saturday morning eye of the storm

 i just sent scrapper an overshare response to "how are things on your end" and i feel it's worth recording for myself:

from my side, i guess these are the times the chinese always threatened us with (“may you live in interesting times”)…

mr smear managed to close out his first year in the arts school without getting kicked out (though he managed to come close on a number of occasions), and in general he’s been maturing in front of our eyes and he’s doing infinitely better than this time last year. he just started learning to rollerblade this past couple of months, and he’s enjoying our rides much more than he was on a bike which is awesome. also, he’s joined one of his friends at a keitana which turned out to be a survivalist school-themed LARP where they learn how to construct and use weapons and have lectures on pyrotechnics 😛 

gd’s been having a rough time, we discovered recently that she’s either been celiac or has had a really intense reactions to gluten* for a long time and it just got much worse the past year or so. the good news is that a couple of months gluten free and her mind and body are in a much better place than they’ve been in years.

* this is obvious karma for us describing ourselves as “allergic to gluten free” for most of the last decade 😅

as for me, 2026 so far has been pretty wild. i’ve been getting deeper and deeper into AI both at work and in my side projects, and i can tell you that the entire industry has completely lost its mind. the tools are at the same time amazing and utter garbage, everything is hype and we’re watching tech leaders making the most ridiculously foolish plays right in front of our eyes. it’s mass psychosis and it’s disturbing as all hell. 

aside from that, i’ve been struggling on and off to figure out how to print my comics and i'm becoming more and more frustrated that none of the indie comic creators in israel seem to be interested in banding together and making it easier for everyone…

otherwise, the financial strain of living hand-to-mouth in tel aviv is “business as usual” stress, and so far the summer weather has been relatively kind, and i’m sitting on a balcony in a cool breeze and life is, somehow, pretty damned good.

...

last night was rough. emotionally and psychologically, gd and i had an argument about how we each see the world (when it comes to defining "normal" behavior in other people after the very upsetting start to season 3 of infinity train) which resulted in the always-uncomfortable "agree to disagree". that was followed by a particularly rough night, first with the hip flexors and then with indigestion that forced me upright when i desperately needed to be horizontal and took about two hours to calm down enough to let me get back to sleep. then it was morning, and after about half an hour trying to sleep in i gave up and got up to make myself coffee and sit on the balcony and make peace with my life.

...

rough night or no, rough times or no, in this moment right here and now i feel particularly blessed. the weather is beautiful and calm, the birds are singing, and our highway intersection and its surroundings are full of greens (and bright yellows), and interesting tall glass architecture (which i love because it almost makes the buildings camouflaged against the sky), and in spite of all my anxieties i seem to doing okay right now.

politely backwards

 today was f***ed. it began alright - i slept okay, had a peaceful morning, and got to the office in good spirits in spite of my trepidation regarding the weirdness i experienced yesterday before leaving.

i spent some time arranging to go to a game dev convention in a couple of weeks, which i'm excited about, and then dived back in to troubleshooting. then i received a concerning message from one of the data guys, and i headed over for what turned into a kind of intervention.

...

i've been talking with these guys about what i'm working on for over a month now. i asked them for help, they basically told me to get on with it. i've worked hard - the heaviest lifting being constant fighting to make sense of how everything works, with AI helping but also hindering at the same time - and it's been rough. demoralizing. and i've been under big pressure.

but hey, i've gotten the work done. i've sent them tons of code to review, and they've (allegedly) reviewed it, and were satisfied enough with it to merge it. now they're saying that everything about my approach has been wrong from the get-go, and that these are highly sensitive systems, and that outsiders really shouldn't be working on them directly.

setting aside the surreal moment wherein the second guy made it all about "blame" and "shaming"*, i'm stunned by just how farcical it all is. to their credit, they both made an effort to behave professionally and tactfully after having thoroughly screwed me over.

* i seem to have successfully diffused the situation by explaining that if anyone was being shamed it was me.

then the third guy came in, and informed me that the reprieve i've been enjoying due to their unresolved issues might be turning into something else entirely. at this point i'm not sure whether this means that my work has been rendered irrelevant, or whether that speeds up my time-to-extended-deadline right into the past...

...

i kept my cool, but immediately left to come home for lunch, with a deep desire to yell my frustrations at the sky. i tried discussing what had happened with my mom on the way, and we both ended up irritated because she couldn't hear me and i didn't know she couldn't hear me. i arrived home to find my son standing at the entrance on his phone, having just arrived from the early ending of the last day of school.

he welcomed me home and informed me that he and "everyone else" had literally thrown all their books into the trash, which distracted me from my own nonsense and drove me totally nuts in a different way. i was gobsmacked.

we went over his end of year report while i ate lunch, and it was relatively good. the fact that he didn't get kicked out of the school, and that he appears to be welcome to continue in the next year, is simply amazing to us and we're very grateful.

omg he's going to be turning eleven soon.

i delayed returning to the office, going so far as to shave my beard before i went, and once there i spent the following two hours writing up reports of what had transpired and compiling a timeline, interspersed with strolling around the office and staring out windows or at the views from the balconies.

i came home, helped unpack the first round of groceries, then took mr smear for a short walk. then i did not-a-hell-of-a-lot until dinner. we had a nice dinner, finished watching zootopia 2 (we were entertained, but i don't like it), spoke to my mom, and mr smear has just convinced me to let him have screen time before late summer holidays bed time.

