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August 19th, 2011
02:21 am - A Dance with Dragons
A bit late, perhaps. I Finished it a couple of days ago. Bloody hell. Another five years to wait, I guess.
( Spoileriffic item behind cut )
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March 30th, 2011
01:28 am
UK freedom of speech: Restricted
This may be the blog post referred to: here. Peter Ferbrache, you seem to have been very naughty.
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January 3rd, 2010
August 18th, 2009
07:21 pm - Back home and into a new job.
So I got home from the Worldcon in Montreal. The plan was to start applying for jobs.
I hadn't even left Montreal when a recruiter rang. I had my first day today. First impressions: It's a job in an alginate factory. There'll be some driving of forklift trucks, unless I get moved to the production line. There were nice people there. I'll get money for it.
It's only till new years so far, but it sounded like they had been looking for someone to hire permanently.
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June 16th, 2009
04:21 am - Stuff and other stuff
Yeah, I suck at blogging.
Life has been going on. I just got back from Edinburgh. (If I'd waited a couple of weeks, I could have taken a direct flight HAU-EDI with Ryanair; as it was, I went Haugesund-Oslo-Heathrow-Edinburgh and Edinburgh-Stockholm(!)-Oslo-Haugesund with SAS and BMI. (Why Heathrow? Shortest layover. Why Stockholm rather than Copenhagen? Two hours on a 737, rather than two hours on a turboprop.)) But anyway, lovely place, lovely people. Thanks, all you with whom I spent time - it was great!
Also, I'm losing my job. Half a year ago, Hydro Aluminium decided that since they needed to cut production anyway, they'd move forward the schedule for closing the ancient Søderberg smelter at our works. And the planned expansion "K6" would be put on ice. Long story short, I've got till the end of June, then I'm out, along with about half of the other metal tappers. Not enough seniority. We've been jerked around for half a year, and it's actually a relief to be done with it. Now, of course, they're realizing they actually need us guys, because our replacements aren't ready. So they're begging us to stay on till the end of August at least. I've been polite about it; so I haven't given the answer I would really like to, the second word of which is "off". I'm getting paid till November anyway, and can apply for another seven months' pay if I don't get a new job. Apart from the niggling detail of a job market that sucks (though Norway is better off than most countries), it's a good time to quit. Working in a huge electromagnetic field and breathing fluorides and hydrocarbons isn't very good for you in the long term, and besides, the work environment is going to hell. So being bribed to leave suits me well, really.
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November 5th, 2008
03:11 pm - Congratulations, Americans
You have elected the guy who seems like a sane, civilised person. Maybe the US will become something to look up to again and you won't have to feel ashamed over your government and your country.
I hope the socially conservative movement shrivels up and dies, and that its apologists and enablers find decent people to hang out with instead.
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March 8th, 2008
09:39 pm - I'm not dead yet
But my ISP's mail server is in a coma. It's been down since ...Tuesday. Had some moments when mail would trickle out of it, then disappeared again.
So if you're trying to send me mail, I haven't been getting it. But if you are, you're probably an automated mailing list and don't read LJ. Oh well.
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December 17th, 2007
06:30 pm - 1984
Stuff like this is why I won't be visiting the US anytime soon. I've got good friends and not too-distant relatives there, but a visit will have to wait till the country is under civilised management. I'm not holding my breath.
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September 18th, 2007
02:25 am - The Wheel of Time turned
Everybody should know by now what I'm referring to with that headline.
I can remember the day I got the Eye of the World. It was 20 September 1996. In two days it'll be eleven years ago. That day I was done with 12 months of compulsory military service, and on the way home I was changing planes at the old Oslo airport when I picked up this promising-looking paperback. Signed too, it was. I read that one, and then the rest of the series as soon as I could get hold of them.
I then got an internet connection, and found this brilliant curmudgeonly newsgroup called rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan...
The series went astray, the group lost its high traffic. But friendships remain.
Thank you, mr Rigney.
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July 20th, 2007
03:40 am - Tap, tap
I was dog-sitting my parents' collie last week while they were in Newcastle. On the Friday night I was sitting in the sofa, with Anja the dog lying by the terrace door. Suddenly I heard a tapping sound from over by the fireplace. Tap, tap.
I couldn't figure out where the sound had come from and it had got quiet when I stomped around. So I sat down again.
Tap, tap, scrape. Mice? Tap, tap. WTF?
Then I saw it. In the stove. I only had my mobile with crappy camera, but here's a pic of our uninvited guest.
A small bat was using the stove as sleeping place!
By this time I'd got the dog outside. I tapped on the glass with a newspaper to wake the little fellow. Angry chittering ensued, then he or she took off and flew in circles around the living room. With some experimental turning off and on of lights, I got the flight path to go near the terrace door, and after five minutes of frantic flight, the beast went out.
I showed the pictures to dad when he and mum got back, and he said he'd heard some scraping sounds earlier too, so the bat must have been spending time there.
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