13-XII-2003.
On eleventh, news from dad. Mom's happy that we talked on the phone the other day, and topped that with an email, wow. He went downtown to pay the subscription to Beotelnet, was 520 dinars since beginning of the year, now 440. In the library he met Jablan, greetings from him. Carp, Števa and Vanji came by, greetings likewise. Vanji says getting connected from Libya is troublesome, specially the last month. He didn't even know that the verdict in his dispute against DBA is now final and enforceable, so he's waiting for the money now. In the kiosks they have Alan Ford again, after who knows how many years.
C.P., whom I met at both conferences, also chimed in, said „That's a bummer that you got laid off!! We just hired a full-time
developer so we aren't in the market for anyone right now. If I hear of anything I'll be sure to pass it on.“
Went for an oil change on the corolla yesterday. Not that I wouldn't be able to do it on my own, I even have the time now, but what to do with the old [oil]. Seeing how the Jiffy is near some lake, thought to have a photo stroll while waiting, brought the Agfa along. Didn't happen, I was the first in line, no wait. The girl climbed down into the pit, unscrewed it and... well, got to take a shot of that, nobody at home will believe me that the AFŽ* has advanced so far here that girls work as car mechanics. Too bad that the shooter remained adjusted to some other color of light, so this batch got deep into the blue, but I just had to have this shot, the girl was really cute.
Željko reports
Whichever way you look at it, things here are same as they were. The state firms are some strong middle ground, which was the reason for me to accept the job in the Cleanliness [city parks, cemeteries and garbage collection], which was offered to me long ago. Here I am the „engineer for development of informational systems“ (yup finished the faks** meanwhile) which in translation means I'm the system administrator, programmer and anything else that can be related to computers. Of course it's far from a good job, but it's at least secure. And that was the important thing, because of the family. Private business is still in a dump, even if you can afford the expenses, eventually the customers drag their feet with payments, for months, so you patch month to month, and never know whether your salary will be there or not. Didn't want to award myself with that „pleasure“. Now I'm cooperating at times with A. and The Strongest, so apart from the Cleanliness app, I almost finished the Water Main.
Of the team, Brlja, Pali and V. are in UScrew, Joška in the newspaper, my Tina is in Jugodata (their shop in Zrenjanin), and I'm in utilities.
As for the city, it's just the same dang old. You may be surprised with the number of banks in the city, there's surely more than 20, mega-markets began opening (so far one Maksi and the other is being built). Renovating the vodotoranj is still not finished, but the lights on the square in front of the city hall was done in a really worldly manner. They lit and renovated the façades and it looks really well when the dark falls.
An excerpt from my long fight against the bible thumper D.D. on UA
Some cultures deserve to be wiped out.
Consumer culture comes to mind.
However, I am not in favor of nor would I advocate what you are suggesting.
I am not suggesting anything here. I was hinting, though, at the history, and its repetitions.
As a matter of fact you need to update you list of objections as that practice really has been out of practice for many decades. Now you will usually see itinerant, local-born and bred missionaries who work within the culture. You need to get a better objection. < g >
OK, point me to the document where any church has publicly denounced the genocidal acts committed under its umbrella. One thing I remember from history is that the first saint officially appointed by any christian church (and there was only one at the time) was a certain Roman emperor in Constantinopolis, who has opted for Christianity and organized a slaughter of several thousand infidels. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is he still a saint? I mean, if that was done for political reasons, it could have been reverted later when the situation changed. Or "the Party is always right, Winston".
Never got around to ask you, which gets me a more qualified devil in charge of flames under my kettle - not believing at all, or believing in a guy from the competition's shop?
Good question... Neither. The Bible says that all are (equally) under this judgement as we are all considered as completely in sin, even if you didn't "do the deed", as they say. That way God can be equally as 'generous' in His grace and forgiveness - even if you didn't deserve the forgiveness, which BTW no one does. Nobody..
Actually, I have no dilemma - knowing my skills and ways around, I know I have spent enough time tending the fire in my father's rakija destilery (moonshine is completely legal back home) - I'm going straight to hell, qualifying as a devil apprentice, to keep a warm place for someone. Too bad nobody reported back from there, so if you get to be boiling on my fire (or vice versa), we won't be able to write here about it... :)
At home, some emails with Joška. He's now the web admin in the local newspaper, and got one of the lady reporters to check out my website, specially the part about the „customs of northamerican tribes at the turn of the century“, which then led to the proposal that I should write a few articles, „and you could insert a photo or two for illustration. Of course, apart from the glory I don't know what else to offer...I don't get any cash for what I write (glory is the word). I think a text about our people there would receive a warm reception“.
I replied „what our people there? Girls and I? We don't have a fresh look at things anymore, as Nina said, we already got used to it. We don't meet any of our folks - in A-burg there was only this Rich guy, but he's Ford's pal so we mostly avoided him, and the rest are the Bosnians who got here through ICQ... um, IRC (International Refugee Committee or some such) and some runaways from Dalmatia, those we avoided separately“.
