it's not supposed to be work

 last night was great! dinner was delicious (and quick), although once again the challah-peño was too hot for poor mr smear... mr smear and i sampled the individual mochi (the vanilla one was good, but neither was worth the expense compared to regular ice cream), gd packed up the gift mochi and i headed out to hail a taxi. over the past couple of years tahoma's husband has been using their bomb shelter time to develop a whole lot of cocktails, and over the course of the evening i had two of them, and the two of them were sufficient to do a real number on me.

otherwise, it was a lovely couple of hours spent with them and nystire and a guy i haven't seen since a pride march around 2008 / 2009 :)

aside from a half an hour or so of lower back pain waking me up in the middle, i slept pretty soundly.

i woke up pretty early, considering, and i spent most of the morning and early afternoon feeling pretty tired. i read a bit of my favorite thing is monsters, which is phenomenal, and cleaned the balcony, and eventually managed to get myself motivated enough to spend a few hours investigating alternative AI harness and model options, while simultaneously testing them on my auto-doc project and the tarot game.

i'm still going, though i've had some success it overall feels tragically like real work, stressful, frustrating and not at all fun. heavy limitations on AI usage take something that's painful enough as it is - working with an idiot that needs a lot of babysitting to not fuck up your shit - and making it essentially impossible. in addition to that, i'm no longer in the least bit interested in doing the coding work manually like a peasant, and none of the tools (specifically codex and opencode, i've given up on pi for now) have any of the plugins, workflows or options that i need to operate effectively.

everything is broken.

i took a break to play uno with gd, which was great fun for us but left a bitter taste after mr smear had not only refused, but ended up being rude enough to lose rather a lot of screen time :/

after that, we went out on our rollerblades. he complained for a while about his ankle hurting, but i think i sorted it out by tightening the straps... also, by incentivizing him with a drink, because we went back up and through the park on the way home and he was doing fine.

along the way we encountered the horrible homeless woman, who's very aggressive and started walking towards us while calling us names. i discussed how we were handling it with mr smear, avoiding her and trying not to provoke her, but in retrospect i think i should have called the police - i think it was a week ago that she was doing the same to gd, and i'm quite over the stress of whether or not i'm going to have to get physical with this unpredictable maniac in order to protect my family.

mr smear and i both had cold* showers, and i got stuck in to an hour of troubleshooting a ridiculous unity license issue (the AI broke it trying to run tests in sandbox mode, and it took a lot of experimentation and grilling gemini to give me a useful answer), then i stopped for dinner.

* cold-ish, in this weather the coldest water is more cool than cold

dinner was great, after which we had another discussion about gaming, and why we need to compromise, and gd - in a show of great magnanimity - chose to play fluxx in spite of the fact that she doesn't like it.

well.

mr smear, oblivious to gd's rising anger, enjoyed himself in spite of his protests, and did really well. gd, on the other hand... i've told her it's up to her to find a game that she wants to play.

after wishing mr smear a good night, i jumped back into to the game dev, with a little auto-doc on the side, and i've managed to catch the menu system vibe i wanted, which is pretty exciting.

and i've only used ten percent of my weekly limit...

i think i'm about ready for bed, now. tomorrow's gonna be an interesting week 🤷‍♂️

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.

productive lazy afternoons

 i didn't lie down, i did have a beer, and i managed to finish the PoC for my AI harness in time to play some more slay the spire 2 before kiddush. and i just had another beer now, that's two down and too many to go :P

we watched some random videos over dinner, one of which led to us watching a bob ross episode in awe.

we ended up going to bed very late, with me getting into bed just after saying good night to mr smear.

then i woke up in the middle of the night for an hour and a half...

this morning started off alright, but turned sour after mr smear not only broke the screen time rules, but hid in his room to continue breaking them after he'd been given a warning. so he lost his privileges for the day, which led to drama... gd didn't agree with me entirely, but at least she understood (and explained to him) why it was important and i wasn't undermined.

then nystire messaged to say he and his family were going to the port, and i managed to herd mr smear out and onto his bike, and we arrived at the port in good time and with only mild complaints. until we crossed a bridge, at which point the complaints became a total meltdown. once he'd calmed down (a bit), i agreed that we can give rollerblades a try, but that he has to have wheels.

and if that doesn't work out, then maybe his bike just isn't a great bike and we need to invest in a good one.

the afternoon with nystire was very pleasant, we sat on the edge of the beach while his kids played in the sand and mine read under some shade, but unfortunately i never did get around to putting on sunscreen and i ended up getting pretty burned :/

after we split up, i took mr smear for a laffa, which we both enjoyed immensely, and then he - true to his word - walked his bike the entire gorram way home. walking on rollerblades gets painful, and i think he knows that, and i was done by the time we finally made it home.

so i showered quickly, cracked open that beer, and now that he's showered i'm waiting for him to be ready to help me wash the floors...

it's okay

i went straight to bed after posting last night. we only had two interruptions with attacks, but that meant about half the night with mr smear sleeping in our bed, which isn't terrible, but it's considerably less comfortable than him not.

another warning about an impending attack this morning, when i needed the toilet. so i held it in, and then suddenly it was a half hour later and no sirens...

i finally got up a short while ago, from a dream in which i returned to uniform with nystire: on our way into the base, nystire got bumped by a car driving out. it clearly hurt him, but when i wanted to stop the car and get him checked out he angrily yelled "i'm FINE!". then there was a large group of soldiers who'd just been sent off to a row of buses, and a whole lot of them had left behind bags and satellite phones. and then, finally, i was being briefed by a guy who - i only realized while he was literally climbing around on his desk - had no legs, and there i was, having been complaining about my boots not fitting (not to him, fortunately). after amusing him with a physiotherapy story, he told me about an experimental procedure he'd been denied because his operational capability wasn't impaired enough "by one point on the evaluation", and i woke up from the two of us laughing hysterically while he danced around his seat showing me how ridiculous that was.

now i'm back in reality, gd's sleeping, mr smear's reading (and trying not-very-subtly* to get to play oxygen not included like he did yesterday, in spite of his screen time punishment because of the extenuating war circumstances), and i'm having coffee and wondering how to approach my work day today.

