Cav's Place

On the evening of October 30, a tragic accident, which was covered in detail by international media, took place inside Colectiv club, some fireworks used during Goodbye to Gravity’s release concert for their second album, Mantras of War, reaching a pillar placed a few meters in front of the stage and igniting the foam used for insulation. Within seconds, the fire had spread to the ceiling and the roughly 400 people inside tried to rush to the single open exit before being killed by the flames or the extremely toxic air, made up of a mix of gases that shocked doctors when it was determined. Once the dust settled somewhat, 27 people were pronounced dead that night and close to 200 were injured, many of them in serious or critical condition. At the time I’m writing this, the death toll has risen to 54, most of those who were injured but will survive will likely have a worse fate ahead of them than those who won’t and, starting a few days ago, some of those who escaped relatively unharmed by the fire started to seek medical assistance due to respiratory problems developed as a result of breathing in that deadly mix of gases, in some cases the complications being severe enough to be life-threatening.
This caused shock, grief, outrage, the expected wave of conspiracies and ruthless people, including some from the media, attempting to take advantage of the situation, but also an immense wave of solidarity and grassroots efforts aimed at helping the victims and the friends and relatives wishing to be near them. Blood banks were overwhelmed by those rushing to donate blood, people volunteered to help in any way they could and people as well as companies offered services free of charge and made countless donations of both money and needed products. Of course, there were also calls for swift and harsh punishments for those the public saw as to blame for the tragedy and demands for a number of resignations, going all the way up to the Prime Minister, but grassroots efforts made during the three days of national mourning declared by the government focused on helping the victims and the medical personnel fighting desperately to save their lives. There were gatherings and marches, even one with over 12000 participants, but they were silent, as a way to pay respects to the victims, people leaving thousands upon thousands of burning candles and flowers at the closed gate of the crumbling Communist-era factory which had in recent years rented its abandoned halls to the club, dozens of other businesses and at least one group of activists.

While this was going on, and while actually being directly involved in the efforts I mentioned above, various groups also worked on lists of demands, making them public after the three days of mourning ended, and the United We Save Community was no different, publishing a list of ten that included a number of resignations considered as a single item, specified as being not negotiable, but otherwise focused on the investigation of the accident and improving public safety, disaster readiness, emergency response and the health care system. As this was made public, a huge protest was announced for November 5, several other groups agreeing to change the plans they had made independently and join a common action that day. This left a single protest focusing solely on demanding the resignation of the Sector 4 mayor, seen as responsible for granting the club the required approvals even though it didn’t meet the safety requirements, announced for the evening of November 3, starting at 6 PM.
Well, that protest ended up being huge, with most activists and groups quickly adapting to the situation to announce their support and take part, and the list of resignations that were demanded growing to include the Prime Minister and the Minister of Internal Affairs, whose resignation had already been demanded recently after a police officer heading his motorcade on a motorcycle fell in a large hole caused by some work being done on that street and died, which also prompted investigations revealing that he had used official motorcades several times per day on average, abusing the privilege even when running personal errands. Some also wished to protest against the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, considering the absence of any official involvement of the Church in the efforts made for the victims, his snappish reply when asked about it and also all the messages posted by various people claiming to be Christians and later also taken up by some high school religion teachers, which said that rock music is a path to Satanism and the victims deserved what they got, especially since a Halloween-themed afterparty was supposed to take place after the concert that evening.
Since the focus was on resignations and I never took to the streets only to call for someone to step or be brought down when that person hasn’t been found guilty of a criminal offense and I don’t have a clear idea of who I’d want to take their place right away, I didn’t take part in that protest, but it was easy to follow, so I can say it started with a few thousand people gathering in University Square, spilling into the street when the area was filled. Then, as it tends to happen after that critical mass is reached and a march starts, more and more joined on the way to Victory Square, probably some 15000 people ending up stopping in front of the Government building.
The group continued to grow while there, peaking at well over 20000, probably up to 25000 or even 30000. However, as they stayed in one place for a good hour and a half, some eventually grew restless, some simply leaving while others began causing problems, arguing with the gendarmes, pushing against the line they had formed and in one case one person even throwing a rock which, from what I heard, ended up hitting another protester in the head, though I’m not sure if that was then or later. As a result, while a fair number were unhappy with this decision and once again started accusing some of the known activists of manipulating the protesters, a call was made and people got moving again, some time later ending up in front of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
What’s interesting is that, while a few of the known activists got as close to the Ministry building as possible and waited for the others to join them, the rest, and the entire long column of people, initially simply continued the march, leaving those few shocked and terribly disappointed. Those at the head of the column were eventually persuaded to turn around and make a brief stop there as well, but it was only a matter of about five or at the very most ten minutes until everyone left again. At that point, it appeared that the intensity of the protest was dropping, people continuing to leave.
The next destination was the Parliament, but once again it was mainly a matter of marching past it, those at the head of the column not even stopping long enough to wait for those at the other end to reach the area before announcing that they were leaving for the original target of the protest, namely the Sector 4 Mayor’s Office, where they did stop for about half an hour. Some more incidents were reported there, including someone throwing what appeared to be a firecracker, and this is also the point where the reports I’m seeing are unclear. The estimates I saw the next day tended to agree on a peak of about 30000 protesters taking part and that evening I was under the impression that it was reached there, more people joining, or perhaps rejoining, once the group reached said initial destination, but others say the numbers continued to drop and the peak was that from Victory Square, so I’m not sure how things actually were. Still, a peak of around 30000 at some point seems an accurate estimate.
After leaving again, the next announced destination was the Patriarchy, but that caused the protesters to split, only a relatively small number leaving the larger group to go there and not even managing to get too far, the gendarmes lined in front of the gates appearing truly determined to block the way for the first time that evening. During this time, the larger group waited, lost a significant number of people and then split again, some heading back to University Square and others to the club. Parts of these two groups met again later, around 1 AM, when those who didn’t scatter shortly after once again reaching University Square decided to go to Colectiv as well, or more exactly to the factory gate. Not much later, only a small group of people was left, sitting mostly in silence around the candles.

