Freur - Doot Doot

Retro video of the day...

This one is by Freur. They weren't much back in the 80's but this song is just sublime. Who would have guessed that they would go on the be Underworld, a world class techno act. This is like 80's to the max!

Random 10.  I should set up a day each week to do this, whenever I have time.  Today is the day this week.  This is 10 random songs from my Cowon A3 which has about 6,000 songs on it.

1. Ultravox - When The Scream Subsides
2. Stan Ridgway - Going Southbound
3. SA42 - Submarine Dance
4. Oingo Boingo - Reptiles and Samurai
5. Portion Control - Refugee
6. Roxy Music - Street Life
7. The Decembrists - Odalisque
8. Orchestral Manoeuveres in the Dark - Messages
9. Gang of Four - At Home He's a Tourist
10. Placebo - Black Eyed

Ok, that was like an almost all retro 10, which fits the mood lately as I have reconnected with an old music friend.  Have a nice weekend all zero of you who are reading this!

Ubuntu

I have a multitude of computer choices in this house.  I have a laptop that runs Vista, as does my wife.  My desktop, which is approaching five years old now is running Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx.   I originally installed Linux on this machine just for fun, to try something new.  Now, as this computer has aged, it makes sense to run a system that isn't as much of a resource hog as Vista can be (though, my cheap ass laptop, running on an Intel Celeron, runs smooth as silk, after optimizing it).

I really enjoy Ubuntu, and after a year of using openSUSE with KDE I much prefer Ubuntu and the GNOME desktop.  Not as fancy perhaps but it gets the job done easier and smoother than KDE does, at least on my system (I particularly have problems with Dolphin, mounting of external drives to the same mount point and graphics (older Nvidia) on KDE.  All of these things just work with no fuss on GNOME). 

Two things I can't get used.  One is a CD/DVD burner.  I have tried Gnomebaker and Brasero and several other, smaller, programs for GNOME and I still go back to running K3B, a KDE app.  It does what I want with the options I want and intuitively.  So I run it under GNOME, which is fine but still, minor graphics glitches and no sound (I could probably figure that out but just haven't prioritized it). 

The other is more difficult.  On Windows I always used Mediamonkey, which is for my money the finest audio player and organizer ever.  Now on Ubuntu I use Exaile, which is a nice small player than does what I want for playing audio.  Most other apps want to act like iTunes which I HATE (HATE HATE HATE!).  The only problem on pretty much all of Linux is finding an mp3 tagger with the ease of Mediamonkey.  MM can find tags from Amazon, download AND attach the album art (Linux seems to be averse to this as I can't find a single program that will automatically attach album art.  They either save it as a file with a link to it or you have to download manually and attach).  And then, you can even organize your files by tags automatically.   I realize it is arcane to think in filenames but I guess I am old (and my Cowon A3, my Precioussssss, does not organize by tags either).  The only program I can find to use in Linux that does something similar is mp3tag....a Windows program run with WINE. 

Sadly, Mediamonkey itself won't run very well under WINE.  It's really the only thing I miss from Windows.  I wish they would either port the mighty Mediamokey to Linux or someone would come up with a quality tagger.

Android

Now that I have an android phone I will hopefully post more often.  Or not.  I'm mostly talking to myself anyway.

The Sound - Sense Of Purpose

An oldie....I always wondered why The Sound never made it as big as Echo & The Bunnymen and other likeminded bands because they were every bit as dynamic as anyone doing this kind of thing in the 80's. But then I realized...sadly it might be because they weren't pretty boys. Too bad, but I guess I can count them among my personal favorites that I don't have to share with too many.

The singer Adrian Borland, by the way, committed suicide by train in 1999 after years of suffering with depression. RIP.

The greatest concert film ever...

is Stop Making Sense.  Been listening to this in the car today on the commute.  I only wish I could have seen them live when I had the chance.

Sigh.

Common sense...

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner had this to say:

The Washington Monthly

Host Chris Wallace noted that "a number of top economists" believe that the nation, right now, needs "more economic stimulus." Boehner replied, "Well, I don't need to see GDP numbers or to listen to economists; all I need to do is listen to the American people."

This is of a piece with a conversation I have been having online with a couple of really far-right conservatives.  That conversation was about the gulf oil spill and how they thought that the things that, in their opinion, Obama had failed to do were just common sense.  They actually used the phrase, "it doesn't take a rocket scientist..."

Well, sometimes it does in fact take a rocket scientist.  They derided me for "hating" common sense, which couldn't be further from the truth.  I love common sense!  Mine has served me well.  Notice those pronouns.  I have no problem with people making personal decisions based on their own common sense.  Hell, make your own personal business decisions that way.

