More from emails to dad.
Went, returned, brought a laptop.
I may need to return the laptop next time, but for now let's brag a little with having four computers in the house. It's heavy as a devil - 4 kilos, plus at least half a kilo of the power adapter. But it's a mighty machine, and I hope the battery will hold a little longer than the nebojša I had in Orion.
Here we had some snow on wensday, so the folks paniced (panicked? paniked? paniqued?), made such a congestion that the guys driving the salt shakers didn't manage to salt all the roads on time - because there were already about a hundred fender benders. In the evening I had trouble getting a cab, two companies just said they have no cars or may have them by two in the morning, and then the third had a car right away and I got a ride. The main road were firmly salted by then and the bus left almost on time. It may have arrived from Newyork a few minutes late (leaves there at 18:00, is in V. Beach shortly after midnight, drops passengers and takes new ones and a fresh driver and leaves again).
The schedule read that it arrived in Newyork up to 9 in the morning - while we threaded our way through Manhattan it was still dark; by the time we arrived at the station it dawned. I got to UniJewel at 7:45 (managing my way through the subway a little better than before).
I got that laptop to work on it. It was taken for the director (looks friendly, very courteous and not talking much), but it was too heavy to carry to meetings etc, so David said that one was for me, and they'll get a lighter one for the director.
The urgent matter for which I made the trip turned out to be small, though it took quite a whole to find what and where. Then more work for me was found, so my two workdays were full. But at least there was nothing big to do, so what we planned to do onsite next week turned out to be unnecessary, no extra trip, nice.
I didn't go anywhere - on the first day I left around four and walked to the hotel, having been quite groggy with the trave. While I did sleep most of the trip - there were just about ten of us in the bus, so I took four seats and stretched over them - but still, that's only 4-5 hours. It blew and was quite cold, it seems all of Manhattan is windy, it always winds around them skyscrapers.
It was nice and sunny yesterday, and at some point before two [in the] afternoon, I went to the bus... which will leave at six. Because that's when office closes on fridays in winter. I went by the cafe near the hotel where I ate before, soup sandwich and coffee, killed some three quarters of an hour there, then took the subway slowly to the Chinatown, where my bus was. I somewhat meandered (half intentionally) with the subway, stood there and listened to a sax player who stood there with upturned hat in a gallery between two levels of a station, then some Mexicans who sang their repertory in a car (two hats - and seeing how fat they were, doing brisk business), and still managed to get there too much ahead of time. Buzzed around the shops, there are two small malls under the Manhattan bridge, I think smaller than Nama altogether, yet they contain some fifty shops of all kinds - restaurants, jewelry, trinkets, dentists, nothing missing. I had yet another coffee at the little restaourant facing the station, and as soon as I saw the buses lined up, I found mine and went in, where no wind blows. At least I had put the laptop in my backpack next to my back, so it pressed against my jacket and warmed me up.
They got a bit frantic in the office, because the weather forecast promised strong snow, but only for today. My bus arrived fine, almost on time, dry pavement, clear air, I even grabbed a cab faster than I hoped to.
Today it's spotty, some halfsnow falling which turned into ordinary rain by noon. Perhaps some snow in the evening. About Newyork, as I see, they were right, they got some ten centimeters already, some twenty more announced until evening.
Now all is left for me is to see where do I put all of them computers, seriously running out of desk space :).
The next day I complained to Trish that
But we can always present the end user with an option to report perfect totals of imperfect data :).
I'm fighting this every day... writing patches for an Access/SQL app (no source at hand, just juggling the database) which consistently allows negative quantities in the inventory ;). These seem to be perfectly valid within the app's set of rules. Except that it doesn't make sense.