the stress ball

yesterday began positively, and so far the post-privileges world is looking pretty good.

when my mother informed me last night that mr smear had reported that he'd lost his privileges forever, i was reminded that on the way to school, we'd seen a child dressed up in a costume and mr smear had asked me how long until halloween.

now, please bear in mind that my son has absolutely no concept of time, and asking him what day it is is usually a silly waste of breath, but also that on our way home on saturday i'd told him that he'd remember the 10th of may as "the last time [he] fucked with me". so when i asked him what day it was, he didn't hesitate to say "11th of may" and it took everything i had to not laugh out loud and continue with "and what month is halloween?" 🤣

the past two work days have been hard, but yesterday was the harder of the two. it was almost exclusively about planning and preparing installations, although it also included entertaining nystire for a bit, reminiscing about our late coworker with our security officer (who's also mourning, but is outsourced so hasn't been doing so as part of the organization), and interviewing a very interesting candidate (i marked him as "strong hire" when i should have marked "proceed", but there's nothing i can do and it's probably fine).

those distractions notwithstanding, it was 7.30pm when we finally had a release candidate that had been sufficiently tested to begin the first installation, and we then found ourselves doing it on unfamiliar hardware and with a very clear and unrealistic looming deadline.

i found myself alone, nursing a beer (my meal replacement) and running into the weirdest issues, until at 10.15pm i realized that i'd been battling for over an hour with a VPN misconfiguration thinking that i was having network issues - that was when i finally left the office and came home; not physically tired, but emotionally completely done.

oh, and my back having been in a spasm for most of the day didn't help much either.

...

i finally posted the following yesterday evening, which i'd been thinking about since being painfully disappointed by a post from tpj a few days ago:

a few days ago an officer that i served with, who lives in a country with some of the most toxic, antisemitic media in the world (the BBC), wrote a post describing israel as an "occupation" and our army as guilty of war crimes. such counterfactual propaganda is painful enough when other people repeat it, but it's led to me recognize that the old adage about the greatest evil being the indifference of good men needs to be revised:

the greatest evil is the amplification of evil by people who we expect to know better. 

in retrospect, our lives since october 7th have been completely overtaken by a perpetual sense of mourning. we mourn the victims of the massacre itself, and all of the traumas both personal and national that the massacre has left behind. we mourn the hostages even as we hope against hope that some of them might return, and we mourn the horrors that they've endured and continue to endure. we mourn the hopes that we've held for so long that peace was somehow just around the corner, and we mourn the decades that we spent deluding ourselves that the situation was so much simpler and less demonic than it is.

but most of all we mourn the illusion that this modern, 21st century, hi-tech world was somehow better than before, that truth and justice were shared values, that antisemitism was fringe, that the west wasn't at war with innumerable enemies who work tirelessly in underhanded ways to turn democracies against themselves. and we mourn each and every friend, relative and supposed ally who falls into the sophisticated propaganda traps and turns their back on us. even more so the jews who don't realize that they're not only unwittingly betraying us over here, but themselves, and every jew everywhere, before us and after us.

perpetual mourning and grief are hard, exhausting pills to swallow.

...

it wasn't an easy night, but at least the massage time in the morning made a big difference. i dropped mr smear off at school, then headed to a post point to collect some ali express gear for gd. i arrived half an hour before opening time, so i hunted around for a coffee shop and settled down with a vegan coffee slushie.

life was good - for all of three seconds, before my phone rang with a video call from a coworker and an unfamiliar name in desperate need of assistance because one of our systems died.

the unpleasantness continued all the way to the office, with only a few minutes' pause as i picked up the package, and for the most part i didn't feel like much of a contributor (although i quietly celebrated a moment when something i'd suggested did help).

i went straight from that to troubleshooting my own installation, which needed to be done before with could continue with any others, with a bunch of different people breathing down my neck...

ultimately, i figured out what we needed to do, delegated some annoying manual labor to the project lead, and between the two of us we managed to get (almost) everything ready by the end of the day.

which is the point at which we were informed that there would be a delay in delivery, but thank you for the effort 🙄

no matter, it's been one heck of a learning experience for the organization, so i'm good with it. i came home relatively early, we all had a very pleasant evening (and watched the first episode of the original naruto series), i've had some time to myself (including playing slay the spire), and although it's late i'm going to at least spend a little time thinking about some of tomorrow's work before hitting the massager and going to bed.

