Burlaki [back] on the Hudson

Don’t tell my younger daughter, but I am awfully late with what she surely expects will be my gift to her on her next birthday. Given that the similar enterprise for the benefit of her older sister six years ago took me roughly nine months to finish, I shouldn’t have waited until March to start something that I need to complete in June.

One thing works for me: I do not have to digitize hundreds of hours of 8mm video recordings this time around. Also, I now have a considerably more powerful hardware than I had then. And I am undoubtedly more skillful with the various media software. On the other hand, I haven’t done much movie-making since before our England years; I could be rusty, for all I know.

My activity log so far has a couple of hours for photo prep and about the same amount for introductory slideshow. I expect the total time to be in the vicinity of 150 hours. I better get on with that.

Chronicles

The children and I went to see Alice in Wonderland on Sunday. We are all big aficionados of Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece, and anything coming out in 3D these days has a strong attraction for us anyway.

We weren’t disappointed. The 3D experience is quite rewarding, special effects and amalgamation of live action and CGI continues to amaze, Johnny Depp is brilliant, other members of the cast were all quite good, Tim Burton’s take on the familiar story is appropriately dark and hilarious by turns. Kimmy, who is normally easily scared by on-screen monsters and startling action cuts, did not find the proceedings too scary.

My only problem was with Mad Hatter falling into Scottish accent during his rants. It must have been too long since I left UK – I had a bit of trouble deciphering his speech. Becky, on the other hand, had no such problem.

A solid on my scale.

Chronicles

NBC pissed me off with their atrocious Olympics coverage. ABC then decided to get on my bad side by making me miss Oscars.

Almost.

I was almost expecting the looping “important message from Cablevision” that blamed all ills on ABC throughout the day on Sunday to be replaced by live Oscar feed just in time for the ceremony. That the feed was restored about an hour into the broadcast partially mitigated my displeasure with both ABC and Cablevision (which, I’ve no doubt, was shared by the 3 million Cablevision subscribers residing in WABC-7 broadcast area), but it still does not excuse either company. The Dolan family, cheapskates extraodinaire, seem to have positioned me and other subscribers as potential hostages in any dispute with content providers (which, judging by the fact that this is the second time this year that a popular channel was taken off the air, may become a regular happenstance). In this particular case, the little I understand about TV content economics does suggest that ABC is more at fault; I can’t imagine why a local affiliate in one specific region of the country, who produces very little of original content beyond local news broadcasts, would be suddenly worth 20% more than before, especially since it is, in effect, a free channel. (And I do know several friends who bought themselves digital antennas to ensure that they could watch Oscars even if the dispute was not resolved in time.)

The outcome will undoubtedly be higher rates for my cable subscription. The Dolans will quote-unquote apologize and blame it on the greedy networks, but that hardly makes me any happier.

As it were, we missed only the opening part of the ceremony, which might have been one of its more entertaining parts. We seemingly did not miss any of the actual awards, joining in when the Best Supporting Actor – which, I believe, is traditionally one of the very first categories to be awarded – was up.

There were surprisingly few entertaining bits in the rest of the broadcast. Only one production number, with brilliant street dancing to the nominated Best Original Scores. No live performances of the nominated Best Songs, which must be the newest trend. Several presenter routines were clever (Ben Stiller, or Diaz and Carell), while quite a few people looked uncomfortable and camera-shy. I liked the recently adopted practice of giving each of the Best Actor/Actress nominees a personal panegyric by a co-star; some of those salutations were quite charming. The Martin/Baldwin duo, conversely, was not at all funny and looked out of place – I can barely recall a joke of theirs that I laughed at (ok, the Paranormal Activity spoof wasn’t half bad); overall, IMHO, they were a huge downgrade from Hugh Jackman’s performance last year.

A number of acceptance speeches for “lesser” awards was quite rudely cut off, which may have helped to move things forward (nonetheless, the broadcast lasted a bit over 4 hours), but also probably contributed to there being very few good ones – I think Sandra Bullock’s was the only one that managed to be both funny and heart-felt without sounding arrogant or patronizing; I can only recall a couple of others (the French guy who won the Best Animated Short, the winner for the Best Score) who stayed away from the tired formula of “I couldn’t imagine this X years ago – Look at me now! – Thank you the managers and the agents and the members of the crew [and James Cameron the Visionary]“.

