Wednesday 16 May 2001

Pic of the day: Glory, glory ... (Actually this picture was taken earlier this week. It rained today.)

In local news ...

Fame is mine. Now onward to fortune?

As I left my workplace for lunch, a man approached me, asking if I was the guy who played that game on the Net. I did not get the name of the game, but I said no, since I don't play any game on the Net except FurryMuck and then under my porcupine alias, which only very few people know. (Not that I do anything unseemly, I have just not had any provocation to write much about it.) The man persisted, and eventually the word "Daggerfall" got through the fog. Yes, indeed it was me. One of the world's leading Daggerfall players, specialist in Daggerfall lycanthropy and linguistics. So we talked for a quarter of an hour or so.

It's a strange thing - most readers live scattered all over the world. USA, Japan, Britain, California, Russia, and various parts of Norway come to mind. (Yes, California is part of the USA, but just barely... :)

But having local readers is somehow different. Because you know that you may meet them in town, and while you may not recognize them, they may recognize you. For me, this is not scary: I am male, poor and uncontroversial except among theologians. (That, and I haven't posted nude pics of myself, only scantily clad ones. See the archives.) Still, it is kind of weird.

***

In other local news, the murder trial drags on for the two young men who are accused of killing two small girls just outside the city here. One of them has admitted to killing one girl, but says that he was following the orders of the other, under threat of immediate death. The other claims to not have been there at all. News today is that he probably wasn't there at the time. He sent text messages from his mobile phone during the middle of what should have been the murder. What is more, the message is traced to a base station that does not cover the area where the murder took place. More important, there is no reason to believe that he knew what stations cover what area so he could manipulate it even if he had thought of it.

The other week, it turned out that the biological trace that the police said implicated him, was only an Y chromosome marker that is shared by more than half of Norwegian males. It's evidently just my good luck that I wasn't charged with this murder, as I probably have less alibi than he. Perhaps I should change to a weblog, so I can update several times a day. You never know when you may need an alibi, if you are male and single and not very social.

***

In extremely local news, I took out the internal modem that did not work in my new North computer. I took it to work and put it in the North computer there, and it works like a charm. This may at worst mean that my new computer has a trouble with expansion cards. This isn't very good news. The good news are that I can probably use the external modem that I used on the North computer at work.

Having two Internet-capable computers can be nothing but a good thing. Especially since I have two phone lines. Now I can log on to chat groups under two different names and flirt and banter with myself. OK, that probably requires a bit faster typing than I can do. (Actually I am a fast typist, but I make a lot of errors which I go back and correct before pressing Enter.)

***

Another important event of the day: The stack of computer games and magazines on the chair near the computer corner finally slid out in a disastrous avalanche. The event uncovered computer magazines from the 90es, one of which in big letters proudly boasted the double value of having a High Density floppy disk attached. Since I haven't missed these magazines in all those years, I threw them all away. Except the Norwegian magazine "Databladet", which I kept for sentimental value. I used to write for them. The pay was nothing but the occasional free game, but we had loads of fun. And let us admit it, I love the fame. :)

Incidentally, my high praise for Bethesda Softworks' game Arena in Databladet may have contributed to its popularity here in Norway (not that it did not deserve it) and thus to the popularity of the sequel, Daggerfall. Funny how things are connected, don't you think?