...

the bitcoin money finally landed in our bank account today, and it was enough to cover the last outstanding debt we owed to my mom. this is a very special moment for us ^_^

argumentatively vegan

i'm just going to repost the thread here. i'm not even bothering to deal with capital letters or spelling / grammatical errors.

---it's far easier to care about animal cruelty when you don't have the guilt of consuming animal products. (within reason, we're far from being completely off animal products outside of our diets)

Animal products and animal cruelty are not the same thing and certainly don't have to be.

perhaps not in theory, but in practice that's just not true. (by that i mean people don't care / have the resources to make it true)

Of course it is true, if u want to eat meat which is free range and slaughtered 'well', u can do that, it just costs more. Maybe what really irks u is that the majority of people simply don't care.

if you look into "free range" you'll see how much of a misnomer it is. this is not a question of what irks me, my status is saying that it's easier for someone who isn't protecting their diet to see what's going on and think about it.

what do you mean 'protecting their diet"?
We live by consuming the life of others, everything that was ever consumed was once alive. If you have ever watched nature you will know that cruelty and violence happens on an industrial scale. We are the first animal on planet earth which endeavors to live 'ethically.'

vfmp: "Protecting" as in "attempting to justify" one's dietary choices.
Humans are the ones committing cruelty on an unmatched and (actually) industrial scale.
And as far as living ethically, our species still has a whole lot of room for improvement.

lol, I commend you on becoming the first homo-sapien which has become a herbivore vfmp, but the rest of us in the human race are omnivores with canine teeth and pancreases

vfmp: Last I checked, I also had canines and a pancreas. Cool theory though

an aunt: It is so easy to reduce meat product consumption and/or go for the free range. A little restraint from everyone would make a huge difference to the scale of cattle, pigs and chicken farming industry which is linked to animal cruelty.

an old co-worker: I think that's the point, no? People don't want to care. If you care you have to do something about it, and it's much more convenient to do nothing, to change nothing.

indeed. and italics-man, modern history might be with you but the science is not. the last few years (in particular, we have decades of studies in fact that were ignored due to industry power) of nutrition research make it freakishly clear that consuming animal products - while an important ability in terms of long-term evolutionary survival - is actually really bad for us, and the root cause of most of our medical maladies.
if you're at all interested in the science, check it out for yourself, if you're not, your arguments fall under the category of "protecting your diet".

neuroscientist: Strictly speaking its not true for kids. They absolutely need meat for optimal brain and body development, however after maturation, every adult would benefit from obtaining protein from plant sources rather than meat. Undercooked meat can be especially bad, its really a risk thing. You're more likely to damage yourself with meat. That said some people cant really afford to eat optimally and meat can be cheap, bones too, organs are the worst for you and now people eat them as a delicacy which is pretty fucked. Most people do protect their diet and stay with the comfortable. The original point is totally valid, I'm confused as to where I stand because steaks are delicious. Theory got trumped again.

i'll stick with the science, thanks. and the facts are all available. if everyone would invest as much time investigating and educating themselves instead if arguing armed with a century of industrial propaganda our society would be in a very different shape. check out the video link i just posted.

that's nonsense and the "health" industry is just as much of a multi million dollar industry as the meat industry. Food processed in the way it is in mass production is bad for you, too much sugar, salt, additives etc. But there is no evidence whatsoever that well farmed unprocessed meat is bad for you, quite the contrary. We are omnivores we are supposed to eat a wide variety of foods. The digestive tract is not supposed to process only beans and fibre.

There are a host of proteins in animal protein in the correct ratios for us that are impossible to synthesize. Acids like creatine are essential for health growth. Both the health AND the meat industry expend enormous efforts to front "scientific trials" to prove the validity of their arguments. If you want to send me some information from an independent source that is peer reviewed I will happily read it with an open mind.

italics-man, there is TONS of evidence. and you're totally proving my point - instead of educating yourself, you're arguing with "common knowledge" that's been informed by... not science. and the research is all available, we're talking respectable peer-reviewed journals. if you're willing to invest this much time arguing with me, but not investigating, what does that tell you?