* why is that always such a difficult word to spell?!

"professional" is being professional when you really don't feel like it and nobody's watching.

dog day halloween

 i'm still feeling tired, weak and fatigued. at least tahoma's halloween party last night gave me a proper excuse :P

...

yesterday morning started at the park with the school's "dog day". there were dogs, and it was a day. the sun was beating down (it was surprisingly bright and hot), and mr smear and i arrived a few minutes early, just in time for me to be awkward with a couple of other dads before everyone began setting up the picnic.

highlights:

mr smear's teacher sitting down next to us and reporting that mr smear has really turned things around over the course of the past couple of days. please god it holds.

the angry mother from the previous week refused to make eye contact. gd and i have been laughing about the fact that both of us were responsible for bringing a specific vegan cheese spread, so we  childishly brought two in order to "show her up" 🤣

i asked mr smear not to tell anyone that we were going to a private birthday party afterwards. he made sure to tell everyone. loudly.

everything on the table was vegan because of the allergy requirements, which was a first for us at a school event. cake for breakfast.

...

from there, the relevant parents and kids snuck out and the birthday boy's mom gave us ride to the country club. it was a perfect day for it, beautiful weather, hardly anybody else around. the downside was spending a fair amount of time fending off crows, egyptian geese and myna birds, but most of the afternoon was spent watching the kids have a great time together both in the water and out, having long and interesting conversations with the other parents (there were only three of us), and quietly recovering from the madness of the previous weeks (and months).

we were not expecting the gift giving, because our previous school and social circle culture is so different. the gifts were custom, and really impressive, and we're going to need to do something about that this week.

oh! and his eye seems to be clear, so i don't think the pool - certainly not this one - is directly contributing to his outbreaks.

...

we got a ride home, and showered, and immediately jumped in to some of the math homework mr smear hadn't done during the week. it wasn't all smooth, but it never got dramatic, and even for me it wasn't trivial (it's working with square roots and ranges of answers, neither of which he's used to). by the time we were done, we'd both had good exercise and i was quite proud of him.

we made an particularly potent challah-peño, my face caught a bit of it (fortunately not my eyes!) and my fingers burned for hours in spite of washing them thoroughly and even doing a whole sink of dishes.

but it came out delicious.

dinner on call with my mom was nice. afterwards, we did have a repeat of the usual fight about mr smear going out with me on saturdays, but at least it ended softly. then i left for the halloween party.

...

nystire and nyah nyah and partners, as well as the linguist we served with, were there, the place was packed with interesting-looking people and the decorations were really something. it was a really fun evening, there was lots of alcohol, and the conversations migrated from work to parenting to language as the night wore on.

by the time i left i was practically falling over from exhaustion - at least i'd made an effort to drink a fair amount of non-alcoholic liquids along the way - and i hailed a taxi home and climbed into bed. i got a particularly warm and fuzzy feeling from ending a night of good company and entertainment with a heart-to-heart with a taxi driver about the state of the nation that left him profusely thanking me for the conversation (which i'd very much enjoyed too).

it didn't take long for me to climb into bed (having thankfully received authorization from my wife that i didn't need to shower again first) and i mostly slept well, and late. it's been a slow and pleasant morning, we've talked and i've read (i'm halfway through blindsight) and now i've posted this, and gd and i are on our way to the shop quickly to pick up flour in honor of friends coming over for lunch.

back to the office

 back to the office, still messy but i tested myself to make sure i was clear. busy workdays, not too much stress though - i'm being cautious not to let anything drag me back to pre-illness stress levels, that was definitely burnout.

i've at least been sleeping alright, but i'm still feeling tired.

on tuesday i left work, spent two hours hanging around the train station platform because fires interrupted the schedules, and then nystire picked me up and we took a friend out for burgers in a really classy* nes tziona pub. i ate too much.

* </sarcasm>

we're currently finishing up mr smear's new year's cards for his class (i'm still riding high on the success of finding envelopes that can handle A5) and then heading out.

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 ^_^

service with a _____

overall, i think it was a pretty good day. i didn't sleep enough but the sleep i got was good, and the morning started off well, albeit uneasily. i dropped mr smear off at school with a good feeling. i flipped our mattresses, and took care of some paperwork and other minor things... and then tried to book a technician for the washing machine.

