09-VII-2022.
We're going more often to Čankovo these days, this time alone. The girls are not interested in going places with us, here, it's the six or seven times that we went for groceries on our own, and as much to the garden. We went, in order, on 29th of june, 3rd, 6th and 8th of july. It's hot and there's a draught, we didn't do much, just that she picked what tomatoes were ripe.
(... 2 words...)
On 3rd she took a dry pear tree that fell in the little orchard, dragged it to the pile. But when she released the trunk, it slid off the apple branch there (which grew beneath the graft on the old apple, and then we saw it's the wrong kind so I sawed it off last month) and down her calf. The scratch was two-lined, not really bleeding but covering some surface and rapidly swelling. So I brought the bag with ground hot pepper, which she sprayed on the wound, then took a coffee spoon of and dissolved it in a glass of water, and then bottoms up. The wound started closing within a minute.
On sixth we stretched out a part of the old okiten* pipe, where we already had the holes for drip tubes drilled years ago. We inserted four valves for the three drip lines - as one of the four went missing (and lo and behold, the neighbor also sprouted a foil covered patch and ran a hose to it, and our narrower hoses also went missing). We watered it, until now, by attaching the hose straight to the drip line, doing round-robin on them, and even so we couldn't run it full speed, as the attachment was just friction, no fitting. It was peeing on the side where it connected, watering the cherry mostly (and it grew to be the tallest tree there and bore insane amount of fruit). If we opened the valve more, it would simply disconnect and water the cherry alone. Now this piece of old okiten pipe got proper fittings (a stopper on further end, a clip connector on hose end, valves for each drip line). It's just that I got the hose end connector of the wrong size, whole inch instead of three quarter, so I drove back to the shop to get a replacement. Actually bought a new one, thinking that the receipt was in the bag with the valves, but I actually did have it in my pocket, just didn't think to check. Anyway, the cost of 130 dinars is less than what fuel I used.
On the corner where our street crosses the main, the house which fell and which I took shots of as it was crumbling, a sort of church is being built. So far they poured the floorboard and some carrying columns. Perhaps it'll be a chapel, the cemetery is at the other end of the street. If it's a church, it will be the third - the main one, romaniana orthodox, is in the center, along with the school, shop, and the catholic church, which is neglected and almost a ruin. The only catholics in the village were the austrohungarian officials, and there's none of them for a hundred years now, nor have any descendants stayed.
On eighth we went to close the valve - we let it drip for two days. The tomatoes look satisfied, she picked a few over 300g, the largest being 724g. Almost 10kg altogether, in a day or two we'll cook some juice.
On 30th we went to Peskara, fifth time this season, and this was the first time I couldn't park anywhere near. The crowd was of respectable size, so I unloade them as near as possible, and slowly drove almost to the other end to park. This time we brought the little waterproof camera, which I already tried out these weeks, and look, it's really waterproof. Its screen being tiny, even smaller than on my nokla, I keep its lens widest possible. Its zoom is digital only, no mechanics.
On 1st and 2nd we finally took to completing the shelves on the terrace. Suddenly there's lots of room, those casks were taking almost four squares of space. And there's still room on the shelves... ahem, we'll have to make more brandy.
On fourth my Štajnberg external sound card came, which I need to hook up with cimet. That'll be a problem, because I confused činč** and banana, and when the guy from Mitros said, on friday, that this box has output on činčes, I said it was exactly what I had. Now, how to bridge that, perhaps I'll have to pull out the solder. And then there's the question of drivers. I'll have to think it over.
In the evening we hosted a frendz parti. We meant to take lamb roast from Kabinet again, but there's nobody on the phone, and gate's locked. On vacation, perhaps. Dragana seems to have gained a bit of weight, almost reached her top 50kg, looks like herself as of 2016; Borko has a new haircut so he looks more senior, though still not serious. We had to show them the jungle first, what with the triumph gate (where she put a connecting beam between two cucumber towers). We drank quince again, but they (and Nina) stopped after three shots and switched to wine; we went on with the quince. Around one we started negotiating on the third bottle, but Dragana wanted to go home, which eventually led to calling a cab at one thirty.
A really boring evening. Borko dug out a few things about Vlatko Stefanovski, and repeated them, pedagogically, a few times around, specially of how the guy appreciates Jan Akkerman, who was once pronounced the best guitar player in the world. Ahem... such pronouncements are made by whichever older guitar players and even drunker critics they manage to grab, and then whatever comes to their minds on that day. And one can never exclude the possibility of some payola. And then I unearthed the story from oldwave guys who watched as Vlatko brought Jan to play together in Beograd a few years ago, and then tried to steal the show from his own guest whenever he could, truly embarassing. But no, he wouldn't have any of that, won't budge, what my witnesses say (one guitar player and two rock journalists of decades' staž in the field) simply can not be the truth. Okay, but I still find it very boring to stretch the talk about that to a whole hour.
