sweet vision

yesterday was great, although there was definitely an edge to it with something uncomfortable in the air. that is, it was all great until i was almost at home.

pointy-haired boss, with whom i'd had a long personal interview in the morning, called me up to inform me that he was being pressured by our unit commander to have us (nystire and myself) removed from the birthright program. because of a frikkin' unit sports day, one of the most irrelevant dates in the army calendar.

i was PISSED. actually, i get pissed off now every time i think about it. i'm exceedingly grateful that ink's co-worker (i can't think of a good name, i'll go with "vision" for the moment) was late for our date, because it gave me time to
a) sort shit out in my head and get over the annoyance
b) meet up with my tattoo artist
c) discover that the comics store has moved to our area
d) find out where to acquire goodies for my revenge

i said goodbye to spot's girlfriend A, had a nap and a shower and walked to dizengoff center, planning to arrive fashionably late. i keep forgetting that we live so close, and after walking slowly still arrived twenty minutes early. this innate south african time-culture kills me.

i've been so disappointed over the past few years with the girls that i've dated, and i wasn't expecting anything more from this one. i was also concerned by having met her in the relative dark, expecting her to show up with some glaring beauty handicap (i'm a fucking champion at finding tiny, irrelevant "faults").

i also have a thing against "dates", specifically brought on by s'belle (and we met up at the same place).

i have to say that a) vision's gorgeous and i simply couldn't find that niggling detail and b) the date was GREAT. we sat at a really nice coffee shop, then spent a couple of really romantic hours on the beach, and then simply walked around tel aviv before she got on the shuttle home.

i want to describe her, but i keep getting stuck in my thoughts. beautiful, fragile, together, with deep eyes and a delightful smile. my life is finally sorted out, and i've met a girl who's totally distracting? i couldn't ask for more.

i returned to the cocktail room afterwards to send everyone her regards (our favourite barman offered to hook me up with her when i mentioned her name, and got all excited when i told him he was too late), and have a few drinks with spot, his girlfriend B (that was fast), wr and magist.

<rant>magist and i fought for a while after we left because of something an old friend of mine taught me many years ago: the difference between being a man and being a male. in fact, i live by the definition of being a man as much as possible (although i'm not infallible - there's still a male in here somewhere) - a man has the ability to suppress his male urges in order to derive satisfaction from the finer things in life. i would rather be lonely trying to find myself with quality than get it on with a cheap slag.

okay, i'm exaggerating for effect, not all the girls i turn down are cheap slags, but i expect a little more from life than a series of shags. and i'd rather enjoy the music than spend every party moment hunting women.</rant>

and i think (i hope) that i've finally succeeded, because vision's coming over for a movie a bit later on, and then we've agreed we're going to a "carrot party" at the zamir. everyone's supposed to dress up as a redhead. spot, the kid and i have been discussing showing up looking normal, then offering to show the doormen a made-up fire-crotch >D

so spot, g/f B and i arrived home around 5am, i had a quick shower to remove the sand* before going to bed.

i woke up around 10.30, and the kid and i went for breakfast before going shopping. it was a pleasant breakfast, but i forgot to use honey until i was almost done and the fruit was a tad sour :S

i put on my blades when i got home, and went out to enjoy the stunning day. as i hit the yarkon i suddenly realized i'd forgotten to do the fun shopping i'd planned from yesterday's mill around the mall, so i scrambled back home to change and get organized.

comikaza still rocks :) i ordered slaine: the horned god (both parts), and bought desolation jones, which is so far stunning. i bought the pink fluff for my nemesis' desk just as i'd planned, and a redhead wig and make-up pen for tonight.

i met up with spot and g/f B at the cafeneto, and we just got back from an excellent and amusing lunch. i'm going to nap now.

* i'm SO impressed with my boots - while on the beach i suddenly realized that i'd been standing in a puddle of water for about half an minute, and not a drop got in ^_^

erasing history

October 31st, 2006. I woke up at 8.40. Hurriedly made my belated way to the base. Was confronted by brother bear. He's now staying where I was before the current apartment. I'd forgotten to clear my history. He could be reading this, for all I know. In all the general craziness I forgot myself, and wasn't paranoid enough. Got called into an impromptu meeting. My spidey-sense warned me in time to get into full uniform before opening the door. That was a good move. We discussed a new twist in our upgrade story. I have tons more work to do than I expected. Lunch was good. I spent the afternoon fighting with piles. It took a serious speech to get him to produce something worthwhile. I was informed by other teammates that I'm being too harsh, but unfortunately it's all he responds to. I had a good meeting with daddy-o. I finally informed him of the flighty thing. He took it well, I guess he knew already. I continued working with (on) piles, then had another meeting. When I came back piles had actually managed to do something intelligent all by himself. I'm not letting up, I figure he needs at least one speech a day. The army day ended with an interesting conversation regarding s'belle; my attitude towards her has turned out to be a shared one --

mmf brought his playstation by mistake... it's a ps2. and spot foolishly informed him of his oversight :P

i hope i hope i hope i hope i hope i manage to celebrate halloween tonight! thanks, moonflake: this rocks :)

crazy day

how do i best describe today in one word? NUTS.

on the bus to the base this morning, i was totally engrossed in oliver twist, and had my earphones in, bopping my head to wicked beats. suddenly one of the earphones was ripped out, and the strange girl in front of me was waving a newspaper under my nose.

