An optimist

Went to a grocery store today to buy some breakfast, and the guy in front of me in line was buying 125 condoms. Either he is about to have a really nice weekend or he is a great optimist.

Blaah. NASA.

They finally launch Discovery after 2 years and 1 billion dollars of not launching anything and trying to fix the falling-off-foam-insulation-problem, and pieces of foam insulation immediately fall off again. Now all the shuttles are grounded again. Good thing the foam did not seen to break anything this time.

Hope they fix this before the next time.

A bomb picture

Yucky stuff, children. Don't make them at home.

Picture gallery

Finally got most of my more-or-less nice pictures on the web (excluding some of the vacation pictures and the ones I will have to scan from paper copies). Not posting the URL here yet, because I'd like to give people the opportunity to censor the pictures of themselves and their pets. It you think your pictures might be there, ask me for the URL in IRC or by email. If not, wait till Monday or so. :)

Sleepy and pissed off

We have some kind of repairs going on in our building, and this is pissing me off. The construction company is clearly unfamiliar with the concept of residents having to get in and out of the building. The yard is a fucking hazard, with piles on stuff lying and dangling everywhere and blocking everyone's passage. We were advised to use the street exits, but there are piles on stuff lying there too, and besides not every stairwell even has a street exit.

Last week when I got the table I realized that the yard gate has a lock on it now, to which I do not have the key. I do, however, have a saw.

Besides, they have some machine that sounds like a helicopter and they start running it at 7 in the morning, waking everyone up.

Telegraph/YouGov poll on Moslem attitudes

YouGov has done a survey for Daily Telegraph on the attitudes of British Moslems after the terrorist attacks. They interviewed 526 Moslem adults across the UK and weighted the data to reflect the composition of Britain's Moslem population by gender, age and country of birth.

For the most part the poll needs no comment. The only surprising item was "Western society is decadent and immoral and Muslims should seek to bring it to an end, but only by non-violent means," which was the opinion of 32% of the people interviewed (1% thought that Western society is decadent and immoral and Muslims should seek to bring it to an end, if necessary by violence). What the hell are those people doing living in the Western society? Hey, I used to live in a sociely that I considered to be a shithole and to which I felt no loyalty at all. You know what? I moved. And Britain is a whole lot easier to move away from than Soviet Union used to be in my time. So what exactly is preventing the Western-society-haters from moving to such moral and wholesome places as Pakistan, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia? I bet a lot of them even have the necessary citizenships and language skills.

This is not just about Moslems. The hardline Communists are fewer in number nowadays, but we don't see them moving to North Korea en masse. I have never even seen a single one of them move to the Soviet Union while it was still there.

A good start

Q: What do you call a murdered spammer?
A: A good start.

No, I don't want to encourage people to kill spammers, but who hasn't fantasized about it?

Decaf tea

Lately a few people I know found themselves in need of decaffeinated tea, and I suddenly realized that there is not a lot of that stuff here in Finland. Yesterday I saw some in Stockmann, though: Twinings decaffeinated earl grey, 25 bags for 2.65 euro.

Terrorism is the word of the day (the week? the month? the century?)

London is looking for the terrorists, police are shooting Brazilian electricians in thick coats (note to self: do not wear a thick coat on the London subway), Egypt has arrested about a hundred people and is looking for some Pakistani terrorists (did they mubarak the homegrown ones into extintion already? what are the Pakistanis doing there? did they indeed decide that Egypt stole Kashmir from them? is it a coincidence that the bomb exploded on a national holiday?), a bomb injured a man in Cairo (a terrorist's "workplace injury"?), Hamas keeps attacking Israel (trying to stop Gaza pullout? trying to prove that they are badder bad guys than Islamic Jihad?) and bombs blow up in Iraq so often that one wonders how come they still have some population left.

New York instituted random checks on the subway without any kind of profiling. Gotta watch out for the Baptist and Buddhist terrorists too, you know.

Today is ten years since terrorists blew up the first bombs in Paris subway/local train station at St. Michel. Surely they anticipated the no-veil policy or something. Those were not suicide bombers, and they are still serving their life sentences.