...

i tried their whatsapp account first, but at some point - after gathering all the data i needed to get through the menu system - it seemed to freeze.

so i called. i was number ten in the queue. after about ten to fifteen minutes of muzak, with a tone every few seconds to make you think someone's about to answer you, there was a pause, a real tone, and then the sound of a call being hung up.

furious, i called again. this time number twenty in the queue. the number's seemed to be going down pretty quickly - one or two each minute - so it was only another ten to fifteen minutes of that muzak with the tone... when a woman's voice finally answered, i yelled just to make sure she had no excuse but to talk to me.

after all that, all she would say was "give me your number so we can call you back". i fought down the urge to yell at her to be ashamed and gave her my number.

later, i'd see a response to the whatsapp messages and learn that i needed to go through the process with a different service 🤦

...

on my way to work i noticed that the unicode code for the tiny heart fingers emoji (🫰) is FAF0. i'm not going to forget that in a hurry. i message an ex-coworker who loves that sign to share the weird discovery :P

it was my old boss' first day as my new boss, kind of. our roles and reporting aren't clear (intentionally), so i guess he's more like one of my bosses.

aside from trolling my team with an april fool's daily report, a very positive check-in with my boss (my direct boss), and a pleasant walk to grab lunch with one of our other bosses (oy) along with an interesting lunch time conversation about parenting and screens, i spent most of my work day getting an installation done over an unreliable network and when i eventually left the office, it was after much celebrating because i finally got the damned thing to work (i was actually starting to suspect a hardware failure).

pre-dinner was quiet, mr smear had apparently had a good day. and nystire and i spoke for a bit and might end up doing something interesting together.

dinner was nice, although we did get into The Discussion again about him accepting his reality - who he is, where he is, and what he has to do - which may or may not have had an impact, but i'm pretty happy with the metaphor i came up with: a heavy car is rolling inexorably down a narrow hill dragging an impassable wall behind it. you can try to stop it, but at some point you will get run over. you can try to go back up the hill, but you will be dragged painfully in the direction of gravity. or you can try to run alongside the car and try to direct it by pushing it to the left or the right.

(or maybe jumping in and steering is a better analogy. needs work)

...

then we had to do the homework page from yesterday that hadn't been completed, and what started off alright rapidly turned to shit. fortunately, we got out of the shit, but not without some serious feelings (and threats).

it took a few passes over the question, but then there was a magical moment where mr smear *clicked*, and he understood what he needed to do, and he enthusiastically Did The Thing. and he did it well.

i told him to hold on to that feeling, and understand what caused it. i pray he does.

even though it was a little after his bedtime, something inspired me to read a little the colour of magic to him before saying good night.

gd and i watched most of the rest of john wick, and i've spent most of the remaining evening updating my macbook, watching random youtube videos and playing inscryption.

holy shit, i didn't realize it was approaching 1am already and we have a meeting with the school in the morning.

the night owls

 as i begin writing this post, it's 2.20am and everyone's awake. me, because i woke up an hour or two ago with indigestion (we had pizza for dinner, and every day since wednesday has been a celebratory cheat-day), mr smear because he woke up thirsty and coughing, and gd because i went to pee and him calling for me woke her up...

anyway. it's been a crazy couple of days, now seems as good an hour as any to get it down.

wednesday:

i walked home, furiously messages everyone who needed to be updated with my news. on my way, i picked up some rum. well, i picked up a bacardi mojito, to be precise, and the cashier expressed her disgust which reminded me that gd had asked for whiskey. but the whiskeys there were way overpriced, so i ended up taking the bacardi while she muttered "disgusting" under her breath 😂

gd had ordered from our favorite vegan burger joint, and i ate my entire meal which was twice as much as i should have :P

as part of my celebration, i also picked up a copy of final fantasy vi (pixel remaster) and car mechanic simulator 2021, but unfortunately the latter proved unplayable after mr smear and i enthusiastically gave it a go this evening after talking about it for almost two days :/

thursday:

i dropped mr smear off at school and then continued on to our clinic, where i finally received the authorization that gd's been waiting on. i walked through to the hospital compound to deliver it, then returned home.

by the time i entered the office i realized that i hadn't received any sign of my contract, so i signed in to the signing app and found it waiting for me - it had been sent immediately after i'd approved it the evening before, and gmail had filed its notification as spam :/

i immediately skimmed through it to ensure everything was as expected, signed it, and it was done.

HOORAY!!

nystire called and we had a quick chat, which began with us trying to remember the name of the ultra-orthodox guy we'd served with that i bumped into on my way to the office, and resulted in him suggesting something that bolstered my confidence that i was making the right decision.

for a while i had a live-stream open of the hostage release, though eventually i realized that it wasn't constructive and i just waited on occasional live updates instead.

everything about how hamas is behaving with the hostage release just seems completely unhinged. who is their footage aimed at, and what kind of bizarre narrative are they trying to convince people of? what the hell do the goodie bags and framed certificates even mean?!

and how does it help them to show such cruelty to an old man while releasing him?? make it make sense

two of my coworkers came in, and one of them is interviewing for the same company. i enjoy working with him, but he's a particularly quirky developer so i'm intrigued.

[half an hour later and mr smear's really struggling, gd's taking care of him but it's unsettling]

...

i received a dramatic message from mr smear's homeroom teacher informing me that the kid mr smear hit with a rock, and whose artwork he's torn up on a couple of occasions, was very upset because mr smear had insulted his mother by calling her fat and saying she was unable to move. made worse by the fact that those statements are true 🤦

he claims that he and this kid were playing a game that involved generating drama, and that he immediately recognized and regretted his going to far. considering the fact that his teacher told me she had to give him a talk and ask him to apologize, i have my suspicions.

to add insult to... insult, he took a pack of oreos to school today to give to the poor kid as an additional apology, and then ate them himself :/

...

while i'd already signed the new contract, i put a lot of effort into making sure that i rejected my other offer in as constructive (or, non-destructive) a way as possible. while it was true that i'd made up my mind before i got the one i signed, it was surprisingly easy to honestly express the aspects that i'd had to weigh (especially as it wasn't an apples-to-apples comparison) and how much i valued their offer and would enjoy working with them. 

it was a relief to get back warm, sympathetic responses from the three people i emailed my letter to and it feels like they're keeping the door open too, which is comforting.

