Category Archives: slice of life

More imaginary magic books

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There is no end to the writing of books!

I recently wrote about my latest fiction project, tentatively called The 1001st Book. It is based on an ancient archetype of the wizard as a person who has first and foremost knowledge. In modern role-playing games and many fantasy novels, being a mage is something you are born to. You still need to memorize spells in some cases, but that is pretty much it. That is not how it used to be! In times of old, the wizard was both feared and respected, not just for his power but for his knowledge. The wizard was old and, well, wizened. A long life of poring over esoteric tomes had given him an uncanny knowledge of things beyond mortal ken.

I have realized in retrospect that what I am trying to do is modernize this archetype. And I try to do so by starting at the point where the wizard diverges from the ordinary people, the “muggles” or whatever they are called these days. This happens when he first begins studying esoteric books: Books of hidden knowledge, but usually hidden in plain sight.

Not to get excessively autobiographical here, but I dabble in esoteric books myself, and I can see how this would generally require some maturity to even get started.

Another influence on this particular piece of fiction is the Japanese new religion Happy Science and the valiant attempts by its founder to make religious knowledge available for people of average intelligence or even a little below. I recently saw (in a computer game, of all places) theology explained this way: “It’s like religion, but with more deep-thoughtiness.” It is this deeper thinking that is glaringly absent in most religious people you will hear of, and probably also most you will meet. They have some basic knowledge, but they don’t have a deep, wide understanding.

But this story is not about theology or Happy Science. Rather it points back to the traditional wizard archetype, where esoteric knowledge spilled over into the physical world, a literal understanding of “knowledge is power”. It was thought that a wizard could command various spirits, or knew hidden properties of plants or stones or animals, or could consult the stars. By combining diverse parts of this wide-ranging knowledge, he could accomplish things that seemed miraculous to ordinary people.

In The 1001st Book, each of the 20 000 Books of Truth contain just one arcane sigil. The rest of each book explains the concept which the sigil represents, the true knowledge associated with it, and its place in the grand scheme of things. While the lines drawn to shape the sigil are indeed memorized, the rest of the tome has to be understood. It is a process of cognition and cogitation, so to speak. You have to understand it and think about it. Only when you have fully understood the concept and its implications, can you use the sigil – an ancient word for “seal”, see Latin “sigillum Sanctum”, holy seal. (Possibly also Hebrew “segulah”, meaning an esoteric component or some such.) For the purpose of this fiction, we shall assume that the sigil is the seal on the knowledge of the book: It sums up and represents the deep and wide understanding the reader has acquired.

Needless to say, the power of this knowledge increases as you add more books, and become able to see the connections between all kinds of things. It does not just add up, it multiplies, because you can combine them in all kinds of interesting ways.

So how do you stay alive long enough to read hundreds or even thousands of heavy tomes? Ancient portrayals of wizards usually showed them as very ancient, and it was assumed that their art kept them alive. In my story, I have a somewhat more straightforward explanation: The Gift of Thoth, as it is called by the locals, comes from the fact that the magician does not age while occupied with the Art. Whether studying on the tomes, meditating on the sublime Truth learned in them, or actually using the Art in practice, the magician is in a state of  “otherness”, in which the mind is under the sway of the Spirit World rather than the material world.

This is an extension of a topic I wrote about (non-fiction, to the best of my knowledge) recently: That certain activities seem to prolong your life by about as much as you spend on them. In real life, religious participation and meditation seem to be among these. So it is no big leap of imagination to extend this to study of Books of Truth.

As for the actual scenes, these often come while I take a walk. This is the usual for me and fiction. The best length seems to be 10-20 minutes. Much less and I don’t have time for a full scene to form in my head. More, and my brain buffer overflows and I have to repeat the text I have written in my head so it doesn’t disappear. (It still changes a bit when I write it down, but usually is still recognizable.)

I know I have written before about walking and getting fiction “revelations”, but it still works that way, and it may be useful for whoever is reading this. It is unlikely that anyone would read this far unless they are into fiction writing themselves, right?

