06-II-2012.
More snow fell, more than half a meter now. On a whim we decided to barbecues, second time this winter. This time not in the garage, but rather in the basement. It's got a door, a window, there's always some draft, it will drag out the snow. She is used to smoke, she's stoking the boiler every morning.
The barbecue is the tiny tinny piece of shit that dad gave us. It may have good ergonomy, the grille is wide and narrow, fits just two rows of steaks so you never have to hold your hand over the fire for too long, it's easier to maneuver. It's hard to spread the fire evenly, there's always a cold spot somewhere.
I shot with the nokla and came to conclusion that the short frequency range is not the problem of cheap cameras, it's the long one. The infrared affects the red and blue sensors, so the fire comes up almost purplish.
To stop the fire we didn't bring any water, there's snow. Just dragged enough handfuls from the window and let them roast.
At SFBC there's a problem that the doc-to-pdf converter works on Nick's account. Now he's gone, his account deleted and this sits silent like shit in the grass and doesn't work for who knows how many weeks. I detest m$'s task scheduler, there's too much screwy administration (and bugs) to it, it not only requires an account under which to run a task, but also its password. If anything happens to the account (or the password), it stops running it. Of course it reports this, in the system log, among other thousands of such entries every day, which mean nothing and nobody ever checks them. So both my things which rely on it (the other one is Lab) are written so that each time they check anything that cropped up since the last successful run, no matter when that was.
The chick who came to replace Nick didn't quite learn the ropes. We heard a replacement is readying.
The next day the three took the saxo and went to Surčin. Ender's sister and her husband are in some other army base in Germany, around Würtemberg or thereabouts, so they'll spend a week there, so Raja will get to know his brother-by-aunt.
During that week I first made an excellent batch of shots, went to see dad later in the afternoon, surrounded by winter idyll, all white, clear sky, sun low, snow swiped, the heaps by the roads and sidewalks up to meter tall, a true winter sunset. On the way back it was, of course, night, and I made another good batch. This time I didn't dare take my gloves off, so I lost the lens cap. I carried the eos40 like that, capless, for a year or more, and finally found a cap to buy, someone's making them, and it even looks and works like the original, which it isn't. There's some difference in the details.
On tenth the cats tipped my motor saw (not gas, motor) off the workbench in the basement, I guess it was perfectly positioned to pounce from when jumping out through the window. This time the handle broke completely, the break has split the switch's shell in two, so it's dangling now. Unusable. Eleventh in the afternoon we ran out of chopped wood, so I went, on foot, to buy a new one. I took Lena's tiny Fujica, it fits into a pocket, so I'd have a free hand to carry the box and would still be able to shoot around, and so I did. Walked to mid Pašićeva street, there beyond the cemetery, and bought the simplest Villager saw, which at least doesn't have such a fucked up safety switch. The one the old Bleker had was enough for my thumb to go stiff from holding it. Walking back, dropped by Braca, sat on the bench with him, had a smoke, bought a snow shovel. Then slowly to home.
When I arrived, I saw a radnaakcija coming from the railroad end of the street. Some five-six guys of different age were shoveling the snow off the pavement. It's both easier and harder now - the snow is pressed by wheels, needs to be cracked first, it's almost ice, but then it's not falling off the shovel when you swing it. There's my chance to try out the new shovel. Well, not so good. The handle is short and straight. It should be bent, so that the ends are lower than the middle, or else it requires a much stronger grip to prevent the load from tipping it to a side. Fuck the job, I took the regular shovel and went on cleaning my stretch.
Why do they make the handles so short, we aren't Japaneses.
Mentions: Braca, Ender Aquila (Ender), eos40, Fujica, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Lab Intro, Majkrosoft (m$), Nick Scage, nokla, radnaAkcija, Ryu (Raja), saxo, SFBC, in serbian