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Sunday, February 26, 2006
Am I at RISK???
Today's reply is OMG, YES!!! :D By the way , it is not "I don't know much about compuers", it's " I am computer illiterate" ! Has the same meaning, yet it adds a know-it -all touch to your email to tech support!
posted by Alina @ 2:26 PM   7 comments
Friday, February 24, 2006
The time management issue
It’s windy again. After a few days of 20+ temperatures, this is quite a burden. And I hate it! Yes, I am back to facing cold weather on my multiple places to go to days. Oh, well, will say it again, I hate it! So I am waiting for the spring again, hoping it will come to stay eventually, sometimes in mid-March would be perfect for me!

Speaking of months, there is a weird process with month February! I always expect it to be longer…And when things appear to be far from me, it hits me, it only has 28 days this year (sometimes 29)! And I loose my recently acquired tranquility. But never mind!

I decided (a very long time ago) that given the amount of different tasks per day I needed some real time management strategy. So I first started by firmly dividing my day and getting involved in some very practical time units allocation. Well, it did not work! So the conclusion of this failure is: school-like schedules are no good: they do not embed sudden changes of plans and it is hard to alter a very specific time table.

So I came up with another great idea: setting tasks as things to do for each day, without mentioning when exactly to do it. This new method does appear to give me a larger amount of freedom each day and everything can be postponed for the nigh. This way, finally accomplishing everything could be a great thing and I would not have to deal with minor failures as not being able to do a certain task when I had planned to do it.

You might wonder which the conclusion of this experiment is. Well, you will have to be patient for a while, I have only started it today! :D

Another thing, I took George’s example and found out what my blog is worth:



My blog is worth $20,887.98.
How much is your blog worth?

posted by Alina @ 12:55 PM   11 comments
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Mediterranean Waltz by Buket Uzuner
I wonder what amazed me most about this book: the perfectly shaped love triangles, the main love story that starts when the boy is 5 and the girl is 7 and is very much alive in their thirties, the constant wondering if it is all real, all unreal, all partly real?

I don’t have a favorite character either. I love Blue Duna/Mabel for his long lasting love, for his way of acceptance, for being the type of the “different from the others” man, for suffering so genuinely when being compared with the rest, for being do determined to believe the civil war is nothing but a nightmare, an image of a vengeful subconscious.

I also love Brunette Ada, the raingirl daughter of two movie cinemas, an avant-garde woman and passionate photographer, blaming herself too much for a crime she did not commit, being afraid to admit to the love she feels for Duna.

I love Aras, the symbol of traditional masculinity and competitiveness, the pretty boy that does not care other girls than his own admire him. His clumsiness in treating the woman he loves as opposed of his perfect way of doing everything else.

The quiet and pale Merrich that is actually strong-willed, sharp-tongued and very focused. The lady doctor that seems so independent but depends on her husbands opinion even for shopping.

The poet Dogan Gokay for his typical way of putting every thought into literary expression. I love his permanent contact with and guidance of the young people around him. His strange passions and perfect insight of others’ character.

Pervin Gokay and Sureyya Mercan for their movie stars love: true, flamboyant, romantic, perfect, troubled, normal, mundane and a lot more at the same time.

These are just a few characters of the novel, all having such real relationships with each other, all having an impact and leaving a print on everyone else’s life. Family connections, love connections, hate connections, all are perfectly shown in the book.

Warm memories combined with war atrocities and violence, sanity mixed with complete madness, heaven and hell, all happening as they usually do in our Earthly world.

You can find more details on the author here. And a description of the book here.
posted by Alina @ 10:57 AM   2 comments
Monday, February 20, 2006
Mediterranean Waltz - Quotes
Freedom i sbeing able to do the same desired things when you get up every morning.

We people are creatures of contradiction. Just look at us: we live in self-styled prisons, only we call them "home, family, relatives, and tradition"...Then we suffocate and go insane within these walls, but guard their collapse with our own lives.

'Women are not like us, sir! They do not have standard reactions like us men'
'They all have their own reactions. It's us men who act homogeneously, and who immediately accuse women of being unpredictable and inscrutable when we feel threatened by them!'

you're life is a portrait of the place(s) you've lived in.

Sometimes, though rarely, you are lucky and you experience a miracle. Because you meet someone who's familiar with your language. (God how we love miracles!). It does not matter at all how old we are at that point.

The worst nightmare is the one you awake into.

Children begin to understand their parents in their thirties.

The most painful wound is realizing that you are the one who's mistaken. The only permanent scar is caused by a betrayal of counsciousness! The hardest mistakes to forgive are in fact those commited by one's own self...

