Spaghetti Cabling

I thought that a cabling hurl behind our TV set and those ugly "spaghetti" on the floor in our bedroom (a working place of our family geek, in fact) is a mess.
But when I've seen this...

Spaghetti Cabling that would make a fully-grown sysadmin cry, or… Cable management is for wimps.

Jesus Christ! - that was my first thought, but then I've realised - no, that's fun! :)

I just wish to see the pictures of those guys who can guide through that cabling chaos...

Коэльо и я - кто кого?

Скажете, амбициозно?
Просто "алхимик мира" сам спровоцировал, сказав:

Все говорит мне о том, что я собираюсь принять неправильное решение, но ведь делать ошибки - это часть нашей жизни.
(Одиннадцать Минут)

Поэтому я сделаю ошибку и заявлю, что "один из лучших авторов нашего времени" меня не убеждает.

Попытки читать "Алхимика" и проч. (даже в переводе) закончились фиаско, поскольку непреодолимая скука наваливалась буквально с первых строк.
В это время "весь мир" (из предисловия) зачитывался, и было просто-таки неприлично не ввернуть в "умную" беседу подходящую цитату.

Поэтому когда я обнаружила на полке книжного магазина сборник цитат (Paulo Coelho. Life.Selected quotations. HarperCollinsPublishers 2007) - в этом была рука помощи свыше. Если мне не суждено совладать с величием литературных трудов Мастера, так может хотя бы цитатами подпитаюсь...
Увы, и здесь меня ждало разочарование, причем фундаментальное.

Вопиющая банальность - вот основное и неизгладимое впечатление.

И хотя были аргументы со стороны, дескать: нельзя судить о целом по его фрагментам, цитаты могли быть выбраны наугад и т.д. - не верю.

Разве вам не приходилось слышать или говорить такое:

All battles in life serve to teach us something, even battles we lose

(в более простом, но страшно жизненном варианте это звучит как - простите, что сразу после великого - "нас ...ут, а мы крепчаем")
или:

No one can desire the love of God without knowing human love

(кто сказал "возлюби ближнего как себя самого"?)

Love means sharing the world with someone else.

Choosing one path means abandoning others - if you try to follow every possible path you end up following none

Body and soul need new challenges

и т.д.

Многое верно, со многим можно поспорить, но ведь все это уже известно! Это все равно, что вещать со страниц романа: "Земля вращается вокруг Солнца" или "Бог есть и он един".

Может, вся гениальность в простой (я бы даже сказала, скупой) словесной оболочке этих мудрых мыслей? Или в образе "Воина Света" (Manual of the Warrior of Light)?

Я даже задумала было открыть серию постов по темам, которые представлены в этом цитатнике: Мечта, Путь, Любовь, Шанс, Путешествие, Предназначение, Битва Добра,Тайна. Чтобы представить особо интересные (или наоборот) цитаты и подискутировать с Мастером.
Сегодня, наконец, выбрала для этого время, открыла книгу... и через 3 минуты крепко спала. Без сновидений.

Такого со мной никогда еще не было.
Действительно - Предназначение и Тайна...

Maths Test

The UK's Royal Society of Chemistry is offering a £500 prize to the person who answers their question correctly (note: the English question above, not the Chinese one!).

I'm afraid they'll have to pay thousands to those who manage to pass a Classic IQ test.

Does anybody have a doubt that the world'll be all Chinese very soon? And them Chinese, they know better what to do with money... They count better.

P.S. And we thought our maths in Russian schools was superior...

IQ (continued) or Bill Gates in my office.

for those who beleives in testing...

You won't beleive it! I had a chance to witness a new Bill Gates completing this test in front of me.
I don't exaggerate. Read it:

Congratulations, Michael!
Your IQ score is 126 (BTW: Not bad but when you read below...)

Your Intellectual Type is Facts Curator (F*** Curator - what does it mean?). This means you are highly intelligent and have picked up an impressive and unique collection of facts and figures over the years (given that the year of birth is 1984... he must collect a hell impressive lot of facts since then). You've got a remarkable vocabulary and exceptional math skills — which puts you in the same class as brainiacs like Bill Gates.

Now, let's see some details which prove:

1. The true value of that IQ.
2. The true value of the "brainiacs like Bill"'s IQ (sorry, but they chose his name for that intellectual type).
3. The true value of the test.

Question 13. A boy is 4 years old and his sister is three times as old as he is. When the boy is 12 years old, how old will his sister be?
16 20 24 28

Michael's answer was: А где 36? Where is 36? (I assume that was for 12*3). Seeing me frozen in astonishment, the brainiac produced Version No.2: where is 15? (12+3)

And this guy is IT!!!!!

Question 23. Which number should come next? 64, 16, 4, 1, ¼? 1/16 1/12 1/8 1/2 1

You won’t believe it! He used a calculator!!!!!