It ended a month or two later, on third article, because they correctad my text, as they only know how. The paper is famous for inserting quotation marks wherever needed or not, to the point where they once printed something about „taxi ’transportation‘...“ as if it's not really transportation but just make believe, or they say transportation but we know what they really mean by that. This third article, then, was about water, and in the sentence „and the best water I drank was in Cueblo and on Manhattan“ they put both places under quotes, as if they were restaurants, not cities. This is where I didn't want to play anymore, there's about 3000 people back home whom I knew, and add some 20% on top of that of those who know about me, and some of them will read this and some will remember this stupid gaffe, and will have fun on my account. Which I don't mind, when I really fuck up something, mock me as one of your own all you like, but this was not my doing, and it bears my signature.
Go's comment on the first article: „The correspondent honoris causa sounds better than honorary correspondent, if you ask me“ - of course, the honorary implies a honorarium, i.e. payment. Though, that scale balanced eventually, some ten years later - see 18-I-2013.. In the same message she comments my publishing of Ajthat (the longest of my SF stories) and the first story, and cut an unfuckable price of 5$ on them... which came to nothing likewise. Next year I tried to sell them at zero dolars, and had perhaps six readers altogether. Dropped the matter at that.
Today the vietnamese girl from Orion also commented on the news of my publishing, „I have looked into your ebook site and found it really interesting. Will definitely reserve some time to read your books.“ - yeah, right, but didn't buy. (checked in 2024, the site vanished altogether)
Gary wants to talk, about me helping with the site itself - my job was the database and the app for him to populate and edit it. „I'm at home all day today. I've cancelled my long distance, I'm using the calling cards, and have only about 20 minutes left on the last one, so it would be better that you call me, whenever you have the time.“ - this I wrote after some consultation with Mohan.
There's some touching warm human story of christian nature from Sharlene in the email, of all people. „Doesn't apply - I'm religion free.“ Almost simultaneously, Berix sent me something from Joe - some user's network snafu'd, few tables got hosed, the indexes got fucked up, the kids' schools were mixed up, just chaos... So she sent me the tables in a zip, to see if I can patch that up somehow and get stuff in order. Not the first time, I already had generated the rebfpt.prg routines for these tables... not a problem. Wrote this to her: „I've revamped my old indexer generator, and I'll have to rework it to use regular alter table command for restoring the primary key - my old tricks with hacking the dbc and messing with binary memos don't work flawlessly. That is, FCTables.dbc rebuilds all indexes from scratch each time without a hitch, and it has a bunch of relations and about 100k of RI code. SpeedCanvass.dbc bangs most of the time after hacking only one key, after which the database becomes invalid - which is a mess. Most of the indexer generator was written back in 5.0, when the set of available DML commands was less rich, so now I can make it simpler using regular commands and fewer hacks. I've found a way to kill all the relations and build them, and to save and restore any RI code, so it's at "few glitches left" state now.“
My reply to a headhunter, who sent me a contract to sign:
I am not completely comfortable with the agreement - doesn't provide any criteria as to what is included and what not, except "as informed to me". I also don't feel comfortable with having one representative in the area - specially when I don't know what's the area. Also - what does the 24 months cover? Nobody else but you or myself can submit my resume (where?) for that time? What if I find a job on my own and it accidentally turns out to be one of your clients?
And, I don't have a fax - if a scan+email combination would work, that'd be fine. If you have a more precise version of the document, send it and I'll think about it. I'm not so easy to sign anything I'm not sure of.
This doesn't mean we can't do business this time. Also - I said permanent, can't do consulting. I don't think it's feasible that I can be a consultant while on H-1B visa. Who's my sponsor in that case?
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* AFŽ - Antifašistički Front Žena - women's antifascist front - was the main political organization for womens' lib since, I guess, 1943 or so. It's a dad's thing to call any womens' organizing as yet another AFŽ.
** faks, short for fakultet, i.e. college
Mentions: 18-I-2013., Agfa, Alan Ford, Allan Robin (Ford), Annenburg (A-burg), Cecilia Roxbury (Berix), Cueblo, DBA, Gary Brandywine, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Goran Staković (Brlja), Jablan Arsin, Joe Dioballato, Joška Apro, Mohan Merchant, Nevena Sredljević (Nina), Orionware (Orion), Pali Bodor, rakija, rebfpt.prg, Rich Petrovich, SF stories, Sharlene Weiter, SpeedCanvass, Stevan Garaj (Števa), Tasa Radenkov (Carp), UbiquAgora (UA), UScrew, Vilmoš Baranji (Vanji), vodotoranj, Željko Popov, in serbian
3-XII-2022 - 16-V-2026