side quests

 i have got practically nothing done today! i accompanied my sister to her meeting with her friends, then returned home via the hardware store (for bird repellant), meeting up with gd and mr smear and doing a friday morning shopping run, which really is one of my least favorite things. it's been hot, i missed my second coffee, and i arrived home slow and tired and quite hungry. i helped gd make challah-peño to take with us tonight, started the process of locating the PSVR components because mr smear has been harassing me for a couple of days now to set it up.

then we left for the shuk, to meet up with my sister, and went up and down the market... mr smear and i feel very similarly about mall people, and shuk people are even worse. he held my hand and walked in lock-step behind me, and we came out relatively unscathed.

relatively, because our visit to the shuk began with him being pooped on by a bird 🙄

getting the bus home took more walking and time that anticipated, and i filed a complaint against the bus driver who almost injured us with his aggressive driving, but we came inside in good spirits and launched into uprising at full blast. then i set up my IDE to work with openai's codex, after which i spent the next while wiring up the PSVR.

and realizing that i, once again, had booked a car for no good reason and it was too late to cancel it without paying the full amount :(

i managed to get the PSVR set up, and mr smear got to play battlezone, and i called sailor for an hour long argument over what kind of "market research" is valid when you're trying to make a video game.

now it's evening, and we're getting ready to leave in an hour for dinner with our cousins.

friday mall stress

the good parts of the day:

finishing up the baseline functionality of the auto-doc project, and it seems pretty solid! i've also written up most of the first article. the sun has already set, so i've effectively stopped for the day. that all took quite a lot of hours.

watching guardians of the galaxy vol. 2 together, even if i did fall asleep for a bit of it.

the not-so-good parts of the day:

the shopping mission... both parts. between not finding the stuff we wanted, and mr smear being a bit sick (snuffly, but he seems fine now), and occasionally quite disrespectful. and mall people, i was irritable as hell. also, gd and i having a fight over something (one of those relationship-long fights), and i've just learned it's still not done.

positive feedback

 i've realized that i don't suffer from very mild narcolepsy, there are just three specific situations which tell my brain it's safe to turn off and it's really, really hard for me to fight them. the hairdresser's chair, the dentist's chair, and meetings. those are my shutdown buttons. some people count sheep. i count shears, drills and droning.

...

yesterday morning began with a serious effort on my autodoc side project. mr smear left late and under tense circumstances.

most of the day revolved around the broken deployments, which became extra-specially sensitive the moment i realized that the running instances where last deployed several years ago and the "successful" manual deployments i'd seen had never actually done anything 🤦‍♂️

later, i learned from a couple of the more experienced engineers that this kind of thing is actually quite normal.

lunch with the lunch group was fun, although it began with me opening my soup in a way that sprayed it across the table and across one of the guys, which was quite embarrassing.

the big division meeting: i spent about two thirds of the meeting struggling to keep my eyes open, and praying every time i nodded off that i hadn't snored or something. i was very grateful to have come out of the stupor by the time we got to the big announcements, and it's now pretty clear what my new role is and how all the pieces fit.

i like (the idea of) my new role. a lot.

...

then i had a call with my mentor. he gave me some good advice regarding how i communicate with my manager: "i've run into <x>, it's going to cause a delay, i'm taking care of it" is a solid formula that i've used a lot, but i still find it interesting to think of it as a formal structure.

i told him about my role change, and how it fits in with my roadmap, and about my autodoc project. he was very excited about all of it, and offered me some very good advice about when and how i write about it.

and then he informed me that he has feedback for me, both from my client and from my employer: apparently everyone's quite happy with me. this is a huge relief, and it feels good.

long may it last.

...

the last part of the day was all about finalizing the deployment fixes, pushing them and monitoring them. by sheer luck, i saw from the git graph that someone else was working on the repo at the same time, so i got in touch with them directly to inform them of what i was doing and why. aside from blowing their minds, i managed to get them excited about dashboards-as-code and i had them on hand to approve my PRs, so when i left the office it was after making sure that the service is actually serviceable and nothing seems broken.

