page 9!

 almost forgot! and we've finally produced page 9 of the graphic novel adaptation ^_^

the last of the staycation

 it's a lovely sunday afternoon, and i'm pleasantly drained after a really nice visit to kirstenbosch with my mom. i'm not not ready to get back to work tomorrow, but i must admit i've barely relaxed and i've barely gotten things done.

that aliyah application anxiety? we finally determined that we've been wasting months and money getting things authenticated locally when the only validation they'll accept is from within canada. so here we go again with expensive couriering.

last night i joined vfmp for my first among us experience - and it was fantastic! i now see what all the fuss has been about :)

the weird thing is that i was able to purchase it on steam and install it on windows, but the steam installer for mac is broken and the only way to play it is via bluestacks. at which point i - or my OCD, at least - decided to upgrade to macOS Big Sur, which apart from being slightly uglier has the simple but powerful feature of allowing me to prioritize wifi connections. FINALLY! this has been driving me crazy for months and i'm amazing at how much impact this little change has had.

indoorsy and outdoorsy

on sunday, i wrote down the following:

i mean, i *did* go outside yesterday to help my mom at her coffee shop, and i *did* go out for a short walk this afternoon which ended with me purchasing the gas station store's last marmite (there's a national shortage due to alcohol production being slowed down, and for vegans marmite has similar post-apocalyptic value to booze).

anyway, the weather's been miserable, and we've mostly been at home, i've read quite a bit (i was intrigued enough to buy "a man named ove" and i has to push through a few chapters before it became interesting), and i have no idea how many hours of ffix i played today.

i'd intended to complete that and post it, but i was distracted. this week has been a bit crazy, while i have had some respite it's mostly been filled with all manner of Things That Need Doing. we're having more trouble with gd's aliyah application, which is causing me a lot of anxiety, and i'd guess that i haven't done 90% of the things i had on my holiday to-do list... but i have resumed rewatching BSG, played some more ffix, read a fair amount, and generally had a good time. i've even napped at random times, and those naps have been good.

exhaling

 this past week was considerably more relaxed than the previous ones, but i still worked long hours with little to no exercise* or fresh air and was so focused on catching up on one system that i got practically nothing done on my main goal.

* although a few days this week the weather was nice enough to get in the pool for a bit.

and then yesterday morning, after consulting with my boss, i realized i need to publish the release we've been working on and the entire day was a mad rush to figure out how to do it and troubleshooting the process. with some much-needed assistance from a couple of coworkers and an encouraging amount of good fortune, it was finally published and tested by 6pm.

and now i'm on holiday for a week. i have a few things i'd like to do, but no pressure to do anything other than enjoy the now, read books and play video games. i'm kinda keen on getting back into ffix :)

gd's documents are finally on their way from pretoria, so one of the things to do this week is submit everything and try to get her aliya interview arranged. this has been one heck of a challenging process, i'm praying things go smoothly.

regarding the US elections: it's been hard not to follow the news on this, but i'm not exactly sure why as i don't know how significant it is which of these guys is elected. i have read a couple of fascinating articles, though, on why so many americans are voting for trump and these ring true: the americans have some underlying issues that they need to address sincerely, otherwise things are only going to get worse for them.

• why "trumpism" isn't going anywhere
• a culture of immediate gratification and cognitive dissonance
• tribalist tensions rising
• losing the technology war (which translates to a weakening economy, amongst other scary things)
  

celebratory chill

 friday was intense and full of surprises, but ultimately successful and we enjoyed a good few hours of real teamwork. i mean, what are the chances of our test server's certificate expiring halfway through our tests?

by the time we were ready to report on our findings, i was exhausted but satisfied. i'm excited for next week - we have uncovered a ton of friction points in our processes and this is the opportunity to reduce them - and i'll be handing back responsibility to the coworker who's returning from his month's leave and preparing to take a week off myself.

