Nick Pasko

People in an extreme situation

2009-05-25T16:47:00.003+06:00

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

2009-05-21T17:31:00.002+06:00

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

2008-04-22T09:48:00.003+06:00

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 :)

2007-07-26T12:38:00.000+06:00

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

2007-05-17T11:35:00.000+06:00

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

2007-05-17T11:23:00.000+06:00

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

2006-11-14T05:07:00.000+06:00

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

2006-11-05T00:00:00.000+06:00

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.

Freelancing

2006-10-18T04:31:00.000+06:00

Greetings to all those who was long waiting for me to post something.
..well, the others are welcome, too. :)

I was in transition for about a month. My IT consulting business seems to be working fine, getting bigger very slowly, with little to no effort from myself. It doesn't bring much money, though, so I sat down and started to think of another ways to earn some bad-needed cash ^_^

About two weeks ago I decided to try freelancing once again.
I tried it about 1.5 years ago, and was scared off by those damn cheap-as-hell Indians. And my business model was different, actually.
I was hoping (stoopid, stoopid!) to arrange several projects and pass them to programmers I know. I still have an .xsl sheet with about 30 programmers willing to freelance from time to time. So, I find a project, talk over the matters with the buyer, pass the project to actual developer, and get the difference between arranged cost and the developer cost. Great idea, huh?

In reality, that didn't work at all.
Developers like to get freelance jobs, but only if you can assure them the job is yours. And only if they don't know it's offshore freelance. If they do - they charge two times more with no questions asked.
Buyers like to be sure their project is in good hands and it will meet their needs in both time and quality.

And I am in between, trying to assure the buyer his project will be delivered on time (how the hell can I know? I'm not developing it, and the person I've found is not working on ME), and trying to assure the developer that the project is already ours. While often having little to know experience in whatever requirements the project has. For example, I'm not a web developer, and only know basics of PHP. Yet, there are quite a lot of PHP-related projects out there in the web.

Basically - I'm trying to tell both sides that everything is fine, while I myself am not very sure of it. And when I'm not sure I'm doing the right thing - I'm performing awfully bad.

Yes, and those damn Indians.
If they were not in this world - well, I suppose I could make this model work. But they just pop out everywhere, offering twice as less as you do, with those supid offer templates like "our blahblah company is a PIONEER in whatever you need, our blahblah great coders can do this whatever project in no time we suffer to meet your needs blahblahblah and blahblahblah". Damn them. >:-E

So, it didn't work for me that time. Why did I think it would now?
Well, to tell you the truth, I didn't think at all. I just sat at my computer, registered at 3 or 4 freelance sites, uploaded my complete profile with my contacts, areas of experience, and resume. The next day I started to browse those sites for the projects, and sometimes placed a bid here and there. This time - only if I was completely sure I can pull the project off all by myself.

How did I scare off those pesky Indians, you may ask?
Well, I didn't. They are not too easy to get rid of.
But, as it seems, they are not really a problem. Their main weakness, as it often happens, lies in their main strengh.

They spam.

Every single freelance project has at least one Indian spammer bidding on it. Especially if it's some PHP or site clone or something web-related.
The bids are standart, based on template, and even if there's something like "we have studied your project carefully and we assure you of our blahblahblah-you-name-it" - I started to smile every time I see such shitty template. Sometimes I even laughed on their template pearls, waking my wife in a middle of the night. Stoopid, stoopid Indians. :D

Why did I smile, you can ask? Why the hell did I laugh?
Kekeke..
I don't know, it was just damn funny to see something like:
Buyer: "we need a person in Delhi to do some-desktop-stuff"
Bidder: "our company is an expert in web development. we made 1000 sites last week for buyers form 100 countries. blahblahblah"

And finally, after a night and a day of smiling and laughing, I came out with a solution.
I don't have to spam every single project I meet which I think I can accomplish.
I should better look carefully whether the project is understandable, whether it's lying in my sphere of competence, and whether I have a similar project experience.
Then I make a bid, specifying all these sections in it, so that the buyer can see I'm serious about the project, that I have really studied it, and that I am a person that can and will solve his problem.

Perhaps my business experience have helped to look at things from the buyer's perspective, but this way worked fine.

In just two days I was awarded by my first project, to fix some functionality of a program named ResxEditor. It is an interesting small application with very little code, but extremely useful to its users, as I have found.
Well, I made everything I had to, AND added some additional work to make the code look like it was initially written by me, for, say, a friend of mine.

The buyer, Joannes Vermorel (hi Joannes, if you're reading this!), was impressed by my work, and offered me a stable part-time freelane work in his project, Lokad. That's some really interesting project, however I'd better not rattle about it too much, as it is not launched yet. Not that I already know any "top secrets", but the loyalty is loyalty, hehe.

And, by the way, there's not only single projects on these sites. From time to time I ran into full- or part-time jobs, with requirements meeting my skills, and payment varying from 10 to 60 bucks per hour. Some buyers require developer to come and live at their place, and the others are suited with online workers. All in all, with some time, effort and quality invested, I'm positive I'd be able to find a full-time online job for, say, 2K to 4K bucks per month.

Along with that, I have got a project on some damn-stupid-MSSQL-transaction-log-reading, and though I didn't like the project from the get-go, I have accepted it to make a positive feedback for my account.
Nothing really interesting here, so let's move on to Lokad, of which I have just sweared I won't rattle anymore. ;)

Anyway.

Joannes offered me $8 per hour, with approximately 10+ work hour per week, or 2+ hours per day, if you're not listing weekends. When I have calculated the financial outcome, it was clear that 16 bucks per day is not much (now I really hope you're reading this, Joannes ;)), and i'm not willing to work 8-hours day anymore. So, if I want to raise some solid bucks online, these are not the terms I'm looking for.

