self-diagnostic

monday:

it's so nice to be doing piles of dishes... haven't experienced that in a while :/
i suddenly remembered that on sunday we'd seen august burns red, i guess that shows you how much of an impression they made. they were pretty good, to be fair, but yeah...

the all-hands calendar appointment was for 9am but i'd decided that the first meeting wasn't until later so i'd get in regular time. newk'd sent me an apology for being late before i was even dressed, and then i thought "damn, that was a bad idea" and rushed out. nobody seemed to care that i was half an hour late.

we interviewed one mr nervous loudwatch in the morning. there were four of us at the beginning, then everybody else suddenly disappeared leaving me alone with him. fine, i carried on, but then suddenly they all came back with executives in tow. if he'd been nervous before...
he seemed like a nice guy and gave the impression that he knew what he was talking about, but when we tried to do a technical evaluation it was a total disaster. when he did understand the questions he deftly demonstrated that he hadn't a clue what to do with them, and when hinted at he stood by his previous answers proudly.

we had a few long meetings and i had lunch with a couple of french speakers (they obliged me with english, mostly). later i was talking to moonlighter and the it guy and they stopped me and told me they'd only listen if i spoke in french. i made it through most of a pretty complicated sentence before i ran out of words, and they were well impressed :D

scrapper's phone is open for international calls but not for messages, which makes the call he made to me during a meeting pretty expensive, and the calls i made back later too. he hadn't taken my advice and had rocked up at the bus station expecting to be able to hop on for toronto, but they were all sold out until this morning. he hadn't taken the set of keys i gave him even though he's returning on friday...

*sigh*

we finished the workday with an extended happy hour with loads more alcohol and snacks than usual and everybody stayed for it. it was mostly enjoyable!

my favourite moment was after two beers when darn was telling us a story about a company he'd worked for that experimented with outsourcing.
"so... you're telling us your company went to india and found itself?"
everyone laughed or snickered, darn didn't get it and proceeded to explain what had happened as if i hadn't understood.

*sigh*

---tuesday:

that moment when you wake up from that short nap before dinner and it's 2.45am...

today was a day that made me confident in my self-diagnosis as manic-depressive. i woke up from almost twelve hours of sleep (on a weekday! i was truly broken) to find my apartment in disarray and no note:

who doesn't know the right way to put cutlery in the drying rack? to hang wet laundry? to recycle? to turn off lights? to lock the door? to clean the sink when he drops toothpaste? to refill the water filter? to remove unused hangars from the shower?

these are fairly unimportant things that i've gotten used to taking for granted since i moved into my own apartment and then lived with pg who's a neat freak.

i'm always reminded of my father screaming at my mother about how only a complete idiot can not know the right way to load toilet paper. i was a little kid and was horrified at how he was so abusive towards my mother over such a trivial thing, and i promised myself never to be that kind of asshole. so on the one hand, all this shit really bothers me and on the other, most of it isn't worth being upset about. so i'm actually less upset about them than i am about being upset by them.

also, it's only the stupid shit i'm annoyed about, otherwise having scrapper here is a pleasure and it would suck if he was in montreal an staying somewhere else. i really feel bad every time i make him feel bad for not doing things the way i expect.

---i arrived more than ten minutes late for today's set of meetings, which scored me a "we noticed" email. we enjoyed about five hours of back-to-back meetings during which i desperately needed to pee almost constantly. my bladder would only relax when i finally got to training, i don't know what the hell that was about. the creatine is supposed to make me retain water and i didn't have any more caffeine than usual...

the vegetarian lunches that were ordered for two of us came with pizza. that sucked.

our product manager asked everyone in the company to say why they come to work every day. most of the answers were insipid, so much so that i caused quite a stir when i stated that "i like to work on beautiful things that i can be proud of." i was actually embarrassed to be sitting around with such uninspired people.

the next thing that would bum me out would be the project manager (okay, i've referred to him enough that he needs a name - i'll call him "darn") informing me that the big boys all want a demo of the software that we haven't even received design approval for. to make that worse:
unless something's changed darn and i both report to megaman. we're supposed to be a team. everyone is constantly reminded that it's a small company and that any suggestions and concerns will be heard. megaman and darn made a decision that would cost us more to implement than the alternative and would limit our ability to follow the product manager's plan in addition to reducing the software's usability. i took darn aside and tried to explain this to him, and he was not only dismissive and offensively unwilling to listen but he treated me in a manner fit for a wayward subordinate.

that made my blood boil. it made me consider giving up and leaving. it made me feel a darkness well up inside me. i cannot abide incompetence, i absolutely abhor irrationality and i detest behaviour that runs counter to everyone's interests.

my impressions of darn so far include him having no sense of humour and having his head stuck deep inside megaman's arse. i now have zero confidence in him as a project manager.

that said, i can't stop thinking about the last round of interviews we've given; if i leave the company after only six months, that reflects badly on me. i still want to be there to try and keep things on track. now that i've been offered options it would be financially irresponsible of me to abandon ship before my first year is up.

i was so impressed and hopeful when megaman arrived, but i do believe that the honeymoon is over. now to just ride it out and see where it goes.

---on a different note, the product manager made a comment about using a pcmcia card and followed that with "this was way back when". yeah, well, there were kids at the table who've never heard of pcmcia cards, so that was a bit redundant :P

---i left the office late and filled with a burning desire to smash something. i arrived just in time for kickboxing but had forgotten my hand wraps... i worked light so it was okay. i was more concerned for my leg, the bump on my shin isn't going away. the horrific bruising is now "normal" in my mind. not even worth a funny photo.
the lesson was solid and i did really well, and it ended with us being offered the opportunity to buy tickets to good seats to see david l'oiseau fighting on saturday night. from the man himself, which was pretty cool, so i picked up two and we'll be there :)

on the way back i felt it - it's the beginning of the end of the shortest summer i've ever experienced. but it's not the suddenly earlier sunset nor the dropping temperature i could feel on the rainy breeze that really hit it home... it was receiving the invitation to renew my ski pass in the mail. YEE-HAH!!! ^_^

so i renewed my pass and i bought in to kite patch, a brilliant indigogo project to reduce mosquito-borne infections in africa. i chatted with a friend before buying into hot watch, which may be awesome but i'll wait to see if they actually deliver.

now it's way later than i should be getting to bed. so that's me for tonight.

heavy weekend part ii

machinehead was awesome. children of bodom was very cool. mastodon was so good they made my eyes cross. godsmack? holy shit that was intense!!

but the grand finale, if i can't use my voice tomorrow and i can't hear very much, i don't care. i just don't care!

ROB MOTHERFUCKING ZOMBIE!!!!!

---1. there's something decidedly less intrusive about being patted down by pretty female security guards.

2. i didn't know sully erna had his tattoo removed, and without it or the chin tuft i was almost certain it wasn't actually him but a look-alike!

3. "o canada" didn't work so well when rob zombie tried to get the quebecois to sing something, but his cover of metallica - enter sandman is a much preferred / better known anthem and everyone chimed in.

4. coming through the tunnels of the berri uqam station en masse and all singing along at top volume to the musicians busking with pink floyd - another brick in the wall was really cool.

heavy weekend part i

friday:

i walked in to the office feeling good on friday, but apparently looking terrible.
"look at you, with bags under your eyes!"

the day was good and pretty relaxed, the only discomfort being an aggressive and condescending "figure it out yourself" when i asked him for advice on auto-remounting samba shares. if we weren't so desperate for server devs i'd have fired him then and there...

up until last week happy hour was drinks at l'artere, and last week's in the cafeteria playing pool was considered successful all round. this week we repeated it with board games - not everyone stuck around, but most did and it was a lot of fun! it also engaged a few of the usually shy and reserved devs. cls is usually really quiet and polite, and we all laughed when i put down a tile in carcasonne and he responded with "i hate you" and we could see that he was really enjoying himself :)

friday night boxing is usually a fantastic way to close the week, but with scrapper it was even more fun. the best part was impact / conditioning at the end, and that's very different when you're striking or being struck by a friend! i don't recall what it was, but something made me laugh soon after he started hitting me and once that started i was hard to stop :)

officially, that was how the weekend started. unofficially, it began on our way to an insanely delicious chinese dinner with the discovery that the sleeper couch had been hit by fleas and that scrapper was developing a rash and wasn't feeling well.

yang had sent me an invite to a party at the belmont, so we decided to check it out.

on the way we witnessed a guy play his flute at the police as an act of defiance, and walking past a statue on a street corner i "thought the buddha was a beggar, but i was wrong".

after saying hi to yang and meeting a cute and amusing friend of his who also got excited when she heard there was a trance party happening and that there was a chance we might hit it, scrapper felt so bad that he grabbed a taxi home. i stayed, and the drum 'n bass was delicious! i had a very good, very sweaty time.

---saturday:

i realized that i'd need to call it a night at some point and i wanted to check out the other party. i didn't see yang anywhere but his friend appeared right next to me, so when the music cooled a bit i asked her if she was up for the other party - whoops! i must have pressed her "creep" buttons because she rushed off with a disdainful and dismissive "maybe".

