Vrykuls are funny. They scream “I need your heart!” so fiercely and so out of the blue that it makes this one piece of their battle cries sounds almost peaceful, as a part of their daily routine.

Like if the seven feet tall ripped guy with excessive facial hair and the outfit of a heavy metal band singer came into the grocery store to pick up some ingredients for the home made sausages. So he picked up whole intestines to stuff and the red meat, liver and spices for the sausage content, and already got in line to check all these things out but suddenly remembered his Vrykul girlfriend—a seven feet tall, badly combed valkyrie with the anger management issues and some prominent facial hair on her upper lip—ordered him to buy a heart for the sausages.

Damn dead caw's heart, he totally forget about it! Passing by the right aisle, he got the liver and red meat, but paid no attention to the heart lying on the same shelf of the freezer. “I need your heart!”—screams the Vrykul guy and rushes into the backside of the store where the freezers with the meat and liver are.

So I’m learning to use cmd+C & cmd+V instead of their Windows/Linux counterparts now, getting used to the absence of the Delete button, and searching Google for the tips and tricks new to me. The only disappointment I have encountered yet was that my Abobe Photoshop Elements license doesn’t work with the Mac version. However, it turned out that the bundled iPhoto suite is good enough to give me some time to decide whether should I spend $79.99 on a Mac version of Adobe PSE9 or should I look for a cheaper option.

However, this is Adobe’s fault. On the Apple’s part everything is awesome. Awesome like having SSH client and Python translator right out of the box, awesome like the lightning fast GUI, awesome like uncluttered desk, and a lot of other awesomenesses yet to be explored.

There are several pear trees growing right in front of my new apartments’ windows. During the cold winter nights their branches were hosting the flocks of magpies or crows (I can’t really tell them apart). With the Spring all the birds were gone, found the better trees to build their nests on, I guess. But now the pear trees are all covered with white blossoms, from the lowest branches to the tops. I can see nothing from my window but the sea of tender green and milk white.

The neon red Tokyo is, as far as I can see, totally sold out for the several years by now, but the navy blue New York City could be found without any hassle in the various outlets around the internet (mostly, in the US, of course). I was lucky enough to get one pair in one of the most common sizes for as low as $42 and I bet I am the only person in this city who own this design.

Of course, MX1000 is one awesome mouse. It was undoubtedly the best one in the 2005 — 2007. But the MX620 (and its left-handed twin-brother MX610) was the most ergonomically perfect product of that times. Its simple yet carefully designed streamlined body fit the palm of hand (at least average sized one) like a glove.

There are a number of high-end mice manufacturers on the market nowadays. Only one of them—Razer—is focusing on the gaming mice, the rest are much less specific and make a lot of nice general purpose mice including such pretty interesting ergonomic solutions like Microsoft Natural Mouse. But none of them, in my strong and strictly personal opinion, can compete with the Logitech MX620 and its successors.

Obviously, the Logitech model MX620 is no longer in production, but it has enough time to become one of the Logitech’s most popular model and brought life to a number of different models like MX400—a wired and priced down variation. MX400 was lacking MX620′s steel wheel and some additional buttons but inherited its perfectly ergonomic form.

In 2010 MX series mice lost X is their names and, in the same time with a dozen of different new models Logitech M500 laser mouse was introduced.

And just like five years ago this launch was dimmed down by another one. This time it was perfect lower high-end Marathon M705 mouse. Its little more “shapier” muscular body looks like it’s a crossbreed of MX620 and MX1000.

The middle range mouse Logitech M500 won’t promise you three years of battery life like Marathon M705 but only because it’s wired and doesn’t need any batteries at all. On the other hand, it’s two times cheaper than the Marathon.

Ergonomically, M500 is a well known MX620, just more shiny, even more well-built, and significantly lighter since the lack of heavy batteries. All the great MX620′s features are here: the steel wheel with the hyper-fast scrolling (switchable) and the full (in mid range terms) set of buttons, as well as precision laser sensor.

Logitech M500 is a perfect replacement for the old wired MX400. However, if you’re looking for a MX620 replacement and think that a hundred bucks for the Marathon is too damn much, try M500. If you aren’t moving around with your laptop a lot or even if your main computer setup is a desktop, you will get used to the cordedness of M500 pretty quick.

