People in an extreme situation

I have just watched the mobile-phone video of the recent car crash which resulted in 4 deaths.

The video itself is indisputably shocking.

The comments, however, are neither shocking nor surprising.
For the most part, commentators, sitting in their homes or offices on comfortable chairs, are outraged by the young guys "who filmed the whole damn thing instead of trying to rescue the passengers".

Well, one of them actually tried to help. He broke into the front glass, letting oxygen in, which basically turned the car salon into a flaming hell.
One person reached out, while the others were either unconscious or dead.
I guess nobody can tell now - anyway, they certainly have died quickly afterward.

Well, for all those showing their anger about operator's "stupidity", "monstrosity" and "violence".

Get out of your chair, go outside, happen to be in an unexpected extreme situation - and show us both your courage AND ability to think fast&reasonable.
Or just get out of your chair. And off the internet. It'll be better without you.

Now, for the rest of us who stay - what would you do in this case?

Would you try to help, without knowing exactly what and how to do?
Would you film it all on your mobile?
Would you just stand and stare, astonished?

I suppose 90% of the audience would do the last one. No matter how clever and tough we think we are.

And only time would uncover what was the "right" thing to do.
Yep, the first should be calling 01, 911 or whatever number you have in your city.

And then what?

Break the front glass, saving someone to doom all the others?
Wait for help to come?

There's no obvious answer, even now, when time has passed.

I, myself, choose one guaranteed life saved.
Especially considering two small "issues", which are:
1) The time usually needed for firefighters to come (which is from 30 to 60 minutes at my city)
2) The average condition of fire extinguishers which we all are carrying in our cars (you'd be surprised how ineffective these are)

And if that means that the dead guy's mother will curse me - well, that's tough but that's the price of taking decisions and making actions.

The biggest issue such extreme situations pose is - there is no "guarantee".
I guess that's why they are called "extreme".

So, I suppose I would stand and do nothing, while trying to weight the possibility to save someone vs the possibility to kill everyone with flame.

A sad conclusion.

Life goes spiral

Perhaps it's just me, I don't know - but it seems that life goes expanding circles, i.e. outgoing spiral.

I mean - sometimes I stumble upon a feeling that the situation I'm in right now has already happened to me years ago. On lower level of complexity, with fewer parameters included. I was younger, had not as much experience - neither professional nor personal - heck, I had kids at the time..

But overall, the situation is almost the same.

I wonder how far and high can I get by the time I find myself on the NEXT spiral turn..

Vista

A few days ago I have installed Vista for the first time in my life :)
That can look a bit strange for people from other countries, but here in Kyrgyzstan that's pretty much OK, as we encounter Vista on notebooks mostly - and it is usually pre-installed.

However, this time it was a fully licensed copy ov MS Vista - 5 CDs in a pack with an MS "licensed" sticker.
To tell you the truth, that was the first time in my entire life that I have installed the fully-licensed software ;)

So, what can I tell about Vista installation?
First of all, it was an "upgrade" of Windows XP to Windows Vista.
Second - it took A LOT of time to complete.
Third - the installer got every single bit of information from XP and transferred it all to Vista - from the desktop background to programs installed. THe only program that could not be migrated was Nero 7. Symantec Antivirus was transferred, but Vista refused to work with it - but that's minor.
Well, when I saw the result - it became obvious that such a process CAN take a lot of time, if you ask me :)

So, after a few hours of sittting and yawning - Voila! The computer is up and running with a new Windows, with all the old preferences you'd like to keep.
And I was even able to download all the official updates from Microsoft, without fearing that they will uncover the piracy ;)

As I always said to my clients - you'd better spend some money and buy licensed stuff.
Now I will tell them - guys, pretty please, go out and spend as much money as you can, but get me all the licensed stuff you can! :)

PS The only thing that brought me a little bit of distress was that MS Office 2007 haven't installed the MS Outlook by default. I wonder whether the Outlook is a stand-alone product now, or was it just a misconfiguration?

Yet another blog update :)

Alas, it seems like I'm not much into blogging anyway :)

No matter how I tell myself everytime that I'm gonna update my blog on a regular basis, that simply doesn't work at all.

Perhaps the reason is - I started this blog just to refine my writing skills in English, as I don't like the very idea of blogging too much ;)

You see, my perspective is that someone's thoughts should stay with the person as long as possible, prefferably until these ideas embody in the reality. That's about personal philosophy and a point of view.

I believe we create reality with our thoughts, and the people around us do that, too. So, if your idea is to be taken by someone around you negatively, or is likely to get people jealous, or in some other way call the negative emotions upon itself - you'd better keep it inside, so that you are the one and only builder of this part of reality covered by your idea.

