thinking

 well, mr smear did it - he handled his fears and he went to bed 🙏

i stayed up pretty late, but finally crashed and slept a bit. not enough, apparently, because i've spent most of the day uncomfortably alternating between reading and napping, with only a couple of longer periods watching an episode of doctor who and giving up on acquiring the zerg campaign in starcraft ii and ending up installing the original starcraft instead.

i've been making a lot of progress through elana gomel's nightwood, and it's riveting fairy tale horror.

now, to mr smear's usual chagrin, we're going out for a bit.

...

i've spent a lot of today thinking about tomorrow's dealings with bigtalk. i occasionally feel like things are going to be alright, but for the most part i'm quite anxious.

stretch

 today was almost entirely spent hiding at home with the A/C on, aside from a few minutes taking mr smear to the corner store to pick up some stuff, most importantly tortit ice creams.

if it wasn't for the discomfort in my neck and legs - possibly a sympathetic response to gd's difficulties - it was a quiet day. we all watched american pop together, which is an absolute masterpiece. there were two moments in the entire movie which were a little too edgy for mr smear, but overall it was thoroughly brilliant, beautifully animated, and wonderful.

before we made kiddush - this is becoming a tradition - mr smear and i played through another level in starcraft ii. he *really* wants to skip to the zerg, though, while i want to play the story through sequentially, so we agreed that next time we'll take turns between zerg and humans.

over dinner and until (late) bedtime, we started watching the doctor who reboot. great experience, and now we're back into mr smear needing to be brave at bedtime because he found some elements disturbing...

onigiri

 the clinic: learning that one of the receptionists' kids also has herpes in the eye. mr smear's paediatrician wasn't familiar with CRISPR but asked me to send her info. we're praying that someone will figure out how to remove herpes soon, and not just from a petri dish.

the bike shop: both bike shops were closed, so we tied up the bike and continued on to dizengoff. we returned later and were treated to a demonstration of the changing of the tube and addition of a new liner to protect it, which was fascinating.

japan month at dizengoff: mr smear was thoroughly amazed by the food, in particular the onigiri. that makes two of us - gd liked it, but isn't a fan of sweeter sushi rice so would rather make her own.

fine by me :P

some of yesterday afternoon was crashing, some of it was working, and some of it was reading and playing card games (uno and fluxx), and mr smear and i played a bunch of starcraft ii together. the evening was a pleasant shabbat evening (with pizza in honor of mr smear's birthday).

after putting mr smear to bed, i tried to get into cyberpunk 2077. i tried. but i had to repeat a section that really felt forced (perhaps you get more choices going forward, but i just felt locked in and bored), and the default controls don't make sense, and by the time i realized i was confused about how to set the controls up the way i'd like i was done, and i put in for a refund.

i played minutescape until it lulled me to sleep.

...

last night i had some really cool ideas for work, and i woke up in the middle of the night and had to get them written down (and book appointments with two of our founders, and book a few days off for long weekends), and then just did random things (including resuming a game of slay the spire) until mr smear woke up.

i tried to get back to sleep, but since then my lower back and butt have been really hurting me. i'm exhausted. emotionally, too, because i saw a message from our tech chief about bigtalk's PR and now i'm confident i need to share my new concerns with my boss tomorrow, which really doesn't feel good. i mean, i like the guy, and technically he's brilliant, but he clearly doesn't have enough experience with collaborative efforts.

we watched son of the white mare, which is fantastic and strange and wonderful, and i was surprised by how much gd and mr smear got into it as well - it feels more like something from a modern art gallery than a feature film.

i've been reading some more nightwood, it took a while to find its feet but i'm a quarter of the way through and things just started heating up.

my aunt's boyfriend rocked up a little while ago for a quick coffee, bearing gifts from my mom. mr smear was very excited in spite of gd almost spoiling the surprise yesterday (note to self: never tell her anything that's supposed to be a surprise, egads)

mr smear's playing spiderheck, i'm contemplating scrounging for some lunch, and then we're going to go out with the bike for a ride.

...

my eyes are feeling a bit better, but i still need the drops quite frequently :/

the good, the bad, the ugly

the good:

the swimming pool experience yesterday was just excellent. he followed instructions, and i came up with some new exercise ideas, and his swimming dramatically improved in front of my eyes. not only is his crawl technique significantly better, but he figured out how to get himself to the bottom of the deep end and we generally enjoyed our time together.

we both had a great time.

i napped well in the afternoon. in the early evening, we spent some time discovering bird flight simulators (such as birdz and aquila) - while the intention is to learn how to code them, i ended up feeling a bit overwhelmed...

