Ninjas and pirates and zombies, oh my!

And princesses and aliens! But not just any old ninjas and pirates and zombies and princesses and aliens!! No! MEEPLE ninjas and pirates and zombies and princesses and aliens!!! :-D

Look they are so many!!1 Everywhar!!1!

Five different kinds, and all of them SO COOL ... !1! They are all megameeple, normal sized meeple don't come in this much detail, it would be too tricky. So sayeth the wonderful folks over at MeepleSource. But who cares!! We'll squeeze those giant meeple on there! Pirates on the roads, zombies in the fields!! Aliens in every town!! Are you with me?? :-D

Watch your back, the aliens have got their eyes on you ... o_O Aliens in Carcassonne. It's what's always been missing in my life.

Consider yourselves warned (you know who you are) - next board game night, we are soo playing Carcassonne. ;-)

I WANT THIS

I know, I know ... seriously the last thing I need is another mp3 player. But I SO want this ... !! It's the latest Zen release from Creative. It's tiny and it has a touchscreen and bluetooth. Not sure what the hell I want with bluetooth. And I really seriously don't need another player. But, but ... look ... !

WANT ... !!!

New camera!!

I've got a new camera! Yay!! Happy! :-) I've been wanting a new camera for a while ... not because the old one is broken as such, it still works fine for the most part, but it is two and a half years old and that is quite a while in the world of the digital camera. As I'm sure all my readers will know. :-) It's also kind of broken ... it's fallen to the floor a few times and been banged about quite a bit, and it doesn't work quite right all of the time.

What it mostly struggles with is the macro setting, and that really sucks, because I take quite a lot of macro shots. You know, the turtles and whatnot. Then the night before the trip to Hemsedal, it looked like it had actually really broken. It couldn't read the memory card at all, no matter what I did. And it had worked just fine a couple of hours before and nothing had happened to it in the meantime. o_O Of course I freaked out. The next day I brought it to work with me ... well, I always bring it to work, I bring it everywhere :-) ... and I showed it to O., who managed to fix it with some CRC product that we sell. :-D I was soo grateful ... I hated the thought of going away on this once in a lifetime trip with Tanumine and the others and not have a camera that was working. :-(

So that really decided me that I would get a new one. Like I said I've been thinking about it for a while, and now I just decided that there's no way in hell I will risk being at Tanumine and B.'s wedding with no camera. No way in hell. :-) Today seemed like the perfect day to buy it, since it's Constitution Day tomorrow and I will have lots of opportunities to experiment with the new camera. :-) I can hardly wait. :-) So I bought it today and already I'm so happy with it. It's exactly the one I wanted. I probably should have gotten another slightly different model - I was thinking this one - but I just wanted one particular camera so much. This one. Coolness.

It's so tiny, I can hardly believe it. Minute. It weighs hardly anything. I love the color. :-) But of course I do understand that more than appearances are important here; it takes great pictures as far as I can see so far, and it has all kinds of fun settings to play with. Unfortunately the most exciting thing I've had to take pictures of tonight is the view of the sunset from my balcony.

All the cool effects, they don't really show up that well with this kind of picture. I should probably have crowd shots or something. Tomorrow ... !! :-D

I need a new computer

Seriously, I need one. This one is going so crazy in every which way, it's driving me nuts. I've been trying to put together an articulate and intelligent post here, but this thing just won't work with me. I give up.

What the hell are you grinning at?? >:-(

I wants it ...

So, it's been a year since I installed that visitor counter stats thing on the blog. It's on the sidebar, really far down. It was a year ago yesterday that I figured out how to install those. :-) I don't remember what time it was, except it was pretty late at night, so the stats will be off by a couple dozen, I guess. I've had 33,865 page hits in one year. I don't know if that's really good or bad or what :-) but I have to say I'm pretty happy with it. I've had hits from so many places all over the world - again, scroll down to see the current visitors thingummy - I've actually been meaning to do a blog post on that one of these days. It's pretty amazing where people are coming from sometimes. :-) If you're one of them, thank you!! :-)

In other news, I went to my parents' house for dinner tonight, and my mother's new mp3 player had arrived, so of course I had to explain to her how to use it. She is like on a different planet when it comes to gizmos like that. I was kind of jealous though, because even though I already have one mp3 player that works perfectly well, and one that's sort of broken but still works, I really want one like she has too. Argh ... o_O

Dey has it ... I wants it ...

Ooh, hungry fake turtles

Feed the turtles, they are cute and hungry ...



Get your own virtual critters here.

