#synop — Public Fediverse posts

#TerosTidbits, in the army in 2001.

There's a compulsory military service in Finland, and it's based on luck whether one ends up doing 6 months as a private or 12 months as a corporal. It's also possible to apply to an officer school.

I was assigned to Tikkakoski Air Force base where I served the first six months and then in Halli Air Force base for the next six months as I was assigned to a corporal track. I am currently an air force weather corporal in reserve.

Army was the worst. But of course you already know that. It was very exercise intensive and I wasn't very good at those things like running, long marches and skiing. There wasn't much in terms of thinking required.

Based on aptitude tests they decided it would be the best to keep me inside heated buildings so I became a weather man. I was taught everything there is to know about clouds and weather phenomena such as "high sand storm" (which is relatively uncommon in Finland). I spent the final 6 months of the service doing weather signaling to air traffic, that is, 3 shift observation round the clock and sending #SYNOP and #METAR messages periodically to describe the weather.

Those messages were shown in Finnish teletext channels in real time which was nice as we could always see what our colleagues were signaling to see if they were totally or just significantly wrong.

I got sports vacation approved for taking part in a chess competition in Kurikka, where I also maintained a QBASIC(!) code which was used to pair the tournament and print out the results after every round to project to the wall. I don't know where that code came from but I was the only one who could do required fixes and real-time modifications to it so I did.

I also got vacation for taking part in Eurobot competition in France with Roboteam, where I had previously taken part in these competitions yearly. We didn't win, but because of some strike action with trains we couldn't get back to the airport in time and were switched to a much later flight back.

Because of that I was late from returning from vacation to the army, which is a serious offence, although I did notify them by phone that this was going to happen. I was given a punishment of "extra service", which were the only times I did something meaningful in the army. First I was assigned to fix the fluorescent lights in the attic. Did that, basically changed ignitors and lights for some 30 lamps in the ceiling.

The second extra service was in the summer to take a bicycle to a nearby sand pit and fill up as many sandbags as possible. I thought someone would supervise, but like with the previous extra service no one did. So I was there in the cloudless Finnish summer filling up some sandbags, and cars started coming in. I thought maybe someone is coming to check the progress, but no.

It turned out the sand pit was a location for a dog agility contest. Several cars came with ladies with their dogs and they set up a trick track for their dogs and ran with their dogs around the track for several hours.

Meanwhile I was trying to look cool in my army uniform shoveling sandbags while watching the in-promptu dog show. While I was doing that "punishment", everyone else was running pointlessly in the forest.

Here's an old photo of me in the #army:

#TerosTidbits, in the army in 2001.

There's a compulsory military service in Finland, and it's based on luck whether one ends up doing 6 months as a private or 12 months as a corporal. It's also possible to apply to an officer school.

I was assigned to Tikkakoski Air Force base where I served the first six months and then in Halli Air Force base for the next six months as I was assigned to a corporal track. I am currently an air force weather corporal in reserve.

Army was the worst. But of course you already know that. It was very exercise intensive and I wasn't very good at those things like running, long marches and skiing. There wasn't much in terms of thinking required.

Based on aptitude tests they decided it would be the best to keep me inside heated buildings so I became a weather man. I was taught everything there is to know about clouds and weather phenomena such as "high sand storm" (which is relatively uncommon in Finland). I spent the final 6 months of the service doing weather signaling to air traffic, that is, 3 shift observation round the clock and sending #SYNOP and #METAR messages periodically to describe the weather.

Those messages were shown in Finnish teletext channels in real time which was nice as we could always see what our colleagues were signaling to see if they were totally or just significantly wrong.

I got sports vacation approved for taking part in a chess competition in Kurikka, where I also maintained a QBASIC(!) code which was used to pair the tournament and print out the results after every round to project to the wall. I don't know where that code came from but I was the only one who could do required fixes and real-time modifications to it so I did.

I also got vacation for taking part in Eurobot competition in France with Roboteam, where I had previously taken part in these competitions yearly. We didn't win, but because of some strike action with trains we couldn't get back to the airport in time and were switched to a much later flight back.

Because of that I was late from returning from vacation to the army, which is a serious offence, although I did notify them by phone that this was going to happen. I was given a punishment of "extra service", which were the only times I did something meaningful in the army. First I was assigned to fix the fluorescent lights in the attic. Did that, basically changed ignitors and lights for some 30 lamps in the ceiling.

The second extra service was in the summer to take a bicycle to a nearby sand pit and fill up as many sandbags as possible. I thought someone would supervise, but like with the previous extra service no one did. So I was there in the cloudless Finnish summer filling up some sandbags, and cars started coming in. I thought maybe someone is coming to check the progress, but no.

It turned out the sand pit was a location for a dog agility contest. Several cars came with ladies with their dogs and they set up a trick track for their dogs and ran with their dogs around the track for several hours.

Meanwhile I was trying to look cool in my army uniform shoveling sandbags while watching the in-promptu dog show. While I was doing that "punishment", everyone else was running pointlessly in the forest.

Here's an old photo of me in the #army: