I am happy!

Upgraded my PC two days ago... Athlon 64!!!! Everything is now lightning fast. More text will follow, but do look at the pics. They are worth the effort :))

(note to self: relink pics)

Technology - we all use it, right?

But how many of us can actually keep up with the damn thing? I remember the time of simple comparisons: there were two numbers we all understood - processor family and clock speed. Say, 80386 running at 33MHz, or a 80486DX2 @ 66Mhz, and so on. Life was simple. There were distinct successors in graphic adapters - Hercules was replaced by a CGA adapter, then EGA, which expanded into VGA (wow look at the colors!!) and then there was SVGA and life ceased to be simple.

Enter Pentium and different bus speeds, multipliers, overclocking and the whole industry became a cruel race. Most of us mortals just couldn't keep up with the changes, unless we devoted ourselves to it full time. Different standards started to compete for market dominance (remember VLB and PCI? I do. I had bought a VLB motherboard along with an S3 graphics adapter which I was sooo proud of, and then PCI won.)

Recently (last 5 years) there are so many chipsets, clocks, buses, whatevers to consider when you are looking to buy a new piece of hardware, that it becoms an arduous task of researching sites like anandtech and Tom's hardware (thank you for your existence) and asking your guru friends for reccomendations.
Just now I witnessed two of my colleagues engaged in a discussion which digital camera one should buy. The abundance of features even in such a simple item as a camera has become so vast, that you can't simply go out and buy one, without fearing that within a few months it will become obsolete. OK, such speedy progress is good, right? I suppose it means that we get better and more interesting gadgets sooner, but in a few years we will need to incorporate some sort of tech-class into elementary education in order to have consumers competent to operate (even understand) those new toys.

And I don't even want to begin talking about Asimov.

No comment...

Happy birthday to me :)

Colours

This morning I felt like I did in Thessaloniki a couple of years back... You see, I had cash flow problems for the past 10 days, and yesterday I got paid. This means that now I can buy smokes, go out on my lunch break, and be a happier individual in general. The situation reminded me of times in Greece when we ate spaghetti or potatoes since we couldn't afford anything else, and then shoveled gyro down our throats when we got cash...

Another thing that happened this morning (It is now 0930):
I was passing by a store that sells kids' school stuff, and the window was filled with pink bags, pink notebooks, pink book covers, pink shoes, pink _______, (you name it - it was there and it was pink). Sad. I mean, I understand that pink is/was the "in" color this season, but we have to draw a line somewhere...

Still no word from John. I'm worried. Thinking about calling his mum or dad...

Yet another update (YAU)

Heh... Just noticed that I listed two previous entries with a wrong date... 2003 instead of 2004. Corrected.

Anyways, now I'm in Afirma FCB, and in a month's time I'll know if I will be staying here. The agency is OK, the people here are nice and I can say that I enjoy my time here. Still.

As for D17, finally got in touch with Dejan, he wrote that he is in Thessaloniki now, 9-5ing somewhere behind a desk... I'll give him a call later on. John has taken to disappearing now. How strange. Can't reach him by phone (perhaps he is in Turkey), but I don't see him on MSN either, and he isn't answering my e-mail...... Who knows. Maybe he joined the foreign legion. Riiiight.

I planned to buy a motorcycle these days, had a great offer, even found where I could borrow the cash for the down payment.... I was sooo happy. Suffice it to say that the bitch spoiled my plan. Man. I need to move out.

Here we go again...

I got laid off... My services are no longer required. The vacation season is over, I filled in for people who were away, and now... hasta la vista, baby. Anyways - I was told that there's not enough work, some arrangements didn't work out like they were supposed to, etc, etc... Back to the job hunting stage. All my plans are messed up. I was planning to move into a little flat downtown, but that'll have to wait. I could have spent the summer on Crete, if only I had known.... Eh...

