Year: 2006

OK, I’m glad to report that the accident case is completely closed now.  Today I have received the money from Cosmos Insurance.  The final judgement was 70% of my fault (manouvering without looking in the mirrors, closing free way, etc) against 30% of the other guy (speeding).

All accounts have been settled, and all paperwork finished.  My car has been repaired and paid for, and the only thing missing is the proper rare right light, which I am waiting for to be shipped from Japan.  In the meantime light from another model has been installed, and, to tell you the truth, noone notices the difference.

Anyway.  Once again, I’m happy that there were no casualties and that noone was harmed or injured – just two cars.  I have learned my lesson, and I am not drunk driving anymore.  At least not after heavy drinks like vodka and tequilla.  I still drive after a glass of wine or beer though, but noone is perfect.  I am not driving to parties no more.  If I know I’ll be drinking, I take a taxi and it seems to work very well for me.

That’s all folks.

As I have already said several times, I am not very fond of astronomy.  It doesn’t interest me.  But I try to ‘get in’ and follow at least major events, such as Solar and Moon eclipses.  Even partial.

Obviously, I am not doing a very good job of it.  Many people notified and warned me that almost full Solar eclipse will be visible from Cyprus on March 29th.  I got these news via all possible channels – in person, over the phone, via email, RSS, and the rest of Web technologies too.  I made a mental note not to miss.

And I did.  I realized that I missed it about 10 hours after it was over.  Can you believe it?  Oh, you can, huh?  Well, I’ll tell you something better.  At the time the eclipse was taking place I was in bed, with my notebook on my lap, watching a movie.  And suddenly, in the middle of the movie, I realized that it was way too dark in the room and, therefor, outside for the lunch time.

Guess what?

I haven’t thought about the eclipse even for a second.  My reasons for insuffecient light were mostly weather related – clouds and such.  Of course, I didn’t spend my afternoon thinking about it.  Those were just a couple of brief thoughts.

But still.  I find it amazing – I was well informed about what was going on, I was actually planning to take part in observations, and I totally forgot.  And not only that – I didn’t pay any attention what-so-ever to the obvious marks and signs that were sent to remind me of what was happening.

My only hope is that my life won’t depend on my memory and organization.  Other then that – I am hopeless.

Just a few hours ago I wrote this entry (in Russian) about Maxim’s first punishment. As bas as it was, I was all in hopes that it will eventually work. But not that I read the same technique used unsuccessfully by The Parent I am starting to have my doubts. Here is the quote from her post to get you started with technique:

Right now the crib also serves as the time-out area for when she behaves badly.

And here are the results of using that technique:

Jon left Leta in her crib for another round of time-out and came back into the living room to walk off some steam. When he told me what had happened I told him not to take it personally because she has done the exact same thing to me. “Leta’s pretty mature for her age,” he said trying to talk through the defeat. “She knows her letters and numbers and all that. I think she could handle it if we added on a few extra minutes to the time-out. Like 45.”

Or in one sentence: it doesn’t work. Now I am wodering if it just didn’t work with Leta, or maybe the complete approach is wrong. Any ideas?

…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.