BEST Alumni Network - Lockdown diaries

February 7

After such a successful release came the somehow expected praise from the management. We really didn't screw it at all this time, so it read somehow nicely. I don’t want prance about it, but I think we girls and guys from IT really deserve it this time. Even the Chief Officer for Competitiveness, despite being so pissed by the pilot, she mentioned us by name in her email. Too bad she listed the old closed streams in it as well. It must have been drafted by someone who downloaded it from Luna's conflu, which I haven't updated yet.

When I clicked on the answer to all, Raja's answer in absence shines at me. This is new! I remember he had nothing set up right after he disappeared. It's just a generic one-sentence statement that everyone has. Maybe his superior had it set for him. I'll just send him a "hello" to get it full. And look, it's not a completely normal answer, it's a telephone contact, but the number doesn't belong to Raj, it ends with 602 200, but he had three fives at the end. I'll try it - the number called doesn't exist. Then I noticed that there is a gap between 60 and 2, so it could be read as “go to zoo,” but I'm probably just fooling around. It reminded me that I haven't found the Drap pills yet…

January 31

No product survives the first contact with the customer. This is also true for our releases. We test everything possible, we invent what could go wrong and what the user would not have to understand. But the collective intelligence of our clients always beats us. Last time, it was clients who had refused to give us an email in the past. Today, there were forty unfortunates who had deactivated the smart key so that they could reactivate it immediately. We can only imagine why anyone would do that. It doesn't matter, it's supposed to work, but we didn't run the database job in time, so we wrote down the deactivation only after the activation and boom!

On the other hand, the opposite can happen - an absolute miracle like last night. Sharky called me, quite scared, and asked if it was falling. I didn't know what. The incidents, he said. Nothing was reported. He was perplexed. They forgot to install the thirteenth (how ironic) of the twenty incremental configuration packages. Yet it somehow worked. I tried it and nothing, no problem. By all the laws of logic, the changes in the next seven packages shouldn't work, and maybe more, but no. I'm pretty used to not knowing why something isn't working. The opposite is rare, but when it's a good day, a rake can fire.

January 28

It happened today. The many months of efforts of several hundred people have been crowned with success, and clients can enjoy the fruits of our labor from this afternoon. We have a few life-lightening facilitations for them, a few eye-pleasing news, and as the world keeps moving, so do a few new exceptions and unexpected screens. It went suspiciously smoothly, and in the end we verified that the worst thing was looking for a mistake that did not exist, and that physical condition and mental preparedness would affect the result perhaps more than the quality of the delivery and documentation. The main thing, at least for me, are psychedelic actions and universal vaccination, we have only slightly prepared them though. Nausea and outbreaks of vaccinated disease have proven to be too serious a risk for rollout. Never mind, we'll fine-tune it. Both are children of a slowly fading viral grove, but they will perform very well in other circumstances, especially in the next pandemic.

January 25

I received a funny question from the continuous savings department. Their questions always amuse me. This organizational unit was established in ancient times, when people believed in the Bible and strategic consulting. Someone from the KPMG, PWC or McKinsey advised us that we should find about twenty percent savings every year. If others can, so can we, we said to ourselves and went for it. However, after successfully repeating it several times, we somehow forgot to cancel the department, so we have a bunch of people trying to keep the cost curve converging to zero, which is approaching its limit in the year three thousand. The bank may not be here by then, but they certainly will.

They asked if we could decommission some robots with our release when the teams that ordered them no longer existed. I replied that there are already so many robots and they are so sophisticated that they have their own unions and firing them is not possible. That helped. The real reason (that we can fire people, drop regulations and dissolve organizational units, but the processes are eternal, they are like cars and robots like roads, so you can build new ones, but they will never stop driving, and we added other roads on top of those roads, so wherever you make a roadblock, someone's way home breaks), I kept for myself.

January 22

The holy grail of software engineering is universal application. Something like SAP that can be controlled and works, Excel wrapped in apple tinsel, or some Chinese social network just without the Chinese behind it. Our contribution to the list of dead ends is the use of code lists for parameterization as well as configuration (both operational and functional). Do you want mobile users to enter a password first and then a name? No problem! Just change a few values in the code list. The catch is that then you have to check that everything else has remained unchanged, and it is never certain!

The application that controls it all has a modest three letters in the name, which means common static tables. But ours are proprietary and dynamic. We reach into them every week and we don't let anyone else do that because they would break it. We have a client code list, client types, processes, process types, functions, function types, groups of each of those things and group types and then also link code lists, configuration code lists, authorization code lists for all this and a code list of situations where it is stated which code list is to be used in which of them. Who can handle all this? Only a woman, …and that's Paloma. She has been in counterintelligence for two years because she didn't enjoy the code lists, but there was no one who would be able to take over, so we invite her to every release again and the temporary state is extended by another fraction of its unit (1 ever). Today, it happens again.

