The right to vote wrong. I love Democracy.

LMAO. My mom's office (civil engineering, telecommunications) is transferring to ISO9002 compliance. Leslie, I guess you understand. For everyone else: imagine Percy as head of the QA department in WWW. It's a dawn of a new age in the roughneck infrastructure industry. What a joke.

I'm on leave till Sunday, elections are tomorrow, I must meet some people or else I'll never have the chance.

Practicing some perl for the heck of it. I hope to de-rust my l33t c0din9 5|<1llz LOL.

Forgot to blog about my cousin whom I've met, however briefly, on Wednesday. He went to some tests while I went to the previous session/year's graduation ceremony (which R0X'd BTW. Ever seen a hundred programmers march in complex formations, salute and shout, accompanied by a live military band? Didn't think so.) to help setting it up and cleaning after they were done (cheap labor). He had to be there at 7am and he lives more than two hours away, so he spent the night at my place. Anyway, dude is so clueless it's sad. He is half a year and a day younger than me and therefore leaves high school this year. He doesn't want to go to college although he easily can and he has no idea about what's going on in the army and what kind of position he can get. Or at least what kind of assignment he wants to get. He can get so screwed over, it's not even funny. 96.125% on the SATs and I'm telling you - unless he gets his act together, he'll be driving trucks for three years. For next to nothing, let me remind you. Clueless underage stubborn idiots. I sound frighteningly like my dear mother. :Q

I'm probably missing my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity now, but I still can't believe it's actually happening. There I sat in a bus and enters Girl: thick long dark red hair, all the right shape, right size, freckles on cute face, non-baggy sweater, school bag on shoulder. Sits down in front of me, takes the sweater off (interesting lyrics on shirt), puts it into bag, takes out a copy of the Silmarillion (in Hebrew unfortunately) and starts reading without obvious signs of utter boredom.

She's sitting straight with her back on the back of the chair and her legs on either side of the schoolbag. The effect is tantalizing. I'm staring. She is either deep inside Tolkien's world or makes a point of not noticing. I'm chickening out, pulling my notepad and writing this.

It took a bump on the road to divert my attention from her to the window and see it's my stop. I swear I would have missed it otherwise. I kept on looking at her while the bus passed me. It was probably pretty pathetic, but my resolution is to at least start talking to her next time I see her (which is very convenient because it's probably never).

*Some time later*

Been told I'm guarding the base on Thur-Fri-Sat. we'll see how nice it is. Maybe will have some time to listen to music and read. And talk to people. I still don't remember most of the names.

Most unpleasant was to see the most annoying person from BT in out group. I sure hope we won't be in the same class. Actually, I'm going to talk to our temp. commander about making sure I don't.

Edit, four years later. The annoying guy just disappeared. Don't know what happened to him, but I haven't seen him since. Nor the girl from the bus, unfortunately.

Armed again. Volunteered to be on guard duty. So I have a gun and I don't do anything. Nice.

Note to self: don't lose touch with the nice people you get to meet - they're well worth the time spent on the occasional phone call.

I'm wet for the fifth time today and yet I'm happy. I was transferred to the base and got the shoulder insignia thingies. I'm in the course (until I'm thrown out ;-) ) and I have free time till it starts (about two weeks). I'll be home every day (I asked to be in the lodgings everyone else is getting but they said I live too close) which means I can't copy homework but also that I'll have internet access. Statistically, that lowers my chances at successfully getting through, but I guess I'll just have to work harder. It also sucks from the socializing point (there are girls in the course. Non-stupid and non-ugly ones!), but then again - we have twelve hours a day, five days a week (dunno about Fridays) for six months, to be together. Thank god the people seem nice.

Can't believe I'm blogging now. Anyway, I think I'm in. I was sent home to fetch some papers and we'll see what happens next. The weirdest thing happened on the way back: I was crossing a street and a cop approaches; I'm already considering whether he can or can't file a complaint for jaywalking when he says: "hi Ze'ev, wassup?"... I tripped (or, more precisely, slipped) and he caught me by the collar before my arse got into the puddle, I looked up at his face and of course, it's a guy from my tent in basic training. He wanted to be a "blue" cop, got it and he's already on the job. Awesome for him.

