Bock Is Kidnaped

After a long period of having few dreams - or rather not remembering having them - I started having nightmares regularly, especially when I take a nap during daytime. I am seriously considering to stop taking my midday naps because of these awful nightmares. Or should I say "daymares"?.

Today´s daymare was as follows.

I am sitting in my office with Bock. We are having a telepathic conversation about our day when suddenly a heavily cloaked figure swoops in and carries Bock away. He is immediately blinded and muted by the kidnapper. I cannot see through his eyes - as I usually can - who it is that has separated us, but I hear his telepathic scream although there is no sound.

In my mind we have an agitated discussion over who it can be that is doing this, where they might be taking him and what the motive for this vicious deed could be. Suddenly I hear Bock mind-scream painfully and feel how someone has started cutting into him with a chisel as if he were made of marble.

Even if the chisel doesn't harm him the force of it going through his flesh makes both him and me cry out loudly.

I am awoken by my own scream and am really upset and angry until I - although still in a daze - realize it was a dream.

Damn Firefox 6

I have been using Mozilla Firefox as my favorite web browser for a very long time. Yesterday I was alerted that there was a new version, the Mozilla Firefox 6, so I installed it.

The new version doesn't work for me at all. It just keeps on loading, loading, loading, loading...and yes, still loading... I cannot move out of the spot.


The worst thing is it is not possible to download the version I was using previously (version 5.something.something) but I have to downgrade all the way down to 3.6.

And with all the installs and uninstalls trying to make version 6 work, I lost all my bookmarks. Damn!

A Must Read

There is a wonderful post on the Internet that has received over 36 000 comments - dare I say postmoderated - since it was published two days ago.

Read it and then weep a little and then be very, very happy about wonderful kids, wonderful mothers and fathers and that there is love in the world!

Click the picture to read the rest of the post! Did I say it is wonderful already...?

On Moderation of Comments

Photo by Nam in Geum

I always like to tell people "I am the most patient man in SecondLife, absolutely everyone tells me so!" Those who know me well and love me - like my Ars, Guyke, Andrey and perhaps Millimina also - laugh in my face when I say this because they of course know damn well it is as far from the truth as you can get.

All the same I still persevere in telling all and sundry this as soon as I can possibly squeeze it into a conversation, in the vain hopes that someone who has known me longer than 15 minutes will one day agree.

The last week I myself  feel I have shown an amazing restraint that would rightfully make me entitled to truthfully keep on stating that I am in fact am the the most patient man. Alas no one seems to have noticed...

The Swedish SecondLife bloggers have been... hmmm... "discussing" the question of whether they - and everyone else - should use pre-moderation or post-moderation/reactive moderation on the comments made on a blog. There are of course valid reasons for each approach. I found an excellent summary here "Everything in Moderation - On Four Types of Moderation".

On my blog I have lately chosen to switch to post-moderation/reactive moderation primarily because I have had no experience with any misuse by commenters and I believe that a free flow of opinions between the commenters is of vital importance.

It is my personal opinion that it must be the choice of each blogger which type of moderation they choose. This choice must of course always take into account the experiences the blogger has had earlier, for instance it is well known that the Swedish blogger PetGirl Bergman with her blog Tinas universum has is the not-to-distant past had problems with defamatory personal attacks on herself and on others by anonymous or signed commenters.

Photo by Natalia Luzuriaga

The Swedish bloggers war was raised another notch when my bosom-buddy Apmel Goosson, the enfant terrible of Swedish SecondLife with the oldest Swedish SecondLife blog "Min avatar heter Apmel" (My Avatars Name is Apmel) the other day stated that he would link differently to blogs that used pre-moderation.

This decision by Apmel caused one blogger to stop blogging altogether and another blogger to express hurt feelings on being negatively discriminated against by not receiving the same exposure as post-moderated blogs.

It is my firm belief that every blogger has the prerogative to choose not only which blogs he wants to link to or not to link to, but also how he wishes to link to them as long as it isn´t done in a derogatory or defamatory way. There is no human rights issue involved in this, nor is it an infringement on anyones freedom of speech or expression.

I have actually kept myself a bit distant from these discussions where I have many opinions, in a way that is totally unlike me in these situations, so thats why I believe I now deserve at least a plaque or  medal telling the world that I am indeed the most patient man in SecondLife.

(The pictures on this post were chosen solely for their beauty and calmness so as to sooth any hurt feelings of my readers.)

Meeting My Unknown Admirer

A short time ago I was contacted in IM by Fingerdelice Metalune, whom I did not know before. She was kind enough to tell me she had been following my blog for awhile and wanted to tell me in person that she liked it.

That made me really very happy and proud. Of course I have realized that my blog may be read once in a while by people I didn't know, but I actually thought most of my returning readers were family, friends or among the Swedes and other Scandinavians in SecondLife.

Today I was invited over to Fingers´ home for a visit. Fingers showed me around her beautiful beach home in Cuban style.

Afterwards we went down to the beach for a nice chat.by the fireplace, we had a really pleasant time although too short because my curfew time for logging off arrived too soon. (I keep a strict routine during workdays because of my present troubles with insomnia.)

Even if it was much too short it was a very pleasant visit and Fingers was very kind to me, showering me with compliments on my blog. As all women know keeping a man well fed and giving him compliments are the surest way to gain his confidence and his heart. We are not at all hard to please...

I hope to see you again Fingers and we must make sure you come visit at Southern Charm some day soon.

Cloud Panic Planing

The oldest female avatar known and the Swedish Queen of SecondLife blogs, Ms. PetGirl Bergman over at Tinas Universum, today shares some of her hard earned wisdom with us.

PetGirl recommends us to read Inara Pey´s excellent post "Avatar A Cloud" which contains several handy tips in case you get stuck in a cloud-state or if you are ruthed.

Among the many tips Inara shares with us in that post is to create a panic-folder for those ugly situations. I am going to make one as soon as I log in-world today.

Do Nice Guys Finish Last?

In today’s Wall Street Journal, there is a report (url) on a new study showing that men who rate themselves highly “agreeable” tend to earn lower incomes than men who consider themselves less cooperative.  “Mean girls” also earn more than more amenable women, but the gap is much smaller.

The study, “Do Nice Guys–and Gals–Really Finish Last?” by Beth A. Livingston and others is forthcoming in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

"Nice guys are getting the shaft,” Beth tells the reporter, "even in firms that claim to value teamwork. Women, meanwhile, are expected to be nice, so they aren’t penalized much for being so."

----

I consider myself to be a nice guy, although all may not agree - always.

So not only are we getting sex with fewer sexual partners, as it has been shown in other studies that both men and women go for the "bad boys", we are also getting paid less wages.

This is what the world comes to if you measure success by quantity before quality when it comes to sexual encounters and if you value a team player as less worth than a rude and assertive loud-mouth.