From another perspective, this offer gives me several bright opportunities:
1) As I don't have to spend much time on it - I can continue to either freelance, or look for a nice-payed full-time online job, or both
2) As I don't have to spend much time on it - I can finally start to implement my software-selling site which I was thinking of for the last two years
3) The technology used in this project is really amazing, and I'm going to grow big in terms of both software development AND management. Especially - online software development management. :P
4) There was something else I don't remember. Perhaps it was Joannes being such a nice person?
Ah, I dunno, it's too hard to remember everything when it's 5 am, when you have just finished to refactor that damn program you were looking at for the whole last year, and when you are going to get some dead-sleep.

Ouch, that last sentence made me finally understand it's REALLY time to go get some sleep, and even my beloved blog is not going to stop me from that.

Good night, everybody!
See you soon.. er.. sometimes. :P

I'm expanding :)

2006-09-08T23:12:00.000+06:00

Ah, at last! :)

My wife has born a child. Name's Mary.
People say she's big - about 4.2 kg in weight, 55 cm in.. length %)
But i still think she's small and fragile. Damn, when they told be to hold her for a minute - i thought I would break her. Didn't know what to do with that small human being at all.

Actually, I haven't understood it all yet. They say it's normal for daddies to accept their babies in about half a year, so I think I'll wait until she will look at me and smile, recognising :)

Daddy.. yep, that's me now :)

1. Personal update

2006-07-20T13:56:00.000+06:00

disclaimer: OMG, the whole two weeks have passed, and I haven't even started to blog!
Damn, that business eats quite a lot of my time! ;)

Ok, let's get started.
The first and most important news in the field of my personal life is, of course, my wife Nadya being pregnant. Doctors say it will be a September girlie. :)
So, for the last couple of months I'm feeding her with melons, bananas, cherries and the whole bunch of other fruits, vegetables and berries. Not that I'm so generous and thankful to my wife - I just want my child to be healthy and strong. :P
My mother-in-law gave us some child dresses and stuff. So Nadya put the most part of it into the washing machine to make it clean. It was really fascinating feeling when I came home one day, and saw small dresses, trouses and other small things hanging from the balcony, drying. Just like there's some small human being waiting for me at home.. sweet feeling, I must say. :)

As a side note - my mom will soon be a granny, har-har-har! :D

As for other personal news - well, I've got some morning headache. I suppose it's some kind of in-head pressure (don't know the English medical term, so please suit yourself with this stupid "in-head-pressure" thing). My medical friend tells, however, that it may have another roots, and suggest going to a doctor and making some throughout analysis.
Guess what? I never came to that damned doctor. And if it won't progress - I hope I'll never have to. Hate'em! Aaargh!
No, really, the health-care side of our lives here is not very comforting. When you came to a hospital and wait for a couple of hours, sitting near a bunch of sick people - you're not going to get through it all unaffected. Some shit will surely stick to you, and then.. then **you**will**know**what**PAIN**means** !!
Huh, I must be really pissed off by our hospitals.. :P

Aside from the headache (which doesn't really bother me anyway) my health is in good condition, and I hope it will progress to exellent. I drink less, eat less, and sleep as long as I need, often coming at work late. Not too good for my business, but very good for my health, so in a long run it pays off.

Yes, about my sleep. I've got sleeplessness (I thought there's some medical term for this one, so I used translate.ru - and I'm not satisfied with the result. Heck, I could thought out something like that myself!)
Sometimes when I go to bed, I'm sleepless for an hour or even longer. Thinking about what should I do tomorrow, how should I deal with that lazy employee, what should I tell to my client, how can I beat the money out of another not-willing-to-pay client, etc. etc.
It seems like I have so much to do throughout the day so that I don't have time to just sit and think the things over. Or I am so busy doing nothing. Or I am so careless about all this. Anyway, it seems like the only time I really think about current problems is when I go to sleep. And I get up late because of it. And my business suffers because of it.

So, as I am aware of the problem now, I'm going to get it solved.
Perhaps I have to put some "thinking hours" in my schedule, or do something else - well, I'll make it work one way or another.

Well, that's all for now. I hope I will get back to blog in a couple of.. days? weeks? How do I know?? :)
Cya!

On updates

2006-07-05T21:55:00.000+06:00

Well, it's certainly been a long time since my last update.. huh, as if I ever wrote them often.. (^_^)
Anyway, I think it's time now to describe the whole lot of things happened/happening/going to happen here.
I realize a single post won't accomodate everything, neither will I be able to write it all out at once. So I'll split it all in a few posts, each describing some different area.
For starters, the list would be like this:
1. Personal update - like about myself and my going-to-grow family
2. Business update - in whole
3. Education update - personal development, education in business etc.
4. Staff update - some stuff about staff ;)
5. Don't know yet :)

Hopefully, I'll make it all in a week or two. It all depends on the level of my tiredness at the end of the day. :)

As for now - see ya, I'm going to d/l some music and play some pc games, eating the melon at the same time (har-har-har, you nothern swine don't have it yet, do you? >:-D )

Business update

2006-04-26T01:42:00.000+06:00

So, here I am, sitting in my own office writing the blog update.
Well, the fact of being a business owner AND director makes me happy. It seems like I was born for this kind of work - walking around proudly, with this bold "who's in charge here? I'm in charge here!" look on my face. Firing people for a mere fact of not kneeling at my arrival! Making huge piles of money by my employees' hardwork, sweat and sometimes even blood!

