I think my favorite Christmas song (yeah, there you go, I’m already singing Christmas songs…) is the one about the little drummer boy.

Come, they told me, pa rum pum pum pum
A newborn King to see, pa rum pum pum pum
Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum
To lay before the King, pa rum pum pum pum
Rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum
So to honor him, pa rum pum pum pum
When we come.

When I went through bible school in 1994-95, we all had ideals that soared mile-high. We were going to be the new Benny Hinns, ministers of the faith, apostles and prophets (like all bible school students, I suppose) and shake the whole world upside down.

I think, through the years, at least I have maybe cooled down a little bit. Those lofty ideals seem … surprisingly not remote, but actually rather unimportant. It is not important that I stand in big arenas and preach to tens of thousands of people. It is not important if I start a huge ministry. Riches, honor and fame, even in the subtle shape of Christian ministry, is not important.

It is actually quite liberating to realize that I am unimportant. There is a sense of freedom in knowing that my name will never be famous. I grew up in a small house, and maybe I’ll die in a small house – it doesn’t bother me. Maybe I’ll never be rich. Maybe I will only touch a few people’s lives in all my days on earth. It is not important.

What really matters is our devotion to Him – to God, our heavenly father. And as little as I am, with the few things I can do or say, if I can only do it for him, then it will matter for eternities to come:

I played my drum for him, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my best for him, pa rum pum pum pum
Rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum
Then he smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum
Me and my drum.

Such as I have, I give. And even if all I can ever pull off is a small concert for him on my cheap little drum, he still deserves my very best. So I play for him, tears in my eyes, as well as I can on my drum. And if I do that, if I give him my very best, as minute as it still may seem… I know he will smile at me; and in that smile he will justify my entire existence.

Contrary to public opinion, Microsoft is not Mordor.

Microsoft is like Moria.

Being a developer and faced with the task of developing some particularly interesting feature for, say, the Internet Information Server (IIS), is much like Gandalf and the companions looking at crossing the mountains through the treacherous kingdom of Moria. Once a kingdom of dwarves, treasures and royal hallways, the rumors that now spread from these caverns are dark and brooding. And entering the domains of Moria will always be an adventure, whichever way you look upon it.

You may get through, of course, if you’re quiet, don’t do anything surprising, and stick to the API’s. Keep it simple, and don’t touch anything you shouldn’t touch. It will be a long, dark passage, but you may eventually get through to the other side.

On the other hand, you may get lost, stray into tunnels that you shouldn’t have gone into; and disturb the deep darkness below. Too many have been lost in these caverns and you are now about to be the next victim. You pass through chambers with ominous writing inside (“here lies Balin, king of Moria”) and stumbling, falling, irretrievably lost proceeding further and further into the darkness…

You can abort. Cut your losses, and get out. You never should have come here. We’ll make for the gap of Rohan instead! Quickly, now!

But some part of you pushes on… There must be an exit ahead… Who knows, behind the next corner you may feel a gust of fresh wind, and a dim light far ahead, the opening to the outside and you’ll be through. But instead, you cross a barrier and suddenly you’re face to face with the Balrog, the most terrifying of all enemies. You’re at the brink of insanity and plunging forward. There is no escape.

Trying to script the IIS is an excellent example. The API is dark and mysterious, and faint murmurs of a dark evil reach you as you stand by the door. And a short way into the inside, you reach a decision point: Should you use the XML metabase? WMI? ADSI? All of these have possibilities, and yet, dangerous drawbacks.

You spent some time trying to figure out what wmic is and how it works. Turning out to be an utterly incomprehensible object, you shy away from it. Next up, you work with CIM Explorer to explore the WMI and MicrosoftIISv2 namespace. It is equally incomprehensible, and every attempt you make to understand it and get ahold of its promises are futile. Like a slithery Gollum, it writhes out of your grip and disappears into the caves. “My preciousssss!” you hear a scream in the distance.

Next up: ADsUtil. A wonderful little VBScript gratitiously provided by Microsoft. By it quickly breaks in your hands – it returns strange and complicated errors when applying it to the IPSecurity object. But, even though ADsUtil crumbles to dust (for magical reasons, you assume), the ADSI approach seems worthwhile. The air in this tunnel seems fresher. You stumble on.

