some of the surprises were good

 i had a rough hour or so last night with my hip flexors, but otherwise i managed to get some pretty good sleep (going by the fact that i remember that i dreamed)

i started the day with volume 2 of my favorite thing is monsters, and aside from that and grocery shopping online i don't recall doing anything interesting.

work began with two conversations about game development - dx has apparently begun trying his hand at it, and one of the other guys showed some interest as he worked on simulations as part of his degree - and a little bit of jumping between tasks.

at noon, i received a phone call from the immigrant employment woman - i'll call her pioneer - and we talked for about an hour, this seems a natural fit for a partnership and she appears to be on board with my vision for a digital kibbutz. immediately afterwards, i received a message from a high school teacher i met last week informing me that she might have found some interesting people to work on another project of mine, one that ties in with the former.

this is all very exciting.

unfortunately, i learned that a meeting i was trying to set up with someone at my alma mata isn't going to happen, and i'm pretty disappointed because it should be something totally aligned with their values...

i came home for an employer group meeting, some of which was quite enlightening, and after an hour or two of more work i called it a day and mr smear and i strapped on our rollerblades and went for a ride.

oh, i watched a couple of my more recent spoken word pieces [1] [2], and i have the strangest sensation of wonder that i wrote those, because for years i've been feeling less than inspired and capable.

dinner was delicious, and i ate plenty, and then i gorged myself on chocolate, liquorice allsorts and whatever the fizzer-like candies are called. then we had a chat with my mom, which included a big discussion about mr smear's barmitzvah plans, and after saying goodnight to mr smear gd and i watched a bit more of ludwig.

i was already in bed, but then gd walked into the fan carrying a cup of water which was somehow my fault, so now i'm cooling off and hoping to get back into sleep mode soon.

small accomplishments

we got shit done today. it took a while to get everyone roused, and gd and i had a bit of a tiff along the way, but the two of us abandoned our child to the screen gods and caught a bus to the shoe repair store where i dropped off my very expensive but now quite broken sandals, and she convinced me to listen to him and do the decidedly non-vegan thing of repairing them with leather, which makes me quite uncomfortable :/

we hit the supermarket - which is a surprisingly good one - on arlozorov, and eventually got out of there with most of what we needed. we caught a bus back home, yelled at mr smear for having put the air-conditioner on when all the windows were wide open, and then mr smear and i went on another mission to the street north of us, which required three stops but we got pretty much everything that remained on the list.

then mr smear and i left for the mall, catching a very cramped mini-bus and mr smear managed to keep it together in spite of the small kids around him. we paid the optometrist a visit and ordered his new glasses (apparently his eyesight has improved a little), along the way happening to pass the second hand game store and asking on a whim if they had what mr smear's been begging for for his birthday - motion controllers for the ps4.

i'd called another shop earlier about that, and learned that nobody's selling them or repairing them (the mongoose left us a couple that seem to be broken or in need of battery replacement), so i was surprised to learn that they had one pair, and they gave me a bit of a discount (still quite expensive).

so mr smear was very excited.

then we did one last mission to pick up another fan and a kettle because ours died this week, and caught a bus home. on the bus, a conversation we had led to mr smear deciding that he really wants to write a diss track response to dan bull because one of his songs isn't as amazing as the others, and i have to admit i'm quite impressed with what he's got so far!

i was crashing on the way home - recalling that i didn't sleep last night - but i made myself a coffee and wrestled with the motion controllers. poor mr smear, standing there with the vr helmet on and the controllers finally connected and strapped on, and discovering that the games he was hoping to play with them don't support them :(

we should have done some research first... anyway, i tried.

i tried to do something of value, but ended up opening inscryption instead (i really wanted to play braid, but it doesn't work on mac), and i've just kneaded the challah-peño and can't decided what my next steps are. perhaps nothing.

big week ahead

 guardians of the galaxy vol. 3 was a mistake, and mr smear and i have agreed that we're not considering it canon. gd and i  watched it three years ago and apparently we weren't bothered by the hollywood tie-everything-up-neatly-with-a-bow drivel and the stream of character assassinations at the end. it kind of feels like the grease fan theory, perhaps rocket did die and the end was his ascension fantasy.

also, it manages to be a lot more gruesome than the others and mr smear - surprisingly - didn't enjoy that.

so that was a good chunk of yesterday. i also spent a few hours on my auto-doc side project, which feels like it's on its way to being ready for integration 🤞

mr smear and i put on our rollerblades relatively late in the evening, and headed out for some exercise. the first part was dramatically unpleasant (we keep having to talk about not being disrespectful, and yesterday evening's incident was on the heels of him lecturing me about how i should teach him and whether i was right to make him learn to ride a bike first), but we managed to get through it and enjoy the rest of the ride together. on the way back, we saw a jackal jump into the bushes a couple of blocks from our apartment and i had to explain to mr smear that - at his current speed - he wasn't going to be outrunning anything on four legs and might need to defend himself with his wrist pads if keeping away wasn't sufficient...

the evening was smooth, and included a visit from our upstairs friends. on their way out, big data informed me that our new fluxx packs have arrived, and that the delivery tax includes them playing with star fluxx before handing them over. they're not too interested in cthulu fluxx, though :P

i continued working on the auto-doc until midnight, by which time i was having trouble keeping my eyes open. due to hip flexor issues it took me a while to fall sleep, and i had to wake up and stretch again a couple of hours later, but otherwise i slept relatively well.

i began my day on the balcony enjoying the green and the breeze, invited mr smear over to explain palm tree growth and how deciduous trees' leaves are like tiny palms begging sunlight from the sky, only they wither and die as the tree curls up to hibernate for the winter.

now to start the new week, wondering if and when the war on iran resuming will affect us (especially with mr smear at his day camp for the next couple of week), and resuming the auto-doc work for the next hour or two before jumping on work-work (though the auto-doc is technically supposed to be that too) and trying to get as much done so i can take tomorrow off for the game dev conference with limited stress. oh, and planning for my sister's visit.

the last opportunity?

 i went to bed late last night. i finished with the button a little after midnight, then climbed into bed and found myself entirely unable to sleep. i don't know why, but i was completely wired and spent the entire night miserably uncomfortable.

the 6.30am alarm was painful.

i accompanied mr smear to school - again, because i'm worried about when the war's going to resume - and we had a fun conversation about the drawing for our front door. on the way home, i stopped at the pharmacy to pick up something for gd, and had a chat with my mom about whether she'll be able to land here next week, and what we should do about her laptop (i'm thinking of giving her our windows machine).

i came home, and struggled to get started with work; primarily because in addition to exhaustion, my back and feet were really hurting. i eventually remembered our foot/back massager, though, and i have to say i'm quite grateful for it!

