Grigory Lukin.com

This is one of those few times when I hope nobody ever reads my blog, because otherwise I’d be reducing my chances to win this great prize. Lyn from Mrs.Goff’s Pre-K Tales is giving away a $50 Starbucks giftcard to celebrate her 50th blog post. Click here to enter.

You know you need to update your site more often when a widget you’ve been trying to add for over a year gets discontinued – and you’re the last person to find out. A while ago, when I first started this site, I dreamed of glory and riches (it’s just the riches now) and tried to add Google Friend Connect to my page. Unfortunately, that wasn’t meant to be, which is why the only way to get updates from my site is a very nearly anachronistic email subscription. (I’m pretty sure the concept of email updates is over 20 years old.)

Oddly enough, a whopping 22 people must have been bored enough to subscribe for email notifications. Fast-forward to today, a lazy April Sunday: I got into that rare state of mind that motivates me to clean my apartment, update my resume or do something equally time-consuming and objectively useless. I decided to give GFC another try and lo and behold! – I found an easy way to install the widget. The only problem is that Google disabled it over a month ago to force people to switch over to Google+. Kind of a low move on their part… I’m sure at this point Google knows me better than anybody else in the world, what with them keeping a detailed search history of pretty much every person who’s ever been online, but starting a G+ account feels like giving in completely. It’s bad enough that I have a Facebook addiction – I don’t have time for yet another evil multibillion corporation!

*le sigh* Chances are, I’ll submit to our digital overlords and join their network eventually, but for now I’m going to keep looking for another way to create a network of followers. GFC was so convenient and easy to use. Perhaps most importantly, it wasn’t needy. It never used to bombard me with email notifications or ask if I’d like to install yet another new update. It just worked – simple as that. I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that there’ll be a fair number of bloggers who won’t switch to G+ when GFC finally gets shut down. (For some reason, it’s still running – you just can’t sign up for a new account.) This may be one of those rare instances when Google made a mistake that will cost them traffic and revenue. Why fix something that wasn’t broken, Google?..

They’re both being given away, that’s what! Nicole Marie is giving away a pair of pearl earrings over here (the deadline to enter is April 19th), and Plushka of Plushka Craft fame is giving away a handmade stuffed owl. Her giveaway ends on the 20th, so there’s no rush. Click here to enter it, and may the odds be ever in your favor! (But not really – I kind of want to win both of those.) 

(Because everything is better with two exclamation marks.) I’ve just spent a couple of hours entering dozens of giveaways – I can think of far worse and less productive ways to spend my weekend. If you’re too lazy to look for giveaways yourself, you’re in luck! Here are three great giveaways:

Claire from “Bless My Nest” is giving away a set of “What to Expect When Expecting” books. The odds look pretty good right now, so enter it quick! It ends tomorrow. Go here to enter.

Peggy of “PJH Designs” fame is giving away a $25 gift card to Home Depot, also known as Depository of Random Awesomeness. The giveaway ends in less than 48 hours, so you might want to hurry. Go thataway to enter.

And last but definitely not least, Tracy from “Owl Be Craftin'” is giving away a pack of Tim Holtz Word Sticks. I won’t even attempt to describe them – just click the link and check them out. The giveaway will end on Friday the 13th.

*resists the urge to say “May the odds be ever in your favor!”*

I spend way too much time online and I love getting free stuff. To be more precise, I love winning free stuff. Somehow, knowing that I beat several other people in my pursuit of free stuff makes it that much more enjoyable, even if my effort consisted of filling out a small form and posting a blurb on Twitter. Until it gets a bit warmer outside (I refuse to go out when it’s 50 degrees out – this is supposed to be Vegas, damn it!), I’ll concentrate my entrepreneurial efforts on entering every small-scale online giveaway with good odds (1:15 or better) I can find. I shall be assisted by my cranky old laptop, a fridge full of coke and a fairly advanced search script I came up with during one of my infamous bouts of insomnia.

I’ll be posting a fair amount of links to said giveaways here, as well as on my twitter account, so stay tuned – who knows, you might win something too!

I’m horrible at remembering anniversaries (as well as birthdays, weddings and funerals) – I’ve just realized that I missed the 6-month anniversary of my move to Vegas. Well, it’s been six months and five days, and let’s just say my first impression of this strange city was a bit off…

Yes, there’s eye candy. However, it stays indoors during the winter. This has been my first winter without any snow whatsoever (which is amazing, by the way), but it turns out Vegas isn’t hot 24/7/365. That’s something they don’t show on all those TV shows – this city gets a little chilly sometimes. I may be getting a bit spoiled here, but damn it, I thought Vegas always had the perfect sunny weather. Dust storms are pretty fun, though – the wind gets so strong that trucks flip over and entire trees get uprooted and fly around. Fun stuff.

The city itself is pretty huge… I never realized how good I had it in Reno, where almost everything was only five miles away (if that). Here you have to drive for ~20 minutes to get anywhere at all. The roads are great, but the drivers are terrible. Maybe they’re even more spoiled than I am by the very nearly perfect weather, but every time there’s any wind or even the slightest hint of rain, everybody slows down to 35mph, even if the speed limit is 50.