while we were doing that, i installed starcraft ii (we're not really using our windows machine, so i was pleased to learn that it runs on a silicon mac!) and war thunder. the latter i tried out while mr smear was in the shower, but the former? mr smear and i have completed the tutorials and begun the campaign, with him playing each level first (and me kibbitzing) and me playing through after, and we're both having a blast!

we finished watching the boy and the heron during and after dinner, it's absolutely gorgeous and i was pleased that we all enjoyed it together.

i slept pretty well last night (until i was woken up by imagining the work conversations i need to have) and i napped a fair amount after everyone else got up.

more starcraft ii today, and we finally continued watching fantastic fungi which we started a few months ago. my late coworker had recommended it to me, and i was caught completely by surprise by the sudden shift in direction, and now it's too late for me to ask him what it is that made him recommend it to me. did i mention my opinions on terrence mckenna's food of the gods? or timothy leary's writings? did it have to do with veganism? or did he just happen to have seen it recently?

the bad:

on our way out to the swimming pool, we discovered that something broke the valve on his bike's front tire, so in addition to having to take the bus, we're going to need to get it fixed soon. that sucks.

my new filling is super-sensitive to cold. and it feels like i've been eating a lot of things that are much harder than expected - like the raisins in my muesli which are unusually small-rock-like.

i think my ingrown toenail isn't healing.

gd and i have unfriended some recently-added friends because they've gone from protesting the government to blaming us for the supposed famine in gaza and dressing their daughter in watermelon shirts. WTAF.

our afternoon walk this evening should have been good, but i left the house in a bad mood and returned in a bad mood.

the ugly:

as if the office politics from thursday weren't enough - they woke me up in the middle of the night and i never quite made it back to bed - while mr smear and i were at the swimming pool yesterday i noticed some redness around his eye.

it's herpes again. this time, there's a blister right on the edge near his tear duct, and i'm freaking out. and to make things more interesting, the timing couldn't be worse because now taking him to the doctor tomorrow and giving him his meds really interferes with his summer camp experience, which in my opinion is critical for him in terms of being a corrective normal-israeli-kid experience. (not to mention how expensive it is)

03/07/03

i've been trying all day to get the vodacom internet sms whatsit to work, and now i'm not sure if it does or doesn't. thanks to synkronos for the inspiration and advice (things not to do).
i haven't even thought of touching my tron game, and i definitely can't read the ddk stuff now.

my brain is fried and yet i still feel compelled to abuse my 'puter.
instead of studying today, i played starcraft (did a bang-up job on level 10, when the zerg overran i destroyed the little bastards), and read a bit of count zero.

invader zim is 20% and climbing, albeit ever so slowly. i kinda imagined that bittorrent would be faster than kazaa: i'm such a dreamer.

we have a marketing project that's due on wednesday - this is the biggest contributor to our final grade (ie if we don't do well i FAIL, regardless of supplementary exams). and grootbek, who's in charge of our group, is leaving on monday for the states. and we haven't even begun the nasty stuff yet. bugger.

the exam in corporate law was okay - i spoke a lot of legalese (read: crap), and generally bullshitted my way to filling in 85% of the paper. i was only 70% of the way through when i realized that we only had half an hour left...
*scribble* *scribble*

after the exam i chilled with the guys who work in our campus computer labs - every thursday evening is "happy hour", lots and lots of free booze and munchies. jack daniels and jonny walker type of booze, with some cheap tequila and vodka (written wodka in israel) thrown in.

i didn't drink. not for any other reason than that i had to go to training tonight. not that i could so much as walk in a straight line, but anywho i bladed there and absolutely killed myself with warmup and stretching.
and then there was fighting. twice i got kicked in the head, one of those to the eye, and i was tired, and hurting all over.
the guys i train with realized tonight, for the first time, that i really don't know how to fight. i kept trying to explain to them that the gold medal i won was a fluke, and they thought that i had a problem with self-confidence, so they kept telling me that i'm fine.

it's infuriating to watch yourself screw up and then have others tell you it's okay, like you're some sort of retard.
err... sorry, challenged person.

one of her best friends (male) has a visitor (female) from the states, so we took them out to play pool in ra'anana. it was quite fun, although i'm the only one who really knows how to play (she's getting better, but it takes time).

if there's one thing they know how to make in this country, it's ice-cream.

