From an email to a fellow UA guy in Oziland:
>You ain't seen nothing yet - my list of complaints on m$ and windows specially may be longer than yours, and I haven't checked my recycle bin lately :). Just rightclick the d: drive's icon, and choose "Explore" - and what do you get? First, what you expect, D: drive selected on the left side, and its contents on the right. Right after that it reverts to showing the contents of "My computer" ("Zblentijum" in my case :) so you have to click D: on the left again. And there's more.
In the afternoon, went to the bus station with my bike, to await Škrba. He came with his computer - we wanted to digitize my music before I took off to the US, so I'd at least carry a CD with the best of my vinyls. My motherboard was weak for sound crunching so he brought his. I had space on the disk that Greg (or was it Ford) brought, a whopping 2G. And this is where my memory doesn't have the range, even this paragraph isn't right, so here's how I described the whole array of events for oldwave the next day:
7:20 striking trabant but it just won't. Leaked the power. Wife and youngest go on foot to the bus, she'll be late for first class.
7:25 checking email one more time, nothing new. Going to the station, on a bike.
around 7:55 the bus from Subotica arrives, instead of Škrba it disgorges a pack of Chineses, fills two taxis, straight to [green] market
8:05 the direct arrives, Stinge emerges with the makina in a travel bag, only styrofoam peeks out, hang it on handlebar and walk to my place (roughly a kilometer).
by 11:00:
variants 1,2,3. We take out my second HD and sound card and insert it into his machine. The disk is 2G, partitioned 400/1600, under FAT32. Škrba has W95 NoOSR, and NTWS with NTFS... doesn't see my disk, neither under 96 nor under NT.
variant 4, we get both of my disks to his machine, unhook his disks
a) powered from my box, as I can't pull out the first disk, the last screw won't until I unscrew the motherboard, which I barely managed to put there because of its odd screws
b) both power and the band cable from him, my first disk still screwed in and second hanging between the machines. That disk is still invisible
variant 5 (final) we do everything on his machine, and then he'll fry the seedees and pass them back before end of week.
We discover that he doesn't have SForge(t) installed, but I have it on a CD (which, amazingly, didn't stay imprisoned on my machine), we install it. Some more cable mess, check this last box, test and
11:00 we begin sampling. First a couple of things by Neca Falk, then BuldožDer, then [hole in memory], then complete Maja de Rado (I know, Boća, you acquired that meanwhile), then a heap of Mlinarec.
14:30 wife and younger daughters arrive. We eat tuna sandwiches; few minutes before that I remembered that the dangerous operations on hardware (life threatening ones, as any hardware guy, having seen what we were doing, would shoot us on the spot) we already finished, so the rakija can be opened now.
17:00 we not unly realized that Škrba's stock of writable CDs is not just not endless, but that he actually has only a couple... We let Kataljist zgreb the Korni grupa, push the trabant, unsuccessfully, but then it managed to start on its own power, none [to be found] in Vista, Mića has none, but says go to Mala Amerika at Neša's, costs only three marons (I, of course, didn't have the time to raise any cash, had only checks), and we return just on time to
18:00 - 20:00 take down the remaining numers, and Go arrives (BTNJ, does anyone have a chance to reach GTomić to scan the photo from '95, in front of Žerbo before the Stones concert), Škrba takes down Zyanna and some more Jethro Tull, we pack the machine (it goes much faster when you know what you want to do - everyone gets his own sound card, there were no cables). Dinner.
20:45 everything is packed, trabant again won't, on handlebar again. The chain fell off, it chafes, somewhere halfway Škrba pulls out a roll of tape and binds the chain. Gets to bus on time, and the bus gets there on time, despite the heavy fog. I get on the bike and push my way back home.
Result: we drank a liter of coffee each, and crammed about 180M of .mp3 music from vinyl, plus 2,25 CDs.
And now, neighbor, I expect comments on this whole writ - may your lime pit supplement mine :)
(lime pit - head, as in 'calcified brain')
The addendum was „It would be better if it were half a liter coffee and half a liter of rakija, but then we were both so tired that it's better that we didn't. You forgot to note in the diary how I raised NT in VGA mode (:O“. Second addendum was mine: 23:00 my makina works again, after lengthy persuasion that the old S3 card and the ESS688 are not alien bodies. Disk OK, all accounted for. Also, „You mean, how you had to reboot twice in a row because you kept forgetting to play it down to VGA mode ;>“
It was Branko who made this cable. The true majstor of his trade, you could always rely on him to do something out of the ordinary. Not just fix things, but also make things which nobody else would even think of.
As for the rest of the music - I bought three CDs of music from some pirates, and got into a bit of a quarrel with them, as they promised me a discount for the third one and forgot about it, plus they kept taking up space on each disk with some stupid dictionary, thus selling more CDs.
We eventually had enough stuff to scan, enough to fill perhaps half a CD (or less... one CD would take 10 hours of mp3 music). He later made a copy for me and sent it by a bus driver, called me to say which bus to wait for, which was the favorite method of delivery for such cases. I got there on time, and the CD was in my hands then.
17-III-2014 - 9-X-2025