Today I came across a nice picture that shows the parts of the Optimist dinghy.
I’ve never knew the English terminology, and I pretty much forgot most of the terminology in Russian as well. Â But it’s a nice reminder of my childhood. Â I’ve spent years sailing this boat when I was a kid. Â Here are the a couple of pictures of me doing just that.
Fun times!
Just in time for the celebration of the Columbus Day in the USA, kottke.org links to a few sources (one, two, three) that suggest that the guy was not worthy:
Population figures from 500 years ago are necessarily imprecise, but Bergreen estimates that there were about 300,000 inhabitants of Hispaniola in 1492. Between 1494 and 1496, 100,000 died, half due to mass suicide. In 1508, the population was down to 60,000. By 1548, it was estimated to be only 500.
Understandably, some natives fled to the mountains to avoid the Spanish troops, only to have dogs set upon them by Columbus’s men. (Bergreen, 205)
It’s been said many times that you can’t buy happiness with money.  The Washington Post runs the article about the research that begs to differ:
Not only did the extra income appear to lower the instance of behavioral and emotional disorders among the children, but, perhaps even more important, it also boosted two key personality traits that tend to go hand in hand with long-term positive life outcomes.
The first is conscientiousness. People who lack it tend to lie, break rules and have trouble paying attention. The second is agreeableness, which leads to a comfort around people and aptness for teamwork. And both are strongly correlated with various forms of later life success and happiness.
Location: Qobo Ltd
One of the very few things we still rely on from Microsoft at work is Office 365. Not because it is so great, but because I simply didn’t have the time to move away yet (quiet Christmas season is coming soon). Most people don’t get exposed much to it anyway, using Evolution or Thunderbird email clients, or forwarding everything to Gmail altogether. But as an administrator of the service I get constantly annoyed by the “there are problems with your domain” notification. After ignoring it for about a year, I decided to finally fix it. All that was needed is a couple of records in the DNS zone.
Unfortunately, the instructions Microsoft provides don’t quite well apply to Amazon Route 53 user interface. It took me a few tries and some searching to find the right ones. Here they are, thanks to a comment on this page:
First record:
1. Log into Route 53.
2. in the hosted zones window, check the box next to YOURDOMAIN.com
3. click [ > Go to Record Sets]
4. Click [Create Record Set]
5. Enter _sipfederationtls._tcp , in the Name field
6. Switch type to SRV – Service locator
7. In the Value window Enter: 100 1 5061 sipfed.online.lync.com
8. Click [Create]Second record:
9. Click [Create Record Set]
10. Enter: _sip._tls , in the name field
11. Switch type to SRV – Service locator
12. In the Value window Enter: 100 1 443 sipdir.online.lync.com
13. Click [Create]
