04-III-2008.
She saw a rabbit this morning. Took a few pictures as well. Must be burrowing below Juliška's deck. At least we've swapped all those rats for a more decent rodent.
Tried to email Toza, guess trying to get him to visit mine [folks], their machine shits some again, but the message bounced off, his spam filter seems to be too sharp.
Nina and Ender are ill. She's got a pneumonia, he's got a combined asthma plus something. He doesn't have health insurance, and if he doesn't get on the job soon he may be pedaled out. She says she got hers from him, because half the workers there are sick, but keep coming to work because the firm pays no health. And his paycheck is on hold by the bank - he'll get the money in about a week. And he had to pay the doctor right away, and he gave him the worse diuretic again (the better one was worse because of wrong dosage, half of that would have done good(... 4 words...)).
One of next times he managed to peek into the monitor at the reception desk, and saw onscreen, next to his name, a remark to not let him see that doctor who prescribed him ordinary lassix last time, which is next to free, because the doc is also a Philippino and doesn't think it's his duty to skin his own kin. Must sell the more expensive meds, first order of business.
Last year there was a tipping point, the moment when games started making more money than movies. At least here. Go finished the couple of her own characters and is now assigned to fix up the garments on many others. The resolution keeps getting higher, attention to detail becomes important, everything is visible. Which then costs, and fucks up the small producers, who can't invest so much time, ergo money. For her tax return, Jose will do it, he's an accountant anyway...
Says she got her picture, from behind, in some french magazine for video games. Never sent us a shot of it.
We're reading about WTO's rules. The world is screwed.
Nina tried to donate blood, like she did in high school and college. Got a fuckoff notice, with the reason stated as „lived in Serbia“. Fuckoff you, cattle. (seeing the date is 28th of march... well, may move this closer)(will not, 17 years later I turned this into a cumulative article for march)
On eighth, she planted roses in the front lawn. We planted a plum [tree], for mere nostalgy's sake. The roses took well, served us next year to learn that we became differently nose blind (she said one had a nice fragrance while the other has none, my nose said the opposite). Of plum, on the other hand, nothing came. When we took it out, we saw it never extended its roots beyond the net in which its soil was packaged.
The grass has barely sprouted, looks green in many places but has neither the density nor the length. Those across mow it second time already, regardless. Not because there's any need for it, but to create the impression to the tennants that there's some service maintaining their apartments, so the rent they pay is not futile.
Twonysecond, talking with Go. Forgot to ask about this Felix the cat, there on the chair behind her. We bought these plastic chairs back then in Orlando, to use on the terrace, and here they are in Seattle. But those cat eyes wouldn't stop kicking my curiosity. And no matter how many screenshots (the joking translation in serbian is something like „sieve gunfire“) I made, the eyes never made any, despite it sitting there for at least two months. Until now, when I took a shot of monitors with Fujica.
Eventualy some time in april I remembered to ask what it was. It's a neon bent pipe, on black packaging, peeking out this much behind another box. The gaps around the slats in the backrest come just where ears should be. There, and we kept guessing for months.
During this talk the top fun was with the tech was when Lena called (she was at a friend) me to go pick her, so I moved the phone's speaker close to zmajček's microphone so Go could hear her, and Lena heard Go as well because the sound from the speakers (at least two were nearby) was loud enough.
In other news from Seattle, Ricardo has got well and we'll see about employment. She spoke with a colleague from the old firm and they have a minor meltdown there, whatever was supposed to be finished by year's end is any day now in just six weeks. Her last team boss there, who kept trying to take credit for her scores and invested most effort in covering up his doing nothing (as he's capable for that only), finally got a kick out ticket. At this job now, she says, it's a song - they succeeded in putting together a good team, and the results are already visible, the characters are already looking much better than they did in december.
From emails with dad, first about fish and meat.
We see that you have fish on the menu as well, which is good, there's no need to have meat every day. In the end, fish is a protein food too, and probably easier to digest than some meats. It's interesting that you buy fish like that, on sale, and yet it's passed the health muster, because probably the inspection wouldn't allow the sale.