*sigh*

yang told me he'd only be leaving in an hour so i called it a night. i needed cash for the taxi home, promising myself that i'd learn the night bus routes.

inside the bank there were two homeless men sleeping right next to the atm, which is really not cool as there was plenty of space not close enough to completely surprise a potential victim :(

scrapper was sleeping so i didn't want to turn on the lights when i got back, and that meant tiptoeing and not eating :(

i'd somehow hurt my neck again, which really sucks. it didn't matter too much during the night because i fell dead asleep, but in spite of a long, physically demanding week and getting to bed at 3 / 4am i woke up around 8am :'(

it was from a dream of entering a naval base and finding my commander abusing a sexy soldier. i kicked his ass and he turned into a small dog; i was terrified he'd screw up my release with a court-martial but he knew his career would be destroyed. so i got the girl.

concerned about mixing caffeine and creatine (turns out it doesn't really matter, the tin's just paranoid), i elected to forgo the latter to coffee up for a call to the real estate agent.

i was very pleased to hear that within a week he already has buyers lined up, and at prices not too far from what we want! this is extremely good news ^_^

that made recovering from the short sleep a lot sweeter, and it was boosted when i found that scrapper was feeling much better and that the flea problem was restricted to the couch cover.

i finished another section of my mars one application (only the personal motivation letter remains), we handled the laundry* and then went to walmart to pick up spare bedclothes, towels and something for fleas. all the flea stuff (for pets) come with dire warnings and it's hard to believe it's okay for pets - we decided to try stuffing the couch cover in the tumbledryer and hope for the best.

* sadly, the laundry basket's handle has broken

instead of returning home we went to my office to drop off the shopping and print our heavy mtl tickets, taking the opportunity for a decent lunch and coffee at l'artere.

---heavy mtl:

every type of metal freak imaginable and in huge numbers. beautiful weather. great infrastructure (free drinking water available, port-a-urinals, loads of food, drink and ice-cream stands), excellent stage set-up.

we arrived at the end of steel panther; at first we thought they were just crass, but aside from their music being good they have a great sense of humour and i'm convinced that all their crap is intentionally ironic.

black label society is excellent, they didn't wow us but we enjoyed their music. except for the long guitar solos that made us feel like we were watching someone masturbating on stage.

when a day to remember came on i said that it would have been funny if they'd been wearing madonna or michael jackson shirts. i don't know what made me say that, because the early part of their show was pretty hard stuff with lots of growling and a sense of lostprophets. but then that transformed into a sense of blink 182 and their shit just got cheesy pop. big props to them on their showmanship, though, and the way they interacted with the crowd was excellent - they beat crowdsurfing spiderman with a crowdsurfing inflatable raft, and the free t-shirt bazooka was the shit.

danzig. danzig! he's awesome. his freakishly large monster guitarist dude made for a cute gimmick, but unfortunately we couldn't really hear him and he looked like he was having a lot of fun.

in spite of the bad taste left by avenged sevenfold's (talented, i'll admit) reduction of metal into teen pop, my overall impression from the day at heavy mtl was from megadeth.
the megadeth experience was as mind-blowing as it was bad for the eardrums ^_^
their visual setup turned everything they did into stunning art, the peak of which was their background to kingmaker.
in spite of my awkwardness about them they actually managed to bring out the devil horns in me };)

scrapper and i were discussing psychiatry on the way home: "diagnosing mental disorder with a list of symptoms is insane. oh, wait, i mean it's completely sane and totally crazy... which is normal".

in spite of an excellent day, the buzzing i left with wasn't confined to my ears: it entered my brain and i was exhausted, restless and in a snappy mood. we ate a quick dinner and then turned in early, certain we'd be up early again.

---i think i'm a bad host; i'm terribly ocd about order and tidiness, which i'd forgotten while living with pg and compared to her i'm a bit flippant myself. there're so many little things!
speaking of pg, some guy posted a comment on one of my pictures of her on facebook calling her a lush. i don't know if she's seen it and i don't know if i should say anything...

...

facebook: i don't understand why my macbook can't handle it anymore, it's weird, and i'm stuck using my phone for everything. which led to a security fail: i had two-stage authentication set up, facebook's sms'es weren't coming through, accessing through a browser doesn't give you the code generator and the access codes i was shown simply wouldn't work when i tried to set up the facebook app on my phone. the only way to install the app was to disable the two-step authentication. that's pretty dumb, facebook.

on a related note, my new iphone's battery life is so much better than my old one! it's so weird that i don't *have* to charge it every night.

---sunday:

i'm guessing the early wake-up is related to the amount of sunshine streaming through my windows. the big news for the morning is that someone has already made an offer for our apartment, so hopefully we'll sort that out soon and then i can find an apartment in montreal that's facing the right direction :P
the offer's good, not exactly what we wanted but if we hurry we might not need to pay capital gains tax on it...

i woke up from dreaming a successful dream, but once the story was over i realized that i was still wearing a skullcap that i'd put on at some point and was embarrassed to be seen as jewish. i don't know how i feel about that dream.

we stuffed the couch cover in the tumble-dryer and ran regular laundry alongside it, then i went to get a haircut. no haircuts on sundays - d'oh! - so i sat at starbucks for an opportunity to write most of this undisturbed, cashed a cheque and came on home to prep for another festival day and discuss the apartment offer with my mother. we have a plan, it feels like stars are aligning, i'm feeling positive.

now - time to rock!

this is the end... of the week

i'm feeling pretty good - my leg's got a nasty little protrusion on my shin bone from that bad check on wednesday and a pretty good bruise-on-a-bruise from last night (how is it that our kickboxing instructor invariably manages to find whatever's hurting and kick it?), but i'm feeling pretty good nonetheless. like i've trained hard this week, like i've worked enough this week, like i've got a big weekend of heavy metal concerts coming up.

my eyes have been a bit weird the past few days. my left seems to have found its focus at the cost of my right whenever i'm not reading. it's like i've always got one eye out of focus, which means that everything looks fine at all distances but has an unreal effect applied to it.

---thursday:

yesterday was a decent day. we interviewed a guy who i thought interviewed well and the others thought really badly, but as he's a contractor i convinced them to give him a chance. contractors are the future, man.

jiu-jitsu was okay but filled with fails; scrapper's new to it and i couldn't get my shit together. kickboxing would have been better if i'd had caffeine in me, but i handled and it was as fun as it was tough. at least until the end, that is, when after all the post-workout punishment he usually doles out he added lunges and squats that really hurt!

scrapper and i walked to harvey's for burgers (it's really convenient living near a decent 24-hour burger joint that serves veggie patties) and began a long philosophical debate that lasted until it was beyond time to hit the hay.

---friday:

there's nothing like waking up in the middle of the night with a blocked nose, reaching out for a tissue and upsetting a glass of water. all around the power bar under the bed.

---jeff bezos is the man. and this article makes a good point about journalism versus media.

high powered

i made it to muay thai yesterday, with scrapper in tow. while he sorted out gloves, wraps and a month pass i headed into a class that would turn out very special... i was partnered up with one of the monsters. aside from a damaged left shin from a badly executed check, and almost learning an unpleasant lesson (my response was to put in my mouth guard, things went much better after that), the training session was alright. not amazing, but definitely not bad.

but the impact training... oh, the impact training! that was awesome. he was actually harder to hit than our punching bags, and when the tables turned his "gentle" almost wiped me out.

i spent the next hour and a half relaxing with scrapper and the punching bags, teaching him boxing basics. by the time class started he was ready to go, and our instructor was well impressed with his performance :)
the class was really good, the overall satisfaction level when we left all hurting and exhausted was fantastic ^_^

---tuesday:

i woke up exhausted, feeling really weak. i felt like that all day and it was only during training that i'd learn that when you use creatine you need to drink LOTS of water. i was really dehydrated!

scrapper needed a computer and i suddenly remembered an abandoned netbook stuffed into a drawer - still good enough :)

work: a very long day of meetings upon meetings. it was pretty draining.
notes for the day:
1. pg sent me a photo of a predator statue to say it reminded her of me. i don't know how flattering that is :P
2. my LEAP controller arrived! i'm actually too excited to open it without having a few hours to really play...
3. the iphone 4 came back from the repair shop, and my 3gs backup restored beautifully! i'm very pleased, the only annoyance is that the casing doesn't lock properly. last night i put together a gir phone cover using vistaprint. i was really glad to learn that i can reproduce any previous orders, they've stored my syndicate shirt design so if anyone wants to buy one i can just click a few buttons and ship it :)

i arrived at the gym intending to do jiu-jitsu and then kickboxing, but only one guy had showed up for kickboxing so the instructor invited me to join for a sparring session. i didn't have my headgear and i couldn't contact scrapper so we didn't end up sparring but we essentially shared a private lesson which was pretty hardcore. it was much easier when i discovered that i needed to drink more water, i spent some time at the spout and my performance improved dramatically quickly.

finished for the day, i hung around for a while talking to some guys and then went home. as i crossed the parking lot gg was getting out of her car, and i haven't seen her since i was all awkward and that was a while ago. she was all smiles when she saw me, we exchanged a few sentences and i walked home feeling good about myself.

i'd learn later that scrapper was at home when i arrived, but in the shower so he didn't hear me throwing stones at my kitchen window because the building entrance was locked (it usually isn't) and i still don't have a functional buzzer. after a few minutes of that i got frustrated, believing him to be fast asleep or something, and i jogged back to rejoin to beginner's class.

round two was awesome, i'm really glad i went back! in addition to training with gg again i was partnered with a really tough dude who made me work hard. i finished the day on a great note and then scrapper and i headed downtown for great chinese and a couple of beers at a nice little pub on peel.

we eventually got home around 2 / 3am. the iphone 4 may be vastly better in a lot of respects, but it's public transport routing system totally sucks.

