

* aota's daughter needs a ride to visit her boyfriend

---and in canadian news, two albertans have died in the flooding and the language police in quebec have taken up fighting spoons. these are stories competing for top spot on ctv. i'm not sure what that's telling me.

i do know that after a long argument with a quebec native who's scared that his culture and language will be eroded, i'm convinced that the solution to the problem isn't laws enforcing language usage. that's counter-productive. i believe that everyone in quebec should have to send their kids to french schools. they can and will learn english at home anyway...

---an 80's geeky childhood can now be yours! there's a crazy sale on at gog.com. i had about twenty tabs open and had to decide just how much i was willing to spend on games that i don't have time to play... but must play anyway...

*sigh*

i got some awesome stuff, though.

manic for sure

i was a long day, most of it a bit unpleasant. in addition to our network going down repeatedly (making most of us quite useless and frustrated), imperieux and i being locked out of our office for over half an hour because of a "five minute" phone call, being asked by megaman if i ever went to school (i think he was trying to be funny, but it came across shockingly condescending) and experiencing an otherwise meaningless lunch fail that had most of the development team laughing at me (not with me), i was really tired both physically and mentally and the coffee didn't help at all.

oh, yes: and aota and i had to take newk'd aside an give him an official warning for repeated tardiness. not cool.

i did have a very positive conversation with the cto, though, and it looks like work and an external interest just combined in my favour.

---i was exhausted by the time i met with metro, and so my pitch really wasn't as enthusiastic as usual. even so, she seems as professional as she is interested, she's definitely more experienced than mason, and she'll be available to get on things in about two weeks. and we totally agree on attitude towards the project! very cool. i have a good feeling about this.

kickboxing:
i did see gg between classes, and i think i made things awkward. without actually saying anything, so i guess there's a good chance that i was just being awkward all by myself. in any event the training was solid.

after showering i began my mars one application. trippy! and now that i've read through the faq i know exactly what my video needs to look like. and that if their criteria are to be believed i actually stand a good chance!

...

i suddenly found myself bouncing up and down to the music, and i've been on a crazy high since.

...

i spent the following couple of hours playing with node.js. node.js is awesome.

---i discovered today that i'm not the only one enjoying the summer but missing the snowboarding.

an awaited long weekend

last night:

the pilot episode of star trek: the next generation was interesting (although the psychic character was just tedious), but what really captivated me was trying to catch riker sitting down.

i managed to get into bed early. i needed it.

---it was a good morning, sunny and with me feeling considerably less stiff and sore. as i sat down on the metro, i noticed that the girl next to me was sketching. after furtively glancing at her page and ascertaining that i liked her work, i thought about asking her if she'd be interested in working with me. i believe that bothering strangers in a closed space isn't cool, so i didn't, but then i thought about how these are the kinds of opportunities that might turn out to be really good, and then i thought "no, you can't do that" and then "really? are you really going to do this?"
by that stage we'd passed three stations, and i was running out of time. "sod it," i thought, and i popped out my headphones and said "excuse me" in my most casual voice.

my gods, she literally jumped out of her seat with a frightened squeal! i hit a 10.0 on my awkward-o-meter, and quickly apologized for scaring her. i then asked if she's currently working on a project, and she told me she's working part-time on a video game for one of the big companies. i asked if she'd be interested in working on comics, she asked me if i had a card, i babbled about arranging a meeting and she told me she'd send me her portfolio. nice!

we then proceeded to ignore each other for the rest of the ride, except to say goodbye with smiles. i'm so proud of myself for taking the chance :)

---i got in to a bit of a nightmare. the first part was what appeared to be a ddos attack on one of our servers. the second part... have i mentioned hating mysteries? two of our servers, one local and one remotely hosted, both completely disconnected, began to exhibit the same really strange behaviour. when we finally established what the foundation of that behaviour was and were even more mystified, everything went back to normal. wtf?

the rest of my day was spent managing, with one incident of my having to take a developer aside and instill in him a real fear of not using the tools we have to keep our codebase sane. i felt bad for him, but when we got up he thanked me and assured me that we were playing the same game. the others are beginning to work in a more disciplined manner, which makes me feel successful. on a similar note, i had a lot of dealings with imperieux today and things between us are fine, so i'm glad and fortunate that yesterday's unpleasantness didn't stick.

megaman told me that he had no issues with the holidays i've been planning, but that he finds it really weird that i'm so pedantic about logging my hours that i know precisely how many over or under i am. on the one hand, it would be easier to do as he says and just log eight hours a day regardless, but on the other... i feel like my knowledge gives me a certain amount of leverage when asking for a day off here and there and it's good that my information ocd is served :)

kickboxing tonight was good, but my arms still felt heavy and my punches mostly sucked. i worked really hard, though, and i definitely had fun!

it's now past bedtime for those of us who have to be up super early to get on a bus, and i've still got to pack. but it doesn't really matter. i can sleep on the bus :D