Better Friday

It's amazing - last week when I was working on a boring manual project, at the end of the week I was dead tired. This week, I've got back to automation and I've been designing and implementing - if you ask me, pretty nifty - test harness for a feature that didn't used to have it... and I feel energetic and ready to do something with my weekend.

Also, tomorrow with the new month, starts the yoga challenge at my studio - which means that I'm going to be doing yoga for 30 days, every day. That's going to be quite... challenging, but I've got good vibes about it. So tonight I'm going to gather some strenght, start tomorrow with some slow hatha yoga and see how it goes. And after next month and the challenge is over, it's only couple of weeks before the teacher training starts. Feeling good about it.

Chaturangas

The remnants of hurricane Rita are washing here and it's raining heavily. I dug up my waterproof shoes this morning, but it is a bit depressing waking up when it's dark and wet outside.

Yoga was good today. I did the primary series with Kelly, and since so few people showed up she had time to concentrate on individual needs. Kelly is exceptional teacher, and she's almost the only one who can actually see my yoga beyond my disability. Most other teacher don't want to give me instructions when it comes to my wrists, most of them assume that I know best what to do. Kelly teaches me like anyone else, but with my weakness in mind - today she talked to me again about Chaturangas. Because I'm shy with my wrist, I tend to do them fast, too fast, which can easily lead to almost slumping down. Kelly told me to slow down, and she has a good point.

I wrote about this last time, about taking the "can't do" out of my yoga. While I keep this in mind, I also need to be very careful not to make my condition worse - at the same time strenght in my arms and wrists will be a good thing, and will protect my joints better. It's sometimes difficult to keep the balance between two - lately the wrist had been hurting a bit more than usual, so I've been easing off altoghter on the more demanding poses and it's immediately helping.

New manager

So today we finally found out who the new manager was going to be. There had been quite a few rumours about, and I had heard from a reliable source that there was going to be more than one person replacing Sean. In the end the management had gone for a two tier structure and given a job for all three people that applied (from inside the team). There is one QA manager, but under her are two - I don't know what I should call them - sub-managers, other one responsible for functional testing and the other one for automation.

It all sounds a bit too much for such a small team, but then again we are hiring more people in the near future and are responsible for testing over ten products, so maybe it's better this way. And "small" is relative anyway - the previous QA team I was part of had two people in it, me included, so compared to that ten person team is huge.

There will of course be some changes once the new manager starts to make her vision into practice - and surely it will be painful too. I'm optimistic though that it will work out good.

Children of Men by P.D. James

I've said before that dystopias are one of my favourite genres, so when I discovered that one of my favourite authors, P. D. James had written one, called Childen of Men, in 1994 I was delighted.

The story takes place in the near future, and human race is become infertile. Last children were born 1995 - and are now called Omegas - and the rest of the population are slowly aging. Old people commit voluntary suicides in guided seremonies and why not, as life without future has lost it's meaning.

P.D. James has a very distinct writing style, and especially book like this that is... well, let's face it, slow, is very well suited for an audiobook. The first couple of chapters describe the world and the situation leading up to it, and there are several chapters on backflashes back to the narrators childhood - none of it is absolutely necessary, it only sets the background for the events and people.

It doesn't matter though, it's all exquisitely well written and a pleasure. The thing is, dystopias are a very difficult genre to write, and there needs to be a point during the story and in the end. This one is beautifully written and tells a lot about the human nature, what happens to people with no future and no hope. But the ending is not satisfying - I love the concept of this book, but the end... and I can't really say more than that without spoiling the end.

This was also my first audiobook with Audible. And I have to say that I love it. I miss BBC Radio 4, I miss that I was able to listen something intelligent and useful while on the move, so this if fulfilling that gap quite nicely. So more, please.

Imagine this...

We had a meeting where some pension plan representatives came to talk to us about the new pension plan my company offering to us (which is very generous by this country's standards, I'm told). There were donuts on offer. Lots of different types, with jam, with chocolate frosting, chocolate donuts with chocolate frosting...

And I have not seen this in any other IT company, ever.

Most of the donuts were left on the table while people were talking about their latest volleyball game.

What kind of alternative world have I woken up in?

Being boring

Where's the thin line between boring and relaxing? Usually we don't want to do much on the weekends, and usually I find it very relaxing. So why has this weekend been more on the boring side than relaxing? Saturday was spent firmly on the couch catching up on some TV series - they are all starting new seasons now: House, Lost, ER, Law & Order (but luckily Stargates and Galactica started their break). There are quite a few very well writen and acted series on right now, but I still might have to drop some if time gets too precious.

Anyway, unlike normally, I've been feeling more guilty of lazying around than normal. I was going to go for yoga today, but about hour and a half before I had to leave my headache became so severe that I had to take some painkillers and take a nap - and of course when I woke up it was too late to go. And I'm feeling guilty about it, even if I had no reason to.

Hm. Need to start writing lists again.

Colours are changing

Kensei

I have been many years training in the Way of strategy, called Ni Ten Ichi Ryu, and now I think I will explain it in writing for the first time. It is now during the first ten days of the tenth month in the twentieth year of Kanei (1645). I have climbed mountain Iwato of Higo in Kyushu to pay homage to heaven, pray to Kwannon, and kneel before Buddha. I am a warrior of Harima province, Shinmen Musashi No Kami Fujiwara No Geshin, age sixty years.

From youth my heart has been inclined toward the Way of strategy. My first duel was when I was thirteen, I struck down a strategist of the Shinto school, one Arima Kihei. When I was sixteen I struck down an able strategist, Tadashima Akiyama. When I was twenty-one I went up to the capital and met all manner of strategists, never once failing to win in many contests.

These are the introductionary words of Book of Five Rings, the great masterwork by Miyamoto Musashi, who is widely regarded as the greatest warrior in the history of mankind. Though nominally a guide to Swordsmanship, in reality it is a book on philosophical teachings of all aspects of life. Many of his teachings are completely relevant today just as they were in ancient times, and his saying "The Way is in training" is certainly one that I have tried to adhere to all my life. Most of his lessons are decptively simple, yet difficult to follow. Musashi sees the Way in everything, and urges his readers to study all skills and crafts to improve their knowledge. He was the founder of the Way that combines both sword and pen, not believing that arts of war are inherently superior to those others. This insight allowed Musashi to surpass the other swordsmen of his era, who were prisoners of the tradtion and unwilling to abosrb new ideas.

Musashi stresses the value of peception over seeing, self-reliance, and disregarding frills. His attitude to fighting as well as life is amazingly no-nonsense, hardly surprising since he was proven in battlefield time and again agaist war-hardened opponents. It is this approach of directness and simplicity that makes his work so relevant today, just as it was in ancient Japan. Musashi's teachings are perhaps best solidified at the end of the Book of Fire where he simply states "The purpose of swordsmanship is to defeat your enemy in combat and nothing other than this." Though he was a man who could shatter his enemy's blade with a single strike, Musashi would never attach any mysticism to his skill. It was all result of hard practice and his innate humility in studying other people.

Though of course Musashi is widely recogniced as the greatest swordsman that ever lived, Japanese actually value him as an artist at least as much as a warrior. He was an outstanding painter, calligrapher, sculptor and portraitist. He actively sought out master artists and craftsmen, and eagerly studied their methods according to the same principles he had developed for his swordsmanship. His work speaks for itself -though witnesses of his duels are long gone and forgotten, his artwork remains as powerful as it was during the day it was created. This was due his ability to set aside his pride as a warrior and approach masters of other fields with humility and open mind. The paradox of Musashi's life was that though he defeated countless men in the battlefield, his creed was acutually one of tolerance, humilty, virtue and peace. Or as he said, best swords are those that are left in their scabbards.

Some of his works can be found here and to read the Book of Five Rings in its entirety, you can go here.

Thank you, Sensei.

Market forces

It's easy to take for granted that which is given freely, when you have to work so hard for success in other areas.

As said by a friend in an IM conversation the other day. I've often wondered why many successful men neglect their families and stay in the office all night long - this was actually a very useful insight into the issue. It's not necessarily because they don't appreciate their families - it's because they are using the same standard to evaluate the success both at work and at home. And work take as much as you give it, and these kinds of men achieve success with that "more the better" attitude. Whereas families - it's either that they don't demand, or that they don't offer the same kind of "payout" than work does... result is that the man spends more time at work, just because the "payout" (or "penalties") are higher. It not about lack of love - quite the contrary, the initial reason for the heavy workload is often financial need to support the family, or the urge to provide in the best possible financial care.

And meanwhile the wife would often be satisfied with less money and more time together, or even some shared responsibility. For many women the emotional support is more important but financial needs are the more tangible ones, the ones that demand more attention. Result is sad and yet avoidable if only the couple would communicate more.

(And before anyone gets their knickers in a twist - whilst I'm writing about working men and their families at home, there's no reason the roles couldn't be reversed. I've just never come across those families - still I'm sure that they too exist.)

Autumn brings inspiration

One of my advanced classes teacher Jeff started yesterday's practice by announcing that summer was over. I thought that was a strange thing to say (was there some kind of equinox yesterday?) but suddenly today it's really starting to get cold. My fingers were freezing on my way to work, so it's definitely time to dig up the gloves and my lil' hat.

Since yesterday's entry I've fortunately got some inspirations. Yesterday was my thrid practice with our travelling teacher Jeff, and while I've never liked his classes too much, I suddenly got him. Or was it that I got me? In any case I'm practicing detachment and have managed to push "can't do" out of my yoga. Jeff's classes are physically very demanding, and yesterday I didn't give in to the "Oh my God I can't do this anymore" and just did all his different sun salutations (he's got more than A and B that involve lot of warriors and quite trying).

Arm balances are still not happening - but instead of thinking that they will never happen, I've started thinking that I'll do them day at a time and if they happen they happen. There was a time I thought I'd never be able to jump-backs and -troughs - and now I'm doing them every time and couple of last classes Jason has really praised them (which feels fantastic). Yesterday even Jeff told me after class that he thought I've been getting stronger. So I guess there's progress happening... even if slowly.

So I've stopped saying to myself that I won't be able to... in the end it doesn't matter anyway. Yoga is not just about the asana.

Anyway, the inspiration. When doing yoga and getting these glimpses of insights into yoga and myself, I feel I'm doing something, and even if I try to avoid clichee's I have to say I feel I'm more alive than with anything else at this time.

Life as I know it

Although my life is more busy now than it was when I was unemployed - hell, I can barely find time to sit down in the evening - it's in many ways more empty now. I have less time to think and to be with myself, most of my waking time is spent at work doing fairly menial tasks (despite my promotion to the automation team I've been stuck with a "very urgent project" for couple of weeks now doing monkey work). It brings me no satisfaction.

For the first time in the history of this blog I've actually not blogged for two days this month - Friday was a hangover day so that was just laziness, but honestly, yesterday I didn't have anything say. That somewhat describes the situation: either I'm too tired, and/or there's nothing worth writing about. It's not even that I'm unhappy, at least then I'd have something to complain about.

And I don't know how to find the equilibrium again.

Pet hate

Oh, one thing I forgot to complain about.

Over the weekend I caught up with numerous Stargate episodes of both series I had fell behind with. SG-1 is going along the usual rut, addition of Ben Browder has been good - he's not shining and is maybe a bit too John-Crichtony, but he blends in well enough and has a good enough chemistry with the usual suspects. I especially liked Babylon where he gets to do his own stuff, and I hope he gets more of that soon.