The next day, those who focused only on resignations got what they wanted, as the Prime Minister resigned, which also caused the Government to be disbanded and obviously also removed the Minister of Internal Affairs from office. The latter’s party needed about an hour after the decision was made public to release a statement saying they take note of and accept it, and something I’ve seen said later that day seemed to indicate that the Minister of Internal Affairs was asked to resign and refused, this being the reason why the Prime Minister chose to settle the matter so quickly and completely. The Sector 4 mayor resigned as well, though he also needed a bit of time to realize he needs to, and later he was detained and an investigation into his actions regarding the club in question was started, though by now he was released again while the investigation continues.
This hardly meant that the protests were over, however. In fact, November 4 brought the highest turnout, estimated at about 35000, but also caused the most reasons for concern, as many of those who attended simply didn’t know why they were there anymore, different political parties and other interest groups made particularly visible efforts to steer the protest in their favor and everyone else saw the opportunity to make their personal demands and desires known, on pretty much any issue and in any direction possible. People wanted change, but many didn’t even know what to say should be changed, much less how, and those who did couldn’t possibly agree on anything, the demands being so diverse, often in direct conflict and at times frightening to even consider. For his part, Vlad tried desperately to gather opinions, ask people what they wanted, what their demands were, how they see the way forward, get some serious discussions going, and simply got nowhere.
This time, I went as well, trying to figure out what was going on and what will come next, seeing as the meeting scheduled before the previous day’s events, which was supposed to take place that evening, was obviously canceled under the current circumstances. I arrived at about 7:20 PM, however, just when thousands of people were getting ready to start marching to the Parliament, and left at about 8:30 PM, disappointed and more than a little angry because of what I saw. Others, on the other hand, seemed thrilled, judging by the posts I saw that night. May have been difficult to say why they were thrilled though, and the one person I actually talked to about it admitted that my assessment was right, didn’t have many rational reasons to hope that much good will come of it and actually, after spending the entire evening there, knew of many more serious reasons for concern than I did, but it was simply a matter of a certain kind of euphoria generated by so many people gathering.
But to return to what actually happened, those thousands of people did start marching to the Parliament at that time, but thousands more, including the vast majority of the known activists, stayed behind, as was the original plan for that evening. Later, it was said that some 10000 people ended up in Constitution Square, led by some highly questionable individuals who climbed the fence surrounding the Parliament building and were allowed by gendarmes to even wander around in the garden for a while. Many looked and acted like the troublesome kind of football fans or even homeless people, they tried to hide their faces, threatened those who meant to take pictures of them and gave conflicting answers that seemed made up on the spot when asked who they were and where they came from. The obvious goal of these efforts was to demand snap elections, which would play right into the hands of the opposition, as no new parties or real independents could be ready to run on such short notice.
Various attempts were also made to steer people to the Cotroceni Palace, which is the presidential residence, but those failed every time, both in University Square and in Constitution Square. As the protest was nearing the end, there were some discussions about going to the Patriarchy as well, but those seemed to only result in arguments among some of the known activists. The only thing that did work was an earlier attempt to break off another part of those gathered in University Square and persuade them to try joining those in Constitution Square, but by then those were already returning, so the two groups met at Unirii Square and eventually returned together, creating that peak of about 35000 people in University Square.
After that point, people started leaving and, except various discussions and arguments and a drone falling on the crowd, it didn’t seem that much else happened. As expected, most were rushing to the University metro station around 11 PM, hoping to catch what they thought were the last trains. It was later announced, possibly as a result of the efforts of a television station, that the trains will actually run for two hours longer that night, to help all those people return home, but the announcement came too late and the two hours didn’t exactly seem necessary, as the number of people in University Square was likely below 1000 some time before midnight, when most of them decided to once again head to the club, or more exactly to the factory gate, where they eventually also ended the protest.

