close calls

giving friendly tech support one day late - explaining to gd that helping fix windows problems is not what i do...

unsafe plugs: my laptop's previous owner had taped the broken cable in the stupidest way and i was lucky that this morning's sparks were all that happened

surprisingly great feedback, setting comic lunch dates

good QA analysis, ez pz rpg advancement surprise (i seem to be doing better than the others)

running for *almost* an hour, but overheating and becoming uncomfortable and feeling like time had slowed down

finishing a feel-good fix to clean up our codebase

advising sasquatch on quitting smoking and one of our QA team on nutrition

almost getting run over for misunderstanding the road works and it would have been entirely my fault, the shock and shame were overwhelming, especially considering we have a baby on the way

having to buy a new laptop charger because the universal cable broke and nobody sells those

rescuing the homeless guy from klapvoet the metro driver

wedding bands arrived!

linkage

the problem with long hours

a generation of entitlement

protonmail is awesome

a fascinating article on john keats

things that happen to couples

snapchat's ceo's answer to business planning

not working to get paid? not exactly, in my opinion. in this case, the author's being paid so that he can focus on producing art. that's work, it's just not an industrial kind of work.

it seems like the shaman's view of psychological disorders is in line with the academic. it would be nice if our institutions could share a similar understanding...

for activists: how to win hearts and minds.

lost luggage? this guy might be able to help.

anger has upsides?

john oliver on standardized testing.

according to MIT, solar is good enough.

long weekend

friday:

asking for a show of hands in the stand-up meeting

gd stopping work

getting up to a comfortable hour on the treadmill, finishing hungry

helping my backend dev debug and then continuing with hac, traveling home with my junior and aligning goals.

a great start to the weekend, a surprisingly fast tax refund really helping out. back muscle swollen, wedding rings and copper branch and van hellsing (the original series, funimation's really difficult to navigate)

ice cream overload, passing out on the couch behind gd

saturday:

and dreaming about creating a wicked beat, moving from couch to bed via brushing teeth and realizing that the tooth i haven't had cash to treat has become infected 

oh, ez pz rpg...

failed laser treatment: too much tan to try

support shopping and three year old signs wasting our time

buying wedding rings online

urgently resting and resting WELL (including van hellsing, speed grapher and hot fuzz)

developing a decidedly disappointing cough, then sharing it, back still hurting

last-minute shopping, in-house shoe weirdness with bnw

rick and morty, ez pz rpg and the rest of hot fuzz

yesterday:

a late, good start

wanting to translate the israeli opposition's parliament speech for the rest of the world

aubut mission and weak arms

researching pregnancy varicose veins, learning how serious they are and how relatively common they are

final fantasy for the first time in ages with gd trying to get through some jewish studies, an important conversation about conversion

nightcrawler is an excellent movie. no no: a dockumentary is amazing.

gd taking risks on food and copper branch's extreme poutine fail

today:

defending a stateless paradigm argument on quora

dreaming of being in an underground resistance movement, turning off the lights and diffusing a situation with our militant muslim neighbours, robin williams kissing everyone's cheeks in an exaggerated manner but the two of us just covering our eyes at each other

breakfast ideologies

february rent mission

hanging pictures and sorting out my standing desk

shopping nightmare (supermarket filled with assholes and a long list)

horseman to the rescue, an afternoon of awesome tekken and talking until late

my first steaming veggies in our new apartment: gd was sleeping so i forgot to turn the heat down, but even soggy it tasted bloody good

now exhausted and in desperate need of some sleep before returning to the office.

nutritional song and dance

so there's a food revolution day thing going around, and some people have taken offense to it.

if more people ate healthily it would relieve an enormous burden on our healthcare systems. it wouldn't suddenly stop poverty but it certainly wouldn't hurt. if lots of people really got serious about eating healthily (and i'm talking about educating themselves about nutrition properly, not getting into fads), we might even do some damage control on climate change...

about five years ago i weighed less than i do now and ended up relying on medical services unnecessarily due to malnutrition that was caused by a simple lack of knowledge - and not just on my part. all of the top diseases that plague north americans in particular are treatable by diet.

as for the relationship to poverty: it is absolutely abominable that some of the cheapest food sources we have are what they are. the sad fact is that the laws of economics dictate that as long as the shitty foods are the most popular, they will be produced en masse and therefore be the cheapest. while nutritional education won't help the poor immediately, if enough people above the poverty line begin eating healthIER then good veggies can move from luxuries to commodities and be accessible. it feels utterly ridiculous to have to think in those terms, but that's what the industrial age has done to us...

