ready for the next step

the self-satisfaction, whether or not it lasts, was entirely worth hours of wet socks, a broken umbrella (which in grand total lasted almost half a day!), and most of the two hours between classes spent in competition with the elements and public transport.

i walked in, turned on my pc, built a new service and solved the problems with the old one, set them all running, locked my station, said goodbye and walked out with pride: all within twenty minutes and while simultaneously brushing people off as politely as i could.

---
that satisfaction was rounded off when we finally got to my turn (about three hours into the class) to discuss my paper proposal for the term.

"can we turn our referat into a seminar paper?" yes.
"and we can turn out seminar into a thesis?" yes.
then i proposed my idea, and i was told that it was such a good idea, and such a broad topic, that there's no way that either a referat or a seminar, or even a master's thesis, would be enough for such an endeavour. i have been advised to turn it into a non-fiction book, and been told that it would solve a problem that nobody else has an answer to yet.

same class, same sentiment. well, colour me pleased, i think i know what i'm going to do when i'm finished with academia ^_^

my beard's looking a bit grey

it's a frustrated night's sleep, fraught with stolen blankets and elbows, with a stiff neck and back on waking up and knowing that the week in all of its insanity has begun.
it's breakfast and a cup of tea before hitting the bed again, curling into foetal position to escape from the icy cold that's seeped inside.

it's the three alarm clocks that dragged me out of my quiet, blanket-smothered oblivion, and the hot chocolated coffee that threatens to cool while the sun shining outside shows me the leaves swinging in the freezing breeze that i'm going to have to face soon enough.

for the one class that i don't like, and must take regardless.

what did i?

what a disappointing weekend. i slept kinda late, tried to be productive (and mostly failed), went off in the cold to wait half an hour with wordsworth outside a miserable door only to be let in to argue bad poetry in an unconvincing manner without so much as a cup of coffee or a chair.

i think i'm out of the group.

i came home to eat in front of the end of the first season of buffy the vampire slayer, i've read a couple of pages for tomorrow's class and i'm beat so i'm going to bed.

tv snow. sans tv.

5am? oh. i don't feel tired, but i think i'm beginning to suffer visual hallucinations.

after performing my socialist student duties* we went to a delicious dinner with pg's family. i ate too much, and had a deep and meaningful discussion with her brother about religion and culture. it all started with why i don't want to work for the big aeronautics companies in israel, and ended with me discovering just how much i've learned since i resumed studying.

* scanning fifty pages of a book (fair use!). i've discovered that camscanner+'s ocr is absolutely useless. the scans themselves are fantastic, though, especially considering the low quality camera, and the only other issue encountered was that the file size is excessive (20mb for a pdf? sheesh.)

i've spent most of the past six hours working, finally getting the new service up and running in spite of being unable to resolve a logging issue. a few minutes ago i checked the logs of the working version just out of curiosity, only to discover that the service is functioning superbly but the target - an external, paid-for service - is down. figures :P

now that i've discovered something interesting enough to present about metropole, i believe i can go to bed.

head down

wow - i just put glow-in-the-dark yellow (english and hebrew) and pink (arabic) stickers on my keyboard to cover the faded ones, and it's totally defamiliarized. i've gotten so used to touch typing, but every now and again i recenter myself and BAM it hits me square between the... you know what i mean.

i got to bed late, and woke up early, and skeedaddled to dizengoff center to relinquish the router that hot so graciously loaned me. that was after i discovered that they'd been charging me for service since december, even though i'd called them to freeze the account and they'd (allegedly) acquiesced.

after almost a year of fighting with them about letting me cancel my subscription, i'm finally free* of their tyranny and abuse and i will never, ever be using their services again. the same goes for netvision - although i have yet to escape their clutches :(

* thanks to pg and her father. i don't know how they pulled it off, but i'm really grateful!

the rest of the day, up until now, i spent in bed dreaming really strange dreams** and feeling awful. i had a lot to do today. i still do. oddly enough, while i'm not quite back to feeling good (which i was this morning) i am feeling particularly bouncy with protoculture's dead or alive remix in the background.

** i found myself in the middle of the war, alone in the silence at the end of the bridge, in the middle of the straits and unsure of whether i was supposed to be building it up or tearing it down. blue skies and blue waters all around, the concrete reassuring underfoot and the heavy sense of the steel girders striking up into the heavens were overpoweringly real. i climbed over the edge and found the worker's entrance into the dark, dusty, hazardous tunnels below, clambering and climbing across and down in circles until reaching the broader, oddly habitable half-finished rest area between tunnels.
i don't know what the cooldrinks had to do with it all, only i'm certain that k-twang showing up had something to do with my decision last night to apply for jobs as far away from montreal as vancouver.

yawn

i'm too tired. i'm too tired to do the work i'm supposed to do, too. it's been a long, fascinating day.

i learned about wearing scarves (pg's is warm AND stylish), realized that my sister's getting married in a couple of weeks (and i won't be there), and i got a lead on a job overseas that looks interesting.

oh, and community does look like fun. and tiger and bunny was fun, as was... umm... the other anime that we watched.

gods - the five hours of work this evening wiped me out.

depression as an indicator

something is broken in a man who cannot function in a healthy society

something is broken in a society within which a healthy man cannot function

am i on to something?

okay, most of us are convinced that our modern day legal systems are broken. in spite of the fact that i've become a bit of an anarchist of late, i'm going to be cautious and suggest that you're all correct: we need laws in order to govern ourselves.

in order for those laws to be useful governing tools, as opposed to a form of oppression*, they need to be dynamic. there's a process for putting something into law, and it's a problematic process because there's no real trial period. a law, once passed, is a bitch to get repealed.

now, i'm all for a regulated society but surely it's better to regulate our society by our current standards, and not those of yesteryear? like that law in tennesse?

i think laws should have an expiry date. when that date occurs, if it's a good law it can be voted right back in. if not... well, then it doesn't have to bite us in the ass.

human beings make mistakes. that's what we do. lawyers and politicians make more than most of us. this will help them as much as us: what have we got to lose?

* by the lawmakers, or by the past, it doesn't matter.

bug (eye) am in the morning

i definitely have to crash. hours of debugging to discover stupidly simple things*, and now i'm stuck on more complicated stuff :(

* so, umm, i shouldn't have done what scr told me to do... services should use System.Timers.Timer. and services need explicit write permissions to write logs. and stones are... stony.

good service

it's been almost a week since i used vinegar, and about 2/3 of a month without shampoo or conditioner. oil production appears to be more or less regulated (if i run my hands through my hair they feel weird afterwards), my hair doesn't smell funny, and i've only pulled out two plastic bristles from my hairbrush so far.

dreads will definitely be less effort than all this brushing :P

---
four and a half hours' sleep before the early wednesday psycho-babble class? nice. amusingly enough, i'm the only person in the class familiar with a rebus (i'd link to wikipedia if they weren't closed*), albeit in the form of cartoon strips called "funetics" that used to be published in capetonian newspapers and magazines.

* SOPA and PIPA are threats to the very foundations of the internet... not only because the internet is so overwhelmingly american, but because if they're stupid enough to pass laws like that then other governments will happily follow suit.
here's what wired have to say, and the oatmeal is on form as usual, and this guy is made of win.
of course, some of the big boys are in too.

i sat an hour or so with scr and we learned how to configure installers for services and perform basic debugging. i'm actually testing it right now, but it's not quite right yet :/
at least all the tricky stuff has been stored legibly in the new office wiki, so we won't have to rediscover it again.

i made it back to campus just in time for second. i enjoyed most of the class (eugenics and cyborgs), not including the five or ten minutes wherein i couldn't focus or keep my eyes open: that kinda sucked. i'm not entirely sure what was being discussed during that time, but i suspect it was interesting.

aside from some good news from the other office (my code passed the initial tests quite well), and some good news regarding sorter's project, and some planning towards the rather complicated things that need to be done to my apartment's roof, it's primarily been an evening of procrastination. and it doesn't help that this stuff HAS to work by tomorrow morning... :S

gut-wrenching instead

as opposed to the heart-wrenching mentioned yesterday. a couple of days ago i mentioned the girl with the dragon tattoo's opening sequence. and i said "oh. shit."

well, we've just braved the cold, wet night air (and splashy, turd-covered sidewalk) to go and see it. not only was i not disappointed, but rather spent most of the movie totally immersed and most of that time thinking "oh. shit." - i'm not entirely sure i want to compare it to the previous version, but i guess i will at some stage. it's a 2.5 hour rush, and it's not an action movie.

...

french class - an amusing aside, even if it was in the most inappropriate time: a couple of us complained that hebrew wasn't our native tongue, and the teacher was shocked. by me, in particular - apparently she'd seen me talking to the english teacher (the one who was harping on about critical thinking) and put two and two together to get sixteen. then the moron who thinks out loud got involved: "but aren't you...? aren't you...?"

i mimicked his hand gesture, palm up and bobbing up and down. "aren't i... what? aren't i what?"

stupid bugger.

