us

2011 America trip expenses

Leave a Comment

Did you ask me for my budget file? Did you ask me for my 2011 American trip expenses? Oh, you did. And here it goes with some comments and annotations.

The file itself exposes no real information on my possesses. Initial numbers in the first lines have been written there to fit “zeros” in the end on almost all accounts; i.e. these are fake amounts. Also, some lines were intentionally removed for my own and others’ privacy.

The only real number here is the sum of expenses for the whole trip. It is US$10190 for Feb’11 — Sep’11 (7-month) trip, including rent, everyday expenses, and even my new assets such as Macbook Air, Kindle, etc.

[Read more…]

MacBook Air 13″ mid-2011 (A1369) top case with US and RU/EU keyboard layouts

9 Comments
MacBook Air 13" mid-2011 top case with US keyboard layout (flooded)

Here are MacBook Air keyboards with US and RU (EU) layout, so as internal side of MacBook Air so called “top case” with keyboard attached.

Recently I’ve flooded my MacBook Air 13″ mid-2011 with half a bottle of Coca-Cola 1L late-2011. Luckily, after immediate removal of the liquids, it was still working, more or less. Only “<” and “>” keys stopped working, keys’ lights persistently dimmed, and all the keys became sticky while typing.

To repair MacBook Air Unibody after such a flooding, you cannot just replace a keyboard. You have to replace the whole top case, which includes keyboard and all the whole aluminum plate with palm rests; the top case does not include the touch pad (only a hole for it).

At the same time I’ve decided to replace US keyboard layout (this MacBook Air was bought in US) with Russian one, which is a subkind of European. Here you can compare US and RU/EU keyboard layouts:

[Read more…]

Canada to lose IT

8 Comments

One of the goals of my voyage was a research (not scientific research, of course, but mostly personal, subjective research) on what Canada is for me, what long-term and wide-range opportunities it can give to me, both in life and in work. And as a software developer, I’m very interested in what the Canadian Information Technology (IT) sector is like.

All hail infrastructure!

Maybe I am not the best IT professional of all time. Maybe I have no experience in running a business. But I do know the very key point for success of almost any business in any place: infrastructure. Every business is delivery: delivery of goods to buyers, delivery of services to customers, delivery of resources to partners. And every kind of delivery needs an infrastructure: roads, flights, a mail system, Internet, communications, and so on. It needs a cheap and reliable infrastructure.

Before I came here to Canada I was expecting to see some progressive country, a smaller brother of the U.S. What I see here in Toronto is disappointing me very much. The most significant things look even worse than in Russia, where I am from; worse than in that third-world, prehistoric, corrupted “mafia state” with bears on the streets and vodka flowing from the taps.

[Read more…]