... having said that, i just got lectured on food costs by someone who spent a good decade struggling with poverty, and she informed me that eating vegetables and grains is actually cheaper, short-term and long-term, *IF* you avoid the expensive and vastly overrated specially packaged organic non-GMO shit.
not only that, but urban farming is a thing and a little bit of effort goes a long way.

just an aside to whoever mentioned canned beans and corn - those are much healthier than a lot of expensive foods. and certainly healthier than cheeseburgers.

the more educated we are - not you and me individually, but as a society - the more balanced things will be. and when that transformation does become significant, poor people will have access too. so maybe jamie oliver is an asshole, and maybe his little video is stupid, but if it can bring attention to the topic in the mainstream then that's definitely a good thing. now we just need to get the right data into our schools and our governments; the latter have bad habits of supporting and subsidizing things that are not good for us and the former produce the latter...

winning uphill battles

sunday:

i was even exhausted when waking up late. it was a good morning and it was great having a chance to skype with dirk diggler (and introduce him to gd, finally), we had a great lunch with our son's godmother and a wonderful afternoon nap.

then we went shopping and the evening turned wet and unpleasant.

monday:

still raining. very comfortable when actually in bed, rather annoying when not. you know what i love about the rain?

nothing.

i mean, in theory i think rain is the best thing ever, but in practice i don't want the stuff anywhere near me. "i'm only happy after the rain..."

a little bit of work, a lot of firefighting, my no-longer-ex-manager gifting me a nabu x (wtf???), a tedious but ultimately successful* shadowrun scene

* in the sense that we completed the scene, the protagonists were utterly unsuccessful but they at least survived

the brain strain of watching robin williams' last movie knowing that he committed suicide afterwards

tuesday:

a calm morning lying in, good breakfast start and stepping out into a surprisingly warm, wonderful day wearing a ski jacket

the nabu x software sucks.

firing day, tricky unlimited sick day policy, working harder and only somewhat smart; a good lunch run but almost leaving my shoes at the gym, working late, a delicious dinner and a pleasant dog walk, awesome poetry and mst3k

wednesday:

the nabu x lies about my sleep patterns

dragging myself out of bed and hurrying to get to aubut before going to work but they didn't have what i wanted and gd wasn't answering her phone (in retrospect i'm glad i didn't take anything instead)

super mario in the men's room

build automation win

hurried lunch, winning a code review

my main project: i may not be working on it nearly as much as i should be, but my manager was pleased with my report and valued my response when he posed a potential problem

fighting fires: nobody's fault, but when i suggested a possible solution to the IT expert he agreed, so i scored myself more work. it's really fun, interesting stuff, it just doesn't fit my schedule...

workflow fix surprise: something i asked for two months ago was pushed through a month ago... only nobody published the info anywhere! everyone's super-excited now that we know

great boxing, solidly finishing the final cardio; watching a little sparring, running into the office to pick up my sweater and ending up returning home with our office d&d crew.

walking in to an unhappy gd; getting back on track and her making a fantastic dinner, talking until late and then doing the garbage day thing before bed

yesterday:

early up to draw cash and pick up non-existent items (again) from aubut under a burning sun

nabu x: manually setting sleep mode helped but the data's not providing much insight other than a rough approximation as to how many hours i was in bed. steps-wise, the data is interesting but not really helpful to me because i'm pretty active anyway. so far, the biggest reason for wearing this thing is the vibrating alert when i don't hear or feel my phone. that's awesome.

