psychological wargames

 omfg. it's 3.40am and i've spent the past hour or so struggling to sleep - i'm tiiiired. at first it was mental restlessness, then it was lower back and hip flexors, i'm a complete mess.

...

it took me too long to get ready to leave this morning, so i had to remain home for my daily. then i headed to the office for a day largely defined by arguing with AI.

the good news: this three-month project that's been dragging out for the past couple of weeks? the current phase is done, i finally got my latest fixes in, tested everything, and it came out clean. this is huge!

the not-so-good news: i'm still working on the golang stuff, which is tiring, but it looks like i'm in the final stretch.

the other good news: i started working on the interruption ticket for our previous client team, and the most troubling chunk of work appears to have been done already.

i had lunch with the client team, which was fun, and then a long chat with sailor; mostly about protoplasm, but i also apologized for arguing when in reality we were both talking about two very different things - it was comforting that even after i explained where we diverged, it still required clarification, which meant it wasn't like i'd missed something obvious :P

i had to cut him short in order to get back to work, but to be fair we were both excited by a direction i'd given him for a therapeutic game...

in the evening, i left the office and warned mr smear we'd be going out rollerblading, which was met with a bad attitude. gd and i together managed to navigate it, i rotated my wheels while he got his on, and by the time we left the apartment he was in a good frame of mind.

he actually did rather well - he's exploring downhill control and becoming an ambi-turner - and it was a fun ride. on the way back we happened past two guys with pit bulls, and omg i miss my brother's twins. mr smear's introduction to one of them was it pushing itself up against him, i think he now has a better sense of what raw power feels like :P

we showered, talked to my mom, and had dinner. dinner was great, but i may have made a mistake dipping a marshmallow into the scorpion pepper sauce. i found the place where melts in your mouth meets melts your mouth, and aside from my tears i could tell you precisely where in my digestive tract the results were located for quite a while after.

i was tired, but i knew that i wouldn't sleep well if i went straight to bed, so i sat down to slowly but surely figure out how to get AI playing with unity. it took me about two and a half hours to get an agent using the unity mcp, and then half an hour to go from being impressed by the results, to being absolutely, literally amazed.

this is a game changer.

[pun not intended]

the stretch / eyeball melting

 sleep journal entry: i was so tired from the night before that i mostly slept well; when i got up in the middle of the night, it was very briefly and primarily due to a stuffed nose.

...

we're just about at the end of the month, and i just looked at my personal timesheets:

20 hours for my employer

50 hours for my auto-doc

105 hours for my client

...

 got up around 6am yesterday morning, and the first thing i encountered online absolutely stunned me (and, soon after, gd as well) and struck a devastating blow: protoplasm had posted a beautiful photo of him and his girlfriend a couple of days ago, but it wasn't at all clear that what prompted it was that last sunday, he woke up to discover that she had passed away in her sleep.

it's so completely and utterly wrong, and i cannot imagine the horror he's going through. we had quite a lengthy talk last night, he's holding up as well as can be expected and i'm grateful to know that he's got friends and family around him supporting him, but i feel bad being so far away and unable to be there in person.

...

from 6.45am until 6pm i was almost exclusively at my desk. the first couple of hours were putting the finishing touches on the auto-doc mvp and publishing my first article on the auto-doc, which was incredibly exciting but also tempered - as has been everything else - by the protoplasm news. the auto-doc is officially out there, and i'm praying it's picked up the way that i believe it should be and i'm fantasizing it will be.

the main thing i'm supposed to be working on for my client has been stuck in a holding pattern waiting on other people to click buttons, so my client work day became primarily about implementing my golang service post-incident recommendations which involved an inordinate amount of getting AI to not lie to me. in the afternoon i invested some time in writing up a one-pager and configuring the auto-doc for the client's infrastructure, which resulted in me stumbling across the SVP engineering's attempt to do the same work i'm doing (in the golang service), and politely messaging him to explain that i've already succeeded, and am simply in testing to prevent any further incidents.

thank god my software engineering efforts live and die by git graph being my primary interface to any codebase, if he'd "fixed" something without my context i might've had quite a time of paying for the merge :/

