Category Archives: slice of life

Internet rationing

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Hey, I must be watching too much anime…

My Internet access is being rationed. No, not by the government – that would not fly here in Norway, not even now. I am talking divine intervention, or something very similar.

Back in Riverview, I had fiberoptic Internet access. The speed was over the top: I could download a movie in a few seconds, if I wanted. It was several times more than I felt I needed. But hey, I like supporting technologies of the future, when I can afford it. Also, the price was about the same as for slower access, except I had to pay the equivalent of a weeks salary up front to get it installed in the first place.

When I moved to the House of Cherries, I did not want to pay a lot up front when I don’t know how long I will stay, so I opted for DSL instead of fiber. Then after some days I got a mail from the ISP that they could install it on September 20th. Half of July, all of August and most of September? If I could do without it that long, I could do without it for the rest of my stay here, if not the rest of my life. I would basically have proved that I don’t need broadband. Which is technically true: I don’t need it to survive (although I do need it to work from home*). I can live without it, but it is not a lifestyle fit for the zeroth world.

(*Further testing shows that I can actually connect to work using my mobile phone’s wireless broadband and an USB cable. This is an undocumented feature. Thanks to the voices in my head for making me test this today.)

So anyway, I canceled my DSL order and instead ordered a Galaxy Tab and wireless broadband to go with it. This device is said to be able to provide wireless hotspot, which would let me work from home if I am too sick to commute but not to think.  Between this and the wireless broadband in my mobile phone, I would also have enough premium capacity for all my Internet use. (Norwegian providers give unlimited use, but speed is drastically reduced after a certain amount of download, in my case 8GB, about half a month of normal use for me.)

The Galaxy Tab was not in stock, but expected to arrive at August 1. Now ten days later it is expected to arrive on August 11th. You can see what way this is going. If it shows on my next credit card statement and is still not in stock, I will report it as fraud to my card company and let them handle it.

Luckily (right?) the third competitor contacted me. Ice.no have a longer-frequency wireless broadband, so they cover areas in the countryside better with less installations. But they also have decent coverage in the cities. I used them for a while, and did not really have any complaints, but I did not need them anymore. We parted on a somewhat unpleasant note, since they continued to invoice me even after I had got confirmation that my account was discontinued. They even sent the bill to collection, but in all fairness they eventually pulled out without any extra expenses for me.

Now they are back, and offering former customers 9 months at half price. That is pretty sweet, so I sent them my phone number and e-mail. They called me after a while. Now it starts getting funny. See, I was out in the traffic and did not hear the phone until too late. Later I tried to call them back, but for some reason they could not hear me clearly, although I could hear them. Perhaps there is something wrong with the microphone on my Huawei? I think I have called the doctor from it once, but generally I don’t talk, so I would not know if it was defective.

In any case, I gave up. I assume that even if I could make them hear me, and even if they did offer me a subscription, something would happen to delay it until late September anyway. It seems God is playing Sims with me again, or something. Perhaps there is a lesson for me to learn, like, you know, patience? Or perhaps it is just for entertainment. In which case, I hope y’all are entertained now. ^_^ It is not very fun to read about people who get everything they want as soon as they want it, right? I have been told that it doesn’t make for great literature at least. Right now it looks like Someone Up There agrees…

Between gravities

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Looks familiar? It certainly did to me.

I took an hour’s walk today again. I can do that much now, with seemingly no ill effect, at least the same day. We shall see tomorrow. Anyway, I came to a familiar place, where a road splits from the main road right where the river widens to merge with the sea. The road that follows the river, and the river itself, are the ones that pass by “Riverview”, the place where I lived until two weeks ago and had expected to live for many more years.

I followed the road a short stretch. It was so hauntingly familiar. Actually I have only walked that particular stretch once, and it had not really been a good idea even then: It is like 3 hours walk from Møll, I think.  Still, it is the same river, almost indistinguishable, passing farms and low hills, and the same road taking shortcuts but coming back to the river time and again like someone in love and unable to hide it.

Right there, right then, I could feel the familiarigravity shift… if I had continued to walk, it would have felt easier than turning around, easier than turning back to the big town and its streets and shops. I could have just walked on, there are no crossing roads, no way to get lost. I could have just walked straight ahead, all the way home.

Except home isn’t there anymore.

