Only two days left of reading before my first exam this term. Two days are a long time, really, and you can read and learn a lot. If the motivation is there. Unfortunately, my motivation meter shows zero today, and I’m not sure what I can do that’ll raise it. The subject is on Japan’s economy, religion and culture, a theme that’s actually rather interesting, but as long as it’s in an exam context, I’m having a hard time with it. But maybe this can help a bit:

Well, hello there. I guess most of you are familiar with H&M (site rejects Opera, but likes Mozilla), “fashion and quality at the best price”. I don’t shop much at H&M, but their commercials usually draw my attention. Lately, the posters you see above have popped up on every bus shelter here in Trondheim (thank you Adshel). After a while, the posters are usually thrown away. But, to be honest, these were just too good to let go of. So, last night, after my basketball practice, me, Hallvard and Tor-Erik, started the hunt for some of these decorative wallpapers. It took us a while to figure out how to open the Adshels in a bit more civil manner than just using a huge rock. Some kids had been at one of the sheds we checked out without the right equipment, fucking it up a bit. So, Adshel-poster-changing-guy; if you come across a messed up Adshel - it wasn’t us. Because after a while, we were able to build the necessary tool to open the shelter. It might have looked a bit strange, three guys standing in a bus shed, waiting for a bus that’s not scheduled to arrive for another 5 hours, but the end result was good. Three Adshels cleaned, two copies of every poster, except the second one. They are damn huge, about 170 by 120 cm, so with three of these babies hanging in our living room and one in the kitchen, you might say that they dominate our line of sight. Tor-Erik was quick to confiscate one of the baby doll posters for his own bedroom.

In the days of the Homeland Security Act, giving all kinds of US government agencies the opportunity to monitor you in every way, paranoia is beginning to wash over me. I’m now using the SecureIM plugin for Miranda for my IM needs, and just installed the freeware version of PGP for e-mail and file encryption. Maybe a bit rash, but better safe than sorry. I’m not sending any sensitive information, but the day I suddenly do, I’d like to know that no one except the intended recipient is able to read whatever information I’m sending. Have a look in the author section for my public key.