[though, in retrospect, i *could* have just excised his changes and written them off as wasted effort, but i'm still glad i caught him in time]

nystire came over and we took a walk through the park with mr smear, who'd had a little more exercise yesterday than i had, and i'm still being amused by mr smear's reaction when nystire suggested that we could always sell his kidneys to buy a gaming machine 😂

he's offered to take us stargazing with him in a couple of weeks, and mr smear and i are very much looking forward to it!

my sister had arrived home shortly before we got back, and everyone else helped with getting dinner on the table while i quietly fell apart from exhaustion. i managed to pull myself back together for dinner, then excused myself after a long conversation about protoplasm and my sister's friends and other-side-of-the-family's dealings with illness and death and bad behaviors to shower and talk to protoplasm and then say goodnight to mr smear and go to bed myself.

...

i did kick off the async game jam thing yesterday, but i was so tired there was no way i was going online :P

i've given up on the mastodon experiment and deleted my accounts. not only were they not providing me any real value, but they've become cesspool echo chambers of the regressive left and i couldn't find any communities with shared values or active members.

the stress ball

yesterday began positively, and so far the post-privileges world is looking pretty good.

when my mother informed me last night that mr smear had reported that he'd lost his privileges forever, i was reminded that on the way to school, we'd seen a child dressed up in a costume and mr smear had asked me how long until halloween.

now, please bear in mind that my son has absolutely no concept of time, and asking him what day it is is usually a silly waste of breath, but also that on our way home on saturday i'd told him that he'd remember the 10th of may as "the last time [he] fucked with me". so when i asked him what day it was, he didn't hesitate to say "11th of may" and it took everything i had to not laugh out loud and continue with "and what month is halloween?" 🤣

the past two work days have been hard, but yesterday was the harder of the two. it was almost exclusively about planning and preparing installations, although it also included entertaining nystire for a bit, reminiscing about our late coworker with our security officer (who's also mourning, but is outsourced so hasn't been doing so as part of the organization), and interviewing a very interesting candidate (i marked him as "strong hire" when i should have marked "proceed", but there's nothing i can do and it's probably fine).

those distractions notwithstanding, it was 7.30pm when we finally had a release candidate that had been sufficiently tested to begin the first installation, and we then found ourselves doing it on unfamiliar hardware and with a very clear and unrealistic looming deadline.

i found myself alone, nursing a beer (my meal replacement) and running into the weirdest issues, until at 10.15pm i realized that i'd been battling for over an hour with a VPN misconfiguration thinking that i was having network issues - that was when i finally left the office and came home; not physically tired, but emotionally completely done.

oh, and my back having been in a spasm for most of the day didn't help much either.

...

i finally posted the following yesterday evening, which i'd been thinking about since being painfully disappointed by a post from tpj a few days ago:

a few days ago an officer that i served with, who lives in a country with some of the most toxic, antisemitic media in the world (the BBC), wrote a post describing israel as an "occupation" and our army as guilty of war crimes. such counterfactual propaganda is painful enough when other people repeat it, but it's led to me recognize that the old adage about the greatest evil being the indifference of good men needs to be revised:

the greatest evil is the amplification of evil by people who we expect to know better. 

in retrospect, our lives since october 7th have been completely overtaken by a perpetual sense of mourning. we mourn the victims of the massacre itself, and all of the traumas both personal and national that the massacre has left behind. we mourn the hostages even as we hope against hope that some of them might return, and we mourn the horrors that they've endured and continue to endure. we mourn the hopes that we've held for so long that peace was somehow just around the corner, and we mourn the decades that we spent deluding ourselves that the situation was so much simpler and less demonic than it is.

but most of all we mourn the illusion that this modern, 21st century, hi-tech world was somehow better than before, that truth and justice were shared values, that antisemitism was fringe, that the west wasn't at war with innumerable enemies who work tirelessly in underhanded ways to turn democracies against themselves. and we mourn each and every friend, relative and supposed ally who falls into the sophisticated propaganda traps and turns their back on us. even more so the jews who don't realize that they're not only unwittingly betraying us over here, but themselves, and every jew everywhere, before us and after us.

perpetual mourning and grief are hard, exhausting pills to swallow.

