The Candle of God is awesome, but it is quite religious in nature, and I think I may already be over-representing that part of my life here, compared to in practice. It is easy to write about spiritual things because the ever helpful fountain in my mind could probably feed me stuff to write for a thousand years, if I were worthy to write it all. I am not, so let us ration it for realism.

I still managed to complete one Incarnate trial in City of Heroes, and do a couple rounds in Mission Architect with two Masterminds.  Technically they are in City of Villains, but they stay in the Architect building and only do heroic missions, waiting to become old enough to move over to “blueside”, as we call the Hero part of the game. The other part is of course “redside”.

(It is worth noticing that in Europe, and presumably the rest of the world outside the USA, red is the color of socialism and blue of conservatism, as is good and proper. That’s why China does not fly a blue flag, for instance.)

The weather is a bit chillier here again, but not anywhere near snowing. Today was overcast most of the way to work and all the way home, meaning I could read on the commute bus! I love the relatively few overcast days we have, since I get migraine if I read in direct sunshine. It is only a 5-point disadvantage, and well worth the extra points I got to spend on IQ. :p  But the south coast of Norway has a LOT of sunshine, not that this makes it warm except in the summer.  I love overcast days and the dark season because of the reading.  Of course, I can always meditate, but the commute is like my dedicated reading time, when the weather allows.

That should be enough! It is midnight. Oh, and in the programming language C, the expression ++ after  a variable means to increase that variable by one, which can be done in passing, so to say. Thus “day++” means we’ve added one more day. But unlike in programming, I can’t see how far this variable will go before it ends.

On the other hand, nobody knows how far the US DEBT CLOCK will go before it ends either. Feel free to stare at it for some hours and gain wisdom in the heart, or something.

Yes you should! That’s what public libraries are for. And their modern equivalent, the Pirate Bay. For all the books you couldn’t buy anyway, either because you’re a broke high school student or because you are not part of the Chosen People according to B&N. Or at least if you do, I won’t be condemning you, since I just did the same thing…

On a list of most counter-productive things to do, stealing religious material must be somewhere close to the top! So how did I end up downloading this book about the afterlife from Pirate Bay?

It all started with my reading about Purgatory, a Catholic invention (except it also appears in other religions, just not in the Bible, probably not). Raised in a distinctly non-Catholic corner of Europe, I found the notion rather quaint until recently, when I actually came to that part in Dante’s Divine Comedy. I still doubt it happens after death, or at least if it does, it is probably only as a continuation of a process initiated in this life.

Be that as it may, Wikipedia somehow pointed me in the direction of this book, What Dreams May Come, by Matheson. Known as a horror writer until then, he had decided to write a fiction based on his own belief about the afterlife, the result of careful studies of a broad range of different sources.

Now, I could order the book in paperback and it would be here in a couple weeks, by which time I would have forgotten the whole thing. Or I could buy the ebook. I went to Amazon and tried to find the Kindle version, but there was none. Well, the book is not new by any means, and perhaps not all that popular despite there being made an inferior movie from it.

I did not give up that fast though. Further search on Google led me to Google ebooks, which had an Android readable version. Yay! But… pressing the button had no effect. Another Google search verified my suspicion: Only available in the United States. Well, that’s Google Books for you. Evidently this is a generic policy of theirs, due up for revision sometime this year.  Google is under the watchful eyes of governments and corporations all over the world hoping for them to make a misstep, so I can see why they would be cautious in the legal minefield that is copyright.

Barnes and Noble had the book in Nook version! Yay! I made a new B&N account. (My previous account there disappeared into the void when they decided to give up on ebooks some years ago and closed down their ebook store along with the books I had bought from them and which they had, at the time of sale, told me that they would keep in their “library” so that I could download it to whichever device I wanted. Now that they have the Nook, they are back, but my books are not.) I actually gave them my credit card details and some such, before they suddenly decided it was time to inform me that I needed a US billing address.