...

after eating lunch meditatively while hiding from the rain, the rest of the day was spent in the office in front of the monitor. it was okay, i guess. i wrote my first windows service, but unfortunately couldn't get past the successful install to the "start/stop" phase :P

headached

the morning was fine, although i was a bit of a zombie during first class. second picked up and was a lot of fun, then i headed off to work.

the integration was a slooooow process, but i got it done smoothly. after an argument - no, a fight - with one of the marketing guys about specifications (we don't communicate well at all) i said goodnight and headed off home, having had more than enough of the day and needing a stiff drink.

i passed my apartment on the way to pick up some stuff and discover that the last fix made the leak worse, and was about to arrive at home when my boss called to inform me that "it's all broken!" and don't i know how critical the data is that we're losing?

i took about five minutes to realize that we weren't losing any data, but that a change that i'd made earlier had muddled the reporting. it took about two minutes to fix that...

... and then hours (i think) to sort out the disconnected stuff without touching anything else. it's just... it's just...

i'm not even billing for these hours. aside from it being my mistake, i cost them the QA's time as well. i'd cry, i feel like crying only i don't have tears. apparently my tears are reserved exclusively for heart-wrenching movies.

...

at least the letter i got from the army is an indication of a positive situation.

sort of turing

another 3am special - but this is the first positive one in ages! i've gotten my system running so well that at first i thought it was broken, before i discovered that my tests were flawed and that what i've built is, in this case, just a little bit smarter than me.

*happier sigh*

now i can go to bed.

on wearing silly hats

on wearing silly hats

---
the sunday morning special: the "regular" french class: less course load, more people in dire need of having "imbecile" tattooed on their foreheads.

work: pleasant - and i'd been worried the whole morning. i convinced the boss that my solution was better than his, and now it's all about racing to implement it in full.

second class: amazing. between zizek, lyotard and leary, hillman, plato and saussure, my concept of the universe (inside and out) feels fleshed out and whole. i wonder if one day i'll be able to communicate it.

the old office: also pleasant. i performed a code review, made a couple of fixes and was left with nothing but completing documentation for our numbered days. we've received notice that we've been fired, but i suspect that the payout won't be particularly high :P

i brought my space quest 1 poster back home.

dinner, french homework, and now work. *sigh*

---
this image is beautifully depressing.

i feel siiiiiiick

on the plus side, though, needing to pee every 10 - 15 minutes has been a great excuse to take a break from the monitor.

i really didn't get as much done as i'd hoped, though :(
and my upper back's hurting :(
and i have a headache :(

*sigh*

living and loving

i wasn't feeling too well today... that was before lunch. i ate, i felt really bad, and eventually moved from the air-conditioner and blanket to the bed and duvet, which heat-wise turned out to be a much better option. i was still woozy when i woke up, had a chat with my mother about Very Serious Stuff, and then...

---
angels in america is absolutely wonderful, in every sense. one thing about the weird relationships in the movie: they most certainly make me appreciate what i have.
i mean, i've spent years kind of assuming that i'd just end up alone - and here i am, actually happy with someone and constantly (and most pleasantly) surprised by it. people are fascinating. people are amazing. but not all fascinatings and amazings work well together.

okay - maybe not all people :P

---
right. time to get serious and responsible. and to try to shake the dumb ecstasy of pg's nutella-filled chocolate muffins. WOW.

needing hugs

monday:

two good classes, one on the grass
sonnet scanning
the formal "good job" speeches:
realization dawns

the new office: too much QA. hours and hours just to find the simple bug :(

---
from an argument that took place after i commented on a new awareness campaign addressing aggressive driving habits:

it intrigues me that you guys are so defensive about something that we all acknowledge is a serious problem in this country, and with a lot of israelis that go abroad - it may not be an israeli-only problem, this macho-aggressive פרייר-paranoia shit [the fear of being a sucker], but it is an israeli problem that our people take all over the world with them.

and we, of all the people in the middle east, should be above that kind of thing.

don't generalize! that's so racist! but the truth is, generalizations are the way that the human mind functions. and [an american friend] just happens to be on our side - do you think that people who aren't jewish and haven't lived here are as fair-minded as you'd like them to be?

this country is a cultural absurdity and it's destroying itself from the inside. whether the fighting is on the road or in the marketplace, it's israelis doing it and israelis who are suffering it, and you don't have to be a racist or an elitist or arrogant to figure that out. you can call [an american friend] anything you want, he lives in a place where, currently, people treat each other with a lot more respect. it doesn't matter whether it's fake or not.

and we're talking about LA. that's kind of a harsh indictment. maybe not every israeli behaves that badly, but more than enough do that it makes the rest of our lives unpleasant and uncomfortable.

criticism is fine - god knows i do it all the time, but labeling people as aggressive assholes just because of their place of birth is bigoted and arrogant.

no, we're labelling people as aggressive assholes because that's what they are. you've obviously missed the point of what i was trying to say in [an american friend]'s defense - [an american friend] generalizing is not the problem. there are two real problems:

1. EVERYONE generalizes, and most people see us the way [an american friend] described even if it's not true 100% of the time

2. we have a problem here. a real problem with aggressive behaviour. and i, for one, am not just criticizing but doing my best to get as far away from here because i don't want my kids to grow up in such a hateful environment.

no, not everyone sucks. but enough do to make it unpleasant. there are wonderful people here. and that is irrelevant.

...
from a later discussion with the same person:
i think the biggest issue here is a crisis of democracy - democracy in its current form essentially means that whoever has the most progeny dictates the order of the country. the second we treat the vote as something to be earned through active participation for the good of the nation - military / national service, community service, taxes etc. and stop rewarding outmoded and dangerous behaviour (hello, overpopulated world with limited resources) we'll be able to consider things like letting non-jews become legitimate members of our society.

on the other note, a fundamental element of judaism is criticism and analytical thinking; not to mention hillel's take on loving one's brothers - senseless hatred, in my opinion, is the primary mode of the ultra-orthodox: i'd rather be a good jew by being a good person than by being identified with a bunch of hate-mongering primitives. i can only justify that last sentence by the fact that my irreligious behaviour disqualifies me from my nation in the eyes of those i'm complaining about.

i'm not entirely shocked by the utter absurdity of the law in the case of illegal immigrants - who can now be imprisoned without trial for up to three years - because we know which side of the table called for it. it bothers me that if such a call had been made by the other side, it would have been for the loss of a jewish state. it's a lose-lose system.

---
beers with ze germans to say farewell to the british one had many pleasant moments, but was rife with politics and a mutual sense of dissatisfaction.

---
tuesday:

our stupid french teacher surprised us by informing us that our friday morning make-up sessions would include a test :(

after class i went home with pg, picked up my rollerblades and went back to the store for a long string of disappointing news. nope, no solutions available. they were nice about it, at least. i tried on a bunch of inners and each one had its advantages and disadvantages.

i bussed straight to work for a bug hunt and what i felt was a disappointment to the boss. swak feeling. i returned home for a great dinner, wrapped up my ankles and wore two layers of thick socks, and braved the cold for what turned into a great skate! aside from ankle hair removal when i removed the bandages, the ride was mostly comfortable as long as i held my foot correctly. so not ideal, but doable. perhaps, i pray, a sign that i won't need to invest in another pair.

---
wednesday:

i worked another 3.30am special, then spent 3.5 hours fighting unconsciously over blankets, woke up tipping over a full cup of water and used the wrong towels to dry it up - happy wednesday! that was followed by long, cold-faced bussing and walking, and i only discovered once i arrived on campus that i'd made the right choice of bus lines.

we had a great class! i made a joke about "sigma freud" and was shocked to discover that our professor had made the same joke a few years back and had been slammed for it :P
also, for the first time, she covered the board with signs and symbols and i actually found it readable. i must have been hallucinating :P

to work - more of a cold face and wishing i'd remembered the scarf that pg made for me.

i left work early with a good feeling (but no brolly for the rain), finally having gotten things functional. i'd left an hour earlier than i'd had to (i'd confused the hour), so i met with pg for a decent lunch, a miserable cup of coffee and then a few minutes on the comfiest chairs on campus - it was raining outside, we were warm, and i sunk in for a deep sleep that i was most forlorne to be dragged out of. but the class i got up for was fantastic, and i've come to the conclusion that china mieville - iron council is awesome, and i will buy it at some stage. (or steal it, if i can't buy it).

my hair was super greasy - was it baking soda and lemon juice time? one more day.

i couldn't rest, so we went shopping; arrival back home had me upset. no hot water and having to go down to turn on the generator in the rain (like in jurassic park) + the motorcycle nuisance making that difficult + getting my ski-jacket zipper properly stuck + failure to open dinner's zip-loc bag = aggravation.