We aren't talking about personal decisions here.  These are decisions that impact millions of people.  While common sense might serve you well personally, basing large scale policy decisions on your gut rather than facts and the truth is crazy.  I am pretty sure that Obama has received more information about oil spills and cleanup than these two I was talking to have.  And I am positive, based on his past statements, that John Boehner ought to listen to an economist or two instead of basing his decisions, which could have dire consequences for millions of people, on his own gut and the American people which, quite frankly, very often don't know enough about macroeconomics to make these decisions.  I sure don't, which is why I defer to those who do.

Everyone's common sense is different.  Mine is probably different from yours and we can all figure out that George Bush's gut is telling him different things than Barack Obama's.  Why is it better to follow your gut than to find out the facts and base decisions on reason?  It's an odd thing that liberals have always been accused of making decisions based on emotion when very often it seems the opposite is true.

I knew it:

Stare at boobs for longer life: Study | TheMedGuru

Frankfurt, Germany, December 6 -- A rather bizarre study carried out by German researchers suggests that staring at women's breasts is good for men's health and increases their life expectancy.

According to Dr. Karen Weatherby, a gerontologist and author of the study, gawking at women’s breasts is a healthy practice, almost at par with an intense exercise regime, that prolongs the lifespan of a man by five years.

She added, "Just 10 minutes of staring at the charms of a well-endowed female, is roughly equivalent to a 30-minute aerobics work-out."

...

In addition, she also recommended that men over 40 should gaze at larger breasts daily for 10 minutes.

Duly noted!  Excuse me while I follow doctor's orders...

It's almost difficult to believe that this thing is still here. Time to reactivate.

I have a personal diary that I have kept on a diary site under an anonymous name and have met some people and stuff from there. But I don't necessarily want that to be the public face of myself, since that is really the place where I share some more personal things, without linking to the public me.

I also want to have a place to post some political stuff and music stuff, much in the same vein as someone who I have seen for years online on political blogs and who I read and comment on. That would be cleek, whose blog I really like and would try to emulate or whatnot, with my own thing of course.

So this will be a place where I want to talk about politics, music and being an ex-pat in Norway or living in the States, or just living. Or basically, this will be about me and what I think, which I am sure will develop a large international following of perhaps a couple of people.

And to kick it off, here is possibly my favorite single song of all time.

I haven't written here in a long time and was actually going to write something last night, while the Wife was off at a friends house drinking wine and talking about books. Things are going great over here, for the most part, other than the series of colds I have had since before Christmas, with this last one being a nasty throat thing. But then, after I finally got the kids to bed far later than normal (I think they were a little hyped about two days at school/daycare after having almost a couple weeks off.) I decided to surf my usual array of personal and political blogs and diaries that I read. One of my favorites is Obsidian Wings, a political blog that slants left but has writers and commenters from all sides, and posting rules to keep the conversation civil and interesting.

The first thing I see there is this post:

Andy Olmsted

by hilzoy

Andrew Olmsted, who also posted here as G'Kar, was killed yesterday in Iraq. Andy gave me a post to publish in the event of his death; the last revisions to it were made in July.

Andy was a wonderful person: decent, honorable, generous, principled, courageous, sweet, and very funny. The world has a horrible hole in it that nothing can fill. I'm glad Andy -- generous as always -- wrote something for me to publish now, since I have no words at all. Beyond: Andy, I will miss you.

My thoughts are with his wife, his parents, and his brother and sister.

What follows is Andy's post: a bit here; the rest below the fold.

I have been reading this blog for years. I have probably read everything that Andrew Olmsted has written there, under his name and the name he wrote under, G'Kar (taken from Babylon 5), which he had to use because he was a Major in the Army and had been deployed to Iraq to help train Iraqi and American soldiers. He was killed in an ambush of his platoon, along with one other person. I'm not going to copy his posthumous post here, but I encourage everyone to read it as it is incredibly moving.

I didn't agree with everything Andrew wrote, and I probably only exchanged a handful of comments with him. One of the things he says in this final post is, "If there is any hope for the long term success of democracy, it will be if people agree to listen to and try to understand their political opponents rather than simply seeking to crush them." This is what I admired him for more than anything, his openness to argument. He also stated that he didn't want his death to be used for political purposes, no matter your view on the War. I agree with that wholheartedly.

