Comrade Zed's Blog

End of Year: 2011 Review

2011-12-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

I don't know if I can call anything I've done during the course of this year an achievement. In fact I've been depressed so many times I might be able to call it one of the saddest years I've ever had, regarding this aspect.

There are, still, some things that are worth mentioning, although some of them I do not like.

So... this year's noticeable events are:

I've improved my German by going to the Faculty of Letters;
I've volunteered for an NGO that has to do with computing, helping children by donating them refurbished computers, also by doing this one of my lifetime dreams has been forfilled, which is working with servers and a corporate computer network;
For once in my life I've travelled with a proper, modern train - the InterCity;
I've picked up my Engineering Diploma from Craiova - I had to wait a year before being able to do that;
I've helped my mate to build a new computer for herself;
I've replaced my air conditioner with a more advanced one;
I've started buying PC games on Steam;
I've got a Samsung Galaxy S II as a birthday gift and I got a new "Android Army" avatar;
For the first time I have someone to play Worms with, which is probably my favorite game of all time;
I've played and finished Portal 2 in multiplayer together with my mate;
I've learned to live without some of my dreams, in favor of something more important;
I've started doing chores, because I wanted to get used to them, it might be useful for me in the future;
I've spent a nice Christmas, being happy on this holiday for the first time in a while;
I've got a little fox plushie as a gift from my beloved mate, which made me very happy because it was one of the things I wished for the most.

That being said, I hope the new year will bring better days.

Happy New Year!

How to train your phone

2011-11-09T04:01:00.000-08:00

It's been three weeks since my birthday now, and about a month since I've bought my phone, the Samsung Galaxy S II smartphone.

It is a birthday gift from my mother; at first I didn't want anything this year, especially since a few months ago my mother wanted to change the air conditioning machine from my room, and when that happened I became the proud owner of a plasma enhanced LG air conditioner, which also has a pretty stylish look, too.

I had promised to my mother that I wouldn't ask for anything else for a while, but I just couldn't help myself when I've seen and tried the Samsung Galaxy S Plus, which a friend from Ateliere Fără Frontiere had got for his birthday - which I had no idea that was that day...

I have to admit that at first I didn't like the aspect of it, and how in some areas it resembles that awful Apple product called "the iPhone", but as I got to play with it for a bit and see what it can do, I got to love that thing and its operating system, Google Android Gingerbread.

I didn't specifically want a phone like that of my own until I went to an Orange Shop to pay my last phone bill for them, and there I saw the Samsung Galaxy S II on the sample phones panel. When I saw the phone's specifications I couldn't get it out of my head anymore, and they were just a small glimse at the actual phone specifications, compared to what I've found out when I went home and visited GSM Arena and read about it. I just had to have it, it couldn't be any other way!

This phone is pretty much a giant and basically does everything I've ever wanted and much, much more: a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, 1 GB of RAM, 16 GB of total storage space, expandable with a 32 GB flash card, an 8 MP back camera and a 2 MP frontal camera, support for the latest Bluetooth and WiFi technologies, an electronic compass and a GPS, and much more, with the camera quality exceeding that of the iPhone, and even capable of high quality Full HD filming, all powered by Google Android - that is, my favorite operating system kernel: Linux.

All in all, the smartphone is pretty awesome, and I don't have much to complain about, except for the stock battery which I've replaced, because the 1600 mAh battery can rarely power this beast for more than half a day.

One thing, though. I had some pretty nasty firmware problems at first. The operating system was running just fine but the phone drivers were faulty. I tried updating the firmware with Samsung's software - Samsung Kies, but I couldn't regret it more to this day. The firmware version it had installed was pretty unstable and it even hanged my phone once or twice, and the phone drivers problem was even worse. I'm not ever going to use that crap again!

Being desperate, I looked up a few forums and found out how to downgrade back to the original firmware version. I've downloaded Odin and a non-CSC version of the firmware, which worked much better. Later on I found out that the CSC would allow me to type in Romanian, German, and other European languages so, given that I still had problems, I've decided to flash the phone one more time.

So... third time's the charm, I suppose. The problem with the phone drivers was that the data connection would suddenly drop and then renegotiate, and then drop again and so on...

This version doesn't do that anymore. It still does something weird sometimes, but it's a minor bug, compared to what used to happen, and I don't intend on flashing the phone again. What happens now is that if I enable the data connection, in some cases it will not start immediately or at all, and if it doesn't start at all then the voice phone doesn't work either. When that happens, a simple reboot fixes the problem. As I said, it's just a minor bug. As the saying goes, "it works; don't mess with it!" Besides, all of this might have happened each time I used the "airplane mode" function, which turns off the phone signal completely.

By the way, the fact that I had to fix those problems on my own, without using the phone's warranty kind of makes me feel pretty attached to this phone, because I actually had to put some effort into making it work properly.

Overall I recommend it. It's the best smartphone you can buy!

Memories / We are the last generation that...

2011-10-09T00:42:00.000-07:00

I've read this on Facebook, posted as a comment to a picture of the class I used to be in, in primary school. I have to admit, I miss the good old days...

Nascuti la inceputul anilor 80, vedem acum in anul 2011 cum casa parintilor nostri este de 50 de ori mai scumpa decat atunci cand au cumparat-o si realizam ca noi o sa platim pentru casele noastre in jur de 50 de ani.

Nu avem amintiri despre primii pasi pe luna, nici despre razboaie sangeroase, dar avem cultura generala, pentru ca asta insemna ceva o data.

Suntem ultima generatie care a jucat "Ascunselea", "Castel", "Ratele si vanatorii", "Tara, tara! Vrem ostasi", "Prinsea", "Sticluta cu otrava", "Pac Pac", "Hotii si vardistii", ultimii care au strigat "Un doi trei la perete stai", ultimii care au folosit telefoanele cu fise, dar primii care am facut petreceri video (inchiriam un video si stateam sa ne uitam la filme 2 zile inchisi in casa), primii... care am vazut desene animate color, primii care am renuntat la casete audio si le-am inlocuit cu CD-uri.

Noi am purtat jeansi elastici, pantaloni evazati, geci de blugi de la turci, iar cine avea firme gen Lee sau Puma era deja lider de gasca. Noi am dat examene de Capacitate, nu am dat teste grile la admitere. La gradinita am invatat poezii in romaneste, nu in engleza... Si am cantat MULTI ANI TRAIASCA nu HAPPY BIRTHDAY la aniversari.

Am sorbit din ochi Pasiuni, mai ales Sunset, chiar si Dallas... si cine zice ca nu s-a uitat ori minte ori nu avea inca televizor. Reclamele de pe posturile straine ne innebuneau, si abia asteptam sa vina si la noi guma Turbo, sau pustile alea absolut superbe cu apa. Intre timp, ne consolam cu Tango cu vanilie si ciocolata si clasicele bidoane umplute cu apa de la robinet, care turnate in cap ne provocau pneumonii. Si uite un motiv bun sa nu mergem la scoala.

Noi am ascultat si Metallica, si Ace of Base, si DJ Bobo, si Michael Jackson, si Backstreet Boys si Take That, si inca nu auzisem de manele, singurele melodii de joc fiind horele la chefuri, la care nimeni nu stia pasii, dar toti dansam! Dar spre deosebire de copiii din ziua de azi, am auzit atat de Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Abba si de Queen, cat si de noile nume gen 50 Cent si Britney Spears.

Am citit "Licurici", "Pif", Ciresarii, si am baut Cico si Zmeurata si ni s-a parut ceva extraordinar cand au aparut primele sucuri "de la TEC" fara sa ne fie teama ca "au prea multe E-uri", iar la scoala beam toata clasa dintr-o sticla de suc fara teama de virusi.

Noi am baut prima Coca-Cola la sticla si am descoperit internetul. Noi nu ne dadeam bip-uri, ne fluieram sa iesim afara, noi nu aveam dolby surround system, taceam toti ca sa auzim actiunea filmului, nu aveam Nintendo sau Playstation ci jocuri tetris de care ne plictiseam la o luna dupa ce le cumparam si le uitam pe dulap, pline de praf.

Abia asteptam la chefuri sa jucam "Fantanita", sau "Flori, fete sau baieti", sau "Adevar sau Provocare", sau orice ne dadea un pretext sa "pupam pe gura" pe cine "iubeam"... Noi suntem cei care inca au mai "cerut prietenia", care inca roseam la cuvantul "sex", care dadeam cu banul care sa intre in farmacie sa cumpere prezervative, pe care apoi sa le umplem cu apa si sa le aruncam in capul colegilor, care am completat mii de oracole, sperand ca persoana iubita va citi acolo unde scrie "De cine iti place?" ca ne place de el/ea.

Este uimitor ca inca mai suntem in viata, pentru ca noi am mers cu bicicleta fara casca, genunchiere si cotiere, nu am avut scaune speciale in masini, nu am aruncat la gunoi bomboanele care ne cadeau din greseala pe jos, nu am avut pastile cu capac special sa nu fie desfacute de copii, nu ne-am spalat pe maini dupa ce ne-am jucat cu toti cainii si toate pisicile din cartier, nu am tinut cont de cate lipide si glucide mancam, parintii nostri nu au "child proof the house", ne-au trimis sa cumparam bere si vin de la alimentara, si cate un pachet de tigari de la tutungerie.

Noi am auzit cum s-a tras la Revolutie, noi am fost martorii a trei schimbari de bancnote si monede, noi am ras la bancuri cu Bula, noi am fost primii care au auzit-o pe Andreea Esca la Pro TV, noi suntem cei care mai tinem minte emisiunea "Feriti-va de magarus".

Suntem o generatie de invingatori, de visatori, de "first-timers"...

Daca citesti si ai cazut macar un pic pe ganduri, esti de-al nostru! Trimite si la prietenii pe care poate i-ai uitat de mult, sa isi aduca aminte si ei!

Translation:
Born at the beginning of the 80's, we're now realizing in 2011 that the house of our parents is 50 times more expensive than when they bought it, and that we'll have to pay for our own homes for about 50 years.

We don't have memories about the first steps on the Moon, nor about the bloody wars, but we have some culture, because once this meant something important.

We are the last generation that had played "Hide and Seek", "Castle", "Ducks and hunters", "Country, country! We want soldiers!", "Tag", "The little bottle of poison", "Bang Bang", and "The thieves and the coppers", tha last who had yelled "One, two, three, face the wall!", the last ones who had used coin pay phones, but the first ones who had video parties (we used to rent a video [casette] and then we stayed indoors watching movies for two days), the first... who had seen cartoons in color, and the first who had replaced audio casettes with CDs.

We had worn loose jeans, splay pants, coats and jeans from Turks, and those who had [clothes from] companies like Lee or Puma was considered the "gang" leader. We had taken the "Capability" exams, and we haven't taken admittance grid tests. In kindergarden we had learned poems in Romanian, not in English... and [we sang "Happy Birthday" in Romanian] at someone's anniversary.

We watched "Passions", especially Sunset, and even Dallas... and who says that they had not are either lying or hadn't owned a TV set yet. The commercials on foreign TV channels were driving us crazy, and we could hardly wait for the Turbo chewing gum to come to Romania, or those superb water guns. Meanwhile we consoled ourselves with vanilla Tango and chocolate and the classic flasks filled with water from the sink, which spilled in our heads would give us pneumonias - and here's a good reason not go to school.

We had listened to Metallica, Ace of Base, DJ Bobo, Michael Jackson, Backstreet Boys, and Take that, and we hadn't yet heard of "manele", the only party music [we knew] were horas, for which no one knew the dancing steps, but we all still danced to it! Unlike children today, though, we had heard of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Abba, and Queen, as well as the new names like 50 Cent and Britney Spears.

We had read "Licurici", "Pif", "Ciresarii", and we had drunk "Cico" and "Zmeurata", and we for us it was something amazing when the first drinks "from TEC" had appeared on the market, without being affraid that they have "too many E-s", and in class we all drank from the same bottle without being affraid of viruses.

We're the ones that had drunk the first [plastic] bottle Coca-Cola and we had discovered the Internet. We weren't "beeping" eachother's phones, instead we wistled [to eachother's windows to call our friends outside], we didn't have a Dolby Surround System, and instead we were all silent to hear the action of the movie; we didn't have Nintendo nor Playstation, but we did have Tetris games of which we got bored after a month from when we bought them, and they would remain full of dust somewhere in our closets.

We could hardly wait for parties, to play "The little fountain", "Flowers, girls and boys", or "Truth or Dare", or anything else that would give us a pretext to "kiss on the mouth" whoever we "loved"... We are the ones that still asked [someone to be our girlfriend / boyfriend], the ones that still blushed when we heard the word "sex", the ones that would flip a coin to see who would enter a pharmacy to buy condoms which we would fill with water and throw in our colleagues' heads, we're the ones that have answered thousands of "oracles", hoping that our loved one would read her / his name where it says "Who do you like?".

It's amazing that we're STILL ALIVE, because we used to ride our bicycles without safety hats, elbow and knee protectors, we didn't have special seats in cars, we didn't throw away the candy we've accidentally dropped on the floor, we didn't have medicine with special packages which can't be opened by children, we didn't wash our hands after we played with all the dogs and cats from our neighborhood, we didn't keep count of how much carbohydrates and lipids we ate, and our parents didn't "childproof the house" and instead used to send us to buy beer and wine at the grocery store, and a pack of cigarettes at the tobacco store.

We heard the gun fire from the Revolution, we've witnessed three changes in paper and coin money, we laughed at jokes with Bula, we're the first ones who heard Andreea Esca at Pro TV, and we are the ones who remember the show called "Beware of the donkey".

We are a generation of winners, dreamers and "first-timers"...

If you read this and it made you think at least a bit, you're one of us! Send this to friends which perhaps you've forgotten a long time ago, for them to remember too!

The Power of Information

2011-08-16T09:50:00.000-07:00

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a long time now; it’s only when I saw they’ve actually made a Discovery Channel movie with some of my ideas in it that I’ve decided to finally do it.

My mother had always tried making me become a religious person; for a while she had succeeded, until I was mature and have evolved to realize it, and see religion and the so called “god” for what they truly are.

Come to think of it, even if I was religious – sort of – I could never be she wanted me to be; in fact being inside a church had always felt wrong to me.

If you’re religious and reading this, you will probably consider what I am about to write as blasphemy. I advise you to open your mind, if you consider yourself evolved and worthy of the title “human”. Otherwise leave this page right now.

That being said, have you ever wondered why we are here, and what is our purpose, if there is one? Religions say that gods have created our world and created humans in their own image... but to what purpose? Why is this world so wrong, full of suffering and so unfair? Do you think all this has a purpose? It doesn’t have any purpose, because all that you know has been told to you by people who have also been told the same thing, for generations, by people who could not understand why everything works the way it does, in the beginning; by the way, among other things people have used religion and fear to control the masses to their own personal interest.

So what if I would tell you that everything you see and feel around you doesn’t even exist? Not physically, anyway...

Have you ever played a video game? Let’s take the Super Mario Brothers game, for example. You control a character that can move around in a two dimensional (2D) world and interact with different objects and beings. The enemies can hurt him and even kill him, so for him they are real.

Imagine yourself being inside that game, instead. Everything that character could do, you can; now try thinking out of the box. What if you are already in a game?

Think about the way all matter in the Universe works.

First of all, think about the known laws of physics. Everything in our world obeys these rules; all particles in the Universe that have a mass create gravity around them. Gravity is an interesting property. It makes an object press on the invisible surface of the Universe from an infinite number of directions, creating a bend in the fourth dimension in such way that other smaller objects are attracted to the center of that bend, much like in three dimensions an object would go to the center of the inside of a cone shaped surface.

Why am I saying this? Well... remember Einstein’s Theory of Relativity? He also said that light is both particle and wave. So if his theory is correct, a photon should have a mass, no matter how small that may be; according to his theory, an object travelling with the speed of light has infinite mass. If that is the case, then why doesn’t being hit by a simple photon kill you on impact?

Note that I said about gravity (and mass, by the way) as being a property. If everything was physical and obeyed the laws of physics then a photon should have its own gravity, no matter how small; that’s not the case, however, because that form of matter has the mass forced to be exactly 0, which is also the reason for it having infinite travelling energy. How is this possible?

Think about what you can do with a computer. It can be programmed to do just about anything. Does that tell you anything?

If you are not familiar with programming a computer, let me explain. You can program anything you want, in this case we will take the example of a cube, symbolizing a Hydrogen atom.

You define the prototype of your atom, creating what is called a class. A class contains all the information you need about an object, in this case your atom. Think of it as a blueprint.

An atom has 3 main properties: the number of protons, the number of neutrons, and the number of electrons which is usually equal to the number of protons. You can add secondary properties to it, like the atomic mass, how many electrons it would accept in order to link with another atom and form a molecule and so on.

Mass itself is a property, a simple number. The fact that is makes the atom create gravity is because of a mathematical function according to which the object’s mass is directly proportional with how strong the object’s gravitational force is, meaning how strong it is the force with which it bends the surface of the Universe, creating a higher or lower angle of a cone.

As I said, this is a function. As with computer programming, you need not to know how this is done. It is irrelevant. The fact remains that your prototype has properties that can be attributed numbers – the number of protons, neutrons, etc. – and at least one function which makes it interact with its outside world.

Considering that your prototype is ready for use, the computer can generate a virtually unlimited number of copies of the same object, using the blueprint, which in this case creates atoms of Hydrogen. Do you see where this is going?

Everything we see around us is pure data, and metadata – which means data about the data, describing what it can do, and how it gets a meaning.

Don’t confuse this with something like the movie “The Matrix”, by the way. It’s not the same thing, and the conclusions are my own, I got to them myself, without the help of anyone.

You could say “But if it’s all data, how come we’re alive and we can think, feel, suffer, and love?”

The answer to that couldn’t be more simple. Information itself is alive; it becomes self aware only in certain conditions, though, when enough information is gathered together to form a meaning, a form of manifestation, which, by the way, is another property – form of information.

How can information be alive? An atom at the lowest level, the property of it existing or not has only two possible states, either YES (true), or NO (false); since an atom is a form of information, a molecule also is.

DNA and RNA are, in fact, very advanced forms of programming, composed by, and forming information.

Do you know what a virus is? It is the simplest form of life, with the special property of not actually being neither technically alive or dead; it does not generate nor consume energy, it is composed only by a protective capsule or membrane and genetic data, and it sometimes has microscopic means of moving around.

However, this little piece of data still attacks and infects, although it’s just information. It technically becomes alive when it infects a living cell, by injecting its data along the that of the cell.

The simplest form of living information, by the way, is the first type of bacteria that has ever existed; it interacts with the outside world, it can copy itself and generate an identical object, its DNA (data) programs its behavior... and it is, in fact, nothing more than a bunch of molecules.

This goes even farther. Did you notice that planets act like atoms? The planets in our solar system, for example, revolve around the Sun, just like electrons revolve around atoms. To get a bigger picture, stars revolve around the center of a galaxy. Who knows if there is nothing even bigger than that?

Did you ever wonder what dark matter is? To answer that just go back to Biology class. What important part of the cell binds all others together? The plasma. The same way dark matter keeps all the visible matter in place and the Universe together. The Universe acts like – if not is in fact – a living cell.

There is yet more. Think outside the box yet again. What is a cell? It is yet another prototype. Ever heard the theory of multiple parallel universes? They’re not just parallel. What do cells form when they work together? They form a tissue.

The reason why it is possible – and very probable – that universes with different rules than those of our own to exist is just like the reason why different types of cells in your own body exist. You have skin, muscles, neurons, reproductive cells and so on...

By the way, speaking about parallel universes, it would also be possible to do what many dreamed of. Who, among us, didn’t want at least once in our life to travel back in time and relive some moments which were dear to us? Doing that isn’t impossible, and neither would be killing your own self in the supposed past. The reason for that is that for each universe there is an infinite number of versions to it, each corresponding to a specific action any being or movable object in it can do. For instance there is a version of this universe in which I haven’t written this blog entry, or a version where I do not exist, yet it still looks like this universe, because it is just another version, not another object.

While this could go on forever, each level is limited. The Universe has a limited number of particles, no matter what type they are, and, like any living cell, it will one day die.

To get back where we started, all that virtually exists, at all possible levels, in other words infinity, is contained within a computer of which size and power we are not able to imagine.

This computer, however, will itself be another form of information and so are the beings who built it.

I’m not able to tell how far this can go, but I am able to help you understand the true beauty of life and information. They are one.

This is infinity.

THE END OF AN ERA

2011-08-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

Memories of School

First of all, as you probably know by now, posts like these have no actual purpose for the world. People usually can't understand the desire to relive the past and not accept the present or the future - although this is not the case, however, because I do not want to relive most of my memories of school; the reason I am writing memories like these is that I reach a milestone in my life, an End of An Era, if you will.

