Coded green.

Tuesday 22 October 2002

Screenshot DAoC

Pic of the day: Sometimes problems just seem to tower over you, you know the feeling? (Screenshot DAoC.)

Things that go wrong

Workday was all right. I came home (fairly late as usual) and I ate four chocolate cookies, some nut & raisin chocolate, a glass of milk and a box of yogurt, and I fired up my computer. While reading up on the webcomics, I also logged on to online.no and Telenor's customer service. I logged in to their IRC chat, the same where I logged in on the 8th of this month and some guy named "Espen" promised to send me a new ADSL modem. It should surprise no one by now that this never happened. Perhaps he was laid off in the meantime – they are axing a lot of people there.

Yes, Telenor (the former telecoms monopoly here in Norway and still by far the biggest) has been laying off a goodly number of people. They recently moved into a new and larger HQ. After laying off people, about a quarter of the pretty new building is now empty. There is some subtle irony in this, that you build so large that you can't afford to have people in all of the building... But of course, building such a large complex takes several years, and there were only a few of us who believed back then that there would be a downturn now. Certainly not the people who earn 10-20 times as much as I do and are very important persons. They are all taken by surprise.

I may feel too smart for my trousers, but I still can't get the ADSL to work. This time I talked with "Grethe", who was just as surprised as Espen had been two weeks ago. But in contrast to him, she asked for my ADSL number (given in the initial letter from Telenor). Armed with this, and my user name, and my real name, she discovered that I did not have ADSL. This was kinda surprising, since the afore mentioned letter stated that the line would be ready at October 2nd, and since yet another friendly customer rep had sent me the hardware a few days after that, and their associated subcontractor had sent me two packets of hardware before that again. She asked for my phone number and promised they would contact me when they found out about it. I am not holding my breath.

Though the lamps on the router/modem have blinked occasionally through the evening, which they never did before. There are 3 of them blinking, two green and a red. The letter says "When the lamp on the modem shines, the account is ready for use." I doubt this is what they had in mind, though. Besides, it is temporary.

***

Speaking about my breath, while I played DAoC a bit later in the evening my throat and nose started to swell and it got harder to breathe. I hate it when that happens. It reminds me of when I was a child and suffered asthma attacks. Also my skin started to glow hot and I started to freeze, and my digestion sped up. I've had it worse before, but it is always disconcerting. Could it be some kind of allergy? I don't know. It's probably not nut allergy, though, because chocolate with nuts is something I tend to eat in small amounts almost every day.

I like chocolate, but I don't "binge" on it, like eat till I get sick. Instead I tend to eat a little chocolate each day. Today I ate some before I went home, and some after I got home. This was because my digestion had slowed down over the long weekend, and I didn't want constipation. That's a dreadful thing. Chocolate keeps the system awake, or at least that is my experience. Of course, even if not I would probably have found a good reason to eat chocolate. I do have free will, but when it comes to chocolate I choose to exercise my willpower in moderation. ^_^

Well, whatever it is I react to, it is making me queasy and uncomfortable and congested. Let's see if whining makes it all better. ^_^ I am sure I have mentioned that study I read about, where people with asthma and arthritis were asked to keep a journal over their problems. Most of them got better. The healing power of whining! Eh. I thought that was supposed to be love, or something.


Yesterday <-- This month --> Tomorrow?
One year ago: Business as unusual
Two years ago: Good days and bad
Three years ago: Architects of Dreams

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