Opposite of starvation

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Which of these represent the opposite of starvation? Sim-Magnus or the imaginary sim-Tuva? The answer may surprise you.

I first wanted to call this entry “anti-starvation”, but that sounds like a humanitarian organization.

I have a few times mentioned my own brush with starvation in 2005. It was certainly not in the developing country manner, but rather a medical situation that led me to steadily lose weight until my body started to adapt to the lack of food in several ways. The most obvious was perhaps the way it influenced my mind, with a kind of chronic hunger, which continued even after eating. There were other changes as well, and one of them may ironically have resulted in its opposite, which is the topic of today.

The opposite of starvation is probably the complex state of health often called “metabolic syndrome”. Actually the professional usage of this phrase may be a bit more precise. But as I am now in a state of pre-diabetes, a still mostly harmless form of the syndrome, I cannot help but notice the parallels.

When starving, my brain stem was hungry even when my stomach was full. I wanted to just keep eating, even though reason convinced me that I would just get sick. Now, it is the other way around: My stomach is bullying me to eat by the unpleasant gnawing feeling, but my brain stem would rather that I didn’t. I feel fed even when I wake up in the morning.  And rightly so.

***

Yesterday a couple hours after lunch I took a fairly long walk that burned 800 calories.  OK, I would probably have burned 100 of them even if I stayed at home, but anyway. I didn’t eat anything when I came home, because I had a doctor appointment next day and was told to fast the night before. So I went to bed, and woke up the next morning feeling completely restored. I could have taken another walk till my legs grew stiff, and probably another and another if I rested a while in between. I was not hungry at all, until my stomach began gnawing.  And my brain stem was right, while my stomach was wrong: My fasting blood sugar was 6.1 mmol. Not sure what that is in American measures, but the recommended upper limit is 6 mmol, and in some publications 5.8. So despite being physically active, I am still pre-diabetic. In fact, it seems that my body has decided 6.1 is the new standard (it was the same last time too), which it returns to after exercise.

This is in theory good news.  Not having to eat is money saved, right? Unfortunately the stomach disagrees. I am still experimenting to find ways to keep it from pestering me. I guess the best I can do is to just keep stopping before I am full, and hope that it will gradually learn to expect smaller and smaller portions.

Feeling over-fed by a small meal is certainly less unplesant than feeling hungry after a big one, so I can see why people just keep forging ahead until they get diabetes, hypertension and atherosclerosis. After all, we are programmed by our instincts to avoid starvation if possible. The safeguards on the opposite side are not nearly as formidable. But they are there, if you pay attention. And if you have tried both, you may recognize the opposite of starvation simply by listening to your own body, even before you hear it from your doctor.

***

I mentioned that the near-starvation may have somehow triggered its opposite. The body is known to do unusual things when facing unusual situations. And this is unusual indeed: Before the illness began at Easter 2005, I used to weigh close to 95 kg. (One kg is roughly 2 pounds, but not exactly.) This seemed to be a practical upper limit, as I stayed close to it for a decade or more perhaps. Occasionally I would dip down to 93, but usually I was in the 94-95 interval.

Now the limit seems to be at 88. That is good, right? No, actually, it is not that simple. When I was 95, the fat was distributed differently. I had a larger paunch (gut bulge), true, but I also had permanent fat deposits on my backside and thighs. Not enough to compete with your average housewife, of course, but plenty for a man and pretty obvious when looking back at some of the pictures from around the turn of the century. This kind of fat is harmless, possibly even healthy. It is only released in case of starvation.

And of course that was what happened, even if it went no further than that. No matchstick arms and protruding ribs and all that. But my body fat was gone. And when it returned, it did not return to where it had been. Now it is almost completely concentrated around my kidneys and thereabout. This type of fat, which is more common in men than in women, can be released very quickly to the bloodstream. It does not even take hunger, just stress.  Get angry or afraid, and delicious fat pours into the blood, ready to fuel your battle.

I consider this a poor exchange for my built-in sitting pillow. But this is the kind of thing that could happen if you are successful with your dieting. Luckily, most people give up after losing about 5% of their body mass in fat, so the effect on their body is quite limited. I will probably be one of them if I decide to lose weight at all. The doctor recommends it, although he is satisfied as long as I don’t gain weight, and stay physically active.  The irony is that I am not visibly “fat” at all. I don’t have the other symptoms of metabolic syndrome either, but if I had not convinced my body that it was starving, I might have been fatter and still healthier.

 

Beep! Zeroth world problem

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In a few war-torn countries, food is still scarce. In most of the developing world, worries are such as getting new shoes for the kids before they outgrow the old. In America, millions of unemployed wait in various degrees of dread for the utility bill, after a summer so scorching hot, a friend compared it to Satan leaving the door to Hell open. (One may doubt the door to Hell is in America, but if the road to it is paved with good intentions…)

So what do we worry about in scenic Norway?

Me, I fed my electronic pulse watch with my age, weight and sex. (“Male”, as “No, thanks” was not an option…) The watch calculated my exercise frame to be from 117 to 133 beats per minute. Fine. But it also insists on beeping if my pulse is outside the boundaries. Beep! Beep! And it just so happens that walking fast usually takes me to a pulse of 115, and there it stops. So, alternative 1, walking through the town with my watch beeping furiously.

If on the other hand I try to run, my pulse quickly goes over the higher value, and the watch beeps even faster. Beep beep beep! And more importantly, running also triggers my exercise asthma. So it is something I just don’t do, unless the alternative is likely death.

The obvious solution is to run a few yards to get the pulse up, then walk until it approaches 117 again, and run some more. Unfortunately this looks just as crazy as walking around with a beeping watch. That was not much of a problem way out in the countryside, but the first and last 15 minutes are through the town where hundreds of people are staring, at least if you act crazy.

So how did I solve this? By listening to the voice in my head telling me to Google for the product name and how to turn off sound. A PDF of the user guide (which I had lost) contained a description that, with a little trial and error, did the trick.

So the key to not be seen as crazy is to listen to the voices in your head. Bet you wouldn’t have thought of that!

(OK, it is not literally a voice, like with schizophrenia. More like an independent thought. Still, it amuses me.)

Anyway, I sped up once I was out of the town center, and burned 700+ calories, so I thought it was worth it.

Bach to basics

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“The grownup wish of cultivating wholesome young men will never come true.” That is a lot more convincing if you aren’t listening to Bach.

I may be a pretty happy person overall, but I am far from perfect. For instance, I am rather incompetent at my job. Even though I now love it, in theory at least, I seem to have a hard time improving. I am not even looking to advance in my career, more like being able to fill a whole workday with actually useful work when there is not an emergency.

In all fairness, our staff is dimensioned to handle a near-emergency. We do get overloaded when all khaos breaks loose, but we do have some over-capacity on a quiet summer day. Anyway, I am sure I could expand my ability and scope with more dedication. But it didn’t happen today either. And then I went home.

***

I came home about half past five (17:30), or an hour after I left work. I sleep or read on the bus home, so that is time well spent. But after that the hours went by, and by the time I took my daily walk the clock was a quarter to nine (20:45). As I walked, I wondered how I had managed to spend that much time doing nothing.

Well, part of it was writing yesterday’s entry. Even though I backdated it to the time I went to bed yesterday, I had it only sketched out in my head. It changed a bit in writing, and grew larger, and there was the actual physical writing as well. So that took some time.

I read and commented on a couple illustrated Sims stories by an online friend. I know from experience how much work goes into Sims stories. Even though my own Micropolis story line was edifying to myself and others, I just don’t have that kind of time on my hand anymore, I feel. In addition to playing the game, you have to take pictures, and later write out the story and resize the pictures, perhaps adding captions or effects. Anyway, I didn’t do that today, I just read and commented, which I feel they deserve.