Every person is and should be valuable but (why hide it?) those we love, even from afar, even in we haven't met them, are more valuable. Particularly those we can love after having gotten to know them.

What makes death most unfair is that it tears one away from one's most dearly beloved.

Children and people who never grow up believe in perfection!

Mothers are the strongest sould God created in the world. The mother of every creature is the strongest among those creatures.

A person should either correct a painful situation or get away from it.

Life is a temporary miracle of our common sense that whispers to us when, where and who to trust.

Love reaches its zenith only when it is the triumph of the impossible.

How love inflames a person...At first from joy then from pain...How lovely it is, and how much it hurts!

Love is the most exquisite of torments, the deepest of joys.

Nothing is more frightening to a man than the emotional outbursts of women.

The skies are everyone's country. The stars...they are the hope of us all.

Is there anyone who has been able to take complete control of her life? Is life something to be organized? For God's sake, what does it mean to organize your life in a time tunnel where anything is possible at any given moment, where no love, once possessed, can breathe freely, and where the thing called consistency is ripped to shreds? Who makes up these concepts and unleashes them upon society?

Anyway, aren't we all somewhat guilty for the deaths and miseries we were unable to prevent? Don't all of us have an element of the murderer, the thief, and the depraved, when we are watching fires, breakdowns, poverty, war and robberies? Come on now, don't be shy! That's how we all are!

Youth is the only true age when one knows. When one grows older, he only remembers.

Someday women and men will acquire equal rights, but it will never be possible for them to comprehend one another.

Those who have personally witnessed the fact that man is the cruelest and most vengeful creature on earth are doomed to be alone forever...They will not ever want to be relatives, friends, or ever acquaintances with any man or womankind again.

Logic is initially perceiving everything emotionally, and not denying it! Every type of intellectual activity is neccessarily processed through an emotional understanding, and this is not anything to be ashamed of.

The soil is ready and I am ready to form new and real footprints.
I am returning.
Home.
To myself.
I smile, thinking it is lovely to awake.
No matter what the situation might be, it's lovely to awake!
posted by Alina @ 5:24 PM   4 comments
Friday, February 17, 2006
List of Four
I have been tagged by George, so here goes:

***Update*** I've also been tagged by Brandly Your over here for this meme.
Four jobs I’ve had:

1. Reporter, editor, marketer, salesperson and whatever else for “Moftul studentesc” – crappy unpaid job at a student newspaper
2. Editor at a press monitoring agency…six months after quitting, I was still thinking in key words :)
3. Marketing officer at a constructions company
4. Translator for my dad’s company – they were German, we were Romanian and we were all speaking English :))

Four movies I really like:

1. Being Julia
2. The Phantom of the Opera
3. Pitch Black
4. Hotel Rwanda

Four places I’ve lived

1. Sihlea – home village of poet Alexandru Sihleanu and of my mom’s family – for the first 3 years of my life.
2. Ploiesti – most of my life, until the first year of university
3. Bucharest – various dorms
4. Bucharest – Drumul Taberei

Four TV Shows I love

1. MASH
2. Friends
3. Millennium
4. Desperate Housewives

Four places I’ve vacationed:

1. Lapusna – the only time I was actually on the top of the mountain, far from civilized world and ate medium raw fish in the middle of the woods cause we were way to hungry
2. Rome/Fiugi – it also involved a 5 hours Latin contest, but it was worth it
3. Hungary/Czech Republic/Gemany – with my parents, driving around and visiting places for 3 weeks.
4. Istanbul – the most recent one

Four of my favorite dishes

1. Fried chicken with French fries or mashed potatoes and tomatoes and cheese salad.
2. Chicken soup – the Romanian sour version of “ciorba”
3. Iskender with ayran if possible
4. Almost all types of pasta

Four sites I visit daily:

1. DeSales online course site
2.
www.bitdefender.com, all day, almost every day
3.
www.zf.ro – the site of a Romanian financial paper
4. A wide range of *.blogspot.com sites :)


Four places I would rather be right now:


1. Rome
2. Paris
3. Istanbul
4. Bora-Bora :))

More than four bloggers I am tagging:

All those lazy girls from Girls Out Loud :D
posted by Alina @ 1:48 PM   11 comments
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Software purpose
"Programming today is a race between software engineersstriving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs,and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots.So far, the Universe is winning." -- Rich Cook

What do you think of this?
posted by Alina @ 5:44 PM   5 comments
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Free from exams
It is finally over, no more exams to study for. The results for now are as follows: 4 grades of 10 and 2 of 9. Also I am pretty sure I’ll pass the last exam as well. So I am pretty pleased with what I’ve accomplished. My plans are now to only focus on the online course I applied for with DeSales University and my license paper which was postponed long enough because of these exams.