I must state that school has always been a source of sadness and depression for me, although there have been moments of memorable importance to me, which I do not want to forget.

Primary School / Gymnasium

It all began with the first days of school of my life. My mother sent me to school when I was about to be 7 years old. Before the actual school year began, they've let me wander through the school for a bit, entering a few classrooms. I remember one of them; it was decorated in the old Communist style, with small benches which were grouped together in pairs of two, linked by wooden planks. The benches were tilted to such a degree that it was pretty easy for a 7-year old to sit in one and be able to write in a student's book without much hassle. I remember that I've actually liked that - not knowing, however, what kind of daily torture awaited me in the future, of course.

I don't remember much from year one, except for a few details, like the fact that my mother had made me wear a children's hat on my head most of the time - because in her mind the classroom was very cold, I remember that I felt scared and probably confused and that I didn't really understand what was the purpose of me having to stay in that place with so many other children - a class was usually composed of 28 to 32 children.

During year one and two, while I was learning how to make signs at school, I had always become dirty of fountain pen ink on my hands, which sometimes even got on and in my mouth - although I don't really understand how it got there; maybe I used to put my ink dirty fingers in my mouth.

We started learning how to count, add, and subtract. I could never memorize adding or subtracting pass number 10 and I've always performed calculations using my fingers and even my toes to count the result; this has been a problem I never understood, because a year later we started learning the multiplication and division tables and I was much better at those, although I failed miserably in the beginning...

In year two, after we were able to write sentences, my favorite kind of activity was text dictation; I used to be very good at that, having a much better memory for it than my colleagues. I guess I had to - or at least it was useful, because my handwriting speed wasn't much faster than that with which I am writing this now...

I remember a marking event of either first or second grade. Our educator let us go home early but I didn't know what time it was because I didn't learn how to tell the time yet, and I thought no one came for me to bring me home from school. My aunt was supposed to do that but when I saw that she didn't show up I started crying and tried going home on my own, although I was accompanied by some other parent with his son. I took the road I knew my aunt would take and finally arrived home but no one was there so I couldn't enter and I stayed at one of the neighbors for about an hour, instead.

My colleagues have always been somewhat of a problem to me. Given my nature and health problems I've always had trouble adapting to, and getting along with them. As I remember, at first, I had a girl as a desk mate but for some reason - probably me - she got moved and I got a new colleague, this time another male. We got along reasonably well for a while. I got another desk mate later on, also male, with which I got along well until I moved to another class, in year 5.

I do remember having another female colleague, though. She was of Roma ethnicity and the first contact I had with people like that. Her personality was pretty typical, I guess, and she also had richer parents than me; she always came to school with new toys, sometimes giving some of them away, but she never shared anything with me and had always acted in an awkward way to me. As I remember, the last desk mate I had - the one I got along with best - came after her.

Speaking of desk mates, it was one of our educator's ways of punishing us for when we did something bad to move us in the very last bench in the row - meaning that we would be behind all other children; at least it was for me and for the other more geeky children in the class. She did once move me in the very last bench in the middle row for something I don't really remember. For the remaining day we had art class and I remember modeling some small things like a tiny boat and vessels out of children's clay. The next day I couldn't tell my mother that I was punished so I went with her in my original spot in the first bench of the right row, but of course she found out from the educator. I was, however, able to keep staying there.

I did mention about my father in the story of my life. It was in year two that he had returned from the foreign country he was working in and brought home a video came console for me. It was a clone of the Nintendo Entertainment System, called "Terminator"; you can find information about it on Wikipedia; it was a pretty popular thing in third world countries at the time. This has no relevance to my school experience, by the way, but it is one of the first encounters I had with computers and it used to be the only way I had to relax and spend my free time at home.

About the same time my mother had begun "helping" me with my school homework, by which I mean that she actually used to do it for me entirely. Yes, it wasn't pretty nice of me but it was the only way for me to have some spare time to have fun and be happy, because already my colleagues had begun mocking and even beating me at school.

At first there were two problematic children in my class. One of them had always picked on me in different violent ways although he did sometimes show signs that he wasn't such a bad person overall. Maybe he was mentally ill or maybe he just had family problems and this was his way of venting; I really don't know. His last name was Branea and he was probably the first person to beat me at school. Interestingly enough, though, he got punished for the things he had done, maybe a bit too harsh, I guess. At first the mother of Francisc Cincasciuc beat him up really bad for what he did to her son who, as I remember, had some bad heart condition and emotional problems; then later on, in year 4, his mother died, leaving him either half or fully orphaned. I can't say I was sorry for him, though. In fact it was the exact opposite. It wasn't in my nature to be sorry for my enemies and it isn't now either.

Another way in which he got a taste of his own medicine was when a new student had been transferred to our class. His name was Cosmin Piţu and he was a very violent Roma kid; he used to beat Branea pretty bad, but he kept his violence towards me to a minimum.

Last, but not least, I must mention Adiţă (Adrian), of whom's last name I can't remember right now. He was the one that started calling me names, together with Branea. By the way, he was friends with him, without being violent, though - luckily for me. Thanks to him others have started calling me names and humiliating me in whatever way they could, including the now classic reason for me being overweight.

Although the girls had not been very nice to me overall, I tended to want to help them sometimes. In year two we were also introduced to the French language, thing which tortured me for 11 years, by the way. I swear the first time I heard that awful thing I thought it was a way of mocking people. I didn't even imagine it could be an actual language. Anyway... in French class there had been this one time when I wanted to help one of the girls so she wouldn't get a bad mark and the teacher saw me and gave me and graded me the lowest possible mark as a punishment - 1 out of 10. I didn't understand what she meant by what she said and no one ever told me that it was wrong to want to help a colleague. It was a harsh and unjustified punishment and I truly wish she got what she deserved for that.

At one point I tried fighting fire with fire when it came to being humiliated and called names by some of my colleagues. That is a very bad memory I would rather not talk about but I can mention the fact that no one was ever on my side throughout school, not even to state the truth about the fact that I just did the same thing to him he did to me. I called one of my bullies some silly childish names but my mistake was the fact that I wrote them all down on a piece of paper. He showed that paper to his father who came to school with him the next day. It didn't end pretty well. I do not regret what I did, though, and as always, I wish only death to my enemies.

I haven't mentioned about playing the piano. I did that for eight years, started before school. It all began when my father came back from Germany somewhere in 1993 or so. He brought back home a typewriter which someone gave him as a gift and a small electric organ (piano). I started playing with that, improvising stuff from what I heard on TV. I liked it, which was the reason for my mother to want to get me to a piano course at a building nearby, called the Children's Palace (another relic of the old Communist regime). There I learned how to play the piano and it was fun... for a while. I kept taking lessons there for about two years, meaning also in first grade. After that my mother asked me if I wanted to go further and enroll me to a music school, Music School of Bucharest no. 2, to be exact.

So I've continued my piano lessons for another few years. Unfortunately it was because of this that when I was in second or third grade my mother got hit by a car... on the sidewalk, while trying to hurry and catch a bus to get papers for me to continue my piano lessons. The reason why I've continued taking piano lessons all these years was for her. My enjoyment in this was long gone; I just wanted to make her happy. She wanted to learn how to play the piano so much in her childhood but she never got the chance to do that, so I wanted to make her happy and be able to play the piano for her.

Although, like normal school, music school hadn't brought me too much happiness of my own, having another source of exams and good marks was an advantage to me. Before I got my first computer, while I still enjoyed playing with toys, for every good mark in piano exams and very good final results at the end of a school trimester, my mother bought me my favorite type of toys, which were Transformers robots. I mentioned about this in the story of my life; I used to have a lot of them, and I still have my favorite ones. This was my only reward for how much suffering I had to endure. My favorite one of all time, and one of my cherished memories, is the first one I've ever got, a robot that transformed into a jet plane. I don't remember when I got it, probably somewhere around Christmas in first grade. By the way, I have a tape of the first Christmas class celebration, which was filmed by my desk mate's father with his camera.

Because of my nature people didn't like me too much - of course. I got kicked out from Music School of Bucharest no. 2 for a few reasons, but none of them were related to anything bad I had supposedly done. The director of that music school hated handicapped people and of course hated me as well, and my piano teacher has been probably pressured to kick me out for some time that one day she just bursted in anger all of a sudden, with the supposed reason that I was making funny faces at her, when in fact I was just humidifying my lips. After that for a few days I cried and wanted to stop playing the piano but my mother found another school which was willing to accept me. I didn't really want to continue but, again, I did it for her to make her happy; I did enjoy having lessons with my new piano teacher, at least for a while, because she had a sense of humor and every time I didn't play a note or forgot to repeat something she would draw glasses on my music sheet. At the end of 7th grade I finally put piano lessons to rest, as I had to prepare for my first official national exam of my life in eighth grade.

I must mention a bit about Religion class too. My mother had tried to make me a religious person, like herself, but in the end she failed, because religion is just not for me. Anyway, I used to like Religion class, maybe because of the different way it was approaching us, maybe because it was the easiest of all; I don't know... In fourth grade, however, we got a very weird and shy teacher who let us do pretty much whatever we wanted. That was his mistake because we, as kids, transformed Religion class into... Fun class. I was pretty quiet and calm although I did make tasteless jokes with one of the colleagues I got along with, but others weren't so good. They were screaming and running through the classroom, throwing objects around and more. All that ended when my mother found out about it, of course.

I mentioned about my mother doing my homework for me. It is not completely unethical, though. Starting the third grade our educator had never allowed us to have any recesses. She always made us stay in class and make grammar or math exercises - unless we needed to go to the bathroom, of course. In essence she used to constantly torture us with these things and she had always given us so much homework that I, at least, would not have had time for anything else between when I got home and when I had to go to bed. That was not fair. I really don't have to justify myself to anyone, but I just wanted to mention about this fact. By the way, the girls had been assigned the task of verifying if we did our homework, and they usually took our student books and gave them to the educator so she would evaluate them. That made them feel important, more important than the rest of us, in fact, and they were always acting highly arrogant.

At the end of fourth grade - 1998 - my father had come back home from work in Israel. He remained in Romania for about a year. At that time he and my mother had bought some electronics I shall always happily remember about. At first they bought the Philips Mini HiFi System we have, and which I recently let him use just for himself, then a new television set, a Panasonic with a computer and Teletext capabilities, then, after years of promises and months of me begging him, about two months before fourth grade ended he bought me my first personal computer, after which they bought a new, big refrigerator which we're still using today.

In the holidays between fourth and fifth grade my mother enrolled me to some computer lessons at the - now bankrupt - New Systems educational company. That and the place where I've learned some things about computer hardware have been the only places I've ever enjoyed school (before faculty). They were the only places where I could do what I am best at: working with computers. It was at New Systems where I've met my first mentor, which now I know that he had been exactly like me. This fact reminded me about wanting to be just like him when I grew up. He was the first and possibly the only true role model I've ever had. He was maybe even closer thing to a father to me than my real father had ever been. I'll never forget him... and how he always used to play Solitaire in the free time between studying sessions; it is from him I got that habit and also thanks to him that I saw an actual Windows 95 floppy edition installation, which is one of the most cherish able memories to me.

In fifth grade I had moved to another class, which was supposedly quieter and more disciplined than my old one, and we've finally been introduced to English class... after 3 long years of suffering with only that forsaken language which people like calling "the language of love" for absolutely no reason. I really enjoyed learning to speak English and I kind of liked the type of books we used.

Now we must return to the issues of my colleagues. After I moved to another class in fifth grade I noticed that my colleagues were - or at least they seemed to be - nice and calm. The reason for this was, unfortunately, because their educator thought them to always spy and tell on each other. I guess that wasn't much different from the... "Securitate" of Ceauşescu's regime. I guess some people can't change the way they've lived their lives; I should know, I don't want to change either...

Anyway, I tried being friends with some colleagues but that worked out in a rather weird and awkward way, not to mention that I made the mistake of trying to be friends - in my own awkward way - with one of the popular kids, whose name was Ionuţ Cătălin Drăgoi. My mother bought me the awkward and capitalistic game Monopoly and I didn't have anybody to play it with so I invited that guy at my home a few times, in which at least one of them we played that and I remember being somewhat mean. It was my mistake and I admit it. After that he didn't want to visit any more and he hated me, thing which I felt. Later on, in sixth grade he started humiliating and making fun of me for several reasons, among which was the fact that he had recently bought a personal computer of his own, which was much more powerful than mine, the fact that I was fat and so on. It was truly my fault and I had to suffer for it for the rest of Gymnasium (meaning until I finished eighth grade).

Fifth grade passed me by without memorable events, which had not also been the case for sixth grade, when the real trouble began. That's when I started having a true hatred for girls. Unlike in previous years, it was them that ripped on me the most, and the reason was my introverted personality and my highly formal behavior and way of talking. I didn't talk nor had subjects of interests like them. They found that a reason to mock me, along side the fact that I wanted to be one of the best children in class and my mother always supported me with a lot of things - including bringing me to and from school, so jealousy was also a factor. My colleagues used every possible opportunity to tell on me to the new educator for doing something wrong, even the most unimportant thing. Some girl named Bianca Rădulescu even stated that "he doesn't respect us anymore" although she had absolutely no reason to do that, and I hadn't done anything to her. That day I've cried quite a lot and my only consolation was that my mother went with me for a walk through town and bought me a calculator I wanted for some time and two video game cassettes for the latest little game console I had. The games were "The New Ghostbusters 2" and "Godzilla 2".

There was one girl I was - at least trying - to be friends with, which was also the first girl I've ever liked or have been somewhat attracted to. Her name was Viorica Ionescu and what I liked about her was her personality. She used to be kind to me, at least kinder than other colleagues. I think we had some project to do together once when I had to invite her over. After that she even came to visit me all of a sudden some day, without any reason, just to keep me company. At the time my computer wasn't functioning properly any more so my mother bought me another type of video game console that resembled those so called home computers of the 80's - a keyboard which you could connect to the TV set and even had a small word processor to play with. We used to play with that. I never told her that I liked her, though; I couldn't, for two good reasons, one of them being the way I was raised by my mother, and the other was my shy personality.

That had also been the year when I had a few failures in History class, which my mother has attributed to me watching the "Life with Louie" TV show and playing Worms Armageddon too much, but it wasn't true. I just couldn't memorize things properly, in the same way as I was never able to memorize anything for Geography class.

In seventh grade I started liking another girl, whom I kept liking and being more and more attracted to until the end of eight grade. Her name was Luciana Florea and she was the first girl I've ever actually told how I feel about her but she didn't seem to take too well. I didn't hate her for that, though. However, I didn't think that we were meant to be together in any way either, even though I liked her. She wasn't like me and she liked other types of boys than me. However it was somewhat nice to know what it feels like to be attracted to someone. Too bad my colleagues found that as a reason to make fun of both of us, besides the fact that they've kept calling her "the hen" although I never understood why. She was the last girl I liked.

My favorite teacher of sixth and seventh grade was the art class teacher, which was also a math teacher. She was the best math teacher I've ever had, and she had the best explaining technique. That reminds me of a thing I did when she congratulated me for getting a very good grade in an important test, and I got a higher grade than that of my "nemesis", Ionuţ Drăgoi. I ran on the school hallway that day screaming "I've beat him! I've finally beat him!!!" really loud. Unfortunately she couldn't teach pass 7th grade and years later I found out that she died of breast cancer. Rest in Peace, Mrs. Ştefan. You will be missed.

Starting the second half of sixth grade, by the way, we had a new Geography teacher, because the old one had some trouble, I guess. This new teacher had an awkward - and very difficult for me - way of grading. However it did have an advantage. He noted every partial or full right answer from every student on a paper and when they had accumulated enough of them he would give them a mark. It was a very difficult time for me as I was really struggling to pass the subject.

Sixth and seventh grade had also been awkward thanks to the Grammar and Literature teacher we had. We had the same teacher in Latin class in ninth grade, by the way. Her last name was Bojescu; I don't remember her full name. The reason why her class was so awkward was that whenever we had lessons with her she would usually either sit at the teacher's desk and do something weird like wear makeup or prepare her makeup, or go stare out the window and do the same thing. Instead of doing anything in class she would give us something - usually exercises - to do from our school manuals and that was it.

Her successor in eighth grade wasn't much better either. She made us fuse our desks in pairs so we would be four people at a desk instead of two and we would work something in a team. She didn't, however, explain anything, and she expected us to know everything on our own.

By the way, one event marked all of us in seventh grade. Two of my colleagues got asphyxiated in their home because of improper plumbing to their heating unit. They were both rushed to the hospital and been in a coma. They were brother and sister, and only the girl survived. Their name were Marian Romeo and Ioana Julieta Cănuţă.

As you probably guessed, their names were inspired by that play. I was friends with Romeo and he was one of the colleagues who never did anything bad to me. In fact I regret doing a tasteless joke to him once, by which I mean putting a thumbtack on his seat, and he actually did sit on it.

I truly regret the fact that my mother had not allowed me to go to his funeral. I wish I had the chance to say goodbye. Rest in Peace, my friend.

In eighth grade we also got a new math teacher, which had also been the Informatics teacher for the optional class which we had in 6th and 7th grade. That reminds me, the Informatics optional class was one of my favorite subjects, of course, if not my favorite of all. The teacher had also been my math tutor since sixth grade so I knew him pretty well. Pitty he was really obsessed with religion since he converted to Jehova's Witnesses. Anyway he did have a good way of explaining things and he has been my second mentor in Informatics. One thing which perhaps made my friend Viorica hate me was when my math teacher actually helped me cheat some math tests. He had done that mostly because he understood how much I suffered at least in eighth grade. Currently he doesn't want to talk to me anymore, because I said I don't like hearing about "God" and that it annoys me.

Speaking of which, in 8th grade I had tutoring in all subjects I had to take my national exams in, which were: Romanian, Math and History. Among those there was also French, because I hated it so much that I couldn't do much without help. I had tutoring nearly daily and in multiple subjects almost each day. I had about 8 hours of school every day and after that I had little to no time for myself because after those 8 hours of school another 4-6 hours of tutoring followed, most of them in literature and math.

In October my parents bought me my first printer, an HP DeskJet 960C. I printed a lot of stuff with it, most of it was useless but it didn't matter; I had some fun. I do remember printing something for the Physics teacher, though. I think it was something related to both Chemistry and Physics class; it probably was the only important thing I had printed – with the exception of a History essay, of course.

Speaking of October, this was the month I got a pretty funny mark in French class. It was a 10 on the 10th day of October...

A few months later, in January, after spending some time with my colleagues, playing Quake 3 Arena at a gaming place near the barber shop I just went to that day, my father had finally bought me a new computer, and this time it was even able to play games pretty well. Of course he didn't do that on his own. I had to constantly beg him for months even before that. Good thing he bought my PC before he bought his car - which he trashed a year later - or else I would've never gotten it in the first place. That was also the year I went to the dentist for the first time in my life, by the way.

Another activity I used to do together with my colleagues in the eighth grade, as a saying goodbye thing, I guess, was playing something called "Lapte Gros", in which the kids form a sort of a ramp with their backs and other kids jump on their backs. I used to be at the end of that ramp, keeping them from hitting their heads to the wall.

That didn’t mean that I was friends with all of them. There were a few colleagues who had always been mean to me in different ways, most of them disgusting, by the way. I remember I’ve actually beat one of them with my fist one day because I was so annoyed and so sad that I felt wouldn’t care even if I killed him; in fact I wish I had, he would’ve deserved it for his wasted and pointless life with no goal...

Over the years, throughout school, at the end of each ear - except for the first two and 8th grade - I've managed to get the so called "First Prize", which meant that I got to wear a commemorative crown of flowers when I got mentioned at the school year closing festivities, for outstanding results. I don't know how much I deserved getting that, but I do miss it. It used to be a thing that motivated me to have better and better school results.

When 8th grade was finally over I felt relieved and I took the time to watch the sunset in the park in the day right before the National Exams (at the time called "Capacity Exam") started.

That night I couldn't sleep. It was a Sunday and the next day the biggest exam of my life was supposed to begin. Of course this hasn't been without incidents, at least from my father's side. He insisted on driving us to the school I was supposed to take my exam at, and along the way he kept making both mine and my mother's lives miserable, as this is the only thing he had truly always known how to do.

At the designated hour we all went inside and awaited our exam papers. Fortunately everything went fine and I wrote enough to get more than just a passing grade. This happened 3 days in a row, one for each exam, in this order: Romanian, Math, and History.