guilt is not the best "goodbye, have a great day" emotion; trying to avoid the sun and being late for work but getting stuck in the metro and having to walk without shade (no buses or taxies) from plamondon

starting the day with a great IT meeting - including offloading that extra work, seeing hac through his tasks, going to pushap alone was refreshing

learning our pm's limitations when trying to explain a joke to him, spending the afternoon doing what i was supposed to (my primary task) and thoroughly enjoying myself

solid kickboxing, quickly chatting with my mother before returning home to shop

bug overreaction

van hellsing new and improved but occasionally interrupted by funimation's app being kinda shitty

this morning:

it's like my alarm - and its subsequent snoozes - is punishment for me being so perfectly comfortable. a good breakfast and a little french while discussing body image and mental illness misconceptions.

kitchen studio

damn, after something like four hours of recording in our kitchen with horseman and his buddy (who's essentially producing this show), i get just how much work goes into these things. gd walked in at a good time to provide her services as singing coach, so that became a thing. by the time we were done we had a few good samples and a solid plan of action - hopefully we'll finish up next weekend and i'll be able to publish some stuff.

we went off to see the new cool at abyss, which has some gorgeous pieces, then headed to p.m. for a delicious dinner and fun politics before calling it a night.

an exciting close to a good week

thursday:

high tone, purchasing "perfect slicer" for gd so i can justify buying something equally silly for myself, rushing to leave on time to meet horseman at the court so he could bear witness to our application to get married. it looks like we're going to be signing the papers on the fourth of july! i guess that'll be our "dependants day" :D

work on time, a weird day with my now-ex manager maybe staying, both him and ol' snake eyes playing nice (including an hour-long support lecture during which he actually included quite a lot of sage advice amongst his decidedly dubious diatribes), working hard until training time

crazy cardio to finish the class and the drills a little bit rougher than intended, utterly wiped out by the end; the barest minimum of an evening and getting to bed early again

yesterday:

a fantastic night's sleep, a good start to the morning including my first rosetta stone french lesson - their online subscription is totally worthwhile

an awkward but relaxed day at work, a break after lunch to unintentionally soak up some sun while lost on my way to catch a quick coffee with sagirl, returning to work a little more and then heading off to the gym for a forty minute run followed by a solidly demanding boxing class: summer has arrived in tristar! the evening was sweaty and gross but deeply satisfying.

feeling good, but sore and stiff and marshmallow-like all at the same time. copper branch and high tone dinner delight. gd liking the early scraps to a new piece inspired by the most outrageous racism that i'd witnessed during the day (i'm staying friends with the offender on facebook so i can keep seeing what's up on the other side - interestingly enough, everything else he's been posting is so in line with me that i'm sorry facebook didn't show me that stuff instead...)

today so far:

sleeping in, slowly starting the day right. trying to schedule a meeting with the new illustrator and waiting for horseman to bring over equipment for a recording session.

big links

there've been quite a few awesome things going around lately...

outgrowing pornography: intriguing stuff: i love that there's also reference to the kind of softporn we're flooded with through regular advertising.

3D-printed ultrasound? WIN.

gd sent me this link to an article with a bunch of highly entertaining and useful portmanteaus.

nick cave in dr. seuss form!

what was that? taxing the rich fairly doesn't result in the wholesale destruction of civilization? i'm shocked.

philosoraptor ftw. i don't care if it's an old one.

omg the tesla battery: elon musk has produced something amazingly awesome as usual! why people should care.

from snopes:

nope, it's not a suicide bear.

nope, poop-beard is not a thing.

going uphill

monday:

rough start and gd tax filing fails, leaving late

a long day of not getting my top priority done, my israeli teammate being a right prat, lots of knowledge transfers while feeling under the weather, good fluxx break and filing my taxes

home in the cool rain for a night spent getting the hang of shadowrun: it's a steep learning curve but we eventually got through a combat turn that was pretty interesting. house rule: movement pace is halved, more than twenty-five metres in a three-second turn is olympian, and olympic sprinters are doing nothing but focusing on movement

gd and i crashing early, both feeling crap

yesterday:

what a horrible, horrible morning. rushing to finish filing gd's taxes, fighting with and about hydro quebec screwing us over. getting in to work and feeling obligated to share shitty information with my manager that he was already aware of. still no time for my priority work, feeling a bit like my old company...