[turns it back on again]

i prepared a scary bit of work last week, and this morning i pulled the trigger. i nervously monitored the dashboards, but a half hour later i was convinced that a) the deployment had gone smoother than i'd hoped and b) i've discovered something quite bad (a memory leak) that's been causing disruptions, probably for years.

i also helped the team lead of my previous customer team navigate the airflow interface - that shit is hard!

in addition to working, i assisted gd with a wolt driver who couldn't figure out how to find our address on a map and was unable to follow directions. not only was he shockingly dumb and incompetent, but he had the nerve to tell me that we shouldn't be using our correct street address and should go for the (essentially) illegal one instead.

we also managed to figure out how to return a pair of shoes she bought online, and it was much easier (albeit much more expensive) than the other site.

in the afternoon i returned to the school to pick up mr smear, and managed to buy raisin brain (for the iron fortification) along the way. mr smear made me wait for a while, so i took off that same amount of screen time, but the journey home was mostly pleasant and once the timer began, he grabbed watchmen off the shelf and started getting into it.

i spent the next few hours drowning in a task that's heavy on the AI because i only vaguely understand what needs to be done. so while i'm constructing (hopefully) a mental model, i'm casting magic spells and praying they don't backfire...

and then mr smear had homework to do. fortunately, he worked through it pretty well, with only one short episode of me losing patience (he couldn't understand the problem, but wouldn't pay attention while i tried to help him), and he managed to score himself some game time before dinner.

dinner: delicious corn soup / corn on the cob combination, accompanied by the next part of ready player one. i've been avoiding spoiling the chest-burster scene from the alien movie because we're planning on watching it soon, so i was pretty bummed out by the disguise scene! at least i know mr smear won't be traumatized by it, though. he thought it was funny. (though he still hasn't plucked up the courage to continue with terminator 2, which he finds too intense)

we managed to get through shower and bedtime pretty smoothly. i didn't have energy to read to him (and it was late), but instead i recited the slam. the last time i recited something i received some pretty harsh feedback from him ("i HATE your poetry!"), but tonight? he was riveted, and actually praised it ^_^

...

i'm going to try to get to bed earlier tonight (ie. soon). it's clear that the "cease-fire" with iran is officially over, so if there's an attack we're moving mr smear back into our bedroom immediately.

gods, this is a really confusing time. strategically, it seems like the americans have really done an amazing job, but right now being in the moment and in the IRGC's crosshairs...

winding down

 it wasn't too bad a day. i rollerbladed to work, which was very quiet because i was the only one in the office. in spite of things getting a bit hectic at one point, i managed to complete the frontend work that's been upsetting me for the past couple of weeks and returned home for lunch before taking mr smear to his jiujitsu class.

while there, i did a little more work - but nothing too serious - and when his class was done we returned home. as we stepped off the bus, the sirens sounded and we scrambled through narrow stairways into a deep bomb shelter along with a large number of coffee shop patrons, most of whom were clumsily wielding their dairy-based drinks in a way that made it anxiety-inducing to navigate to a safe corner while keeping mr smear out of contact.

god damn.

anyway, it was unpleasant but we didn't have an incident, so that was a win.

we both showered quickly when we returned home, and there was time before dinner to fire up the vr.

gd and i agreed that we could afford to get him one of the vr games, and he decided on battlezone, then he discovered that i'd downloaded a bunch more vr demos, so instead of buying something we dug into those instead - and we had a really good time. there were two games in particular, which caused a bit of a fight at first because we didn't understand what was going on or why mr smear needed us to tell him what was happening, but once we did get it they were brilliant. and then i took a turn, and i was absolutely blown away by how good the vr experience was!

after dinner, mr smear went to bed, i posted my two books on gumroad, and then gd and i settled down to re-attempt deadpool & wolverine. we made it a bit further before we were both falling asleep. it's really fun, we're just really tired...

i haven't slept well in a while, and i know that going to sleep early will cause problems, so i carried on fine-tuning all my online offerings and i'm now pretty happy with how things look. i think i'm about ready for bed now. i hope i am.

i'm very excited that i'm going on vacation tomorrow evening.

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.

a good friday

 firstly, starting off the day seeing a video about elements of purim having pagan origins, and then looking it up and finding all sorts of weird stuff (eg. this). so that got stuck in my head today.

i spent some time updating drivers on my windows machine while waiting for my family to be ready, which took a long time. we eventually set out to the furniture store, where i explained the problem and fully expected to be dragging us through a huge ordeal involving selling our current bed and buying two new ones, but i was stopped short.

"do you know what a mattress topper is?"

no, no i did not. and now i do. and i've tested one out, and i've ordered it, and i was so relieved to be presented with such a great (and inexpensive) solution that i was on the verge of tears.

so that was a good start to the day.

we then walked up and down the street until we found the place we bought our couch, and ordered two additional cushions for it.

then we bussed to dizengoff center and picked up mr smear's new prescription, as well as really good food for breakfast (and later lunch) - i had really good vegan cholent, it was glorious.

we missed the bus home, so we strolled up dizengoff and picked up coffees and had a variety of tel aviv / purim experiences before getting to the dominator store - mr smear has been asking to go there for months - and then we hopped on a bus back home.

i've played a lot more bloons adventure time than i should have, but i did claim the martian throne when it was already claimed at a stupidly high level. i even napped in the middle.

it's been a quiet afternoon, listening to good music and doing dishes while mr smear plays spider-man, and putting a little bit of effort into sprucing up an old poem of mine inspired by godspeed you! black emperor. now i'm enjoying a glass of whiskey and gathering thoughts.

located

 my mother did manage to find the song! i'm not just impressed by her getting her hands on the books, and relieved that one of the books was the right one, but i'm also proud of her for reading through both of them well enough to find what i was looking for ^_^

it's called "אני מחכה לאחי החייל" and i've no idea who wrote it, but i definitely got the first verse right. i also didn't expect it to hit me right in the feels, i tried reading it to gd this morning, but at some point just couldn't speak through the sobs.

אני מחכה לאחי החייל

יש לי אח גדול,

בן עשרים אולי,

הוא יכול לעשות הכל,

וקוראים לו שי.

אחי שי הוא חייל,

הנה הוא פה בתמונה.

שי הוא חייל גיבור

ושומר על המדינה.

