Personal - General Update

• Got a very much overdue haircut at the new local barber (he couldn't believe I was in the military, my hair got so long). I gather the haircutting business is very competitive here and now because he treats his customers very well, looking to score recommendations. Very reasonably priced, too. This should get my chain of command off my back for a couple of months. BTW, don't worry - I won't be blogging about shopping for underwear.

• Have been reading John Cowan's blog (recommended by Tim Bray). I envy his linguistics skills (I know more people who are gifted like that, namely Eli Bar-Yahalom). The entire xml-dev crowd seems fascinating, from where I stand.

  I have added some of his signatures to the sig DB I use at work. It's some Outlook VBA code that appends a random sig from an Access file upon sending an email. I've found it's a great conversation starter to draw the attention of geeks, because the people who can understand and comment my sigs are the ones I want to talk to. Also, I feel the need to show off.

• I haven't yet blogged about attending Adi Gigi's graduation ceremony on June 23d. We were, for a few months, together in programming training when she passed the "gibush" for naval officer training and was forced to choose (it's not cost-effective to let people do two costly voluntary training programs when they'll only serve in one post). She wisely chose the harder one and now, two years later, she's an officer on a Israel Navy ship.

  BTW, Israeli naval ranks are exactly the same as for the land services, so although it's called second lieutenant, actually she's an ensign.

  Letting women into the elite combat officer training programs is quite new - she's like the 10th (give or take) female to successfully complete the training, the first with her specialty, the only in her class (and with no females in the recent flight school batch at all, situation is not that good for women in combat).

  I have to mention the enlisted and commissioned crowd at the ceremony (Dani himself arrived to give them their insignia and ranks) was from a very different IDF than the one I serve in. The people I know from "the army" are IT types: analysts, application designers and coders, DBAs, systems people, tech support of various types, comms techs, etc. while the people there were boat crews, harbor defense, infantry, search and rescue, field intelligence, etc. Very little in common, except for the age and uniform (and not even that, with the navy). I felt like the geek that I am.