Moving to USA?
Don't. Well you probably heard all of this already, the USA getting less and less free, more and more intolerant, crazy, and so on. And
here is a commentary from
Slashdot by a Canadian that lived in the USA for a few months recently. Pretty botched up place it became, the USA. Maybe you'd be interested to browse through all of the comments of the
story from which the mentioned comment is. Consider it an educational reading. ;-)
In the Wrong Business
After I've seen a few oddities around the house, I started to get suspicious. You know, it's not quite common to have an electricity cable coming directly from the wall, in the kitchen behind the stove, to connect to the cooker. You see, my mom bought a new stove since the old one was in ruins, so it's only right for me to get the old one out and the new one in. With the help of my sister I got the old one out and trusted my sister with the cleaning of the place before we installed the new stove.
"Aiiee, there're sparks coming from the cable," suddenly screams my sister. A bit dreamy from a lousy train voyage, first with some grumpy old people, and then some Russians with a very very bad breath, and still with a heavy head from the headache of headaches of the day before, I look at the thing and say: "Yea right. You're seeing ghosts. Just roughly clean it up so we can finish this." Oh, did I tell you in what a bad mood I was? I'm still not quite healthy. Some damn virosis, for which my doctor didn't prescribe me anything. Just some odd thing for the outer ear infection of my left ear. Interestingly, the original drug usage directions don't even mention ears. It says it's for eyes. Go figure. But I digress.
So my sister resumes cleaning and suddenly asks me, "Isn't there something wrong if a part of the cable is gleaming?" Suddenly a chill ran down my spine. "Er, what?!" "Yeah, look here, just as the cable comes out of the wall it's perforated and a thin wire inside is gleaming." It's good I have fast reflexes. Very fast. I don't even require any thinking. Right after I've seen the smelly gleaming thing I was already at the switchboard unscrewing fuses and asking my sister if it stopped gleaming.
Oh dear God. Or Goddess. Whatever. Oh dear divine being. The fuse for this circuit was very hot. And very strong. 16 amps. I've checked if anything else is connected to this circuit, but no, 16 amp fuse only for one cooker. That's for... 16*220... hmmm... 3500 W stuff? There's no way a simple 2-plate electric cooker needs such a strong fuse. I've replaced it with a 10 amp fuse. But before that I've replaced the damn cable. And what a long operation that was.
The original cable had 5 leads which means it was meant for the three-phase current. The cooker needs the regular one-phase current since it has a regular plug for the regular wall socket. Curiously enough, the cable had this regular one-phase socket at the end. "Err, what?" I went. "Ooookay..." and so I opened the access point in the wall a few centimeters away, where the cable was connected to the electric circuit. 5 leads all right. But... I unscrewed only one fuse. What about other two phases? So I checked all the leads for current, but they were all dead. Whatever. I'll just buy a new cable. But it was Saturday afternoon and all the shops with special stuff I wanted were closed. So I bought an ordinary cable packaged in 2 meter lengths, a 4.5V battery and an adequate lightbulb, and a socket to mount on the cable. Curiously enough, the cable had only a plug at one end, the other end having nothing but three stripped wires. They didn't have the variant of the cable with only one socket. That would have been ideal. But I can never get anything ideal. Everything has to be twisted in some way. But I digress, again. I used the battery and the lightbulb to check which wire of the socket was which wire in the access point. It wasn't easy. All three wires were shorted. But then I twisted the cable in one direction and suddenly they weren't shorted anymore and I could easily see which was ground, phase, and null. And then mom came home from shopping for flowers and candles. "Ah, yes, this thing was sizzling for a long time. Every time I cleaned up around there it sparked a bit, but then I just nudged it a few times until it stopped." I was shocked. No comment. Just a question: "Do any other cables sizzle when you clean arond them?" "No." Good. Then I preached something about burning up the house, why didn't she tell anyone for years, and so on. But what do mothers know about electricity, high current, heating of wires, melting of isolators around conductors, amperage of fuses, three-phase current, grounding, and so on, right?