There is just a small, empty house, its windows dark. But I cannot see it like that. That is not how I remember it. Living there even for less than a year and a half made this “gravity well” of familiarity, that was even now calling out for me. Come home! Your life is waiting for you. The kitchen where you know where everything is, the apple tree outside the window, the river, always the river. The water slowly floating past, through the green fields.  Quiet, cool, yet strangely almost alive.

If my feet feel fine, maybe I will take that walk on Saturday. Probably not, but perhaps. If it is not too hot and not raining too much either. Sure it may be three hours, perhaps three and a half. I’d definitely realize that it was a dumb idea by the time I was halfway. But I may still do it, just because I can. Oh, and to check the mail box. Turns out changing the address took longer time than I had expected, so theoretically there might be some mail in it. Statistically unlikely, it usually went weeks between each time I got anything. Well, perhaps a free issue of the local newspaper, I never found a system in when they handed those out. But, you never know. I am sure the mail box is not taken down yet.

I would not need to walk home. The bus passes by a couple times on Saturdays as well, if I just go early enough. Yeah.

But probably I won’t. Now that I am home, it does not look like a very bright idea anymore. But if I go there again… I am not so sure. For a short stretch, perhaps a hundred steps from the large road crossing, the gravities meet and cancel out, reality and memory. Beyond that… it is downhill all the way, even when it is not.

It seems I am able to walk for an hour again now.  Before the foot incident, it was unproblematic to take an hour’s walk and later half an hour the same day, or the other way around. I am not sure exactly how far I could have walked, I did not push it. There is no reason why a few weeks of resting my foot should change that forever. If I go a bit further, a bit faster, I may be able to walk that road each day again, albeit a different part of it. But still walk the road along the river, through the farmland, in the light and the breeze. We shall see. Perhaps that, or perhaps something else. “When men talk about the future, Heaven laughs.” (Or sometimes cries, I guess. Let’s hope not, this time.)

 

Familiarigravity

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I have never seen this bush before, because I had never walked that far from my new home. This probably happens every time I move, but usually I forget to write about it.

I was taking a one-hour walk today, finally, now that my foot is fully recovered. Well, it was meant to be a one-hour walk, but due to familiarigravity, it ended up more like 50-55 minutes.

What is familiarigravity? I can hear you ask. Actually, that is what I would like to know as well! I discovered it for the first time more than 30 years ago, toward the end of my high school years. (Yes, amazingly I have lived a long time already, longer may it last.) What I discovered was that when I leave the places I usually go, and walk into the unfamiliar, even if it is just along a road, I slow down and yet I tire more easily.  Conversely, once I turn around and start walking back home, walking becomes easier and I walk faster without getting more tired. It is as if there is a center of gravity somewhere in the familiar.

No, the road is not actually sloping upward. This is when I walk in flat terrain. If there is actual uphill or downhill, these add or subtract as usual. It is as if there is a second force in addition to gravity, similar to it but weaker and with a different center. This is what I today decided to call “familiarigravity”.

Obviously the law of familiarigravity is a law of the mind, not of matter. But the two are certainly intertwined in us humans. And I sincerely hope they will continue to be so for quite a while yet!

 

I don’t live in Oslo

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I do live in Norway, though. Luckily there have been no terror attacks here on the south coast where I live, so the huge bomb blast in Oslo and the shooting episode are really not much “real” to me than it is to you.

The aftermath will probably be, though. Depending on who is found to be responsible, the political climate will change dramatically, I am sure. There is a strong undercurrent of resentment and scorn toward the Muslim immigrants in Norway. And rightly so, actually! What has happened is that Norway has taken in a large number of refugees from various Muslim countries, for the obvious reason that Muslim countries are among the few where killing people is still government business.

Now, the refugees are not necessarily political opponents, although that happens. They may often be common habitual criminals, which is enough to get you killed in those countries. So they are not criminals because they are Muslims. They are criminals from countries where being a criminal is highly unsafe, and we take them in because, well, we’ve signed various treaties to that effect.

As a result, “Muslims” – as in people form Muslim countries – are now a major part of the criminal underclass. They are responsible for the overwhelming majority of rapes, most robberies and all but a few murders.  (The exception being homegrown psychiatric patients with sufficiently serious mental afflictions, and a few jealous boyfriends.) Again, this has less to do with religion than absence of religions. That does not really help the public opinion though.