fine.

blown fuse

 today was fucking miserable. i spent most of the company hackathon just wanting to be anywhere else, questioning my life choices and feeling very, very shit about myself and the situation i found myself in.

yesterday:

after significantly more effort, i managed to push monday's changes, and then follow that up with more changes. sitting next to the AI experts has become a legitimate challenge, because we have really interesting conversations all the time, and i need to keep awkwardly bowing out to get some actual work done.

i came home for lunch yesterday, gd made me more sushi, and it was a great escape from the office. just as i was preparing to head back, she received a phone call from a very worried mr smear - he admitted that he'd drawn IN MARKER all over the book we'd had to re-purchase for him a couple of months ago. the day before they had to return all the books.

fortunately, we had plenty of time to coordinate our responses, so we could keep on him on edge while figuring out an appropriate punishment that's harsh enough for his being on edge to be warranted, and for him to learn the lesson, of course, while still being fair enough to reward his being honest and upfront about it.

when i was finally able to get home from the office, i dropped my bag and immediately took him to the bookstore to purchase another copy. the walk there and back was long enough to have a bunch of conversations, including follow-up talks about what to do if he gets lost again, and the rest of the evening was another sushi dinner (and starting splash), and random mindless shit until climbing into bed.

today:

i woke up late, which was already a terrible start to the day. and my stomach was doing a thing. i left with mr smear, saying goodbye to him halfway to the school and walking to my office from there. i arrived having not had a cup of coffee yet, so i made one, immediately remembering how much i dislike their coffee options.

there was a large spread for breakfast, but i didn't see any vegan options so i found my team's station and started trying to get set up. of course encountering lots of weird issues that i hadn't had before.

the office manager told me to stop being a nerd (it was her expression for the day) and go eat, so i got up and asked her if there were vegan options. "of course there are", she said, and aimed me at one of the caterers. he walked me around, showing me that a) he didn't understand what "vegan" means and b) that the only options that seemed trustworthy were all buried in cheese. no, i didn't want him to wash them for me. that whole ordeal was worse - more insulting - than them just admitting that there weren't any options.

having started my day thoroughly on the wrong foot, i then began to meet my teammates. two of them were very clear about not wanting to be there, three of them arrived late, apologized, and then promptly fucked off for the rest of the day. that left five of us altogether, with exactly one guy being enthusiastic and two in total being productive (not including myself).

to be fair, though, the lack of productivity in the two guys who weren't interested in the first place was largely due to my lack of planning. it wasn't until a short while before demo time that we had the general architecture locked in, and at that point i learned that i was supposed to have been putting together the presentation and presenting our efforts to ~100 people.

this was a rock bottom moment for me.

there was nothing i felt right about presenting, everything was utter dogshit, after a lousy, miserable day that included navigating some pretty shitty attitudes. i was so stressed that i - only half in jest - tried to get anyone else in the team to take charge, and eventually one of the more experienced guys suggested that i ask the organizers to skip our team.

which they did, but then everyone seemed disappointed, the enthusiastic team member especially so.

most of the demos were really good, but i couldn't enjoy them properly because i was so nervous that they'd forget they agreed to skip us and call me up anyway. by the time i left, i felt absolutely disgusted with myself and with the day, completely demoralized, and full of bitterness.

i called gd and let her know how i was feeling, then i called my mom, and then i tried to get my head into a better place while on the bus home but to no avail. one of our upstairs friends walked into the building with me and made the mistake of asking "how are you?", and then i automatically responded with the truth and immediately felt bad for doing so. i sent her an apology a little while later.

our landlord and his handyman had been sending me voice messages all day, which i detest, and they became more and more confusing and annoying until eventually we spoke (just after i put mr smear to bed), and i went downstairs and discovered that the aircon has been on, and isn't dripping. he said some stuff that confused me, which i'm too tired to care about, and now that gd and i have finished the first episode of ludwig (which is really fun) and i've posted this, i'm going to try to wind down and fuck off into dreamland.

girl drama claude drama

 hoooo boy, it's been a couple of days. i'm going to be rushing through stuff i don't want to rush through...

yesterday:

arriving in the office just in time for my meeting, then spending a good half hour trying to get my computer connected to the network. nobody knows why my vpn connection keeps dropping, and i lost a significant amount of ephemeral context - not just work time - resolving it.

i spent a good chunk of my day running test jobs to enable me to finish working on one of the changes, and then i had to leave early to pick up mr smear, grab a bite to eat (and a cup of coffee), and head south to his class end-of-year pool party at a country club.

not only did we have quite a time getting there, between bus line switches and an unhelpful transit app, and some drugged out guy aggressively harassing innocent bystanders (he came too close for comfort while mr smear was fiddling with his sandals, but i think he ducked when he picked up my vibe).

while we were trying to get there, gd had managed to get herself lost on the way to the dentist, and there was much drama as i tried to troubleshoot remotely for her...

the pool party was really cool. the kids in this school are a different culture completely, much less cynical, and there were a few "performances", a couple of nice speeches, and then into the water. only a couple of parents went in with the kids - myself being one of them - and i had a good chat with the mom of one of mr smear's friends. and then some fun with mr smear before getting out (he was disappointed, but he was having a good time with his friends) into a chilly post-water 28 degrees.