As I stated before "If you want to send me some information from an independent source that is peer reviewed I will happily read it with an open mind." Otherwise stop pretending that the scientific community is some kind of homogeionous group that has "decided" that meat is bad for you. That is a straight up lie.

italics: watch the video i just posted and check out nutritionfacts.org - all sources are listed. there, i've done what you asked for. i'm not "pretending". check out the documentary forks over knives too.

tpj: I'll just put this here. the secrets of food marketing

Michael Greger and "Forks and Knives" lol, just a tip but as a rule agenda based vegan scientists like Greger who cherry pick data and documentaries which base their studies on debunked studies are not the Independent information I asked for. Next you'll be asking me to read "The China Study." Check out this study from 2014 in Austria concluding the ill effects of non meat based diets. Concluding vegans are twice as likely to develop allergies, 50% increase in cancer, 50% increase in heart disease and lower quality of life.

[talics' comment calling my mental state into question was deleted by him after my response]

okay, i'm going to ignore the name calling and actually respond to the valid points that you raised:

1. dr greger's agenda is health through nutrition. when you make claims like "who cherry pick data", feel free to back them up with actual counter-papers. if you look across nutritionfacts.org you'll see all sorts of interesting things that will surprise you - i felt the same way you did until i came across that stuff, and the reason i found it so compelling is that it's not all "ra ra eat vegan"; he's extremely careful about showing all sides of what he's read and is very good about differentiating between obvious conclusion, reasonable conclusion, and what a study suggests / implies.

2. i've just looked into the china study criticism, and quite frankly i'm now sitting on the fence until i see something solid regarding the criticisms and the responses to them. after a quick look and some intriguing video through multiple sources i'm now suspicious, but the criticism that i did find has some serious flaws if you think about them for more than two seconds. so never mind forks over knives, then. unless you can ignore the china study references and want to see fascinating and disturbing things about the media and marketing.

3. the austrian study is very interesting, because it talks about vegan diets but doesn't take into consideration how educated / responsible those vegans were. it's INCREDIBLY easy to become vegan and eat badly. anybody who becomes vegan and doesn't know that they need to worry about b12 and vitamin d, for example? they're cruising for mental illness. anybody who goes vegan and eats fried / processed vegan food? avoiding bad foods doesn't mean the same thing as eating healthy. vegan doesn't mean "whole foods", and even "whole foods" doesn't mean getting the full spectrum of nutrition. which is why one needs to educate oneself about nutrition and eat responsibly.

it's definitely better to eat a relatively healthy meat-based diet than an unhealthy vegan-diet. what's even better, though, is learning about nutrition (something schools, the media and by and large THE MEDICAL ESTABLISHMENT have neglected), and making informed decisions.

i urge you to watch dr greger's presentation in spite of your misgivings.

I commend you on a very considered response. I am certainly no expert on matters of nutrition, and the Austrian report is relatively new but does seem to be reputable and peer reviewed. My point is merely that the issue is not settled as much as those on either side would like to pretend it is. There has been a huge increase in all kinds of diseases due to the way our food is processed and prepared, for example the large rise in heart disease has shot up since the 1920s. There are so many factors which can account for this from our lifestyles to pollution to just the fact that we are living way longer than our ancestors did. At the very least if meat is harmful at all it is very likely to be dwarfed by a cacophony of other things which would have a far more meaningful impact on health. Regarding criticism of Greger there are many, Harriet Hall is probably the best known. No one criticizes the studies he uses just that he omits other studies which do not support his views and that he is clearly a man with an agenda. Another interesting study is a WHO study who reluctantly concluded "A very small inverse association between intake of total fruits and vegetables and cancer risk was observed in this study."

again, me becoming vegan was not a knee-jerk emotional reaction, i was initially decidedly anti-vegan and only switched as the evidence began to pile up.

on the face of it, that WHO study seems to suggest that high fruit and vegetable intake isn't enough to counter the effects of animal product intake. i'd like to know more about the study before i accept those conclusions without context.

regarding the criticism of dr greger, i'm aware of it and looked into it before. the claims are all made without counter-argument, without pointing out the significance of the studies he's purportedly left out. once again, i urge you to watch from table to able and hear what he's discovered.