Even though my interaction with him was very slight, it still hit me like it was someone I knew. It is amazing, these intertrons, how you can make connections with people you never meet, how you can actually feel connected and like friends with people you have only even read and not interacted with. It kind of took the steam out of the happy, silly post I had in mind for last night. I read every one of the more than 600 comments on that blog post, and even left one myself.

Sometimes we read something that puts our lives into perspective. Life can be difficult at times, and we fret and worry about our problems. But we are alive. Like Andrew said in his letter, "I'm dead, but if you're reading this, you're not, so take a moment to enjoy that happy fact." And that is what I did. I am fortunate to be alive. To have a Wife who loves me despite myself. To have two wonderful kids. It makes me regret that I don't take the time to bask in that more often.

Rather than write something that will have no impact on the world, I am going to leave you with the link to the words of a man whose life was far to short (I'd repost it here, but I would rather you all go over there and read it, where he left it). And I am going to spend the weekend relishing all that I have. And watching some playoff football. I think he would like that.

R.I.P. Andrew Olmsted

Plato

By the way, it is been noted that, like myself, Andrew was a huge 80's music fan (it's actually one of the things I distinctly remember discussing with him a while ago), so I declare this weekend 80's weekend. I'm gonna listen to nothing but. And one of his all time favorite songs (and mine!) was "The Ghost in You" by the Psychedelic Furs, so I am including that video here.

Plato's Earwax

In Search Of

Ok. I don't remember what this is called but I read about this a while ago. Apparently, what you do is list the names of friends who would like to get into contact with on your blog and then when they, like a lot of us, do a google search on themselves, this page will hit.

So, the people I am looking for email addresses for are Samuel Larson (or Samuel Bradley Larson) and Dan Campbell (or even better, search-wise) Dandon Campbell). If either of you guys stumble on my page you can contact me, Cory Nyberg, at platosearwax[at]gmail.com.

That is all.

The fall of Tacitus

One of the first political blogs I stumbled upon was Tacitus run by Josh Trevino. What I liked about it was the quality of the discussion, even if I mostly disagreed with the proprietor. I never got to participate much, what with me being in Norway, 6-9 hours ahead of everyone else. Most of the good discussions took place while I was sleeping and I came to them the next day with not much to add. But I read it, and still read it, regularly. And as little as I interacted with the folks over there, it came to feel like I knew them in some way.

Well, after four years, Tacitus is closing up shop, for whatever mysterious reason Mr. Trevino has. Luckily, the good folks over there are intent on continuing on, with a new site, a new name.

So, the good folks at Tacitus are choosing a new name for the new site. I offered up platosearwax as a joke, but somehow it got onto the list of names to vote for. It isn't winning. And it won't. But I would gladly have given my handle to the new Tacitus.

Meanwhile, I might start actually updating this thing, with more political stuff. And I am going to try to participate at the new Tacitus, whatever its name might be.

Wow, maybe I should update this thing, huh?

I've decided to chronicle the times where I run across people being self-centered jerks. I went off on this a few weeks (months?) ago, where I talked about how people around here park. Well I had another one today.

I was taking the kids to the daycare and to get there I have to drive up this hill that has maybe a dozen cars parked along the right side of the road, making it a one lane road and forcing you to pull over to the side to let a car pass if you encounter one coming at you. Usually, no problem. Today, as I turned onto the road, I saw, way at the top, a car standing still but with his lights on and looking like he was going to drive down the hill. So I started up and then he started to move and by the time I got to the end of the parked cars, where the road is now wide enough for two cars he had blocked the road. He moved even further forward and tried to pull off to the side far enough for me to squeeze between him and the last parked car. Of course there was not enough room. So he starts honking and waving his arms, I guess to let me know that he is insane. So, instead of backing up one car length so that I can get past him, he forces me to go in reverse all the way back past at least a dozen cars to the beginning of the street. It was totally ridiculous and yet another example of people who think only of themselves, because, hey I was in his way and damned if he was going to reverse for any reason.

In other news, I just took a shower with my wife, something we hardly ever get the opportunity to do anymore, but something we used to do all the time.

It is friggin cold here. Well, cold by Bergen standards. It was 16F (about -6.5C)degrees this morning when I woke up. The car was an iceball and our house, being the seive that it is, is leaking cold air from basically everywhere. Being this cold means there is no rain or snow, which I guess makes up for it.

I have to go get the kids soon and then I am making Italian sausage grinders tonight for me and my wife.

I think the last year, when I haven't written much, cleared my head or something because I am enjoying writing in here lately (well, the last few days anyway). We'll see how long that lasts.

