Oh, he's more than just thankful and appreciative - I'm still working with him. It's thoroughly enjoyable to save the day when time comes, but as I age I start preferring a more predictable life:)
I got a wakeup call once at 8am, it was my CEO whose Thinkpad laptop failed to boot due to a stuck CPU fan. He had a plane to board in 3 hours to visit a seminar where he had to present a slide stack.. the only copy of which was on that laptop. Naturally, there was no time to replace anything (much less find a spare fan), so after a short lecture on importance of backups I took his laptop, put my lips to the fan intake, pushed power button and gave it a gentle blow. That got the stuck fan started. Perhaps the same could be achieved with a dust blower, but we didn't have one handy. When he asked me how is he supposed to fix it in front of world's most known scientists in the field, I told him - "give it a blow on startup, that's all".
Those EYES...
It did the job though:)
Not Aeroflot - Red Wings. The prior is the biggest airline in Russia (their operations are relatively safe), the latter actually seized operations while settling the dust around said incident.
In Russia? No, they are not. But they are helpful if someone tries to frame you for an accident, and that happens sometimes, especially if that they drive a Cayenne and are kids of some kind of high official.
... 95% of Russian programmers I spoke to (and 99.99% worthy ones) can read/write enough to understand whatever they need to know. Generally speaking, if a programmer in Russia doesn't know English, he's frowned upon by his colleagues, exclusions are usually over 45 years old. P.S. I learned my English through reading HTTP RFC, and amused the hell out of my English teacher in college by using associated terminology:)
For whoever can read Russian:
http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/telecom/129943/
For those who can't - "Marina Akulich, blog-secretary of MTS, this is an official company comment - at this time company does not prohibit using any VoIP services such as Skype and the likes. Obviously, installation of such software is not blocked an all corresponding services are granted at full scale. The issue came out of Comstar-Direct (probably an acquisition done by MTS) company who did not have a license to provide voice communications over Internet (translator: that's a weird case of Russian licensing to you). All customer agreements are being updated now and this paragraph will be removed from all new version of such agreements".
Bottom line: corporate SNAFU.
I hope they enjoy themselves, it's a fun place to be in, and that's from someone who spent 27 years in Kemerovo before moving to Houston, TX. Just make sure they gear up for like -40F, as that's what weather is like there in recent couple years. And no, we don't have bears running around and drinking 96% alcohol from a ice bottle while knocking people with balalaikas:)
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Oh, he's more than just thankful and appreciative - I'm still working with him. It's thoroughly enjoyable to save the day when time comes, but as I age I start preferring a more predictable life :)
I got a wakeup call once at 8am, it was my CEO whose Thinkpad laptop failed to boot due to a stuck CPU fan. He had a plane to board in 3 hours to visit a seminar where he had to present a slide stack.. the only copy of which was on that laptop. Naturally, there was no time to replace anything (much less find a spare fan), so after a short lecture on importance of backups I took his laptop, put my lips to the fan intake, pushed power button and gave it a gentle blow. That got the stuck fan started. Perhaps the same could be achieved with a dust blower, but we didn't have one handy. When he asked me how is he supposed to fix it in front of world's most known scientists in the field, I told him - "give it a blow on startup, that's all". Those EYES... It did the job though :)
*ceased. Sorry.
Not Aeroflot - Red Wings. The prior is the biggest airline in Russia (their operations are relatively safe), the latter actually seized operations while settling the dust around said incident.
In Russia? No, they are not. But they are helpful if someone tries to frame you for an accident, and that happens sometimes, especially if that they drive a Cayenne and are kids of some kind of high official.
... 95% of Russian programmers I spoke to (and 99.99% worthy ones) can read/write enough to understand whatever they need to know. Generally speaking, if a programmer in Russia doesn't know English, he's frowned upon by his colleagues, exclusions are usually over 45 years old. P.S. I learned my English through reading HTTP RFC, and amused the hell out of my English teacher in college by using associated terminology :)
For whoever can read Russian: http://habrahabr.ru/blogs/telecom/129943/ For those who can't - "Marina Akulich, blog-secretary of MTS, this is an official company comment - at this time company does not prohibit using any VoIP services such as Skype and the likes. Obviously, installation of such software is not blocked an all corresponding services are granted at full scale. The issue came out of Comstar-Direct (probably an acquisition done by MTS) company who did not have a license to provide voice communications over Internet (translator: that's a weird case of Russian licensing to you). All customer agreements are being updated now and this paragraph will be removed from all new version of such agreements". Bottom line: corporate SNAFU.
I hope they enjoy themselves, it's a fun place to be in, and that's from someone who spent 27 years in Kemerovo before moving to Houston, TX. Just make sure they gear up for like -40F, as that's what weather is like there in recent couple years. And no, we don't have bears running around and drinking 96% alcohol from a ice bottle while knocking people with balalaikas :)