Best. Product. Name. EVER.

"We reject the idea, which other companies have advertised for years, that toilet paper is only soft if the roll feels squishy in your hand. The truth is it doesn't matter a bit how soft the roll feels, since it's not the roll you will be wiping with!"

Is this not marketing genius?

Darth Kitty

This is one of the more frightening things I have ever seen. Perhaps not the costume itself, but can you imagine the thought processes that led up this idea...?

Question of the Day

Confused Customer: "What does an 8-digit number look like?"

Idiotic, obtuse, and the rest of the thesaurus...

Sometimes, there are no word for how strangely surprising a situation is. I will do my best to describe this one anyway. It has been quite a while since the events below took place, and I have now mulled over them long enough that I think I want to share them.

It didn't happen to me. I heard the story from the co-worker that experienced it, and I am now passing this one to you. It begins thus:

Where I work we do not earn commission. My individual bonus is determined partly by how well the company as a whole does, but the vast majority of it is based on whether I, as an employee of the company, in my role as Customer Service Representative, do a good job. If you, the customer, feel that I have answered your questions, solved your problem, and contributed to a pleasant experience when you called our customer service, and if I have done it swiftly enough that the wait time in the phone queue is kept to a minimum, without making the call seem rushed in any way, then I will receive a bonus. If I fail in any of the above, then I won't. Therefore, though we are encouraged to promote sales whenever we can, that is not actually the point of what we do, which in turn is what lead to the strangely surprising situation that I am now finally about to tell you.

A certain gentleman, let's call him Mr X, contacts our customer service and wants us to help him determine exactly what kind of memory he needs for his computer. He spoke to one of my co-workers, S, who has been with the company long enough to know our products very well and who therefore is able to be very helpful. He gives Mr X all the information he needs, Mr X thanks him and ends the call to go shop around and see where he can get the best possible deal on his new memory. He finds that deal in a surprising place: A local computer store.

The story is a bit unclear at this point, as we have only Mr X's word on what was happening. Mr X claims that he relayed all the information S gave him to the sales person, including the memory serial number, and that he therefore made his purchase on S's indirect recommendation. That is important, since that means that S, and by extension the company S and I work for, are responsible for why Mr X bought the memory module he did. At least Mr X believes so.

When Mr X came home he proceeded to open his laptop to install the new memory, and that was when he discovered that a regular DIMM that he had purchased, designed for a desktop computer, is far too long for the slot in a laptop. As a matter of fact, it is about twice the length of the memory slot in the laptop. So here Mr X is, with his laptop that he wants to upgrade, and with a memory module that is far too long for the slot in the laptop. But that is a small problem for a mechanically inclined man who owns a dremel, right?

Yes, he did.

He really did.

He cut the DIMM in half, and trimmed it until it would fit in the laptop's memory slot.

I need to mention something important here. A memory module has two main parts to it: the black components, a.k.a the chips, and the multi-layer printed circuit board (PCB). Vastly over-simplified, a PCB is made from lots of thin layers of a non-conductive material, and then there's a conductive layer, usually copper. The circuits are etched into the board, by removing the copper from where there is no need for electricity to go. A multi-layer PCB consists of several very thin separately etched PCBs bonded together. So there are several layers of electronic circuits in the little green "plastic" board the chips are attached to. If you cut through a multi-layer PCB, the cutting will rearrange the circuitry and make the electricity go in directions it was not supposed to, at times when it was not supposed to.

And that is why, when the dremel modified memory module was installed, it short-circuited so badly that it caught fire.

Mr X was quite unhappy with this turn of events, salvaged the parts of the memory module from the mess of charred and melted plastic that used to be an expensive laptop, and then he returned to the computer store to demand a refund, since the memory destroyed his laptop. The store manager informed Mr X that warranty claims are handled by the product manufacturer, and referred him to us.

Mr X contacts our customer service department, the returns division, and finds himself speaking with H. Now, H has been at this job for a couple of years as well, and has enough credibility and credit with management that he gets away with a lot. H informed Mr X that when the part is purchased from one of our resellers we do not guarantee that it will be compatible, and furthermore, if a part is modified in any way it is no longer under warranty. Mr X responded that the part was not modified, it was destroyed by fire, and therefore still under warranty.

No one in the entire customer service department can ever remember seeing H speechless before. However, he recovered swiftly, repeated that the module was no longer under warranty, and the call ended soon thereafter.

Mr X called back, requested a manger, and repeated his demands. The manager repeated H's answer, that the memory has been modified with the help of a dremel and therefore no longer has a warranty. Mr X replies that since nothing in the product documentation states that the memory should not be modified with a dremel, we are obligated to honour the warranty. The manager explains that there is a flaw in Mr X's logic, and that no reimbursement whatsoever will be given for the melted laptop.

