I got tired of all the comment spam on this blog. I don’t think anyone has noticed anything because of the terrific Akismet plugin that catches pretty much all of it, but right now I have 755 spam comments killed by Akismet so far. It’s tiresome. And every once in a while I have to [...]
Monthly Archives: November 2006
November 30, 2006
17:01
17:01
November 29, 2006
00:30
00:30
Unemployed
Last Friday was my last day at work. Since then, I’ve been temporarily unemployed — that means, I have a new job starting January 8th, but until then, I’m free as a bird. It’s a very strange feeling to not have to get up out of bed in the morning and go to work. It’s [...]
November 24, 2006
01:55
01:55
Writing Dialogue: Meet Chris and Rebecka
Writing dialogue is the most difficult thing I know. But watching Ally McBeal has really made me interested in writing again; and I think I realize that the whole purpose of dialogue is to establish a relationship in the story. Let people communicate and grow with each other. (Maybe that’s the purpose of all dialogue?) [...]
November 20, 2006
14:18
14:18
Final Countdown
4.5 days left of my employment. I’ve cruised into the final week here. Friday at 1700 hours is Liberty Hour, when I will dance out of the halls, with bells ringing and choirs singing. And then, six weeks of long, wonderful, blissful nothing (oh! nothing! bliss!) until I start my new job. “We may allow [...]
November 17, 2006
00:50
00:50
Freedom, Capitalism and Communism
I am becoming increasingly angry with communism. The more I study it, and the more I read about the history and development of the nations that suffered so terribly under the its heavy hand, the more I passionately start disliking it. I read today about Bulgaria and Ukraine, two countries with a wonderful, fascinating history. [...]
November 16, 2006
11:49
11:49
“Oops”
System administration isn’t always easy. I just read some horror stories from Unix administration, one here and another one here. And I so much share the grief and agony of the administrators who accidentially typed in the right command, in the wrong place, and wiped out the accumulated work of 100 users in one second. [...]
November 14, 2006
15:13
15:13
Romance is in the Loudspeakers
I have ended up with a sampling of romantic love songs that is… uhm… rather wide; from Ornella Vanoni’s “L’appuntamento”, over to Dean Martin, and on to “Kiss the girl” and “Part of your world” from Disney’s The Little Mermaid. But I think my favorite song is “It had to be you” from When Harry [...]
November 14, 2006
00:54
00:54
Remember Us
The 20th Century was probably the bloodiest century in the history of mankind so far. The world wars probably claimed over 50 to 60 million people alone, with civilians and military casualties. But, by far, the biggest killer of them all was communism. Globally, estimates of the number of “wrongful deaths” by communism range from [...]
November 13, 2006
12:01
12:01
The Big Memory Wipe
I reformatted my laptop’s hard drive this weekend. Wiping everything on the laptop like that makes you think hard about life. It feels like you’re wiping the memory of an old friend, and now you have to start all over again. It’s sad, because there are so many memories tied up with that particular Windows [...]
November 5, 2006
23:28
23:28
A Dictator Falls
So there it is. Saddam Hussein gets a death sentence. Justice has been served. I mean, just hang the guy and get it over with. Of course, Swedish internal law activists were quick to condemn the death sentence. Quite frankly, I don’t know why they did, because I turned off the TV, but I imagine [...]
November 2, 2006
10:46
10:46
The Oyster and King Bore
Back in high school, a friend in the computer club wrote a poem about an oyster who defeated King Bore (the presumed God of Snow and Winter). In a sudden flash of inspiration, I blatantly stole the idea and wrote my own. It turned out something like this. Once upon a time, a colony there [...]
November 2, 2006
10:29
10:29
Poem on an Uninvented Language
Nika tunga bete wola Dopi lamunga aki nola Sa wele patima, ahima te A naki tonga walu me. A sina wati do katunga ne A sina wati pim milunga me. Ha kata son thanima ikosai Mita wa patima, ahimanai. Sa akita hawane, mi thak Tabena watasi anima pak Karoosha me sawane wele no Ha misa [...]
November 1, 2006
11:15
11:15
Snowfall
The first snow fell yesterday night. The national weather service talks about people stuck on roads and trains as a snow storm swept in over the country. I noticed rather little, except that the wind was blowing strong last night. But as I got out of bed this morning, the entire country was swept in [...]