High School

During eighth grade we were supposed to make a list of all the high schools where we would want to get sent to automatically by the central computer which would do that according to the results of the National Exams combined with the average results of the years of Gymnasium.

I got sent to the Petru Rareş Technical College, the section of Philology – which meant that I would put an accent on letters, instead of numbers and logic. That didn’t last too long, though, because I requested a transfer to Mathematics and Informatics the following year. However, I did have to endure a full year of Philology; by the way, I remember Philology in Petru Rareş to be about the hundredth option I had listed.

Anyway, in September 2002 I’ve started the new school year, continuing my studies. I remember the uniform I had worn that day and also for the rest of the year, with a green vest, white shirt and black pants; it made me feel pretty good and also somewhat proud of myself.

On the first day of study I was anxious to get in the classroom, so I stood near the door, which also happened to be at a higher level than the soil, so I guess that was the reason why my mother said “Don’t be higher than they are!” to me... although I don’t really understand what would be the problem; they didn’t care anyway and also they’ve proven to be lower than me over the years, in more ways than one...

As always, I did try to make some friends, and I failed for both my fault and theirs – also as always.

I had some pretty childish or... rather immature colleagues; I don’t understand why someone would make fun of someone else’s food; this was one of the topics of discussion between the members of a little group that mocked me pretty much for nothing. I don’t get what’s wrong with home cooked food like an omelette sandwich or salami.

By the way, their leader’s father died. I once sweared him in such a way to include that, so it would hurt him deep inside, the same way it hurts me every time someone doesn’t leave me alone; I do not regret what I’ve done and I would’ve sweared both his parents, if they were both dead. People like him do not deserve mercy when it comes to this, because they don’t show mercy towards others either.

By the way, in all my school experience, with the small exception of a large suitcase-like backpack which neither I or anyone actually else wore on our back, I’ve never had an actual – or normal – backpack. I’ve always used suitcases or briefcases; it wasn’t my idea but I didn’t dislike it either; on the contrary, having a suitcase made packing up a lot easier.

I did have some friends in ninth grade, one of them was my desk mate... probably the only one, but I’m not sure if even he wanted to be friends with me. I used to go to computer game rooms and play stuff like Counter-Strike with him from time to time but that was basically it.

Speaking of computer games, the game I’ve played the most during ninth grade, and probably also obsessed me a bit was Grand Theft Auto 3. I played that game so much that I knew where to find most secrets.

Anyway, overall year one of high school (ninth grade) didn’t leave so many scars. It did, however, leave some rather amusing experiences.

The History teacher, my favorite one, had a pretty interesting sense of humor. He always replied in a humorous way to students who were supposed to get graded that day but didn’t study; he would do things like pretend that our problems mattered somehow to our grading, and then he would do something mean like say “We’re sorry and we’re supporting you in these dark times... however I must grade you TODAY.”

Of course, my favorite subject still was Informatics, and luckily we had that in ninth grade, so I got to have a bit of fun. I met the head Informatics teacher, Emma Dornescu, one day when I pretended to be innocent when I entered the IT laboratory and she was writing something, most likely for the secretaries, because they were pretty much incompetent and lazy;

I remember the dialogue going something like this (quoted):

- Good afternoon. My name is Ionică Dumitru. I was wondering if you can tell me if I have a good computer or not. It’s a Pentium 4 with 512 MB of RAM, a 60 GB hard drive, and a GeForce 2 video card.
- And you’ve come here to brag?
- No. Of course not. I just wanted to know if it’s good and if I can help you with anything at the IT lab.
- Yes. It’s good, it’s very good.

Later on I started helping with stuff at that IT lab, including writing documents whenever I had the opportunity to go there because the teacher of the subject had not shown up to hold the lesson.

I remember that our Geography teacher also was pretty generous and humorous. He was the only Geography teacher I ever liked. There was this time when he had something to do and he had told us to stay inside the classroom; I felt the need to get some fresh air, however, so I went out and wandered a bit through the school garden. Meanwhile he came back and asked where I was. The students didn’t know so, knowing about me always going to the IT lab he looked for me there... but the IT lab was closed. When he came back in the classroom he saw me out the window and said “What are you doing? Get back inside this instant!” and then laughed at the end of the lesson when I wanted to apologize.

He wasn’t also not that severe when it came to grading us... or maybe it was just his sense of humor, for example when I had used “I’m sorry sir. I think I’ve missed that. I study by skip-reading...” as an excuse for not studying some details he wanted me to know.

As I mentioned, I wanted to move to another class, the one with Mathematics and Informatics. For that I had to study pretty hard throughout the whole year and in the summer vacation; I had to do that because there were things which the students in Philology didn’t study in Mathematics, Physics, and Informatics – especially basic computer programming knowledge.

During the summer vacation I had studied math with the help of my new tutor. She was pretty severe and gave me a lot of homework. I guess that proved useful in the end, even though – by the way – I had just joined the computer network my neighbors created between them and I had Internet access for the first time, and my homework left me quite little time for myself to use for fun with network computer games and talking to people over the Internet (or even within the local area network, with a program called Network Assistant).

I also had tutoring in Physics class, to understand some things I couldn’t in class, and also to catch up to the stuff my future colleagues learned. As a side story, this is the way I met and became close friends with my Physics teacher from ninth grade.

All the work I had to do during summer resumed to the special exams I had to take along with other children – who did not fully graduate the year. I had taken the exam in Informatics where I wrote a lot of things about computer hardware, and computer viruses. The head Informatics teacher seemed a bit disappointed about me not taking the subject in programming; I was only a beginner, though.

The Physics and Math exams didn’t go that well although the head Math teacher allowed me to pass them and thus to be able to move to his class – he was the class master of the Mathematics and Informatics class.

I wasn’t the only kid who wanted to transfer there, by the way. Some other student wanted to do that and in Informatics class the teacher allowed him to pretty much copy everything I wrote in my exam, in order for him to be allowed to pass. I did not like that.

So I passed and started the 10th grade with my new classmates. That’s when my worst troubles began.

I don’t really remember much from years 10 to 12, just a few events and details; I guess my mind doesn’t really want to remember much about that...

The thing that bothered me the most was one of my colleagues who was completely sexually obsessed, and not just that but he was extremely awkward, stupid looking and was proud of himself for everything he did, too.

I really hated that guy and I wasn’t afraid of showing it. The more he did, the more he talked to me, and just the way he talked to me made me hate him and his kind so much that I would’ve done anything to see him gone.

I remember asking him a simple question once, about something special he did. Don’t remember what that was, though, but his answer was, naturally, extremely stupid: “Through perseverance and a lot of sex.”

Sometimes when we had Biology class our teacher would move us to another special classroom. There my colleagues would always do something stupid like putting a bone in a skeleton’s crotch...

That also reminded me of eighth grade when we had Human Anatomy as a subject and, of course, my immature colleagues made fun in every possible way of whatever the teacher said, especially when it came to reproductive organs. I do not see the point in making fun of a part of your body.

In 10th grade the true nightmare regarding Geography class had only just begun. We didn’t have the same teacher as the Philology class. We had the worst teacher in school. I used to call her the “demon lady” because her eyes were so black you couldn’t make a difference between her iris and her pupil. She gave me my first very bad mark of high school because I couldn’t memorize 100 capitals of the World. I just couldn’t; my memory works differently. She had no heart, however, and forced me to memorize them. That effectively destroyed my memory forever. After that event I was effectively unable to memorize anything I didn’t like anymore, and she probably knew it. She hunted me throughout the years until she finally managed to make me fail at least one semester in 12th grade.

About in 11th grade the high school had received a donation of IBM computers so they made a new IT lab. It was managed by both my Informatics and my Physics teacher. I remember there was one funny event when I went to the IT lab and for some reason the Physics teacher on her knees or rather “on four legs” and she looked like she was doing something behind a computer while she was talking to the Informatics teacher; she was probably arranging some cables but she still said “It’s not what it looks like!!” to me...

Another interesting event was when my Informatics teacher did something pretty abusive, telling me that she’ll give me a very bad mark if I don’t help one of her friends or... rather one of the employees of the high school. I was supposed to install an operating system on his brand new personal computer, which I did. However, after that I had to visit him at his home for some reason, maybe to install some CD burning software and show him how to use it. I recall doing that too.

That day I’ve been away for a bit too long and my mother became worried. When I got home she knew where I was and she slapped me for lying to her about where I was going. I did not, however, know I was going to be away for that long; that day I didn’t have much to do and I thought I would be done pretty quickly.

Something I miss doing from that period of time is going to a computer store called “Best Computers” which resided basically on the same street where I had bought my first computer. I had a friend who worked for them and I visited him from time to time, talking about computer components and computer games. I guess it was a time when I really wanted to have someone to talk to...

Last, but not least, last required year of school, 12th grade. Throughout high school I kept being tutored in Math, Literature and French... for obvious reasons.

This was the last year of school and immediately after it the Baccalaureate exam would follow, the biggest and hardest exam of my life, which is also the reason why people call it “The Exam of Life”.

I barely managed to pass 11th grade and my sadness and depression grew more and more along the way. Throughout the years I’ve become more and more dark, sad and depressed, all because of school. My only happiness at the time was visiting some site called Husky.ro. I found out about huskies recently and I was a bit obsessed with them so I read about their personality and discovered that they were like me. They would make the perfect friends to me.

By the end of 11th grade I wanted to kill myself before reaching the age of 18. The thing that stopped me was the fact that we got new neighbors that summer and they had two Siberian huskies, so I got to spend time and play with the dogs, thing which made me happy for the first time in a long while. In a way huskies, especially the youngest one, saved my life – at least for now. My happiness had to be ruined by 12th grade when the demon Geography teacher finally managed to fail me, at least that semester.

That made me swear that if I wouldn’t even get a chance to take the Baccalaurate exam or, if I would fail it, I would kill myself.

From that point onward I was completely discouraged; I had lost all hope, especially because I had a 50% chance to also fail Math and even Physics. At the point of failing three subjects I would automatically repeat the whole year. I would not have accepted that, even if it meant I would have to die to finally be free.

Ironically, I got saved at the very last moment by the person I expected the least. My French teacher from 10th grade onward, with whom I had become good friends with over the years, had blackmailed both the Geography and Math teachers into allowing me to graduate. He was very severe regarding marks in his class and if I wasn’t allowed to pass, he would fail most of the other students as well... so the price for their lives was mine.

In a way I felt redeemed by that, because even if not by my own will, I would finally get my revenge for all they’ve done to me over the years.

During 12th grade I had taken a lot of pictures of myself and of other things with the – at the time – brand new VGA camera phone my mom bought me at the end of 11th grade; that was also the first ever type of camera I got and it really meant a lot to me. I’ve always wished to have my own camera, as much as I wished to have my first PC.

A few days before the Baccalaureate exam began I had taken a few last pictures of myself, at least I thought they were going to be. I entered the corridors of the place I had to take the exams thinking that I would directly fail it. However, that had not been the case, because I am writing this now, five years after this event.

The Baccalaureate exam was not without events, though. I had to take 6 exams, in the following order: Romanian – oral, French – oral, Romanian – written, Math, Biology, and English – written.

The written exam in Romanian has been a disaster throughout the country, as the largest exam created a lot of confusion regarding a character you would have to analyze him for being an intellectual. About half the contestants chose a bad character, and half of this number failed the exam because they chose the wrong one out of all possibilities. I was among the ones who made a wrong choice, but I did choose the good one to talk about, even though it wasn’t completely correct.

I had a great chance to fail the Math exam too, because of the subject papers they had given me; they didn’t fit the type of math I learned in high school and if I hadn’t asked for the right one I would’ve gotten 0 points; it didn’t matter if it wasn’t my fault, I would’ve had to take the exam again.

The Biology and English exams went well and in fact I got the highest mark in the English one; I had to write an essay about a time in my life where “one today is worth two tomorrows” but I couldn’t think of anything like that because I had no such event. I did, however, remember one of the episodes of Life with Louie, the one about the time when his grandmother died, and I adapted that story and wrote the essay about that. I hope my mother doesn’t think I wasted my time watching TV anymore...

The thing which made me proud of myself - and I’m still proud of it even today - is the fact that I had passed the Baccalaureate exam without even attempting to cheat, despite people advising me to do the opposite.

The Four + 1 years of Faculty

The worst part of my life was now finally over. Now that I had passed the Baccalaureate exam I was finally free and able to go to a faculty, where I hoped to find decent people and maybe a different atmosphere, and so it was.

The colleagues here were much different than what I’ve been used to so far. It didn’t lack undesirable people either, but the difference was huge. I had finally been able to make some friends and have topics of discussion and even play games, from paper games like “pen soccer” to PC video games through elaborate virtual local area networks.

It hasn’t been easy, though; of all the subjects I’ve only liked the Cisco Technologies courses which included the IT Essensials and CCNA Exploration courses.

Everything else felt boring to me, and sometimes completely useless. I had courses in Math, Physics, Electronics, Electronic Logic, and Computer Programming. I wasn’t really good at any of them and I struggled to pass them all; even if I did have a few remnant exams it was much different than all I’ve had to endure all these years.

There have been times when I thought I wouldn’t make it, meaning I wouldn’t graduate but I just kept going anyway. I guess I wanted to see where that road would take me.

The biggest problem I had, along with about half of the other students in my class, was with Electronics. The teacher, a politician whose name is Bobulescu, is quite severe in grading students and didn’t allow anybody to pass unless they’ve knew at least half of the entire subject matter. I’ve tried taking his exam three times and each time was a failure; the fourth time I had to pay a tax in order to be able to take the exam again, but I did finally manage to pass it that time, along with one or two other colleagues.

I must admit that exam was one of the hardest of my life. Compared to this the hard exams I had to pass at our Programming teacher were piece of cake – despite having to do one or two favors for him, because I still had to work a lot to get a passing grade.

Speaking of CISCO, I’ve passed most of its exams without cheating. The problem was that their exams are inflexible and if you fail the exam once you’ll probably get asked the same question again. I had failed the very final exam, the one for CISCO CCNA 4, and had to take it again. I really didn’t want to cheat but I had no choice, given the fact that in order to pass you need at least 8 out of 10 – and I’ve got 7.90 in my first attempt.

There haven’t been any memorable events, not bad or sad ones anyway. One of my first exam days, however, had been rather funny. We had to take two exams in the same day, one right after another. The was the first exam I had in year one, in Programming class. The teacher told us that when were ready we could go and leave the paper on his desk, to which, because I didn’t know much about what to write, I said “Really?”, meaning that it wouldn’t have been impossible for me to bring the blank pages...

In year two me and my colleagues used to have fun during the recess between Programming class by synchronizing our phones to sing the “Still Alive” song from Valve, from the game Portal. It was also a way for me to test my freshly bought Orange SPV E650 at the time; I bought that phone mostly out of my own earned money, because I had worked for the ISP called “Lightning-net” – the one that used to also be my ISP - for a few months.

I was pretty impressed with the phone’s capabilities at the time; true multitasking on a phone wasn’t something you would see every day.

Later on, in year 3 I became friends with more colleagues and we started doing a lot of stuff together, like going to pizza restaurants together, playing pool, air hockey, arcade video games and more.

In October that year I’ve also built my latest gaming computer, to commemorate a decade since I had bought my first computer.

Later on, also in year three whenever we were at faculty we would do something fun or stupid, depending on our mood; that went from playing “Chicken Invaders” and “Plants vs. Zombies” on the faculty’s computers to Counter-Strike, Quake III Arena, Warcraft 3 DoTA, playing with paper airplanes through class, and so on... while the teachers were telling stuff to whomever wanted to listen – but we weren’t among those people, of course.

Speaking of which, there was this teacher I had in GSM Technologies class that gave each of us a project, and at the end of the faculty year we presented it and we were supposed to get graded. I remember saying a pretty mean joke related to jews outloud that day, and the teacher looked at me in a pretty upset way; the thing that made me say that joke was a few Stars of David scratched into the desk I was sitting at. Anyway, the way our teacher looked at us made me wonder if I had failed in a horrible way, meaning that he was actually Jewish. I may never know...

Everything has to end sometime, however, so in year 4 we stopped doing all these things; one of the reasons for that was that we didn’t have to go to faculty anymore, and instead we had to write our graduation projects.

I chose mine in programming, the topic was about Algorithms. I chose to make it in such way to be like an introductive course.

Unrelated to all this was the fact that my mother had the idea to get me to do some voluntary work. She went to some NGO fest and found an interesting organization called The New Horizons Foundation; they do volunteering with their so called “IMPACT” clubs in high schools.

I decided to give it a try and see what can come of this, so I went to their little forming course, although working with people was definitely not for me. However, it was pretty cute; I could still help with IT, which was exactly what I did for about two years now.

I must admit that I couldn’t really stand one of the persons there, who was also the most charismatic. Unfortunately, when she had to leave, everything related to the volunteering in that school. Anyway thanks to the volunteer training I got to meet a few people and make a few new friends. One of them is an artist who has made two awesome gifts for me and for someone very special to me.

Speaking of which, in March 2010, about half of my last year of faculty, I’ve met a German girl, the person who turned out to be the love of my life, and the only one I’ve ever been able to truly love; it was a feeling I had never felt before, and much different than what I knew to be simple attraction.

It was the first time I felt truly happy in my entire life, and we are so much alike that I had felt her to be my true mate for life since the very first days.

It was also very unexpected too, given the nature of both of us, especially the fact that I’ve fallen in love with her for who she really is. I haven’t even seen her at first and yet it felt so wonderful that no words can ever describe it, and we’ve been doing everything together ever since.

It was the first time I was truly happy to be alive and the first time I had regretted my suicidal thoughts from 12th grade; I am extremely grateful I did not do that deed, otherwise I would’ve never met her, and she means everything to me.

Master and Faculty of Letters

The last chapter in this story, and also the reason for my last depression is the post graduate courses I tried to attend at the Polytechnics University, mostly because my mother had forced me to. My entire depression has been generated by the fact that I was extremely enthusiastic about these courses but in the end it turned out I am not capable of studying in that rhythm any more and I’ve lost several months of my life for nothing.

I also went to a second faculty, because I really wanted to learn German; I wanted that my entire life but I never got to. In the end I couldn’t keep up because I tried doing them both at the same time. It didn’t matter, however, because the faculty of letters wasn’t really for me. The first year has been enough for it to serve the purpose I went there in the first place: to get a good start with German.

I have resigned my studies at both of them, the master in December and the other in June; I know my limits.

It is when I have fully resigned that my depression started to fade away and I started feeling much better.

Anyway, if it wasn’t for literature I would’ve wanted to continue studies at the Faculty of Letters; however, I really can’t stand that, so therefore here ends this chapter of my life.

End of an era.

I have written this document because I am still sometimes haunted by memories of my past and I want to let go of them, at least not keeping them inside; those were the school memories of Dumitru-Mihail Ionică, an Aspie now graduate Engineer in Computers and Information Technology.

Thanks for reading.

Valuable lessons for life which you can learn by watching "The Omen 666"

2011-07-24T18:06:00.001-07:00

Here are some valuable lessons for life which you can learn by watching "The Omen 666". Don't believe me? Watch the movie yourself, then. :)

Children are the essence of evil;
Satan is a furry;
The Son of Satan has either Autism or Asperger Syndrome;
Blondes are evil;
Film cameras can tell you how you're soon going to die;
Priests are schizophrenic;
You can easily kill someone in a hospital just by leaving a child at the door to distract the guards;
Helping out a person in need will most likely bring you suffering later on in life;

A link to the past

2011-07-16T02:47:00.000-07:00

A.k.a. "The Good Ol' Days of Computing" and why I am so attached to old computers / computer components, especially the ones which resemble those of my first computer.

I can never forget about my first days of owning a personal computer, especially not about my first computer nor the games I used to play on it - which I got somewhere in May - June 1998.

The configuration of my first computer was... rather interesting. It didn't show the right processor type in the System Properties window. I don't really know why. Maybe it was a bug because the Windows 95 installation was upgraded from Windows 3.1. I know this because it had MS-DOS 6.22 installed at first and it leaves its distinctive signature when you install it - it labels the C: partition as "MSDOS_6".

Anyway... the configuration was the following: Cyrix PR200 processor (166 MHz, however it was overclocked at 200 MHz because the idiots who configured it didn't know what PR200 meant and they've probably thought it meant its native speed is 200MHz), 16 MB of RAM (which I found out later to actually be 24 MB of RAM, but the BIOS didn't recognize the two SIMM modules properly - it saw only 8 MB per module instead of 12), a 1.6 GB hard drive and a 3.5 inch floppy drive (and of course the keyboard was of AT type and a serial port mouse). Oh... and the monitor was a Sampo 14" SVGA model, pretty good for the time, actually.