I spent some time catching up with an unexpectedly long discussion in which I had participated earlier in the day on Google+. The question was basically whether government was universal or a human invention. I weighed in with the conviction that on another planet, people may not need government because they all follow the voice in their head, which would teach them everything and remind them of everything. Opinions were somewhat divided on whether this was a good thing, but I think it is clear that it would make government as we know it superfluous.

Furthermore I opined that even on our planet it is possible for an individual to outgrow the need to be governed by others, and instead govern oneself. I don’t think that is particularly far-fetched, since there is already considerable variation in how much various individuals need to be governed. And even the same person can change over time.

I also spent a little time setting up the Galaxy Tab with the new SIM card, which arrived on Friday but the PIN code did not arrive until today. Once it had a new SIM card, Google’s 2-step verification stopped recognizing the whole tablet. So I had to generate a new verification password for that as well.

But at least I found time to listen to Bach’s Toccato and Fugue in D minor for organ!  Surely that at least is time well spent. I reserve judgment on Ryuho Okawa’s assertion that Bach was actually an archangel, but I can understand why someone would think so. I do believe his music has increased the happiness of many people: Not mainly in the form of an immediate, upbeat joy, but rather by refining – or calibrating? – the soul of those who have reached a level where this kind of music can touch them.

Perhaps I should consider more seriously my threat of listening to some Bach each day – except each day is already this short. In fact, it is over right about now. It is my scheduled bedtime, and I have not even found time to play computer games or watch anime! What is the world coming to?

Family hit and miss

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My earthly father Erling Itland, my brother Arnar Itland and his wife Oddfrid. I almost missed them, due to the recent disturbance in the force.

I had believed, or at least fervently hoped, that the string of unlikely coincidences would come to a halt now that the Galaxy Tab was in my grubby hands. Not quite so. Remember what I wrote on Saturday, when I had moved the SIM card from the mobile phone to the tablet? “People who know me well enough to call me, know me well enough not to. They will instead send a mail or, failing that, a text message.” Yes, that is how it has been so far this year, and some time before that, if I remember correctly. Not this weekend though.

For the first time in so long that I don’t remember last time, someone unexpectedly called my cell phone. On Sunday evening. I was probably out walking, but in any case, I did not hear the tablet ring. (I assume it rings when you phone it, because it can be used as a mobile phone. Headset strongly recommended.) So, after hundreds of days of not getting a call while I carried my phone on me pretty much everywhere except in the shower, the day after I stopped wearing it everywhere, it rings. The chance is, obviously, one to a couple hundred or so. Not a miracle, but extremely suspicious given the string of unlikely events before. Just saying.

***

The person who called was my older brother Arnar, who wanted to visit me together with his wife and our earthly father. I have three older brothers, actually; Arnar is the saintly one. Luckily he is also the one who has a lot of children, with the enthusiastic cooperation of the aforementioned wife. I dare say there was no coercion involved in the mass production of offspring, certainly not from his side. And it has paid off handsomely: Several of the children have grown up to become awesome. Twinkling lights in the gene pool and all that.

Anyway, I found the “missed call” messages on the phone the next morning. It turns out that the three of them had made their way to Riverview and found it deserted, then a neighbor had helped them find out where I had moved (well done, neighbor). So they came here, and talked with the lady upstairs, but did not find me. -_-

Luckily, they had some time tonight as well, so they stopped by a couple hours. It seems to be about ten years since I have seen my brother and his wife. I was not aware that it was quite that long, but I knew it was close to that. The father has been here on the south coast once or twice since, as have the other two brothers with family. If Mohammad will not come to the mountain, the mountain must come to Mohammad, evidently.

The amusing part was that we interacted pretty quickly as if no time had passed. Of course, much time has passed, and I at least have changed a lot lately. But we did not talk about that.