D17 update:
John is occasionaly in Turkey, visiting his new girl, Nasli. When I was working, I used to run into John every now and then online, and he'd be asking "have you updated your site yet?", and I guess that, since I said I'd do it like that afternoon (I'd say that every time), an update was in order :)
Dejan has dissapeared. No replies to e-mails, he's not answering his phone.... I wonder. Last I heard from him was that he was banging this Swedish or Norwegian or whatever girl, and thinkig of eloping with her... Who knows. D, man, if you are reading this, drop a fucking note!!!
As for myself and girls, I had a little adventure which ended as easily as it began... The little tart actually thaught that she could make me jealous by playing hard to get *after* we were already in a relationship... Dumb kid. Right now, I'm seeing this girl I first met 'bout a year a go, and had my eye on since then. Fortunately, she's 2 years older than me, so I don't expect any immature bullshit from her... I'll keep y'all posted.

Update

OK, it's been a while since I posted anything new here, but as you'll see, it was for a valid reason...
Since I returned to Belgrade, I've been looking for a job and feeling generally miserable. No cash, no energy (nemam ni 2 evra ni energije) stage had overpowered me and I spent around 4-5 months just slouching around my room and occasionaly going for a job interview... Man, that period sucked. If it wasn't for my twice-a-week CS matches, I'd have probaby gone absolutely mad or something of the sort. Another bright point was this certain person who was in a similar state to mine, so we could relieve each other's tensions... Unfortunately, she took of to Turkey to make candles.

However, just before that, I finally found a job! I started working as an Account Assistant in IDEA Plus Communications, an advertising agency here in Belgrade. Needless to say, my psychological state improved vastly as a consequence of that. I started actually spending time around people, and earning money. The downside of going to work is that now I don't have the time to go out as much as I could before when I had no money to go out with, but there you go... Overall, I am really satisfied. The people at work are great, the atmosphere is excellent, and smoking is allowed. I am still in the test-stage - the first 3 months are something like a probation, after which we'll see if I will become a full-fledged member of the staff. Sure hope so.

Over the course of the next 2 months or so, I will finally relocate to an apartment of my own, away from my parents. This is the last thing that I have to do before I can say that a certain stage of my life is over, and I cannot express in words how much I am looking forward to that...

As far as Dialetti 17 crew is concerned, John is in Thessaloniki having mad fun ;) studying away and generally living a student's life... good for you mate, enjoy it while it lasts! Dejan is on Crete, working and generally living a "summer is great" life with his g/f.... Nice, innit? I'll sure as hell try to get to Crete when I get the chance later this summer... perhaps in August...

Well, there you are for the time being, I really don't know what else to put down.... if something pops up from my stale memory, I'll post it. Until then, enjoy this picture of a cute friend of mine from elementary school who I ran into at a friend's b-day party a week ago....

Well... there we go. New year.

Lots of fuss. As usual. Much ado about nothing. Did I mention I don't like these holidays? Everyone is supposed to be happy because of a date change. Riiight. I want to find a religion which does not celebrate anything in this period. A friend of mine said I should try some African tribe that celebrates only victory... Maybe it's a good idea - lots of nice scenery there, good for riding a bike.

One of the things that happened while I was on Crete last summer is that I got hooked on bikes. I remember when Johnny was showing me some magazines about bikes, and I told him something along the lines of "Johnny I don't care, I am not into bikes." That was before I rode one on a regular basis. Mind you, I still don't know much about the racers and the likes, since I'm not into those crotch rockets. Something like this Africa Twin on the photo would be just fine... (no shit?)

These are two of the bikes I used to ride on Crete. I was fortunate enough to work in a bike rental store called Easy Ride located in Plakias on the south coast of Crete.

Update

Well, it's been exactly a month since my last post, so I thought it would be nice to add some more nonsense....
I am no longer in Slovenia, things didn't work out there... Back in Belgrade, working on finding some work, and getting reaccustomed to living here - it seems like I'm here to stay now...
Back in the flat I was welcomed by my mom's dog, 'bout 12 years old, but still insane like a puppy... I forgot what it was like to have a cat-sized hairball that sounds like a banshee running around my feet...