The real estate is still ridiculously cheap, but there’s an interesting caveat: it turns out that the only way to buy those dirt-cheap tiny $25,000 condos is if you have $25K in cash on you. Apparently, banks don’t like to issue mortgage loans for anything less than $50,000. Who knows, maybe I’ll take them up on that offer…

The people in Vegas (Vegasites? Vegans?) seem pretty average, but my data sample is relatively small. I find it interesting that the city that’s notorious for its risque shows and “anything goes” attitude is actually pretty conservative when you get past the Strip and Fremont Street. That’s not something you notice right away, but there are little signs here and there… I’ve got a great story to explain what I mean by that, but that would put this blog well into NC-17 category, and I want to keep it PG. At least for the time being…

A couple of weeks ago I was struck with a rare desire to organize my financial accounts. After spending an hour trying to recall the password to my 401k account with Vanguard and find my way through Schwab’s passive-aggressively counter-intuitive navigation menu, I ended up staring at all the pretty round numbers in my accounts, opting out of receiving paper statements from Schwab and spending 20 minutes on the phone with Vanguard and trying to prove that I am, in fact, me.

I thought that was the end of it, but that would have been way too easy, wouldn’t it? The other day I was feeling particularly adventurous and decided to venture out of my beloved apartment, risk the exposure to dust storms, bravely fight my way through 20 yards of urban Las Vegas and explore the quantum uncertainty that is my mailbox. (I don’t get out much…) Lo and behold – right next to the usual junk mail (death threats from creditors, love letters from stalkers, that kind of stuff) were three letters from Schwab and Vanguard. The white, crisp, official-looking envelopes bore a wide variety of stamped messages ranging from mildly cool (“Personal and Confidential”) to downright mysterious (“D/S Reading PA auth 2E-785”). My pupils dilated. My heart started racing. (Speaking of which, 120 beats per minute is about average, right?) My palms got sweaty. Excited, intrigued and horrified by mysteries the three letters may contain, I tore them open right there and then.

I read their contents. I re-read them. I sniffed them. I stopped just short of licking them because the only thing worse than getting a paper-cut on your tongue is getting an ice-cube-cut. (Don’t ask.) I shook the envelopes to see if the letters were merely a decoy cleverly designed to distract me from some secret object glued to the inside of the envelopes. They weren’t. I was left with no other option than to take the letters’ content seriously. Here is what they said:

“Dear Valued Client: Thank you for choosing Schwab eStatements. We received your request to stop paper delivery for your account,” said the letter from Schwab. Two of them, actually. Completely identical and printed on paper, thanking me for opting out of paper-based notifications. Smooth, Schwab. Very, very smooth. With my luck, the paper that was wasted on these letters probably came from a tropical rainforest tree that was cut down in its prime for the very purpose of thanking me for refusing to use paper – a tree that may have been vital to its tiny tropical rainforest biosphere and whose subsequent destruction may have set off a domino effect that will destroy South America’s economy, trigger World War III and leave the scant remnants of hitherto great civilizations wandering the radioactive landscape and asking their gods what they did to deserve such a fate. Great job, Schwab. I hope you’re happy, you genocidal paper fetishists.

The letter from Vanguard was only a little bit less likely to cause irreversible brain damage. A laconic tale of suspense and mystery, it described in stern, dry tone the saga of my unsuccessful attempts to guess the account password, their locking the account and subsequently restoring my access to the aforementioned account a few hours later. One could view this letter as a completely pointless and unnecessary waste of ink and paper which merely stated the obvious, but I like to think of it as the world’s shortest three-act play composed by Vanguard’s valiant Participant Services, whoever they may be. The titillating summary of those events was sent to me not by email, nor by fax, nor even voicemail, but by that most efficient of all communication media – snail mail.

But wait! That humble piece of paper has even more entertainment value to offer to the discerning reader. On the back side of the letter, the unsung heroes of Vanguard’s Participant Services created a piece of truly mind-bending, koan-worthy abstract post-modernist art. In the top left corner, there was Vanguard’s logo. Slightly to the right of it was the date the letter was printed. (For reasons that remain unknown, it hadn’t been mailed until two days later.) In the top right corner, “Page 2 of 2” insulted my AP-style sensibilities but appealed to my OCD nature. At the bottom of the page, the string of mysterious symbols read “017210 2- 2 8508 WEBL D1 1 X.” And at the very center of the page was the message whose existentially mind-boggling self-imposed contradiction rivaled those offered by the finest works of postmodern art. It resembled a Zen koan. It reminded me of the riddles and no-win scenarios we once discussed in my Bioethics class (which, incidentally, is the only college course I ever failed). In terms of absurdity, it was much like the set of instructions on a bag of toothpicks that drove one of the characters of Douglas Adams’ So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish insane. I’m sure that by this point you’re either at the edge of your seat, trembling with excitement, or waiting for the end of this tale of adventure, danger and 21st century’s bureaucracy, having come too far and wasted too much of your time to quit reading now. Well, wait no longer! The message that was printed in black size-12 Times New Roman font right in the middle of the otherwise mostly empty page read, “This page was intentionally left blank.”

