hermiene.net

I started work at Amnesty on June 20, not July 4. I didn't miss it, though; a letter from Siviltjenesteadministrasjonen (the administration that handles what I loosely term community service) casually mentioned, among other things, that work started on June 20. I assumed it was erroneous, as my employer and I had agreed on July 4 and since the letter didn't state that this was a change, but I showed up anyway, expecting a short visit and two more weeks of vacation. Alas, work did start June 20, and I have been working for three days now. I like it there; it's laid back and my co-workers are OK people, despite one of them being religious. But you know I don't care about that as long as he's not a zealot. I have already pointed out four spelling errors to my boss, and I wasn't yelled at! In fact, he seemed to appreciate it. I wonder why, back in school, my classmates didn't appreciate it when I corrected my teacher.

I have finally churned through MegaTokyo, and a link is on the Links page.

Reading Asimov's Second Foundation I came across one Commander Cenn, which I consistently allowed myself to read as Commander Keen. See? This is how I amuse myself. No, really; my humor can be truly simple at times.

It strikes me how very few people in Asimov's works are irrational. Sure, they may be evil, negligent, hateful, or frustrated, but they're always rational. The only irrational people, as far as I see, are the ones who are against, say, robots (like Mrs. Weston in Robbie), and then mockingly so.

I removed the IE nagbox from all pages save for the Index page and slightly shortened it. There's really no need to remind you that you're using a horribly broken browser on every page.

I've finished my 12 years of obligatory schooling, and I am happy to report that my curiosity and sanity have survived, despite several of my teachers' best efforts to the contrary. A few of them, notably Ivar Lein-Mathisen and Trond Borgen, however, did their best not to kill them, and they succeeded brilliantly. Let's not talk about my grades; they're mediocre, at best. Next up is working for Amnesty International, Rogaland division, and the date of my starting there coincides with that of USA's Independence Day, July 4. I'm still looking forward to starting.

I love Wikipedia and its concept and I have been reading articles on it for a few months now, so I decided the only fair thing to do was to make my own user page and start contributing more than correcting spelling and grammatical errors.

I reinstalled Windows XP, and my system is now more elegant and clean than it has ever been. Perhaps it will be even cleaner when/if I get around to installing Linux on it. I celebrated by playing and finishing XP Plus Pack's Labyrinth and its bonus pack. This game looks absolutely gorgeous in 1280x960 with Quincunx anti-aliasing. I tried Winamp 5.09 for the second time. (The first time I reverted to Winamp 2.91, for reasons I can't remember.) I especially like the global hotkeys, which I now use fanatically.

Try playing StepMania with both hands, one hand for each player. It's fun.

Is it weird that my last five news posts (and this one) have all been posted on odd days on a two-day interval? It's totally coincidental and it's not a conspiracy. I swear.

Even started up a new site again. As usual, I wish him good luck with it.

I finished Foundation and Empire.

In imitation of Mr. Schrøder's "English words that I think are cool", I present you with my own list.

Oh yeah. At a recent LAN party, my ethernet card fell out of its PCI port while my computer was running, fell down on my Audigy card, and short-circuted it. Blast. I have no idea where that screw went, but I am positive that it held the ethernet card firm, at one point. Oh well. Such is gravity.

The Nerdiness Manifesto is an extremely funny read, and its first addendum more so.

I wonder if maybe the typical jocks-get-pretty-cheerleaders-and-pick-on-nerds phenomenon is specific to the United States. For instance, Norway isn't big on sports in school (we have annual tournaments, but they're not serious and we don't have cheerleaders in the organized fashion that American high schools seem to have them), so we don't have many typical jocks. Speaking for myself, I was never stuffed into a locker or locked in toilets or any such thing. During my first six years of school, I was bullied a lot and a few times I ran away from campus, crying. That wasn't particularly pleasant, but that type of bullying stopped after those six years, and grew much more subtle during the next three years of schooling; one of the things I damn myself for even now is that I was so weak as to not openly admit my nerddom in fear of being bullied, and the reason I was afraid, I firmly believe, is because I was friends with Niels-Henrik, who at the time was very skinny, wore patched-up spectacles whose glasses could withstand a 20-ton thermonuclear explosion, and did "weird things" such as being reclusive during breaks from classes and play Wolfenstein 3D on the computer in his classroom. This caused him to be severely bullied, and I still can't forgive myself for not standing up for him. Niels-Henrik and I are still friends (and very good ones, at that), so I don't think he holds any grudges.

What slightly bothers me (but not to such an extend as to actually affect me or anything) is that now that I'm unafraid of positively proclaiming my nerdiness, very few people bully me about it. That's a Good Thing, of course, so I guess what really bothers me is that I didn't have this attitude then, when I really needed it.

Oh well. Site-wise, I have acknowledged Even's transcendental artistic skills on the Colophon page.

Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory's cooperative mode is awesome. I am not a homosexual, but there's something really aesthetic and elegant about two fit male superagents dressed in black leather climbing on each other, covertly making their way into all sorts of secret hideouts. What's so cool about this mode is that you really do depend on your partner. If he lets you down, neither of you can complete the mission. Hmm... You know what would be cool? A female protagonist for Splinter Cell 4. That should make for some interesting interrogations with the hostaged mercenaries.

Finished The best science fiction of Isaac Asimov (yes, my summaries are short, but only because I want you to read the books I summarize and not waste your time reading the summaries).

The subject of my social life (or lack thereof) has been on my mind recently, and because of two interesting conversations about it, there's now a new section on the About Me page.

My ability to delve into the unknown and bring swift, radical changes to my site knows no boundary. Behold, a header image! Of course I didn't make, seeing as my artistic skills go as far as cutting away unwanted parts of the image and making it alpha-transparent. Oh, and I know how to save the images. No, Even made it, and I'm very happy with it. Thanks a bunch, Even!

So yeah, my site has experienced a small hiatus, and for that I am sorry; I have been too lazy/busy (interpret that as you want) to rectify the situation, until now.

I have read two books since the last update: Fremtiden by Eirik Newth and The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

And when you thought it wasn't possible, my news system is getting even more nifty and user friendly! I decided to arbitrarily allow the characters /, ., and - (solidus, full stop, and hyphen, respectively) to delimit the year, month, and day in the Archive. For instance, 2005-05.03 is as valid as 2005.05/03. Not that anyone would want to use such ugly combination, but the possibility is there. Also, people might legitimately want 2005-05-03, and I'm not going to stop them.