2/5/2009: Adam's work

I went up to the office yesterday to meet with the guys with whom I work and organize some logistics for the demo we are doing on Friday for the head of the group over at Vodacom. Shortly after arriving, C. asks me "what have you done?". C. is the head of the group mind you, and has a lot of influence on whether or not my business gets to continue receiving contracts from Vodacom.

I asked him what the problem was and, to make a long story short, it centered around my being an idiot and not changing an rc.local file on one of our boxes, which had rebooted and loaded an old version, a non-working version, of our software. Oops.

I got some information from him and put it into our system and gave the location of where we thought some bad guys were (our software locates bad guys, but I won't go into specifics). These particular bad guys, 12 of them in all, armed with AK-47s, had just robbed a mall. He SMSed it over to the head of the bad-guy-finding group and that was that.

Well this morning I receive an SMS from C. Here is what it read:
Adam Thanx for your help yesterday. (name withheld) arrested 2 suspects about 300m from where we provided them with the location.

Awesome! Pats on the back all around!

Also this morning I got to do some more neat errands. By "neat", I mean "a huge pain and everything takes longer than it should". I set out to go get satellite TV switched on at the house (even with a powered antenna, the TV received one station, badly, and April wants to watch some Afrikaans programs).

Thinking that the DStv.com site should actually provide me with the location of a retailer, I foolishly copied down the address. Ha ha! The joke was on me. Seems the retailer had relocated and, after calling several disconnected numbers, I finally reached someone who could tell me where to go and what to do. Turns out the office was right by the mall where I needed to go to the bank and the post office. Score, although I was still irritated by driving all over Centurion!

The satellite TV here in South Africa is CHEAP with a capital C. I mean like two bucks a month cheap, and the decoder is all of 45 bucks. I went ahead and got a package that assured us we'd get Afrikaans channels.

Of course, what you're not told is that if you purchase a TV, you must have a license. This are to be purchased, with cash only I found out, at a SA Post Office. After getting the decoder and my account all set up for satellite, I walked over to the Centurion Mall and went to the bank to get my check card and the Post Office to pay R225 for a license and R5 to send one piece of mail to the U.S., April's resignation letter to LISD. LISD administration requires an original signed document stating that one has resigned. I would think that one not showing up would be proof enough, but hey, that's why they...are...educating...our...children. Crap. Looks like it's private school still! Those folks over there are getting paid way too many of our tax dollars to be that ignant.