The Hurt Locker looks like a great movie that I definitely want to see, but its haul of Oscars and especially its Best Picture award look to me a bit of a stretch. Ever since Shakespeare in Love won over Saving Private Ryan in ‘98, the Academy has been trying to over-compensate in favor of the socially- or politically-profound movies, and this must have been the case of the voters being biased towards a current-events, touches-the-nerve story over a fantastic allegory. Still, I felt that a ground-breaking movie a decade in the making, and one that so effortlessly became the most widely seen movie in the entire history, was slam-dunk deserving of the Best Picture Oscar. Makes it even more of an anomaly that The Return of the King cleaned up in ‘03.

Also, the Best Picture award provided a single exception that I noticed this year to the trend of the same people winning all awards during the season. Jeff Bridges won a Golden Globe, a SAG Award and an Oscar for his role. Sandra Bullock did likewise. So did Christoph Waltz. So did Mo’Nique. I can’t imagine that their performances are such stand-outs compared to those of their fellow nominees that different voting bodies would each agree. Only when it came to the best movie, did the Academy of Motion Pictures vote differently from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Weird.

In any case, Oscars always rekindle my interest in watching movies. That, and the sight of gorgeous women in beautiful gowns – hey, I’m secure enough in my masculinity to admit that I enjoy that sight tremendously! – makes the Oscar night one of the most important TV nights in my viewing calendar. Good thing ABC and Cablevision came to their senses before it was too late.

Books & Movies, TV

Spent a few days in Chicago on business. The schedule was fairly packed, but I managed to squeeze in an evening with the little brother and his family. Did not manage to find much time for idle city-seeing, although I did try to take different routes between the hotel and the office, as I aways do.

From a point of view of an architecture lover, Chicago must be one of the most impressive American cities. All over the Loop, there are gorgeous examples of a wide variety of architectural styles. The concept of uniformity was seemingly paid no heed whatsoever when Chicago was built up in 19th-20th centuries, so there are literally no two like buildings in any proximity of one another. On a bright, sunny day, even the heart of the city’s concrete jungle is rather pleasing to the eye.

I’ve been to Chicago quite a few times in the past, and yet I never knew that many streets in its Downtown area exist on two levels, with the lower level providing a quicker driving route between various points; much fewer cars use those lower streets. When you walk around Chicago on foot, you may never realize that a wide thoroughfare such as North Michigan Ave is, in fact, an elevated roadway, with the ground-level street directly underneath it. When a taxicab suddenly took me along the lower-level route, I was stunned by the discovery.

I also feel like I should have been familiar with that before.

Having had been a comparatively frequent business traveler prior to the family move to England, I have not been on a business trip for nearly three years. The shaving cream can felt victim to my lack of recent exposure to traveling without checked-in luggage. It was a large container, well above the 100g limit allowed in the carry-on these days. The TSA agent looked at me with barely concealed disdain and my pride took a serious hit for being publicly nailed in an attempt to break the law, however inadvertently, especially as I was unable to conceal my incredulity and duly attracted the attention of everyone behind me in the security check line. It all makes sense, I suppose: Idiotic rules make you feel like an idiot.

On the other hand, I consoled myself, at least I can hope that a truly dangerous object would not escape TSA folks’ scrutiny, seeing how successful they were in preventing various bottles, cans and containers to accompany their hapless owners. My shaving cream joined a pile of at least 50 similar objects…

Chronicles, Travel

I am getting into a car to go pick up my teenage daughter and a couple of her friends from a trip to the mall. Because I’ve been volunteered to deliver those kids to their homes, and because one of them lives as far as is geographically possible from us while still technically residing in the same township, I am looking at 45-50 minutes of total driving. I want to have some music playing while I’m driving, and not of the kind that kids these days prefer.

My little problem: I don’t want to embarrass my kid. I want to be a cool Dad. And yet, 90% of music on my iPod is in languages other than English and hardly any is in genres that teenagers would appreciate. The rest falls into the “oldies” category, with a good chance of appearing too dated to the kids.

My only safe choice seems to be in going with my 50-song Beatles playlist. The Beatles are kinda undissable; even if the other kids don’t like it, I can’t imagine them giving my daughter hard time about her old man being a Beatles’ fan.

