17-III-2010.
Although we're already somewhat packing, the garden must go on, saplings are made, what with lighting it with some hot bulb and a respectable thermometer to keep the temperature right. The beer box next to it is from A-burg, some artisanal brewery there sells this as a sampler, twelve small bottles in four tastes... Well, guys, what about a beer which would have all four? The way you made it, it's rather hollowish. While each does have that one taste to differ from others, it lacks everything else. Stop, do over.
The aquarius works nicely. In winter the gathering of water doesn't work so easily, while [the air] is dry. Here we are, eleventh year already, and I still don't get it that the winter is dry and summer humid, having grown up where it's the opposite.
At the corner of our back alley an ad dawned, a piece of thinner plastic in a wire frame poked into the lawn, a favorite format here, specially when there's an election campaign going on. Says „we pay cash for junk cars [phone number here], min 100$“. Someone out there has a chop shop, there's always a market for second hand spare parts.
Lena's graduation work defense was early in the afternoon, at 13:00, so I drove her. Of course, we both came, and so did Nina. Along the way I noticed that the Megdonaltz on the boulevard (not quite one, it's just that it's a four lane street, passing by the shopping mall) was now gone and in its place they're redecorating the place for a new usurer, the cash loans joint. These are the worst usurers in existence, serving the bottom tier mostly, those who miss a few bucks to bridge the gap until the next paycheck. The interest is horrendous, I think I once recalculated it to be about 90%, if we include into the count the 2-3 bucks fee they charge. Still, not much, because the loan is paid back in just a few days, and those who take such loans mostly know what they are doing. The market demands it, or else they wouldn't exist. Of course, there's always, among their customers, those who'll never repay.
For the defense, or rather presentation, she had the small amphitheatre at school quite full. The „quite“ is immesurable to mee, I didn't see others, what do I know what's normal. From the comments I'd say this was about double that. She kept a very calm stance, as if she were doing that daily, no stage fear, she got everything down pat.
The explanation of how the sockskhlet (yes, soxhlet!) worked took the most of the time. It's a somewhat complicated glass... still. It had cost 200$, and without it the whole thing would have been simply unfeasible. Of course, she didn't pass the chance to arrange a little joke with her friends - when at the end she started taking questions, the one question was „how much time did it take for the whole experiment?“. Except it wasn't, it was „how much thyme“, which is I guess one of five cases, tops, in english where a th is read as t, so what you hear in 'thyme' is the exact same as in 'time'. The reply was „five grams“ and I think the whole room got the joke.
On the way back I think we got the groceries somewhere, I see on the floor a ten pound sack of onions and a half a gallon bottle of sangria.
A silly problem occurred at work, the girl from Australia complained how in the management module there were a few days missing. The matter dragged for some hours because Laura didn't reply right away, the first email somehow lost its way straight into her junk, and then the description of the problem came out as correct, if the observed period included tenth of march, there's a screwed up record on that date, which spoils the bliss, and if that date is not in the selected period, it all works as advertised. Who knows how long it took to delice this one, the module is not mine and I never messed with it, it must have been Jan who tore his hair over it until resolving it.
The next day Nina's new PSP (portable playstation) arrived, and she handed me down her old one, so I'd play some too. It meant to me more as a portable reader, to shove all those SF books on it and to start reading them at ease. That doesn't mean that I wasn't reading them onscreen before, it's that it'll mean that I'd move my ass out of the chair and stretch on the carpet. Okay, when we return there won't be a carpet... Then it turned out that the reading software has its own set of problems - for dry text it uses one app, for html another, for pdf something third, and the navigation keys behave differently on each, not so comfortable as I hoped for, I had to acquire habits, this wasn't the software serving me, I had to serve it some too. Among other preparations for the trip, I bought a new battery for the nanovo, the factory [one] isn't holding too well. And a new disk of a whole terabyte, for the zmajček, and in the same shipment a polarizing filter for the Fujica, which I plan to keep screwed on for at least two weeks.
With Škrba I had a bit of dispute over... quotations in emails. Because I stick to the old habit from sezam to insert my comments inline, between quoted paragraphs, which his Lookout then can't interpret, because m$ always had its own ideas about how the html should be handled. And whenever it's about m$ vs the rest of the world, he is also against the rest of the world. So I sent him this screenshot, just to show him how regular software makes it look normal.
Then I had to explain what was the PSP (see the paragraph above the shot) and what's dead wood (paper).
About the pink theme... I introduced that a year or two ago, to know where I was. When I see this on dark chestnut background, I know I'm on zmajček. If I see it all blue-green, that's Jan's programmer server. If it's purple on dark blue background, that's his support server. I had to do so, because it otherwise all looks the same, the distance means nothing, all the pixels are equally in focus regardless of it, I get lost easily, I simply forget on which machine I currently am, so this way I at least have it marked.
Text on the screenshot:
Now let me answer an item at a time, don't remember when I last did so:
The most interesting part is when it gets into the second-third generation of replies, and start smixing fonts, colors and overlays... Well, that's when madness ensues. Neighbor cut it there right away: all nicely violyet and in the same font and God forbid any spacing, which comes handy as an exercise in concentration (:
I do what I was doing for a hundred years already on sezam: jump into the spot where I want to write something, slam on the entaire and begin. Now if your m$ Outlook 14 interprets it the way it interprets it, why don't you try some other Outlook 14?
Just kidding me a bit, less as a provocation, more like a... well as in a tavern, when you overhear the conversation at the next table and can't stop yourself from getting involved in it. After a few shots, we'll either end up embracing or beating each other, for sure we'll end up singing :)
That, right!
On saturday a scene was looming.. but it wasn't a tavern. Some science fair, kids with their projects, žiri finished deliberations, and now there was some celebration. For which I don't give rat's ass, between 1962 and now I had two years of being excused from education (one on unemployment, one in vojska), got my buffer full of little village shows, so I was sitting in the foyer and reading something (on the PSP, since I stopped buying dead wood
Mentions: Annenburg (A-burg), Fujica, Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), Jan Brenkelen, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Laura O'Hare, Majkrosoft (m$), nanovo, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), sezam, vojska, zmajček, žiri, in serbian
2-X-2024 - 23-XII-2025