My computer was up all night downloading some stuff that I need. How surprised I was when I saw a message like: Congratulations, latest updates were installed! …And the computer was restarted without my will for that. How fucked up is that I don’t even have an option not to restart being in the middle of something?!
Guess what was the first thing I did when I came to Seattle? We went to brewery in Seattle area where I ordered a big beer burger! Umm, how I missed it and how delicious it was! Not that I was trying to eat much and make myself look like this man:
But I have to admit that it was very enjoyable!
I’m finally back from the business trip to US. It’s been a long time since I posted anything new, but that’s mostly because I was too busy. Looking back at what my calendar looked like - it’s pretty packed. If you can see the blank spot - that’s because I was traveling on that day.
I still can’t adjust to the 10 hours time difference. That’s why I’m up so early. My schedule is a complete mess right now, but it’s getting better.
Check out latest photos I made. Unfortunately, my wife wasn’t accompanying me this time and it wasn’t as much fun as it could be. But still, it was a very interesting and useful trip, both business and personally-wise.
We’ve been to Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas. There were many unforgettable moments…
I’m getting tons of crap like: “Great article, I’ll subscribe!”, “Nice story” every day. Who the hell thinks that I’ll approve them? I accidentally deleted useful comments because of spamming retards.
Now, anyone who spams me again will suffer from my deadly curse (I also have a magic ability to send curse to automated scripts so they end having fatal bugs wiping out your file system). Do you want to spam? Think again.
I’ve just read this article and quite frankly, I’m a little shocked, if not to say more… Don’t forget to read this official policy for officers [PDF].
Tomorrow Darya and me are going to Marcus Miller’s concert - a prominent bass player who was born in Brooklyn, NY. My parents purchased tickets for us to our wedding anniversary (we’re almost 2 years now, 2 days left 
This is so very nice of them!
Truth to be told, I’m not Marcus’s fan. More than that, I believe I haven’t even listened to his albums before. But my buddy bass player was extremely excited about the fact that he’s coming to Odessa and so was a music crowd, so I figured that I gotta go too. And so my parents knew this somehow and are coming up with this gift - cool 
By the way, I already know what Darya is about to present me. And I’m super-excited! I mean… Oh s…t, yes I am! But she doesn’t know about my plans yet, hehe. Women are always this way More details soon…
So I’ve started using a Desktop computer recently at work. I didn’t really want to mess my laptop’s OS with monstrous development tools like Weblogic, Oracle. Plus these sort of tools require a very powerful machine (even 3 gigs of RAM is like a minimal threshold). I made Kubuntu an OS of my choice.
What can I say after using it for a week? Very nice, really user-friendly OS with excellent packaging system and an interface based on KDE. Plus it’s still Linux - nobody had canceled CLI interface (in case something goes wrong)
Phew! Finally I have some free time. It turns out that I need to read my own blog sometimes. I saw Darya’s post today and was very surprised that she made a post. Frankly, I had no idea…
July was quite a busy month for me. And although it’s not over yet, I already feel very tired. A part of this is because I started working on new project - eHarmony and it takes some time and efforts to dig in. The project is very dynamic and interesting.
This month me and Darya started using the new approach for accounting at home. The method is called “4 Envelopes” made popular by Max Kraynov. The method itself is very simple: you take your family income, subtract savings for this month (or 2 weeks), scheduled bills and payments, financial goals amounts. The rest part is distributed among 4 envelopes. Each envelope is for one week (3 envelopes for 8 days, 1 for 7 for this month). And then you try to only use 1 envelope during a week.
If there’s something left at the end of the week, you put money to another envelope called “TO SPEND”. And that’s my favorite part ;-). So far this method works pretty well for our family, so we’ll keep using it in the future.
Kraynov and Co. also released a web-app to facilitate this method. I personally tried to use it but unfortunately back then (I don’t know if it’s resolved now) I couldn’t complete the registration because of software glitches, so I gave it for for my own system (based on Google Spreadsheets, hehe).
When I lived alone, I used to track every expense and it worked okay for me (except the fact that it was very annoying). It doesn’t work that well for 1+ people.
Now, what else… Oh, I’ve just read that my friends purchased iPhone 3G. Congrats!
Akademos, Inc. website got updated with a neat and lightweight design. Pleasant surprise and nice job, folks!
I started riding my bicycle yesterday (I bought it 3 years ago and used it for about 3 weeks max. since then so it’s like new). And so I went to the downtown yesterday (just to see what’s new). An office building where we used to rent an office when I worked for Akademos is now closed for maintenance. I always regret that I don’t wear a photo camera with me so I can shoot photos (yet don’t do anything to address this problem, heh ).
Alright, it’s time for another bicycle ride. It’s a great supplement to my muay-thai trainings. I had 35 of them so far and I’m really happy with my physical shape again The down side of this is that I’m black and blue. But this is another story.
Ну вот потихоньку, через дебри и мучения - а как же по-другому? :D - осуществляется моя мечта.
Я, наконец-то, записалась на курсы вождения. Месяц была нудная теория (которая еще не закончилась), а вот теперь я выехала на улицы нашего города. Мне попался замечательный инструктор , который сразу же, на первом занятии, вывез меня (то есть я его, ведь я вела машину!) на центральные улицы нашего города. Было очень весело, особенно, когда глохла на перекрестках… Но, должна сказать, водители других авто очень снисходительно и доброжелательно относились к новичку на дороге: никто не сигналил, не орал, а просто тихо и спокойно объезжали меня десятой дорогой :) .
Ощущения, конечно, просто не передать словами: когда был первый урок сидела зажатая, потом болели ноги и руки; на втором уроке уже пыталась немного расслабиться и получать удовольствие от вождения и иногда это получалось. А сколько у меня было гордости, за себя любимую, когда я съехала со спуска с поворотом на право, а потом заехала на горку Все-таки водить - это ТАКОЕ удовольствие!!! А завтра (10.07.) снова в бой… с машиной, с перекрестками и с пешеходами…
Если все будет в порядке, то в августе получу заветные права. А так как машина у нас с Темой одна, то будем жить по такому правилу: Кто раньше встал, того и машина!!! А так как раньше встаю я, то…. Ну, тут и так все понятно :D 
Alex, my friend from New York has started a blog. I already subscribed. Alex, make sure to make posts more or less frequently.