They thought I looked the same as I did 10 years ago, but that is not actually true: My hairline has been steadily receding. It now looks like Arnar’s did 10 years ago. In fact, we seem to grow more and more alike physically with each passing year. However, unlike me he can still eat fat. In fact, they all did so with great enthusiasm, having brought eggs and butter and borrowing my frying pan.

In any case, it was a welcome visit, and I am glad they had this extra day so I did not miss them just because I made another assumption. It was that close, and it is not certain that we are going to all meet again in this life. I am fine with that, really, in the sense that I don’t feel I have things I need to do or undo between us before we leave this world. But I certainly enjoyed their company. As I have said before, my family would have been my friends if we lived in the same part of the country. But we don’t. To some degree, I guess, we don’t even live in the same world. (For instance, they don’t live in the English-speaking world, as my brother pointed out in passing.) They seemed quite happy with their lives, though, and so am I.

The craziness continues…

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It has arrived, at least. (The screen is rather brighter than it looks here – the picture was taken with flash so the screen seems dark in comparison.)

So when I wake up after a long night’s sleep, my first thoughts (or nearly so) go to the Galaxy Tab waiting for me at the post office. After a leisurely morning, I wander off to the post office … or rather, the place where the post office is supposed to be. I checked the tracking message and a couple different maps, they all agree that Mandal post office lies in Arkaden, the mini-mall in the center of the town.

There is no post office. There is a list of the various shops in the mall, and the post office is listed there, but it is not there.

I decide to check on the Net again, and fire up my trusty (?) Huawei Titan smartphone. Unfortunately, it cannot find the Internet anymore. It was there this morning, but it is gone now. I put it in flight mode and back. I turn it off, take out the batteries, wait, and replace them, then do a cold start. Twice.  It cheerfully informs me that yes, there are Telenor networks available, both 2G and 3G. But when I pick one, it works for a while, then plays dumb. “What is this ‘internet’ of which you speak?”

Eventually I walk around the outside of the mall, and find a sign telling me that the post office has indeed moved, to Kastellgata 8. Unfortunately I have no idea at the time where Kastellgata is, and the name does not really give any hint in itself. I could have looked it up on Google… if I had Internet access. I start going home.

Partway home, I decide to start the mobile phone again, and lo! It has Internet. I find out where Kastellgata is, and make my way there. It is is within walking distance, but then most of Mandal is, for me. Success! Objective obtained!

I already got the SIM card, so now the only thing I lack is the PIN code. It is not in the letter, which makes sense. Better not have it stolen at the same time as the card, if there are mailbox thieves. For the same reason, it would make no sense to send it in a separate letter to the same address on the same day. But it isn’t here today either.

On the other hand, I have a pretty, shiny paperweight now!

***

You did not think I would stop that easily, did you? On one hand, I have a shiny paperweight without a functioning SIM card. On the other hand, I have a mobile phone with a functioning SIM card. It cannot act as a WiFi hotspot, but the paperweight can. So out goes the one SIM card, and in goes the other. Now, I cannot receive calls with the mobile phone, but that is not something I do every month anyway. People who know me well enough to call me, know me well enough not to. They will instead send a mail or, failing that, a text message.

I have a shiny paperweight that is also a WiFi hotspot! That was the most important reason I bought it, after all, so I should rejoice. Just as soon as I am able to actually log on to my new wireless network. It works just fine with my Huawei Titan smartphone, but that is not much progress, since that is where I had the SIM card before!

Now to the Windows 7 desktop computer where I do most of my writing (and gaming, such as there still is). I look in various plastic bags that are still not emptied from when I moved, and eventually find the Jensen USB wireless dongle. I insert the USB plug. Windows starts installing, then gives up. It does not recognize the device. I install the driver software from the CD. Windows installs it, then ignores it. The latest version is for Windows XP, which may have something to do with it…

I try the Jensen USB wireless in the Vista machine. No go. Then I remember that I had an even older wireless dongle, from D-Link. It seems kind of pointless to try something from my first ever wireless network (not counting the Bluetooth home network I improvised before wireless became available for the masses). But I try it, and it works at once, in Windows 7.