---wednesday:

in my earlier drunken state i'd failed to set my alarm correctly, but miraculously woke up by myself with just enough time to get organized and get to work on time.

ceh: i don't care if he has personal issues he's dealing with, the look he gave me when i tried to discuss a task i needed to hand him made me want to fire him on the spot. if we weren't desperate for backend developers... later he joined a few of us for lunch and regaled us with grossly inappropriate tales involving drugs and disturbing psychological details that made a couple of the guys visibly uncomfortable.

otherwise, it was a decent day at work. the it guy was kind enough to hand me a waterproof iphone cover (which i needed just over a week ago :P ) and another cover that converts the phone into a radio receiver. nice!

then i left early for muay thai, and had that magnificent evening, and scrapper made dinner and i crashed. i'm really pleased that he's now had a taste of tristar. and i'm really pleased with how good i feel.

first world problems

it was a really difficult weekend to post. i was too busy! now i'm sitting here on a monday evening trying to wrap this up quickly so as to disturb scrapper as little as possible.

---thursday - the forgotten moments:

neck and back still hurting.

1dollarscan.com is a fantastic idea, but it's a little costly if you're not sending your book / documents to a local address. the pdf i'm looking forward to will ultimately have cost me around $30.

i should open a local branch! all i'd need is a p.o. box and a scanner. shit, there's a lot of things i'd like to do with my life. i need more of me.

---friday:

neck and back still hurting.

the massage therapist was in, and she *really* helped! i got up disoriented but with my neck and back feeling like jello. unfortunately, that sensation lasted all of five minutes before the muscles started tightening up again.

i gave my iphone a try, plugging it in to my macbook. charging! amazed and excited i was, until i realized that it wouldn't charge more than the thin red line meaning that it wasn't actually charging at all. being plugged in wasn't enough to turn it on and access the data...

friday was the end of a long two weeks stabilizing a build, and i joined the happy hour late but in a celebratory mood. we held it in the cafeteria which was more fun that going out, although i played terrible pool.

i made the boxing class on time, there's a cute new girl from ottawa and we were set to work together. turns out that in spite of her hesitation, she's been teaching kickboxing and she put me under a lot of pressure... i cannot express how satisfied i am with myself for keeping up with her pace, doing all the combinations correctly at high speed on autopilot ^_^

why is it that every time i'm paired with a girl we do impact training? she forgot to inform me that she had a belly piercing and i hit it a few times. hard. i was totally embarrassed afterwards :$

regardless, i was on an absolute high from the class when i left the gym and walked out into a beautiful, cool summer sunset.

orange is the new black is cute at first, but then it gets better :)

foufounes electriques. newk'd and jock invited me to join them for a night out. they were both pretty drunk by the time i arrived and i didn't know where to go. at first they sent me in the wrong direction, then i returned to sainte catherine and was told to go right. so i did, and i walked while on the phone with newk'd trying to figure out where he was in relation to me because he'd apparently been waiting outside for me and was walking to meet me. in the end we discovered that this was the case... he'd instructed me to turn right when i should have turned left, and actually unwittingly followed me at a distance for about twenty minutes before figuring out what was going on. wtf??!
drunk people.

anyway, i've been there a couple of times before with yang but until friday night i didn't realize that it's the very same club wp and i went to back in 2006! i felt a circle close. i also drank a lot. i was far from drunk, but i was certainly going to feel it in the morning.

while there, i was informed that my soul patch is unflattering so i've decided to drop it. on a completely different note, i walked in to the dancefloor just as rob zombie - dragula went on and i joined the crowd rocking out and growling along... the next song was marilyn manson - beautiful people which was followed by disturbed - down with the sickness and nirvana - smells like teen spirit. it took me back a good six or seven years and i thoroughly enjoyed myself even as i was already concerned that my throat was going to hurt the next day... which it did...

i said goodbye when i had just enough cash left for a taxi. the taxi took an inexplicably long route so i jumped out a couple of traffic lights early. overall i'd had a very good night indeed.

---saturday:

neck and back still hurting.

otherwise, i was feeling pretty good. i went to godmother's for lunch in the sun, then returned home feeling the previous night. i was offended by the guy on the escalator in front of me as i headed to walmart because he wiped his feet almost into my face - one asshole can ruin your whole day! (okay, i got over it fairly quickly)

i managed to get the last cheap-ish everlast headgear in stock and returned home for some more orange is the new black and a solid afternoon nap. i got up from a long, perfect moment lying in bed on a cloudy evening with the window fan's deep hum keeping me sleepy.

i love the window fan's white noise. i really do.

horseman came over for an overly long evening discussing investment theory, stats and math. some of what he had to say was intriguing, but i was tired and i wanted to be in top shape for sunday's sparring session.

---for a few days now facebook hasn't been working on my mac. i've established that it's not my internet connection and it's not facebook, but no matter what i do (restarting, etc.) i just can't see my feeds / pages properly. the hell?

---sunday:

neck and back still hurting.

tapout versus everlast: this and and this? it wasn't me, the problem is that everlast's mouthguards SUCK. the tapout instructions were easy to follow and even though i fit it skew the first time it handles reboiling and i just did it again. no problem!

my first sparring:
gloves? check.
mouth guard? check.
protective cup? check.
headgear? check.
shin pads? check.
commitment? ... check, but with reservations about how smart i was being.

1. my boxing defense is awful and i don't breathe correctly.
2. i eventually did start striking properly.
3. even though we were all being responsible, speed and accuracy make up for a lack of power. one particularly well-placed strike gave me my first insight into the accuracy of the expression "he rang my bell".
4. after an hour my arms were really, really sore.

in the end there was no blood to clean up and i have a very good idea of just how much i need to improve before getting in the ring again, so i consider the session a great success!

the guys were shocked that i weigh 90kg as a vegan. i evangelized for a short while and then returned home to do laundry. i would have done laundry if the gorram laundry room wasn't out of order! what a way to ruin my plans :(

i went out to the market to pick up clif builder bars, then returned home for a big nap, big shopping and some more orange is the new black. i finally completed my sketches for the first chapter of my comic! i'm really excited about how i managed to resolve an issue that was troubling me ^_^
then i clicked on xkcd's time post and checked out the easily accessible version before reading randall's explanation: shut up and take my money! i bought some merch in a gushing show of support because that man is one of the most committed and inventive artists and is totally deserving of the highest praise.

---i can't recall how long ago or why i was searching for this, but i found it: lewis black on water. he's rather clever.

---monday:

neck and back feeling a bit better.

it was early morning in august. the temperature was... 9 degrees. seriously. it was AWESOME. i was even a little chilly while waiting for the second airport bus (the first was full).

i had to wait a long while for scrapper to come out, he described the officials as "thorough". we had a quick bite to eat before taking a taxi home, i briefed him non-stop until we parted ways on the metro.

my jaw hurts from the sparring. the muscles more than anything!

first order of the day, arguing with the cto in a video-conference when i was the only person on screen, and couldn't facepalm or make the faces that everyone knew i wanted to. after eventually coming out on top and feeling guilty for pushing back hard when everyone was listening in, we closed the call and the guys in the room showered me with sympathy :P

aside from a lunch break with some time outside to enjoy the stunning weather and discuss dragons and terminators, it was a day filled with meetings. one of the meetings was for all the developers, and after being shocked by ceh's brattiness (which was commented on by the project manager too) we were treated to a long and very boring presentation. presentations need to be engaging, and they need to be managed properly. as it finished, i sent an email to the project manager to say "we should never do this again".

boy, was i surprised to see the email summary pop up on the screen in front of everyone! serious faux pas, the project manager was not amused and i was super embarrassed.

my eyesight's griefing me, but i suspect it's related to how tired i am. my brain still hasn't gotten used to two eyes focusing so differently... but i certainly wouldn't want to give up my right eye's near-sightedness. reading would be really tough otherwise.

i got home in time for muay thai but i really needed to do laundry. i showed scrapper the laundry system, i took him shopping, i had a short but desperately needed nap before dinner, made dinner, we played fluxx and then he went to bed while i wrote this post. it's now an hour and a half after i began and it's my turn to tuck in.

PHEW!

level up!

once again, this time in physique! for the first time in my life i've just hit 90kg. super stoked! also proud that i trained serious kicks on the taped-to-shit punching bag and came out with only light bruising. i'm feeling all my muscles and i'm feeling *strong*.

i can't drink enough water - and my craving for tonic water far outdoes my thirst for regular h₂0.

---my eyes were irritated all day, which concerns me but there's not a lot i can do about that. work-wise, we spent most of the day having meetings about how to deal with a protocol issue while a couple of the developers worked on it in the direction we agreed was best. by the end of the day, after everyone got a say including marketing, we agreed unanimously that the way the developers and i had agreed to deal with it was the right way.

*sigh*

---a meaningful last hour of the day was spent arguing about addictions and parenting with aota.

---i met with the illustrator (bnw) and was blown away by the quality of her take on the subject. and was gladdened to hear that what i'd be concerned about she gets done quickly. we spent an hour and a half figuring out where we think we should go, and i'm now under the gun to sketch out my script because apparently it's easier for her to get what i'm going for. hah!

there's a question she had about character identities that caused me to think about it in a new way, and it was only later that i realized that her suggestion of what to do about it was absolutely correct even if she didn't know what to look for. score!

punctures and rls

i went to bed late, slept well, and woke up with my neck and back in spasm. the hell?! i managed to stretch out enough to be functional, but i was severely uncomfortable. fortunately it was wellness wednesday! we didn't have a massage therapist but we did have an acupuncturist. i think it helped a bit, but even if it didn't the excuse to rest was welcome and definitely made me feel better.

the last couple of days have seen my restless leg syndrome firing up, i'm drinking tonic water but it's not doing the trick. i wonder if it might not just be the lack of foot support now that i'm wearing flip flops all the time...

---a forgotten note from tuesday: i was wearing my "follow me until you die" persuadertron shirt and some old geezer behind me in a queue came up to tell me he was having trouble reading my shirt.
"it says die," i informed him.
i think he was hoping it didn't. i felt sorry for him, so i raised my voice over everyone else to say "it basically means forever".