November 5 started with a mess among activists, after the President asked for representatives to take part in consultations the next day, after those with the political parties represented in the Parliament, and the United We Save Community, the old page, various other groups and individual activists and protesters rejected the idea completely, sticking to the stance of refusing any discussions with politicians or any other actions they consider may “legitimize” the authorities. Of course, I’m also sticking to my stance of pointing out that this is at best terribly misguided, and in fact was even more so now than in 2012 and, especially, 2013, as back then it could be said that there was a clear list of demands that were not negotiable and didn’t need to be formally presented, but now not even that list existed. And no, being aware that this invitation was something of a publicity stunt and also specifically meant to generate such conflicts, even more so after a message was posted about half an hour after the announced start time of the evening’s protest asking for people to send e-mails to nominate representatives by midnight, so exactly when those directly involved weren’t exactly going to be paying attention, doesn’t change my opinion.
To get to the protest itself, I was pleased to see that the activists I know were gathering at the fountain and trying to agree on a brief list of demands, in an attempt to put some order into the mess and offer a direction for all that energy and discontent. Unfortunately, after the rest of us had agreed that one of the top demands needs to be to completely eliminate all artificial electoral thresholds, Claudiu showed up just as people were spilling into the street and we were about to follow them and disagreed, saying they should only be eliminated for local elections, but the one for the Parliamentary ones should only be reduced from 5% to 2%. That definitely won’t help the real alternatives, but with no time for further discussions, it was the idea that seemed to end up on the list as we first joined with some representatives of some student and youth groups in one area of the mass of people and then made our way to the front.
That move was to have a better chance in part of blocking the attempts to make people march again and in part of having more of an impact on the various groups, after somebody came to tell us that less than 20 meters away in any direction we’re neither noticed nor heard and the Square is simply full of all sorts of groups promoting their own demands and agendas in their own little parts of it. The first goal was achieved, the second much less so, despite the best efforts of the activists who had made their way there and apparently some football fans who tried to help. Others, on the other hand, were only there to make an even worse mess of things, argued, yelled, two rival supporter groups even fought at one point, other suspicious individuals kept accusing activists of the same usual shit and at some point a certain strange and strong smell that others I believe seemed to recognize as weed made an appearance.
While this was going on in the street, at one of the metro exists a few other activists had set up a spot where people could come and write their own demands or opinions on pieces of paper, to be gathered in order to determine and present the most common ones later. At first the location for this was announced as being the statues in front of the Bucharest National Theater, but that idea was abandoned even before our group made its way to the front, possibly because of those who had claimed that area, some demanding returning Romania to monarchy and others being the usual crowd from that spot, at the time protesting against both the current and the previous President. Either way, a significant number of demands were gathered in such a manner, and others, written in few words and large letters, ended up on a string in front of the fountain, where they remained and were joined by others in the coming days, to be seen by anyone passing by.
As far as estimates are concerned, I can’t make any myself after having been in the middle of such a large group, but I saw the media putting forward numbers of 10000 or 12000, though some activists claimed there were in fact at least 20000 people present. What’s clear is that there were a lot less people than the previous day, and also that the road was cleared and the protest ended somewhat earlier, most leaving before or, at most, around 11 PM. By the time the metro wasn’t an option to get back home anymore, no more than a few hundred were left, and I’m not seeing anything about any attempt to get back to the club as a group.