January 19

I met Mina. She told me mockingly that I was being investigated by the health department for unauthorized entry into the bank. I didn't know we had such a unit. It seems to have arisen in response to pandemic measures (just before their end, whatever...) and is managed directly by the CEO. They found out that I was at the bank last week, even though I was in a group that shouldn't have been there. I asked how come I saw her last week and now I see her again. She laughed that she has an exception - bimbo.

The consequence of the investigation is that I have to undergo corona tests, which I pay for myself. They'll take about half a liter of blood. I objected that they only take so much from donors. They said it was exactly the point: If I were sick, they would conduct research on it, if I was cured, they’d use it for the production of medicines, and if I were virginly clean, then for emergency purposes and I would receive the Jansky Medal. I wanted to suggest that I bring the right amount of stool and urine as well - also for testing and possible donations, but I changed my mind.

January 16

At night I went to Průhonice Park. Of course, I parked on the Jesenice side, at the end of the sidewalk from Zdiměřice. I walked the rest. It's a long walk, but the only chance not to get caught by a camera. There are many places between the official gates where the flowing branches of the trees provide enough shade from light smog and at the same time some help for overcoming the stone wall. For a nice walk through the darkened park, the levels of ponds reflecting the silver moonlight shone on me. Even in the dark, now that I was concentrating, I found a pathway to the cottage sharply trodden in the deep grass forming a large arch. Someone was careful not to be too conspicuous.

Two staples and a half minutes were enough for the lock in the latch. It's self-closing, when I leave, I won't leave a trace. The cottage was full of computers, I saw a server ladder and a large number of routers. Someone set up a data center here. I was trying to turn one on when I heard a click. It was a lock that I let stupidly hung in a latch. I had to leave quickly. The cottage has several windows, but they are all boarded up. But somewhere they had to bring electricity here. I followed the cables until I found a hole in the floor. As expected, the board could be moved. I crawled out and crept fearfully through the grass, almost to the edge of the park. I didn't dare to climb the wall there. I'd rather sneak around her fearfully back to the western border.

Jenuary 13

In the end, there were fifteen of those projects that, according to Max's list, a bit against their will and the logic of their focus, implemented little something we needed. We managed to get some new parameters for existing services, a few buttons that work differently in the context of a special user, a few steps in workflow, which are now useless, but they will then come in handy, and even one new interface, so far only a test. Of course, nothing is free, so each project asked for a counter-service, …which was supplied by a different project - haha! Max made a board like from the movie Ball Lightning. A will help B, B will help C and so on, until finally N will help A. Everyone is satisfied!

It almost went wrong with acceptance. Sharky accidentally gave out that our changes were intertwined, even though we agreed to report them as no-impact (what the word actually means was long forgotten). One hyped top manager dug into it and started asking Max, who is unable to figure out an excuse, and so he showed him the board. Fortunately, I walked around and started describing how we would be rotating people in agile manor between project teams according to those arrows. That thrilled him. He said that he would also implement it - yeah, great idea for sure! - and that he saw that we had everything under control, so he will certainly accept everything from us - phew!

January 10

I was looking at photos from the weekend trip to Průhonice Park. They came out quite well. The key to a pleasing excursion photo is, above all, the lighting conditions. The soft light and blue sky elevate the awkward pose of the fat-skinned family at the railing in front of the sausage stand to a poster from a magazine. With the right equipment and approach, you will be able to blur the background and you suddenly have a thousand sincere hearts in the facebook group of aetsy mothers.

But to the point. When I compared the places of our wedding photo shoot today and years ago, I saw a sharp tooth of dryness biting into the landscape, which is also carefully maintained here. Something tells me that family bathing in one tub will not reverse this, but I was more surprised that there was a new latch on the door to the cottage under the chateau. How come I didn't notice it? Someone is doing something there, but what? Průhonice’s website is silent. That's definitely a good reason to go there again. I have had an adventurous and detective mindset since Raj's disappearance…!

January 7

Today, I followed in the footsteps of the prime suspect in attempt of Raj's assassination. I believe it’s been an unsuccessful one. It wasn't hard to find her. All I had to do was settle in the comfort of the armchairs above the garage entrance and look at the uncomfortably large and disgusting pink SUV to appear. I went downstairs and waited for the typical clapping of three-inch heels on the pavement of the bank hall.