Today three people threw bottles of hydrochloric acid into a Jewish school in Paris. Nobody was hurt.

Hope the terrorists are too dumb to know of Finland's existence.

Hesari making fun of world leaders?

A few days ago they had headlines saying that Finland is enhancing border controls and that Putin is planning to come to Finland very close to each other. Today they had a picture of a baboon who bears a suspiciously strong resemblance to President Bush.

Today

Been to the beach with Heli. Got bitten by a duck. Heli got bitten by a duck too. The pictures of the perpetrator will be published later.

Egypt

Now Egypt was bombed too. 88 dead, about 200 injured. All because they sent troops to Iraq. Oops, they didn't. Oh, no, it was because they stole Palestinian land - they should return it. Oh, bugger, they lost it to Israel in 1967. Maybe they occupied Kashmir, or Chechnya, or whatever? Maybe they were killing Moslems? Hmm, most of the people who died in these bombings were Moslems, and civilians at that. I guess killing Moslems is only wrong when it is done by people who are not Islamic extremists.

Oops, sorry, I forgot, the perpetrators have not been found yet. They might not be Islamic terrorists at all. A group of Presbyterian terrorists, or Methodist ones, or maybe Buddhist. Sure thing.

I hope Mubarak will do something mubarakish, such as find the terrorists and their support teams, insert small explosive devices up their asses, bring them to the desert and detonate.

Or maybe other Islamic terrorists will attack these particular ones and kill them, all the time screaming "You killed our Moslem brothers! You must die!"? Would be nice, but I am not holding my breath.

London revisited

07.07.2005: Terrorists: *kaboom*
08.07.2005: London: We are not afraid!
21.07.2005: Terrorists: How about now?

Don't know about Londoners, but hell, I am afraid. One can only hope that all the fuckers who knew how to make a proper bomb died in the first explosion, but this is being optimistic. After the second bombing the police shot a man after getting him down on the ground, and that in a country where police routinely do not carry firearms. How many people will die in the third bombing? What will the police do afterwards? How many bombings will it take before something really nasty hapeens?

Cry of the soul

When I find the fuckers who decided that kde absolutely depends on kanji-fucking-dic and totally cannot be considered properly installed without it, I will hang them on their fucking bowels!

No rest for the wicked

This was a stressful few days, and I am still needing proper sleep and seeing nighmares almost every night. Nothing much happened, but there was too much of it.

Went to Ikea on Tuesday, which was stressful all by itself, and bought a desk and some other stuff. Killeri gave me a ride home, at which point we realized that we can't drive into the yard since some fucker has put a lock on the gate. Had to drag all the stuff through the construction area that is the passage to our front door.

Put the desk together, which was surprisingly stressless. Booted the computer. It did not want to boot. Said "shit". Could not find my glasses. Went to work. The work computer all fell apart due to an unfinished update to another Debian distro (from sarge to sid).

Came back home. Managed to boot the computer by taking the video card out and stuffing it back in. It became blue (computer screen, not the video card). Not as in "blue screen of death" but as in losing the red component to all the colors.

Went to the bar where Jari and Riitta were telling about their Africa trip. Was really in no condition to be sociable, but hadn't seen them for a long time and wanted to see the pictures and the people. Did not last there long but it was great to see everybody. Asked around to borrow a video card. Edu told me that the problem could be in the cable, and later turned out that it was, I fixed it with manicure scissors and now everything works.I found my glasses, too.

On Thursday dragged my ass to the aliens' police in the morning. The service was pretty good again, I am starting to suspect it's always good at 8am. But 8am is not a time for humans.

Took me most of the day to fix the work computer, but now it more or less works.

Went shopping to cheer myself up. Bought a digital camera (Pentax Optio WP, so far so good), cherries, bratwurst, a pair of shoes and a frying pan.

Went for a beer with Seanna and Mari, which was probably not a good idea considering the lack of sleep, but which was fun anyway. We had some good beers and captured Juha who was just innocently walking home and passing by, and I took some pictures with the new camera.

I had some problems mounting it on Linux and was already considering bying a card reader, but finally managed to mount the thing anyway.