אם שי הולך למלחמה -

אמא נורא דואגת;

אבא שומע רדיו כל שעה

וכולם יושבים בשקט.

והנה בא מכתב

משי שלנו - הטוב;

"אני בריא וחזק

להתראות בקרוב-בקרוב".

אלוהים, לך אני מתפלל -

לגמור את המלחמה ודי.

תן שלום לישראל.

שיבוא מהר הבייתה שי.

...

tuesday:

i'm struggling to recall tuesday. i vaguely remember that there were at least a couple of points of interest, but i'm at a loss right now.

one thing i do remember, though, is that at bathtime i explained to mr smear how our ears downsample and we only hear about a third of what's said to us, and that we complete what we hear with context and expectations. with the implication being that we literally can't hear what other people are saying when we're upset.

yesterday:

yesterday started off scary: i woke up fine at 5am to go to the toilet, but on my way back to bed my back began to spasm. with some help from gd i miraculously managed to stave off the full spasm and by the time i got to the office i was more or less okay. i'm still nervous about it, though.

also, it looks like i might well have psoriasis.

it was a busy morning. gd and mr smear were both upset because gd, tired and in pain, spends forty five minutes every morning preparing breakfast and lunch and mr smear doesn't want to eat what she puts in front of him. the conversation that we'd had the night before came in handy: i asked mr smear if he could make himself calm enough to hear what we were saying, and he said "no". so i stopped trying, and on the way to school we managed to talk everything out.

this morning went much better.

i spoke to my mom, who informed me that uncle hate has shuffled off his mortal coil and that she was asked not to fly to montreal right now, which i guess is a bit of a relief. i sent my aunt and her kids condolences, glad that gd's supportive of me playing nice in spite of how they treated us.

i managed to get an authorization sorted out at the clinic, then picked up my favorite onion bagel, then went through to one of the clinics at the hospital to find out if and when gd had an appointment, and went on a side-quest to explain to management that their signage is insufficient. they were shocked, disbelieving, and i'm not 100% convinced they're going to do anything about it.

the work day went well, it was long but had some good moments.

the south african foreign ministry appears to be serious in threatening south africans who've served in the idf. assholes.

in the evening i watched another episode of unchained with gd, then tried to write an article i'm been stewing over for days, then crashing.

today:

mr smear was good today, breakfast went well. gd's on a mission to gather her thoughts about our cape town community, i'm going to help her put out an article (on whatever medium) in her own voice because she's really upset about how woke jews around the world are behaving when they have no clue what's going on over here.

whew!

today:

a good start, we managed to get our boy to school sort of on time in spite of the fact that he was convinced he was too sick (he really wasn't), and i managed to figure out where one of the issues that broke my thursday is even if i don't yet understand what the issue is. that freed up my soul to pack away my work machine for the weekend. then we workshopped the framework for a poem together that was inspired by me watching dead prez - hip hop, kanye west's def poetry jam recital of self-conscious, and the digging the greats video about all falls down. it's just a beginning, but it's a really good beginning.

we then went to the shops, where i picked up a decent charger for my laptop and we did the groceries. i had just enough time to eat a sandwich at home, then went to the dentist.

what an enormous relief! we worked together and figured out that i was absolutely right, that the previous dentist had just gotten things very wrong. it turns out i have at least one cracked filling, and the intense pain is caused by cold hitting the surface of the filling, then spreading deep until it hits the crack. it was a fair amount of investigating, and my teeth hurt for a while afterwards, but i have an appointment (for a few weeks' time) and while it's not clear whether it'll be new fillings or a root canal, i'll take whatever relief i can get.

on my way home i spoke to my mom, and for the first time *really* lost my cool and let her know exactly what her delaying leaving south africa means to us. i feel sad for her, but we're far beyond any point of no return and it's just not viable for anyone to live there any more.

i ate, flipped an avocado slice straight into my keyboard (panic! but it looks like i took care of it), washed dishes, snacked, washed more dishes, and played mr smear's variation of goodcritters. i suddenly felt drowsy when he started setting up, and i passed out while he was trying to explain the rules to me - that was embarrassing. i came round and got the hang of it, and while there were a couple of points that demanded a bit of debate it was overall a pretty fun game!

i needed to crash afterwards, though. i rushed off to lie down, and a bit later mr smear came to "punish" me for not helping tidy up by tickling me. the tickling became a pillow fight became me getting the hiccups and suddenly needing to throw up, which i did, and now i'm just feeling tired. in spite of that, though, i'm feeling pretty good about today.

yesterday:

mr smear was too sick to go to school, and i was working from home. for the most part it was okay, though, although i had a pretty frustrating and very long workday. mostly due to test flakiness, and my efforts didn't seem to help very much.

in the afternoon we went to a book fair (they're everywhere this month) and picked up four exciting books, so last night i decided to read the hebrew translation of "the giving tree" to mr smear at bed time. we got as far as the boy taking the branches before mr smear couldn't take it any more, he just broke down in tears and we couldn't finish the reading. so i held him tight (while fighting uncontrollable nervous giggling), conceded, and switched to the incredibly beautiful the iron man: a children's story in five nights.

i then spent the rest of the night (well, until 1am or so at any rate), entertaining myself online, watching wonderful and surprising things like big oxygen and playing tales of the neon sea (what a gorgeous game!).

wednesday:

mr smear woke up with a nasty cough, but it didn't seem like we should keep him home. at 9.05am the therapist called to find out where we were, and we - were - mortified. i don't know why it didn't occur to me to ask for a video chat, but we scrambled to catch a bus and made it there with ten minutes left on our clock. fortunately, she managed to move her next appointment by fifteen minutes and that gave us just enough space for a very productive and insightful meeting!

some of the advice she gave us was contradictory, but it's a lot of grey-area no-right-answers kind of stuff and in the two days since i feel like all three of us are doing better.

it was a constructive day at work. and a pleasant evening. i continued playing around with my new npm package and i'm really happy with it for now.

in general, i've been deliberately going to bed very late for the last week or so, and i've been sleeping much better as a result. i hope this lasts. 

...

i just taught mr smear how to do a shift cypher, which was fun!

awkward thursday

a few days ago, inspired by back to the future, my son came up with an idea for time machine boots - very similar to the delorean, where if you walk fast enough the shoes go backwards or forwards in time. unfortunately, they have a slight design flaw in which the wearer of the shoes' feet go with the shoes but the rest of the wearer is left behind. shenanigans ensue.