So today I put up a brand new smoke detector. I don’t really expect a Kristallnacht thing, or for that matter a preemptive strike by the foreigners, but I do share this house with a family that is not ethnic Norwegian. Since I have only newly arrived, I am not sure how many locals know that I am even living here yet – the upstairs family was alone in the house for some time, and people may still think they are. Just saying. A smoke detector may not be enough if push comes to shove, but it is generally a good idea to have anyway.

So yeah, the bombing could affect me  even that distance, in a subtle and indirect way. But hopefully not.

And hopefully we won’t take a nosedive into “homeland security” society, like a certain other nation that used to be admirable. But you never know. Humans are just barely rational even at the best of times.

On the bright side, if this turns out to actually be an Islamic terrorism, we might finally get a conservative government after the election. That would be a silver lining indeed, since conservatives here in Norway are rather different from the American version. The correct name for them is actually “Moderates”. This is the name of the corresponding Swedish party, “Moderaterna”. I was briefly a member of Moderat Ungdom (Moderate Youth) in high school. And no, it did not mean that I was only moderately young.  Now, however, that would be a more fitting description!

 

Plumbbobs and chandeliers

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Oh, my platinum plumbbob lights up the paintings on my wall…

The plumbbob, of course, is (in addition to an actual real-world tool for finding the direction of Straight Vertical in mines and constuctions) the soul crystal over the head over the small electronic people in The Sims games. Its highest level, the pure white shining Platinum Mood, represent the highest possible level of happiness and contentment. This is how my sims usually live out their later years, and how I usually feel as well.

That seems like useful preface before mentioning that I came across an old country song today, called “Crystal Chandeliers”. Like almost every country song I can think of, it is at the very least verging on the self-pitiful. At least it is better than the Norwegian version, which was the one I could remember. Anyway, I don’t really recommend getting anywhere near country music unless you have a permanent platinum plumbbob of your soul, an unshakable mind, invincible thinking etc, or at least nearly so.

And of course, thinking that you know me, it would be easy for you to read me and a certain someone into that song. After all, I never fit in too well with folks she knew etc etc. But that’s just the way it is – I don’t even fit inn well with the folks I myself know! In fact, I would probably worry if I did.

In any case, the song is pretty, but it is also subtly evil, because it mis-portrays love. Love is not about having expectations of reward, never. Love does not even have expectations about how the other person will behave, even though we would of course want them to Don’t Be Evil (TM). Happiness is different to different people; in part, we are born different, and have different fates.  While there are certain laws of the mind which promote happiness, some people are made for a life of crystal chandeliers, and some for one of plumbbobs. Love only blesses. Love only gives. Love leaves another person with more freedom than than they had before. This is true and essential.

***

So anyway, now I have this overwhelming urge to name one of my minor characters Kristel Chandlers. Although, knowing the madness that seizes new parents, I am convinced such a person already exists somewhere, probably in America.

Quiet entrainment

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Bedroom stereo is up in Cherryview. The diskless computer is connected. And, just in case, a steel plate is under it in case it might otherwise start building up heat. It is time to resume brainwave entrainment. Quietly, very quietly.

(In all fairness, the toddler upstairs seems to be awake till near midnight, so I don’t really think they have much reason to complain even in the unlikely case that they can hear a soft hum around 11 in the night. Now if their cat doesn’t return, they have reason to complain. Hopefully it won’t go that far.)

I am not really surprised that I wake up more often the first week in a new home. Anything else would be unnatural, or supernatural or something. But with the delta brainwave entrainment, it should no longer be a problem, more like an opportunity. Let’s see if we can get that Red Bull out of the lunch before it becomes a habit…

Foot and rain. Oh, and souls.

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Half a minute’s walk from home. Not quite Manhattan.

Another slice of life in the three-dimensional world of Earth! Well, mostly.

On Thursday and Friday after work I walked for half an hour. Saturday morning I took a walk for 45 minutes and another half hour in the afternoon. I could barely notice any pain in my foot even after that. So it seems my foot is almost fully restored. It seems to have been healing at almost supernatural speed from the day I decided to give in and move to this place rather than keep looking for a house. Hmm, that’s an awful lot of coincidence, seeing how it began to hurt only a few hours before I heard that I would have to leave Riverview. The “before” of the previous sentence implies that it is not something my subconscious could do without divine intervention, or at least telepathy. It is still kind of suspicious.

