breaking points

 i accompanied mr smear to school this morning, and on my way back accompanied him through a video-call hunt through his locker and classroom to demonstrate that he's legitimately lost his math equipment 🤦‍♂️

the first part of the day can be summarized by the half a minute of me, exasperated, yelling furious and impotently at the sky trying and failing to navigate my mother's iphone while trying to set up her esim. what a fucking nightmare UX, steve jobs must be spinning in his grave.

i went to the office today; there were two friendly dogs, and i think i'm getting paranoid because the moment i petted either of them i developed a crawling sensation across my skin. all my skin :/

aside from a team lunch with the boss - good talk, delicious lunch, i only had half the meal which was still too much food - my day was extremely frustrating as i continued to get hit with code ownership problems.

i took a break to pick up mr smear from school, and joined another employer meeting (it's poor timing to say the least) about adding more work hours to my week to get AWS certified...

eventually mr smear and i got home, he took my mom to the comics library while i was brought to boil by the sheer idiocy of my client company's current state. to the point where i wrote an "angry letter" to my client and my manager in which i essentially let rip, though i did pull my punches (professionally) and tried to be constructive.

the response was... not exactly comforting, but not negative. and the thing that pushed me to breaking point - a team gatekeeping its contact channel by demanding anyone with questions do a small quiz first - did provide a couple of helpful responses to my auto-rejected queries.

it was a long afternoon and evening, with very little progress. at least i was provided with something positive when i called my mom to find out how they were and learned that the two of them were just sitting in the comics library and reading quietly together :)

it's yom hazikaron, so we watched the masa ceremony on the big screen after dinner, which was moving as usual. in spite of us fighting with mr smear throughout to get him showered and his teeth brushed and him into bed.

i can't believe it's so late already. i'm going to try going to sleep.

the nights are getting warmer.

sense of accomplishment

 today was pretty solid. it started off with me finally closing the PR i opened on january 4th because i'd gotten to a point where i had an enormous number of changes by AI that i knew i couldn't trust, and in addition to feeling like the project is ready to proceed in an orderly fashion, i also think i've leveled up in my agent orchestration skills.

i managed to get mr smear set up for his remote classes today - he had four of them - and for the most part he participated. gd took over when it came to his phys-ed class, and apparently worked him a lot harder than his teacher ever manages to 🤣

i feel like i got in a good day's work, though it's kinda hard to tell these days.

i'm still feeling dumbfounded by the fact that my network issues were primarily about a bad cable connection. i ordered a network bridge to replace my router, at big data's suggestion, but when i spoke to the technician this evening he convinced me that that's not such a hot idea.

i had to book a ticket to the comics library, pandemic-style, and i had an oddly emotional moment when mr smear started listing the books he wanted and i asked him to send me an email. and, gosh darn it, he did. he figured it out by himself, and then proudly came over to my desk to see what it looked like on the receiving end :)

after a bus ride and a walk - which i realized halfway i'd been watching random shit on my phone instead of appreciating being outside - i arrived there just in time for an attack. one week into the war and i'm already spoiled, because ten minutes with no network connection was hard.

i was amused to learn that while all the books mr smear wanted aren't available, they're all on order already because he asked for them. i picked up a few that looked interesting, and then i walked to the second-hand bookstore in the hospital complex.

now that i know it's a second-hand bookstore, it's selection and vibe make so much more sense! i picked up my copy of my name is asher lev, and then found myself purchasing a hebrew translation of a new mike maihack spider-man comic (we loved the first two) and then i waited for a bus for too long before walking off and being passed by no less than five of them all at once.

so i walked home, and became thoroughly engrossed in completing my wife's phone swap before beginning my son's phone swap. it's a lot of effort - primarily when it comes to not signing up for stuff we don't want - but eventually i got to the point where i could set up paybox young for mr smear. it's an awful UX, everything about the program is to trap kids and parents alike, and i was extremely frustrated and irritable by dinner time. but after dinner - after boring my mom so much with the money stuff that she had to excuse herself from the conversation - i finally managed to get his money into his savings account, and i think there's a way to make it work without costing me an arm and a leg.

