http://xkcd.com/338/

I hate simply posting a link in a blog entry but it deserves it!

So in my work I submitted some bug reports to Apple, among others, for their Safari engine. Today I got the following email from Apple:

—
Hello Karl-Johan,

This is a follow-up to Bug ID# 5298296. Engineering believes this issue has been addressed in Mac OS X Leopard.

Leopard is available commercially as of October 26, 2007 at:

<http://www.apple.com/macosx/>

Upon installing this software, please update this bug report with your results.

Thank you for your time. We truly appreciate your assistance in helping us discover and isolate bugs.

Best Regards,

The Bug Reporting Team
Apple Developer Connection
Worldwide Developer Relations

—
I’ve seen a lot of crap in my days but the above really takes the prize. I tell them, in great detail, about a bug, and their response is to fix it in their “new” product (Leopard) and they even have the stomach to inform me that, in order to fix the bug, I have to install Leopard.

And besides, what the hell? Safari is available for Windows too. Should the Win users update to Leopard as well, just so they can use Apple’s retarded browser?

My ISP:

1. blocks outgoing port 25.
2. screws their own sendmail servers up and doesn’t manage to fix them in 24+ hours.

Go Bredbandsbolaget!

A few weeks ago, I decided to get up-to-date on the American shows that interest me, which was mainly BSG and Lost. BSG because I love the theme, and Lost because, well, Annie is talking about it all the freaking time! For someone to talk about it all the time it *HAS* to be good. I refuse to believe she’s insane.

Anyway, BSG was just a curiosity thing, but was triggered by Stace’s post about Star Wars and such awhile back in her blog

So here I am, watching BSG and Lost when I have the chance to do so (which is usually at nights only, before bed). I started with BSG, so I’m only a few episodes in (well, about 10 episodes into the first season) of Lost so far. BSG I’ve almost finished watching, but I’m a little worried about “the final plot” on that one (I’m on season 3, somewhere at the beginning there).

I’m not sure why I’m telling you about this, but I figured some of you might get a kick out of knowing.

Yesterday I switched to DreamHost and today I am switching even more. (I didn’t realize I could have more than one domain on a single account — d’uh!) So, this blog shall perish for a little while as it is moved over to DreamHost. See you on the flip side!

I’ve testily moved one of my domains over to DreamHost. I’ve for some reason been reading their blog for the last year or so, and when they mentioned a promo code with $50 off I couldn’t help myself.
Once the domain actually has content, I’ll let you know the URL. I don’t believe I’ll be able to continue  using both this one and that, so when the time comes, this domain will take a nap, so to say. (I’ll still pay for the domain but I won’t pay for hosting and I won’t have a server.)

Explosives: “the concept behind explosives revolves around the volume change which occurs when a component in solid or liquid form changes into gas form. Explosives of decent quality in solid form will change into gas form in a very short amount of time. In mines ammoniumnitrate mixed with diesel oil is used”*

*) Not using proper chemistry terms, no.

For example in mines they use ammoniumnitrate (NH4NO3). 25 kgs of NH4NO3 results in something like 70 m³ of “gas” (N2, O2, H2O), though this is a presumption based on the temperature of the resulting gasses reaching ~450 C. During a more powerful detonation the released gasses can reach several thousand degrees, at which point they generate a shock wave spreading faster than the speed of sound.

(This all is more or less copied and poorly translated from my chemistry book — I just thought it was kind of amusing that they went into such amount of detail over explosives. And noMrBushImNotOutToGetYou.)

I just bought a regular home phone earlier today. Bye Skype, it was(n’t) fun. I ended up using my cell phone 100% of the time in the end, because Skype gave me crapshit quality 99% of the time, and it was a major pain to keep the computer running just in case someone wanted to call. It was neat to have a US phone number, and if anybody wants to call me, I will have that number for awhile longer, so just lemme know and I’ll turn it on for you, but otherwise, I’m done with it all at least for now.

Once I move to Japan that might change. I might reenable my phone number and all that stuff, so people in Sweden can call me still, like mom.

I helped my 84-year old neighbour replace some light bulbs and got these as thanks:

Aren’t they cute?

I finally had some time to sift through the thousands of unread entries in my RSS reader today, and came across some fairly interesting stuff. One of the things that really put me in an apprehensive mood was a post by Joi Ito (which in turn was posted by several other people) about 3 weeks ago, which can be found here. The post contains an image of a recently published book with the text (in Japanese) “Oi Nigger! Don’t be touching a Japanese girl’s ass!”, which was apparently about “foreigners committing crimes” in Japan. In fact, from what I can tell (I haven’t read the book or seen anything from it myself, except that one screen), the book is talking about the problem of foreigners committing crimes in Japan, with images and such.

The thing got a huge amount of attention, and the author of the book made a response to the international audience in Japan Today, here.

I’m not sure what to think of this all. I knew racism existed in Japan (against everyone not Japanese), and I do not have any illusions (like so many other people who are planning on moving there) on ever being seen as “Japanese”. No, I would rather be seen as “Kalle”, and I would rather see people as who they are as individuals, and to hell with belonging and becoming.

But this is just… wow. It smells and looks and feels like the racism of half a century ago. Where am I headed again? And why? I hate having to ask myself those questions when I’ve been set on this plan for over a year already.