• came into work: 12
• left work: 15
• cups of bad coffee: 2
• results: none

Last night I arrived on the last flight from Gardemoen into Trondheim. It was delayed for two reasons; 1) the crew couldn't get to the airport in time and 2) a flight in from Paris was delayed and since this was the last one to Trondheim, those passengers travelling up north would have no other connecting flight. First of all, who the hell needs the crew anyway? We should just have the pilot announce "sit down, shut up and I'll bring this bitch home". (Pilots work long days, no wonder they're grumpy, have a little compassion.) It's a 50-minute flight, you can do without your coffee.

So we land just after 1am, by the time people collect their luggage and the shuttle takes off (thank god they wait for the last flight even when it's delayed, the airport is 40km away) it's 1:30. I'm in town by 2 and then I got a 15 minute walk home. By the time I get to bed it's 3am. Not the ideal lead-in to the first day on the job.

By the time I got into work it was noon, but the university doesn't look much like it does on the average day at noon, it's basically deserted. The first piece of business is getting the computer up to speed, I start installing Ubuntu Breezy and... realize I have no network connection. At universities, the networks are very complicated, all the more so in our department. There are 4 plugs in the wall, one is for phone, one is for a Sunray network, one is disabled and one is for some old SGI network. In other words, I'm out of luck. The installer freezes halfway through, because my improvised network connection dies for no apparent reason. So I manage to install Ubuntu with no network for now.

I ask around the office, of course none of the people there are responsible for networking, so I need some other person in some other department in some other building, who may be on vacation at this time, to fix the network plug for me. So my officemate sent an email on my behalf and we wait for the reply. It doesn't come. Meanwhile I need to get my keycard activated so I don't have to ring the doorbell everytime leave the building. At one point I had 3 office veterans working on this problem, trying to remember who is reponsible for signing off on keycards. Finally the verdict comes in "bureaucratically speaking, they're all on vacation, the whole department". But since I already have a card and I just need to get it re-activated, they eventually managed to pull a quick hack and get me access.

But my network problem persists, so I take the grand tour up to the 3rd floor of the main building and realize I can't get in there, because my card doesn't give me access to that department. And there is no doorbell. "Visiting? Use the phone on the right to call the person you're here to see." I scan the list of names beside the phone and I try the one in bold listed under "Networking". Answering machine "the person you are calling, number 93423, is on vacation". So I try another networking guy and I get the switchboard, connects me to someone who *should* be in today. No answer. Apparently they "work until 3, but they're open until 2". This was around 1:30 and I still couldn't get anywhere.

So the eldest guru in my office says "you can use the big boss's computer until they fix the problem". The guy has a top of the line AMD X2 64bit with 4GB RAM and a dual 21'' LCD display, it's a sight to behold. He's not in today, like everyone else, he's on vacation. But I'm not about to invade his office. So I end up spending an hour and a half chatting with my officemate about everything and nothing until we both realized we've done enough today. Hopefully the network bug can go away first thing tomorrow morning.

Have you also had an unproductive first day? Write to us at:

Here's how I killed 4 hours playing Solitaire as I was waiting to get on the network
47 Efficiency Avenue
342-12 Time-to-waste

Do you ever see someone on the street and you think to yourself "that's a really bad thing to wear"? Exactly, so I thought I could do something new here and bless the world with some fashion tips. I'm no fashion guru, but I can save you from humiliation by telling you what not to wear.

The superman boots
God only knows why women like this model. This brown leather abomination looks crap in every incarnation. They usually extend to somewhere above the knee and they inevitably have a zipper on the side. The boots look like something you would wear in a swamp so your feet stay dry. I could understand how it might be practical at winter time, _practical_. But good looking? No, sorry. Not least because they're often worn with clothes that strongly contrast the boots themselves (so you can see them a block away), or because they're worn with clothes that don't contrast much at all, drab, tired shades of brown, navy and black.

Note: the short ones that only rise a little above the ankle are not on the blacklist, those look quite good.

Short skirt & bike
Well this is a no brainer. Or should be. In this country of bikes, everyone has one. And while I wouldn't have thought so, long skirts actually look rather classy and elegant on bikes. Short skirts that cut off above the knees on the other hand.. very tacky.

So there, now you don't have to buy "Vogue" this week.

I keep expecting to belong. Belong in my house, belong in my city, belong in my country. Maybe that is the error in my thinking right there, that I expect to. And it's not that I definitely don't belong. But neither do I convincingly belong. And that raises the question: what does it mean to belong? It's not the place alone, I know that much. I've been to Milano, Amsterdam and Paris in the last few years, all supposedly magical places, but I haven't felt the magic. And what is so special about the place where we live? Really just the fact that we live there. So what else is it? The people? Do friends make us belong, feel at home in a city? I've never found it easy to make friends. As a kid I wasn't good at it. And that's telling in a way, because it's easier to meet people now than it was then, but back then when I did make a friend, it was more likely to be someone I really got along with. Nowadays I can meet people all the time, but I don't necessarily enjoy spending time with them. I'm pretty picky at this and maybe it's just down to the fact that my standards are too high. But I just don't like spending time with people I can't really communicate with, people who don't get me. And I don't often meet people who do. Sometimes when I do I try too hard, get my hopes up and in the end it doesn't work out for one reason or another, that can be quite a let down.

