It’s one of those days. One of those where every second of concentration has to be fought for. It’s probably my own fault. I had a late night last night, following the styremøte for NMWL. I had pretty late nights Sunday and Monday, too, which doesn’t help. I’ve got loads to do, but all of the vague or not-very-urgent variety (I need deadlines, I need to get better at setting and keeping my own deadlines). I have also got two web-site redesigns floating around in my head. One I have already mentioned, concerns this site. The other is the NMWL site. Our webmaster has passed the torch due to illness (and possibly boredom), and I have volunteered to pick it up. However, the site has been created using MSWord (I can hear the techies groan…), so before I do anything I will have to rewrite the back-end, because as it is I have problems updating even simple information like phone numbers because of all the code I have to wade through. You might object that I could open the page in Word and find the text easily, and you’d be right, in a way, but you would also be oh so wrong. Where’s the fun of web-design if you get Word to do it all for you? Anyway, I’ve been itching all day to get down and dirty and convert the whole thing to style sheets and simple code, but I don’t suppose that’s what my employers are paying me for. Pity. And I don’t really have all that much time tonight. Well, at least I’ve got a massage (mmmmmmmmm) booked at half seven, but I guess that will only take me out of the house for an hour at most, so I will have some time. But I also have a date with my bed. There are two working days left before the weekend, and I have too much work on to have another one (or two) like this one. So, sleep. Major priority.

Once I’ve done the behind-the-scenes stuff I’ll get more adventurous and see what else we might use. A group (the executive committee) blog for news broadcasting seems like a good idea – I could even tie it to a mailing list so that members could subscribe to the news items. We could also do with some more pictures. I also wouldn’t mind doing something with the design look-wise. I’m not going to repeat what one of the guys here at work said abou the existing one, but it was not flattering. I don’t think it’s that bad, it’s just not outstanding either. Amber would be a good colour for a whisky site. That would also rule amber out for the colour scheme for this site, which wouldn’t be a bad thing (limiting my options might make it possible to chose). And the five favourites “vote” could definitely do with being written as a form that you could fill in instead of just the “e-mail the webmaster”. And… And… Well, as you can imagine, it affects my concentration…

Oooh, lookie!

Voice in my head: “It’s cold outside and there’s no kind of atmosphere…”

I’m not saying I didn’t like Diana, you know. It’s just that she no more deserves the “Great Briton” accolade than all the other several million decent people in Britain. Trying to live as a decent person “for richer, for poorer”, in the face of adversity and success, is actually what most people I know do. Diana just happened to do it with the attention of the public solidly on her from her engagement onwards. I wasn’t so much sad at her death as shocked. It was one of those “where were you moments” and as I think I’ve mentioned, I was sitting there thinking “this has got to be some sick joke, she can’t be dead, she’s not the sort of person who just dies“.

I don’t actually want Thatcher on the top ten, either, you know – I don’t like Thatcher because I think her view on politics is completely misguided. But I do admire her for what she managed to achieve, even if I sometimes wish she hadn’t achieved it (like the privatisation of British Rail – complete disaster, even if it was well-intentioned). I only mentioned Thatcher because that’s who Anne Robinson mentioned.

To clarify further (and because I feel like it), why don’t I give you my ideal list of ten from the shortlist of 100, and if I can think of anyone I would have like to include who isn’t on the list of 100, I’ll mention them.

Right. Jane Austen, obviously. I’m not even going to explain why. Shakespeare, ditto. I don’t care who wrote the plays, really, whoever it was, whether it was Shakespeare or Shakespeare was just a front and it was really Francis Bacon or someone else entirely – the person who wrote the “Complete Works of Shakespeare”, whoever (s)he was.

Hey, I wanted Wilde on the list, but assumed he was excluded through being Irish, but if Bono can be on there, where is Wilde?!?

Brunel, maybe. He was a great engineer, anyway, I don’t know much about him otherwise (I just love his bridges).

Elisabeth I, Livingstone, Nelson, Nightingale, Pankhurst, Sir Walter Raleigh, Chrurchill – am I up to ten yet?

Hm, Thatcher is on the list. Why did the newspaper stories make it out that she wasn’t? Huh, journalists!

Rowling, if she would only finish the three last books. Not until then, though.

Darwin, hm. I suppose I ought to have included him. Up to 11 plus Wilde, now, plus one-half-Rowling. I’ll stop now…

I wonder what the final ten are going to be.

As the wetherpixie will tell you if you drop by about now, it’s been snowing this morning. Only the sort of snow that melts before it even hits the ground, but still.

Very short autumn this year, and here is me, autumn being my favourite season. No fair. See, it’s affected my ability to construct sentences. That’s how distraught I am.

Always look on the bright side, though: I am really looking forward to Christmas. I LOVE Christmas.