Mr X has now filed a case with the Better Business Bureau, stating all of the above, demanding restitution.

I am at a loss for words.

Not Another Christmas-themed Blog

My exposure to anime ended several years ago, mainly because I own no anime myself, and the friends that did are still in Sweden, whereas I am here in the United States now. I still have fond memories of the Ruroni Kenshin episodes I watched (only made it to 14 or 15, I think), mainly because of the supporting cast and the outstanding Japanese voice-acting. My love for katanas was started by Kenshin, and the novel Musashi built on that. (That book is amazing!)

I think Japanese RPGs and games are so popular in the US is for two reasons. The first is that they capitalized on the Anime boom. If something is Japanese, it is exotic in a cool and fashionable way in the US right now. The second is that today's average gamer is just below 30, has a decent paycheck and is of the generation that grew up when consoles and videogames just came to the US, and the Japanese don't get enough credit for the fact that as far as RPGs go, they were first. It's to a large extent nostalgia. The first Final Fantasy games, The Legend of Zelda game, and the greatest one of them all, Chrono Trigger… I played them, loved them, and remember them very fondly. So fondly in fact that I don't remember that the things that bother me about today's Japanese RPGs was there back then as well. I just didn't see them, and if I did, I don't remember them bothering me.

One of the most fascinating things to me about cultural differences is the ones that you have to look closer at to see the full extent of. The fundamental ways of thinking, the subconscious assumptions that the thoughts are based on are drastically different... so different that a person from one country may learn the language of the other, but still not be able to understand them.

For example, the English language has no equivalents to the suffixes the Japanese put after names, largely because social station is not nearly as important in the US as it is in Japan. In fact, the English language goes to great lengths to erase differences in social standing. The Japanese on the other hand, have to signal those differences in order to even be able to have a conversation. Because they are so very important, and because they have no English equivalents, the translators of Persona 3 had no choice but to leave them in the game as they translated the dialogue, leading to a mixture of Japanese and English all too familiar to viewers of Anime in the English-speaking world today.

When I was younger, it didn't strike me as odd to play a game in which a 15-year old was the main Hero that saved the world. When you are 15 years old yourself that is an old age, filled with maturity and wisdom, and to save the world is something that every teenager dreams of. We want to be heroes. We know we could be, if we only had half a chance. And then I grew older, and realized how self-centered and immature teenagers are, and it irritates me that each and every one in these games is a kid. Why can't adults save the worlds for once?

Maybe it is because youth symbolizes purity in most of Asia? Heroes should be pure, after all, and why stop at making them pure in thought and deed, when you can add multi-layered symbolism to the mix? The Japanese more than love symbolism; their written language consists of it and their way of thinking is based on it in ways that is difficult for Europeans to comprehend.

Or maybe it's simply a matter of children in a Japanese culture growing up faster than in the US? Where the US thinks of and treats you as a child until you are 18, though your body and mind may be mature in every sense of the word, the Japanese expect responsibility and adult behavior from their children at a younger age, and consequently they receive it. That's a vague theory of course, since I haven't really studied contemporary Japanese culture that much. I prefer to stay with the nostalgia of the samurai novels.

It is also interesting that the typical American hero, the nameless vigilante that operates outside the law, is a negative thing in Japanese culture-they were the Ronin, the cast-off samuari that served no master, had no honor and no principles. They lived outside of society's strict framework of defined roles and rules, and by doing so they automatically threatened that framework. One of many reasons the 360 isn't doing so well in Japan, perhaps?

Speaking of that, have you ever noticed that the villains in Japanese RPGs surprisingly often are tall, blond, and have blue eyes? The evil that threatens the world is European in appearance... as a former history major, I find that fascinating.

I enjoy Persona 3 because the parts of Japanese culture that I liked in the animes and novels are there. The delicate balance between a collectivist culture and a strong individualism, between personal ambition, and the expectations to put the welfare of the group above the welfare of the individual. The insight that although something can matter a great deal to me personally, that doesn't automatically mean that it actually is important, and death is a perfectly natural part of life, and not by far the worst thing that can happen to anyone.

And what perhaps is the biggest obstacle of all for an American audience: A story does not necessarily have to have a happy ending, to have a good ending.

The Case of the Stupid Story Title

I bought a new book last night. I'm having a lot of fun reading it; I have always enjoyed murder mysteries (reading about them, anyway). However, with this particular collection of short stories, I have a strong complaint. In one of the short stories in the book, one of the first characters introduced is the village dress-maker. The title of that particular story is Tape-Measure Murder. Guess who the killer is?