at least work was fun, i got to do some real problem solving again ^_^

---
thursday:

two great classes, and a super-strange moment when co-conspirator took offense to our lecturer's sense of humour and refused to speak to him (???). the orientation class was fun and interesting, and was followed by screenings of samurai jack, hellsing and afro samurai. all brilliant!

the experience was marred by my lunch - i won't be buying a sandwich from the webb cafeteria again. a glove on her left hand, and while i was making up my mind she scratched her hair with her right. i figured that as long as she didn't use that one it wouldn't be a problem, but then she did. ugh. and i was too embarrassed to point it out. while my mind was reeling, she then reached her hand into her shirt for another scratch. compounded embarrassment, and i resolved to think india and hope not to get sick. lice sandwich? *knocks wood* i think it was okay. it was delicious :P

note-to-self: i don't get to complain about a lack of weekends because my thursdays are so much fun :D

the paid-for lecture in the evening was painful to watch. i was unimpressed by the lack of sophistication of the subject matter and its presentation. thought highlights:
connor mead in ghosts of girlfriends past is a wona-miser. the movie, much like dickens' a christmas carol, is very spectre-torial.
aside from captain obvious' conclusions that the movie is similar in a number of respects to the dickens novel, i was offended by the director / script writers' insinuations that not appreciating the institution of marriage equates to excessive materialism. being a misogynist is a sad / bad thing, but hollywood values aren't any better.

i did not study hard for the french test. but i did use baking soda and vinegar on my scalp. i think the baking soda was a pointless exercise, but the vinegar? that shit works fast! and well! and i blabbed about it.

---
friday:

horrid, early, rainy morning
forgetting the basics on the test
a shitty lesson, a cool cat sitting on class laps
a decent breakfast
some rest
dinner, drinks - and a lost voice over politics

---
samsung makes future: the smart window.
jeet kei leung: it takes him quite a while to get interesting (and i don't like his style in general), but when he gets to the point he makes it really well! global culture through festivals

---
will humans become extinct?
depends on your definition of "human", and how lucky we are. the odds of us becoming extinct soon (on earth) are fairly good, considering our dwindling resources, overpopulation, warmongering and weapons of mass destruction, not to mention the ease with which some new type of disease could spread through our global village.

if we evolve, either genetically, technologically, or both, we may well see ourselves escaping an unfortunate destruction and heading out to populate space. if that happens, we will have an opportunity to evolve far beyond our present concepts of humanity, and in that sense we not only might become extinct, but probably should.

having said that, what separates us from other beasts is our language and our ability to produce social narrative. as this feature might well survive whatever other transformations we may experience as a species, by this definition of humanity it is anyone's guess if it will survive as part of our descendants' genetic / social make-up or if some inherent communication / thought improvement will crop up

going feral?

i've just gone two weeks washing my hair with only water, and just now used vinegar as conditioner - it's awesomely effective. chemical shampoos and conditioners aren't good for you.

although i'm sure the first few weeks of getting off them are more comfortable if you have less hair :/

i can attest to the fact that there are no interesting smells, it feels good and it's less effort / wasted water / money. i'm just putting it out there in case anyone's interested; it's not the biggest deal.

in response to a comment about "nourishing the hair via the scalp": seriously? hair is made up of dead cells. it doesn't get nourished from anywhere.

in any event i think that fixating on hair is silly, just like i think that following fashion trends is silly and owning status symbols like cars is silly. if hair is a "thing" for you, then it makes sense to take care of it in a certain way. but if it's just hair, then as long as it's clean and doesn't smell then it's just fine.

of *course* it's comfortable to use shampoo. that's the whole point. once you're using shampoo your body produces the oils in excess and you *have* to use shampoo and conditioner to get rid of them. when you wean yourself off, then you don't need it any more.

just sayin'.

---
obviously going public with a story like this can leave one open to all sorts of attacks, and someone insinuated that i might not be using deodorant.

the truth is that i haven't really been using deodorants or perfumes for a heck of a long time now, not because of any conscious decision but because quite frankly i don't notice much difference. i'm now convinced that as long as you take care of your personal hygiene you won't smell funny, and that it's not the use of deodorant but rather the food you eat, how much exercise you get, how often you shower... that sort of thing that matters.

i'd link to an interesting article (in i could find it) that i read a while back (i think it was in wired) about the fact that human beings use their natural smells to detect genetic compatibility, and that masking those smells is a mistake relationship-wise.

also, beware of perfumes specifically - as opposed to deodorants, which as far as i'm aware don't have this problem - because the manufacturers put all sorts of crazy things in there including animal faeces (for the "musky" quality).

---
something that keeps popping into mind whenever i smell something offensive is that dogs use smell intensity in identification, whereas we use it as a way to know if we should avoid something. i find that amusing, yet knowing it doesn't help me when i have to stand next to someone smelly in a line. be clean, people!

stupid muscles.

have i mentioned not having patience for stupid people? our french teacher may or may not be partially deaf, but she's definitely, 100%, not a smart person. and she's not a particularly good teacher, either. it's definitely better to learn online.

what a way to begin the week: an hour and a half of wanting to do violence to her painful lack of intelligence. it's either slapping sense into, or slapping the stupid out. to paraphrase louis ck - "i had to stop just so i could hate her with all of my body".

...

i got to work feeling like shit, and the office equipment seemed to be conspiring to make me pass out. chairs missing, a computer that needed moving... the network was down, though, so aside from being harrassed by a guy who wants to see *SPOILER ALERT* battlestar galactica *SPOILER ALERT*, has gone so far as to read all manner of reviews and ask everyone he knows if it's good, but cannot bring himself to actually watch it, i had a short while to rest a bit and by the time we had internet access i was doing a bit better.

i can't tell if it's my back, or my neck, or something else... and my knees were aggravated this evening. i'm definitely over the hill :P

the evening class was kind of alright, but i found more interest in becoming a sudoku champ. possibly because i only read a few pages of china mieville - iron council so i didn't really have any legs to stand on.

dinner, metropole, rest. then work.

distractions: hairbrush cleaning combined with dr. seuss @ burning man and pg and i arguing over an offer to stay in l.a. served to slow down my work efforts. at least it's all good now.

i've had greasy heart popping to mind a lot since i stopped using shampoo / conditioner... this had better be worth it! (i suspect it will be)

so much serious

i did a bit of work today... and a little reading... but mostly it was more of the same. heck, we even watched the first part of angels in america - quite an impressive film.

still here

wednesday:

i learned that a muscial conductor in hebrew is menatze'ach (מנצח), which directly translated back to english is "winner" or "beater". so the opera conductor "beats" the opera, as it were.

---
the news for the week was painful: i was informed that the old office is closing. a while back, after another unfortunate encounter with the law, i told my boss that i was interested in moving to the US office. he told me then that they weren't looking. on wednesday, when presented with an opportunity to discuss this with the CTO, i was informed that if i *had* gone over my boss' head they would have known in time and would happily have sorted me out with a visa, but now it's too late and i'll have to wait until april to apply for one which will only be useful come october.

dammit army! dammit mom! you guys taught me to go through the right channels, and this is how i'm repaid?!

at least his enthusiasm and appreciation made me feel good.

---
i returned to campus for a meeting with the student union; apparently i'm involved with the elections this year - i'm supposed to be the representative's representative. and here i thought i was registered to be the former. (o_O)

dinner with all our parents: not unpleasant at all. discussion of our future kids over dinner was a bit strange, though.

i wasted time until 3.30am looking for solutions that don't exist, AND i couldn't get to work until sunday, so i was a bit stressed about an issue that had arisen during the day.

lihi sagi's album was playing in the background, and it got stuck in my head. it's really good.

---
thursday:

a short but great sleep, a happy wakeup. thursday was a beautiful day, the classes were fun. there was a bit of work stress but scr managed to sort it out with only one phone call so we were all good. i'm becoming a sudoku master (the orientation class was a bit bland).

i left campus "anime braindead": detective conan is cute, but bobobo-bo bo-bobo is completely bizarre and great fun that will ruin your neurons a la the magic roundabout.

i got home to rum, my massage pillow and webcomics. my mum, pg and i went to goocha, and i noticed raindrops just in time for us to find ourselves dry and inside when the hail came pelting down. the meal was well timed and absolutely delicious.

i rewrote my resume when we got home, and sent it off to the cto. i then fell into the deepest sleep on the couch: getting up to go to the airport took a while and was really difficult.

the airport experience was filled with miscommunications and bold planning.

pg and i returned home in the rain for a good night.

---
yesterday:

i finally performed sorter's project review. i'm pleased to report that for once my co-worker has made me proud! the code is commented, it makes sense, and he didn't do anything ridiculous ^_^

t'was a wasted day, as today has mostly been. healthy spiritually, not so much financially or academically.

we watched the original fright night last night. it was shocking to realize that the first time i saw it was over 25 years ago! and the first time i watched it and laughed was about 12 years ago...

i passed out until 4am this morning, then passed out again until about noon. most of my up-time has been reading unproductive things, watching videos and i *think* it's time to get serious. it's been an amazing weekend so far; i haven't had one of these in forever!

