The Work...I Guess

I suck at coding...I just thought you should know that.

I've been here 2 weeks and I'm pretty sure I haven't accomplished anything at work.I drew some pretty pictures, and I pretend to know what I'm doing in Flash every day.

The Products 

Here they produce 2 magazines, 1 newspaper, and websites to match all. There are also a few portalai (portals) that are web-only products.

Newspaper (Laikraštis): Verslo žinios (Business News)

Magazines (Žurnalai): Verslo klasė (Business Class) ir (and) Iliustruotasis mokslas (Science Illustrated)

Portals (Portalai): cv.lt - Darbas (Jobs)


The Presentation

My presentation on the Mountain Group was held in the news room. I had three big-ass screens, all in a row and mounted on the wall, to present on. So i put up the websites for Ski and NASTAR on the stage right one, and Skiing and Warren Miller on the stage left one. In the center i put up (in reverse order for use—so the first one was on top) several flash pieces i had built to explain the brands themselves, the scrum process, Drupal, Mantis, and our whole host of open-source tools and approaches, a few screen from Skiing Interactive, and underneath it all i put up the Warren Miller trailer for Wintervention. 


I pretty much blasted through the presentation of the brands, covering the personalities and the histories of each. I tried not to linger too long on the kool-aid of open-source platforms and scrum development, and in the end i lingered over my babies, the interactive screens, and let the Warren Miller trailer headline the whole thing. It had the intended result. "Cool". 


I am building a flash reader for their print products to be read online (thanks for letting me steal your work Johnny...insert evil laugh here) and am trying to convince everyone that i should be building really cool, interactive flash pieces for editorial content. 

Machinarium

Little robot with a big game (http://machinarium.net/demo/)

Arunas showed me web-based game. It is life changing.

Machinarium

It is beautifully illustrated, completely without language, and brilliant in its simplicity.

...Arunas is pretty much the nicest guy on the planet. He also helped me get a wireless router (by hooking me up with a deal from his brother in-law), and drove me to attend a design presentation they were holding downtown. I'm pretty sure I would be lost in this office without him. 

The 11/20 Club + Tragedy

It's the weekend again, and we are going to see a punk show at 11/20.

Its just me and Linas, the girl from the last weekend isn't coming along...and i don't ask why.

The first band is from Poland and they have their rock faces on for sure. The girl who is singing is at times angered and amused either by her own lyrics or the crowd itself.

Either way she has some serious pipes.

Before the show even starts there is a guy who has already had too much to drink. he is pounding the front of the stage while the band is setting up. At one point he looses his control enough to grab the singer, and pick her up over his head in a bear hug-like grip. She pushes his face back trying to get loose. "No means no!" she shouts. It works. Later the guy is dragged out by the volunteer security for this homegrown venue. He does manage to get back in and is forcibly removed several more times. 

After this little melodrama the singer starts the show by telling us "as a little girl we were taught to be pleasant, to be [acquiescent], but that's bullshit."

...Let the punk rock begin.

Tragedy is from Oregon, they are brutal. The crowd packs in even tighter than before now that its time for the headliner. The band rips through song after song without stopping to talk, breath, or even drink that much.

The crowd eats it up. The place explodes into mosh pits, and crowd surfing. I thought you needed hundreds of people to crowd surf with any real effectiveness. I was wrong.

You can see all the show's photos here (http://photo.qip.ru/users/gooyuyu/96587837/all/?mode=large)

Linas tells me you can see me holding up one of the crowd surfers in one of the photos, I haven't found it yet. Where's waldo? 

The Wingman + Discovering Punk in Vilnius

We arrived back in the city for the end of street music day/the beginning of street music night. The official end is supposed to be around 10 pm. but you could tell the crowds and the musicians had no  intention of stopping.

Wandering

We wandered the street for a while, finding DJs cranking dance music inside ancient walled gardens, and people spilling into the streets from every conceivable corner. Fire dancers entertaining for change on the roads punctuated the deepening night with bright light and heat.  

SMC Again

We find ourselves back at the SMC, I need some whiskey.

The Girl

"Can you order the drinks? I need to talk to this girl." As statements of romantic intent go, this didn't even come close. I just nodded my head yes—since I couldn't really think of anything helpful to say.  It is much harder to execute one's duties as a wing-man if you don't speak the language. Linas left me at the bar to get the drinks, I appreciated this confidence in my new-found language skills—however misplaced, and made his way outside.

The Discovery of a Secret Punk Rocker

I meet them outside with the drinks. They are deep in conversation, and i don't understand any of it. I keep my distance, trying to be a good wing-man (I guess, I mean at this point I don't know enough to even be sure that is what role I am playing here). I wander off a distance, to give them some space, and find some people speaking English that i can talk to. They are not that interesting. Boo-hoo for me.

Linas waves me over. "Stand like you're [in our group]". I allow myself to join them, but remain certain that this is a violation of bro-code. They start talking in English for my sake. I am introduced to Gaile. Hi Gaile! I bring up music since it is still going on all around us, asking everyone what their favorite music is—and what bands they are into...blah, blah, blah. The same questions we all ask when we don't know the people and have nothing good to say anyway.

She knows punk..a lot of punk.

We disintegrate into quizzing each other about punk bands. "Do you know Bad Brains?" "Hell yes!". I know a lot of current bands from American that she does not, she knows a lot of bands from everywhere else that I do not. We have common ground on the classics.