Shame on you, editors.

Angels Do It Too

Someone reminded me the other night that I haven't blogged in a month. Froli has been mentioning it as well, and even teased me about it. I know. I've been neglectful. At the same time, this blog is a toy, not a job, and it is for fun and relaxation... so here it is. A new blog, about one of the very best things in the entire world.

No, it's not Mass Effect. It's not The Witcher either. (And though I love Froli more than you strictly need to know, it's not him either. Not this time.)

God gave it to Kiss, it was John Miles's first love, Abba thanked you for it, and the angels had it before they even had wings...

Music.

I am finally getting around to hoarding it again, restoring the collection on my computer, one ripped CD at the time, and I love it. All of it.

I have what might be called eclectic tastes in music. On my CD shelf Mozart sits next to Eminem, Bach and Savage Garden next to Evanescence and Lisa Ekdal. There is Nat King Cole's Christmas album, almost the only one I can stand listening to. There is Jussi Bjorling's indescribable performance to Verdi's Requiem. There is U2 and there is Nightwish, Freddie Mercury next to Janis Joplin. I will listen to almost anything, if I think I can stand it.

I am always willing to give a moment of my time and the undivided attention of my ears anyone who loves the music and who sings or plays because they want to share it, and because they have a passion for it greater than words can express. That's what makes music great. When the words are not enough, when they simply cannot cover it anymore, that's where the music takes over, and tells everything.

A couple of days after Pavarotti left us I posted a video of him here, an attempt to keep his memory alive that was as small as it was unnecessary. It is the theme from Caruso. I don't understand a word of it, but I can feel the pain. The loneliness, the longing, and the hopelessness inevitably makes me sad whenever I hear it.

Pavarotti made the world a better place by bringing music to as many people as he could. Apocalyptica does it by playing the cello in their own unique way, and Bobby McFerrin does it with the flair and style that only genius can bring.

There is no real point to this blog other than to say that I love music, and I want to share it with the world. In the end, everything will have been about the music, and that will have been enough. In the end, the music is everything.

(Don't bother. I already know Argent did it first.)

It was a matter of time, really.

I found out about this yesterday. Apparently, a legal complaint that accuses former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld of authorizing or ordering crimes of torture to be carried out, as well as other war crimes, has been filed in Paris.

Behind the accusation is an alliance of organisations, The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, the Berlin-based European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and two Paris-based groups, the International Federation of Human Rights and the League of Human Rights. The complaint will be investigated by the French authorities, and if they find there is enough basis for that complaint, Rumsfeld could find himself prosecuted for war crimes.

A person that has been accused of torture does not have to be a French national to be prosecuted in France, they only need to be on French soil.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed complaints with other European courts as well, and a spokesman says they will continue to do so, since no one in the US, "not even the Congress" is willing to investigate the Bush administration's torture of Iraqi war prisoners, or of the detainees in the Guantanamo Bay prison. Since the United States still refuses to join the International Criminal Court, Hague is not an option ether.

That the French courts are willing to consider this and investigate the matter makes me happy. The way in which Rumsfeld at last has managed to unite old American and European allies against an enemy without conscience or morals, amuses me. Finally, at long last, someone is calling him and the entire administration on their bullshit.

The Long Silence is Broken...

...by a YouTube. But it cheered me up. :-)

Court Your Muse

In the words of Sander Cohen, respectable citizen of Rapture, a muse is a fickle bitch with a short attention span.

He's wrong.

Though Sander's muse may not be the most attentive and regular visitor, that isn't because she is fickle, he simply doesn't know how to treat her right.

He fragments his attention between several different projects. He is focussed on his audience instead of on the muse, and he is too preoccupied by anger, fear, and every other emotion in the spectrum, to pay attention to his muse at all. Worst of all, he makes someone else do his creative work for him.

A muse is not fickle, and her attention span is usually anything but short, but she is a jealous and demanding creature. If you want her to become a central and recurring part of your life, you need to invite her, make her feel welcome, and lastly you need to make her feel so appreciated that she wants to come back to you. In other words, you have to court your muse.

The most important thing to realize is that once she has arrived, your muse wants to be the center of your attention. She wants you to eliminate all distractions, and to focus only on her.

If your muse has left you, or if she seems very willing to give you space lately, let me give you some advice on how to get back into her good graces. Keep in mind that since I am a writer, the more practical portion of my advice may not apply to you if you are not, but the theory should be as universal as it is solid.