...

it wasn't an easy night, but at least the massage time in the morning made a big difference. i dropped mr smear off at school, then headed to a post point to collect some ali express gear for gd. i arrived half an hour before opening time, so i hunted around for a coffee shop and settled down with a vegan coffee slushie.

life was good - for all of three seconds, before my phone rang with a video call from a coworker and an unfamiliar name in desperate need of assistance because one of our systems died.

the unpleasantness continued all the way to the office, with only a few minutes' pause as i picked up the package, and for the most part i didn't feel like much of a contributor (although i quietly celebrated a moment when something i'd suggested did help).

i went straight from that to troubleshooting my own installation, which needed to be done before with could continue with any others, with a bunch of different people breathing down my neck...

ultimately, i figured out what we needed to do, delegated some annoying manual labor to the project lead, and between the two of us we managed to get (almost) everything ready by the end of the day.

which is the point at which we were informed that there would be a delay in delivery, but thank you for the effort 🙄

no matter, it's been one heck of a learning experience for the organization, so i'm good with it. i came home relatively early, we all had a very pleasant evening (and watched the first episode of the original naruto series), i've had some time to myself (including playing slay the spire), and although it's late i'm going to at least spend a little time thinking about some of tomorrow's work before hitting the massager and going to bed.

...

the bitcoin money finally landed in our bank account today, and it was enough to cover the last outstanding debt we owed to my mom. this is a very special moment for us ^_^

more strike

 the strike continues, on through tomorrow. this morning i took mr smear with me to pick up a parcel, and then took him to work, picking up a mother's day gift for gd along the way.

getting him to do his homework was tough, but aside from that having him in the office was fine and he enjoyed coming with me to build a salad for lunch.

it was another annoying work day, though. slightly less annoying, but annoying nonetheless. but: while i didn't get through what i needed to get through at the office, i did make progress and managed to get things working after getting mr smear into bed. and i got to show off something cool to gd, which was fun.

mourning / scrambling to finish the work / dealing with a strike / not sleeping well / overcompensating by snacking and consuming too much caffeine -> wired, tired, not happy

and my wrist's a little sore from too much minesweeper.

i don't know if i'm ready to rest, but i think i'm ready for the massage kit.

strike^3

 omg.

another strike day, and tomorrow's another one. godsdammit.

the day began alright, then involved a fight over misunderstandings, then (once resolved, at least) i headed to the shiva house. i expected to be the only coworker there, but a few others arrived just before me. i talked to a woman i once served with (who turned out to be my late lead's sister-in-law), spoke briefly with the widow, and spent an interesting while with the parents.

then we bussed back to tel aviv, where i met up with gd and mr smear, took him to mexicana, and we walked to the office and ate there.

by the time i was finished eating i was done. my brain was fried - the sensation i suspect of being a kind of mild narcolepsy - and my coworkers needed me functional.

i wasn't functional.

for a while, at least.

anyway, most of the afternoon was me feeling harassed and not getting any of my work done, while simulatenously feeling guilty about feeling harassed. and at the same time dealing with mr smear who couldn't do his homework on the old computer.

it wasn't a particularly successful day. we came home and enjoyed a great dinner, and then i began falling apart. but i had stuff to do, so after putting mr smear to bed and doing some massage-kit time, i did a little of the work (symbolically little) and then got caught up in bullshit. and now it's late.

so i think i'm going to go to bed soon.

the mandate

 i'm absolutely exhausted, but finishing my "good night" tea and dropping these notes before hitting either the couch or my bed.

yesterday:

a mix of learning, getting distracted and improving my changes from wednesday, and distracting myself with random shit.

in the early afternoon we all took a walk, a very pleasant one, and ended up at the ice-cream parlor with the salted oreos flavor. mr smear was *extremely* excited by how clean their toilets were and couldn't stop repeating, in wonder, how much they care about their customers.