Allright, I'm just kidding.

To tell you the truth, I didn't think it is that hard to rule the business. When I used to work on the employer, I could take a break at any time, with no inner feeling of being wrong. Now I feel sorry if my day wasn't as effective as possible. Alas, that happens almost every day now.

Heck, even the picture of myself sitting in the office is not that ideal.

First of all, this office is not mine actually. I pay the rent for it.
Yes, I know that's a normal practice. However, the rent is going right out of my business funds, and it makes me nervous. Nervous enough to get my ass from the sit and go out seeking clients.
..hmpf, it seems like this is a good side, actually ;)

The second thing is that there is a bunch of workers now. These workers are working.. working on a work.. to get the payment.. in money. (Alas, this joke is not that funny in English)
So, they build a fake wall here, to divide the office space in two halves. One half will be ours, and the other half will accomodate a web design agency.
And while this work goes on, there is a lot of noise, dust and discomfort. If you ever played Pizza Tycoon, you should remember the visitor asking: "Are you in a middle of redecorating?"
Yes, we are.

So I can't invite anyone here, and when someone calls and asks if he can get his computer to my office so that we would fix all the bugs and problems he's got - I cannon say "yes, we'll be happy to meet you here". I have to say "oh, I'm terribly sorry, but we're having a bunch of noisy workers here, and a lot of dust, so your computer can easily get a pile of dust in it's cooler and break down".
What's more, I even cannot talk over the phone sometimes, when they make those holes in the walls.

Running your own business is so much fun.

Providing service

2006-02-10T21:05:00.000+06:00

A few days ago I made an agreement with a local internet cafe. They need a network andministrator, and I need some money. So that part is good.

The other part, however, concerned me for a period of time.
Making such an agreement would mean I'm going back to 'working for uncle Joe', right? They have a problem to solve, so they pay me some amount of money to solve it. That's not my problem, and I don't generally enjoy the process. To tell you the truth, the only computer-related thing I hate more than system administration is hardware.

So, at the first glance I am beaten back by my life into an employee state.
However, my attitute towards my current job is quite different from 'make this - get that much'.
First of all, I can come any time suitable for me, and perform my duties in any order and in any way I like it. They care for the result.
Second thing is that I'm not going to do this forever. My vision is different now, after almost half a year of self-employment. I seek a possibility for starting a business.
And I think I have found one there.

There's quite a lot of organizations working with computers on a daily basis. It's not necessary internet cafes or game clubs. Almost any commercial firm uses computers to some extent, starting with a single machine to store the documentation and some CRM/ERP system, to having quite a big network of computers.

Yet, there's still very little service provided to them. Computers hang, software starts to glitch, network doesn't work for unknown reason, etc.
What do they do when they face such a situation?
They call a 'computer' friend.
Or, if there's no such friend, they call a firm that sold those computers to them and ask nicely to come and solve the problem. Usually nobody comes.
Or, they hire an administrator to watch for computers.

Neither way can always be available, and neither way can always be suitable.
A 'computer' friend can be busy with his problems.
A computer selling firm can explain that they deal with the hardware problems, not software ones.
An administrator.. for, say, 1 or 2 computers? Bleh!

So the idea is to open a small firm dealing with software-related problems.
You can either bring your 'broken' computer to us, or call our specialist to your place. You can even make an agreement that our man will come every week to check whether everything is ok, and solve any upcoming problems.
You can be sure that we can deal with anything. Call us, and it is not your problem anymore. We will make sure everything is fixed up and working.

Basically, we do:
- accept your problem, if it is a computer-related one;
- seek the root of the problem, and decide what measures are needed to solve it;
- either solve it at once, or..
- explain in simple terms what should be done, how long will that take, and how much will that cost, and if our client agrees with our solution
- we solve the problem.

We do NOT:
- solve any hardware problems ourselves. However, we always know the right people who DO. We won't charge our client more than the cost of fixing the hardware. Yet, that's still OUR problem, not our CLIENT's problem;
- teach our clients 'how computer works' or any other stuff. We're not teaching courses, we're providing service;
- sell hardware. As beforementioned, we don't deal with hardware ourselves. We're outsourcing these problems to our partners. However, if you wish us to give you an advice on what to buy - that is possible. I'm not sure yet whether we should charge money for this.

The differences between a 'network administrator' person and a 'network administrator firm' are:
- we are always available. Physically, one man can administrate from 4 to 6 different places with a number of computers from 3 to 10 at each place. In reality, nobody actually deals with more than 3 places. Just imagine - you're at once place, providing a routine profilactic, making sure everything is fine. And you get a distress call from another place, because their computers 'all broke down' and 'they lose money every minute' and on and on. You have to come there ASAP. And while you're on the road, a third client calls and mumbles about 'somethingswrongwithmyserver' - perhaps that problem can be solved by pressing the right 'any key', or perhaps that's something serious, he can't tell. That's not a rare situation, actually.
On the contrary, when you are one of the guys in a computer service firm, you can be sure someone will substitute you if such problem uprises. Your work becomes more efficient, and the amount of clients becomes closer to your 'physical' ability.
- we won't disappear right when you're in a middle of computer chaos. Even if somebody gets ill - there is always someone to come and fix your problem.
- we can always make our agreement transparent. If you want a 'black' agreement, with no documents at all - it is possible. If you want a 'white' agreement, with all those papers, contracts, bills and signatures - it is possible either. Whatever suites your needs best.

So, that's what I'm thinking about, and that's why I'm learning all possible problems while I work at those cafes. I will need to understand the nature of problems myself, and I will need to hire people who understand that too. Or teach them.

