Hettie’s Reflections – Blog Posts

July 1966

It has been several months since I last wrote a historical post. I moved and got settled, so there are no more excuses. I am going to continue from where I stopped back in March – summer 1966.

It is summer again, and I live in Sosnovaya Polyana with Baba Ania and Deda Fedia. And once again, most of the pictures are taken by my father. It might be that it was the only time that summer he visited.

My parents were already divorced by then, but I do not remember that something changed drastically in my life. My father was on and off by that time; the late-night fights continued, though less frequently.
I am assuming that it was my father who bought me a bike. A bike had training wheels, and I never learned to ride a regular bike when I was a child. Believe it or not, I only learned to ride a bike in the US after both Vlad and Anna learned it.

But here I am, happy on my four-wheel bike :).

Continue reading “July 1966” →

I Learned Something New!

My neighbor not just helped me to fix my bike, but he tough me how to do it myself!

DO=on’t I have the best neighbors ever?!

Overcoming Technical Difficulties:)

Remember my ecobee story and how I fixed it? In addition to the ecobee itself, I had six room sensors, which I disconnected from my previous ecobee in my old house.

I thought they would automatically connect to the new device, but I was wrong – nothing happened when I brought them closer to the ecobee. The website suggested removing batteries for two minutes and try again, but that didn’t help.

The only tooms sensor, which I had and which was not used before, connected to the ecobee immediately.

I was at a loss and was ready to through away all these six sensors, but then I decided to use “the last resort” and contacted an ecobee customer service. They told me to do the following:

  • to put the batteries into my devices wrong side up
  • to pull the ecobee off the wall, wait for two minutes, and plug it back again
  • one by one, take each of the room sensors, turn the battery right side up while staying about 3 feet away from the ecobee, and then it will suggest pairing the sensors.

I know how ridiculous it sounds – but it worked!

On The CTA

Life both without the car and attachment to the Metra train schedule is so liberating! Especially since I live the house early enough to hit the rush hour schedule with not-so-crowded trains.

June is the first month when I ordered the CTA monthly instead of Metra monthly (and the first time I have CTA monthly). Since I already had one CTA pay-as-you-go pass on my app, I wondered how they will live together and whether there would be any confusion. I thought I would examine the situation o May 31.
However, it turned out that the monthly pass showed up on May 26 (since I didn’t have a previous monthly). I did not know about that and thought I still have my pay-as-you-go in use and was using it for Anna. it turned out that the app was applying my monthly for the first passenger and then deducting the pay-as-you-go for the subsequent ones. That was a pleasant surprise, and it solves the problem of how I will be taking my out-of-town guests around 🙂

Biking

Biking along the lake in the morning is one of the best things at my new place. On Saturday, I took a longer bike ride on the Lakefront trial.

I didn’t realize how close I was to the Lincoln Park, otherwise I would make it there!

Continue reading “Biking” →

Love My Neighbors! Am I In a Bubble?

I talked to the couple from the house next to mine about my future garden. They suggested we come and look at my balcony and draft a plan. While we were busy doing that, a neighbor from the unit next to mone walked out. He said he is going to get a new faucet from Lowe’s 

— Not from Home Depot?

— No! No more Home Depot! Do you know how much they donated to Trump’s campaign?

No more questions asked. That’s my neighbors. Offering to look at my bike and to teach me some basic repairs. Asking whether I need something from Morse Market because they are going. Planning my garden. Neighbors who traveled the world. Neighbors who have more books in their homes I ever saw. Celebrating their child’s first birthday at the courtyard and offering cupcakes to all neighbors. Neighbors with all the right signs in their windows.

They say that in the suburbs, you live in a bubble. I feel like I like in a bubble right now :), and soon, I might forget that the rest of the world is not so perfect …

That’s What Happens…

When you walk to the Morse Market because you need a lemon to bake salmon. In fifteen minutes, you walk out with $49 worth of groceries 🙂

From The Instagram

www.instagram.com/p/CPib7a1lvnB/

What Is Our Book About?

For the benefit of my friends who do not need this book 🙂

Hettie D.'s avatarThe World of Data

This blog post is long overdue. Since our book PostgreSQL Query Optimization was published, we’ve been asked multiple times, “What’s this book about?” In addition, my non-technical friends keep asking whether I can describe it in one paragraph so that they could understand it as well.

I thought that the best answer would be to copy a couple of paragraphs from the book’s Introduction – I hope that it is not super-technical:).SO, here it goes.

Like many authors, we wrote this book because we felt we could notnotwrite it. We are both educators and practitioners; hence, we see both how and what computer science students are taught in class and what knowledge they lack when they enter the workforce. We do not like what we see and hope this book will help bridge this gap.

When learning about data management, most students never see a real production database…

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Mom

Yesterday, Igor was going to take mom to the Devon market, but it was too short of notice, and she said she could not go at that time. So I thought that in that case, I could take her to ALDI (and show her the way so that she could do it herself in the future). Knowing her daily schedule, I called her at 3 PM to tell her that I will stop by in an hour. She didn’t pick up, but in a could of seconds, she called me back. To my surprise and horror, she said: I am not sure I will be at home in an hour, I am not sure where I am. When I asked her to read the name of the street at the intersection, she replied: California.

Those who know a little bit about Chicago geography can understand my feelings. I asked what’s the other street name, and she said: Toughy. She could not tell me which direction she is going. She asked a couple of people where is Morse CTA station, and she said they were should her different directions. I hypothesize that people were just showing directions to the nearest CTA because she was so far away.
I had to wait till she reached the next intersection (aI opened Google maps and followed her) to confirm that she was going in the opposite direction.

First, I wanted to get Uber and pick her up, but I was afraid she wouldn’t stay in one place for 30 min, so I started to direct her over the phone. I was also afraid that the phone would get discharged, so I didn’t keep her on the phone the whole time. After one of my calls, she told me that she already turned on Morse Ave and she knows where she is going. I got dressed and prepared to leave the house. I called her one more time, and she said she is not sure why she is on RIdge, not on Morse. I asked her again to read the nearest intersection sign and told her to stay where she was (again, for those familiar with the surroundings, she was at the corner of N. Ridge Ave and Chase). When I finally found her, she was out on the streets for more than three hours and asked why I am calling Uber when we can walk home.

Yes, I already set up location sharing on her phone, and I made sure that the internet is on all the time, and Anna and I talked about other precautions.