running off midday to complete and send off gd's tax return, returning to work late for an afternoon of firefighting and watching a train-wreck of my ex-manager defending his pride vs actually getting shit done

staying late, minor advances and clocking hours

quick chat with my sister, getting to bed early

today:

intriguing dreaming, investigating marriage options and hoping that my registered status is correct, spilling coffee on the ipad

post-meeting: being called out for "strutting" by a man whose primary mode of locomotion is "slithering"

an afternoon spent... doing mostly forgettable things, staying late to spend a couple of hours on the job i was *meant* to be doing

back home, shopping and dog-walking, discomfort moving from back to chest

slamming weekend

friday night:

shabbat candles, pharmacy walk in weather warm enough for just a shirt, quicksalad in front of bubblegum crisis: tokyo 2040 and passing out by the third episode, waking up to painful rls

saturday:

awfully tedious dreams, ending with a truck driver almost killing me and ru55 and a half an hour on the phone with 911

a day full of taxes, a beautiful, summer's day full of taxes and capped off with an iced coffee that turned out to be a mistake of coagulated almond milk

gd's gym buddy, heavy shopping, cleaning up and making dinner, one piece dubbed isn't quite as good

la belle verte is conceptually brilliant. have i never seen the beginning of strange days, or is the version on netflix the director's cut?

yesterday:

sleeping in, long breakfast coffee and failing with google play music sync and to help gd with her taxes, not-so-quick dollarama mission and meeting friends for a hot, sunny walk and silly-expensive pizza (or beer and salad, in my case).

back home for a fantastically good but short rest, then off to the throw collective's finals.

1. my performance as sacrifice was appreciated, and i enjoyed myself in spite of my nerves

2. overall excellent quality, and the collective is sending a really strong team to the cfsw this year

3. the feature (queen ka?) was kinda lame, but her backup musicians were brilliant

4. a long walk for greasy fries and gross toilets

today:

1.30am, aaaand late to bed.

did somebody say "linkage"?

mti on the definition of bad-ass

and on female figures

parents need to understand gaming

animals are people too!

now trying to sleep more

the "stay weird" oscar speech

intriguing body scanner images

thousands of old games online!

"evidence action"? i like it. different problems require different solutions.

an interesting article on the meaning of "free speech"

double standards

to everyone in israel who thinks that anti-semitism isn't really a thing, check this out. read the comments. ignoring (for a moment) the fact that the laws preventing homosexual couples from engaging in surrogacy in israel are primitive and shameful (as are the laws regarding civil marriage), the reality is that no other people in the world would be judged for taking care of their surrogate or adopted babies and not the mothers.

nobody gives a shit about the mothers... unless there are jews involved.

if you think these are just a few voices on the internet, i'm sorry to tell you that you are very, very wrong. it continually horrifies me to learn how much anti-semitism there is even here, in canada, where people are famous for being non-judgmental pluralists.

breaking on through

tuesday:

slotting a well-timed joke into our stand-up meeting ("spring is here! i got so excited i wet my plants...")

getting shit done at a great pace, good cthulu fluxx lunch break, cleaning up the git messes

a strangely spring 19 degrees!

birth certificate excitement

fantastic dinner

gd reading french harry potter to me after dinner, going to bed early

wednesday:

tough getting up, a busy morning (in particular, sending a promised email update to a potential employer to tell him that i'm happy where i am - i found that tough to write), stepping out into spring feeling ready for boxing and awkwardly anticipating the shit-hitting-the-fan meeting i had just received an invitation to...

... the fan was hit surprisingly gently, it was a day of small victories, lots of positivity. my ex-manager-now-coworker asking me for help before i left...

boxing: badger in charge, hard work, shaking hands while giving the beginners some tips on the way out; feeling tired but *smoothly* so, relaxed and good.

yesterday:

trying to sleep in and being woken by our cleaning lady, helpful marriage and tax advice

a gorgeous day, but mostly spent on emergencies and a broken vm... a surprisingly well-received presentation on comments, an exhausting discussion on bureaucracy after a huge, delicious pushap lunch, learning that my no-longer-manager is leaving the team soon, onboarding hac and another guy from my previous team, small successes and planning midday boxing drills with a coworker i ran into in the gym on wednesday.

kickboxing hard and good, but with a post-pushap bloated belly. ropes are *tough*, man...