---wednesday:

hah! i recharged my metro pass because i thought it was the first of the month. i really hope i didn't send that money into a sinkhole. i'll find out in the morning...

the workday began on a terrible note, as the core scrum took place without me even though i specifically told the lead to wait. as i said to the new project manager, if you want to reduce my responsibilities go ahead, but who's going to handle the technical side of our development? it took half a day for someone in that scrum to report an issue that urgently needed my input.

but you know what? someone else's problem. i'm not stressing over that shit. i'm not paid enough to fight everyone else's higher-salaried bad decisions.
oh, that reminds me. megaman gave me very bad information and jeopardized my options package. i can't be sure it wasn't on purpose, but i'll be kind and think of it as incompetence.

perhaps it was my attitude, but the day felt slow. i followed it up with a hardcore boxing class, i was sore and weak but i gave it my all. for some of the drills i was really proud of myself! specifically the final one, we were working speed and power on the punching bags and i, like everyone else, was wasted by the last minute. all we had to do was one-two as fast as we could until the instructor called "time", and i got my head together and really nailed it.

oh, i paid for that afterwards, but it was totally worth it.

note to self: guru versus rockst*r? guru just doesn't cut it. i need caffeine and i need all the other stuff as well.

i managed to do laundry even though i went into overtime, made another huge salad (tomorrow will be the last one like that) and watched an episode of full metal alchemist. now, without further ado, i'm going to bed because i'm tired...

sink or swim

wow! how did another holiday weekend disappear so fast? without me blogging at all? i must have been busy :D

i'm currently uploading my mars one application video after an evening spent with an ice pack on my leg and stuffing myself silly on a really good salad and dessert...

---friday night:

the wolverine! just what i like in a comic movie. very, very cool and a lot of fun :)
we did nothing after that but crash in front of the telly until braindead.

---saturday:

we got up early in the morning to join some friends of SxS's on a boat. i wore a peak cap for the first time since childhood, and i'm told it suits me.

we began the boat ride drinking gin and tonic. fort lauderdale's really impressive when you travel past its houses on the water! it's also pretty cool from the ocean. has it really been that long since i was last in the ocean? damn. we stopped for the perfect swim (my first since the operation), and the captain had just finished attaching the tube to the back when the storm broke. massive, threatening black clouds swarmed the inlet accompanied by drenching rain and lightning. driving into that to get to a dock was pretty damned intense! and quite fun ^_^

after half an hour eating and drinking to while away the time (yuca fries and bottomless iced tea) the skies cleared and we continued back. suddenly we found ourselves amidst a group of anchored boats blaring pop music and sharing jello shots, so we joined them for a beautiful afternoon in the water tossing around a hefty coconut and playing fetch with very cute dogs.

afterwards we went to a raw vegan restaurant. raw vegan restaurants are not my cup of tea. they're definitely not SxS's :P

we returned home exhausted. i watched some ufc before my cousin picked me up for a cup of coffee: i haven't seen her in twenty years! we talked for hours, and could have talked more but she had to get back to her family.

---sunday:

SxS and i were both broken after the previous day, so aside from shopping for sports equipment and eating a large and delicious meal at chipotle, we spent sunday on the couch with a friend of his watching americans playing soccer and enjoying moshe kasher's stand-up.

my israeli apartment: not only did i want pg's agent to manage my apartment's rent and sale, but my tenant woke up at the last minute and realized that he needed a couple more days. those cost me a lot of email time typing in hebrew on a canadian macbook. not exactly fun.

we ate take-out and watched pirates of the caribbean (the third one) to round out the nothing day. not good for the eyes, but definitely good for the soul :)

---monday:

monday was such a beautiful day! i *had* to go to the pool. i was on my way there with my hands full of towel and book and keys, thinking to myself that i had better remember to take my cellphone out of my pocket before getting in the water.

i didn't.

iphones can't swim.

i enjoyed the afternoon in spite of this, continuing to read kevin mitnick's memoirs and alternating between feeling like a complete imbecile and laughing at myself and the world.

[oh, man! i just realized that i scanned a photo my cousin brought of twelve year-old me and her kids and it's lost now...]

i picked up lunch at 4th generation, which is a pretty cool place. putting a veggie patty on a bagel surprised them, but it was absolutely delicious.

the drive down A1A (i wasn't allowed to put on ice ice baby but i really wanted to) was cool, that's one impressive stretch! i arrived at the airport on time, the only surprise was having a tsa official look at me and go "eh, what's up, doc?"

i hoped he wasn't talking to me, i looked away. then down, and realized i was wearing my bugs bunny shirt. i looked back up at him and signaled that i got where he was coming from.

"yeah, you looked at me like i was crazy or something."
"sorry, i forgot what shirt i was wearing today."

he wouldn't be the only one to comment. otherwise, boarding was smooth and we paid for it by waiting on the runway for over an hour. the delta staff were very careful to explain that the connecting flights would be made aware of the delay without even insinuating that they'd actually care enough to wait for us. this happened a few times, including just after landing.

detroit is beautiful from above in twilight.

we ran (with me flap-flapping my flip-flops) to get across detroit airport in time. we had plenty of time. that sucked.

after arriving late and close to midnight, it only made sense that they'd park the plane on the side of the airport furthest from passport control. i made it out just in time to not be able to make the metro home.

---tuesday:

it was late, and i made a terrible decision to take the bus and then night-bus from downtown. the bus took forever and without google maps i couldn't find the right bus stop so i ended up taking a cab anyway. all told i lost an hour and saved $5. not exactly worth it.

...

no phone meant no alarm clock, but i woke up at alarm time on the dot this morning.

wr is dating a friend of scrappers?!?! how did that happen? [she's one of the slow couple which i guess broke up] i was most amused by the background check i was asked to provide :)

my new old iphone (refurbished) isn't ready, so i was given the same galaxy that made me love iphones more before. on my way out i was given its big brother, which might be better but i think it's too big to be a phone :P

---the big meeting: our cto didn't like what i had to say at all, and megaman backed him up.
"no, we're going to do it this way. it's a fact, it's already been decided."
"oh, okay then."
... everybody else talks until they finally arrive at the same conclusions and suggestions i'd offered in the first place...
"oh, so all i had to do was agree with you guys to get what i wanted in the first place?"

i realized that wasn't necessary the second those words left my mouth. i'm very glad my "i told you so" was ignored.

---i've been mixing the creatine and the protein powder, and while it doesn't taste bad it does make me feel a bit sickly. i can't explain it better than that.

---finally - back to training! my skipping was horrible, i kept managing to somehow smack the back of my head. my legs weren't responding correctly to kick signals. my back and neck were a bit sore. there were only two of us, so we got an ultra-light sparring session which proved to me that i have a long way to go. it also made me think about the fact that sparring involves being hit in the head, even if not at full power.

hmmm.

the other guy wasn't satisfied with the intensity level when we were done and so got sent back to the punching bags to do a hundred roundhouses with each leg. i decided to join him, and while i'm really proud that i finished them i'm not so proud of my technique (directly related to that lack of a kick response). i also managed to connect on the wrong part of my shin a lot - i didn't count those - so that's what the ice-pack (frozen peas) was for.

i had to go shopping afterwards, and in addition to the usual i picked up fairly cheap microwave stir-fried veggies: *that's* how i'm going to make my salads from now on!

i can't believe that i've spent more than two hours on this post and my mars one application. i've got shit to do tomorrow!

---prosthetic advances usually inspire me, but everyman advances really make me happy. for this message i'm proudly south african ;)

cyberpunk day

it's late on a friday afternoon as i begin typing this all up. i have spent the afternoon glued to my monitor, catching up on comics and news. mostly gaming news. two items are particularly exhilarating.

1. shadowrun returns came out yesterday, and it looks really, really cool!

2. satellite reign's pitch gives me goosebumps. shut up and take my money!!!

also, bionic contact lenses? pretty rad.

---wednesday:

wednesday morning was cloudy with the sun peeking through and a cool wind blowing. it was the perfect morning to skip work to hang around coffee shops and comic book stores! but that's not what i did. i went to work.

after long hours in a design meeting with all of the developers getting excited about quickly and correctly getting out of the mess moonlighter's left us, megaman vetoed with a "fuck it, nothing's going to change on such short notice". "anguish" is a word that accurately sums up my feelings. we eventually managed to compromise, but on this topic we are not playing the same game.

aota has turned wednesday into "office wellness day" by bringing in a massage therapist / acupuncture specialist. usually skeptical, and always cheap, i went in for a half hour session. that woman took little time figuring out what was troubling me and how much pressure she could get away with applying, and after a severely painful experience (through which i almost fell asleep, i had to explain the concept of lekker-seer to her) i floated out of there feeling like my neck and back were made of jelly. it was nothing short of blissful!

strangely, that didn't motivate me to work. ceh's job was to migrate a server setup from windows to linux, and i babysat him through several headaches until very late. it was only after he left that i'd begin to understand just how sloppy he'd been, and we'd spend almost all of my working thursday dealing with that :(

---a reflection in my monitor made me spin around just in time to see the cleaning lady throwing the paper bag containing my eye-drops in the trash. jesus!

---i went to my favourite chinese restaurant for dinner, which would have tasted a lot better if i hadn't burned my tongue on the first bites. why do i do that? it's not like i don't know better, and it's not like i forgot. my brain can be so stupid sometimes.

i watched about half of kung fu panda 2 when i got home, then went to bed early. i was too tired to pack.

