Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Good Samaritan

On Sunday, right after we went to sleep around one or so, the honking started.

It would go for a while, maybe a minute, stop, and then resume. A wimpy honk, annoying like a mosquito. Right in front of our house.

I was halfway asleep, and I was dreaming of smashing the honker's windshield with a giant pick I have leaning against the fence, next to the gate. I was envisioning a drone strike hitting the most deserving target ever: the honker right outside my window.

What sort of a sick, demented being blows a horn for a half hour straight in the middle of the night in a residential neighborhood? I was dreaming of applying the giant pick all over the demented being's car, piercing the radiator, prying the tires off the rims.

And then: Bam! Bam!

Two shots, really close, into the air.

Immediately, the honking stopped. The car was trying to leave, but it wouldn't start. I looked outside — it was a maroon Saturn, cranking like crazy. It finally started and took off. A quiet night followed.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Pallet Rack Storage in Moscow

Dear readers, allow me to spam you with some advertisement!  My friend runs a commercial shelving business in Moscow.  He is actually a violinist, but commercial shelving sells better.  Next time you need to buy or install some pallet rack storage in your warehouse in Russia, consider Slon (компания «Слон»): http://slontage.ru.


(I'm hoping that a link from a highly respected internet resource, such as this blog, will get my friend's site into top 10 on Yandex for the search string "монтаж стеллажей".  It's currently at position 12, so fingers crossed!)

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Man Resting


January 2012
Man Resting
BAMBOO pen tablet

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Happy 2011 -> 2012!

2011 turned out to be a pretty good year — despite all the natural and financial disasters in the world. The revolutions were pretty cool. Also Fidel Castro survived another year.

 * A year ago we were five months pregnant and camping in Hawaii with two kids (10 and 2). It was a lot of fun, in retrospect.



* At the SF Erlang Factory I convinced Joe Armstrong to try Rdio (http://www.rdio.com/people/erlang).

* Then we got about a third of the first floor of our house finished, in order to start a co-op preschool there.

* Then I fulfilled a major dream: installed an oval pot rack.



* Then Dmitri Gorchev died. (Correction: he died in 2010)



* Toured the new Bay Bridge with Manish.



* Then we had a baby! Daria:



 * We got most of the living room painted.

* Then I turned 30.

* With all the baby-having we forgot to change the oil in our Subaru Outback and the turbo went out of business.

* So we had a month of public transportation. We visited museums and chased the F on Embarcadero. With two strollers!

* I discovered Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli.

* Arkadii the Cat (16) went on to the next life.



* Then we got a turbo put in at Brannan Auto Experts.

* Redevelopment finally entered full swing on 7th street near West Oakland BART.

* We went to Yosemite in December. I'll never go to Yosemite during summer again.

* I quit my job of over three years at Rdio.

* Started a new job at Connect.Me.

* Our son Boris turned three.



* Macbook Pro -> Thinkpad X1 with Ubuntu 11.10.

* Started work on the remaining 2/3 of the downstairs.

* Harmony read 26 books this year.  This is important, since, apparently, not all children grow up reading.

I don't really read anymore. Somehow I finished these:
- Monday begins on Saturday by Strugatsky brothers (I read this book every year, in January)
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- Жизнь без Карло Дмитрия Горчева (Correction: I read this last year)
- Matsushita Leadership by John Kotter
- The Road by Cormac McCarthy

* My wife presented me with a Kindle Fire for Christmas, so I'll be reading more. I already read a few of the free Sherlock Holmes stories (better in English, it turns out).

* 2012 will be the year of Connect.Me, which is super exciting.

* Happy 2012!

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

The Summer 7th Street Won the Lottery

This summer 7th Street in West Oakland finally won the lottery and hired construction crews to fix its sidewalks. The crews dug them up, put up no parking signs ("no stopping any time until 9-2"), orange cones, wooden stakes and forms, and left. Things have looked like this for the past five weeks:



I'm not worried. It allows me to reminisce of my native USSR, where few construction projects were ever finished and the sidewalks, when they were eventually paved, they were paved with asphalt. USSR nostalgia is far from the only benefit of this crying administrative clusterfuck. Consider this:

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Sold Out

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Friday, April 15, 2011

Kankles 4 Life

Friday, March 11, 2011

Natural Habitat

A Ural motorcycle in its natural habitat. Marychevka village, near Samara, Russia, September 2009.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011