Republic of Tatarstan
Today was the weekend, so I decided to spend the first part of the day at home. After lunch, I went for a walk that lasted about thirty minutes. It was a bit short because the weather was not very comfortable. The temperature was around -18 degrees Celsius, and the wind was strong and extremely cold. Honestly, I had checked the weather forecast beforehand, so I knew about the temperature. However, after about ten minutes of walking, I started to feel the cold on my face. My face wasn’t covered, and the wind was blowing directly into it. Because of that, I decided to end my walk early and come back home.
My trip started at 11:30 AM, after I successfully started my car engine. Before that, I spent about ten to fifteen minutes installing the car battery. The day before, I had brought it inside my house to keep it warm. Since I don’t have a battery charger, that was the maximum I could do. Fortunately, it worked: the engine started without any issues. Overall, these small actions paid off and made me happy, because I managed to leave on time and complete all my tasks.
I also want to share a few observations about the weather. While I was working on the car, the temperature was still around minus 26 degrees. However, the sun felt almost like a spring sun — bright and surprisingly warm. It didn’t bother me at all; on the contrary, I felt quite comfortable while tightening the battery terminals and other mechanisms.
Today, I want to continue writing about my car again. Because I couldn’t start the engine, it became clear that the battery was partially discharged. The starter tried to crank the engine twice, and then a warning message appeared saying that the battery level was low and needed to be charged. There were two reasons for this. First, my battery is more than six years old. I have already mentioned this many times in my previous posts. The second reason was the unpredictable weather conditions, as the temperature dropped to –29°C.
During the day, something interesting happened. When I was sitting and doing my work tasks, my relative came from outside and told me that someone loved me. At first, I was a bit confused and couldn’t figure it out because it sounded strange and hard to understand. After a few minutes, I asked, “What are you talking about? Can you explain it, please?” After the explanation, I realized that someone had drawn a mysterious heart on my car. But it didn’t surprise me, because during the day I had noticed some school or kindergarten kids. They were playing loudly outside and trying to spend time outdoors in the cold.
During the last three days, I was stuck on one of my work tasks, and it was very challenging for me. I was quite busy during this time because my main goal was to understand why the bug happened and how to fix it. Despite the difficulties, I was motivated and really wanted to finish the task as soon as possible.
The task was related to email messages. The main issue was that users were unable to reply to emails. What made the problem confusing was that it appeared only in one specific place, while everything worked correctly in other places. During my investigation, I also found an incorrect HTML structure with strange symbols, but only in one email. This made the issue even more unclear.
Yesterday, I mentioned the issues I had with the delivery. I thought I wouldn’t be able to receive it during the week. Because the delivery time was delayed twice, I completely lost hope. However, today around 3 p.m., I checked the delivery status and saw that it had changed to delivered.
Here I need to explain one important detail. When the status says delivered, it doesn’t mean that I’ve already received the package. It means that the order has been delivered to a special pickup point, and I need to go there and collect it myself. Of course, I could choose home delivery, but for that I would need to pay extra money and also stay at home. If the delivery man arrives while I’m out, the package won’t be delivered. That’s why I prefer a 10–15 minute walk and picking up my order on my own.
Last year, on December 16, I ordered an original Philips universal travel adapter that works in more than 200 countries. Unfortunately, I still haven’t received it. The first estimated delivery period was from January 4 to January 9. Then it was postponed to January 10–19. Today is January 19, and instead of receiving my order, I got another notification saying that the delivery has been delayed again.
Honestly, I really hoped that today would finally be the day I received it. Instead, I received another excuse. Because of this, I decided to message the shop manager to ask when my order would actually be delivered and why the process is taking so long. I’ve been waiting for more than a month now, which feels unreasonable.
A few months ago, I started using the Google Maps API on my blog to share my flights, routes, future plans, and simply show the places I’ve visited. Until today, everything had been working perfectly. I was careful with my API limits, but today I received a warning message — especially related to the Directions API.
I was using two different APIs: the Maps JavaScript API and the Directions API. The first one is only used to display the map and draw markers and flight routes. The second one was responsible for drawing car routes. The problem was that the Directions API had already been called 8,231 times out of the 10,000 free limit, while the Maps JavaScript API was used only 287 times. After reaching 10,000 requests, Google automatically switches to the paid version and starts charging money.
Today was another sunny day in my city. From sunrise throughout the entire day, the sun was shining in the sky. As usual over the past few days, the sky was deep blue and completely clear. I’ve already noticed during the last few days how bright and clean the sky has been. Overall, it was a perfect, interesting, and productive day for me. Even though the temperature wasn’t warm, it also wasn’t really cold — around −12 to −14 degrees Celsius. In my opinion, this is actually very good weather for spending time outside.
I’ve already mentioned my broken car tyre many times in my previous posts, so I won’t repeat the whole story here. In short, nothing particularly interesting happened. The problem turned out to be very simple: the valve core was faulty. I just needed to remove the old valve core, install a new one, and inflate the tyre. At the tyre service, they changed it quickly, and everything was fine. It cost me 200 rubles, which is about $2.57 in total.
In the evening, I went for a walk. The temperature was as low as -20 degrees, but when I went outside, I felt comfortable for the first time and thought it wasn’t that cold. However, after a few minutes, when I reached the park, my hands started to freeze. The part of my hood around my neck was covered with frost because warm air from my mouth turned into frost when I spoke to myself. My hood, beard, and even my face were covered with it. Even my eyelids felt a little frozen — I noticed it when I tried to blink.
At that moment, I felt like someone from a northern city. And if I hadn’t spoken, I think frost would still have appeared, because the weather was extremely cold and every breath of warm air immediately turned into frost.
Today my day started as usual. I woke up, did my morning routine, and started working. But during the day, I decided to check my old EarPods again. When I connected them to my laptop, everything worked perfectly. However, when I tried to use them with my phone, they didn’t work at all. At that moment, I realized the problem was with my USB-C adapter. My phone doesn’t have a 3.5 mm audio jack, so I use a USB-C adapter to connect my EarPods. The adapter was damaged near the USB-C connector. I noticed it accidentally when I touched that spot. Now I know exactly which part is broken, so I don’t need to buy new EarPods — I only need to replace the adapter.
The weather today was quite sunny. Throughout the entire day, the sun shone in a perfectly blue sky, and I didn’t see a single cloud. However, the air temperature was rather low — around -10 degrees Celsius — though it felt closer to -15 or even -20 because of the cold wind. Still, during the day, I noticed that people walking under my windows seemed quite comfortable. They weren’t in a hurry; they walked slowly and calmly discussed the worries of the world.