At some point after the kids get in the car, Hello Goodbye comes up in the shuffle. Suddenly, they all start singing along from the backseat1. Becky notices my apparent surprise of that and remarks: “See, Daddy, my friends are cool!”

If they are cool singing to it, I must be cool playing it.

Whew! Aced it!

———–
1 It came up in a conversation afterwards that the teens know the song mostly because of Jonas Brothers’ cover, but they all agreed that they hated that and that the original version was much much better…

Videos & Music

My kids love to ski. I don’t. So, on our weekend skiing trip, I had ample opportunities to use my new reading gadget, whiling the time away at the lodge.

Overall, I am happy with my choice. I like the design and the feel of the reader, the user interface and the navigation is simple enough, and the reading experience is not at all taxing on the eyes. There are few bells and whistles beyond plain book-reading, but I neither care to listen to music while I read nor have any interest in carrying grayscale versions of my favorite photos on the device. Absence of 3G connectivity (and of the ability to buy and download books on-the-go) does not bother me in the least.

PRS-505 is not as small as to fit into an average shirt or jacket pocket, but a ski jacket provided me with a perfect compartment for it, and on other occasions I think I’ll be fine carrying it in a bag. On the other hand, I wanted the device with at least a 6″ screen, and I appreciate the fact that its navigation buttons do not demand too much of “dead” space around the screen to be accommodated.

Since this particular model is no longer being produced by Sony, it makes little sense for me to go into a detailed review. Let’s just say that if it was still freely available in the stores, I’d lean to strongly recommending it to others.

It is not without shortcomings, though. The one that bugs me the most is that there does not seem to exist an option to select the initial font size when the book is first formatted for reading. The device defaults to “small”, while I find “medium” more acceptable. Pressing the font change button causes the book to be re-formatted, which can take 15-20 seconds. Having the formatting process run twice before I start reading is a minor annoyance.

The device also self-reboots on me occasionally. In fact, when the “currently reading” value exists and I want to change to a different book, the reader is certain to reboot during “new” book’s formatting. After it restarts (45-60 seconds), the “current” book is no longer marked, and the formatting goes ahead without a problem. But with one book, I could not make the font larger, as the device kept rebooting during each “second” re-formatting. I am willing to attribute this as a side effect of russification, but I need to play with various formats to find out if it can be overcome. Strangely, I have all of the books on the device currently in its native .lrf format, which I least expected to cause me problems.

[update 02/26] After playing with different formats for a couple more days, I can conclude that initial formatting step (as well as re-formatting for font size change) is specific to native Sony .lrf book format. The involuntary reboot is definitely due to using .lrf with the russification hack – it does not occur with other formats. I do not have much of a choice if I want to be reading Russian books, because support for .epub format is currently limited enough so that I’d have to perform manual task of font embedding into each ePub file, and PDF does not really do it for me (table of contents gets dropped during conversion to PDF; re-sizing of the font size does not re-page the document, but simply breaks one page into two or three with the bottom of the initial page occupying just the portion of the screen and breaking off in mid-sentence – very disorienting), so I’ll probably ignore the few annoyances that .lrf causes me now. For an English-language-only user, seems like ePub format offers the best reading experience with practically no downside. [/update]

So, no, not perfect. On the other hand, I’ve yet to see a device of any kind that would not cause me some sort of annoyance design- or performance-wise. I have already practically recouped the money I spent to buy the reader by saving on skiing rental equipment and two days of lift passes for myself. Ability to not do something I don’t especially enjoy while generally accompanying the kids and keeping myself entertained – priceless!

Technology & Gadgets

A junk-mail envelope felt to touch as if it had some sort of a card inside, and my curiosity took upper hand. As it turned out, a run-of-the-mill “invitation” was accompanied by the following:
 

 
How do I end up on their mailing list, I’d like to know!?

Chronicles

What a joke NBC’s Olympic coverage is!

A single Olympiad occurred during my time in Europe and, having watched it in two different countries, I was impressed with the coverage both on BBC and also on Italian TV. It was much closer to what I remember from my Soviet days, when during the Olympics, practically every event could be seen on TV in its entirety, either live or earlier recorded, with the focus on the present competition.

