21-III-2019.
On 17th we decided to celebrate our wedding anniversary by returning to the scene of the crime - some grub at kaštel, all together. I first swung by the busodrome to pick Lena, made a bunch of shots while waiting.
We all got in the van and hit the road. Well, almost, but it wouldn't start. The battery exhausted in winter. Jumpstarting via cables from saxo's battery also didn't work, not strong enough, so we called a cab so half in it half in the car.
The girls found the playground interesting, even Raja and Violet had fun there. The only trouble was the waiter, who just didn't manage. What was on the menu was half missing in the kitchen, but he didn't know what was in which half, so when we'd pick something, he had to go check, which took a few minutes, then he'd come say nope we don't have it. Repeat. Eventually, on third try, we did pick something they had, but even of that he'd forget some things - like bringing extra glasses, which we then picked from other tables. In the end we remembered that he didn't bring the salad, but didn't want to remind him, because he'd bring it when it would be too late. Well, at least we had an experience, and he got no tip.
For the trip back we just stuffed ourselves into the saxo.
Just heard of patient portal 2.0, yet another secret project, written by Jevgenij and yet another programmer we didn’t know of, don’t even know his name nor location (prob’ly Toronto, and may already be working from the new office)(found, few weeks later, it was Grbo. Jan and Kees are already extremely pissed off and so am I. “but what the're doing is they want to test out if this is the framework they like, and if they like it it will be the future of the company”... Not telling and not even asking opinion nor technical advice from existing team is a nice touch. Since when are the CFO and sales manager the expert team who decides which framework is the best, and outweigh the collective brainpower of the rest of us?
Last case I know of secret projects was six companies ago, when we were preparing to part ways. So we forked the framework in different directions, not telling each other. Within a year there were two companies. Period 1993-94.
Anyway, Jan and Kees are visiting Toronto next week. The discussion sounds promising already. There’s already a list of questions and Briyesh was, so I heard, rather angry at hearing the first few in a call.
Few suggestions for more questions:
• how many more secret projects will there (need to) be before we become one company again?
• which protocol was applied when creating secret projects?
• where were they documented?
• Are there any other “secret” projects going on?
• Are there any other secret projects going on?
• what's the code for these projects in ClockWorker?
• why are we storing data on our own servers? (GDPR/data protection)
• why aren’t we storing data on our own servers? (ClockWorker, payments project)
In other news, one of the major customers has just hired some IT security bandits, and the usual shit happened: couldn't do anything for them from this side, geoblocked. Not even via the Manchester servers.
Meanwhile, Go, Stanley, Neša and Anita were visiting Hawaii the last ten days, returned home today. Kids had lot of fun, pictures look good. It's weird to see all the paraphernalia of american way of life transplanted into such a different setting. For one, four lane highways with classic electric poles with oodles of cables hanging, in the same picture with the mountains with clouds sitting on them, palms*, ferns and beach.
Most of the time they were with Stanley's half brother, by mother, who has a different surname (polish at that, and pronounced in such a way that you'd never guess its origin until you see it written). The guy's likewise half bald and likewise finding that hair migrated to the lower part of the face. From what I heard he's a microbiologist or viruslologist of sorts, somewhere in California, high up there in the ranks of health industry. The brothers were just revisiting the places where their mother spent the last years of her life.
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* I've sometimes wondered why they keep saying „palm trees“, sounds redundant. Ah, not redundant in english.
Mentions: Anita Jennifer Berger (Anita), Briyesh Dupta, ClockWorker, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Jan Brenkelen, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Jevgenij Nosorowetz, kaštel, Kees de Cock, Nenad Berger (Neša), Prasad Gorbeau (Grbo), Ryu (Raja), saxo, Stanley Berger, Violet, in serbian