I need a vacation.

Eric Rudolph R.I.P. (rot in prison)

Eric Rudolph, the terrorist who has bombed two abortion clinics because he is against abortion, a lesbian night club because he apparently assumed that lesbians are major consumers of abortion and the Olympic games because he had confused Olympus with Lesbos, has been sentenced to two life terms in prison without parole, and will be sentenced to two more.

In an unusual but refreshing development, his victims and relatives of the people he murdered came to gloat at the trial, and the press covered that fact. Emily Lyons, the nurse he maimed at one of the clinics, said "The joint in my middle finger had to be fused, and it is indeed an injury I have longed to show you.".

Argh

Emergency fridge cleaning at 8 in the morning. The fridge died. If this remains my last posting, assume that I got eaten by green hairy things that crawled out of there.

I was looking for a way to blame Islamic extermists for the fridge failure but did not find it, so I guess it is just a combination of heat and advanced age.

Now there is some water coming out. Its waters broke! It's gonna give birth to a little baby fridge!

On wars and rules

There exist rules on how wars should be fought, and it looks like the rules are about to be rewritten. Terrorists say that they don't care about the rules since rules were written and ratified by states at the times when war were fought by states against each other. Also, perfectly sensible people are wondering if there is any sense to following and enforcing the rules, since people indeed don't generally like a bomb that is thrown on them by a state from the sky anymore than they like a bomb that is blown up by a terrorist on their bus.

I think the existence of rules of warfare is somehow counterintuitive to most people (myself included) because, first of all, warfare as such is very much against modern Western values, and also because it makes one think that if people manage to agree on the rules somehow, couldn't they also manage to agree on whatever they are fighting about without resorting to the actual fighting?

Still, I think that the rules of warfare are there for a reason, and the reason is to protect a lot of people from a lot of trouble. I wish that everyone (especially the terrorists themselves) who thinks that terrorists don't have to play by the rules because they are the small guys and because the big guys have invented all the rules anyway gave the thought to the following idea: what exactly will happen if the big guys stop playing by the rules too? (The glib answer would be of course Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, but I am afraid this is just the beginning.)

The whole concept of warfare is very much against the modern Western sense of justice. Even if you are fighting the most evil dictator ever and manage not to kill a single civilian in the process, you are in all likelihood killing lots of perfectly innocent people who were drafted into the evil dictator's army through no fault of their own.

The way all the Western countries justify this is an appeal to necessity, which basically amounts to "we kill the enemy because we are fucked if we don't", which might or might not be true, but that is beside the point. Now, what do we get if we start applying the same argument to a war where the enemy lives among us, wears no uniform and is distinguished only by belonging to a particular religious/ethnic/political group? I really, really suggest we do not go there.

Grandma

Called grandma yesterday, and again she explained to me the right way to live. Nowadays I don't even get to talk back much because the grandma is rather deaf.

Her favorite question number one: "How do you eat? At home or in a cafeteria?". She has been asking that even since I moved away from home, and every time she has receive the answer "at home", after which she has always expressed a positive surprise at the fact that I know how to cook.

Her other favorite question is "why are you not sleeping yet?". I usually call her late in the evening or at night, and she could have gotten accustommed by now that I am usually not sleeping at that hour.

She always asks people the same things, and never seems to remember the answer. And she has always been the same way.

Oh well. At least she does not tell stories about how everything was better in the old times, and at the same time how everything was difficult and the young generation has it easy. Although, judging from her stories, everything indeed was difficult.

She remembers how her village got the first radio receiver when she was 10. Nowadays she likes to surf the Net (although she does not have a computer of her own) and even has some vague idea about how TCP/IP works. makes me sort of wonder what kinds of things I would have seen by the time I am 90.

A prayer

Dear Lord,

Now that the four suicide bombers from London and the one from Netanya have met you, don't you think that we should arrange for some kind of hell? Christians have had a hell for so many years already, we can learn from them. If you have problems coming up with ideas, just ask me or look it up on the Internet.

Sorry for having to ask for it again just like I did last year, but could you fix the front door again? It is clearly not getting fixed without a divine intervention.