Alas, my mind have changed quite a bit since that first time the idea of starting my own business have come into my stupid programming head.. :)

Why should I care about time-management?

2006-01-30T06:15:00.000+06:00

I have just risen from a night sleep, and this night's dreams were more useful than anytime I can remember.
Aside from my usual night-dream stuff like fighting monsters, roaming around strange places and having some sex, I drank beer and had a very heated conversation with some friend of mine.

To make things short, we were going to some university lecture, and he told be that from his experience these lectures are extremely boring, though he liked them because it was a good time to just sit there and do nothing, enjoying your life.
My point was, it is stupid to go to such lectures and waste your time on nothing. I went even futher, as I tend to when it comes to our universities, and said that generally the university is a great waste of 5 to 6 years of your life. By the time you graduate, it is nearly one fourth of your entire life, or one third of your conscious life. Quite a lot, if you ask me.
Instead, you can decide yourself what to do with your time. What things to learn, what work to do, what experience to have, etc.

My opponent stated that he doesn't waste any more time than he would waste if he had full control on it. I.e. he would wander around the house, perhaps drinking his lemon tea now and then, perhaps lying down and making his thoughts fly high, perhaps drinking alcohol, watching TV, etc.
Even more waste, he said.

I argued that I know the reason why he's so ineffective with his time, so that he even doesn't consider most things as 'waste'. When he was a child, his parents decided for him, when and what he should do. When he grown up a bit - he went to school, and teachers began to decide for him. When he become a teenager and urged to get some control of his life - he was once again bound in chains of university, letting the others (yet again) to decide what, when and how he should learn and practice. Thus, he has no skills in time-management at all. He doesn't have enough practice with it. He doesn't notice his bad habits of time management. He wastes an hour of his life - and it's ok, because that's exactly what he was doing for his entire lifetime. He wastes some more - and perhaps he will notice, or perhaps the others will notice. Or perhaps not.
Thus, he drinks, he wanders around, he sits and thinks some stupid and useless thoughts, he watches TV, he visits a boring lecture - he is letting his life go by.

The opponent didn't agree with me, and the argument went on. I was becoming so angry, that I was ready to beat the shit out of anyone who would disturb our conversation.
Slowly, in progress of argument, I started to become awake. I become more cool, more argumentative, and as time went by, I started to wonder why should I try and change that person's mind? He obviously wouldn't listen to my thoughts, he obviously won't agree with me no matter how intelligent my speech would be. Or, in the contrary, no matter how hard would I beat him. He just won't change his mind, anyway.

Then, once I became finally awake, a single flash of thought ran through my mind: this person is me! This stupid, ignorant, inefficient, life-wasting dumb-head.. is me! Oh shit.

Thus said, I think I should care about time management.

Do you?

On planning

2005-12-22T09:46:00.000+06:00

When I left my dayjob, I wasn't actually planning everything in details.
Well, frankly I wasn't planning everything at all. I had some very blurry plans of perhaps doing this and that, making some useful products, and providing some useful services, and get some useful money. That's it.

I believe it's not my nature to plan anything. My attitude towards my life in general and towarrds the detail as well is - grab the situation, and get something out of it. Sit back and enjoy the life, until next situation comes in. Repeat.
It can sound pretty stupid to those who carefully plan, carefully counts all pros and cons and then proceeds, backed up with some data.
However, it works for me. Not "generally works" - it always works. This is the way I am designed. This is the way I function.

I don't deny planning. To some extent, it is useful even for me, especially when I have to decide whether to start some long-term activity, like starting some business, or not. Some short and messy plan helps to understand the time span needed for the task, the cost of it (not only in money - you invest your time, your passion, your courage etc.) and some other aspects of the problem.

However, as I found out, for me the detailed plan doesn't work. When I start throughout planning, I become confused with the details, unable to see the situation and grab it. This way I have already spoiled about two months of my time working on a pre-dead project. I wrote two different plans on it, one for my "angel" and the other one for me, and the planning took enough time for me to become confused and blurred enough to waste my time and energy on the project, instead of dropping it and starting the one I'm doing now.

So, to sum everything up - if you're not designed for planning, you don't have to plan. Stay awake, stay alert, and don't miss the right moment to make an action. Grab the life with both hands.

My life for Aiur...

2005-12-22T09:32:00.000+06:00

Less than a month has passed since my friend has died. Name was Yuriy, though I always named him "Shrike" - his StarCraft nickname.
To tell you the truth, I am drained by telling the story of "how did that happen to such a brilliant and promising young guy", so that I cannot possibly tell it once more.

All I can tell you is that his death was an accident. "A stupid accident" as people call it. Perhaps it is more comfortable to think that death works based on randomizator, taking the lives left and right, so that you don't take the responsibility for your own life and death. Come on, you aren't even involved in the process of defining who shall die today!

However, I don't believe it anymore. Death is not stupid. Every person lives his or her own life the way he or she likes it - and deals with the consequences. This life can be either fully conscious or be not, the person can accept the concept of "fate", or "dao", or can not, the person can be ready for death or be not - all that don't matter for death. One day, it will come, and you'd better be ready.

What done is done, and what had happened - had happened.
My friend is gone, and I don't know whether he still exists somewhere or not. The memory still exists in myself, so you can say that, to some extent, he lives in me.

En Taro Adun, Shrike!

Some shocking news

2005-10-22T21:59:00.000+06:00

Pretty much time have past since the last update, though I can't tell it's been quiet down here - in my life, I mean.