The last part of a long walk is the only time I stay warm lately. Well, except under my duvet. This has probably more to do with the weather than the location. It is around 16 degrees C / 61 F outside, and no sources of heat inside except me, my quad-core computer, my fridge and occasionally the stove or washing machine. Not a lot to heat a family apartment. Those on the second floor probably get a small boost of heat from below, as hot air rises to the ceiling. Given how rare rainy days are here on the south coast, I am not eager to swap with them.

The funny part is that in my home office, the electronic thermometer shows 22 degrees C, which is only about one degree less than when I was wearing boxers and still feeling hot back in Riverview.  (No pictures of that, for some reason.)

***

I guess the topic today is that the body and the soul are highly intertwined, like the spaghetti and the past sauce. Or, to use a more correct but less amusing symbol, like the metal of a coin and the pattern engraved on it.

New research has shown that the placebo effect – the ability of fake medicine to heal – works to some degree even if you know it is placebo. So if your doctor gives you calcium pills to reduce your pain, and tells you that they are actually not supposed to work except for your belief in them, they will still work to some degree. If he does not tell you, they will work better. If the doctor also thinks the pills are genuine painkillers, they will work even better again. I suspect this may be ramped up even more if a whole nation thinks a form of medication works, even if the laws of nature do not explain it.

The other day I had the amusement of meeting someone on Google+ who claimed that his mind did not exist. What was called mind, he insisted, was simply a function of the brain. In my brain, this was translated into the following:
“My computer does not need software! It comes with Windows built-in!”
“Bah, my Mac does not even need Windows! I just turn it on and it works!”

I’ve been working with software since I was a teenager, back in the 70es, and I think this may have influenced my view of the mind. The reality is probably a little different again. But I believe it is the closest metaphor we have right now, and also closer than any metaphor our ancestors ever had. When an atheist goes so far as to deny software, you know that their (un)belief is truly important to them. Whether it can also heal their foot, I do not know.

 

Without broadband

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Computers, computers everywhere, but not a drop of broadband! Or rather, drop may be what it did.

One of the things I first thought about when the house was sold, was broadband access. I had fiber-optic high-speed access. Kind of overkill, but the price was only marginally higher than the slower telephone  cable broadband, except for an initial investment of around $1000, which I found acceptable given that I was renting the place for five years. That cost would happen again if I chose the same solution (it covers stretching fiber-optic cable to the house, while virtually every house older than 10 years has copper cable already).  I can’t keep stretching optical fibers from house to house every year.

So I looked at DSL suppliers, and decided to go back to NextGenTel (a Scandinavian-only ISP), which I had used for several years until I moved to Riverview. The other realistic supplier was the former state monopoly Telenor, which I used before switching to NextGenTel.

I quit Telenor because of their incompetence. On several occasions I was without Internet connection for a week or two, and calling them just resulted in their helpdesk making up some random story to explain, a story which would depend entirely on who I met when I called. The next day someone else would give another story. An engineer would be there tomorrow. No, it was just a temporary glitch. No, they would get an engineer to look at it. Etc, until I happened on one of the few people who actually knew anything, and who could throw a switch to get my Internet back on.

In all fairness, Telenor is OK as long as everything works. I have them for my mobile phone, at least for the time being.

I ordered DSL from NextGenTel when I was sure I was actually going to move to Mandal. To be honest, I did look for houses in the countryside for a while. If my foot had been OK, I might even have gone for the one that was a 45 minute walk from the bus. (Once the move was imminent, my foot started healing rapidly. Another suspicious coincidence.)

Yesterday I got mail from NextGenTel that they would deliver my broadband on September 20th. That is a bit later than the 2-3 weeks their web site advertises and that is specifically mentioned during summer.  Evidently they had forgotten that their workers have summer vacation or something. I called their customer service which verified the mail. They also pointed out that this was the same for the competition, and I am pretty sure it is. For certain values of competition.

I could get ICE.NET wireless broadband in a couple days, and this is probably true because 1) I have had them before and they delivered fast, they just were horribly slow to stop when I tried to end my subscription, and 2) there is no local driving involved, they just send a wireless modem in the mail. Actually I still have their wireless modem and am testing it right now.