Dejan has returned from Greece, so two out of three are in Belgrade now... if only we could get John to drag his ass up here, it would be sooo cool. (Yes, Johnny, we miss you)

Hello again after a while....

I am now in Slovenia, staying with my brother, looking for a job... I am sleeping in my nephew's room, surrounded with toys and kids' books and stuff... cute :) I am again in the phase of learning a foreign language from the movie subtitles, having no permanent place of residence, no mobile phone, etc. We'll see how it all goes....

How are you?

And so it ends....

I am back in Belgrade, having finished my studies and a all-summer-long vacation in Greece. It was great - I met some wonderful people from all over the world, and had a good time in a small place called Plakias, on the south coast of Crete. I was just browsing the hostel site and some of the photos there reminded me that it wasn't all just a dream...

Return

Well, the full moon was on the day that I left, so... no party for me :(

Coming back from Thessaloniki, my boat docked in Iraklion on Sunday at 2315h, which meant that I couldn't catch a bus to Rethymnon and then Plakias. Not that it made much difference, 'cause I was flat broke - not a cent on me. So, what could I do but hike to the highway (took me about 45 minutes) and hitch a ride. At midnight. Alone. In my army trousers. What was I thinking? Who's going to stop for a guy like that?
Anyway, optimistic as I am, I waited and sure enough a guy pulled over in a pick-up truck, and dropped me off about 40Km further down the road, since he was turning off the highway. Well, my mood got a bit better, and I thought "Hey, this could work..." So I sat by the road for a couple of hours, watching the cars whiz by me...
There was apparently an accident some 10Km back from where I was, because I saw a police cruiser flashing the blue lights followed by an ambulance, and some time later a fire truck, and finally a tow truck... "Too bad" I thought, but at least I can hope that the cops will give me a lift, reasoning that they will not be afraid to pick up a stranded hitchiker in the middle of the night. Guess what. I was wrong and bored, so I got up and started walking. After about 25 minutes, slap bang in the middle of nowhere, a taxi driver stopped and gave me a ride to Rethymnon. HappyHappyJoyJoy!!! I'm almost home...
Off the highway, on to the smaller road, around 0400h, I started walking to keep the cold and boredom away, and tried to hitch a ride with the few vehicles that passed by... Tough luck, I ended up walking for 15Km before a guy stopped and went out of his way to drop me off in Plakias (Thank you!)... By that time it was 0645 - mere 7 hours for a 120Km trip... My ankle was hurting, my muscles sore, but I got into the shop (good thing I had the keys), took a bike and rode it to Selia, and hugged the bed.............

Break

Last day before I leave for Thessaloniki to take an exam, but I'll be back in Plakias and the Youth Hostel crew... Before that, we will have another full moon party tonight... pics to follow :)

Beach party

We had a beach party two days ago - you know, full moon, fire, alcohol... John came up with the idea, Amy and myself took care of the firewood, and everyone brought booze. It was quite nice, at one point almost all the people from the youth hostel were there - around 50 guys & gals having a nice time...

Anyway, here are some of the photos. There will be some more as soon as they are developed/scanned

(Note to self: relink photos)

OK. The first batch of photos is here.

I went to the Preveli beach, which is a 13km ride from where I'm staying, but a good part of it is on a dirt track - this made for a relatively exciting bike ride to the spot. The last part (around 5 minutes) is walking up and down some steps, since there is no road to the beach, which makes it even more of an oasis. There is also a photo of a cave entrance, which is actually a tunnel that leads to an opening in the cliffs above the sea. From the little clearing, the tunnel continues until it reaches a small cave that is open to the sea, but it enters it somewhere between the ground/sea level and the roof, so I couldn't descend in it without any equipment. I'll go there again in some time, hopefully with a better camera...

(Note to self: relink photos)

Whassup...

Crete is great...

It is still very, very hot.