Now, NBC has done its darnedest best to prove its uniquely inept approach to covering the Games.

Listen, NBC! I don’t need to hear for the fifth time in a couple of days that a Canadian skier draws inspiration from his severely-handicapped brother, or that his Australian rival is actually a Canadian born in Vancouver who bolted Down Under because of a conflict with Canadian team authorities, or that Chinese figure skating favorites have given 18 years of their lives to their pursuit of a gold medal. I already heard and saw that all on the last night’s broadcast! It is no longer enlightening if you keep repeating it. And it is not even news anymore if you simply re-cut the same video segment differently.

Least of all do I need two minutes of commercial breaks for each four-five minutes of event coverage. Especially when there’s been no athletic performances shown in the last 5-minute segment.

In the three hours of prime-time Olympic coverage that I watched last night, we’ve seen about ten downhill runs, a handful of snowboard cross heats and half a dozen or so figure skating pairs’ programs. With charitable approximation, that’s about 70 minutes of the actual event coverage out of 180 minutes spent in front of the TV. Ridiculous!

Some scheduling decisions are impossible to understand, period. I realize that with the 3-hour difference, some prime-time events are simply occurring too late for the younger kids to stay up and watch, but why would the broadcast of a final of a day-time event be pushed all the way back towards midnight? Kimmy was rather fascinated by snowboard cross, but only quarterfinal runs were shown before her bedtime. Semifinals were slotted in between figure skating performances around 10pm, and even I did not stay up beyond 11pm to see the final run. On the other hand, in one of those prime-time segments, we were treated to a riveting spectacle of a Chinese figure skater throwing a football at the beginning of his warm-ups. Followed by the drawn-out medal ceremony for the aforementioned Canadian skier.

Is there anybody out there who enjoys watching the coverage of one of the biggest sporting events on the calendar with the actual competition taking backseat to fluff? NBC has been at it for as long as I can remember. I suppose exclusive broadcast rights mean that my only alternative is not to watch Olympics at all, and since I do want to watch, I will unwillingly contribute to the ratings that will continue to fool NBC into thinking that their coverage was successful. If only I could move back to London for the couple of these Olympic weeks.

Sports

The kids will be out of school for two weeks in late March-early April, and we are suddenly faced with a dearth of places to go for a holiday.

The big part of it is undoubtedly our “spoiled” attitude after several years in Europe – we simply do not find many destinations in North America all too exciting. Add to that the upper limit of three hours in the air that we are currently willing to entertain, and our lack of enthusiasm for a beach holiday, and, as one of my friends jokes, “it’s Colonial Williamsburg or stay home”.

Where did we go for a spring school break from London? Cotswolds, Tuscany, Wales, Central Europe. Fairly inexpensive, either by air or by car, comparatively short flights when driving was not an option. Ok, one year the girls went all the way to the US for spring break, but while the flights were of the longish variety, the overall travel expense was still quite minimal…

Back in the US, we can’t come up with an option of a nice place that can sustain our collective interest for longer than a couple of days, be relatively near and comparatively inexpensive to get to and spend time at. Preferably, where we haven’t been to yet. Desirably, warmer than Northeast US. Hopefully, not overrun by hordes of vacationers also taking advantage of school break.

I already admitted – spoiled.

Travel

The best snow-blower is four guys with snow shovels.

20 minutes, 40 bucks, and I have not had even to step out of the house.

I don’t know why they did not show up and offer their services after previous snowfalls, but I sure hope they’ll be showing up the next time.

Chronicles

The second big storm of the winter – and just like the last time, northern parts of the Tri-State metropolitan area got no snow to speak of, while we got over a foot and parts to the south of us even more than that.

Is geography broken? Shouldn’t it be colder and more snowy as you move towards the North Pole rather than in the opposite direction?

Chronicles

I did not decide to look for an electronic book reader only after perusing information about iPad. An e-reader was on my to-buy list for quite some time. But the iPad announcement gave me a push and I finally spent money on a gadget that I long wanted.

My procrastination was partially explained by indecision. There are quite a few of interesting devices out there and I spent a long time figuring out which one to choose.

I already stated in that iPad article that I wanted the benefits of an eInk screen for my electronic reading. iPad, with an LCD screen, was not seriously in contention, to be honest.