11/20

"Where can i see local punk shows" I ask her. She tells us about an underground venue, no advertising, no listing, that has one every weekend and sometimes during the week.

It is called 11/20, because someone, somewhere, said that was the day punk music died. I don't know what year, I don't know who said it, and I don't care.

Lies about the Toasters

"The toasters will be there on Wednesday!" Gaile says "The fucking Toasters!" I exclaim, then break into a horrible rendition of Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down. I extract a promise from everyone that we will go. They agree.

The next day Linas tells me, the toasters are not coming.

Bullshit Gaile. Bullshit.

The Barbeque + Mariposa

Sometimes waking up is hard to do.

It is street music day, but we are headed out of the city for a BBQ in the country and some much needed recovery time. Linas has invited me to come to his friends house in the countryside. All of the people going are connected (either through spouse or friend) to the group of people he was in college with. They are all in media in one shape or form today.

We meet up at the SMC, it is halfway between our two places and is pretty much the only landmark i can get to with any reliability at this point.

Linas takes me to get food and drinks to take with us to the cookout, we are going to "Maxima" (read Lithuanian Walmart) and there two of his friends will meet us and give us a ride with them.

Maxima

 Food Shopping

This is the first real attempt i have made to buy food that isn't already prepared here. I follow Linas like a lost puppy watching everything he is picking up and asking questions about what everything is. I figure if i can learn brands (like the advanced consumer American I am) i can pretty much keep myself fed for a while.

We each get food enough for ourselves, and once we get there the food will all be pooled and everyone can share. I add a jar of pickles to my basket, it functions as my personal next-morning-recovery aid...I highly recommend (although it is most effective if you can not only eat the pickles themselves, but also chug down the pickling brine they are floating in, yum).

Now it is time for beer, and i could really use a bit of the hair of the dog at this point. The selection is broad, and, while it doesn't hold a candle to the micro-brew obsessed stores in Denver, it is more than enough to keep me questioning Linas about beer for quite some time. At this point his friends come walking up with their own purchases. We select some light beer suitable for a BBQ, and i add some single cans to try, and we are off to the check-out.

This is when i learn that bags have to be added to your purchase here, and you have to tell them before you are done checking out. And pantomime will only get you so far. Lucky for me i have 3 guides to help me through this simple transaction. I feel like a child again. It isn't as much fun as i remember it being...or maybe it is exactly as much fun as it was, and i just remember it wrong.

The Countryside

The house we arrive at is set back in the woods, along with several others. It is like a little subdivision of modern duplexes...each build out of the the identical wood, and the identical floor plan. What is it about people that even when we build houses "to get away from it all" we still cluster together, and match.

The little subdivision in the woods is very nice. And the people are even nicer. We are greeted at the gate by the family who is our host. The husband and wife, and their two little daughters. Maria, the older of the two girls, is obviously in change of everything...including the adults.

Eating...Everything

The food is delicious and plentiful. I am not sure of the rules for this type of thing here so i wait, and take my cue from Linas. He takes his time, talkignt o everyone, introducing me around. I am starving. After what seemed like an eternity, Linas finally picks up a plate and starts on the buffet table, there are chips, dips, and many little snacks to eat while the meats are being cooked. Our pile of food is added to the queue while the chicken and pork that was already there is cooking.

I dive into the food like I hadn't eaten in days. Everything is delicious.  The baby back ribs i brought out of a sense of truth and beauty turn out very well. I eat everything.

Se Habla Español

The family whose house we are at had just got back from nine months in Spain. The dad is a wind surfing instructor, and the wind was excellent on the Spanish coast. They all speak perfect English, and I am once again struggling to pick out a few words in Lithuanian and respond in kind. But as i try to absorb this new language more and more, an old one keeps intruding on my mind. All of the Spanish I thought I'd failed to learn comes rushing back at me.

The entire family, however, has just added Spanish (a little) to their list of languages, and the oldest daughter has decided her Spanish name (since there was some confusion on how to translate "Maria", an already Spanish name) is "Mariposa"—butterfly.

I seize onto this as a common language of communication. For the rest of the day I speak to her only in Spanish. It makes me feel a little better about not speaking Lithuanian. We have a linguistic bond.

The Woods

Neatly planted trees

After eating, and being deluged with a child's Spanish demands for attention. Linas, our host, and I go for a walk in the woods around the house. On one side there is a very old-growth forest, on the other, one that was planted 30 years ago. The man-mad growth is in perfect lines—there is something very unsettling about a neatly organized forest. There have been many changes in forest policy. Once it was considered good to clear brush away, keeping the forest clear of decomposing matter. Now it has become the rule to leave as much as possible to replenish the nutrients in the forest's earth.

As we come to the edge of the trees there is an open filed. Most of Lithuanaia is countryside, but not all of that is in use for farming. Much of it would be perfect soil for planting, but these days there just aren't enough people farming.

At the edge of the fields there are neat little piles of stones. These are collected by hand to keep the plows and other farm equipment from being damaged by them. The guys with me tell me they used to go as school kids to participate in this for the local farms, walking from one end of the filed to the other, keeping an eye out for stones and collecting them.

The rest of the day goes by quickly, and as the kids get more and more cranky, the adults start to filter out. Soon it is our turn to leave as well. I'm glad I woke up for that.