Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

Every morning of mine (which is already midday in Eurasia)

This is the third deer family we encountered in a 20-minute walk with the dog near the house. The video clearly shows why it’s not a good idea to drive fast past our house. What wasn’t captured on video is a deer from this group, who fell behind the others and decided to bolt across at full speed a minute later. I didn’t manage to film that. Another car was coming along, going faster. It had to brake hard, with a screech of tires and someone screaming inside. The deer was literally jumping over the headlights just half a meter away from the hood. In fact, they all think the same — they believe they need to jump over the light of the headlights and that they will surely make it across in time. Occasionally, they don’t make it, and their at least sixty-kilogram bodies smash into the windshield. This time, the driver got off just with a scare, but we once again saw why the 25 mph speed limit here is no joke.

See those black boxes on the ceiling? Those are cameras. Today, I visited the “cashier-less” Amazon Wholefoods store. Here’s how it works – you just place your hand on the terminal upon entering – just show your hand, that’s enough – and the system starts tracking you with cameras. You take what you need from the shelves and leave. That’s it. The money is deducted from the card linked to your Amazon account, and the receipt is there too. They say it easily handles attempts to confuse the system – like taking two items, handing one to a friend, who then puts it back on the shelf. In short, wonders. The store is located in Washington, in Glover Park.

I went to the local post office to pick up something to be signed in my name from Russia. Not that I knew what it was. In these troubled times, I was plagued with guesses. In short, my oldest friend, with whom I’ve been friends since school, decided to make a nice surprise, and he succeeded. Among various ways to be closer to space in our time, a book is an excellent option, I believe. I’m just finishing the last chapter of Build, and my mind is freeing up for a new topic. And such books are nowhere to be found here. Thank you!

Our polling station. Congressional representatives’ representatives are campaigning right from the flower beds

This is for the early voting process. You can register and vote before the big day. By mail, email, fax, or the old-fashioned way by coming here and dropping it in the box

Interestingly, this dog’s “let’s play” state is almost exclusively triggered after eating. At other times, he blissfully sleeps or reluctantly accompanies the owners on a walk (mainly because of the leash). So, if you don’t play enough ball with him after he eats, he goes to the backyard, finds a weed, and occupies himself. A convenient dog indeed.

Two paintings by Yuri Pimenov. 1937 and 1944. New Moscow. The Frontline Road.

A new update on my Hybrismart.com: Implementing Back-in-Stock and Price Drop Alerts

In this article, I explore the potential pitfalls and mechanisms that can be developed to tackle and possibly eliminate obstacles when implementing Back-in-Stock and Price Drop Alerts. This content is aimed at product owners, solution architects, and developers. It is independent of SAP Commerce, making it relevant for any custom solution (though there is a brief chapter about the OOTB module).

By using back-in-stock notifications, customers are alerted when a product they recently showed interest in becomes available again. Similarly, a customer might want to subscribe to updates on a product’s price and receive notifications when its price decreases.

As a result, customers are more likely to return and make a purchase. These two functionalities are often deemed essential for nearly any marketplace solution.

The implementation and design of these features are also perceived to be straightforward and quick. However, this is not always the case — several points might be overlooked during the design phase. In this article, I focus on the potential pitfalls and best practices in implementing “Back-in-stock notifications” and “Price drop alerts”.

Overview

Users

Registered/Authenticated

Anonymous

Double opt-in?

Subscriptions

Notify Me Buttons

Don’t Notify Me About This Product

Registry of Subscriptions

How Often and When to Stop

Handling Languages and Currencies

Handling Discontinued Products

Handling Multi-site Products

Handling Variant and Configurable Products

Duplicate Subscriptions

Canceling Subscriptions

Notifications

Handling Product URLs and Categories

Handling Availability and Price Groups

Handling Multiple Subscriptions

Minimum Inventory and Price Drop Rules

Notification Intervals

Service Suspend/Restore

Integrating with Web Analytics

Reporting

Solution (diagrams)

Back in Stock Alerts

Price Drop Alerts

How interestingly the brain works. Take some musical notes, practice for about half an hour. Some things work right away, but of course, at first, it’s far from smooth, and after a while, you feel — that’s it, no progress. Then you take a break, switch to work, after a while — say an hour or two — you return to the piano, and it goes significantly better than before the break. You make progress again, hit a dead end again, go to sleep, for example, come back — and it’s a completely different story. The delta between the first time after rest and the last time before rest feels very significant. It’s as if the brain was training instead of resting. Or not eating. Or not coding.

Apparently, during the learning process, the brain gets loaded with all sorts of junk in a form that’s inconvenient for it, which then requires time to sort things out neatly when it’s not busy consuming information. Then it takes the necessary things directly from the right shelves, not from the heap hastily thrown together.

For some reason, this doesn’t work with drawing.

Another interesting thing is how muscle memory and consciousness work. You play something, and you are aware of playing — exactly at what moment which chords and which keys to press and which not to. At some point, after about the tenth time, you catch yourself thinking that you no longer understand what you are playing, but it plays smoothly. And that’s the moment when you need to significantly reduce the tempo (or even break it), to create a balance between muscle memory and conscious playing. Muscle memory is fine, but only until the first mistake. It is quite difficult to recover from it, as the conscious part of the brain has relaxed and handed over control to the mechanical part, and then bam, a mistake, and the conscious part is like oh where am I what are we even playing here and all that.

“An old rabbi was very proud of his faith in God. He often repeated: ‘I believe in the Lord’.

Once, during a year of heavy rains, there was a flood. The water kept rising, and people began to evacuate. People came to the rabbi’s house:

– We are leaving this place. Come with us, – they offered.

– No, I’ll stay, – the rabbi answered. – I believe in the Lord and I know he will help me.

The water continued to rise. A boat floated up to the house, and the people sitting in it said:

– There’s still room here. Come with us, the water is still rising.

– No, I believe in the Lord and I know he will not forsake me in my troubles, – the rabbi replied to them.

The boat left. And the water kept rising and rising. When it flooded the entire house, the old rabbi had no choice but to climb onto the roof and pray to God for salvation. Soon a helicopter arrived, and from there they shouted:

– Old man, we will pick you up, climb up the ladder! There’s no other help coming.

– No. I pray to the Lord and I know that he will save me, – the old man replied.

The water continued to rise, and the old rabbi drowned.

Meeting God in heaven, the rabbi asked him:

– I so believed in You, Lord, how could You let me drown?

To which God replied:

– I tried three times to save you: I sent people to you, directed a boat to your house, and then I even sent a helicopter…”