---thursday:

a morning of epically long dreams involving bullying and tribunals. i woke up with my eye behaving strangely: was i treating my eye okay? could the way i'd had my face pressed against the massage table done any damage? were my sleep goggles protecting me?

after my ordeal with leap motion, i was most upset to discover that my pre-order had failed anyway. they sent me a code to re-order with the pre-order conditions, but i'm not satisfied by my experience. i hope *this* attempt doesn't get screwed up.

packing was fairly simple, work was super-stressed. only because i was trying to get everything together before leaving and not a lot was going right.

---megaman's made me feel a little uncomfortable by splitting up the team and assigning me to web development. he has a tendency to pigeonhole and aside from not wanting to be left out of our core tech i have a feeling that if that's what happens we're going to end up in deep shit.

having said that, it's not my company and it would be a relief to have less responsibility. i want the company to succeed and i want everything to be great, but most of my job is hand-holding and that's tiring and not very exciting.

---aota played chauffeur and drove me to the airport, allowing me an opportunity to vent before flying. everything was smooth as all i had to worry about was my backpack. i had plenty of time to finish this month's wired and begin reading mitnick's ghost in the wires. walking through the airport in atlanta with pj harvey - when under ether playing was pretty surreal.

it only takes one asshole to ruin your day. or flight. the well-dressed gentleman sitting next to me turned on his ipad as the plane was taking off. now i know there's talk of dropping the rule, but in addition to it being a rule it made me quite nervous. i turned to him and told him that, asking him to please wait until we were in the air.

"i'm just going to continue reading," he told me, quite condescendingly.
"thank you," i responded, immediately wanting him to die a horrible death. the exact thought was "die in a fire," but then i had a vision of that fire being caused by us hitting the ground and instantly regretted it. i hated him for the rest of the trip, at least whenever i wasn't transfixed by kevin mitnick.

SxS arrived to pick me up just as i left the building and it was a long, chatty drive to his place. it was quite late when we eventually called it a night. i put in my drops for the last time before going to bed.

---today:

i woke late after non-stop dreaming. entertaining dreams! i took my morning slow, beginning an internet catch-up that's interminable even if i have found myself at the end of the day with a much clearer to-do list.

one important part of that list was making contact with the agent taking care of pg's apartment. pg left for europe after scaring my tenant off. the tenant will be leaving in a few days, and pg's brother and mother will be handling the hand-off. my mum and i want to sell the apartment, but until it's sold we don't want it to stand empty. so if this man can make our lives easier or organize a buyer, that would be pretty neat.

---SxS took me to whole food market, and my mind was blown. not only by the selection - vegan heaven! - but by the quality of everything available. everything i've tasted from their prepared foods has been delicious! i haven't stopped snacking all day :)

we went out for lunch and i ordered a vegan burger, not realized that "pepper jack" is a type of cheese. all the other ingredients were listed! so it was a vegan burger with cheese. which i had to scrape off, leaving me with just a patty and buns.

*sigh*

the weather here in florida has been surprisingly comfortable. i've been indoors and air-conditioned all day, but those moments outside have been decidedly pleasant. this being on holiday thing is pretty cool, too.

humble pie

i bought into the humble bundle last week, and while i was waiting for my follow-up exam on thursday i began reading wil wheaton - just a geek. i've been reading it on and off, finishing it this evening. the first time i ever heard his name was on the big bang theory. the second time was on the guild. i'd already seen an episode or two of tng, but i had no idea he was wesley!

the story he tells is insightful and interesting and personal, and i'm now unreservedly a wil wheaton fan. not of the actor, not of the writer, but of the actual wil wheaton. he really does deserve his break.

---in this book, wil's done what i was intending to do with all of my army posts: use extracts to tell the surrounding stories. it's inspired me to attempt to return those posts to this blog - i cannot for the life of me recall why i removed them in the first place, but i've kept backups. let's see how this goes...

second-hand nightmares

i suddenly remembered one of the weird dreams i had this morning. my forearms and hands were constructed in an alien fashion, human-shaped and fully functional but with a lot of gaps, kind of like a crustacean's exoskeleton but with less meat keeping everything together. i woke up soon after becoming frustrated by insects that were flying into the cavities i couldn't scrape them out of and being forced to bang my arms on corner surfaces to get rid of them as if emptying the contents of a tin of beans.

---our project manager (darn) was a bit shaken up this morning, and i had to get the whole story. we began with confusing excess political correctness, as he felt so uncomfortable saying "handicapped" that he used "special" instead. he proceeded to explain that he'd been travelling on the metro when a mixed group of mentally handicapped and blind people filled the car he was in. one of the mentally handicapped threw up on the floor right next to him, and he wanted to get out of there but didn't want to seem like an asshole. i think that it's perfectly alright to leave if you feel uncomfortable, but he felt guilty. someone working with the group came over with a towel and cleaned up so he felt a little better about it... but then they arrived at his station and began shuffling out.

he tried to quickly slip through a gap in the doorway, and as he stepped outside heard a sickening noise. he turned around to discover that he'd tripped up one of the guide dogs, and in turn caused a chain reaction that resulted in a whole group of the blind falling on the floor. they were all lying awkwardly, very confused, and he felt terrible and ashamed. while their helpers set about picking them up... he ran away as fast as his legs could carry him.

---today was a pretty good day, although there were a few incidents with the network. hopefully it'll all be over soon. we have a contractor helping us out with our backend, and i was embarrassed to show him a piece of code that moonlighter had written that was causing weirdness. i explained the fix and confirmed that we were ready to put that kind of thing behind us...

a very strange and sad incident occurred today: aota made a mistake and the cfo dressed her down disproportionately harshly. this is the man who called me out for my tone of voice when dealing with cam2's incompetence? apparently aota didn't say a word, and the cfo was so embarrassed when he calmed down that he left early.

i understand he's been stressed of late, but damn.

---my father was a complete bigot, totally racist and a hardcore homophobe. i once tried to convince him that i was coming out the closet with "dad, my boyfriend's nigerian so i'd appreciate it if you dialed back the racism a notch".
there was a moment of dead silence, absolutely ruined by my mother's laughter when she realized that i was talking shit.

...

okay, so maybe i didn't say it as cleverly as the way i just quoted it. either way, thanks, mom.

---israel brain gain? a representative tried to contact me and i checked out what appears to be their mission statement. if they want skilled israelis to return to the country, perhaps they ought to work on making the country an attractive place for smart people to live?

just saying.

closing monday

as a busy bachelor, buying fresh produce is a bitch, it's not cheap and it has a frustratingly sisyphean short shelf life. i've reached the conclusion that in addition to meal replacements and supplements, eating out every night is not only more convenient and satisfying, but financially responsible too.

or at least it would be if eating out was less complicated for vegans.

---today began with my purchasing two weekend passes for otakuthon for myself and scrapper. i can't wait ^_^

it looks like we're wresting control from the cto. it also looks like our network troubles aren't over yet. it looks like i need to go to bed early tonight.

i felt monday today, i took a contractor out for lunch and i'm not sure if i ate too much or if the punjab palace's food is as bad for me as it is delicious. this is the third time i've walked out of there in dire need of a siesta.

i've been given a galaxy phone for the week and promised a new (refurbished) iphone next week, but i'm not doing anything until i can figure out how to backup my contact data to gmail. the internets has advices.

what sundays are meant to be like

how did we go from hot and humid back down to 18 degrees and chilly in four days?!?!

i'm not really complaining, by the way.

today was awesome. from pacific rim to piknic electronik to shakespeare in the park... *this* is how sundays are supposed to be :)
1. *nerdgasm*

i think i've been waiting my whole life for pacific rim. in 3D. on imax. i may have drooled a little. and giggled too much ^_^

2. piknic

dubstep and groovy beats with yang. i wasn't there for long, just long enough to be disappointed that i had to choose between shakespeare and mat the alien.

3. a midsummer night's dream was beautifully executed in such a manner that had everyone laughing out loud throughout the production. the acting, most notably the acting of bad acting, was superb and while the changes to characters and script were noticeable they weren't distracting at all.

vfmp and his boyfriend took me through the village - i've never been - and we sat chatting until it was time to call the weekend to an end.

i'm exhausted, i don't even have the energy to eat anything. it's been a perfect weekend!

peak to trough - part iii

[... continued]

i've just returned home from an hour and a half of non-stop chatter with vfmp.
1. my suspicion that he's gay was confirmed.
2. my worries that he'd see this as a date were allayed (i've been through that awkwardness enough).
3. i was pleasantly surprised to discover he's into shadowrun.
4. i was completely surprised to discover that he's studied literature, is an aspiring author and is into shakespeare.

meeting a vegan like-minded geek the same age as me at tristar? what the hell are the chances?! so i'll be joining him and his crew at a midsummer night's dream at la fontaine tomorrow evening ^_^

---friday:

it was a stormy day, and blessedly cooler. the workday was sensible and relatively relaxed! what a pleasure. megaman came by at some point to inform me that we'd acquired a few more cubicles, and i moved to one of the new window cubicles (!) to make room for one of the core developers who'd been left on the other side of the building.

scrapper's coming to visit on the 6th! i'm really looking forward to seeing him and introducing him to montreal. heavymtl: two two-day passes acquired ^_^

my new cubicle was the perfect place to see the weather suddenly flip from pleasantly cloudy to crazy storm replete with tornado warnings. after megaman sent an email warning of potential sharknados, the office atmosphere immediately switched to weekend mode. we would have gone out to happy hour, only the rain and the wind made that idea seem rather unattractive.

while debating venturing outside, i discovered that jock hadn't completed a task i'd assigned him and so i informed him that he would be finishing it before going out for drinks. it was only then that he made it clear that the instructions i'd given him had gone way over his head; i'm always surprised when an engineer(ing student) whose primary (academic) focus is logic and problem solving doesn't *get* something fundamental to software development. and this is jock, who has been teaching our qa manager the basics of software development.

huh.

i went into mentor mode and started at the very beginning. i taught him the principles of comment-driven coding and i introduced him to the art of deconstructing problems into their simplest component parts. knowing a programming language is not enough, one needs to know how to use it effectively.

i'm not sure if i've mentioned this before but jock's attitude towards the world is nothing short of inspirational. in particular his dedication to figuring things out under the gun. on a number of occasions i offered him the chance to go home and continue on monday - i knew that he was going to be driving a lot last night and i didn't want to mess up his plans. he refused, he was going to finish this. i was happy to oblige, and a couple of hours later we were done. he was done, i should say. and i was satisfied.

so was he. he was very grateful, filled with praise and insistent that i do what i did with him with every intern as they arrive. in addition to being flattered, two things really hit home during that talk before we left the building:

1. the interns, regardless of their academic tracks or their previous experience, will not be prepared for the level of work that i consider to be absolutely basic.