"you want to read the paper?"
"i can't read hebrew."

i replaced the earphone. 20 seconds later there's frantic movement in my peripheral vision. i look up, and she's waving a stick of gum at me.

"no, thanks."

geez.

on base there was plenty of work, we were completely swamped with many different and unpleasant things the entire day. most of it was developer, and i managed to get the rest of the team scratching their heads and thinking "where did we go wrong?" :) [that smile's for my not being alone]

just before lunch, we had a farewell ceremony for one of the tech-support commanders. it was nice, and the food was good. what was really weird was afterwards running into one of her soldiers - i asked him why he hadn't been there, and he mumbled something about "why should i have been?", before scurrying off.
personally, as much as i hate my previous commanders, i'd still go and do the official goodbye thing. strange.

---lunch was amusing. a few of us from the section went to the mess hall, and ran into s'belle and a friend of hers. we were both on top form, and we all spent lunch (which wasn't too good, but not the worst i've ever eaten) in hysterics. afterwards, she was frantically messengering me [is that a legitimate verb now?] to find out if my friends also think that we look like a couple. i used a lot of little-people's words to explain to her that i've been out of primary school for a while, that i'm not interested in anybody else's opinions of me whatsoever, and that the only thing i'm interested in when it comes to her is sex. and i'm still not sure she grasped all of it. it may have been too much at once.

just after lunch, the new girl came up to me with a forlorn expression on her face. she's heard me ranting and screaming in frustration, so what does she say (in a soft, sad voice) when i ask her what's up?

"i hate developer, too."

now if that didn't start the funniest series of quotes and arguments, i'll eat my own head. *thump, thump*

i was informed by the other south african that we were to meet in the afternoon with somebody from the airforce about aerospace software engineering. hell, i'd sign on extra years for that!

two minutes before we were scheduled to meet, he postponed. buggrit.

i went to work, and got busy fixing a bug from last night. it drove me nuts, especially when i found it and it wasn't at all related to the problem area i'd been looking at. urgh!

after sorting everything out, we began moving it all to linux. that was fun. what wasn't fun was its not compiling at all. when we figured out that the problem wasn't on the coding side, we also discovered that our support had forgotten to inform us of a new version release. we installed the new version, and suddenly NOTHING compiled. so much for backward compatibility. i hear that the development team got into deep shit when we alerted them of the problem. our side was filled with sardonic laughter.

i dealt with it anyway, only to discover that they'd introduced something called log4j, which needs to be initialized in a certain way. and if it's not correctly done, it screws up everything. much time wasted on fixing that, then discovering that JApplets don't run on remote consoles. i'm learning more things all the time.

by the end i managed to get the most crucial application running and loaded on the server, and i have a good idea of how to correct the same problems on the primary application. but i have to be done by tomorrow, and that's probably going to result in me working late. TGIT (friday's our day off, don't forget).

on leaving the premises, i suddenly registered that the reason i'd been struggling the entire evening was that somebody had changed my resolution to a setting that should have been labelled "ridiculously high - too high for a small screen like yours". and i hadn't actually noticed.

tomorrow morning i get to miss inspection, i'll be sorting out rent subsidies. sounds like fun.

---waiting for the bus after work, i was accosted by two arabs. i had no problem with giving one of them a cigarette, but i was put immediately on guard when they started taking an interest in my service. i managed to brush them off with bullshit, but i was ready to deal with an attempt at kidnapping. not a nice feeling at all.

and just before the bus came, they started telling me about heroin and how i should stay away from it. having a cousin who enlightened me from his first-hand ordeal about the horrors of getting hooked on that shit, i'm in no particular need of guidance from strangers. especially ones i'm already wary of.

---my door wouldn't open when i got home. i forced it, and discovered that they've got loose cables sticking out of the new hole in my floor. tomorrow's talk is going to be interesting. but i do have electricity!

anyway, the positive has outweighed the negative on this one. i absolutely loved returning to development under linux, and i've achieved a lot in relatively few hours.

who's cool, and has two thumbs? fonzie... and me!