all i'm asking is that everyone invests time looking into these things, not hanging on to the first things they find that justify not looking into these things. it's one thing to agree that people should make up their own minds, but it's quite another to do so without taking into account the enormous disparity between the knowledge the academics have and the knowledge that's disseminated through the medical community and the financially motivated media.

one of the reasons i keep pushing the presentation, by the way, is because he addresses your concern that the issue isn't settled. the scary thing is that all the academic bodies and even the meat, dairy and poultry industries acknowledge all the evidence, but their responses cross the line of absurdity. sometimes in a humorous way, sometimes not.

return to the poutine routine - part ii

[... continued]

i wanted to meet up with tpj at the sherlock holmes museum pub, but i'd forgotten that it wasn't on baker street. whoops! so instead we ended up at the beehive drinking stout that wasn't particularly good. it was nice to see him and we had plenty to talk about; it was almost too late when i left for the heathrow.

*and* i didn't know which terminal i needed to be in. i guessed 5 correctly, though, and i made it through security just in time. security was a breeze again! i don't know why they get such a bad rap.

there was a long delay on the ground, but as long as i was on my last flight i really didn't care. after watching world war z, i finally got around to seeing elysium! what a fun film, thoroughly entertaining... but i cannot fathom how anybody who's not south african could possibly enjoy it. i *would* have enjoyed it on the big screen, but i certainly wouldn't have felt it worth the price. maybe i'll watch it again when it comes out on netflix.

i got in a little sleep and some epic dreaming, breezed through the airport and came out on the other side of immigration feeling so ridiculously relieved! godmother had yang pick me up, which was really nice, and i returned to a clean apartment for a much-needed shower; i did some emergency shopping, gobbled down a frozen meal and was so jet-lag exhausted dropped out of consciousness in a heartbeat.

---there's something queer about yang: he was telling me about an upcoming party that he'd previously sent me an invitation to. an open-to-the-public party in a nightclub downtown. the next day i mentioned that i might want to join him and he informed me that he hadn't actually extended an invitation, "not to sound offensive". wtf?!?!

---friday:

in the morning, pg delivered the tax-related documents i needed and i put everything together for the accountant. she also invited me to see pearl jam when they play england - that would be awesome! i wonder if it's in the realm of possibility...

i sent in my resume for a couple of jobs, and spoke to bell regarding some worrying things on my bill. they explained everything and even reversed technically legitimate charges in good faith (they may have been legitimate, but were understandably unfair), i was well impressed :)

i had been planning on going to newk'd girlfriend's community center poetry slam event, but when i realized that i'd gotten the date wrong i agreed with vfmp that jiu-jitsu and boxing followed by glitter sounded like a good plan. let me be clear - the only reason i agreed to watch a movie like that was because every time i'm shocked by his boyfriend not having seen culturally critical films his response is "well, have you seen glitter?!"

i renewed my tristar membership for six months, hoping that i wasn't being too optimistic but satisfied that the difference in cost between three months and six months isn't really significant. i returned home to snack and nap, and unintentionally bit down on an unpopped popcorn kernel: i found the offending tooth! and it's *not* the one the dentist suspected, so good on both of us for not proceeding.

i walked into the gym and into a lecture from the top muay thai instructor who wanted to make sure that i'd been careful with sparring after he'd seen what the beast did to me. my boxing coach was right there, so i flashed him a grin and asked "are you hearing this?"

jiu-jitsu was good, i seem to have gotten a handle on a lot of stuff; the rolling afterwards, though, required all-out power and my partner and i kept stalemating. after him i rolled with vfmp, but by then my arms were exhausted and so after i gave up we practiced some techniques instead.

my return to boxing: i know now that after my christmas tale the coach had excitedly told others how impressed he was with me, but from the moment i stepped into the class we were back to the verbal sparring. it's kind of sweet, kind of annoying. anyway, the class was fun and he left us with so many exercises that the entire class treated it as a group effort. i think i was the only one who failed to complete the 400 sit-ups, push-ups, burpees and squats (100 each). but that's mainly 'cause i wasn't feeling well, jet-lag-wise.

i don't know why i got home so late. i also don't know how i'd managed to score skin irritation on my chest and arm from the jiu-jitsu when i'd been wearing long sleeves; i think i might need to wear a regular training top underneath my long-sleeves. i "hurriedly" showered and went to vfmp's; i write that in quotation marks because my body refused to operate any faster than slow-motion. it was like all of my muscles had turned to jelly, but i was feeling great so i wasn't complaining :)

i *did* need two beers to watch glitter. it wasn't nearly as bad as crossroads, and as far as motivation goes i now have currency with which to purchase vfmp's boyfriend's film-time for movies like the fifth element :)

forgetting that it was friday night, i arrived at the metro at a time that would have been fine on a saturday night... fortunately it wasn't too cold, the twenty minutes waiting for the bus could've been worse.

