Off-Topic: Bleeding for Rails! Part 2

“Victorious!”

A small battle won in the war against THE SYSTEM! As I reported in last week’s post, I found a ‘gap’ in THE SYSTEM thanks to a tip from Vinicius. I went to Niterói and managed to submit my passport renewal — which, if I’d gone through normal channels, wouldn’t have been ready until mid-June!

Yesterday I took the midnight bus to go back to Niterói to pick up the passport on the scheduled date. One detail: they said they’d send a confirmation email two days in advance. Of course, that email never arrived — THE SYSTEM appears to be choking on something.

I was seen at 7:00 sharp and by 7:05 I walked out with my passport! As I explained before, at that hour the 512kbps connection at the station wasn’t yet saturated :-)

At least the trip to Niterói was worthwhile because I got to exchange ideas with Vinicius at Improve It (thanks for the hospitality, Vinicius!). I caught my bus back to São Paulo at noon and arrived around 19:30! Even traveling in a sleeper coach, it’s exhausting. On the way there I barely slept 2 hours, and on the way back I caught some very poor sleep.

Thanks to São Paulo’s vast distances and traffic, I didn’t get home until around 9pm. A long day. Good thing it’s not routine. But at least the effort was worth it — now begins the second part of the race: sorting out flights, accommodation, etc. to make it to RailsConf!