...

i'd intended to get my chair and monitor home before taking mr smear to the second part of his evaluation, but it proved too tricky, so i walked home, fired off the aforementioned email i'd been preparing, and the bussed him to the evaluation. i enjoyed a decaf coffee while waiting for him, resuming learning about the dangers of localStorage and coming up with a potential mechanism for using it securely. 

while there, gd went to the dentist and finally got her first crown sorted out! it's a huge relief.

i picked mr smear up, we grabbed hummus at a hummusia close by, i showed him the building i'm about to start working in and we took the light rail home.

i didn't need to eat so much of the pita, but it was delicious.

...

it having been unseasonably warm the whole day, i left the apartment after dinner without a sweater and barely regretted it. i took the train to the office (i'd been misled by a bus stop display to believe that there was a protest causing traffic), picked up my chair and wheeled it out, then called a taxi. fortunately, the taxi driver not only had no issue with transporting a chair, but was able to jimmy it into the front seat in a way that i definitely wasn't capable of.

i'd originally intended to use an hourly rental, and i think i would have deeply regretted it.

yesterday/today (friday):

i got mr smear to school, and from there caught a bus to the office to pick up my monitor and drop off my key and keycard.

i was amused by my reflection in the elevator mirror when i realized i was taking office equipment out the building wearing a hoodie that says "pirate king" on the front 😅

i took the train home, and set up my workstation, which i'm happily using now and it makes an ENORMOUS difference to the experience of using my shitty windows machine!

i kinda regret not setting something like this up before.

i picked mr smear up from school, came home, helped a woman pick up a whole bunch of mr smear's unwanted books and toys, then walked with mr smear to one of ze germans' son's street exhibit on ben gurion, which was simply astonishing. what's just as astonishing to my mind is that most of his artwork was sold by the end of the afternoon!

amazing kid. even mr smear found his work riveting, and at some point told him "i'm good, but you're waaay better than me" 😅

...

we were supposed to meet up with the mongoose but hadn't heard from him, so we walked around until we discovered market vegan and stopped for lunch. i had a thai curry soup that came with glass noodles, mr smear wasn't a fan of the soup but enjoyed the noodles, then decided to try adding soup to the noodles, and at that point decided he could enjoy it properly :)

we also picked up one of their desserts, which was delicious, but mr smear looked like a chocolate version of heath ledger's joker so we stopped in at a bar/restaurant to clean up. on our way out, we stepped on broken glass that had simply been abandoned while whoever dropped it went to get something to sweep it with, and we were about twenty meters away when i realized that mr smear's shoes had a massive glass spike in it that almost went through to his foot :/

...

we met up with the mongoose and co. (wife/daughter/some friends), his daughter's really starting to speak! and i just realized that i never put her birthday in my calendar and we just missed her 2nd birthday 🤦

it was nice seeing them, but mr smear really got in my face and wouldn't let me talk, which not only infuriated me but also lost him a chunk of privilege time - it took three increments of 15 minutes to finally get him to stop. on the walk home i explained to him how bad that was.

we were almost home before he realized that his punishment was going to be carried out immediately, and we sat on a bench and had a massive fight about how punishments work, and how the punishment itself is his fault and not mine, and how what he was doing to me was assault and if he wasn't my kid he could get into real trouble for it.

eventually, with only an additional 15 minutes added on top for rudeness (he did try hitting me a couple of times, but i responded in kind so that stopped quickly), we returned home in surprisingly calm spirits.

...

we tried out the new vegan sachlav that's being advertised everywhere, and it is good! it's one of those things that i've missed every winter since i went vegan (so... almost 15 years now) and i really enjoyed it :)

after doing some dishes while mr smear served his sentence (some sentence, he just chilled and read for an hour), we headed to the synagogue. along the way i talked to him about prayer, that there are different forms of it, and that there's power in communal prayer (whether in synagogue or on a dance floor) and power in being connected to our ancestors and our history.

the chazan was in a bit of a droning mood, so it wasn't as vibrant a service as usual, and there was a weird choir thing as the end, but otherwise it was a pleasant experience and i'm glad that mr smear's going with the flow.

...

between getting home and saying kiddush, we had time to try out the mechanic simulators, and sadly our windows machine just isn't up to spec :(

at least i could get a refund.