For a quick summary, I have considered four different business ideas, being:
- the development of a desktop application for small business, partially sponsored by my angel friend;
- the (possibly) web-based project with one of my ex-Starcrafter friends;
- some piece of the low-level technology, the idea initially offered by its inventor (and co-founder) as a spyware, properly converted into a time management monitoring complex for the corporate market;
- some sort of the VoIP business, like if I install some VoIP hardware to the client, he will be able to use the Voice IP sitting at home, and I'll get some share of his payments.

Everything was fine, like I have finished the documentation for the first project, have come to a partial agreements about the second and the fird, and invented a nice business model for the last one.
Then, suddenly, a thunderclap! My angel friend has been.. um.. robbed? "thrown", as we use to describe this? some other term, describing a money loss because of some ill-intending jackass?
Anyway, he have lost some big sum of money. Good news was it was not big enough to knock him out of business, while the bad news was - he had to freeze all his current side-projects (like, as you could notice, my first and the most important project) so that he can gather his funds together in his mainstream business and try to recoup the loss.

Perfect.

So, at the first day I was doing the most natural thing for such a situation. Well, at last it is natural enough down here. I was drunk, asleep, then drunk again. Pretty though day, it was.
The next two days I was trying to gather my thoughts into something resembling my usual state of creativity, by playing StarCraft hardcore with my friends. And it helped much more than just laying drunk, you know. :)
Why so much stress, you could ask? Hey it was merely one project, one from the four I was intended to do, you could say.
Well, yes, it was.
What's more, it was the only project with some from-the-start funding. I mean, all the other ones CAN generate some profit, and I am sure at least one WILL. In time.
And as time goes by, I need something to eat, to pay the rent, to spend my time online, etc. etc. And now that's pretty tough kind of situation, being left with no income at all, and a bunch of possibilities to generate it at some distant point at the future.

So that's what I mostly think of right now - how can I make some bucks to support myself, so that I won't become a lifeless corpse by the time my projects will make me rich. :)

So far, I'm positive enough that I can do that. Well, I'm mostly sure. Yeah.. No kidding here.. Wheew.. ;)

Taking off

2005-10-04T08:47:00.000+06:00

Yesterday I've gor fired.
Finally.

It was an interesting experience, watching myself from the inside, when I heard that. You're fired. Yes, I've felt a lot of happiness and relief, yet.. some dark side of my inner being was scared to death, screaming aloud and thrashing about with it's eyes goggled. What the hell, how can I be fired? Damn, damn, damn!

Well, it was at least understandable, if not expected. Provided I've never been taught to work on myself instead of working on someone, provided the "finish the school / university / get a stable job / save some money / perhaps buy an appartement or build a house / die" lifestyle is still widespread in the post-USSR area, being the only lifestyle possible for several generations.
Even more, quite a big part of my self-respect was always based on my income. On my ability to generate an income, to be precise. And when you have a stable job, this ability is easily measured and is quite reassuring.

Well, no more easily-measured income for me. Big deal. :)

Anyway, by today my feelings and thoughts are much more set up, and I'm looking forward to do some actual work now. :)

Wish me luck, guys! :)

An old friend returns

2005-09-21T12:10:00.000+06:00

Ah, finally my angel is back from his vacation.
And it seems everything is exactly as it was spoken of. The deal is done, and now the hard work begins. :)

Now, as the urgent matters are done - like searching for people to hire and researching the possible code libraries to purchase in order not to write everything from scratch - the main most urgent goal is to finish the new project background, business model and functional specification. From that point on, we'll be able to decide whether to take it or return to the first one.

No matter what decision will be made, the next step will be the technical specification, financial plan and.. developing itself.

I still have to take care about the web designer, in order to have somebody skilled enough to develop a small shareware site, yet not ambitios enough to demand much money for it. Fortunately, I have a person to talk to, nad I really hope he will be as pleased to work with us as we do. :)

On a side note, it seems to me that I tend to search for people amongst StarCrafters mostly. Well, I think that is the largest group of smart young people I know. To be most precise, that is the largest group of smart people who I know very well, and who know me very well, so that we can come to a mutual agreement much faster.
I hope this group will make it possible to find all specialists I need. Otherwise, that will be another story, searching for people being smart, willing to learn, and trustworthy at the same time. Searching for such people without actually knowing them, that is.
Pretty hard task in my opinion..

ill effects

2005-09-20T09:13:00.000+06:00

I've been ill for more than a week now, sitting at home doing nothing.
Well, mostly nothing.
Actually, that 'nothing', as I think of it now, was more like "trying to get my health back, thinking of my new startup, doing those simple things I can do from my home, like fixing my father's laptop, fixing my mother's laptop, getting that damn programmer to do some actual work, trying to hire a rookie webmaster, and anxiously trying to contact my business partner".
So there was something more than simply whining and yawning after all.

In fact, the most important thing was to find out where my angel-friend has gone. You see, he wasn't answering my e-mails, haven't shown in the ICQ, and I even started to think that he had changed his mind about our mutual business.
Well, it turned out that he'd gone for a break, intending to get some rest after all, cutting out all contacts with the business world. I can understand that, even though his decision made me worry a lot.

Anyway, the period of woriness made me think over my future once again.
Not surprisingly, I came out even more reinforced in my decisions to stop working at my day job and start my own business.
Even if I won't be able to raise some funds from an angel, even if I won't be able to find the angel in the first place - I will not return to the "stable" work. Not while I will raise enough funds to pay rent and feed my family. And it is unlikely for me not to be able to do that.

In fact, as far as I can see, once I made my conscious decision to leave, a whole bunch of possibilities have fallen upon me. Even if my startup will fail, I will start another business, perhaps even not software-related at all. Even if all my plans will fail - I can work for the local companies on a "do this work - get that sum" basis, more like a freelancer than an office worker. Work for them, and think for myself.

