Month: September 2021

Very interesting lectures @[1087585110:2048:Konstantin Severinov] on life science. Thanks for the organization @[553229549:2048:Александр Плющев]. About the structure of DNA “in layman’s terms,” the sequencing process, how PCR works, the mechanism of replication, etc. If you’re interested – do not miss it. It can be difficult at times, but generally, it’s quite accessible. I’ve been interested in this topic for a long time and didn’t expect anything new in yet another lecture on the subject, but three hours have passed and I can’t pull myself away. Here is the link to the first lecture, search Google for the others

This is roughly what pictures “for the corporate event” and “from the corporate event” look like. I’ve already forgotten how to spell corporate event. It seems to be something about strengthening the corporate spirit with something strong and corporate spirited.

Today’s walk with Yuki. Rabbits, deer, but I didn’t manage to capture the fox. Yuki didn’t see it in time but caught its scent as we passed by and went a bit wild.

I haven’t written about English in a long time. Recent discoveries:

– how to pronounce the word unanimously

– how to pronounce the words asymptomatic, atypical, asexual, atheist, apolitical, asymptomatic, amoral, asocial

– how to pronounce “I ordered it”

– how to pronounce “cleanliness”

– how to pronounce “infamous”

– how to pronounce “Hyperbole”

Personally, I’m beginning to drown in messengers. There are just too many of them.

Besides Telegram, Skype, and the social network messenger, there are several Teams that don’t want to work together. Recently, there was also Slack. There are notifications from multiple emails, and along with those, notifications from Jira (which can also be multiple). Many service notifications cannot be aggregated. And some are actively monitoring and messaging on LinkedIn (where I have thousands of unread messages), Twitter (where nobody writes to me), WhatsApp (same story), Instagram (same story). For some, it’s also their business.

Corporate Teams can’t properly manage multiple accounts (i.e., formally it can, but switching between accounts is far from instantaneous, and you’ll think twice before clicking on a notification from an inactive account).

If you’re involved in five projects for five clients, each will give you their messenger, their email, their Jira, their Confluence, their Git. And while handling passwords is simple, Microsoft products lament, as under one user, they cannot properly work with multiple accounts simultaneously (to avoid switching).

Many clients simply send their laptop. Then comes the problem of how to work with two or three laptops on a desktop with two monitors and a keyboard.

Luckily, I don’t have such a large number of clients, but when there are even two or three, it becomes difficult.

Installing on mobile phones is even more complicated. For instance, I cannot properly install the Teams from the client I’m currently working for on a phone that already has Teams from EPAM. I mean, Microsoft formally allows it, but clicking on a notification will require switching accounts, which takes seconds.

It’s somewhat easier on laptops. To work with two Teams on one machine, I have to run one in the browser and use the app for the other. And if I need three more Teams from clients, with their login-password pairs, I will need two more browsers (choices include Safari, Chrome, Chromium, Vivaldi, Opera, Brave). Theoretically, you could somehow run the Teams application under a different user on the same machine (in Windows, this is done via runas, I haven’t figured it out on Mac yet).

Besides that, all messengers have different message histories, each with its own search, contact lists, image storages.

What could be a viable solution here? A messenger aggregator is definitely not an option, as vendors won’t go for it. They run ads and gather knowledge from what we send to each other. Honestly, users wouldn’t be happy if everything from their 20 sites with personal messages were collected into one feed, where important mixes with unimportant, without context, etc.

Today I studied the biography of Woodrow Wilson and was surprised to find that his image appears on a banknote – note this – worth 100,000 dollars. It turns out that it’s not the only one of its kind – there is a 10,000 dollar note with Salmon Chase’s portrait, banknotes of 500 (McKinley, Marshall), 1,000 dollars (Hamilton, Cleveland), and 5,000 dollars (Madison). The 100,000 dollar banknote was used only for internal transactions by the Federal Reserve. A total of 42,000 copies were printed. They were never circulated publicly; moreover, possessing such a banknote is illegal. Some time after their production was stopped, most of them were destroyed.

The 10,000 dollar note is currently for sale on eBay, priced at half a million.

Really interesting, amongst all these feet, pounds, ounces, and yards, money is still in the usual decimal system.

Aeroflot canceled my flight to Russia on November 9th today. They asked me to call the call center to arrange a refund or reschedule. I looked on their site, and there are no flights from Washington starting October 31st at all (I scrolled through to March 2022 and then gave up) – neither direct nor via New York. Does Aeroflot know something or is this usual for them?

P.S. I was just told on the call that Aeroflot has canceled almost all international flights to/from the USA for November and for the following months. Maybe they’ll resume someday, but that’s the situation for now. They offered to refund my money or rebook for October. I chose the refund. I wonder what the reason for the cancellation is?

P.S. Bought Lufthansa + United. Turned out to be one and a half times cheaper. Turns out, Aeroflot stealthily (well, okay, I didn’t notice) adds a $249 fuel surcharge to the ticket price of $415 (I fell for it). The new tickets via Europe cost $459 with no fuel surcharges. Either way, I had one layover.

P.p.s. with a layover in Europe, the airlines did not confirm, now I have two pending refunds. Looks like Europe is not an option. Will look for options via Turkey.