31-I-2020.
The third frendz parti, this time at Borče's. Dragana was there when we arrived, but not far ahead of us - we heard him open the door and talk with her when we were at first floor. He's on fourth.
I brought the kruksovača (kruška+kajsija, i.e. pear+apricot) brandy to taste, which he did and liked. The rest of us drank his son-in-law's pear - two kinds, the viljamovka (hence I consider him a shakespearologist) and the butira (boots?), which is the weaker kind but is planted nearby to boost the growth of the viljamovka. Orchard tricks. Instead of the customary pack of coffee, we brought two cartons of eggs. We were almost quite sweaty by the time we got up - I took the thick jacket, thinking it will get colder in the night. It didn't. And we walked all the way to there, which is about 2km (checked later - 2,7 to him plus floors, 2,9 to her).
We couldn't avoid the subject of DBA. While I was one of the founders, he came late to the party - I'd say early 1994, so we overlapped for just a few months - but stayed there for thirteen years. Few surprises among things he knew and I didn't: for one, Števa was never a programmer. He'd open a table and mess with it, run some checks, talk with the customers, know things about and inside the apps, but he never wrote a line of code. Just whatever he could do on the command line, which seemed to be enough. And he wasn't that long in the UK, just 2-3 years, and while he did work in a software company, again, he wasn't coding. Come to think of it, DBA had only four proper programmers - two of us, Sale and Grgi; Brata and Blaža were coders, the former being sacrificed to the payroll app, the latter charming the lady operators and unzipping the old version everywhere; I think I fixed the same bug of his about a dozen times at four customers.
I took a break to take a couple of shots from the terrace. Hoped that I'd finally get the effect of flash reflection off dozens of rear car lights but no, didn't work that way. Without flash there was no such effect (but doesn't look bad), with the flash the eos70 just wouldn't focus, because it couldn't find a single thing on which the laser beams would project a focusable trace. And I didn't want to switch to manual focus, because I was drinking. As I rule, I forget to switch back to autofocus (autoficus, as Aćim would say), and thus fuck up the rest of the pics for the evening.
The other part was Anđa, who not only never became a programmer (even though she passed all the exams at FON... well, we know their quality...), she actually had nothing to do. She would go afield with programmers and chat with the end users. Kind of escort service. Though she wasn't ever a proper person for that kind of service either. And then the culmination of that subject, she once told Sale, in public in the office, "you'd never have gotten married had I not taken you". Baam. At least they're grandparents now - or should be, we last met them a week before the due date.
Another round was about the VIII2 and some bits about VIII3 - we remembered almost everyone we could (Rencika, Tejka, Savka, Milica and Milica, even one guy who used to work shifts with Arpi), I much later remembered Zvojko, too late, will report next time. Another guy who was mentioned often was Momir, because they both know him (he taught in the school where she was the secretary 2001-2014).
And, ah, BTW, Bajlo was pissed off that he wasn't invited last friday when Bilja was here. Yeah, right, that'd surely help the surprise work as it did. And this is a neighborly visit, not a class reunion. He doesn't invite us when he visits Mandža or Baki, right?
Gary had some troubles with inserting images in Byo. This thing was one sample he sent to demonstrate the trouble. Well the trouble was something else, which I eventually fixed. It was quite a conundrum, and I misread several symptoms until I came down to the plain old debugger and saw where I screwed up the naming.
So I have, for some money, run a virtual Windows in a box, even kept it on for a couple of weeks, because I can't refuse Gary, we are pals. True, he did have a remark when I charged him, the same rate as I did fifteen or seventeen years ago (and anyone can guess the inflation in between), citing himself being on fixed income now... Well that's it until here, the rest will be free, I added a few things I'll be using for myself, on the house. As for „fixed income“, that... no kidding, the last I remember he was getting 10K$ a month for royalties on AMG, plus others. It is fixed, indeed, only in the sense that there's no source of any extra that may land into his hand.
Mentions: Aleksandar Raskov (Sale), Arpad Gunaroši (Arpi), Biljana Lajković (Bilja), Blagoje Vrbović (Blaža), Branislav Rade (Baki), Brata Avramov, Byo (Byo), DBA, Dragana Vitas (Dragana), Emerencija Nerdelji (Rencika), eos70, Ferenc Gereg (Grgi), frendz parti, Gary Brandywine, Mališa Borkovski (Borče), Milan Šebrcan (Aćim), Milica Erceški, Milica Zubatović, Momir Hadžipopov, Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), payroll, Savka Čajkanić, Slavica Tejin (Tejka), Slavoljub Mandić (Mandža), Stevan Garaj (Števa), VIII2, VIII3, Zvonko Darišić (Zvojko), in serbian
5-VI-2020 - 16-V-2026