If you write on a computer, take a moment to install a writing program that takes away all your distractions. If you are on a Mac, install Writeroom, and marvel at the solid black background, and the sleek interface. For Windows users, like myself, Darkroom offers the exact same functionality.

I run a Linux distribution, Ubuntu 7.04, on my laptop, and have not yet found a Linux application out there that offers the same thing, so I am using a work-around of sorts; I have made some changes to the text editor that came with my Ubuntu 7.04, Gedit. The background has been set to solid black, the font to pale purple, and I have hidden the tool bar, and maximized the window. Not quite as smooth as Darkroom is on my Windows PC, but it gets the job done.

If anyone out there knows of a native Linux application that mimics the functionality and interface of Writeroom, I would very much appreciate a link.

Before you start writing, close your browser. In fact close all other applications except one (we'll get back to which one later), to avoid the temptation of tabbing back and forth between the windows. Turn off your IM client, your RSS feed, and and your email notifications. Actually, if you're on a notebook, go ahead and disable the wireless altogether. You don't need it right now, and it distracts you from the muse. She doesn't want to share you with Digg anymore than your partner wants you to keep trying to watch TV while you're making love.

Now that you have removed all visual distractions, you are a quarter of the way there. Next is to get rid of all those things that take place everywhere around you, and that hover just at the outside of your perception and nags you to turn around, just briefly, to see what's going on. I'm referring to the TV downstairs, the conversation in the next room, the loud music from your neighbors, in short, I am talking about sound.

Sound is deceptively good at distracting and fragmenting our concentration, and when that happens our focus slips away from the muse and back to the movie that is playing on the TV below. Fortunately, there is a very easy solution for this: Listen to other sounds.

Install a good media manager on your computer, and create a playlist for when you sit down to write. The media player is the only thing that should be running on your computer, aside from the word processor, when you write. What kind of music you listen to is not as important, whatever you like and whatever shuts out every single distracting sound from the world around you, is perfect. My primary writing playlist consists of a lot of metal and gothic rock, my secondary plays classical music.

Listen through earphones. Speakers are all well and good, but they don't isolate you from the sounds of the world. Plug in your headphones, and keep the volume at whichever level is loud enough to shut everything out, yet soft enough to be pleasant.

There is one more thing you need to do, before you can guarantee your muse the complete privacy she needs. You need to let your room mate, spouse, child, pet, or any other creature living in your home, know that when you write, you want to be alone. All the Darkrooms and earphones in the world are useless if someone suddenly walks in to ask you if you remembered to buy toilet paper when you went to Costco last night. Ask for privacy. I should not have to tell you to ask nicely, or to be willing to explain why you need it.

Now, the forth and last piece of advice I have is that you make it easy for your muse to find you, and show her that you will be there when she comes looking for you. She doesn't just want to just date you, she wants a committed long-term relationship, and she wants to be able to count on you to show up when you've asked her out.

Make writing a part of your routine. Sit down to write at the same time every evening. It doesn't matter if you can only do it once a week, though if you can't do it very often you need to rethink whether you really want to have a relationship with a creature as demanding as a muse.

But if you can promise your muse that you will be in front of your computer, earphones plugged in and word processor open, by 8:00 PM every Thursday night, and spend at least two hours with her, you will eventually begin to find her there at that time, every week, impatiently waiting for you with countless new ideas that she can't wait to share with you.

Court your muse. She'll reward you with life-long loyalty and endless inspiration, and she will help you achieve things you never thought possible because she wants to inspire you. She just needs to be convinced that you want her there with you, every step of the way.

Apocalyptica plays Metallica

I used to play the cello, a long time ago. If I had known back then that a group like this would appear, or if I had realized that it was at all possible, I might have been a professional cellist today.

This is what it is all about. My music, on my instrument, my way. The way I like it, the way I want to, because this is how I love it.

This is Enter Sandman, performed on four cellos, by four very talented and skilled cellists. Enjoy.



Now, take my hand. We're off to Never-Never Land.

By popular demand...

Here we are. This is what we look like when we are very tired, and very dressed up. Despite both those things, we are also very happy in this picture. That's why we're smiling.

Happy National Video Games Day!

Today is National Video Games Day. Celebrate your favorite games or gaming devices by playing your latest obsession for hours and hours tonight. Take a moment to fondly remember the game that got you hooked on gaming, your first love, all those years ago.

Rejoice in our captivating hobby, and don't forget to send an e-card to the favorite gamer in your life.

It is fitting that the 360 is returned to us on this auspicious day.

A Magician Has Left Us

I know that this is several days late. I know that I am doing what everyone else has already done, but I don't really care that much about that.

