my tallest with three stripes

i was too wasted to work last night, and i really wasn't being productive, so i left early with spot. spot just reminded me that we didn't take the same bus: more proof that if i didn't blog, i'd lose my mind.

i came home, fully intending to crash on site; but the kid was around, and i needed him to watch full metal jacket. and of course, i ended up watching with him. we turned it off when we got to the end of the basic training... that is the most important part, after all. and now he understands why i keep referring to my replacement as private pile.

i eventually got to sleep around 1am, and i missed my alarm at 7am. the kid only noticed at 7.45, so i was destined to be late. instead of simply wasting my tardiness, i called my TL and got permission to go to the department of home affairs.

i walked through my primary base without being hassled. but when i got to the DoHA, they made me remove everything for the scanner. almost everything. i've ranted about this before: an army uniform is mostly bits of metal. we're soldiers, we're not a security threat. we're protecting them.

but they made me take off my belt, and walk through holding my pants up. assholes.

the queue didn't take too long, and i got to the information desk and told them what i needed. it took the lady two minutes flat, she'd renewed my passport and modified my id card, sent me on my way, and made the passport photo's i'd had taken on the way a complete waste of NIS 30.

wow.

i got back to base, sorted a few things out, ran a test (that showed up some problems we're going to have to deal with soon), had a promising chat with our TL and the kid, and then participated in making posters for the sports day that begins in five hours (did i mention i'm captain of the tug-of-war team?).

i made a large poster for our previous TL, and then a really nice one for sports day. i like painting.

we rushed off and got a ride to the final ceremony for the officer's course, and it was quite enjoyable. our previous TL had a good laugh at the poster when he saw it - during a speech they're supposed to be concentrating on - and then we turned it upside down for our own amusement. the poster was in two parts, so getting it wrong wasn't too simple to achieve; a few people didn't get the joke, and came up afterwards to laugh at us. morons :P at least they were the minority.

the kid and i bussed back to tel aviv, and i returned to base to finish the poster and get my bag. then i bussed to work, and had an extremely productive evening. good lord, i even enjoyed half an hour of putting together a very useful shell script.

the lack of documentation from our provider pissed me off again tonight: i'm supposed to send a date as a string, but it doesn't tell me the format. it complained about everything i could throw at it, and to make matters worse - returned an oracle error message. they couldn't even be bothered to wrap the exception, they just throw it to the user as is.

that's not very professional. spot and i were contemplating the possibility that our provider is a middleman for the real provider, and in attempting to find out we discovered that another foreign currency exchange company has almost identically copied our website. that will be dealt with.

we bussed home at 11, and went for coffee with magist. on the way home, an old friend (total babe) from university recognized me, and came down to say hi, and then came to visit the apartment. i walked her back afterwards, then on my way in magist walked out, so i walked a bit with him, then returned with an ever-increasing sense of deja vu. i'm guessing the girls who were sitting on the bench outside the entire time were beginning to get suspicious.

we now have a wireless ad-hoc network set up, and i'm sitting on my bed with spot's laptop, blogging before showering before crashing. tomorrow's gonna be tough.

i have to buy a desk, we have to organize a sleeper couch / sofa set, and the kid has to remember the lecture i just gave him on how to do the laundry.