---saturday:

i slept in, enjoying a slow and mindless morning. i went with godmother for coffee at the mall, after which she had stuff to do and took so long i worried i'd been forgotten and abandoned... she appeared just in time for me to be able to consume a quick lunch and head out for the slopes. i had a bit of a headache, but i really didn't want to miss such a perfect day - i was totally right! the weather was absolutely stunning and the snow conditions were excellent ^_^

...

that awkward moment when, after cringing and asking him to please be a bit more gentle with my board, the bus driver upbraids me for how i've been transporting it and explains why and what to do in the future. turns out he's a snowboarder. win!

(apparently the flat gets preferential care to the edges on bouncy metal surfaces. who knew?)

...

as i got off the bus an old woman with a heavy bag slipped on the ice, and slowly and awkwardly fell, softly (hopefully softly enough) hitting her head on a wall. i quickly dropped my board and helped her up, i hope she was okay...

on my walk to the mountain i couldn't stop thinking that the small voice that thought i should take the day easy is a dickhead - i would have missed the most perfect weather! we had bright sun and soft blues, it was relatively warm, very picturesque and absolutely lovely. i made good use of my couple of hours and my switching is getting quite decent ^_^

---i returned from the final slope feeling so incredibly fortunate and grateful! i was almost sure that nothing was broken, but my right leg was really hurting after the worst wipe-out i've ever had. "the ones that hurt are the ones you don't see coming" appears to apply to snowboarding as well as boxing. that one could easily have hospitalized me: on the final section on my way down there were two people that i decided to go around, but what i didn't see until it was far too late was that they were standing in front of deep moguls made of solid ice. i couldn't slow down in time, and i bounced - probably three or four times - and when i finally came to a stop and had figured out which way was down, i realized that i could easily have snapped my neck. i didn't even notice until i locked up my board that my foot had completely pulled out the binding (explaining why my ankle's screwed), and until later that i'd suffered minor injuries to all my limbs, my lower back and my jaw.

no matter how fortunate i felt, the walk to the bus was an eternal half hour of grimacing and grunting in pain. i spent the twenty minutes waiting for the bus trying to keep things mobile and stretching, worrying about all the bones clicking that i'm sure aren't meant to click. the hour or so on the bus was all about stretching and flexing, and the walk through the stations and then home was agonizing. the intense relief of climbing into a hot bath was unbelievable, and i'm very glad i remembered to ice things for a while before limping into bed.

[continued...]

traveling british

wednesday:

i suffered some packing anxiety but i was efficient nonetheless; it's helpful to make lists and handle purchases before the day. i felt a bit silly trying out fez when i wasn't completely done, but then i received an alert from british airways informing me that my flight was to be delayed by three hours.

WHAT?! what a screw-up! so i was ready to go far too early and my otherwise unstressed time visiting family and friends in london would be pressured.

the metro to bus transfer was (unwittingly) perfectly timed. i was made nervous by a woman in the bus putting in or moving around a contact lens while we were in motion. i arrived at the airport and headed straight to a store to buy a tsa-approved lock. at least the plastic clamshell packaging had a little easy-open flap that even *i* could find.

after checking in - handing in my luggage and printing out the boarding pass i couldn't get on my phone - i tried to change us dollars to british pounds. the guy took my money and showed me a number that was higher than i expected: great! odd, but great. he proceeded to give me that amount in canadian dollars.
"i asked you for british pounds."
"i can't change us dollars for you, i have to change them to canadian dollars first."
i gave him a dark look.
"and you couldn't have told me that before? i *have* canadian dollars."
i told him to give me pounds for the canadian dollars. as he turned to do that i realized that he was succeeding in double-charging me for the conversions. rude bastard!
"hey, stop! just give me my damned us dollars back. i'll change them on the other side."