[quickly stops to flip open the work laptop and double-check that the image tags really were updated]

so i walked out of the office in pretty good spirits ^_^

...

my afternoon and evening were exceptionally gassy. i have no idea what i ate or when, but it went on for hours and was very uncomfortable. you know how "every 'no' brings you closer to a 'yes'"? well, my spin on it is "every fart brings you closer to a shart". fortunately that didn't happen yesterday, but it probably could have.

anyway, i dropped my bag off at home and took mr smear with me to the mall to pick up his second pair of shoes. notable moments: witnessing a bunch of hormone-drunk teenagers harassing a sex-shop worker, buying socks, and a fight over mr smear reporting a clean bus for being dirty. otherwise, we had a pretty good time. and talked a lot, some of which about the LARPiness (or lack thereof) of his summer camp.

we had a very nice dinner while watching a lot more of guardians of the galaxy, and after mr smear was in bed gd and i finished another episode of ludwig. then i went straight to bed, for most of a night's sleep.

the masses move through the tent city

 the nights have been relatively quiet the past few days, but i've been sleeping worse. physical nerve discomfort, primarily, but also mental disquiet.

we got up yesterday morning at 10am, which felt wrong somehow. it was only in the evening that we learned that it was wrong, because daylight savings time. it took us a remarkably long time to get out the house, by which stage the weather had turned to cold and wet.

we were nervous about traveling across the city and getting caught in an attack while outside, but fortunately we were caught once while at the mall, and the second time while waiting for the bus home, so we had time to get down into the parking lot.

man, the tent city is an experience.

between the mobs of mall people, and mr smear being generally disagreeable, and a siren catching us before i managed to get myself a second coffee when i was already feeling twitchy desperate, i had zero patience by the time we left. but we had managed to get the two things we needed the most: a kettle cord* and a smaller (and less permeable) shower curtain.

* how the hell did we end up with one less than we have appliances that need them?!

and gd's hair-care products, and also a large container of cholent, which mr smear finally tried and liked ^_^

once we got home, i spoke to two cousins, declining the still-open invitation to a pesach seder because there's no way we're traveling far with the war still on.

big data's been doing a lot of work on the building these days, and in the afternoon he came over with his tools to give me a hand with putting up a shelf to tidy up our modem / router situation. not only was he a great help with getting the shelf up easily and neatly, but he had a brilliant idea of attaching our sound bar underneath it, and we now have the solution we should have had for the past four years - it's awesome!

unfortunately, while we did get the projector set up "well enough" (using polystyrene from the electric hob's box that we hadn't tossed yet), it's clear that it's seen better days and that at some point we're going to need to upgrade it :(

i mean, it's served us well for a decade already...

a bit later we went upstairs to join them for dinner. good food and plenty of it, and aside from some issues with mr smear we all had a very pleasant evening. it was very late by the time we finally went to bed**, but between the achievements of the day, the company, and a fair amount of alcohol, i went to bed feeling quite relaxed.

** after watching the first episode of rick and morty with gd so that she could be reminded of why mr smear shouldn't have seen it

so it would have been nice if i'd been able to sleep better.

...

it's been a peaceful morning so far. i sorted out the playstation in preparation for mr smear's friend coming over, and i've watched some random things, and maybe i'll do something productive now or maybe i won't.

a power day

 well, the next part of the day was pretty rough - but in a fun way, i guess? it certainly was an experience. 

firstly, mr smear is now full-on into counter-strike, and it's nice to see him not giving up and getting excited by his successes. so it was a cool tone to set before we head out to his regular allergist checkup.

but we headed out right in the heaviest part of a massive thunderstorm. fortunately, we both had our big-enough rain boots on, the water levels were high everywhere and my waterproof shoes would have been flooded from the top. and we had a time avoiding cars spraying water onto the sidewalks, and we got pelleted with hail (his first time outside in hail), and the walk from the bus to the hospital was just ridiculous - a real urban jungle adventure - and of course, the sun came out just as we arrived at our destination.

from that point on it became impossible to close my umbrella...