A while later, while pouring over .NET, DirectoryEntry, and hitting your head repeatedly on sharp, nasty stalagmites stalactites hanging from the ceiling, you force yourself into twisting little dark tunnels, which now consist of strange, magical invocations of objects, GetTypes, unexplored COM objects, and you have the vicious feeling that nobody has been here before you in a very long time.

And right there, just when you hit entry.CommitChanges() and think that you’re home safe, an exception is suddenly thrown out of the blue. A wall collapses in front of you. And there it is… the Balrog, full of flame and fire and smoke and radiating with a pure evil from aeons past.

I should have made for the Gap of Rohan. Now, it’s over.

*sigh*

It is with unbridled pleasure that I have finished reading a most wonderful and thought-provoking book of economic theory, Jane Jacobs paramount work “Cities and the Wealth of Nations“.

Her economic theory is founded upon the absolute requirement of cities. No city, no foundation for economy, other than a very basic subsistence form of economy. At the heart of her theory is the replacing of imports; a place that starts replacing imported goods with locally created ones automatically becomes a city. As it keeps doing this, the city grows, eventually giving birth to a region dominated by this city.

Expanding on this, she analyzes economies and draws several conclusions from this; that all schemes to support regions without import-replacing cities are doomed to failure; that efficiency improvements in rural economies can be disastrous for the economy in terms of unemployment. Her vision of an economy is not a functional system ruled by regulations and laws, but a living organism, growing and expanding on its own. Trying to transplant factories and foreign economic factors into this organism may, in fact, kill it.

The thing that stands out in her analysis is that there is no alternative to local small business. This is the very lifeblood upon which any economy lives or dies.

Another interesting point she makes is about currency: How the value of the currency is proportional to the strength of the city economy. (Forgive me if I misquote.) A nation’s currency is dominated by the largest city regions; and it will suit them the best. However, for smaller cities growing, the currency will provide what she calls “faulty feedback”, as they are out of sync with the dominating economy. As a result, nations will gradually begin concentrating their economic life to one, large city region. She takes France as an example, which is almost entirely dominated by Paris. Italy is dominated by the industrial north, Japan is increasingly dominated by Tokyo, and so on.

This gives birth to financial transactions, aimed at restoring the weaker regions and provide jobs and development; these transactions are, however, foreign aid to these smaller cities, and, like transplants, fail to stimulate the economy in a permanent way: they do not stimulate import-replacing businesses. Moreover, they sap the economic strength of the city region that provides the national economic growth; the further this process develops, the more stressing this situation will become. The nation will continue to be dominated by a large city region, who increasingly carries the burden of the rest of the nation out of sync with the currency valuation, and further and further “transactions of decline” are initiated.

Building on this, it is easy to show how all empires must fail, due to systemic economical difficulties built into the very structures of an empire. In this light, the implementation of the Euro is a bad idea: It will gradually become dominated by a fewer and fewer economical regions inside the EU, requiring all the more financial transactions to be made to “equalize” the lesser developed regions inside the EU, sapping the strength of the main city regions and ultimately dooming them to failure.

What is the answer to this? She sees one possible solution – a highly theoretical one, she admits, and rarely, if ever, tried in history.

As a nation grows and becomes stronger, building on a city region, and before too heavy support transactions come into play for its underdeveloped regions, the nation should split: Divide itself into two, with separate currencies, and, if necessary, tariffs to protect its internal markets in their infancy. As the new region grows stronger, the need for tariffs disappear. When this economy, in turn, becomes too large, it should split again, repeating the process as necessary. Their local currencies will always be in direct relation to the economic strength of their regions. Of course, pitfalls abound, but this way it will counteract the negative forces in play when the synchronization fails.

As controversial as it sounds (and I have little hope for its practical feasability), I find it attractive, because it provokes a vision of the world as a living organism, growing organically, and multiplying as cells do – by splitting. And in doing so, it is directly at odds with romantic dreams of uniting the whole world under one government and a single, worldwide economic system.