There is no other mouse on the market you can buy for less than $40 that is partially as good as Logitech M500. All other options (and most of them are from Logitech again) are at least twice more expensive.

Being just a little bit more pricy than America’s numero uno — Timex — Invicta occupies much more prestigious niche as a “manly Movado”.

Invicta are pretty large watches, some models could be called huge. Even ladies’ models are quite bulky and feel heavy for the first time. However, it’s really easy to get used to a 150-200 grams watch on your wrist. After wearing it for a couple of days you hardly notice it.

Half of Invicta models are bigger and heavier than world’s most monstrous Casio G-Shock and other well known big watches brands like Luminoux and Hamilton. And half of this half is listed in the Invicta Signature Collection – the anthology of Invicta’s most authentic, most original, most expressive watches.

Invicta Corduva Skeleton model No. 7136 is among the biggest wristwatches in the Invicta‘s Signature Collection. It measures 52mm in diameter not counting a crown covered with even balkier screw-in cap attached to the watch case with a sturdy steel lever. Case thickness of 16mm isn’t something extraordinary for a 200m/660ft divers but it looks really thick on the wrist.

Yellow gold ion-plated case looks brushed in contrast to polished gold plating of the movement which is visible through the windows in the dial and the back cover but it doesn’t hurt the overall impression of quality.

The caliber you can see in all its glory through the skeleton dial is a neatly decorated good old Miyota — simple and reliable automatic movement. Invicta 7136 timepiece I’ve played with was gaining about 20 seconds a day which is ok for a sub-$1000 automatic watch.

The band is multi-layered — half canvas, half leather. It feels sturdy, quite comfortable and easy to clean. However, if you will need to change it after awhile you will have to look a spare one on eBay, simply because it’s not that easy to find a 26mm wide watch band in the next door clock shop.

The luminescent coating on the hands and hour markers is bright and keep glowing for at least six hours. The good thing is a tiny bit of lume on the second hand which looks gorgeous.

What’s not so good about Invicta Corduva Skeleton 7136? The hands — they are way to short for the such big watch. The minute hand should be approximately 3mm longer. The short hand could be bigger too.

Windows 7 Starter Edition restrictions has a lot to speak on its behalf. Some of them are plain ridiculous and hardly affect actual computer performance like inability to change a desktop wallpaper, and some are pretty frustrating like addressing no more than two gigabytes of RAM.

Of course, someone can always excuse such measures as Microsoft’s efforts to save the much more expensive Home Edition, Professional and Ultimate bundles from canibalisation. Except that sometimes it cripples otherwise pretty neat machines.

Exempli gratia, Windows 7′ Gaming perfoirmance score on Atom N270 backed nVidia ION with the latest drivers is 4.7 on Windows 7 Starter Edition and 5.3 on Windows 7 Professional Edition. Pretty much of a difference!

Although it’s still not enough for the modern video games, even such forgiving ones like World of Warcraft, but it more than ok for the Win7 Aero interface features. All of them are working perfectly smooth.

Atom N270, one of the first Atoms on the market, is a single core processor, so it hardly benefits anything from the dropping of Windows 7 Starter’s single-core-only restriction. Even though the Windows 7 Professional shows this hyperthreading CPU as two, it helps real life performance virtually nothing.

Summarizing, in terms of performance, it’s mostly the RAM—a quick jump from the “caged” by the Starter Edition 2 gigs of RAM to approximately 2.8 gigs (2Gb + 1Gb − about 256Mb eaten by nVidia ION) boosting little netbook tremendeously. Well, as much as it could be possible in case of the old cripled Atom CPU.

It isn’t documented anywhere, but it seams that Windows 7 Starter Edition cripples GPU performance somehow. At least, this is the only explanation for the Windows 7 Score difference for video gaming performance.

It is really hard to review such a simple and reliable watch like Skagen Titanium 338LTMD. It simply works. Works for the year, for the second year, and for the third one so far. It is really hard to complain about anything.

The case is so thin that it never hitches sleeve or anything else. Skagen 338LTMD’s crystal is curved a little. When I realized it for the first time I was afraid that it could affect the reliability, but more than two years passed since then and it remains as clean and scratch free as on the day 0.