And I think Atlantis is doing fine too - I like the addition of Ronon to the crew, as long as he doesn't become too domesticated he's going to bring in a bit of rough edge this series needs.

But BLOODY HELL if I have to watch another episode with a RETROVIRUS I'm going to explode. Pardon the use of capitals, but THIS FRACKING THING got old like in the 80's... You know the usual plot where someone very important person in the crew gets this MYSTERIOUS VIRUS that mutates them INTO ANOTHER FRELLING SPECIES until some genius of a doctor develops some GORRAM RETROVIRUS that in the last minutes of the episode transforms our hero back to normal.

Another one of these, and I will raise some hell.

Marjapuuroa

At the moment in my cooking game we're consentrating on Asian and Scandinavian foods - while I've been cooking curries and that sort of stuff there has been one Finnish food I've been planning for about a week now. That is the cranberry whip (vatkattu marjapuuro) - normally in Finland that would be done using lingonberries, but in here cranberries will do.

The main problem has not been finding the berries, but mannaryyni - first of all I had to find out what it is in English, as I have to say I didn't even have an idea what manna really is. You know, it's one of those things you've seen as a kid come out of the packet and you never thought what it really was.

Turns out manna is actually like a coarsly ground flour, usually wheat, and is called farina, or cream of wheat in English, or sometimes semolina for the coarser grain. I don't know what I was expecting, but wheat seems a bit boring, I was almost thinking it would be something more unusual... Anyway, we looked for farina from Safeway on couple of occasions, before giving up, and today I was determined to find some so we headed to Capers. Capers has a very large selection of different flours so I was sure I'd find either farina or semolina there - and after some searching I hit the jackpot.

So project Marjapuuro was succesfully brought to completion today. I was surprised how similar taste cranberries gave compared to the real thing - the taste really takes me back to my childhood when I used to love this stuff. I had it with some vanilla flavoured soy milk (I keep going back and forth with soy - sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it) and it was absolutely lovely.

I'll never drink again

And yes, I know I've been here before.

Thursday was my boss' leaving do and we went out to Bogart's on Broadway, a very classy place. I had no intentions to drink anything, as I never do because of my hangovers, but... one thing lead to another and I ended up having some champagne. Very wisely after that I thought I wouln't get anything else, and got a glass of water that Eddie, our waiter, kept filling every time it hit half-way - but then my (now ex-) boss Sean kept ordering me drinks. I'm pretty good with it - I said 'no' to every round of shots, and only drank half of my chocolate-toffee martini, but in the end I had to give up and drink couple of shots.

All in all, maybe 5 drinks at most, and in the end of the night I wasn't overly drunk... but I knew I'd have a hangover. And well enough, yesterday was quite miserable - luckily at work our database machine went tits up so most of the day we couln't even do anything. In the evening I even went out quickly - this time it was another collegue's birthday, but I was only there to meet Sean again to give him the going-away present we had gotten him a bit too late. We were home by eight, and I was in bed shortly after nine.

And I slept for 13 hours, which I never ever normally do. Today - I can't say it's a full hangover, but my metabolism is still shot, and I'm now in the evening (after a nap) slowly starting to feel like a human being again.

I really should know better, I know alcohol doesn't suit me. So from now on, no drinking for me.

(And as a side note - the fact that smoking in public places is not allowed here, an evening at a restaurant is actually very pleasant. Next morning when your clothes and hair and even underwear don't smell like a sailor makes a world of difference.)

Listening to books

This book reading thing, I'm really getting into it again.

Problem is, there's only so much time in a day and I rarely have more than maybe an hour a day that's not scheduled for work, cook, eat or do yoga - or travel from one activity to another. So while lazily surfing the net yesterday I had an idea about audio books. Previously I've bought some, last time from iTunes - but they are bloody expensive, even in that format... until I came across Audible.com. This is a service that you subscribe to, and based on the level you can download one or two audio books a month. Roughly calculated, I spend about 24 hours a month on the move, and two books each 10+ hours seems to be just right.

They have an offer going where I get the first month for free - so what can I lose. I've picked Neil Gaiman's American Gods (one of those books I feel like I should have read but never have) and P.D. James' Children of Men (I've often stated that dystopias are favourites - and what more can I ask but a dystopia written by the master of the pen P.D. James?).

The options for the downloads are numerous - most of the books are available in different qualities, so you can pick lower if you have less space available, or they can even be streamed to your computer if you want to listen to them that way. Files are their own proprietary format, but you can either use Audible's own player, or you can import them directly to your iTunes and from there to your iPod, or you can even burn them on a CD. All files will stay on the server up at Audible, where you can always download them again if you need to. So midst all this ruckus about copyrights and DRM it all sounds very reasonable.

I'll report back later on how it works.

Smoke

For days now a local bog - with a jolly name of Burns Bogs - has been burning, and as a result Vancouver, the whole Lower Mainland and even as far as Victoria has been engulfed in smoke.

This far out it comes and goes - it can be like that photo I took this morning when the burning smell was really strong, but although there was a lot of visible smoke in the air visibility was still decent. Or in minutes it can turn into this, a thick all covering smog.

It's really stupid - the bog is an incredibly valuable natural resource to the area, not only is it home to hundreds of rare species of birds and animals, it's also considered to be the lungs of Lower Mainland and responsible for the unusually clean air we normally have here. Now it's burning because some local red neck farmer had threatened to sue if his farmland became flooded, and it had been slightly drained - therefore allowing the peat to dry and now burn: at the moment it's about 200 hectares but fire's far from put out. The problem is that peat can actually burn for months without letting out any visible smoke, therefore it's very difficult to say when fire's been properly put out, and letting firemen go near it is very dangerous. At the moment they are saying it might be weeks before it's completely safe.

Meanwhile, there's smoke. Everything looks dirty.

House finches came to visit

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

Talk about books I should have read ages ago - Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time that I got from Woja as a going away present about a year ago is one of them. I picked the book up yesterday and read it in one go.

This is the kind of book I'd never pick out myself, but I'm really glad I read it. It's written from an autistic 15-year old boy's point of view who is the narrator of the book. Christopher is mathematically extremely talented but socially totally inept. He uses prime numbers as chapter numbers because he likes prime numbers, but when it comes to people he has to remember what different emotions look like as he finds it impossible to know what people think. Although the author is not autistic himself, autistic people have said that this book is a very good description of how an autistic person's mind works, and Haddon manages to keep the narrative true of the subject for the whole book.

Despite the difficulties Christopher has, he's not stupid by any means, and he tries his best. The reader is never ahead of him, expect in situations very common to us like traveling in a train when we know how things work and how to behave that are very alien to him. I love especially the description of London underground and the sensory overload you get when a tube comes in - something we're quite used to even though it's actually fairly unpleasant, but something that's totally petrifying for Christopher. Or seeing the pain of his caregivers in the face of a child who is unable to give or receive love in the traditional sense.

This is an excellent book, well deserving of all the awards it has won. It's an incredible insight into a completely different way of looking at the world, it's moving and it feels very real. I'd wholeheartedly would recommend this book for anyone.

You can read some chapter excerpts from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at MostlyFiction.com to get the feel of the book.

Black Jack by Reijo Mäki

So I've got back to reading - now I'm starting to go through my bookshelf looking for books I need to read. First thing after Woken Furies I encountered was Mäki's Black Jack, a Vares book Chu had brought me when she visited us - in the spring. Dragon had read it back then, but me... never mind.

Anyway, the reason I for asking another Vares book was that I quite enjoyed the first one I read. I love a good detective novel, and Mäki writes witty, easy to read, clever little books - it's not War and Peace that's for sure, but it keeps my but glued to the seat while I'm reading it.

I wasn't sold though when I started reading the book. It starts out with some alternative youths foraging food out of dumpsters, and then moves on to a muslim terrorist with a Finnish wife and a child waiting for the call to come. Especially the terrorist plot bothered me throughout the book - just seems so unlikely - but I had to raise my hat in the end for some extremely nice plot runs. The reader knows exactly where the plot is going and who's cheating who, but Jussi Vares sees only the small details in front of him, and in fact the large scale events never become clear to him.

Despite the start and occasional loss of believability, I thought this was once again a very entertaining read.

Low maintenance

Orava and Janka came yesterday evening from Nevada. Dragon had to disappear to a previous engagement, but us three went out to Liliget and had a really nice, albeit slow, meal. Liliget is Vancouver's only aboriginal restaurant, and just happens to be around the corner from us - although of course the food is not "authentic" (and I doubt we'd like to eat what the natives ate) they do serve lot of seafood and game which is quite unique.

This morning we went out for breakfast, and then the travellers were off again.

These were the last guests we had coming - more people will probably come next year, but for now we're all alone again. So today I've been doing some things I've needed to do for a while, laundry and so on, arranging the bookshelf. Sometimes I sit on the sofa and stare at the bookshelf and looking at the backs of the books thinking that they should be in some kind of order, sometimes I see books that I think should be next to each other. Most of the time I can't be asked to do anything about it, but today I did. Put Harry Potter books together, arranged some in size order... the kind of anal things I'm sure only a person like me would think of doing.

Weird weather

Last night when I was going to bed it was raining hard outside - or that's what it sounded like. On closer inspection it turned out to be the wind making the noise - incredibly strong wind that was making a sound like it was raining hard. My first thought of course was Katrina, but at the same time I knew it wouldn't be anything that bad. When I was laying in bed I was listening to the neighbour's patio furniture making a racket on their balcony.

Next thing I know I was waking up to the smoke detector. It wasn't full on blast - it was making "little" beebs, like they do when the battery is running low - I say little, but the sound is loud enough so that sleep is impossible. Oh great - that's what I need, the smoke detector battery going flat in the middle of the night with no spare batteries. Next thing I realised was that Dragon was not in the bed - I spent next few minutes waking slowly up as the beebs continued, contemplating if I should get up and get him to check it out.

Then Dragon came from the living room to inspect the sound - turns out that electricity had been cut from our building and the smoke detector was letting us know this (it works from the main, not with batteries - although it might have some spare batteries that are running out, need to check). It was impossible to sleep and Dragon was suffering from a headache he gets with thunder - it still wasn't raining, but there was thunder and lightning further away on the mountains.

So we spent the next ten minutes or so looking out to the city - there were some emergency crews out on the street fixing something, people with flashlights. Some of the buildings around us had lights, others did not. When the electricity came back on the building next to us lost their lights. All electronic equipment slowly whirred back into action and smoke detector gave us a last loud beep before shutting up.

It took me ages to get back to sleep, and as my sleep pattern was disrupted I woke up incredibly tired in a middle of a strange dream. For some reason the heating was on full and the whole apartment was very hot - I turned heating off but nothing seemed to change.

Weather now is calm and bright like nothing had happened in the dark of the night.

Christmas plans

After careful consideration, we booked the flights to Finland for Christmas today.

The thing is - I don't particulary want to go. I have two weeks of holiday for the next 11 months, so we can't stay for the two weeks we would normally do. The jet-lag will mean I will be totally out of it for the ten days we are there. With family obligations left and right it will not be relaxing or invigorating. Travel is pain, and most of all - it's extremely expensive and it will take all the savings we've managed to accumulate so far. (This way we'll never get anything saved up.)

So the obvious question would be why is it that we're going.

Short answer - external pressure. I'm 31, but still sometimes my life is not my own. There are still other people to think about, whose well-being needs to take precedence of my own.

So we just need to take it as it is, and try to make the best of it. Midst all the obligations we need to try to things for ourselves too, meet close friends and let the hair down, just a litle bit.