Got another exam on Tuesday, and after that, I leave for Crete on Saturday - that means I'll be AFK for quite a while...
The sad news are that the Dialeti 17 crew is splitting up. We're leaving the apartment, but we will be spending the summer on Crete, kind of a nice way to part... or not - who knows what lies ahead...

It's hot.

Ahhh.... there we go!

The last lecture of my university studies was held yesterday, and all that's left is the exam period that starts in a week... Soon, I will have finished this arduous task of getting a university degree.

Yes, I know, it's been a while...

Well, today is the beginning of the last week of this, last, semester. We're all hyped up and stressed and nervous and busy and.... finishing assignments, getting ready for exams, thinking about what are we going to do with our lives, whether we'll find a job, where will we find a job... WhatCanISay....

Back in Thessaloniki!

Easter vacation went according to expectations (more or less), and we're all back at Dialeti 17! The weather is summer-like, and the atmosphere in the house is like one year ago, when we first moved in. Thats the good stuff. The bad stuff is that there's coursework waiting... Mngrrrh! Well, at least it's the last bunch...

Two more days...

Dejan and I are leaving on Friday, which means that Saturday morning we'll be in Belgrade. Finally. I am tired of lectures and lecturers, assignments and projects... I want to see Belgrade and my friends...

There's an interesting phenomenon that occurs whenever I return to Belgrade from Thessaloniki: the first two days I'm amazed by the beauty of women in Belgrade... It's amazing how criteria can drop when you are exposed to different standards.... We were commenting on that today - there was a girl at the University that we "rated" as attractive, but when we applied the northern standards, the rating dropped drastically. What can I say.

Background

Added some new content!I stumbled upon some photos of my mates, and decided to put them up here... Welcome guys :)

Besides that, there were some job interviews that City organized, and out of those, only KPMG made some sense... But still, I don't expect much out of it... "we will keep in touch"... riiiight.

What else? We have a new nickname for John. Since his full name is John Warwick Zourmpakis, which when translated into serbian, (minus the last name) is Jovan Ratko, or JR. This closes the circle to Mali (little one, kid), which is what he call him around the house. Shit, I just realised that I didn't tell you why we call him Mali! Here goes...

Some time before Dejan and I met John, we were shopping in IKEA. We stumbled upon some nifty cups and bought three each. Since that was the period when we discussed finding a flat together, we joked about having a complete set of six when we move in... Few minutes and jokes (about living together) later, we were in the kids' department of the huge IKEA store in Thessaloniki, and looking at various junk they have there for kids. Someone picked up a toy of some sort and jokingly said "Shall we get this for the kid?" and so on. A while after that, I met John, and since he was also looking for a new flat, we all met and decided to move in together like a nice little family... I doubt that he could have expected that we had a nickname for him even before we met!

Hmmmm....

Just figured out that my ISP offers hosting.... DUH!!! No more Tripod ads ;)

Lament

It is snowing??!?!?! As for the assignment storm, it died down a bit, so I can chill for a while, but not for too long...

Anyway... counting days to Easter. Going to Belgrade for two weeks or so. Another 14 or so hours on the train, accompanied by two border crossings, equaling a grand total of 4 sets of customs officers, police officers, and any other officers you can imagine. (For those wondering why 4 sets - exit Greece, enter FYROM, exit FYROM, enter Serbia). I wish I could afford a plane ticket. It is soooo much better.... no hassle, plus from door to door it's at most three hours.

Almost forgot... got my ass kicked in tavli.... 9-13 is the current score... I have to practice my dice throwing skills ;)

Disastah

We had a flood yesterday... a pipe burst in the bathroom. Johnny, bless him, went out today and bought a replacement, so we had a lot of fun putting it in place... We are all wet, but at least all is functional now...

Ana beat me in tavli yesterday, now it's 4-2 :)

Procrastination

Unbelieveble.... no matter how much time given in advance, we always leave work for the last moment.... An interesting phenomenon. Another asignment handed in.... per aspera ad astra! Yeah, right.