...

greasy hair is uncomfortable. it also makes it frighteningly obvious how bad shampoos and conditioners are for one's scalp. i wonder how it'll feel when it balances out...

---
the title sequence for the remake of the girl with the dragon tattoo: oh. shit. for the music as much as the visuals.

---
i've been thinking this since discussing it with my mother on wednesday: one day we're gonna look back on private car ownership and laugh. how pathetic that so many of us have been trapped by the idea that a private car provides freedom, when it usually does precisely the opposite! for the exceptions, when public transport isn't helpful, alternatives such as rental or shared cars make a lot of sense.

two thousand and hate

an attempt to keep my promise to myself not to write everything down:

why have the last few days been so ridiculously cold? and so filled with politics?

the first communication of yesterday was two thousand and hate mail: it's not wrong. what scares me about islam is not that it demands all of our submission, but that it threatens to delete* all incompatible history, knowledge and culture and that's more important to us as a species than any imagined freedom or rights.

*don't deny it, i'll cite the taliban and those so stupid that they'd find french philosophers offensive. and george carlin.

religion - disconnecting people: this is my new favourite image. i'm none too sure about its context, though.

...

i love this country

the super-heated and packed bus home from work made me feel faint and sickly. i initially wrote that the other way around but it sounded like i'd actually fainted. i had to push past others getting off, and found myself standing outside the bus with someone seated next to the exit dangling my ipod just in reach. that could've been unfortunate.

others' hot troubles reminded me of mine. i hate israeli companys even more than i hate most israelis.

the other office: it was a successful evening, but *boy* was i wrong in estimation.

dj anders - morning expressions made a good background playlist for the evening >v<

work: logic nuts deep into the night. i like actually having interesting problems to solve.

heading off at 3am to get some sleep... pg's parents were still unpacking when i walked in.

---
you can spot your own bloodvessels. it is an interesting exercise.

unstable french teacher, gifts from switzerland, too much lunch.

it took a long time to get to work, and i was there a much longer time than i'd planned.

harvard makes a good call! now why didn't they mention b12? and why is nutritionfacts so depressing of late?

inside, i'm a fat person trying to get out. i just stopped myself from demolishing a large bag of crisps, and not because i'm hungry. there's me advising people who want to quit smoking *not* to replace the cigarettes with food, and eating non-stop...

it's the hair

it's not using shampoo and conditioner and hoping that the next month will be alright; it's brushing the hair loads and in both directions with bouncy goa trance in the background while standing wrapped in nothing but the steam from the hot shower after coming home soaked through and freezing cold from a debate with my manager in which we agreed that mafia and gangs are a preferable alternative to thugs in uniform and with diplomatic immunity.

it's sitting in front of my pc with biltong, chai tea and the airconditioner's warmth about to get to work after an evening spent arguing the value of statistics* and the nature of reality and then tying up loose ends on a complex fix at the old office.

* statistics is a necessary tool, but has absolutely no bearing on predicting the outcome of an event outside of the controlled for variables and original context and as such cannot be used as evidence.

---
confucius jokes are only funny in english. i find their direct translation to hebrew funny because of how severely they aren't.

that's a very dangerous gun

i didn't go up north to experience reefer decree like i wanted, but the ushering in of the new year was good nonetheless. rum and sushi, my girlfriend and my mum and the fifth element, coincidentally timed so that the world was saved pretty much as 2012 became a consensus reality.

may 2012 bring us less politicians, less marketers, less organized religion, free drugs, higher IQs, and magical unicorns blessing us by farting rainbows all across the skies.

---
friday:
a trip to the skate shop for nothing, because my leg was still hurting from the day before. i get the feeling they're not going to be able to help me, and that my 1.5k is a painful sunk cost. and i couldn't even leave the blades there because they couldn't guarantee being able to retrieve them for me when i return.

it was a long drive up north, this time pg wasn't feeling great either. i managed the trip there in spite of being extremely self-conscious and uncomfortable. i'm sure it's my slipped disc, but it could just as easily be a lack of fresh air or trouble with my blood pressure. or maybe i'm a bit ill?

lunch got a little burnt, but with great cakes, chatter and rest for the remainder of the afternoon i didn't really feel compelled to complain.

a sudden synapse misfire outside herzeliya had pg back in the driver's seat - not cool. i pulled out my massage pillow and sat on it in front of half of the first episode of fry's planet word. i think it helped a bit.

i then ran off for a political beer next door with botchman: is it worth getting involved in politics when they're so broken? i joined pg and my mum at etnachta and had lentil soup for dinner, followed by a long night's sleep.

---
the last of 2011:

i woke up late, pg wasn't feeling good and the dog was desperate so i took her for a walk. this made her more affectionate than usual, and i couldn't really focus on metropole while drinking my coffee because she kept trying to get a response from me.

we were late for a big family lunch in herzeliya, loads of delicious food and all sorts of interesting chatter. the ride back was alright, but i still wasn't feeling good - have i been sick?

an email from one of my professors made me wonder about alternative methods of studying french - so i signed up for the duolingo beta

---
i was shocked this morning by the now well-known story of paul christoforo.
here's the bottom line.

holy shit. i suspect that his next year is going to be less fun than the last... and he deserves it.

rule no. 1: don't be an asshole. thank you, penny arcade.

here's more detail, and even more detail.

wow. and thank you. you know, if this man was up for the "douchebag of the year" award 2011 - he'd totally be winning it.

to quote a friend: "it's like he compiled six months' worth of crazy just so he could qualify by dec 31."

what kind of day was it?

i woke up feeling like i'd slept enough. hooray!

i left my cds for the anime afternoon behind. bummer.

my rollerblades are utter shite, i made it two blocks before it was too painful to continue. F***-BUGGER.

of the three buses that end in 71, i picked the one that goes the wrong way. F***!

late for class. swak.

it was an awesome class wherein we learned about the origins of the minotaur and their relation to a midsummer night's dream. sweet!

not a bad lunch, and time to space out a bit. neat!

having a fellow student point out the lack of hygiene as i finished my meal... *sigh*.

more sonnets, less sanity. nice.

finding the student union's portable speaker available. excellent!

getting serious weight-lifting exercise carrying it around. cool.

an orientation class on mythology, interesting points made in a monotone. meh.

good, crazy anime for an hour and a half. sogoi!

skipping the evening lecture to go to work instead of joining the others for a pre-new year's bash. hooray :/

tons of work and not enough time. *grumble*

mother freaking out because the television interface is in hebrew and she thought she'd buggered something up. aaaargh!

forgetting that pg is staying in a different city tonight. whoops...

long arguments online about fundamentalism and extremism and whether or not it's okay. timesuck. (it's not okay, but it's understandable)

good dinner and rum and liquorice and chocolate in front of the original fantasia. pleasant.

getting ready for bed by sitting in front of the pc. what the hell am i doing?!

thank you, ben franklin

late to bed and early to rise, makes a man slightly psychotic and a bit irritable. first class was tough, but ended with a great telling of a story about the creation of memory. i was on my way from that to the old office, in good spirits, when i got a phone call from the new office.

the upgrade i performed hadn't been functioning at all. i had to go back.

fortunately it wasn't too tough to sort out, but i wasn't feeling particularly positive about having caused them a day's loss of data. the cto shrugged, i shrugged, and i was on my way out when the ceo made my day: i suspect he reads good management articles. he took me quietly aside and informed me that they're incredibly pleased with me and my work.

you know what? that made my day.

i had a great breakfast for lunch next door with pg and my mum, and then we went together to campus. aside from a bit of touring before class, i sat down to get some of the reading done and was interrupted by pg's brother and his girlfriend for a pleasant chat until i had to run. the class was sometimes interesting, but mostly i just played sudoku between points of "oh, cool".

the event that wordsworth and co-conspirator organized was surprisingly good. most of the participants were interesting, all the items were short, and it was all done with a sense of humour and i think that it was remarkably successful overall.

my mum and i headed back home to pick up pg and then meet with some cousins for a very pleasant dinner nearby; pg has made cookies and i've now given up on the readings (perhaps i'll manage some more before class).

yellzors

whoa. another 4am special - and it still wasn't working right. when i took it to scr, *boy* was i surprised to discover that what wasn't working was something i'd written in my first couple of days on the project, and that it shouldn't have been working at all.

eh??

another early morning, this time punctuated by an interesting chat with pg's brother and her sister before french class. the class was a bit long. i had a pleasant lunch with pg and a pointless meeting with a professor about a non-existent web page before running off to work.

it took me about four hours to get it all working, by which stage i was completely exhausted and beyond ready to go home and get some rest before rollerblading. i was most unimpressed to discover that there was a report the upgraded system needed to produce - and urgently - and having the client sit behind me sounding pushy did not make me a happy camper.

i urgently dragged myself out of there an hour and a half later after an unpleasant battle with microsoft's excel package. it was all working but i wasn't at all satisfied.

a drink at home made it better, as did a great meal with pg and my mum, and we decided to skip the exercise in lieu of a movie and munchies. the movie was eyes wide open, which was a bit more artsy than it needed to be but it definitely fueled thought. unfortunately, the argument i had afterwards with pg regarding the bible belt overheated.