Well... it was my first computer and I would've settled for anything just to have one, because I wished for one for years. On our way home I was hugging the keyboard like I haven't hugged anyone in my life and I was petting it too. I guess that my Aspie nature showed up quite intensely from that day.

When we finally got home and I managed to connect all the peripherals to the computer I was quite anxious about what would happen the first time I ever pressed the power button. So I did... and it started loading. It showed the Video BIOS on the screen which, by the way, was of a SIS graphics card with 1 MB memory... and drivers only for Windows 3.1, which came on a floppy disk. :)

After the Video BIOS loaded the computer always halted after the hard drive detection, telling me "Press F1 to enter Setup". I had no idea what that meant, because I've never seen a BIOS CMOS configuration screen in my life before. I still have no idea what it did that - continuously tell me to enter the BIOS setup - by the way.

Having no other choice I pressed F1 and it showed the BIOS Configuration Utility. The BIOS vendor was AMI, by the way. I looked around that thing for a while, trying to find a way to quit it, while my father was being a worthless retard, like always, telling me that everything that I learned before was for nothing. How could I have learned about a thing like that in a beginner's course? Anyway the only type of Setup I knew about was when you wanted to install Windows 95. I really didn't know there could be any other kind.

Anyway, I did select "Save and Exit" a few times in a row and the BIOS still wanted me to enter Setup, but it did boot up properly, eventually - I think it was the fourth time or so.

So finally Windows 95 began loading. I truly miss the "Starting Windows 95..." message of my original computer. That's when I saw how different it was from what I knew but I got used to it pretty quickly, though.

For a few months I was learning how to get around Windows 95 and also I started going to some courses about Windows 95 and Microsoft Office 95. Meanwhile I started buying a few PC magazines, including PC World (IDG Romania) and PC Gaming. It was because of PC Gaming that I saw a CD for the first time in my life. I didn't know you could actually use it with a computer but I figured that out later, I think it was when I carefully analyzed some details about the configuration of a computer which some kid won from a competition organized by the Mickey Mouse comic book Romania (yes, I read that for years and I used to have a huge pile of comic books from it) but also probably of the fact that I saw something similar to my - at the time - brand new Philips Mini HiFi System which included a CD player. Obviously computer CDs didn't work with a music CD player, so I wanted to see what was with that CD and asked my parents to get my PC to service so that they can install a CD-ROM drive. That happened within a few days - meaning I had to stay without a computer for a few days but at the time I wasn't -yet- so addicted to it.

Finally I had a CD-ROM. It was a BTC 24x drive, which is the reason why I've asked my boss this Wednesday to let me have the 48x drive I had found the last Friday. I really liked that CD-ROM drive and I truly miss it. I wish I could find the person I sold the computer I had later on to which I had installed that CD-ROM drive and ask her to buy the drive back - or better yet to buy back the whole computer.

Now that I could access the CDs I had from a few PC magazines. One or two contained just some computer programs, and other two contained some games. I didn't know how to play them at first but I found out how to install a game later on. After another few more months, since I had those PC and Office 95 courses, I asked my parents for that office suite and also for some "active speakers" - I didn't know it also implied a sound card but they did install one by default - and it was an ISA port Avance Logic (now known as Realtek) card. I waited a week or more for that and I still remember how weird it felt to have the peripherals but not the actual computer. When I finally got it back it was time for me to have some fun. I did a lot of things in MS Office and I had fun doing even those. Now comes the gaming part. I did try playing some games before I had the sound card but now it was starting to get really fun. I mostly played demos for a lot of games, mainly because I didn't have money - and my parents never wanted to give me money - for buying games, but also the configuration didn't allow for just any type of game.

Anyway, the games which I've played the most, over and over again, were:

The Red Baron (for DOS)
Worms Armageddon
Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
SWAT 2
Commandos: Behind The Call of Duty
Commanche Gold
Ultimate Race PRO
Gruntz
Caesar III
StarCraft
Ignition - (probably the only full game I've ever had)

and many more which I can't remember now.

I've always wanted to play 3D shooters but I didn't have a 3D accelerated card and I didn't even know if it would work. That computer had some weird trouble anyway. As far as I can tell it had a very weird IRQ conflict between the ISA audio card and the floppy disk controller. The first time I've booted the sound never worked but after that if I pressed Reset the sound card worked... but the floppy drive would have trouble.

It was a pretty interesting time. Of all the games I've played Worms Armageddon remained my all time favorite, because it was so funny and cute. :)

When I was in 6th grade my second mentor - which was my Informatics teacher and later on my math teacher and tutor - offered to install Windows 98 on my computer and I accepted because I really liked the way it looked and the enhancements it added to the old Windows 95 environment. That's when we found out that the graphics card didn't have drivers for Windows 95 or later. It did work - in a rather forced way - with the Windows 3.1 drivers but they couldn't be installed in any other way than running their Setup program. The sound card didn't work for a while because Windows 98 didn't have the drivers for that model but I didn't really mind. We got it to work later on and to my happyness it didn't have that weird IRQ conflict any more.

The story of that computer ended one day when it started freezing all of a sudden. At first we thought that it was because it had no grounding. Turned out to be the processor, which was overheating so much that, in combination with all the dust inside the case, it actually broke the cooler, making it overheat even more. My teacher lowered the working frequency to the normal one it should've had from the beginning - 166 MHz instead of 200 MHz but the damage was already done. The processor began self destructing itself, an interesting trait which Cyrix's processors had, probably one of the reason why they almost went bankrupt and they were bought by VIA. The computer worked like that until one day when no matter what I did it kept freezing over and over again. That's when my teacher found me a temporary PC with a Pentium MMX running at 133 MHz which, believe it or not, worked even better than that Cyrix at 200 MHz. That's the computer I sold to get some money I needed at the beginning of 2002 and I regret doing that so much to this day and I will never stop collecting old computer and old computer hardware. I hope that one day I'll be able to rebuild each computer I owned. I can not accept losing any treasureable memory of my past.

Meme: The things I love / like

2011-06-24T07:19:00.001-07:00

The things I love:

I can truly love only one person in the world. My mate, Jali.
I love spending time with my mate and talking to her.

The things I like:

I like my Asperger syndrome because it makes me and my mate be exactly the same.
I like computers and just about anything related to them, especially the Internet.
I like typewriters.
I like videogames.
I like collecting stuff, especially old computers, typewriters, computer components, etc.
I like doing the things I enjoy or going to the places that have deep meaning to me over and over again.
I like Winter and cold temperatures.
I like Germany, the German language and most things made in Germany (I am a germanophile).
I like making fun of France.
I like furries and The Furry Fandom.
I like watching some TV shows and watching movies.
I like the "pommes" type of food (I will not say the English name, because it includes the word "French").
I like discipline.
I like being strict.
I like being formal.
I like spending time at home.
I like being an asshole to Apple customers.

- The list will be updated as necessary. -

Meme: The things I hate

2011-06-18T15:43:00.000-07:00

Things I hate - got the idea from Zhiarie Tagoras

I hate retarded people above everything!
I hate socializing and social situations.
I hate my parents. Always, especially my father, I hate him the most and wish I could kill him.
I hate alcohol and I especially hate tobacco. Fuck all of you who love to smoke!
I hate hippies.
I hate religion and I wish I could destroy it forever. I hate how humanity can not evolve thanks to it.
I hate my country's people and retarded history.
I hate people who are so retarded they can't realize how stupid it is to intentionally type in a sloppy and careless way.
I hate people who have nothing better to do than gossip all the time.
I hate children and I hate people who think that having a family and "having a life" means having children with their partner.
I hate what this world has become thanks to too much democracy which will one day turn against humanity.
I hate France and everything related to it, especially that retarded fuckin' language - and I'm also proud of it.
I hate Apple and everything related to it, especially that bastard Steve Jobs. I hate his pathetic and worthless life and how he thinks he's better than others. I hate how 90% of the planet doesn't see him for what he really is.
I generally hate dogs, with the exception of Siberian Huskies and German Shepherds or other breeds with similar aspect, build and type of personality.
I hate insects, with only a few exceptions not worth mentioning.
I hate my body.
I hate makeup and I hate women who wear makeup.
I hate parties - the social event type of party.
I hate stereotypes.
I hate people who believe that revenge is not the answer to when somebody hurts you in such way that they truly deserve what's coming to them.
I hate parents that try creating a copy of themselves in their children.
I hate retarded parents that can't understand their children and can not comprehend the fact that their child is different from them and what they define or think the definition of normal is.
I hate my colleagues.
I hate people who think that I am not the way I say I am.
I hate people who think I am normal and try explaining to me about how I am normal and that everyone has problems like I do.
I hate how my mother thinks that everyone is the same and has the same problems we do and refuses to understand that the world isn't the way she says it is.
I hate the people which we call "cocalari" to the point that I want to exterminate them and I'm proud of it too!
I hate how the fear of Communism and Fascism has transformed the world into a stupidity and ignorance loving hell hole full of people that are even proud of what they are.
I hate circumcision and any other retarded practice like it.
I hate body modification, especially piercing.
I hate Michael Jackson.
I hate people who try explaining the existence of their imaginary friend with redundant crap which makes no sense.
I hate people who think that the human "soul" has anything to do with "divinity" and that humans are any better than animals.
I hate people who believe in Creationism, because they think that a being who exists without anyone having to create it is possible but a thing like the Universe existing without anyone having to create it is not. - Where is the logic here?
I hate what people call "God". Even if that thing was real I still wouldn't worship it because it doesn't deserve it.
I hate being touched by people, either intentionally or unintentionally.
I hate it when people answer other people’s phones.

- The list will be updated as necessary. -

Asperger Syndrome

2011-05-13T21:53:00.000-07:00

As an introduction, I must mention that the reason why I am presenting this is because I also fall into this category. I was suggested to talk about it because I know what it is and how it manifests, at least for my own personality.

A few years ago, instead of taking an exam I had to present a hand written essay of 1500 words, in which I had to describe the development of my personal and professional life. Upset because I had to write the whole thing by hand, I started with a computer draft, in such way that I would write the entire story of my life in exactly 1500 words – in Romanian, of course.

I started by describing my childhood as it was, at the time I didn’t know about Asperger. I have described only what compulsive behavior I have noticed in myself over time, because I knew what OCD was. Most – if not all – people which have Asperger Syndrome also have symptoms of OCD. It’s one of the many traits of this interesting thing. I have written about how I’ve always been obsessive about how things should look, symmetry, about being extremely precise and specific, about having a repulsion of talking in public and more. One of the things I hated most and didn’t understand was being brought in front of the class and being made fun of by my colleagues.

I’ve always been fascinated by electronics, and also I’ve always been the one in the family who knew how stuff worked. I discovered the computer when I was just about 6 years old and without ever seeing one before in my life, I knew how complex it was. Since then I couldn’t think of anything else, I wanted to have it so much that I would’ve done anything that one day my parents would give me one as a gift, thing which happened in mid 1998. Ever since I started learning how to work with it and also started collecting all sorts of things related to it – floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, very old computer components and chips, and other things, most of them are in good functioning condition because I keep them that way.

So far so good, but what’s this got to do with the main subject? In my childhood I used to sometimes play with the other children but not many times. I find and have always found some types of social interaction embarrassing or even repulsive. Most of the time I spent at home, having fun in my own way – which of course many people did not understand.

Social interaction also means talking to people… thing which I don’t do. When I was a child I sometimes talked to my colleagues, but only to those that had a bit of interest in what I did as well. I never talked to anyone about every day life subjects like parents, TV, later on girls, cars or other types of gossip. I couldn’t. The only thing which presented interest to me is the one that also obsessed me.

As a coincidence, this week, on Monday, I talked to an old teacher of mine from high school. I told her about some things I plan on doing in the future and she got a bit upset, because she thinks I am a normal person. Well… she never really got to observe me. She described to me about some friends of hers who once visited all of a sudden and wanted her and her children to take theirs for a walk in the city or some parks, because they don’t get out of the house, they do mostly the exact thing they did as soon as they had the chance when they entered my teacher’s home – sit at the computer desk and play with the computer. That’s exactly what I would’ve done as well. I told her that this is the way I have fun: by browsing the Internet and fixing computers. I break my computers intentionally and then fix them again just for fun. I also find fun collecting very old things, especially computer microprocessors and special types of BIOS chips, typewriters and even whole computers because of the way they are built. I find joy in that and usually in repeatedly doing some things that have a deep meaning to me from my childhood or even from present days, including going to specific places, even just the streets if the buildings or companies don’t exist anymore. I never get bored of doing that, no matter how many times I do it, over and over again.

Up until now I talked about how it manifests in my personality. These things usually point to people that are called geeks or nerds but there’s a difference...

Asperger Syndrome is, in fact, a form of autism. It is one of the three recognized disorders in the autism spectrum, the other two are – of course – pure Autism, which greatly impairs an individual on different social and mental development levels, and PDD-NOS (The Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified). The way Asperger Syndrome manifests itself is characterized by abnormalities of social interaction, restricted and repetitive interests and behavior. To be more specific, people with this condition become over-focused or obsessed with a single object or topic, ignoring all others, and they want to know everything about this topic, and often talk about little or nothing else.

Children with Asperger Syndrome will present many facts about their subject of interest, but there may be no point or conclusion. They often don’t recognize that the other person has lost interest in the topic, and their areas of interest may be quite narrow, from an obsession with train schedules, household objects or collections of objects. People with Asperger Syndrome do not withdraw from the world in the way people with pure autism do. They often approach other people but their problems with language in a social setting often lead to isolation because their body language may be off, they may speak in a monotone way or not respond to other people’s comments or emotions, they may not understand sarcasm or humor or they may take a figure of speech literally. They have problems with eye contact, facial expressions, body postures or gestures – speaking of which, I almost never have eye contact with anyone.

People with Asperger Syndrome have trouble forming relationships with children, be it their own age or other adults, because they are unable to respond emotionally in normal social interactions, they’re not flexible about routines or rituals, they have difficulty showing, bringing or pointing out objects of interest to other people and they don’t express pleasure at other people’s happiness. This is a very typical description of myself. I can not stand being near children and can not feel or express pleasure in their or other people’s happiness. This may sound cruel or soulless but although I can feel emotions such as pity, compassion and love, the last two I have never truly felt in my life up until a year ago, and for only one person, who is exactly like me.

Many children with Asperger may show delays in motor development, and unusual physical behavior, like delays in being able to ride a bicycle, catch a ball or play equipment, they can display clumsiness when walking or doing other activities, they have repetitive behaviors in which they can sometimes injure themselves, and they can show repetitive body movements.

Many children with Asperger Syndrome are very active and may be diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and they may also display some tics or symptoms of Tourette.

Last but not least… many people with Asperger display anxiety or depression during adolescence and young adulthood – which also happened to me. I have a very depressive personality.

I have presented this because of the way I am, and because I know what it feels like. Apparently there are treatments for disorders like mine, but honestly… I don’t want to change. I’ve been like this my whole life and for the first time in my life I felt love and also felt loved. Changing will take all that away from me. However… there are many other people like me out there, often misunderstood and misjudged by society. I wanted to give an example of what’s it like to live like this so that maybe people will judge them less.

People like me often help you with your computer problems, they develop the software you use every day for things like writing a document like this, watching movies, chatting and using voice over the Internet and much more, not limited to IT, but their lack of social skills makes them often be seen as unimportant or even sometimes as objects.

I want them to be seen for what they are.

Formspring answer regarding circumcision

2011-04-11T19:41:00.000-07:00

What are your feelings on body modification, including but not limited to, piercings, circumcision, tattoos, etc?

I don't have anything against tattoos and as far as genitals are not altered, I don't have anything against piercings either. That brings me to the matter of circumcision, of which I've posted on Twitter a few times. I am completely against it, it should only be done if it is justified, meaning if it treats (TREATS, NOT PREVENTS) an actual disease.

1. There is no scientific evidence in favor of it preventing cancer or any other serious disease and also no real neutral doctor can say anything in its favor.

2. Neither culture or religion should have the right to impose you to cut yourself or your son - or daughter, for that matter. Limiting someone's sexual pleasure is an act against nature, because nature intended you to feel it, proving that not everything in life has to be sadness and pain. If you do that for cultural or religious purposes you obviously want to eliminate any enjoyable thing in life - especially if you are doing it to a poor girl. Also, any culture or religion that does that SHOULD BE TERMINATED.

3. Just because you're circumcised doesn't mean your child should also be. That's like saying you have to be an amputee just because your parents are.

4. If you think that the foreskin has no nervous endings, you should study anatomy carefully - in case you have the mental ability to do that. The foreskin has a very special role in sexual stimulation. A male has the same right to feel pleasure as the female and vice versa.

5. If your girlfriend wants you to get cut because she would like you better that way, you should reconsider how much she is worth to you, because obviously she doesn't care about your needs.

6. Circumcision is necessary when it can actually TREAT a condition. Saying that you want to prevent something before you know it can actually ever happen is like saying you want to cut your arm off because you will lose it anyway sometime in your life.

Romanian Traditions – The Trinket (English Homework)

2011-03-25T10:50:00.000-07:00

As homework for today's English class I had to do a translation from Romanian to English of some text which the teacher gave us. This is just half of what we had to translate, the other half is something about the Romanian "Mucenici" tradition, which I have an even less interest in. The reason why I've posted this on my blog is because I've finally made a trinket myself, but not representing the bullshit people used to or still believe in. I wanted it to represent a coincidental special occasion for me in March. I may write about that some other time, though. Here's the translated text:

The so called Mărţişor (Trinket) is a Romanian specific tradition which doesn't exist in other cultures and it is taken from Dacians and Romans.

The vulgar (popular) name "Mărţişor" of the month of March comes from Latin - "martius". On the 1st of March, which was the first day of the old Roman calendar, the "Matronalia" holiday used to be celebrated. It was on this day the god of the forces of nature, of Spring and of agriculture, Mars, was also celebrated. Women and girls were given gifts.

To our ancestors the first day of the new year, on March 1st, represented the rebirth of nature. The joy of welcoming the new year at the beginning of Spring was symbolized by two strings which were tied together, at first made from cannabis or wool, later replaced by cotton. The two strings were of red and white color and were tied in such a way that they formed the shape of the number 8, accompanied by a gold or silver coin, some grass or some of the first flowers of Spring. In the oldest parts of Romania mothers would hang the trinkets from their children's necks or even to the entire family, tradition which is still kept today in some Romanian villages. The trinket was worn during the entire month of March.

The combination of the red and white colors is traditional. It exits in most Romanian traditions and events, like on the clothes of the bride and the groom, at the birth of a child, and in Oltenia they're even present when an elder passes on, in this case they represent the fact that life goes on after death. The wedding flag of Aromanians from Pind is white, whereas the one of aromanians from Fărşeraţi is red. Red and white are the used to decorate the first sheep which enter the sheep-hold, and the first plow of the season.

Between the 1st and 9th of March the trinket expresses the victory of Spring in the fight against Winter. Romanians express this symbol by an old saying, the so called "days of the old women" lead by Dochia.

On the gift giving of the trinket as an archaic ritual, the aromanians of Fărşeraţi kept the following tradition: children come with grass furrows and the first horn flowers from the sunny parts of mountains to the doorstep; each member of the family passes over the doorstep three times and the mother comes out with homemade pretzels; the horn flowers are tasted as a symbol for becoming strong as horn timber, and then they are worn together with the two strings until the end of the holidays.

On the last day of March, before sunset, the ritual of the trinket's removal takes place. In areas from fields the trinket is placed on a tree with flowers or on the branches of fruit trees. Mountain villages place the trinket on horn-trees or briers with flowers. With the coin from the trinket girls buy curd, which is believed to keep them white and beautiful throughout Summer. There's also a belief that the trinket will be taken to the sun by swallows, blessing the people who put it in the tree.

A day in the life of an Emo (joke)

2011-02-13T17:53:00.000-08:00

5:00 My little sister woke me up, she came back home drunk again. She only knows to drink and go to concerts. She doesn't love me. When I was of her age I had a stamp collection. I can't get to sleep again. I'll have to bite my nail polish.

6:00 I'm biting my nail polish.

7:00 My mother almost saw me biting my nail polish. She told me to get my faggy sorry ass out of the bed and go to school. She makes me cry...

7:05 I've started preparing for school, got my trousers on... they're tight. More badges, more, more! Ah fuck! I lost a badge. I hate this stupid world. Mustn't forget my hat and gotta put on as much black makeup on my eyes as possible.

7:20 My sister saw me. She started to laugh. Fuckin' punk.

7:21 A badge fell off. I put it back.

7:28 A badge fell off. I put it back.