I think back to being a kid and feeling that I belong. How did I feel coming home from vacation? What made me enjoy that? I'm not sure, I can't remember it specifically, it was just a feeling of belonging. Maybe it was school to some extent, feeling I belong in that class, with those people. I'm sure it was that among other things. But being part of a group has always been problematic for me. When I watch the World Cup now and I see these players playing for a team I can imagine how they travel together, train together, eat together, hang out in the hotel, all the stuff that goes with being in a group. When I think that I think "that's not for me, that's not who I am". Playing sports, sure it's fun, I've always loved that. But being part of a team, spending time with these people outside the game, I don't like them that much. That part was always a waste to me, I always used to wish in those moments that I was elsewhere. It's probably the reason I've never played on a team for a long time, it's probably what's keeping me from joining a team now.

In a sense it is a nagging feeling of "this not being all that it's supposed to be". I cannot say how many times I've felt that, felt content, felt happy, but not fulfilled. So when do I feel that it's all it can be. When I'm playing sports sometimes. When I have one of those long, meaningful conversations that go on for hours. When I'm working really hard on something just because I want to make it work, which is pretty much the feeling of hacking, making something work not because it's particularly useful, but because it matters then and there.

So where do I belong? And when will I start belonging?

So surgeons scrub their hands very thoroughly before a surgery. And then they put on some gloves?

Am I missing something?

What's that, you're ready for another one of my gross oversimplifications? Okay then.

So every once in a while there is some issue in the political, social, environmental, legal, economical.. (etc) realm that gets a lot of people riled up. And when enough people start forming opinions and talking about a subject, I think often we can distinguish three classes of discourse.

The ill informed

The loudest and most populous group is the one of the least informed. These are people who don't know much about the issue, but they have a very strong opinion and they're easily swayed by the flock mentality (into adding points to their point of view, because everyone else seems sold on them). Oddly enough [one might think], these people are hard to convince with solid arguments or evidence, they feel they have enough information to hold their stand. It is because they not only take their stand on a true/false premise, they cling to it for other reasons, like social pressures in the flock. Finding the truth is an obscured objective, it seems more important to stand strong. And at this level, social pressures are strong, even modest variations in opinion from the core standpoint will come under heavy fire.

At the same time, in order to be able to present a strong (and unified) point of view, there is a great thirst for simplification, so you will hear from this group very simplistic expressions. For instance, during the Norwegian debate on EU membership in 1994, the opponents's tagline was "The EU wants to take all our money".

The reticent

Most distinct from the least informed is it that the reticent are very aware of the fact that they don't have all the facts. And this humbles them significantly, they are willing to press for their point of view as long as they feel confident about the facts, but they will not wander into uncertain territory. I label them reticent, because they are averse to making absolute statements, to drawing conclusions. They would rather discuss one point at a time and establish a consensus for each one, whether or not the points point in the same direction. They are primarily after the truth, which makes them open to new points of view, new evidence. Their stand is rational rather than emotional, so they will let themselves be convinced by factual arguments.

The social context of this group is radically different, it isn't a gang mentality, it's a much more respectful atmosphere, open toward new ideas. No two people agree, they only agree on certain points, and it's downright abnormal to exactly replicate another person's stand on the issue. The opinions are not overly simplistic, they take into account the complexity of the issue. But as always there is a certain degree of humility to every opinion, no belief is held with complete certainty.

The well informed

Firstly and crucially, the well informed are not numerous. They rarely even find themselves in the company of other well informed people. And so while they are not populous, they aren't loud either, having to put up with people who aren't really qualified to talk about the issue.

The well informed usually have a stand on the issue, and "the facts are inconclusive" is a valid stand as well. They know enough about the issue to form an opinion, but their opinions are very refined and simply cannot be simplified into anything that would suit the ill informed. Just about every answer to every question begins with "that depends".

The well informed are enlightened enough to the point where the rewards for social interaction are no longer coveted. They do not draw satisfaction from "being right" simply because they believe they are right anyway. And so whether someone chooses to inform themselves adequately and see the same as they do matters little to them. Because they are surrounded by the less informed, they will rarely care to express their full opinion, only when confident that the listener will be able to appreciate the full extent of it.

Enough evidence will sway the well informed, but it would take a hell of a lot, because they've already seen most of it.

I'm sure we've all belonged to each one of these groups at some points in our lives. I most frequently find myself among the reticent, I concede there is much I don't know, but I don't have the time or willingness to spend an enormous amount of time on informing myself about the issue. Least frequently I'm among the well informed, this happens sometimes when some issue that I'm deeply involved in suddenly becomes a loud issue among lots of people and I suddenly see very clearly who belongs to which group. When I was younger, I was more frequently among the ill informed and I still am now from time to time. But I think the realization of that is what lifts us out of it, once I realize I'm willingly ignoring certain facts, it's harder to keep on doing it.

There is quite a lot to be said about interactions between groups and members of groups, perceptions between groups and so on, but that is quite a big subject in itself.