Month: June 2016

I wasn’t sold glasses because my prescription was expired by 4 days. Attention—it’s valid for two years. I got it in June 2014. In Russia. Everything is fine, but two years passed four days ago. And they sent me to get a new one.

I went into the nearest optical shop. With my insurance, eye exams cost me 10 bucks. I’m used to in Russia, they let me look at letters, measure with a metal device on my head different lenses, and write a prescription. In particularly advanced centers, there’s an electronic box on the table with a hole where you need to look, and from its rear end, a receipt with numbers will pop out.

At LensCrafters, they conducted six different tests. Each test had its own quite substantial equipment. The doctors— with tablets, which were connected to these devices. Three different doctors worked with me. Apparently, the real doctor was the last one; the first two just saved his time because working with the equipment requires lesser qualifications. Images are displayed on the tablet.

Besides the quite expected figures about my vision, I received some image about where there are various risks for different ailments. Everything is fine, except for a suspicion of glaucoma. That is, my pressure is normal, which says there is no glaucoma, but other symptoms suggest it is present. My grandmother went blind from glaucoma, so yes, I am at risk. But what’s interesting is that no doctor had told me this before. And early diagnosis for glaucoma is super important, as glaucoma is virtually untreatable, but living a life almost without any notable inconvenience on drops that reduce intraocular pressure is possible. Although they didn’t find any pressure issues, they referred me to a specialist.

On the same tablet, they showed me an animated interactive clip about what glaucoma is and why it is important to treat it.

This is my first medical visit in America, and even though it is just a routine vision check for buying glasses, it was very impressive.

By the way, the eye exam cost me 10 bucks after insurance compensation, and glasses at the same LensCrafters cost around $550, of which 2/3 is paid by the insurance company.

A cool video about Voronezh. It should be shown to foreigners before they find regular footage like this:

New post about Hybris on my blog. I managed to integrate Hybris with SolrCloud. This should greatly improve search and indexing performance for all major online stores.

In a nutshell, searching for products in an online store on Hybris is based on pre-indexing, so that it can quickly deliver results in response to complex filters. The architecture on which 99% of Hybris stores are built includes one indexing server and N servers delivering data. I assume that almost all large stores have a problem with indexing taking longer than the business would like. But in Hybris and the Solr it uses, this problem is not easily solved.

So, replacing it with SolrCloud can make indexing horizontally scalable, while also obtaining a system with greater reliability and performance. If something suddenly broke on the indexing server before, you had to at least wake up the admin. In SolrCloud, the admin is ZooKeeper. And it’s faster when six servers are handling the indexing at the same time, rather than just one.

Including @[100001168004708:2048:Erik Babadzhanov] @[100001044160267:2048:Aleksey Kryuchkov] @[100004031421822:2048:Alexey Lyubimov] @[1817791335:2048:Victor Romanovsky] @[100000077047562:2048:Marina Zhigalova] @[100001894770015:2048:Viktoriya Shaimardanova] @[100001735299023:2048:Alexey Pronin] @[1698960808:2048:Alexander Zolotilin] @[100000571996239:2048:Maxim Antonov] @[100002859265802:2048:Ilya Timchenko] @[1328575098:2048:Max Shelukhanov] @[617283947:2048:Renata Mussina] @[1509384824:2048:Anatoly Mokhov] thinking this might solve some issues for you. The integration is quite simple, essentially, there isn’t a single line of JAVA code in my prototype. But for production systems, it will be needed, though to a minimal extent.

Following up on the theme of English, my post from five years ago. I still use the described method to this day

What topics of English grammar must you constantly remember during every conversation? For me, it’s not all automatic yet, so my brain kicks in to construct phrases (although not as much as back in January of this year). The correct verb forms for different subjects don’t pose a problem anymore – it’s all quite formulaic here. Main verb tenses also don’t present a problem. Where do I stumble?