I have absolutely no need to “buy the book and start reading it in 60 seconds”. My only impulse buys when it comes to books are in the segment of gorgeous travel and/or architecture photo-books. Not exactly something you’d buy for reading on a smallish monochrome device. And, anyway, I read a lot of public-domain books, and the rest only on someone’s recommendation. Surely, upon hearing a most effusive of endorsements for a specific work, I can wait until I get home, download the book onto my PC and then transfer it to my reader.

As an aside, I don’t really know how book publishing economics work, but if I can get a 1000-page mass market paperback for $7.99 at Barnes & Noble, I cannot think of a case for a digital file – no physical materials, nil physical storage space, nothing-can-be-simpler no-expense on-demand reissue – to cost $9.99. Especially, when you consider that a member of my family cannot pick up that same file when I’m finished with it just as they would a traditional tome.

So, the main advantages of a Kindle or a Nook are not really that important to me. I know a couple of people who own Kindles, and they are happy with them. But their reading habits differ from mine. I heard of only one person I know who’s getting a Nook so far and it’s too soon to judge how he likes it, but regardless, it is too new a device for me (remember, late adopter).

Considerations of storage are not of big import to me. Books are not songs – you can’t go through several dozen in a day. Having your entire library constantly with you is a completely unnecessary luxury, IMHO. I’m sure I’d be fine with having just a few books that are next in my reading queue. In any case, the e-readers with the least internal memory on the market can still carry around 160 books. I don’t think I’d ever buy a flash card specifically for the reader.

When I first considered buying an e-reader, I was concerned with formats. Seeing as there are at least three dozen different ones out there, I’d rather not be tied to a specific one. All of the major players are now not as proprietary-minded about formats as they were in the past, or they provide conversion services, but I was for a while seriously considering Astak ezReader as a possibility, on the strength of it being the only e-reader on the market that seemingly handles practically every format directly. Then, I discovered Calibre, which does an excellent job converting practically anything into anything.

Finally, russification. I read quite a lot of Russian literature, and for any non-English work, I am not sure I’d prefer an English translation to a Russian one.

That more or less sealed Sony as the only serious choice. I knew for a fact that Sony readers can be updated to properly display Cyrillic, and I was not sure that any other readers had similar patches available. And regardless, I’d have to look “outside” for Russian-language books, which was another point against investing into Amazon or B&N service.

Several people I know highly recommended Sony in either PRS-505 or PRS-300 incarnation. The latter I deemed a little bit too small for my taste (5″ screen). The former has been discontinued for a while in favor of touch-screen PRS-600. But I heard a lot of complaints about the screen glare on the new model. I even went to the local Best Buy and performed a very simple test with the available display models: Sticking my finger in front of the screen of PRS-300 resulted only in some shadows on the surface; doing the same for PRS-600 resulted in a clear reflection of my finger. I don’t want to see my face reflecting back at me when I read. I am not so keen on touch-screen capability as to compromise on the reading experience.

Various online stores are offering PRS-505 at $300 and above, so I decided to try eBay first. There were quite a few listings for “brand-new, factory-sealed” items, and it did not take me long to win one of them, for a very reasonable sum of $227.50. I received the package within a few days; it was as advertized in pristine never-opened condition. I spent some time on russification, which went quite easily, and then loaded the tiny total of 47 books onto the new toy. Should last me at least a couple of months.

I’ll let you know how I like it some other time.

Technology & Gadgets

Monaco famously occupies a very tiny spot on the French Riviera coast, but its topology is such that if you move from one part of it to another on foot, you will be well-exercised from all of the climbs and descents along terraced stairs.

On our visit to the principality, we spent an entire day there with several sightseeing and entertainment targets in mind. Our planning rested on the notion that sights cannot be that far from one another, but after taking into the account time constraints for a couple of sights and the desire to have a dinner at the end of the day in the historic center, we ended up repeatedly shuttling between Monaco Ville, Monte-Carlo and Jardin Exotique area.

At some point towards the end of the day, we decided that we had enough of walking and instead took the bus. This was on the route that we already covered in one direction – a convoluted and lengthy walk over quite a number of slopes and terraces – but we were pretty sure that the bus ride would not take more than a minute or two, with at most a couple of stops.