Now that I have Internet access again, I get a one-time password so I can log into my Google account from the Galaxy Tab and access Android Market. (Because I have Google 2-step verification, I needed a special authentication password for my first login on a new device. It is inconvenient, but not as inconvenient as having my Google account hacked, as happened last year.)

And so the long, long row of talking donkeys finally come to an end, and I wonder if I have learned anything from it.

***

As for the Android tablet itself, I shall quote my Google+ report:

The Samsung Galaxy Tab is reasonably nifty for its age. It really is just a big, flat, and somewhat heavy smartphone – but that is good enough for now. The next model seriously needs higher screen resolution, but I find the 7″ size ideal and the weight acceptable, especially seeing that it has great battery life.

The resolution is fine for the Kindle reader, but a bit grainy for Zinio. Facebook, Twitter and Google+ all look as if on a really big smartphone. If there are tablet versions of the apps which make better use of the screen estate, I have yet to see them.

It was probably not worth it, actually. But these are the kind of things I want to support, things I want to see more of in the future, if any: Android tablets (especially the smaller 7″, which is about the size and weight of a smallish book) and wireless networks. So I encourage them with my money. But to tell the Light’s own truth, I suspect that money – and that time – could have been put to better use, if I had been a wiser person. But for now, I am this.

 

Since I am the main character

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This kind of situation turns up often in comics.

This refers back to my entries “Internet Rationing” and “More divine (?) comedy“, about the numerous and unlikely obstacles that arose to me getting the level of Internet access I was used to until July this year. I chose to present these in a lighthearted way – after all, it is not the end of the world if I don’t get to watch new anime or play YouTube the last half of the month. Billions of people don’t get to watch YouTube at all.

Still, a part of me worried if I was stretching things too far. The fate of Balaam came to mind, the prophet who didn’t take a hint and whose donkey eventually had to speak out loud. Even though he survived that particular episode, he came to a sticky end later. I haven’t, so far. Not sure about the people who were involved in the collision today.

See, I had expected some comical ineptitude from the Norwegian postal service. It is still owned by the state, after all, even though it is now organized as a business. As a fiscal conservative – or what we here in Norway call “non-socialist” – I feel obliged to expect  ineptitude from anything state-owned, until there is proof of the opposite. Well, there is proof of the opposite: They discovered that I had moved, while the Samsung Galaxy Tab was still on its way, and redirected it to the post office nearest me. I could follow its progress using its tracking number, and saw that it was waiting for me. It was almost too good to be true. (How often have I said that phrase now?)

The post office closes at 17 (that’s 5 PM in English) so I decided to go home a little earlier today and pick it up. I printed out the collection form at work, and took the earlier bus. Now you can see what I mean. Yes, there was a collision this particular afternoon. No, it did not involve me or the bus I was in. Not except that we were delayed and arrived at the bus station – about 100 yards from the post office – ten seconds to five.  I am not really that fast while carrying a heavy laptop.

You couldn’t make this stuff up. Or you could, but your publisher’s editor would demand you cut it before accepting your novel. Reality, of course, differs from fiction in this, that it does not have to be realistic.

I am not ready to laugh at it all until I know what happened to the people in the cars. There were ambulances, but the cars did not look like the kind of wreckage that leaves body part lying around. They should be fine if they used seat belts and did not have a heart condition. But I have a browser window open on the news report still, waiting to find out how much they had to sacrifice for me to not get my Android device on a Friday afternoon.

Ah, the news are in. One person was sent to hospital for a check after experiencing back pain, the other five were physically unharmed. That could certainly have gone much worse! I feel relieved.

Still, as the Main Character of my story, I hope this thing can turn from a curse to a blessing from now on, somehow.

I am not entirely crazy enough to feel sure three cars collided just to keep me away from my toy for a night. If so, I would certainly be obliged to do something extreme this night to make up for it! But I am led to believe that most of us are the main characters in our own stories, even people who to me seem pretty bland and who even feel so themselves. Evidently not everyone feels life is an exciting adventure that they would love to continue for ever and ever. I do. But on the other hand most people are important to someone, and in that regard I am probably one of the least important characters alive.