Apple convert

So how do you know you've become an Apple convert?

For me it was probably this morning I realised what had happened. I was waiting for the new announcement Apple were making this morning - first of all, I knew about it, and secondly, I found myself reloading Apple's home page after the announcement time to find out what it was.

And when I found out what it was - new iPod Nano, an incredibly small but fully functional iPod - I immediately wanted one. Although I have to say the although it's indeed very sexy beast, the 4 GB maximum capacity is a turn-off for me - I'm happy with my 20 GB colour iPod.

And of course there's the new iTunes phone, but to be honest I'm not too impressed by that. With 100 songs it's got less capacity than my iPod Shuffle (yes, I own two iPods... and no, that wasn't a clue for me!) and it would have to do a damn lot better than that to make me change my mind about my next phone.

And guess what - even after these two announcements about hardware I have little interest in, I'm still exited about it. In fact, I'm still exited about the previous announcement they made about the Mighty Mouse, which is a mouse of all things... And I desperately want one. If that doesn't make me a convert, I don't know what will.

Fawlty

I'm tired, laying on the sofa, taking care of my captain's duties and watching John Cleese's finely choreographed comical ballet also known as Fawlty Towers. I originally wrote a much longer entry but then I closed the browser in a Basil-like accident and lost it all. Nothing you wouldn't know anyway, so I'll just conclude by saying that Fawlty Towers is pure genius.

Woken Furies by Richard Morgan

I've been reading ridiculously few books lately, but it's something I decided to do something about. There are lots of books in the bookshelf just waiting for me to come and open them up, and on the top of my list has been Richard Morgan's latest Takeshi Kovacs novel Woken Furies.

We know ex-Envoy Kovacs from the previous books Altered Carbon and Broken Angels, and this time he's returned to home to his homeplanet Harlan's World. He's running his own agenda once again when he by accident gets sidetracked with a bunch of mercenaries, finds that people are not who they appear to be and is chased by the most dangerous man on the planet - himself.

This book feels different to the two previous ones - I think Kovacs is getting old. The pace of this book is slower, there's probably less violence and gore, Kovacs gets laid and into trouble more often and it's generally not as big a mindblower than previous books. Altered Carbon was introduction to the techology and the world, Broken Angels was about the Martians - I guess Woken Furies is about Quellisim and especially about Quellcrist Falconer. It's also about religion - earlier books have touched the subject lightly, but Woken Furies tackles it full-on. Several hardline opressive religions have taken root on Harlan's World, and Kovacs has an issue with them.

'No.' I swung on her. It seemed I didn't have it cranked down after all. My hands shot out and grasped her by the shoulders. 'No, I'm calling you a gutless betrayer of your sex. I can see your husband's angle, he's a man, he's got everything to gain from this crabshit. But you? You've thrown away centuries of political struggle and scientific advance so you can sit in the dark and mutter your superstitions of unworth to yourself. You'll let your life, the most precious thing you have, be stolen from you hour by hour and day by day as long as you can eke out the existance your males will let you have. And then, when you finally die, and I hope it's soon, sister, I really do, then at the last you'll spite your own potential and shirk the final power we've won for ourselves to come back and try again. You'll do all of this because of your fucking faith and if that child in your belly is a female, then you'll condemn her to the same fucking thing.'

Can't help but to feel that Morgan is venting out his frustrations on the current situation - although he does is so well I don't mind.

The sleeving technology means Kovacs novels could go on forever - but in some ways this feels like a goodbye. Kovacs is more mellow, and do I get a hint of boredom, or maybe indifference? Do we get see Kovacs settle down, maybe? Personally I'd rather like to see him crash and burn - not that I don't want happiness for him - but I think he'd ultimately never be happy settled down, either with Sarah or even Virginia.

Still, there's lot of the story still to be told, so weather we see Kovacs or not - there's definitely more about the Martians that Morgan is aching to tell... but very wisely doesn't give too much away at once. And Morgan continues to amaze me with his writing skill - I read the prologue, and just sighed with happiness - every word considered, smooth and a surprise shot in the end that makes you chuckle and want to cancel all your appointments so you can read the whole book there and then.

