11-VI-2010.
Graduation day, handing out diplomas etc. Gugao topped it with giving out six laptops to the school, to be given to two prominent teachers, and four graduates, two male two female. Considering that this is a magnet school, for the brightest kids, and how big the school is (about 1400 to 1600 students), this was quite an honor - Lena got one, and looking at the pictures she took at school, her friend Siobhan got the other. Possibly yet another member of their quizz team got one too.
Actually, the school is not over yet, there are still various exams, the last one for her would be on wednesday. Don't know why we made this ceremony of putting on the google's sticker on it, it's still an advertisement, but it's not my machine so I didn't comment much. The machine was immediately named gugolj, as portmanteau of gugl (as we write and pronounce it) and Gogol bordelo, which we pronounce very close to russian Gogolj. The OS on it is the cheapest 32 bit Windows seven, the screen is not the best that Lenovo has, but at least it's large enough and the keyboard has numeric keys on the right.
At work, a large irish clinic is switching from dbfs to SQL and guess what, we couldn't connect to the SQL server, while all the other apps out there could. Jan sherlocked out that the others are on the old server, and the Feds has a new one to itself, and it was installed just yesterday. Of course, someone there installed it for us, and not knowing the m$ dogma, left everything at default. Which means everything wrong. For one, the connections aren't possible initially, must be enabled. Then the ports need to be opened. Then...
We'll run into this dozens of times in the following years, and it would usually be my job to switch things from default to usable.
Daniel chimed in with a note that the Toronto server will be offline until their noon. David mentioned „I've dug up a document that I had created many moons ago for Feds 4.2! I will send it to Serge Willis for comment (and to Oliver, seperately). Don't think we should 'rush it ' in there though...nor rename fields right now (especially with WHO 5 under consideration).“
Wow, what a stiff from a closet... The versions up to 4 were created by that dutch doctor six years ago. And the fieldnames being so tightly woven into the documentation is an extra reason to keep the database structure indefinitely, never removing anything, just adding stuff. So it gets more complicated as we go...
Meanwhile, the neighborhood was dispersing en masse. Les was amidst a dispute with his landlord and gave his notice, he's moving out within a month. The couple in #2 are falling apart, she left for that endowed black guy and took the kids and the car. The husband stayed, but it doesn't make sense to pay the rent for a 140 squares apartment and live alone in it. His brother came from time to time to console him, and we talked with them a couple of times on the lawn, during the smoke breaks. I gave him the one mostly usable bicycle - nobody among us will need it anyway. The next couple in that apartment will be a weird one, a black guy with a japanese woman, of whom the stories would come, nothing too memorable, though.
On the other end, the classy black chick moved almost surreptitiously. Either she didn't have too much stuff, or she packed and sent it off or put in a storage. The actual parting scene was her putting last two bags in the trunk of her convertible, locking the apartment and driving away - alone or was a guy with her, don't really remember. Didn't even look back, nor wave the neighbors.
From #6 the tenants were evicted, for who knows how many rents unpaid. All of their shit stayed there, and the landlord's workers seized what they thought was worth the effort, and the rest they dumped on the curb. Then the 'hood swarmed, to pick the free stuff. Took them days to go through the heap. The tenth day only the couch and the big mirror remained. The big grab was only the first afternoon, while there was more to choose from.
So we're leaving only the mad priest in #5 and Juliška in #4. Even Nina and Ender will stay here only a few months, until they close the deal for the house in Chesapeake and get that house in order.
Mentions: Daniel Berton, David Berton, Ender Aquila (Ender), Feds, Gugao, gugolj, Jan Brenkelen, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Juliška, Les Paul, Majkrosoft (m$), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Oliver Byford, in serbian