As part of my recent decision to write in here more often, albeit shorter each time, I'll try a quick entry right now. We'll see how long it takes me to get driven nuts typing on a laptop keyboard. I am currently sitting in my living room with my wife's laptop on my lap (ha! using a laptop as a laptop!) and listening to Seinfeld while my wife is playing Sims 2 on our snazzy new home computer (the thing is awesomely fast in comparison to our old 1 ghz machine. For the techno geeks out there it is an AMD Sempron that only runs at 1.6 ghz but outperforms the Intel Celeron running at 2.8 ghz. And our huge hard drive is way faster as well. And it has 256mb of video ram instead of 32mb which renders web pages faster than lightning. Anyway, it rules. Thanks, Kristian (the guy at work who built the thing for me)). Desparate Housewives is on in 20 minutes and we are going to watch that.

Christmas was fun, if not busy. I'll post some pictures when I write something on the main computer as that is where the pics are. We ate the traditional pinnekjøtt, which is sheep ribs, salted and dried and then steamed. It is salty and greasy, and while it isn't my favorite meal, it's not bad once or twice a year. I don't like the kålrabbe that is served with it (that would be rutabaga, shredded and cooked with milk or something, it tastes sort of like squash which is gross--and I'll eat most anything). The kids got a massive pile of stuff, including a big doll house that they both love. The silliest item was an inflatable Disney princess chair that Emma got and both kids fight over pretty much constantly. Should have gotten Sara one as well. I got a new wireless keyboard and mouse, some clothes and stuff, whole season DVD's of Raymond, King of Queens and Seinfeld, DVD films Sin City and Star Wars Episode 3, a bunch of Sudoku books and more stuff. My dad the rich guy gave us cash, which we recklessly spent on a Sony DVD recorder, the new computer and a new vacuum cleaner, pretty much blowing that whole wad (he he I said "blowing that whole wad").

We, the wife and I, are both work free this week. We got the kids to the daycare (yes we are shitty, horrible parents who take any opportunity to get rid of the kids instead of using the free time to spend time together as a family.) at 9 this morning and ate some breakfast casserole while watching 2 episodes of Average Joe 4 we had on the DVD recorder. It was sort of white trash heaven. Later this week, hopefully, the in-laws are going to take the kids for a night and we are going to be all alone here for an afternoon, an evening and the next morning. I am not sure if I remember what it is like to sleep until you wake up on your own and leisurely arise to eat some breakfast in peace. I am sure I will wake up at 6:30 and not be able to get back to sleep.

And now I have to pee and go watch Desparate Housewives, so you are left with just this lame update.

Hope everyone had a blowjobby Christmas and here's to a blowjobby New Year!

I'll write later in the week.

I'm writing this with the brand new keyboard my wife gave me for Christmas. Just wanted to type something.

I'm a dork.

Just a quick note

Usually, in the summer, we take away the carpet from under our coffee table and live with the plain fake-wood-vinyl floor, since it is easier to clean the floor that way. But in the winter, the floor gets kind of cold so we put the carpet back down.

Since we did that this year, the kids, particularly Sara, have spilled soda, water, coffee, etc... more times on the carpet in the last week than they have on the fake-wood-vinyl floor in the last year. This is some kind of rule with kids, that if there is something on the floor you must spill on that, rather than on the bare, easy to clean, floor. It just happened now. Again.

And that's all the time I have for this, because I have about a million things to do before the in-laws get here in 6 hours.

Merry Holidays Everyone!

Insanity

It has been complete and utter insanity the last few weeks. I have been working every day, but where I don't have a lot of access to a computer. And at home, we have had lots of holiday stuff going on, plus we got ourselves a DVD recorder so there has been a lot of TV watching instead of time on the computer. I haven't hardly even read anybody for two or three weeks. And tomorrow is the day we celebrate xmas, and I may even have to work so updating this weekend is probably not going to happen.

But, we have ourselves a brand new computer as well (thanks for the cash for xmas, dad!). It is incredibly fast and awesome. And next week my wife and I are both taking the week off and the kids will be in daycare so there should be plenty of time for a real update. And if that doesn't happen, someone needs to fly to Norway and totally kick my ass. Word.

Anyway, happy holidays (just to piss off the Fox "War on Christmas" News crowd) and I'll catch you all after I eat my pinnekjøtt (super salty and greasy sheep ribs, the Bergen tradition for xmas).