i sat with a couple of other parents and we really got in to politics, ai, economics and ideologies, it was an exhilarating rabbit-hole dive and i think we all enjoyed it. when we were thinking about leaving, the mom offered me and mr smear a ride home, which i gratefully accepted.

suddenly, mr smear came out the pool and declared that he was "bored" and ready to go, but i could tell by his expression that something was up. i walked with him a little and managed to get it out of him - one of the kids had told his class nemesis that he liked one of the girls, they all were chanting it loudly, and the girl in question heard and apparently seemed to quite enjoy the idea of mr smear liking her.

he was mortified, dying inside, and i gave him some calming advice... but also, when i asked him what her name was, had to inform him that we were going to be going home with them in the car!

both the kids were a bit distracted on the way to the vehicle, but she saved mr smear from the scenario he was particularly dreading by jumping into the front seat. but then, as we pulled out, mr smear let one rip - i don't think anyone else heard it, but he opened that window really quickly 🤣

the ride home was much less awkward, the little girl's very sweet, and he made it home in one piece :)

it was pretty late, we had an amazing dumpling-y dinner that gd's concocted, and a good conversation about relationships and responding to teasing at bedtime.

today:

i didn't sleep so well last night, i spent at least a couple of miserably hours lying in bed, not quite awake but certainly not asleep.

i received some good news this morning, and some not-so-good news: gd's physio treatments are finally being covered - half the amount, but considerably better than nothing - and my request to have the parking fine cancelled was rejected.

the main thing this morning before heading to work was switching my copilot subscription for a claude code one. i figured it made the most sense, not just because it seems better from a value-for-money point of view, but also because my client is switching everyone over to it and i have to learn how to work with it anyway.

so that was pretty much the story of my day: trying to get real work done while simultaneously trying to get claude code to work the way i want it to. it's not a trivial migration at all, and claude code does a bunch of things in an utterly infuriating way (and i'm not the only one in our area to feel this). that stretched the day into a particularly long and emotionally draining one - lots of "i REALLY hate claude" moments - and i got stuck on something at the end of the work day that made it take longer to get out of the office than i could handle.

i picked up some healthy snacks from the supermarket on the way home. i wanted to take mr smear rollerblading, but he was doing hebrew homework and i walked in just in time to go over it with him. we both learned some stuff, but overall i'm very pleased with how he's doing.

we watched some more grease at dinner, which is initiating quite a few interesting conversations, and after dinner we had a lengthy and heated discussion about an incident with the crazy mom's manipulative daughter at school today; i'm so grateful that he voluntarily let us know immediately after school came out, because that gave me an opportunity to text his teacher before the madwoman poisons things.

i managed to do a little bit of productive stuff since putting him to bed, but i had to stop to write this and now it's feeling like bedtime.

jumpy

 in spite of my stress and my lower back (which has been griefing me for quite a few days now in spite of my consistency regarding iron and magnesium supplements), i managed to sleep last night.

i started the day reading more watchmen* (my favorite chapter, where rorschach is caught, also omg my son just read this stuff and i'd forgotten what it included), then sat down at my desk to get productive and realized that my son had left for school having forgotten his sports class shoes. so i jumped to get dressed, caught a bus (traffic lights and bus timing perfect), and dropped off his shoes and grabbed his sandals with literally two minutes to go until the bell rang.

* oh, i totally forgot - on friday evening i discovered a massive collection of books and comics i'd bought over the years from humble bundle, so i've read a couple of battlestar galactica comics (specifically one about time warping into parallel universes) and watched part of a video about the original series, and it's really shed new light on the reboot. i love how it's all canon, while all very different.

i came home and have been struggling to get shit done, though i did managed to put in a claim and complaint for gd's physio sessions.

the tami4 technician arrived, wore his shoes into the kitchen, reconnected the machine and pushed the button. water flowed nicely. it was apparently an "air bubble", and we could have had a slightly easier weekend after all.

i washed the entrance and kitchen floors, and i've made myself a coffee, and in half an hour i have a pre-hackathon meeting. i'm really having trouble getting my head in the game, i hope i "wake up" soon...

is it art?

 we were excited for the end-of-year exhibit, and mr smear was apparently excited too, as evidenced by him phoning us from the secretary's office ten minutes before it started to ask us where we were.

but once there, he wasn't interested in letting us go through the exhibit - which is what we did last time - he tried to rush us through and made it quite unpleasant. eventually, we got to the very, very, very last corner of it and found his works. his class had three pieces up, and mr smear only had two of his on the boards, and of those pieces one of them was upsetting to gd because it involved roblox horror with a rabbit being chopped up.

so... not the greatest morning we could have imagined.

we bussed home, then went out to do the weekend shopping. about halfway through i suddenly felt ill, most likely caused by nerve pressure in my neck. the rest of the expedition was unpleasant to say the least - i despise friday shopping on a good day.

we came home, i lay down for a while, and felt a bit better when i eventually got up again. good enough to try taking apartment the shower head holder that's been bothering gd since we moved in.

it was gross, badly rusted, and it took a while for me to get it off the wall. leaving this:

but is it art?

see that shiny eye? that's the sharp remains of a screw that's not coming out.

i then returned to the store with mr smear to pick up a sixpack of water that i'd been in too much of a rush for earlier, and gd called me, distressed, because she'd bought the wrong kind of rice flour for the dumplings she and mr smear have been desperate for. a bit later, there were yells from the kitchen, which rapidly made their way into the office - gd had figured out how to turn the rice flour into sweet / sticky rice flour on her own!

