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– Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished by Rocky Wood, David Rawsthorne, and Norma Blackburn is coming out.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.

1. Pet Shop Boys
2. Matchbox 20
3. Guns’n’Roses
4. Led Zeppelin
5. the Eagles
6. Red Hot Chili Peppers
7. Nine Inch Nails
8. 50 Cent
9. Sex Pistols
10. Green Day
11. Deep Purple
12. Queen
13. Garbage
14. Beach Boys
15. Smashing Pumpkins
16. Eminem
17. Alice in Chains
18. Blur
19. Gorillaz
20. White Snake
21. Aerosmith
22. Iron Maiden
23. Radiohead
24. Hootie and the Blowfish
25. Hole
26. Spoon
27. Scorpions
28. White Zombie or Rob Zombie
29. Madonna
30. Jewel
31. Police
32. Pink
33. U2
34. Doors
35. Sheryl Crow
36. Prince
37. Seal
38. Rolling Stones
39. KISS
40. Dead Presidents

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.