Please smite all the terrorists. Also smite the people who make a horrible noise in our yard every morning, if you have time.

Guard all the Scottish police officers and other innocent bystanders from bicycle-riding politicians.

Could you fix Debian's and Ubuntu's AMD64 port so that not every damn package is broken and not every damn library is lost? GTK libraries and libpango need some special attention.

The weather is lovely right now, carry on with it.

Please try to put at least some common sense in the heads of the followers of Sayyid Qutb. Failing that, arrange them a meeting with the man himself.

The park weirdo

Was in Koff park with Anu and Elaine on Monday. At some point Anu and I went to the toilet and when we came back a guy was lying down next to Elaine and muttering to himself. This was funny because just before that we were talking about how she is a magnet for weirdos. She gave us a "what did I tell you" shrug.

The guy said that he just wants to sleep and does not want to hurt anyone. I wanted to point out that there was enough space to sleep in the park without coming within 50 centimeters from me, but did not.

The guy was about 60, and looked like he has never been sober during those 60 years at all.

We started talking and the guy took offence at the fact that we were speaking English - apparently he believed that we are doing so only to spite him. He whined for a while, demanded that we stop it, then rose and started walking around. Among other thing he growled that he has been abroad more than any of us (in the Deliriumtremensland, apparently) and that none of us has ever been abroad anyway.

Then he left, much to everyone's relief.

More on bombings

The London bombers turned out to be home-grown and of Pakistani descent. The families are shocked much in the same way as families are usually shocked when their kid does something evil.

At least they were suicide bombers, which is nice because it means that the real people's death toll has dropped from 52 to 49 or 48 (they are not sure that the 4th bomber died).

Although he fact that nobody has mentioned any suicide notes or suchlike makes me wonder whether someone gave them the bombs to deliver somewhere and then set them off from a distance. I guess we'll find out when the police know more.

In a similar news, a suicide bomber killed 4 people and wounded a lot more in Netanya. This time it was Islamic Jihad, who has been losing its terrorist support base to Hamas for a while now and apparently feels that something has to be done. "Vote for us! We are the most terroristy terrorists!" Besides, they must be pissed off now that PA got lots of money from G8, which it is probably gonna share with Hamas but not with them. Islamic Jihad itself is funded from Iran, which currently has enough problems of its own so the funding is probably not great.

I was curious whether now BBC will start using the word "terrorist" to describe the guy who did it, but no, they haven't. PA leader Abbas, on the other hand, condemned the act with unusual harshness ("Quiet, assholes! The Israelis are about to pull out of Gaza, don't fuck it up!") and quite possibly was serious about it.

In a similar not-even-news, 24 people were killed by a suicide bomber in Baghdad. This time the bomber targeted a few American soldiers and a bunch of Iraqi kids who were taking candy from them. Apparently killing Moslems is wrong only when unbelievers do it. Or maybe kids stop being Moslem when they eat infidel candy.

The man of convictions

Mohammed Bouyeri, who is on trial for murdering filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, is finally talking.

"I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion."

"I can assure you that one day, should I be set free, I would do exactly the same, exactly the same."

These are the words to remember, especially at a parole hearing - if there ever is one.

He had some words for the mother of the victim, too:

"I have to admit I do not feel for you, I do not feel your pain, I cannot - I don't know what it is like to lose a child," he said.

"I cannot feel for you... because I believe you are a nonbeliever."

"I acted out of conviction, not because I hated your son."


The man of convictions is likely to get convicted to a life in prison.

Blaah

Tired to death. Was at Viljo's bachelor party on Friday night and Saturday - more of this later - and went to a park yesterday. Not really hung over (am so tired that cannot drink much) but tired of the combination of heat, allergy and the damn workers who start making all kinds of horrible noises in our yard at seven in the morning. Maybe should have a rest today since the game session was cancelled.

Here we go again

All kinds of trash have crawled out of their caves saying "you reap what you have sown", meaning of course that London commuters are paying for their government's decision to do something that has displeased some Islamic extermists - in this case, join in the stupid Iraq war. You do something they don't like, they bomb you.

