meat popsicle

 i didn't get back to sleep for another hour or two, and even then i didn't sleep very well, although i was able to get up later than usual.

my mouth guard is starting to fall apart :/

i was really tired today. really tired. like, possibly coming down with something tired. i arrived at work for another full team meeting (although bigtalk wasn't around), and it went on for a couple of hours, so we missed the daily with the rest of the department.

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

then i rushed out to meet up with gco and co, we ended up at the top of the building and had to rent a meeting room to get going, which was surprisingly expensive. getting sorted out took us about half an hour in total, but the hour that followed was very interesting and constructive. all in all, i'm very glad we did it.

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

i made it back in time to help out a couple of guys with random things, and then went into another hour-long meeting. at least this time i had coffee and a slice of cake with me :P

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

at this point, i was falling apart and i made myself a fourth cup of coffee. i needed to sync with some coworkers on our priorities for the next few weeks, and that was when i learned that bigtalk wasn't working on what we were working on, which is absolutely insane. i was completely stunned, and i lost my temper in front of half the office, and my coworkers ushered me into a meeting room where i explained to them why i was so deeply affected. they heard me out, and they were very supportive.

...

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

i found another meeting room, and sat down to be interviewed for a talent spotlight. i was still very upset about bigtalk, and i spent the few minutes i needed to wait just trying to calm myself down and get into an appropriate headspace.

i wasn't prepared (they'd only sent me the questions this morning) so everything was off-the-cuff, but by the end i felt like we'd all had a good experience and they seemed happy with what they had. i felt relieved because it went a lot better than i could have planned, and i feel like the resulting story they have to work with is good.

also, i left the meeting room freezing cold.

...

the next couple of hours were me trying to get work done with providing support to others, and eventually i left the office having encountered confusing errors with bigtalk's changes.

on my way home, i spoke to the incoming manager and informed him that i've completely lost faith in bigtalk's ability to function in our organization, and i made an appointment with my boss on sunday (when i'm on vacation, but he isn't) to let him know that this experiment is over.

...

i got home wired and overwhelmed, and needed to vent the day's stories to gd before i was able to calm down enough to eat. we had a good dinner, we enjoyed two simpsons episodes, and mr smear's bedtime (after putting in a few additional minutes of work) was pretty smooth with more of the neverending story.

the rest of the evening has been peaceful, not least of which being completing a fun run of slay the spire, and i think i'm just about ready for bed. caffeine-allowing, of course...

drama flare

 oh. shit. it was such a ridiculously dramatic day (so far) that i didn't even remember having trouble sleeping last night :/

...

today was mr smear's last day at summer camp. i received not one, but two hilariously inappropriate animations from him. he made it through the summer camp, and in spite of his protests had a generally good time!

...

this morning was very stressful, primarily because although i started out relaxed and in good spirits, it soon became pressured, with the main source of pressure being an upgrade to brave that made online grocery shopping impossible. i left without completing the orders.

...

the day didn't begin well. we had a devops gathering with our incoming guys, and while some of it went well, some of it was a shit show and i ended up having to be the adult in the room (reigning in both bigtalk and the new manager). the new manager called me in to a private discussion afterwards, where he not only made it clear that bigtalk's not going to be around long but that the woman i had issues with a couple of weeks ago is a proper dolores umbridge...

... fuck me.

i then took the new guy in to a private meeting to explain that the tension we're experiencing is entirely out of the ordinary, and what precisely is bothering me. then i took bigtalk into a meeting, where i really had trouble keeping my cool but he responded in a surprisingly healthy way.

after lunch, i made him walk both me and the new guy through his code, and he did a pretty good job of convincing us that he hadn't gone totally off the rails like i'd thought. but what he's doing is irreversible, so we have to be very careful how we test it and how we roll it out.

...

i managed to grab hold of our UX guy to discuss some of my ideas from friday night, and when he'd heard me out he pulled me over to his computer and showed me that half of what i was talking about was already in the pipeline ^_^

he was impressed by my other suggestions, though, and i even managed to solve a weird design issue he's been experiencing along the way.

...

the rest of the afternoon was a bit messy, but i think i finally got a piece of work done that i've been trying to finish for a week already. which would be great, but deploying it took forever and then i ran into the same bizarre issues that a couple of the other devs have been loudly complaining about for the past few days. that really messed up my evening plans, and i ended up leaving the office way later than planned.

and after having succumbed to temptation and polished off another slice of the cake from thursday's happy hour. right before dinner.

...

dinner with the family (and the simpsons) was nice, mr smear's shower time was far too long and frustrating, and there were some bad vibes around bedtime caused by him actively not getting into bed, when i was prepping for two different meetings. at least things were a little calmer by the time i was ready to say good night.

...

my elevator pitch to our product chief seems to have gone down well, and again, there's a lot of convergence going on - i've been invited to get involved in two closely-related projects.

between meetings, this post. in a few minutes, troubleshooting with our canadian contractor.

the nap

 i resumed my re-read of danny the champion of the world, which i just saw we stopped reading the day hyperviper died :(

mr smear surprised me by reporting that he'd finished reading it by himself and absolutely loved it, so now i'm giving it another go. and tonight we watched the "lisa the vegetarian" episode of the simpsons so that's all tied in nicely.