I spent another hour or two looking for any way of buying it the ebook. And then I downloaded it from Pirate Bay.

If B&N or Google wants the $9.99, they just have to write me and tell me how to pay them. You see, it was paying I spent more than two hours in vain trying to do. Getting the actual text to my computer screen takes about a minute, perhaps a little less.

This is not unique for this book, or even for books in general. The actual books, music, movies etc are readily available on Pirate Bay (Sweden) and other file sharing sites. Getting them takes minutes at most – usually only seconds with my fiber connection. Getting to pay for them is a nightmare. “No, we don’t want your dirty non-American money. Go away! If there is a world outside the US, we don’t want to know about it.”

While I could easily spend all my free time downloading books, music and movies from file sharing sites, I generally don’t. If there is someone, anyone, who sells the stuff I want legally, I’d rather buy it from them. Otherwise I usually skip it. After all, I have produced intellectual property myself for many years, as a software developer. If people had copied my programs when they were available for sale, I would have not lost any sleep about setting their house on fire while they slept. That’s how I felt about it back then. I have mellowed a bit since then. -_-  But generally I don’t like piracy.

There goes a line, however, and it seems to go with people who first steal my stuff and then refuse to trade with me. Hi B&N? I have upped my standards, now up yours!

***

In more pleasant memories, I actually first met the teachings of Master Ryuho Okawa when I downloaded an animated movie of his, The Laws of Eternity, from a fellow on the Internet who gave the impression that it was free.  When I learned that it was actually a professional movie that had made the rounds at the movie theaters in Japan, I wrote to the nearest Happy Science temple and asked how to buy this and other movies by Mr Okawa. They were quite helpful, although in this case they had to redirect me to an address in Japan, where IRH Press is located. I have since bought all the publicly available books in English by them, so it is rather a “Happy” ending for them, I would say.

(Incidentally, the afterlife described in What Dreams May Come is fairly similar to that of Laws of Eternity, except it does not move beyond the fourth or fifth dimension.)

***

Generally, I am not convinced that copying is theft. I suppose if Jesus had multiplied the loaves and fishes today, the bakeries and fisheries would have sued him, but I obviously disagree. (In fact, matter-structure multiplication may quite possibly become commonplace in the not too distant future, which will raise some interesting questions.)

I do however feel that people who give something of value to others should be compensated for it, and currently buying their stuff is the most convenient way of doing so, even though greedy middlemen run off with most of the profit. Hopefully in the future writers, musicians etc will be able to collect donations in a more direct way, but for now, buying is usually the best way.

And for the record, I do not expect or even accept any financial recompense for my own writing, thank you very much! ^_^

(In fact, while I would frown on putting your name under anything I write, it is quite fine to present it as “Some guy on the Internet once said…” Just don’t try to sell it.)

I have returned from a two day business trip. It was not a pleasant experience, as these never are, and I’m likely to lose a moderate amount of money rather than getting paid for the extra time my job has kept me away from home. Nor was it voluntary, except in the sense that I volunteered to not quit my job or lie and say I was too sick to go. I may try to refuse next time. There will probably be a next time if I live, even though there is very little to gain from these seminars that could not have been achieved faster and cheaper. Or so it seems to me. Perhaps neurotypicals need these kind of experiences. They certainly don’t seem to mind.

That said, I love my job and it is like with friends: You can’t expect them to be perfect. Especially when you’re not perfect yourself, and I am not. (I think that should be obvious from my archives.)

I am grateful that I have a job where I can help people and get paid for it.  But this trip had very little of the first and less than usual of the second, so I am not enthusiastic about it. That said, it was not a soul-crushing suffering either. Kind of like a bad cold, I guess.

And I came home unharmed. Well, essentially. I usually get sick the day after a trip. At least it is something like 10-15 years since I have had an overnight trip and not got sick afterwards, if memory serves. It is not a big deal, just the body ridding itself of the unusual forms of food eaten at unusual times. I have eaten very little on this trip, so there should not be much to get rid of. But it means another day off from work.