[gd just went to bed, and mr smear's now up and reading todd strasser's the wave on the couch behind me]

we enjoyed the pizza dinner and the simpsons, and then mr smear got an extra half hour to play an FPS during which time i taught him how to strafe and not stand still when engaged in a fire fight. i then jumped in the shower, where i heard him yelling excitedly from the living room after he won his first game ^_^

after getting him into bed, i played a bit of final fantasy vi and then went to bed myself. it's 4.15am and i'm not feeling particularly tired myself...

the game

yesterday (thursday night's a blur):

i got up early and started configuring my company computer to be able to work on the job application (my ssh and git configurations were very specifically set up for work, and not compatible with personal stuff). that took a lot of effort.

once that was taken care of, i started following the instructions for getting set up with the exercise. of course i encountered hiccups along the way that took lots of time to resolve and had nothing to do with the exercise itself... and then i finally got everything looking like it was up and running, but it wasn't.

at that point i tried setting things up on my windows machine, but that was a complete wash. i think i'm going to try again in a docker container and see if that makes more sense.

i took a break to pick mr smear up from school with gd, then took a walk to the supermarket to pick up some healthy snacks for the weekend. then i did the dishes, and had a long chat with horseman that was mostly about ideology and narrative but concluded with a discussion about a game idea i've been brewing. by that point, i was pretty much all in on the weekend.

i took mr smear to the synagogue for the friday night service, which was a corrective experience for him - we both enjoyed the service itself, and none of the babies were screaming. the walks there and back were good, too.

the evening was pretty good in general, and after everyone else went to bed i settled in to try out the tribe must survive that nystire gifted me (thank you!!) - i played until my eyes refused to stay open, it feels very much like don't starve together, but i felt a lot less stressed playing it. i mean, it was a while ago that we tried the latter, so i now feel compelled to replay it so that i can make a fair comparison.

either way, the concept, artwork and atmosphere are great!

today:

i got up early (again) and put together a document for the game idea i spoke to horseman about that's been on the boil since thursday morning. it's a combination of a bunch of different ideas that have been simmering over the past couple of years, and i'm really excited to flesh it out!

mostly good

it's midnight [as i start writing this]. i've just gotten home, brushed my teeth and showered, and i'm enjoying a cup of chamomile in the hopes that it (along with the antihystamine i just took) will counter the effects of the turkish coffee i had a couple of hours ago.

nystire just dropped me off at home after we paid a visit to an army friend (the one who emigrated to montreal) who's just been here because his father passed away. i'm really glad we got to spend a little time with him before he leaves this coming morning.

...

saturday:

it was a lazy day, spent doing lazy things. in the early afternoon gd and i left mr smear at home and had coffee with our friends, which was nice, and once again we returned to catch mr smear watching a youtube channel he's not supposed to. i'm grateful, though, that while we all deem it inappropriate, it's far less worrying stuff than it could be :/

in the afternoon i coerced mr smear into trying corn schnitzel on challah with the "sauce" from friday's cholent, and after he finally acquiesed he realized that it really is amazing :P

i finished the first volume of one piece, which is truly excellent.

i signed up to try out the latest iteration of chatgpt, 4o, and as a professional developer i was shockingly disappointed. i'm still stunned at how ridiculously overhyped it's capabilities are, and i'm relieved that they gave me a refund without too much hassle. $20 for something that i probably won't use is just too much.

yestertoday:

gd's tooth's been hurting her, so this morning was mainly about figuring out where she should go next. she's agreed to give a different medical-aid clinic a try before going to a private dentist. gods help us.

i was a little concerned about how things would go with my boss this morning, but i needn't have been. he was happy with my decision and there was no stress on that count, and i was very pleased to be able to show him good results by the end of the day. i'm very happy with the results, myself.

via GIPHY

those results would have been in much earlier had i not been sidetracked by an annoying dependency issue again, the third in as many weeks, that took most of my work hours to sort out.

but if i'm being honest, i'm really happy with a bunch of changes i managed to sneak in along with the fix, so that's okay :P

i rushed out the office a bit later than planned, but managed to get home in time for us all to go together to the parent-teacher meeting. i'm relieved and excited to report that mr smear has, in spite of himself, been doing extremely well. he's very lucky to have such a caring teacher, and i really hope he makes the most of the last month or two of the school year. the fact that his hebrew reading isn't the worst in his class of native speakers is good news, and his maths is clearer sufficient. i feel like gd and i (along with his hebrew tutor) have managed to keep him mostly up to speed, and that's not nothing.

looming threats

 well, we've been on alert since yesterday, worrying about whether iran's going to attack us outright. tomorrow's the first day of the passover school holidays, and we were all excited about mr smear going to his first week-long mma camp but the first two days have now been pushed to next week and we're hoping that things will go back to "normal" by tuesday...

... gd's been freaking out about the potential escalation, it's been a really hard six months for her.

thanks, nystire, for sending me the fallout intros earlier. at least it has great memories attached :P

...

yesterday:

mr smear did indeed finish his homework before school! i dropped him off, came back home and tried to work. it was a very, very frustrating couple of hours i put in during the day, very unproductive, and i'll be complaining to my teammates tomorrow and try to figure out a way to make our testing make a little more sense.

otherwise, i did very little productive yesterday. i was exhausted. my chest was still full of green gunk.

aside from picking up mr smear from school and doing a very quick shopping, and then another one later, and a lot of dishes... we watched groundhog day, and a bit of testament: the story of moses, and mr smear and i played rubber bandits together which was a lot of fun.

i was particularly proud of mr smear joining in (to a degree) when i made kiddush ^_^

today:

concerned about potential rocket attacks, we spent most of the beautiful day indoors. i rested some more - unintentionally passing out while watching more testament, and the first episode of star trek: the next generation, but the biggest thing today was purchasing valheim for mr smear and encouraging/helping him whenever he got stuck. it's early access, and it's not easy to get into, but he's having an absolute blast and i'm so pleased to see him demonstrating grit and accepting the idea that each play isn't to win, but to learn how to win.

i managed to get him to come out for a walk in the afternoon - gd wasn't feeling safe, physically or emotionally, and we stopped for an excellent ice-cream and had really interesting conversations along the way.