Backgammon

Ana said she's good in playing tavli... "I hope you are not a sore loser".... Suffice it to say that up to date the score is 4-1 in my favour.

I finished rearranging my room tonight...

Two days of carpentry, painting (then waiting for stuff to dry), and moving furniture around. And the dust! I didn't believe my eyes when I saw the amount of dust lying forgotten under some pieces of futniture!! Anyway, the worst part is over, all that is left are some lights and hanging stuff around (speakers, phone...) Some other day...

Nenad is coming over tonight, so we're gonna sit & chill out a bit, to test the new room, and John went to get a PS2, so we're probably going to get stuck playing all night... And there's an assignment to do, rugby practice to go to... I am such a responsible person, aren't I?

Goin' out?

Dejan is DJing at InSide tonight, something like a test-run.... We'll see how it goes...

Rant

Assignments, assignments and more assignments in line. Just handed in the first one yesterday, after being raped by the PC. Cutting the long story short, the temp folder filled up since the CD burning prog didn't erase its files, so there was 0 bytes free on the HD... result? Chaos. Spent about an hour on the phone with Belgrade, until we came to the solution... Printed the bloody thing and raced off to hand it in. Pffff.

Other than that, some interesting things were and are happening on the personal plan, but I guess it doesn't belong here... (T. eat your heart out!!!) Suffice it to say that things are going good ;) which is more than I can say for Johnny... he's confused, as usual. We've watched Ice Age again yesterday, and he still refuses to accept that Sid the sloth was based on him... ;)))

More will be posted later, since further details about the case may hinder the ongoing investigation ;)

Oh, and by the way, I am finally content with the plans for rearranging my room, and will start the works late this week... All hail mighty 3DMax.

As I am reminded by a visitor in the guestbook (bravo T, you are the first :) Dejan has new sneakers. I personally think they are too "space gear"-like, but he enjoys them very much, and that's what's important.....

Added a new link to the links page.... some things about rugby...

R.I.P

Now hosting at Tripod....

Yes, I hate ads too, but the other place where I hosted until now is sooo sloooow. This way, it won't be such a drag to update, so we can expect more frequent posts to this page :) Plus, there is that "notify me of updates" button in the top right corner, so you can receive mail whenever I add something here - useful thingy...

If anyone out there is willing to give me a few megs somewhere, I'd be eternaly grateful...

Phew... been offline for a while.

Check this: we haven't paid our phone bill, and the phone company decides to cut us off. Ok, fine. But they did something weird - since we have ISDN, they cut only our digital line, so we cannot dial from the PC, while the normal phone lines work. No biggy, you might say, go pay the bill and everything is OK. Riiight. We had no idea that they cut us off, since the phones worked fine. I thought that there was something with the settings of our provider, so I call their tech support - they say everything is fine here, you have a problem with your computer. No shit Sherlock. I spent a grand total of a few hours holding for various tech supports, and they were all utterly confused by my situation. I even had people from the phone company come and replace the ISDN network terminator, still with no results.... When John went to pay the bill, he explained that we cannot "call internet", but that our phones work, this is what happened:

Clerk:
"No, your phone is cut off, so it can't be working"

John:
"But..."

Clerk:
"No, your phone is cut off, so it can't be working"

John:
"Ok, it doesn't work."

We are very curious about our next phone bill - will they charge us for the calls we made while are phone was "not working" :)))

Time for an update

The semester has begun, which means I have classes Monday through Thursday. Fortunately, Fridays are off, so I can seek shelter and comfort in the long weekend. Blah. On average, from 18 to 21h, I have to go and sit there and listen to all kinds of business related stuff, which is not that interesting. Well... if that's why I'm here, that's what I'll do.

Otherwise, things are just peechy. Money is... it's... mnggggh I don't wanna think about money now... it brings me down. Weather... that's always safe. Thessaloniki is suffering from a mild case of snowfall... People here are just not used to snow. The pavements aren't ment to be used in wet weather. They are slippery. Extremely. I've managed not to fall until now, and I hope that I won't. But some scenes that you can see on the streets... just outrageous. When I used to live in another area of town, on a hill, every winter day was an opportunity to observe something amazing and unique.