In either case, it is rare that a good chess player moves a piece, be it king or pawn, with just one purpose in mind. Of the best players one may say that “even his plans have plans”, and the Light is certainly more forward thinking than even that. Even if everything happens for  a reason, I think very few things happen for only one reason.

The series of coincidences that have racked up about my broadband access is certainly long and unlikely, but there is no single thing in that list that would not be reasonably normal on its own. It is just the way they go on and on that makes it disturbing.  And that is visible only to me, just like the star constellations in the sky are visible only from our solar system: The stars in them are frequently far, far apart and not related in any way except for being aligned as seen from our little speck of space.

 

More fun with sleeping!

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Duvet rolled into caterpillar shape makes for good sleeping! Definitely more so than mobile phones. Believe me: Unlike Kana-chan here, I have tried both.

Rather than meditate for hours, how about using the amazing power of the smartphone to improve sleep quality with less quantity? That is the idea behind applications like the successful SleepCycle app for iPhone. You put it somewhere in the same bed as yourself, and it maps your movements through the night and uploads them to the Internet… no, wait, it uses them to calculate your sleep cycles.

All humans have sleep cycles, evidently. They are not bikes, but structures of our sleep. They last from 90 minutes up to 110 minutes, most commonly the first from what literature tells me. In each such cycle we descend toward deep, slow-wave sleep, and gradually back up toward REM sleep, which is similar to being awake but with intense emotions. At the end of this dreaming, we may wake up for just a moment (but will generally not remember it later) and then sink toward the next deep sleep. If we don’t fall asleep at that point, for instance because we have already slept for 9 hours, we will generally feel pretty good and ready to take on the day. The SleepCycle app tries to wake you up at just such a point, but a cycle or two earlier than you would have woken up naturally. It should still be better than trying to claw your way up from deep sleep.

This is most important to young people, who continue to sink down into delta sleep, the deep silence of the brain, almost every sleep cycle of the night. As we grow older, we tend to only have that deep sleep in the first half of the night.  Now that I am past 50, that seems to be the case with me. (Although if you skip sleep a couple days, you will try to regain that particular type of sleep.) The elderly may have only minutes of deep sleep, some nights none at all. But enough about that.

I don’t have an iPhone, but I do have an Android smartphone. So I downloaded a very similar app, “Sleep as an Droid”. I even tested the sensor, that it was able to register the movements when I tossed or turned on my bed. But even though I tried to use it tonight, the alarm only went off at the last moment, and there were no statistics. I must have somehow gotten the setup wrong, I guess. It is a bit more complex than a common alarm. So I may try again.

On the bright side, it did not catch fire. It is generally a bad idea to cover your smartphone with highly insulating textiles for many hours on end. I tried to place it so that it was not covered, and did succeed, but still I guess it made me a little nervous: I woke up twice during the first few hours of the night. This may have turned to my advantage: I used the opportunity to restart the 2Hz delta brainwave entrainment track on my computer, getting extra doses of deep slow-wave sleep. I certainly was less sleepy than usual at work today, but it was hardly intentional on the part of the sleep app, so to speak.

Also, the phone was not warm at all in the morning, so perhaps I should give it another chance. I’m not putting it under my pillow though!

 

Deceiving myself again

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“Well, I was going to study, but while I was studying I was focusing on other stuff…” Yeah. And I was going to read.

You may wonder whether it counts as deceiving myself if I know it, but I think it does as long as knowing does not change my behavior.

What am I talking about? Well, I have reflected some more on how fate seems to go out of its way to thwart my purchase of more bandwidth and, in particular, a Android tablet. (Not a pill, but a large handheld computer with touchscreen.)