7:35 I put my hat on, got out of the house and noticed I'm missing a badge. I found it and put it back where it belongs.

7:50 I put a sock on my head instead of the hat. I was wondering why this hat is so fuckin' tight. Shit happens. I returned home and took my hat and then went to school.

8:20 I'm late for class, they didn't let me in. I'm staying in the hallway. I'm crying.

8:41 Class is over, I've entered the classroom, threw my bag and got out in the hallway and stood there sad.

8:43 I hate my life. Staying with 5 other emo kids, crying.

9:00 In class. Crying.

9:10 They've kicked me out. I'm crying in the hallway.

9:15 I went to the bathroom.

9:16 I got to the bathroom. I've started crying. I forgot to take a piss...

9:17 While exiting the bathroom one of my badges fell off... in the toilet. I took it and put it back where it belongs.

9:18 I'm looking in the mirror. I'm cute. I should take a picture of myself.

9:31 (recess) The other emo kids came and said that I'm true. My sister was passing by and started to laugh. I told her she's mean. She kicked me in the face with her boot. She makes me cry. :(

9:35 The Emo kids told her she's wrong. She started beating them all with her boots.

9:37 I wanted to run away. She beat me up again.

9:44 I'm in class. My veins hurt.

10:10 I wrote the good bye letter on the bench.

10:12 The teacher saw me. She kicked me out. I'm crying.

10:21 I'm at the cantina. I started crying. I forgot to eat. My sister went by me and hit me on the back of my head. Coming out of the cantina a badge fell off in the garbage. I took it and put it back.

10:29 The emo kids saw me and told me that I'm true.

10:40 I'm in class. Writing my farewell letter, without blood. Yet. Well fuck the god damned blood. What's important is that the letter would be as sad as possible.

10:50 I've finished writing the letter, tried to read it and the teacher threw me out. While heading for the door a badge fell off. It fell behind the heater. I took it and put it back.

11:11 (recess) The emo kids saw the badge and told me that I'm true. I gave them the letter to read it. They've said I'm even more true. My brother passed by and told me that I'm an idiot and what I'm doing isn't true. I asked him what's true. He gave me his mp3 player to listen in class. Ramones and Sex Pistols.

12:30 I was listening to music in class. I got scared. I started crying. I ran away from class (I knew that my brother listened to crap but I didn't think they were that horrible). While I was running a badge fell off and I put it back. The teacher caught up with me. He grabbed me by my T-shirt. He brought me back in class and told me that I'm a fag then he kicked me out.

12:45 I'm crying.

12:50 (recess) I gave the boys the mp3 player to listen to my brother's crap. Costel passed out, Vasile started crying, Vova confessed that he's out of pink nail polish and got depressed, Lionia ran away screaming. One of her badges fell off. My brother saw this scene. He took the mp3 player, broke my face and told us that we're gay.

13:00 I started hitting on Svetlana. She told me that I'm a filthy fag. Yupy! She likes me! I'm so happy I'm crying.

13:20 The teacher kicked me out of class again.

13:40 Classes are over. I waited for the other emo kids. On our way home our badges fell off and we put them back. We talked about meeting up at 4 o'clock.

14:00 I'm home. Nobody else is here so I've started playing Tokio Hotel. I'm chewing off my nail polish.

14:20 My sister came home and stopped my cassette player. She went to sleep.

14:40 I started the player again and woke my sister. She broke my face, I tried retaliating...

14:50 AAAAAAAAAH!!! She makes me cry. :(

15:00 I'm laying tied up next to the heater, with a sock in my mouth and headphones in my ears. Something horrible is playing! I want to die.

15:10 Some of my sister's friends are visiting. They've put their coats on me and started beating me with their legs.

15:20 Mom came home, she hit the pile of clothes with her legs and by the moans she figured out that someone is in there.

15:30 Mom untied me and sent me to buy bread.

16:00 I'm standing in line at the market, with some bald guys next to me. They're looking at me in a weird way (I think they're jealous of me for having so many cool badges! :D)

16:10 They beat me up and took my money. I've tried to get up and a badge fell off. I put it back where it belongs.

16:20 I got home, my mother beat me up and went to get bread herself. Shit happens.

16:30 I'm late for the meeting with the other emo kids. They said I'm not true any more.

16:37 One of my badge fell off.

16:40 Made up with the emo kids. We're crying.

16:55 A punk went by and we told him that he's an asshole and to go fuck himself. And the whole group (25 people) beat him up. We're so true!!!

17:10 10 punks came and beat us all really bad. What idiots, we're more true anyway!!!

17:30 We're looking for change to get some beer. Yay, we're so true!

17:32 The sales woman didn't wanna give us beer.

17:35 We've managed to convince her to give us some beer. We got 2 liters! (Yay! We're more true than anyone!!!)

17:55 We wanted to open the beer. My sister and 4 other punks came and took our beer.

18:00 Some chicks were passing by on the street. I started hitting on them. They told me that I'm a helpless virgin and to leave them alone 'cause I'm a fuckin' fag. They're so sexy. They surely want me and envy me for having a more true makeup!

18:15 Vova said that he's a virgin and got depressed.

18:20 We saw a wedding. Alex said that she's dressed in white because she's... (we decided to dress up only in white starting tomorrow)

18:30 I got home, went to watch cartoons.

19:00 Cartoons are over and I'm writing my last epistle.

19:20 Listening to Tokio Hotel. It's an emo formation...

20:00 My little sister came by. She beat me up and went out.

21:00 Mom told me to go to bed. "Mom, I'm 17. Can I shave my feet?"

21:05 Mom beat my ass. I'm in bed and trying to get asleep. @&#$!!!

21:10 I can't sleep. I wanna chew my nails.

21:15 I chewed my nails. I'm asleep.

FAIL: 486 Powered PC Trouble

2010-11-14T13:30:00.000-08:00

So it seems that on my 486 PC I just can't run Windows 95 without compromising Windows 3.11. I won't do that. Anyway, here's the things I've done, in their order, to try to install and run Windows 95 on that computer.

Buy a pack of 30 Floppy Disks.
Write a Windows 95 image on the diskettes.
Tried to install, didn't work, found out that at first it was because of the BIOS' Anti Virus Protection - which in essence is a Read-Only setting for the Hard Disk's Master Boot Record and for the boot sectors of the partitions.
Tried again, got an error that I couldn't use that version of Windows Setup, as I already have an operating system installed - so I need to get an upgrade version.
Tried out a few hard drives, turns out the BIOS can't recognize a lot of hard drives and it can't recognize CD drives at all. The reason is that their capacity is typically too large.
Found an old 850 MB hard drive. Went through all the trouble of copying the files on it, first trying to put it on one of my hard drive racks - didn't work, Windows Vista is an asshole, then putting it in one of my other old computers and copied the files to it.
Windows 95 Setup completed successfully... and I found out that the reason why this hard drive was labeled as malfunctioning is that it can't boot.
Conclusion: BULLSHIT.

I've gone through a lot of trouble to get that PC to work with both MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows 3.1 and Windows 95, even if I had to change the cables to the hard drives every time I wanted to switch them... and I still can't get satisfied. Fuck it.

The [top] reasons why I hate Apple

2010-10-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

The reasons why I hate Apple:

Their products' prices are much higher than they are actually worth.
They encourage the mentality that you should do things in a more and more simple way, ultimately without learning anything.
Eye candy is worthless.
Their hardware is too overrated. I can build a high end PC with almost half the money I'd throw away on a Mac. And also their hardware can fail (and does fail) just as often - or sometimes even more often than a PC's.
Their services encourage you to spend money on nothing.
(And most important) I can do everything you can do with Apple, but for free.

Neues vom Rumänen

2010-07-29T12:34:00.000-07:00

From time to time I have to update my journal... meaning my blog, in this case. I was wondering what to write about. A lot of things have happened since the last time I wrote something, some positive and others negative. I won't focus on the negative ones, though, at least I'll try not to.

About a month ago I've bought a Nikkor 50mm F/1.8 lens. From the beginning I've noticed that it had a minor flaw, a scratched dot beneath the first visible lens. I thought it wouldn't cause problems but it seems that in some conditions it causes a blue stain right in the center of the picture. The conditions usually are: very bright sun light, case in which I have to use a smaller aperture (a higher F number), and if the minimum aperture is used, that problem occurs. It can also occur in low light and maximum aperture, with a long exposure setting. I've tried using the warranty, in order for the Nikon guys to fix it or replace it for me but they say that the problem is dust. That simply can't be, because I have other dusty lens and none of them have a problem like this, because of the internal dust. Besides, I've made sure that no dust really is inside the lens. I refuse to pay a dedusting service that isn't needed, so I've got back the lens as is, and bought a hood for it, to try to reduce the effects of direct sun light, when possible.

When I've bought the hood I've also bought a dedicated 50mm Macro lens, from Sigma - The 50mm F2.8 DG MACRO. The way it works is very interesting. It seems I need to take pictures with it when there's no wind, and also... I always need to use the tripod, because it doesn't have an image stabilization system and my hands are pretty shaky. Anyway, the images look pretty nice, and also, for a Macro dedicated lens, it can take sharp landscape pictures, when focusing to infinity.

I've learned a lot of things about photography on my own in the past few months. Some of which I read about on a site created by a photographer named Ken Rockwell. The site is: http://www.kenrockwell.com

This Saturday I will have an introduction course for the Nikon D90 and D5000 cameras. I have the D90. I'm most interested about the knowledge about composing a photography, because I usually do it by "instinct" but I don't always get it right. I really want to get better at this.

In other news... I'm no longer a student at the University of Bucharest. On the 30th of this month it will be exactly one month since I've left Bucharest for 3 days, to stay in Craiova because I had my presentation for my graduation. It went... somewhat well, considering the fact that I wasn't exactly the star of the show. They didn't deny graduation to anyone but I did feel like I could've done more. well, some good came out of this, however, because I did get to spend a few days in Craiova, and I saw a large part of the city. It's nice, very green, in fact if it was the same size as Bucharest, it would've been greener than Bucharest. Well, I've visited the largest park in Craiova and took a few pictures. Overall it was a nice place, I would go there again if I had the opportunity.

I really must complain about the train rides, though. I didn't like any of them. And I didn't like the fact that when I left Bucharest for Craiova, I had to spend a few hours in the compartment with a few French speaking scouts. I really don't get them. Why do they choose to speak in French if they knew other languages. In fact why does everybody do that? :/

Best Tweet I've ever read

2010-05-24T22:15:00.000-07:00

Deutsch:

Kernfusion in Frankreich. Klappts: Gibt's billigen Strom. Geht's schief: Ist Frankreich Geschichte. Eine Win-Win-Situation.

English:

Nuclear fusion in France! It works: Cheap electricity! It fails: France will be history! That's a win-win situation!

This is THE best tweet ever. I swear.
Original link here (click).

Best friend I've ever had

2010-05-17T18:49:00.000-07:00

Here's something I never thought it could happen...

First of all, I've always despised the way girls are, for various reasons, the main reason being the fact that they've always picked on me, either because I was better and wanted to be better in all aspects, or because I never paid any attention to them... and by attention I mean sexual attention. So I continued this war for years...

I don't really hate girls. I just despise what some of them do. In fact, my way of thinking was and in many cases still is that we should be all equal as far as rights and way of being treated go. So why should females get everything and get treated like gods and males be treated as shit because they have to "take it like men"? That's sexism on both sides. Also, I never accept doing that. If I treat a girl well it's because I want to, not because Society wants me to.

So basically I've always treated them cold and with seriousness, never showing any sign of joyfulness towards them, while respecting them at the required level - well, anyway, those who actually deserved my respect, because there were some which I would've done anything to see them suffering, mentally, not physically, because of various things they've done to me. And yes, I still do. Revenge is the only true justice. I will forgive them only after they get what they deserve. I never did anything bad to them, and I expected the same in return.

And now here's the thing. I never thought I would ever say this, but the best friend I've ever had is a girl. :)

How did that happen? Well, it happened because her personality is about 90% or more like mine, something I've never encountered before. And she's lesbian. I really like this fact about her, simply because it means I can talk freely with her about anything, and I'm not expected to do... other stuff... It's really frustrating for me to think that a girl would want THAT from me. If and when the time comes for me to actually do that too... I will probably do it.

So... believe it or not I spend hours continuously talking to her... getting more and more addicted... to each other. :) This is actually nice, because she's the first one to actually like me for the way I am. It's a wonderful feeling, to know that someone actually likes you, not just wanting to use you, like all the others. So I'm eternally grateful. :)

Wings of Change

2010-03-23T01:47:00.000-07:00

Incoming by ~danionica on deviant ART

Wings of change... Usually I don't like or approve of change but this time is different. The embedded picture is probably the best shot I took in my life. All thanks to my new camera, the Nikon D90. It kind of costed me a hand and a leg... (figurately speaking) but the camera is worth every penny, along with the provided lens. It's not a default lens kit, which is usually made by Nikon, but with the Tamron 18-270mm lens instead. Hopefully I will soon learn every function of the camera and how to manually control every aspect of it, including, but not limited to: ISO, Aperture, Shutter Speed.

I'll probably edit this post when I will come up with more detailed info.

I've even started to constantly dream that I'm taking different shots with my new camera. I have to admit, I didn't imagine there was going to be such a big difference. My old compact camera feels somewhat like a phone camera to me, now. I feel... accomplished, for now.

I remember the first pictures I ever took with my own "camera" were taken with a VGA phone camera, from the Sony Ericsson K500i. Since I was little I really wanted to take pictures but I never had the means to do it.

Then, one day I got that phone and, as I recall, I took about 600 or more pictures with it. That's quite a lot, given the fact that the phone had 12 MB or internal storage and I only took a few pictures a day, or sometimes didn't at all. Anyway I just loved taking pictures. One by one... precious memories from my life. In fact a few of my most precious memories are immortalized with it.

About 3-4 years later I got my compact camera, the Canon PowerShot A560. It works pretty well and its value/price is reasonable. With it I took thousands of pictures. Literally. Shot by shot I started to learn a few things, basic things but it is a start. At the end of that camera's era, I finally managed to discover how to manually control it, and I did take a few great shots, even if they are basically pretty simple.

Now comes the Pro era. By the way, I literally took more than 1,100 pictures in less than a week. The camera is just constantly calling me, constantly making me push the trigger. :) If I keep this up I'll probably need a much larger hard drive to store all the pictures into.

Mirror, mirror, on the wall

2010-03-08T01:20:00.000-08:00

I had this strange, sudden urge to write something. The last two weeks have been... quite interesting for me. The title is just random, came into my mind and posted it to Twitter.

Anyway... Usually, meeting new people is not something that I do or like to do nor do it on my own. Well, not on my own, but it is nice when I meet someone who thinks and perhaps acts like me, in any percent, the more, the better, the more fun it is to spend time with the person, even it is in the virtual world.

Some time ago this new friend added me on Twitter and I didn't know who he was although I've seen his YouTube profile half a year ago, before I started using Twitter mostly with other people like me - that is, furries. Interesting coincidence, what else can I say.

It's actually the first time I talk about random stuff with another geeky fur, like myself. I really wish I could do that more often. It offers me a state of relaxation I can't just have most of the time. Too bad I probably won't ever do something physical in the real world with another fur. It's in my nature not to. That reminds me of my fellow Romanian fur. He's basically just like I used to be - shy, lonely and non vulgar.

I recently started playing Nexuiz on my friend's server, along with one or more other furs. That's another thing that kind of relaxed me more than I had hoped. Again, I don't know what to make of this. Have I lost so much in life by being a loner? Even a simple thing like a video game, when doing it with someone like me makes me feel better than how I usually feel. I've done many things with friends and not really enjoyed much. Well, except maybe for going to a movie or two. So what does this mean...

I'm actually jealous of people who can enjoy themselves at conventions. I don't know what I'd do there. I don't know anyone... it looks like even in the furry world, there are actually few people that like me.

Also, there is something I haven't felt for a long, long time. I realized I need affection... that I need to be loved... and of course to love someone. There was a time when I thought I will never feel that again. I know I'm going to regret this...

*** Later edit ***

Oh yeah, it's coming back to me now. Two days ago I was called a "homophobe". I must say that being called something like that is what I least expected, the more from the person who said that. The reason why she said that is because I said "I know what that stands for" about a rainbow themed calendar. By which I meant she wasn't required to explain to me what that calendar promoted, NOT THAT I WOULD HAVE SOMETHING AGAINST HOMOSEXUALS.

Anyway, that person is crazy and trying to say something reasonable was futile so... I just said I don't like rainbows - which is, obviously, not true. And just to state the obvious, I don't have anything against gay people!!! Don't ever call me a homophobe! I swear, I've seen them be more sensitive than most people I know. So I actually like them.

2009 Summary

2009-12-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

If you ask me, this year wasn't so good. There are several reasons for that, even if some of my achievements tend to state the contrary. These achievements have costed me dearly. Can this have something to do with karma? I don't know, maybe. Here's what happened this year, as a retrospective:

Even from the first days of the year, I had to endure depression, as the husky of my neighbors ran away and never came back. About two weeks earlier I had the chance to see him for the last time, I got out of the house as it began to snow, and it suddenly stopped as soon as they got out too. I'll take that as a... sign from the Heavens. A sign that I really had to get out of the house that day. He's probably the biggest loss I've ever had. He was the best friend I've ever had, even if I wasn't his master. I've never loved anyone as much as I loved him. I hope he's alive and has a better master now, no matter where he is.
I've entered the world of social networks and I've made my debut as a photographer, on DeviantArt.
I went to the cinema for the first time in my life. The movie I saw was "Terminator: Salvation".
I've seen some classic cars with my own eyes, for the first time in my life.
I've finally got two statues representing Anubis. I wanted them for quite some time.
I've managed to pass my final outstanding exam, the one at electronics.
I bought my first 1 TB Hard Drive and my first Netbook.
I now have a DVD-Recorder which I can use to record TV shows on its internal Hard Disk or burn it directly to a DVD. This is meant to replace my old VCR.
I have multiple Internet connections again, 3, to be exact, of which two of them are mobile.
Got my first touch screen mobile phone.
I went to Nicolae Ceausescu's tomb, for the first time.
I've finally managed to get my hands on two of my favorite horror movie of all time, right on Christmas day. Why then? Because that's when I found out what their names were.
Last, but not least, I went to the cinema, two days in a row. That is, yesterday and the day before. I saw "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel" and "Zombie Land".

Christmas 2009

2009-12-25T18:02:00.000-08:00

So I've visited Ceauşescu's tomb a few days ago. I've been wanting to do that for some time now. Before you jump to conclusions, let me explain why. It was a little tribute I had to give him, for if it wasn't for the doctors of his time, I would not be able to walk nor be alive today. Why am I saying that? Because as of this date, Romania's hospitals and doctors are increasingly fewer, there are no money to support them, and it is not because of the global financial crisis. It's because of our "democratic" system, in which the people who have power do exactly what they want, and steal how much money they want. If they would leave at least 10% of the money to their actual destined institutions, our standard of living would be a lot higher. You have to live here to experience that.

At first I didn't know in which cemetery of Ghencea he is buried in nor how to get there. I found out that I could take the tram close to me, later on. I got there with by subway and then by tram #41. The good thing about this is that I found a decent flower shop and bought some to bring them to the tomb. Now, I don't know why people always bring carnations to the tombs they visit. I've decided to go for that and also 2 roses, because they're my favorites and I just wanted to be symbolic. I got to the first cemetery in line, the military one, which was actually the last of them, but I found out that later. I got in and started looking for that specific cross. I didn't find it and I decided I really had to ask someone. I made some courage and asked an old couple that was visiting someone, probably someone close to them. I asked them "Hello Sir and Madam. Would you mind telling me where I can find the tomb of Nicolae Ceauşescu?" and I was expecting to get some sort of negative reaction. To my surprise, they smiled and said that this is the military cemetery and that he's actually buried in the civil one. They've also said to me that they don't mind me asking about him, in fact they're glad that some people still care, because he was the one who made us -Romanian translation- decent people.

So I've exited that cemetery and went on. About 100 meters away I find the entrance to the proper one and start looking. You might have guessed that I couldn't find him here either. I asked someone again, and I guess I got lucky, no one reacted negative - for now. I finally found him, as you can see in the picture to the right (click it), or the larger version on Twitpic (click here).

