31-XII-2012.
Twonyeighth, treated myself with a notebook, not wireless (has a wire and what the retail calls a spiral, we experts call a helix), and a keyboard, mouse and mousedrome. The gadgets are black, from Logitech, with our letters on top of the keys. On twonyninth we went to Belgrade to fetch Lena, buzzed around her end, and then drove home. The masking tape which marks the position where the little table doesn't rock is still there and still works, just like the other pair behind, for the smaller table. Geometry, mother differential.
Both oldwave and the suština's editors discuss in parallel... so here's a pick.
There's also the part on the methodology of testing. Instead of, as Allan Cooper says, stand behind users' backs and watch how, and specially what with, they suffer - they first slap an unknown truckload of money to design a questionnaire aimed at finding all the answers to the questions which are relevant to them. Good examples of this school of thinking are various polls on some websites on the subject „how's your experience / experience* on our website“, where they keep asking things about what matters to them, and don't matter to me as a visitor. But things that leave me totally confused, or that I find missing altogether, or really annoy me - they don't mention, that's assumed to „must be that way“... and the money will anyway be poured into assembling that questionnaire, and processing the result, and meetings where they'll discuss the result, and promote the dummy who sold the whole fog to the team.
I've seen sellers like that, there were heaps of them. I once even suffered twenty pages with 3-4 questions each (which were all multiple choices with four wrong answers, my answer was nowhere), just because I knew there would be a comment field in the end, where I'd list the questions they didn't ask. Don't even remember where that was.
Afternoon, Škrba a propose the order of publication of articles on suština:
Team,
We filled up the day as it was envisioned. True, I did intervene „a little“ by posting two Neighbor's contributions for today instaed of timorrow's wee hours. Thus I may have disturbed a part of the idea (specially eating pihtije as a method of removing dengover**), but what can one do when such is the romance [song].
Now only to think of what will I [put] into the remaining slot I reserved. I'll decide in the following hour-two, just right on time (:
I reply
Principle of synchronicity, namely I put them in such an order to make room if something stronger comes along, and I reserved the shuffling for the case if the density be lacking when needed. You learned to act as per my whim :љ.
This cyrillic stick out tongue smiley I just invented and kept inserting it whenever I found an occasion, to acquire the habit. In other emails, one of the oldwave forwarded the announcement of publishing a book by Lazar Džamić, „Cvjećarnica u kući cveća“ (Flowershop in the house of flowers - the first word being in croatian ijekavian; house of flowers is the official name of the mausoleum where Tito was buried), about the phenomenon of Alan Ford and how could it be more popular in SFRY than in its native Italy.
Noetflix keeps sending me invitations to try again, despite having fucked me off when I last tried. They don't cover Serbia, period. But no, they forget because the techs and sales are not on the same server and don't talk [amongst themselves]. I reply
You should really do several things:
- provide a field in your database where you could at least mark a former subscriber as "residing in a country where we don't operate"
- stop lying about "anywhere" in your ads. You definitely DO NOT operate anywhere. Actually, you don't operate outside of a few countries here in Europe. Someone may sue you for false advertising.
If I get another email like this, I promise I'll make an even larger screenshot. Please stop. For two years you aren't able to get me off your list, or provide service that you call me back to. As far as you are concerned, I'm nowhere - as I'm not inside your "anywhere", so stop bothering me.
Checking out on our olds. First we swung by špajiz (called „Bio špajz“ on the house front, and who knows what it says on the bag), all three of us (Lena was with us). No idea what we bought there, guess some sweets to take to the oldsters, because next station was that nursing home where Oma was. There we saw they adapted the garage to serve as a kitchen and salon (not a separate object, it's in-house), so one part is for stove, counter and sink, the other with couch and armchairs and TV. I shot a decent series, it was nice and cozy, pleasantly warm because the central heating's boiler was in the room, a big box and seems to use heating oil, not solid fuel. We didn't see any traces of coal nor stacked wood. I remember seeing such, if not the same, model back in seventies, most prominently in the community [center] on Groš, while they had the youth club and disco.
Oma was serene, and we got a quite decent coffee at that. And there was also a surprise, I recognized the old lady they brought to sit with us: Rožika. Amazingly, she still looked cute, albeit completely whitehaired and absent. I even talked with her a bit, in hungarian, but I don't believe she remembered me. Few weeks later we heard they had trouble finding her, she just got dressed and walked out of the gate. She didn't get far, just a corner or two, but they had a whole hour of panic and kept the gate locked henceforth. Which was then a trouble, there was no bell, so when we'd arrive we'd have to wait to be noticed by someone inside and unlock it. It never crossed my mind to key in their phone number into my mobile, still haven't acquired the habit.
We heard later, during the year, that she died.
Then we drove to dad's, and sat with him for a while. Ladies had a rakija with him - I stubbornly refuse to drink when I drive, as there'll be time for that. Then home, to have that doček. We had the gibanica and russian salad, all classic. Still can't see what we had before this shot, seeing how the plates are still clean yet there's half of the russian missing. Or maybe she took some to pack in a box for Lena to take to Belgrade. Ah, no, we had pihtije first, there's a cube of it on a fork in another shot, full domestic atmosphere. True, Lena doesn't indulge in such pleasures, still a planteater (can do eggs, can cheese). This was shot at 20:50, so we had a plan to spread the dinner over the evening, to distribute the effort to last and to take time.
That's Nina on the left monitor, we talked with her for a while, seen a lot of Raja and some of Ender (with controller in hand, he played something on the big screen), everything was okay, they'll also kind of do a doček, though the new year is not so big there as it is here.
I see that the background on the right monitor is dark blue... Eh, I gave up on background picture, the Windowses simply consume too much to keep it, and bebeLean (which I use regularly, fuck the exploder) may even support it, no idea, never checked it out, my ikonostas is minimalistic. On the table is her Toshiba (laptop) with optical mouse (both from 2007 and both still operational when needed, and it's february 2026 when I write this; true, half of the software refuses to work because it checks for updates and m$ has long ago ceased supporting any of that, but when you kill its networking, it skips the checks and everything works). Lena has quit the nokla E71, this is some unknown model.
I see there's the PSP, which I still used as a reader. It being practically a toy, the reading software is weak and unfinished - had to use one app to read html, another for pdf and third one for text, and each had its bugs. Scrolling a page would take half a page on one, whole page on another and one row on third. But okay, I've became immune to that sort of rubbish, it's still passable.
Behind the chair there's a box from some smaller appliance (blowdryer?), seems to have acted as a handy waste basket, which I'd usually keep in the times when I'd consume peanuts in shell (a shell or the shell? if either, please explain why). Maybe we were still finding it on shelves.
On the most photos of the doček itself the most prominent figure is Donald, Lena took him in to pet him and spoil him, and he enjoyed and posed. The shots were mostly quite good, he's really a photo model of a tomcat.
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* in serbian I used both words for both meanings of 'experience' - doživljaj, a set of impressions of an event, and iskustvo - knowledge accumulated over time by taking part in events firsthand
* instead of mamurluk (hangover), he wrote mramorluk. Mramor, mermer - marble (the stone; marbles are klikeri - clickers... there you go).
Mentions: Alan Ford, Balogovi, doček, Donald, Ender Aquila (Ender), gibanica, Gradivoj Škrbić (Škrba), Groš, Jelena Sredljević (Lena), Majkrosoft (m$), Nevena Sredljević (Nina), nokla, oldwave, Oma, pihtije, rakija, Ryu (Raja), suština, špajiz, in serbian
23-II-2026 - 24-II-2026