2. my academic qualifications aside, i have a lot more valuable experience than i give myself credit for. not in terms of what's on my resume - my resume is a vague summary that's too high level to really appreciate. what really counts is the generic methodology i've developed through the years, and what has become natural to me is actually counter-intuitive to most people in the industry and almost every new graduate.

jock's words combined with my mother and the cto both praising me on my patience and teaching ability this week have inspired me to create a blog (not anonymous, so i won't link here) to share my methodology.

it was a cooler evening and i walked into a cooler apartment, i spent the next couple of hours working on the blog (and the first post, but i need good examples before i actually put it up) and then i watched an episode of tng to see wil wheaton in action before going to bed.

---saturday:

a long wake from a mad epic dream involving a driver's license exam in an ontario swamp at 3am and being offered career assistance by a teacher with worse connections than i already had.

after posting the first part of this sequence i did some shopping, watched another episode of tng and some ufc before resuming with the second part. then i went to godmother's for dinner.

---godmother went for a run today with yin (who's healing well, she can now walk a block / run a block). it's the first time godmother's ever run in her life, and she was complaining about her muscles being sore.
"just stretch a little whenever it hurts, " i said, "it's your body adjusting to new demands."
"nah, if it keeps hurting i'll just take two advil."
that totally cracked me up.

---it was a perfect summer evening, punctuated with occasional unpleasantness that peaked with my uncle proudly expressing his bigotry and unable to understand why we were all upset. just before i left, he goaded me into button-pushing: i told him i'm an ordained pastafarian minister. i think godmother and yin thought i was talking shit, but either way their attempts to change the subject were so synchronized that they couldn't have been planned better.
"hey! look at the moon! it's so beautiful!"

godmother and yin had made me rather self-conscious about wearing my sunglasses at night. not that i needed their help, but i left feeling so stupid that instead of wearing them i tried just keeping my eye closed. i hope i didn't squeeze to hard, because i was specifically warned about that and squeezing becomes automatic when you're holding only one eye. after getting off the bus i discovered that my eye's not quite as good as it's been the past week. i'm a bit disappointed. or perhaps my eye's just tired or something.

speaking of which, i've spent far too much time in front of a screen today and i've got a big day planned for tomorrow. it's time to crash.

---meytal cohen's slipknot - duality cover is a lot of fun to watch.

peak to trough - part ii

[... continued]

so after a long day i was tired to the point of feeling ill, and slightly wired to boot. i babysat the cto through a big two-part integration, with the second part being delayed until the following morning. i got a ride from our qa manager because a crazy thunderstorm was brewing, and all i wanted to do when i got home was crash.

unfortunately, i had laundry to do. i kept myself occupied with stargate sg-1 and jackass 3 while it ran, but then had a problem: it was too hot and humid to sleep. seriously. i've been living in the middle east, the ultimate hot and humid, for twelve years and this here felt way worse.

i guess i'm a winter person now.

to my mind it's plausible that a part of the heat came from within: even hours after my laundry came out the dryer it was still piping hot. perhaps i have it the other way around. whichever.

---i'm picturing a future civilization figuring out how to play an unearthed copy of jackass 3 and treating it as a cultural artifact representative of the times. if it's a choice between jackass and cartoons, the cartoons would make me proud of my species. they're kind of the same, only one's a little more focused on bodily functions.

---thursday:

after a sleepless, uncomfortable night i got up at 6am to complete the integration. it took an hour and wasn't at all fun*, plus i pissed him off because i made a comment about some badly written code and it apparently wasn't my place to do so.

* although i was praised for my patience and my ability to teach

i did manage to pass out for an hour after that, which made dragging myself to work all the tougher. as i stepped outside the building i found myself refreshed! if the apartment's worse than outside, i need air conditioning.

the quote of the day came from newk'd: "the internet connection is up and down, and i've come to accept it. it's like i've been born into poverty".

i was super-busy in the morning, i had a lot of hands to hold and some big decisions to make; at noon i needed to put my eye drops in before heading out to the clinic for my follow-up appointment. at noon i was called in for a surprise urgent meeting with the cto (who was supposed to be on holiday, which was why we did the integration at 6am) to go over a bunch of things we've already gone over three times. i was not amused.

---technician: "oh! what happened to your eye? that doesn't look so good."
me: "actually, i like it."
technician: "ha, ha! you're very funny!"
me: "no, seriously. it's grown on me! i'm going to be sorry when it gets better."

i don't know why she thought that was the funniest bit. afterwards i saw the surgeon, who asked me how i feel. "so you're good? and you've just come to confirm? excellent."

i began reading wil wheaton's just a geek using the kindle app and i gotta say, i'm quite surprised at how entertaining it is. he's basically done what i wanted to do with all of my army posts. erm. with his own blog posts, i mean.

i had some personal meetings with a few developers in the afternoon and it became a good boss day for me: i'm sorry i didn't do this before. i learned some very important things, in particular i discovered a monumental miscommunication between megaman and one of our remote workers that changes our game significantly!

i entered an email time warp, slowly catching up to the present. jock was kind enough to take me to the walmart - he needed something and i wanted an a/c. walmart was a total failure, not just because they were all out of reasonably-priced units but because comms were down for the area so it was all cash only. we then went to canadian tire, where the units either required permanent installation (heck, no) or were way more expensive than i'd like for something i'm hoping is only short term. i eventually walked out with a window fan, which isn't the same at all but it's still pretty cool. it also makes a loud humming noise, which i find helps me sleep better :)

i had a long chat with my mother in the evening, and it looks like we're both managing well lately. this is good!

late night shopping wearing sunglasses is weird.

hovek olam - star sounds orchestra popped up on my playlist and i had to share the smile. i haven't heard it in a looooooong time...

i was a much better night, i declined posting in order to get into bed quickly.

[continued...]

peak to trough - part i

well! i cannot express just how much of a relief this weekend is for me. i mean, i've just spent most of my day today either reading or contemplating where i am and how fascinating it is that all of the things causing me to stress in life are in the niggling details while the big picture is looking fantastic.

the past three days have been intense; i'm supposed to be healing, and i spent them suffering sleep deprivation (partially due to the absurdly uncomfortable weather we've been having) and a pile-up of responsibilities that pushed me to a new level. i'm really proud of how i managed to keep it all together!

---wednesday:

i got up stupidly early for an appointment i've waited over a month for - which was set for tuesday. how did i screw up the calendar entry?!?! this was a really good start to the day. there wasn't enough time to get some sleep before work, so i got in to the office an hour and a half earlier than i usually do.

everything was quiet and peaceful until cheshire cat lady rocked up. i don't particularly like her at the best of times, and to have her suddenly popping into existence behind me while i was trying to focus on bigger issues didn't push my sympathy buttons. i dismissed her, telling her to let me know when imperieux became available.

instead, she brought imperieux over to my cubicle which was not what i asked her to do, once again disturbing me and giving me a sense of having my personal space invaded. fine. i locked my computer and walked them over to her space.

i have a job to do, and that job is to solve problems. the first part of solving any problem is determining what, precisely, that problem is. so i began the interview. cheshire cat lady is not one for precision, in fact she's one of the least technical / rational people i've come across. i have no idea how she ended up in the field of technical writing and i'm pretty sure she's the worst possible candidate for the job.

her first claim: "the interface is terrible and it doesn't do what i need it to do." the sad part is that she participated in the design and its iterations. as i drilled down in an attempt to uncover the underlying causes of her distress, i began to pick up on specifics and offered her solutions to those so that we could focus on finding the rest of the problems. it was terribly frustrating to have her repeatedly return to the resolved issues, and just as frustrating having her instruct us on technical aspects of a solution that wouldn't actual help anybody.

my job is to solve problems. my job is to determine underlying causes and then to figure out how to resolve the issues in a manner coherent with the big picture. the user is always right, but that extends on so far as to say that the user knows when something is wrong with the experience. it doesn't mean that the user knows what needs to happen behind the scenes and it certainly doesn't mean that one user's needs can override any of the others'.

so i pressed on in my quest to put all the pieces together, and she pressed on with complaining about everything being wrong (there were three issues in the end, the rest of this rather complex piece of machinery was designed perfectly adequately). not only was she repeating herself and constantly returning to the already-resolved issues, which was frustrating, but the more she repeated herself the more frustrated she became and the louder her voice got. very soon this escalated into her screaming at us, so loudly that the entire building could hear full well what she was thinking and this upset a lot of people.

now, i'm no angel. i kept my voice down, but as much as i didn't want her to shout i cannot say that my dislike for her and her idiocy didn't extend to my holding back on making her feel cared for and appreciated. it's hard to refrain from gently pushing someone over the edge when they're highly unlikable and talking utter rubbish. i was on a path to being entirely dispassionate, and while i knew that this was upsetting her i wasn't about to begin pandering to a fool. i don't play nice when i'm being shouted down by incompetence.

i say i was on a path to being entirely dispassionate, but the shouting soon devolved into personal attack. i went from cold to super-heated anger in a flash, at the same time keeping an iron fist clenched around remaining professional.