there was a bit of confusion (which was to be expected) at the reception, but we made it through the bureaucratic gauntlet and went upstairs to the allergy clinic. it was war-time very quiet and there were only two other kids there, surprisingly calm and extremely cute children, so off the bat it was a much less stressful time with mr smear. at that point my tiredness and lack of caffeine began catching up with me, but the allergist and her nurse were efficient and mr smear managed to distract himself from the prick-test itching with games on his phone, and pretty soon we were discussing the results.

it seems like, sadly, his allergy level is stabilizing rather than going away, we'll know better in the next year or two. but even so, the level it's stabilizing at is far less dramatic than before, so while he'll still need an epipen and to be careful not to consume dairy, we don't need to be so scared of accidental contact.

it's / it should be fine.

we went through the hospital mall, where i picked up an emergency coffee just as the attack warning sounded. considering the fact that the roof is made of glass, i get why the safe area was three floors below ground... there was nowhere comfortable to sit, so the two of us walked around the parking lot full of people occupying themselves on their phones and amused ourselves playing word association games.

then we returned to pick up a couple of things at the supermarket, and a couple of bottles of sublingual b12 at the pharmacy (while waiting in the uncomfortably crowded aisle for the self-service checkout, gd called twice while i was holding an umbrella that refused to stay closed, a cup of coffee, and two bottles of b12. i was not in my happy place.

mr smear and i took a bus home - to his chagrin, he always wants to walk these days to get some exercise - and he signed on to his remote classes while i finally got wednesday's code review approved and got started on the follow-up improvement. gd has managed to schedule me a haircut, so a short while late i headed out to catch a bus to sheinkin.

i had some time to spare, so i got a little more work done and drank a coffee that i must assume was soy milk (because they said so, and i honestly can't tell). i arrived just on time for my haircut appointment, and another attack warning. everyone headed across the road to a hotel shelter (the same hotel my cousin threw his farewell party in on mr smear's birthday), which was an interesting experience, and then we returned to get into it. i thought the coffee would keep me from nodding in the chair, but...

... i'm really happy with the haircut. gd's happy with it too. i'm very enthusiastically grateful that i'm no longer sporting my jew-fro / isro :P

it took a long time to get home (i shouldn't have gotten off the bus when i did), and while i waited for the connection mr smear had an accident while helping gd and the two of them had to deal with a smashed plate. so that happened.

the evening was me completing the work and studying a bit (data engineering), and mr smear playing more counter-strike, and then a pretty intensive training in which mr smear admirably demonstrated that he not only could STFU when being given instructions, but that he could redirect his anger and frustration energy into the drill we were doing (a liver shot combo) (even if he did feel the need to tell me that he was imagining that he was hitting me), into continuing the work through discomfort, into stepping into his first impact training (feather-light touch from me, but a big deal for him), into pushing himself through difficult post-training exercises (like planking, diamond push-ups, crunches and burpees), into taekwondo-style stretching.

all the while holding himself in check, even when it was clear he was emotionally at the edge. when we were done, his pride was quiet but visible, and he didn't argue with me the first couple of times i told him how proud i was (he did a bit later, though :P).

a great dinner (double yo-egg, both types as a very successful pre-pesach experiment), and everyone into the merch episode of strip search with lots of pausing to discuss. shower-time and tooth-brushing time were very positive (gd and i were loving him singing along to my playlist at the top of his voice), and his bedtime was earlier than it's been for a while and much more peaceful.

after saying good night, i went on a hunt for vitamin d resources that someone asked me for regarding testing / screening and dosage:

there're a lot of studies that discuss the unreliability of testing - this one's pretty clear - check out the "sources cited" button beneath this video (it's really worth watching). 

see also the "accuracy of screening tests" section of the US preventive services task force report.

and then i watched a whole lot of youtube videos (war news interspersed with random shit), and now this, and then... maybe i'll go to bed soon.