...

our home internet connection's been all over the place this past week or so, we've had a technician replace our router's cable, another one replace the building's amplifier, and nothing's worked. this morning i updated the network appliance firmware (which i did around the time the troubles started), and it *crosses fingers* looks like everything altogether has final done the trick.

spotty internet is tough. first world problems are real problems.

today began with a phone call with a man who wants to hire me while i'm not sure i'm actually interested in switching jobs. after the awkward call, i sent a flurry of messages to the recruiters to remind them of my situation and we all (mostly) agreed that unless i'm really excited by something we should arrange calls with anyone.

in the afternoon, i got a surprise call from another company :/

...

i had a hard time getting my head into work today. yesterday i made progress on a frustrating piece of work i've been fiddling with on/off for weeks, and today it almost felt like i was going backwards trying to take the next step. there was another project in a similar state. it wasn't a satisfying way to end the week.

we love watching mr smear play spider-man on the ps4. it's a full-body experience for him, a real work-out! it's also a really great game.

after dinner i wishing my family a good night and hopped on a bus to watch another improv competition, i arrived a couple of minutes late but it didn't really matter. it was a brilliant evening, a lot of fun, although something in the final post-judgement piece put me in a weird mood and then the post-event music was so loud that i couldn't heard what anyone was saying to me.

anyway.

i came home, showered, and edited what looks like my actual final recording of the slam, and now i'm fiddling around with midjourney trying to decide what direction to go in before i turn in.

which will probably be any minute now. or after another cup of tea.

...

bing with chatgpt is producing some amusing yet disturbing interactions.

routine-ish

i started yesterday taking care of admin and watching a bit of transcendent man at horseman's recommendation. it's the perfect time to watch it, with all the AI madness going on (i've just received an NSFW warning from midjourney because i'm terrible at prompt engineering...).  i remembered to take leftovers to work. i spent most of the day laser-focused on the security stuff and i ended the day with a pretty big achievement.

it's weird getting praise from my boss because i don't trust him to actually mean it.

i don't remember much about what i did last night, but i got home relatively late. after wishing mr smear a good night i finally had a chat with vfmp, we've been just-missing each other for weeks... i ended up going to be unreasonably late, but i don't recall exactly what i was occupied with.

this morning i restarted transcendent man to watch with mr smear at breakfast time. then i managed to record advice (it took a lot of attempts, i'm satisfied enough with the final output but it's not perfect...)

work was more of the same. i left the office having almost completed the task, but with my eyes and brain crossed after so much concentration. it's really sensitive and convoluted stuff.

we had a good evening, the highlight was finishing the peanuts movie. we watched the peanuts movies from half a century ago and absolutely loved them, they've aged beautifully! then we watched the 2015  movie and it totally blew me away. i'm stunned by what is clearly a work of pure love, both for charles m schultz and for his characters.

it's literally wonderful. (except the music, but whatever)

mr smear was so excited reading charlie and the chocolate factory tonight that he had to sit up and sit next to me, occasionally getting up to pace animatedly while musing about how amazing getting a golden ticket would be ^_^

holy holiday, batman!

i'm conflicted. on the one hand, i'm trying very hard to be on vacation. on the other hand, this is the opportunity to do All The Things! i've already put out another video, this one for the now-polished step away from the vehicle. i'm extremely pleased with how it's come out. i'm even more pleased now that i've configured the captions, which i must admit was a lot of work but very satisfying.

now i need to do the same for the musing video... but that's going to have to wait another day.

i worked sunday and monday, long days but generally good ones. i'm still amused that i was the only one in the office on monday night who knew the blessings for the candle-lighting, but not one of us remembered all the words to the first verse of ma'oz tzur...

yesterday morning gd and i went down to ozen hashlishi (after passing through dizengoff center and browsing comics and figurines) for a hipster breakfast and a browse through their enormous catalog of awesome media that we most certainly do not need. sailor came over for dinner, which was a bit of a failure from a food perspective but it's fun to be able to spend time with him again.

...

we're all still coughing. it's been weeks now. this is ridiculous.

we thought mr smear was sick yesterday, so we turned off our alarms and slept in. he picked up on this, which was unfortunate because we quickly realized he was fine and this "betrayal" started our day on a rather unpleasant note - not entirely his fault, to be fair - but we were extremely pleased to pick him up at the end of it and hear that he'd actually had a really good time.

this morning gd was more certain that we should keep him home, and by the time she regretted that decision it was far too late. in the grand scheme of things this worked out well, because in addition to starting our day with a couple of hours playing through the lego harry potter game together, i took him to the tel aviv art museum in the afternoon. he's been wary of galleries every since we encountered the butcher boys, and our tour began with him immediately whining to turn around and go back home...

my initial attempt to draw him in were almost a complete failure as we encountered a (legitimately) creepy doll statue, but after a couple of talks about practicing bravery and opening his eyes and heart and reassuring him constantly we started coming across installations that piqued his interest, we ended up have a really good time!

we'd both had enough at roughly the same time and i thought i'd get him an ice-cream on the way home, but he was more into a falafel so we split a particularly satisfying one (meaning i got the leftovers).

we all forgot about candle-lighting this evening because mr smear and i were invested in completing the artful escape. what a delightful game! i also cleaned up scrapper's bass guitar and amp (after gd had already taken care of the worst of it) and plugged them in, but i suspect that the guitar's battery is dead because i couldn't get a sound out of it with either of the two cables...

anyway, it was a good day.

kitchen studio

damn, after something like four hours of recording in our kitchen with horseman and his buddy (who's essentially producing this show), i get just how much work goes into these things. gd walked in at a good time to provide her services as singing coach, so that became a thing. by the time we were done we had a few good samples and a solid plan of action - hopefully we'll finish up next weekend and i'll be able to publish some stuff.

we went off to see the new cool at abyss, which has some gorgeous pieces, then headed to p.m. for a delicious dinner and fun politics before calling it a night.

actually alive - summary and part i

the shortest summary: the week before this last one was plagued by enormously powerful screw-ups caused by good intentions. it might have been fueled by my not feeling well, which lasted until this week, and it brought about deep despair and intense emotional distress and anguish for gd and myself. we did learn a lot through it, we're in an amazing place right now.

[there's a very cool reason for the sudden rekindling of interest in jewish history, philosophy and rituals]

work's mostly excellent, though i'm a little concerned that big junior's becoming more defensive. i'm super-excited about the art / poetry projects that are moving along right now, and things have heated up with the slam team's preparation because we only have a month left before we head off to victoria.

huh.