the only good things about the three hour delay were the free subway dinner and a few hours of contemplation / meditation that i sorely needed. and i wrote online dating while i waited, which i'm quite proud of.

airports:

no security problems anywhere. no serviceable wi-fi anywhere. the prices in johannesburg's domestic departures hall are set for international travellers, and that's really, really uncool for south africans.

mariah carey - all i want for christmas is you played EVERY TIME i walked into a men's bathroom. subliminal messaging?

kids:

1. sitting next to the kid's toys by the gate and talking on the phone is not a good idea. a bunch of them decided to come and play and i had to move across the hall. the smallest kid took a shine to me and the bigger kids were taking care of her, which was cute but made trying to converse on the phone a bit of a mission.

2. on the first flight i was sitting just behind the infants' row, and counted us all fortunate that they were all, for the most part, relaxed on the flight. on the second flight, i was sitting IN the infants' row, and the parents next to me were flying with their child for the first time. they were more worried than i was, though, and we were all very grateful by the end of the flight that the squealing had been minimal. also, my headphones block out a good amount of noise :P

food:

the in-flight food i had was undoubtedly the best i have ever tasted in thirty years of flying! i am totally satisfied that i remembered to order vegan meals. they were all delicious and i wasn't forced to compromise on anything :)

sleep:

from wednesday morning until friday night, i must have slept between two to four hours in total. i entered zombie-mode almost immediately, unable to focus on anything like a movie or a book, uninterested in writing or even in listening to music. i kept trying the latter and giving up. most of the time i just kind of stared miserably while my head lolled.

when i *did* manage to sleep, it was at all the wrong times. i'm very grateful that they kept waking me for my meals, though!

health:

my stomache was killing me from just after the first take-off until i arrived at my cousins' in london. i was up and down to he bathrooms with no results, i don't know what the hell that was all about. my second flight was ruined by restless leg syndrome in spite of my repeated top-ups of tonic water. i was not impressed, no matter how much i got up and stretched my legs remained cramped.

overall experience:

in spite of the last items mentioned, overall the experience was really good. the airport stuff was all smooth in all directions, the planes were relatively spacious and the only things to complain about had nothing to do with anyone but me.

london:

the underground was simple and i was surprised at how familiar everything was when i'd last been there in 2004.

on the picadilly line to cockfosters: that's a name they might want to consider changing. just sayin'.

my family: it was great seeing my cousins! i only had an hour or so with them, and they had some friends over. when their kids brought out bread and food, they pointed at a bowl and told me it was a mushroom spread. cool! i put it on a slice of bread and it was excellent. a short while later someone asked how it was made.
"oh, mushroom, ricotta..."
"there's cheese in there?!"

why would somebody describe mushroom AND RICOTTA as just mushroom? does cheese not count? i commented that i wouldn't have taken it then, and was asked about my dietary choices. everyone was cool with my reply that it's for health reasons and was happy to leave it at that.
except for the family friend, who got an angry look on her face as she asked: "what makes you think that being vegan is healthier?"

"if you'd asked me that a couple of years ago you'd have been absolutely right," i began, and proceeded to inform her about the research that's been done over the past years. that sparked a discussion about supplements, and once that was over we could change topic and everything relaxed again. only... when the family friend left, she did so without saying goodbye to me. hmmm.

travelling from there to leicester square i just missed the right train; fortunately i only made moonflake and zenstar wait about fifteen minutes, and even more fortunately we'd be travelling on the tube together for a while so we actually ended up with a decent amount of time for coffee and catch-up. it's so nice to see them doing well and even nicer to hear that we're all thinking along similar lines long-term! :)

that moment when i remembered that i didn't need to pack my nice jacket: *facepalm*

i didn't have time to meet with tpj, so i called him from the airport and we chatted until boarding time. i need to make the most out of the $45 package i took for the uk...

---"gold-digger" is such an ugly term. i prefer "full-time high-class monogamous prostitute".