I am sure that if a person intends to start a business, and is persistent in his (or her, for those sexists out there) actions to fulfill these intentions - this person will eventually succeed. It certainly won't be easy, and there will sertainly be a number of failures along the way, but the outcoming success is inevitable. :)

So, I think my illness was kind of useful, at least for making my view more concentrated and.. uh, solid. :)

Setting the takeof

2005-09-05T06:04:00.000+06:00

We have finally came to an agreement with my investor friend. We'll have to make it officially later, though that will be but a formality.
As for now, I'm going to have a talk with my current - and the last one, I hope - boss. According to my contract, I have to tell about my intentions to leave for three months ahead. I'm still having a project to complete, and someone has to be prepared to take my place.

Anyway, there will be no way back once the conversation is done. And that is just what I need. :)

Teaching programming

2005-08-28T23:46:00.000+06:00

A few days ago, once my business plan was completed, I have met a friend of mine, who was StarCrafter in my clan for about 4 years, and is eager to become a programmer. He's still a student actually, though they don't get much of an education here anyway. That was the prime reason I have left the university myself - it's been a waste of time for most part.

Anyway, we had a meeting, and came to an agreement concerning his participation in our project. I'm going to teach him the things I know myself about being a programmer, and in about 2 or 3 months he will start his actual work on the project, with myself giving him a close look and support. I won't be able to leave my current job any sooner, so the project won't start until that time anyway.

Yesterday we had a 2-hours teaching session, where I have introduced C# .NET to him. He did learn some Basic, C, Fortran, and SQL in the university, though he had never took part in any serious project yet. As I already said, they don't receive much knowledge there, so I'll have to teach him almost from the start, including some stuff like coding conventions, clear code rules, refactoring etc. I wish someone would teach me that at the time I have started my programming career.. :)

Well, what can I say after the session we had.. guy does have a head, though he'll need a lot of practice to become of any use to us. However, I am pretty optimistic about him, because:

- He does want to learn, and this is the major thing;
- I do have some teaching skills, being a programming teacher for some schoolboys during my summer holidays at 2nd grade; later I've been a StarCraft teacher for many young fellas down here, adopting new strategies and teaching them how to use them properly;
- He respects me a lot for myself being both a programmer and a progamer, and he's always open to my ideas; actually during these years I had a few guys I had to teach who didn't respect me enough to listen carefully. I either earned their respect in some way, or dropped the teaching, because it won't be very useful in such a situation.
- I trust him a lot, because I know him for several years now, and because.. because I know him for several years know. I mean, he's a rare kind of a person, a person who can be trusted. That said, I'm willing to make business with him. The main thing I have understood about the business is that you don't have to start anything with someone you don't like or you don't trust. Even more, starting anything with such a person would be a disaster. Someday somehow it will pose great problems. And you can't be sure you will be able to recover after such kind of a problem, a problem coming from inside of your installation.

So, I'm glad the boy's with us, basically there have left only two more people to settle down things with: our graphics designer, and our investor. Both are my long-known friends, so I think we'll come to an agreement one way or another, without much arguments and give-me-more-or-I-won't-participate kind of stuff.

8 pages that make a difference

2005-08-26T22:56:00.000+06:00

So, the business plan was effectively done by today morning. Actually, I was pretty flattered by how little time it took. Of course, it surely needs some enchancements in several places - some rephrases, mostly, to make the text flow through one's mind without gripping his attention with those little obstacles like badly formed sentence, unusual word etc. Anyway, I'm pretty good with my native language (yes, english is not the one), so that won't take much time.

Actually, I have thought about writing a business plan earlier when I was thinking over several ideas for shareware products. However, it always scared me - come on, how can I write a business plan if I don't have any economical background and if I even don't know how to do that in the first place? So these thoughts got me scared enough to write completely nothing. Sometimes I even didn't bother sitting and writing a product overview and a functional specification - the tasks I feel myself pretty confident at. And I have dropped several ideas without giving any deep consideration to it - I wonder whether there were potential bestsellers among them.. :)

..well, that was not the thing I was going to write about, anyway. :)

And what I was going to write about is that it's strange how my attitude has changed once I put all my thoughts and considerations on the virtual paper. First of all, I am now much more confident that the product will be a success, to some degree. Earlier I hoped it won't be a failure, so that's some difference.

Second line of my confidence is that I'm not bound to my may-be-investor friend anymore. I would be glad to make business with him, of course, but if we won't come to a mutuall acceptment - I will take my business plan and go to someone else. I am pretty sure now that I have a detailed business plan, I will find funds to make it work, one way or another. No more "I need a sum of money, but where can I get it" whining. No more "aw, he's interested in my idea, I should stick with this person whatever the price" anxiety. I have a busness model to show to potential investors, and it's up to them to decide whether it interests them or not.

I certainly don't think that my plan is ideal, I'm sure it will change its shape (and perhaps even some basic ideas, who knows) as time goes and as experience stack up. But it is a platform that gives me a solid ground in the field I'm intending to start my career at. And that's just great.