...

it was a quiet day (tfu tfu) and i think we're all still in shock from last night, not to mention the shock of the dead and wounded and the level of destruction in rishon le'zion and ramat gan.

[phones buzz, we're on high alert again]

this is exhausting. thank god we had a relatively quiet day, and mr smear is super excited by kerbal space program (even if i was disappointed that he didn't enjoy another case solved), and hopefully tonight won't be too bad. it looks like our forces are doing really well so far and the iranians are beginning to take to the streets 🤞🙏

the retelling

friday evening:

so we watched prince of egypt on friday night, and if i recall correctly we also watched the end of paddington 2. regardless of when we watched it, i interpreted the ending the same way as this guy.

gd was going to bake challah for shabbat but suddenly realized - once the dough was ready for the oven - that we don't have a working oven... so we did what we technically should have been doing anyway, and had matzah instead :P

yesterday:

we re-watched joseph: king of dreams in the morning, and while we didn't love the songs it wasn't as bad as we remembered. but the writers really added a whole lot of unnecessary stuff to the film and laid it on so thick, that afterwards i downloaded the sefaria app and started reading the original text.

i don't recall much from yesterday afternoon.

in the early evening we picked up the car, and almost left the gift behind... which worked out, because i'd forgotten to relieve myself before heading out and considering the traffic i would've been in trouble if i hadn't.

it was heartbreaking and aggravating seeing so many people protesting on erev pesach.

we arrived in reasonable time, and the evening was very pleasant. the seder was a lot quicker than usual (and less loud), and mr smear got "stage fright" when it was his turn to sing, and i struggled with the tiny font of the unfamiliar haggadah, but it was great seeing everyone and the kids were adorable and the food was great. (i agreed to let mr smear have half an egg on account of it being a very special occasion and ironically symbolic, but it bothers me)

and the drive home - ignoring having to duck my head to avoid super-bright LED headlights - was relatively smooth.

today:

i spent a large chunk of my day napping. leftover lunch was delicious. in the afternoon i took mr smear for a long walk through the park, we talked about storytelling and workshopped an idea of his. on the way home we picked up some snacks, and hid in the entrance of a building when the sirens went off for a rocket attack.

we watched the simpsons over dinner, and i started playing slay the spire, which is really fun. mr smear went to bed rather late, in large part because i picked up a copy of asimov's i, robot and started reading it to him. we're well into the first story and really hating the parents.

i played some more, until i died, and although i have to work tomorrow i'm contemplating playing a little more now...

... uh, oh...

revelation

i'm too tired to write much down, and i'm driving a lot tomorrow. lemme just drop some notes.

yesterday:

mr smear's last day of school before the two week holidays. i finally remembered to move the furniture around so that gd could cut his hair in the afternoon before leaving for work. i struggled to make an appointment for her foot :/

i got to the office and took the opportunity to have coffee with someone, and he's doing what i think most people would describe as a dream job. (there're a few of those with us)

while i was explaining what i'm working on, we had a really exciting moment of inspiration (we're both into gaming and simulations) that chained into a podcast one of my bosses suggested and that led to a couple of really exciting conversations (with some other bosses). in addition to that, we had a retrospective during which i managed to connect a whole bunch of dots and received a literal "amen". and then, just before leaving the office but after managing to get something really tricky working, i overheard my lead grumbling (very loudly) and i literally took command of the situation and told him how we were going to handle it - in that moment it felt like a weird but significant shift in power took place.

i like working in an environment where our power structures are fluid, and i especially like being a part of an organization that might be making a sci-fi fantasy i've had since i was a teenager become a very real thing. and it's interesting to be feeling so aligned and in the right place when the beginning of this very week started off with me feeling frustrated and out-of-place.

i was super-excited by how the day had gone, but it wasn't over. after dinner chatting with gd and mr smear (they'd already eaten by the time i got home), i still had some work to do - it began with teaching one of my coworkers how to deploy something, but something went wrong. and then i learned that what i'd thought was working perfectly was missing an important piece of the puzzle.

today:

i slept rather poorly last night, mainly because the new pillows we bought suck.

it took me a while to get my day started. gd went to her sewing lesson and i left mr smear alone to go get my hair cut in a very fancy place. it's not an amazing haircut, but it's okay. gd's happy with the front but hates the back ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i didn't realize how much longer her lesson would be, so i sat around having coffee and listening to a podcast and reading random articles for a while, then rushed home when i couldn't get hold of mr smear (his phone was on silent) to pick him up and drag him out to join me and gd on a quick shopping mission... but to be honest, most of the time was spent in the harry potter pop-up store and with much enthusiasm on his part :P

we'd been trying to arrange a gift for our kibbutz cousin, who we're going to see tomorrow, and just as we left and were waiting on a bus i had an idea, said goodbye and rushed off to the sarona market where i found some south african sauces and spices, along with some of the saborito hot sauce range!

it was a great haul, albeit quite expensive.

the afternoon was spent eating delicious food, helping mr smear with his homework, and enjoying a glorious breakthrough with the work problem. i've handed over a working solution to my coworkers and in theory should be able to take sunday and monday's vacation without interruption ^_^

mr smear and i went to shul, and between the service itself and the walks there and back it's become a really nice way to close the week / start the weekend. after kiddush and a nice chat with my mom, we watched an episode of the simpsons, had a fun shower / teeth / bedtime ritual, and gd and i have been doing nothing ("parallel play" :P) since. but i think i'm going to go to bed very soon.

oh, look - i wrote a whole bunch of stuff.

sleep deficit

i certainly could have used some more sleep. i say that, but it's approaching midnight again... one of my bosses asked this afternoon if not sleeping could be making him stupid. i suggested that not getting sufficient REM sleep prevents our brains from processing information.