i'm particularly proud of myself for leveraging the new-game enthusiasm to get him to shower before dinner :)

i'm still reading the prisoner of azkaban at bedtime, and we discussed why the book has so much more in it than the movie. i told him about american splendor, but then realized that using h.p. lovecraft's writing as an example would be even better. he's very familiar with c is for cthulu, after all, it's still one of our favourite books. i explained how just seeing cthulu would drive a person mad, and the impossible dimensionality of r'lyeh, and he went to bed very excited about his plans to draw funny cthulu images in the morning.

i'm so proud.

now that we know he'll be home for the next two days, i've set up the windows machine so he can play valheim without me (i'm very relieved that i was able to get into his steam account, it had steam guard configured on an old phone), and gd and i are about to take a look at the fallout series on amazon prime.

please don't suck.

pool day

 it was a regular saturday morning, we played games and i stop-started doing something in preparation for a project (i created a facebook group), and then nystire got in touch and invited us to join them at the beach.

we were planning on taking the bike out anyway, so why not combine the two?

the bike ride to the beach began with the discovery that the back tire has a puncture. i'm really glad we figured that out before we left the building. very soon, mr smear decided he didn't want to ride, and started walking his bike instead.

it took forever to get to a kiosk, where i bribed him to get back on the bike with an ice lollie. but he had to finish the ice lollie first. omg.

the rest of the way to the beach was pretty good - just a lot of little stops along the way - but by the time we arrived nystire and co had just left.

it was a beautiful day, so i suggested we go to the beach anyway, but he wasn't interested. he was, however, interested in getting chips. we went to mike's place, the first time i've been there since just before my 31st birthday.

the vegan burger was good, the bucket of chips was satisfactory and they were kind enough to provide a serving of vinegar, and we enjoyed the meal together. the best part of the visit, though, was him showing an interest in the pool table!

today i taught my son to play pool, and he enjoyed himself and started to get the hang of it by the end. he actually decided that he was happier getting to clear the table after losing than he would have been winning >D

i made a big mistake on the way home by putting my rollerblades back on, because he walked almost the entire distance. and then, in addition to the puncture, the chain came off when we got to dizengoff circle. twice. i treated myself to a coffee after getting most of the grease off my hands, and then we continued the excruciatingly long not-ride home.

i showered immediately, synced with my mom, and then we tried to watch the original mary poppins movie (i'd read an interesting analysis of it in the morning, and i was kinda enjoying it by the time my family decided to nix it and move on). we watched a breakdown of virtual insanity, and then we all laughed hysterically at james acaster not lying. and then we gave the amazing digital circus a try.

it's pretty good.

i was inspired to play portal, and made some good progress before beginning to wonder if i was going to get motion sickness in spite of wearing my glasses to play. which i did because i'm wondering if it helps, if perhaps a part of the motion sickness isn't to do with my eyes operating at completely different distances.

dinner, gd getting mr smear showered and toothbrushed, and now i'm going to say goodnight.

the break

 i dont think i had enough coffee today, because i suddenly crashed a little while ago and needed another cup. i'm used to two strong coffees at the office (after my initial morning coffee), and today i had a black tea and an instant coffee instead. so i'm now making up the deficit with another instant and hoping it tides me over until i get home tonight.

i say "i", because i had to cancel the babysitter and i'm going to nystire's alone... gd did me a favor and picked up a bottle of wine when she was out, but miscalculated how far the liquor store was and ended up hurthing herself in her rush to pick mr smear up (late).

  .-'---`-.
,'          `.
|             \
|              \
\           _  \
,\  _    ,'-,/-)\
( * \ \,' ,' ,'-)
 `._,)     -',-')
   \/         ''/
    )        / /
   /       ,'-'

workwise was weird. after a 45 minute meeting arguing over YAML vs JSON, i began building a test app in the language i thought i was supposed to be evaluating. then, an hour before i was supposed to sync with my boss, he asked how it compares to the other language... godsdammit. anyway, the rest of the afternoon has been startlingly unproductive and i'm feeling a bit shit.

i should have gone to pick up the mattress topper earlier.

...

last minute pre-publish edit: my coworker got back to me, and i'm now glad i didn't waste time on the other language because it wouldn't have made any sense.

it's raining tacos

 well, our sunday is monday, but still. i had a good workday yesterday, and the only issue with mr smear is him not doing is homework (and fighting about brushing his teeth in the morning, gods help us).

we got a surprise invitation to nystire's wife's birthday party tonight, and we miraculously managed to secure a babysitter. if we both manage to get there, i think it's going to be the most spontaneous thing we've done in about ten years :P

mr smear was singing it's raining tacos over the weekend, and it's got stuck in my head. i prefer it the way he sings it, though.

the weekend was mostly good, though i took mr smear out for a walk that was also mostly good, but had some rough parts. and then we were "urgently recalled" because he needed to take his meds on schedule and we were far from home with no public transport :/

yesterday was a good work day. i got a whole lot done that i'm happy with. i'm a bit anxious about potential on-call duties, though i'm sure it'll be better than my previous experiences.

i completed the video for signs in the dead of night yesterday, i'm very happy with it.

after a long chat with vfmp last night, i didn't get much sleep but it was at least good sleep. our mattress topper is ready, now i just need to pick it up.

