09-VI-2001.

Visited Go and Ricardo in Alexandria. Brought some cheese rolls and apple rolls - we try to bring some homemade stuff each time. Got her one book (the longest one, forgot the rest), some yarn and knitting needles to have fun in the summer with. Ricardo brought some chinese takeout food, in them white cardboard boxes, see picture, as the girls have developed some culinary curiosity. Nina says that at school everyone is going at lengths about this or that food they tried (presently the ethiopian cuisine and mongolian barbecue are in), so we're experiencing a general switch from "I never ate that!" to "I haven't tried that yet". The chinese cuisine, outside China, is quite similar to ours - has zaprška, has varivo (boiled vegetables as an add-on to the main meat of the dish, or as the main dish, doesn't exist here, vegetables are just decoration, a spoon of this or that, there's no čušpajz or potato paprikaš), often chopped meat (just to fit two sticks) etc.

Jose has just taken new lodgers in that apartment and it's getting kind of crowded. Go thought they were from Columbia, but it later turned out they were from Honduras. We didn't see them much, though.

There was a funny moment when Go asked where will they sleep, and Jose said „in the closet“. The word klozet in serbian means a toilet, so she first thought hey, what if someone goes to pee in the middle of a night, would he have to jump over them? Then she remembered.

The building felt strange, because it looked like our novogradnja at first - low number of floors, and the width of about ten apartments, but beyond that everything was different. For one, it had only two entrances, which is about enough for a three-floor with some sixty apartments. Two, the halls go all the way through, as in a hotel, so you can do what you can't possibly do back home, enter by one and leave by another entrance. Third, it's only three floors because it's all wooden. The hall is decked by some cheap sturdy carpet, which feels eery, compared to our halls of echoes (mostly, except where they tiled the floors, which somehow helps). You feel the planks under the carpet (nope, found out later that it's an inch thick plywood). It's a foreign country...

From home, in the evening, downloaded the music I gathered via the Napster instance at work. Here's the list:

Adamo - Tombe La Neige.mp3; Bee Gees - Spicks And Specks.mp3; Edu Kettunen - Kone Älä Hyydy.mp3; ENIO MORICONE - The good, the bad and the ugly.mp3; Evgeny Doga - Moi Laskovyi I Nezhnyi Zver.MP3; Ian Anderson - Postcard Day.mp3; Little Tony - Cuore matto.mp3 ... which is probably the time when I started hating caption case, as it looks so bad when applied to other languages. On further thought, it's ugly in english as well.

Got a message from Ted:

"I just ran a sweep on the network for MP3 files and your workstation is still showing 503 MP3 files. I need them removed immediately. Thanks for your cooperation “

Ah, yes, don't have music at work. Becoming fully m$ compliant, at Zero. My machine name was „easy-rider“... and all these were in napster\incomplete or \\easy-rider\d$\temp\_0e40psiqj\_0e40pttd4\ directory. Which means I've already cleaned up what I knew about, it was these incomplete files that I didn't. I cleaned these right away, I don't want him to get into any trouble, he's a good guy.

Emails back and forth with Vanji (to his younger son's email account, don't know what happened with his @Avai.com address)

I'm horribly retarded!*

You can say that among us in private, but for the customers the stroy should be that we're the ambassadors of advanced technologies....

Well fuckme, I really am a Hungarian. Meant I was in a delay.

...programmers love a pat on the shoulder from time to time, and enjoy being told „I know it sounds impossible to do, but if you manage to...“ and then being the heroes when they pull it off. Myself had a postit note on my monitor here with „impossible done right away, miracles take a whole day“. But then they don't like anyone to get into how and what they do. Now where you'll find that balance, is a matter of your skill.

There's no balance. That's more, like: find the largest odd number in a set of even numbers. But then I do exactly as you say they like.

So far he's diligently working his way, and I hope it'll really work for the user.

Knocking on wood from here.

These days Joja got stuck at user's. In Comedy** he stayed until 9 in the evening, and only two days later until 1 after midnight! But they paid out the payroll, which is essentially the most important.

Today he was in Boržoš, and I haven't even seen him - it's possible that he's still there (it's 22:55 now). Namely, they have finally decided in favour of our app, though, it seems, Brata had visited them, because they've asked several times whether we're sure that our app will work?, doI guarantee, that on monday (even if Joja had to work the weekend) they'll be able to pay out the salary to the workers? If we fail, there'll be trouble.