Fake but fun

Anyone remember those HewlettPackard commercials where famous people talked about how their lives were so great because they had HP computers and shit? Well, this one isn't one of those. It's ... inspired by those. Made just for fun. I think it's pretty good anyway.

Success!! ... or, I give up.

I was going to write a really deep & profound blog post today, all about religion and what's wrong with it. But I've spent so much time (and even some money) fiddling around with this goddamn decoder thing that now I don't have the energy to write more than just a short rant. >:-(

The reason why I spent money is that I have more than one doodad hooked up to my TV - a DVD player, the recorder, etc. And there's something wrong with the gadget that they're connected through ... the DVD player I can hardly use because I have to get up every two minutes (and I'm not necessarily exaggerating) to adjust the connector cable because the picture goes all wonky (eg, turns blue, yellow or pink). So I decided that now I'm digging through all this shit anyway I may as well get around to replacing those. Even though I should be trying to not spend money right now ... but generally speaking I have been really good about that. So.

The good news is that I have figured out a way to get the signal back via my DVD player. Or whatever the hell the problem was, I fixed it. Sort of. I can actually use the player now. Yay. :-) Canal Digital - thanks for nothing - can't contribute anything whatsoever. They claim that the problem is something with the settings on my TV set. WTF? Then those settings have been affected by their fucking update, because I did nothing to any settings at all other than what they asked me to do!! >:-( Anyway, I've unplugged the whole damn thing. It is now entirely unconnected to anything whatsoever except the surface of the table it's sitting on. I reconnected the player to the TV set the way it was before these idiots started fiddling with it. So now the DVD player works. Success?

Yees ... except that if I should want to watch anything on the channels I have via the decoder, I have to pull out that whole section of shelf again and disconnect and reconnect and whatever, and that's harder than it sounds because now I don't even remember what was connected to where on that stupid box. Argh. I need help.

I guess I sound kind of obsessed about this right now, I don't want to give the wrong impression ... It's not like my life is empty without my TV working. But right now it's just really nice to have a working DVD player so that I can watch some movies sometimes. Plus, not to mention that I have a lot of time right now to obsess about it. >:-) I've actually been really pissed off about this tonight ... and looking around me I still am, a little, when I see all these goddamn cables lying all over the floor and the shelf with the TV on it halfway out from the wall, lamps on the floor ... Argh. Again, I need some help.

But, anyway, I was in a really bad mood, but then I checked my subscriptions on Youtube and discovered that Pat Condell has uploaded a new video. And it's his best ever. Fantastic.

Picture tag!!

I've been tagged again! This time it's photo-related, and I am of course happy to participate. :-) Sorry it took a little while. :-) My relatively new (as far as I know ;-) reader Sunder tagged me with this photo challenge:

Tag, you're it! Open your FIRST photo folder. Now find the TENTH picture. Post that picture on your blog and then tell us the story of the picture! Then tag FIVE friends and have them do the same!

So, this is my picture:

It's from last year, the day in ... November, it must have been, that my mp3 player arrived in the mail. I was so excited to get it. For some bizarre reason I had never had one of these before. I had thought very vaguely about getting one, but never done anything about it. Then I came across one of these in a store while looking for something else entirely ... but I didn't buy it there, although I was quite charmed by it ... I felt like I ought to be sensible and do some research first. Ie, if it wasn't a total piece of trash I would buy it. It seemed pretty good, and I found it online cheaper than in that store (where they didn't even have the DVD recorder that I came there to buy) so I ordered it. When it arrived, it turned out to be even better than I'd thought it'd be. It has a loudspeaker, so I can use it even without headphones. I didn't know that before I got it. Check out my careful research ... !! :-D

I've been using the player pretty much every day since I got it. It goes everywhere with me. I've listened to 20 audiobooks so far this year. Boring chores at work have gotten soo much less boring ... !! :-D I totally love this little piece of plastic and circuitry and I don't know how I ever managed without it. The best thing I bought all last year, or, in fact, since I can remember. :-)

That's the story of my 10th picture. Now I'm going to tag, let's see ...

Paz over at Pictures of Ireland

Quiltoholic

Writativity

The Anéa Journal

A Death in the Ballroom

Materialism gone amok

Being kind of a valley girl by residence :-) I get the local free paper in my mailbox every so often. Lokalavisen Groruddalen, a perfect stereotype of a Norwegian local paper. But I do read it; I mean, despite the clumsy language and the constant focus on nothing but the narrowest concerns (in a geographical sense, of course *cough*), there is interesting material there sometimes ... and it is nice to know what's going on in the area, generally speaking. I was morbidly fascinated by the rat problem at Haugerud subway station. Who is this woman who brings bags of food to dump there every single morning?? But that's another blog post.