On thursday (7th) I finally decided to bite the bullet and try to plug the Štajnberg into cimet and to see how to solve the driver problem. Took the contraption upstairs, plug it into its youassbee, and lo and behold, it recognized it in a microjiffy, zero installation. On friday I reported thus to oldwave:
Let me brag a bit with two things: the transition cable that I soldered two years ago, connecting the headphone output to those jaybyelle boxes, is finally retired. I purchased an external sound card, Štajnberg UR12, where the main problem was that its output connectors are činčes (!), and my cables end with bananas. Just this morning I went downtown, Modul shop in Gimnazijska, and from a heap of adapters they pulled exactly what I needed.
The other good news is that I'm not deaf, I heard the difference to the hilt when I plugged them in.
It was close to a hair pulling situation when it arrived, because it's accompanied with a seedee, and the setup instructions takes several pages, for windowses and mac each. Alright, the mac is similar, the install has a .pkg file, which may theoretically fit a linux distro (no, I didn't check the seedee, but their site). I procrastinated for three days and then finally went to see how would one add new hardware on linux, for I can't remember the process at all.
Nothing to do - as soon as I plugged the thing into the youassbee, I checked the audio controls, and there it shows two sliders now - one for the integruša (i.e. on-board sound card), and the one above it neatly says „Steinberg UR12“. I still don't know how to add new hardware.
So on friday evening we sat and sipped the quince and listened to the music. Which finally sounds as it should. It did sound better than any time before (except perhaps in 1972 when I'd sit alone in otherwise quiet room, park the speakers at half a meter around me, on head level, concentrated), but now nothing is damped. Because the slider doesn't rule any resistor, that would require at least a stepping motor. It rather just multiplies the sample numbers by zero comma something and passe them to the DA converter. And there, whatever doesn't make the threshhold won't be heard. Finally all those tambourines and higher harmonics come to play, full image. And an ordinary volume knob.
On friday afternoon we put Linda and Sanda on bikes and went to Springfield. Of course, mid second hour they asked for a pizza. Okay, a medium kapričoza, whatever it may be like, the last one was miserable, limp and damp in the middle, charred on the edges, thin topping. But it seems they replaced the cook, this almost returns the trust in pizza. And a draft tuborg of 0,5l - the waiter has no clue that it was made here by Podravka, that they had a QA guy from Denmark who sat in the plant all the time, and that it came in low wide brown bottles. He's born long after that... This is... apathetic, contains Apatin***, read the label, must say that somewhere. Bot okay, not too bad. Somewhat tart. Don't remember much of what Podravka made, only that it was much smoother, it simply slid, but don't remember the taste. Surely this doesn't even look like it, but still not too bad.
In a parallel stream my new phone is lined up. Bilja emailed, when I posted the pics of the last maturski, that she'd be coming on 11th of august, and we can do the phone thing now. I delayed it for almost a month, and finally checked the links again and sent to Go. Good that I waited, because they now have that cheaper model, of 150$, the Pine 64, a true linux phone, the only kind I'd accept. Go also got the same talk of „shipping to EU from our warehouse in Poland, from Hongkong to elsewhere“, which I thought I got after they saw where my IP number fits geography. But no, so Hongkong it is, with 30 day shipping it should fit into our 40 day window, should arrive fine.
Now (9th) I tried to pass some cash to Go, but I got the paypall password in firefox, which now refuses to touch the old profile, as „opening the old profile with the new version may irreversibly damage it“, and your only option is to create a new profile. Nice, nice. Now I have to pass the whole dance party of password change (and actually couldn't, as it wants a phone number, or to send a code to our old landline of 1999). Luckily, I tried from Waterfox, and remembered which password I put there, and sent 300$ („...and treat the kids some, okay?“).
The Mozilla guys have gone bonkers, fully. So what, you create a new version with no easy way to migrate the profile? No wonder I'm on waterfox for two years now.
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* OKI was Organsko-Kemijska Industrija from Zagreb, and okiten was the brand of these black plastic tubes, which are usually used as underground water or gas ducts, even at street level.
** the technical term, which grew by itself, of unknown origins, means RCA type plug.
*** the place where the brewery is
Mentions: Biljana Lajković (Bilja), cimet, Čankovo, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Gorana Sredljević (Go), Linda Sredljevich Aquilla (Linda), Mališa Borkovski (Borko), maturski parastos, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), nokla, oldwave, Sanda Sredljević Aquilla (Sanda), Springfield, staž, in serbian