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Sirens.

Posted 18:22 CET Thursday March 11th, 2010 (yesterday). 36 views. No comments. Tagged with Miscellaneous.

On the first Saturday of March, last Saturday that is, I had a little get together at my humble apartment. Naturally, I had to clean the apartment before people showed up. Even though I like to keep a clean house, it really didn’t hurt to get everything to sparkle a little extra. In between finished the living room and start work on the kitchen, I decided to watch a little TV. Cleaning might be a necessary chore, but damn it’s boring. So I needed a break.

Half way through an episode of South Park, I suddenly heard a lot of sirens that came closer and closer and then stopped not too far from my apartment building. I got up and looked out the living room window and saw this:

The fire brigade pulled two people out of the burning apartment, rescued two or three others from other apartments in the building with two ladder trucks. For me it looked like the firefighters were in total control, the time that passed between the second and third picture above was maybe 2 minutes and then the fire was more or less put out. My heroes! Seriously.

So, there you have it. Bad idea: Set fire to your apartment. Good idea: Don’t set fire to your apartment.

When it Hits.

Posted 21:47 CET Friday January 15th, 2010 (56 days ago). 158 views. 2 comments. Tagged with Miscellaneous, Politics.

Yeah, you probably heard what went down in Haiti. If you haven’t, here’s a quick summary: On Tuesday, a major earthquake hit the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince and a country that was in rather miserable shape already is now on its merry way to hit rock bottom. The estimates of number of casualties are rather hazy as of now, I’ve seen numbers ranging from 30,000 to 500,000 – and that’s just form the earthquake itself. If you want to know more, Wikipedia has a detailed article about the 2010 Haiti earthquake you can read.

According to the same source, Haiti is the poorest country in the Americas by most economic measures. It had a nominal GDP of 7.018 billion USD in 2009 with a GDP per capita of 790 USD, about $2 per person per day. Needless to say, the country’s infrastructure was in no way capable of handling a natural disaster like the one we’re seeing now even before the earthquake hit, and most of us can only imagine what it’s like now. So, please, if you can spare a few dollars – or whatever currency you might use – donate to your favorite humanitarian organization.

That concludes today’s morale encouragement. Now let’s put everything into perspective. Continue reading "When it Hits." →

911, What’s Your Emergency?

Posted 21:18 CET Sunday November 15th, 2009 (117 days ago). 165 views. 2 comments. Tagged with Miscellaneous, Ramblings.

Meet Joshua Basso, a 29-year-old from Tampa, Florida. Joshua was recently jailed for allegedly placing several obscene calls to 911 operators, asking dispatchers to talk to him while he masturbated.

From The Weekly Vice:

When officers arrived at his home, Basso initially denied that he called 911 and refused to turn his phone over. An officer then dialed the number that called 911 from her personal cell phone and Basso’s phone rang in his pocket while he was standing next to her. He then reportedly admitted to making the obscene calls.

This is another classic example of someone who has broken the “don’t-do-something-really-stupid”-rule, because if you do something really stupid it’ll probably end up on the internet. I wonder what happens if Joshua Basso’s next employer does a quick Google search for his name. Continue reading "911, What’s Your Emergency?" →

Google Wave Invites.

Posted 14:21 CET Tuesday November 3rd, 2009 (129 days ago). 225 views. 16 comments. Tagged with Internet, Miscellaneous.

Just a quick entry to let you know that I have 20 Google Wave invites to give away. Leave a comment if you’re interested.

Please note this (from Google):

Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick.

Meaning that it might take a while from I send you the invite until you actually receive it.

Get Rid of Free Newspapers!

Posted 19:58 CET Thursday October 15th, 2009 (148 days ago). 154 views. 2 comments. Tagged with Miscellaneous, Politics.

I should probably have written this entry in Norwegian because it’s only relevant for people living in Norway, but there are quite a lot of people who live in Norway who don’t speak a single word Norwegian – I know a few – and it’s very relevant for them.

Anyway.

I’m not sure how it is in other countries, but in Norway it’s possible to avoid getting your mailbox stuffed with advertising, leaflets and whatnot simply by attaching a sticker to your mailbox or front door saying that you don’t want it. The sticker doesn’t even have to be a pre-made one, you can just create your own. And from the 1^st of June this year, it was possible do the same to avoid getting free newspapers as well. When I came home from work today, I’d received one district newspaper, one city newspaper and one that was strictly not a newspaper, but an advertisement newspaper from a real estate broker.

I don’t read any of them. If I’m interested in district or city news, there are great sites on the internet that give me just that and when I eventually decide that I need a bigger apartment, I can collect information I need to achieve on the fantastic interweb, too. So today I’m taking action, I’m attaching a sticker to both my mailbox and front door.

If you don’t read any of the free newspapers you get in your mail either, you should do the same. Below are two versions of such a sticker, one that I grabbed from the site Grønn Hverdag and a version I made without the Grønn Hverdag URL in case you for some reason don’t want to advertise for the site. For kicks, I’ve also included the same two versions of a sticker that should stop the flow of advertising you really don’t need if you haven’t done that already. Right click the images you want to save and select “Save image…” or whatever your favorite browser might call saving an image to your computer. Then print, attach with scotch tape and live happily ever after.