and there was much rejoicing.

it's now erev shabbat, and i'm not quite sure what i should be doing, nor what i want to do. but i will post this:

AI slop, AI slop of horrors, AI slop, AI slop of terror...

discouraged

 the more i worked today, the more despairing i felt. i'm extremely anxious and overwhelmed, i feel like i'm drowning. every layer of the onion i peel shows me that the onion was far larger and deeper than i thought; or, at least, each wall that i break down thinking it's the last one turns out to have two more standing right behind it.

it doesn't help me personally that i understand that what this company has done to itself is dangerously stupid: most of the companies in our industry, it seems, have shot themselves in the foot by attempting to drop headcount and fill the gaps with AI. even if we were using the latest models this would be a stretch, but with the model pricing being raised across the board (the drug dealer's sample period is over) and the israeli shekel having strengthened significantly against the dollar (making actual developers more expensive to the company), it's a race to the bottom and everyone's losing.

the only positive thing i managed to do - i'm not holding my breath about the disappointing reports i put together after five additional hours of investigation, or the plans for tomorrow so that i can ask for help - was to disable and migrate all of the thousands of lines of irrelevant and contradictory repository rules and skills that i didn't realize were polluting each and every AI context i've been working with up until now :/

...

gd and i were a little late to the school meeting this morning, because of course we hit ridiculous rush hour traffic and of course we decided to get off and switch to the light rail just as we got through the worst of it. we had a good, productive hour with the councillor and new homeroom teacher, though, some of it was funny and some deeply concerning. the homeroom teacher did a little snooping right after, though, and called me to clarify that the incidents were not quite as serious as they'd been made out to be.

that was an enormous relief.

gd stopped at azrieli by herself on the way home, which was the first time she's felt safe enough (from a health perspective) to do so in many months. i came home and dived into work.

i had a really rough afternoon, and i don't know if my regularly running back-and-forth to the bathroom was the result of something i ate, or the anxiety that was slowly building up.

either way, my first real "break" was after mr smear came home, and we had a very long (an hour or so) family meeting during which we discussed All The Things that had come up during the school meeting. it was mostly positive, but the big stuff is him needing to learn to avoid alienating his peers, and find more ways to connect with them.

oh, yes - mr smear came home sporting a weird rash on his hand. gd and i suspect that it might be from the borrowed wrist protectors, but it didn't seem to be getting any worse so now we think he must have brushed past a bush or something that he had an allergic reaction to.

because we were super-bored, and not stressed about anything, we discovered that in addition to everything else we have an infestation of cigarette beetles - or something very similar :/

by the time we had dinner i didn't have much of an appetite, and neither did gd, though we managed to eat anyway. after a couple of great episodes of infinity train (we're into season 2, now), we chatted with my mom for a while, fortunately discussing her birthday present and not making the mistake of getting her something she doesn't want.

...

we also discussed my cousin who was scammed a while back, and taken for literally everything he had. not only has he just gone from wealthy to destitute, and not only is he seemingly making every effort to not get back on his feet again, but gd made a good point today and now we're all really concerned that he's essentially dragging his son down with him, because nobody else is going to put him up.

it's just awful.

...

i honestly don't know how i'm going to sleep tonight, but i have to. i'm so nervous about all the steps i need to take in the morning, and i feel just horrible about everything.

burning down

 i'm replaying today over and over, and no matter which way i turn things over, i'm in shit. and it's absolutely my fault, regardless of context.

there's something magical about the accumulation of various anxieties and stresses, and bad decisions made under high pressure, and now i've just broken the cardinal rule of my employer by grossly misjudging my time estimates and having to ask my client for an extension, which i'm praying i won't need. this is literally me praying for a miracle, and lots of extra hours.

but my life doesn't allow for focusing. that's not how things go.

i spent most of my hours today laser focused, in high gear, generating reams and reams of code and then reviewing it with a fine-toothed comb to make sure i didn't miss anything with my own eyes. with one agent doing a fix-and-detect cycle, and another ensuring that the first agent's changes still fit into the grand scheme of things, a task that i thought would be quick and easy and had scheduled for sunday evening past, i finally completed its first subtask after 6pm on wednesday.

and this is just the prep-work so that i can get into the real stuff.

...

gd's toe's looking and feeling much better, so much so that she decided not to see the surgeon today. let's hope it keeps getting better 🤞

...

mr smear had a good day today, although he's already doing his usual thing of latching on to any bad memory he can grab hold of and ditching the fun parts. his class went on their annual hike, a proper tour through the cave system at beit guvrin, and from the photographic evidence it seems like he had a good time in spite of himself.