[attack warning]

the price of teeth

 the game night at the mongoose's was fun last night, just a couple of us and mostly playing on the nintendo switch. his buddy gave me a ride home around midnight, which was very much appreciated.

i think i slept alright, kinda, but we were interrupted by another rocket attack from the houthis. fortunately, we all got to sleep late.

i spent the first part of the morning just catching up on social media, then we had a fight with mr smear about brushing his teeth (as usual), and once things calmed down the two of us had sufganiyot for breakfast and tried to play video games together and failed (i purchased an extra copy of little racers street, but we couldn't connect).

and then we headed out to the barber shop. they didn't have space for me but i now have an appointment for sunday morning. we walked down the road to the mall, and it didn't take long for me to get mall-people'd out. we stopped for lunch, which was nice, then fled outside to find coffee, and then we all agreed to just go home.

i needed that nap when we arrived.

i've done a lot of dishes this afternoon.

the biggest achievement today was setting mr smear up with his own bank account (kinda, it's in my name) so that he can begin earning compound interest on the little bit of money he's acquired, triggered by the fact that he's just lost a tooth, he's about to lose another one, and we haven't even given him anything for the last one...

gd's been freaking out and has been on the verge of a panic attack for days now because of her dental work. i'm trying to be supportive but it's very hard.

we lit the candles for chanukah and shabbat on a call with my mom, and the rest of the evening's been alright so far, with mr smear and me playing rounds until my brain started melting. it's a great game!

progress

 yesterday:

another clinic visit in the morning on the way to work. buying a laffa for lunch but being served a pita instead, "paying" them to not have to go back inside. meetings in the morning and struggling not to fall asleep in the afternoon.

a good evening, but issues with mr smear around and after bedtime, making for a long, shit feeling until my own.

today:

a somewhat decent night's sleep, weird but forgotten dreams.

on the way to work, i dropped off the shoes gd's returning at the post office. the post office experience was okay, but the people were weird. especially the older woman who kept bashing into some guy's scooter (even immediately after apologizing for doing it), and the woman who was in a hurry because she'd left her baby somewhere bothered me.

i walked and talked with my mom on the way to the bicycle repair shop, not sure if the bike would even be there. almost there, the call cut off, and i couldn't call back - i only understood later that my ear had hit the airplane mode button :/

i arrived at the shop and asked about the bike. the good news? the bike was there, and the bike was repaired! the bad news? once there, i *had* to pick it up and i had to carry it all the way home. by the time i got home i was seriously sweating, and not only that but i was running late to a meeting...

... i managed to get to azrieli center in time for the meeting, and parked myself in the food court. this was fine at first. the first guy i spoke to was pretty professional. after five/ten minutes he realized he was in over his head and brought in a dev.

the dev joined the call wearing a wife-beater and with one arm holding a cigarette out the window next to his desk 😂

we spent the next forty five minutes finding the first bug, but the next one was on them and we eventually called it and agreed to meet again. by that stage the end-of-summer-holidays crowds had filled the food court and the rest of the mall, it was loud and unpleasant, and getting out to the street was anxiety-inducing.

i arrived at work just as everyone was planning on going out to eat. i'd brought lunch from home, but i joined them anyway - i recently read somewhere that nobody ever remembers when you worked through lunch, but they remember when you impacted them socially, so i've been making a point of not skipping lunches / happy hours.

i didn't want to eat, but i hadn't had my usual second coffee and i stumbled upon a fruit shake place selling vegan coffee shakes made with dates and bananas, and that sounded really good. unfortunately, i didn't think to ask about the price until the shake was already ready, and i was shocked to discover it was more than the cost of a meal. it wasn't just me, my coworkers were shocked too.

it was delicious, to be fair, but i won't be doing that again.

the rest of the work day was... not bad, but difficult. i've been struggling with frontend shenanigans for two days, and it's been very frustrating. every time i've gotten one thing working, another's fallen apart.

in the middle of it all, i had my second bi-weekly (every two weeks) meeting with my boss. i was expecting to discuss how things have been, considering that the last meeting was quite negative, but i guess things are fine because we chatted awkwardly about family and argued gently about traditional weddings - i've never been to a wedding with groomsmen.

anyway, there was a visceral moment this evening, around 5pm, when i suddenly, luckily - nay, miraculously - got everything working the way i wanted it. i spent most of the next hour tidying things up for a code review, and then walked home.

the evening has been mostly positive.

overflow

 i boiled over this morning, i'm doing what i can to take this afternoon as easy as possible.

