aman getting organized to report from today's opposition rally. Mostly mobile phones to modem to website, but also someone who lives nearby, and a Mavica digital camera (with floppies!) which would be carried to someone's home nearby. All in all, any events would get reported within minutes, possibly with photos.
Dad reports that they have welded our gate properly. Had to move the hinges twice until they got welded at a proper height. Had troubles sending emails, so he thought he didn't send them, but actually sent three, with more or less same text, shorter on each retry. For the last one Števa was helping. I don't know why all of the emails got sent from Outlook Express (the worst email client ever, m$ would be better off training pigeons) when I sort of remember leaving Mozilla installed. It seems they asked somebody to help them, and so the trouble began. At least it works, more or less.
Then Oma will come tomorrow to get an update on our emails. She's got trouble with the tennant in tanti's house, very annoying. Greetings from Veca and Sneca and their mom.
Lunch at Emmy's. Last time she came to pick us up with her van, which was a small shock, I couldn't imagine anyone owning a van, a van is a business vehicle.
She took us then to a tour around the historic stuff in the area, what they have, and then to a supermarket, to get some groceries. She drives barefoot, but for the shop she put on some flipflops, said they wouldn't let her in, it's not hygienic. Yeah, right, when Ford's dog drools into my beer, then it's hygienic. She took us to some viewpoint, probably that apple orchard on one of the hills, they have a few of those, you can see the whole town.
This time we had our own transportation, the Poozhoe ran fine. Since they are in the next county south, I acquired a map, which then didn't help much, falls a few miles short. But we found her place on first try. Even with the house being in the middle of a forest, the streets are neatly marked (one called Crestview drive, nearby, saw no crest anywhere). About 100m to the next neighbor, such is the regulation, distance mandatory, must preserve the forest. They were even limited in how many trees they were allowed to raze for the house and the driveway. The driveway is some 30m, strewn with longish neatly ground stone of some blueish tint. Probably the nearest quarry has stones of that color. They had trouble getting TV service - wherever they put the dish for the satellite, it is aimed through the trees, and the cable companies didn't even want to wire the area until it got sufficiently populated.
Her son works in the same building where Zero is, in the basement, the door across. They sit all day with headset on, retyping the court tapes, for the minutes. Saw him there a few times, and also some chick which was trying to smite him - he's a hunk, tall and cute, and she ain't bad either, it's just that Emmy didn't like her at all. Of her I remember only that she wore high heels with loose minutely patterned ankle high socks, a fad which, luckily, vanished by spring and wasn't seen again.
Had barbecue for lunch, but they do it quite differently from us. The meat is not thin at all, it's a foot long piece of beef, of about 15cm diameter, roast so in one piece, sliced into steaks only upon serving. All the kudos to anyone who knows how to roast that without making it like Orson Welles (burnt outside, bloody inside). The barbecue burns gas, which then heats the lava stones beneath the meat- The fat drips on the stones and makes smoke. These Amers are nuts.
Her husbant rents out limos, has half a dozen of them and it's mid season again, the weddings and parties are on. The main season, of course, is june, when the seniors at the local university graduate, and hire him for a drunk joyride. High school seniors would do likewise, if they were allowed to drink - but the limit is set at 21 years (18 for smoking, 16 for driving a two ton SUV, 2 to have a weapon to one's name).
On the way back it was night, and the road was quite different, left curves were right now, and maybe we took a wrong turn right out of the gate. I knew we should be heading roughly north, but its's hills, the roads curve, and my internal compass isn't quite perfect. At some point a deer was staring at us from someone's lawn, hypnotized by headlights.
We somehow escaped the labyrinth of theese hill streets (where you see no houses, only mailboxes lined up along the shoulder) and finally reached some wider road. Tough, all the right curves are now left and vice versa, so we made another wrong turn there, tried to read the roadsigns but they don't have any names, only road numbers, „132 north“, „124 east“. That's fine when you have the map in your head, but we were out of the area covered on our map. We were supposed to go north to A-burg, but it's night, it's hills, the roads are curvy, you don't see any houses, just mailboxes on the shoulder.
We finally got out of the hills when we reached some Walesboro, so we knew where we were - few more miles south. There I did about face and then, ten minutes later, spotted a neat piece of wide shoulder. All five of us went out of the car to take care of the watershed. We were all under pressure. I think we made some thirty miles extra.
New guy at Zero, Rick. He came just a couple of weeks after me, and someone was smart enough to put us together in the side room, away from the main one. He's probably as good as I, or would be soon. Presently, he knows a lot of stuff, but not all of it, usually it's „use Gradivoj alias F1“, i.e. call me instead of help file.
Guys at home have trouble connecting to Zero's ftp, because it was moved to a different server and the HW guy didn't quite test outside access. And even then, Walter and Rick think it wouldn't be good for the guys to have access to main folders, we better have a place where to put stuff for them.
29-III-2023 - 26-XII-2025