However, I have already felt the side effect of being driven by my ideas. Today, when I came to my day-job (having just recently finished the plan at home), I was so excited that I couldn't get myself sit and start some work. I felt that my job is pointless now as I get a new path to follow. That was really hard to overcome, though after about an hour of fight with myself I finally sat and lauched Visual Studio. I have a project to finish before I can leave peacefully, so I'll have to take the pain of working at my now-hated-day-job. Of course, I can leave at once with a bit of a scandal, but I don't feel that would be right to leave my work unfinished. Damn my "do-good" attitude. :)

Considering a career switch

2005-08-25T12:08:00.000+06:00

To tell you the truth, I'm tired of my current career already. Programming for yourself is nice, and programming itself is a lot of fun.. while you don't have to make a living out of it. Even more, when you have to sit at the office for 8 hours a day, pretending to be working hard - now that's not a lot of fun anymore.
For me, that is not.

I understood that long ago. Actually, almost a year have past since I gave it my first serious consideration. And while I think of myself as of a conscious person most of the times, I still haven't decided to make a switch. There are many reasons - on deeper thought, many of which are mere excuses anyway - but the most big single reason is: i make quite a lot of money from my current job position - about $550. Not much compared to any developed country, still that's quite a lot down here in Kyrgyzstan. For example, a normal salary for a developer here is about $250-$350. So that really made me think thrice whenether the idea of leaving came to my head.

Anyway, Steve Pavlina have wrote an article lately, divinely driven to help me sort this out, i suppose :)

And here I am, writing a business plan for my first shareware project (about 20% complete), trying to weight up the funds and time needed to launch it. Fortunately, a friend of mine is interested in this, too. Actually, he's interested in good investments, and that's exaclty what my project lacks at the moment.

Hopefully, we'll be able to launch it in about half a year from now. And hopefully we'll make enough profit from it in next several years to stop this project peacefully (and making the 80% failure statistics look even more discouraging) and start another one from scratch.

I haven't left my current job yet, however, once I make sure I will have a stable profit - about $200, I suppose - from either my friend's investments in me, or from any other side job I would take to feed myself, - I shall leave at once, and will hopefully forget my current job as we tend to forget nightmares. Slowly, but inevitably. :)

The dark side of entertainment

2005-06-23T08:12:00.000+06:00

Yesterday I was reading Steve Pavlina's article about determining the true goal of life. While I really think that is a great way to start, and I have planned the exercise myself, that's not the main reason of this entry.

However, one of the comments to the above mentioned article, initially posted by Oleg, have raised some interesting point about games.
To tell you the truth, I've been thinking about this for quite a few days before that, though it was the comment that drove me to sit and write this all down.

Games. The Ultimale Evil?

First of all, let me give you a brief intro of my gaming experience, so that you don't think I'm trying to theorize here.
I've been playing computer games since I was about 8 or 9 years old. For several years after I have finished the school, I've been playing every night for about 5-8 hours strict. Even now I'm spending about 10 to 20 hours per week playing games, and I'm considering myself a professional cyberathlete for about 5 years now.

And that seemed fine to me. Until I started to think about the real influence the games have upon my life.

Oleg asked in his initial post, why the games are so addictive, and why do they have such strong impact on our day-to-day lives?
Well, I'll try to answer this from my perspective.

The common view is somewhat like, "come on, those are mere games, those don't matter! That's just a way of entertainment, nothing more, right?"

Wrong.

Games, as I see it now, tend to substitute the goals of the real world with the goals of the virtual world. This is doubled or even tripled when the game tries to simulate a world. Especially MMORPGs.

The reason is, it is always hard to achieve your real-world goals, 'cause it takes much time, efforts and hard work. While in a virtual world you can set a goal and achieve it right away. Sometims - after spending a little bit of your time and efforts, but nevertheless it won't be nearly as hard as it would be in reality.

"So what? I can always see a difference between a real goal and a virtual one, and I can always get back to fulfilling my real goals once I've done with my game. I even become more self-confident and strong, having achieved my numerous virtual goals!"

I'm not that optimistic anymore.
This knowledge didn't come to me easily. It took quite a bunch of years from my life to understand this. A glimpse of understanding came when I felt the difference between mere playing and becoming a pro. Between enjoying the play and training hard to become the best.
However, the true understanding came in about three years from that.

Yes, games give you a feeling of fulfillment, a feeling of self-confidence and a feeling of Being Able. The downside is - those are nothing but feelings. When you become used to being able to achieve your goals fast and easily - you're become weak in achieving your goals through prolonged hard work. You become weak in achieving your real goals.

What's more, you even lose your desire to achieve your real goals. Why should you care, you have just fulfilled a whole mess of goals in a two-hours session of gaming! You feel satisfaction, you even feel a pleasant weariness of fulfillment, who dares to disturb you with those petty real-world goals?? Let someone else care about those.

The more you achieve in virtuality the less you're able to achieve in reality.

And now that's bad.

What do you suggest then? Drop the games completely?

Nope, I'm not that harsh. :)
I agree that games are entertaining, and that games can give you some self-confidence if treated carefully. I even agree that not everyone dumps in the virtuality, there are lots of people who always see the difference, or perhaps don't have to hide their real-world problems by playing games.

There is a great difference between games. And there is even more difference between various styles of playing. Like, role-playing vs being a munchkin, or hardcore playing vs being a pro-gamer.

Games have to be chosen wisely. Try to avoid those "Live a life" games like Sims, Fallout (one of my favourite addictions), Pirates! or Morrowind.
I.e. no RPGs, and especially no MMORPGs. While the common games are imps, those are devils.

You can stick with puzzles, logic games, arcades, sport/car simulators and even some 3D shooters, though the last ones are silently transformed in RPGs lately.

Play games to be entertained, to train your reaction or logic.

Play games as a sport, play it to defeat your opponent and hone your skills.

But don't play games to live a life.

Just shut your computer down and go out to live a real life.