Luciano Pavarotti has left this world, and he left it a better place than he found it. I'm hoping I can say the same one day, though I could never hope to do it the way he did. He had a magical voice, and a skill that matched his fantastic talent, and recordings of his performances will hopefully last for generations, who all will have a little more beauty in their lives from the music he was a part of.

This is not a tribute, so much as my contribution to his memory. May it live for centuries.

Entirely Bug-Free Software, Guaranteed

Andy Brice did it! He wrote the first ever bug-free application, and you can find it, completely free, at all the reputable download sites!

Actually, to be serious for a moment, what Andy did is pure genius. Everyone who uses freeware, a lot or a little, should read his blog article and make notes of all the sites he submitted his little application to. Don't be too scared, but do be careful from now on.

Intermediate Literacy

The ability to express oneself clearly and concisely, using the written medium, is not so much an ability as it is a skill. Because it is a skill it takes time and practice to acquire it, and that has rarely been as painfully clear to me as over the past few days.

I am on email and chat detail at work. That means people write in and ask questions and I write back and answer them. The emails are not so bad, but the chat can be physically painful, and not only because of the way I tend to hunch in my chair. Maybe it is because I have spent nearly ten years living online as much as I do off-line, maybe it is because I read a lot, or maybe it is because some of the people I talk to in the support chat really are illiterate idiots, but it is becoming more and more clear to me that though basic literacy may be widespread, the intermediate version isn't. I'm referring to the ability to communicate or describe clearly, using exact words and phrasing, a situation or the events that led up to it.

Another side of intermediate literacy is the ability to read between words, to understand the implied meaning of written language and not only what is actually there. The ability to understand that when the Technical Support agent in the chat asks “Did you receive an error message?”, they expect you to copy and paste that error message into the chat if your answer is yes. It is implied, and the ability to understand such implications is vital to clear communication in a medium where all you have to work with is the written word.

I admit that I may be spoiled. I spend a lot of my spare time in internet forums, chat rooms, and talking to friends on various messenger services, and after nearly ten years I have become very good at expressing myself in writing. I know the difference between calling someone a “nice” person and a “kind” person.

I know that I read more than average. I know that a lot of people that I communicate with online do the same, and I realize very well that the amount you read, and what you read, directly affects how you write, and now I have finally arrived at what I was pondering on the way home today.

Is there too little writing in our everyday life today? Everything is in pretty colors that are easy to distinguish, words are short and quick, and news as well as important political issues come in 5-second sound bytes. We're moving towards a society that has no room or use for long segments of written language, where novels sell better if they are easy to read and use short and simple words, and where soon only college textbooks use four-syllable words and demand that you think while you read them.

But we are also moving towards a society that exists at least partly online, in blogs, chat rooms, on IM clients and on message boards, and in those places, the written word is the only way of communicating. Can there be a balance between the real visual world, and the written online one? Will there be?

There should be. It seems to me, that with computers and network connections here to stay, the written way of communicating should be focussed on, emphasized and celebrated. After all, what else are we to each other than words, strung together to form sentences?

Draught

In addition to the backyard swamp, my well of blog ideas has also dried up recently. Somehow it seems that going on a second YouTube binge so soon after the last would be a bit like cheating. I need some other form of filler material, and I need it quickly. It's either that, or I'll have to start thinking again, and I feel very strongly that I'm getting enough of that at work right now.

I am in that situation right now that all callcenter employees recognize, where all my customers are irritating and annoying for me. Every single one of them seems a bit stupid, has a funny-sounding voice and an irritating way of talking, and they aggravate me, and I know that it isn't them, it is me.

If you've ever worked in customer service you know what I'm talking about.

I need a break, and I am very much looking forward to the upcoming three-day weekend. Amaterasu Okami and I are going to smite evil together.

The Bane of the Black Swamp

The swamp has been defeated. The correct parts have been purchased and assembled and the sprinklers will work again. In all, it's been a busy weekend.

Cause of the Backyard Swamp

We seem to have a leaking sprinkler pipe. The main pipe, the one that is filled with water under high pressure whether the sprinklers are running or not. Next to it are two other pipes, and an electrical cable that probably should not be accidentally cut when one is up to one's elbows in muddy water that said cable is fully submerged in. You are looking at the result of nine hours of hard work, starting with determining where the leak was, how bad it is, and what exactly needs to be done to fix it. And that was after digging through quite a large amount of very heavy mud.

The '73 Belmont Stakes

I have always wanted to see this race, and I finally found it on YouTube. This is what is known as "a spanking".



And you thought Seabiscuit was impressive...