Cyberborean Chronicles » Life

There is a button, stupid

Alex Alishevskikh — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:56:19 +0000

Long tweaking and hacking an open source software code can lead to a sort of very special menthal syndrome. This is a real life dialog in the kitchen:

Me: This microwave has very annoying, shrill beep. I hate it! I gonna break it and cut that damned beeper off.
My wife: Don’t be surprised but there is a button sequence which makes the owen silent.

Probably, I have to take a rest.

Networking under bombings

Alex Alishevskikh — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 23:52:30 +0000

He is a guy I owe for my fast and cheap satellite internet connection at home. He is a programmer from Ukraine who develops and supports Globax – a great free band-saving tunnel solution for sat-internet and also took part in development of DVB drivers for Linux.

Now he is a network administrator in Lebanon. He refused to leave it after Israel’s attack and now his daily job is to revive permanently destroyed communications to provide internet under bombings in the distressed country.

I decided not to leave the country and to hold on there as long as possible. When I told my friends and colleagues I was about to evacuate, I was just frightened to see despair in their eyes. They have been forsaken by all parties. Hizbollah has their own goals. The government, like our “orange” one, is clueless and they are only beating one another. The world community worries only on their own hassles, pipes, belongings and doesn’t care about dying civilians…
I knew also I’m responsible for to provide internet for more than 20000 families. My assistants have been blocked in the regions of massive bombings and unable to do anything because of electricity and communication breaks. They relies on me and they have helped me when I was in trouble myself…
I’m really feared but I cannot forsake them. I fear of that wicked hostile bombards with a chemical weapon which is hardly avoided. I fear that after the humanitarian crisis the country will be a crowd of criminals and a hotbed of epidemies. And after all, there are my wife and 2 y.o. daughter in Ukraine…

(my translation, the original post is here)

God bless you, Denis.

People don’t know who are the programmers

Alex Alishevskikh — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 12:20:27 +0000

I think I am only partly a programmer (I have a lot of other interests) but when I getting acquainted with “non-computer” people I usually introduce myself as a “programmer” – just for simplicity. Everybody realized who the “programmers” are but often their imagination is a bit strange. Here is a typical talking:

- You’re a programmer, aren’t you?
- Yes, I am.
- Wow! Hear, I got troubles with Windows there…
- I don’t know Windows.
- ???

(As a variant there might be a question how to fix his computer hardware)

The talker is frustrated – he thinks I’m lying because I don’t want to help him. In the best case he concludes: “Ok, he is bad programmer” and stop further talking. In the worst case he is getting curious why I don’t know Windows and there starts a quite idiotic talk where I’m trying to tell about my work with terms understandable for “non-computer” people. I hate it.

Another idiotic talk:

- Maybe you’re a hacker? :-) (sounds like a joke)
- Hmm.. A kind of. (I just forget what the word “hacker” means for the people who learned about it from the mass-media)
My collocutor looking at me as at alien.
- And you really can crack a bank?!

So, in mass vision the programmers are the people who

has a comprehensive knowledge of Windows
can fix any computer defect
the most skilful of them are “the hackers” and they can crack the banks

And a very minority remembers that “a programmer” comes from “to program”…