Night patrols

2005-06-18T08:42:00.000+06:00

Yesterday, after the crowd was scattered, almost everyone expected the agressors to try and repeat march 24th. As a member of local people militia, I came at the briefing held in the police headquarters. Police forces seemed to be ready virtually to anything, and there were many militia members supporting them.
As a side fact noticed by one of our guys, the ground floor windows were barred with sandbags - obviously in case of a direct armed attack.

Our unit consisted of 3 cars and about fifteen guys, mostly armed with clubs, reinforcement bars etc.
We were patrolling the city for about 3 hours at night, ready to engage and call support if any disorders would take place. However, everything seemed.. not calm, of course - it seemed stable. We haven't seen many foot policemen during our patrols - they were distributed among the local police depts, patrolling the dark allyes and blocks. However, there were police cars scattered along the main roads, full with armed policemen.

Even more, virtually every store, sometimes even small ones, even some beauty shops, were guarded by groups of civilians, ready to repel marauders. Some guys were on the edge, but generally militiamen were cool, not waving their weapons, not actively searching for trouble. They were citizens who came out to protect the city, that's all.

There was even a small incident describing how well protected the city was - after one of our circles we met at the starting point (every car had its own route) and were talking about what we have seen. In about 5 or 10 minutes a car stopped near us. There were 4 huge guys wearing armor and armed with commando-version of AK74. After a brief talk they explained that some local habitats have called police, and they came to deal with "a loud group of people gathered around a bunch of cars". That was really nice to know such serious guys would come in case of trouble.
Before departing, they even thanked us for what we do, helping them to deal with the situation. Man, that alone was rewarding enough for spending a few hours on the road.

After several patrol circles our units were dismissed, though we all had our cellular phones on. Just in case.

This night have shown that the city is ready to protect itself from any disorders. Last time we just were not ready, that's it.

Breaking the customs

2005-06-17T14:57:00.000+06:00

So far so good. Seems like police is aware of possible consequences of letting the mob do everything it's up to.

The fact is, agressors were not holding the White House for long, as the OMON (special police units) threw them out. They even attacked the crowd later and scattered it, we have some photos of the event here. No firearms were used, only so-called 'pacifizers' (rubber clubs) and tear-gas.

Whew, that's some relieving news indeed.

National customs

2005-06-17T12:06:00.000+06:00

Well, it seems like storming the White House is already a custom here in Kyrgyzstan. For the first time it happended in march, and for a few hours that was fine, but the following events have shaken everybody, no matter whether they have supported the revolution or not.

It all seemed calm from then, though. There were still some small-scale disorders, however the police along with people militia took care of these, and everything settled down.

But now the White House seems to be taken over again, by some unknown group of people, numbering about 2-5 thousands. There is no certain information yet, though all this seems not to frighten us anymore, but rather call out our anger.

People I have spoken to all say that such actions cannot be treated calmly anymore, and it has to be dealt with by force, using either police or people militia. Many are ready to volounteer and throw the agressors out of the White House.

Personally, I don't think this would be wise to start a massive civil disorder. However, if our governement won't do anything with this, and it will seem the so-called 'liberty fighters' would transform into marauders once again, I'll go out at the streets along with militia.

Though I still hope that won't be necessary.

StarCraft

2005-06-17T01:46:00.000+06:00

The clanwar between a2 and esC is over just a few minutes ago, and now I feel completely drained.

I have been playing StarCraft for more than 5 years now, being a local champ for this time period, but this is my first online clanwar so far. And I can tell that it is even more draining than any LAN party I have ever experienced. Perhaps that's just a matter of my newbiness, but anyway, it's hard. :)

But I feel good, no matter how tired I am. Come on, that was my first CW, and I have won my opponent 2-0! That's something that fills me with joy and self-confidence.

To tell you the truth, that is the main reason I came to this sport, and that is the main reason I am in it for so long. Self-confidence. Winning a worthy foe gives you a strong feeling of Being Able. Winning a tournament is even harder, that's why it gives much stronger feeling. Even when the opponents are not-so-good, the fact that you came on top of so many people is really A Something.

I can tell for sure that my results in this sport gave me the courage and self-confidence in my day-to-day life. Six years back I was a young guy posessing almost no self-confidence at all, I bended before the challenges my life offered me, and I always tried to run away from any responsibility. Now I'm really a different person, although not someone really bold like Terminator ;), but pretty bold anyway. I am ready to live my life without hiding from its challenges, and I know every challenge will make me even stronger.

Not that the sport changed me single-handedly, though it was really helpful in times of trouble, when I was shaken and my spirit cried. I hid in sport, and got the strenght in it, and that really helped.

However, for about a year now I am seriously considering giving StarCraft up. It doesn't get me the help as it used to - or I just don't need it anymore - and sometimes it even becomes an obstacle on my way. For example, I am sure I wouldn't be able to get up at 6am tomorrow morning (oh man, it's TODAY already!), and even if I'll make it at 7, the whole day will be screwed.
Not to tell about the evening work I intended to do.

So, I am re-thinking my connection with this sport now, and God help me to choose right! :)

Intro

2005-06-14T19:40:00.000+06:00

Well, so the moment has come and I'm typing in my very first blog entry.
I suppose there shouldn't be any loud noises about it, because, come on, quite a number of people could be doing the same thing at the same moment.

Thus said, I shall make it quick and simple.
My name is Nick Pasko, I am currently working as a software developer in Bishkek City, Kyrgyzstan. Alas, Joel or Eric would call my current activity a mere programming.
That's why I want to become something different, starting with being developer - and I don't really know how far will my intentions bring me in the end.

Well, I suppose that's it for the first entry, for I have a number of things to do now, hopefully I'll write about that some time later.