1. Prepositions. There are no rules here, and you just have to remember various fixed expressions like listen to. For example, today I discovered that it’s more correct to say, the drawback to this option, rather than drawback of this option. In this area, there are both significant mistakes (as in the case of listen) and minor roughness (as in the case of drawback). Or, for instance, “it is clear to me” sounds better than “it is clear for me” in most cases, although in some it’s more accurate to use for me (e.g., it is clear for me that 2*2=4!”

2. Conditional constructions and complex sentences. Since I speak and think in complex structures in Russian, I find myself having to restrain from creating such in English, because I can’t always properly formulate them. Were the issue to reappear, our engineers would now be ready for it.

3. Commas. This is the least significant part of my list, as even Americans themselves don’t always know where to place them correctly. But there are practically no rules here, as far as I know.

4. The progressive form of to be in different contexts. I always get confused about where it’s needed and where it isn’t. In general, the difference between “He is being stupid” and “He is stupid” is clear, but it’s hard to calculate quickly in speech. For example, how to discern between Something is changing and Something is being changed.

5. Also, it’s unclear where you need to use the Present Perfect and where the Present Simple is sufficient. Well, there are obvious cases and not-so-obvious ones. These last ones can be divided into “more correct” and “less correct”, and here it’s tough to understand the difference—yet it’s very noticeable to Americans.

6. Articles. On one hand, I hardly think about articles anymore; on the other, I’m sure I often make mistakes. In English, this part of grammar is not well formalized and just needs blunt experience. Though in speech, it’s not very noticeable to an untrained ear.

7. I don’t know what to call this. Better with examples. Here are three examples (_the correct form is emphasized_):

I must {_go_ or to go or going};

I want {go or _to go_ or going};

I keep {go / to go / _going_};

I tried {go / _to go_ / _going_}.

For different verbs, you need to use different forms of to go. There are no rules here. You just have to memorize them. Consequently, in speech, when there’s no time to think or Google the right version, you say whatever comes out.

This is just what came to mind quickly. If you’re interested, I can share more 🙂 #American #English #american #english

For me, it was also new to use address as a verb analogous to solve when applied to issues, problems, root causes of the conflict etc. If there’s a need to resolve a problem with something on the website, people often say address the issue, rather than fix or even more so solve #American #English #american #english

Some things that are common here due to the local climate are unheard of in Moscow. I already wrote about ice cubes, now for the rest:

– a refrigerator for your car

– ice blanket

– just ice. Also, dry ice is sold in supermarkets – we are going to New York next week, we’ll buy it instead

– “синенький” – this is a cold accumulator. Cools down quickly, keeps cold for a long time

Can anyone explain how this is even possible? No calls, no SMS are received, neither from the website, nor from other phones, neither Russian, nor American. But the ads reliably keep coming through. The tablet is connected to the internet, Beeline is on roaming (though, nothing works). How did these SMS get through???

If you are leaving Russia to work abroad – disconnect the Russian SIM from all services. Otherwise, you will end up like me with Beeline.

Let’s say, at some point, the SIM stops working properly. This can happen after a delayed payment and it doesn’t restore properly post-blocking. Maybe it just broke – such things happen with SIMs. Of course, Beeline’s customer service says everything is fine on their end. You can’t just descend into a subway here and exchange a Russian SIM for a new one. So now, I have a tablet at home, which just yesterday miraculously received a promotional SMS from ZebraFitness, but is otherwise useless.

Moreover, this SIM was connected to Raiffeisen.Connect internet banking. No SIM – no transactions. Thankfully, there’s almost no money left in the account, so it’s not that big of a deal. But darn it, what if there had been money there! I call the bank – they say you can only change the number in person by visiting the bank or by somehow receiving a confirmation SMS on the old number. There are no other ways, sorry, dear customer.

So I imagine, if there had been money – what would I do? Travel to Russia just to change a SIM or a bank number?.. Absurdity 😦

#beeline #raiffeisen

The first photos from the last day of school are coming from the Machine School. They have a shower there!