Thursday 11 November 1999

Pic of the day: So what is that sleepyhead doing online instead of embracing a big fluffy pillow in his double-sized bed?

I'm tired these days. I fall asleep on the bus. I fall asleep at work. I fall asleep in front of my home computer while playing Master of Magic, which is otherwise a quite fascinating game. Perhaps that would be a more fitting title for me: Master of Sleeping.

I am pretty good at sleeping, if I'm not ill in some way. Sleeping on the bus home from work is pretty regular. Sleeping on the train to Oslo is almost certain. I don't take that trip so often anymore. Though I look forward to the next time, because the train sets on the South Coast railroad has been upgraded, and the railway improved. It is now supposed to be an hour shorter and quite a bit more comfortable. Of course, the "comfortable" part probably means that I'll sleep even better. All over my fellow passengers, most likely. I already have one famous episode of that in my past, and several minor ones. Oh well.

So, the clock radio had already been gabbing for a while when I woke up. Someone was reporting that more and more Norwegian (why do I keep writing Norwegina?) companies are restricting access to the Internet for their employees. And then some business oriented gentleman was interviewed, and said that the problem was that employees did not surf enough on the Net. They lacked database searching skills. For good measure he added (though nobody asked him) that there are still bosses who boast about not having a PC in their office and never having read an e-mail. This, said the gentleman, was like boasting that you cannot speak a word English and don't know anything about economy.

On the bright side, our organization now again lets out e-mail. We do not have web access, only Intranet, but we do have e-mail. For a few days, outbound mail did not get delivered. We did not know whether this was a technical problem or a policy, and were afraid to ask. You see, there is a lot of mail going to and from, but none of it is useful in the least. It's moving objects (which I have forbidden because of the virus and trojan thingie, but which circulate anyway just not cc me). It's jokes, long streams of jokes. It's photos. And general notes of friendliness between old friends. Probably some romance and flirting too, if I know my sheep by name. Anyway, it's up now. It was just a technical problem after all. I can only hope that we don't get a scandal on our hand, by some grotesque mail going to the wrong recipient. I'm sure they will settle down eventually.

I mailed myself a Strangers in Paradise cover picture (volume 2 issue 2, the winter image) and placed it in the middle of a white space that covers the entire screen. I now use that for a background picture. It is relaxing and tasteful.

In unrelated news, I consider color coding my entries. I've considered this before, but that was too advanced. What I'm thinking of now is to start off with two backgrounds: White for diary, light grey for journal. Diary entries would be "this was my day" stuff, from a laundry list to an entry like this one. Journal entries would be more essay-like, topics that are not about me personally. If that worked, I might branch out into other colors if need be. White on black for angst & whining, for instance...

The good thing is that you could see at a glance what type of entry it was, and leave at once if it was the wrong type. On the other hand, the entries would look different from day to day. I'm not an experimental type. I want people to see at once that they have come to the right site. I have not changed anything since I started unless I felt that it would be a clear improvement. (Margins, titles, archive.)

What say you? It's only for your sake I consider it, dear reader. Clamor in e-mail, or concentrate hard and send me a telepathic message. :)