---tuesday 26th:

• general feeling of well-being before bed, perhaps brought on by my having fed the blogging-ocd demons
  
• good sleep
  
• fighting about not taking advice when asking for it, eventually resolving it
  
• introducing gd to shane koyczan
  
• good progress at work
  
• shirtbreak [what was i on about?]
  
• javascript binding trauma - seriously, binding in java is unnecessarily complicated
  
• too much halva
  

...

satisfaction at the end of the day, marred by a pinching nerve as i walk out to the gym? after almost fifteen minutes with a jump rope i rushed to the bathroom, and wobbled out sweat and woozy. i tried to continue training but after a couple of rounds i was a disaster and i showered and went home. i'd continue to feel awful for the next few days.

i slowly did the quickest shopping i could on my way, caught a bug with my eye while thinking that if i'm not in cape town then it simply becomes far from fair.

good dinner marred only by our fighting over music and raising children.

---wednesday 27th:

slow morning, stretching, mango shake, figuring out how to watch music videos (from youtube, mainly) on the ipad (vevo and youplayer apps), and ordering a bluetooth keyboard for it. more of the pinching nerve. that prompted the purchase of dr kelly starrett - becoming a supple leopard. i picked it up on ibooks, intending to put it on the ipad but forgetting that the ipad's registered to a gd's account.

fortunately, i'd discover later that apple allows us to share purchases if our devices are registered to the same computer. a lot of unhelpful forum posts and bullshit later, but my usual complaint that apple keeps its shiny shit obfuscated (like how to use a mac's touchpad properly) isn't that surprising.

thought for the morning: those who play the loudest music usually have the worst taste.

i made it just in time for the bus to the beach club, read my new book most of the way. the beach club wasn't much to look at and the music was particularly shitty; having to keep out of the sun because i'm currently undergoing laser hair reduction kinda ruined the company event for me. at least the main speech was quick (and interesting. and i learned that i'll be out of the country for the next two events), there were vegan braai* options even though they were terribly marked - and the salad had egg yolk in it :(

* they brought in a team of south africans to handle the barbeque.

i learned an important lesson about the people i work with: a lot of them won't wear the company apparel because it has the word "geek" on it (demonstrating that they're true nerds), but think that wearing apparel advertising the products they work on is cool. let me tell you something: women wearing porn site t-shirts? sexy, not very classy, but sexy. guys wearing those shirts? creepy. and it doesn't matter what you look like. you don't look like a producer, you look like a (literal) wanker.

at least most of my team are rum drinkers.

the sumo suit competition was cut short when a man passed out in the suit and landed badly. eventually an ambulance came to pick him up. the ordeal was pretty surreal. he seems to be okay now, whoever he is.

i found a bench in the shade and took a nap for a while, i got up with a sore back, dazed and needing to pee. on my way to the washrooms i was intercepted by one of the security team. who knew my name and had been informed that i trained at tristar. we had a really good chat about jiu-jitsu for about five minutes and he threw me some tokens for free drinks.

afterwards, i picked up a drink and realized that my team had all disappeared. i did some exploring and found a dancefloor playing decent music, and hung around there until the bus arrived.

there's not much like a long ride on a bus with shitty suspension when you need to pee (for the second time).

...

buying tickets when tired and with alcohol in your system? #@$!. i'd been thinking "oh, i'm not training tonight" and forgetting that i wasn't going to be training anyway. getting gd excited for a night out and having to cancel on her because we had a team meeting? that's fucked up. that was the beginning of three days of overwhelming misery, during which i learned that there'd been some things bubbling under the surface that needed some serious addressing.

stupid levels of guilt and can't-think-straight, a better talk after gd got off work. the refund policy for the tickets was ambiguous and confusing at best, and i almost gave up on trying for it.

team meeting: important strategies and team planning and freaking out about the fact that the first slam of the season was almost upon us.

back home: relationship therapy, essentially.

---thursday 28th:

in spite of the emotional discomfort, it was a good start to the day minus the back issues. there was slam team weirdness. i purchased bill hicks - arizona bay on itunes having been inspired when introducing gd to tool - aenima. i can't believe i've never heard that material before! it's really funny.

not a bad morning, and i managed to get my movie tickets refunded. i needed to go to the bank during lunch: the highway had a gas station smell, and somebody in the line at the bank had awful body odour.

after completing a big project and saying telling him i'll explain what i did, big junior responded with "i'm not stupid, i can read code".

...

kc gave birth! i found that very exciting news, i'm extremely pleased for her :)

i was also pleased to hear that gd's no longer working at her gym any more, it was hurting her and she can afford to pay for classes now. that was the good news: the upsetting news was that we'd both completely forgotten about godmother's summer party and my reminder only caught me two hours before it started. i was feeling stressed and dark still from the day before and now i was feeling like every #$@!ing day there was something else. i just wanted a little bit of a routine and to get some training in and spent time with gd.

[to be continued...]

highs, lows and the navigation thereof

"efficient, organized, neat, and systematic"? i'm trying, mom. i'm trying. but the last two weeks (?!?!!!) have been absolutely insane, they've seen me hit real lows for the first time in many years and some seriously real highs as well. i don't know where to begin The Great Posting, but i've got to start somewhere.

considering the fact that i'm overwhelmed by all the crazy shit i'm doing right now, my journal might be reduced to a long list of barely intelligible items.

oh, well. have a performance instead.

the rush - part iv

[... continued]
i tried to rest, introducing myself to siri and being rather impressed. i uploaded to soundcloud for the first time, then rushed off to meet vfmp and his boyfriend for the monkland street festival. we had a nice walk but i couldn't avoid the sun even with my sunscreen, my big floppy hat and my jumping from shade to shade. it was waaaay too hot.

vfmp and i headed to shaïka for good wraps and to trade bad father stories; we talked about blood donations and i think he's provided me more than enough fuel for a poetic rant. i then took a long trip to meet with someone before her performance in an attempt to sort out a connection, we shared ten minutes together that were totally off-topic and for a reason i'd rather not go into i ended up returning home without staying for so much as a minute. that was totally unprofessional and uncool of me.

i went back home, feeling remarkably shitty about what had happened, and waited for gd to come home to discuss it with her. i was expecting the worst, but while things definitely weren't great they were far better than i'd hoped for and i'm extremely grateful for that.

we enjoyed a peaceful evening, punctuated by an attempt to do something cool for the als ice bucket challenge which resulted in an amusing fail video instead.

just before heading to see the teenage mutant ninja turtles reboot gd started hurting and then my nerve started pinching, so we arrived at the theatre in less than the best of circumstances. the movie was fun, really fun, aside from a bit of shaky-cam-itis and a couple of weird plot decisions. i have to say that the credits, both opening and closing, were awesome and a lot of the shots were just incredible!
ignoring about half an hour of gd's back giving her trouble we had a really good time.