after we returned home, i caffeined up and got a ride to the shiva house. a whole lot of us were there, the family was stunned to hear stories about a side (or sides) of my lead that they never saw, and our hearts broke for his wife, their kids, and his poor parents.

that was hard.

i missed my ride on the way out but got a lift from one of our founders who i've been chasing for a one-on-one for weeks, so we talked all the way back to tel aviv. i was in a hurry to meet with the rest of the team on the beach for beers in my lead's honor, stopped to use goodness' toilets and paid for a shake, and then had to hang around forever while they made it.

and it was getting cold.

i hopped in a taxi and met up with them, borrowed a sweater and we all commiserated over beers and pizza. i got a ride home just in time to say goodnight to mr smear, get myself ready for bed, and crash.

today:

in the middle of night i became restless, both physically and psychologically uncomfortable, and after an hour or two i moved to the couch where i stayed until morning. (i think the massager helped a bit)

mr smear's school's on strike (and again tomorrow), but we forgot until we arrived there... we did a full page of harry potter in hebrew, and he did well, and then i went to work.

between conversing with coworkers, a picnic in my lead's honor, and bussing through to the funeral, the day was almost all about him. in between, we discovered some issues with a deployment and i just (a few minutes ago) redeployed, found some more issues, and put it aside until tomorrow.

the day was hard, the funeral being the hardest part. i've only known the man for two and a half months, but son of a bitch, i don't think i've laughed that much or cried so hard at a funeral before. i still can't believe he's in the ground.

and i'm keenly feeling the weight of the additional mandate to succeed for his memory's sake, and for the sake of his family.

hyperviper is down

 "the faster the harder the louder the darker the better"

this time it *is* too dark, hyperviper, RIP. your stories will live on as legends (and, often, warnings to our children) and while i believe they're going to let you in upstairs, there're going to be some angels hiding behind the furniture when they do.

...

i haven't heard from hyperviper in a few months, the last real conversation i had with him was after a close friend of his passed away young. i'm still stunned by his passing this morning.

...

i don't understand how it's been an entire week with no posting, when it's been a really crazy week. oh, wait - i do have a suspicion about why i haven't posted. this week's story started on sunday morning. i dropped mr smear off at school, and then accompanied gd to the ER. well, to a weird barrier about 50 feet from the ER entrance. the hospital's waiting list for doing an allergy "challenge" is half a year and they won't do one for cannabis, so we followed our doc's unofficial instructions and administered it ourselves.

gd took a puff. i opened my laptop, trying to be productive. a couple of minutes passed, gd wasn't feeling anything and wanted to take another puff. i suggested she wait a few more minutes.

now, i don't know how long she actually waited, but she took another puff and then suddenly realized that she needed to sit down on a bench. we made it about five steps before she fell over (fortunately i managed to catch her). we tried again, didn't get very far. then a kind english-speaking religious man darted over to help us, and helped me get her onto the bench.

i tried to get her to lie down. at this point her eyes rolled in the back of her head, and her entire body was locked like when someone gets knocked out brutally in a fight. the kind man kept repeating that we needed an ambulance. then he suggested using a taxi. there was a taxi just pulling out of the bus stop we were at, and i flagged him down. we managed to get gd into the cab and the cab driver drove us through the barrier and dropped us off at the ER.

i've never had to find a wheelchair and wheel my wife around before, i had to work to prevent her from falling out of it.

triage. i knew i had to tell them the truth from the get-go. it was awkward, though.

blood tests. it's hard taking blood from someone who can't control their own body.

an ER ward bed.

gd was shaking, she could barely control her limbs. we (mostly i) told and retold the details to the various doctors and nurses in turns. they did an electrocardiogram.

gd started having a panic attack. while they went looking for an ativan, she managed to breathe herself out of it.

slowly, she began to feel better. slowly, we began to realize that it was entirely possible that we had rushed her to the ER because she was just really... REALLY stoned.

there was no anaphylaxis. there was no stroke or paralysis. gd was just fine, and much more sensitive to medical-grade cannabis than we could have expected.

