Andrei Zmievski

Thanks to this I can now reasonably well understand the speech patterns of my brother. Although Sterling, who apparently is intimately familiar with this aspect, says the list is somewhat old.
I am going to re-read one of my favorite books, Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Such a great work.

Last week I took my parents and brother on a trip to Las Vegas. They have never been before, and I wanted to experience it in the summer, rather than going in the off season, like I did last time. Needless to say, it turned out to be a great visit. Some gambling, some sight-seeing, some dining, and so on. The highlight of the trip was seeing Mystére by Cirque du Soleil at the Treasure Island. If you have never been to one of the productions, buy a ticket right now. You won’t be sorry. The pictures from the trip are here.

I didn’t know that I was a drug dealer. And what brought me to that page? This.

This must be the most ridiculous job posting I have ever seen. So let’s see, the potential candidate needs to know Cisco equipment by heart, handle firewall software from several different vendors, be an accomplished network engineers, administrate Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server, and Sybase, support Windows and Linux servers, write programs in PHP, Perl, Python, HTML, SQL, and JavaScript, and create graphics in Fireworks, Flash, Photoshop, and Illustrator to boot. All for a $50k salary. Good luck. They’ll still be looking when the Halley’s comet comes around next time.
I’ve seen a variation of this kind of silly ad, where the requirements are something like this: 10 years of Java, 7 years of .NET and C#, ability to eat UML for breakfast, and write compilers for dinner. No wonder there is a perception that the job market is incredibly tight. I don’t think that’s necessarily true; it’s just that both sides need to have more realistic expectations.

After I posted my rant about the latest Matrix installment, it acquired a few comments from individuals who believe that firstly I am a moron who does not appreciate the artistic sensibilities of the Wachowski brothers and has a personal vendetta agains the movie, and secondly that the movie is a bridge that provides brain candy for people to nibble on while they wait for the next one. To which I say, learn to spell and read the abridged script of Matrix Reloaded that summarizes my own and many other persons’ feelings about the movie far better than I could express myself.

A strange and wonderful thing happened over the weekend. I received an email from someone who turned out to be an old classmate of mine, back when I lived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan and attended School #110. Apparently she has been trying to locate me for a while now, and finally posted a message on a Russian community site with a plea for help in finding me. Some good soul saw her request, found my email address (most likely by googling), and sent it to her. So after more than 10 years, we are once again in touch, and the Internet’s claim of keeping people together is somewhat redemeed.
On another note, I finally broke down and bought a digital camera: a 4.1 megapixel Canon S45.

Jeremy relates an imaginary encounter between his present self and the one from 10 years ago. Amusing, yet unmistakably familiar to most of us. Who has not reminisced about the times long gone and wished they could take a quantum leap backwards and relive the past, and not as a verdant youth, but with the accumulated knowledge of the years? People say, “I would not repeat the blunders of my life. I would do things differently.”, and I confess that I am guilty of the same reflections from time to time. Yet somehow I think that being wiser than your years would probably not help much, because your basic self is fairly resistant to change. A mountain stream follows an already wrought channel – the path of least resistance – only gradually widening and altering it over time. And so is life, with its events and experiences, shaped to be uniquely yours by your character, attitudes, fears, and values. Changing other people is tough. Changing yourself is like trying to bite your own elbow.
A great book related to this topic is Replay by Ken Grimwood.

Instant notification of domestic terror alerts. Yeah, that’s exactly what I’ve been waiting for. How is knowing that the current alert level is Orange versus Yellow going to change the way I go about my everyday business? Am I supposed to be extra vigilant and report any Orange-level activities to appopriate authorities, armed with the Patriot Act? The whole terror alert system is silly. Reminds of a great Onion article (no link unfortunately) which talks about extremely loud sirens going 24 hours a day to announce the current alert level.

I wish I could add Grey Goose to my Amazon wishlist. Or Sauza Hornitos. Alas, they have not expanded to handle that particular area yet.

Sebastian Bergmann says that he enjoyed Matrix 2, and labels it “entertainment. Nothing more, nothing less.” Sebastian, I enjoyed Matrix: Reloaded as well, don’t get me wrong. But look at all the hype behind this movie. It wasn’t created by just the fans who worked themselves into frenzy awaiting the release, salivating over every released tidbit of information, and endlessly annoying people in the theatre by shouting out, “You go, Neo!” The hype was nourished along by the creators of the film too, and I would submit that the final product does not live up to the free-floating expectations out there.