This morning, Hamer woke up early and ran into our bed, telling me she wanted me to buy her something, though she couldn’t quite articulate what it was. She only mentioned that “it’s blue.” I had a hunch—it might be the exercise book “5·3 Daily Practice” that her teacher had mentioned.

Since she woke up early, Hamer managed to get herself ready almost entirely on her own. Just before we left, we realized she had forgotten to put on her school uniform. After a quick change, we finally headed out for school.

During the day, I was deeply immersed in work. I completed the design of another table in the morning and then started optimizing the control panel’s interface and functionality based on the new design. The entire day flew by in what felt like the blink of an eye.

In the evening, after submitting a pull request, I rushed to Olympic Park to pick up the gear for tomorrow’s parent-child run. I initially planned to take Hamer along and meet up with Xiaoyan afterward. I called Hamer to see if she wanted to join me, but she was happily playing at home with a classmate. After some hesitation, she decided to stay and continue playing.

Riding my electric scooter quickly to the park, I noticed the weather was cold and gloomy. I thought it was probably better that Hamer didn’t come—she might have caught a chill. After picking up the gear, the staff informed me that due to severe smog, the run was postponed to Sunday afternoon. I felt relieved, as it gave us more time, though it did mean we’d have to cancel our planned trip to the Fragrant Hill Park.

Just as I was about to head back, Hamer called, crying over the phone. Through her sobs, she told me she regretted not coming with me to pick up the gear. After a few questions, I learned that she had had a fight with her classmate, who then went home. On top of that, she had been feeling a bit regretful about not joining me, and now everything came crashing down on her. On the call, she cried and expressed her remorse and frustration.

I felt a pang of guilt but saw this as a teaching moment. I gently explained to her that once we make a choice, we have to deal with the consequences. I told her to think things through more carefully next time and not just focus on the immediate situation. I even used a metaphor: once you choose a path at a fork in the road, you miss out on the other. But Hamer quickly countered, “But we can always turn back, can’t we?” I was momentarily speechless—she had a point.

We talked for about twenty minutes, during which her sobbing gradually subsided, and she started to calm down. But her last words hit me deeply: “Can’t you just come back and comfort me?” She was right—she was hurting, and instead of comforting her, I had focused on pointing out her choices. I felt a wave of guilt.

When I got home, I apologized to Hamer and gave her a big hug. We tried on the running gear together and even put up some glow-in-the-dark stickers. After dinner, Xiaoyan suggested I finish my remaining work on Saturday, but I couldn’t shake off the unfinished tasks. I decided to head back to the office later in the evening to wrap things up so I could fully relax tomorrow.

When I got back to the office, I found two colleagues also working late. After chatting for a bit, I discovered that one of them had already taken care of the tasks I was planning to do. We then collaborated on refining some details and recorded a demo video. By the time we wrapped up, it was 1:30 a.m.

Last night, I was hoping to wake up a bit earlier today to catch up on my journal. Didn’t expect to wake up this early, though—4:30 a.m.! I stayed in bed until 5:40 before finally getting up. Even while lying there, my mind was still spinning with work-related thoughts, making it hard to truly relax.

During the day, I kept my head down, working non-stop. In the morning, I quickly synced with a colleague on the device connectivity issues; there are still some unresolved challenges, so I decided to bring a laptop and device next time to troubleshoot thoroughly.

Today’s focus was table design, mainly organizing existing fields from Pro. The trickiest part was defining the CodedValueDomain, as I kept confusing field types with Code/Value. After many attempts, I finally sorted it out and got it done just before heading home around 9 p.m.—felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders.

At lunch, I had intended to go early, grab a meal, and take a short nap afterward. But things kept dragging on, so in the end, I missed out on the break. In the afternoon, the office had a little birthday celebration, and the game was to guess the number of candies in a bag. I got lucky and guessed correctly—16 candies—winning a little My Little Pony candy. I thought I’d bring it home for Hamer; she’d probably love it.

When I got home in the evening, I brought the candy and a nightlight projector as a small surprise for her. But when I arrived, I found that she and her grandmother were already asleep. When Xiaoyan got home, she noticed that Hamer had gone to bed on the top bunk. We’d agreed that from Halloween onward, she’d try sleeping up there by herself, and she actually remembered and followed through without a word. Watching her sleep soundly filled me with pride and contentment.

Haha, none of us managed to get up on time this morning. When the alarm went off a second time, I realized it was probably getting late. I quickly checked the clock—it was already 7:20! I hurriedly scooped up Hamer, took her to wash up, and, still half-asleep, she finished up in the bathroom and brushed her teeth. Xiaoyan and I took turns helping her get ready. We arrived at school right at 7:45, cutting it close but not too late.