The guys? Excellent... Dejan came a week ago, with a fresh haircut and chocolate (i kutijom onih bananica... jaoooo). In chocolate we trust. It never lets you down.

Computers...

When I woke up today, all I wanted was to play some music from my PC, and go make myself a coffee. Yeah, right. Malo sutra prijatelju. I press the power button on the bloody box, and it turns on for two seconds and then dies. Unplug the box, wait a few seconds to reset the power supply, try again, same result. Shit. There I am, thinking, which part of this hellspawn machine made a short circuit mess... Open the case, check the motherboard, unplug the drives, remove PCI cards, still dies immediately. Take the MB out, still the same. Hmmm. Must be the power supply. Take it out, open the fucker, clean tons of dust, check out various capacitors and such, nothing suspicious. "Fake" the power-on signal by shorting two leads on the ATX connector - power supply revs up normally. Fan spinning. Voltmeter in hands, I inspect individual leads on the connectors, all the voltages are there. OK. As Johnny often says, "I'm confused". Everything still in pieces, I connect the ATX connector to the MB, punch the power button, and it spins up, CPU fan and all. Fine, I say, it's just one of those "switch off/switch on and it works" phenomena, just a bit spiced up. So, I assemble everything, plug in all the peripherals and give it a go, and it just goes zzzzz-click. Back to square one. AAAARGGH! This time, I just take the ATX power supply lead, fake the power-on and measure the voltages again. The -12 wasn't there for a sec, but then it came back. Hell, I think, maybe I didn't make good contact with the probes. Put the connector back in it's place, everything works. Good.

Puzzled, but happy, I think "maybe it's a good idea to remove that modem that I'm not using, and rearrange the PCI cards since my LAN card is too close to the graphics card's fan..." So I do that. Boot up, and behold! Linux does not see the sound and LAN cards. Neither do Windows. Linux can see the secondary graphics card, but it doesn't use it - no picture on my secondary monitor. Hmmm.... After spending some time trying to configure my sound card, I just plug the modem back in, and everything works fine. Reviving the secondary display took another 40 or so minutes...

And all I wanted was some Massive Attack and a coffee. Was that too much to ask?

Later on, I found out that my mobile phone decided to switch itself off, right when I was expecting a call. Fortunately I saw it was off not long after the last time I used it.

I guess this is just one of those days...

Relief

Phew! There's finally cash in my account. Got tired of eating spaghetti and such. On to the supermarket!!!! How much? 45 Euro? Maaan.... this stuff better last a good while... Cash - 480, bills 204, rent 135.... I'll be broke again before I know it :(

Dejan is in Belgrade, Johnny is taking an exam, and I am boooooored, since I got up spontaneously at 9h in the morning, and there's nothing to do.... 'haps I'll go out to do the Greek thing - sit in a caffe, and drink a frappe (for the ignorant, check the coffee howto, link is below). Baaahhh.

Did I mention I play rugby?

No? Today was our first practice after the Xmas break... Only four of us were there (David, Matt, Tim and me), but it felt good - my body is happy it got out of the sofa and onto the pitch. Anyway, rugby in Greece is not very popular, as you can imagine, but it's growing...

Sleep

Johnny and Dejan (flatmates) let me sleep the other night, as in didn't wake me from my afternoon nap :) This resulted in me waking up at 7 am the following day. Now it is 13:50, and I haven't slept since 7 o'clock yesterday. I feel good. Coffee helps. Oh, while we're on the subject, go check out the linux coffee howto. Where was I? Ah, sleeping. Funny - my sleeping habits got completely twisted around when I came to Greece. I keep wondering what's the reason.... Anyway, here I am, typing away happily on my freshly reinstalled (with a lot of hassle.... again) linux box... Whatcanisay...

Me happy!

WAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Last of the exams for this semester is over and done with!