On 22nd, email with Emmy.
We're going through the third week of rains. It's usually raining couple of times in June, but I don't remember the last time we had this much rain.
All the grass has gone wild. The air is so wet, I'm expecting fish to swim by the windows. And it's still rather hot.
You're getting all the rain that *isn't* falling on central Virginia. Very dry spring here.
The arrangements are underway, and nothing is clear. I just got a confusing response from the embassy - they got no papers about me so far, but they sent me the standard instructions on how to get a visa. I'm already looking for flight info. Greg called on Friday, and asked what sort of car should he provide for me... now is it really true (or he's just kidding) that you still drive the dinosaurs (2 liter cars and above). I'd feel rather uncomfortable driving a cruiser, specially until I get used to its dimensions. I do drive for 26 years now and I can even manouver with a trailer (backwards, too), and I even drove a small pickup with only side mirrors for rear view, and never had a scratch - but still, driving something huge is not my idea of having fun driving. Aren't there decent sized Japanese cars in the range around 1,4-1,8 liters?
What, precisely, is a "decent sized" Japanese car? You have to remember, most Americans are a lot bigger than most Japanese. There aren't many cars I can drive if I wear heels, I can't fit behind the wheel, and there are virtually no cars that I can fit in the back seat [later found out that she isn't fat at all, just a bit larger... with larger feet]. My husband's head hits the roof of most small to medium size cars. Granted, I'm considered tall, but the average American is woman nowadays isn't that much shorter than me - maybe 4-5". I have no idea what engine sizes are, but my friend from England uses the same terminology. He's rather pleased with American cars, he drives a big sport utility vehicle, although in England he drove a BMW. He says he's always wanted a big old cadillac convertible, with fins. Drives like a boat!
Seriously, though, for rental cars you're limited to what is available. Most agencies rent American cars. If and when you buy one, you can get yourself a little Mitsubishi or Honda. We even have a car called the yugo. Basically, aluminum cans with lawn mower engines and 4 tiny wheels. American compact cars are much cheaper than most foreign cars, though. It won't take you any time at all to get used to them. The engines may be larger, but they don't have much bigger frames than European and Japanese cars. Ask Greg to rent you a Topaz or Cavalier or Escort and you'll be fine.
I spoke with the new guy* - he's a VB guru (contradictory as it may sound), they're going VB, VInterdev, Web, whatever. I didn't hear the magic word "Fox".
Well, another casualty of war. If it wasn't for the war, I'd be there already and I guess the things wouldn't have gone that way. I'll have some words with him. "It's easy, you'll see", he said. "Easy to do, hard to maintain", said I. How do you live without subclassing?
Anyway, he said they'll do some things in fox in the next couple of years. I'll do my best to stretch that. I think they've gone too close to m$, I can sense the hand of Big Brother.
They're going to VB? I don't know how that's going to happen. They have tons of code out there in fox, and its not like you can convert it overnight. Frankly, there's no reason to convert it. fox is much better for the kind of work they're doing. I would take that information with a grain of salt. I heard Greg say we were converting to Java, too. I'm sure the "cowboy" is really pushing for VB though. Remember I told you how great he thinks it is? He's in for a major surprise, I think. With the new guy pushing for it too, there isn't anyone forceful enough to override Sam now that John is not there full time.
The new guy is right, though, it won't be that much of a learning curve. Its a lot slower to develop in if you don't have a good set of objects. This approach is actually better than subclassing, you have a lot more control over VB objects. Unfortunately, VB objects are slow as sh*t. The performance will degrade horribly unless you use C objects. And you really need a lot of planning and modeling beforehand to make sure you have easily used objects.
On UA, we had a brief campaign to write emails to Alphonse, because of a fresh limitation to the most frequently downloaded files to become available only to paying members once they were downloaded 250 times. It started with D.F. of Lynchburg, VA, and soon included Jack, Beatrice, me, B.B. from Budapest, Mark McCasland, Ken Weber. I joined in with an email of my own, of course. Beatrice wrote
Although a sysop, I was as surprised at this policy change on UA as the rest of you were. Personally, I feel it is wrong to limit downloads as many of my friends first found UA when looking for a utility or add-on, but stayed - and got their preferred status - because of the free features.
However, let's send polite requests to Alphonse instead of ultimatums. Perhaps he hasn't thought it through and many requests to go back to open file-downloading will change his mind - or perhaps he has his own reasons and WON'T. Either way, lets talk to him instead of threatening him or UA. We all get a lot out of UA, and this should continue even with new forums opening like the WIKI site. Don't burn any bridges!
The wiki is hosted and operated by George. Alphonse replied the same day - the limitation came from his hosting company, and he found a solution to host the files elsewhere, even gaining some speed in the process.