And that is why I want to believe in it. :)

Imagination is a wonderful thing; that dreamy world where a thousand different worlds unfold. What amazing stories that take place there, when one is allowed to just dream a little. And, with a snug satisfaction, all those adventures can be experienced without ever leaving your comfortable home. For instance…

• …I have walked down the busy streets of New York and London in the morning, feeling the air of busy commerce and traffic. I have taken the El to work, Starbucks coffee cup in hand, a hundred mornings in Chicago. Seen the sun rise over Lake Erie from Sears Tower, and stood on the pier of a little village in Maine looking out over the ocean. I have been the captain of fishing boats steaming out towards open sea.
• I have traveled through Japan, taking the off-road path through little towns far outside of Tokyo or Osaka. I have visited small villages and photographed the countryside. I’ve been in Morocco, Egypt and Israel, taking pictures with my camera. I have seen the mysteries of Nepal.
• I’ve been the friend of movie stars, presidents, famous preachers and foreign kings. I have worked with secret service, protected dignitaries, and led uprisings in far off countries. I’ve been a mercenary, secret agent, benevolent dictator, upheld the law; I’ve conquered nations, established justice, gone to war and fought for peace. I’ve led armored brigades against Napoleon and Alexander the Great.
• I have traveled in time and seen the early days of Egypt. I was there when the pyramids were built (in fact, I had quite a hand in the building process). I was there when Jesus died, I was a part of Columbus expedition to the New World, and I spoke in the senate of the empire of Rome. I saw the first barbarian tribes that moved into Scandinavia, and I stood on the Danube the day that Attila came.
• I’ve been a man of the world; romanced women, crushed their hearts and said “c’est la vie, ma chérie – it was never meant to be”. I’ve professed my love in a thousand ways, written poems and symphonies to put eloquent words to magical feeling, and I’ve sung duets with my wife at my wedding – to spontanous applause. I have received the Nobel prize; and I have given the Nobel prize to others.
• I’ve stood on the moons of Saturn and beheld the sky filled with gleaming rings; and I’ve watched the tiny blue dot that is Earth from the plains of Mars. I’ve seen the millions and billions of stars that is our galaxy. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser gate.

All of this is part of me, of the world I make for myself. Inside, in my thoughts, there are no boundaries for anything; I am king, servant, ruler of the universe, or humble saint. I have a grand palace with fifty rooms, and yet I sleep with the homeless on the street. I build intelligent robots that can love, and I shoot soldiers on the Eastern front. What a dramatic life I lead!

And then I wake up again, and realize that I still haven’t finished that little PHP function I was supposed to build. Oh, well, back to work ….. *sigh*

I looked today at a program on TV with a guy and his compost.

He used the compost to grow a garden full of pumpkins, zucchini, cucumbers, which he then harvested and made all kinds of delicious soups and dishes with.

And all I could think was of me jumping into the car, driving to McDonalds, and putting my teeth into a beautiful, juicy, wonderful hamburger with absolutely no effort.

I lead such a blessed life.

Snif.

I love hamburgers.

Some people in life are just naturally spontaneous. Like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh, they excitedly jump out of bed, ready to swing the banners of Carpe Diem and let the oncoming day hit them with heaps and heaps of fun. It may turn out to involve chatting with friends, having coffee in the sunshine in the city or taking lovely walks in the brisk evening air. At the end of the day, Tigger, having a feeling of contentment that the day was well spent, exhaustedly falls into bed and goes to sleep, dreaming happy dreams and resting for another day.

Setting definite times and deadlines for Tigger people, may, of course, be bothersome: It imposes a fixed point during the way when something has to be done, and it wrecks this casual mood of seeing what the day turns out like if you spontaneously poke at it in various different ways. It means that you can’t play at will in the Tunnels of Fun, because there’s an oncoming Train of Requirement that will not be negotiated with.

As for me, I’m not a Tigger person. I like planning.

I suppose it has something to do with my military interest, as well as my tendency to structure and organize. It’s a habit I have, organizing and structuring; whenever I’m faced with inefficiency, my natural tendency is to roll the sleeves up and methodically carve away at things until the organization is like a smoothly running machine. It doesn’t have to perfect – perfection is, in most cases, an inefficient (and unflexible!) use of resources – but I want it to purr like a cat.

A part of this is to make plans. I don’t know why it’s so much fun, but whenever a situation comes up that involves several activities (and possibly more people), I write an Operations Plan: A detailed listing of all activities and resources involved in the event, as well as checklists and a detailed timetable. It may also, depending on the requirements, contain small-scale maps of the target areas.

An example of this is when I travel overseas. The simple step of going to the airport may be illustrated in the following hypothetical scenario:

OPERATION FALLING LEAVES

Purpose: Vacation in Florida.
Timeframe: 3 OCT 2006 - 14 OCT 2006

STEP 1 - INITIAL PREPARATIONS

(list of things to prepare, including
   - packing
   - procurement of necessary items
   - and so on...)