We got on a completely empty bus and paid the fare to the driver. He gave us back a receipt. We sat down.

Not a hundred meters into the ride, there was the first stop. A man in a suit and a coat got onto the bus, said something to the driver, and stepped towards us.

“Les billets, s’il vous plait” he said, flashing some sort of a badge.

I did not expect anyone to start speaking to me in French at that particular moment, so my reaction must have been that of a complete confusion. The man caught up immediately.

“Your teekets, pleeze.”

I mimed utter relief in response and, after a second of difficulty trying to recall which pocket I had put the damned receipt in, produced said receipt.

The man carefully inspected the piece of paper, nodded with satisfaction, gave it back to me, said “Tres bien. Merci!“, and got out of the bus at the next stop. Which, as it happened, was the last stop and our destination.

I had to produce public transport tickets for inspection on quite a number of occasions in my life, but none of such occasions left a similar imprint on my memory. A completely empty bus, only two stops to ride, no more than a couple of minutes of time on the bus, the tickets bought directly from the driver – and still the inspector did not neglect to show his zeal. Those Monegasque must be really serious about law and order in their little country, I thought to myself.

I haven’t been back to check whether they still do, unfortunately.

Memoirs, Travel

We were on Brighton Beach on Sunday for a visit to good friends. The area has been officially branded as “Little Russia by the Sea” since the last time I set foot there. True as ever, the vast majority of people on the streets are Russian emigrants.

Natasha noted that Russian children that we saw were all properly warmly dressed in freezing air temperatures. Winter coats, wool hats, thick scarves and mittens… That was in contrast with American children that we oftentimes see around where we live, who wear what I’d charitable call inadequate clothing in cold weather, so much so that I start shivering just by looking at them. (I’m getting cold from looking at you is a common Russian saying addressed at anyone who is not dressed warm enough as the weather dictates.)

I found that cultural difference mildly amusing. People born in Russia are often stereotyped as being impervious of the cold weather (or even affectionate of it), but the truth of the matter is, we simply make sensible decisions what to wear on cold days. Which means we are not as cold as someone who wears a short leather jacket when it’s 24 degrees Fahrenheit outside, yet is perpetually impressed how Russians can tolerate cold temperatures.

Apropos of

When our children were born, we did not exactly bother to research what the names we were giving them meant. (Or, if we did at the time, my memory did not record it.) But yesterday, Kimmy came across a naming book in our library and decided to figure out what her full name originates from.

Kimberly Sarah turned out as “Royal Princess”. Sorta redundant, but it just proves that we weren’t concerned with meanings much, just with whether we liked the names and whether we could honor our late grand- and great-grandparents by naming the children so.

Becky then looked up Rebecca Evelyn as well.

“Faithful Hazelnut”.

She was surprisingly good-humored about it…

Apropos of

The newest Apple gadget is shiny enough and I suspect a whole lot of people are salivating at the prospect of getting their hands on one. Perusing the official iPad website, I caught myself on a stray thought about how neat it would be to own one of these.

Let’s recall my repeatedly stated admission that I am a late adopter. Let’s also admit that I am not an Apple devotee, never having bought into the unsubstantiated religious belief that Apple products are truly superior to those of their competitors’, and having never been impressed with the monetary expenses attendant to owning every “greatest” Apple device. (I do own an iPod, but I actually got it at absolutely no cost to me. I don’t own anything else from Apple.)

Those considerations pretty much negate any possibility of me going out and getting an iPad when it becomes available. But there are also considerations of “Do I need a portable – however slick – computer at all?”

I do not spend a lot of “free” time in front of a computer at home. When I do switch on my home PC it is either for a computer-enabled house chore (say, to review family finances) or for a personal project. In both cases, I am pretty sure that a desktop PC with a wide-screen 24″ monitor and a full-size keyboard is a device more conducive to efficient task completion.

I prefer to read during my lengthy commute. Books or periodicals, not daily newspapers or blogs. So, an Internet browser with 3G wireless capability, while an unquestionably nice thing to have available, is not exactly a necessity for me. And an ability to peruse emails on the go – or to respond to them – does not fit at all into my M.O. I occasionally scroll through my Blackberry inbox outside of business hours, but I am a big proponent of leaving work behind when I am on my personal time.