Jelena Jelenina, key account manager at 4Q. The cocktail dress contrasted sharply with the time of day and good taste, but even without the leather jacket I was sure. It didn't surprise me that she had a meeting with my boss. I wasn't surprised that she went to see Luna’s boss instead of our project manager herself either. But I didn't expect her to walk into the counterintelligence chief’s office as if he were at home, and she'd be chatting all day with deputies in the Untouchable Reserves. I have to be careful, the situation may be worse than I could have imagined…

January 5

I mustered up the courage to ring at our caretaker. I paid the price painfully right after opening the door and listened to a half-hour litany on a number of topics in the field of extreme housekeeping, such as spitting on windows, taking out rubbish, throwing out vagrants and chewing gum, dog feces, etc. but she gradually turned her monologue to video recordings. In the end, I pulled the loop with a few sayings like "People are the same everywhere, you don't choose your neighbors, I'd like to see what it looks like at their home."

And boom, she took me to her video room, which of the equipment couldn’t be matched by any TV editing studio. She began showing me the worst examples of civil disobedience and ruthlessness of all the houses she manages. Eventually, what I came for - an explosion in Prosecká Street - appeared among the dusty mats, spilled coffee and uncollected dog poos. As it kept going, the caretaker explained what all the discarded cigarettes could do. Sure. Not far from where I was standing, a girl was watching the explosion too. It occurred to me that I knew her, and I even know where from…

January 3

It would be just another boring day at the office if it weren't for the unexpected afternoon phone call from the boss. In addition to the well-known sap implementers, a hitherto unknown company has applied for a new incident reporting system. She said to have a look at it. I looked and it was worth it!

This differed from all other offers mainly in that it made sense. Instead of the usual phrases, it only contained a summary of the content and a list of strengths and weaknesses of the proposal. The body used images with abstraction on a moderate level, which, and this is truly unique, matched the description. The whole document showed a perfect knowledge of the bank's environment, including the organizational structure.

In the answers to the supplementary questions, I found an addendum, which we added as a joke to the automated reply email to clients template last April: "We believe that we answered all your questions the way we wanted." I checked when we sent those questions, and it was clear: Raj lives!

December 31

There is a sacred silence in the office. The dining room is as clean as a shrine. All are sacredly considerate. It's a balm for tangled nerves. Stop this rubbish speech! Maybe one more. As I left the buzzing hive that I call home, I became very effective. Too much. This afternoon I was quite bored. Golden times, they would say. But for a man with a fantasy, such boredom is dangerous, even pernicious!

I am thinking about things. Very insidious thoughts. Some can be shamelessly described as creative ideas, and nowhere is there any distraction that would drive them away. No killing routine anywhere in which they drowned like mud. I'm afraid I'll try to implement some of them. It went so far that I decided to take one of Drap’s pills when I gave up on Thursday. But I can't find them! Someone took them from me. Maybe my children! I have no idea what they're doing, but it won't be healthy. They've been acting weird lately - I'd rather check it out…

December 30

Everything is falling apart, I've reached the bottom. Yesterday's fiasco almost killed me. I tried for a moment what we created. I was terrified. Raj is dead, so he can't help us. We will never make it to any meaningful state. Is it just one stream, but area vaccination? We shouldn’t even try, it would end in a plague epidemic. I started to drink. I'm feeling sick. I think my wife finally managed to poison me. Maybe Drap would help me. I remembered his pills. I look at them - blue and red. So which one?

December 29

Today we piloted our project. We took advantage of the relative emptiness of the bank's headquarters and occupied the entire hall. We installed lights, speakers, three sensors and wifi transmitters around its perimeter. It only took a moment to convince about five people passing by to try on our holo-goggles and perma-headphones. We set off the beast machine.

The plan was simple. The pods in the masks read the data from the people's pockets, blend it with their encephal waves, and send it to our backend. There, hard data, mood and current situations are evaluated, and thanks to holographic projectors and other sensory attacks, the user (yes, that's how we call them) gets the impression that he is in a crowd of his friends and enjoys a picnic or a concert with them. Psychedelia so suited for the bank.

It was a total disaster. After less than a minute, the participants in the experiment began to squirm strangely. The woman who didn't put on her glasses didn't fit the best. She slammed her mask against the ground and left angrily. Max told me she was the Deputy for Competitiveness - this will have an ugly follow-up. The others roared, vomited, and one of them began to bleed from nose. I shouted at Sharky to turn it off. He came to me and said, "I don't think they're ready for that yet."