Still home. Apparently they are in a serious shortage of coders, because they send everyone who's not completely dumb to do the tests. Well, the short version at least. What I got was two hours long, not the full seven hours usually associated with the course. No answer yet, but I'm coming back there tomorrow, so we'll see. The word is that those who fail it get the operator/tech course, which, at this point, suits me fine. Met some people from my school who are already there. If I fail and they pass, it would be truly sad.

Talked to a guy I know through my mother's connections that has been through that thing I'm going to try and get into on Sunday. He says the tests are easy, the course is hard, the job is boring, the people vary and the paychecks when you're done are fat. But he said it's extra three years, not two like I thought. Ouch. Then again - I'll definitely have time to get a degree from openu and maybe even take a break for a masters, if and when I decide I want one. So I still want to go. Now, I hope my brain has not completely deteriorated.

I'm home!!! Going to some computer job tests on Sunday. I think I have a fair chance of getting in, but I try not to get my hopes too high. Must practice coding, since brain-wrinkles are all flat right now (Kudos Penny&Carole for the expression).

Can't believe basic training is O-V-E-R! Hurray! What a disgrace it was. Dima, I shall forever remember you every time I look at my right hand. Big day tomorrow, must go sleep.

sleepy rambling

Stumbled across my work on V.2 of this site. The API needs work, the JavaScript implementation is unreadable and the documentation either does not exist or is written in poor English. And I don't even have an excuse for that. What the hell was I thinking? I need to be home every day lest my mind will rot. This template needs an upgrade. Saying the two are connected is an understatement.

So tired, not packed yet.
Did not take photo with gun, won't be able to later.
Will probably be fucked over at the Sorting.
No brains or courage, nor ambition. No patience either.
Doing nothing and hoping for the best is not a strategy.
Lost opportunities seldom return.
Carpe diem.
Free verse rulez.

Snow Crash of Sea Wolf? Your vote. LL&P.

Dude, relax! You finish basic training on Tuesday! :)

Fandom - Marta, ArtDungeon

Thanks RJA! Wow!

Edit: ArtDungeon is her site. She's an awesome artist.

Soldier discounts work only for combatants on weekends, so it was full price for me. TTT was worth ten times the ticket, though. I don't even mind the changes that much. And can you believe I had HP&tORoP flashes during several scenes? "It's your Sam" - bless their slashy sox. The comic relief was spot on. And the half an hour long battle scene was good. And of course split-personality Gollum. Everything, basically. Now I still need to pack my stuff and I must wake up in three and a half hours. Fuck.

And to prove the military hurts you psychologically too - I listened to and liked this. Sad.

Bootcamp

Back here. This place still doesn't feel like home. Probably never will. But it's mine (kind of), I can use the bathroom whenever I want for as long as I want, and my room is not shared with 21 other smelly armed teenagers in various stages of depression and social-Darwinistic manipulations.

The weather is completely horrible and makes any kind of positive look on things almost impossible. The base is located in a place that somehow forces extreme conditions: if it's "nice and warm" then it will be scorching hot, if there's a "light breeze" there will be chilling winds, if it's "partially clouded" we wont see the sun all day and if "some rain" is promised in various places of the country we will be drenched to the bones in our leaky tents, sleeping on wet beds in wet uniform without any dry clothes available anywhere in the vicinity. It was the freaking monsoon season for us.

I think I have finally learned to aim and scored max hits in the last test. Too bad there's only one left. But then again, on the 14th I get rid of the three-kilo and seven-years-in-jail Weapon Of A Thousand Apologies (already used about a hundred in public transport this Friday). I'm not even allowed to take it apart without supervision of my superiors. And I need to oil the POS. Screw it - I'm oiling it today, I don't need it to jam on the firing range.

Remember that radio they used to call napalm air strikes with, back in 'nam? Well, it's heavy. I'm not exactly in top shape, but I can tell you this: you can either charge, or carry the thing, but definitely not both. Very glad it was my responsibility for only a few days.