In Ledinje they have a new director, a fitoprotector, reasonable, young man, with whom I quickly established excellent communication. I believe, that not we'll just continue the contract, but we may also hope to build them the network, invest in intranet information system, field chart... [the fabled Zrno project, which was still in the air]

Really, again? Or you're just stoking me? I remember quite well what we talked that evening at Bole's, and I think that I could still create the tables and write the project based on that talk. And look, now, 13 years later, who's where of the people who were there then.

You're really unhooked. How can you remember the details in that distant past. All I know, is that we have en times started, planned, offered, but never really moved off the beginning. But they aren't interested now. They even had someone else's program with similar purpose. Actually not even close.

If in Mečka they really use copies of our apps, Brlja will be sued.

So he should be. He's gotten under influence of his hercegovnian or likian side, whichever, and he may pretend that he's a Lala all he wants, when it comes to money, he isn't.

Yesterday, while I was on the way to Belgrade, the director of Mečka rings me on mobile, and says, that we erased his 2001.y. data. Told him, that I didn't even know, that his girls were so well versed in fox, to find that out. But rather, may he say to the one, whom they hired, to look at the signoffs and archives...

At the students' home*** where our app was installed (sold), I offered the new version and maintenance. Nope, they say, Brlja will do that. Well then I explained what Brlja is allowed to do and what not. And I spoke with the commerce inspection, and I may file a report, a request for an investigation.

The minute when he offered me 10% for use of GenerAll, I spoke up in that message where I stated that the generator, in case of any previous lingering ambiguity, belongs to Avai. How about we sell him the rights to it for 5000 marons, then cancel that against his share of the firm and he still owes us 4000, eh?

I've always admired your suggestions!

(re wine, Tisa, music, mosquitos, past, future...)

Now I can't come when I want, we're in the finals of the green card procedure,

I understand, never mind. But you owe me one coming, whenever that may be. (I only don't know, whether I'll manage to save the wine... it seems to perish quickly...:))

You should have seen me driving a truck :).

Mind you not to make a habit of it. You may become a trucker and a half.

m$ camew to YU officially. I was at a mega presentation of their new technology. First m$ conference here, titled Sinergija. 2000 visitors, logged and registered in advance, with ID cards, phantastically organized in Sava centar, where Michel Lacombe also spoke (vicepresident of the company) and also Zoran Đinđić (president). Story of .NET, the XP generation of all and everything, and of course about XML. Our pal Škrba held one of four sekcija, of course the XP office tale. It all looked like those m$ conferences in Pešta, but in a profoundly balkanic way, so I lost appetite on the very first break. Namely, in the hall they put coolers with coke, fanta, kanada draj, and freezer boxes with icecream, all that next to coffee, which was in good-for-nothing plastic cups with lots of sludge and much sugar. The people (why is it called so?) ran for all of that, to the extent that queues formed, even though there was enough for everyone. The scum would take two, three cokes and bag them, take them to their cars, then queue up again. In the lecture halls, not even worth mentioning how many bottles, icecream boxes, they ate and drank even there. The lunch was a culmination of the poverty syndrome. Individuals would stand by the tanle, pull up a serving plate, rummage through it with toothpicks, for as long as there was something on it. So those who formed a firm cordon around the tables ate their fill, while those behind them cursed m$ for being a cheapskate and not putting a table for each. In fifteen minutes they stiffed it all out. Later the waiters brought more plates, so even I managed to grab a munch (when everyone else ran away for beers).

And so, the era of BSA, and licencing will begin here too. Whether will Avai have some advantage, for selling licenced software for three years in a row? Somewhere else for sure, here I doubt it. On the other hand, that XP and .NET requires serious hardware base, and some licences cost for us a real fortune. The story always begins with enterprise servers with 4 or 8 processors, with 16G of memmory etc. The licence for GawTalk 2000XP alone costs about 50K marons per processor!

But just as after a rain always comes sunchine weather, the very next day I got an invitation from those belgraders, who already sought us before, so on tuesday Peja and I go to see what next.

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* the word he used was „zaostao“, stayed behind, lagged, which also means that

** most of the customers had nicknames... this one should be a pharmaceutical plant

*** it's a bit strange to have a problem there - that's where Eči worked, and the director was my student at MPSŠC...

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Mentions: Avai, Bole, Brata Avramov, Endre Felbab (Eči), fox, GenerAll, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Goran Staković (Brlja), Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), Jose Bariero, Ledinje, Majkrosoft (m$), MPSŠC, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), novogradnja, payroll, Ricardo Manuel Bariero (Ricardo), sekcija, Ted Gulding, Vilmoš Baranji (Vanji), Vladimir Pejin (Peja), Voja (Joja), zaprška, Zero Distance (Zero), in serbian