---
i have a problem - i don't realize that i'm raising my voice unless someone tells me: "you're shouting". by which stage, damage is usually done regardless of my best intentions to the contrary. if i was normal, i probably would have known to give it up but if i was on the receiving end of that response i would be offended that i didn't care enough to... well, shit. the only expression i can think of it "to close the corners" because it's the hebrew version of what i want to say... i would be offended that i didn't care enough to tie up the important loose ends. the back and forth, some tense and unpleasant, some calm and amusing, eventually ended in a reasonable and reasonably desirable atmosphere.

i wish my mother hadn't had to suffer through the stages from the side...

---
vogonizing is mine. i render it unto you.

success? failure? character reports? that's inspired. i think it's an awesome idea, even with the potential pitfalls.

just another regular day

getting to bed after 4am... waking up around 9am... two classes, a quick sandwich and then arriving at work for integration...

[the integration went smoothly, i'm well pleased. also, the boss intimated that i can disregard the vicious email from yesterday]

... bussing to dinner, delicious and extremely busy post-wedding get-together, then bussing back with pg and my mum... now about to resume working...

not the best of plans

i don't think there's a way for me to post this quickly; i have to get to bed because i have to be up soon and i've only just managed to get the barest minimum of functionality out of my code.

and i just got back from her wedding, having had a fair amount to drink.

---
saturday:

i *did* go back for a nap, and woke up in the evening *just* in time for us to all have to scramble to get to modi'in to celebrate my cousin's kid's engagement. it was dark, rainy, and *boy* were we glad that pg came with us (she doesn't like surprises) because i began to feel faint on the highway.

joke of the evening: there's no pre-nup when one becomes a common law spouse :P

the evening was pleasant, although it took us more than 40 minutes to say goodbye and i was still feeling woozy. then pg pinched me when i responded to something in a way that might drag the goodbye out even more, which led to some embarrassment.

the storm: not even a KRAA-AAACK before the BOOM, and the BOOM was right nearby. we jumped out of our skins, my mother told us later she'd done the same, and the poor dog was terrified as usual - only the dog can't be allowed to jump up on the bed (bad leg), so i had to lock her in her cage and we felt really bad for her. oh, well. it'll be even tougher with kids one day...

the 7am parking trauma will not be discussed.

i slept well, and i slept late. it was tough to get up, but i knew i had to get the work done. a few hours later i was faced with a virtual wall - thank you, transact sql, for sending error codes that aren't listed anywhere. the worst bit was that the code seemed to be working, but was sending an error code in addition to the correct output. i spent hours trying to figure it out, and had to let go in order to get to the wedding.

it was only now, a handful of minutes ago, that i figured out the issue. debugging sql is a right bitch, and i've now wasted far too much time on getting to a point only halfway towards where i needed to be by today. the pressure was only increased when the client team sent an email to all of the bosses complaining that the application i've written is utterly useless.

brilliant. i haven't even been paid yet :(

at least the wedding was great. it was actually very emotional, it was beautiful and tasteful and there was too much food. i had a great evening, and in a few hours i'm going to sorely regret having neglected my studies this weekend...

too much, or not enough

5am waking to wait for an hour with busy children of disinterested parents and arsim; the closest one can stand is a long way from the gate, enough to blur my eyesight and cause potential embarrassments.

shopping and decaf coffee, then bed: the first call was from a friend of mother's, which i can understand. the second, from a cousin, which i can understand. the asshole repeatedly honking outside the window? that i couldn't understand, and i was so infuriated by its waking me up that i couldn't get back to bed.

bits of work, then goocha for brunch. awesome spicy crab and tasty tentacly goodness.

bits of work, then a perfect half hour sleep followed by a perfectly evil requirement to get up from it.

both my mother and my girlfriend had a go at me about my not owning enough formal clothing. with my attitude towards materialism and social niceties... why the heck should i?!

dinner was at מקום בלב (makom balev) in ra'anana. that place deserves the 5/5 food rating it received on google maps. there were nice speeches, there was a great vibe, and aside from an awful incident where i forgot two of my cousins' names, it was as usual great to spend time with everyone.

i feel greatly advantaged, comparing all of my interestingly (both psychologically and professionally) successful cousins on my mother's side of the family to all those on the other side, who are either unsuccessful or only financially so. also to all my "friends" (the use of quotation marks implies that i'm beginning to view them as "not so much", like ze germans), who are all considerably less psychologically developed and are wasting their lives on the pursuit of money.

too much good food, or not enough?

there was much discussion regarding big weddings and end-of-the-road bravery: the groom's father has just had his leg amputated and is at the end of his road, yet was nothing less than charming and joyful - and in some cases, amusingly and cheerfully cynical.

the fifth element's OST played us home - eric serra is an absolute genius. this is not the first time i've said it, and it certainly won't be the last.

finally! to bed! and, of course, the complete inability to sleep. pizza dreams? it was too hot, or too cold, my sore legs and feet causing my body to curl and spasm and knock pg about... it was only around 6am that i was finally "rested" enough (define irony) to get out of bed and stretch out, and the short sleep that i got after that was, well, too short.

hooray for early mornings! :/
after doing a bit of cool shopping (buying classical comics off book depository - kick ass!) i got my mother and myself through to the synagogue in time for me to be called up to hold up the torah (no sweat! except that i *was* a bit nervous)... the whiskey breakfast afterwards was nice, and the coffee next door, and the coffee after that, and then it was time to hunt down fuel stations in tel aviv before searching for parking.

we found the parking fairly easily - nice!

i feel like a need a good, long sleep. gonna go do that now, before returning for a night's hard labour...

---
on an entirely unrelated note, an amusing (and somewhat accurate) breakdown of the lsd experience caught my attention on cracked.com, so i thought i'd share it.

not just another weekend

sleep did help a bit, but i didn't really leave myself much time for more reading.
first class - great.
second class - made my head spin.
orientation class - way more people, i made myself useful and co-conspirator drove me nuts with her stupidity.
anime afternoon one - two episodes of ergo proxy and gundam 00. awesome.
work (old job) - productive. almost interesting.
work (new job, at home) - productive. but i gotta run across to pg's mom's place (temp home) now because i need sleep before waking up in 4.5 hours to go pick up my mother from the airport.

real art

i can't concentrate of astrophil and stella; the words aren't sinking in, and it's deep stuff.

it doesn't help that i got caught up ogling the best of street art utopia 2011. it's all amazing - but this one in particular blows me away.

maybe if i sleep a few hours the poetry won't seem so alien.

unplanned pre-vac

the early morning was painful as usual, and i was buggered. it was an interesting lecture, although i must admit to having spent some portions of the last few classes (various classes, not this course specifically) playing minesweeper or sudoku... i don't know why...

i mean, i'm still paying attention and taking notes. i suspect that there's an element of tiredness influencing the lack of participation.

i needed to write a paper for the next class, so i figured i'd do that at home instead of in or outside the office. also, pg managed to score a massive splinter and needed help removing it, so i gallantly returned home to make it worse. i've warned her to take it to a doctor if it doesn't heal quickly, partially out of guilt :(

i was really tired, so after lunch i thought i'd set my alarm for half an hour and have a nap, only switching to my alarm application isn't the same as setting it and i only got up about two and a half hours later. panic! i kind of enjoyed writing the paper anyway, but it totally blew my plans for getting some work done before going to class.

another inspirational class! followed by the old office, doing new job work. i thought it would be quick and then i'd start logging hours once i got onto old job work, but instead of half an hour or so it took me well over two, and i had barely enough time to make myself useful before i had to leave :S

although at least i did make myself useful.

i came home in time to help out with dinner (mini burgers - the first failed and turned into tasty "meaty bits" that were spread in the salad, the second came out in the right shape and texture but not as tasty), perform serious duties as webmaster, and... and now i have poetry to read for tomorrow morning.

wisps of mytheme

as it was, i only had 4.5 hours to sleep this morning; i spent most of them half-awake, conscious of my body and my surroundings but stuck in an attempt to solve a problem. i barely remember fragments of the problem, but it involved four or five characters and i believe that if i had been able to recall all of their details at any given stage i would have been able to combine them neatly to form a sensible picture, but as i was limited i was unable to find satisfaction and i was distinctly aware that what i was searching for was a myth to make sense of the contradictions.

and then my alarm was going off, and even an extra fifteen minutes couldn't help me. although i'm feeling far better about this morning than any other wednesday this semester.

picked-me-up

i love bizarro, and the post i read this morning in particular. as much as i appreciate the first one, it's the second one that made me laugh out loud, and i felt compelled to share :)

---
what a difference catching up a bit of sleep makes! and spending the first few hours of the day working from home, figuring out interesting things and then heading off to work with nothing but a kindle** for an hour's meeting and some administrative tasks before heading out for the other office kept the rest of the items short and sweet.