STEP 2 - DEPARTURE

0500       Wake up
0545-0550  Leave home
0730       Arrival at airport
0915       Flight departure
...

And the list goes on.

This, of course, does not rule out spontaneity. Doing things on a whim, being spontaneous and having fun, is indeed possible with accurate planning; waking up like Tigger one day and saying “ooh, I know, let’s go there and there today” is possible just because I had the passport, credit card, exchange of currency and other items on my “initial preparations” list, and I also happen to have a set of contingency plans if anything goes wrong.

I call this “operational spontaneity”.

At the end of the day, I don’t fall into bed, content that the day was well spent; I fall into bed with the happy feeling that my Operations Plan executed so well. As I drift off into sleep, the last fleeting thought through my brain is a smug satisfaction that my contingency operations worked exactly as planned; the machine worked smoothly… just like a purring cat.

I’ve been tagged by a friend. Since I never did anything particular about Thanksgiving Day this year, let’s list some things that I am grateful for.

1) I am grateful for my car.
Seems awfully materialistic, but the fact is that I believe God led me to this particular car, and every day I feel grateful for it. It fits me perfectly. It is wonderful. And there’s a very tangible difference between something you went out and bought because you wanted it, and something that God led you to buy. There’s all the difference in the world, because I praise God for it; and I believe that is actually the purpose of creation – to inspire to thanksgiving and praise to God.

2) I am grateful for life.
In spite of sorrows, troubles, unfulfilled dreams or hopes, I am grateful for my life. It doesn’t always feel like a great pleasure – life on earth seldom is, I’ve noticed – but every day is another day that I can work towards the completion of all the things that God wanted for me to do. Like a great adventure; the mission of my life. Like the U.S. Army says “be all that you can be”. To complete the mission, fulfill my destiny… It’s HARD WORK (don’t be fooled), but if my life ever becomes boring, it’s probably just because I missed a turn somewhere.

3) I am grateful for the Holy Spirit.
“But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you…” (Jn 16:7) I don’t think anyone ever could have a better friend than the Holy Spirit. He has been with me from day one of this great journey, and his gentle help has led me all the way. I would be hard pressed to think of a more loving, more compassionate, more kind, more sensitive best friend than him. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for your wonderful help.

4) I am grateful for my friends.
I have had the great fortune of getting some very extraordinary friends. There are friends and then there are friends; there are people you know and work with and hang out with, and then there are friends that you go through war with. “For he who today sheds his blood with me, shall be my brother; we lucky few, we band of brothers.” There are people I’ve fought side by side with, who have helped me, and whom I have helped, through turmoil, war and destruction. Such friends are rare and precious. You know who you are. :)

5) I am grateful for… Coca-Cola.
Yep. And Quarter Pounders from Mickey D’s, and Snickers, and Belgian chocolates. And those lovely After Eights, and Pear Cider in a tall, cold glass; and good movies on television and playing piano in the middle of night. And for the internet, for emails and chatting with people, and for Mozart symphonies and great movie music and American country stations that you can record as MP3 and play in your car. I’m grateful for Wal-Mart, for Dunkin’ Donuts, and for Hotel Panorama in Gorzow Wielkopolski.

I guess the bottom line is, there’s lots to be thankful for. Not the least all the little everyday things down here on earth that can really make my day. Hooah. :)

I woke up a little early today. The idea was, that an electrician would come over this morning to look over some things with the heater, and I didn’t want him to show up while I was in the shower, so I made a point of getting up something like 6:45am or so. So when my mind rose drowsily from happy dreams into semi-awakeness, I briefly looked at the alarm clock and then decided it was time to get up.

So I got up. Went through the normal routine; I showered, shaved and brushed my teeth, clothed myself; spent a couple of minutes hunting down a matching pair of socks, as I always do; and in my rather good mood this morning, I was middle in the process of making breakfast for myself when I noticed that the clock on the microwave was totally off. It said “02:14″. I thought that was odd – there must have been a power outage or something – so I went to look at the big clock on the wall. It said the same thing.

At this moment, a hint of dark suspicion began to rise in my mind. I went to check the alarm clock beside by bed. It said “02:14″.

It took a few moments before the realization dawned on me that the reason why this night went by unusually fast, was not because I had slept so deep, but because it was still in the middle of night, and here I was fully clothed and ready go to work.