December 28

I examined the tracks Raj left me. The documentation of Zap app - after all, a photo of Raj in a circle of a wide family probably in front of the Taj Mahal - really?… and finally a leaflet with an invitation to the prayer house in Prosek and Týn - what? I decided to start with the closer one.

I watched the door at the given address for a moment and saw the same strange people as in the city center on one random walk a week ago. If I don't want something, it’s to agree with Nora, our warden, and the other fascists, and not at all when Raj is soaked in it. I was going inside, walking to the road that separated me from the entrance and boom! Shards sprayed from all the windows on the ground floor of the building, and smoke flowed out just after. After a moment of haunting silence, people shouted from inside and out on the street. I ran home cowardly. Raj, I let you down!

December 27

I visited the ghost town, or bank in other words, today. I was ordered to move my things to the newly appointed place. So I picked up both the slippers, the moldy towel, the photo of the family, the obsolete document folder with the words "top secret" and the stone-age donut from before the lockdown and transferred from sector 3A to sector 2B. I carefully stocked it and locked it with an impossible-to-guess four-digit numeric code. But I had one more goal…

I went to the section where Raj had a locker, and it was being moved. Three people stood in front of his locker, trying in vain to open it. He was supposed to move on his own a week ago, so now they were trying to break in. But neither the lady with the universal key nor the gentleman with the crowbar nor the department secretary, who tried all the combinations, succeeded.

They asked what I wanted. I said I could help. They were amazed and said the locker could not be opened. That's clear, it's Raj's, I said, pushing them away from it. I remembered what Raj had once told me about solving puzzles. Everything in the puzzle has a purpose. What has a clear purpose is a trap, unless it is the key. I set four zeros. They shouted that they were trying. I calmed them down and pulled on the side of the door, where there are usually hinges. The heavy safe opened. I quickly reached for what was inside and said, "I'll throw it away for you," and left triumphantly.

December 23

When I think about it, our project has started unexpectedly well. Luna sought some additional funding for the project from the director of the untouchable reserves department. She's really good at this. Everyone thinks they know how she achieved it only staying gallantly silent about it, but I think we are doing her wrong. The girl would just extract a calf from a barren cow, as they say. The business requirements were therefore much easier for me to write. I took advantage of my recent excursion into the secrets of the Jira and SP underground and made a list of about a dozen projects that now provide something that might come in handy.

Sharky also showed himself in the best light. For most of the requirements he knows about an open source SW to make them covered. Max surprised with a comprehensive documentation of the affected systems - and there were an awful lot of them! He had to collect and sort it for years. Even 4Q came up with an offer of their subcontracting, which met the requirements in terms of content, ime and the price did not deviate from the moral boundaries of an average cheeky dealer, of which criteria we were used to their concurrence of a maximum of two. In fact, I'm a little nervous about it. Firstly, because it is not normal, it will go wrong somewhere and it will hurt all the more, and secondly, because we lack a capable integration engineer and Raj is still nowhere…

December 22

A rather disgusting bug appeared in the Zap app. Actually, more than a bug. Zap app was hacked and misused to spread a Trojan horse, which downloads and sends the login data stored in the phone, as well as those used for banking applications. Downloading the faulty version and replacing it with the older one was a piece of cake, but it was impossible to fix it. Of course, this didn’t happen like that, it must have been someone from the inside, either from the supplier or from the bank. Mina went, of course, right after me, saying she had clear evidence against me. About four people from counterintelligence called me, first gradually, then all at once. I wondered what they found out, so I answered on purpose as if I really did it.

In the end, of course, it turned out that it happened when I was cut off, so bad luck - checkmate, baby. I think she'll hate me a little more now. Interestingly, however, they tracked down the repository where the data was sent from - hence a proof against me. It's our unit disk. The one who did it didn't want the data, but he wanted to harm us, the Zap app, the bank, or just all of us. But why? And can it be related to Raj? Sharky said that he worked on the app after all…

December 21

I connected with 4Q at an unhealthy eight-thirty in the morning. They already had half the morning shift behind them and were looking forward to a lunch break. I was just getting up and turning on the computer without pants and with a toothbrush in my mouth. Director Rak wore a respirator as if he were sitting in parliament, and he had the majestic panorama of the town of Zvolen projected behind him. He startled me by asking if I could turn on the camera, that it would benefit the atmosphere of the meeting. If he thinks so… I agreed. At least I saw each other for the first time today and could be a bit of a five-fingered comb.

It turned out unexpectedly well. Leaving aside the usual business talk of an out-of-the-box solution, ready-made (who came up with that word) components, demanding integration and wide configuration options, I agreed to a tight delivery schedule without price increases from the framework contract. We even went through the RFO without hearing an objection, complaining or intimidation. The only possible reason for that cowardly behaviour is that they want to win a different, much larger contract. But which one?

