25-I-2003.
Got 1200$ from Gary via paypal. In an email, he added "I am unable to receive email, something with the Dell servers or something, so you may not get any comments from me until it clears."
My response: "Got it, no problem here. I was working on the distributed app, and I've made some good progress - the cross-refreshing works now, at least one way. It gets across exactly those records which were edited since the time of last sync. Tomorrow I'll do the both-ways updates, plus something to propagate any structure changes. Changing tables in one location is a relatively simple matter, we've done it before, but distributing these changes may be much more difficult."
Email from my parents, another long one. Reconstructing from it.
We understand that the Amers from the Brits, who are afraid of moisture, inherited building wooden houses. But you say you couldn't raise the temperature above 19oC.
Wind blew, that's why the heating couldn't cope with it. And we're the top floor, and this being rental apartments, there isn't too much insulation.
About practical knowledge to maytain house or equipment, such is the attitude in all of the USA. A neighbor told us how he was visiting his sister in Chicago, and a kid's bike had a broken pedal. The owners almost scheduled the purchase of a new bike, but he just replaced the pedal and the bike was as good as new. Then he went and fixed all the kids' bikes - a wire here, a loose screw there. Then parents wanted to pay but he said it's a hobby, his free time, no charge. Then they sent beer, juices etc, crates of. What can one do. Maybe it's not bad if they can keep the attitude and pass the worry to someone else.
So it is with the machinery. The working hour of a technician is too expensive, compared with the cost of parts or replacement, so nobody fixes things much. And training them is also costly, and they're paid but not working while they learn, so there's a double loss. So the first thing a majstor does is the estimate whether something is worth fixing or needs replacement.
The fridge in our previous apartment broke; the parts would have cost 175$, the work at least 25$/hr, new fridge 375$. And it was old enough, they replace them every ten years, good or not.
Sometimes even I get into situations where time is money - when I was putting together my computer, for some things I just drove to the shop and bought stuff, rather than wasting time on workarounds, because I wasn't even sure that would work, and on the other hand I get 40$ an hour from Gary, so... why waste time. Just like I bought a video card on eBay last week, 20 bucks, 28 with shipping, just can't remember for which machine it was.
Our majstors, of course, think quite differently, they adjust to their customers, they're born that way, the real majstor is that who saves on parts. I remember that son of that granny, where we lodged in Hungary, fixed monitors, would replace some 50 HUF thingy and save a 8000 HUF monitor, he was the people's hero of the day.
That time when Rick and I replaced the starter, the estimated saving* was around 300$, so you see. A similar fix on his dad's car (at least three times more expensive than mine) had cost around 1500.
The interview for Atlanta is scheduled in four days from now. Don't know how many candidates they have, but it doesn't look like there's a queue. Getting there shouldn't be a problem, they're next to the beltway. The exit numbering is weird, differs between maps. They used to have ordinal numbers for exits but then it's the same problem as with street numbers, if you insert a new one between 4 and 5, what will it be? So they mark them by mile now.
Decided to replace the car radio. The programme is even worse than ours, the ads are about 30% louder than the rest, and they chop out the silences between spoken words, so it's machine-gun sped up, every second is paid. The plan is to get the cheapest radio I can find (against theeves, have nothing fancy in the car) which has the auxilliary input, so I can plug the mp3 disc player in.
Lena got her first machine few days ago. Got some old software running, the Psycho pinball works! The monitor is some cheap and bad Packard Bell, which we got from Ricardo (for free, ofc). This is definitely not Hewlet Packard, nor Bell, nor Bell Atlantic, just a noname name resembling them. At least it had some sound boxes which weren't that bad, but he kept them.
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* I resisted the urge to write „the savings“, because I hate unprovoked plurals. If you say „a savings“, well, try to count them.
Mentions: Gary Brandywine, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), majstor, Ricardo Manuel Bariero (Ricardo), Rick Netter, in serbian