Tag: humor

Switching off the notebook

This must be on of the most hilarious things I’ve heard in some time…

My mother just called me and said that she has a problem with her newly acquired notebook. The bloody Windows XP got stuck while booting up and there is no way to shutdown the computer. She pressed the Power button, but it didn’t work. She did than the next logical step – pulled the power plug from the socket. To her surprise, this didn’t help, because notebook’s battery was charged and the damn machine didn’t react in any way.

It’s been a while since I talked to regular computer users. Most of the people around me are professionals and have other fun problems. This one though reminded me of all those technical support jokes, but in a new, refreshing way. It also reminded me my frastration with ATX motherboards, when I first met them. I remember wondering why the Power button doesn’t work and who was the idiot who came up with this idea.

P.S.: If you came across this post trying to figure out how to switch the damn thing off, it’s actually easy: just press the Power button and hold it for ten or fifteen seconds and it should do the magic.

UAZ in Japan

UAZ is selling cars in Japan.

Luckily I can save this in multiple categories, otherwise it would have gone into Humor without any hesitation. You see, UAZ is one of those monster Soviet factories producing cars. Actually, cars is too much of a word for those products. Cans is more like it. After some thinking I can find only one reason for selling those cans in Japan – export/import of metals. Last time I saw one, UAZ looked like it was done from the military tank armor. There’s surely some value in that.

Quote of the day

Microsoft .WAV RIFF files.
These appear to be very similar to IFF files, but not the same. They are the native sound file format of Windows. (Obviously, Windows was of such incredible importance to the computer industry that it just had to have its own sound file format.) Normally .wav files have all formatting information in their headers, and so do not need any format options specified for an input file. If any are, they will override the file header, and you will be warned to this effect. You had better know what you are doing! Output format options will cause a format conversion, and the .wav will written appropriately. SoX currently can read PCM, ULAW, ALAW, MS ADPCM, and IMA (or DVI) ADPCM. It can write all of these formats including (NEW!) the ADPCM encoding.

© man 1 sox

Russian soup

Browsing through the threads of LiveJournal, I came across this post. Quoting:

Russian soup

Russians refresh themselves with this cold soup made of ice-cold kvass (weird national drink most closely compared to non-alcoholic beer), sausage, cucumbers, onions, boiled eggs and sour cream – just imagine this horrendous concoction!!…

And guess what they call this “soup” . … They call it “Ohkroshka”… pretty difficult to articulate, huh?

And now get ready for a translation. “Ohkroshka” means “Oh baby”!

It made me think.

Firstly, of course, the unthinkable humor of it. I’ve been eating “Ohkroshka” since I don’t remember when. My grandma usually cooked it. Among other things, my grandma possesses two definite talents – cooking and playing with words. I find it interesting that, while she practically harassed every other Russian word on the planet, she never touched “Ohkroshka”.

Secondly, I found it interesting how narrow-audienced this post is. Originally meant for the English-speaking people, the true fun of it opens only for those who knows well the Russian cuisine AND English language.

And, thirdly, of course, how blogging in general and LiveJournal in particular help to rediscover familiar things and open my eyes on stuff I long thought I knew.