Right. So I pulled the cable from the wall. And a tile fell off from the wall that was at the hole, partially covering it. Now I'll have to be a mason, too. I spent ages mounting the socket on the new cable. Damn socket, they produced it so it was all embedded in a flexible plastic, almost like a gum, round and round, and I just didn't know how to get the insides out, so I cut the damn gum or whatever in half, mounted the damn thing, and then taped it back together. Idiots. And I threw the plug away that was on the new cable. Then I spent ages screwing the appropriate wires together in the access hole. I used thermoplastic connectors for that. It's neat, just plug in one end of one wire, screw it tight, at the other end plug in one end of the other wire, and screw that too. Screw everything. Screw USA. But I digress, for the third time. The access hole is quite small for my artistic expression of an electrician, so I had some trouble fitting everything into the hole. But I managed. And then, time for a chisel and a hammer. To get the old glue from the wall. And then glue on the tile that fell off. Yes, for some reason I have all the material and utensils at home. I suppose it's easy to tell I do stuff like this quite often. And a lot of other stuff. Like fixing plumbing, pipes, roof tiles, etc.
All this was a bit too much for my sanity to handle so I asked my mom exactly how old is this house. "Oh, the construction began somewhere in 1950 and went on for several years." Hmmmm... Several years? Hold on there. Who exactly built it then? "Well, your grandfather, of course." What? One person built the whole house? "Of course not, a few friends helped him." Ahhh... That's why everything looks a bit spooky. "And it isn't even finished yet, the attic was supposed to have rooms to live in." Oooookaaayy... I think it's a wrong idea if you continue telling me about the history of this house.
I think I'd be a great housekeeper.
It wasn't until today that I istalled the new stove. Heaps of new problems. Oh, and my mom bought a new freezer, too. The old one is exhausted. It just runs endlessly and has a hard time keeping everything frozen. So I had to install this today, too. And a few more problems. Tiny. But I'm too tired to explain everything. I need rest, not work.
Agony
A volatile combination
With wings of desire
Tentacles of frustration
And a pinch of angry fire
In a cauldron of rejection
Produced a hammer of black art
In search of some affection
Smashed the anvil of my heart
In dark nights devoid of hope
The curse of losing lingers
Smirking viciously down the slope
As my dieing wish wriggles
© 2004 AlesS
Disconnected
I just can't be like normal people. I'll exaggerate with everything. Like now. I've been going without a break for more than a month now although my body had terrible time keeping up with my activities. So I think it's slightly broken now. At 37°C, tiredness, and some goulash cooking in my head, I think it's time I let it have its way for a few days. Just this morning I had 36.1°C. I measured it because yesterday I had similar symptoms, just not so heavy, and I woke up all sweaty. So... until I get better, this place will be a bit deserted.
And then I'll exaggerate again.
Internet Radios
You know, I somehow stopped downloading mp3s. I don't use any of that Kazaa, eMule, etc. crap for a looooooong time now. With broadband on every step, there's no need for that. Because there's a huge lot of internet radios. Most of them even without commercials!
Most of them "air" over the internet using SHOUTcast streaming, which is basically an mp3 stream. The
SHOUTcast webpage even lists all the stations that are free for the public to connect to. You can see the same list in the Media Library window of
Winamp.
So, run Winamp, choose a station, and enjoy! No more hassle over searching, downloading, and compiling playlists.
Let's Get Retarded
You know. When something annoys me for long enough. I start doing potentially stupid things. But I don't know that at the time of doing it. I mean. I've eaten maximum dose of Coldrex pills today and yesterday. I'm even eating sweets. And now I'm thinking. I've gained some reserve energy by reorganising my diet. I'll take an extra boost tonight. And then cook some wine. A huge lot. Sweet hot wine with lemon. I'm going to drink myself silly. And then. IT CAN ONLY BE ONE WINNER! Or I'll start billing those damn viruses for renting my body.
Spreading Freedom?
Whatever news I watch, I can't get rid of the segment of video where Bush says he'll continue to fight the terrorism and spread freedom around the world. I don't know, is it possible to force freedom unto people? It sounds kind of kinky. Absurd. You can't force freedom, it's a contradiction. So what Bush does, seems more like fighting freedom and spreading terrorism. And interestingly enough, this also suits the facts. Americans have less personal freedom than before Bush. There is a notable increase in terrorism. And then I see brutes in their early thirties yelling "YEEEAAAAH!" to "I shall continue to fight for American interests!" or something else equally megalomaniac. I'd send them to Iraq immediately.
Oh, and there is some controversy around
a bulge on Bush's back. Yes, the president is actually a Martian and that bulge is the respirator for his gills. It would explain the destructive behaviour. The Martians are taking over the world!
