05-VII-2017.
Four days ago Nina announced her pregnancy. Of course, she didn't write any kind of announcement or „surprise! guess what's new!“ nor anything of the kind. She just sent a series of photos with positive tests, and everything was clear without a word of explanation. Good shots.
Today I wrote a brief layout of the database in Feds for Briyesh. Not quite knowing what it would serve, as what I put in there is just bare bones, there are twice as many that I didn't mention. I guess he needs to know a few things, so at least he came to the right place to ask. But then... it's all documented already, can't he go read the wiki first?
Today, Arpi brought The Ashtray. It's one from the railway, šinobus actually, from the years when he was working on an oil (or was it gas) field somewhere around Kikinda, and was probably bored out of his skull riding the slow train there and back every day. So he unscrewed it and mounted it in the toilet at home. Now that oma died, he asked whether there's anything we wanted from her house (though she wasn't in it for the last five-six years anyway). So I asked for this ashtray (I mounted it likewise, in our bathroom, though I almost never used it - in the following two years it didn't gather a whole dozen of butts) and she for the vitrage works that her uncle sent.
Of course, we drank the 2014 apricot, but all the same I went through the whole ceremony, offering all other brandies and other booze first, watching him being british and pretending to be bored and not biting any of the baits, until I eventually said „and there's some apricot, too, we keep it as the last resort in case we run out of everything else...“ Of course, I know that apricot was on top of his list, but the tradition must be kept, so I played it all the way through.
That's roughly the time when we agreed to pass dad's TV (v. 22-VIII-2015.) to him, because the missus snatched theirs, among other things. The set was in mint condition, except one of the LEDs in the bottom of the frame got dislodged, or there was some hole in its plastic sheathing, so there's a lighter circle near the bottom of the picture. I guess it happened during one of dad's falls, when he just couldn't get up from the floor, and would crawl around the house and grab on anything to lift himself up, and must have grabbed one of the cables, so the set fell. Good, no other damage. I once had to replace the bottom shelf in his fridge, went to a glasscutter for it, when he leaned on it.
It's third week in a row that I'm trying to add ten dollars form Paypal to Skype. I don't spend much there, for most of the stuff we have emails or some direct contact software, and often it's a skype-to-skype talk, which costs not. Of course there's no agreement on format and addressing, so various such chatterboxes will not talk to each other, unless made by same company (and sometimes not even then). The nice feature of the skype is that it can call regular phones, which is far cheaper than going through international telephony, costs about two cents a minute (from here to there; in the other direction it's 11 cents to call a landline, 25 to mobile). I usually put in some five or ten bucks and no worry then, it lasts me a year or more, because those who I really need to talk with but there's no other way except phone, are really few. But this time the payment just won't pass. I've found an email under this day, in which I was trying to find out why. Because,
During the last few weeks I kept trying to pay $10 to Skype. It was refused, a dozen times, without a word of explanation. Similar payments worked just fine a couple of months ago, and the same payment also worked a year ago. Don't know what changed.
I'd call your number but I presently have only less than 1$ of Skype credit left. I prefer emails, for documentation purposes.
I only want to pay these $10 to Skype and to know why I couldn't. You can check my Paypal account to see that I got enough money there.
Below is the full history of emails from Skype, you and me, plus a screenshot of my last message on resolution center.
And there it ran me in circles, without a word of explanation, just „refused“. Even worse, when I reported that the payment just won't pass, while I did everything exactly like last month and many times before, I got this much bullshit of an answer:
We've completed our review of your account and found that your account is secure and has not been accessed by an unauthorized third party. As a result, we've closed your unauthorized transaction claim.
If you're unhappy with your purchase, we encourage you to work with the seller to find a resolution. If you can't find a resolution, you may file a dispute in your Resolution Center.
Well fuckya, that was not what I asked, you horses, may your algorythm fuck you. I didn't complain about anouthorized access to my account, I didn't complain about any problems about buying anything from anyone through you, I just wanted to pay ten dollars more to you. I replied only
AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Did you read my question at all?
Answer this or I'm pulling all my money out presto.
It ended up by Nina shifting five bucks from her skype and I used that until m$ froze the remaining two or three, for inactivity (!). If I wanted to unfreeze the money, I should log in into skype's website and do something there. Well fuck off, here you won't take my money, and now you seized these two and blackmail me.
A year or two later I found out what happened, I guess I tried again, and finally there was a trace of the reason: it said „unverified account“. Ha, there it is, this account exists since 2002 and now it's unverified all of a sudden, yeah right. Actually, it's that m$ wants the account to be bound to my bank account, or else it takes no money. The account was the one in the credit union, which I closed some six years ago. Well, you won't know who or where I am, may the two bucks fuck you. That information is on the need to know basis, and you don't need to know.
On 6th, fes ran for 11 hours, on zmajček 12w, in two windows - each taking an almost whole monitor. Amazingly, this boxed windows 7 accepts any random screen size as its current monitor, no matter that it's virtual, and the whole thing just works. Some other apps for peeking into other machines are prone to forcing you to scroll, or other ugly artefacts. We did use all kinds - terminal services (sounds like a funeral shop), Gotomeeting, Peeseeanywhere and my would know what else, and one of these had the ugly habit to negotiate resolution with the remote OS, draw a window of that size, then use the insides of it to draw menu, toolbars, statusbars and then it needed the scrollbars because the window was now smaller than the negotiated resolution. Endless annoyment.
On 7th went to Čankovo again, more apricots. Now that we have the thermometer, it became clear how hot it was, so we took the coffee to the front part of the house, where the walls are 70cm thick, and it's much cooler, only 38°.
On eleventh we tried to continue making brandy in the small still, but ran out of gas and... well let's pull out the big one, hope it won't crash. It didn't. This last shot was made at 22:52, just to repeat the moonshine shot from 2011, playing on „making moonshine under moonshine“. But this was far from the end, we came home around 2. There was lots of brandy to distill.
We continued on 13th and 14th. There's no end to it. When there's no fruit, it's bad, when there is, it's bad. Whatever, run it while it lasts. We did tire like dogs, but just as doggedly trudged on, picked, pitted, laid into barrels, waited while it ferments, distilled.
We ended the season with three small crates. Of apricot pits.
Mentions: 22-VIII-2015., Arpad Gunaroši (Arpi), Briyesh Dupta, Čankovo, Feds, fes, Majkrosoft (m$), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), oma, šinobus, zmajček, in serbian