A wedding day
On 19th of July 2008 I've married my fair girlfriend (or, may be bride?) Galya, whom I know for three years already. I can't boast of my new shiny ring, because I don't have one, but I'm looking forward for our first journey as a married couple. I haven't decided yet where would we like to go, but it's not the point, I think.

Decisions.

Every time I come upon a necessity to make a decision, I do hesitate. My mother always told me that this streak is an inherited one. But the more years pass by, the more obvious it becomes, that hesitation is in human' blood. Whether you need to choose a job, or find yourself a university to study at - you do think and trying to find an advice from any one around.
A very famous book, written in eighteenth century in Japan, Hagakure I mean, contains some sort of Samurai code.
Every modern reader of this masterpiece wonders how did Samurai in particular and Japanese in general managed not to kill themselves during so many years of their history, being placed on such a small piece of land?
Besides the picturesque descriptions of different kosher ways of ancient suicide, Hagakure's author generously provides us with aphorisms, which shortly give a correct direction in his (or may be her?) life.
As to decision making, Yamamoto Tsunetomo says, that every decision must be made in longer than seven breaths. There's no anything on Earth that deserves thinking longer.
I do agree. That's true. But can't follow, can I?

Delayed projects

In my opinion it would be very interesting for me to start blogging about how not to complete projects on time.
I've lot of experience in this field.

The most strange thing is that the longer you postpone the project work that is already late, the more painful become these activities for every single participant.

Developers have to recall what the subject area is all about, PM has to review his or her initial project plan, and feel sorrow.
Customer must think about why these so cool looking guys with so much good references failed the project.

And so on.

The obvious solution is not to postpone the project everyday tasks, that are used to be planned so nicely in the initial network chart.
Then it won't become painful and will bring only fun and, well, satisfaction.

President elections in Russia

Today it was day of President elections in Russia, you know. And it was pretty interesting. We didn't managed to vote with my girlfriend, because we were late. And the doors were closed.

There are two types of system administrators:
those, who don't backup yet, and those, who do it already.

Old truths must be felt by every person.

There's one very-well known eternal verity - if you want to do something relativly complex, that involves a labor of a team, then you must build a team you can rely on.
It's pretty simple, and everyone agrees with that. It's hardly possible to find a person who would object.
And I wouldn't object either. But understanding - is one thing, and the feeling, that you fail a project because of you inability to gather a good team - is something completely different.

Not so long ago I felt pretty well that if manager doesn't know the team, if she is not sure that she can withstand any 'storm' with the team members, then she has no team.
Manager must not underestimate the risks that follow the cooperation with unknown or not enough known team - that's clear.

And by accepting these risks manager bets her reputation. Because it's obvious that the only person, responsible for the project failure, is the manager. It's impossible for manager to blame anyone else except her.

So, team matters and this risk must be valued along with any other risk, such as new and unknown technology, time shortage, small budget and so on.

Corporate email addresses. I'm not sure whether you are acquainted with this problem or not, but I have some colleagues, who can't spell their email by phone easily.
The thing is that we all speak Russian here, you know. And email addresses assigned are written in Latin letters we are not used to.
Actually lionshare of my fellow citizens can't spell Latin letters correctly, in lots of offices one can here talks on phone like "Yes, S like the dollar sign".

Well, everyone has to tell someone his email by phone, right? In many different situations you ought to do that. And what happens when you are Russian, and your new system administrator has assigned you long email, composed from you last name and initials, transliterated in some strange manner, specified by corporate policy #345-i "Employee email address assignment instructions"?
Right, new employee has to spell somthing like zasetskii@ugly-domain.cos by phone.
That's not easy, esspesially when talking with a mid-aged accountant.

Lunch is coming closer all the time, and I have to finish all this. So, I have thought out a simple solution.
email creation policy must have instructions to assign a couple of addresses to each employee if necessary. So, Ivan Zasetskii can get two addresses:
the standard one:
zasetskii@ugly-domain.cos
and the easy-spelling one:
ivan.z@ugly-domain.cos

Am I clever?

Good news every one! I'm perfectly sure none reads this, but anyway, practicing in creating text in English is rather useful for such a jerk I am.
As far I remember, Lenin, who knew mane different languages, use to write I instead of I when he used English.

Lenin, the father of Russian revolution, explained that by his modesty, it didn't allow him to use capital letter to identify himself. That was rude, as Lenin thought.

Meanwhile I've created a flickr account and posted some pictures we've made with my girlfriend while being at Tunisia.

I've noticed that most non-Russian Tunisia tourists look like truck drivers, plumbers and so on. I mean, look like workers.
Here are my pics any way
http://www.flickr.com/photos/59663065@N00/tags/tunisia/

Here is the first and useless post in this blog. Have nothing to say.