...

i started my day today reading a bit more of stranger in a strange land. so far, it has not aged well. i'm now ending my day trying to make some progress on my AI harness, or climbing into bed at the earliest opportunity. i actually slept pretty well last night, which was amazing, and shocking too. but my lower back / hips were doing their thing all damned day instead, and i'm nervous about what tonight might bring. at least i was able to shower without triggering hell's itch again. i think i'm starting to peel now...

constructive

it's half-past midnight, and i honestly didn't realize it was so late already. i just put together and posted my hackathon presentation, and i'm actually quite proud of it :)

...

 i don't know what possessed me to "experiment" with moisturizer this morning - i thought it was over, but after i put a little on one of my shoulders, it burned terribly (while the other didn't) for at least a few hours afterwards 😫

i managed to make some progress on my side project this morning, but i got into a flow state and then suddenly it was a rush to get to the office before my team daily, so i stayed home until after the meeting and then went out. the work day was pretty good, but my own work was delayed by a fair amount of lending a hand to other projects.

and then i found myself consciously asking my boss the exact kind of thing that i suspect my now-ex teammate might have asked, and hoping that it's not giving a bad vibe. but i *did* find a reasonable workaround for something that's been bothering me - manual dashboard editing - and now i've got AI agents building and modifying version controlled dashboards even without corporate support.

so there.

i came home early (although having done plenty of hours), had a good leftover lunch, then got some more work done before we all headed out to catch a bus to the school for the parent/teachers evening.

peak rush hour. we managed to get off the bus a stop early and walked the last leg, which was a bit much for gd but we didn't really have a choice.

meeting mr smear's new homeroom teacher was encouraging. the problems he has are real, but the improvements are real too, and - as i said to gd and my mom earlier - he's no longer in crisis mode. he's got shit to learn, like discipline, and apparently some of his "funny" mannerisms are offensive to his teachers and peers (like his tendency to "air quote" when he doesn't agree with something), but from what we heard tonight he's doing okay.

although... we also have a follow-up meeting with the full team on sunday, so perhaps not? who knows.

the meetings with his art teachers went well, and it was then that the penny dropped that there's only one arts track from the sixth grade onwards, and mr smear is talking about switching to music which doesn't make any sense. i've got no clue how this story plays out, but even if they did accept him, which they probably won't, i don't know if we literally are able to afford the lessons :(

we had a really funny meeting with his math teacher - she called mr smear a "good student", and then gd and her both burst out laughing - and then light-railed and bussed back home. i got some more work done and mr smear showered while gd made dinner, then we ate and finished the highlander movie (which barely made any sense), chatted with my mom and got mr smear into bed. once that was done, gd helped me sponge bath myself to avoid triggering hell's itch again, and then i dived in to the presentation.

it's been one heck of a week so far. please god let me sleep tonight 🙏

expanding to fill the hours

psychologically, i'm really struggling. it wasn't a bad day, i think, but it was mentally tough and now that it's just about 10pm mr smear's finally gotten into the shower after only just finishing his hebrew homework. it has been extremely trying for me, even though i did finish my first ascension in slay the spire 2 while i sat behind him alternately coaching and chiding him.

i got a surprising number of hours in at work today, in spite of the fact that i had to take two hours to bus to the other side of bnei brak and back for a (literal) two-minute ultrasound.

it's always an experience seeing how those people live. bnei brak, a city as beautiful as its people. i arrived there with the back to the future theme in my head :P

my coworker who i spoke to for a couple of hours last week pitched some ideas this morning. this afternoon, our manager contacted me for a quick meeting and informed me that that coworker is no longer with us :(

the explanation he gave seemed reasonable, but didn't quite match with what my now-ex coworker said in a linkedin message (his company slack had been disabled by the time i found out).

apparently i'm okay? i guess we'll see.

we had a Q&A with my client's COO, which was edifying, but really, really long and boring. i'm really glad my client is not my employer, i'd be nervous for sure.

["i'm done showering!" | "really? the water's still running" | "well, if that's how you define if someone's still showering, then fine"]

i came home to hound mr smear (his homeroom teacher informed me today that he was trolling the hebrew teacher about his assignment which he'd claimed to have completed), and then we took a break for dinner (and highlander), and now...

... i have so much stuff to do, but i'm tired, and i don't feel like it. also, it's been two days and i'm sooooo damned sunburned it's ridiculous.

a lazy afternoon

 we took a taxi to the clinic, getting out early because the road was blocked and almost having an incident with a street cleaner. i decided to try reading stranger in a strange land while we waited, and was very busy nodding off just as gd was called in to see the nurse.

the nurse was very sweet and helpful, but the most helpful thing she did was inform us that her daughter had recently gone through a similar thing with a toe and the local anaesthetic hadn't helped in the slightest. so i looked it up when we got home, and discovered that it really is a thing, and i know what to suggest to the surgeon next time we encounter him.

after we got home i spent some time fiddling about with an ai side project (it's building right now) and learning about some more devious google nonsense, which introduced me to helium: i'm trying it out right now, so far, so good. i played an act of slay the spire 2, tried to nap (but didn't get in more than five minutes), and after mr smear got home i went out to do some shopping, which turned out to be quite a mission.

i'm tired, but i can't decide whether to lie down or drink one of the beers we bought for lag ba'omer. not because i particularly want one, but because it's hard not to have one just because i keep seeing them whenever i walk through the kitchen.

...

when he's not doing his homework, mr smear's been playing minecraft with stabbity-stab-stab, which is how gd and i have been calling his classmate who allegedly threatened another friend with a knife. and they're still friends. so either someone's lying, or everyone's mad.

...

i've been listening to if pink floyd played the entire ocarina of time soundtrack today, and it's amazing.

somniferous

 i'm making an effort to stay awake tonight. fortunately, after the weekend progress i made on my AI harness i'm inspired to move forward. there's a lot of stuff going on, and i'm definitely learning.

