Sunday 6 February 2000

Pic of the day: "Last week I saw that Magnus at Chaos Node has those pink cheeks. But he's not a kid! At least, mostly not."
(Poor Jade! I know you didn't mean it that way! But I am a kid, only bigger.)

I've got some stupid e-mails lately, and they're not even about my diary. No, they are from a new breed of rich beggars. Some people around the Mexican border who mail random people begging them to go to an American website that claims to pay people for using the Internet. (Actually for using the Internet while having their dedicated advertising program visible on the screen.) The company exists and it is quite possible that they actually do pay people to watch ads. Others do. Here in Norway we have Digger, a program that occasionally display full screen ads. However, Norway having less people than some American cities, the ads are few and far between. On the bright side, Norwegians probably don't spam the Texans begging them to go to a Norwegian web site.

But just in case, Digilog (the company behind Digger) sent a full-screen paid ad today reminding their users not to send requests to chatrooms, newsgroups or people they don't know, or their accounts would be forfeit. Sounds like a great idea. I went to the website of the American company and saw that they had a similar policy. So I forwarded the junk mail to their abuse dept.

It baffles me that people would think I'd be thankful for good news. When was the last time you thanked Jehovah's Witnesses for bringing the Good News to your door? Much less accumulate brownie points for them at the place they want you to go.

Yes, referrals take many shapes. In the Bible it is implied that the first Christians believed in some kind of referral point system: When you thanked God for someone, it was somehow added to their heavenly account. Nowadays people take a more practical view, I guess. But I kind of like the concept.

Another type of referral is the uquib ... ubiq... commonplace use of links in web pages. Not least by us journal writers. (We have to find ways to extend this thing, and a single head can only hold so much creativity before it explodes.)

For instance, Jade of My Jaded Journey linked to one of my entries recently. Actually it was only to show an example of a grown-up with pink cheeks. (She was talking about my face, though.) Even so, it was sort of nice, don't you think? Plus she writes a nice journal herself; more artistic than mine, not that this takes much. :)

And if that is not enough, tomorrow is the seventh. You know what that means? It means that in all likelyhood, Nova Notes will have its monthly Lives Online special, where you can wallow in journals till you puke, for free. Some of them are almost certainly better than this one, but on the bright side, I've been around for over a year. And there's always enough text in an entry to cure your insomnia.

Speaking of insomnia, I did get less sleep than usual this past night. The left side of my face started hurting late in the evening, and grew progressively worse. Probably a root canal infection or a local sinus infection. It faded in the course of the day. I did eventually sleep some in the morning, and had a longish dream where two national politicians, both women, were debating on radio. Well, debating ... One was from the Center Party, the other from Labor. And the two could not agree more on almost anything. They praised each other no end, and told the astounded listeners how much they admired and respected each other's work etc.

Yeah, that would be the day. Referrals by political opponents.