December 20

They gave my access rights back. Of course they found nothing to link me to Raj's disappearance. Mina herself told me. I wondered why she was wasting his precious time with me, then I understood. She added that they found out beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone was trying to kill Raj and that I had a hand in it. I remarked that the latter probably wouldn't be so sure when I could sign up again, but she just grinned and hung up.

So Raj is in danger indeed. But the good thing is that he's probably still alive and that counterintelligence found out something about it. I have to find out what, Mina won't tell me. Apart from not wanting to experience another cut, I need Raj for the project to deliver at least something. I also asked Sharky and Max. Sharky claimed that Raj worked on the Zap app (the internal service desk for employees) before he disappeared, but that was always supplied by 4Q, as far as I remember. Max developed a theory according to which Raj returned to India. But Raj is a Kurd and was born here.

December 17

My project report was a great success. All the people, the bordies and the sponsor were thrilled. Words of endless praise were coming, saying we had met all expectations, that we had brought a fresh wind, lit a light at the end of the tunnel (is it really said?), And our work is an encouragement to all members of the team. Luna is not so excited. She justifiably thinks that I overdid it and set the bar so high that we will definitely not jump over it. As punishment, she sent me to negotiate with the supplier.

I'm not excited either. Sharky has already let himself be heard that he would definitely not help me in this matter, and Max said that he did not understand this joke. I left him in it, even though he didn't realize it was no joke at all, as usual. Negotiations with 4Q are taking place with the participation of the director Rak - they consider this our shot in the dark to be a key contract - and I am definitely not looking forward to that. He's an arrogant dumbass and he stinks. So at least thanks to the virus, I can take it online.

December 15

I was wrong. The quarantine gets on my brain a little. Our waste was clogged. That's not the signal. The reason is that I decided to solve it and disassembled the siphon. More even the fact that I couldn't assemble it together. The pieces won't fit together, I smeared my hands, T-shirt, sweatpants. I spilled some turbid water on the floor, and sprayed my wife. She shouted at me. The children came to see what Dad was playing with. I shouted at them, so they shouted at their mom. I was desperate. In a nervous shake, I opened the bank’s internal service app for employees, took a picture of the whole mess and sent it as an incident.

All this indicates an impending nervous breakdown. But then came a warning of an early onset of a serious mental illness with hallucinogenic symptoms. Less than half an hour after the nonsensical report, some gentleman with the inscription “I am team blue” on his T-shirt rang. He greeted me, asked where we had the kitchen, and without further ado reassembled the garbage and cleaned up all the clutter. I don't understand it at all, that's not how it works! But what, Christians say, you need to be able to accept God's gifts. I'm just looking at the photos I send at regular intervals and pouring water into the sink to make sure it wasn't just a dream.

December 13

I pushed myself to send the report to Luna today. I did such a good job. I put the goals of the project into a broad geopolitical context. I described the chosen route as a decisive passage through a bush labyrinth with a chainsaw, painted the benefits as a box of chocolates in which there is something for everyone, and chastely covered the risks in a burqa with the word "agility" written over it. I think John Sculley would be proud of me.

December 10

Reportedly, Nora, my neighbour, saw somebody like Raj, so I wanted to get more info from her. Without success. She was playing stupid and talked about a million other things. She also said not to exaggerate and refused to evaluate the meeting as fatal. What if her friend got lost? That wouldn’t probably bother her. But if it was her dog, that would be a different story. But that won’t ever happen because she bears that rat in the purse.

She remembers which actress is dating which playboy, how much is the butter discounted, what the neighbor said about her friend's uncle, but she can't tell me anything about the most interesting person she's ever met in her useless life. For the last quarter of an hour of our desperate phone call, I had to listen to a weird story about an alleged mosque set up in their block of flats last week. It is said that "jihadists" gather there every day and pray into the night. I knew that Nora was a jackdaw who would jump at everything, but I thought she didn't care about this nonsense, probably the unfortunate effect of quarantine.

December 8

I couldn’t sign into the bank’s network today. I called the helpdesk and they didn't know of any problems. I tried different restarts and modes and nothing. There can be only one reason. An investigation into Raj's disappearance has already begun, and counterintelligence has cut me off. Never mind, I have nothing to hide. Around lunch I received a mocking grin from an anonymous GSM gate. Must be the bimbo - Mina.