I am perfectly fine with using my iPod – do you know that I still have the original monochrome-screen clunky-by-current-standards model? – for music on the go. I haven’t ever bought anything on iTunes and don’t plan to – vast majority of what I listen to is in Russian and is not available on iTunes, and my tastes in music are so calcified in the past, that it is hard to imagine that I don’t own something that I like on a CD, long ago digitized for iPod.

I have my business schedule and all of my contacts on my Blackberry. Given that it is also my mobile phone and my business emails channel, I am more than happy to have all of that functionality in that one place.

I can’t work up much enthusiasm for watching movies or TV shows on a smallish screen.

I practically do not play computer games.

I can see how having all of your pictures on a device that can easily display them while being passed around has certain value as a great conversation starter. I don’t know how frequently it would be of use, though. Certainly, not a necessity.

Having maps of the entire world – whether GPS-enabled or not – with you can also be viewed as valuable, but I honestly do not see myself trying to navigate streets of an unfamiliar city while checking my progress on a tablet. If anything, it will attract thieves in no time.

I don’t engage in creative pursuits that may require jotting down ideas as they occur to me. And my retentive memory is above average in that I actually rarely take notes altogether.

I do make to-do lists for myself all the time. On post-it notes, more often than not. Replacing that media with a tablet for that particular purpose appears an overkill.

So, of all the items listed on the iPad features page, book e-reader would appear the most useful for me. Except, with an LCD screen, I would not get the benefits of eInk that practically every dedicated e-reader provides these days.

Of course, it should be noted that I have not joined the 21st century yet in buying myself an e-reader. But I suppose I’ll look into doing that rather than contemplating getting a tablet PC, however brilliant iPad looks from a distance.

Technology & Gadgets

I have been wounding down this recurring feature on my blog, for lack of material. Unless I get a sudden flashback to some remarkable piece, I can no longer think of a non-Russian song or performer that holds a special place in my memories. And I do not feel much enthusiasm for pulling in Russian songs into the series. I guess about 50 entries in a feature is a pretty good run.

For a finale, though, I will use a Russian exhibit. Not a song, though, but rather the theme from one of my favorite old Soviet movies. As far as melodies go, this one is undoubtedly my most favorite melody of all time, bar none. I can’t exactly explain why but I literally get goose bumps when it reaches crescendo somewhere around two minutes in.
 

Chronicles

Both of the teams I was rooting for lost in conference championship games on Sunday. The Jets were exposed as a lower-class team with mostly toothless offense and only occasionally stingy defense. The Vikings turned the ball over four times and yet had the game for the taking with 2:29 remaining in the fourth quarter. Except, my erstwhile most favorite football player – on his second consecutive one-year un-retirement – single-handedly gave it up with yet another turnover, followed by the overtime in which he did not get a chance to touch the ball. NFL overtime rules are beyond stupid, a questionable officiating decision helped the Saints on their winning drive, but the bottom line is, as I was sitting on the couch repeating to myself “Protect the ball, get into the field goal range” at the end of the regulation, Favre managed the latter, and then screwed up with the former.

The Superbowl now holds decidedly limited interest for me: Not having seen it on the American TV for several years, I’m curious as to the commercials aspect of it. Colts in a shootout, anyway.

In other news, Cablevision and Scripps Networks have resolved their dispute regarding Food Network and HGTV, and both are back on air. Since these two channels constitute roughly 80% of Natasha’s choice of viewing, she is now back in contention for TV-watching time.

And on an entirely unrelated note, my corporate overlords recently decided to block access to a variety of blogging sites. Stand-alone domains such as mine are still accessible, but services such as Blogger are not anymore. I can still use my RSS aggregator for reading, but my ability to click through has been curtailed, which means however little I commented in the past, there will be even less of that going forward. And it goes almost without saying that I practically never spend time on blog-reading when at home. If they block RSS sites as well, I might drop out of the blogosphere altogether. Advance apologies to all of my pen friends.

Chronicles, Sports

Yep, 15 minutes, give or take.