there was stress at shower and bedtime - mainly about mr smear moving too slowly, as usual - but i read to him and it was a markedly improved experience from last night. now i've sent him an email - to the other email address that he won't have access to until he's much older - and posted this, and i think i'm pretty close to being ready for bed.

outside

 last night was unnecessarily rough, because we could have booted mr smear out of our bed after the first siren and i would have had a much better night's sleep.

today was a bit weird.

i invested quite a lot of time in getting stuff to work on my home machine that i already had working on my work machine, stuff that - as usual - really shouldn't be that complicated.

gd had a phone appointment with our doctor, which resulted in me calling multiple clinics because ours was closed only to continue to run into dead ends. then we all went on a pharmacy mission, and a bit of a grocery mission on the way back home, and then we dropped everything at home and jumped on a bus to dizengoff center, with a little bit more of a walk than planned.

which was good. we've all been pretty cooped up for a week.

i couldn't find what i was looking for, but gd got sorted and i was inspired to upgrade her phone (she's been unhappy for a long time) and hopefully the new model will be a better experience. and then mr smear inherits her old one, and that gives us a way to manage his "banking".

we had a great hummus lunch, which i think was pretty brave considering nobody had any idea when the next attack would be, but we managed to make it home before the sirens.

mr smear convinced me to take the windows machine off facebook marketplace and reinstate it as "his" machine, and that led to me spending a good chunk of the evening (and our shelter time) on getting it set up, enthusiastically testing out shutup10++ and being pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to clean up the windows experience.

i'm also pleasantly surprised by the fact that i managed to get mr smear to do another training session with me this evening, and although the main focus was on boxing drills, i think the most important lesson was in shutting the fuck up and following instructions.

we had a bit on an incident with kevin, our little eight-legged boarder, who's been insisting on hanging out in our bed. i tried to get him out of our room, and i may have accidentally injured him :(

then he decided to scoot off into mr smear's room, so mr smear was very nervous about checking his bed thoroughly before going to sleep. but then he couldn't sleep, because he was feeling so bad for how unfairly poor kevin had been treated...

kiddush and dinner with my mom were nice, and the food was great, even though it was really late.

mr smear got siren'ed out of a shower - so much for canishower.com showing 11% - after that was bedtime and then my shower time, and now i've watched lots of politics and other garbage and i think i'm ready for bed.

...

if you want to understand what's going on with the war, and what its all about, this tom nash report is eye-opening.

everything on mainstream media - CNN in particular - is unhinged propaganda. seeing so much AI-generated slop of destruction in tel aviv is pathetic. who believes this shit?

off a low base

 well, to be fair today was easier. but i felt completely exhausted, and disorganized, and my brain seems to be seeping down my spinal column and into my butt.

i started the day with a walk to the post office to pick up my new phone covers - the three of them cost less than gd's failed one, and they're all awesome. so i'm proudly sporting the hunter license:

(ugh, those nails 🤮)

on my way home i stopped by a mor clinic. it was uncomfortable that i couldn't even get a number for the receptionist because i didn't have an appointment. when a receptionist did become available, she informed me that they can't help me with what i'm looking for. when i asked if there was anyone i could speak to about gd's cannabis story, she shrugged and complained that she, too, has difficulty getting human assistance and she works there.

i came home, completed the deployment i'd triggered on my way out, picked up my gear and walked mr smear and gd to the clinic (he was supposed to get blood tests done, but we hadn't realized he'd needed an appointment). i bussed to the office, where my future team was already waiting for me, and we spent the following few hours strategizing and getting some work done.

two jumpy dogs + a bunch of jumpy kids = distraction.

i spent the remainder of the day being set upon by various coworkers, constantly context-switching and generally feeling worn out and slow. i did get some good stuff done, a few good things, actually, but at least twice i got told off by my boss about not having taken a holiday.