---i was glad to find an indian toilet at johannesburg's baggage claim. the other stalls would have been impossible to change in. i don't know how people change clothes on an airplane.

i arrived in cape town exhausted and feeling grim - like i'd been travelling since wednesday. as soon as i got off the plane, though, i could feel the summer holiday feeling and once i'd gotten home and had a shower i was feeling quite human again in spite of myself :)

visualization

waking up visualizing the talk i was going to have with the cto, the horrible realization dawned on me that there's no way for us to discuss it without my at best implying that he's an idiot.

i'm not a politician, and being especially tactful is not what i do.

aota came in to the office for a short while, and i'm very glad i managed to catch her for a "talk". i shared all of my frustrations and she assured me that a) all the executives are aware of what's going on and b) that that's precisely what megaman's been tasked with dealing with.

i headed back to megaman's office to convince him that i don't need to be in the meeting and to argue with him for over half an hour about the value of commenting code.

...

if i don't give a shit and take things less seriously i *do* feel better. can i keep this up?

---i can't tell if megaman is a victim of buzzword-speech or if he's simply imprecise. regardless, he knows how to make me feel needed.

...

three things made me smile yesterday: my rocket surgeon shirt arriving at the office, buying ministry albums (psalm 69 and the mind is a terrible thing to taste), and one of the interns finding the original syndicate on gog.com.

oh, and leaving early for an eye exam.

---it wasn't hard to find the eye institute, their welcome was quick and pleasant. they did make me wait a bit, though, and i was pretty tired...

the tests went strangely. my right eye couldn't focus on the letters either, and the pressure tests left me in tears. afterwards i was led back to the waiting room where i sat for so long i began to nod off. it was in a haze that i entered the doctor's room...

... where we discovered that my right eye's vision is excellent. perhaps the test equipment wasn't calibrated correctly? anyway, for my left eye i was asked to look through a patch with holes in it and my vision was instantly corrected. science! and piracy. maybe i should just wear a patch instead of dropping almost two large on surgery?

the technician who explained the details and risks could barely speak english; he made everything awkward by constantly apologizing...

---i felt a couple of drops of rain and headed into tim horton's for a cup of coffee. i was inside and cozy when the skies opened up and the rain came bucketing down - once in a while i get it right!

while there i went online and was touched to read a lengthy note by tpj concerning consciousness; he may have missed a few steps in my personal history but he definitely internalized what i was getting at :)

i returned home with no plans to train. i did laundry, chatted for a while with SxS and then overclocker, finished season 7 of doctor who and watched another couple of episodes of death note before going to bed early.

i *was* thinking about working on my comics but i really disn't have the energy.

---today:

special deliveries! i received both my copy of the arden sonnets and my syndicate shirt! it came out beautifully ^_^

so far, it's been a positively meh day at work. the most interesting bit was designing icons for something and almost explicitly stating that cheshire cat lady's input wasn't appreciated...

!adventurous

let's go backwards, shall we? i've spent almost all day indoors, minus a short excursion to walmart to pick up a few things (almost none of which i found).

i've just watched some more tiger and bunny: i can't believe i didn't have the whole season! now i have to watch online. at least i have internet. it was fun at the beginning, but it's become intense. the story is excellent.

i spent 2.5 hours transferring pages from wikispaces to mediawiki. why the hell did the cto have to choose one of the only wikis that uses a proprietary markup?! what a painful experience :(

i've been practising a bit of french; i'm really impressed with duolingo's new iphone app.

i thought the two girls had made a mistake when they so enthusiastically greeted me when i opened the door. my first encounter with carollers. i said "this is awkward, i'm jewish." then i gave them a couple of bucks to go away - it's supposed to be for a good cause. i was amused, and very glad that they didn't sing for me because afterwards i could hear them singing to the neighbours.

i posted a video that i thought was really good, and it offended tpj. he posted a rant and i responded, and he misunderstood my response and we ended up having a private argument that began with him calling me "a retarded bigot". i don't just give up on people whose opinions i appreciate, and we fought it out, eventually both apologizing but as amiably as we resolved it the whole incident left a decidedly bitter aftertaste.

i had a long video chat with pg. i miss her. as much as the internet can bridge the gap of half the globe, you can't hold hands through a screen.

i did laundry and finally took care of the recycling this morning. i was annoyed to find the slip for my gloves' delivery pasted on my postbox: this is the second time i've suffered this, the first being with a penny arcade delivery. not only did my online payment include postage, but there's a reception charge?! i paid $25 for shipping and the receipt says another $25. as i wasn't here when it arrived i wasn't here to refuse the payment, so unless i'm mistaken (and i hope i'm mistaken) i owe the caretaker money.

that stinks.