"so... you're saying i am stupid?"

aside from getting mr smear up and to school in good spirits (and reading my kindle instead of looking at screens), i managed to get some work done and have a meeting with my (direct) boss before gd and i headed out for our meeting.

the meeting went pretty well. gd had a couple of emotional moments, one positive (the new principal gave her a hug) and one negative (the old principal got a lambasting in absentia, with gd comparing her to a "hair on a soup"). we learned that mr smear's chief bully is on the spectrum and mr smear takes it personally when he makes faces and noises that - allegedly - are him self-regulating 🤦

we've agreed that mr smear's current shit class is probably the best place for him, primarily because they made the other classes sound even worse. i'm not sure how i feel about that.

i walked gd home, then continued on to work, completely forgetting to help her prepare to cut mr smear's hair after school. which in retrospect must have been a good thing, because the washing machine technician arrived a day early to examine it and decide that gd had simply been using too much soap 🤣

most of the work day - the bits that i was in the office for - were straightforward and productive, though i am a bit unsure as to whether what i'm doing really qualifies as meeting my deadlines. and i received my first full payslip today, which was less than i was expecting. i had to go over it earlier this evening and i'm hoping my insurance broker will agree with my assessment...

between my morning chat with my boss and an afternoon chat with our (unofficial) head of communications, i feel like that was the most productive part of my day.

i left the office early to meet gd at the orthopaedist's offices. we arrived early enough to buy new pillows and get a few groceries, and eventually found the clinic itself. the examination was brief, and now we're on to the next specialist (the one we knew from the beginning she needed to see).

we got home just as the play therapist was leaving, and after unpacking the groceries that had been delivered i sat down with mr smear to continue The Homework. but that took longer than anticipated, mainly because we had a couple of in-depth talks about All The Things.

the simpsons over dinner - gd's experiment with making vegan chopped liver for passover was a complete success - and then a fairly relaxed bedtime / finishing john wick (it's a well-executed 80's-style action film) / run on kaycee's mod / and now this before going to bed.

morals and dilemmas

 i'm quite upset right now, and the current upset is triggering an earlier upset and everything's getting mixed up in my head.

[takes about half an hour to trawl the interwebs to see if he's referred to aethersmith by "name" before or determine which to use]

so a couple of days ago i heard about the studio ghibli filter, and i ran our family photo through it. the result was gorgeous, and i'm really pleased with it. today, aethersmith post the following comment on my photo: "this is gross. and shits all over artists." and then tahoma reposted something about how miyazaki is deeply upset by the use of the filter, so we shouldn't use it. 

aethersmith and i have been arguing about generative ai since it became a thing, he's very upset that training models on artists' works without consent or compensation is unethical. he's not wrong.

having said that, though, the use of generative ai is - to my mind - not quite so cut-and-dried. art has been cannibalizing art since its invention, and the only real difference between what ai models are doing and what human artists have been doing is that they're commoditizing it and doing it at a scale that's making us a lot more sensitive to it. imagine banning the sale of painting equipment, or preventing people from reproducing others' artworks... that could never make sense.

i'm sad that miyazaki hates it, but whether he appreciates it or not i see this whole ghibli filter trend as a beautiful tribute to his works. i believe a lot of other people do too.

pandora's box is open, and it's not going to close any time soon. i hope that this is simply a growing pain and that we evolve to a place where we have amazing tools that work for everyone, not just consumers. i believe that we can get there, and i believe that we must get there.

...

and that triggered upset over the brief conversation horseman and i had earlier regarding the zombie apocalypse that's been rapidly emerging around the globe. the hysterical destruction of tesla vehicles and infrastructure by people who believe that climate change is an emergency is mind-boggling. the complete rejection of facts or any level of rationality and fair-mindedness with regards the war in israel is mind-boggling. everyone has finally lost their minds after decades of "active measures" and disinformation campaigns and enemies of the west infiltrating its media and its universities.

gd and i were discussing this morning how a hidden aspect of the trans agenda is self-sterilization, and that there's a sibling component to that in how the west is leaning more and more towards tolerating and encouraging people who don't have children, and in doing so opening the doors to enemies performing a "land and expand" conquest, while convincing themselves that tolerating their enemies' intolerance makes them morally superior and anything else is racist bigotry.

i hope we all wake up from this dystopian nightmare before it's too late.

...

i didn't sleep much last night, and i didn't sleep well. we had some unpleasantness getting up in the morning, but it passed quickly, and after mr smear left for school i took care of a couple of things and then accompanied gd to her dental imaging appointment.

we arrived on time, at the right place, but there was no appointment. i tried getting hold of our dental clinic but there was no answer, and we were in the middle of resigning ourselves to having to go there in person to make a new appointment when the technician (or dentist?) picked up the phone and intervened, taking no prisoners and making it clear to whoever was on the other end of the line that it's not fair that patients are blamed for receoptionists not doing their jobs.

he handed me his phone and my jaw dropped as the woman on the other end informed me that we had an appointment booked, but hadn't paid. when i translated for gd, her jaw dropped too. this is all very literal jaw-dropping, by the way, we stared at each other, mouths agape, because we both remember very clearly paying for the appointment.

regardless, we instructed her to deduct the payment and she released our booking, and five minutes later we were out of there, having thanked the man profusely for going to bat for us.