the weekend has mostly been good. yesterday morning i occupied myself with coding puzzles and guitar hero (i'm definitely getting better), an hour or so by the pool, then an afternoon relaxing and at some point picking up on ffix which i haven't touched in waaaay too long. mr smear was really getting into the battles, he loved the music :)

this morning was an early sunday, rushing to ready ourselves, pick up a gift and another kid and head out to a jumping castle birthday party. funny thing about buying books for birthday parties, is we find it impossible not to pick things up for ourselves. so today gd got ben brooks - the impossible boy and i grabbed a copy of the graphic novel adaptation of animal farm.

i've never read animal farm. i flew threw it in the afternoon and found it utterly brilliant.

the party was cool, much more relaxed than the previous year (bounce world was empty except for us), and the kids had a good time. we were taken by surprise when dropping off mr smear's friend and his mother offered to keep mr smear for a swim, we've never done something that spontaneous with him before and we enjoyed a plant lunch followed by a relaxing hour at home.

aside from an unpleasant meltdown in the late afternoon, the day has been great. we were able to watch my cousin's wedding on a live stream (much better than a hundred people in zoom), and we found the ceremony and their speeches really touching.

it made me realize that there're a number of us who've gotten married over the past few years without big family celebrations, and maybe we should all do something special together when the plague slows down sufficiently...

the fog of looming deadline

 this week has been mental. we came into it with a plan, and that plan fell apart yesterday evening after three days of grueling battles with bash and bamboo. i'm not sure if my head's feeling full of wool because of allergies, because i'm coming down with a cold, because i'm exhausted, because of my neck, or because of all the stress... or maybe it's a combination of a number of those. either way, my neck's been threatening to spasm and i really haven't been sleeping well.

but today, in spite of all this and losing two hours of my day to taking gd to the mall, we actually managed to complete a round of testing a day before deadline, giving us tomorrow to be more thoroughly certain that the release i'm responsible for is safe to go out.

and, along the way, we all learned a lot and have built some neat additions to our tooling. this is good.

aside from being relieved, i'm actually excited to complete this release cycle and write up all the lessons learned, and the big reward will be spending next week with the team making sure that the next release is a lot less stressful.

i think i'm just about ready to call it a night.

borat subsequent moviefilm

no way. but... i mean, of course. then again, no way.

sbc is not the hero anyone wants, but he's definitely the hero they need. and i'm just as impressed by maria bakalova who deserves at least as much credit!

remembering what nature smells like

i started my day writing up a couple of things i've been thinking about recently, then played some guitar hero before heading out. i took mr smear to kirstenbosch today for the first time in more than a year (according to my blog posts), it wasn't great weather but it was perfect for a light hike and we had a good time.

a migraine loomed on the way home, i'm pretty confident it's all in my shoulder / neck. i managed to keep it together, though, and it seems to have calmed down. the afternoon was mostly pleasant, i read some more of the swamp thing reboot (which is amazing) and lounged about. mr smear and i had a couple of turns at dance dance revolution - he's improving! - and everything was fine until dinner was over and it was time to shower.

i'm fast arriving at the conclusion that my son's pretty spoiled, and it looks like we're going to have to change tack quickly. it doesn't help that his behaviour upset both gd and myself, and then things escalated... now everyone's unhappy. a great way to spend a sunday evening after a generally good weekend.

mixed-bag saturday

 i slept alright last night, waking up at some point to write down the following: "why did the ambitious dancer join a studio for giants? because the bar was higher."

mr smear woke me up this morning and after teaching him to make a bowl of cereal for himself (he was so excited!) we played dance dance revolution and both had fun. afterwards, i tried to figure out how the DLC works, and while evaluating the options suddenly began a migraine. panado did nothing, but an hour of lying down and crying (just pain tears, so not crying per se) at various angles seems to have helped a bit.

i'm really feeling betrayed by my neck this past few weeks :(

stop.

 layer cake. a good, but deeply unsatisfying movie. i've just watched it as a fitting end to a weirdly unsatisfying week. my neck's still griefing me but i have this strange feeling like my mobility might be improving. i'm getting better at guitar hero.  i discovered yesterday that fifteen minutes of dance dance revolution on even the lowest settings is very real cardio.