the day began pretty simply, we got up, had coffee, i played through bloons: adventure time quests and caught up on stuff. then we woke mr smear up, fed him, and we left for the shuk. on the way to the bus, we ran into our old neighbor and his now six-month old son, and we had a good chat. i mean, the subject matter was tough, but it was nice talking to him.

the bad feelings began on the bus. not because the driver was driving recklessly (and throwing us about) - though that didn't help - but because there was a bunch of young people and nobody would give up their seats for the old people who climbed in.

and then it was a fight to get off the bus because of all the idiots blocking the doors, and it took a little while to start calming down. but by then we were in the shuk itself, and we were realizing that we weren't going to find what we were looking for, and then all the people around us were doing what mall people (yes, same thing) do, and then that started stressing me out...

then we walked down king george, but first we encountered an old rollerblading friend and i completely blanked on his name and got super weird and uncomfortable. we walked down to dizengoff center, where the security guard insisted on shaking my hand before letting us in.

*shakes head*

king george was unusually empty - obviously because lots of people are scared or scared away - but the mall was pretty full.

first a pit stop, then finding food, all through mall people. that part was good, and the tourist group doing a headphone party activity was amusing.

we hit the sports store and found gd a swimming cap, then took mr smear into the toysrus to see if there was anything he wanted for his birthday. this time i was the one who became overwhelmed, and progressively desperate for a cold drink and coffee. eventually, on the point of losing it, i rushed everyone out, very grateful for gd being in full support mode.

we got some cool drinks, then crossed the road to ozen hashlishi and sat down. i approached the baristas, who informed me that... that their coffee machine had broken down. the big man i'd assumed was a barista was actually the technician. i looked her in the eyes, and explained that i was desperate, and would settle for a turkish coffee if they had any.

they did.

and just as she was about to start preparing it for me, the technician announced that the machine was back in working order.

*relief*

still very anxious, we sat outside and i slowly calmed down over my latte, and then we hopped on a bus home.

i still had some leftovers and a bagel from our mall breakfast, so i figured i'd give it away if we came across anyone in need. there's an older homeless woman who i've seen a lot in the area lately - the last time i saw her she was fighting with some garbage men about *her* trash can - and i asked if she was interested. she said no, but told me there was another woman walking around who would be, and so i left it on the bench and said it was for that woman.

she began yelling at me. i tried to walk away, but she picked up the package and ran over to me because "she's got enough trouble of her own, she can't be helping other homeless people".

wtaf.

*sigh*

anyway, we came home, and i rested, and the rest of the afternoon's been all about playing games: inscryption (act ii of the story mode), and i roped mr smear into playing shivers with me because he wouldn't stop going on about scary games. overall, we had a fun experience together, and while the atmosphere totally creeped him out the jump scare (which i'd warned him was coming) didn't bother him too much. i think the proprietor's corpse was a bit much for him, though, but reading about the hieroglyphs seemed to distract him sufficiently.

...

now praying for a quiet weekend.

big days

yesterday:

after dropping mr smear at school, i went home to send my wife off to her first sewing lesson in israel and then went to misrad hapnim to see if i could find a human being to talk to. i was duly informed at their information booth that there are no human beings to talk to, although i suspect that it wouldn't be in a lawyer's best interests to encourage doing things without them.

it's a lucrative business, immigration lawyering... anyway, i got some helpful information from her, and from the woman that i'd contacted on wednesday, and those two sets of information gave my mother some direction, and relieved a lot of pressure. so that's good.

the work day was mixed, but ended on a really high note - and by high, i mean manic. after hours of bashing my head against a wall, i finally found the missing piece of the puzzle (thanks to a coworker stumbling across a chatgpt answer that was completely wrong, but unwittingly included a hint that i could  make use of) and got everything working smoothly.

then i rushed home, picked up mr smear and my rollerblades, and we headed to the climbing wall. the rides were good, there was minimal resistance from mr smear, and all-in-all we had a really good time.

gd's sewing lesson went really well, and she's extremely excited. which is very exciting for me, as well.

