all things me

– Fourth Splinter Cell is scheduled to come out in spring 2006. And I haven’t got the third one yet either.
– The new Prince of Persia is coming out in a few days (on 9th I think).
– Colorado Kid by Stephen King just arrived for me from a bookstore. I’ll have to finish Insomnia (by S.K.) before I’ll start the newest book. I ordered Blood and Smoke (audio book) as well, and I can’t wait to get to listen to it!
(I actually got it already, but it turned out to be a cassette version so I’ll send it back and ask if they have a CD version.)
– Early next year yet another Stephen King book is coming out: Cell.
– This Tuesday is a public holiday (Independence day).
– Apparently, WordPress 2 is coming out soon.

And last but certainly not least… Fanfare, please.
– 2 days off in January! (Which in practice will be a 5-day weekend, because Friday, Jan 6th is a public holiday and I’m taking Wednesday and Thursday off.) Holy game-a-thon, you say? Yeah, so do I.

[edit: Dec 6th]
I completely forgot this!
– Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished by Rocky Wood, David Rawsthorne, and Norma Blackburn is coming out. I just hope it’ll be available in Finland.
[/edit]

This is a funny “game”: spot 74 bands or artists. It’s actually a contest for people in the USA (and then some). I’d like an Alienware computer, but alas, I can’t enter the contest. I can, however, try how many I can find. I’ve got 39 so far. Some clues are very obvious but I can’t get the names out of my head (if they even are there).

I haven’t bothered reading the rules if publishing the list is bad, but I’m not going to help someone win an Alienware computer I have the list below this but I’m hiding it. Anyway, the list is not the point. Having fun with a couple (or 74) of heureka! moments is the point.

Quite a nice find: Music Export Finland.
There you can listen to Finnish bands — some of them even singing in Finnish! I’m not a fan of Finnish bands, but there’re some songs there I like (= can bear):
– Humane: Wish God Was A Woman
– Bomfunk MC’s: Hypnotic (snippet)
– Kwan: Unconditional Love (only a 40 second snippet)
– Nightwish: Walking In The Air (theme from Snowman)
– The Crash: Lauren Caught My Eye
– Kemopetrol: Child Is My Name
– Club For Five: Muistan Sua Elaine (snippet)

… Stupid snippets … oh well. At least listen to the song by Humane.

Even though the singer sounds like he has a hot potato in his mouth, the song’s kind of nice. The piano thingy on the background stuff. Ah, I guess it’s just acquired taste. Everything in music is. (Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. Just for the record: Tripping is a wonderful song and everything on Intensive Care is awesome. Robbie is a god with dimples. )

I’m sure there’d be more nice songs (well, not really sure). I don’t know how long that site will be up (if it’s a temporary thing because it’s “advertising” some party) so Go hear. Finland. And please, don’t judge the country by the kooky bands (say, “Semmarit”).

I’ve been making my godson a fancy Christmas card. I’ll buy him a subscription to a magazine (we don’t know which yet) so I decided to make him a magazine-themed card. It turned out pretty cool:

The barcode has (“to” +) my godson’s name and the date of Christmas eve in it; the front cover holds the month and year, “free issue”, and the name of a fictional printing house (a reference to yours truly). And of course, it says “Merry Christmas” in Finnish at the very top. I bought some very pretty — manly enough for a 7-year-old, however — snowflake stickers so I’ll stick a few around Santa. On the inside I’ve written a banner with “Special Offer! Available as long as needed.” and then I’ll write some sort of greeting.

When I was printing the card, the printer ran out of magenta. I opened the cover and replaced the cartridge — and noticed the printer’s serial number is FART05657.

Earlier today I started designing a calendar for Mum. My sister and I are doing a calendar with our doggie’s photos on it. There’s only one photo missing which my sister will hopefully take tomorrow.

Back to designing cards!

I hate putting a green custom sticker on gifts. I hate how it also spoils the fun for the packages I get. But without it the package gets stuck in the customs and you have to stand there, watching a mean-looking officer get his dirty hands on your precious gift and give you the third degree.

If I got a wrapped present that I had to pick up at the customs and I obviously wouldn’t know what is in it, would they make me open it there — or worse, open it themselves?

There’s a guy at work who seems to take nothing seriously. It’s usually fun, he jokes a lot and he’s funny. Today we (a couple of people) were talking about my studies and I told I had promised Grandma I’d have my bachelor’s degree by next December when we meet up again (of course we meet before that, but we have a special Xmas meet-up in December). This “joker” said ‘blaaaah, your grandma’s going to be dead by that time’.

I get the little teasing and I don’t mind it, but that was just plain rude.

(Can you think of a more boring title? )

Merry Christmas everyone!! We have given out presents already, njah njah. I got wonderful things: Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (Kory, yay!!!) and Path of Neo. Ooooh, which to install? Both! I also got books — Secrets of the Code by Daniel Burstein (“The Unauthorised Guide to the Mysteries Behind the Da Vinci Code”) and “a guide for grammar police” or something like that And I got Donna Tartt’s Secret History from a friend of mine who got me the Little Friend by the same author a few years ago. It’s not my usual style of literature, but I liked Little Friend very much. I can’t wait to start with the new book. Sister had got me a Stephen King movie, Silver Bullet.

Now, to the title. I think, when you are little and your Dear Santa letters are like this…
- pretty pink Barbie
- candy
- somesuperduper Lego package
- some electric spy thingy gadget
- something pretty impossible to find
… each of those dashes represent the word ‘and’.

When you get older and your letters are like this…
- Splinter Cell Chaos Theory
- Path of Neo
- Prince of Persia Two Thrones
- Ring 2 DVD
- Call of Cthulhu
- something on Da Vinci Code
- very heavy dictionaries
- (you get the drift)
… the dashes represent the word ‘or’.

Each year I need to point this out to Dad when he gasps after seeing my wishlist. This year, it was pretty short though (SC:CT, PoN, PoP:TT), but the things I wished for weren’t cheap.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll need to hop into the boots of Sam Fisher and slip on the nightvision goggles.

I can’t believe I forgot new WP was released on Monday! This lazy bum here is now going to upgrade. Keep yer fingers crossed.

@19:45
Whoa… no glitches yet and all the plugins seem to work. Please let me know if you bump into something odd (technology-wise, not content-wise )

Don’t mind the odd shaped intro box up there (appears by clicking on Intro). I have a thing going on there Now I gotta go watch Stephen King’s Kingdom Hospital

Our dog has a blog and even though I rarely write in it, I wanted to give it some time in the limelight. Well, it may be permanent – that box on the main page. There are some pretty photos and cool changing header image on the site. It’s a sort of sandbox for WP stuff — the rare occasions I have the energy to play with it (nowadays — or currently).

Hope you like it.