Voice in my head: Michael Bolton (yes, I know) singing How am I Supposed to Live Without You (probably in sympathy with LPW, facing a possible future without HV – I just started rereading Strong Poison, start here to see what the effect was the last time I read these books)

Searching through Google for “web resources backgrounds”, I come up with sites like this. Now, honestly: Would you expect to find any graphics worth using on this site. Where did they learn design? Are they colour blind?

That was not the worst one I found, either.

*giggle* Someone’s found my site by searching Yahoo for “+”compulsive desires” +lying”. Go on, try it! I come out as number 3…

Which Avril Lavigne Song Are You?

If you can read Norwegian, you really should read Nemi – on the web, every day. If you can’t, you could get me to translate… Well, here’s one, anyway, because Life’s like this:

(Frame 1:)
Nemi: Why was Petter so sad?
Cyan: Because he likes me…

(Frame 2:)
Cyan: He’s cute, polite, fond of his family… And he has a very good job…

(Frame 3:)
Cyan: Furthermore, he’s open, honest – and very kind… But I don’t want him.

(Frame 4:)
Nemi: Why are you so sad?
Cyan: Because I don’t want him.

Not reading LPW at all or anything like that.

Voice in my head: Avril again, still singing Complicated

Still playing around with new layout options. This is why I could never get a tattoo – after two weeks I have yet to decide on a background. Since the colours in the background are going to have to dictate the other colours, I am not getting very far. I basically have the layout nailed in terms of “which box goes where”, I think, but the overall look is going to be radically different depending on which background I choose. If, for example, I go with something like this:

I will keep font and frame colours reasonably muted, too.
Whereas with something like this:

I will need the text to make a stronger statement.
(The text will be displayed on blocks of a single colour, most probably white, in any case, by the way.)

Decisions, decisions.

Complete change of subject: I saw half an edition of The Weakest Link yesterday, it was obviously a celebrity edition, as the participants all seemed to be writers (though I can’t say I recognised any of them myself). Normally, Anne Robinson gets on my nerves (I know the fact that she is “scary” is part of the concept, it’s just that to me she’s more annoying than scary), and I will only watch a few minutes before channel hopping or turning off (gasp!) the television. However, the participants yesterday were more able to hold their own than the average contestant, so instead of a one-way stream of abuse it was more of a two-way banter, and it was FUNNY. Even Anne Robinson (who actually seems like a nice person in most interviews – i.e. off the WL set) had problems keeping a straight face at times. I could barely contain my exasperation at the end, though. Jilly Cooper won. 7 thousan something pounds. And which charity did the earnest Ms Cooper want to give the money to? A memorial somewhere or other to “animals who have died in war”…! Oh, never mind the starving and abused children. Never mind, even, the LIVE animals that are mistreated or the ones that are on the brink of extinction. Lets spend the money on a memorial to honour all the dead horses. I mean, ten out of ten for good intentions, minus a gazillion or two for good thinking.

Anne Robinson, by the way, seems set to stir up another storm in Britain (and most of the rest of the world, I suspect). Having slagged off Wales, for which she has apologised, sort of, she has now moved on to the late Princess of Wales. AR is working on the new BBC series Great Britons, and claims to be surprised that Diana was nominated at all. Though I am more surprised at AR’s surprise than at the nomination, I can’t help agree with her in having problems seeing why Diana should be considered a “Great Briton”. No doubt the she has taken on the status of a saint to an astonishing amount of people, but there have been a lot of Great Britons, and quite a few of them did more to deserve the accolade than marrying the heir to the thrown and look alternately pretty and harassed on television. Yes, no doubt Diana gave pleasure to a lot of people when she visited them in hospital or wherever, and no doubt she did help raise the issue of landmines in the public conciousness. Although I wouldn’t go as far as Anne Robinson, I certainly think that one thing Diana was good at was to manipulate the media. And although Robinson’s own favourite, Margaret Thatcher, is not high on my list of favourite people, between her and Diana, if I had a daughter I’d rather she take Maggie as her role model (not least for her own happiness, look at the two: Which would you say had the happier life?). Maggie is not even on the initial list of 100, it seems. More’s the pity.

Voice in my head: Avril Lavigne singing Complicated (again)

Oh dear. I’ve overdosed on Elton John (sounds bad, doesn’t it?). VH1 are having an Elton John Weekend, and I seem to have had VH1 on most of the weekend (I haven’t, really, it just seems like that now). And when I didn’t have VH1 on, some time today while I was doing the washing up and cleaning out my closet (Oh. No. Eminem.) I actually put “The Best of Elton John” on on the stereo, because there were a couple of songs VH1 hadn’t played yet that I wanted to hear again.

Oh dear, oh dear. I’ve got Fame on in the background (TCM) and Bruno’s father has just mentioned Elton John.

That’s it. I’m going to bed. It’s either that or hitting the bottle, and it’s Monday tomorrow…

Voice in my head: well, what do you think?