"i'm trying to help you, " i said behind gritted teeth, "and you're antagonizing me. it's very hard to think straight when you're doing that."

just then, megaman stepped up to the cubicle. he stood for a moment, while cheshire cat lady screamed on, and then made a quieting motion with his hand. what happened next made me do something totally unprofessional; i simply couldn't resist such an appropriate response to her (perhaps unwitting) moment of clarity. she continued her rant in her loud voice, this time directed to megaman and with me behind her back.

"... and i'm sure everyone thinks i'm mad..."

and in full view of imperieux and megaman, i opened my eyes comically wide and nodded my head furiously in agreement.

megaman invited us to join him behind closed doors, and with all of her perpetual noise it took the better part of fifteen minutes before he understood what we had already homed in on a while before. i explained my plan of action and told him how and when we'd execute it, and once he had ever-so-sweetly managed to get our message across to the idiot, imperieux and i made our escape.

i needed a few moments to explain to everyone else what the drama was about in the most politically correct "we just had a miscommunication" way possible without sharing my true thoughts on the matter. when it was time to get to work on the fixes, i took imperieux for a game of pool first to put us in a better mood (he won) and i sat with him the entire time to make absolutely sure that there was no way for any more miscommunications to interfere.

it took an hour or so, but by the time he was done i knew that this was everything cheshire cat lady needed. i called her over for an acceptance test, sighed deeply when she approved and then went back to my otherwise pretty busy day.

...

a few hours later she approached me again, with that extra-special super-sincere cheshire smile of hers.
"everything's great, thank you. now, is it possible to have all the items in the menu listed in alphabetical order?"

fuck you.

"i don't know, but it's really not a priority right now. i'll discuss it with <imperieux>."

boy, was i ever pissed when she approached imperieux directly and he made the changes on the fly!

petty? sure.

---the qa manager came up to me later on to inform me that he was buying sports supplements in bulk if i wanted in. l-carnitine was on sale, i don't remember if i ordered it or not. i just found out that l-carnitine is bad.

[continued...]

stretch

over the past two days, we've discussed replacing the it guy and ceh (he's arrogant, difficult to work with and hates communicating). the development team now has access to a rubber chicken (that squawks, it's funny but i didn't know about that when i ordered it). i have received my vegan creatine, and it's not bad at all! i have discovered that one of our clients is an ex-soldier with stories up the wazoo and friends who've served in the idf, so we bonded over funny catch-22 tales.

two days now that it's been so hot that i've been happy to stay a little later off the clock for the a/c; yesterday to be regaled with tales of snowboarding (and photos) and today updating my macbook and watching paths of hate which is stunning.

megaman can't look me in the eyes with my red background, and i find that hysterical. i really, really like the way it looks.

i joined vfmp, his brother and a friend last night for magic: the gathering. the cards and the rules have changed (a) little since i last played, but it was a lot of fun :)

quote of the day: "i pay one life and look for an island"
all i could think of was "isn't that what we're all doing?"

i was surprised to be on the winning team (two on two, it's possible) and left around midnight to catch the bus. the one i needed was a no-show (!!), but a couple of minutes later another one went past and the route worked out in the end. i did a dance of showering, putting drops in my eyes and eating, finally getting to bed around 2am because there was so much going on on facebook.

that shit be dangerous. especially ma. ma is beautiful. ma is borne of great intentions. ma deserves support.

i woke up exhausted this morning.

today was a long day of meetings and of assisting the cto with our integration procedure. there was something odd about doing an on-the-fly code review for my superior and hearing him promise to fix the things i pointed out :P

i'd ordered delicious chana masala yesterday and couldn't finish it so i packaged it up and put it in the office fridge. usually that's the same as putting it in the trash, but on my way out this evening i suddenly remembered and it made a great dinner the second time around! i started watching stargate sg-1 before joining jock and his girlfriend at the dollar cinema to watch pain and gain.

what a crazy film! comedic horror at its finest, i'm really glad i didn't know the real story before watching. the only thing that wasn't enjoyable was sitting in such uncomfortable seats...

i did say that my left eye has become dominant: i was wrong. it's just that the change in visual acuity makes it appear so.

---the current humble bundle is brilliant!

red eye

i'm absolutely adoring the look of my iris with its bloody background. i may not be ready to risk an eyeball tattoo, but i'm certainly going to miss what i have right now.

principles of recovery

i don't know what made me change my mind, but i was right to avoid alcohol. i was so focused on watching young frankenstein that i may or may not have absent-mindedly scratched my eye.

i may also have enjoyed the movie without finding it particularly funny.

functional

well. i slept alright last night, and began my day meeting another illustrator. i think we had a meeting of the minds, we're going to trial run two weeks after which she'll tell me more or less how much work she expects needs to be done and how much money she'll want. we can take it from there.

the afternoon kind of whiled itself away, i've been doing some actual work and just took a break to watch an episode of misfits. what a fun series!

now to decide if i should go out for a walk (and shopping mission) now or later.

these lenses! so scratchy!

i had a nap early and didn't think to wear my goggles. since then my eye's been a little irritated and i'm hoping i didn't touch it in my sleep :(

amusingly, my right eyelid's begun twitching. the hell?

i spent a large part of the afternoon giving my mother telephone support (well, skype) to set up her iphone. the iphone's not the problem, obviously. my well-intentioned sister overcomplicated her gmail and itunes accounts while helping her out; when you're introducing someone to something new, you don't show them the most unwieldy parts first. the whole point of an iphone is its simplicity, if you want more out of it or if you want to cheat the system then that's your business. i wouldn't have jailbroken mine if it hadn't been for the network lock... and, quite frankly, my little phone and i are paying the price for the jailbreak every day. the performance dropped noticeably and i can't upgrade my shit...

as we're putting our apartment in tel aviv on the market, we're looking at apartments here in montreal. good lord! cheaper than tel aviv, and that's for beautiful apartments in hip areas! sounds like a good deal to me :)

when i said something about training she stopped to ask me which gym i'm at. one of her colleagues was really excited when he heard that i was doing mma in montreal: "is he at tristar??"
my mother didn't know, but yes, yes i am. and that's why i'm so damned excited all the time :)

i did a little shopping which was a great excuse for a short walk outside. it's such a beautiful evening! and it's so weird to be seeing it in such sharp relief. within two days my left eye has already become dominant. mind-blowing.

chiba city

early thursday morning, i paid using the same credit card machine they use for take-out before removing my shoes and donning surgery cap and booties. a technician sat me down and told me what to expect afterwards. a few minutes went past, then the surgeon came by and i followed him into the operating room.

a small, sterile room furnished with two large machines separated by a table that felt like a padded stretcher. the procedure was explained vaguely and the lights went out. in the dark, with my eye beneath a circle of yellow light with a flashing red dot in the center, i imagined how it must feel to undergo back-alley surgery, whether abortion or body upgrades. this was an upgrade, for sure, trusting this stranger and his machines with one of my optical sensors.

"look straight up, don't move" was the mantra he chanted. over and over and over again. a metal hoop of sorts? to hold my eyelids open? no. i'm moved to the other machine. "look straight up, don't move," he repeats, and i try to relax my body as it stiffens against the hoop pressing into my eye. that pressure increases and i'm almost gasping for breath. "look straight up, don't move," he says, as i think of that hoop being pushed straight through my eyeball and brain and grinding into the back of my skull. my vision pops into blackness, have i fainted? oh gods, i forgot to tell him i have a syncope. is now the time to tell him? no, it can't be. i say something, he misunderstands and i have to explain that it's okay, everything's okay, i just don't know when to be alarmed. can i see again?

i'm back under the first machine, a circle floats between me and the machine. "look straight up, don't move" over and over and over again. i'm trying not to move, i'm trying to focus. what am i supposed to focus on? it hurts, my eyeball flutters involuntarily, am i messing this up? am i going to blind myself because i can't keep my eye still? "look straight up, don't move," he repeats. the machine is whirring to life and then backing off, over and over. "look straight up, don't move," and he counts down. he's doing it, the laser is shooting into my eye and shaping me and he's counting down and i'm focusing everything i have on not moving but what if i move? what if my eye flickers? am i breathing? am i moving? should i relax? should i tense?

suddenly the mantra stops and the machine stops and the lights go on and a technician gives me a hand. i stand up, disoriented, and i stumble outside in a daze. the first technician is there to greet me and show me where to sit for the next hour, to tell me that it'll be hazy and it'll burn and scratch and that i need to tell them if anything's going horribly wrong.

i sit down, blinking rapidly. i don't stop blinking, am i blinking enough? can i look out the window? the sunlight bounces off the cars in the parking lot so i try not to stand where it'll reach me. even through the haze and fog and blur i can see that my eyesight's improved - it's improved so much that for the first time i can tell just how bad my "good" eye is. can i use headphones? or will the bass cause my eyeball to vibrate? silly, i know, but i have to ask.

time flies, i sit or i pace and i appreciate this little miracle. upgrade complete, installing latest device drivers. it's feeling good, it's not hurting like i was warned. when she told me about the burning and said "you'll see", she was wrong about the burning but right about my seeing. i do see. it's beautiful.

...

my one eye now sees far and my other near, so depending on what i need to focus on i just close the inefficient one. this is fantastic!