So, returning to the purpose of this blog - I think the goal is already reached. No more need in this blog, right? ;)

Well, I'll think about it, and perhaps this blog will get some new purpose. :)

About that damn maniac

A lot of time have passed since that night partol. That was fun, and that was scary at the same time.

To tell things short, we were riding a Black Boomer (kekeke) with hammers, clubs and ice-axes all night long, visiting every single yard and every single dark spot, ready to help people in case they will be attacked, to see them get to their doors unhurt, and to possibly catch that damn butcher.

To sum things up, that wasn't very efficient, as people tended to be afraid of us more that of the possibility to meet maniac. We were even stopped by a speznas patrol - rude guys in ski masks with AKSUs. It was a bit hard to explain we wero from volunteer patrol, though in the end they said their thanks and we went off.

However, taking into consideration that we only met militia two times during the whole night - seems like the neighborhood wasn't safe at all, thus our patrol was not a waste of time.

By the way, when some time have passed, everyone here agreed that the 'maniac' thing was just a political move to distract the attention from our beloved mr. President's affairs.
Yeah, slicing a few people to death is a nice way to gain political advantag these days.

Some random stuff

Havent' been here for long. Seems like a lot of things have changed since my last update.

When I have just entered blogspot to add some stuff, it offered me to move to google blogger. Seems like Google took over the blogspot?

After a minute of googling it became obvious that Blogger was finally bought off by another internet startup (a bit more lucky startup, I must add ;) - Google.

And it seems like Google added some value here, too. The most interesting thing is - everything is in Russian here! I wonder how many languages do they support now?

Anyway, Google is growing stronger. And imo that's good, as they tend to make things work in a nice and convinient way. So - my congratulations to both Google and Blogspot.

.. Actually, initialy I didn't want to write anything about that online monster ;)
I just came here to state the now-obvious fact that I'm unable to carry on adding lots of carefully refined thoughts as small "articles". Thus, I am asking myself whether it will be ok to switch to another style of blogging.

Yeah, I'm talking about entering my blog at least once a day, writing everything comes to my head along the way.

So, in order to save my time and effort, I won't be thinking about it anymore, and will just apply this change.
Let's see what it will ook like :)

Maniac

A knife maniac is acting in our neighbourhood.
7 victims in 5 days, 4 of which are already dead.
Our guys from patrols were on duty tonight.
Tomorrow I will go in patrol, too.
Hope we will at least prevent further murders.

Some random stuff

On internet
Damn, the business here is still in childish state.
Especially when it comes to customer service, no matter how much money was invested and how high-tech services are provided.

That stupid Transline (one of our local home-net providers) have bought out the smaller one, Megaline.

I used to praise Megaline when I was connected to them until last year. For the year and a half they were doing their work quite well. Not flawless, but well.
In the end I have become very loyal to them, and have recommended Megaline to a lot of my friends here.

Now, as I moved to a new flat (once again) and had to decide how should I connect to the internet, Megaline option popped out right away. I did know they were bought out, however I still tended to praise them.

To make long story short, I have lost time, money, and faith in Megaline. All in 3 days.

Just imagine - the image of the company have been built for more than 1.5 years. And was completely ruined in no more than 3 days. Such things really make think about consequences of your every single business decision, don't they?

On beer
I have just bought several bottles of Arpa.
A long time ago I thought it was the best beer down here - relatively cheap, while pretty fine.
As time went by, and my cashflow increased, I tended to think of it as of something barely more worthy than a dog's piss. Awful taste, you know.
Today I have bought the yesterday 'release' of Arpa. Well, it appeades to be fine, much to my delight. It seems like this beer worths bying for no more than 3-4 days from manufacturing date.

On books
I have just finished Peter Benchley's "Jaws".
To tell you the truth, I would never read this book if I had any choice. The book desighn is awful, like if publisher is trying to sell crap. You know, all these selling tricks like 'intruiging' quotes and stuff.
The book, though, is good. Reminded me of Stethen King's best novells. Many details, while really interesting story line. Never thought it would be that good, provided the book design.

That, again, makes me think about over-usage of selling tricks and persistence.

On politics
They are threatening again to storm the White House and make President leave.
However, nobody cares as much as they did last year. Our president is really bad, though everybody doubt the country's economy can handle another 'revolution'.
It is obvious police and army will use weapons in case of open conflinct, and the whole majority of population will support them. Perhaps even with force.
So, it is nothing but really stupid, while funny, theatre. Nobody fears, as far I can tell.