25-XII-1999.
On 21st,
We had some snow, not much, but it changed the landscape enough. I made three shots through the kitchen window, and stitched them together manually, in the then PaintShopPro or whatever we had. The house on the picture is actually on the opposite bank of a little creek. The lady there had a funny little dog, a basset, with flapping ears. Among us we called her „basset's mom“.
Go and Nina were also playing with the PSP and made a bunch of versions of our photos (theirs and mine) with changed color of hair and, in my case, beard. They sent it to me at work, and Rick had a good laugh seeing that.
Leanne at Leevor complained of student photos not being printed in reports on some workstations. Of course, this was caused by use of general fields in them, which is a clumsy interpretation of m$'s object linking and embedding technique, whereby for each type of embedded file an external app would be in charge of handling it. And there was some protocol on how it should work, and it did work more or less, until this external app gets uninstalled, or some other app, not compliant to that protocol, would get installed and register itself for this type of file. Or, worse, it would get installed and registered for just a trial, then it would get uninstalled, but no app would take over. And that's for just images...
So someone talked her through the process, over the phone, how to install LeadTools on each new machine. We seriously need a runtime installer. Or, um, we actually have it, but...
Drat, another stupid install/subsystem puzzle. This is why fat client is doomed to history. It never ends, because m$ never stabilizes anything. I bet we find that some OLE related DLL has changed and we don't install the current version any more. If that is the case, who will redo the ZdStart1.exe installer?
More stuff for Leanne - Hossy applications, when importing files from EONS, doesn't pull in the USMLE 2 score. Because it wasn't there last year, it's a new field, and they never tell us in advance when they make such changes.
Twentysecond, email from Tereza, via some guy who knows me (um, we hired him to do a website for EnergoPro, but he did it in haircut latinic script, without šđžčć, and I flatly refused to sign off and told him to fix that or we won't pay... I guess he hated me for a while... until about 2001 or next year, when he moved to Canada; at this time he was an IT guy in the city hall). She's learning to use the sewing machine that she inherited. Their daughter is back for christmas but will return to Budapest for doček with her gang. „In conection of te real estate tax, I went to see as you haven't registered anyting(tat te house exists) you need pay no tax“*
Trying to arrange to get some CD with music from Škrba, but he got the email a bit late, so it'll be a triper... we'll see.
Twentythird. On aman discussion, I mentioned how „Funny, though, that the word 'Revolution' gets involved in such a doublespeak, being very highly praised if it belongs to the history of United States of [North] America, and then becomes an ugly word if mentioned elsewhere.“.
Dad reports that Brlja was in Hungary yesterday - to get the cash, I presume, not sure he'd need to visit the tourist agency to get the ticket. Avai engaged in advertising on one local TV (Santos, not the KTV). He still didn't miss the opportunity to congratulate her christmas, even though she mentioned a dozen times that she's no believer; they also sent the same, through me, to Greg and Ford, which they were happy to hear. The fees I earned (as a translator for aman) haven't arrived yet.
In another email, Brlja reports to Greg that he's got both visa and ticket in his pocket, everything ready. To me, he wrote
BTW, send a list of stuff to bring. Your dad called, they got a couple of kilos of thread and a few sets of brandy shots. Eeeey bro, I thought this America was a rich country. Well never mind, I can bring you Sloba so you also see the sun rise :-)
The doctor from THC likes the applications app, asks for more reporting or gold plating on existing reports.
On twonyninth, Škrba passes the news from ajVar that the old sezam is no more.
Euthanasia Executiva Acuti.
Wheels fell off, eh? They actually lasted quite long. To me it seems to be thanks to them being in Belgrade, with a sufficient influx of young, pardon the expression, enthusiast, who can suffer the bullshit long enough for the sake of gaining a reference, work experience and contacts. Though, I stopped visiting there in '95, so this could be just my fantas(magor)y from some other place.
But YOU WIL have the complete JT, that I guarantee you. Even if you had to take 1,9GB down the wire.
I'll suffer the inconvenience :). I'd just leave it overnight, pass it to Ted and by the end of the week I'd have three CDs. As we speak, our misdeed is being copied, when I be returning Brlja to the yeroplane**, I'd drop by Burt in Arlinton to deliver it, and to meet his housemates (Zyanna and Geoff). And that so many times mentioned Burt is the healthy youthful heart attack candidate, breathes with some difficulty but eats with ease, has brother to brother 110 kilos, and can chat all day.
Listen, if you can send anything, without which you can survive for a couple of weeks, send it. If not, as I already said above, I had it coming. And, eh, is there any mp3pper which can chew the whole Passion Play.wav in one piece (about 400M), the FataLjist*** keeps counting down some negative percentages at me and eventually does nothing. I'm doing some backup, I'm listening to that kazEta [cassette, but pronounced the way they do in some areas of Bosnia and Lika] for five years now, and I really should preserve it while it's still sound.
Is there any Y2K euphoria?
A bit on TV, wich I barely even watch, where they try to sell you clocks which count backwards etc etc - or to make the euphoria help them sell stuff, for instance „are you ready - and are you sure that your electric can opener will... and this one is guaranteed to work even then“ - and then they try to sell you an ordinary opener at a price blown up by fifty percent :).
Go reports from Atlanta, where she and Larry are nighthing en route to Florida: „if Nina would just get offline for a while and release the phone line, we could even talk“.
On twonyayth, Zeta sends me a dumb map of FRY to print, she needs to fill it in for homework. Aren't they on a vacation at this time? Dad reports that oma reported that husband of one girl from inspection has died... With them we had a special relationship, as they two were good pals at work, and they likewise have three daughters. He had a kiosk on the [green] market in those inflation years and fared so-so, was a partner for a while with the guy who plastered our house in 1992. He also liked to drink and gamble, allegedly made the third child while she was asleep, owed some money to this plasterer guy so was on the team on our house for a day, to work off a part of the debt. They owed us 1000 marks too, so we eventually pressed them to return it when we needed to complete the house. To do us a favor back, she topped the return with a length of 5x4 cable (five wire, 4 square millimeters cross-cut), which is now connecting our power meter to the street line. Although just two years older than us, she always looked at least seven, such was her style. Once they two traveled together to some convention, had a compartment in a sleeping car, and the conductor asked „would your mother prefer the lower bed?“.
The other news is that Višnja had a daća in her village, they were giving year [i.e. annual commemorative] to her uncle and perhaps grandmother too, so Arpi and her waited for the bus in the wrong places, froze like asses. The kids were with oma.
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* as usual, text which was in haircut latinic is translated without aitches after a consonant and, this time, with no double letters, so to bring te experience acros. Also, „in conection of“ was actually „in bundle of“ (sounds just like that when genitive case used instead of instrumental), well well, look at that, they sell tax by bundles now.
** we actually say „avion“ (little bird, I guess, the french way), „jeroplan“ was one of the earlier expressions in use in early XX century, a mispronounced aeroplan.
*** old albanian joke, „fata ljist“ - „catches leaf“, i.e. goes down the park with a pointy stick and thus gathers leaves
Mentions: Allan Robin (Ford), aman bre, Arpad Gunaroši (Arpi), Avai, daća, doček, EnergoPro, EONS, Geoff, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Goran Staković (Brlja), Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), Greg Reubenthal, Hossy, Larry Artois, Leanne Harper, Leevor, Majkrosoft (m$), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), oma, Reginald Burton Cape (Burt), Rick Netter, Rozeta Gunaroši (Zeta), sezam, Ted Gulding, Tereza Mazek, THC, triper kombinacija, Višnja, Zyanna, in serbian
23-V-2023 - 21-VI-2024