Went to a concert this evening with Solveig, in the old assembly hall of the University. Lovely building, lovely music, played by The Oslo Symphony Orchestra. Beethoven, Karlsen and Tchaicovski , the Karlsen (Kjell Mørk K., in case you wondered) was a first performance, so that was quite interesting. Curiously enough the main effect on me of the concert as a whole was to make me want to go to the opera. We’ll have to see what we can do.

Having spent the first part of the evening in such a cutured way, I went home for a late dinner of hot dogs, and then had some red wine. The height of sophistication, that’s me…

Oooh, and I hung my bathroom mirror, which I’ve only been meaning to do since January. Yay me!

Voice in my ear: TOTP2 on the telly

I had a meeting this morning in connection with a project we’re doing where the issue of next of kin came up. Uhm, just realised most of you don’t know much about my job, so an explanation is in order. I changed jobs in July. I now work for a company, which shall remain nameless (not because you’re not allowed to know, but because although I don’t mind my colleagues or our customers reading this I’d prefer it if they found it some other way than by searching for the company name on Google) which produces patient journal handling software for GP and company health service offices. For one of our major customers we’re now on a project where our database needs to query their personell database for certain info, such as the patient’s address and his/her next of kin. Which brings me back to:

I had a meeting this morning where the issue of next of kin came up, specifically, whether the record queried would always contain the person’s “person number” (unique identifier for a Norwegian, a bit like your social security number), to which the answer, naturally, was “No”. I know my own PN, and I think I might be in the minority. I have my brother’s writen down somewhere, as he is my beneficiary on the ex-company pension plan/life insurance. I have no idea what my parents’ PNs are. Most people are unlikely to know the PN of their next of kin, so what happens when the patient is asked for the details and can’t answer? Well, the other system generates a “fake” number, with an x to indicate the fact that it is fake. Fair enough. Now the first half of the PN is your birthdate, so for me it’s 100474, and someone said that in some cases this would have to be “faked” as well…

I made a remark to the effect that “It can’t be a very close next of kin if you don’t know their birthday.”

Well, apparently it can. (Always depending on your definition of “close”.) So, people, quick poll: How many of you would not be able to quote your parents’, siblings’ and/or significant other’s birthday if put on the spot? I’m not talking about remembering to send that card, or buy a present, or to phone on the actual day in question, rather than a week later (we all know that this can be quite tough, depending on your individual state of distraction), I’m talking about coming up with a simple (preferably correct) date. Anyone?

Congrats to Jimmy Carter on the Nobel Peace Prize. Good on you, Jimmy, old boy, for spending your rubber chicken years doing something worthwhile.

I can’t believe Bush was actually nominated. Not only do I have problems fathoming how anyone could consider that he deserved it, but why anyone should think the committee would give it to him in the current climate is really beyond all comprehension. It’s not as if they’ve ever been the sort to give in to pressure (thanks, no doubt, to the way the system works, with the individuals on the committee being so blessedly free from any considerations such as personal gain in making their choice).

Also, of course, it gave them a perfect opportunity to express the opposite of admiration and support to the way Bush is handling his job. To which I can just say: Ditto.

Not that this is to say I don’t think Saddam Hussein probably deserves everything Bush & Co can throw at him, it’s just that, from experience, SH himself isn’t the one who’s going to suffer. Invariably, it is the unprotected and innocent in the attacked country and the individual “attacking” soldiers (how many positive “I was in the Gulf war and it was a cracking experience” stories have you heard?) who take the hardest hits.

(Nice blend of half-mentioning the job, a “something funny happened to me this morning” story and touching on controversial political issues, there, I thought.)

Voice in my head: whassernameagin? – Universal Soldier

Yay! Another bandwagon

1. what size shoe do you wear?
Eu 42-43, GB 8-9, US – oh, I don’t know. Anyway, I’ve got large feet.
2. how many pairs of shoes do you own?
Ahem. Too many. (Tries to do quick count in head) 21? no wait; 22. Eh, do slippers count? (24) And don’t hold me to that number.
3. what type of shoe do you prefer (boots, sneakers, pumps, etc.)?
That rather depends on the situation. If temperature and surface allows I would rather be barefooted. In summer, sandals. In winter, my black Cats (boots). In between, anything comfy.
4. describe your favorite pair of shoes. why are they your favorite?
A pair of party shoes, black, very thick soles (higher at back) with a “chinese” dragon in silver embroidered on the “heel”. They’re pretty. I could happily have them framed and put on the wall.
5. what’s the most you’ve spent on one pair of shoes?
About 1000 NOK (GBP 85) – my Cats. They were worth it, they’ve been faithful through 7 winters and show no signs of flagging out yet.

Voice in my head: my superego: “24?! You have 24 pairs of shoes??!!”