In the afternoon, Luna called to ask when I was going to have the report and how come I wasn't online. I promised to fix it soon. That wasn't enough for her, so I corrected myself to ASAP, which satisfied her. She’s such a honey. I don't know what the report is. We haven't done anything yet, have we? But it doesn't matter, I'll do it. The good news is that my investigation problem is unknown to the rest of my colleagues, this is my chance…

December 6

As I procrastinated lately, I stretched my work over the weekend. I was wandering through mysterious nooks and crannies of our intranet. I found pages at the tenth and twentieth levels of nesting, documents that didn't open, and intricately tangled cyclical links stretching through immortal incidents and demands in the girder back and forth to bite into our own tails like ouroboros.

I was already closing the last tab with the unfinished acquisition of a project running sometime at the turn of the millennium, when the green light of a traffic light flashed at the author of one of the artefacts for a split second, signalling an active user. It was Raj. If I told anyone, they wouldn't believe me. I wouldn't have believed myself if it weren't for that shimmering sense of absolute certainty. Raj, man, you're a real boss. The whole bank is looking for you and you're planning something. I don't know what, but I know it will be worth it…

December 3

The state of emergency has been going on for quite some time and it's getting to people's brains. At least me. I haven't procrastinated so much time since the end of college. In order to fight with it, Sharky and I had an all-day workshop, booze over Skype in other words. There are never any meetings on Friday anyway, no one is waiting for any answers to emails or anything. In addition, drinking in working hours has the hallmark of irresistible grunting and a lovely taste of nostalgia for high school truancy.

We talked about everything, even work, so I don't even have to have any remorse. We have only invested the time normally spent in meetings in synchronizing our mental needs, orchestrating our interests and harmonizing our souls. Unfortunately, it ended infamously. My wife came to ask if I would come to lunch just as Sharky was talking about his crush on Paloma. I tried to indicate by gestures that he should start saying something sounding like IT stuff, but he didn’t get it. As a result I had to pretend to work so consistently afterwards that it really was work.

December 1

I went to see Drap. He didn't seem to have much work to do at this time. In the doorway, I passed another patient both on arrival and departure. Drap himself looked a little distracted, but with a cheerful smile he led me around his office and lab. He generously gave up the cultivation of medical cannabis to make way for 3D printers, where he made respirators day and night. He is also working on studying the effects of humans on viral diseases. A true Renaissance man.

But it doesn't look good for me at all. I described all the symptoms to him, hoping it wouldn't be anything serious in the end. It's not the corona, although it would almost match. But Drap said that it's much more likely that my wife is trying to poison me than that I caught it. Simple statistics, he said. I slid home worried about my future. I have to watch my food, detergents and clothes. I also received two pills, blue and red, in case of extreme emergency. I'm afraid the emergency is around the corner.

November 28

In the EnEMa project, there was a turn of a few radians at the first steering committee meeting. This is fast for the start-up scene, let alone the established corporation. The events in the virtual space were checked off by lawyers, events with the personal participation of participants when using special measures did not appeal to the audit, and events with the participation of inspected persons weren’t liked by the compliance. The sponsor won’t give money for the cloud events, AI driven events carry too much risk, and robotic events have been cut by architecture. On the other hand, both of my proposals passed. I meant them as a joke in anticipation of ending the meeting, but... The last remaining drug event with immediate drug administration thus split into two: psychedelic events and a universal vaccine.

November 26

I feel sick. I flipped through the diary entries and found only one where I have written that I am not well. It seems strange to me, but even if I feel good from birth to now, I feel as if I have always been sick. Maybe it could be just a rhyme, but it is not so creepy and does not cause depression on the first day. This is different, strange, elusive…

I called Drap, he's a real expert, no stupid doctor. He studied medicine, but in three years he learned all the material, so he stopped going to lectures, and when he wanted to give his final thesis, he was cut because he opposed the pharmaceutical lobby. He has always helped me and will help me now. I like his strictly systematic logical-analytical approach. We always start by going through the events of the last period and he makes a list of diseases that could bother me and their possible causes. This time he is dominated by malaria along with mumps. I hope for the latter, I don't want another baby anymore.

November 24

Luna called if I read it. Why I don't know? That's because I don't know what you're asking, honey. She set up EnEMa conflu, and asked when I'll be done with it. I'm not sure if the girl enjoys me or annoys me. In any case, the project is starting up nicely for us - we have chosen the main supplier, identified the stakeholders, planned the releases… Then I just have to accept it. Formality - clear. But why me?

I didn't like it and I looked at what we are actually delivering. I shouldn't have done that, I could have lived in sweet ignorance. We have seven streams: events in the virtual space, events with personal participation using special measures and events with the participation of trusted people - so be it. But there are also cloud events, AI driven events and robotic events - and that's exactly what?! In the end, however, the icing on the cake - events with instant drug use.

