Today the service changed to version 2.0. The buttons moved, the editor has a new toolbar, and for the first time you can attach a photo without sending it to the server by hand. I tried it. It works. I was almost disappointed.
My counter did not reset. The theme did not change. Everything is exactly like before, only a bit further to the right. This is the kind of upgrade I like.
Since Monday the dollar is 8.40 som, not 5. I was saving for a laptop (the Acer at the Altyn shop, 640 dollars). Before Monday that was 3,200 som. Now it is 5,376 som. My stipend is the same.
OK. It will be a desktop then. Again.
Third year. Our group list, printed on the wall: 17 names. I read it twice, the way you read a list from a different year. The lab has new computers (not Pentium II, something with a flat monitor) and the punched-card teacher is teaching "networks" this term. He says the network is a lot like a card catalogue, only faster and more rude.
My father brought coal. In the old days, he says, you bought coal in the spring, because it is cheaper, "like a sensible person". This year nobody was sensible.
The stove is working, the cat from next door has moved into our shed, and my mother says that for the first time in a year the house smells of normal things: soup, wet wool, tea.
University opened again today. Our group: 24 people in 2005, 17 today. Some left for Almaty, some for Russia. The Pentium IIs are gone from the lab (nobody knows where) but the punched-card teacher is still there.
Kuble Soft has closed. The office is empty, there is a paper on the door. I am sad about it more than I expected.