Today someone invites everybody „soon in Vegas at the last big VFP-party of the millenium!“. I really had to reply with „have you not heard that there'll be a DevCon in 2000, too? And probably some other things as well.“. Somewhere along the way they lost count... one of the centuries seems to be only 99 years long.
Date loosely determined by what I remember - that the weather was bright cloudy and muggy. What they shooed the clouds away is now paid with interest, the whole summer is rainy.
The bombing campaign was over, Sloba has agreed to terms, as long as it's not an unconditional surrender and occupation, bla bla bla, life has gone back to whichever value of normal was current. We actually had zero damage, our city was already such a piece of shit that there wasn't anything worth bombing. The guys at Svemiks had showed me a sidestreet in their village, where a couple of cluster bombs (yes, those forbidden by Geneva convention) have exploded, and shattered a roof of a pigpen, slaughtering a few dozen pigs. Dozens of stray pellets hit the house across the street, and made craters in the mortar - shallow, perhaps 2 mm, about 50mm wide, but with a deep hole in tthe middle, where the pellet lodged. And they had to repair 2m of railway, where another bomb scattered the gravel below the tracks. And that was all, as far as the city and municipality.
Škrba is back from uniform. „Welcomed by a huge backlog, into mother's cunt. I'm gonna get killed in front of the monitor, after I managed not to do so behind the cannon. I need some musicotherapy. Is that JT completed?“
Boća asks whether the road to Kikinda is drivable. Said, „I drove yesterday halfway to there [which should be something for the same Svemiks], and there are no bridges on the other half, so just drive. One bridge here, by Lalinski got shat in, just got some holes in it, people drive slalom (s Lalom**), and that's on the road to Romania, can circumnavigate that via Bašaid. The Pančevački bridge is virgo intacta. Ergo, just get to Belgrade any way you know, and don't worry about the rest. By Kikinda I sort of remember something around railway station, the Kikindians will know better. We also had a bit of railroad by Lukićevo damaged, but it was only the gravel below the tracks which got undermined - perhaps a meter or two of one rail was dangling in the air - which probably got fixed by now. BTW, for boththree who know my family affairs (Fenči, Škrba, Boća), the things are on the roll, and should finally be resolved in about two weeks“
Met Tejka again, this time after work, in front of the Bangro building, I guess she was waiting for someone to give her a ride, and I was on my bike. Told her we'd be leaving soon, and she went into full Tejka mode, criticizing the move as risky, even unpatriotic, they're gonna screw you, you're playing with the lives of your family... all of her you-naive-and-I-know-it-all spiel. She said she was doing some accounting on the side, as a tezga. Well, I hope you do it right and when you're sober...
In other news, the state now commands that all TV and radio stations must retransmit official news, which is between 30 and 90 minutes of official propaganda every day. Found I wrote this news (among other... newses?) on aman. The new thing there is that now writing on the site will be paid, they just posted the tariff (ok, the use of the word is a joke, it's a false friend - tarifa is fee schedule, in serbian).
On twonyayth I report to oldwave; „send the third email to american embasy in Pest, as they keep claiming that my visa [approval] still hasn't arrived. Until it does arrive, few more days may pass, and then until it gets approved for family members (aka maam and the three), though this should go aFtamaTSky [internal slang for automatically], because I'm getting the H-1B visa (for so-called „deficitary cadres“ - how socrealistically it sounds :). The plan is that I'd keep on scribbling on sezam for at least a month from there, to see if anyone will notice any difference, and then I'd treat neighbor and his theme with a few traveloguelike notes. In that purpose, I'd ask for the news to not be spread. And so, I'm gone to gastarbajter crowd, again.“
Thirtieth:
(I'm not really sa stupid as I look :)))
Since I don't know how you look anyway, I can't dissuade you by a negation of that statement, what with taps on the shoulder, „no, no, no, no, no, you don't really look that stupid...“.
I'm currently in some waiting phase (the enth), whereby _everything_ is settled, except the embassy still didn't get my paper, which by default it should have got two months ago. Now I guess my bosses are sending it via DHL, and the big boss is on the road again, and the guy in charge of my paper is not responding (except he emailed the whole office that fifth of july the office will be closed)... and in the end of ends, my corner hurts [i.e. don't give a damn]. I have long ago stopped getting annoyed, in the same way that when in the middle of the war they told me my visa was done, I wasn't able to be pleasantly surprised.
Two days ago I made quite a phone bill, chatting with the embassy (good part of time went into silently waiting until the switchboard operator patches me through... luckily I speak hungarian so I blurted enough pleasantries right on so not to be hung up - and eventually she kept checking every fifteen seconds whether I'm still there), I should be appointed to Telekom's board of directors („who owes little is in debt, who owes a lot is a business partner“).
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* that would be Frank
** s Lalom - with a Lala
19-I-2023 - 29-VI-2024