i definitely need to take a holiday. it would be nice to not literally be the only person holding the devops fort right now.

at 7pm i told gd i'd be leaving in ten minutes, and ten minutes later it was 7.30pm, so i don't know what the hell happened... i came home, joined my family for dinner (accompanied by a shot of rum) and some of the fifth harry potter movie, was shown some of my son's amazing artwork (his "realistic" minecraft characters), and after showers and toothbrushing (i'm being very cautious about brushing as softly as i can) i read a little more of the neverending story.

sometimes mr smear isn't in the mood, but tonight he was upset when i stopped reading.

it took me a little time to decompress enough to write this, now i'm not sure if i'm ready to crash yet.

double vision

 i slept pretty well, surprisingly, but i woke up with crusty eyes indicating an incoming eye infection. because things weren't stressful enough. we headed to the clinic early, where i got off on the wrong foot by taking two numbers instead of one, which offended the clerks. then gd decided we had enough time to go to the pharmacy, and it was only through sheer dumb luck that i overheard my number being called after mr smear's had already been missed.

the doctor examined him, did some complicated math, and prescribed pills instead of syrup which makes our lives much easier. and he prescribed me drops and a cream, which i'm about to use for the first time and i'm a bit nervous about it.

my eyes are really itching all of a sudden, please god don't let it be herpes :(

we came home, packed his bag, and all left together to catch a bus to the summer camp. we dropped him off, confirmed that the councillors understood the importance of getting him the medication on time, and then walked to the bus stop and caught the bus home / to the office.

the sync with the tech-ops manager seemed to go well. i really hope it did.

it was a weird day, lots of kids and a really sweet pug and odd jobs and a walk to see the new offices and a late lunch after a big department meeting. then a few more odd jobs and packing up our old offices before taking a few items across with my boss and being amazed by the new digs (the showers are particularly impressive).

i met up with gd and mr smear, introduced them to the pug, and then we (after washing our hands thoroughly because the pug is, to quote gd, a "stinky potato") walked to a hummusia for a big meal that i would've enjoyed as much as them if not for the intensely painful sensitivity of my new fillings.

otherwise it was a great evening.

we went past the mall to explore the harry potter store, sort out mr smear's phone, buy a new case for gd's phone (which she's promptly broken and is now my "new" case, i'm quite upset), and then rush (ha ha, wait forever at the bus stop while wondering who the protestors are yelling at) home to take meds and get ready for bed.

after putting mr smear to bed (with socks on his hands for the second night in a row), i did some work (about an hour and a half of it) and then watched youtube videos while playing minesweeper. and now it's midnight and i'm going to bed.

the sim

i'm tired, i'm sore, and we're leaving in an hour to drive for an hour or two to our cousins' seder. i've just had four cups of water after realizing that the only liquid i'd consumed today was black coffee. ugh.

firstly, today was a huge day for us and mr smear: i've bought him a sim card, and given him my huawei, and he now has his own phone. well, shit.

secondly, it was a big morning in the mall, and then when we finally got home my mom called to ask us to take some chocolates as well. i walked to the chocolatier (cardinal) on ibn gvirol, amazing vegan stuff but no hechsher. i walked back to leonidas, nothing gift-like that was vegan. i then walked all the way to max brenner, arrived before they closed and finding a couple of items that reasonably fit the criteria for a gift.

i returned home with sore legs and 10.5K steps on my watch. i tried resting, but found that hard to do with mr smear very noisily playing among us and gd struggling with our old iron that almost destroyed her shirt (fortunately our neighbors could help us out with theirs).

oh! she very successfully made potatoes in the oven today. she's now rather embarrassed that she's been ovening wrong all these years, but we're very glad we don't have to buy a new one just yet.

...

gd and i had a very difficult conversation this morning, one that lots of jews are having right now: how do we celebrate our freedom, when we have up to 129 hostages still trapped in gaza?