---aota picked me up and we stopped for veggie burgers at harvey's down the road. a bit of office gossip as well, and she informed me that i wasn't missing anything as megaman wasn't in and the office comms were down. if i'm not working, nobody's working.
she dropped me off at home and i spent the next several hours using the computer or my phone in short bursts (so as not to forget to blink enough - that's the real reason you can't read or anything) and enjoying the greatest nap in the whole world. me and my sleep goggles.

leap motion's pre-order form is a bit of a mess, and they're aware of it. after getting my knickers in a knot because it's almost go-time and no matter how i tried i couldn't get my details correct, i requested phone support. they came through, and the agent was pleasant, and i ended up satisfied. i can't understand how a company with such an amazing product can fail on a web form, but whatever.

vfmp shot me a mail inviting me to a magic the gathering / vegan eats evening. now that i can't train for two weeks, this sounds like a good alternative :)

my first eyedrops sessions were frustrating, but it takes fifteen minutes every six hours so at some point i'm going to become proficient.

aota and newk'd took me out to an indian restaurant in snowden, it was a fun evening. what wasn't fun was my mom repeatedly trying and failing to get hold of me because i had no signal and newk'd telling me a story about yang that was so ugly it was embarrassing to hear. rule number 1: "don't be an asshole". calling the cops on peaceful protestors because you don't agree with the protest is not okay.

---friday:

between my goggles, the hot, humid night and my neck i had a terrible time sleeping. i felt horrible in the morning.

in general, waking up for my early drops sucks.

on my way to the follow-up appointment, i was embarrassed to get off the bus and discover that i'd been sitting next to one of the technicians and hadn't recognized her (she said hi to me). i'd arrived too early so i crossed the road to the tim horton's to pick up a doughnut and coffee. i didn't cross in the most legal of ways and two cops stepped out of the coffee shop and began to walk in my direction... [they ignored me, i was grateful]

...

i live in a strange building: the apartments have heating during winter, and the building has a/c during summer. that means that if my apartment gets too hot and humid i can just go sit in the corridor where it's cool and dry.

it was a pleasant afternoon of naps and inconsequential things. i took a bath before dinner, which was a mission and a half. godmother picked me up and i was surprised to find myself allowed back to her house.

my uncle is now only too happy to have me over any time! it's because i am jésus-christ de moustique. he always thought he got everyone's mosquitoes, but that was until last night. he also thinks that my green oakley jawbones are the greatest joke ever.

...

on the metro home i sat opposite a well-dressed woman who coughed non-stop without covering her mouth. typical, when one needs to protect one's eye.

i spent the next hour or so voting on soundtrack styles for shadowrun online. then i took a muscle relaxant and went to bed.

---today:

i suspect that i shouldn't have taken the muscle relaxant. it didn't really help and it made me feel horrid when i got out of bed this morning for my first drops.

i've so far done nothing much today, and i don't care. i've really needed a few days of nothing, i'm only too glad for the excuse!

the other part of the day

the previous post covers the bit of the day that really interested me. the rest follows:

it took forever to get my post-op prescription filled out. i mean, like, i was the only customer in the pharmacy and it took more than twenty minutes. the hell?!

when i strolled up to the counter i threw my headphones over my shoulder. i can't explain the logic behind that move, but i was late for work and almost at the metro station when i realized that i couldn't find them. what a waste of $20! i was really upset about them until i realized that i'd put them in a place that made no sense and forgotten it.

work: a long day of meetings. towards the end i tried to help our cto with the svn and due to an unfortunate series of miscommunications i put him into fight mode. it took a while before i could calm him down and get him on the same page, from there everything was friendly and smooth-sailing but i ended up leaving much later for the gym than i'd intended.

note: there's nothing i appreciate less than a surprise visit from a client who's not supposed to need our help with what he's doing and who changes the rules of the game at the last minute.

as i crossed the road illegally i found myself looking directly at a police car. i felt awfully exposed, and went through that for nothing as i just missed my train anyway.

...

now preparing for a couple of days of nothing. i've stocked the fridge and cupboards, now i just need to make sure that i have a way to listen to my french audio lessons because apparently i won't be able to read, use the computer or watch tv.

first withdrawal

1. i've just completed my pre-op training, and already i'm missing it! i'm totally addicted.

2. just like last week's post-trauma kickboxing loosened my leg up and had me feeling good, tonight's double muay-thai and boxing has drastically improved my neck and back. if this doesn't tell me that i have the body of a true masochist...

3. between the muay thai and the boxing i don't think i've ever managed so many proper (explosive) pushups in one day.

4. the guy i worked with in muay thai taught me the basics of defending against punches! it's the first time i've had some kind of clue what to do :)
that didn't stop me from tasting one of his feet, though.

5. after muay thai i was sweating so much that even the instructor was shocked. at the end of the class he made me fetch a mop and clean up. i couldn't resist shouting "wax on! wax off!" with every stroke.

warp-spasm

quick! before the day actually begins and i head off to the pharmacy to pick up my meds for tomorrow's surgery.

yesterday was another great day (today, not so much). great news for the day was that my uncle came through surgery in a decent state - he'd fallen a short while ago and had developed postsurgical psychosis...

anyway, the day was fairly uninteresting with quite a lot of administrative tasks. an email from pg made me laugh out loud, in addition to arriving at the conclusion that purchasing hats is easier than making them she's decided that bournemouth is like eilat: hot and dry weather and chavs (arsim).

infinity - techniques is awesome.

---training.

jiu-jitsu: there was only an advanced class. the techniques we learned were nothing short of mind-blowing; especially as a beginner it's hard to wrap my head around some of these ideas. i learned that my rash guard on a hot day gets me producing an insane amount of sweat. i also learned that i need to train with a box.

it is a really, really intimate sport.

everything was great, though, and i felt like i was making real progress! i even stayed behind to spar with my partner (vfmp) at the end. that was fine until i found myself being flipped over my neck right off the mat.

that was bad. very bad. my neck and back muscles all spasmed in unison, and the rest is suffering.

kickboxing:

in spite of not being able to turn my neck left, it was a solid kickboxing session. not only was i supremely proud of myself for being singled out to the beginners as the right form to follow, our punching bag session went well and i chose the duct-taped boxing bag. this is the bag everyone stays away from, but my shins have toughened enough that i could handle it ^_^

all in all, it was a most satisfying three hours. except, of course, for my neck. i had a hot bath, then sat with frozen peas over my shoulder while drinking dinner alongside a couple of slices of toast.

i went to bed early, but i can't say that i really slept last night. it was more just lying there rearranging my neck.

---guantanamo bay supporters: you're right. years and years of madness, and still going strong.

it's not stupid! it's...

[this posting backed by sundance - psymorocco]

today was my first lesson in advanced boxing. for the first time i understood what our instructor meant by "you need to relax": it's not my shoulders, it's that "every jab you throw is set to 'destroy', you can't throw knockout strikes every shot".

... or can i?
}:D

damn, i'm now so pleased with myself that i can't decide if i should listen to him or not, and i'm *pretty* sure he knows better than me.

...

oh, the second handle of my cheap skipping rope broke today. each time it gets a little shorter, so the first break made it perfect and now... i don't know how i feel about it. but i do think that my footwork and rhythm are getting on track.

---i always thought it was a cape town thing:
"what do you call great weather after two lousy days?"
"monday."

well, turns out it's a montreal thing as well - today was absolutely stunning, warm but not sticky with the sun shining and the birds singing.

---the day began with a disturbance in the force: ceh was unimpressed with his mandate and megaman was equally unimpressed with ceh's strategy. these two are old friends, and about halfway through i recognized their professional relationship being similar to that of mine and spot's. megaman's giving the guy a break, the guy's smart but out of sync with his role, and for a moment i almost saw sparks flying. i felt super-weird getting involved, and almost made a joke along the lines of "now, now, children", but instead took an arbitration position and managed to get everyone playing the same game.

i was very proud of myself just then. we actually managed to take something positive out of the bad, i snuck in a little of my agenda at the same time (which is kind of in line with what ceh wants) and megaman was satisfied.

...

later on i'd get megaman and the cfo considering investing in a decent videoconferencing setup instead of having employees / executives flying regularly between offices. it's 2013 already, you know? just saying.

---i spent most of my morning resolving issues with our recent ip change and trying to figure out why godaddy never stops sucking. the first support agent i spoke to was a moron, the second was sweet but essentially blew me off. i hope her advice was on point.

the best part of dealing with them? prior to being put on hold while waiting for an agent, an option to not hear muzak was offered. good show!

---i spoke to the laser clinic and they've assured me that it's only one eye and that they know which one it is. so it looks like we're on for thursday!

i didn't get to take lunch until 2pm, and never had a chance to drink my morning coffee either. this was fine, great even, until about 3pm when i suddenly developed a withdrawal headache :(

i'm intrigued that nystire's considering the possibility of working in montreal. i don't see how he could possibly go wrong doing that, but then we've never seen eye-to-eye when it comes to making big life decisions :P

a friend of a friend sent me his resume to pass on for an opening we have. i sent it back and told him he needs to run it through a spell-check. wtf?! do people really not realize that these things matter when you're trying to make a good impression? i suppose spelling errors are better than wrong-word-chosen-by-spell-check errors, though. i've seen some funny ones lately.

i was exhausted by the time i got on the metro home, so much so that i could barely stand. what a pleasure to walk into a clean apartment (the cleaning lady's leaving the country this week for a month), quaff an energy drink and head out to boxing!

...

it's been a very relaxed and unproductive evening. i think i'm ready to go to bed early again. i have dreams to catch up on.

slipping

oh, gods - i just managed to pull myself out of bed, i could've stayed like that forever! i was so perfectly comfortable with the dulled sunlight and the whirring fan and in a state where each alarm snooze brought a new dream.

real world, you are cruel today.