I got the paper yesterday and there was one particular story in it that left me pretty much speechless. It was about a woman whose car has been burgled. There's no info given about her age, but in the picture she looks to be in her mid to late twenties. So ... Generation Y, with their fucked up priorities. And how. Brace yourselves ...

So, her car, a fancy Mercedes, has been broken into, and various things have been stolen. The GPS, the CD player, an integrated phone, whatever that is (and who needs it) and shit like that. Including, and get this, a pair of sunglasses that cost 12,000 crowns. o_O That's about $1,900. WTF?? OK, first of all, if you're actually willing to spend that much money on a piece of, pardon my French, fucking plastic, you've got some synapses wired wrong in your brain. Seriously. Think about what you're doing. But it gets worse.

It says in the article that this woman and her husband bought the sunglasses after saving up for them. So in other words they aren't rich people with money coming out of their ears to the point where they wouldn't even notice a pair of 12,000 crown sunglasses more or less. I don't know if that makes it better or worse. RIDICULOUS GENERALIZATION ALERT Rich people suck. In theory I do approve, enormously much more, of people who actually save up to buy the things they want. That's the way to do it, definitely. But people who save up to buy something like this ... not so much. And here's the clincher. Get this.

Now, this is a direct quote from the article. Let's see. I tore it out of the paper so that I'd be able to quote what this woman said exactly. It's so annoying that they [the burglars] take things that are personal like this. We chose to buy these sunglasses rather than go on vacation last summer. WTF?? I repeat: We chose to buy these sunglasses rather than go on vacation last summer. o_O

What kind of fucked up psycho priorities do these people have to actually prefer to rather buy a pair of sunglasses than to go on a trip together and do something real to experience things and create memories??? Oh, how I hope they don't have kids ... !!!

OK, rant over. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. Look how cute the Google logo is today. They're celebrating the vernal equinox. Aww.

If I ever get my own house ...

... as unlikely as that may be, then I want a staircase like this.

OMFG. o_O

WANT ... !!!

Also, Keanu Reeves is hot. Happy Monday!! :-D

Giveaway #1: the winner is ...

… Paz!! :-D Yay! Congratulations! I picked the winner on Wednesday, but didn't get round to announcing it then, because I spent the time translating that article instead, and then yesterday I was out pretty much all night. So … better late than never. :-) Raffle King got to make the choice, it picked Paz, and here's the proof:

:-D

So now, Paz, I need a shipping address I can use to send the prize to you. You can message it to me via LiveJournal, how about that? That way neither of us needs to post an email address anywhere. No immediate hurry to send the address, since my friend Dag Erling has decided to take part in the giveaway … he thinks the prize should be a 'real' CD, and he's volunteered to provide it, if I can get it signed by all four band members. o_O So … let's do that. :-) I hope you'll be patient. But please send the address whenever it's convenient. :-)

I did not break the mp3 player – at least not yet – it has now reset itself on its own accord, and when it did it turned out that I have managed to transfer one – 1 – album to it. I've also managed to transfer a whole audiobook to it which I had no intention of doing and have no idea how I did … so clearly I do need some kind of help. But it's still functioning, so yay. :-)

Have a great weekend, everyone!!

Mail call, and how!

Happy day ... !! :-D

I love getting stuff in the mail. Even just a postcard is enough to make my day sometimes. :-) So this afternoon I've been quite, as the British say, chuffed. :-)

First of all, my mp3 player arrived! Yay! I don't know if anyone remembers it ... in fact I hardly remember it myself since it's been so long since I ordered it. It's been what, two and a half weeks. I ordered it from Komplett.no, a Norwegian online electronics store, which trilltrall recommended to me. He knows about this stuff. :-) They had the player and the earplugs in stock, but not the charger ... it was supposed to arrive the next day, so I figured OK, that's not a problem. But it's taken all this time to arrive. I can't fault these people on service, though - every single day since I placed my order I've been getting an email telling me that it's been delayed by one day. :-D So on Sunday when I got another one I just expected it to be about yet another delay. But no, it was to say that my order had shipped. Yay. I got the text message from the postal service yesterday, but I was out with Anne Ida then (movie review coming up, sooner or later) and when I got back home it was too late to pick it up, the post office and everything else was closed. Alas! This afternoon of course I stopped by there on my way home from work and got my package.

