Happy summer solstice, readers near and far (excluding the southern hemisphere). It is today at 18:06 UTC; that’s when the North Pole points closest to the sun.

Here in Reykjavík, sunset tonight is at 00:03. Yeah, three minutes after midnight.

Our time zone designation needs revising at some point.

Me:	Do you have the MacBook mid-size in stock?
Apple store:	No, sorry.
Me:	When do you expect it?
Apple store:	Well, it was dispatched a week ago.
Me:	Okay, so it’s sitting in a ship somewhere?
Apple store:	(half-insulted) No no, not a ship. They come by airplane.
[a moment's pause]
Me:	That’s one slow airplane.
Apple store:	Well, it is coming all the way from China.

It better run faster than it flies.

Enter a somewhat unkempt man in his early forties, medium build, in overalls with a little paint on them. He wanders around the lab for a bit, contemplating the oscilloscopes.

The essence of our conversation is paraphrased here to the best of my ability, G representing me and D the Designer.

G: “Hi, uh, can I help you?”

D: “Yeah, I’m just taking a look around. I designed this building, you know.”

G: “Really?”

D: “Yeah, I did, my company did. I designed the Mac interface, too.” [gestures at my PC display]

G: “Wow. So you’re here to see how your creations turned out?” [still not sure whether he's joking]

D: “Yeah, well, I’m also having trouble with the department, they still haven’t paid for the design work.”

G: “Really? One would think they’d have that kind of thing in order.”

D: “Apple, too. They haven’t paid me for the Mac design work. These people owe me a lot of money, it’s pretty lousy, and I’ve had to take action about it.”

G: “Action?”

D: “Yeah, I’ve just sent this fax out, to the EE department, and to Apple, and several other places in the valley.”

He shows me a hand-written sheet, memorably ending with the words “Pay or be punished!”

I measure him out, as inconspicuously as I can. He has me a little worried, but he’s not that much bigger than me, and hasn’t seemed aggressive.

G: “Wow. You’re not mincing words there!”

D: “Heh, no. Can’t go too easy on these guys, or you just get them walking all over you.”

G: “I’ll bet. Well, best of luck with that. I hope they come around.”

D: “Hey thanks. It’s good talking to you.”

G: “See ya.”

He leaves the lab. Later that night, when leaving, I walk around and see D in the lunch area on the second floor, eating out of the common fridge. I nod to him, shrug and leave.

In the morning I mention this to Ed, the labs manager, and in about ten minutes a policeman arrives. I describe D as best I can, and then it hits me that he told me his name.

Policeman: “Oh, that guy, okay. He pops up around campus every few years, I think he was a student here once. He’s never gotten violent, but he hasn’t said anything threatening like this before either. I’ll have a little chat with him.”

That day, I notice copies of D’s handwritten fax posted on doors and flyer boards around campus. Never heard of him again.

I wonder if he ever got paid.

I have just returned from a country where, apparently, potato chips can be marketed under the name Papas Lolita.

http://www.asciimaps.com/

„Til hamingju Glitnir,
með að fæðast í gær …“
♪ ♬

Insider tip úr Landsbankanum: við erum alveg að fara að kasta 120 ára gömlu nafninu, frá og með morgundeginum munum við heita „Lýsing“ og sérhæfa okkur í fjármögnun bíla og vinnuvéla. Allir að drífa sig að shorta LAIS! :-)

(Eins gott að það les þetta enginn, annars myndi regluvörður flengja mig bláan fyrir svona gáleysistal.)

But I would walk five hundred miles
And I would walk five hundred more
Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles
To fall down at your door

Hér úti á götu heyrði ég rétt í þessu einhverja glaðværa unga menn syngja lagið „500 Miles“ og skyndilega fullmótaðist hugsun í höfðinu á mér sem hefur verið þar myndlaus og þokukennd frá því á táningsárum mínum þegar ég horfði á Gettu betur:

Ármann og Sverrir Jakobssynir minna mig á The Proclaimers, sér í lagi á þetta lag.

Og öfugt.

Það er ekki útlitið. Ekki eru það fræðistörfin eða tónsköpunin. Ég veit ekkert hvað það er og ég meina ekkert illt með því. En það hefur verið þannig hálfa ævi mína, og ég sé ekki fram á að það breytist.

Asnakjálki með meiru

¹⁵Og hann fann nýjan asnakjálka, rétti út höndina og tók hann og laust með honum þúsund manns. ¹⁶Þá sagði Samson:

“Með asnakjálka hefi ég gjörsamlega flegið þá,
með asnakjálka hefi ég banað þúsund manns!”

¹⁷Og er hann hafði mælt þetta, varpaði hann kjálkanum úr hendi sér, og var þessi staður upp frá því nefndur Ramat Lekí.

— Dómarabókin, 15:15-17

Þannig var nú það.

Napoleon Dynamite, the “super-nerd.”

Yes, I work in marketing now.

I’ve been a techie since before I can remember.

• I wrote a program for drawing on the TV screen with a joystick, on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum when I was 10.
• For the past four-and-a-half years (and for three of the four summers before that) I’ve been working full-time as a programmer (or software engineer, when I want to sound fancy, although engines are rarely involved).
• I have an MS in electrical engineering.
• I read dozens of software development blogs.
• I write software for fun in my spare time.
• I run a webserver for myself and several friends.
• On my home computer I use Gentoo linux, not Windows.
• I read Dilbert, chuckling in a particularly gleeful oh-how-deliciously-superior-I-am way whenever marketing stereotypes are featured.
• I’m sitting at home blogging at 6pm on Dec 23, when I should be in a panic-stricken shopping spree in a mall somewhere.

But I took a job at the web department of a bank in the beginning of this year. And today this web department was merged into the marketing department.

To my loyal readers: happy holidays, both of you. If you need me, I’ll be over here in the Identity Crisis Counselling corner, working on this.

☺

Firefighters battle the flame of the loins of an intimidatingly tall Indian woman by instructing her to assume the Salamba Sarvangasana pose, known to relieve tension.

And they say Indian women are reserved and conservative…

Indian firefighters have no idea as to how to react to strange phone calls from young ladies asking them to ‘extinguish the flame of their loins.’
[...]
… be it day or night, the content of the message remains the same: ‘Can you extinguish any sort of fire? What about the fire of passion inside of me? Come quickly, I am all on fire.’

Original story — from the one and only Pravda, sort of.

The guy in this picture probably looks pretty cool to perhaps 5% of the world.

He probably knows, and doesn’t care, that he looks like a cruel and pointless killer to perhaps another 5%.

But I wonder if he’s aware that, to everybody else, he just looks enormously silly.

I direct your attention to Strandbeest. Most specifically, to the animaris rhinoceros transport video, which would be worth watching even if only to hear the way this (maniac?) inventor speaks the name of the monster he created.

There are several other videos of his various creations, all in the same vein: huge marauding webs of yellow plastic tubes, walking around on beaches.

They move by themselves, powered by wind, after he sets them off. Personally, I think he’s plotting a hurricane-powered hostile takeover of Florida in time for the presidential elections.

I don’t know whether to be impressed or frightened by this man.