Oh, and the tooth is broken again, the one that was glued on last year. (I think it was last year.) Usually it breaks when I buy a new laptop. I don’t really need any more laptops, but the trip made it clear that I could use a new battery in my HTC Hero. Either that, or a new phone, if the price is approximately the same. By now, it really only holds charge for actual use between home and work, where I recharge it again. For a day trip I can only use it a few times a day to check mail, twitter and Facebook, and it still runs dry.

At least it lasts more than five minutes, which was about how long the next-to-last phone held charge when I gave up on it.  Since I did not actually use the phone back then, I did not notice.  Now that there is Internet on the phone, I tend to use it to stay in touch, much like other humans do, except they talk and I read. And occasionally write.

Took this pretty picture recently, but not today, as I was home sick. I got better over the course of the day though, and feel completely healthy now.

We’ve had a couple beautiful spring days. The ice is breaking on the river. Relax, it is a quiet and dignified breaking this year, and even last year when it was more violent, there was no risk of flooding at all. Far from it. It is kind of fascinating to watch though.

The woodlice, however, live more precariously. They are coming out in droves and crawl underfoot. I am not sure whether they actually eat wood, but if so it is kind of worrying that they are so plentiful.  At least we don’t have termites here up north!

Meteorologists say that winter will return later this week, so perhaps we get two (or more) springs this year? For the price of one!  Actually there is still snow cover on the fields, although it is gone around the house and other objects that absorb the sunshine and gives off heat.

Spring is a wonderful time here up north. Yesterday it was sunshine both when I went to work and when I came home. It is not many weeks since it was dark both times. It really has changed fast. I think of these days as “white spring”, when the snow is still around many places but melting fast. Then comes the “brown spring”, where the plants seem uncertain as to whether they really can trust the winter to have ended. A few courageous flowers make a stand by the roadside. And finally the “green spring” when they throw caution to the mild winds and put on the light green dress, and the rest of the flowers hurry to open up.

But I wrote about this last year too, did I not? “Believe in the coming Age of the Sun.”

You know, the one who gave me one night’s warning as to his arrival?

Didn’t show up. I was home all workday and saw neither hide nor hair of him, as the British say.

I am still not irritated. I got a good deal of reading done, and my boss was quite understanding.

But I think it would have been appropriate to at least put another paper slip in my mailbox explaining why he could not come and when he will come instead, if ever.

If you get in a situation where you have to break an appointment, or simply discover that you have forgotten it, what do you do? Do you call, send an email, write a letter, or just hope nobody notices?

When I came home from work late in the afternoon, there was a message in my (physical) mailbox from the chimney sweeper. He is coming tomorrow between 8 and 12 to sweep the chimney.

I am not sure how this is in your various countries, but here in Norway, the sweeper is working for the authorities. This makes a certain sense, since the firemen also are, and this guy is basically a more humane alternative.

That said, half a day’s alert is just crazy. Later this month, I am supposed to be in Oslo for a day, which could well cause me to stay two nights at hotel (if I am well enough to travel in the first place). There might also be private reasons for me to not check my mailbox every single day.

Leaving that aside, I usually work on workdays. (Surprise, surprise.) Tomorrow I have a telephone meeting that was scheduled some time ago. Unless this chimney sweeping is finished before 10, these two events won’t happen on the same day.

I am also supposed to have a fire resistant soot container ready for the occasion. I am not sure what exactly that is supposed to be. A steel bucket perhaps?  They had those in my childhood. I am certainly not likely to find one here over the course of the night.  As it happens, even if I had a car, the shops were closed when I found the message, and will still be closed when I begin waiting for his arrival.

Well, I can’t say it irritates me. If he freaks out because I have not magically prepared the mysterious container, I might be a little irritated. I just have to make the best out of it. But dear reader: Please don’t be that kind of person, because it is dumb, or more exactly thoughtless.