Dear Lazyweb,

where can I get a stationery item called "index cards" in Russia? More specifically, bits of thick paper that measure 3 by 5 inches. While I can use photo paper as a substitute, this sounds a bit bizarre.

Since the day Gmail appeared, its contacts manager was rather broken. The worst thing was automatic addition of every person you ever mailed, and other aspects were not overly attractive either. But it's getting better. First, they have introduced a default contacts group that is manually managed. Then, they rolled synchronization soluion. Finally, they added some goodies, like contacts merge. The net result is that I can use it as convenient backup for my mobile phonebook, and actually use the application too.

Update. Looks like it's somewhat raw. First, it stopped synching with error 0x86000106. One seems to be supposed to disable contacts sync, sync, and enable it again. Second, sync makes everything appear on the phone in the "Last Name, First Name" format, even if originally entered with the sane "First Name, Last Name" format.

Update 2. Also, there's no way to automatically create birthday reminders in your calendar from contacts.

Update 3. In fact, there is a way to add birthdays to your calendar, though a bit obscure. Unfortunately, you cannot set reminders for birthdays. Also, it appears that default behaviour of scheduling events in 30-min increments cannot be changed, so to create event at X:15 you have to type the time manually.

After some 10 tries I've managed to print something on an envelope. For reference, 11x22 is "Envelope DL", and the opening should be on left, and one should pick "landspace" in openoffice, and "portrait" as paper orientation when printing. And of course, select the same "Envelope DL" as paper size in printing dialog. And, "Envelope tray" appears to be wrong -- one should select "Multi-purpose tray".

But, above all, one should export to PDF and use Acrobat for actual printing, as that's the only application that appears to understand such concepts as document size, or paper size, and has a remotely sane print configuration.

Dear lazyweb (and _gq_ in particular) —

I wish to install a wireless router in the hall of my apartment, and I also wish to retain the wired line to my "office" for backup. Unfortunately, there are no AC outlets in the hall at all, and running an extra AC line is a mess. So, I originally decided to run a low-voltage line from the office back to the router. But then, I recalled that ordinary Ethernet cable has two unused wires, and now consider using those two wires to provide power to the router. Is this gonna work?

One week I was busy trying to hit some deadline. As result, I did not read any blogs at all until Friday evening. When I fired my RSS reader there were hundreds on unread posts. It took, on a conservative estimate, a couple of hours to read them all, and then I realized that only few were of any interest — and surely none was urgent. So, I took some action.

First, I've noticed that I was subscribed for a pile of personal blogs of people I don't personally know. Each of them said something insightful in past, once, but then stopped doing that. So, I've unsubscribed from most such blogs. Second, there was a pile of professional blogs that also followed insightful-once-useless-later pattern. Those were deleted as well. And then there was third problem — planets. I am subscribed to a few sites that aggregate topical blogs from individual persons. Supposedly topical. As it happens, at least half of the posts either tell that Mr. X woke early last Monday, or speculate that women do not become programmers due to that-or-this made-up reason. Not having many filtering mechanism, I just have to hit delete key for such blogs. Either I'm getting older, or there's a pattern above. Seems like when blogging required some effort, each post had to have at least some content.

I still avoid reading any blogs during the week and this is working well. On the other hand, this morning I had 400 unread posts. Clearly, there's some way to go!

If you are Russian citizen applying for an US visa, and you touch computers for a living, beware that:

1. You probably won't get 2-year visa. For some reason, they now think it's risky.
   
2. You need to present your CV and list of publications, so have those ready.
   
3. There might be an "additional processing" so apply in advance.
   

Of course, those are somewhat unexpected and alarming policy changes.

I've tried to make a tea-based latte, using berry-flavored tea for better effect. The end result was strange, most resembling milk shake. Probably, it's either because the milk used was somewhat sweet itself, or because milk and berries do not mix. Shall try again next weekend.

As part of my Friday browsing spree I've arrived to lifehacker.com, to find a hilarious advise about cardboard laptop stand. Here's the photo:

I certainly think this is plain ugly, but let's look at context:

Unless I'm mistaken, the picture features Apple laptop, Apple computer, and also keyboard, mouse, and speakers by the same manufacturer. All this probably costs $3K. And amidst this, we have a DYI cardboard laptop stand. Surely a good way to make a fool of yourself.

For extra effect, sidebar on the same page features DYI cardboard wallet.

If your wireless router suddenly switches to 1MBs bandwidth, and is otherwise acting weird, check if the external antenna is screwed to the router itself. And if it seems to, check if it screwed really tight.

It seems that my praise to garage's business process has tempted the fate too much. Having just dropped by to pick the car, I found the door shiny, and of right color, and so on, but featuring a 3cm long, rather thin scratch. Further, it is apparently below the clear coat, so it's not something that even theoretically can be removed by polishing. And this scratch is just as annoyingly visible as the one that was painted out. Apparently, quality control is a bit lacking here.

