10am and on. A different kind of quietness in intermediate days. A street, even more empty by now. Janitor on the other side's having a coffee and a cigarette in the sun, some people are out there carrying huge shopping bags, and on the corner balcony, a young student in a rabbit-ear hoodie seems into learning, hidden halfway behind a laptop display bearing a glowing fruit. The morning, too: Digging deeper into technology. Rubber duck kind of debugging, and the duck doesn't understand either. There's still work to be done today.
Closing in on 11am. Running into wires drawn months ago, which seems ages by todays standards. There's always some flaky infrastructure on one end of these, and there's always a deep dark hole to get lost within while trying to dig to the core of the problem. (Also: The fun of issues that disappear just by deleting log history or viewing configuration files. Things being indistinguisable from magic again...)
Früher Nachmittag, späte Pause. Gelegentlich fallen Termine in merkwürdige Zeitfenster, und dann merkt man, wie sehr sich ein bestimmter Tagestakt eingeschliffen hat, wie sehr die Konzentration an gewohnten Bruchpunkten abfällt und schließlich verschwindet . Stolpert aus dem Fahrstuhl in den Hof und über das Pflaster, sorgsam, nicht die Schatten zu verlassen, außerhalb derer sich die Stadt hell und heiß anfühlen muss. Braucht eine Weile, bis sich Ziel und Richtung wieder finden. Auszeit im Blick dutzender Tauben, die neue Lücken für sich gefunden haben. Gespräche unkonstruktiven Verlaufs, auch mit sich selbst. Nichts Neues im Betonviertel.
11am and on. Sitting between chairs, holding a lot of different tools, but they all seem inappropriate. Also, the unpleasant effect of things changing behaviour on closer look, driven by factors invisible to eye and monitoring. Navigating a wide array of likely breakages, randomly recombined every other moment. Trying to focus dancing particles of dust, staring elsewhere then and now to avoid feeling all too dizzy. No model answers, no better ideas. So it proceeds.
Close to 11am and on. Lost between languages and time zones - feeling like wrestling the same dull issues over and over again. And the model decided to stay offline for the morning. Maybe it doesn't make things much worse, though, maybe one day there's the insight that the best thing about talking to language models is training the individual skill to describe problems to others in a somewhat concise textual representation. (Having another hot coffee, pouring away half a cold cup. Forgetting to actually drink has an interesting effect on daily caffeine statistics as well as daily personal shape. No clouds in that day, just a dense soup of bright white light.)
Close to 11am again. And the interesting sensation of how daily task lists looks like, after having gone through the first calls. Moving on fast, leaving behind a trail of poorly scribbled notes, odd grammar and write-only references that become impossible to decypher almost immediately. (Too many tabs open. Both literally and metaphorically. At least, more coffee is still an option today to stay within some usable comfort zone. Letting some autumn wave through the home office, to reconnect with things a bit again. More clouds than sun, by now.)
Dann bleibt der Tag ein strömender Fluss, mit kurzen Unterbrechungen, und Wiederansetzen an anderer Stelle. Immer wieder hilft ein kurzer Schritt aus dem Fokus, um neue Sichten zu gewinnen und in neue Richtungen zu denken. Und es beginnt zu regnen, wie nicht bestellt, zur unpassendsten Stunde am unpassendsten Tag der Woche. (Also wieder: Kaffee kochen, dem Wind in den Ästen zuhören. Warten, dass der letzte Code seine Wirkung tut, dass sich der Geist vom Ausflug in die tropfnasse Welt wieder einfindet und alles in einem Takt einschwingt, der trägt bis in die Zeit, in der der trübe Himmel wieder aufgerissen, wieder lichter geworden ist.)
(Getting up early enough, taking a breath at 8am already feels like noon. Not really listening to the voices in the street, but the sounds making it through the open window feel vivid and in a way very comfortable. Not yet completely lost within the trails of the day, contemplating more coffee and how to align all of the upcoming blocks to not waste too much time in between. But then again, is spare time ever wasted?)