I've put the flowers on his tomb and staid there for a while. When I wanted to go, a reporter asked me why exactly I visited him. I've said to her what I've mentioned earlier. I know that a lot of people died during his regime, that's true. Nevertheless, he was also human and deserved a fair trial, not a 10 minute recitation of his accusations and then being shot. Also, people are also dying in large numbers TODAY, even as we speak. They're dying of hunger and cold, of different kinds of illness, they're being beaten to death just for their few money, a phone or whatever they're having with them. What's the difference? They're dying free? That's worthless. Also, about a month prior to his execution, Ceauşescu announced that he wanted to merge Basarabia with Romania. Because of that he was asked to yield the presidency but he refused. The so called revolution was not actually the people's call. It was an outside action and people, thinking that was the best thing that could happen, happily joined. Now all those who took part at - and survived - that revolution are either dead or dying or struggling to survive on the few money they can save. All that, so that the ones who currently have power, to be able to get rich, the easy way. Believe it or not, communism would have fallen anyway on its own, just like it did in the other countries. They just didn't want to wait for that moment or knew that they wouldn't get the chance to steal so much.

Now it's not only hard to find a decent and stable job these days, it's near impossible. You need experience. Where do you get experience? FROM F***ING WORKING SOMEWHERE. And there are a lot of places where they won't hire you for the sole reason that you know how to do a bit too much and they know they'll have to pay you more, which they don't want to. Now, at the call of Basescu's bastards, there are a few days a month in which people are NOT allowed to work. They're forced to take some stupid days off without pay, in order their salaries to be cut with a certain percentage. Even my father has to deal with that. In fact he may have to deal with unemployment, soon.

I hate capitalism. I TRULY DO. There isn't a thing on this planet that'll ever make me change my mind. And don't call me selfish. I wish of a world in which we would really be equal. No, not a communist world, yet a world where money and fortune are worth less than the values of people and what they do.

You may wonder why I wrote about this on Christmas day. Because this is the day he was shot - 20 years ago on this day. I wanted to go there today but I've realized that transports would be very rare and rushed that a bit. Other than that, I don't have much to write about. It's all going to Hell again, for me.

My Birthday (2009)

2009-10-24T22:39:00.000-07:00

This Friday was my birthday.

First of all, I have to mention about my Birthday Cake. I have been planning a long time about doing something funny and geeky with it and here it is before I wrote my age on it, and here it is after I wrote the number "22" in binary, as a byte. :)

I went to IMPACT at the G. Cosbuc High School and had a pretty strange but... nonetheless fun time. But before that, that day at 1 in the morning I got the most awsome gift of all, and from I would never have considered - from a girl, an artist. It's a representation of my character, Zed (my fursona) and Renamon, together. It's just what I wanted most.

This made me feel more optimistic about life, something I haven't done for years. That's the reason why I actually accepted to go to IMPACT on my birthday although I was kind of planning not to.

As expected, one of my "colleagues" went all MERRY CHRISTMAS!!! when she heard it was my birthday. So here we go with a bunch of kind of inappropriate things to do, including surprize kisses. I'm glad they've liked the cakes I've served them with, though. I like to be appreciated. :P

After all that was over I hadn't anything better to do than try to do what was going through my mind. For the first time I've noticed that the ceiling was pretty low and I wanted to touch it by jumping but I was distracted and I hurt my right hand's thumb. I completely forgot that I've had that one bandaged before, some time in the past. Today the pain has almost gone away and the swelling has begun to shrink.

I've made a promise to my colleagues that I would buy them some pizza and I did that, along with some drinks, because I am a man of my word. As a little surprize for me, a colleague from university has given me a Plextor PlexWriter Premium as a gift, I really wasn't expecting that. It's exactly the Plextor I wanted to get about 6 years ago when I really wanted to build myself a new pc, to be able to play games. For me this is priceless, it's a collector's item.

By the way, today I've got myself a few collectable coins from the Russian Communist Era. I will list them, along with the other birthday gifts I got (except for the writer, I've already posted that).

A Vodafone 3G modem and a subscription - to use as a backup broadband connection when my main one (RDS Network) fails.
A Samsung NC10 Netbook. (click here to view)
A Samsung S5600 touch screen phone, and I've got a mobile plan for it.
A paper trimmer and a laminating machine. (click here to view)
A cute little statue of the Egyptian Godess Isis - click here to view - Wikipedia
A Samsung DVD-Recorder with a 160GB Hard Drive (click here to view)
A bunch of collectible stuff from the Soviet era.
- A coin with the SSSR (CCCP) engraving and an inscription on the back marking the end of
  World War 2 and the triumph over Fascisct Germany. (click here to view)
- A coin with the SSSR engraving and Lenin's head egraved on the back. (click here to view)
- A Romanian insignia of the so called "Pioneers". (click here to view)
- A Russian medal awarding the courage of The Conscripts on the battlefield...
  and it has Stalin's face on the back of it. (click here to view)
Two Samsung hard drives - one with the capacity of 1 TB (1000 GB) and one with the capacity of 500 GB, to replace the 750 GB Western Digital drive that is beginning to fail, although I've recently found out that it sometimes hangs for a bit because an overheating problem which this series of drives has.

-- By the way, I am planning on getting a Nikon D90 camera, so the shopping spree isn't quite over. --

Antichristian Post...

2009-10-05T17:10:00.000-07:00

This post is Anti-Christian and quite antireligious in general. You were warned. If you're a very religious person please leave now. I am not responsible for any negative reactions you may have for reading ahead.

This is addressed to all of you who give explanations to the World's misteries by invoking the so called "Creator".

I've just watched this guy's video, posted as an embed on a blog entry, located here (click here).

It makes me sick to think that for more than 2 millenniums Christianity and the other religions that are related to it (I will not name them but they worship basically the same "God", no matter what its name is), including those that have _evolved_ from it - which means that they're a branch of it - have managed to push so many people into believing aberations like the "Creationism theory" and they dare to tell their believers not to question them.

For now the subject is the... Creation. Let me put it this way:

Any living being, no matter if it's human or not, has a certain level of intelligence required in order for it to survive and it also behaves like computer program in a lot of ways. Humans have no ideea what they are talking about when they say that it has to be tought how to do things. Each and every part of a being's behaviour and instincts are programmed in its genetic code. You can't deny this because we have yet to discover the functions of all the chromosomes. No one needs to teach a being something that it is required to do. Accept the damn fact! While it's alive, it is programming its self according to its environment. If the environment it lives in will dramatically change, it will become extinct if it depends too much on it or it will just reprogram its genetic code to accomodate the changes... evolve, BECAUSE NO BEING WILL WANT TO DIE, NOT EVEN A SINGLE CELL OF THE BODY. IT WILL TRY TO STAY ALIVE NO MATTER WHAT. (By the way, humans are the only ones that commit suicide, because of the crap their head is filled with but even so you can still see the modifications that our body has suffered over tens of thousands of years - yes, and considering this, imagine what tens of millions of years can do.) What is so hard to believe in that?

The fact that some creatures seem not to obey the laws of evolution is because we have no ideea what that creature actually evolved from and why. Over the time tens of thousands of species have gone extinct, some of them evolved to the creatures we can see today. If there is any reason why for example that stupid bug evolved a chemical factory to produce a tiny explosion is that IT CAN, as WE CAN now make replacements for our lost limbs and science will EVOLVE even further and some day we may become as... GODS.

Religion leaders wouldn't like that to happen. They keep pumping aberating crap in our heads even in schools, just to keep the people under their control. And this goes on and on for tens, hundrends, thousands of years because of the stupid herd mind.

Because of stupidities like this, people have killed eachother over the centuries just fighting over who has the better... immaginary friend. Furthermore they've done so many horrible things to themselves, not only to those of a different religion than theirs.

THIS HAS TO STOP.

Actually I am not saying that you shouldn't be believing there any gods. If it makes you happy believe in either one you like... BUT NOT ONE THAT IS IMPOSED TO YOU. I am saying that fanatism and control will distroy you, prevent you from evolving further.

What I do say is that no god made the world as it is, especially no god that is advertised of being so forgiving and so good.

If there is one or more superbeings why wouldn't you want to be like them instead of worshiping them?

If you actually think there is a reason why you shouldn't... well, there is no hope for you.

My new gadget

2009-09-28T02:19:00.000-07:00

On Thursday my new netbook (the Samsung NC10) has finally arrived. I've ordered it on Wednesday or at least I think so, because on the excitement I forgot to blog this on that day.

Anyway I really like my new little gadget and I must confess that, being such a jackass, I couldn't resist not to show it to some of my friends and colleagues. On the very day when the netbook has arrived I went to a colleague of mine just to be smug about it. :) Of course my mother has been worried sick because it was getting dark and I had a computer with me but... that didn't bother me too much. I really wanted to eat something and talk a bit with that colleague.

The next day I've went to my mother's friend, Mihaela, to see why the computer which I borrowed to her was not able to connect to The Internet. It seems that after she has called someone to put some stuff on some of her DVDs the guy didn't connect the ethernet cable properly and neither did the guys from the ISP - remember when I was talking about employee incompetence in an older post? When I got there all I had to do was ensure that the cable was in a proper position.

---------
By the way, you guys at ISPs are stupid or are you just trying to look that way? The fact that a cable connection doesn't work, showing a "cable disconnected" message, has NOTHING TO DO with what software besides the TCP/IP the operating system has installed on it. I have uninstalled all protocols besides that for a reason. Nobody is using protocols and services like NetWare Client or Windows File Sharing on a network that is not part of a workgroup! In fact these things are better off disabled or uninstalled completely if you don't ever need them. Why in God(s)' name would install and enable them, without the person's permission (in fact my permission because that computer belongs to me) if I specifically removed them?
---------

Other than that the results from my tests came (some doctor tests I had to take to see if I am infected with some stupid bacteria). Looks like I am 100% clean but some glands in my nose are in a bad state so, like always, I have to take more medication. Heh, the neurologist was trying to give me some stupid medication against depression and antisocial behavior again... like I'm idiot enough to take it. Obsessions and my behavior is what defines me and I'd rather die than give that up.

New Remote Control Helicopter

2009-09-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

Today was a pretty interesting day for me.

After I got up at about 10 am (as usual), my mother asked me to copy some papers so that she could go see some doctors regarding my niece's condition. It turns out that she has to get some painful injections for an entire year, otherwise her bones or muscles might fuse. Bummer...

After they've got back, my mom celebrated her birthday - which was yesterday, by the way - and then she took me to a health center to get some papers for my annual checkup. I really hate doctors.

Despite the fact that my patience was put to a test yet again today, it turned out quite well, because when I was finished with the medical bullshit I went to Plaza Mall to get something to eat from Burger King. Yes, that horrible place full of incompetent workers actually has ONE food type I like and can't get anywhere else - the chicken sandwich. P.S.: Don't get me wrong, I don't speak of Burger King as a whole. I'm talking about the one in Romania, where the workers usually "forget" to pay you back the change, forget who ordered what and give you something entirely different than what you have ordered. That can't be called anything else than pure incompetence, sorry. I won't ever eat anything else at Burger King, other than the chicken sandwich.

So I had my meal and was on my way home when I remembered about the Diverta shop where I wanted to get a remote control helicopter from, for quite a while, and guess what: today was the big day.

I was a bit disoriented, at first, because they've demolished a part of the shop but they have moved the toys to another isle. There were a lot of remote control toys there and I saw a pretty huge helicopter which I really wanted but the controls were switched as if it was made only for left-handed people (FAIL?) and naturally I would have had a real hard time maneuvering it so I didn't get that one.

Well... I finally decided to buy this one and went to the pay checkpoint where uhm... Romania's employee incompetence and "joy of work" never ceases to amaze me. I asked for a spare set of batteries and it took that stupid w**re of an employee 15 minutes (NO JOKE) to get it. 15 minutes for waking about 5 f***ing meters in the store. And you all out there wonder why we are so intolerant. THIS IS WHY! I'll shoot that stupid employee if I ever get the chance, because it's not that she can't do things properly and fast... she just won't because she doesn't want to. Screw that!

Well, that's a wrap.

Nothing important happened today

2009-09-03T16:13:00.000-07:00

I've got my brother's hard drive from warranty (which, by the way, was a present from me) and I've installed it back to him. I've also finally managed to make his stupid second hand TV Tuner to work. It would all have been so simple if he would buy something brand new from the PC shop, just this once. Oh well, now he has to anyway, his DVD Writer just died.

By the way there are only two more days until the big exam. I've been seriously sick, with a temperature of about 39°C and stomach pains and a horrible diarrhea problem. I went to the doctor and she gave me some pills to take, I've begun to feel better after about three days but I had to take some separate pills for my stomach to get normal again.

I've had my last tutoring session at electronics and I hope I've ready for it. I have to pass the exam. Tomorrow I think I'm going to study some things one last time.

Just thinking

2009-08-25T03:09:00.000-07:00

It is interesting to meet people from all over the world. I've never thought that I would really do that on my own, without anyone having to force me to socialize like this. It seems that The Internet and the Furry Fandom made me something I couldn't imagine just a few years ago.

It's quite pleasing to talk to people, even if it is electronically. The beauty of it is that now the language barriers have been lifted. It doesn't matter any more in what language you speak, I will be later be able to understand you by using a translator. For what's worth it, I don't know if many Romanians will ever realize this fact nor I know if they'll ever use it to something pleasant or productive. The majority of the people of my country are depressing and repulsive. They caught this from either American movies or from - let's call it - miscultures that have slowly been integrated within our own.

Simple people these days wouldn't give a damn on your life and could just hit you in the head and steal your money, if they had the chance. I am witnessing more and more violence coming from the minority population, especially from romas. They are corrupt, they're starting to attack authorities and they think that they're above the law and they're more important than anybody else, that they can do whatever they want. In short, they're scum.

What can I possibly do to avoid them? Nothing. They're always showing up at the worst possible moment, have no conscience and they're more and more dangerous by day.

The people of Europe have blamed us for mistreating them but that wasn't the case. They could see that just as the doors of the European Union have opened for Romania. The "Romanians" who have basically invaded states like Spain, France or Italy are not us, the innocent people. It's them. And for whatever they're doing we have to suffer. People from various countries have begun to mistreat innocent people, some have even been attacked and beaten. For what? I'll tell you that: Because the scum that should be banished forever are free to roam and WE have to suffer the consequences.

In Romania their population is getting bigger and bigger. I am truly afraid that they're one day going to equal us or even surpass us, in Bucharest at least. The truly bad news is that the youngsters have begun to see them as something to be followed. They want the life of them because it seems easy to survive in this chaotic world.

I truly wish I could leave Romania forever and never have to come back. The problem is that I have nowhere to go...

Church day

2009-08-15T16:23:00.000-07:00

I know, I know, don't laugh. I made my way through the whole Bucharest today and went to about 7 churches. Why? Well this goes back to what my mother and I used to do monthly or when some sort of big holiday was coming on. We would go to a few churches and pray. I haven't done that in a very, very long time.

What was so special about today? Well to tell you the truth, it was my mother's idea and since I almost never get to spend some quality time with her I decided to go along. I don't need to give details except that today was so strange, with the exception of the first, in each of the churches I entered there was an ongoing baptize.

What was up with this day? Seriously, 6 baptizes? That sort of thing never happened to me before. Do the planets align today or something like that?

Well, regardless of the strangeness, I did like one church, the Russian one. It is the one that students call "Saint 5" - because in Romania the education mark system is noted from 1 to 10 and 5 is the minimum required to pass a test... and that church is always full of students. Pretty funny but I did enjoy watching a Russian architectural wonder. :)

I hate living in fear

2009-08-14T19:00:00.000-07:00

The day before yesterday I went to the doctor with my mother. I had an appointment because on my birthday, in October, I have to renew my certificates. I have a handicap, remember? (Read the feature post - "The story of my life"). Now, for some reason I had some some strange pains in the left side of the body, all the left side of the body from the chest below. These have lasted for about a month but I didn't stop having headaches although they were more rare.

I went to the neurologist and it seems that I now have an appointment for the famous MRI. I must say that this is the only machine which I truly fear. This thing can say just about everything about me and I really think that there are some things that I don't want to know. Sadly to say, there haven't been a lot of days in my life that I haven't lived with fear, and just about that fear was beginning to go away, now that infernal machine has triggered it once again.

Speaking of fear, exactly three weeks and one day are left until I have to face that son of a b**** electronics teacher of mine, again. He often speaks of idiotic idealistic things to be accomplished by the Ministry of Education but he doesn't often show his own ass at the courses to teach us something - or he didn't when he should have, in my second year of college anyway. One time a friend of mine has even made him a special dedication for him, at the radio. The special dedication sounded something like "I wish you were hit by the tram!". That is how much we all - the ones who have to face him again - love our teacher.

Well, hoping that all will be better soon... cheers!

Incoming mass posts

2009-08-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

I am planning on translating and moving my whole Romanian blog here on Worldpress.

The address where it can currently be read is: http://danionica.blogspot.com/ - just in case you are curious.

I have begun my studies so I will be away for a while. Anyway... updates are coming soon.

I am planning on translating and moving my whole Romanian blog here on Worldpress.

The address where it can currently be read is: http://danionica.blogspot.com/ - just in case you are curious.

I have begun my studies so I will be away for a while. Anyway... updates are coming soon.

Stupid blogging program "w.bloggar".

2009-07-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

I've decided to try one of the stupid blog editors on the net.

The freeware I've managed to find was this one - w.bloggar. How come it was so hard to configure? I know this is supposed to be some kind of open source or freeware stuff but could you do it any damn harder to configure?

You could just give some examples, at least, for every God damn blog platform supported. It would have taken you approximately 30 minutes to do so.

About the new Harry Potter movie (Half-Blood Prince)

2009-07-28T17:12:00.000-07:00

I've taken my nieces to see the new HP movie today, as I've promised them a while ago.

Before I even entered the Mall, a friend warned me that the movie would suck... well I don't know what to say about that. It wasn't as good as the first movies, that's for sure, but it's not half as bad as The Order of The Phoenix. I've seen a pattern here. Looks like for a while now, at the end of every Harry Potter movie, someone has to die. Why? Ask the writer, not me.

Anyway the action scenes were quite good, especially at the beginning of the movie. I see that now the focus is on something like Harry Potter's friends rather than himself, but some of the jokes are quite... old. I did laugh a bit but to be honest, the story could have been better but... not bad for a film of 2009 anyway.

I see there have been some differences between the movie and the game, probably because the game got out first and they didn't want to spoil the film or something.

My favorite parts of the movie were those when Draco Malfoy was shown as a big cry baby. His coward faces were so stupid I've laughed my ass off. He reminds me of an old "friend" of mine, he kind of looks exactly like him. He used to bug me pretty badly back in grade school and, accordingly, is as weak, cowardly and stupid as he was.

Back to the film, now we find out how Lord Voldemort can truly be killed for good but, wouldn't you know it? That won't happen until probably the next movie(s), and all the hard work our heroes put up in this one is for nothing. Yes, that was lame.

Well, not the best movie I've seen in my life, that's for sure, but it was pretty fun to watch. I'd give it... I don't know, maybe a 6 out of 10?

Mayor Piedone's Fountains

2009-07-25T23:45:00.000-07:00

Today I've met our mayor, Mr. Cristian Popescu Piedone. I gave him a DVD containing the copies of the pictures I took in the park that he has arranged, with the help of a few companies.

Since I like the fountains very much, I have made a couple of videos of them.

That being said, thank you Mr. Mayor Piedone! We love you!

Zapp E@sy (CDMA Technology)

2009-07-08T23:47:00.000-07:00

After a few thoughts and a few Internet connection crashes, I've decided to get a spare connection though I haven't actually decided who the lucky provider was going to be. Saturday after a visit to the local mall I saw the first company I've ever wanted to see the services of, but never had the chance. This was Zapp (Telemobil S. A.). Nothing very special until I saw their current service plan and decided to buy a phone and a voice+data plan, but I did that the next day - I had to get some more money, of course.

The wonder phone's picture is shown here: (click).

It has a few nice features but some nasty and annoying ones as well. The messenger function works flawlessly. The WAP browser also does but sometimes you get the message that the network was lost. That's nothing. The really annoying part is the video player. It has the ability to play YouTube videos but sometimes it crashes if you push it a little too much, when the video does not start you better not try to force it or else it might hang the phone, and it's VERY HARD to remove the battery cover. The other extremely annoying bug is the keyboard. It actually has 4 function change keys, one called "ALT', one called "NUM" (number lock), one called "SYM" (from symbol) and one called "CAP" (caps lock). You can easily want to press one function key and press the other by mistake but that is not the problem. Since all my passwords have special symbols in them, using the SYM key is critical. The VERY ANNOYING fact is that when you press that stupid button the whole text is selected and if you press a key it will be overwritten, so beware. May I ask WHY this kind of stupidity had to be implemented? This is a question for Qualcomm or whatever the manufacturer is - the model is "Ubiquam U800". You do NOT make the phone select the whole text when you press a function key!

