aggression balance

being productive from bed is nigh impossible. once i'd started on a month, i felt compelled to finish it and it took me longer than it needed to and was uncomfortable. to make up for it, though, i pulled out alice in sunderland and resumed being engrossed in it ^_^

i got to sleep fairly early, and yet was still quite stuck getting out of bed in the morning. i don't check bus times, so i'm always amazed that i *just* miss the bus that's usually the one i need.

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the day begins with a mail check: gasoline has sent me a message claiming that cash is a problem, so she won't be joining me for the trance party. her phrasing makes me fairly certain that this is her way of saying that she doesn't do trance, which makes her agreement to join me retrospectively disappointing.

the other girl whose car we were going to take? also out. in all her enthusiasm, she "forgot" that her boyfriend was coming back this weekend? hard to swallow.

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i sent my ride an sms to let him know that i'd arrived at the agreed upon time. fifteen minutes later, i received an sms telling me he'd be another ten minutes. with the extra half an hour, even if i hadn't known in advance, i could have sat on a cup of coffee at the train station instead of standing in the hot sun waiting for him.

so i wasn't having the most relaxed morning: i was pissed.

we began the ride with a fight about whether or not i should give our old SC the demotivators i bought him. his reasoning was that he's no longer our SC, so how he behaved is no longer relevant. aside from the fact that the only reason that i'm currently still in uniform is because he played me for a fool, that rationale completely excuses and even justifies my behaving badly for the rest of my service - once i leave, we'll all be friends.

right? of course.

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so the day started with my complete and utter frustration at the general lack of genuine* respect most middle-easterners show for one another.

* as opposed to pretense, which to their credit israelis aren't big fans of. i'm primarily referring to respect for others' time and importance in the grand scheme of things.

nystire managed to sneak in another aggravation - without saying a word, he'd slipped my p5 glove into my office. i didn't know it was there, and i now share my "office" with the rest of the unit. people are in an out all the time, and yet he didn't think there was any chance that interested fingers might venture in my glove's direction.

and of course, returning something without mentioning it is a comforting gesture. of course.

i checked out car rental options, and began wondering if maybe it's worth buying a car for use on weekends and renting it out privately during the week. the guys in the office had a field day with the idea, and then nystire suggested that it might be possible for me to take their car this weekend.

sweet! i asked if he wouldn't mind, and was told i'd have to speak to his wife, without letting her know that i'd already asked him. the procedure is as follows:
1) i call her and ask to borrow the vehicle
2) she calls nystire to discuss it with him
3) nystire discusses it "officially" with me
4) he calls her back, and gets permission
5) someone tells me what's going on

so i called her number, but she didn't answer. i then asked him to call her and ask her if she could call me :/ [i discovered later that i had the wrong number]

lunchtime saw us filling out appraisal forms for the catering company. some of our responses weren't very nice.
i was surprised at how hot the hot sauce was. surprised, and gasping :o

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i explained a couple of basic marketing principles to nystire when we got back to our offices; we were talking about purchasing a kindle or ipad, and he started repeating the industry-standard mantra of the ipad being an inferior product because it's not a complete product that integrates with everything else.

it's not supposed to be. and most of the slashdotters-slash-geeks are not the target market of the device. these are the same people who complained that the ipod sucks because it only operates under itunes. i agree with this assessment, but only because it's a problem for me, and i'm not their target market.

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i spent a few minutes eating another section's snickers and discussing the practicality of implementing a pass system for certain equipment that needs to be borrowed, then went off in search of something to waste time with. i wasn't in the mood to work.

unfortunately, both of my TL's (confusion reigns) caught up with me and i had to sit in a meeting for the next couple of hours formalizing my plans for my project. this was tiring, and made me very, very angry with captain incompetent. he really takes being a moron to the next level.

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day over, shuttle home. i almost lost my war decoration due to bad seat-belt design, which has me wondering if the idiots who make minibuses ever actually get inside to try them out :/

i walked to pongo, and had my "i only eat vegans" shirt printed - it came out really nicely (these are the low-res versions):

[click here for the version with a man]

i continued on to home center, to have the salesman ignore me in a fashion that made me take it personally. i walked out with a basic telephone and a mosquito zapper, and almost took the dvd player as well. i'll check and see if maybe the ones at the base store are cheaper. my dvd works fine, but being able to plug in any usb device would make it a whole lot more useful.

i walked home, acquiring someone's junked shelf stand on the way.
a) my finger and forearm strength have increased massively since i began climbing, and i carried it home one hand at a time
b) i had fun spraying it brown and yellow
c) i'm a little high from the fumes

i've eaten and done the online thing, rested a little, and now that i've posted i'm off to dance a bit and hopefully meet someone who i can ride with on friday.

the mario truth - i like this.