Month: March 2006

…viewing HTML source code.  Can you believe that?

I mean, I know that while she’s not very technical, living together with me can leave some deep marks.  If she would start preaching Open Source or arguing about supremacy of Perl over Java – I would understand.  These things are coming out of my mouth way too often and they mean much more to me than they should…

But HTML source code?  I don’t even remember talking about HTML, let alone showing her how to do that.  How… where.. err…

She was playing one of those online strategy games – a clone of Duna.  And the website wasn’t fully supporting browsers other than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.  And she uses Mozilla Firefox.  So, what does she do, when base captions aren’t displayed on the map?  That’s right, she opens up the HTML source code, navigates to the correct place and gets all the information she needs.  And not only that, she does it all calmly, in the most natural of ways, like she developed the site herself!
I am stanned.  I am amazed.  And, I am proud.  Way to go, baby!

Accidental misunderstandings are fun.  They are tough to figure out, but, when over, can be a great source of fun.

I was wondering why all of a sudden Olga started giving me those looks recently.  The looks like I am an ignorant bastard who doesn’t care about anyone else.  Sometimes she was also complaining from the loud sounds that come out of my notebook.  Impossible I thought – I am wearing the headphones for a reason.  And there is no way someone can hear the sound from the headphones from another room.  She’s just making it all up to make me go to bed in time.

Today I realised though that she was right.  And the problem wasn’t in the headphones.  The problem was with the configuration of the soundcard.  Whenever I plugged the headphones in, I was sure that the sound from the speakers was gone.  But it wasn’t!  And, of course, wearing the headphones which played the same sounds that were coming out of the speakers, I couldn’t notice the problem.  It was only by accident that I took off the headphones when the sounds were still coming out and I realized what the problem was.  It took me five seconds to fix it.

For those of you who need a fix for this problem – it’s in the volume controls.  Sometimes, the volume settings can be differnt for headphones and for speakers.  And sometimes you can have a setting for the soundcard to automatically switch off the speakers when the headphones are plugged in.  In kmix this setting is in the Switches bar and it is called Headphone jack sense.  It should be on.

I was passing by this shop with large windows.  One of the shirts caught my attention.  It was a plain white shirt with a shiny (disco-style) writing on it’s back that said “Million dollar man”.

Somehow, I thought, the only thing that one can be sure about is that a person wearing this “Million dollar man” shirt doesn’t have a million dollars.

I have witnessed something today that made me think about Murphy’s Law and how easily it is extended to every action. Even those actions performed by children.

I was waliking the park with Maxim today, when we saw this boy who was riding a new bicycle. The boy was very proud (Lev: guess who am I talking about. OK, I’ll give you three attempts.). It turned out it was his second day on the bicycle and he was riding it very good. Without any tricks or anything, but solid – without fallings or ugly manouvers.

So, this boy was making circles around us. He was shining with delight. I complimented him on the newly acquired skill. And he started to show off. He made the face like he could ride all by himself, without any concentration or focus. He even started ringing his bell.

And that was the point where he lost control. His bike started going from left to rigth and back to left. He lost the touch of the pedals. His speed decreased, which made it even more difficult to keep the bike straight. He was about to fall on his face. Luckily, his reflexes were fast enough to jump off the bicycle and stay on his feet. The bicycle fell though. Noone was hurt.

But the look on this boy’s face was all about a question: “Why did it happen to me right now?”. It could have happened to him on any given moment in the last two days. And noone would have noticed it. And those who would notice, wouldn’t care for it long enough, and would forget immediately. But it happened exactly at the worst moment – when he was showing off.

The answer to the kid’s question is, of course, Murphy’s Law.

Little did the boy know about the worst moment though. The accident didn’t just happen when he was showing off. But the accident happened when he was showing off to a blogger. Now, the memory and humiliation of this accident will stay in the history of the Universe forever. And there is nothing he or anyone else can do about it. Because in exactly half a second I’ll press the ‘Publish’ button and within 30 seconds at least two major search engines will index this story. Oh, boy.
P.S.: Am I cruel or what?