Well, no shit, Sherlock. They don't bomb you for smiling nicely at them and paying them jizya tax (if you don't know what it is, it's time to find out and Google is your friend). They bomb you for doing something they don't like. It's rather obvious. I still don't understand the corollary implied by people who say so: "just do everything to please them, and they won't bomb you". Just take a fucking look at Bin Laden or Omar Bakri or any other of their extremist leaders: are those the guys whom you would really like to please? No matter that some things that displease them are quite stupid on their own merit and therefore should not be done - but do you want to base your safety on not doing anything to displease Islamic extremists?

I wonder what happened when Germans bombed London? Did many people say "serves them/us right for joining that stupid war"? No, I am not comparing WWII with the stupid Iraq war: Saddam was an evil dictator of a much lesser caliber who mostly only killed his own people (about whom most Westerners, both pro-war and anti-war, do not really care) and occasionally the citizens of small neighboring countries like Kuwait, he had a lot less potential to cause real trouble for the West, and, worst of all, the countries who invaded Iraq had no idea what to do with it after occupying it.

Islamic terrorists bombed London for Britain joining in the Iraq war. They bombed the US for joining the Iraq war, pre-emptively, a year and a half before the war started (or was it for the previous war?). They bombed the Paris metro 10 years ago, 8 years before the French joined the war... oh, wait, they didn't. Oops. They also threatened to bomb the French if they ban veils in schools, and there were even idiots in the West who thought that France should back down on the veil issue in order to avoid giving a justification for terrorism.

They also threatened to kill Salman Rushdie for attacking Iraq... I mean for writing Satanic Verses. And even then some people said he shouldn't have done it. Apparently Western freedom of speech is void where prohibited by Ayatollah. And that wasn't a handful of extremists - that was the leader of a 70-million country, and that country has just democratically elected another religious fanatic.

"Now London is getting a taste of what Bagdad is experiencing every day," say some people, apparently meaning that this is just revenge. Bugger. I did not know all those suicide bombings in Bagdad are carried out by British suicide bombers. I was under the impression that most bombers there were from Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries. Not that I would encourage anyone to bomb civilian targets in those countries, especially since it is already being done, and mostly by the same kind of people who bomb Iraq and London.

Every fucking time when somebody somewhere does something that displeases Islamic extremists they threaten to kill somebody, often somebody quite unrelated to the events. This is a problem. Avoiding doing anything that might ever displease them is not a solution.

A little reminder to the terrorists: the last guys who bombed London before you were the Luftwaffe, and we all know how that ended. If you don't know, then again Google is your friend.

Bugger, hell just froze over and there is a pig flying outside ours windows

Hamas has condemned the London bombings. "Targeting civilians in their transport means and lives is denounced and rejected," they said.

What next? A brothel condemning prostitution? Bush condemning the war in Iraq and incompetent bikers? Bin Laden condemning religious fanaticism?

In better news

The European Parliament voted 648-14 against software patents. This should be celebrated.

In other, lighter news

The Leader of the Free World and our Biker-In-Chief fell off his bike again after colliding with a Scottish police officer.

Dear Secret Service, or whoever is watching over the Chimp-in-Chief: don't let him ride a bike again. It would be embarassing if a man who has as many enemies as he does died from falling off his bike once too many.

Not letting him ride a bike would also protect innocent police officers and other people from him.

London bombings and our old friend Omar Bakri Mohammed

About half a year ago our old friend Omar Bakri Mohammed said that the whole of Britain has become a house of war where unbelievers have no sanctity of their life and property, and in April of last year he said to the Portuguese magazine Publica that an attack on London is inevitable. (He also predicted that the first thing the government would do would be to deport him and his family. We'll see if this prediction comes true as well - I think they shouldn't have let him in in the first place. I mean, what kind of moron accepts a refugee who got kicked out of Saudi-fucking-Arabia for Islamic extremism? Some sense, people.)

Here is the text of the interview. It's in Portuguese. If you don't read Portuguese, consider yourself lucky. If you do, consider yourself warned not to eat while reading.

Anyway, inquiring minds want to know whether anyone has seen Omar Bakri Mohammed since yesterday, and whether he is being interrogated.

