16-V-2009.
Few days ago them clogs arrived. It seems a solid wood, I already removed the stickers, wear them at times. Of course, it will take me some time to stretch the bridge, but I still have the old pair, so I'm taking turns wearing them. We may have to hammer them a bit, or to soften the leather with that vodka (... 11 word...). Can't find proper alcohol to buy, only isopropil (which I never managed to find back home, that's something only electronics repairmen had and they wouldn't say where theirs came from), so we took a kilo of some shit vodka at 50%. We got camomille blossoming, the basil multiplied by itself - threw seeds while we weren't looking - and even potatoes sprouted even though we didn't even plan for it. Namely, under the soil we bought was our compost, in which there were potato peels, some of it with germs. The cucumber is growing, the pumpkins too (or whatever squash we have - don't know which one of the hundred kinds we have) and hot peppers, only the tomatoes are somehow slow, maybe wrong soil for it. One which didn't fit the space we put next to the cucumbers in the other flowerbox, next to Juliška's shed, that one is going like crazy - different soil there, and the oats grew too, because the compost contained old guinea pigs' bedding, and various seeds they pushed out of their plate.
We switched rooms. Nina and Ender got the big blue room, because they do need space where to be during the day, can't sit downstairs with us all the time. Besides, she also got switched to work from home, so let her have her own space. We two stuffed ourselves into her orange room, it's big enough for a bed. (... 52 words...)
Then Ted and I screwed two thick hooks into the plank under the flowebox, to tie his motocycle to it, may it not grow legs. That lower plank is some rottex particle board, which used to be the shed wall, and looks as if any stronger wind would smash it. But behind that plank is that railway beam, hard wood, and that is really screwed, severely.
Who buys on the quick, will repent at ease. Everything, just literally everything is somehow complicated up, everything has some kink, whatever you want to buy you must first learn what and how and which is how*, and which has what... and if you buy before you learn, the tuition costs more.
Lena passed five exams already, from the set which would count as credits at college. I had to pick her from school because she had to miss the schoolbus for the last one. This van (or is it an SUV, they look the same from behind) has the boosted undercarriage and wheels, which is the fashion now. This is actually a moderate boost, we've seen a few guys push theirs over an intersection when the engine stalled, and the floorboard was exactly at shoulder height.
Dad writes „E one more thing, which we forgot in last couple of writings. In the world a big dust was raised around the "swine flu", which appeared in Mexico. Well the world media wrote more about that than about the world crisis. Whole tables of statistical data where it appeared with the number of reported cases, treated and deceased.“.
I reply: „Bah, it's commerce, distraction and who knows what else. Mind you, a flu epidemic in the spring. Okay if it was march, when there's still no vegetables and vitamins, and everyone is running thin since winter, but this is Mexico, where they know it's winter by the day being shorter and the heat bearable. I think this is just a bit of exercise in extraordinary state and strictness, to see how far can the folks here be shoved into order and obey the orders. Also, someone is making good money on these vaccines (which who knows how good they are and how dangerous they are, since nobody knows how much that virus is weakened, and whether it is exactly the strain, not to mention mercury as a preservative), if not again that sleaze Rumsfeld, who I guess returned into the manufacturer's board. And above all, a nice distraction from the monthly loss of 400 to 500 thousand jobs a month. The madness here has spun already. At least Ender got a job - in a video game retail shop, which doubles as a cafe-playroom. Not much money, the first three months while he's in training, and then they're supposed to open three more locations in the area, and he should be a manager in one of them.“
On UA:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TANSTAAFL**
Except that I don't see why would anyone want an imitation, "thing such as a"? I can understand wanting to eat for free, but wanting a thing which is "such as a" instead sounds like "I want a fake". Besides, free lunch is not a thing, it's an event, a phenomenon.
Was hit with a bit of idiocy in Excel yesterday. Something about the colors - in VB code, the RGB function (red, blue, green) had some weird format of parameters, so I did the worst thing - pressed F1. In a m$ app. And what did I get? I got VB help (note that this is not the end-user help, it mentions objects and properties, end users don't know about them)... which doesn't know about the function. Which clearly exists in Excel. Add another dozen minutes of wasted time, thank you, m$.
Been working on the SF stories section of sGradlj.com, namely the first story, from Sirius. I guess this is when I finally did retype the first story from the photocopied pages that Škrba sent me.