It's bullshit, but on the other hand it can be fun. I'll have a beer with my colleagues in the online pub in the evening. We will figure out whether I will promote psychedelics among those drugs, or I would rather suggest that we devote those funds to research and development of a universal vaccine.

November 22

Over the weekend, I tried a few tricks for home exercise from the sharp muscle men to youtube and insta. I failed miserably. I knew that anchoring the heating ladder in the bathroom would not support the weight of a human body. On the contrary, the fact that my neighbors ignored the risk of catching corona and they came to tease me because of a few screws in the panel ceiling still seems a bit surprising to me. Fortunately, I still had the drill in my hand, so they left quickly again. Although, to be honest, I also gave up jumping rope on the balcony because of the annoying vibrations under my feet.

I was just pleased to find that I was too strong for improvised barbell dumbbells filled with any material except mercury (I didn't try it). My wife did not rejoice at the negligible amount of sand, rice, clay, and gravel scattered in the hall. The last attempt were the frog jumps in the axis of the living room, the hall of the bedroom and back, after which the infectious neighbors came from below. I'm going to turn to esports instead, anyway, it will soon be a major mass pastime.

November 19

Mina called and asked when and where I had last seen Raj. Just out of curiosity. Sure! This girl can’t be trusted. She has a crush on the head of counterintelligence. She must have convinced him to entrust her with the search for Raj. I wouldn't care if I wasn't the prime suspect now. There's no reason behind it, but Mina has hated me since I ripped one of presentations apart with arguments. I’ll have to get some help.

November 18

I woke up with a cough this morning. I don't smoke. I measured my temperature, it was normal. I would have expected even lower in the morning, it scared me a little. I've been trying to reconstruct where I've been running for the last fortnight. I could barely remember what I had done yesterday, so I quit again. I wouldn't consider it a symptom of the disease yet, but something is creeping up on me. I hope it's not a rhyme.

Otherwise, I'm no longer doing well. I haven't installed the awning on the terrace yet, I didn't have time. I haven't practiced a single day of isolation yet, I didn't have room. I don't play much with children and I don't talk to my wife, I wasn't in the mood. Besides, she doesn't even deserve it. The woman works somewhat less and none of the children yet fulfills the development plan that I have prepared for them. I'm a little afraid that when I read this record in the future, it won't be funny.

November 16

It is said that children come into a person's life in order to teach them something. I have to have a pretty deep notch in karma stating I need to learn patience. Patience and multitasking. That's not what I want. After all, I got married (and chose carefully) so that I wouldn't have to be patient and someone else would multitask for me. Well, fate seems to have gotten me in the least expected way, as it happens in big Russian novels. After all, the Russian novel is most reminiscent of everyone's life.

The world is engulfed in a war with an invisible enemy, and while our leaders compete in presenting imaginary victories on senseless offensives and to useless endings, we face an everyday existence that has changed more in our imaginations than in reality and that gives us little hope to die heroically in the front line and rather quietly plague us with a monotonous misery, in which one day we will pass away with boredom.

But children perceive it differently. Children are happy about it. They roar in the mud like a hunting dog in a carcass of a deer. Today I can still stand it and I'm going to play hide-and-seek in the sixty-meter apartment for the seventh time. But tomorrow! Tomorrow I’ll show you what life is about…

November 15

The morning was harder than usual. The connection to the bank did not work and several meetings were ruined. While I tried to solve things over the phone and in text messages, Sharky called me over Skype. To my question how he did it when it didn't work for anyone, not even me, he didn't answer. Instead, he explained quite nervously, that Raj disappeared. According to Sharky, this comes from the fact Raj has been offline for ten hours, and that never happens. Nor a weekend, nor pandemics, nor other circumstances do play a role, he said. He'll probably be dead. Sure.

I don't think Raj is dead. But I know quite well that Sharky is going nuts. And it is also clear to me that if I won't do anything about it, he will end up in a madhouse or jail. I don't even want to guess what and how he had to hack in order to call me when the bank network didn't work, and now he thinks I have to help him in his RPG-like adventure of finding Raj. It's a fact that he didn't even answer my phone today and I'll definitely need him in the project, so before he will appear alone, I can at least pretend I'm looking for him so that Sharky doesn't do something stupid…

November 12

Nothing special happened in the morning. Very few things happen on Friday. But then the meeting came to me calendar starting right away, along with an email of high importance, with task and notification and instant message which read, "Can I call you?" I've always hated these pressures applied by project managers, but I'd like to learn how they make all the channels ring at once. Before I could answer that probably she will call, even if I say no, my phone rang. It was Luna.