...

i accompanied gd to the clinic this morning, from there were went to the hospital, begged for an in-between in-between appointments appointment, and returned to the clinic to see a doctor who gave gd a referral that formally begs for an in-between in-between appointments appointment. later i received an email from the hospital that says "okay", with no further details.

it's all very confusing.

i was falling apart after we came home, so i made myself a coffee and napped for half an hour, sipping it before closing my eyes and finishing it soon after. i was still a mess for a little while after that, but i eventually managed to sit myself down and dive into the work.

i feel like i did some real work today, even if a lot of it was being told by the AI agents that none of what they said before made any sense :/

i called mr smear after school had ended, and was pleased to hear that he'd found the last missing book. he gave me a bullshit story about not being able to bring home a workbook without bothering the janitors more than he already had, which i decided to let slide...

today was a mix of healthy and unhealthy snacking.

my mom and i took a walk to the immigration lawyers' office for a free consultation. the weather today was weird, and there were a lot of detours, but we arrived on time for a very pleasant meeting, and we were assured that ours is a "slam dunk" of a case should the need to use their services arise.

we returned home, i ushered mr smear into the shower so that i could spend some time on my AI harness before dinner, we enjoyed a really nice dinner, and a smooth bedtime (i resumed reading the colour of magic for the first time in a while).

my brain's a bit foggy. i'm not sure how much constructive effort i'll be putting in, but dammit i'm staying awake.

abandoned beer

 well, i guess i was wrong. a minute after posting i received a message from one of the birthday moms, to say that they'd tried to get mr smear to stay...

i packed up, abandoned my beer ($#@%!) and stalked out the coffee shop, calling gd to update her (and vent). she quickly convinced me to avoid being reactionary and hold a family meeting when we got home. i was furious when i found him, i made sure to send him back to apologize and say goodbye, and we began the walk home.

it was good that we walked. not only were our public transport options limited - and i didn't want to pay for another taxi ride - but it gave us a lot of time to talk once i'd calmed down (fortunately, that only took a couple of minutes and i didn't say anything that i ended up regretting).

his behavior was less bad than i initially thought, though it definitely wasn't wise, and it seems like there was a lot more at play than just pop music and food smells. amongst other things we spoke about the importance of integration with whoever you're studying, working or serving with. during the family meeting gd and my mom both helped drive that home, and i feel like we got through to him 🤞

there were a bunch of other things, but that was the most important one. i'm pretty glad we handled it relatively calmly and constructively.

dinner was great (gluten-free-gd's getting good with daal), and although mr smear took a long time to get ready for bed, it gave my mom and i an opportunity for a really interesting discussion about pluralism, contrasting my experiences in japan and india with hers as a foreign exchange student in the 60s.

i'm not sure how functional i'm going to be right now, perhaps i should start moving towards going to bed.

the twelve tasks of tuesday

sleep journal entry: technically a decaf coffee around 3pm. i still struggled with post-nasal drip and coughing for a lot of the night, but towards the morning i was able to sleep properly for a bit. now everything's starting to come out again...

earlier i had a dream in which i, along with a squad of sorts, entered deep into a terrorist's nest. one imbecile made enough noise to call attention to us, another (a kid i detested in primary school) did something even more dumb and suddenly we had to fight our way out. the battle was vicious and bloody (and involved shooting a lot of people in the eyes), and then i awoke.

...

i didn't get a lot of hours in yesterday, but i did end up with enough of a handle on the situation to be confident in how i move forward. the theme (or tantrum) of the day was due to ownership insanity - the devops who had seemed receptive to my initial proposal pushed back with the argument that there are two sources of truth, both valid even if contradictory, and that's on top of the situation in which there's no leadership coming from management and nobody knows what the situation should be.

it feels like the twelve tasks of asterix.

we weren't sure if we were picking mr smear up or not (he ended up going to his friend's place), but just before school ended his teacher called me for a long conversation - which needs a follow-up face-to-face meeting - with the fantastic starting point that they found all of mr smear's books! all but one, so my mother and i took a meandering walk through fascinating architecture to the bus, found the right book store, bought a copy of the missing book, sat down for a coffee, then walked home.

i didn't get much work done in the hour or so i was at home.

a potential impactful talk with my mom on the bus about my urban kibbutz idea.

one of the guys from my second team was looking through old stuff yesterday and sent me a picture of the gift i presented them during my farewell - it was such a fun memory!

mr smear met up with us at the mall after hanging out with his friend, we bought him a headband (his hair's been in his eyes) and he dutifully made sure it wasn't from adidas (i can't believe they're still operating in israel), then he sat down to eat his school lunch (?!) while my mom and i found a surprisingly good dollar store and picked up a bunch of things we'd been looking for.

mr smear wrote his name clearly in his new math book, dinner was great, and the evening was pleasant (including learning that the UAE has pulled out of OPEC).

i actually got a couple of practical things done before playing a bit of slay the spire 2, before hitting the hay.

brain fogging

 once again, as it gets later and i get ready to go to bed, my nose and throat situation begins to worsen... on the one hand, the antihistamines seem to be helping a bit. on the other, this really can't be just allergies.

i'm enjoying the excuse to accompany mr smear to and from school these days, even though it's awkward and getting more awkward by the day. are we at war? will the bombing resume? or should we be living our best lives?

limbo is uncomfortable.

i told my team what i've been thinking, and that i essentially needed to go back to the drawing board, and they were understanding. in spite of a fair number of distractions, i did manage to be productive today and i'm understanding considerably more than i did before. i'm not quite sure how to formally introduce AI tooling into what i'm doing - i may have to treat it as local harnessing only - but at least i'm feeling a little less lost.

