Year: 2003

Oh, well. Today we decided that Olga should see a doctor. She had pains in her stomach and back very often for the last two weeks.

Someone recommended that we see a gastrologist. OK. We decided to go the nearest polyclinic (“Ygia”). When we almost entered the building, I saw a “Gastrologist” sign across the road and we agreed to go there first, since that would most probably save us some queue time. The gastrologist was on holidays though and his secretary suggested that we go and get inspection from the general surgeon from the office across the coridor.

The guy there looked reasonable. We went through a troubleshooting session (very much like a chechlist they give to technical support personal at ISPs), and decided to do X-Ray and blood tests.

X-Ray immidiately revealed the source of pain – Olga appeared to have two stones in her gal bladder (small thingy that helps liver): one 12mm and another 8mm. Blood tests confirmed the theory. After not much of a discussion Olga is hospitalized and will undergo and operation to remove her gal bladder. The doctor promised that this will not affect any of her “afterlife”.

Quick shopping for the hospital staff and she is in. More news tomorrow.

Hazard received the Amazon package which had some stuff for me too – “Full Metal Jacket” and “Payback” DVDs, and Criptonomicon and Annotated Alice in Wonderland books. Entertainment time. :)

Quick beer in German restaurant and off to Hazard’s place to watch “Mars Attacks!”. Good Friday. :)

Today is the end of the first real (first touch was when Red Hat 9 came out all Red Hat mirrors were dead) experiment with BitTorrent. BitTorrent is an excellent peer-to-peer network based on an open protocol. Speeds are excellent and there is a bunch of content. Look, for example at SuperNova.

Few minor glitches which I found to be my fault, but overall I am very positively impressed. Good job! :)

I, of course, forgot to mention that one of the physical results of BitTorrent experiment was a set of South Park series, which I watched with Hazard during few beers. Sweeet! :)

Today is the last night shift of the series since Saturday. Most of the stuff that I’ve planned for these nights is done now and I am kind of happy I took them. Also, it proved to be a good addition to my basic salary. :)

Archeological news: I’ve found the first mention of me studing Linux! The date is 28th of November 1998. Distribution – Slackware 3.5. I even don’t remember that I ever used Slackware. :) Anyway. Data comes from these two messages to the linuxtalk mailing list (in Russian). For those, who want to try Slackware 3.5, it can be downloaded from here. Good luck! :)