---friday:

okay, now reversing the chronological order to its original direction.

my birthday. facebook is a thing every year, but i've now established that blocking one's wall is a very good idea. a lot of the people i care about sent me private messages, and instead of just a bland wish on the wall, to get lost amongst all the others, each private message was an opportunity to chat and it made the wishes that much more special. i created a status to catch all the lazy wishes, and that made mass responses much easier.

before pg left she hid my birthday present in plain sight - she knows me well - and i woke up to directions. her gift was absolutely spot on; the card for me is the real gift, the physical part is great but the card itself made me smile and laugh and really, really want to reach out and hug her.

*sigh*

i had a super hot shower before getting dressed for the office, and it was one of those perfect showers that it's practically impossible to finish.

i checked the weather report before leaving the apartment. -13. i was sure there was a glitch. i double-checked. same result.

i have to say that -13 in short bursts really isn't different from -1 or -2. but there wasn't any wind... wind chill is evil.

food of the gods is a brilliant book, but some of his ideas don't sit well with me. i totally understand where he's coming from and so can vouch for the quality of his theory based on my own enlightening experiences, but i have no problem integrating all of the language-magic with an objective reality whereas he refers to science as sophistry and the idea of reality as fantasy as antithetical to what we* are beginning to come to grips with. then again, he hints at connections even as he says that, so i guess it could just be signs of the time of writing.

* i'm being an elitist by presuming that the whole world is on the same level as those at the forefront of philosophical, psychological and neurological studies

the art director was complaining that the company doesn't have branding, and that his decisions are by and large arbitrary. we talked for about five minutes, during which i presented him with two different branding concepts. they were both pretty exciting. "you know," he told me, "you should be a copyrighter!"
i didn't mention that i've been studying literature and am an aspiring writer :P

i was sent an invitation to a video conference that went on and on and never really got to the point. it's bad enough that it was a waste of time, but it was mind-bendingly boring and i had other stuff to do. when i finally started getting back into focus, the cto forwarded me an email from wikispaces informing us that our trial period has come to an end. what timing! so i spent the rest of the afternoon installing mediawiki (the easy part), configuring access to it (impossible, there must be some kind of conflict with the hosting company's configuration and i eventually had to do a temporary workaround) and then importing from the old wiki. see my previous comment about proprietary formats :S

two shitty moments for the day:

the first was when aota called to say the immigration agency has contacted her to inform her that we didn't do something really, really important: the website says that the simplified application process involves three forms; it totally neglects to mention that a federal application needs to be made simultaneously. oh, shit. oh-shit-oh-shit-oh-shit.

the second was when nystire's brother called me on skype. he asked me a question that i answered without thinking, only realized then that i was essentially sharing that private sentiment with everyone within a 30m radius. oh, cubicles, you suck.

while travelling to my aunt's for dinner, i was struck by a couple of intense food smells at random points. i was beginning to wonder if i was imagining it but when some kids hopped on the bus and confirmed that it smelled of fish 'n chips i knew that my nose was fine.

dinner was great, the vegan dishes were delicious, and there were a few guests who made the evening loud and fun. afterwards i joined yang and my aunt's friend's kid for a beer downtown. it was cold outside. very cold. but the place we went to served guinness and the music was alright. i think i got home around 1am or so. i was a little tipsy.

---i'm a little tipsy now, and that's only because i poured a glass of wine as i sat down to post this. maybe i'll go to bed.

headache

today was a long one filled with tidying and painting and packing; i didn't get a heck of a lot done, but what i did manage took ages.

i had coffee with tpj who happened to be nearby, watched some tiger and bunny with pg and her delicious pasta sauce, after which it was time to head to her parents' for second night.

loads of good food and plenty of pleasant conversation, but by the time we left i was exhausted and suffering from sore feet and a headache. we've been messing about with sim cards and i've been focusing on tea; now it's time for bed. perhaps one more episode before that.

---
i was suddenly inspired to try cleaning my iphone with a dot of dishwashing liquid - worked like an absolute charm!