Entering via Horgoš... more work awaits.
Joška's working on the water supply central, for which he writes the billing app... the water meters were supposed to be calibrated every ten years or so, and while converting their old data I noticed that they have the dates of last calibration. So I wrote a little select to get the list of those to calibrate this month - got none. This year - got none. Finally got something when I extended it to ten years. Asked Rečo when do you really calibrate them? "Only when they complain"
Joška had a nice glitch in there. As someone who went through the directed education, and then graduated marxism, his last contact with maths was in 10th grade, and I can bet that it wasn't much. And now he had a maths problem - to apply one price to part of the month and another to the rest. Because it was one of those things they said will never happen: "you calculate the amout as per the price for the month", and we said "what if the price changes during the month?", "that will never happen". Of course it happened within the year. Hungary had only about 30% inflation at the time, and we were just fresh out of earning our collective doctorships on the subject. But it's like sex - no need to explain to those who tasted it, no way to explain to those ho haven't.
So he now had to apply the price proportionately to the number of days in the month. A simple proportion, which he messed with for a good hour or two and eventually got it right except it was mixed up. He'd apply the price for first part of the month, and vice versa.
Math isn't required for programming, but makes it soooo much easier.
Szoftex had its own vintner. Something like a friend of the house, just I can't decide which way. Gemenc is spread on seven hills, which are all riddled with tunnels. Each generation's task is to extend the tunnel by two or three barrels. They press coins into the walls of the tunnels, for memory, good luck and rich crops, to it's no miracle that it takes a fifteen meters to reach some coins one recognizes... until that point it's all numismatics.
It happens that a tunnel caves in, and later someone digs from the other side and finds the dug in barrels, by who knows wom and which year. Or one digs and suddenly a barrel falls in from above :).
This vintner had a glass syphon, which he'd fill by dipping it into the barrel and sucking out the air, then leaning it on his shoulder while holding his index finger on the bottom hole. from which he would then, by a slight motion of the finger, let a stream of wine into a glass. One drank there on foot, so the guests would not stay too long, and he poured mercilessly fast, pretending to get a stiff finger, can't hold it much longer, gimme your glasses quickly. He had a phenomenal merlot, and his local kadarka wasn't bad either... and the scenes when he'd, by the time a long evening sitting would come near its end, he'd drive his tractor backwards into the big front room, while having less than half a pedalj on either side, successfully avoiding various items hanging from the ceiling, he knew their positions with centimeter precision. The big two-liter ladle would pass a finger's breadth near his ear... and he wasn't drinking any less than we did. During one such party we even had some shots made, even Ula looked good on them (too bad I never got one), and I remember that somewhere around the third hour I sat with the one German there and went at length about in-floor heating, while trying hard to remember any german that I could muster. But just to spite me, it would appear that whenever I'd find a drawer in my head where a certain word should be, instead of a german word in that drawer I'd find a hungarian one. My garden was a mess...
Once we so went there a day before going home, to buy wine. That is, we know who among us has some cash and loves wine... Joška bought perhaps two bottles, I not one. While we were tasting the wines, what with the usual „finger getting stiff“ spiel etc, one sees that the guy has the routine down pat and that nobody will, so on foot, come to the point where one gets up and sits right down. And he pours half a deci of each, just enough to taste it but not get ourselves done. Right then one guy comes, whom they all know, and they all roll their eyes when they see him. He's just about the radiomileva of the street, goes from cellar to cellar, gets a sip or two everywhere, and when he feels he overstayed his welcome, moves on to trumpet away the gossip he collected. But this time he really liked to have arrived in the middle of a tasting, so he attached himself and wouldn't budge. More rolling of eyes. At some point he goes with „do you know what are the three best things in the world?“. „There are two“, I cut him. „No no no, there are three“, Two. Three. Two. Three. „Okay, which two?“. „A cognac before and a cigarette after“. He was enchanted, „wow how good this is, how is it even possible that I didn't know this before!“... and off he went to trumpet that down the street. The vintner gave me a bottle of wine for this. Had the guy stayed half an hour longer, the cost would be at least two bottles.
17-XII-2013 - 2-IV-2026