I didn’t have time to make breakfast this morning, so I grabbed some chicken breast, but eating it plain was a bit hard to stomach—felt pretty gross, to be honest.

The main task today was figuring out how to optimize the interface for device connections, and I ran into several challenges. The most frustrating issue was dealing with the ContentTemplate and DataTemplate in the dropdown box. Not being familiar with this part, it took me a while to figure out how to make the selected item display the same as the dropdown list. Before understanding it, nothing worked no matter how I tried, and the more I debugged, the more annoyed I became. Although it’s only Tuesday, I already feel like I’m running out of time, with so many details still waiting to be handled.

In the evening, I played a round of badminton—it’s the one time I can really let loose and relax these days. I had a great time, played several casual matches with colleagues, and by the end, my racket strings even snapped. After playing, I debated whether to go back to the office to tweak the interface a bit more, but thankfully, I resisted and decided to head home early.

After dinner, it was another busy time for each of us. Hamer was working on her math homework, while Xiaoyan was organizing the schedule for client visits to her company next month. Once Hamer finished her math, I helped her start learning to use Keynote. I guided her step-by-step, teaching her to recreate the picture on her labor history I’d done for her before, and with a bit of effort, she completed it successfully. Right before bedtime, Hamer suddenly remembered she hadn’t finished writing her journal, so she quickly reviewed and memorized what she needed, then went to bed peacefully.

In the morning, Hamer was reluctant to get out of bed; she had only realized last night right before sleeping that she still had homework to finish, so she stayed up late to catch up. After breakfast, I headed out with Xiaoyan. Just after I dropped her off at the subway station and reached the turnstile at my office building, Xiaoyan called—she had left her laptop at home. I had no choice but to turn around, go back, and deliver it to her.

Today’s main focus at work was optimizing device connectivity, covering everything from functionality to the interface, with a lot of detailed adjustments involved. On the functionality side, there was the challenge of recording the last-used device, which proved to be a bit complicated. The primary issue was that while we were saving information like the device’s name, we also needed to retrieve real information about the device based on its name. This resulted in a mismatch between the initialized device from the saved data and the reloaded device list in the system, causing the display to appear blank. I spent quite some time trying to keep the popup window open continuously, but in the end, I needed a colleague’s help to resolve it. Afterward, I tested the real-time changes in device status, working through the issues until about 10 p.m.

During the lunch break, I spent half an hour playing frisbee. Today, I tried throwing left-handed backhand, which went pretty smoothly. Most of the throws were mid- to long-range, and I broke a sweat—felt in pretty good shape. I got back to work at the office and didn’t grab lunch until 2 p.m., when I bought a Subway sandwich. Dinner was a quick bite with some basketball colleagues near the office, about a 40-minute meal before heading back to tackle more device optimization work.

One regret today was missing out on shopping with Xiaoyan and Hamer. Xiaoyan later told me that Hamer picked out everything in pink, giving a nice sense of style and coordination. When I got home, Hamer was about to go to bed, so I sat down to chat with her briefly. Afterward, I updated my Spotify account, did a quick wash-up, and went to bed.

This morning, Hamer woke up early all on her own, got washed, dressed, packed her school bag, and finally came to hurry me up to take her to school. I still felt like I hadn’t rested enough, but seeing her all ready, I pulled myself together and got up. She managed to wake up so early thanks to going to bed early last night. When we got to school, the gates hadn’t opened yet, so we waited in line for a while.

Once at the office, I dove straight into implementing the right-click menu and properties panel—so many little details to tackle. Before I knew it, it was 12:30, and I’d only just finished putting together the basic framework. I grabbed a pasta snack from Lawson downstairs, eating quickly while standing, which oddly left me with a sense of “melancholy.” Part of it was the rush, and part of it was the feeling that eating had become just another task. After lunch, I headed to Hamer’s school for the parent-teacher meeting, having taken the afternoon off for it.

The meeting stirred up complex emotions—both disappointment and unease. It started with the language teacher, who assertively directed the kids to get ready and launched into a series of class demonstrations. I didn’t like this approach; it felt pointless. No wonder Hamer said she was afraid of this teacher—the teacher indeed came off as very forceful, and the kids seemed cautious and tense around her. I couldn’t help but wonder: What are the kids actually gaining from these demonstrations? Why is this staged show necessary for parents? What I really wanted to see was natural interaction between the teachers and the students, not something that felt like a task to check off a list. If this sort of performance is typical in the classroom, I’d feel genuinely uneasy. As a parent, I already keep an eye on Hamer’s learning progress, often helping with her assignments, so I have a fair sense of her growth. I don’t need this kind of “report” to feel reassured. By contrast, I appreciated the second half of the meeting, where teachers shared small milestones in the students’ learning journey and their hopes for the future. That part felt valuable, much more useful to me.