...

the workday began with a rocket attack, so i took my coffee down into the basement for the first time (previously i'd just hung out in the stairwell, but i was curious).

...

highlight of my day: i helped our security consultants secure authorization for a contract for an important tool. afterwards, i overheard one of them discussing password policies, and i
(respectfully) got into it with him. i was getting some support from his coworkers, but then their Big Boss arrived (he looked vaguely familiar) and he asked him to step in.

he didn't hesitate to agree with my assessment - that password policies should enforce complexity and be easy to remember, not check arbitrary industry-standard compliance boxes that only cause people to behave in counter-productive ways. and any developer will happily accept occasionally using a second-factor authentication method (like fingerprints) over having to regularly reset their password.

after another round or two, they were enthusiastically on the same page and i really hope they manage to figure out how to implement a policy accordingly. as i told them: if they can get this right, every player in the industry will have their backs and be excited to work with them.

...

a couple of us interviewed an applicant in the afternoon. i'd prepared pretty well - though i've learned a bunch of things through the experience - but the actual interview was a bit awkward and it was only when pressed (afterwards) that i was able to put my finger on what was bothering me.

...

i didn't accomplish what i'd set out to, but i did learn a lot. i came home and had barely enough time to get mr smear through a page of his math homework, but he did such a good job and with such a good attitude that i was happy to put on an episode of the simpsons (homer the vigilante) in spite of it being too late for screentime.

after mr smear went to sleep, gd and i resumed watching slow horses. this is because i mentioned to my coworker how disappointed we were with its politics, and he threw me a spoiler that made us want to give it another chance. so i guess we'll see.

...

i've been playing inscryption again (tonight's the first night i've been feeling alright about taking things easy in days). i ended up doing a ridiculous run, with an unkillable geck (x2 thanks to goobert) and a reptile totem with an ant spawner sigil, and then an ouroboros that i was forced to sacrifice that was offered back to me, and then i put a morsel sigil on it, for completely OP combinations.

stickers and scribbles

 okay, i'm tired. but i'm also agitated and frustrated - mr smear's school has been utterly unresponsive for more than two days and tomorrow's the deadline to register him for the art school. so tomorrow's going to be started with angry phone calls but, at the end of the day, it's really not in my hands...

i eventually climbed into bed after 6am, and the morning was really hard. so hard, in fact, that i skipped on taking mr smear to school - on the one hand i'm really impressed that we're at the point where he can go to school by himself, but on the other i'm rather disappointed because i quite enjoy the opportunity to chat on the way to school.

the office was really quiet today - one of the bosses kept repeating that, until at one point i offered to put some heavy metal on and she quickly assured me it was fine :P

i asked lipgirl if we had any stickers (swag), and she enthusiastically introduced me to the office label printer. omg i hadn't realized that label printers have evolved so much!

i learned stuff today, very slowly but surely. it's all about a crash-course in kubernetes right now.

i was so desperate for lunch that - believing that the order would take a while to arrive - i scarfed down the previous day's leftovers for breakfast. which was more food than i'd thought, and then a few minutes later a massive burrito arrived for me... and i ate it :/

gd called me in an angry panic, the new vaccum cleaner arrived and she couldn't figure out how to work it, so she wanted to take it back immediately. i've convinced her to let me give it a go first...

in the afternoon i returned home to pick up mr smear and take him to his final psych evaluation session (i sneaked photos of the school's form, that'll make for interesting reading). inspired by the morning's sticker session, i thought it would be cool if he drew something with a sharpie on my fancy water bottle, but he didn't follow the (very simple) instructions and started scrawling something inappropriate. both gd and i were upset with him, and to his credit he did feel bad, but at bedtime i proposed that we turn it into a bit of a graffiti project in the morning and he seems into it.

while waiting for him, i went back to the office thinking i'd continue working, but i had an issue with the coffee machine and ended up in an interesting 1-on-1 with someone i hadn't met before; i'd spent all day thinking that i just couldn't remember him :P

i picked up mr smear (he apparently did well) and we returned home, and between his shower and dinner i managed to get him through two significantly advanced paragraphs of harry potter. *i'm* learning as we go, and he's building confidence, particularly with the stuff that's more his level. this was definitely a good idea.

i had a salad (because of the overeating) and we watched the simpsons, then called my mom to say goodnight. once i'd showered and brushed my teeth i joined mr smear for calvin & hobbes, and i've spent the past couple of hours taking care of random items, watching youtube and ignoring a bunch of stuff on my to-do list.

i suspect that i should go to bed very soon, but i feel like i can't get my head into or out of anything right now.

day two

 i didn't sleep enough, but i think i slept relatively well when i did... although i might've needed to come sleep on the couch for a while, i don't really remember.

i don't recall much from the morning, either, really, but i did pick up mr smear's new coat from the post office, which led to minor encounters with "humanity" (i got a guy to move his massive bike from right outside the door without trouble, and i kept relatively cool about the woman who jumped the line by taking a number when nobody else had).