After last week’s tragedy, massive protests began as soon as the three days of mourning declared nationally ended. I didn’t take part in the first, since it was only calling for resignations, but did attend the next ones. Admittedly, only wandered around for about an hour on the second evening, as after the protesters quite surprisingly got the resignations they called for they were left without any common goal and the result was a mass of tens of thousands of people who didn’t exactly know why they were there, many actually being unable to answer that question and those who could having extremely diverse and often conflicting demands, some of them absolutely terrible. Things did improve slightly on the third day thanks largely to the efforts of those who can still be said to make up the United We Save Community and a few others who rallied to the same cause, but then last evening was once again a mess, in part because and in part despite the best efforts of the same people.
But I should actually write a post about that when I’ll get around to it. If I’ll get around to it. Either way, this shouldn’t be about that, but just a very quick personal update posted before leaving again, largely just to have a second post this week. Was thinking of starting that larger post now, continuing after I’ll get back this evening and hope to finish it tomorrow before leaving, but that hardly seemed likely, so this will have to do. If during the first days three years ago I was managing to participate every day, write “protest reports” and also somehow add at least 300 words per day in my story, now I’m barely managing to add a couple of sentences in my story in the last few minutes before going to bed and just about nothing else, so I definitely wouldn’t have managed something like that. After all, after that push during those first couple of weeks I never recovered in the least in terms of writing, and not only that, so it’s not even a question of how much I could afford to push again before crashing just as hard.

Still, at least I managed to run this week as well, and it marked the fourth week in a row with times between 20:50 and 20:55, as now it was 20:54. The intermediate times were 4:42, 10:12 and 16:16, respectively, so getting worse at the second and third points, but that was actually done on purpose, as I wanted to see what will happen if I’ll take it just a tiny bit easier then and try to push more towards the end, but as you can see the result was the same. Still don’t know how much I’ll be able to continue, seeing as the temperature is dropping these days, but it was fine then and it should actually be even warmer next week, so if I don’t miss the better days I may just manage to keep it up until the end of the month… As long as I’ll also manage to avoid any serious colds, which will get harder now because of the protests.

Following the successful completion of the fourth and final planned trajectory correction maneuver, New Horizons is now truly on its way to its next target, currently named only 2014 MU69. Of course, seeing as the object was only discovered in June of 2014, only an extremely small part of its orbit has been observed, so additional maneuvers are almost certain to be needed as its position at the time of the encounter will be determined more accurately, but I recall the team saying that they were left with enough fuel on board after the Pluto encounter for a change in velocity of 130 meters per second while these four maneuvers achieved 57 meters per second, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
Of course, one problem may be the funding, as the extended mission hasn’t yet been approved and in fact the formal proposal will only be submitted in early 2016. Now it is rather difficult to believe that such a proposal will be rejected, knowing that humanity won’t get another chance to analyze such an object at close range in the foreseeable future, but that hardly means that the approval is certain. In addition, while New Horizons is a mission with relatively low costs, especially when compared to the returns, granting it additional funds will likely mean abandoning other projects or missions, considering NASA‘s financial situation, in which case I can’t help but wonder what will be sacrificed.