for about a week now, mr smear has been singing the chorus (correctly) of of monsters and men's little talks. it's awesome to hear him, it's a little annoying to be perpetually stuck with the earworm ourselves, and the timing of its subject matter seems a bit creepy.

i finally completed a chunk of work today, but it wasn't as interesting as a brief moment at the end of it when i demonstrated to our older, old-school and very set-in-his-ways linux guru the value of writing detailed comments above every regex string. meaning i typed the whole thing out myself, and promptly found a bug.

the geese have been pooping in and around our pool. it's getting hot, and i wanted to go for a quick dip... but no.

anyway, i haven't been feeling too well this past week or two, some of it due to my neck, some of it due to sleeping badly (as usual), and a lot of it due to the emotional swings brought on by krybabie's passing. i'm hoping that maybe this weekend will be easier.

deep breaths

this past week has been a real rollercoaster. tonight was the last night of prayers for krybabie, it's been an emotional week and it's far from over.

our physio left me feeling beaten today, second time in a row. i really need to figure out how to hold my head correctly. i'm failing at something we evolved for at least two million years ago. i'm pretty confident nerve pressure is the reason i've been feeling tired, headachey and queasy since friday :(

fingers crossed, i'm hopeful that our canadian documents will finally get to the right people in the next few days... we're very lucky that one of gd's conversion group works for a courier company and has offered assistance!

my work week's been a bit weird, i had plans but for three days have been caught up investigating a bug and (as always) trying to make sure nobody gets stuck with the same nonsense twice. at least i've learned a lot of different things.

our dance dance revolution mat arrived yesterday! so we're set for the next lockdown, which sadly looks imminent...

our programmable banking beta program has a hackathon going on with some pretty amazing prizes, and i'm actually quite excited about what we came up with this afternoon! not that i've had headspace for much these days...

tears for krybabie

 he was diagnosed less than two months ago with an aggressive variety of cancers, and passed away on wednesday a handful of days after his fortieth birthday, leaving behind a devastated mother, sisters, wife and two small kids as well as a massive hole in his community.

although our mothers have been best friends for ever, the two of us haven't been close for two decades... but as teenagers we were inseparable and the past few days are proving tougher to process than i would have expected. it's absolutely heartbreaking to think of what his family is going through, it's honestly making my head spin.

and speaking of things this brings perspective to, my sister has finally remembered that life's too short to put up with her horrible third husband.

so it's been a dramatic week.

 ...

i've been becoming increasingly frustrated trying to plan our holiday trip in december, and my last two workdays were thoroughly unproductive due to all the crazy stuff going on, so i'm feeling VERY glad and grateful that i made sufficient hours before hump day (which also happened to be invoice day for me). and getting our documents back from the apostille feels like pulling teeth, and there's really nothing we can do about that...

...

on a positive note, swimming season's pretty much here (even if we're contending with egyptian geese for use of the pool), mr smear is obsessed with minecraft (and on an even more educational note, i managed to find rehov sesame videos teaching hebrew letters that he enjoys), and whenever i get a chance to play guitar hero live: omg, it's hardcore. for me. and i'm only trying to play on "regular"... it's great fun! even if i do feel terrible whenever the crowd boos or throws things at me.

weirdness

 the week's half over and it's been a weird one.

sunday: i actually (finally!) put a couple of hours into strategizing a legacy app i've been thinking about for a year and a half already (it's what i made the simple free encryption tool for). nystire - aka the destroyer of dreams - has validated it and provided some helpful feedback so i'm pretty confident this is a good idea.

we also spent a little time by the pool, which was really nice.

 this work week so far: i've been deploying, rolling back and fighting massive serverless/terraform/terragrunt headaches, and while today's deployment finally looks good i'm still not 100% confident and i'm monitoring nervously. the best part was discovering that one of our production services has been down for over a month and it doesn't deliver error notifications O_o