I’m also hoping for a quick trip to the mountains and some skiing. This should be fun as I’m a beginner and it would be K’s first time to try it. Well, maybe we won’t break our necks. At least we will try not to.

Last night I succeeded in meeting Cristina. She said it’s been like three weeks since last time and that we should see each other more often. Well, she’s seen me twice this year, more than my mom. And there are people that I haven’t seen since before Christmas…I should try to squeeze them all in especially since the exams are now out of the way.

On my way home, while waiting for the tram, I sat down trying to read a little. Near me (how did I pick that seat?), a young couple (first/second year of university, high-school eve) were having an after break-up conversation. Oh, man, the crap people sometimes say to each other!...
posted by Alina @ 5:03 PM   9 comments
Aquarium life, not always easy…
As most of you know, we’ve had a nice little aquarium for some time now, filled with fishes (it was about 8 different species, or 9, now we’re down to 7…). Well we bought them, cared for them, fed them and all that, and one could have thought it should be enough…Well guys, it is not…

First some of them died…apparently being taken out of your original aquarium on a terribly cold weather and driven to a new home is not that good for them. Well, I felt bad for each of them and never could do the “take ‘em out and flush ‘em “.

Then the real treat: a few days ago a fish vanished…First we thought he might have jumped and died…But we could not find him at all…I said he had been eaten, but K said it was impossible, he was too big to be eaten. I said ok, maybe he jumped and we will eventually find him…

A day later another fish vanished…Well, guys, this time it was the smallest fish in the aquarium, he couldn’t have possibly jumped! Something fishy is going on in that aquarium!...
posted by Alina @ 4:52 PM   6 comments
Monday, February 06, 2006
The day before
Well, guys, I am studying for my last exam of tomorrow. Of course I’ve just started the serious studying today, that is what I always do…There is a Romanian saying that you should not try to make the pig fatter the day before you slaughter it…Well, if that is the only day it eats, it might just do the trick…For me it always does: thank God for the mind He has given me that still allows me to study enough the day/morning/night before.

These days I feel a strong need to start writing again. Maybe I will as this time it’s like an inner calling. It’s not like before, when it was just me wanting to get back to this habit so bad without any solid foundation, it’s like a need to let out all I’ve been gathering in these years of not writing a short story at least. I am looking forward to giving it some time after the exams, actually.

Well, this is basically the news, along with some fresh snow and colder weather. Will have more for you soon!
posted by Alina @ 5:47 PM   6 comments
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Nature's free shows

The Black Sea is quite an attraction for Romanian and foreign turists during summers. But this winter, it thought it should change the routine. As it contains less sault than other seas around the world, it froze to display a major show that gathered people from different parts of the country to see it.

My dad was one of these less than 24 hours tourists. As I could not go with him (work, exams, the usual routine), I made a special request for pictures as I was sure it would be an amazing view. I was right, and I thought to share it with you. The rest of the pictures are posted on my other blog. Take a look and enjoy!
posted by Alina @ 5:11 PM   10 comments
The Kama Sutra worm/Blackworm
I don’t usually post work related news, but this new threat has really caught my eye…It all started by emails presenting the virus and its “potential” that every one took for hoaxes at first. When taking a better look, the threat turned out to be real.

This nice little malware (malicious software) does what you would have most: takes all your .doc, .txt and .pdf files and others of this type, then, on the 3rd of the month, it deletes them. Imagine how nice it will be to find yourself without an important paper due the next day? I would really go nuts to be honest!

Luckily, all antivirus products are detecting and disinfecting it by now (Even Norton :D). But it got me wondering as it did before. Some say it’s AV software producers who create these viruses of all kinds to keep the business going. So I had a little chat with a colleague of mine from the Virus Lab, whose job is practically adding signatures for new threats.

As he said, most new variants of malware are created by socially impaired people who want to feel like they control the world and usually consist in old variants that are copied and then a few code lines are changed. Voila! New virus! Real threats, like the one I’ve just told you about, are quite rare. Those who create such “masterpieces” are the real smart ones, and although I could admire their intelligence at a certain point, I’d have to say, why the heck did you pick on me with your new cool virus?

Viruses take it all out on normal users mostly. Windows users…cause as you know, Linux viruses are just a few. I don’t know who creates such nice little programs, but if I ever met one, I would take his precious malware and stick it up his ass!
A more technical description of Blackworm - Nyxem here and a removal tool as well. Keep safe!
posted by Alina @ 9:29 AM   4 comments
About Me

Name: Alina
Home: Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania
About Me: "This is my church. This is where I heal my hurts". It's also where I feel free and my preferred means of expression.
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