Inside the 7mm lightweight titanium case Miyota slim quartz movement is hiding. I hardly have anything to say about it as well. The model 338LTMD lack of seconds hand makes it almost impossible to tell if the watch is not keeping time. I was adjusting them only twice a year to keep up with the Daylight Savings Time and never noticed it lost or gained a minute.

The steel mesh band is awesome. It is lightweight, flexible and sturdy in the same time. It is unbelievably easy to clean. Actually, it is cleaning itself most of the time, before you get to the nearest faucet to wash it. Also, it keeps no sign of smell — it was really cool to discover during the last heat wave.

Widely praised by Skagen double safety clasp works exactly like advertised. So no room for complaints here either. Skagen Titanium watch is so flawless and solid it would be British not Danish.

“And what about the price?” you may ask. “It’s pure awesome!” I would answer. You would hardly find any Skagen watch with the price tag above the $150 mark.

This is a second part of my August story. You can find the first part at vk7.org.

On Monday, August 3, 2010 at 9:36 in the morning I was heading to the office when my phone rang. This was captain Kwochkin. He asked if I forgot that I owe him a visit. Not paying a lot of attention to my negative answer, captain proceeded to arrange our meeting at 12:30 at the FSB regional office headquarters.

At the appointed time I came to the front doors of the white massive soviet-style building and dialed the number the morning call came from. A minute later the door opened, captain appeared in the doorway and invited me to enter inside with a barely noticeable nod.

Inside, in the small, dimly lit lobby, I was greeted by the two more men. One of them was at least 55 years old, he introduced himself as the FSB deputy director Ushakov. The last one was barely 25 and didn’t bothered to say his name.

Captain silently left us alone. Deputy director and his young protégé escorted me into the meeting room right next to the lobby. It was even smaller than the lobby, though a wide grated window was letting in enough of high noon light. The entire room was decorated in cheap wood. With the old soviet era varnished table in the middle it was just like a KGB movie decoration.

Deputy director took the conversation into his own hands straight from the first minute and didn’t weaken his grip throughout whole meeting. He told me that he knows that kind of man I am. He called me “romantic” and added that there are no more than five hundred of “us” in the entire city. What a remarkable example of flattery and assurance that resistance is futile in one sentence!

The Freedom — FSB deputy director literally spit the word out — that has followed the fall of the Soviet Union, gave birth to a lot of such people, troublemakers, and those who might turn into enemies. And now we’ve become a problem. Fortunately, the FSB is stronger than ever and have anything on its hands to keep us at bay.

Our conversation was, in fact, a monologue of the deputy director. He weaved their paranoid questions about me spying on their fragile facilities, which I almost get used to, into his thrilling stories of the North Caucasus terrorists’ networks; mobsters, who are using small businesses for money laundering; and how he was invited to teach the graphic design by one of the local universities.

My photography practice was thoroughly scrutinized as well. Deputy director Ushakov confided in me that he is an artist too, an apt photographer who had personal exhibitions here in the city back in those days. He advised me to buy a Pantone color chart to calibrate (he used the term to tare for that matter) my camera LCD screen because the RAW files on my card were displayed with the colors went all wrong in their software.

“You have a very good camera,” — Ushakov said, — “the one with the three sensors; so you should learn it better”. The advice that always comes in handy. The only thing I should note here that the last digital still camera with the three separate sensors (for Red, Green and Blue channels respectively) I heard of was a 1998 Minolta; and the ACR shows pretty accurate colors in my RAW files with the default WB — nothing I couldn’t fix most of the times; and it’s pretty pointless idea to calibrate Olympus E-410 as well as any other entry level DSLR LCD display since they are all crappy anyway, but mostly because it’s impossible.

As it came to my mind at the end of the meeting, it was his in-born need to dominate in any area he encountered. His knowledge is all embracing across a countless number of disciplines… but rather shallow.

I was going to went out of all that story alive and free, so I was nodding in agreement most of the times. It was harder than it seams because some of the questions were actually designed to catch me on anything illegal. I had to play a role of a village guy eating gratefully anything they fed me and to keep my wits about me in the same time.

It’s all true: those guys are really doesn’t care about your guilt or innocence, they want you prosecuted by any means necessary.