Friday 19 October 2001

Pic of the day: Relaxing with the trackball.

Idle hands

I'm getting slowly better with the trackball, but my hand is still hurting and partly numb. Too bad. I have stories to type and games to play, but not "at any cost". Today I saw a coworker had a mouse pad with a soft (gel-filled?) wrist rest. It seemed nifty. But I'll give myself some days of varying with the track ball before I jump on anything new.

I had planned to spend some of the evening watching Prince of Egypt, the cartoon movie about Moses. The box was right, but inside was the movie about Joseph instead. I guess it's all the same to the video guys. *sigh*

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I could not remember exactly what was so bad about the strategy game 3rd Millenium, so I installed it on the new machine. Now I remember. The poor (if not outright misleading) documentation, the bug that fritters away system resources from the operating system and doesn't release them when you exit the game, the cheesy faux negro music, and the unchangeable game speed meaning that in the beginning you have to run the game literally for hours without anything happening. This certainly is a great contender for "world's worst strategy game". I'm not sure how significant this is, but it is made in France.

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The new centre-right government is in place here in Norway. I'm not sure if this is a cause of celebration, much as I regard socialism as a subclass of stupidity. The new government will not just have to fulfill all the promises of each of the three parties that are part of it, but also the irresponsible Progress Party that it depends on for support. Surely it is God's grace that they come to power just as there is a sharp international downturn in the economy. Because I cannot see any way they can avoid overheating the Norwegian economy. We already have too few workers. The people who are jobless now are either in transition from one job to another, or they are in deep personal trouble.

I've been jobless myself, and I know it doesn't mean you are a lazy bum. (Not that I'm not a lazy bum, but it wasn't really necessary.) But that was during a time with layoffs left and right. This is a time where they beg you to get in the doors. A problem however is that many of the jobs are near Oslo, the capital city. And the cost of living there is second only to the world's largest metropols. Private companies can adjust their wages accordingly, but the public sector typically has nationwide standard wage contracts.

I, for instance, would not have been able to maintain a decent standard of living in Oslo. The cost of renting a small apartment there would be nearly equal to my income after tax. On the other hand, I might like to live an hour or two by train out of town. Commuting is fun, when you have a pocket PC! ^*^