Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

Last day of the year. It was a good year all together, but I am glad it’s over now. It’s not the events in 2003 that make me so. It’s more the events to come in 2004. Exciting! :)

Flipping through the pages of this diary for the last year make me glad that I was marking it all down. Here is a little round-up…

I’ve started 2003 in the mountains with my family (mother, brother, wife, and myself). Total isolation of any technology even close to computers. :) Lots of work in the office has been done during the rest of the month. Two remarkable things I’ve seen that January were the Tornado in Cyprus and “Two Towers”, which I was not sure were that great at the time. :)

Most of February has been spent coding an LDAP interface, which I was almost proud of, but which has been thrown out completly 6 months later and redone in Perl. After another few month that seems like a good idea.

March started off with migrating the site to the version you see now. Static HTML to Embperl, which didn’t bring much changes but was supposed to encourage futher development. Which it didn’t. :) Almost a year later (now) I am almost ready to redo the whole thing again. I even have some new designs ready and some code completed. Next few days I’ll put it up, since I’ll be having a nice vacation. :)

March also has been an office month. Major power failure left our server room without air conditioning. It felt like Pizza Hut kitchen. ;) Also, we’ve started with the NOC closer to the end of the month. NOC is bigger and better now. And more professional. :)

April has been a party month, as usual. Lots of birthday parties, trips to montains for barbeque, movies, beer, etc. I’ve started learning Perl. Really this time. I’ve also became a Perl Monk.

May was not much different from April in terms of partying. :) Lots of movies again. Disappointment with “Matrix Reloaded”. More Perl studying. Some fun in Larnaca watching KVN. :)

Main event of June was, of course, Cyprus Rally. Oh, no, not the Cyprus Rally, but Cyprus stage from World Rally Championship. Some good action! :)

July has been excellent! This month I’ve got my SonyEricsson P800 and we started our tradition of Saturday travelling, which presented us with opportunities to discover a bunch of really nice places.

Nothing special happened in August, except more travelling and movie watching. :)

September has been interesting with holidays we took together with my wife and Hazard in Paphos. Remembering that now brings a certain amount of nostalgie. :)

October is known as a month when I started to grow my beard, which I prouldy wear till this day. :)

Most of November was spent in the hospital together with Olga and doctors. She is OK now, and I am glad that’s over.

December…well, you know all about it since it’s a recent month. :)

I am off to the New Year…

Waiting for camera… until evening, when we went to see “Intolerable Cruelty“, which was an excellent movie to see during Christmas season. Not that it was in any way related to Christmas, though. :)

Today is day “D”. I’ve finally ordered Canon Digital Rebel 300D from Digital Foto Club. This site is known to work, since Hazard bought a couple of items from there. Entering the period of waiting now. Hopefully it’ll take them less then 2 weeks. :)

Back to NOC in the evening. I’m thinking about taking few days off. :)

Ela’s birthday (Slavka’s wife). Unimaginable ammounts of home-cooked food and vodka. I find it hard to beleive someone could actually cook that much. :)

Singing, pictures, and a bunch of other stuff. Apparently I got very drunk, but behaved OK. :) Some people were nervious to learn that their pictures are about to show up in the Internet. I wonder why. When I’ll get my mind cleared and talk to Slavka once again, I’ll see if I publish them. There is nothing special on those pictures anyway.

Off to Alex and Katia to celebrate their daughter’s birthday (3 month). Lots of fun, excellent food, and pictures taken.

After the party I went to NOC for the maintenace shift, during which I was way too productive. :) Fixed few bugs in the recently release Intranet and finished few other bits of code. Suprisingly. :)

Friday – is a social day, so we picked Lev and Hazard and went to Pagoda Chinese restaurant for a really nice meal and wine. Then, back to our home for a nice pocker game. This time we didn’t have to use straws, but rather plastic coins which are specifically made for pocker (Christmas present from Yannis and Svetka).

After we’ve played for some time, something really unbelievable happend – Hazard got a pocker. It’s the first time anyone in our company got pocker. And we do play the game rather often for the last couple of years. ;) Hazard, of course, used all his mean character to get a good deal of cash on that. Plastic cash, though, which is good for us. :)

Another notable thing happend today. I was making all sorts of stupid pictures all day long. The only time I didn’t have the camera with me was when I drove Lev and Hazard back home. And guess what – there was a really spectacular car accident in the tourist area involving a Mercedes, pedestrian crossing and municipal Christmas decorations. Some really nice pictures were not taken. Pity. I cann’t beleive it.

Photos are coming soon, by the way. :)

Yannis and Svetka came for Christmas lunch. Olga cooked nice liver and potatos. Wine and fun, presents, et al. :)

Back to NOC for yet another night shift… :)

Merry Christmas to everyone who celebrates it! :)

I, myself and me have spent an excellent night in the NOC watching over the network and polishing the almost ready for release Intranet code. :)

Pictures for the recenet trip to Trodos are up and shining – enjoy. :)

Road trip. We went to Trodos mountains today (Lev, Olga, my brother Alex and his girlfriend, and myself, of course). Lots of snow (comparing to Christmas time last year), lots of people… I’ve made few nice pictures with Hazard’s camera.

For lunch we went to Founi tavern to have some Shato Brian stake made from Dutch beef by a French chief. Sounds nice, huh? :) Excellent piece of meat with a nice sauce. Next time we should take 2. :)

Pictures are coming shortly…