great class finish, boxing coach advice and good talks with my first yoga instructor and mti

great dinner, and winding down 

today:

irritable morning, vfmp's boyfriend finding my tax code, paypal fails and realizing i'd left my gloves at the gym (luckily they were picked up by the guy on night shift, the day manager was stoked that i'd had the decency to be worried that i'd left them dirty gym gear too)

getting ready for open mic on sunday

pressured morning of doing... not much? getting all lead-y?

running and pad work with a coworker and again feeling flush with exercise, a hot shower in the middle of a gorgeous day and bringing good vibes back with me into the office 

meetings and bureaucracy and knowledge transfers and OMFG THE WHOLE POINT OF HAVING A DOOMSDAY DEVICE IS LETTING EVERYONE KNOW THAT YOU HAVE IT. my now ex-manager is a total asshole, and that's becoming clearer every hour.

leaving late-ish but feeling super-positive, forgetting lunch in the fridge again, random tristar guy recognizing me in the street, P.M. stop on the way home to taxes

urgent

to all americans reading this: this is your chance to regain some of your rights.

stopping racism and police brutality would be cool too... though i do believe that's a lot more difficult to achieve. i'm not justifying looting and arson, 'cause destroying your own infrastructure is stupid and counterproductive. but rioting in general? after all the shit that the black communities in america are still being made to suffer?

...

is bud light beer *trying* to demonstrate just how much rape culture is a thing?

maybe everyone has been drinking the kool-aid.

lounging

thursday:

2am aussie movie aggression waking me into fight mode, extreme discomfort ensued

...

waking up tired and sore to a miserably perfect day for staying in and watching trigun

"oh, that's sweet: you have a complaint? i can escalate it, but you know nothing's going to change..."

a new divider in the men's room - did someone complain?

severe overeating at pushap, returning to struggle with shitty code and not enough information, finally finishing that only to start a task with redis installation issues, interrupted for a half an hour of reviewing my lead's code and a short but interesting conversation with my old manager about which side of the fan i'd prefer to be on when the shit hits it

tired, going home to put up hooks (badly?) and do some painfully heavy shopping

an early night with some rick and morty,

friday:

waking up in the middle of the night and remembering learning about something utterly stupid in my team: not being fluent in english is *not* a valid reason for using overly-simplistic and unclear or inappropriate variable names. it's actually a particularly good reason to be really precise. assholes.

a day full of office politics. and headaches. and git stuff-ups.

judaica shopping, online arbing, passing out to sin city: a dame to kill for

saturday:

deliberately sleeping in, finally setting up a shelf for our lounge entertainment system, burning coupons at popeye's, jugo juice employee cruelty and filing a complaint

horseman, great tekken, louis c.k.'s 2015 show's brilliant surrealism

feeling like shit while shopping, kam wing huge (surprisingly spicy) dinner and wall-sized netflix before crashing hard

sunday:

pinched neck nerve = loads of shoulder, chest, arm pain and weakness

chilled morning, having a lounge and separate room for haircuts again is so comfortable!

midi 6 brunch delight

shopping... and running out of cash. taking gd into a comic store is dangerous! chasing that with opening an account with funimation, which is far superior to crunchyroll in every way.

p.m. deliciousness, mom's intro to backswings, ergo proxy, end weekend at 10pm.

yesterday:

very serious, absurdly detailed epic dreams disturbed by my alarm. sleeping in a bit anyway, slightly improved neck situation.

hazzing the dumb and responding inappropriately to an email about my grandfather... and then managing to make it worse.

continuing to feel stupid, but getting a two-day estimated job done in two hours and enjoying a brisk walk to walmart before lunch.

my manager's awkward response to their leadership seminar

my rebase suggestion taken seriously and appearing to resolve our issues

the tristar tour and mti's surprise upon hearing that gd's expecting

a surprisingly loud fart easily identified across an empty room

watching the spacex launch live while trawling through logs that seemed to indicate that i was right about something in spite of my ignorance

getting home to shitty internet x2, great leftovers, translating hebrew poetry and having my mind blown by the vicious willful ignorance of antisemitism.

