The date is largely approximate. Even the year is under some doubt. I rewrote BarSys for Zeki's restaurant - even took the recursion a bit further, so that the eggs that are a part of the mayonnaise (if made inhouse and not bought ready-made) also count, as do the eggs used for pohovano steaks and are all reported correctly as gone from stock.
However this never worked because they didn't understand how much work it is to have the data entered and entered correctly. The GIGO principle was combined with NIGO (nothing in, garbage out), i.e. partial data never yield a correct report. OTOH, other stuff we sold him did work and were used, but he never paid in full. So we settled for a lunch or two - on business I guess, because I remember there was someone with Vanji and me, though not who. Vanji probably arranged other lunches for other business partners so maybe in the end we were kind of even, I wouldn't know.
The other date is correct, but of undecided meaning. I have a backup made from first day of operation of TaxiSys for 7/8th of july, with some 980 rides, 40 drivers (among which, though, 28% rides were made by code „0000“), most of them with about fifteen rides, with two outliers above 30. There seem to be few rush hours - one starting around 13:30 and tapering off by 18:30, then again building up between 20:00 and 22:00, when the real rush begins and lasts until 1, then tapers off again until 3, then stays low until 5, builds up towards 8 and then there's a permanent rush until about 10:30. I don't know how I got that backup - did I do it myself (I sort of remember watching over the operator's shoulder, but that may have been on the instruction day), and why do we have only that first day. Perhaps Brlja visited them both times, i.e. on 7th and 8th, or, more probably, it was Bata who then supplied the backup to us, just to have a real sample.
This statistic is very likely unrelated to real rush times. Because the cabbies are just loose associations of independent operators, i.e. singing societies (later there were owned ones, which would have unified car parks, which the members would lease off until paid), they work when it suits them, they simply check in into their radio network, and start waiting for a ride, and then check out when they've had enough. Some thus intentionally choose to worke under bad weather (rain, snow, frost? - no, they say wind is the best), or on a market day, or when some more important slava is on, when first league footbal match is played etc, and just as likely may not sniff out the time and stay at home to celebrate just like everybody else. So it's possible that after a larger event there's not enough vehicles to take the visitors home. Also, this backup is for one day, one union (and there were at least four more at the time), and on top of that there are solo players, who just operate their one vehicle and aren't member of anything anywhere.
Some time this summer we bought a welder. Not anything commercial, factory made - this was pure handwork. The old man Bodgar, next house beyond Kale's aunt and before that of Soka the butcheress**, used to be a solo trucker, then retired but kept fixing trucks for others. His son, I think, kept driving for a while, until he got married and moved (to Novi?). Now the old man died, and his widow was selling his tools. I bought a bunch of hand tools and this welder. It didn't have a proper housing, it had a wooden box on wheels (well not proper wheels, just large bare ball bearings). It was heavy as a horse, impossible to carry. Well the guy made it strong enough to weld the toughest parts of the worn out trucks he was fixing.
The best we could do to transport it was to roll it through the yard and over the driveway, park it at the curb (luckily, as tall as in the rest of the street, and somehow lift it into the trabant. Not in the trunk, that'd be too high, it would break our spines, we actually took out the shotgun seat so we had more room. And we did this maneuver a few times too much, because Arpi borrowed it a couple of times. Had to take ten minute breaks after each such maneuver.
It had no buttons at all, nothing to adjust, it had that one strength and used the thickest electrodes. And worked flawlessly, never had a case when it wouldn't, nor did it ever melt a breaker. The first thing I did was to make a workbench in the basement. El profile legs and traverses, fosna* for desktop. On top of it I screwed a serious vise, something 10kg strong.
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* 50mm, aka two inch, plank
** the suffix -ka would mean she was a butcher herself, and -ca that she was a butcher's wife. It was, wrongly, -ka, as 'mesarka' slides off the tongue, while 'mesarica' is actually unheard of.
23-IV-2020 - 26-IX-2025