*sigh*

it's the little things.

guitar hero live is awesome, i've received my copy of dance dance revolution and tested it with a regular controller (weird), and all that we're waiting for now is the dance mat for my early birthday present to myself to be complete.

we watched a couple of very interesting documentaries on izzy the other night: blues by the beach (heartbreaking) and israel inside (making gd even more excited to move).

now to get back to monitoring and then hopefully find some time to make bookings for the december holidays...

motion sickness

 twice. once watching kids playing minecraft when picking up mr smear, and now after helping mr smear out for a bit. i'm now super queasy :(

on a different note*, guitar hero live is amazing! it took me more than just the tutorial to get a handle on what i was supposed to be doing, and i've got a loooong way to go before i'm... whatever the expression is for playing well. shredding like a rock star? whatever. it's a lot of fun.

* sorry.

mr smear and i joined gd and her friends for a promenade walk, which was mostly nice with only a few stressful moments (mr smear almost rode his bike into a toddler at one point). at least i don't feel sunburned.

i've now published page 8 publicly! 8 down, loads more to go. but probably a bit less than the initial estimate of 64.

 [gets distracted by more minecraft]

a welcome weekend

 i'm off to bed, just quick notes:

1. my work week was all over the place, but ended on such a great note i'm still excited by it.

2. i've been to the gym three times in the past week, and already gained a couple of kilos.

3. i drove out to a scrap metal place to sell our broken tap, i was pleasantly surprised to receive R120 for its 2kgs.

4. mr smear's dairy allergy appears to be lessening. he's still got to have an epipen, but it is slightly less stressful for us. gd, on the other hand, has turned out to be massively allergic to marijuana - so much so that someone smoking around her could put her in the hospital :(

5. i don't know if i resent the jewish agency or the canadian embassy more. the jewish agency for demanding an apostille / signature on every document, the canadians for making it so hard (and ridiculously expensive, $80 per document!)

so now i have to get a courier to pick it up documents from the apostille in johannesburg and deliver them to the canadian embassy, *if* i can convince the embassy to accept my payment form via email.

$#%!.

6. i really, really hope the weather improves over the weekend because gd and i are finally both able to get in the pool!

7. mr smear's been doing cool things in minecraft so we bought it. guitar hero live has just arrived today! it seems like my birthday celebrations are starting early this year >D

hitting hump day

 it's past midnight, but i've done what i needed to do. which was write a piece of software that a day full of meetings had decided was necessary, and upgrade my vmware workstation version to a) determine whether it's actually worth paying double for and b) to buy me another 30 days to decide.

mr smear stayed home again yesterday, but finally returned to school today. for the moment i'm stuck at home because not all of my hardware's actually portable... yesterday was spent isolating a bug that's only producing errors for me, and even then only under specific conditions. today was almost all meetings, although i did make a point of heading to the gym for an hour or so, and i do feel a bit better for it.

mr smear seems to be getting a feel for minecraft, which is cool.

i met with my therapist yesterday, and there was a realization that stood out - my entire life has been a long continuous stream of incoherence and contradictions: i've been extremely privileged and ridiculously fortunate, but at the same time i haven't been through a single phase of my life that couldn't be comfortably described as a psychotic mess of strangeness and contradictions.

and all i have to do now is learn to accept the lie that always raised my hackles: "it'll be okay". i think i'm slowly starting to get it. even if it won't be okay, it'll be okay.

i feel like i'm missing something important. oh, yes. apparently my bank is investigating the disappearance of my money and the woman overseeing the investigation was shocked by the breadcrumbs she's uncovered so far. that's inspiring. in other news, the apostille still hasn't communicated with me regarding our vital original documents, but mr smear's passport appears to finally be on its way which is a huge relief.

one day at a time.

end, weekend

today started off a bit sourly, as i realized that i'd missed an important notification from teams on friday (thanks, microsoft, for making it so you only get notifications when you've pinned a channel), and struggled to figure out how to respond to the alerts because they didn't actually provide useful information. 