---yesterday:

going to bed at 2.30am after learning about smashwords' greatness: they really are fantastic! they are without a doubt the future of publishing ^_^

...

i woke up to some poetic inspiration, and i'm ridiculously pleased with myself about what came out of it. gd gave me a lesson in humility along with a painful french lesson, after which we enjoyed a blissfully relaxed sunday morning. we arrived at midi 6 famished, and their soy latte to go with my "herbivore" was precisely what i needed ^_^

i finally figured out how to get a naked domain to redirect - that really should be simpler - and we finished watching cheatin' before i hurried out to godmother's for coffee. it was a gorgeous afternoon, the raspberries were delicious and the fact that fudgee-o double stuf cookies are vegan just made a fantastic day even better. also, yang's finally taken a step in the right direction regarding his education, so that's a thing.

i took my slightly pinched nerve and tender jaw (discovered earlier) to my apartment to pick up a set of keys, two folding chairs and the mezuzot off my doors. i need to put them up here, and i need to acquire another one.

i needed the nap that i took when i got home, but i woke up to go shopping feeling like i was still dreaming and had overdone the sun and not napped nearly enough. microwave dinner, posting, and transforming into a being of pure discomfort were the order of the evening... i guess my day couldn't have been too good :P

gd was watching fringe: we need to hunt down whoever's responsible for mastering these shows and slap some sense into them. you shouldn't have to keep turning the volume up to hear speech and down to prevent hearing loss during action sequences.

---today:

i woke from long dream sequences to a morning of k's choice and more posting. i rushed out, soooo tired and still trying to avoid excess coffee. i made it until 11.15, at which point big junior showed up to delegate a documentation task. fortunately, that's the kind of thing i'm really comfortable doing with my brain off so i completed that quickly enough and returned to my grand plans.

i may have sweated a little when i realized that i was reorganizing the team's wiki docs without authorization :P

my junk food mission to the supermarket next door was successful - they have israeli vegan munchies! nice one :)

the shitty part of the day was my wasting other people's time with non-problems - i had the dumb, i thought my virtual machine's hard drive was taking up 80gb and we spent far too long trying to resize a disk that was actually only 20gb :$

i left feeling incredibly tired and slow. the experience with the laser hair clinic was surprisingly pleasant; the technician was cool, she totally got my intentions, the pain wasn't as bad* and the terrible smell of burning hair didn't last as long.

* it apparently eases the less hair you have

on my way home, i found that siri doesn't work without an internet connection. that's just silly. siri. silly. siri.

i spent the evening almost resting, watching safety not guaranteed with gd and then the first part of the battlestar galactica mini-series when she went to bed. omg, i can't believe it's still so incredibly good, and just how much more powerful it is when you know what's coming!

...

this last post brought to you by a thoroughly irresponsible disregard for my need to sleep. but my chapbook has a nice cover now (thanks, pixlr!) and i'm fairly certain i'm gonna crash in a couple of minutes.

the rush - part ii

[... continued]

it's monday morning and i have a busy schedule to prepare for... but i've got to finish at least some of this, and last night i felt absolutely horrible. i'm feeling much, much better now.

---wednesday:

at 5am i woke up and had a flash of inspiration - i had an idea a while back and with the tools that i've been exposed to at work i now have a good way to do it!

it was a nice morning but a dispassionate one. i spent it managing tricky fixes and realized late that i'd forgotten to put my lunch in the fridge. fortunately it was okay.

on wednesday i received a mandate to run loadtesting: i've been doing that since. i like breaking things "the right way".

my shoulder and neck began hurting. a man in the bathroom standing right behind me to take a drying towel raised his head to smile at me in the mirror, which was super-creepy. i had pre-performance nerves, but i had no time pressure as it was my first day since i started that i'd gotten enough hours done before 6pm; the power of a short lunch :)

i was on the metro already when i realized that i'd left the tripod at home. when i got to le dépanneur café i found a really dodgy substitute and for the first half of the evening i didn't trust it to hold, so i held on to the camera with my hand and it shook every time i cramped up :(

i was not impressed by my team. i'd asked them to record video using their phones so that we could get different angles, and they couldn't be bothered.

my performance wasn't fantastic, but it really wasn't bad. things were rather awkward though, because our host left rabbit out of the evening and we're all to new and inexperienced to know that we can and should be shouting "hey! what about rabbit?!" :$

kyra shaughnessy sang a few songs. she's AMAZING (and you can hear her for free). brandon wint and nasra adem's poetry was beautiful, too, though there were some pieces i just couldn't connect with.

the guy working le dépanneur café was entirely unwelcoming.

i made a note about "gd and i talking properly" but while i suspect that our conversation involved the nature of reality and the importance of written words and memories it's been too long to recall :/

we stretched a bit and i sent off some thank yous for the event and suddenly it was 2am...

at least google play music works on ipad!!! even if you do have to search through iphone apps to find it.

---thursday:

it was a good, slow morning. i was nominated for the ice bucket challenge.

i arrived at work late and felt slowed down. it bothered me that the cleaners were taking care of our little coffee / microwave room at lunchtime, their timing could have been better. i spent my extended lunch hour working to set up a new website for the throw poetry collective and connect all other services and things.

i was very busy with taking pride in my work; i came across something that was written badly (using sync functions in node is not a good idea) and spent ten minutes rewriting it... only to discover that the undesirable behaviour had side-effects that the previous developers were using and so fixing it broke everything.

#$!@.

oh gods, a guy one cubicle over was being a total douchebag about als awareness when one of the girls was talking about it. it was a struggle to keep my mouth shut.

kickboxing: a tough training session, my first holding my hands up muay thai-style and my biceps were burning. towards the end i developed a serious stitch that was prolonged and extremely painful.

i got home and learned that my mother's bank account has been emptied by hackers, and after we talked about it we're convinced it was an inside job between the bank, her mobile provider or both. it was a freakishly sophisticated attack and there really wasn't much she could have done to protect herself. except maybe use a bank that double-checks suspicious activity with as much fervor as it double-checks legitimate activity.

i was exhausted when i got home. i caught up with SxS, did some small things online (like completing the first volume of saga for gd) and went to bed just after discovering that my laser hair removal treatment wasn't done along the line *i* shaved. i'm going back this evening for a redo, i can't believe how dumb the technician is.