Just Your Everyday Random Crap

Yesterday afternoon we went to a halloween party. Well...if you can call 4 kids and 5 adults a halloween party. The kids had fun and the adults sat around listening to jazz and talking, mostly in English for a change since there were two Americans there, one of whom doesn't speak Norwegian (not I. We were at our neighbor's house where they are also a Norwegian wife and American husband who have a son who is good friends with Emma). Nothing much to report from there really, just your average afternoon with the kids.

I didn't work today so I changed the tires on the car. Over here we don't use all weather radials but summer and winter tires. So every spring and fall I have to change the tires, which only takes an hour or so, but is murder on my back.

Speaking of that, I am apparently getting old and falling apart. Every day brings some other weird pain. My back, upper some days and lower others. My left knee makes incredible crackling sounds when I bend it and lately I can't put a whole lot weight on it without wincing in pain. And, not pain related but age related, a couple weeks ago I was looking in the mirror and noticed that I had some hair kinda flying free behind my ears. Thinking I just needed a trim, I tried to brush it back with my hand and realized the hairs were growing on my earlobe. Long ass hairs on my earlobes! I am on my way to looking like Einstein. And seriously, what the hell is it with losing hair on the top of your head and having it grow like weeds in your nose, ears and on your back?

My wife told me something funny that Emma said the other day. They were watching "Hey, Arnold!" and this old guy told the kids to be quiet, and if they weren't quiet they were going to have to move out. So Emma, with a serious and slightly scared look on her face, turned to my wife and asked, "If Sara and I make noise are we going to have to move?" I love kids literal logic. Today, she was wearing a shirt with a short sleeve dress over the top of it and angel wings, a tiara and carrying a silver magic wand and jumping on the bed. I laughed at her, because she just looked sorta funny and she stuck her tongue out and gave me a raspberry. Then she asked my wife why I was laughing at her. I guess I need to be careful from now on, she is starting to catch on.

It seems like most people like Law and Order: SVU the best, but now that we have all of the Law and Orders the best one is far and away Criminal Intent. Vincent D'Onofrio rules. I can't get enough of the way he figures out how to get under the skin of the people he is trying to catch. It's one of my favorite shows.

We finally got the package that I gave my mom money to mail when we were in the States...in July! In typical mom fashion it took her weeks to actually mail the thing. And then, 6 weeks later she got it back and typically she says there was no indication of why they sent it back to her, but I guarantee you there was something marked on it that told her why, she just doesn't remember or didn't see it. Anyway, she waits a couple of weeks and sends it again. We waited and waited and were about to give up as lost the two seasons of Cheers and one season of Friends that we bought in the States when it showed up last week....8 weeks to the day after she sent it.

And even though I wrote all the above totally random crap, I felt like I didn't really have anything to fill an entry. Just goes to show if I force myself to open the Write and Entry window and just write, I can come up with something, even if it was just banal crap.

Ok. Talked to my sister yesterday and today. Apparently my mom had another seizure on Saturday night. So they were keeping her sedated and seizure free with the breathing tube in while they ran more tests. A chest x-ray showed that she had some pneumonia in one of her lungs. So they ran a spinal tap. You medical folks probably see where this is going. Turns out she has bacterial meningitis. The pneumonia in her lungs spread to the lining of her brain which causes all the symptoms that she had. They are now setting her up on damn near lethal amounts of antibiotics, which she will have to take intraveinously for the next 28 days. They think she will be good enough to take out the breathing tube this afternoon. She has been semi-coherent over the last 24 hours or so. She is still in the ICU, so not totally out of the woods, but the doctors are very optimistic that she will make a full recovery.

So that's a relief.

Don't have tons of time so I will relate only one other little observation unrelated to my mother. I have learned the hard way that you should never, ever say nice things about your kids. Case in point: Things sleeping-wise have been wonderful, both kids in the same room (though Emma goes to sleep in our bed and gets transferred later because Sara won't ever be able to go to sleep with the excitement of Emma laying almost withing arms reach) and sleeping until 7 or so. UNTIL...I say how nice they have been sleeping lately. I said this Thursday. Since then, not one night of good sleep. Either they are both up in the middle of the night, or Sara one day was up at ten after six. Or last night Sara was up and then Emma was up, both at around 4am and then Sara was all excited and laughing at Emma so I got the sofa and Emma shared our bed with my wife so Sara would shut up and go to sleep. This kind of thing happens every time you say something nice. "Gosh, they haven't had a cold forever!" BLAM, both will get the flu. "Wow, they are playing together so nicely, they never fight!" BLAM a day of complete chaos where they are after each others throats. It never fails. So, compliment them when they do good things, but for god sakes don't ever talk to anyone about how great your kids are.

More to come...