i initiated the process of registering mr smear for the art school, which i'm hoping was in time. 

after days of being messed around by the plumber our landlords put me in touch with, he admitted that he had no idea how to help us with the sink, but he also made it clear that it's an old sink that needs to be replaced, which was useful information to have.

i called the dentist to try to postpone my upcoming appointment that i've been waiting months for, and while i was on hold i fantasized about the moment someone picked up and putting them on hold. i got so in the mode - i was on hold for a while - that when a human being finally answered i found myself uncontrollably speaking like an automated message :P

between various chores / admin thingies, i left the apartment a bit later than i'd planned, but it's much quicker to get to the new office so it wasn't a big deal.

the work day was interesting, not easy but not difficult either. socially it was a bit awkward - i haven't got a handle on who's who yet - but there was a fun moment during a process meeting when the four of us in the room suddenly realized we all served in the same branch of the army and the language changed immediately :P

something very special happened today: it was the first time that mr smear came home all by himself.

i made a point of not drinking the "good" coffee, but i found myself dragging a bit in the first meeting and really struggling in the second.

i walked to the supermarket, picked up snacks for mr smear's field trip tomorrow, came home and did some hebrew reading with him, we had a good dinner (not easy, but good, as we had to coerce him into eating the green beans and asparagus) and watched the simpsons, said good night to my mom, and then entered bedtime...

... which was complicated, he had trouble getting to sleep for a long time.

i think i've caught up on all the stuff i needed to get done this evening, and i think i'm going to go to bed shortly.

ritual insanity

yesterday the ceasefire went into effect. more psychological warfare, more terrorist propaganda, more anxiety. at least the first three hostages made it out alright, which was an enormous relief. i don't understand the schedule for the rest of the jesus-fucking-christ *third* of the hostages they're holding, but at this point i don't trust or believe anything to hold or make sense.

it's a relief that trump is now the american president. at least he's less likely to make things harder for us than the democrats have been...

...

i'm a bit tired, and sore. it's just past midnight, my brain's a bit fuzzy.

i dropped mr smear off at school, completely oblivious to the fact that it was a field trip day. and he'd left his phone at home. i came back, and then gd and i went off to our guidance session.

amongst other things, all three of us (the therapist, myself, and gd herself) learned that gd has been losing patience with the "play therapy" sessions. and i realized that we're going to have to be very careful about signing him up for the art school lottery...

we bussed home, i had breakfast, and then took off for the dermatologist. i had a list prepared, and was relieved to learn that most of the things that have been bothering me are just irritating getting-older-with-overly-sensitive-skin things, nothing dangerous or infectious (well, aside from one minor thing that i knew about, and now need to see a plastic surgeon for).

her exact description was "you have a ginger's skin" :P

on the way to pick mr smear up i saw photos from the field trip, and by then it was too late to cancel his hebrew tutor... fortunately, she was able and willing to make up the lesson in the evening.

a little later, while waiting for the kids to return, i had an awkward conversation with our hardcore-democrat friend's hardcore-democrat parent, and things got a bit uncomfortable.

mr smear got off the bus so grossed out that he wouldn't stop (literally) spitting, which was quite embarrassing. he claimed to be feeling sick, but i'm pretty confident it was psychological because he'd been sitting next to a sick, coughing kid the entire ride :/

on our way home, we purchased his next hebrew book: a translation of the first harry potter. i hope this goes well!

the next couple of hours were a mix of getting mr smear to do his homework, trying to read more about the exercise i'm doing, and then eventually taking my kindle to the couch and reading/napping for a while.

...

mona lisa overdrive: five stars for vision and depth, but it's hard to follow.

i recently re-read neuromancer, which has aged superbly and is nothing short of miraculous. i chased that with count zero, which takes a while to get warmed up and ends with a character abruptly tying up all the loose ends.

and then there's mona lisa overdrive. brilliant world-building, phenomenal ideas and a grand vision for bringing everything across the three novels together... but for the most part i found it incoherent. some scenes blew me away with how ingeniously and cleverly they were rendered, and some just left me feeling confused about who was doing what and why. i still enjoyed reading the book, but i feel like i missed a whole lot of stuff and i would need to go back and re-read it to put all the pieces together.

what i'd *really* like, though, is to see this adapted into a graphic novel or television series. i feel like gibson may just have been biting off a little more than even he could chew.

...

i took mr smear to his tutor and spent half an hour with a decaf coffee while studying the code, with a south african voice engaged in an intense conversation about investec nearby and an enormous flock of monk parakeets in the trees across the road erupting in a loud debate that lasted a few minutes and drew angry yells from someone in the building.

i picked up mr smear and we returned home, i helped him with his math homework and we watched the simpsons over dinner.