After the meeting, I took Hamer to the hospital to check out her persistent cough. She’s been coughing all week, with no sign of improvement. It was close to 4 p.m., and the pediatric waiting area was still packed. We were number 89 and had to wait nearly an hour. The doctor, young and very thorough, diagnosed it as a regular cold, prescribed some medicine, and reminded us to keep her warm. Afterward, as is tradition after a doctor’s visit, we went to Xibu Mahua for noodles. Coincidentally, our table number was also 89. Hamer and I enjoyed the meal immensely.

In the evening, the whole family went to the National Stadium to watch a basketball game—Beikong’s home game against Zhejiang. It was our first time watching the CBA. Xiaoyan and I were quite into it, while Hamer seemed unimpressed and eventually fell asleep. Beikong won in the end, and as the crowd began to leave, we suddenly heard a loud popping noise. We thought someone might be setting off fireworks to celebrate. But then we remembered that fireworks are banned in Beijing, and we realized people were stomping on their inflatable cheering sticks, making sounds that resembled firecrackers. We joined in and stomped on our sticks too; it was surprisingly fun.

We didn’t get home until late at night, and everyone was exhausted. After a quick wash, we all headed to bed, ending the day on a satisfying note.

I couldn’t get up early this morning, but I hurried to finish yesterday’s diary. Then, I got ready for the day with Hamer, washing up and preparing for school. After dropping her off, I went back home to make breakfast. Today, I deliberately used a tray to arrange everything nicely. Xiaoyan even smiled and took a picture with her phone, saying the plating “had a vibe.”

During the day, I was completely immersed in work, thinking about how much I could push the features forward before the Feature Freeze. Most of my time was spent optimizing device connectivity, followed by dealing with layer structure, saving issues, and tweaking the right-click menu and properties panel. The work pressure was quite high, but the progress was decent. In the evening, I discussed things with a colleague, and we decided to separate the device positioning structure. This way, the user experience would be smoother. My colleague was very helpful and assisted in implementing part of the features.

I also started coughing today—there’s a colleague who’s been coughing for a while now. The two of us were coughing back and forth in the office, which gave everyone a good laugh as they teased us for our “synchronized coughing.”

I got home around 10 p.m., just in time to meet Xiaoyan on her way back, so I picked her up. Hamer had already gone to bed with her grandma, and the house felt especially quiet. Before bed, Xiaoyan suddenly started thinking about buying new clothes for me. She complained that my old clothes were too ugly and that I kept wearing the same few outfits, which she “couldn’t stand anymore.” She was really serious about it, occasionally measuring my waist and arm length. Her attention to detail left me feeling a bit helpless, but also quite touched. I couldn’t help but laugh, thinking that if it were up to me, I would have long given up out of laziness—no way would I have her level of patience.

Today, I finally merged the first Pull Request for the GNSS feature. Although it’s the first PR for such a large feature, looking back, something feels a bit off—it took until now to get just one PR merged. There were several major issues: first, some technical challenges remained unresolved; second, the feature design was never fully nailed down; and third, I didn’t break down the tasks well enough. I’ll need to properly reflect on these lessons later.

I woke up at 6:30 this morning feeling refreshed, thanks to a good night’s sleep. When it was time to wake up Hamer, I quietly told her, “You have 23 minutes before it’s time to leave.” She let out a big sigh of relief, thinking at first that we were running out of time. Lately, I’ve been consciously reminding her of how much time is left instead of just rushing her, and it seems to be less stressful for both of us. Xiaoyan helped Hamer with her hair and getting dressed. When she saw Hamer slowly putting on her socks, even though it was a bit frustrating, she patiently waited. Later, she couldn’t help but comment to me, “She’s so slow!” We both laughed. After dropping Hamer off at school, Xiaoyan and I had breakfast together. That time has become a peaceful moment for just the two of us—no rush, just sitting down, eating slowly, and chatting, which felt really relaxing.