a couple of months ago i began the process of setting up paybox for mr smear, and then a few weeks later got his account set up. since then it's been unclear whether he's actually earning interest, and today i got in touch with their support. after they initially lied to me, it became apparent that children's savings accounts do not, in fact, earn interest. so the whole exercise was one in futility, and i've now withdrawn all the money and we're going to have to find another option. and, just like every other thing we've tried, this has cost us; not just in cash, but i've now got two credit cards that need to be cancelled :/

assholes.

i snacked a lot today. today was all about snacks. even if some of the snacks were essentially just an extended lunch :P

the supplement routine is getting a bit ridiculous, though. it's complicated, and i've kinda given up on intermittent fasting the full 16 hours (though i guess i've been unofficially doing less for a while now) because it makes it even more so. i can't drink tea or coffee for an hour before or after taking my iron supplement (or eating something with a reasonable amount of iron in it), and i've got to take vitamin D in the morning with food, and magnesium at night with vitamin C (but not vitamin D), and i have to have my handful of walnuts (or pancakes, if i'm in time for gd's breakfasts) for omega 3, and not forget to regularly take b12.

after my mom and i picked mr smear up from school, we returned home and then walked across the highway to find the supermarket. it really is well-hidden! mr smear's whole thing for weeks has been hunting for lotus biscoff cookies, and i honestly wasn't expecting to find them there.

but find them there we did :)

on the way there, i'd charged him with paying attention to the route so that he can he gd find the place, to which he'd responded in a decidedly uncooperative manner. i warned him there'd "be a test", and on the way back i quizzed him, putting the lotus cookies on the line. he was not happy when i "failed" him and assured him there'd be no biscuits until i got a map, at which point i went home and my mother volunteered to accompany him to give him a hand.

which he apparently didn't need 🤦‍♂️

it really is all about motivation with this kid. he got home, drew me a map, took half a biscuit and promptly forgot about the ones i'd offered him as a prize, and then settled down to try and improve his previous solution in human resource machine.

that was effectively the end of my work day :P

while he didn't exactly post the correct solution himself, he did work through it really well, he made a real effort and stayed focused, made a bunch of modifications that he was pleased with himself about, and when i sat down with him at the end, he was clearly on board with me every step of the way.

this is exciting stuff ^_^

just before dinner his new teacher called me, and our chat was pleasant. funny, even, in a distressing kind of way, because the story she told me was that she'd loaned mr smear a book for the lesson, and he'd somehow managed to lose it by the end of class even though nobody had moved.

my child is certainly talented.

eventually, i got the full story over dinner and everything made sense, nothing had been lost.

dinner was really good, gd and my mom worked together to produce a lentil curry that even anti-lentils mr smear found edible.

bedtime was smooth, i finally read a bit more of the colour of magic to him (we're so close to the end!), and i've now spent a couple of hours doing nothing of value (including some spire slaying). now i'm taking my cough to bed and praying to get some rest.

shouldn't have told the universe my plans

 gd decided to clean the bathrooms and floors today. i tried to nap for a short while after breakfast, though i really didn't get much actual rest, and then our kibbutz cousin arrived for a visit. it was great to be able to host her for once! it's the first time in the twenty five years i've known her :P

just before she arrived, i registered a flurry of activity on our classroom whatsapp group, and we were horrified to learn that mr smear's homeroom teacher was riding her bicycle to the school earlier this week and was run over by a truck. she's been hospitalized and is in a serious condition, it doesn't look like she's going to be returning to the school this year 💔

we had a great late lunch ordered from jars and bowls, after which i jumped on a bus to pick mr smear up from school. we walked all the way to the light rail, hopped on the light rail, and only then did i learn that he'd left his locker unlocked again. so we turned right around at the next stop, went back into the school and i made him unpack his locker and search for his books while i searched above and in all the open lockers in the same row.

we didn't find anything.

we then took a quick walk to a bus stop to ride to the dentist to join gd, who was very nervous after her last visit. by the time we arrived she was almost done, and we she came out she was (rightly) very proud of herself for having told her dentist exactly how she was feeling and why; the dentist responded professionally, and gd says the experiences were night and day.

i wanted to pick up a decaf coffee on the way home (it would have been my third decaf today), but the guy at the coffee shop took way too long. we caught a bus home, and since we got back i've been struggling to stay awake so as not to have a hard time getting to sleep tonight.

so, braindead, i played slay the spire 2 until dinner, ate a great dinner with my family, showered, and have just tucked mr smear into bed. now it's time to go to bed myself.

the alternative

a scratchy throat all day that caused trouble all night. it's still scratchy, but feeling slightly better right now so hopefully that's a trend.

i wasn't too sure that ze germans were doing the yom ha'atzmaut thing, and i made the mistake of only asking ru55 if he was going, and he didn't get back to me until this morning. so instead of going, i cancelled the car we'd rented and we had a "barbecue" hot-dog lunch at home that was really good.

a bit later, my mom and i dragged mr smear out to the beach. there was a chill wind on the beach itself, but once mr smear (mr inertia) was on the sand he didn't want to leave the beach, nor the sea. in retrospect, we should have brought him a towel...

otherwise, it was a beautiful afternoon. we took a slow walk down the beach and then up to allenby, where mr smear decided we should have hummus. that was a fantastic decision, we had a fun experience with the shifka and the meal was delicious.

