Subway is my favorite mode of transportation. Over the years I've seen many, many things: from a homeless,   running around batman-like,  dressed an a garbage bag superhero costume to a girl riding home with a pot containing a huge pot plant.

This morning I looked I was finishing the last Dortmunder  book remaining on my bookshelves. Sitting next to me was an older man, who could be best described as having the "hangdog look" ala master thief John Archibald Dortmunder. All of a sudden he started taking off his shirt. He took out a fresher blue shirt out of his bag and started to put it on. A black lady sitting across from him gave him the dirtiest look she could muster.

When the old dude went for his belt buckle, the same lady stomped her feet a couple of times and in a profanity-laced monologue informed him of inappropriateness of his actions. It was a good call - it's very possible that he was planning on changing his underwear.

The unapologetic old codger replied with a tirade (also profanity-laced), in which he blamed the politicians for making a 50 year old man work (retirement age in the USA is 65). His opponent noted that it's possible that his habit of using MTA trains as a dressing room hinted at the root of his problems in life, i.e. lack of common sense.

You can see my older subway-related articles here.

In my line of work I am often reminded of this brilliant passage from  Ellen Ullman's "The Bug" (which I reviewed earlier):

"Programming starts out like it's going to be architecture--all black
lines on white paper, theoretical and abstract and spatial and
up-in-the-head. Then, right around the time you have to get something
fucking working, it has this nasty tendency to turn into plumbing.

...

It's more like you're hired as a plumber to work in an old house
full of ancient, leaky pipes laid out by some long-gone plumbers who
were even weirder than you are. Most of the time you spend scratching
your head and thinking: Why the fuck did they do that?"

To take the metaphor a little bit further, let me bring up one actual plumbing nightmare that I faced when I was renovating my apartment. One of the contractors clumsily knocked  off a valve on a piece of  water piping that did not have a local shutoff. The only shutoff was in the basement, and required turning off the water for the entire line. And the super, who could do the shutoff  was not in for a couple of days.

Another contractor knew exactly what to do in that case. He created something that he called a "chop" (I found out later that the term is Ukrainian). It's a conical piece of wood, shaped like a fat pencil that is hammered into the hole in the pipe. In a couple of minutes the wood swells up and completely plugs the leak. Add some duct tape around it, and you got a very good temporary plug that is almost as strong as the unbroken pipe.  It makes the worst permanent solution (wood rots), but the best temporary one (it can be applied without taking the whole system down and is reasonably strong).

Chops, or as they are called in English - thru-hull plugs, are a maritime invention: they are used for emergency repairs on boats. These days you can even buy a ready made set.

People think of software as of something static. Well, dynamic websites are more like a ships out at sea. Sometimes you have to patch them up in a storm. And then a good, strong "chop" is the best you can hope for until you can repair the leak permanently. And you are going to sink unless there's somebody around who knows how to make a "chop".

April 1 is a semi-official holiday in the city of my birth, Odessa, Ukraine. Humorina, as it is known has been celebrated since the 70s. The first few Humorinas were actually pretty funny and sophisticated, punctuated with elaborate pranks. It was a bit on the downswing by the time I remember it: it is very hard to come up with original Fool's Day jokes.

In later years Humorina became a tourist event, culminating in a non-organized costumed "parade" and vigorous displays of public drunkenness. Odessa is still widely renowned as a capital of humor, but Humorina is just embarrassing these days.

What is interesting, is that April 1st is becoming commercialized: here's a garish display that some cell phone company company put up in Moscow.

Now that Soviet holidays are not celebrated anymore, non-Soviet holidays are more important than ever, thus more activity on April 1st. But as with everything, many people take it upon themselves to just get drunk and behave in most unappropriated manner.  Take St. Patrick's day, for instance. It's now celebrated in Moscow. Take a look at these pictures of Muscovites parading in  kilts and faux-Irish garb of all kinds, flashing their privates in public and getting drunk in the streets. It'd be funny, but for some reason isn't.  It all smacks of an American Wapanese and other allied culture copiers.