23-XI-2004.
See who callled... Ford :). He dug around the webs, looked for news about fox and found me somewhere, probably on FoxTalk (my second article will appear in december, and this week I should prepare another one for february; the december check already arrived). He asked for news about USquad, us, so... long time no talk. He's still in that sanatorium, ie. chief of the machinery park in a rehabilitation centre (don't know what kind exactly, for invalids, alkoses, junkies or just ordinary nutcases), says his three year contract is up, he's been offered a renewal, and he's of two minds... He was surprised that I was still here, I guess he tought that without Zero we won't be able to manage here.
It rather seems he forgot about it. While I was working for Berix, the old Zero team once gathered, around the anniversary of the end, and his younger son was there. Though, he may not have mentioned seeing me. Obviously Leanne didn't tell him I visited her in Houston. He tried, as it looks, to do something, with Brlja's gang at that, which lasted to about april 2002 (again - heard the story in Houston, and saw some traces of the deed), and then gave up the futile exercise.
Some serious wind was blowing, we didn't leave the house, but had a treat instead. We bought a kuglov mold, so she tried out two recipes, i.e. while we were eating the last piece of the first one, the dough for the second one was already made.
Something was burning across the street in the evening, nothing serious, firemen drew themselves on time. The Conica didn't turn out to be up to task, there's not one well focused shot... except this one, where the only thing in focus are these smudges on the glass, remaining since the time when various anouncements were pasted there while the house was on sale.
Nina is coming to visit a bit, and we still haven't laid the carpet in her room. Should have done that yesterday, but I got preoccupied by Gary, I spent most of the day handling his stuff, something around them posters, the database being in escouelle now and he'd be working from home in fox tables, and periodically synching the changes up to server. I made about half of the monthly loan installment on that :). I see I made a bacground image on twelfth, in psychedelic colors - by blurring some of the posters to be as out of focus as dispersed clouds - which I needed for an app which should be used by the site visitors, from which to trade posters - offer to sell or buy, haggle... which was very unclear to me. Not how to do it - I did it exactly what he told me to do - but rather how will they use it. It all seemed a notch too complicated, well he's a rather more classic programming school and he cant get it into his head what an average Amer may find too difficult to use. And I think it never took off, perhaps twenty people used it altogether.
Too bad I don't have a better shot than this, to see whether I would now, 20 years later, remember what was the purpose of all those icons on the toolbars. How many pieces of software there were... and I wonder how many were for me, as an end user, and how many were just patching the defficiencies of the system.
At work, David and I are preparing, it seems, the inventory, i.e. the application for taking an inventory. Which should introduce order into the vault and help them at least find what's where, it's all in tiny bags and has barcodes on stickers, which get scanned and that's it. But no, we're to try to handle stuff like „scanned outside vault“, „in vault but in wrong box“ as not a minus, but rather make them cancel out with pluses elsewhere, it's not a loss it's misplaced... How complicated they are and what a chaos they perpetuate. Even worse, in regards of UniJewel and the inventory, is when they sell and don't register that in the app. „But I entered it into the computer“ - yeah, right, buddy, into a spreadsheet on your workstation, which is in no way connected to the application and its database, this is no superbrain, these are the stupid peesees. So later this inventory found discrepancies of a few thousand stones as either missing or in excess. Well they don't have any damns to give, as if anybody may check what they're doing.
So on wednesday we went to the Norfolk busodrome to meet her. She called from her cell when the bus exited the interstate into Hampton (which is a town on the other side of the bay, left bank of James's river), and then we drove off. She reports a rain, and through the windows I see clouds gleaming against a starry sky. Until there, we passed twice through dry, twice through a downpour, and the rest was neither rain nor dry. Later in the evening a full moon was showing nicely.
Previously, when they'd come by bus, we'd wait on the station here, but now both stations are at about equal distances from us, and the bus takes about half an hour to get here (counting the layover time), we decided to switch to that one.
Dad's asking how's it going with paying off the house. Eh... The contract is for fifteen years, but we are paying off acceleratedly. If it goes as we planned, we'll save about 15000 on interest. We've already paid off 30% of the house (20% the down payment, and 10% for these three months since we're paying it off).
The due date is the first of the month, payments are monthly. The installment should be about 400$ plus 230$ for tax and insurance. We try to pay at least 1000$ or whatever we can, because the interest, however low (5,25%) is still more than we'd get if our money was sitting. We see to it to bite off the principal amount as fast as we can, to reduce interest. We paid off the car in year and a half instead of three, and the interest totaled at 600$ instead of 1050$.
Mentions: Allan Robin (Ford), Cecilia Roxbury (Berix), David Krakovski, fox, Gary Brandywine, Goran Staković (Brlja), Leanne Harper, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), UniJewel, USquad, Zero Distance (Zero), in serbian