The contents:

The player. It's so tiny! And it weighs hardly anything. It's so cute, I'm charmed. Only problem is I don't know how to use it. I've never had an mp3 player before, I have pretty much no clue how to operate one. But I'm not worried, trilltrall will teach me. He's a gadget freak and I'm sure he'll be only too happy to figure this out too. ;-) I texted him tonight to say that it had finally arrived and he replied, Uuuu tech, let me at it! :-D

The next thing I got was a total surprise. In other words, even better! :-) It was a postcard, no doubt self-designed, from fellow blogger A. over at The Corporate Cog. And look, it has a turtle on it!! A., did you make this specially for me?? :-o In any case, I love it, it's wonderful! Thank you so much, you totally made my day with this card. Up on the wall it goes!! :-)

Detail. It's so cute, I love it. :-)

The last thing was something I had in fact ordered but then proceeded to almost forget about. I was thrilled that it finally arrived though. It's a sticker (although I did order two to be on the safe side) letting whoever it may concern know that I don't want junk mail in my mailbox. No unaddressed mail. I've been planning to get one of these pretty much since I moved in here, but it's taken me forever to actually get around to doing something about it. (I am slow etc.) But it seriously had to be done. I get so much junk mail ... !! Five or six items a day is not out of the ordinary. While I was in Egypt I got a stack of it almost two inches high. Worthless crap that I hate. I so want to not have to deal with it anymore ... it just clutters the place up and I have to carry it back outside and throw it out. And it's one of the things that in terms of the environment is just the worst ... because it's damaging and it serves absolutely no purpose. >:-( Although it's disgraceful that it's taken me this long to do something about it, better late than never.

My mailbox with the sticker in place. Now it'll be so interesting to see if I really do get less junk mail. It worked the last time I tried it, at my old apartment, so here's hoping. Death to junk mail!!!

Fellow Norwegians, do you need one of these?? You can get them here.

It haunts me ... !!

I was out shopping for a new DVD recorder today, and look ... !!

There is no escape ... !

But I DID NOT BUY IT. My strength is as that of ten because my heart is pure!

I actually hardly bought anything in that store. They didn't have what I wanted at a price that I wanted to pay, so ... if you're sold out, you'll miss a sale. Don't I know it. I just got a case for my new camera, and then I went down the street to a competing store and got my new recorder there. Serves them right. >:-) I did see another thing in the first store that I really liked, though:

I don't know what it is, but I want it ... !

Is it some kind of an mp3 player? If it is, then maybe I can get it, because I don't have an mp3 player, but I could probably use one, right? Hmmm ...

I've got a new camera!!! :-D

Yay ... !! :-D

Don't know if I've ever mentioned it, but my camera's kind of crap. ;-) Especially when it comes to filming - it can only film for either 60 seconds, or, as I recently discovered, 180 seconds at a really shitty quality. The battery also isn't too good anymore and without decent lighting the camera seriously struggles sometimes. Other than that I'm really happy with it. :-) It is a good camera, I do like it, but it is four years old now, and, well, a lot of people I know are taking much better pictures than I am. :-( And pretty soon something awesomely cool will happen for which I really want to have a really good camera. So. Time to shop.

I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to get ... but I was in favor of something from Canon. While hanging out with KAS and trilltrall yesterday I was strongly urged to consider the new Canon Ixus. KAS' little sister has it and it's fantastic, apparently. :-) I don't know a lot about cameras ... or about stores that sell cameras ... but I had decided I would definitely buy a camera this weekend. And guess what, for once I was really lucky. My fellow blogger Gunnar Tjomlid is in Oslo this weekend - for a concert with some people I never heard about - and he'd offered to take me out for coffee. (Read: hot chocolate. ;-) I immediately decided to exploit the situation since I suspected that he knows way more about cameras than I do. And I was so right. We met up today and he took me to a great store that I'd never heard about but which had good prices on cameras and a really good selection. I picked a Canon Ixus 970 IS. It's supposed to be really good. It is, as far as I can tell. :-) I also got an 8GB memory card, so I guess I have years ahead of me now before I ever need to worry about camera memory again. ;-)

Have shopped, am satisfied!!

This is the first picture I ever took with the new camera. So far also the only, but I promise you it won't be the last. ;-) It's one of the chandeliers in the Winter Garden section of the Library Bar at Hotel Bristol, in which we had our coffee & hot chocolate. And a very pleasant conversation for a few hours, before I had to leave for my board game night and he to hang out with teenage girls in their hotel room. ;-)

Hey, I gotta start somewhere.

Thanks for helping, Gunnar!! I hope you'll have a good stay, it was great to meet up. :-)

Sorry about the hanging out with teens comment, but I just couldn't control myself. I hope it's a kind of syndrome, that would be cool. ;-)