Besides that, the Yahoo! call seems to work fine, along with the modem. Well... that's about it.

Update - 9th of July 2009:
I went with the phone in service today and got a software update. Hopefully the phone crashes will go away. The keyboard crap is still here but it is still a little software bug. However they said that an update is coming on soon.

Transformers 2 Movie

2009-07-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

Today I went to the cinema again, this time for the new Transformers movie, called "Revenge of The Fallen". I was wondering what that name meant. Hmm... to spoil or not to spoil. Well what the heck (no, seriously, I won't spoil the film, with just a few funny exceptions).

So, as usual they've started the show with a few commercials, 'cause they don't f**king have them enough on TV and that is exactly what we've came for anyway, didn't we, 'cause we just LOVE commercials (not). The good thing out of this probably is the fact that I've seen the trailer for the new Harry Potter crap, hope I can see this one too in about a week or two after its release (yeah, you don't suppose I pay that much money on a premiere to watch a movie, do you?). After that the movie started.

We saw the boy a bit more grown up, like in the trailer, doing whatever normal kids do (normal kids that encountered aliens on their way to manhood anyway) and then suddenly the fun begins, when some random household items begin to attack him, that would be like in the first movie when the mobile phone came to life - perhaps they had to make a connection from the beginning of the movie, somehow. Anyway along the way his girlfriend does some silly jokes about him not saying "I love you" and neither does she say it, well those are tough words to say indeed, they probably kill you if you don't really mean it when you say it...

After that I guess the plot is that he's now finished High school and must go to college. Or... at least try to go to college, you probably know by now exactly what I mean. His girlfriend gets a new "pet" and then she catches him with a hot girl that ain't what she seems, however against his will. Well, after a rather spicy debate, they make up - sort of - and the story goes on. They encounter an old (and I do mean OLD) ally of theirs, which talks about the history of the alien encounters. I can't give any other detail except of course the humping jokes of that part, and by the way, the movie also started with some humping dogs, which at first made me to believe I've made a mistake when I bough my ticket... well that was probably not something for kids to watch but was funny anyway. No, it wasn't anything graphic, but the gesture was awkward and had nothing to do with the movie. As I said, funny anyway, and being two gags of this kind, the other one is the most awkward, because of... well... never mind. Watch the movie. :)

Other than those silly gags, the movie has lots of action scenes, explosions, about everything you'd want from it.

I simply must spoil about the stupid girlfriend kissing scene, because that hadn't anything to do with the plot either. It's just like in the Hitman movie when they hadn't anything better to do than introduce some drama / romance just for the sake of it. This is actually the only part that I disliked. The ONLY one. Oh yeah, by the way, I was extremely disappointed when I realized that the Transformers theme song, sadly, was NOT in this movie. I've really enjoyed the theme from the first movie, so could anyone tell me why not to have it or have a remake of it for this one? It's Transformers, damn it!

In the end, great movie. I recommend it. And by the way, this is a picture of my ticket, taken when I got out of the cinema. :D

Cheers!

Update:
Since I've seen a few user reviews (comments, actually) of this movie on IMDb, I must say this. Yes, it has some immature jokes about genitals, stereotypes and more crap but all in all it's made that way to be funny for a large category of watchers which in my opinion it succeeds.
If you enjoy very intellectual movies or complex plots OR don't generally like to watch robots smash each other, DON'T watch this movie, otherwise if you do watch it, don't blame it just because of that.
Yes, the stereotypes are a bit exaggerated and yes, it lacks the story a bit but these days you really do have to improvise, let's face it, the media companies are rapidly running out of ideas.

*** SPOILERS ***
So let's see what grade I would give the film, and I KNOW that some day the Nostalgia Critic is going to make some asshole jokes about the movie just because the intellectual jerks didn't like it.

Action - 10 out of 10, dependently.
Characters:
- A few of them were kind of lame and stupid but still funny - for a while, 3 out 10 for those.
- Others were amazing, especially the nanobot transformer, that is a great idea, 10 out of 10 for that.
- A robot morphing into a human? Hmm... not very original, and looked a bit like the terminatrix from Terminator 3 Rise of The Machines, but it was kind of funny - an ironical funny that is - to see it smash up everything after finding out about the boy. 6 out of 10.
- Indeed the fact that almost all decepticons were gray and looked alike was lame. Still some looked pretty good. So I'll say 4 out of 10.
- The decepticon that has switched sides. THAT was a very funny character, just because of its disguise, to see the famous Project Aurora plane transform into... that old pile of metal was FUNNY. Everybody in the room laughed so hard I couldn't hear what the characters were saying any more. 10 out of 10
- Bumblebee. Enough said. I just don't understand WHY didn't they just let him have a voice. I liked his new voice in the first movie when they've repaired his voice box. I guess they did that just to make him do some more lame radio jokes. Well... I'm kind of nostalgic about him. 7 out 10.
- The doctor and the toy car transformers. FUNNY! I didn't expect that. :) 10 out of 10.
- The humans... well... the mother was LAME, LAME with a capital L. And what the heck? Cannabis? Dude... I don't think that was an University dedicated to hippies or anything like them. VERY LAME. 1 out of 10. And what's with the alien obsessed guy? Jiiz... 4 out of 10.
- So, the average characters score is: 7.2 - so 7 out of 10 in the end.
The plot. Average plot filled up with a lot of jokes about genitals, some of which WERE funny (By the way, Obama?!? How much time DID it take you to make this movie and did you update the presidential status on purpose?). 6 out of 10.
Special effects and animation: 100% wonderful. 10 out of 10.
Level of entertaining - if you would make a graph you'd have to include something like this: lame - cool - funny - funny - funny - zzZzZZZzzz - funny - heartbreaking sad - funny - funny - let's beat the hell out of each other and smash everything in our path - FUNNY!!! - zZzzzZZZzzz - let's beat the hell out of each other and smash everything in our path, and this time take no prisoners - haha! - let's blow up everything because bombs are fun! - bring in the biggest guns you can find - unnecessary sadness-like moment - interesting revelation - surprise moment - optimus prime goes rampage and beats the hell out of each decepticon all by himself. So I guess that by watching this movie you get a sort of emotional roller coaster, and that's GREAT! 8 out of 10 because of the zZzZZz moments.
Sound effects were good. 10 out of 10.

In the end lets see... the average score is 8.5. I guess I've exaggerated a bit at the sound part but... what the hell? I liked it. So there. Deal with it!

Social Networks

2009-06-29T15:07:00.000-07:00

A while ago I've came across the new ideea of a Thumblelog. This is some kind of combination between twitter, a photolog, a normal or short blog and some new stuff like quotes, chat dialogues, audio links with a player, etc. Until today I haven't been able to figure out why its dashboard was working so slowly, until ofcourse I've disabled the Twitter dashboard interface. Looks like the interface was taking so much time to load because it was fetching a lot of twitter entries both from me and the people I follow. Well I don't know if I should actually keep updating it or not, now that I have this blog on Wordpress, and the Romanian one at Blogger. Oh well...

So I guess that now I have alot of social networking accounts, and this is something I was never expecting from myself, because I'm not that sociable, at least in real life... or I just don't notice that I am.

Well... here's what I have:

Twitter.com: ComradeZed (both in Romanian and English, now mostly English).
Plurk.com: zed_darkman (Romanian only). ***DELETED*** as of 17th of July 2009, lack of time to update.
Plurk.com new English account: ComradeZed
Identi.ca: ComradeZed (English only).
Tumblr: http://comradezed.tumblr.com/
Blogger: http://comradezed.blogspot.com/
WordPress: http://danionica.wordpress.com/ (started in Romanian but now English only).
LiveJournal: http://zed-darkman.livejournal.com/
FriendFeed Aggregator: http://friendfeed.com/comradezed
Facebook Aggregator: http://www.facebook.com/people/Dan-Ionica/1289726055 ***DELETED BY ADMINS*** as of the 17th of December 2009
Current Facebook Aggregator page: http://www.facebook.com/comradezed
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/umbra2006
Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/danionica
And an account at Photobucket which I haven't yet updated,
and I plan to do so only with interesting pictures.

So there you have it, the list of all my... crap. This post will be updated as necessary.

My personal comments on Michael Jackson

2009-06-28T02:07:00.000-07:00

So Michael has recently passed away. Well I don't actually know what to say. He kind of annoyed me when I was young. I remember that some of his performances were broadcasted live just when some of my favorite shows would be aired and that really pissed me off. Because I was young I never understood his music, and by the way back then I didn't speak English. Now that I've listened to a few of his songs I can say I like some of them, currently two to be exact, the song from the Moonwalker movie - "Smooth Criminal" and "Beat it". I heard other songs too but I don't like them as much as I like these two.

Apart from his music, I really don't know much about him except what I've read on Wikipedia. I've seen the satirical episode of South Park about him - "The Jeffersons" but I didn't think that he would actually make his kids wear masks for example. Kind of a shock to hear it's not fake, I guess. I know I'm not supposed to judge people but... that was some serious crap. Also I've seen a tribute for him from James Rolfe (The Angry Video Game Nerd) and saw some sequences from Thriller. Well what went through my mind was about this: "What the heck is that supposed to be?". Seriously, the disturbed crap that he pulled with these videos should only have been music... and just that, period. If you look at the video it reminds you of one of the "Return of The Living Dead" movies, basically having nothing to do with... what was going on in the first place. Anyway what's done is done, and people seem to like his videos.

That being said, rest in peace, Michael.

The story of my life in 1500 words

2009-06-21T14:23:00.000-07:00

I've managed to translate and adapt my recent post with the essay. This is the story of my life. I want people to know it, just in case something would happen and I wouldn't be around anymore. I've learned that you can't really be alone and no one know about you. If you take the time to read this post, I appreciate it. By the way I will try to write a book based on this, some day.

A while ago, instead of taking an exam, I had to present a 1500 words manuscript as an essay, in which I would describe the development of my personal life, as well as my professional life. So, upset that I had to hand write the whole thing, I started with a computer draft, in such way that I would write the story of my life in exactly 1500 words. Piece by piece, the final thing was ready, which can be seen in the picture from this link, the papers which I gave the teacher.

Yes, I know, OK, it’s kind of lame that I post this thing here too but it is among the most interesting things that I’ve ever written so, lame or not, here’s the post:
(Oh, and by the way, the original, in Romanian is located at this address on Blogger, from the day I’ve gave the essay to my teacher).

As a small introduction, I must leave some personal notes, pleasant or not. This is my “essay” for the “Personal development” curriculum (or whatever it’s called, I personally don’t think that the name has any importance). I must mention that this essay has been first written on a computer, in such way that it contains exactly 1500 words, without this paragraph.

I shall start with my personal development. I can guess that it’s expected from me to express myself however I can about my life and about the reason I behave the way I do.

Recently I’ve discovered I suffer from the OCD Syndrome, the Purely Obsessive OCD variant. I’m not kidding around, I really do have some obsessions about how I want things to look, about symmetry, a repulsion of talking in public and a lot more, which are personal. I don’t remember exactly if I’ve always been this way but I never did like to go in front of the class, for example and I never understood why I had to be humiliated in that way, besides the daily humiliation which I received from my colleagues.

This humiliation came in several ways and for several reasons. One of them was that I didn’t go to kindergarten and my social skills were less developed than the others. Besides that, I was generally a geek, always wanting to be the best of the class but I’ve isolated myself because I never had a topic of chat or play with the other kids. I never could practice any sport so I couldn’t play football or any other game they’ve played, because it involved running. I had an operation when I was a year old, for a congenital disorder with the left leg and this is what kept me from having fun in any other way than my own, and I still can’t. My mother had always brought me to and from school because I had a restriction not to carry heavy weights, and about 6 school books and 12 notebooks weren’t exactly easy to carry around with you, daily. I think that my colleagues have noticed that and became jealous of the fact that I have a loving mother which takes care of me. I am ever grateful for that, especially because I was generally ill during my whole childhood. I’ve played alone most of the time, and I used to collect Transformers robots. In a related matter, I used to play the piano. For every piano exam which I passed with a good grade, or in fact for every good result at the end of a school evaluation period, my mom bought me a Transformer. I had a collection of over 50 robots, some of which I have gave away, and some I’ve kept for myself, to remember the good days.

I remember that I’ve always been fascinated with electronics, I’ve been the only one in the family who always knew in detail how stuff worked… and I still am. Right before I first started school, when I was about 5-6 years old, I discovered the computer. I was visiting a neighbor who, back then, was a student at the University of Medicine and who usually nursed me when I was sick. It was there that I saw a computer and I instantly knew that this was an incredible complex machine that I would master, I saw my destiny. Since then, each day I would think about that computer, until I finally got one, when I was in the late fourth grade, in 1998, after begging for my parents daily to get me one. Now I currently own my sixth computer, which I especially built to celebrate 10 years from my original computer, sixth computer if you don’t count the laptop I am currently writing this from. Still… I can never forget the feeling I had with my first computer, although it wasn’t perfect, in fact it had a few bugs or was a bit malfunctioning, I uhm… I was able to do my “apprentice” years with that computer, considering the fact that I did get into the wonderful world of computing in the MS-DOS and Windows 95 era. Speaking of which, Windows 95 remained my favorite operating system of all time, even today I change the operating system theme of the computers I sit at, to resemble it. Now I collect old computers and I make them work. It is something that gives me my identity. I miss their days and I’d give anything to be able to relive them. I generally don’t like and don’t accept change. In my opinion change is a bad thing, it makes us never be able to find our peace and stability. Even in our days I still collect AND use 3.5″ floppy diskettes, exactly for that reason.

So, after I got my first computer I started to learn how to use it, although I did use other computers before, at a computer study lab which was organized by my local school. The first operating system I’ve ever used was, obviously, Microsoft DOS version 3, on an IBM computer which I remember every day of my life, it probably had the PC-DOS version, with a white text on a blue background. I loved that thing. Besides me, no one liked that interface with typing the commands to console. For me it was kind of like a blessing. The computer is the machine that did whatever I told it to do and above that, it could also answer me. I can say that I felt and still feel like myself in front of this machine, because unlike people, it can not hurt me in any way like they did, it can only do what it is programmed to do and doesn’t ask any questions why it has to do it, in other words the computer was not human and that was the thing that made me feel something like king of the world.

Seeing how much I loved computer science, my mother started to enroll me to different kinds of courses. They are listed in my CV, in the years 1998-2000. Some of them are not that good but they’re a lot more than average people know nowadays. Perhaps some day I’ll even be good at programming. In fact I do wish that, I must be the best in what I do, no matter the price!

About in the second half of the year 2002 I’ve got my first Internet connection. Because I didn’t have money to pay for a subscription of my own, I asked for some friends in the block to connect me to their building private network. They had a cable modem Internet connection. This is how I really started socializing for the first time, even if it was through the computer, working like a proxy (anyway it is built to help us communicate, isn’t it?). This didn’t bother me at all. In the real world I can’t express myself rapidly because everything must be spontaneous. Through the computer I can think and then express myself, in writing.

So with the help of my computer, now connected to the big Internetwork, I could catch up with different aspects of the world which I had missed. Among those there are some movies which I wanted to see my entire life and are not available to buy, others I wanted to see again and the television company never reaired them, I’ve become a rock fan, me, who listened to almost no music at all. Thanks to the local network I could get a taste of what social activities are like, even if they’re virtual. It’s wrong to say that video games are bad because they’re good at a lot of things, including becoming a sport, one of the only two sports I could enjoy – that is, gaming and chess. For the first time, thanks to video games, I’ve met other people like me, with one of which, from the city Arad, I communicate daily.

After some time, because me and my network buddies would fight on the Internet connection bandwidth, I started learning how its architecture works, slowly at first, because it was something new. I found out about a little Internet provider company nearby, called Lightning-net.ro.

This is how we get to my career development. It’s been two years now since I’ve been trying to find some part time work. I did manage to work at that provider company for a little while. It was a bit like a season job, because I was forced to quit when the University year began, so I could keep up. Meanwhile I helped friends by fixing their computers when I could. I can’t stand to see a computer that doesn’t work. I never asked for money for what I did, because it was my a pleasant activity for myself, however sometimes people insisted I accepted their money. To be honest, by doing this, I am trying to be like my former mentor from elementary school. He also had a passion for computers like I do. So I kept doing this stuff for some time, through out the high school and I still do this sometimes, when a friend needs it. For me the fact that I can do what he doesn’t know how or simply can’t is a delight. This has a special place for writing documents. I did some secretary work sometimes, but not because they’ve asked me to do it, but because I was extremely annoyed by their incompetence.

Recently, because of the CISCO courses offered by the faculty I currently study at, a precious opportunity in the world of networking was offered to me. I think that understanding the way networks operate is important, especially nowadays when typically every company relies on a connection to communicate. Anyway besides computer hardware (and a bit software), networking is another thing which fascinates me.

Now with the new world wide financial crisis it’s kind of difficult to find some work but this doesn’t matter. Computer science is a vast area and I can find work in almost any field because computer science is mandatory.

Blogging, microblogging... what's the difference?

2009-05-02T10:00:00.000-07:00

Well... well, well, well! Looks like I've entered the wonderful world of blogs and microblogs. What the heck are these? I didn't think that I would ever actually like writing what goes through my mind but I do find it interesting to see the way I was thinking on some specific day.

While not knowing what to write in a blog, because I don't really have anything to write about - nothing important happens to me too often, writing a 140-character long sentence is... cute. For example even s0arec has a Twitter account, although I prefer Plurk because it's faster - at least for me.

I was bored so I made myself a FriendFeed and a Facebook account and I've interconnected all my social media accounts with the FriendFeed one, because it's my favorite aggregator. In the image you can see a screenshot of my "Yahoo MyBlogLog" thing. I honestly didn't know that this is another kind of an aggregator. Just for laughs I wanted to test it and it looks like now the status updates from Twitter or the YouTube favorites appear on my timeline.

Well... I don't write these things because I would want anybody to see them. I just like keeping a more detailed journal and blogs aren't exactly my taste. So... happy blogging, microblogging or whatever you like!

Nostalgia

2009-02-16T23:59:00.000-08:00

Recently I've got a... pretty special portable computer as a gift from some acquitance. It's a Compaq Lite 25C. From the articles I found on the Internet, its configuration should be an i386 processor, running at 20 MHz and with 4 MB of RAM onboard. The hard drive isn't mentioned but it probably has a 10-20 MB, since the model used to come preloaded with MS-DOS 5 and Windows 3.1.

I could say that a thing like this is one of the best gifts someone could give to me. I've always had a passion for computers, especially for older ones. Not many people can understand that. Old computer have something special to them, especially because they are not from this generation, in which everything tends to go from fast to faster and faster.

I think I'm nostalgic... I miss the first computer I've ever touched, a pretty interesting IBM PC which had its DOS version different from that of Microsoft, with a white text on a blue background, instead of a gray text on a black background...

I sit and think about how time passed by me and what I've become. From that IBM PC (which I think was a Personal System / 2) together with another one which was pretty cute too, an IBM PC/AT compatible, I got to my first personal computer.

Since I didn't know much about hardware I had bought what I could find at that time - or, to be more precise, what my father found to be cheaper - a PC/AT compatible computer powered by a Cyrix 6x86 processor running at 166 MHz and with 16 MB of RAM, which was unfortunately overclocked at 200 MHz by the idiotic technicians of that store, because two years later I found out that Cyrix processors could self destruct if they overheated, which is exactly what happened to me.

Since this computer was pretty much toast, I temporarily bought another one, this time a 133 MHz Pentium with MMX instructions which, believe me or not, was faster than that Cyrix which used to run at 200 MHz. I wish I could have kept it but I couldn't because I had to pay some debts. It was the time when I had to take my first major exam before I could go to high school.

About half a year later when my dad came back home from abroad I bought a new computer from a company named "Best Computers" which at the time hasn't yet been bought by Diverta. The configuration had the name "Monster", with a Pentium 4 running at 1600 MHz, 512 MB of RAM, a 60 GB hard drive (compared to 1.6 GB hard drive which I had before that, by the way) a CD-ROM and a CD-ReWriter drive - yes, my first optical burner drive. To me writing my first CD was something magic...

The transition from the 133MHz Pentium MMX to the 1600 MHz Pentium 4 felt pretty weird. I could say that it actually felt a little bit too fast to me. I had the same feeling about my current computer too - but let's not skip history.

After about two years I've changed the motherboard and the RAM (the processor was a Pentium 4 but the chipset was the Intel 845, which was working with PC133 SDRAM type of memory modules) so I bought a motherboard with DDR memory support and a Geforce FX 5200. By the way, I haven't mentioned this. I used to have a Leadtek Geforce 2 MX and it could actually run Doom 3 - a bit slow and with log graphics, but it was playable.