Or I could just continue to use my mobile phone as wireless broadband. It does have a flat rate subscription, and unless they have changed policies without me noticing, the only result of “overdraft” is that the download speed is lowered. I am not absolutely sure of this though, and it would be pretty dramatic for someone in the zeroth world to lose data access on the mobile phone!

About that: I whined on Google+ about the 10 week delivery time on broadband, and was met with absolute icy silence instead of the expected shock and outrage over the cruel and unusual treatment. Could it possibly be that this kind of customer “service” is common down in the first world? Do you still have regional monopolies and stuff? Up here in the zeroth world, every day without broadband is like a day in the Dark Ages. It is just unnatural for a modern human to not be able to videoconference, watch movies almost immediately, and play elaborate multiplayer online games while talking on some kind of IP phone. The death of distance is more or less a part of history for us, which is why being without broadband is so unthinkable.

I may end up getting the ICE.NET wireless broadband to supplement the mobile phone. Between them they should provide me with all the bandwidth I may need during July, August and Septembet. There is as usual a 12 month minimum duration, but the first six months are half price, which is quite reasonable indeed. If that applies also for former customers, I may opt for it.

At least if I have to move again (or find a nice house way out in the countryside), ICE.NET uses a frequency that covers a much larger area per base station than mobile phones, so there is hardly any habitable place in Scandinavia that is not covered. I can bring it with me anywhere there is some source of electricity, basically, with no downtime. That may turn out to be a valuable trait if I keep getting chased from place to place with little time to prepare.

I mean, it is not like you folks want to be without my updates even for a day, right?  Right?

Pigsty Project II

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Not literally looking like a pigsty. More like after a tornado or teen home-alone party, some such.

Extremely regular readers – well, probably only myself – will remember the Pigsty Project from last time I moved. It is a year and a half ago, after all. It was quite simple really: Each workday I would carry something, anything, out of the home, never to return. I could be an empty bottle, used batteries (we are not supposed to throw those in the household garbage around here), a used book to give to the second-hand book store. Anything that was not going to be used again, and that did not go in the regular garbage.

I am not sure when I started. If I had been smart, I had started as soon as I heard I would be moving, but I think I only did this the last few weeks. It was complicated by the fact that I also carried things each workday that I would bring to the new house before the actual move, so as to make that less.

I continued for some weeks after I moved too, because frankly there were still things left. Eventually it came to an end.

Yes, I have started it again. Strangely, there was now a multitude of such things. Partly there are new ones, like empty glasses that have held pasta sauce. Partly there are old ones, like the comics I was sure I was going to read again but never did. If I had a couple more months before the move,  I could probably have made it off with them all. But I didn’t.

Needless to say, perhaps, this time I started as soon as I heard I would be moving.  And I intend to continue until I am rid of everything I don’t need. This time, even the old computers will go, even if I have to carry them bit by bit. That is what I think. We shall see what actually happens. Yesterday and today I carried books. For tomorrow I have set a bag of comic books by the door. I brought along the glasses (as opposed to setting them adrift on the river) so they will also have to go.  I think most of the rest I need to get rid of will be fit to throw in the garbage bin.

I got my own garbage bin! Even though it is only half a house. It is certified family residential unit so evidently I get my own. That should help. Well, if I don’t fall back to keeping everything “just in case” once I forget the packing and unpacking. What is the chance?

Once more into those breeches

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Back to work today. But at least I put on trousers and shirt that had not seen fresh air since I moved or thereabout. Possibly the move before that, I am not sure. I could do this for a long time, but I probably won’t. The shirts and many of the trousers are already finding their way into the wardrobe shelves, where they will probably just disappear from my consciousness until I am forced to move again, if ever.

But at least I carried a plastic bag with paperbacks to the city and gave them to the used-book store. And I’ve filled the bag today again, hopefully to repeat the feat tomorrow, unless something gets in the way. I don’t intend to put a book back in the bookshelf unless I feel a nagging suspicion that I would replace it if I lost it. Well, except perhaps to complete a series.

I also discontinued my subscription to the Wimp streaming music service. They showed no interest in getting back the Norwegian composer I had written to them about. There is no point in subscribing to a Norwegian streaming service if it is the Swedish competitor that has the Norwegian composers I want. Spotify is more than enough.

Next up – to stop the fiberoptic Internet subscription at Riverview. But first, sleep. Somehow that always ends up low priority unless I stop myself from doing everything else.