[dad's sufficiently deep into orthodoxy, seeing how he doesn't count fish as meat - that's what the church permits during a fast, it doesn't count]
We actually didn't have fish too often, because it may have the stench of silt and it could be fished out who knows where, with unknown amount of various stuff (mercury, cadmium and the rest). Tilapia looks mostly well, we really hit it right this time, it both has very few bones and has turned excellent, and it was half free half for nothing, because of that trick with the scale, it probably weighs at least 5% less when the iced condensate thaws.
As for inspection here we can only laugh, or tap them on the shoulder. First, there's no permanent inspecter in the meat packeries, and they don't have their own either. Whether they'll run tests regularly or not is entirely on their whim. There were cases of escherichia, and since the small slaughterhouses are mostly extinct. or do just loanwork - the meat being then processed and made into products somewhere else - one vat with a mix for hamburgers may as well contain meat from couple of thousands of necks*. So if one of them was infected, the whole batch must be discarded... if they're caught, i.e. if anyone dies. The story how market will make it all alright, in practice comes down to them not waisting a dime in production on anything that's not bringing profit or is strictly against the law. And about the law, it's been lobbied to death already (lobbying is legalized bribe, mind you), so there's no such legal control today. Federal sanitary inspection has 200 people altogether, and some states still don't have their own laws on the matter. It's cheaper to risk and maybe pay damages at times (if the relatives manage to prove that meat was the cause) than to do regular analyses.
About muddling with hiring, firing and statistics.
The working class suffers. The worst hosed are the workers nearing the end of their working age, who, once fired, at that age, can't find a job because younger ones are in demand, and the hiring institution keeps them on material [support] for bare two years, which often isn't enough to make it to retirement.
It's jst six months here, and when you see them bragging how the crisis isn't really that much, see the unemployment fell to bare 4,5% - screw that, the number of jobs didn't increase. They say „some people have left the workforce“, which means their six months are out and the statistics doesn't count them anymore. Many give up trying to find any regular job, but rather manage on the side.
At work, the usual. Something in CAAR needs to be poked, Jiang asks for a meeting then delays it because of rush in her schedule; the clinic in Norway, i.e. Ilke Gerbersen, asks for a fresh version; Nick complains how Feds freezes in the kicked-out (okay, forward) division in Marin county; our liaison chick in Australia says they were exalted with the demo and immediately asks about Anzard, the Ozzie equivalent of those like CAAR, Belrap or hfea. Loads of work ahead.
Actually there's the great news, the team is being augmented by George. Jan sent him a greeting email with initial show of where the ropes are, the staff that we have, and then
The problems
1. Currently the organisation is always rushing into new builds as clients do want things yesterday. Often things have been promised at forehand we later cannot live up to. There is a lot of pressure on the development of Feds while other important things are not done.
2. As a result of 1, documentation is lagging behind. In fact only the ones working on a certain enhancement know what has been implemented, often leaving the rest of the team in the dark of how, what and why certain things have been implemented.
3. As a result of 1, certain problems and bugs go undetected out to clients, resulting in support calls that can only be handled by the ones who were working on it.
4. There are many, many things outstanding which have been promised to clients and need to be implemented soon. Often those things are depending upon other things to be implemented first.
5. There sometimes is a disconnect between the programmers and the rest of the team on what it means to implement a certain feature and on how it should be implemented.
6. We keep on underestimating what is involved to get a client up and running.
7. There is no standard reusable demo database.
8. There are no testing protocols.
The challenges
1. Running each build as a separate project.
2. Telling out clients they'll have to wait longer for certain features to be implemented.
3. Create user documentation as well as some technical documentation.
4. Getting all clients on the same version and build.
5. To have clear rules when we need to invoice clients upon a certain request.
6. Getting all the heads pointing into one direction.
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* in serbian animal husbandry, neck is the unit of count of animals, „a herd of 200 necks“.
Mentions: Belrap, CAAR, Ender Aquila (Ender), Feds, Fujica, George Whiteley, Gorana Sredljević (Go), HFEA, Jan Brenkelen, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Jiang Wong, Jose Bariero, Juliška, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Nick Scage, Ricardo Manuel Bariero (Ricardo), Svetozar Sirilov (Toza), zmajček, in serbian
5-III-2008 - 25-III-2026