...

this article on the origins of the bible is really intriguing.

the chop

tuesday:

another infuriating waste of time at the clinic on the way to work, improved somewhat by a breakfast bagel.

i got my hair cut on tuesday, gd was so upset she refused to let me leave yesterday morning without fixing it :P

but it was overall a pleasant experience.

yesterday:

i began my day with a mindblowing conversation: the end of the 90 day window for me purchasing my options from my previous employer is fast approaching. i messaged my previous boss - the one who was laid off during our second round - to see if he's purchased his yet. he purchased some of them, giving an interesting reason of FOMO, and i asked if he feels that their 2024 is off to a good start.

he proceeded to inform me that my boss (originally my team lead) and the company's star researcher both left right after me.

HOLY SHIT.

so the first takeaway is that i'm not going to purchase my options, and i'm going to feel confident that they're not going to do anything amazing. the second takeaway is that i left just in time. the third, that that's the second time in a row that i've left a team and it's immediately fallen apart. i know it's not causational, but it feels... weighty.

...

on the way to work, i managed to clear one of the two authorization hurdles at the clinic. then i had another breakfast bagel.

i had to skip lunch with the team because i was in an awful meeting with the school about mr smear, but apparently the lunch trip didn't go very well either. mr smear's struggling, in particular with hebrew language, which is taught by the decidedly incompetent teacher he despises.

it's really not fair. our alternatives are to either try to switch schools - that doesn't seem like a smart move right now - or get him up to speed in spite of them. and that means a tutor, which is more money we don't have, and less chance of getting gd into sewing classes which she's been begging for for ages.

aside from all that joy, mr smear and i had a good conversation which was followed by an absolute meltdown last night. in retrospect, i could easily have avoided it, but once it was on it was on. thank fuck this morning started off on a better note.

...

nystire sent me an update yesterday, after NINE LONG YEARS his wife / mother of his two israeli children finally got cleared for permanent residence! we're so pleased and relieved for them, it's nothing short of miraculous.

home safe

friday:

i picked up mr smear from school, and thought we go grab a bite. he wanted to ride his bike, but i was still recovering from thursday and told him i wasn't up for it - he decided he just wanted to go home. i wasn't going to force him to spend time with me, but that did sting a little.

i continued on to azrieli center, where i picked up an enormous potato from "teeras". i probably shouldn't have finished it, but i regret nothing.

i went back to the hostel for a couple of hours, then hopped on the "sababus" to go visit nystire. we had a nice catch-up, and i'm very impressed by how built up that little part of not-tel-aviv is. unfortunately, the weekend bus takes an hour each way and i was completely done by the time i got back to the hostel.

at which point i encountered my new neighbor - a very big, very disturbed man in the capsule next to me, who didn't give a shit that everyone around could hear him yelling into his phone after midnight. being fairly confident that i didn't want to get involved, and that he'd suspect me immediately if i asked the management to step in, i just did my best to ignore him and eventually fell asleep.

saturday:

i woke up early, and the first thing i noticed was that the bathroom had been turned upside down - or, at least, somebody had gotten angry with all the toilet paper. fortunately, there was another bathroom in which i could brush my teeth and fortunately i didn't need to use the toilets, but i high-tailed it outta there and walked home with my heavy backpack.

i'm still not clear on whether i've actually paid for the week, nothing's off my card yet but the hostel claims we're square.

weird.

anyway, i got home and woke gd up and we synced, it was a lot to sync about but we're in a good place. over the course of the day, we all went out for breakfast at our favorite (local) vegan coffee shop, and in the evening we ordered pizza that we all enjoyed (our usual source wasn't available, but pizza porto had two delicious vegan offerings and mr smear thoroughly enjoyed the broccoli and zucchini one).

yesterday:

a good start to the day, gd and i starting our "homework" together, then at 8.30 gd remembering that she had an allergy "challenge" at the hospital at 9am. then i got out the appointment slip and we realized it was actually at 8.30. we arrived at 9, and got sent off to get authorization, which needed special authorization so that took another half an hour or so. then we finally got to see an allergist, and she asked us where our challenge supplies were - we'd been expected to bring our own. so i rushed off to by fresh pecans, and then returned to find gd about to start chewing on some old ones they'd found in the fridge. then the lady administring the test made it clear that there was exactly 0% chance of gd getting to do a strawberry challenge as well, and that the pecan challenge would take until mid-afternoon.

so i went back home to work from there, so that i could easily pick mr smear up from school.

just prior to picking up mr smear, i discovered that i'd been working on the wrong thing all morning. i picked him up, but it took so long (between him dawdling and syncing with one of our friends along the way) that i was in a massive rush to prep for a meeting with my boss. then gd arrived, much earlier than expected, with a box of strawberries - the doctors are convinced there's no pecan or strawberry allergies! this is really, really big.

so we celebrated by eating the strawberries together, then i took off for work.

i worked late, but managed to make big progress. dinner was nice, but bathtime turned sour when mr smear and i had a misunderstanding and he went to bed in a bad mood.

gd and i finished watching freaks and geeks. we both loved the rewatch, it was awesome ^_^

...

this morning started off grumpy, but i managed a miraculous rescue with mr smear and i sent him off to school with good vibes. gd and i had some work to do to sort out our own feelings and miscommunications, but we eventually got through it. now that that's taken care of, along with some medical admin and posting this, it's time to resume homework, and go past the clinic on the way to work.

the weather's really nice today.

