It's better to be barefoot than without books

I realized like/don't like sort of fizzled out and died. I will now attempt to resurrect it. Rise...rise...RISE!!! *thunder in the background. A hunched-back servant throws a switch*

beardonaut likes:
JPod, by Douglas Coupland. I finished this book a while back, and wanted to write something about it, but it just never happened. So here goes.


So far I've only read three of Coupland's novels, Microserfs, All Families are Psychotic and JPod, but I need to read more. Microserfs was good, Families was so-so, and JPod was great. Hilarious, well-written, exceptional characters, and with a nice meta-plot twist, since Coupland himself plays a minor part in the story.

My gut feeling is that you need to be at least partially a geek to appreciate JPod (and Microserfs) fully. There are geek references throughout, and most of the characters are geeks. However, since it is very well-written, anyone with an appreciation for witty contemporary literature should be able to appreciate it.

Now go read it.


beardonaut doesn't like:
Undisciplined dogs. Or rather, their owners. While walking home from the grocery store today, I met a woman with two dogs. I rarely pay attention to dogs, unless it's a pitbull straining at a leash held by a punk with too many heavy gold chains around his neck (wait, what am I saying? One heavy gold chain is too many...). So today I paid them no attention, and just walked on, headphones on, cut off from the world.

Until one of her dogs decided that whatever I had in my bag was of interest. Not like it bit me or anything, it just lunged at me and careened into me. The woman pulled it back from me, and started screaming at it.

Now, here was a person that obviosuly shouldn't own a dog at all. Why? Because she couldn't control it, and because she screamed at it.

I have no problem with dogs in general. My grandfather had dogs when I was younger, but they were well-behaved, well-trained dogs.

I could make all sorts of parallels here between dogs and children, but I won't. For now.

Who will be the strongest thumb?

I lost two thumb wars in a row this morning. What. The. Hell. I have a powerful thumb. Meaty. And I lost. Twice.

Did you know that there's a Thumb Wrestling Federation?

And so it begins

Tick tock. Tick tock.

*the sound of sheep hooves in the background*

Doth thou speaketh English?

Last night my boss called me, and said "You should go to the Nordic Telecom Summit" tomorrow. I said I had too much work to do at the office. For some reason the fall is always the busiest time of the year. He told me that didn't matter, and that I really should go. So I did.

There were some pretty good speakers, highlighting issues like the future of mobile broadband, developments in radio network interfaces, and the evolution of 3GPP networks towards LTE. All very interesting.

The highlights of the day were more on a personal level though.

1. I realized as a guy from Google was speaking, that if everyone worked at Google (megacorp, anyone?), or all companies worked like Google, the world would be a better place. For nerds.

2. I got to ask someone from a competing company (that shall remain nameless) uncomfortable questions about their presentation regarding the future of services in IP backbone networks. She evaded the questions like she'd been in politics for twenty years. Cop-out.

3. All the presentations were in English, and some truly awe-inspiring Swenglish was heard from the speakers. My personal favorite, that wasn't really Swenglish either but just plain wrong and hilarious: "Everyone wants a pie of that business". Eh...what? I see what he was going for, but it misfired beyond description.

In all, a good day.

I wish that just once people wouldn't act like the clichés that they are

I'm a bona fide TV junkie. I'll give most shows a chance, and I can watch some stuff over and over and over.

I acknowledge that TV is a real time stealer. I acknowledge that perhaps it numbs my soul. I don't care. It's entertainment, baby! and sometimes that's just what I need.

The Best Show Ever is, of course, Six Feet Under. I watched it sporadically when it was shown on Swedish television, and was always drawn to it's dark humor and flawless dialogue. I've since bought it and watched through it all with Mah Girl a few years ago. It's awesome, in the true sense of the word. Spectacular.

I want this on a t-shirt

Shows of that magnitude, that are that well-written, transcends entertainment. They become something more profound, a mirror in which we see something of ourselves reflected back. That might sound like pseudo-religious ramblings, but it's the truth, at least for me.

