Avacar, Get Your Thumbs Out...

My buddy Butch Diavolo has now - despite dental surgery, tooth extractions and terrible pains - fulfilled the requirements for an invitation to the Rhino Bloggers Group by posting three times in a week on his newly started blog Butch´s Ramblings.

Please send the courageous and heroic man an invitation to the Rhino Bloggers group a.s.a.p., Avacar!

Welcome to the group, Butch!

P.S. Never mind, Avacar buddy, I discovered that I could do it myself so I sent him the invitation! ;)

Damn You, Google!

This weekend Google has decided to screw with bloggers outside the United States again it seems. They have now decided to chang the addresses to all the Blogger (a part of Google) blogs in your blogrolls.

I didn't understand that something was wrong or what was going on until I read this post on J.M.G. Joe Jervis´s readers are usually an extremely chatty crowd and the fact that I couldn't see a single comment in his last ten posts made me suspicious.

What you have to do to get your browser directing to
http://[blogname].blogspot.com/ instead of the http://[blogname].blogspot.[your country code].is to change to the correct address in your browser by changing the address to http://[blogname].blogspot.com/ncr. Then click enter and the ncr will disappear while the .com will remain.

Once you have done this the original versions of the blog will remain in your browser. You do not need to change your blogroll (my wrong sorry). The change survives a restart, but I guess you have to do this every time you visit a new Blogger blog or change browsers or computers or anything else...

Please note:
1. Thankfully Google is only messing with its own Blogger blogs, the other blogging services remain unchanged.
2. Bloggers in the United States are not effected.

---
This is plain stupid, whatever lofty and high sounding reasons they may give for the change!

UPDATE Sunday March 18: If my own personal experience is true for everyone it seems we must perform the change to .com/ncr everyday.

Visiting Ziggy

I logged into my SecondLife yesterday without any real plans, just to do whatever came to mind or depending on what a events would be announced in my groups.

As I was feeling cold in my first life I dug out an old sweater from my inventory, after having made a quick check around the home sim I was ready to go. At that instant I got an IM from my friend the always studelicious Ziggy Starsmith.

Ziggy sometimes tries to portray himself as one of the baddest boys in SecondLife. It may well be that he is towards those who deserve it, but to me he has always been friendly, sweet and kind. I have a knack of consistently befriending the biggest bitches and bastards in the basket, perhaps because I am one myself or perhaps because I firmly believe we all need the rebels and those who tell us what´s what without fear. In my experience those claiming to always be ever so friendly most likely turn out to be vicious, there are however exceptions to this rule.

When Ziggy called me I remembered he and his hubby Holter had recently moved to a new home and halfway forced myself upon him to show me their new place. He had to interrupt the hiking trip he was on to go home, but he was very sweet about it.

The guys new home is named Bron Yr Aur (which is Welch for "almost gold"). It is a beautiful, luscious and green wooded parcel with loads of birds and animals - not to mention chimes - everywhere. The guys had been busy making it into a warm and friendly haven.

After taking a look around the parcel Ziggy led me to a spot in the wooded garden and we sat down there for a long talk covering everything from serial killers over dreams (lucid dreaming in particular) and ending with brief insights into our first life dating histories. I had a splendid time and big chunks of the weight from the previous work week were erased from my mind. Even if the Friday coma eventually hit me with full force, I was feeling in a much better mood after our long talk than I had been in when I logged in. That´s what good friends are for!

Thanks for soothing my mind, Ziggy, hope to see you again soon!

---
For more pictures of our meeting please visit "Ziggy On The Edge Of Second Life; A Visit With A Friend"

Finally Friday

"China Shangay 2002, Tai Chi 3" by Itshak Dinstein    

I am not the one to usually burst out in T.G.I.F´s, I like my work and colleagues too much, but this Friday was really welcome.

The past week I have been chasing around to try to catch up with myself. I can like that sometimes, when things are intense and hectic and you feel like you are accomplishing worthwhile things, but not this week. Even though a lot of good things happened, I have been too tired to enjoy them. Hopefully that will happen during the weekend or next week.

Life - to me - is sort of a balancing act, the only problem is that life doesn't know it - or care. Life instead insists on coming at me in varying amounts. speed and at its own timetable.

Accepting Facts

The American radio and television journalist Andy Rooney is quoted as once having said, "People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe.”

The Swedish legal system is based on what is sometimes called the Continental European legal system, where laws are codified in statutes that are passed by the elected legislatures. The laws are then interpreted by the courts in the cases that come before them. The courts are however bound by the the wording and framework of the laws and the intentions of the legislature and cannot interpret the freely or without basis in the wording. The Swedish Supreme Courts interpretation of the laws (precedents)  then limit the lower courts and their own future interpretation of disputes where the facts of the cases are the same. 

I have been at a tiresome meeting today. The object of the meeting was to inform and advice the 74 attendees on how the existing laws in Sweden regulate a specific dispute and what the relevant precedence is that would be applied by the courts when deciding their dispute.

The biggest problem to deal with was that about 25 of those at the meeting (the loudest naturally) were not there to listen or to be informed but instead to argue, from a purely emotional standpoint, how they believed - or would have preferred - the laws and the precedents to have been different.

I do not mind working for a change of existing or laws or how they should be interpreted. In Sweden such a change cannot be achieved in the courts solely but needs a lot of political footwork and lobbying against the legislature.

The 25 people at the meeting had little or no knowledge of the Swedish legal system and had probably seen too many American films and television dramas - where the legal system is completely different - of how victories and change of law comes about through valiant court battles with cunning and impassioned lawyers. Any explanation of how their disputes would be adjudicated by a Swedish court was meaningless to them, but instead only proved to them that there was something lacking with the lawyer.

Bara Interviewed

This seems to be the evening when all my favorite men with connection to SecondLife seem to be up to something, all except Apmel, Ziggy and Eddi... but the day is not over yet!

First my favorite Philip Linden (maybe), then my favorite Butch Diavolo and just now I got an e-mail from the Bara Jonson´s Fan Group in SecondLife with the following message.

Bara as portrayed on Virtual Music Magazine

"Yesterday I was inteviewed for the Virtual Music Magazine here in SL and its already been published.

http://virtualmusicmagazine.virtualmusicservices.com/ 

Also I have to show this amazing blog from my sons favorite uncle.. Bock McMillan...(emboldened and underlined by this blogger)

http://bocksl.blogspot.com/2012/03/bara-on-tour-in-first-life.html

See you on Friday 12.30 for this weeks only show!"

Butch Does It Too

My lovely buddy Butch Diavolo has now joined the wonderful gang of SecondLife bloggers, simply "Because  I can!" as he so eloquently puts it, even if he gives you an even more meaningful explanation in his first post ever.

Butch went for the black background on his blog like every cool blogger, but I must say I love the name of his blog "Butch Ramblings". This should be very exciting to follow, because I already know he has a beautiful mind

My only complaint is the very, very small font size he has chosen for his first post, I had to squint to read it and "us gay blog readers" (that's me) do not like anything that may give us wrinkles around the eyes. Do you hear me, Butch?

(The man is really perceptive, because he has already - within ten minutes of my posting this - increased the font size, thank you Butch, you just gave me another five years on the cuteness chart!)