lain, la belle verte until i passed out

this morning so far:

a pretty spring morning, sleeping in and checking out québéc marriages

quick linkage

who is prince ea? and why should we stand for trees?

forensic science is a field full of liars. this is a horrific read.

here're pieces of a fascinating documentary on muslim antisemitism.

free falling

happy (israeli) independence day!

today:

crazy undersea resort dreams, climbing equipment win but leaving on time fail, cloudy day depressing, a morning full of caution wasted on an uncomprehending cowboy, an afternoon started well and then flipped by emergency mysteries caused by the wrong kind of lazy

allez up:

1. revisiting accreditation

2. it's nice to climb with a group

3. holy crap.

bless me, father, for i have sinned: it has been two years and two months since my last climbing wall session. i'm feeling the punishment from the tips of my fingers to the insides of my elbows, a little bit in the legs and slightly more on my ego.

it's high time i get back into "the swing of things".

chinese delivery, tough garbage night, crashing early

how many chucks

sunday:

shopping drag, copper branch delivers! watchmen and learning that gd's officially divorced!

yesterday:

early to bed, waking up two minutes before my alarm with adrenaline pumping through my veins after dreaming of getting in a fight with a bunch of asshole teenagers playing "bad boys" out of their parked convertible

french practice, a long, boring day confused by talk of role-switching, good cthulu fluxx for lunch and an evening of shadowrun character creation amidst a gathering of magic players

dog on the bed, two exhausted

today:

positive green meeting in spite of mr transparency's admission

running until dizzy, epically failing to bring clean underwear

star fluxx and desperately eating a LOT of food

intro to the new system i'll be working on - http://xkcd.com/1513/

painfully slow progress, glad to see the end of the workday. coming home to put up gd's work mirror. the only way to learn that the drill you thought had a keyless chuck actually needs a key... is the hard way.

atari: game over is beautiful.

it's israel's day of remembrance: as unhappy as i am with how israel's being run, how it's handling its neighbours and its citizens, the more time passes the clearer it becomes how much we still desperately need our homeland, and desperately need to defend ourselves as a nation from antisemitism that only grows stronger and more insidious. i continue to pray that the horrific number of soldiers who've died defending our country and our people will never have been in vain; and hope against hope that we'll see peace in our time.

a moment in the sun-day

thursday:

great waking, serious breakfast and small chores and midnight nation

*finally* prepping for the gym...

... and not going. walmart and star fluxx instead. more talking than working, then leaving early for a great team happy hour, shopping twice and coming home tipsy to a delicious dinner

passing out after showering and

friday:

waking up early, hurriedly putting up curtains before rushing to work

i think i'm too big to be a hobbit.

long workday, exciting success, toxic nsfw bubbles

serious rls and seriously glad for my massage ball

reintroduction to boxing after two months out of the gym:

1. "dude, you've lost weight. it's obviously muscular, it's a good thing you're back."

2. you know it's been a good class when after showering you have trouble raising your towel above your shoulders.

excellent takeout and an early night for both of us

yesterday:

sleeping in and dreaming hard, an entire morning sunk into my poetry video

why do i have to explain to our neighbours that pouring water off their balcony onto ours isn't cool?

why didn't godmother contact me when we had plans? good kokkino coffee, interesting debates, rushing off to donate blood

straightforward and not unpleasant procedure, feeling pretty good afterwards

home quick for relaxation therapy and dinner, then meeting vfmp again at a sports bar to watch a ufc fight night (mostly good) and drink to his birthday

being challenged on the metro ruining an otherwise chilled evening

today so far:

seriously feeling the boxing, stiff and sore arms and body

a haircut day, interrupted for french practice and shopping

linkage

gameloading: rise of the indies is coming out this week! check out the trailer, it's an inspiring documentary :)

batman vs superman on the big screen? oh, yes. oh, and star wars, but you've gushed over that already. unfriended sounds like an unlikely addition to the list of movies i want to see, but i'm intrigued.

sustainability = good business
another example of how to make it in the internet age

amazing old photos!

curing AIDS?

pregnancies should not be punished. seriously.

a successful penis transplant. wow.

marijuana:
1. it's safe
2. there're plenty of reasons to chill
3. legalization is hurting the DEA mexican cartels