02/07/03

i think i have low-grade insomnia. err... i *think* that's the way to say it.
i finally went to sleep around 2am, woke up around 9am and just could not keep my eyes closed.
and the heat is so uncomfortable - i've just been feeling crappy all day.

bearing in mind our law exam is tomorrow afternoon, this is what i did today (until 20.00 that is):

finished starcraft level 10 watched 28 days later went shopping for a toy boat went shopping for food spent time with her

28 days later is a great film. the cinamatography is excellent, the story is good, and the protagonist is great. the only problem i have is a rather major one - i think the movie would have been a LOT scarier if instead of silly b-movie type monsters, they'd stuck with the story and made it really angry people. much scarier, when your enemies are not restricted to stereotypical zombie attacks.

they don't sell toy boats/ships in my entire city. i went to every f#$@ing toy store, and there're a lot, and i didn't find a single one.
and it's a country that's proud of it's navy, too.

i actually bought healthy food today - and enough to last a couple more. i even bought fruit, which is such big news that i'm mailing my mother just to tell her.

it's now 20.13, and way past time to begin the studies...
*THAT SINKING FEELING AGAIN*

*** later ***

that sucked. i couldn't concentrate on the material - it's all legalese (OBviously), and i'm still buggered from not sleeping properly.
however, i'm coming up with all sorts of other bright ideas - for instance how to cover the vodacom sms site so that you only have to fill in the phone number and confirmation mail once.
i'll probably have that up VERY soon.

i went to get myself a midnight snack (i've been eating pita and humus all day - i WILL get gas from this, i'm sure. note: humus is a bean), and got caught by two tekken players. out of 15 games i lost one. i would be quite impressed and proud if only i hadn't been beaten by a completely lucky run - i know how grootbek plays and he had no clue what he was doing.
it sucks to see so much effort (by us trying to teach him) go to waste.

i've been reading william gibson's count zero for the last few days - it's VERY good. no wonder he got such acclaim (yes, i HAVE read neuromancer - this is cooler).

28/06/03

my god - i have watched a lot of movies today.

last night i caught most of mimic, which is one of the few horror movies that truly frightens, and repels me.
after that was lock, stock and two smoking barrels. turns out i forgot the whole damn thing...

i just watched solaris - not a bad film (ignoring the ten or so minutes of the cd that was so scratched that it would only play 3 to 4 seconds at a time - aaargh!), but seemingly pointless. i can only assume that it's about how nothing matters more than love? i dunno.

i've been trying since last night to download 28 days later, but i only succeeded in getting the trailer. looks good, but the download's still hovering around 500MB from 717, and i'm not sure when grootbek's going to come home and cancel it.
he always does that, and then claims no knowledge.

i've begun writing a multiplayer version of tron - i've been studying drivers (and learning nothing) for so many hours now that i just had to do some coding. it's really nice to be working in c++ again; i have to admit microsoft's system in vc++ for comments is nice.
respect where it's due.

as for the drivers, it's so hard to focus - it's all the same shit, and that which i didn't understand from the beginning has still not been explained.
not that i haven't learned ANYTHING.
i've learned to be a lot more patient with the system startup, and why i should be impressed when it takes so little time for the system to detect and install the correct drivers for things like usb mice.

not boring you, am i?

don't care.

so ja, my tron version is so far looking quite naff. okay, not visually. i have no clue what to do when i need graphics - i'll have to outsource. any volunteers that might be accepted will already have my email address. actually, anyone reading this who doesn't have my address should be shot on sight.

i'm planning some self-mutilation tonight - i'm shaving myself. my HEAD. no, the BIG one. i'm in shock over my haircut, still: if you haven't seen the photo's then go check them out. it's disgraceful.
never going there again.
and just think, that cost me the equivalent of around R70.
shameful.

i spoke to my taekwondo instructor today - i still have the go-ahead for the course, and i have to contact them tomorrow to find out when to go for my ECG. for some reason they think i might die on them. i don't get it.
surely, if you have a problem, you'd know about it?
and i thought *i* was paranoid.

i've got quite a bit of reading done today. i finished much ado about nothing, and although i didn't get every word or concept, i quite enjoyed it. i was wondering, though, about all the people on this planet who think that you have to be able to quote shakespeare word for word. i don't remember dick from hamlet, except maybe "now might i do it, pat". and i don't feel any less understanding of the story. in fact, it's quite sad just how much i DO remember.
damn school system.

i've begun reading count zero (william gibson), and the first couple of chapters are looking good.

and i spent some time listening to good ol' israeli music. i must admit, now that i understand some of them, the lyrics are really good. now i just have to understand ALL of them. so much WORK, living here.

*** later ***

it's now 22.45. at midnight, i'm going with some friends to see x-men 2, which is finally out in israel, and i'm right now trying to decide if i should shave or gel.
decisions, decisions.
on the weird side, i actually asked her for permission (to see the movie), as i told her we'd go see it together. there must be something wrong with me, as i've never done that before. and i knew that she didn't particularly want to see it anyway...

and finally, the starcraft news. i've had level 8 in the back of my mind for the past few days, because i've had no clue how to begin.
today, i thought i'd give it a try. not only did i manage to survive the first few minutes, but i totally wiped out the other side before completing the mission objectives.
that felt GOOOOOOOD.
i'm so proud of me.