This does not happen often to me.

For a moment, the thought occurred to me that I might read a little in bed until morning, so I wouldn’t have to undress and go back to bed, but then a follow-up realization suggested that I had only been asleep for two hours and it was five more until I logically should wake up.

I went back to bed.

It took a while before I fell asleep again, mostly because I couldn’t stop laughing in the darkness, at the silliness of the situation. At point I felt rather thankful that I didn’t have a girlfriend – I suppose she would have looked rather curiously at me as I stood there by the bed, fully clothed, eating from a pack of youghurt at 2am in the morning.

Thank God for small mercies.

Blev precis uppringd av Telenor som gärna ville erbjuda mig lite rabatterat bredband via 3G fram till påsk.

Nu reser jag nu nästan inte alls, men jag tänkte ändå på något sätt, att det kan ju vara kul att leka lite med, eftersom det är gratis i 30 dagar och det var tydligen enkelt att returnera det inom den tiden. Och 79 kr i månaden fram till påsk är ju heller inte så farligt. Så jag sade ja via telefon och sedan började vi en liten avtalsinspelning.

“Ägaren till abonnemanget godkänner alltså … [tum-de-dum, diverse avtalsinfo uppläst, jag svarar "ja" där det behövs] … gratis 30 dagar med returrätt, avtalstid 24 månader med 3 månaders uppsägningstid och inkopplingsavgift 200 kronor…” … ehupp?

Vadå inkopplingsavgift? Det sade han inget om?

Dumt nog så godkände jag, efter en sekunds tvekan (det kommer nog låta roligt när man lyssnar på inspelningen sedan) – eftersom det var inspelning på gång, och jag hade ju ändå sagt ja tidigare…

Visst förstår jag att det blir lite pengar i kostnad och administration att skicka donglar tvärs över landet, så jag förstår ju deras sida av saken. Men jag tycker ändå att det är lite, lite oschysst att ta upp just den där inkopplingsavgiften först under avtalsinspelningen. Helt plötsligt så förbyttes min glada känsla av att “oj, kul grej, den kan jag leka lite med och se om jag vill ha den” till “oh, crap”.

Nåja. 200 spänn är ju inte så mycket när allt kommer kring. Och medan jag väntar på dongeln så kan jag ju alltid sprida lite dålig PR om Telenor via facebook och min blogg.

A few years ago, my friend and I traveled to Poland. We went around the place, spending most of our time in a little town called Gorzow Wielkopolski, with an old church and a rather charming mix of new-style apartments, malls and old buildings.

Poland joined the EU, recently, which gave us remarkably little trouble in visiting the country. In fact, all I had to do was wave my passport at the border guard – I didn’t even have to open it – and they waved us buy. Of course, when they saw that my friend had an American passport, they quickly halted us, took his passport away and went into a little house to check it up.

That was when it hit me: I am a citizen of Rome.

Paul the Apostle had a similar experience, which we can read about. As soon as he waved his Roman citizenship around (which you either got by birth, or by a large sum of money), special privileges and laws applied to you, and you were treated with better dignity.

The Roman Empire was an enormous empire that spanned most the entire Europe, Middle East and North Africa. And while it was founded on a military power, states were usually willing (with some initial resistence) to join as it brought trade, money, a distinct legal code, culture, and many other benefits – not the least protection from neighboring tribes. The Pax Romana ensured a peaceful environment within which trade could flourish from all parts of the empire.

When the West Roman Empire ceased to exist 476 A.D., Europe quickly degenerated into a chaos of Germanic tribes and remnants of the empire. The different cultures solidified and became the basis of the European nations, which were more or less continually at war with each other for over 1500 years, eventually culminating in the First and Second World Wars.

To put an end to this division – to bridge the gap between the different nations, and establish a peaceful European community – the European Union was formed, the basis of which was the Treaty of Rome in 1957. All the European nations are now coming together into one democratic union, which will establish a Pax Romana, whose foundation is entirely economic – the benefits of trade and commerce under peaceful conditions will far outweigh any sentiment towards military confrontation.

For the first time since 476, we now have a new, peaceful, economically united Europe, wherein all citizens may travel freely (within the Schengen territories), with a single currency (within the Euro zone) and trade without hindrances.

I am a member of the European Union. I am a Citizen of Rome.