Thursday 30 August 2001

Pic of the day: The Diarist.net awards are out! No, I didn't win any, but one can always dream, right? (And I bet they couldn't make Sims do that.) -Actually, being worshipped is against my religion, but instead you may read my rants!

Rant day

Oh-kay! I may not have given netcom.no 7x70 chances, but not far from it. This is it, you pathetic losers. Not that I have anything against pathetic losers, but one should be that in private, not for money. Exit netcom.no, my e-mail address is currently itlandm@online.no. At least until they are bought out or change their name for some silly reason, as online things always seem to do. This one has been the most stable so far. I will continue to read incoming mail on the netcom address for a while, but any replies will be through the professional company.

I have a strong tendency to support the underdog, but not when the underdog bites the hand that feeds it.

***

On a distantly related note, this seems like a good time to ridicule all those of my fellow nerds who are young enough to hate Microsoft. Ungrateful kids. You don't remember what Microsoft did for us in 1945. No, wait, that was not Microsoft. Microsoft was in the 1980es, when you kids were born. Until then, computing had been in the grips of IBM, who did whatever they wanted in Heaven and on Earth. OK, not in Heaven, but they would have if they could. But then God sent Bill Gates, and there was a great battle in the spirit world, and IBM was thrown down. And there was much rejoicing. From then on, you could run the same programs on any of dozens of cheap computer brands. The competition brought the prices tumbling down and down and down, until even students and pensioners could have their own computer with Internet access.

Today, the kids think they are doing some great and holy quest by latching on to some tiny little operating system whose main claim to greatness is that it is incompatible with MS Windows. Incidentally, each of these systems is also subtly incompatible with the others. Fine, just sit there tweaking your code. Let's just call it "code masturbation". As long as that satisfies you, have fun.

OK, so I only wrote all this because I went to the FreeCiv website and found that the windows version was mysteriously absent. The link returned a "file not found". So I was peeved.

That doesn't mean it isn't all true. If I had made my debt collection software for some obscure "compile it yourself" operating system, companies would likely never have been able to use it and save millions, as they did. (Not that I ever saw much of those millions, but it did provide a moderate living for my friends over ten years time.) Any idealism that doesn't actually help anyone is labelled "{cutesyname} masturbation" by me. Your mileage may vary. If so, by all means write me.

***

And what's up with the Diarist.net Awards? Every quarter of a year, there is a new bunch of awards, and as surely as "amen" in church, there is a stampede of disappointed people who think it's just a popularity contest and it's the same people who get awards over and over and over. Verily I say unto y'all: "Duh!"

It's the same with the Oscars too. Always the same people. Never me. I'm not even nominated for an Oscar. What's that guy from Gladiator (can't remember his name, something about a crow) got that I haven't? People just don't recognize greatness when they see it ... I'll tell you one thing, mr Crow-something. Yeah, the girls all touch themselves in inappropriate places when they see you on television, and you may think you rule the world now. But I'll give you one, just one piece of advice. Never try to invade Russia in the winter.

Anyway, back to the awards. I wouldn't be in the least surprised if someone nominated this very entry for the "Best rant" category. That would be just like my kind of luck. You see, I almost never rant.

I've been featured two times in Al Schroder's Lives Online webzine. Now, I love Al like a brother, and it is a great honor, and stuff. But the first time was for a comedic entry, about a talking toy mucking up my workday. But I almost never write comedy. Apart from some sarcasm, intentional humor is about as common in the Chaos Node as palm trees in Norway. The second was for drama, I think, when my mother was dying. But I almost never write drama either. (Thank the Light for that, I don't have people dying all the time, may it continue that way.) So anyway, all the people who came to see the drama are probably gone now.

Why is there no category for "Best verbose exposition"? Or "Best rave about old, out-of-stock computer games"? I think I would have a chance there. And best of all, I'd have the staying power to satisfy those who came for all their verbose exposition needs.

I may not have the quality, but I sure have the quantity. And the diversity. And the tenacity. (Boy, that word sounds a lot more heroic and manly than "clinginess". Gotta love that Latin legacy.)

I want you all to know that tonight I had decided to write really short. Just a few short aphorisms before bedtime. Yeah, right ...