today:

dropping mr smear off at school, then wasting an aggravating hour trying to get technical support from our internet provider. then gd joined me to afeka to pick up the puzzle book that finally arrived: aleksandra artymowska's around the world in 80 puzzles. and buy some nice stuff from the store the post office uses as a front.

then we bussed to the mall, did some grocery shopping while i became progressively hangrier and less patient for all the friday morning mall people, then walked home in the oppressive heat to eat breakfast, then picked up mr smear from school and walked up to do a quick pharmacy / hardware store mission before finally coming home, doing lots of dishes, and then relaxing.

i mean, doing a little work, then watching random stuff and playing a bit of inscryption. act iii is hard.

ending the day riding to meet the mongoose and his daughter and go with them to the beach, mr smear not only riding well in both directions - and appreciating how quickly we got there and back - but also really enjoying a beautiful afternoon / evening chilling in the water.

a big dinner, and delicious dessert (the chocolate halva from the grocery store is amazing), and now we're full and sore and tired and ready for bed.

weak

 yeah, this week was definitely more actually coming down with something than allergies, although i think allergies are a part of it.

yesterday:

i was completely broken yesterday, but still needed to go on a shopping mission and take mr smear to the school to pick up a book he needed for homework.

the mall was FULL of mall people. it's not usually that bad, but between them and how i was feeling and the supermarket not having everything on our list, it was very unpleasant. and then i forgot some important things, and that made the morning longer.

in the afternoon, we had our usual fight getting mr smear started with his homework, and then the usual breezing through the homework once he accepted his fate. it's so tiring...

one great thing, though - i bought him two books, conditionally, and one of them is a hebrew translation of spiderman comics. this is the first time we've seen him voluntarily read a hebrew book, and that's huge.

one awful thing: i messed up with calculating our finances, and last month was a lot heavier than i expected (－‸ლ)

today:

a mostly quiet day. gd and i left mr smear alone for a couple of hours for the first time ever, while we went for coffee and a liquorice taste-test with friends. it went well :)

most of the afternoon has been spent doing very little, very quietly.

now to try and herd him outside for some fresh air.

the day

 i finally got back to sleep an hour or two later, and felt completely broken when my alarm forced me to drag myself out of bed. gd put a plaster on my sore thumb, and it was very frustrating not being able to use my phone properly all day.

after dropping mr smear off at school, i sat down to work on the regex package and i've been working on it on and off the whole day. it's going well, i think. it's already feeling a lot more polished (what i have locally, not what's published).

gd and i bused to the mall, on the way getting splashed at the bus stop even when we were hiding behind it. we grabbed a coffee, then i purchased a pair of pants. it was only after i was done that gd decided that she needed stuff too, and by the time we eventually got to the cashier there was a line of infuriatingly slow people.

ugh.

from there we did a grocery shopping, which also took a lot longer than i've become used to, and then we picked up a small box and ribbon for mr smear's homework assigned by the teacher he detests. i gotta say, now that i've seen what the assignment is based on, and combined with our experiences with her over the past year and a half, i'm feeling pretty strongly that his teacher's an asshole. or, at the very least, that she has asperger's.

the book says to imagine the gift, and maybe draw it. not to bring a physical gift. FML.

anyway, we got home barely in time for me to go and pick up mr smear, who'd had quite a day - incidents in both his classes, kids put glue on his jacket in one class and another kid messed with him at the end of the other.

*sigh*

i passed out on the couch for a while, eventually becoming functional again.

in the afternoon, with some cajoling and a break in the middle, i managed to get mr smear to do his homework. he thought it would be cool to right a letter and send a(n imaginary) giftto buggy the clown pirate. i guess this is going to be interesting...

after bathtime we discovered that he's made himself afraid again, but this time it was 100% his own fault: he admitted to us that earlier, he'd muted the ipad and watched a scary thing on youtube that he knew we wouldn't have approved of.

fuck.

so we're back to a blanket ban on youtube, and no roblox without an adult present.

gd went to bed before we were able to finish watching episode 16 of freaks and geeks. i've spent the hours since watching things about and engaging with antisemites, working on the regex package, and sinking ever-deeper into the bloons adventure time hole. i started playing the who's lila? demo the other day, i really should get back to that. maybe i'll do that now before i crash.