I’ll just post this quickly, because it seems that the network I was in was taken over by another. At least this time it seems to be another LAN, not one of the big corporations, but it once again happened completely silently, with no warning, and I just found out after checking the connection details after it recovered after being out for a short time, and not the first time today.
In fact, it was out for some 15 minutes last evening, and being Friday evening dad called them right away and found out that the guy we used to contact no longer works there. At that point, dad also said he saw new people when we went to pay earlier this month, which would have been a clear indicator that something big happened, but he somehow didn’t pay much attention to it. He also said he’ll go there today and see what’s going on, after I made him aware that something like that should be paid attention to and also that we need contact details of someone we can get to outside their regular business hours or when they have people in the field, fixing or diagnosing problems. He now said he didn’t go, however, so this will be left for Monday.
Currently the connection seems somewhat unstable, which is understandable, and sites on Romanian servers seem to have the bigger issues, but what I’m more concerned about when it comes to that is that the LEDs on my switch blink in an odd pattern. More exactly, they blink in ways which announced problems somewhere down the line before, so if this will stay like this I’ll be wondering how to figure out details about problems from now on, assuming we’ll stay here. But maybe it’s just something happening now, while they’re changing things.
Still, as I was saying, this seems to be another LAN, with the main headquarters relatively nearby, but the financial information I found says they’re not doing well, always having losses, their income dropping sharply in 2012 and then continuing to slide down since, and those numbers saying they have no more than several dozen clients. Which was probably the case for the old network as well, at least lately, after recent problems caused some to leave, so if those couldn’t continue like that, how can these not only continue, but also buy them?
Of course, this means a new IP, which again caused me some problems, but I’m hoping it’s at least still a fixed one, because I need that. And I’m also wondering what the new parameters will be and what other terms apply, and of course I want to know who’s now handling the information and what guarantees they offer, both technical and in terms of privacy and all the other obvious concerns when it comes to important and sensitive parts of one’s life, especially considering all these data retention laws that keep being passed and all the other rotten moves made by governments and certain corporations.

With that trial period finishing, Sunday night I switched from ESET NOD32 Antivirus 8 to Emsisoft Anti-Malware 10, seeing as Emsisoft is one of the ones I’m actually considering sticking to and the previous trial was on the previous version. Then again, ESET is interesting as well due to the options offered, and seeing as the slow Internet access issue had nothing to do with it I can also say it caused me no problems during the trial, but it constantly lags behind the top products in tests, so I’m wary of actually sticking to it because of that. Plus, I was hoping to be able to test the new version during this period as well, and also see if the upgrade works well, but even though it was released in some languages around the time I started the trial, an upgrade for the English version wasn’t offered by the time it ended, so I’m still in the dark when it comes to the version I’d actually be using if I’d purchase it.
Then again, it appears that the first beta for version 11 of Emsisoft is already available and, based on that post, going in the wrong direction, so even this current trial may not be particularly relevant. It is, however, relevant in the sense that it already proves they mean to go that way, as I immediately noticed some things missing compared to the previous version, such as the fact that it no longer shows the files being downloaded and installed during updates, so users can no longer notice if something’s wrong and stop a potentially faulty update or easily troubleshoot update problems, or that it no longer allows the user to select what behaviors the behavioral protection should look for, or that the user can now only select to have files with a good reputation automatically get permissions instead of being able to select an actual threshold, the percentage of users reporting a file as good, required for that. Admittedly, this latter issue may be due to them changing how their reputation database works, but I’m not sure.

Otherwise, I seem to have ended up with a cold, as in going past the somewhat runny nose which is normal for me during the cold part of the year. Didn’t seem like it when I woke up yesterday, but took a few napkins with me when I went for this week’s run, just in case, and had to use two on the way back because it was like somebody turned on the faucet. After blowing it as much as I could when I got back, it seemed to get somewhat better, but in the evening I kept sneezing, nose got worse and worse, eyes also started to sting and were bloodshot and there was a bad feeling in my throat as well, and this continued until I ate at night, possibly also because I made sure it was warm in the kitchen.
After a surprisingly good sleep, so far it seems significantly better today, but the evening isn’t quite here yet, and that’s when colds tend to act up. Nose still feels rather odd and I’ll need to watch what went down my throat, so I’m already trying to spit some out if I can manage it, while otherwise there’s that overall weakness, or the feeling that I’ve been beaten, as it’s called around here at least. Not badly, but it’s there, and it may get worse before it’ll get better. But I don’t exactly need to do anything or go out again this week, so I can just try to take care and wait it out.

As for this week run, as I mentioned above, that was yesterday and the time was 20:52, with the intermediate times being 4:43, 10:00 and 16:09, respectively. That means I was once again quite fast on the first part, and those times would have been new records if not for what I did two weeks ago, when the whole purpose was to set new records at those two points. Still, that meant I slowed down later, but with the last three runs having times of 20:50, 20:55 and now 20:52, it seems I found a comfortable pace, though comfortable is not how I feel towards the end and, either way, it probably won’t last now that the temperature is said to drop sharply. Actually, it’s to drop sharply enough that, if it stays that way, this may even end up being the last run before spring. But we’ll see about that.