Sunday 21 February 1999

Pic of the day: All right, who ordered snow, express delivery? (At least there were no anchovies.)

Sat up late into the night, playing Civ2. Humiliating, the computer was beating me at my own scenario. This was my Trade World scenario, in which there's more trade almost everywhere, and particularly at sea. Also trade is available almost from the start of the game, and caravans are cheaper and better defended, plus they move faster. (I always felt it was just plain wrong to have a caravan use centuries to get from one town to another.) Anyway, the Greeks beat me without a swordblow. They just plain out-competed me by more aggressive investment and by colonizing every plot of land they could find. My conservative no-risk strategy landed me a rather remote second place, which isn't much when the game is all about winning. I have to try it again from the start ... :)

So what else have I done to add value to the day? Well, washed all dark green shirts I could find. Yes, it's Sunday, and I know some of my fellow Christians think it's sinful to work on Sundays. Well, here's news for you: The Sunday is the holy day of Mithra, not Jesus. Go read your history books. Anyway, if working too much were my main fault, things would have been very different around here. Take my word for it. (And anyway, I'm letting the washing machine do the work. Nyah nyah!)

Oh, and I've visited the websites of Maggie Brazeau and Drew Gillmore, both of whom have taken up writing web journals. I know the two of them from the somewhat peculiar newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan, where they tend to graze along the fringes much as I do. With all due respect for Robert Jordan's books (at least his Wheel of Time series), still the fact is that much of the newsgroup is held together by tangential activities (or, more honestly, totally irrelevant banter). It has become a hang-out for unusually intelligent people, some of whom have a life and some don't.

Stop press! It's snowing outside, snowflakes like small handkerchiefs. I have to go out and look ... Yes, somebody must have ordered a ton of snow for express delivery. Directly from above. If this goes on, we will have winter within the evening. If this were a computer game, I could have whined about the lack of realism...

I still have a bit of floor space free, and have toyed with the idea of buying an indoor bike. That way I could save on the heating bill in winter. And it requires less floor space than the current alternative heating system, dancing alone to the latest album from Infinity. The downside is that these training bikes are expensive, and I'm broke. Well, I'm going to be broke when I've paid all my bills. No, I'm not going to sell my shares, not for someone else's wedding. It's a bad time to sell shares here in Norway - we've already since last summer been on the economic downturn that America will have soon. Lucky thing we got it too - people were starting to really lose their slippery grip on reality.

Visit the Diary Farm for the diaries I've put out to pasture until they buy the farm:
January 1999
December 1998
November 1998