Everything at the Kabinata office was proceeding normally and cheerfully until... Until Zhivko and Sasho dragged in an enormous contraption, which turned out to be some kind of server. The beast was intended to power the online broadcast of the Bulgarian Web Awards 2009. And then came one long...
The machine with eight processors hummed so loudly that it rivaled a jackhammer, a drill, and an angle grinder all put together. But that wasn't all. By a quirk of circumstances, I was the only subject available for camera calibration. Ten minutes hadn't passed before Sasho 'Ani, move a bit. Now like this. Now like that'. If someone heard us without knowing what we were doing, they'd get the impression we were telling some pointless story. But that was just the beginning.
Once something kicked in with that contraption, I completely lost my grasp of Bulgarian around Todor and Sasho. Those two were jabbering so intensely that I wondered if they were cursing or speaking peacefully. I didn't understand a single word. Thankfully, they used prepositions like 'on', 'for', 'to', so it became clear that alongside computer terminology, they were also using Bulgarian.
One morning, sipping coffee leisurely on the terrace, Sasho huffed that they'd been struggling with that noisy beast until midnight. The entire room was surrounded by cables. With cameras sticking out everywhere and equipment piled up, we looked more like a CIA laboratory than a peaceful educational portal. And amid all this chaos, someone would suddenly dart by doing acrobatic twists, holding a camera on a tripod.
It's hard to believe that tomorrow they'll haul this enormous box out of here. I guess I've gotten used to it. From time to time it emits some super-strange sounds in an octave, just like the beginning of Monti's 'Czardas'. To avoid hearing its wailing like a departing 'Boeing', I've found a few radio stations to listen to so I don't go completely mad. And now? When they take it away? Nothing will hum. I won't stumble over cables with the prospect of visiting 'Pirogov' in the shortest time possible. I won't feel like a media star in office-scale terms. Well, there are good sides to it. The office will return to its measured life. Computer terminology will be replaced by jokes and laughter (not that they ever really disappear in Kabinata). And finally I'll finish that article. Actually... I'd better write a different one. About how we prepared for Web 2009 🙂