Next question: Which one of these five things is least like the other four? Plum Grape Apricot Peach Cherry

He was thinking more than 3 minutes! His comment was: «все растут на деревьях» - "they all grow on trees" (!!!!)
Somebody send me a picture of a grape tree.

A little of geometry: так, у нас здесь остается ромбик (СМОТРИ, ЕСЛИ ОВАЛ С КВАДРАТИКОМ СОВМЕСТИТЬ, ПОЛУЧАЕТСЯ РОМБИК - цитирую дословно!)

Congratulations, Michael, indeed :)

IQ

I don't beleive in tests, but some of my friends do... They also beleive in IQ.
So, I ventured to undertake a simple but "classic" IQ test to find out (I knew it anyway) that my result is much higher than that of one of my close and beloved friends, who is undoubtfully clever and genius - but... who can challenge the on-line results? :)

That's what I read:


Congratulations, Lana!
Your IQ score is 136 (they carefully don't mention that 136 is out of... to save us from a bitter disappointment!)

This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others.

Your Intellectual Type is Word Warrior. This means you have exceptional verbal skills. You can easily make sense of complex issues and take an unusually creative approach to solving problems. Your strengths also make you a visionary. Even without trying you're able to come up with lots of new and creative ideas. And that's just a small part of what we know about you from your test results.

Al this seems true. But why am I a warrior again?!

Am I not a beautiful and clever, kind-hearted, caring, fit, open-minded (what else?) woman after all?
So, my verdict is: DO NOT BELEIVE IN TESTS! :)

I broke a password!

Just to share my great experience in code-breaking.

I wanted to replace MS Express by MS Outlook and asked my good friend, coincidentally a very clever and skilled IT expert, to help me with it.

Of course, that was very easy for him ...until the time came to enter the e-mail password. I didn't know it, the guy who had set it several months ago was out ot reach.

So, we had two options: either wait until I get in touch with that guy or... Actually, with an IT profi by my side the only decent option was to break through.

Quite a lot of programs which promised to disclose the 12-asterisk stuff had been downloaded from Google. But none of them really worked. Digital fortress held strong. I went down to the kiosk to buy more sigarettes...

Eventually Alexander found a program which managed to reveal three first symbols of the password. He said: "No, this is not good, it shows only three letters. Let's go on to find another one". And THEN my glorious moment came, when I suggested: "Let's delete these three letters and try again then, and the program will show us the other three first letters - and so on". "No, it won't work", replied Sasha but agreed to try. And you know what? It worked! We'd read the password 4 x 3 letters and finished with my e-mail within a minute.

So, dear Sasha and all IT guys! After all, dumb users also have brains, and they work some times.

I was born to work with numbers

All the early years of my life I've desperately spent in the music and arts enviroment. That was, actually, my destiny and life-path predetermined by one genuine and unavoidable superpower-force - parents. Been very advanced in maths and having learned how to read and add at the age, when average toddler learns how to walk and run, I was chained to the piano and school's choir for ages...

Since perfection was my ultimate goal in everything, I'd managed to graduate with honours from the Moscow State Conservatory, got my PhD and even published two books and some articles on contemporary music and art. Funny though, in the huge field of the music theory I'd discovered - surprisingly enough - one semi-deserted area where my restless and number-striving mind could get a playground and searchlab the same - this is a theory of Serial Music. Studying and scrutinising endless scores and workings of great composers and analysts during so many days and sleepless nights, I've learned how to turn the music into beautiful equations and proportions, how to find symmetry, balances and progressions in the music texture and - most important - I've discovered that the numerical and logical orders, which I'd carefully ( and maybe rather ackwardly) derived from that music, had been there way before I came to find it... So, the beauty of numbers had been unveiled once again, and I think that was a turning point for my further life and career development.

Why? Because at present I'm a qualified accountant, ACCA member and my everyday chores have absolutly nothing to do with music and arts - unless you count playing CD and occasionally watching my daughter's painting on the opposite wall... But not as simple as that, though.

It seems now that my hard work had served a purpose after all, and more than one.

In the Russian music theory Serial music was presented as underdeveloped area. My initial adea to summarise and further develop existing findings had evolved into a solid monography which had been highly appraised in 1996 (although some people thought that so young girl could not produce something worthy), and the one can spot numerous references and quotes in the Inet articles and catalogues like this for example, mostly in Russia, but in some other countries as well, like Germany, France, China, Azerbaijan - honestly, bearing in mind highly specific nature of the subject, I didn't aim so far...

Also, analytical experience gained in "that" part of my life was very useful and helped me a lot to accommodate myself rather fast and comfortable in accountancy and finacial analysis. It seems sometimes that I could see figures and grasp their sense, meaning and correlations almost instantly, like if I would hear their wonderful music. It's still amazing, after several years on the new grounds, and I'll never get bored of it.