the birthday hum plus

 yesterday:

after sorting out a grocery shopping, and working more on an article i'm putting together, i bussed through to our apartment and gd came downstairs so that i could drop off my laundry and pick up shampoo. i hummed the birthday song tune loudly as i climbed the steps, it's definitely the weirdest way i've ever wished someone i love a happy birthday.

it was a funny sort of workday, i spent a good chunk of it completely puzzled and then slowly the puzzle pieces began falling into place. i had a very long chat with sailor at one point. i ended up leaving very late, though, because we were trying to put together a release and a bunch of things i'd touched went wrong for a variety of reasons. we were all a little smarter by the end of the evening, and i must admit that i learned quite a lot.

on the way back to the hostel, i synced with vfmp on his relationship, my relationship with gd, and everyone's relationship with his brother

then i had a sync with nystire while looking for food, which ended up being a mindful pea soup and cider in a cloud of cigarette smoke.

today:

i went to bed pretty late, but slept alright, having a weird dream in which i waited on a bench for hours before the sun set and then i woke up. then i hurt my neck a bit by playing more bloons adventure time than i should have. i did a grocery shopping for gd, but didn't have energy for much else so i put on the audiobook of stan tatkin - wired for love (sailor gifted me a copy after our conversation) and walked to work, picking up a suspicious coffee and later a suspicious banana muffin along the way.

so far, it's very, very interesting.

the work day would have been just fine, but after lunch my stomach started doing a thing at the same time as my brain just shut down. like, the coffee and the sugar i tried to treat myself with did nothing. i was basically vascillating between moving quickly to the bathrooms and passing out awkwardly at my desk, until eventually i just got up and left. i'd just started feeling safe enough to get on a bus, but not very safe, and i came back to the hostel to lie down for a while.

i suspect a part of my suspicious breakfast was to blame. but maybe it was lunch? who knows.

eventually, i felt well enough to go outside, and i had a long chat with my mother followed by an excellent pita za'atar before returning to my capsule, where i've been lying on my tummy and playing more bloons adventure time and feeling much better.

i had a really nice goodnight call with mr smear, it was very gratifying to see him light up when i told him i'd pick him up from school tomorrow ^_^

the hostel is crazy right now, packed with revellers and filled with loud music and accompanied by a surprising array of smells, and i almost feel awkward about going to take a shower with all these drunk people in and out of the bathrooms.

the pause

 yesterday:

we managed to go to the pharmacy and grocery store together with gd, which felt like an achievement. mr smear and i ate laffot for breakfast, and i bought him books five and six in diary of a wimpy kid series.

i played a fair amount of inscryption, but nothing that mr smear couldn't witness.

mr smear and i went for a walk in search of coffee mugs, and came home with coffee mugs and ice cream. we ate the ice cream watching hunter x hunter, and it was brilliant (vanilla halva flavor!).

i've eaten a lot of junk food this weekend. and this week. and it's showing...

i finally put together a request for our landlords to not increase our rent and ran it by firefighter, i'm going to send it tomorrow. it was initially a demand, rather than a request, i never can figure out which is appropriate...

today:

i made pages 31 and 32 publicly available today.

nystire and i went for a long-overdue beer and a walk.

i bought forbidden island on the ipad today, and mr smear and i played it. it's an amazing translation. and we won our first game! it was nerve-wrackingly close.

i had a long chat with horseman this afternoon, things turned philosophical (as usual) and i came up with an analogy of real life being just like rogue-like games.

my machine's now set up for me to experiment with qt, xamarin and android studio.

egg on my face

 well, i guess i've been wrong all this time. apparently, it's possible to put a price on one's personal safety, on one's health and wellbeing, and on being with one's family.

what a fool i've been.

i don't know what to think right now, but i'm gobsmacked and heartbroken. i don't know where to put all these thoughts and feelings, but i do know that i'm feeling sick to my stomache and i'm going to have to reevaluate a lot of things.

at least i managed to get my wife and son out of danger. that's not nothing.

...

in spite of my uneven state of mind, i managed to convince mr smear to face his fears and give the first toodee and topdee boss (without cheats) another go. he did beautifully. not only did he persist until he got it, but he did it in a different way to me; in fact, i would say he did it in a considerably harder way than i did.

then, to make that success even better, we completely demolished the entire next world including the boss and he did most of the work and the puzzle solving. i'm very proud.

...

nystire came through to drop something off, and i'm very grateful for his timing, his warning, and his giving me a lift through to the car after i brought our reservation forward half an hour. getting to my family was crazy - i got blocked and turned around twice - and getting through the protests to the airport required second-guessing waze a couple of times. we arrived at the airport just on time.

mr smear needed the toilet, and i had to wait with him while he took what felt like forever. during which time a number of people used the facilities in a way that made me confident that they were very sick and that there was a good chance we might have picked something up.

and i'm still not over the cough thing. i thought i was getting there, but that's like every day for the past couple of weeks. it's just not going away.

the drive back was okay until we hit tel aviv, and we got stuck and turned around for ages, mostly because there were two closed off roads around the diamond exchange in ramat gan that nobody had marked as such. after our second time around, i marked it and we managed to find a clear route home, and i eventually dropped gd and mr smear off around 11.30pm. then i had to get the car back, and was just becoming despondent as i stopped across from a blocked road that was my only route to the parking when the light turned green and the cops and blocking bus cleared off in time for me to get straight through.

that was a huge relief.

i stewed all the sweaty way home (it's stinking hot outside), and now that i've had some time to cool off (including doing some more grinding in steamworld heist) and shower and write this, i think i should probably be getting to bed.