I'd hate to say it's the weakest of the Kovacs books so far - but it's not weak by any standard. My personal favourite is still Broken Angels because of the hard core sci-fi plot, and Altered Carbon is an absolute masterpiece in it's simplicity. Still, Woken Furies is a fantastic read, and an absolute must for Morgan fans. (His next book is going to be placed in another universe again, so this is all you have for now.)

Middle day

Nice thing about long weekends is the middle day when you realise that, unlike with a normal weekend, you still have one day left. So you don't have a pressing need to do anything that needs to be done by the end of it and obviously you never do on Saturday. That pretty much describes today: didn't go out, chatted on Skype and Yahoo with friends and family, and read a good book (which is something I haven't done in ages).

And that's it. Good for me.

Shopping, cooking and entertainment

Shopping, shopping, shopping. I really need some new clothes, and Dragon was lovely enough to come with me. My new desk at work is next to an air ventilator, so emphasis was on practical warm clothes - and I managed to pick up two sweaters and a cardigan, plus lot of other bits and pieces I needed (and some that I wanted, like CDs from Audioslave and Vanity Project). The comfortable ankle boots with killer heels (and they do exists, in case you're wondering) were still elusive, but we didn't even go to Robson - it's long weekend with Monday off, so I'm planning to return on the prowl.

At home it was time for a nap, and I'm cooking Italian at the moment so dinner was a roast chicken Italian style. At home my mom never roasted chickens, I don't know if it's even on the Finnish family menus - but I learned to love a good roast back in England. I picked up a nice little free range chicken from Armando's on Granville Island on Friday, and stuffed it today with lemon, rosmary and sun dried tomatoes. Succulent and tasty.

Evening's entertainment was Sin City that we've managed not to see so far - and I can't say I liked it. I appreciated it, but it was violent and disgusting and while it was very engaging I had difficulties stomaching it. Which I'm sure was one of the points of the movie, so in that aspect it was a success. Just not for me, not right now.

Big change

Today's normal weekly team meeting started by my boss writing to the whiteboard two words: "I QUIT".

What else can I add, except that he was maybe the best boss I've ever had and that I shall miss him. I hate office politics. I hate small managers with illusions of grandeur and boys' clubs, and today I've learned things about our company I'd rather not know.

I'm in a state of shock. My boss is the person who has made the workplace as good as possible and shielded us from the shit that has been happening elsewhere, he's the person that helped me to get a more meaningful position and he was the one who went out of his way to get me a rise after I'd been in the company for only few weeks. Whoever will replace him is unlikely to rise to his level.

Impossible to say what's going to happen next - they might bring in someone from outside of the team, or select someone from within to become the manager. Either way, it will take a while for things to settle down.

I think I'm probably making it sound worse than it is. It's not about life and death as it is elsewhere, and I'm not in the danger of losing my job or anything like that, it's unlikely that my job will even change. I'm just feeling very emotional right now because I don't know what's going to happen. Maybe nothing will. Something I do know, something I learned during the time I was unemployed - I refuse to let my work life overshadow rest of my life, and work will never by my number one priority again. If it will get too stressful, I will look for something else.

We'll see.

Working overtime

I'm good at breaking things. I've even made a career out of breaking software - but I generally only want to do it when I'm getting paid for it. On my free time, I like things just "just work": maybe play around and see what makes them tick, but I want them to work.

Still, I'm quite proud of finding a real bug from the new version of MovableType. Trivial bug, really - you can see it on the sidebar there. <MTArchiveList archive_type="Monthly" lastn="6" > tag should normally show last six months there, but is currently showing for some mysterious reason only two. Support has confirmed that this is indeed a bug with the lastn attribute.

Yes, there is certainly a certain amount of satisfaction there.