...

so far we're up to '92 (season 3), and there're two simpsons predictions nobody ever talks about:

1. with all my criminal buddies

2. otto the school bus driver not having a valid license. i'm not going to share it, but we have a video of mr smear's class stuck on a bus last year chanting "shame! shame!" at their bus driver after he arrived with an expired license 🤣

between two sleeps

 i recently watched thoughty2's video on biphasic sleep. well, it's past 3am and i've just gone through the training in system shock 2, and i don't even feel like i'm doing it wrong :P

yesterday wasn't a bad day. the weather was alright, and i published and babysat a new release at work that went relatively smoothly.

my team decided to go to tamir, which is a terrible idea of you're trying not too eat too much, even if you're vegan and only ever go for their falafel. to avoid the pita i ordered a plate, which was heaped with food, in addition to a large plate of fries :P

in the evening i sent a message to the CTO i met with a couple of weeks ago, and it looks like my timing was appreciated 🤞

we're continuing to watch the simpsons, we're deep into the third season ("homer alone"). and at bedtime, mr smear has me reading calvin & hobbes. there's something magical and fascinating about re-imprinting nostalgia in a next generation.

i passed out watching the latest venom movie soon after mr smear fell asleep. i haven't been sleeping well at all, and it's mostly been due to "the usual" physical pain in my lower back and legs :(

calm through the storm

 around 3.30am i was awoken by what sounded like combat aircraft flying overhead. it turned out to be very dramatic thunder, and the storm that ensued continued until noon. mr smear tried to weasle his way out of school again, but aside from it being friday (their electives day) i think he enjoyed splashing to school in his galoshes as much as i did.

i took care of the emergency shopping on the way home, gd and i finished watching the original beetlejuice in preparation for its sequel and i took care of some more of the dishes.

gd went to her dental appointment, which once again turned out to be different to what we expected. i picked mr smear up from school while it bucketed down (i got really irritated with the other parents jostling me with their umbrellas while i was waiting at the gate), then mr smear and i made it to the bus stop just in time.

we arrived at the dental clinic just as gd came out, and it took a little while and a lot of confusion to get an understanding of what the rest of the plan is. then we walked to the hummusia and gd watched while we ate an enormous, delicious breakfast. we then picked up hers to go, which she was able to eat by the time we got home.

aside from us finally cleaning the apartment, the rest of the afternoon was very chilled, shadowrun: hong kong and napping.

we had a great dinner (the simpsons stealing cable*), mr smear just went to bed, gd is on her way to bed, and i might very well be doing so myself soon.

* my son to me: i do honor you! just barely enough to satisfy the fifth commandment.

i'm feeling much more relaxed today than i have in a while.

the sufganya

 today was completely insane.

it began around 2.40am, where the missile alert sirens sounded, and we all struggled to get out and into the shelter, barely making it before the booms. i didn't realize until the afternoon that a school building near nystire was destroyed. mr smear couldn't get back to sleep after that, so i stayed with him... uncomfortably... for a couple of hours until i was reasonably sure he was actually going to sleep.

...

1. same wakeup pattern, but this time i was feeling completely broken, and no screen time for me either. i read desolation jones and we listened to music, and it was nice.

2. mr smear was complaining that he didn't feel well enough to go to school. he agreed to abide by the outcome determined by the thermometer. the thermometer suggested he was a bit warm, and so he stayed home. having reviewed his math homework dashboard, i'm satisfied that he's at or above his grade level, and apparently he did his other extra homework well, too.

3. on my way to the mall i received a call about a job. everything was sounding good, but before i agreed to come in to meet them i made sure that they could afford me. they can't, so... oh, well.

4. i'm glad i did a little research last night on kindles. i walked into the store, bought the right model (the basic 11th gen, the only one they had) at the right price (in ten instalments), and the experience was quick and painless. and then, for the cherry on top, i managed to pick up a bunch of soy yoghurts while they've been sold out everywhere for weeks.

5. my manager came in sick and coughing. again. it's really, really grating my cheese.

6. we had an all-hands today, which affirmed that the situation isn't dire. in honor of chanukah being next week, we had sufganyot. the ceo assumed that the one i got was vegan, and i took a chance - expecting it to maybe have egg, not dairy.

it was made with $#@!ing dairy butter.

that was around 11.30 this morning, and my stomache's only just started settling a couple of hours ago. for the first few hours after i had headaches and was really, really tired... so tired, in fact, that during an important conversation i fell asleep a couple of times and even dreamed. my coworkers found it hilarious that i tried to participate in the conversation when i woke up, even if i did have something to contribute :P

7. before the dairy took effect, i at least managed to finish my lunch. i'd walked past the hummusia on my way to work and just the memory of the smell made it a must.

8. in spite of everything, i managed to get the job i've been working on done by the end of the day.

9. i came home, just in time for a chat with an HR rep about another gig. it went well.

10. dinner was late, but we managed to squeeze in a simpsons episode before the new 8pm cut-off. dinner was ratatouille, gd's first attempt, and it was great. 

i can't explain why, but gd had informed me that a friend of hers wanted to lend us a hand financially, and i was inspired to do grace after the meal.

overall, the bedtime routine part of the evening went smoothly.

11. a two hour conversation with gd's friend, the conversation was all over the place but we graciously accepted the offer of help and he sent it to us in the form of some bitcoin. now i have to figure out how to withdraw that bitcoin into our bank account so that i can use it to pay off some debt...