January 31, 2010, is the deadline for filing UK taxes for fiscal year 2008-09, and I repeated the self-assessment process that I first mentioned here. This time, I literally typed in three different amounts provided to me on the British equivalent of W-2 form (called P60) and one other form (called P11D), after answering a series of binary questions regarding my sources of income and eligible deductions; to do all that I needed to click through about two dozen different screens at the HMRC website, but all of my personal information was already there, I only had to additionally re-enter my banking account attributes for the purposes of direct deposit. It all took 15 minutes, if that.

I actually ended up owing Her Majesty’s government a small amount of money, which was very easily paid through my UK bank online service. My tax account already reflects zero balance on the website.

Curiously enough, this is not the last time I will have to report taxes in the UK. Their fiscal year inexplicably runs from April 7th of one year through April 6th of the next. As I was on the UK payroll through early August of 2009, I earned about four months of salary in the fiscal year 2009-10. The tax return filing deadline for that will be January 31, 2011. Only after that I’ll no longer have any obligations to HM Revenue & Customs.

Expat Topic

I know quite a number of technology people with strong opinions about Microsoft and its products. Usually, not too positive ones. That does not prevent most of those people continue to use Microsoft products all the time, especially seeing how PC software have always been easier and cheaper to come by as opposed to, say, software for Macs.

Me, I never had to develop software on Microsoft platforms during my career and I never had much of a problem with my home PCs either, so I am a reasonably content PC person, always amused with anti-PC exaggerations in the mostly entertaining John Hodgman/Justin Long commercials.

I am also a late adopter who has never ever upgraded an operating system on a home PC. Moore’s Law in hand, I simply get better hardware once every few years, and use whatever comes pre-installed on it, which is more likely than not at the Service Pack 2 level by that time, meaning that all of the initial most annoying problems have been resolved already.

My last PC purchases until recently have been made before our move to England in pre-Vista days, so I have been happily running XP on all home devices. But I decided to renew almost all of the family home computers upon settling down back in the US. Before Windows 7 came out, so that my late-adopter bona fides were not impacted. Having never heard a single good thing about Vista, I made sure that my own new PC had XP installed on top of Vista installation. But for the new computers for kids, I did not bother with such specifics and ordered standard-configuration devices that came with Vista pre-installed.

One of those PCs came with an “invitation” for a free upgrade to then soon-to-be-released Windows 7. I misplaced that leaflet originally, but then came across it a couple of weeks ago. Late adopter or not, a free upgrade is a free upgrade. The information on the leaflet specified that I would be ordering an upgrade disk rather than doing any sort of on-the-spot installation, so I figured I’d get the disk while I was still inside the eligible time period and then decide whether to use it on some computer later.

I go to the online ordering site, type in the upgrade code from the leaflet, and learn that I am entitled to an upgrade from Vista Business Premium edition. Oops! The Vista installations that I have in the house are all Home Premium. The accompanying note on the website instructs me to be absolutely sure that I am ordering the correct upgrade, else it will not work.

I click through a couple of pages to find the appropriate support number, pick up the phone and within a few seconds speak to an “upgrade project team” member who introduces himself as John. After hearing my overview of the problem, he profusely apologizes for a mix-up and assures me that it is easily fixed. All he needs is the supporting documentation (literally, a scan of my upgrade leaflet and a print-screen of the operating system info from the PC in question) and my shipping address, so that they can order the proper upgrade version for me directly. Fifteen minutes later, I have the necessary jpegs which I send on to the e-mail provided to me over the phone.

Within 30 minutes, I get an email response from someone named Mario asking me for additional information needed to place the order. Apparently, my daytime phone number is necessary. I immediately respond. Within another hour or so, I get another email from someone named Malik that all of my information was received and sent up to the “processing department”. As soon as they review and approve, my order would be placed.

Next day, I receive an email from someone whose name I do not recall notifying me that my order has been placed. In less than 24 hours, yet another email comes, of seemingly automated nature, advising me that my order has been shipped and providing the tracking number.

A few days later, I get the package in the mail, with the Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade disk in it.

I’ve seen some efficient product-replacement issue resolutions (and even blogged about something of the kind), but this was right up there on the Great Service plane. Quite unexpected, to be sure. Props to Microsoft.

Now, do I really want to futz around with an almost brand-new PC that probably can safely run Vista for several years, given that its primary user – a certain 9-year-old – is only interested in internet and streaming video…

Customerography