* implementing json objects in c# isn't that difficult once you've seen it done... but you have to have seen it done first :P

** i usually have my heavy schoolbag

the other office has better coffee, and there were doughnuts. my co-worker and i had an argument on the whiteboard until i realized what he was talking about, and it was pretty much what i'd told him to do in the first place only phrased differently. after that, i had about ten or twenty minutes to hurriedly find something (i found it!) before rushing home to leave in time for the rollerblading route.

it was a great route! my blades were a bit easier to secure, although the left side bit into my ankle the whole route and the right side scraped the inside of my sole... hopefully it'll get better.

pg and i had a long an amusing debate about marriage and emigration, and while i'm not going to share the details here, suffice it to say that i can definitely see a familial future for us whether or not an actual wedding is involved.

---
someone asked me earlier how i'm doing, and it suddenly struck me that in the midst of all the craziness, i'm doing fantastically well. studies are stressed but fun and satisfying, working as a freelancer is an absolute pleasure (so far, at least) and not only is the home situation comfortable but my mum's arriving this weekend and christmas / new year's might actually feel like christmas / new year's ^_^

bzzzt

i was a zombie this morning. i could barely stay focused during my classes and it appears that when i shut up, everyone shuts up... not so pleasant.

work this afternoon didn't go very well; i spent another hour sinking research time down a well, took ages to figure out a shortcut for web communications in c# console applications (WebClient - it made translating php and cURL to c# really simple), and...

... today, i billed hours for the first time in my life. it was incredibly liberating. i feel like... a grown-up.

i arrived home quite late, and was just as shocked as pg when i kissed her "hello" and it was literally electrifying (one of us had been building up static, apparently). after dinner, i celebrated the continuing university strikes (the non-tenured are revolting) by doing my french homework (je serais boire rhum parce que je suis pirate). now to get to bed, i can sleep in and still get up early enough to make programmatical strides.

i realize the time.

it's late. i've done what needed doing, and i'm happy with it. also, i've discovered absolutely incredible artwork (joe fenton) and read something profoundly worrying about consequences.

swayed

that icky feeling's still going strong - it's been one of those days. pg and i left early to join the strike that didn't really happen, i handed in my midterm assignment and then failed to do any useful work from the campus computers.

the first hour of the lecture on consciousness was a bit of a disappointment because david chalmers (who is one froody dude) dumbed his talk down. i can't talk about the rest of it because i then had to head to class.

after class i went to work, and managed to make a breakthrough in spite of how crap i was feeling. i returned home just in time for dinner, and i'm now trying to be productive but... i don't really want to be.

---
the life 2011 pictures of the year are amazing as usual. i might not have seen them all if at any stage i'd realized that there were over a hundred of them :P

floored

i woke up in the middle of the night to pee, and ended up on the floor after a fainting spell or two. it all feels... icky. and as a result, i slept too much and my day was going to be stressed anyway :/

my work here is done.

i totally forgot to mention one of the highlights of the day! it was one of the highlights of my return to academia, actually. my favourite professor, who i was certain i'd offended, appears not to be as offended as i'd thought. not only that, but my response paper that i sent in last week came back with an enthusiastic review, a grade of 100, and rather more flattery than i'd expect from a paper beginning "i found the unit on utopia fairly tough to wrap my head around, and i’m not certain that this response is going to contain anything more than ruminations on themes already discussed in class".

i'm a little bit pleased with myself, yeah.

misplaced

nothing like spending more than a day and an inordinate amount of research time coming up with the first half of a paper, and then discovering that i'd inadvertently saved it in the wrong place and in so doing made it publicly available, in all its stages, to my classmates.

i *really* hope nobody read it. partially because it's far from polished; mostly because i'm terrified that some idiot will steal my ideas. and i'm fairly sure nobody else was going the route i am: i've spent just over a page explaining why the question we're answering is ridiculous in order to make a claim that's rather nasty to substantiate.

---
i'm so glad that pg's mum came over to check out the kindle! i was busy telling her that the one drawback is the inability to flip through books, and happened to discover how it's done. my kindle just became even MORE awesome (^_^) - either that or i just turned out to be a complete moron (>_<). celebratory brunch (pg's mum's birthday) this morning was pleasant, and an enjoyable distraction from the paper. so was watching the last two episodes of the first season of misfits. i really enjoyed it!

---
i've done no actual work today. fortunately, tomorrow morning there's a strike on campus, so at least the french homework can wait a couple of days :P

i can't believe my mum will be here in less than a week!

long friday

waking up early for the make-up french class was a bummer. the test was alright. the class was annoying, and i speak for pg too.

we had a pleasant breakfast at the new place next door - much better now that the opening excitement has died down - and then sped off to the skate shop so that i could pick up a pair of rollerblades.

on the one hand, i should have spent some time doing research. on the other, i can't be without rollerblades. so i went with nrks. so far, i haven't figured out how to tighten the tops and i've gone from less than thirty seconds to put on my blades to more than two minutes...

and something doesn't feel right on the left side, which is an all-of-a-sudden that began a few minutes before i got home now from cm's :(

the rest of the afternoon was spent in front of the computer, trying to make progress with my midterm assignment. i did - i know what i want to write about - but that's about it. i could use another week :/

in spite of that, i took off a few hours to go over to cm's and play arkham horror again. we not only finished the game, but we had a lot of fun playing it - if you play with the attitude that you're not supposed to win, then you can focus on the characters' perspectives and it can get pretty terrifying.

speaking of terrifying:

1. my blades and i aren't stable and my wheels are new, so when botchman took me up to 50kph on the back of his bike i had to call it a good try

2. the tall, well-built bald man dancing in the middle of the deserted street and trying to get me to approach him "to show me something" at around 3am? i would have called the police if i wasn't worried that they'd have given me shit...

3. i wish that somebody would tell me that this is a twisted, chain-letter style practical joke... but the petition has reached over 5500 people and the protest has been mentioned in the news: the usual idiots are now trying to turn the national electric company into a religiously run institution.

because it's not bad enough that they take most of our taxes and resources and hate us in return, provide nothing either culturally or economically, and would like to see us all head back into the dark ages.

back to sleep

so i missed a wednesday, and essentially a thursday too?

thursday: a strange day, i actually managed to sleep enough, sort of didn't really get started on my midterm assignment, had my rollerblades break on me (after six years of good usage, so i suppose it's fair) on my way to campus, enjoyed a wonderful orientation course lecture, was at work just long enough*, then returned for a great lecture on orson welles' othello. then i came home to eat soup, watch misfits, and study for the french test in the morning.

* there's a tax issue with my fees, and i was stressing about whether or not to broach the subject at all. i was given an opportunity to mention it without making it seem like i was asking :)

wednesday: i was completely buggered. practically dysfunctional. first class was tough, although now that i'm on top of things it's much easier to keep track. i returned to the neighbourhood and ate breakfast while waiting for the plumber to arrive; he only called me when he was done, which meant that i had to get him (thursday morning) to come back and show me that he really had sorted it all out before paying him.

i think i understand the source of the confusion now - he and the other guy have the same name, and both of them have partners. freaky.

i went to work for another meeting - seriously, i wasn't expecting so much administration but at least i can bill for it - then returned for an excellent evening class** before going to the old office for an hour before returning to tel aviv for a pub arrangement with a guy i used to serve with.

** that girl has actually been quite pleasant since we had our little talk.

oh. shit.

it was 2.30am, and on my way home i discovered just how much impact wind-chill has on rollerbladers... i was wearing a ski-jacket, but without gloves under my wristpads my fingers were freezing...

... also on my way home, running into someone i study with and getting into a heated debate about veganism. it was interesting - although i suspect i cut him off a bit too harshly quite a few times - until some apparently drunk guy who'd been peeing in the bushes behind us planted himself two feet away and stared at me. he asked my classmate if he could understand a word i was saying, and when he responded in the affirmative he told him to tell me that he understood perfectly too.

now, i don't have an issue with being excessively social, or anti-social, but do you *have* to be aggressive about it? everything about this jerk suggested violence, and the first words out of his mouth were to tell one stranger to "pull one over" another. damned primitives :@

---
now that i've gotten it through my head that i'm actually freelancing, my appreciation for my time is completely flipped around and everything's gravy. i'm a team of one, and i'm the team leader fully responsible for management. i don't have an issue with putting together charts and graphs and spreadsheets when i know that i'm being paid to do so.