12. that was just before midnight, when i realized that our sink was an absolute mess and in danger of triggering a blocked drain. i angrily un-jenga'ed everything and got the drain guard back in place, then sat down with my tea to post this.

i have a new kindle, and it's already set up. i think i'm going to read a bit before going to bed.

two steps

yesterday:

the work day was pretty bland.

i joined my boss for a walk for our one-on-one, and i asked some tough questions about where we're at. we're going to have an all-hands tomorrow so he didn't want to say too much, but he did a pretty good job of assuring me that we're not in a bad place.

the interview in the evening went pretty well, although signing off was really awkward so i've no idea if i made a good impression or not.

watching the simpsons as a family is therapeutic. it's also highly relevant, as we saw the results of marge getting itchy and scratchy declawed and then this morning i saw the real-life results of a 21-day cellphone ban.

today:

the morning started off alright - three mornings in a row with mr smear responsible for getting himself organized before panic time, and three mornings that were much calmer than usual - and after dropping him off at school i continued on to the post office to pick up socks and a beard trimmer.

then i accompanied gd to her dental appointment, and found a nice coffee shop (lebowski, which used to be movie-ing) to wait for her at. her appointment turned out to be quite different / less dramatic than we'd been told, they just took an imprint for the tooth that's due to be extracted so she'll be able to wear a retainer with a temporary replacement while they prepare for the real work.

i got some decent work done today, ran into another cousin working in the building on the way out to lunch with my coworkers, and by and large it was quite a relaxed one. having said that, by the time i left the office i was feeling wiped out and i still had a parents' screentime workshop at the school at 8pm.

ugh.

so we had a nice, early dinner together before i left. the evening was... well, some of it was interesting, and some of it was inspiring, but a lot of it was a slog and by 9.15 i just wanted to get the hell out of there. when she pulled out cards for a "last activity" at 9.35 i fuck-that'd and noped on out.

gd and i had a conversation about all the things that came up, and we're both going to make an effort to modify our screen habits, particularly around mr smear. this is going to be an interesting experiment, but i don't think it's going to be hard - i just need to pick up an e-ink ebook reader as quickly as possible.

...

jason pargin's review of deadpool & wolverine just blew my mind.

the slap

 well, shit.

it was a bit of an annoying work day, and i didn't get too much done. in the middle of it, i got a phone call from mr smear complaining that he'd been waiting at the gate for half an hour, which was entirely my fault because i told his teacher that his tutor session was cancelled but forgot to tell him 🤦‍♂️

to be fair, though, the reason it took him half an hour to call me was because he was playing games on his phone...

[source]

[source]

the interview went... not great. the experience was fine, but they weren't happy with my coding exercise and called it before the architecture section. i very much appreciated their directness and their not-wasting-anyone's-time-iness, but it does sting... especially considering that i felt i did pretty well.

not amazing, but well. which is obviously why they called it.

anyway, it's been a mixed emotion evening - mr smear's doing his usual, nothing extraordinary but annoying - and i'm just done with the day. i feel like watching the simpsons as a family is healthy.

i have another interview tomorrow. maybe it'll be better.

winning the battle

soon after posting, i fielded a call from a recruiter but shut him down immediately when i heard the name of the company he wanted to put me forward for. no gambling (including forex and crypto schemes), no marketing. it felt weirdly good to do that, and i wonder if he'll bring me anything good in the future :P

...

it was a rough morning, and i had a hard time getting anything productive done. i had a sync with my boss once i had a better idea of what i needed to be doing, only to discover that i didn't have a good idea at all. and our conversation went on longer than i'd expected, and i was getting stressed about being late for the school meeting...

... i made it on time for the school meeting. but, as usual, the principal was being disrespectful so i had to stand and wait outside for five minutes, even though i'd had to wait a month for the meeting and was taking off work for it. by the time i walked in, i was boiling - not just because of the waiting, mind, but because of everything mr smear's been through, and all the things i was planning on saying and expecting them to say back.

i was vibrating with the anticipation, but ready for war.

...

i walked out of there still vibrating, but with a sense of victory. there're things i said that made it very clear how indecent and negligent they've been, and how disgusting his bully's parent is, but i still managed to preserve a veneer of adult reasonableness and i was pleased to walk out of there with a feeling that everyone, even the principal, was on board with the plan to move mr smear to a different class. now it's just a matter of getting it done quickly but smoothly as possible.

i hope the amount i fought for him today makes up for the times i didn't (out of naivety and ignorance) fight for him before. i hope that wherever he ends up, he makes the most of the fresh start.

...

i came home, scarfed down a quick lunch, then caught the bus to work.

the afternoon was tough, and dreary, and it took a while before i understood precisely what my next steps need to be; not fun at all, but at least i have a direction now.

i did some quick shopping on the way home, we had a nice dinner (with more of the simpsons, mr smear's claim of "inappropriate" is now confusing me), and a smooth bedtime. now... i don't know. it would be nice to get a good night's sleep.

overtired

i now strongly suspect i'm sick, but most of the cause of my suspicion is that i've been so ridiculously tired that i've been dysfunctional, and additional coffee hasn't been helping at all.

yesterday:

the first order of business was fixing my phone control app's sms handling, which went smoothly. then i had a constructive chat with an HR person, and i say "constructive" because we discussed money and it was a heartfelt "nope" on the money.

i went to the office for a slow work morning, then rushed off to pick up mr smear after lunch because gd still wasn't handling with her coughing. i left the office three minutes before the bus was scheduled to arrive, which was good because the bus arrived three minutes early :/

as we got to the school stop and i was about to step off the bus, i heard a THUNK as a drunk old man collapsed face down on his way into it. i was nervous about touching him, but i helped another guy get him onto a seat and a doctor who happened to be on the bus attempting to check him out while someone else called for an ambulance.