Granted, some things, like the weather, the army can't control, but for others it is solely responsible. For example, budgets and the level of competence of our commanders. And drafting people who I would never, ever, in a zillion years entrust with a pocket knife, much less an automatic weapon (yeah, it's illegal to switch it into fully automatic mode so you're only allowed to use it as a semi automatic. Doesn't help me to sleep at night.).

Thank god for our platoon commander, the cutest nineteen-year-old I've seen. Half of my squad want to marry her. She's competent enough for four and she tyrannizes our commanders mercilessly. At times she seems like the only good thing on that stinking base. If Gaza is the Gates of Hell (and according to the people who served there it is), I might be in love. Alas, it was never meant to be. Oh, the angst. ;-)

Some of the kids are halfway decent, but most are future truck drivers and in our obligatory "drugs are bad, mmmkay?" talk admitted to having first hand experience. Many a fun moment I had listening to them describing in vivid colors their latest dream about the blonde¹ commander from another platoon or how they would like to drop-kick the company commander (who is a bastard of a lieutenant that thinks him being able to court marshal us for being untidy or late makes him God. I'm sure the blonde commander sleeping with one of our commanders and not him makes it worse. No pity from here - May you be involved in a weapons accident, you fat pig. :-) ).

Well, it's only one week and a couple of days left, and I think I'll manage. You can eat the food when you're hungry enough and I just have to remember to bring lots of sweets to share with everyone so they remember to re-label be a "nice guy" every day.
Now I know who I can have a semi-intelligent conversation with and who can't see a difference between me and the Ukrainian drunk with his acid raves pounding in headphones ten feet away louder than some of my music through speakers because our first language is the same. It also happens that the people who are stupid and biased are hardly worthy conversationalists unless you want to discuss the finer points of faking an illness to get out of work. Not a big loss by any rate.

I guess you wouldn't be surprised how much some people's attitude changed when they found out I can fix their computers, but you could think that in a predominantly ethnically homogeneous country established to protect a people from racism there would be no internal racial squabbles. How wrong would you be.
Russians, Romanians, Poles, Checks, Argentineans, Moroccans, Iraqis, Ethiopians. Color, facial features, head and body hair, customs, foods, language. Combined with the usual disagreements between people who had to work at McDonald's to buy the cheapest Discman-clone and the people who's daddy bought them a brand new mid-high range car the day they got a driver's license and you can get a pretty tense atmosphere. Especially when everyone's trying to establish he's tough and should not be messed with. And when there isn't enough privacy to get off for two weeks (popular topic of conversation around the dinner table, btw).
I can't wait to get out and be in a more segregated-by-motivation-to-not-be-an-asshole environment. And idea I couldn't really express there and not be considered an elitist (a lost cause by now, I think).

My school principal also believed in integration. The idea is that putting all the nice guys together might produce a very productive group of nice guys, but all the not nice guys will be lost to society, so the two groups should be mixed and then at least some of the not nice will be inspired to move upwards rather than downwards and will get a decent job rather than get into drugs. This forces the nicer people to carry the extra weight of the no-work force until they're allowed to ditch the leg shackles and run straight into exclusive groups. Which turn into a joke like mensa, but that's another problem.
The problem I see in this is that although some pebbles might be polished, the diamonds are definitely dimmed², and it's a heavy loss. I saw it in school, I see it openly practiced in IDF policy and I see it in western society in general. I don't like it. This criticism does not mean I have a solution to propose, so consider it a rant. Probably an immature one at that.

I'm going to try and use the soldier discount in the movie theater this evening, because I need my TTT fix.

Thank you Lou for your letter. I might even be able to answer it.
Everybody — I am VERY sorry, but I have no time for anything. Please, email me, stay in touch. Tell me about your lives, what's going on in the scene, etc.

1 - keep in mind blondes are rare and sought after in these parts, at least by the oriental population, though the Ashkenazi are also at fault. What's with the Aryan complex? There are fine girls available with dominantly Semitic features.
2 - quote by Robert G. Ingersoll