then we walked up sheinkin, picking up some coffee along the way to the bus home.

unfortunately, i accidentally ordered a regular coffee instead of decaf. so it was around 6pm that i drank my fourth cup for the day.

we got home, and there was no argument from mr smear about jumping straight into a hot shower. afterwards, we started watching the tokyo ghoul series. which is really cool, but i did nap through half of the second episode...

dinner was the "barbecue" burgers, also delicious.

we got mr smear into bed, unsure of whether to expect a disrupted night or not because the ceasefire was supposed to end.

i went to bed pretty late (played slay the spire 2), and simply couldn't sleep. i estimate that it took me more than an hour and a half to finally fall asleep, after which it was fitful with claustrophobic dreams of an in-house rollercoaster with one of ze germans.

i struggled to wake up this morning, with my throat still doing a thing, but mr smear certainly helped as he made horrible noises (his throat) for the longest time. over coffee / his breakfast, we discovered that he's been avoiding going to school because he's been getting into trouble for not having his books. he's lost most of his books, apparently, and also never thought to report back that the lock on his locker is broken, and that he doesn't remember the code for the old one.

i don't know how much of any of that is actually true.

we explained to him that the books are expensive - they are - and that he's going to find them. and that all privileges are to be withheld until the situation is sorted out. on the bus to school, i explained what he needs to do and found his old lock's code, and sent a message to his homeroom teacher. on my way back home, he called to assure me that he's at least started the day off making an effort, so 🤷‍♂️...

also, on my way home, i thought some more about my work situation which is starting to freak me out. i've been trying to get a job done with AI that i have little context for, and the AI is leading me around in circles. not only do i need to change tack and focus on building the context i need, but i also *have* to  begin experimenting with AI harnesses because i'm feeling like i'm getting left behind on the most critical issue of our (engineering) time right now...

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.

dust mouth

 firstly, omg i didn't realize it was my turn on crosswalk duty at the school this morning 🤦‍♂️

so that's a bit shit.

also a bit shit is our financial situation this month...

i dragged myself out of bed this morning, and immediately completed my first sleep journal entry. i found it a bit confusing at first, not just because of whether 12am and 12pm are midnight and noon or vice versa, but also because it's weird documenting the night's sleep and only afterwards documenting any naps from the rest of the day before the night's sleep. either way, it amuses me that the first night of sleep journaling and i actually slept pretty well.

it was a warm morning, first day of shorts and vests. i dropped mr smear off at school, returned home for an early breakfast, and then accompanied gd to the clinic. she got an appointment for our doctor, and so until then we burned our time waiting in line at the pharmacist. we picked up a coffee at "our" bakery, and then sat down with the doctor for a very unpleasant session.

gd was not happy, because the doctor doesn't agree with her assessment of something she's dealing with and so refused to prescribe medication for it. after much drama, gd's managed to get our old doctor in cape town to prescribe it in a way that my mother can pick it up... it's all very weird.

after that, we visited the nurses office to find out what happened to a sample gd delivered over a month ago, and learned that she'd never provided a "permission" (which nobody had told her about) so somebody had collected the sample and... made it disappear? so we'll be complaining about that on sunday, when she brings in a new sample.

jesus.

we returned home to drop off the groceries and then head out to the mall to pick up gd's new prescription specs, at which point we realized that we'd forgotten about mr smear and that school had come out already. i told him to meet us at the mall, which he dutifully did. he arrived just as gd's eyes were being re-tested because her very expensive specs were completely useless - she literally couldn't see anything - and entered the lego store which i chatted with my big sister.

during our chat, i learned that someone in a group i'm in is doing something related to the impact work i've been thinking a lot harder about since wednesday. i've just sent the guy an email, hopefully it'll lead to something.

after gd came out, we went downstairs and had a delicious hummus lunch, then gd failed to pick up another pharmacy prescription (part of the doctor drama) and we headed home, stepping outside into a massive, choking dust storm.

i read a little bit of the the colour of magic graphic novel while listening to tool before crashing into a semi-conscious nap for an hour, then made myself a coffee, used the massage tool on my neck, and then settled down at my computer to try and do something productive, even though my brain's offline, while i listen to mr smear humming to himself and appearing to make enough progress on his homework that he might actually be done before the sunset deadline.

i don't know if i'm going to get anything productive done.

finding out

 i think i had plans for tonight. like, real ones, i was excited. but after a really long day - accompanying mr smear to school while practicing the sign language for FAFO and singing nant's ingonyama bagithi baba, trying to console gd who's stomach's messed up again, investigating weird messages from my mobile provider, long hours working with AI*, a huge, delicious vegan lunch from an unfamiliar place, more hard work, picking up mr smear while "participating" in an hour and a half zoom workshop that i didn't need, lots more hard work, losing my temper trying to help mr smear with his homework (him claiming to not understand a thing after successfully doing pages of the same stuff), sitting down with big data (and then his family) over a utility app he wants to build, a great dinner and ready player one followed by the terrible mistake of trying to eat 99% chocolate (why TF does it exist?!) followed by a rather shit bedtime, followed by more hard work.

* and understanding that AI is really teaching us to be better mentors and instructors to juniors

oh, and i saw and killed a fucking flea this afternoon. we have no idea where it could have come from. fuck.

i mean, at least i managed to sleep a bit last night. i wonder if i'll be so lucky tonight.