05-VII-2010.
Another visit to The House in Chesapeake, this time (Nina, Ender and I) with their agent and with keys to get in, so I took many shots. They'll have a lot of work ahead, practically all the walls need to be repainted, carpets replaced, wallpaper stripped in a few rooms... but generally looks good. Lots of space, huge garage for two cars, exactly what they were looking for.
On the way back dropped by Advance Auto Parts (sounds even more stupid when translated), where Ender should start working soon. Whether he went to buy something or to settle any details, dunno, came back empty handed. Visited his folks then, where he picked something from the krtlog (v. house dictionary) in the garage. There's no room for a bike, let alone a car in it. There's a kiddie bike for Eleese, when she comes, but now she comes to us, not there.
In the afternoon I tried to shoot birds on the chickory bush on our lawn, but Fujica spited me fully, always focusing in wrong places.
Went to Walmart in the evening, bought another wristwatch, the battery died in the old one. I don't wear the contraption for years now, except for airports, so will need one now. If the first[ one]'s battery lasted five years, this one proved to be even more resilient, survived thirteen, despite having hands as well, which meant mechanical work and thus using more power. The prices were five and seven bucks, with respect[iveness]. True, the time shown by hands and display differed as early as next year, and I never managed to align them. Didn't try much, either. I downloaded from somewhere even the manual for it, filetime is 23:25...
These watches were, um, worth writing a book. How they kept adding options but never additional buttons, and never real pixels, just the simple logic of predefined fields, as everything else comes at a cost. So the interface was getting worse and worse, and the only reason they were never pronounced the worst interface of the century is the existence of video recorders, which have twenty functions and two buttons more, which precludes any dispute over the title.
Extra negative score is that this piece of paper (the image shows about a sixth of the whole) covers fisix models which are almost the same inside, differ almost by faceplate alone, and when the explanation of model differences is taken out, there's ony three paragraphs explaining the buttons and what they do. Of course, half of the things specific to this model aren't explained anywhere. This is normal, I have tens of similar cases worth of experience. And why is the manual called „Operate instruction“ - is this surgery or is the instruction a piece of equipment? - is higher poetry, above my pay grade.
And of course it had to happen once, about 2016 or thereabouts, I set it to wake me up at seven. For four more years I was unable to turn it off, only managed to somehow set the time to 13:10. We never managed to turn that off, just moved it deeper into the drawer, then into the middle drawer. The issue was resolved when its battery eventually died.
Someone on oldwave said „Now when the Chineses build the Borča-Zemun bridge, it'll be a carnival when they see it's an ideal place for a toll booth*“. The cue was the traffic regime change on Gazela, which is under some reconstruction. Someone claimed that one saturday afternoon, in 1976, Brankov bridge was relieved of overload, because Gazela took the brunt, the wait started as far as Autokomanda. And all of this is a part of planning to visit Jeff Beck's concert. The whole gang is gathering - Škrba, Kunta and two more guys from Kikinda; Boća and Piton from Kragujevac, Kleks from Niš, ajVar and Stinge from Belgrade, and a few more guys.
Marinko asked something about a height of a textbox in a grid... editbox, that is, because he put row height at 40px, 22 being the norm, 19 inside.
Burt announces that he may drop by for Memorial day, which I still don't know when is. Zyanna, on her side, tells about her new title „Angelic mystic examiner“, at NationalExaminer.com... She went into all that mystologiy and faith, glue thins, it seems to me.
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* the bridge was built, by the Chineses, six years later. No toll.
Mentions: Božidar Sokolović (Boća), Dragojlo Kuntić (Kunta), Eleese Aquila (Eleese), Ender Aquila (Ender), Fujica, Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), house dictionary, Marinko Protić, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), oldwave, Piton, Reginald Burton Cape (Burt), Stinge, Zyanna, in serbian
6-I-2022 - 14-V-2026