Another two years later I took the Baccalaureate exam and I went to faculty. I got some money and bought myself a laptop I also made a gaming computer, which was the first time I used an AMD processor, the Ahtlon 64. I used that computer until this october when I got some money for my birthday and I built a new gaming PC of which pictures are here on my blog... not to mention the fact that it's not been six years since I've connected to the Internet.

So... from a i286 IBM PC/AT compatible and an 386 Personal System / 2 to Cyrix PR200, From Cyrix PR200 to Pentium MMX and then to Pentium 4, from Pentium 4 to Ahtlon 64 and then to Intel Core 2 Duo, breaking the 3 GHz barrier. My life in the digital age has evolved but I always remember with joy and nostalgia the first computer I've ever worked with - that IBM Personal System/2. No matter how much performance today's computer may have, no matter how fast the world is, nothing can replace the magic which the computer of that time had, in a time when not everyone had this privilege of using them. Today many people afford a computer but they buy it just for having something to brag about, for playing or for listening to music. Very few people show an interest for what they are and what they have been built to do.

I feel sorry for the fact that we've got here. A computer is meant to help somebody be more productive and even have fun and to communicate with other people but this involves being open to learning its science. This is what the current generation doesn't see or doesn't want to see, especially because of the evolution of graphics. I'm not like them and am not part of their generation even though I've been born at the same time they did. I will always cherish these dynamic jewels.

The house belongs to my parents but... the door is mine!

2008-07-30T17:30:00.000-07:00

Well, I've finally managed to get a modern metal door. Although it looks like wood, it has several metal layers inside and in the center, between them, it has a soundproof spongy substance - like the one they have put around to door to keep it in place.

The door's aspect is simple, without stupid decorations, because I really don't like things like that - I've bought a door, not a photograph in a frame.

I can hardly wait to change the wallpaper, and this time I will have the occasions to make things as they should be, not as my father did it, along with his retarded friends.

The Romanian Language is Everywhere

2008-06-04T21:58:00.000-07:00

I've opened this subject today - about these funny foreign names. Somebody told me about the "Pula" station of the Republic of Croatia and it reminded me about a joke email I received a while ago (the joke can't really be translated from Romanian, you have to understand the language to get the idea, but I'll try explaining):

Limba romana e atat de bogata incat am exportat-o pe banda rulanta. M-am aventurat in a face un top al denumirilor internationale care, fara sa stie purtatorii, sunt... d'ale noastre, neaose, suculente si pline de inteles.

Romanian is such a rich language that we've mass exported it. I've adventured myself in making a top 10 of the international names which, without them knowing, are ours... full of succulent meanings...

1. Pe primul loc, bineinteles, ce alt nume ar putea figura decat renumita statiune croata Pula. Am intalnit persoane care isi fac concediile in Pula (inclusiv oameni care chiar merg in Croatia pentru asta).

First of all, of course, what other name could figure here than the famous Croatian station named Pula (cock). I've met people who spend their vacations in Cock (even people who go to Croatia especially for that).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pula

2. Tot Pula se numeste si moneda oficiala a statului african Botswana. Prin asta se explica saracia lucie din savana... luand in calcul faptul ca populatia e preponderent feminina, se ajunge la cateva subdiviziuni de Pula pe cap de locuitor. Cursul de schimb il gasiti pe http://www.x-rates.com/d/BWP/table.html

Cock is also the name of the official currency of the African state of Botswana. This is how you can explain the extreme poverty of the savana... giving the fact that the majority of the population is feminine so you get several subdivisions of cock per inhabitant. You can find the exchange rates in the link above.

3. In alte zone de pe continentul african, oamenii o duc si mai rau. Daca botswanezilor le e de ajuns o Pula pentru a-si asigura traiul (mai ales ca-s negri, si stim noi ce se vorbeste despre ei), 3,4 milioane de mozambicani locuiesc in regiunea Nampula, avand capitala in orasul cu acelasi nume.

Other areas of the Afrian continent have it even worse. If for Botswanians a cock is enough to make a living (especially because they're black and we know how gifted they are), 3.4 million Mozambique inhabitants live in the Nampula ("n-am pula" = I don't have a dick) region, with the capital of the same name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nampula_Province

4. Printre distractiile mai putin cunoscute, dar mai apropiate de noi, se poate numara o excursie cu intreaga familie in micul si linistitul Camping De Muie, pe insula olandeza Tholen. Puteti sa le scrieti sa-i felicitati pentru denumirea inspirata, sediul lor din St. Maartensdijk e amplasat tot pe strada... Muie. Sau vizitati-i pe http://www.campingdemuie.nl

Among the less known leisures - but closer to us - you can get a camping trip with the whole family in the small and quiet Camping de Muie (Blowjob Camp) on the Tholen island of The Netherlands. You can write them a letter of congratulations for their inspired name, their headquarters are on... the Blowjob Street. Or you can visit them on the Internet by clicking the link above.

5. Futai USA Inc. este (ah, asta imi aduce aminte de o imprecatie dintr-un vers de Parazitii) cel mai mare producator de umbrele din lume, vezi Doamne. Cica aproape toate umbrelele din lume contin piese Futai. Firma taiwano-americana mai face si crose de golf... desi nu vad legatura.

Futai USA Inc. (Fuck USA Inc.) is - ah, this reminds me about some lyrics from Parazitii - the biggest producer of umbrellas in the world. They say that almost all umbrellas in the world have Fuck parts. The Taiwan-American company also makes golf clubs but I don't see the link here...

http://www.futaiusa.com/about_futaiusa.htm

6. LABA inseamna pentru toti italienii Libera Accademia di Belle Arti. Saracii ofera chiar 30 burse de studiu "per i Master della LABA". LABA - La natura dell' arte.

LABA (paw ~ masturbation) means "Libera Accademia di Belle Arti" for Italians. The poor people even offer 30 scholarships for "Master of LABA". Pawing - the nature of art.

http://www.laba.biz

7. Daca tu crezi ca esti in rahat, ce parere ai de cei 32.000 de insi din orasul israelian Rahat? In Rahat, ce-i drept, locuiesc numai arabi (ca sa vedeti unde i-au trimis filosemitii de americani), si ei se simt bine acolo, de vreme ce rahat inseamna pe limba lor ceva gen "convietuire fericita".

If you think you're in deep shit, how about the 32,000 people from the Israel town of Rahat (Shit)? In Shit, honestly, live only Arabic people - this goes to show you where Americans have send them - and they even feel good there, since in their language Rahat means something else, probably "happy conhabitation".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahat

8. Pentru ca din nou ne-am indepartat de plaiurile mioritice, am putea sa vizitam si Curu. Nu, nu e suficient sa te uiti in spate, Curu este o rezervatie naturala in Costa Rica. 75% din Curu lor este impadurit, si totusi costaricanii il considera unul din cele mai frumoase locuri din tara. N-as vrea sa le vad pe celelalte, in cazul asta.

Because we've departed from our plains again, we could visit Curu (Ass). No, it's not enough to look behind you, Ass is a natural reservation in Costa Rica. 75% of their Ass is bushy and yet they consider it one of the most beautiful places in their country. I wouldn't want to see the other ones, in this case...

http://www.nicoyapeninsula.com/curu/

9. Am ajuns si in indepartata Japonie, unde pe crestele muntilor cresc falnicii Sugi. Sugi este chiar arborele national al japonezilor, asteptam cu interes aclimatizarea lui pe coastele insorite ale Croatiei de mai sus.

We've finally arrived in the far away Japan, where on the top of mountains grow the glorious Sugi (You Suck). You Suck is the national tree of Japan so we're waiting for the acclimatization of it on the sunny coast of Croatia, mentioned above.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugi

10. Cui nu-i plac conditiile rudimentare oferite de campingul olandez de Muie, ii recomandam cu caldura cazarea in hotelul parizian de Buci.

To whomever doesn't like the rudimentary conditions offered by the Dutch Blowjob Camp we recommend the Buci (Ass Cheeks) Hotel of Paris.

http://www.bucihotel.com/

In concluzie, dragi cititori, fiti mandri de graiul ce-l graiti, dar fiti prudenti. N-ai de unde sa stii ce inseamna "buna ziua" in limba uzbeka.

As a conclusion, dear readers, be proud of the language you're speaking but also be careful! You can't know what "Good Day!" means in the Uzbek language!

Election Campaign - 1st of June 2008

2008-06-03T23:30:00.000-07:00

This Sunday the elections were going on. After I went to vote I had to go to a hospital from Sector 5 with someone and on my way there I saw just how lame our politicians of today can be. Instead of talking about their plans for a better life of people in a civilized way, they're fighting each other. If they lived there I would've wanted to know why PNL is better, for example, than PSD... but no... in Romania if there's an election campaign they don't tell us why it would be good to vote for someone - they tell us who not to vote, instead.

On the same theme I've taken the picture of that stupid cross too. I don't really think Romanians live a better life now than it was before the big "revolution" of 1989. Oh. Right. They guys from different political parties have an extraordinary life, especially because they can steal anything they want. The same goes for people who can't form a sentence without adding a swear after ever two words, and also the ones who can't live without watching a porn movie.

Is this what the people who fought the Revolution of '89 died for? A lot of people I talked to have told me about how it used to be when Romania was under Ceauşescu's regime and it didn't sound to me like they were having such a hard life. Oh, let me guess. Too much order just isn't right, huh? People die if they stay o day or two without eating meat (if they live outside Bucharest or some other big city). People don't like being monitored when they enter or leave a building. They like being left alone so they can eventually steal something from a random person's house, like it happened to a neighbour of mine about three weeks ago. Yeah. If you were caught stealing you went directly to Jail without "passing GO" so you could bribe people a bit.

Windows 95

2008-06-03T23:16:00.001-07:00

It's been some time now since I've last seen Windows 95 running. About three months ago somebody donated me a Pentium 1 laptop which was in perfect condition except the hard drive - I don't know exactly what's wrong with it but the computer can't boot from it until about 10-15 minutes after being powered on.

I've eventually managed to find and buy a "new" hard drive with the capacity of 1 GB, using the okazii.ro website. I've replaced the old one with the new one which, by the way, came to me via Romanian Mail because the guy I bought it from lives in Pitesti so... this has been a nice occasion for me to find out what's it like to use the snail mail to get what you need - instead of the Internet.

I've installed Windows 95 on the laptop and here's the result:

By the way, it's just a collector's item, and I like using Windows 95 from time to time. I feel nostalgic. However you may want to check this: Why I still use Windows 95

Update: There used to be a page showing the following text there, but now it's showing a picture similar to the desktop computer I have in this picture - Twitpic: My idea of having fun:

Why I Still Use Windows 95

The operating system I currently use on my primary computer is Windows 95 OSR2. Furthermore, not only do I use Windows 95 extensively, but I prefer it to Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, and Vista.

Yes, I am aware that this puts me in a position not shared by many other people today. I wouldn't be surprised if the proportion of people still using Windows 95 on a regular basis is ½% or less. And, I am accustomed to getting strange or uncomplementary reactions from other people when they find out that I still do: "Are you insane?" or "Why the hell are you using Windows 95?!" are only typical. I can no longer count on most of the latest software being capable of running on this configuration. So, why do I still endorse a computer operating system more than ten years old?

First of all, a computer is a tool. It is a principal of mine that if a tool works well and satisfies my wants and needs, there is no reason to replace it; regardless of mere age. On that note, I have traditionally been the last using any given piece of computer software on occasions before: I used Windows 3.1x semi-regularly on my Gateway 2000 486 as late as mid-2003, when I had a practical need to turn to a newer computer for regular tasks and be capable of running 32-bit programs. Windows 95 is far more technologically sophisticated and viable than Windows 3.1x.

Second of all, for a variety of reasons I have a major aversion to Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and higher: I do not want to use it and I do not want it present in any form on any computer I own. With Windows 98, Microsoft needlessly integrated Internet Explorer 4.01 (or later 5.0) into features that were ostensibly parts of the operating system itself: The Explorer shell interface and Windows Help both display their contents in Internet Explorer windows complete with a browser-like throbber in the corner, with the browser difficult if not impossible to completely remove. This dubious practice has continued into all subsequent versions of Windows to date. By contrast, it is not difficult to completely remove or circumvent the preinstallation of Internet Explorer from Windows 95 OSR2, and the earliest versions (though less stable and less capable than OSR2) didn't include IE at all.

Windows 95 is reasonably fast in performance, and is not compromised by the arguably frivolous animation and eye candy features in Windows 98 and newer versions: Sliding or fading menus, gradient title bars, "flat" toolbars, and menus that annoyingly take on the 3D appearance of command buttons when moving the mouse over or selecting them but to name a few examples. There are no "activation" schemes, and the OS installed takes up well under 500MB.

Currently there is no hardware or software I need or desire to use that is not capable of running on Windows 95. I can run even Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird in a pinch. Most of the applications I have found that do require Windows 98 or higher, meanwhile, tend to be incidentally plagued by having slow performance, a poor interface design (such as with the newest versions of Windows Media Player and RealPlayer), and/or no compelling functionality not present in an earlier version. In any case, the APIs of Windows 95 OSR2 and Windows 98 are virtually identical, and there is no good reason for any software capable of running on one not to work on the other as well. With my browser and e-mail client, Office 97, WordPerfect 7, and a few graphic tools I can be as productive as I like with Windows 95.

While I freely concede that Windows NT 4.0, 2000, and XP are much more stable than Windows 95, I also maintain that Windows 95 OSR2 is the most stable DOS-based version of Windows to be released, moreso than Windows 98 and especially the buggy mess that was Windows ME. It is substantially more stable and handles system resources more efficiently than Windows 3.1x as well.

I prefer to have as much native compatibility as possible with DOS applications such as older games I own. While it is possible to run these from Windows 2000 or XP either natively or (as circumstances may very well require) through an emulator, I prefer to have the real thing.

Finally, Windows 95 has an intuitive user interface I prefer to the IE-integrated monstrosities of Windows 98 and subsequent versions. Windows 95's Explorer uses OS-native controls and menus, has all the most essential tools—such as file-delete and individual icon-view controls—on the toolbar, does not waste space with oversized toolbar controls or needless left-hand icon-and-caption panels, and doesn't contain unnecessary Internet Explorer tie-ins such as awkward "back" and "forward" file navigation or a "Favorites" menu. The Start menu automatically sorts folders and files alphabetically automatically, and defaults to a multi-column view instead of Windows 98's slow and inconvenient scroll arrows.

I don't expect my reasoning to be representative for everyone, of course, and I have sometimes been tempted to switch to a different version of Windows myself (specifically NT 4.0 or 2000) or even abandon Windows entirely a number of times. However, I have justifiable reasons for my decisions, and will continue using Windows 95 OSR2 as my primary OS for the forseeable future until I can no longer run a relatively up-to-date web browser or absolutely must use a piece of hardware or software not compatible with Windows 95.

2007 Summary

2007-12-31T23:59:00.000-08:00

In short, the things that have happened this year are:

I've completed the Cisco Training Courses for: IT Essentials 1, IT Essentials 2 and CCNA Exploration 1
I officially have two Internet connections: Lighting-net.ro and RDS.Link
I've been to the CERF convention for the second time, where I've seen some interesting things, especially the impressive Vodafone stand
I've worked for the first time as Tech Support for Lightning-net.ro
I've bought a multifunctional router - the Asus WL-500g Premium
I got a trial version of Windows Vista but I am not running it simply because I don't like the way it looks
I've bought my first Smart Phone running Windows Mobile - the Orange SPV E650 with a Bluetooh adapter and Bluetooth handsfree
I've completed an AutoCAD introduction course. I will get my diploma after New Year's Eve
I've bought my first ever SATA PC components: a Samsung DVD-Writer and a 500 GB hard drive.
I've bought my first Altec Lansing audio system... 2.1 for now, because I don't have a good sound card yet and also I can not listen to music otherwise

Orange SPV E650 & Windows Mobile 6

2007-12-09T16:45:00.000-08:00

I'm quite sure that nobody was experiencing me to buy a cell phone with Windows Mobile as its operating system. Well I've disappointed them. I'm the happy owner of an Orange SPV E650. The phone is produced by the HTC company, under the name S710 or Vox. The Smart Phone supports WiFi, Blue Tooth 2.0, it has a QWERTY sliding keyboard and the operating system is the fresh Windows Mobile 6.0 Standard. I've bought the phone in October, for my birthday and, until now, at least, it worked pretty well. I have to be honest, it has a few bugs but they can go unnoticed. The phone has many advantages. The phone comes with Microsoft Pocket Word, Pocket Excel and Pocket PowerPoint. It can save documents although not create new ones. You have to work around that. You just have to create a blank document on your PC and then you can save it with the phone. It does require restarting from time to time, after all it's Windows, what did you expect? :) Uninstalling programs is easy but some of them may cause Registry problems. YES. The phone actually has a Registry, like the PC version of Windows. You can actually unlock the phone from the Orange network just by modifying some Registry keys. Surprisingly it has sort of a "format c:" function. It's called clear memory and it erases any changes there are in the phone's internal memory and restores everything to the factory default. You better backup your contacts somehow, if you're going to do that.

I don't know what to say about the phone's real stability, because a lot of the required restarts are not necessary because of the operating system but because of the actual SIM card. I've had a few phones and all of them worked the same when using an Orange SIM. They react a bit slower. The HTC Vox (the unbranded version) can work even without a SIM. If there's a WiFi network nearby, then you're all set for browsing.

Ubuntu 6.10 & Fedora Core 6 -- Zod

2006-11-11T20:00:00.000-08:00

I've once again begun testing Linux-based operating systems, in my quest of finding the right one for me and also one that would be stable enough on my PC as well as my laptop. Among the distributions I've tried there are: OpenSuSE 10.1, Ubuntu LTS 6.06, Gentoo 2006.1 and Fedora Core 6 (Codename Zod).

Those of you who ever tried using Gentoo probably know that this is one of those "compile from source", with performance and speed optimizations for the hardware - especially the processor - it's supposed to run on. In 64 bit it is indeed very stable but it's not quite what I am looking for, because configuring each part of the operating system must be done manually and that takes me quite a lot of time - which I don't have for now. By the way, Gentoo is the fastest of all distributions which I've tested but, as I said, you must have time and Linux knowledge for it. Yes, it's not enough to read the online manual, as they say.

The distributions I've considered to be the best are Ubuntu LTS 6.06 (or the current version, which is 6.10) and Fedora Core 6. Both offer the possibility to automatically install and configure software, especially the video card drivers, although I've noticed some small bugs linked to that in the current kernel. Ignoring that, both distributions are very stable and for the first time we can talk about Fedora Core and performance. Well... like any distribution, it has its bugs... but I do like the fact that the guys from Fedora have finally managed to fix some very annoying incompatibilities between KDE and Gnome.

At least so far I haven't encountered any problems starting GTK+ (Gnome) programs in KDE and vice versa. I did encounter problems with the XFCE environment. It basically works but I can't figure out the reason why when setting some themes the main menu becomes completely useless for that user, no matter if it's the root user or a normal user. Ubuntu has some strange problems with CUPS which hangs when I'm trying to configure my printer... although it might be because of the older drivers for it. It works perfectly with some Samsung printer drivers, though. I've tested KDE 3.5.5 on Ubuntu 6.10 and it looks like it's working as well as it does in Fedora Core 6 but, to my amusement, if before you would have problems with GTK+ in KDE because the objects were too large, now some objects are too small, especially the fonts. I don't think everyone know what I'm referring to but it doesn't matter, it's something you can ignore, because it looks like this version of KDE is almost perfect. I didn't encounter program loading problems in Ubuntu either.

For those of you who run the 64 bit versions: The only inconvenience is that there is not 64 bit Flash Player... for now. I think it's pretty annoying not being able to run Adobe/Macromedia Flash content because they're more and more popular these days and the only temporary solution is to run a 32 bit browser.

Baccalaureate / Admittance to Faculty 2006

2006-07-30T15:00:00.000-07:00

The first session of exams is over and I'm among the lucky ones who managed (somehow) to pass. Unfortunately some of my colleagues weren't that lucky... Bummer.
Well, I've got admitted to The University of Bucharest, The Department of Technologies.

I wish good fortune to all who have to try again in the next session, in august and September. Go pass the baccalaureate exam and get admitted to a faculty of your choice.

Random stuff... My first blog post

2005-10-24T17:10:00.000-07:00

For some time now I kept visiting Jeff Milner's Backmasking page.

Maybe the things he posted on his site are real, maybe not, I don't care. I like stuff like that. They sound cool. The best song I've ever listen to, in my opinion, is "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin. It's worth to try listening to it backwards...