Terminally Annoyed
I'VE HAD IT! You remember the past weeks of my obnoxiousness over the sore throat? Well, somehow after my birthday party the damn cold transformed. Maybe sudden highly windy couple of days immediately following the party helped. I don't quite remember when and how it transformed, but I think on Thursday I've noticed my left ear aching, as if someone plugged my ear to an oxygen cylinder or some other gas under pressure. And no more sore throat. Well, today my left ear is okay, but my right ear has this symptom. Only I think my whole head will blow, not only the ear. And for some reason I've slept quite well. I'm beginning to suspect UFOs. Testing the efficiency of various viruses on me, ha?!
Total Tolerance
I've been searching the net for some info on Sikhs and found
an excerpt trying to describe Love. There it says: "Total tolerance is love." Now, I think this is not a quite well chosen wording. How would you feel when someone approached you and told you: "I totally tolerate you"? It sounds as if it would be better if you removed yourself from the area so no tolerance is required at all. :]
Freeeezing
The winter this year is early. For the past few days I thougt I'd freeze instantly if I got out of bed. Well, today I know why. The radiators generally work better if you open the valve and let some accumulated air out. And suddenly, they got warm. Wow. Magic.
Maybe I'll sleep better now. Maybe not. For the past three weeks I haven't been sleeping very well. I feel as if I sleep only 5 or 6 hours a day. Not only feel, I think it is so. For example, today I've awakened at 4:19, 5:32, 6:07, 6:24, 6:48. The exact times I remember should tell you I indeed was quite awake. Where do I find the cause for this?
Public Critique Can Get You Fired
I've just read in tomorrow's newspaper that there's a Croatian teacher who has
her blog (in Croatian language, of course). She's criticised the damp and musty rooms in the school where she works. Then the people read it, it got popular, the head of the school got annoyed, at first characterised her as emotionally unstable, and after a few more days fired her, and then reinstated her because of the public pressure.
No, Croatia is not ready for EU yet. :]
Too bad her blog seems to be deleted; the
Google cache of her page is too old and doesn't contain her recent posts, including the problematic post.
Free At Last
Yes! My sister rented a room! She's moving in today! I hope...
Not Over Untill It's Over
Yesterday I threw a birthday party.
The result? We emptied 7 bottles of wine and 30 cans of Guinness, drank 1L of Jägermeister and 1L of Malibu rum, 3L of Coca-Cola, 3L of orange juice, I made 2 pans of pizza, and 2 pans of a pastry one day before. It's all gone. :]
I got a cue stick for billiards. We're playing tomorrow already. :]
Now I'll have to become a local billiards master. ;)
All in all, the wine bottle count has decreased. At last. The wine gain was lower than the loss, so I'm starting to regain some space on the shelves. Although now I've noticed a serious increase in spirits. Now I have... Oh dunno, surely more than 5 bottles of various spirits. Ummmm... Anyone for a drink-till-drop-dead party? :]
... But Not in China!
China's police ministry on Sunday handed out rewards of up to $240 to people who reported pornographic Web sites in a campaign to stamp out online smut, the government said.
Source:
Newsday.com, Associated Press.
I've read a joke a few weeks ago, where a man was telling someone from China claimed they don't have sex in China. I guess that Chinaman was telling the truth afterall.
Sex in the Air
Virgin Atlantic is making aviation history by installing double beds on its flights between Britain and the US.
Announcing the move in London on Friday, Sir Richard Branson, the airline's chairman, said he wanted to bring passengers "closer together".
A Virgin spokesman said: "We are not going to dissuade couples from having fun as long as they don't upset others."
The airline has fitted two of its Boeing 747-400s with four double suites, protected by low privacy screens.
Source:
The Sydney Morning Herald
Groovy!
My Birthday!
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to meeee...
Um. This is pathetic.
Yes! It's my birthday today!
Up and away I go! Preparing for tomorrow's party. I invited approximately 20 people. I'm afraid they'll all come. ;) I hope the weather will get fine soon. So I can position some of the people on the balcony. :]
And
you can call me Al. ;)
Zig-zag
Phew, I was at 4 shops today, shopping for... well... foooood. Basically. ;)
Made me pizza. Mmmm. I still know how to make it. In 20 minutes. Not counting baking it. I'll see if I can similarly optimize my timing with the
prekmurska gibanica pastry tomorrow.