[continued...]

the rush - part i

it's been a busy, trying week. and a long, busy weekend. most of it's been spent focusing on my poetry, and taking my game to the next level. which means buying a domain name, and getting ready to publish a short collection of poetry. it all feels like a big deal.

---monday:

fighting the snooze. working hard. sending a wire transfer to pg for half the amount i owe her as a show of goodwill. not taking any steps toward transferring my lease because i didn't have the deposit yet.

i made good progress at work, but it's all very slow going. that's kind of the story of the week: i'm really fortunate that i'm not on any official project yet because that gives me time to deal with the ridiculous state of the software i'm working on. it's been a week of research and refactoring, in particular learning just how limited mobile html5 implementations are.

my first code review: overall, very positive, very nice. unfortunately, i managed to upset big junior a little; i was worried that our difference of opinion on coding style would become a thing but it hasn't.

i worked late, again, and at around 6.30pm officially signed off and logged my hours. i spent another fifteen minutes drinking coffee and perusing facebook with my headphones on, when suddenly i registered that my manager and boss were laughing at me for "working late". that didn't feel good, but it was all in good fun and i'm fairly certain they trust me.

boxing: high powered training with a beginner who's a fast learner. it's all about focus, relaxing, breathing, and it's amusing to me, "robocop", to be instructing someone else in these points.

the surprise of i-forgot-my-membership's-expiring right when i'm paying other big amounts? not so nice. fortunately, the next day i'd sort it out and working for my company gets me a 37% discount on a year's all-access pass. hopefully i'll get about two-thirds of what i paid back when i pass my probation period...

aaaand i've reached my credit limit. i've been on the edge the whole week, i *need* to get through to next week's paycheck...

i got home early-ish, had a good dinner and watched being human.

---tuesday:

so much to do, so little time...
garbage, dishes, and email (with some good news from pg about israeli social security). it was a beautiful morning, i left earlier than usual but still later than i'd like...

... gd had accidentally bought cookies that weren't vegan, so i spent the morning pushing them on my co-workers. that seemed to go down well :P

there's nothing like trying to give a software demo to a boardroom and having it fail, only to discover later that the software cannot be run on a machine that has a remote desktop connection. huh! what was cool was learning that microsoft has a remote desktop app for the iphone that works *really* well.

i keep forgetting to put sunscreen on when i leave the office, until i get outside and it's too late for me to go back up and come down again.
i decided i needed to start the credit check in spite of not having the deposit in hand, so i handed the building manager the notice of assignment and paid for the check. i was hungry when i hit the supermarket and found myself in an odd frenzy over rice crackers.

i'm getting comfortable practicing my poetry performance in public.

it was good timing for picking up allergy meds, but shitty timing for developing a sore throat when i had a performance scheduled for the following day. i worked hard until late, eventually giving up on mobile html5 implementations. the worst part of their failures is that they're bloody deliberate.

kickboxing: crazy class, feeling tough most of the time. badger brought me an hd video camera in lieu of coming to the show herself, and tried to record my technique as a demonstration but our instructor kept moving in front of the camera. she introduced me to all the features i'd need and showed me how to set up her decidedly nifty tripod, after which i returned home for another good dinner, loads of talking, and discovering the hard way that my computer and the hd camera are not willing to talk to one another.

[too tired to continue writing.]

[continued...]

drained - part iii

[... continued]

when i walked into the gym a guy i'm friendly with was behind the counter, and he's taken it upon himself to right the wrong that is me having ordered a custom shirt when i moved to the advanced mat in jiu-jitsu and still not having received it. it turns out that the other guys were all blowing me off, and that the order had been cancelled. he was kind enough to use his employee discount and give me four shirts instead of the money back; he used his discount again later when i paid for my new fighting shorts. i'm really pleased with all that.

kickboxing was good, but i was breathing even worse than on tuesday! that was crazy :(

i ran into mti, and explained to her that the reason nothing's happening with the comic is because... nothing's happening with the comic. i've told her i'm hunting for new illustrators, and i really hope i find someone soon :/

badger gave me a ride to the supermarket and i bought some emergency supplies, i came home and ate while watching steve jobs: one last thing. the biography was way more in-depth but it's nice to actually see the footage.

---friday:

it was my second day of stomache troubles. otherwise, i enjoyed a good, relaxed wake-up. completely obsessed with the razors edge, total earworm.

...

örmagörd, i'm like a little kid - i was rocking out while brushing my teeth and ended up with swipes of toothpaste on my chest :$


...

having left my umbrella at work, i was forced to use my poncho. i'm very glad i have that poncho.

i made some progress towards transferring my apartment lease, and bought myself a keyboard for work because the ones the it department provides suck. i sat with one of the guys cooperatively debugging and had a hard time keeping my eyes open because i was so tired. after we were done, he spent an hour introducing me to the magic of twilio.

i briefly spoke with my toronto cousin, had an awkward moment in the elevator when i realized that i'd responded to a stranger's "have a good weekend!" with a "thank you", and ended the week with some hard work. i practiced role models on the metro - which seems a bit creepy - and met up with gd at p.m. for way more sake than i was ready for and a delicious, delicious meal.

we headed over to côte-des-neiges to a russian restaurant for kgb's surprise birthday party. we drank a lot and danced a lot and the borscht was brilliant after i scooped out the blob of cream to the waiter's dismay and disgust.

gd and i had a wonderful time. our tipsy revelrie felt sooooo good and i was sooooo grateful that it was weeekend and sooooo grateful for how the week had played out, but i wasn't so excited about chasing it all with a blood donation the next morning.

i fell into bed, absolutely wasted.

---yesterday:

i woke up with cotton wool in my head and mouth. it was a perfect cool, rainy morning and i was warm and toasty and foggy and sleepy and the belly discomfort from the previous days was gone and i was sooooo comfortable and i was enjoying my dreams and there's nothing i wanted less than to drag myself away from all that.

but i did. i clambered out of bed, got ready as fast as i could (not very fast) and left a little late for the slam team meeting. i arrived there and was met with a silent, empty room. i fired off messages to the rest of the team and eventually one of the flatmates appeared and reminded me that our usual host is away for the weekend.

i thought about that on my way back to the metro. since i've been at work i've been so overwhelmed that everything *not* work has been on autopilot. i knew my teammate was away, but didn't connect that piece of information to whether or not we'd be meeting.

wow :/

at least there was time to do the shopping i needed to do. it was inconvenient to be walking around with both a sweater and a poncho, the latter going on and off every time i left or entered a building, but i picked up a decent iphone case, and i found a good pair of under armor shoes to replace the ones that screw up my feet.

i would've picked up a lightning cable from the apple store if it hadn't been so pricey. i picked up a knock-off from walmart later instead.

i had a quick lunch / snack at home, which would have included baba ganouj had that not been taken over by a very serious mould, chatted briefly with my mother while setting up twilio (and forgetting my password, which would drive me nuts later), hunted down all the rental assignment forms and rushed out to get them printed.

