The evening before I wrote to my, somewhat former, partner... around two in the morning, therefore today. He's about to move Avai because Bangro is no longer in the mood to barter office rental for app mainenance, as the latter is now done by Brlja. At regular price, they'd skin him. So he meant to take the house where tanti lived, adapt it to standards, and make a deal with Oma about the rent. (nothing came out of it, he'd have to invest a lot and she'd have her hands full)
Here I already gave up - I'm almost glad that I don't have a dime in Zero, so whatever I hear they messed up at various levels is not touching me anymore. It's almost the same to me whether it will go bust or go rich. So much for the worries of management and all the attempts to keep all the reins of command in hands - that is simply impossible. Just so you know, back then it was just a „place where the team gathers“, and any talks about reconfiguring the firm were seen as happening in some second phase, when we were supposed to (by initial plan) legalize the work through Avai, the day after Sloba falls and the sanctions are revoked. But then we saw how Brlja imagined it and how he played it out.
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Brlja told me a few times how he has no love for a tezga, it's not really his dish, that he goes for one only when it's something short and simple, takes hundred marons* for one aftrenoon and the like - I even helped him in a few places (Stahhl, Ingeborg), mostly for free or almost free. But he blurted out here when Greg was calculating how much to pay them, stated clearly that he's clocking 350 marons a month on tezgas. There, he may have been lying or just driving a bargain - the statement was given in a public place and we can always call him upon it.
I wouldn't mind if he had one or two friendly or semifriendly tezgas, but it seems he had quite a lot of them. Now when I recap all the places where I found him or where we dropped by when returning from field work, well, it was a lot. And yes, he peddles the same crummy apps as those he hove upon our accountants. What I don't know is what he sold to Health home in Novi.
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The Zero (aka Zippo distress) is currently on neither sky nor earth, and stands so splayed for a number of months. Now for the first of april they scheduled the launch of the first big app under the new system, or the phase one of the new product, or whatever they may call it, and the goal for that day is a „deligthed customer“. For your info, I'm sitting for two days with a documentation writer (and there's a whole division of 5-6 such people) and we're going through all the fields in the HR app - the app in general is all pivoting around the HR - so that the gentlemen of the project design could fathom the extents of their needs. This feeding the pig on krismas eve means, finance-wise, that the investeors from the first phase (aka angels) are nearing the end of their patience and that some of them already stopped pouring, while the others give in a small spoon. The investors from second phase (venture, aka vulture capitalists) just keep walking by and not appearing the second time. Maybe I already said too much, but this is already a public secret.
And all this means that they don't have any permanent or formal relationship with UScrew; they pay them some for what they do at home, their arfare to here and back, here they get food and lodgings (a rented apartment in my area, which means i drive them every morning, and often in the afternoon too), and some stipend while they're here. They have B1 visas, as if they were coming for training. The plan is that Brlja's SZR [standalone artisanal shop], and that Greg should go in the summer to found a firm which would be fully owned by Zero. Now how realistic is that is really a question, because the destiny of the Zero itself is hanging by a thin thread. While it's true that there's no panic here, that the work is progressing nicely, and no austerity measures are taken yet, on the contrary, still one can see, here and there, that the going on is not quite as it should be. For one, the throughput is 50%, i.e. within a year half of the people were gone, and of the present ones half weren't here a year ago. I counted the other day, 14 people have more staž in the firm than I, and I've seen 24 people leave. Of those, perhaps 20% were fired this way or other, the others just weaseled out, gone.
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Actually, there's a dire need for programmers. At the time when I was looking for a job, just the US was missing some 200.000 of them, and where are Australia, Canada and Europe. Not to mention that the quick and dirty development of tools and operating systems means that the existing personnel spends a lot of time learning, and by the time current operations are automated and the matters settle, there's already a need to replace obsolete parts, or those incompatible with this or that, and again you need the people who'll do that. So I simply don't believe the demand will drop in any significant degree.
The mutual gain appears when you have programmers in a country with cheap workforce - they'll make enfold more money, and still be cheaper by half when compared to Canaders. On top of it, ours are better educated, and quicker to solve problems. You wouldn't believe how hollow they are here, their education being simply just on the surface. About anything they know a nothing and a quarter. When I drop a few words in latin or mention Dostojevski, I get blank stares :)
Rich sent to anyone he knows some warning aout calls from area code 809, because those are paid by the recipient, and those not informed of the scam may get into debt of 20000$ or more in just a few minutes. The efbyeye also warns of the same, saying that such numbers, being otherwise same as 900, which are subject to various laws to prevent scams, are in the american phone system but not on its territory, so these laws don't apply to them. So who gets screwed, got screwed.
At home, as I hear, granny Marta crazier than the one here. One day 25, next day 3 degrees. It at least calmed here, the wind has stopped. True, sweater again when going to work, the magnolia blossoms wilted (a sacrilege, the whole tree was blooming, blossoms were pink, with petals 6 to 9 cm in length), but then everything else is coming up slowly. And even the little birds started tweeting (I heard even nightingales), and the squirrels just swish around.
Đuđa, as I hear, isn't so popular in her village anymore. When they invite her to a wedding, they don't let her pack slices of the cake and the cakes to take home to her daughter (as she was prone to do, she even bragged with how much she gathered).
The inflation at home is about 1% for half a year, still somewhat less than the once 300$ a day.
I have to stretche myself with those weights, a bit, though it largely depends on the music. Đoka [Balašević] is, let's say, often too slow, and Bora [čorba] a bit too fast. The best fit for me is Disciplin A Kitchme**, I guess they guessed right the length of my hands, without even knowing it :)
Today we heard us with Go, they'll move now, señor Jose is buying an apartment, but that one will be vacated only after a month or stronger, and in the meanwhile they'll have to sit tight. We'll see them now on saturday.
There was a ruckus at Zero these days, which I wrote down nowhere, because I guess it didn't even happen. Clara seemed quite happy with the work we did this week, she was bristling with pleasure, „my boys“, so we set a round of beers right across the office (a bit to the side), at Buffalo wild wings (no actual buffalos were hurt, it's not that they ever had wings, it's that the recipe is from the Buffalo city), her with the whole yugo team. Not right after work, but around eight, so I drove the gang to their place and then walked myself. There was a bunch of us, I know V. was there, and Joška, and one or two (a girl?). We sipped the thin beer, and there was a quiz running on the screen above the bar - the questions show up, and to play one needs a controller, which they charge a buck or two or zero, that's entertainment. And the quiz itself is not run by the bar, it's a service they pay and install, and it probably runs at the same time in thousands of other bars across the Uniteds. Along the way we started mouthing the answers, and after seven-eight of those Clara concluded that we know a lot of stuff and that we're actually quite good at this, „my boys!“, so she went and got a controller, and we started playing for real. Don't know whether the free beer was on the house or on her.
I left after the second beer, because I'm a bit old for that kind of sitting, and also am not in any kind of mood for the american beer. That may be interesting for you guys, but I don't have to drink that. I guess I thought the walk will do me good.
And then things maybe went in any direction, I wasn't there and can't state anything. Allegedly V. was hitting on her, lawyers were mentioned, a threat of a lawsuit was presented - which I all heard on monday morning, and which all stopped and disappeared before the second coffee, didn't happen. To this day it remained unclear to me what was going on there. Joška said there was nothing, but then he wasn't the last one to leave. He went to catch the last bus, in which he then forgot his little camera...
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* maron aka moron - marka, german mark
** the drum-n-bass band, actually meaning „discipline of the spine“, but when Koja moved the band to London, he didn't translate the name, but transliterated it this way instead
13-VI-2024 - 12-I-2026