She has been put in charge of the project called Esurance of event management, thanks to which the bank should be able to support organizing cultural events in difficult times. The acronym is EnEMa - I've heard worse. They say I have to play the main part there. It is true that I have tried to cover up the fact that I know nothing about anything on several occasions in the past exhibiting in power point and, conversely, give the impression that I know everything about everything. But if Lu thinks that I'll help her with this, I guess I overdid it. I have to back off somehow, but I won't rush. The good thing about this project is that the clients will just never care about it…

November 11

I am disappointed that I have not yet been able to meet my daily mental and physical health maintenance plan. I start the day by making coffee as I decided, but so far I have never supported my immunity with fresh fruit juice, have not participated in the preparation of lunch, have not meditated on the balcony with a cup of tea at five, have not sipped whiskey at the evening reading news and professional literature and my wife and I haven't been drinking wine while watching a recording of a theatre play. It seems like I'm running out of time, but I don't know where it's slipping.

In addition, today's work efficiency was buried by a video call with Sharky and Max. Sharky is an interesting person with one unpleasant quality that you will never know if he is joking or not. I'm used to it, but when communicating at a distance, it's much harder to digest. Max, on the other hand, is a good guy whose only weakness is that he takes himself very seriously and never understands any joke. For an application manager, this may be fine, but together it's a tedious combination. A video call has a lot of advantages over a regular phone call. You can gesture, you come closer somehow, you can read emotions from the facial expression. Sharky also decided to take advantage of the fact that when you sit at home at the table, you can only be seen from the waist up. We didn't really have to learn this fact if he didn't stand up to close the window. Not even what shorts he wears. I think that in communication with him I will limit myself to phone calls and short messages.

November 10

While work efficiency remains high, the domestic, if you want parental, lags. In the morning, my wife asked me to help her a little. I was somewhat free around ten o'clock, so I lifted the chairs for a moment to let her wipe the floor, I played with the children for a second so that they wouldn't step on the wet floor, I prepared them a snack and I helped to get some items from high shelves (diapers, pacifiers, wrappers and grippers that I've never seen before.) At half past one, I returned to the PC to rest.

In the early evening, I returned to my plan to prepare our sons for life, but the domestic obstacle course wasn't that very glorious. The younger son bypassed most of the obstacles and let himself be carried over the rest, while the older one proudly declared that he would build an even better track than his father, and carried all the things out of his room into the living room into a huge pile - not only toys but also books, clothes and duvets. The boys had fun, but that hour of preparation and two hours of subsequent cleaning weren't probably worth it.

November 9

A new life is beginning and I intend to enjoy it. I planned the whole day to divide my time between family and work responsibilities in an optimally efficient ratio. It's amazing how much I can do, when interference and pointless commuting disappear. A few phone calls will save me hours on meetings. When I'm home, I can concentrate and handle all tasks in half the time. Instead of gossiping in the canteen, I will delight the children with my presence and my wife by finally making a drain from washbasins, I will assemble and attach a wardrobe, I will install an awning on the balcony (I will need a lot here now) and clean the shelves with the old documents. I have twice an hour left to rest alone, simply great.

No, working from home is an achievement of modern civilization. Generations of our ancestors wandered dust and misery, shed blood for every minute of free time to seize some joy from the short life in a cruel world. My father also experienced working Saturdays and classes on Christmas Day. And what about you, my offspring? You are enjoying the fruits of your parents 'and their parents' efforts and the benefits of home office have fallen into your lap without any effort. Mom's skirt at your fingertips and Dad's on call. It is our duty to acquaint you with what the world really is in its naked nature. I have already planned that, just wait for it!

November 8

No one is here today. An open space, perhaps a hundred meters long, is empty. I can choose the place at will. Even at telescopic tables. I can occupy more than one at a time. Yes, no more waiting for the slow-moving crappy desk to finally roll up. I'll just take a step aside. Then I have to plug my notebook into the docking station and wait for the monitors to heat up, but it doesn't matter. It's beautiful and I work super smoothly. I have one desk for reading emails, one for writing, one for studying documentation and on the fourth, I drink coffee. Nobody and nothing bothers me…

I finish work earlier - I'm so efficient after all - and I'm going home. Even the subway is beautifully empty. Clean as out of the box. Today I was at the bank with a scarf on my face. I have wanted to do that since I was a kid. I walked over to the counter, pulled out a knife, and fried the woman at the cash register of the canteen with a rusty voice, "I'll pay contactlessly." "Don't forget the fork," she said and I moved on with my lunch. I can’t wait to tell my wife.

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