note: if you're sending an error message to a user, include a hint as to what may be causing it or how to resolve it.

one of mr smear's friends celebrated his birthday at deerpark cafe this morning, and overall we actually had a good time. the weather was gorgeous and i actually got a little sunburned, but the kids had fun and we only had one freak-out when one of the parents assumed a candy bar was vegan and gave it to him (he didn't have a reaction so it might have been, but when i looked up the product there were no ingredients / allergens listed).

some of the afternoon was tense, most of it was pretty chilled. i finally downloaded the minecraft demo, but mr smear was too busy with little big planet to try, and inspired by a conversation we'd had with another friend's mother i attempted to get hold of dance dance revolution or a wii. wii's don't appear to be available in south africa, so we ended up splashing out on the former as well as picking up guitar hero live. which, considering the dates everything's due to arrive, is effectively my early birthday present to myself :P

a saturday night for old people

i'm in bed, i've done my rls stretching, now just reflecting before shutting down for the night.

it was yet another crazy week, even if my work-week was only three days. i'm really glad i took yesterday off, it gave me an opportunity to go to the gym, play videogames, that sort of thing. today was finish-another-page day for the comics, and after two days of intense winds (we sorted out my mum's apartment just in time!) we all walked out into a cheerfully sunny day for ice-cream and gift shopping.

the two issues i last posted about haven't been resolved yet but i'm feeling a bit less stressed about them. and my mum'vs on holiday for the first time in years so i'm pleased about that.

the hunters: good heavens, the first season finale was deeply disappointing. utterly shite.

the boys: still incredible.

utopia (the UK production): brilliant, beautiful, with only minor criticism for an overwhelmingly entertaining series. 

double jeopardy

oh, yes - and my fancy, exclusive bank managed to double charge me when transferring a large sum of money last week and they still haven't resolved it. i really don't know what to do at this point. 

breaking of the fast

i not only fasted this yom kippur, and not only did i fast about an hour longer than mandated, but it was a) an easy fast and b) a generally good day of services that ended on an inspirational note. in the rabbi's closing sermon yesterday he alluded to (or perhaps said so explicitly, i heard most but not all of it) the idea that yom kippur serves as a sort of annual near death experience, one wherein we're encouraged not only to be introspective about our behaviour but all to reevaluate who we are and what our priorities are.

as for the fasting being easy, gd and i have both picked up a little weight we're not proud of and i think my having a spare tire helped. (i think a lot of my spare tire blew up from around mr smear's birthday celebrations, we did eat a LOT of cake and donuts. also, living right near an amazing vegan donut shop is definitely a part of it.)

work-wise, thursday and friday were legitimately exciting and today was overall pretty great. the code changes i made amounted to a handful (okay, perhaps even a double-handful) of lines, but the amount of changes we've made peripherally to our testing and deployment process have put me in a much stronger position to take over from next week so we're both feeling pretty good about things.

i dragged mr smear out of bed and took him to school this morning, not realizing that the calendar changed due to the pandemic and he's still on school holiday until next week. if nothing else, we had a good time singing and dancing along to some good rock on the way :)

...

i've been wading through bureaucracy lately and seeming to claw my way up to breathe, which is a nice feeling. now that gd's eligible for permanent residence, we've looked into it and it turns out to be completely meaningless to apply - we'll be gone before the authorities grant it, and once we're outta here it's very unlikely that we'll be coming back any time soon even for a visit. my mother's admitted that she'll be following us to israel, and i'm really hoping that as many of our friends and family as can manage follow suit.

the only disturbing news of the day has come from gd's aliyah application, after a short back-and-forth via email i'm quite worried that the apostille has mislaid all our documents and those things are a) expensive and b) take forever to acquire and c) are preventing us from actually making real plans for our migration.

anyway, it's mr smear's bedtime and i'd like to finish the first season of the hunters AND get some sleep tonight.