...

it took forever to get out of there. we cabbed back home and i spent most of the day working where i could keep an eye on gd, checking every now and again that she was still breathing.

so... it's school holidays. most of this week, gd's been at home. i worked from home the first couple of days, from the office the rest. gd's been taking the occasional puff with the windows open, which is fine, but that last-one-before-bed puff after mr smear's been put to bed and it's too cold to leave the windows open? most nights this week i've gone to bed early feeling a bit stoned.

and i've been sleeping much better than i have in ages.

...

on sunday night, netanyahu fired gallant and our entire country erupted. on monday, he pulled back and postponed the judicial reform until after the passover holidays. so the story's not over, but everything feels calmer now and it's a huge relief. one sad thing in particular on monday morning sparked optimism, and that was the crestfallen face of one of my coworkers who's been a staunch bibi supporter until the firing. if he can see the cracks in bibi's facade, there's hope for our country yet.

to all the protestors: i'm very grateful to be proven wrong. even if it's only temporary, it's a real relief that the judicial reform has been put on hold for pesach.

it's just as big a relief that netanyahu has played his cards so brazenly that even his supporters are beginning to see through the cracks that he's willing to burn everything and everyone in pursuit of power and his will to stay out of prison.

bibi's not interested in the well-being of our nation or our country. he never has been.

i find it intriguing that he's been forced to capitulate to ben gvir, who's very quickly demonstrated both how power-hungry he is and how politically naive he is.

i just want to take this opportunity to say that this is precisely what's wrong with coalition governments. a coalition government is a group of political parties that, individually, did not get enough votes to rule, but that are now in a position to rule us anyway and can get away with pretty much whatever they want.

that's not very democratic. and it doesn't matter if it's a right-wing coalition or a left-wing one.

...

on sunday night we had the final round of my script. it was complicated, but ultimately successful.

on monday evening i had the weekly meeting with my boss. it began with an unpleasant surprise - he had accidentally tagged our CTO when asking if i was ready for the meeting, and i was suddenly sure that i was about to be let go... i had mentioned that i wanted to take a long weekend in lieu of the two fridays that i'd had to give up, and things got awkward. maybe it was just me. i hope it was just me. either way, there's no compensation for time during a crisis in a startup, and i guess i wasn't really expecting there to be. and he made a good point that nobody's watching the clock anyway. and that i'm just about to mark a full year with the company, at which point my options will vest, and then it'll be "my" company too. i explained (truthfully) that i wanted the company to succeed regardless. i remembered how grateful i am to have a job that i (mostly) enjoy, with people that i like. it was good motivation.

the rest of the week was a bit weird. i guess it's not even over yet. we've had a couple of surprising new issues with our ci/cd pipelines (which i'm responsible for), and we've been having trouble with costs. every time i fix one broken thing i discovered another, and it's been a long week trying to catch each falling domino before it hits another one...

...

mr smear has been generally cool and calm this week. we had an interesting breakthrough yesterday, as i waited with him outside the school for the gates to open. he opened up to me about a dynamic between him and a couple of the kids in his class that's really toxic, and he appears to have actually taken my advice. a part of the advice was "letting us in" and telling me and gd about what happens at school so that we can help him when he's struggling, and when i got home from the office in the evening he did just that. it looks like my advice helped him get out of a situation with the slow kid who harasses him a lot, and i'm hoping that this week's lesson will stick!

...

last night i watched bert kreischer: razzle dazzle, and it was hilarious. i convinced gd to watch it this morning, and she enjoyed it too. last night we watched most of hey big boy, and it's great in spite of my being familiar with some of the material.

i ditched work early this afternoon to grab a coffee with spot and his wife and "smaller" child. the kid's two and a half and bigger than an average four year old! it was a fun coffee, and getting a ride home was an amusing little adventure.

we're slowly making our way through season 5 of adventure time. mr smear is loving the bfg. we gave up on danny the champion of the world because as brilliant as i remember the book being, both mr smear and myself are uncomfortable with the heroics involving killing animals even if that's not really the point of the story... this week mr smear showed me a little booklet that he made, more of a pamphlet trying to convince others to not eat animals. it's evident that he's trying to be encouraging rather than forceful, which is heartwarming.