i made a point of not using my hands for the five minutes it took to get to a coffee shop where i could OCD (surgeon-style) wash my hands, and thank them by buying a coffee.

i arrived just on time to the school gate, where i had an awkward conversation with the mother of the kid mr smear occasionally torments, but mr smear himself was nowhere to be found. after i'd waited long enough, i called him and learned that he'd had no intention of coming out because he was already on his way to his friend's place, and hadn't thought to inform us of his plans.

so... i was really happy he was going to spend time with his friend, but also pissed because i hadn't had to leave the office after all :/

on my way home, an old woman threw her cigarette out the car window and it almost struck me. her pitiful apology was not enough, and i fumed all the way home before realizing that what i should have done was thrown the cigarette back into her open window.

i made it home in time for an interesting demo, but at some point i found myself struggling to stay awake. i returned to work still desperately in need of a nap, had myself an extra coffee (the "slippery slope" coffee), but still was barely able to keep my eyes open. everything i was working on blended into a weird daydream until i realized that i wasn't achieving anything and decided it was time to go home.

i made it all the way out the building before realizing i'd left my sunglasses in my office, only to get back to my office and remember that i'd actually left them at home :(

i walked home in a weird state between wired and tired, then tried and failed* to nap a bit before dinner. we watched a couple more episodes of the simpsons over dinner, which mr smear has decided isn't so appropriate. then we all went to bed early.

* i did read a little bit of the honest truth about dishonesty, which is off to an excellent start.

i didn't sleep very well at all. i'm still tired. i'm working from home this morning because i have a meeting with the "school team" in a few hours... i hope i get this right.

next steps

 "work from home". today, noooot so much.

i did catch up on a little sleep last night, with some epic dreams that slipped away pretty much the moment i opened my eyes. i was still quite tired, though. the morning started off alright, i got mr smear to school in good spirits*, and was planning on heading to the clinic to support gd at her doctor's appointment when my phone reminded me that i had an upcoming interview.

* on the way, mr smear informed me that he doesn't like his singing voice so much (he has a great singing voice!), so he decided he wanted to play beethoven's 9th symphony at the school's chanukah ceremony in two weeks' time and could i please print the sheet music for him. while i was picking my jaw up off the floor and making a note to myself to take care of the printing, i stepped on a small, squishy piece of dog poo.

the interview went pretty well, i think, and i'm a lot more interested in what they're doing than i thought i would be. at the same time, the company i interviewed with poorly yesterday evening scheduled an in-person interview for next week, so 🤞

i also managed to sort out the payment for gd's cannabis license, but only after realizing that they didn't send a broken link, rather that my relay software splits form data on the equals signs and breaks links. so i'm going to have to fix that, and fast...

i tried to get some work done, but i was tired and distracted. just as i was trying to rest my eyes for a few minutes before leaving, gd began another coughing fit. a little less rough than we're used to, but still rough, and so far *tfu tfu* it looks like the new meds and saline nebulizing are helping.

i picked mr smear up and took him to his hebrew tutor, got a bit of work done, and brought him back home, to both of our excitement discovering along the way that tapuchips are making salt and vinegar flavor now ^_^

while i did get some work done during the afternoon, it was rather a messy mixture of work, random distractions and helping gd herd mr smear - he spent most of it on his keyboard, which was great but not conducive to high levels of concentration on my side of the table.

the new, uhhh, play therapist? showed up in the evening, she's very sweet. we all introduced ourselves and talked for a bit while mr smear got over his shyness, then we had a very serious drawing competition, and then i got a final bit of work done before evacuating the living room and helping gd with the dishes.

good dinner and the simpsons, a rushed bedtime ritual but not unpleasant, and when gd went to bed i played through another section of shadowrun returns. oh! i finished count zero yesterday**, and i'm now taking a break from the sprawl trilogy to check out the honest truth about dishonesty. so far, so good.

** what was particularly interesting about the re-read was just how relevant it remains in spite of some of its anachronisms, and just how much it has influenced so much other literature (including video games) that i've loved. count zero still holds up, it's a brilliant story executed exquisitely. i felt that the tying up of loose ends felt a bit rushed, but the ideas were exciting and i really enjoyed the adventure alongside the characters.

oh! it's quite late. i guess i should probably go to bed.

assemble!

 so, i introduced my boy to the avengers today. it was AWESOME. pure joy ^_^

the only thing that didn't spark joy was gd having another coughing fit just at the end of the movie :(

but she does seem to be feeling better overall.

oh, and we've been watching the simpsons from its first season, and really enjoying it.

it was a weird day. the weather wasn't great, so mr smear and i stayed indoors except for a short walk around the neigborhood. i spent most of it (i believe) playing shadowrun returns, and that's the reason i'm writing this post after 1am when i should have been in bed hours ago...

i didn't actually want to be on screens the whole day, but there wasn't anything i felt like doing that wasn't on a computer (including count zero, and i'm loving how much shadowrun is just lifted directly from gibson's sprawl trilogy). 

but anyway.

shadowrun returns is every bit as brilliant - and surprising - as i remembered.

i'm a bit nervous about what tomorrow will bring, between my current work and the job hunt and the school stuff. i'm also a bit nervous about going to bed because my mattress (+topper) and i aren't vibing.

...

i'm also feeling quite disturbed by the fact that fursan al-aqsa exists and is allowed to be published on steam.