The workday was busy as usual, and I dove headfirst into developing new features. Most of my Pomodoro sessions were around 40 minutes, though one stretched beyond 50 minutes, and another even exceeded an hour. It’s clear that sometimes I get too absorbed and lose track of the Pomodoro rhythm. Still, the highlight of the day was merging the new feature’s PR, which brought a huge sense of relief. My colleagues helped a lot—some worked on positioning displays, others on layer loading. We collaborated closely, especially on the satellite info display. By the afternoon, one of my colleagues had already implemented an initial UI according to the design, which was impressively efficient. I felt really grateful for their hard work. While I was still working, Hamer called to ask when we’d go to Hema. It turns out today was our regular shopping day. Although I sometimes forget, Hamer always remembers, which is impressive. These little family routines feel so heartwarming. Xiaoyan took Hamer to shop first, and I hurried over to meet them. After we finished, they headed home, and I went back to the office to handle some other feature bugs. This time, I didn’t stay too late—just over an hour—because I knew that if I stayed longer, it could throw off my balance and reduce my productivity.

In the evening, Hamer cried three times. The first was because she was having trouble memorizing the combinations of 7, 8, and 9. The second time was when she couldn’t find the rock sugar she needed for her experiment. The third was when she was told that the socks she had asked her mom to buy had been returned. About the rock sugar, Xiaoyan found out she actually wanted dry ice for a smoke experiment. As for the socks, Xiaoyan told her to promise she’d organize her socks better in the future. Hamer didn’t quite grasp the concept of making a promise and seriously said “Si” with a very earnest expression, which made Xiaoyan laugh out loud.

I wasn’t feeling my best today, mostly annoyed at myself for being so unproductive.

I pretty much slept all morning and didn’t really get up until noon. Last night, Hamer was tossing and turning, clearly uncomfortable, moving around a lot, sometimes even crying. I asked her what was wrong, but she couldn’t really explain—I think she didn’t even know herself. She woke up early this morning with a nosebleed. I helped her stop the bleeding and comforted her for a bit, then turned on Starfall for her to watch. But her nose still felt stuffy, and when she tried to clear it, the bleeding started again. After that, Xiaoyan took over caring for her, and I went back to sleep, all the way until eleven.

Xiaoyan took Hamer out for breakfast and even took her to get a facial around noon. And me? I just stayed in bed, scrolling on my phone, feeling all sluggish. Finally, past noon, I got myself up, ate the breakfast they brought back for me, and then sat down to watch some Korean drama.

Thankfully, something in the afternoon helped me get a bit of my rhythm back. The water heater installer came over, which sort of rescued my otherwise wasted Sunday. We checked the setup at home, drilled a hole through the glass for the vent pipe, removed the old one, and put in the new one. The whole thing took a little over two hours. The guy worked really efficiently and paid a lot of attention to detail. I was quite happy with the job he did. After that, I tidied up the kitchen and balcony while watching COU ultimate frisbee matches. The Bologna team was seriously impressive. I found myself getting caught up in the game—it felt like just the mental break I needed.

Xiaoyan got home early in the afternoon and ended up dozing off on the couch while watching TV. Hamer went to the amusement park with her friends and didn’t come back until evening.

By nighttime, we just kept it simple—dinner, freshen up, and then off to bed. Almost all the appliances at home have been replaced now, and using them today felt really nice. It was one of the few bright spots of the day.

Working overtime on Friday night and Saturday completely threw off my routine, and honestly, it just wasn’t worth it. The worst part is that the overtime didn’t even yield good results; it just wore me down. On top of that, not sleeping well these past couple of days made it even harder to get up this morning. I was just in such a lazy and tired mood—it was a pretty rough day, all in all.

Today, I woke up early—before 5 a.m.—feeling really good. I managed to complete four solid Pomodoro sessions in the morning, catching up on all the journal entries I’d been putting off these past few days. It felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

It was raining in the morning, and I hurriedly took Hamer to school before heading straight to the office. My goal for today was to finalize the layer design we discussed yesterday and figure out how to implement it. I spent the entire morning sorting out my thoughts, and by lunchtime, I had a clear plan. After lunch, I discussed it with a colleague, and we finalized the approach. In the afternoon, I continued improving functionality based on the new layer structure and even went through the whole process with PE using the device, identifying issues that still needed to be addressed.

I went for lunch early and returned to work right after, feeling great and full of energy. It was at this point that I suddenly received an email related to my level at work, which made me quite excited.

In the evening, I played badminton, and it was so much fun. I played with several different colleagues, and it felt both relaxing and enjoyable. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to play with Hamer tonight. When I got home, I dealt with the social security receipt from her school, which required a lot of photocopies. After school, Hamer went out with her grandmother, but there was a bit of a scare when her grandmother lost track of her and called Xiaoyan and me in a panic. It turned out Hamer had wandered into a mall by herself—thankfully, it was just a false alarm.

Tonight, I planned to go to bed early, getting into bed by 9:30. I felt a bit regretful, though, as Xiaoyan seemed to be in a bad mood today. I wanted to talk to her before sleeping, but I was already dozing off and didn’t bring it up.