As I'm writing this, Grey's Anatomy is on. That show has become a real train wreck of soap opera intrigue and drama that is completely uncalled for, filled with completely one-dimensional characters. And just like Prison Break, it had such promise, that it never delivered on.

But really, I shouldn't be watching that much TV, or spending that much time slouching around on the Internet either. I should be writing. I should be structuring that novel I so very much want to write, or resurrecting one of the countless short stories that lurk in the depths of my hard drive.

One of my favorite authors, William Gibson, said (or wrote, not sure):
I suspect I have spent just about exactly as much time actually writing as the average person my age has spent watching television, and that, as much as anything, may be the real secret here.

I should listen to him.

This blog was supposed to be an inspiration for me to start writing again, after sort of a hiatus. It has helped in a way, since I'm writing here more than I've done in a long time, but it hasn't really helped me finish any stories. I need to get my bearded ass in gear and write more.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent

So now is later.

Lately, I've been considering what the hell is wrong with the world and people.

Over the past two months three people I know have been assaulted in one way or the other. As I've expressed in previous posts, I'm not a real believer in the inner goodness of man, but I still think that it takes a certain kind of person to beat up someone without a reason.

This is where you go “A reason you say?”.

Yes. A reason. I know I have the capacity within me for violence. I know that if someone close to me was threatened or attacked, I wouldn't hesitate to step in and deal with the situation. With violence, if need be. I know this might seem hypocritical, and that may be, but I have little doubt this is the way a lot of people are wired. For me, that realization came when my then-girlfriend was attacked by her stepfather. The rage I felt when I found out was terrifying. The realization that I would have thrown myself at him had I been there, with no regard for my own safety, was terrifying. The fact that I would do it again, for anyone close to me, is terrifying. But still true.

I felt the same way when my now-girlfriend was trapped inside the entrance of a club between a locked door and a guy gone berserk on anti-psychotics and alcohol. Good combo, that... He was about as tall as a Smurf, and managed to throw a 200-pound security guard around.

So yes. A reason. Then again, that's the only reason I can think of.

That situation aside, to me normal people don't hurt other people. Here's where we need to define normal. Normal as in “functioning properly emotionally”, nothing else. It has nothing to do with normalcy regarding looks or political views or race or whatever (the middle one sometimes fits, though that's a topic for another post). The urge might be there, those primal fight or flight instincts, but normal people don't let the urges get the better of them. That's what's called “civilization”.

I consider the three people (I won't dignify them with the term “men”), and any other people really that do the same thing, to be below me on an evolutionary scale. Yes, all men are created equal, but again, those degenerates aren't men.

Those are my two cents.

Game over, man, game over

Today was one of those days where things move from good to bad to good again in the blink of an eye. Well, not really the blink of an eye, but a fairly short time.

It started off well enough, even though I shouldn't have been feeling that well, considering I was up too late last night and what with the stuff that's been going on lately. More on that later.

Then it all went sideways as a problem at work just grew out of proportion. It was all about a process gone horribly, horribly wrong, and about some people standing on the sideline not really noticing that it had gone wrong, and about some people on another sideline overreacting when it did. Through some well-aimed diplomacy (I have a piece of paper tacked to my cubicle wall that says “Diplomacy is the art of telling someone to 'Go to Hell' in such a way that they actually look forward to the trip”) and a lot of running around, I managed to at least partially defuse the situation, and above all sort of who had done what wrong when.

My workday continued to be less than spectacular, and I felt compelled to complain to Mah Girl. As always, she cuts straight to the point.

“Think about good food and good company later. It's going to be LEGEN...wait for it...DARY!”

Instant smile.

So I left work on time, and went downtown to meet the Almighty Steelwheels. The plan was to eat meat and speak nerd. I ate salmon, which wasn't quite right, but others ate meat. And we spoke nerd.

Quote of the night:
“Bill Paxton is the only one ever to have been killed by both an Alien and a Predator. I think about stuff like that all day...”

All is well with the world.