Canterbury, England. A.D. 999.

An atmosphere close to panic prevails today throughout Europe as the millennial year 1000 approaches, bringing with it the so-called "Y1K Bug," a menace which, until recently, had hardly been heard of by anyone.

Prophets of doom are warning that the entire fabric of Western Civilization, based as it now is upon monastic computations, could collapse, and that there is simply not enough time left to fix the problem.

Just how did this disaster-in-the-making ever arise? Why did no one anticipate that a change from a three-digit to a four-digit year would throw into total disarray all liturgical chants and all metrical verse in which any date is mentioned? Every formulaic hymn, prayer, ceremony and incantation dealing with dated events will have to be re-written to accommodate three extra syllables. All tabular chronologies with three-space year columns, maintained for generations by scribes using carefully hand-ruled lines on vellum sheets, will now have to be converted to four-space columns, at enormous cost. In the meantime, the validity of every official event, from baptisms to burials, from confirmations to coronations, may be called into question.

"We should have seen it coming ," says Brother Cedric of St. Michael's Abbey, here in Canterbury. "What worries me most is that 'THOUSAND' contains the word 'THOU,' which occurs in nearly all our prayers, and of course always refers to God. Using it now in the name of the year will seem almost blasphemous, and is bound to cause terrible confusion. Of course, we would always use Latin, but that might be even worse -- the Latin word for 'Thousand' is 'Mille' - which is the same as the Latin for 'mile.' We won't know whether we're talking about time or distance!"

Stonemasons are already reported threatening to demand a proportional pay increase for having to carve an extra numeral in all dates on tombstones, cornerstones and monuments. Together with its inevitable ripple effects, this alone could plunge the hitherto-stable medieval economy into chaos.

A conference of clerics has been called at Winchester to discuss the entire issue, but doomsayers are convinced that the matter is now one of personal survival. Many families, in expectation of the worst, are stocking up on holy water.

I guess it's one of those days.. I needed to move my stuff from one drive onto another and not surprisingly, there was trouble ahead. All the partitions containing docs, software, install files etc moved along just fine, did a simple rsync in linux. The Gentoo partitions were just as well behaved, they took to their new homes with no questions asked but then comes the big, ugly monster: the Windows partition. I had never tried copying one before and I didn't think too much of it, I thought as long as I got all the files across it would be all good. Not so fast! Copying the files over in linux failed miseably, I ended up with a corrupt, unbootable Windows (apparently there's more to a fat32 than meets the eye, at least as far as Windows is concerned).

A quick search on google revealed that I might be more successful with Norton Ghost so I tried that then, and voilá it seemed to work fine. At this point I was quite impressed and relieved that I had been able to transfer the beast without reinstalling all my software. I had set up all my partitions on the new drive and was ready to format the old one when it somehow turns out the Windows install isn't in good shape at all. Once I plugged out the old drive, the new one was left with the exact same boot handicap I discovered earlier. Quite puzzling that was, I thought I had been booting from my new drive all this time, there was nothing to suggest otherwise and apparently Windows had been consulting the old drive just the same. Talk about disturbing behavior under the hood.

Well there was no way back, the old drive had been wiped and the new wouldn't boot. Windows installer, here I come. Basically, I had spent 3 days trying to avoid this boring, drawn out, horrible process and I ended up having to go through with it all the same. Thank you so very f. much, Redmond!

Well I got around to watching Chris Rock's new flick "Head of state" and it was pretty much like all of his screen work, kinda weak. The story is very weak, the acting is mediocre and Chris is funny from time to time. There is some interesting material to be found, give a hood kinda spin on politics but in the end it's all too Chris Rock and not very innovative.

At the same time it was Chris' debut as director and I believe he also wrote the screenplay. Better luck next time, Chris, noone's doubting your potential but this is no blockbuster.

4/10

Program:

Strauss - Serenade for wind instruments

Strauss - Obo concerto

Mozart - 40th symphony

Orchestra: Trondheim Philharmonic

Conductor: Eivind Aadland

Soloist: Albrecht Mayer

To be frank, Strauss was rather dull and disappointing. Herr Mayer followed up with an encore of a Bach piece from his latest album, which was a lot more appealing. The main problem is that the obo doesn't really make a mark on the music, it tags along with the orchestra but there's little accomplished, there are other far more successful pieces written for the obo. Then we arrive at the highlight of the evening, Mozart's 40th and one might say it was consistent with most of his other work. Thoroughly done, spectacular at times but there's a feel of workmanship to his music, which could easily be held against him had it not been for his brilliant ability to make it interesting.

Er det noen som har fått med seg at den at den norske utgaven av "Ungkaren" går på Tv Norge for tiden? Nok et eksempel (i rekken på uendelig mange) av et tv konsept som blir utviklet i USA (ev. Nederland) og kjøpt/kopiert her hjemme. Hvor lenge siden var det vi så noe innovativt på norsk tv som faktisk var norsk (bortsett fra "Farmen", som er direkte pinlig)? Jeg husker "Norge rundt"... De siste årene har vi blant annet hatt "Hvem vil bli millionær", "Idol", "Big Brother" (thanks for nothing, Holland) og "Temptation Island". Alle var de tv konsept kjøpt i utlandet og reprodusert i Norge, oftest med lite imponerende resultater. Og "Ungkaren" er nå enda et program i rekken, som nok en gang ikke når opp kvalitetsmessig til originalen. For de som så noe av de første to sesongene sendt på Tv Norge, så antar jeg at man har lagt merke til hvor skikkelig programmet ble produsert. Selve kisen var rimelig attraktiv, hele opplegget rundt var imponerende med digre, flotte hus, masse blomster, passende belysning, interessant stemning og det hele. For meg personlig var ikke dette noen veldig stor tv hit, programmet var vel ment på andre enn meg hovedsaklig, men jeg må si jeg la meg imponere.

Men så kommer den norske utgaven da. Det første som slo meg var hvor lite stilig selve kisen var. En helt vanlig fyr, det er ingen ting som skiller ham fra de tusener på gata. Han virker neppe særlig glup, særlig galant. I det hele tatt må han vel være en nevø av Røkke for å i det hele tatt vekke oppmerksomhet. De to kisene fra originalserien var det rimelig bra klasse over, mens den norske kisen gir inntrykk av at de fant ham under en stein i skogen. Og da er det på sin plass å spørre: hvorfor i all verden kunne de ikke finne en mer passende ungkar?!?

Men det er ikke bare kisen som gjør et magert inntrykk.. da jeg så de to første sesongene som ble sendt, så var hele greia imponerende. Bygningene var gigantiske, med utsikt mot havet, med baseng, med alt man kan tenke seg, i ett ord galant. Og her hjemme ser det ut som de filmer episodene i en middels pen leilighet i Oslo. Kisen er ikke noe særlig å se (eller høre) på, damene er sånn halvveis interessante og resultatet er ganske dårlig sammenlignet med originalen. Jeg mener at skal man kopiere noe så bør kopien være minst like god som originalen..

Så da er det lov å spørre seg.. siden vi ikke er særlig gode til å kopiere, hvorfor insisterer vi på å gjøre det hele tiden?? Det å sende en serie man syns er god er vel og bra, men i det man aldeles ikke har forutsetning til å nå opp til den standarden, så er det like greit å nøye seg med originalen uten å kopiere den gang på gang, uten hell.