I entered electricity meter readouts from the previous 3 months into OpenOffice, spent half an hour amusing it with my confusion about its graphing abilities, then I gave up, exported it to a text file, and plotted it with
gnuplot. Say whatever you like, but LaTeX and gnuplot are all I need to do any text. Fuck office tools. If it were up to me, everyone would be using only command line (shell) and GUIs would be considered an abomination. There's so damn much work with programming a GUI, and then it wastes so damn much of your time because you get lost in the maze of menus and options and requesters and tabs, and... SHEEESH! What's wrong with a nice simple command that takes a few arguments and does one thing it was programmed to do? It seems to me that with time people just tend to export more and more of their brain functions to the computer. And then suddenly virus writers are no longer needed, they get substitued with chain-mail writers. And spammers don't have to look out for open relays over which to send gazillion copies of spam, just compose the damn spam, add the "send this to 20 people you know and something wonderful will happen to you tomorrow" line, and send it to a few random persons.
Oh, the electricity spending plots:
The expensive tariff
The cheap tariff
One month ago the annoying one of my flatmates ate a few of my nerves wanting the boiler be turned on non-stop. No calculations, no logic, no proof about the hightened electricity spending helped, so there it is, the final proof. I'll print it out and make him eat it. Perhaps it will stop him spending 3/4 of hot water every day.
Um. The TV channel Viva is having Rammstein weekend. Just the accompaniment.
mp3
Fooooooood
One of the flatmates yesterday bought a microwave oven damn cheap. $50. Today I told my boss about this oven and how nicely it would complement the fridge at the office. So now there's also a microwave oven at the office. Hm. Suddenly a whole new vista of possibilites appeared. I can buy refridgerated and frozen foods, to be heated/cooked in a snap! It's about the time for me to change my awful sustenance. No more excuses about the lack of time for cooking and thus eating only sandwiches, pizzas, and the likes. ;)
My boss is very inventive, too, not only generous. How to test a microwave? Put in a Micro$oft CD and see it sizzle in flashes and sparks. Geeez. And I thought I was crazy. ;)
It appears both of my flatmates are away for the weekend. Neat. I'll test my knowledge of pizza making tomorrow. I haven't made one in a year and I don't want to test that on my b-day party. :]
And now for a can of Guinness to take me into the night. If nothing can help me get rid of my sore throat, then this won't either. Errr. There's something not quite right with that statement. Eh, leave it.
Read my first
post at
The dregs of I.T. ;)
mp3
Sad
PM Dawn: Set Adrift on a Memory Bliss
The camera pans the cocktail glass,
Behind a blind of plastic plants;
I found the lady with the fat diamond ring.
Then you know I can’t remember a damn thing.
I think it’s one of those deja-vu things,
Or a dream that’s tryin’ to tell me something.
Or will I ever stop thinkin’ about it.
I don’t know, I doubt it.
Subterranean by design,
I wonder what I would find if I met you,
Let my eyes caress you,
Until I meet the thought of Missess Princess Who?
Often wonder what makes her work.
I guess I’ll leave that question to the experts,
Assuming that there are some out there.
They’re probably alone, solitaire.
I can remember when I caught up
With a pastime intimate friend.
She said, bet you’re probably gonna say I look lovely,
But you probably don’t think nothin’ of me.
She was right, though, I can’t lie.
She’s just one of those corners in my mind,
And I just put her right back with the rest.
That’s the way it goes, I guess.
Baby you send me
Set adrift on memory bliss of you
Careless whisper from a careless man,
A neutron dance for a neutron fan;
Marionette strings are dangerous things,
I thought of all the trouble they bring.
An eye for an eye, a spy for a spy,
Rubber bands expand in a frustrating sigh.
Tell me that she’s not dreaming.
She’s got an ace in the hole,
It doesn’t have meaning.
Reality used to be a friend of mine,
’cause complete control, I don’t take too kind.
Christina Applegate, you gotta put me on.
Guess who’s piece of the cake is Jack gone?
She broke her wishbone and wished for a sign.
I told her whispers in my heart were fine.
What did she think she could do?
I feel for her, I really do.
And I stared at the ring finger on her hand,
I wanted her to be a big PM Dawn fan,
But I had to put her right back with the rest.
That’s the way it goes, I guess.
Baby you send me...