London, again

Looks like everyone I know in London is all right and is trying to figure out how the hell are they gonna get home from work.

Hope whoever planted those bombs will be found and strung up by their balls, ovaries, necks and other unnecessary appendages.

London explosions

A series of explosions happened in London subway today. Authorities blamed a power surge, but after realizing that there were explosions on buses, too, finally figured that it might be bombs.

Ugh. Hope nobody I know is hurt, and in general that as few people as possible are hurt. This comes one day after London was chosen for 2012 Olympics, but I would still bet a liter of Fazer's truffle ice cream against a teaspoon on Valio's vanilla that the world's most peaceful religion was involved somehow.

A public service announcement for googlers

I am not the guy who founded Programmable Power Supply and Security Technology Systems, or indeed any kind of guy. If you are looking for him, go here.

Hmm, maybe should make this a permanent link...

Scanner: happy happy joy joy

Bought a scanner, Epson Perfection 2480, and it actually works, even though had to install a new version of sane for that.

Tried to scan a few negatives and got some newfound respect for people who do that fot a living: the right colors are almost impossible to get. Scanning paper photos produces a better result.

Planning to get all my paper photos scanned, 20 done, a thousand or so to go.

4th of July

Celebrated the Independence Day yesterday in Koff park. Had 3 Americans present (plus 4 Finns, one of whom is the same person as one of the Americans, and one ill-behaved Swedish-born dog). The day was beautiful, and we had a lot of wine and two disposable grills.

I was tired and in an unsociable mood, but still had a good time.

Otava ate everything. Seriously. He eats anything organic and a lot of things that aren't. Tried to drink my wine, too, but I was faster. Tried to eat my sausage, but I was faster again (I was trained by the best, for example Jero).

The scenario repeated itself many times: Otava is sitting quietly, whoever is holding on to him has let her guard down. Food appears. Otava leaps at the food. Somebody (usually Elaine and I) roar and leap after him. I grab his leash and pull down on it with all my might, and Elaine makes a leap at the plate that would make most NFL players green with envy, but the plate is already empty. Two pork chops and a countless number of sausages went into the bottomless maw - good thing we had a lot of extras. Hope the poor dog is not shitting tinfoil today, although it would probably serve him right.

Ebu growled at Otava in a very authentic way. Maybe the rest of us should learn too.

Stockholm

Went to Stockholm for the weekend. It was really beautiful there, and a wonderful summer day.

Played Code/X on the way there and back. It was a lot of fun even though we somehow managed to get 2 characters out of 4 heroically killed. I finally made myself a disgruntled evil henchwoman character that I was planning to make for a long time, and did not even get her killed.

The abnormally high work morale of evil henchpeople in the movies has always bothered me. I mean, usually the Big Bad Guy mistreats the henchmen in every way, and the hero keeps doing very nasty things to them too, but still they pursue him/her relentlessly, instead of saying "bugger it, we are not paid enough for this, let's go have some beers and then write a report on how the hero got away", like normal people would.

In Stockholm the guys went to a museum, but Laura and I decided that the day was too beautiful for that, and we just hanged out. I whined about there being no coffee milkshakes anywhere in Scandinavia and no Ben&Jerry's anywhere in Europe, and then we ran into a cafe that sold coffee milkshakes (rather small but worth every one of the 46 kronas) and at least three places that sold Ben&Jerry's.

(Maybe it's magic and every time I say something does not exist it mysteriously apprears? Let's try it: There is no coffee milkshakes in Finland, or Ben&Jerry's! There is no decent Chinese food in Finland! There is no money in my pocket! There are no cute naked guys under my desk!")

Spent lots of money on booze. Probably should think that will save it on Alko purchases.

Sci-fi Bokhandeln somehow managed to sell me a book and a DVD even though I decided I am not buying anything.

Ate in Food Garden on the way there and the way back. Their appetizer and dessert buffets are great, but if you like your steak rare this is not a place for you.

From the conversation with the waiter:
Me: There are two water bottles on the bill, I had three, where is the third?
Waiter: Probably on somebody else's bill.

Took a lot of pictures, will post them sometime.