...

a girl begging in the metro was particularly aggressive.
"sorry," i shrugged.
she took a step closer.
"how about two dollars?"
"sorry," i said as i shook my head.
she took another step closer.
"one dollar"?
now she was way too close for comfort.
"why are you sorry?"
i stared back at her.
"why are you sorry?"
"because i'm not interested in giving you any money."
"you could have just said 'no'" she snarled as she stalked off.

and you could have not bothered a total stranger, and not harassed him for trying to be polite in an uncomfortable situation.

...

printing the assignment forms was quick and painless. i stopped in at walmart to buy the cable, and by the time i got to my apartment there wasn't time for coffee and i'd only had my first cup in the morning. the guy i'm assigning to rocked up a little late with his girlfriend. nice kids, but *damn* they took a long time to fill out the forms!
by the time i walked out it was 6.30 and i was running late for the 7.30 movie and was exhausted and hungry and feeling bad for making gd meet me at the cinema after she'd had a hard day at work.

i then had to wait a ridiculously long time for my meal in the food court. then i sat down and the people at the table next to me were watching videos on their phones at top volume. then gd walked in, suffering real back pain.

[furious part i]

we went to see the movie anyway, clearing things up a bit on the way in. we'd missed the first few minutes, but it didn't matter too much. guardians of the galaxy is GORGEOUS. total sensory overload, funny and fun and we'll definitely be seeing it again.

[furious part ii]

---today:

after sorting things out we went to bed exhausted, i dreamed insane dreams and woke up with a stuffed nose.

[furious part iii]

we took a while to clean up, literally and figuratively, i was introduced to the pixies and getting a bit more sleep was good. we went to midi 6 for a desperately needed lunch, then headed downtown to brave the crowds and pick up an ipad to replace gd's computer. i mentioned my new iphone and the amount it's improved my quality of life - gd's pc has been driving her nuts and it's so old and dysfunctional that there's really not much we can do with it.

by the time we returned home it was 5.30pm and we still had tons to do. the evening has been spent setting up the ipad and introducing gd to its wonders, posting, grocery shopping, doing laundry, eating wonderful home-made vegan pizzas (groundless beef and daiya cheese), being admitted to a lone soldier's veteran club, and wondering where the time has been going while my task list hasn't been getting any shorter. and now it's almost 1am.

DAMN. i needed a restful weekend :(

drained - part ii

[... continued]

l'artère sent me an email that was distinctly lacking in professionalism, asking (months down the line) if i had paid up my event bill... which i had. not impressed.

i did some stretching, then joined gd in watching premium rush, which just seemed like a sorry excuse to put together cycling and new york city. not exactly mind-blowing.

trying to get to bed early became falling asleep after 1am.

---wednesday:

it was a rainy morning but a good one nonetheless. having forgotten my lunch, i walked into the supermarket across the road where i'd ordered commensal meals the week before. i get that the manager can't speak english, but when i asked in french for him to speak slower it really grated my cheese when he simply repeated himself at the same speed. it took me an awkward moment to figure out more or less what he was saying.

for lunch i decided to try a little indian restaurant nearby called "pushap". seriously? i just found my new favourite indian restaurant, and it's right next to my office. which means it's right next to where i *used* to live.

godsdammit.

their thali is insane. and it's only $5!

...

in the afternoon i discovered that i'd been attempting to solve the wrong problem... i'd been given the impression that the feature i was implementing had worked once and been broken, when in fact it had never been implemented. that meant that i'd been working in the wrong problem space, and my efforts moved from backend to mobile frontend. mobile frontend is a nightmare, and what remained of my week was spent trying to get ios and android phones to use html5 the way the standard is defined: when apple and google have specifically gone against the standard, the documentation becomes utterly useless and trying to work off it is a solid waste of time :(

i was stupidly tired after work, it was too warm for a sweater and too rainy to be outside and i was too slow for la panthère verte where i managed to offend the girl trying to be helpful because she switched from english to french and i misunderstood that she was actually explaining what i'd asked her to :(

it was a great poetry evening, though, and the only thing that wasn't cool had to do with team politics. that's something that really shouldn't be a thing :(

...

i was so excited to come home and find my syndicate scanner iphone case! and so very, very disappointed to discover that the iphone 5c's volume buttons are incompatible with iphone 5 cases. what kind of a design decision is that?! it's so absurd, why would nobody mention the difference when selling 5/5s accessories?! fortunately, my letter to vistaprint's support was responded to with a full refund, and that did a good job of reducing my frustration and relieving me from my sense of ignorance.

...

hot coffee: you don't need to see more than half an hour to get a clear picture of how messed up things are and how bad it is that we all jumped on the "frivolous litigation" bandwagon. george w., you never cease to disappoint.

...

i wrote "unnecessary stress" but i haven't a clue what that was about.

---thursday:

dreams: day and night in a dive bar in the middle of nowhere, then festival fields with a three-ferrari grand prize and plenty more on display

it was cold and raining when we woke up and we were warm and cozy under the blankets. i finally cleared all the dishes and bought a couple of ac/dc albums: back in black (because i owned it) and the razors edge. i don't understand how it's possible that i've never heard the title song from the latter, because now that i have i understand why it's the title song. holy shit.

at the beginning of my lunch hour i walked in to the bell store where i got my phone intending to purchase a case with the store credit the salesman had promised me, but he wasn't there and the guy i dealt with gave me shit even before he looked up my information. he was a complete ass and i walked out in a bit of a rage. the perfect frame of mind to be calling my building manager in. those idiots couldn't grasp that i'm offering them a tenant and the money that goes with having a tenant in an apartment they're complaining is difficult to fill.

my code was fine but my machine was down. i noticed one of the guys playing counterstrike global: offensive, it looks just like i remember cs, and i guess that's the next gaming purchase...

i received a call from hema quebec, but because the french don't pronounce the "h" i thought the poor girl was saying "emma" and that made me make her repeat it for a while before giving up :/

after all that frustration, i figured out the html5 quirks and received a call back from the building manager to say that they were finally acquiescing to my (imo very reasonable) demands. i did some git wrangling until i finally tamed the beast and then took a bit of time out for myself.

[continued...]