only when it counts.

i'll begin at the beginning - waking up bright and shiny in the morning.
a sweltering morning.

arrived on base and resumed my task from last weekend, and learned some nifty ms word stuff in the process.

i went to talk to my welfare officers about my situation, to see if they could help me out at all. the result of which: i have a choice. i can continue to live more-or-less close to tel aviv, and close enough to be able to see friends and go out every so often (more often than less, lately ^_^)... OR, i can move to a cheap and nasty apartment near the base, and be able to quit working so hard.

big decision, that one. at least i remember now what it is i'm suffering for. i'm suffering so i can have a semblance of quality of life.

the guy in charge of guard shifts called to say he hadn't got my note, so i had to go over there and point it out to him (it was on his desk, in front of him. he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer).

what i found quite disturbing was that even though we've never spoken, he knew exactly who i was from the moment he saw me.

i guard too much.

so we had a friendly chat while sorting everything out, and i'm in the clear.

spoke to the guy i'm doing the data haven project with, and we ended up with an understanding that my current situation is not condusive to the work... hopefully i'll be discharged relatively soon, but there's no betting on that.

lunch in the mess hall was actually pleasant. THAT was surprising.

the dog was up north, so the other guy in my team - i really should come up with a good name for him: i'll call him scout - and i went for ice-creams and arbing. got called back by our team leader to deal with an emergency. another oracle emergency. i LOATHE oracle.

this time, we have a deeper understanding of what's wrong. and it's TOTALLY illogical. basically, everything's been running fine, after a WEEK the code develops an infinite loop. all by itself. if we run it manually, there's no problem. but once the problem's started, there's nothing to do but kill all the sessions and redefine everything.

i ABHOR oracle. i actually let my commander know EXACTLY how i feel, not only about oracle in general, but about our systems specifically. he was shocked. i actually BEGGED him to let me in on his secret for dealing with this shit, and it turns out that he actually agrees with me, but is too lazy to care as much as i do.

great.

i finished the ms word job, and then ran off for volleyball practice.

it was boiling hot, and we worked HARD. we were absolutely revolting afterwards, and my eyes were crusted with dirt and dust, and i got mildly sunburned. and dehydrated. but a few of us did well, and managed to teach the hangers-on a thing or two. hopefully the match tomorrow will be dealt with correctly. if we choose the correct team configuration, we'll kick their asses. if we don't, we'll be humiliated.

i dealt with the guys responsible for fixing our servers... a few weeks ago, we requested that they fix one of them. it doesn't MATTER what's wrong with it. every few days, they've called to make sure that we still want them to fix it. today, they'd finally called in an external techie, and wouldn't let him touch it until i'd given the go-ahead. so i explained to them in no uncertain terms that i didn't care how, the server would be up and running and better than before.

they finally fixed the damn thing.

and it's up and running and better than before. amazing what a little aggression achieves in the country. i hate that it's necessary.

i bussed to the lincoln, got there all smelly, but in time for coffee and a chill before warm-up. i SUCKED for half an hour, then began the first round.

the guy i played was REALLY good, and i still wasn't in game mode. he made a few mistakes here and there, and i was on/off the whole time. eventually, we were 4-4, and it's first to 5. he was going for the black, and i still had 5 balls on the table.

and i got into the zone. i cleared the table with absolutely fantastic shots, and off the last one lined up perfectly for an easy shot on the black.

i focused, i KNEW what to do, i exhaled... and shot. and put the black ON THE GODDAMN POCKET. he couldn't have missed unless he was trying. i GAVE him the match. when it counted the most - but REALLY counted - i fucked up. that KILLED me.

i said my goodbyes, then went to wait for the bus.

waiting for the bus gave me an opportunity to reflect. it rained - RAINED!! - while i waited, and the atmosphere gave me a moment to collect my thoughts and to get back to my natural state. felt GOOD.

after missing a couple of busses due to overloading, i finally got home, and still haven't showered.

why haven't i showered?

because i've been working. i was totally stressing at all the changes that needed to be made, had a crazy argument with the woman i'm working with, and then we discovered that she's been misusing the stuff i wrote, which resulted in us arguing about different things. turns out what i've done is just fine - more than adequate, really - and she's just begun testing. now to wait and see.

and shower. and go to bed, at some stage. i'm bloody exhausted.