On eighteenth, uploaded the Engar story, all 58 files of the cyrillic version. Only on 18-VIII-2021. will I remember that there's no link to those, and that nobody could see it.
Also, some small changes in code to maintain sGradlj.com, the section where it generates the pages for the big dictionary of „customs of American tribes at the break of centuries“ is moved into the form itself (gensajt08.prg is called, to generate the site), is not called from the outer alert.prg.
At work, something about sperm banks. Jan: „re: Sperm banks data structure. Our model is similar, but bit more advanced. Differences are that we have a stacked table t_straws table that records both the straws and the straw movements. Not sure whether I understand the role_types table. A patient can be a patient one time and a donor the other time, or both at the same time (shared egg donors). The relationship always indicates the role. The lab/tanks/buckets, really is too limited. IT does not handle the hierarchical structure needed to cope with multi level of storsge containers (Tanks-Canisters-Goblets, tanks, canisters, visitubes, Tanks canisters, goblets, slots).“
Tech call, Jan, Suez, me, David, Laura, Hana and Norman. I almost excused myself, was supposed to drive Lena to school - the madness around the end of year, but it turned out she found alternate transportation, so I was relieved of the taxi detail. Jan also excused himself for a while, „between my 13.15 and 14.15 (Candidate buyers visiting my house). I'll have lunch within that same hour.“. [he later did sell the house, once he moved into the new one, which cost him 300.000€ and which he will be repaying for at least a dozen years]
David announced that Daniel is coming to Firriver and should attend. I was hosting... additionally, Das and the old project manager were there (that guy left soon, for greener pastures).
Two days ago David and I talked with Belgrade. A doctor from GAK wants to open a private clinic on Dedinje next winter when her building is finished (whoa, buddy), and there was already an ongoing correspondence, and this was finally a talk. Gathers offers so far, but we seem to be strong candidates. We two later wondered where did she get the money, Dedinje is the most posh area of Belgrade, and decided there's nothing to be amazed at - where there's money, there's money. Anyway, a serbian version is to be shown on 20th.
Current problems - at a british clinic, some dates are exported into Excel as mm/dd/yyyy instead of dd/mm/yyyy. Once Norman fixes that, I had nothing on my list, so can do a build right away.
[this was never completely eradicated - while directly exported dates could be properly set in code, the date lists were handled by SQL server, and there the script created these lists as strings, so downstream they weren't treated as dates, but taken as they were. The stored procedures would have to have an additional parameter with values for each variant of the date, which would require looking into the settings record and... don't know whether that was ever fixed; without that, the stored procedure would gather these lists in the same date format everywhere.]
Talked with Bajlo on skype. We found each other somehow, I guess he visited my parents and got my skype alias from them.
Also had a talk with Nick about something - I may find a recording someday and see what was up.
On twonyfifth, on blogue, about peanuts, too long and I'm too lazy to translate into serbian. In short, I got tooth itch, love peanuts, unsalted, roasted in shell (probably by hot air, don't know how they salt it). Fried in oil? Why, peanuts already contains its own oil. So we found at K-mart a big pack, 10 pounds I'd say, and kept buying it regularly, for months. Then it happened that they ran out of unsalted, but had a whole pallet of salted. Well, don't want that. We went a couple of weeks later, same again. Third time we got our groceries elsewhere and then remembered K-mart. Put some lettuce in the cart, walked to the peanuts, still the same. I saw that they won't procure any until they sell this heap of salty. Well do that without me, the unsalted was what I was coming for, ciao gbye. We returned the lettuce on the shelf, returned the empty cart. Three months later checked again, now they had no peanuts at all. And, by the way, this is a peanut growers' area.
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* 'how' is here a placeholder for the word which doesn't exist in english; theoretically, „wuch“, to which the answer would be „such that...“.
** Heinlein's „there's no such thing as a free lunch“ - he didn't say „there's no free lunch“, and I have often wondered why.
Mentions: 18-VIII-2021., alert.prg, blogue, Daniel Berton, David Berton, Ender Aquila (Ender), Firriver Fertility (Firriver), Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), Hana Burberry, Jan Brenkelen, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Juliška, Laura O'Hare, Majkrosoft (m$), Mohandas Raj (Das), Nenad Bajlo (Bajlo), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Nick Scage, Norman Shen, SF stories, sGradlj.com, Suez Lima, Ted Gulding, UbiquAgora (UA), in serbian
6-II-2022 - 8-IV-2026