Georgi’s Blog

Birthday continuation

About 2 days ago, I finally decided to upload the pictures from my birthday. Of course you can find them at the standard location:my gallery.

…
I just figured out, that I haven’t uploaded all pictures. I have now added the last 30ish.

Lettuce Salad

Here is a lettuce salad that we do every once in a while. Thanks to Angel for showing us the right lettuce.

Ingredients:
1 head lettuce
5-6 pcs radish
1 dry pint (box) of cherry tomatoes
3 scallions
about half pound bulgarian sheep cheese
1 tsp salt
4-5 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2-3 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Preparation:
Chop the lettuce in not too big peaces, the radish as well, tomatoes in half, scallions in rings and put all of then in a big bowl. Put the salt, vinegar and oil ( in that order ) and the crushed cheese on top. Mix well, grab a fork and attack

Work during the summer

I got a phone call yesterday by one of the recruiters at UBS bank with an offer for a Summer internship in the IT Equities team. It starts on 4th of June and is 10 weeks ( till 17th of August I think ). Now I have to find a place to stay for the ten weeks in Stamford, CT and is about time that I get a laptop. Probably I will not be allowed to carry it in the bank, but at least at home I will need it. I need to check their policies if I will be allowed to blog about the job I do over there. After 17th of August I need to go back to BG to renew my visa for the US, because it expires. I will not have time for the surgery but I’ll try go take a few days for a vacation on the Black Sea

Patents are one big bull***

I don’t know how many of you follow the news in the US, but those who do, you couldn’t have missed the news about Verizon and Vonage.

Vonage is a company that offers phone service over the internet (VoIP technology) and had several million customers in the US. It’s all good, but several months ago Verizon decided to sue Vonage for patent infringement. It starts to turn out that Verizon came up with the technology Vonage uses. From Verizon’s point of view it’s OK, but from the customers of Vonage and Vonage’s point of view is quite messy. It is quite possible that Vonage will go out of business and the users (business and private) will lose their phone lines. How does that sound? The other possible solution is Verizon acquires Vonage almost for free, raises the bills, and again the customer looses. Someone will say: well yes, but if it’s Verizon’s invention they have the rights… Big deal, does Verizon pay for every single thing they use? And they shouldn’t. That’s the hole point of science, to improve human life and everyone should benefit from it. Because if it is not for everyone some become richer and greedier. This type of thinking “I invented it, it is mine ” is now obsolete, it is still yours but you don’t have to destroy everyone that wants to use that invention…

Vonage has to pay $58 million in damage… like Verizon was going to do the same thing Vonage did…

Bull***. This is only one example how patents don’t do any good for most of the people ( and make filthy rich the other very small part of them )…
P.S. I’m not even a Vonage client!

Criminal

Source : CopyCrime.eu

On April 24th, the European Parliament will vote on IPRED2, the Second Intellectual Property Enforcement Directive. With one stroke, they risk turning thousands of innocent EU citizens and businesses into copycriminals.

If IPRED2 passes in its current form, “aiding, abetting, or inciting” copyright infringement on a “commercial scale” in the EU will become a crime.

Criminal law needs to be clear to be fair. While IPRED2 says that only “commercial scale” infringement will be punished, the directive doesn’t define “commercial scale” or “incitement.” Even IP lawyers can’t agree on what are “private” and “personal” uses of copyrighted works. One step over that fuzzy line, however, and anyone could be threatened with punishments intended for professional counterfeiters and organized criminals.
The excesses of IPRED2 need to be reined back. Sign our petition now!.

Barber shop

I don’t know if I’ve ever told you about the barber shops here. I think, it is pretty interesting, the fact that exactly here in Oakdale there is a barber shop run by Turkish people. I do not have anything against them, on the contrary - I think they are good barbers(is that the word? ), it is just a strange idea that a Bulgarian goes to a Turkish barber shop in a small town on Long Island. Most barbers? even recognize me as someone from around Turkey ( most of them needed at most 3 times to guess that I am from Bulgaria, even though they already know it )…

I know people say “It is a small world” but I think it is a huge world, and even so things like this happen…

Presentation

When I have a presentation to make, it usually means that the night before I will sleep 4-5 hours, because I would have actually make it… Last night wasn’t an exception. I had to compare Socialism and Capitalism for a course of Economics and not only did I go to bed at 4:30, but I didn’t like the presentation. In the end 6-7 hours of work were presented in 1 hour and I couldn’t get enough sleep ( the presentation was at 10 in the morning )

Happy Easter

According the the Greek orthodox beliefs, today is The Resurrection Day ( of Jesus Christ ). In Bulgaria we say:
- Christ Resurrected!
- Indeed Resurrected!
and than the egg fighting starts.

Disk Disassembly

Today in Arcib we had an interesting event. We had to make sure, no one will be able to recover data from 4 disks - to destroy them. It turned out a little bit more difficult than it sounds. First, it is not easy to disassemble the drives. Than the platters are pretty tough and it took quite some time to drill through and heat them, in the end we took the head magnets for us, we drilled a whole in the platters, heated them to 1000 degrees fahrenheit and we concluded it will be very hard to recover anything from these platters… A got a few of the strong magnets for myself

Yogurt

Few weeks ago, looking around at amazon, I found Salton YM9 1-Quart Yogurt Maker. This device is nothing more than a worm incubator for bacteria It was on a discount, so I decided to give it a shot. All I can say is that I will never buy yogurt from the store again. It is twice cheaper and 100 times better( in taste and healthy ). I also got some Bulgarian bacteria and now I grow them at home and I eat them. The only problem is that this yogurt does not last as long as a store yogurt. Not that it goes bad, it just gets eaten too fast

Here is the procedure:
I put 1 quart of organic milk in a pot and I heat it until it start smoking ( not boiling). Than I put the pot in the sink and run cold water next to it to cool it down until it stops smoking ( around 40 degrees centigrade ). In a small cup I mix 2 teaspoons of my last batch of yogurt with a little of the worm milk, stirring carefully, not beating. After the yogurt is dissolved well I mix it with the other milk an stir. I put it in my incubator ( it can be left in a worm place with a blanket around it, or in a stove that can maintain as low as 40 centigrade. Also when I stir I run all my utensils through very hot tap water for disinfection. After about 5 hours I move the container to the refrigerator. The consistency will still be runny, but after another 2 hours in the fridge and mmmmmmm