And that, my friends, is the greatest piece of abstract art I have ever had the pleasure to see, let alone own. In fact, I’m probably going to frame it and hang it in my living room. Thank you, Vanguard Participant Services, for making my week! (And yes, I really am easily amused.)

Not too long ago, I started wearing turtlenecks on a daily basis. Why? Because I love the way they feel, the fact that they’re warm but light enough for almost any kind of weather (with the possible exception of Nevada’s summers) and the fact that I won’t have to agonize over choosing a work-appropriate T-shirt in the morning. (Why yes, my mind is a strange place.)

Like many other things I do, my love affair with turtlenecks serves multiple purposes. One of them is an open-ended sociological experiment to see people’s reaction to an average guy wearing an unusual item of clothing. Sometimes I do the same thing with my suit: I do my best business casual impression, dress sharp and just spend the day walking around town or running errands: eating out, mailing a letter at the post office, etc. Sometimes I do the same thing, but dressed in my best 1990s attire: a canary-yellow sweatshirt, baggy jeans and a giant peace sign around my neck.

It’s quite amazing to see just how differently people react to the same person when he wears a different outfit. Preconceived notions and stereotypes kick in and take over their rational thinking, forming their first impression for them based on a split-second analysis of what they see – or what they think they see. As a social scientist of sorts, I love this phenomenon: it’s a great way to hack people’s minds or, at the very least, get them out of their routine and shake up their world, if only a little. Don’t believe me? Try putting on your most professional outfit and walking into McDonald’s. Or get a bunch of presidential dollar coins from the bank and use them to pay for small purchases. The expressions on people’s faces when you do that (or something equally out-of-the-box original) are priceless.

Anyway, on to the turtleneck experiment. For reasons I’m still trying to figure out, turtlenecks either never really caught on, or had a brief period of popularity, after which they were banished to thrift stores and dusty attics. I can’t think of the last time I saw a fellow turtleneck enthusiast in real life. I’m pretty sure most people would say the same thing. That might be why their faces get that unique “what’s going on?!” look when they see me walking around in a turtleneck. Over the past week, I’ve experienced a number of averted gazes from men, double-takes from women, stunned and awkward silence from Subway sandwich makers, and frozen smiles from buffet hostesses. (Then again, I’m pretty sure the latter have seen far stranger things in their line of work.) Some of the coworkers modified their behavior by either avoiding eye contact or staring in silence, as if trying to figure out what’s going on. Not a single person thus far actually asked me why I started wearing turtlenecks.

It’s quite funny if you think about it: people wouldn’t act any differently if I wore a regular sweater, but a turtleneck – the same sweater but with a longer neck – confuses them and changes the way they perceive me. Such a small change makes such a huge difference. If I were just a tad more evil, I’d figure out a way to hack people’s subconscious first impressions and use them to my advantage, but it just doesn’t seem worth the effort. Not for now, in any case.

Sometimes, when the weather outside isn’t up to my high standards (i.e., it’s colder than 75 degrees) and there isn’t a whole lot of excitement going on in my life, I like to take fast-forward through time by indulging in highly addictive, risk-free and very cheap activities. For the most part, I’m talking about old TV shows, video games and long books. Some would call it geeky, nerdy, anti-social, etc., but hey – they’re the ones who might crash their car on their way back home after a night at the bar. To each their own.

I remember when Fallout-3 came out in 2008 – I played it for 40 hours straight once I bought it, followed by about a month of nearly 24/7 gaming before I finally squeezed out every ounce of content. At the time, I was a freelancer decompressing from a particularly difficult (though very fun) gig and I could afford to hide from the world for an entire month. These days, I’m mostly looking for ways to occupy my 3-day weekends while it’s freezing outside. I think I finally got enough supplies to help me fast-forward through February – with any luck, there’ll be something worthwhile in March.

My current fast-forwarding arsenal:

• Dan Simmons’ Hyperion trilogy 
• The complete Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy anthology (which I haven’t read in at least seven years)
• ~20 liters of coke
• Final Fantasy XIII that I got almost for free at a Blockbuster liquidation sale
• Dead Rising-2 (ditto)

That should last me at least a few weeks… And yes, I’m well aware of the irony of doing all that indoor stuff just a few months after I moved to Vegas. In my defense, it’s pretty cold out here, which makes hanging out and people-watching on the Strip pretty difficult. Maybe in another month or two…

The first Facebook chat/interview was such a success that we’re doing it again tomorrow! Go to CBR’s Facebook page, post a college-related question on their wall, and you’ll be entered to win an iTunes gift card. Not only that, but I’ll also answer your question! *g*

The Q&A will be tomorrow, Tuesday, between 2-3pm Pacific Time (5-6pm Eastern). See you there!