Set adrift on memory bliss of you
mp3
Reclaiming
Another day of calories and my body is nearing normality. I think. Thought analysis shows significant dwell on yesterday. Hrmmm. I used to be focused on tomorrow, dammit! What fucktard changed this?! No wonder this blog is polluted by worries. A graceful turn to the south, driver, if you please.
Yesterday
Davin "convinced" me to join his
The Dregs of I.T. blog. It seems I always have a few ideas on how to "improve" his posts. ;] So I'll scribble something for that blog occasionally, too. It's time to pull out that nasty killer sarcasm from the dungeons of my mind before it rusts to pieces.
And no, I'm not this disgruntled and sizzling man in real life! Well, not all the time. ;>
Some people just take it too seriously. Me included. Doh.
Regaining
The timing is improving; I was at the office at 8:45, fully fed and all. I threw huge portions of calories into my body yesterday: pizza, damn greasy baked eggs with cheese, sandwiches, etc. I'm seriously considering some sweets. :] Sugar! The only more direct approach would be pumping glucose intravenously. I just hope I won't get sick from it; I don't tolerate much of chocolate, I get sick soon.
So, yeah, I'm energized, now it's up to the body to get damn healthy.
Restarting
I'm depressed.
I need strength. Energy. I need to sort out myself. How on Earth I'm going to do that I've no idea. It's within my reach, yet... What the hell am I missing?!
My health has gone somewhere else, again. Probably visiting sunnier places where people aren't so lame.
Rebelling
Elections are tomorrow. There were ads, commercials, rallies, vans with loudspeakers on streets, etc. A mix of messages where the basics of important issues more or less converged. And although the basic premises were mostly similar, there were differences in how politicians presented them, how they behaved before or after a happening, lots of those hidden subtle egoistical greed or righteousness or narrow-mindedness bordering to blindness or just silliness. Of course there were also the opposites, but I could hardly notice them. Unrecognisable. Mostly in defense. Then again, I didn't follow any of it; what I've seen was purely by accident. So I didn't see much and could have gotten wrong impressions. But whatever, at every such time a piece by Pink Floyd popped into my mind. Great piece:
Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)
We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control
No dark sarcasm in the classroom
Teachers leave them kids alone
Hey teacher leave them kids alone
All in all it's just another brick in the wall
All in all you're just another brick in the wall
Resuming
When I woke up today I thought I'm going to regret for going to work and not calling in sick. Exhaustion from the previous day still seemed to linger and I slept for only 6 hours, I couldn't sleep more. But I just had to work, there's too much stuff dependent on me at the moment. So I moved my butt over to the office, wondering whether I should just cancel all my plans for tonight as I felt damn tired and didn't know if I'll even manage to work for at least 8 hours. And right in the morning a programmer working at one of my customers called me perplexed over a seemingly simple problem. After I exhausted my list of simple oversights beginners tend to do I just said: "yeeess...." to his: "Ummm, may I send you the whole source for you to look into it?" And then, just after I've just started understanding the whole working of the program and were starting to trace the error, he calls me again: "Hello! I think I know where the problem is. You may stop with your debugging. Oh, and thanks." I mean... sheeeesh! Whatever, it's on his bill. Only pitty is that now I got less time to work on other things.
It's interesting that as time went by my body just somehow magically started gaining energy and my sleepiness was gone in the afternoon. I was happilly typing again. Errr, programming. All that big exhaustion has gone and now I'm just normally tired. Well, normally, as compared to that exhaustion. My sister didn't bug me much today, she seems to have found out how to cope with this place. ;) Amazingly she didn't call me for any pointers. And she got all the answers at her faculty today. The only bizzare question was when she called me from the train station: "At which rail is my train?" Oh... well... errr... look it up? There are, like, these big timetables hanging all over the place? With rail numbers? Gosh. Sadly she didn't find a room for herself yet. I guess she'll stay with me for a day or two more...
And now I'll go to bed. Have a long sleep. I hope. Maybe I'll stay in bed till noon, maybe I'll spend an hour or two in the morning for work (
telecommuting) as a customer is almost on his knees asking me to finish something. Somethings. More and more things every day. But hey, I can't work all days and nights even if the world would come to its end because of it. And then, at noon, I'll pack my bags, put my ass on a train, and follow my sister home to mom. There are parliamentary elections this Sunday and I'm registered to vote at my official place of residence, which is still at mom's. And some home cooking will be good for me. ;)