---
it was evening already when i received an emergency phone call from my tenant: sewerage seeping out a pipe that goes through the bedroom. NOT acceptable, less by me than him if i gauge the difference in our attitudes correctly.

the plumbers i usually call are two partners, one of whom lives close by and both of whom do decent work fairly cheaply. the thing is, these two are always bouncing phone calls back and forth and i've never been able to keep track of their phone numbers - not only bouncing, but they each have a couple of numbers so my contact list is a bit of a mess.

i can't say who i called and didn't call, and as usual there was bouncing and back and forths, but eventually we agreed that we'd meet within the hour at the apartment and i bailed on a meeting to rush home and attend. when i was five minutes away i called to make sure that everyone would be arriving with me, and by the time i arrived the guy was there and had already discovered the problem.

our tanks overfloweth - and as my apartment is on the first floor, of course it's the first to make the discovery. after a strange and frustrating non-argument with the caretaker, we agreed that tomorrow morning we'll meet (after my class) and the plumber will arrive and sort it all out. for a very fair price.

a minute after he left, the plumber called to say he would be arriving in five minutes and that he'd been delayed because he couldn't find parking.
eh?? i told him his partner had already left, surprised that they hadn't talked to one another, and was about to go back inside to pick up my bag when he called back to inform me that his partner hadn't been to see the apartment.

-- cue twilight zone music --
i haven't the slightest notion who it is that came over and is contracted to fix the problem, even though i definitely know him and he's definitely worked in my apartment before. no matter how much of the other guy's time i wasted, and no matter how much he was willing to beat the other's price, i wasn't about to cancel on someone who'd not only made it on site quicker and with whom i already had an agreement, but who i cannot even phone to inform him because i don't have a clue who he is or what his number is.

that's a bit screwy.

---
rollerblading was great tonight; i needed the exercise. although i could just as easily have slept those hours - yesterday morning's wake-up was tough, this morning's is probably going to be tougher. and i discovered, an hour before leaving the apartment, that i have an assignment due tomorrow and a whole bunch of reading i'd forgotten about...

what i've gotten myself into

well. i discovered today that i don't just have to calculate project times and costs, but i have to be able to justify them, too. also - although i've been told that they can try and speed things up for me for my first month - the norm will be that once i've billed them i'll have to wait thirty days from the end of the month in which i've billed them for payment.

it's not the end of the world, but it most certainly changes the way i plan things. also, i've realized that i need to include the amount of time i spend researching new things and making those plans. it's not the end of the world, but it's new and kinda of annoying.

---
1. my favourite professor doesn't appear to have been offended. hooray!

2. too much reading this week. it's nuts.

3. pg missed her french class yesterday morning so we met on campus and i caught her up. it was an experience; tough, but ultimately satisfying. i wish she wasn't so impatient, though. and i don't have patience for impatience, which creates tension :S

4. it was *really* cold this morning. for some reason i kept thinking of the forecast temperature and put aside the bit about it being less than that in the wee hours of the morning: i'd gotten up an hour and a half earlier than my alarm :(

5. the locker on campus is seriously paying off. i bladed to campus yesterday, used the buses to get to work and back, and after the evening class bladed to the old office and then home. i have to say, it was noticeably difficult: after a weekend of eating unhealthily and not exercising...

gearing down

between yesterday and today, i got a hell of a lot less done that i'd planned. not that i didn't get anything done, but i most certainly wasn't in gear.

i suppose i did kind'a need a weekend.

pg and i pulled out thunderstone this evening - it took a few minutes to get it all set up and it took a few rounds to get into the groove, but i have to say i'm well pleased with my investment. it's such a great game!

final score - i won... 62 / 61. that's pretty darn close, and she had the thunderstone :)

the shape of things to have come

i'm busy reading h.g. wells - the shape of things to come, and a specific sentence caught my imagination:

the alternative to disaster, they saw even then, was not just a bleak and terrified security. that was the last thing possible. there was no alternative to disorder and wretchedness, but "such an abundance, such a prosperity and richness of opportunity", as man had never known before.

if we, as a collective, could escape the culture of fear that we have allowed to control us, and which has allowed those willing to manipulate us free reign, we could enjoy the fruits of our labours and struggles. in a capitalist age where the difference between the rich and the poor is vast enough to be disquieting, this same distance allows us to dream and lets us forget, in a strange way, that even our poor are better off than they would be amongst peers in another system.

wells is right, i believe, in suggesting that the problem with any system is its inflexibility... trial and error, and balance, are crucial devices in managing great numbers of half-crazed supermonkeys*. but in order to get to such a point, those supermonkeys need to relinquish their fears and turn an optimistic face to the possibilities of new paradigms.

* that's us

socialism isn't good, capitalism isn't good, but varying combinations of the two could work well.

i wonder if it's possible to maintain a civilization wherein anything is allowed as long as it doesn't infringe on the rights of others, and in which any violent acts (and only violent acts) are responded to with the utmost violence as a means of disincentive. would it be possible to protect such a civilization from the subversion of manipulative genius, from becoming a dictatorship or a police state?

while logging in to post this, i discovered two pending comments that have apparently been waiting for my approval since july... way to go, blogger!

---
it wasn't an easy day; i spent it in front of the pc, not counting two episodes of bill and ted's excellent adventures* while kipping on the couch, a quick shopping spree and super**. otherwise, it was all about not reading plato's symposium*** by performing some of my webmaster duties****, going through emails, and sending off long emails to my co-worker regarding both jobs*****.

* seriously - they arrive in china hundreds of years in the past, and everyone speaks english? outstanding!

** it's actually pretty funny, and surprisingly sweet! also - what an amazing cast! thank you, captain hammer holy avenger!

*** the first half, at least, is a serious drag

**** joomla can be fun!

***** sorter's project, too. dropbox has turned out to be the best cheap svn for single-developer projects

---
linkage for the day: nokia's mapping is amazing. but with all these wonderful, incredible, life-enhancing systems being built and deployed, i'm left with one question: what happens when the internet goes down?

good parenting advice: compromise is important. not quite "if you can't beat them, join them" but an even wiser position.

this is amazing and frightening. and not because of his connection to family guy:
lapd arrests the wrong guy over protests in los angeles.

psy-onna-stick

it was a most pleasant day. last day of the week? einstein's general theory + my last couple of weeks seem to indicate that the more one works, the less one moves in space and the faster the days go by. the first two classes were entertaining; the last class was our orientation.

wordsworth brought in a couple of texts and we demonstrated the kind of analysis that's expected of them for their papers... i think by the end they started getting it... then i had half an hour to teach them the basics of psychology.

either i'm a great teacher, or they're really smart, or they're good liars - apparently everything i said was clear. i covered everything they'll need to get through a goodly chunk of their degrees and i even took it one step further - to the point where we are right now with our wednesday classes.

that made me feel good. then i went to work and actually got quite a bit done, which also felt good. the end of the evening in the office was a bit of a rush job (a few TODO comments in the code) because pg was cooking and i didn't want to miss dinner :P

pg and i just watched confessions, and i can see why our lecturer found it distracting. it's really good.
now, i believe, *is* a good time to go to bed.

---
the last weekend was killer, and i was concerned that i'd be burned out by the end of it. strangely enough, while i'm still exhausted i'm REALLY excited about real programming again and i'm loving both jobs. i don't even mind having to drag my co-worker by the ear because he's a fantastic exercise in coaching, and i'm convinced that the day will come when i teach him to do things the easy way :)

where? am i?

it's just turned thursday, and i have the following to report. in no particular order.

• rollerblading slowly through quiet, dark streets while dressed in clothes i only wear around the house felt... nice...
• i fear i may have offended my favourite professor by sending a mail slightly impolitely deconstructing monday evening's lesson of stupid
• i'm very, very tired.
• this morning's lesson on lacan and levi-strauss actually made sense, and was interesting. it gave me a totally new perspective on science (reinforcing my previously held views, but putting them in a much more interesting context), and brought me across the line from the side on which i'd been imagining that co-conspirator isn't a complete idiot. when she doesn't *get* something, she forces a subject change.
• i would wonder how people like co-conspirator and the girl from monday's lesson got their degrees, only our master's forum this evening explained it all. in simple terms, undergrad is now the pay-as-you-go say-you've-been-to-college certificate, and master's studies are what undergrad used to be once upon a time, when people actually wanted to learn stuff.
  
  in addition, it has been made perfectly clear that the thesis track is a complete waste of time for anyone not planning on continuing on to a phd, and i realize that if i want to contribute something to the academic world i'm as well off, if not better off, doing whatever i like in my own time and publishing (or not) personally. i'd rather make use of my little "vacation" by doing as many courses as i can about things i know nothing about.
• my co-worker: *sigh*. he's not bad, but i don't know how much drilling i need to do before he gets what i'm on about. SIMPLE code. SIMPLE solutions. THOROUGHNESS. when committing and when testing. COMMENTS AND DOCUMENTATION. useful things. in friendly format.
• last night i got to bed early (around midnight) for the first time in a week - and we were woken up with a jolt around half an hour later by a phone call from the states...
  i didn't answer, and i got back to sleep almost immediately, but physical shock was memorable :(
• a long chat yesterday with one of the guys i used to serve with; it sounds like we might get together to make some music - i hope.
• the project! it's OVER! there were a few interface issues, but on the whole it's now a neat and functional application and it does the job. and a whole bunch of other jobs in the future, which means that i designed it well ^_^
  it was really satisfying to see the results of field operation. one row of data made my whole day :)
• i didn't have the energy to go rollerblading last night. it sucked to bail, but it was the smarter choice.
• working on contract is beginning to sound much, much better than for a salary. i can take days off between projects and nobody will give a shit where i am. i can incorporate studies and personal events into my time estimate, and nobody will panic.
  now i'm just waiting for the guys from freelancer to get back to me so that i can bill my first job.

it's not over yet

i've just now, finally, i pray, completed the sql logic. i can't believe that in my haste i made such silly mistakes. now all that's left is to integrate it with the front-end, and then i'll be ready for bed. soon after which time i'll be getting up for class again...