Trivia Aug 7, 12:00 — Aug 9, 18:00. 800 km.

Highlights

• Big city, with large and conveniently walkable downtown.
  
• Fairly authentic building and places.
  
• Even more authentic buildings en-route, in Pereslavl and Rostov
  
• Every cafe we run into was nice.
  
• The hotel was fairly good as far as rooms and people go.
  
• Good road. 10 km of road repairs near to Sergiev Posad were the only big problem.
  

Lowlights

• The hotel had no water at all when we arrived. This was fixed while we were having dinner in the downtown.
  
• The cocktails in the hotel's bar were barely drinkable. Breakfast was a bad joke.
  
• Roads inside the city are a mess.
  

I have a minor repair performed on my car now. It's a different garage now, and since the first interaction I had some suspicion.

When I arrived for initial evaluation, the actual repair was scheduled for Aug 11st. Then they went like this: "of course, we'll remind you by phone in advance, <click>, <click> on 9th". On 9th, they indeed called and reminded. And then, on Aug 11st, they went like this: "we should have repairs done by 14th, but we'll update you on status tomorrow, <click>, <click>, at 14:00". At which point I got really suspicious, and when they called the next say, at 14:20, I became fairly certain. They do have working a tickler system.

Here, "working" means that not only they have Outlook, or similar, that can remind about actions items, but they also create reasonable action items, and act when they are due. This is different from the experience I had with any Russian company so far. Typically, if a company promises to do something "in a week", it's you who has to create a tickler item and ping them, or nothing will get done. And if you have the ball, you can be sure nobody will ever check on status. And this is regardless of expected revenue.

I would have expected any "Business 101" to cover such matters, but presumably it's all about acquisitions and IPOs these days.

I have had a bad habit of confusing "stuff" and "staff" for years, and finally decided to somehow memorize this. While the internet had no good hints, dictionary helped -- one of synonyms it listed for "stuff" is "luggage", which happens to have the same first vowel.

Because I use the Todoist task tracker increasingly heavily these days, and it does not have any official backup solutions, and also because my skills as C++ programmer were becoming really rusty, I sat and wrote a quick-n-dirty backup tool. It essentially grabs and stores locally raw JSON data -- not very useful for anything, but better than nothing. You can grab it here.

Along the way, I have played with TinyJSON. Color me unimpressed. The interface that is based on containers of boost::shared_ptr to boost::any makes me dizzy.

ominous, adjective — cool-sounding synonym of "foreboding"

I guess I should stop using the most widely advertised medical lab here. Routine blood test results came in yesterday, with hemoglobin level of 4.1 g/dl. For reference, anything less that 8 counts as "severe anemia"
and requires "prompt management". Ah, also "may be life threatening". There was also "checked twice" remark
by the value. Sure enough, a repeated test, in different lab, came up perfectly normal. In this case, the original results were apparently bogus, but it is disturbing to think that in other situation, an error could be in the 'reasonable' range, but significantly, and wrongly, affect treatment decisions.

To be honest the original results had a note a the end -- "we might have messed up, and recommend to try again" -- though it would be more becoming to say "try again for free".

The remote for my car signaling system, after 2 years, got broke, in that pressing the "open" key no longer does anything. The company that did original install had a warrantly of 1 year, and they don't do such "simple" fixes outside warranty. The manufacturer, though, turned out to be very nice. 5 mins for repairs, for free, and not a single question about warranty certificates, proof of purchase, or any similar nonsense.

I have already complained about bad airline websites. But there's still room for further breakage. Let me introduce you the second-largest Russian carrier — S7 airlines. Their website is fast, and nice-looking, and functional, and tells you the price and conditions at once. But just when you enter credit card number you notice that the price has gone up -- because in addition to applicable taxes and fees they have also added $10 "service fee" for the privilege of using their website. Now, it's less than 0.5% so is negligible to both sides, but charging for using the site is just outrageously stupid idea. It's like a restaurant adding "table rent" in a bill — which happened to me once — but only once.

When dealing with DHL earlier I was pleasantly surprised with one trait of their business. When you call them, they pick a phone and say "This is DHL, John Random speaking". It's the last name that makes all the difference.

With most other companies, the process is this. You call them and hear "Hi, this is Lena speaking" (Nice to meet you, but my phonebook say this should be "Traders in everything, LLC"). "Yes, we can sell you pieces of gold, at $1/kg". You drive by their office and find that it's actually $100/g, and they are out of stock and only can sell you a couple of stumps and they have 10 persons named Lena in the office. Boo.

Because of this, I tend to ask for a full name pretty much every time. Some just give the name, but there are companies that refuse, offering "operator number" instead. And there are few cases where the person gets very confused and goes like "Why do you need it for?".

I wonder what are the established business rules outside Russia.

(*) The name "Lena" is used above because it is supposed to be most popular female name in the generation of 1980. Source.

Dream Theater will be playing in Moscow, on June 10th. Who's going with me?