So I thought back a few months, to this past winter in my home in Riverview. The house was old and not too well insulated, and the winter was cold. The electricity price was high, what with the cold winter and a couple dry years behind us. (Norway mostly uses hydropower.) So I thought to myself: “For now, I will just let the living room stay just warm enough to not risk the kitchen freezing. But when the spring comes, and the cold is less extreme, I will fire up the wood stove almost every afternoon and spend my evening in the living room reading a good book.”

The spring came, and eventually became summer. But I only spent a quarter of an hour or so, a couple days, in the living room. Otherwise I stayed glued before the computer, until I started taking the long walks in May, after the serious health scare I had back then.

Now, I am saying to myself: “The Galaxy Tab is perfect for reading. I will sit in the living room each evening reading my e-books on it, instead of playing City of Heroes or The Sims 3 or refreshing Google+.”  Yeah, sure. It is not hard to predict what will happen. After all, as psychologists are fond of saying, “past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior”.

Besides, I already have a couple paper books that I have not read all the way through, and a couple more that merit a reread. But I don’t get out of my boss chair in the home office to go read them. I don’t even go read the comic books that I was planning to read a second time before giving them away.

I know myself too well to even be surprised anymore. But perhaps that is my one and final hope, that I am starting to see through myself?

 

More divine (?) comedy!

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Is some celestial power working against me or something? If so, I hope it is mostly for your entertainment, and not serious like “You won’t need any Internet where you are going, mister.”

See previous entry about the impossibility of getting more than a trickle of Internet access in a town in the world’s arguably most advanced country.

Not easily deterred, I checked Multicom today again, the company where I ordered the Samsung Galaxy Tab. It continues to be pushed one day into the future for each day. Of course, since they have already got their money, they have less than zero incentive to ever order the actual products. So, it is time to cancel the order. But first I look for somewhere else to get the same thing.

The obvious choice is the Netcom site, which sells the actual telecommunication subscriptions with the hardware on the side, rather than the other way around. Unfortunately their pricing is deliberately confusing, I would guess, or else a result of exceptional incompetence. In any case, the minimum price I could figure out from it was substantially higher than the competition. So, onward to Telenor, the former monopoly (and occasionally still acting like one).

They have a rather affordable plan and rather affordable Galaxy Tab as well. It is almost too good to be true. (Wait for it.) I match the hardware to the fixed price plan and go to checkout. There is a form with fields for first name, last name, birth number (like social security number, for foreigners) and e-mail, twice. I dutifully fill out the form and click “To payment”.  The computer works for a while. Then: “Phone number must be filled in.” It sends me back to the same form, where there is no field for phone number.

Somehow I doubt they are going to sell a lot of stuff over their web site … wonder how long they have had this up and not noticed that nobody ever ordered anything? Well, it probably doesn’t matter if you think you are a monopoly. After all, if the peasants don’t want your services, they can suffer. I am sure the CEO will get his bonus no matter what. I am not sure the programmer will, once this reaches the right ears. That may take some months, I guess, this being a multinational company after all.

In such a situation, I am the kind of guy who goes beyond the call of madness… er, duty. So I call the helpline. A voice message greets me and tells me to key in the phone number my request is about. Now, I am trying to buy a NEW account, so there is no phone number. I wait. The voice returns eventually, informing me that I have not keyed in the phone number. There is of course no manual operator and no choice other than the phone number.

I will now use the phone number of my existing phone, in order to get through to them. Watch me.

OK, I got through to a helpful and seemingly competent woman who took down the information. She promised they would send a confirmation e-mail. This is almost too good to be…

Mail arrived. They still have my address in Holum, even though their website said it will be sent to the address in the national registry (which is where the social security number comes in). You cannot change the address – it is locked to avoid identity theft. The postal collect slip will doubtlessly arrive in the mailbox at Riverview – I assume there will be a slip and they don’t just dump the whole box there. As it happens, I have reported my move to the post office, so perhaps they will send it after me to my new address. Or perhaps just the collect slip. Luckily there is a tracing number that I can use to trace it online, so I should be fine.

To be continued… God willing?