... i only got to sleep around 3am yesterday (too, it seems), then got up early to do the reading and didn't have nearly enough time. i managed to arrive late for the first class because i'd gotten the rooms backwards and sat waiting for a while until i registered that i didn't know *anyone* around me...

the second class was interesting, but i was buggered, unfocused, and it took me right until the very end of class to come up with something interesting. i decided not to go to the third that i've been auditing because it really is a waste of time if i'm not doing the readings. and i was really tired as well.

i had lunch with wordsworth, who gave me a ride to the bus - on the way another netvision representative called to offer me some new deal; it's happening more and more frequently, and i've taken to screaming at them in an attempt to get myself on a "do not call" list. it's very upsetting, especially considering the fact that they've still got me by the balls with the internet services that i don't want :S

work: horrid. everything went pear shaped, and it all being down to configuration issues doesn't make me feel any better. i don't know if my chat with the boss at the end was productive; it took me a while to explain last week's misunderstanding to him; there were a lot of assumptions made about company knowledge that i've just learned the hard way, such as who to listen to and under what conditions to agree to a project. next time i'll be smarter, at least :)

slightly more positive news - my mum's coming to visit soon ^_^

it's funny, i don't listen to music when i'm super-stressed. after getting home, snacking, skipping over to pg's parents' to print and photocopy stuff so that i can sign up for a freelancing company (what a great idea!!! they take a cut and i don't have to get intimate with the revenue service), and doing my french homework, i was feeling much more relaxed.

just a little bit longer...

not. my. day.

i got to work all excited after french class, only to discover a couple of minor bugs that kept me busy until i had to run to class again. it was in the middle of class that i got a phone call informing me that things weren't working...

... it's the class that's usually my favourite. nim, the girl who upset me on thursday? [i didn't even mention it, apparently. she kept cutting off the professor, and punctuated the rest of her sentences with "uh, huh?"s and "mmms" and "rights" - a little distracting]
i had a talk with her, which i'd been dreading both having and not having - i was certain the confrontation would be unpleasant, but the alternative was more of her behaviour. surprisingly, it seems to have gone alright. but the universe couldn't let it go at that, so it had her "teaching" us the whole lesson instead.

this is a girl who doesn't *get* what the class is about. we spent two hours pouring over uninteresting things that any idiot could find online, and in this case did. the highlight? she cited "the onion" as a source, not realizing that it's a parody site.

seriously.

...

straight back to work, there until 10pm. i got things basically functional, but the boss asked me to make some critical changes and holy crap, i've just spent two hours renaming fields in the database only to discover that i'd forgotten to incorporate a couple of changes made in the other office, potentially wasting hours of work when i don't *have* hours to spare. it's closing in on 1.40am and i haven't done the readings for the morning.

FUCK. and my outcry at my discovery woke pg :(
at least it seems that the bosses are happy with me. i'll tell you how much that's worth if i survive the day.

parkinson's law isn't always right

i'm WAY overdue for this project, judging by the amount of sleep i've lost and the fact that i haven't been out of the apartment since thursday. heck, i can count the number of breaks i've had on my fingers (although friday's few hours were good).

there's just a *tiny* bit left to do and i really can't do it without jeopardizing my day. dammit.

both wired and tired

i have just now completed the Big Deal - the only thing that sucks is that while there's a big deal of code behind it, it doesn't actually look that impressive from the user's end. i can only hope that it's as "to spec" as i think it is. at least it's a major item scratched off the list; two more major ones to go.

i'm taking a break to do some of the readings for tomorrow; the only other break i've had was for french homework. i've just decided that i won't be joining the protest tonight... i really don't have the time.

on another note - the leftovers from pg's baking are unfortunately delicious.

ticking tocks

i worked until late, then slept, then got up early and carried on working. aside from a chat with my mum mid-way through the day, i continued to work through to the evening, at the end of which i discovered that the biggest part of the project (or most complex, at least) is still ahead of me. so tomorrow's going to be hard work again. and i have readings to do.

dinner at pg's parents' was great, and we came home just before the guys began to arrive for super-weird anime, a nasty game of citadels (i was either killed or disabled for most of the game, and - mostly - it wasn't even intentional), and attack the block. that's a fun, intriguing film but it's not quite as good as i was expecting (after the so-far cornetto series and paul, which kind of set the bar), although something tells me that there's a lot more to the movie hidden beneath the surface and that it might warrant a more observant review at some later stage.

as pg said - it's alright that we didn't see it in the cinema.

---
in terms of discourse and registers and what-have-you, it's dawning on me that pg's and my relationship has, for a while, been a lot less girlfriend / boyfriend and a lot more husband / wife. i find it a bit startling every time that we discuss future plans (serious ones, like leaving the country and raising children) that these things don't worry me; they're not overwhelming or scary, they're just the way things are and the way things should be. and that feels... rather good, really.

break-ed

i spent a couple more hours working, then went to bed. then woke up and dragged myself back to campus. the day was great; excellent even. we got good feedback on our orientation course, too.

i scrambled home, buying olive oil on the way and wondering, once again, why the express queue is always the slowest. i mean, i know *why* - they just have to herd troublemakers over to another aisle - but i don't understand why it's not taken care of.

i did a bit of work, then joined sorter at my apartment to spend an hour or two terrified by the fact that we were working with asbestos (not directly, but the dust was everywhere and i'm not sure that our masks were really enough. it was dirty, disgusting work (i didn't do much aside from share my opinions and try to avoid the dust - not that the troublesome particles are visible) and i *really* hope we've sorted the leak out this time.

whether we have or haven't, though, we now know what the situation under the roof is and i'm going to need to set up something a little more solid.

we came back to my place for a beer, after which i showered and ate (and joined pg in watching an episode or so of invader zim, and now i'm working / playing...

oh, crap. and YAY!

i'm a bit blown. it's 1am and i've barely begun the stuff that needs to be finished this week, because every - single - time i try to do something i learn a new limitation or something else goes pear-shaped. no pressure... i'm reduced to simulating the functions that are working but somehow inaccessible by copying and pasting their live results into the code i'm writing.

this is shameful.

---
the other crazy news:
i made a serious faux pas yesterday with both my bosses, and i got the feeling that at that moment i'd blown the whole thing and had lost the job. it ate away at me all the way home, by which time i'd settled on a course of action that involved sending a long email to explain exactly what was going through my mind when i said what i did.

apparently they're both surprised and satisfied by the email, but we'll only know when it comes time to make the hiring decision...

mongoose called me up yesterday, and spoke to me in a way that i find... disappointing. i'm actually quite irritated with him, and i suspect that we're not friends anymore, nor have we been for a while.

this morning began way too early with way too much freud and lacan. i'm not entirely sure what was going on - i tried to take notes but the words blew away like wisps of smoke in a breeze. something about navels and signifiers and not knowing anything. that was all after witnessing an absolutely horrifying incident with some violent kids (and i mean, 8-12 year olds) continuing to be disgracefully rude to an elderly lady in spite of three of us (on a packed bus) stepping in; one was adamant that he was both polite and a grown man, and i'm fairly certain that his parents should be culled.

---
the good stuff:

on my way off campus last week my left ankle developed shooting pains at every step, and i suspect a bit of a sprain. it only got worse whatever i did, and then i figured out that if i forced my leg out and to the left it didn't hurt so much... it's kinda like i'm retraining my leg, only without the use of orthotics. the odd bit is that when i went for a run on sunday (forcing it outwards consciously) it was okay... anyway, it felt much better today.

rollerblading last night was excellent. today, so many birthday wishes *did* make me smile in spite of my cynicism. it made it tough to get things done! the best part of the day: cooking liver for dinner and then being treated to pg's excessively decadent personal pavlovas. small for a pavlova, giant for a meringue ^_^
every time i leave the study i'm surrounded by balloons and wishes; and pg knitted me a really funky scarf! (i didn't realize she'd made it herself, i was certain it was store-bought :P)