Kablammo!

Nearly five years ago, I saw a Finnish movie used a particular song as background music at one point. I have no memory of the movie other than a brief snippet of that song. When the movie ended, hummed the song for somebody and asked what it was; turns out it had been a reasonably popular recording by a reasonably popular Finnish recording artist. I was told, and promptly forgot, the names of both the song and the artist.

For years, that was the end of the story. Actually, the story, as it were, didn’t even exist, because I had no recollection of any part of it. Until the other day, when I somehow managed to get that long-forgotten snippet stuck in my head again.

After racking my brain for a while, I was able to pin the snippet down chronologically — I knew, more or less, where I was and what I was doing when I’d heard it originally. From that, I remembered the Finnish connection. I read every name listed on Wikipedia’s “Category:Finnish singers“, to no avail — though some of the names were quite familiar, none of them was the right guy. I didn’t know who the right guy was, but none of the names on that list sparked an ‘aha!’. For one thing, I knew the guy had a one-word moniker of some sort, and I was sure it wasn’t on that list.

So I tried again, with another Wikipedia list: “Finnish rock artists and bands“, which includes the name Rauli ‘Badding’ Somerjoki. Badding! That’s the guy. And the song, I was pretty sure, was “Tähdet, tähdet”. A quick YouTube search later, and I finally heard the song again, and got it out of my head. Thank god for the internet.

Song of the Moment: «Tähdet, tähdet» — Badding

What a time to be alive:

This computer has been on its last legs for years, and I daresay those last legs just got a good deal longer, now that it has, among other new features, a SATA card and more free space than I know what to do with.

In other news, there’s nothing quite as fun (and as productive) as having several beers and then tinkering with your computer. For example, those beers make it much easier to justify plugging a 6-pin PCI-E power connector . . .

. . . into the socket on your brand-new (yet already obsolete! Hooray for AGP) video card, a socket designed for an 8-pin connector . . .

. . . simply because, hey, you happen to have a 6-pin connector available, but your power supply doesn’t have an 8-pin connector, and you’re far too lazy to use a molex-to-8-pin adapter . . .

. . . like some kind of chump. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen from plugging a connector into a socket it’s physically compatible with, but doesn’t have the right number of pins for? And anyway, the inside of your case is already enough of a rat’s nest as it is, without adding even more cables and adapters. Plus, since you only have one free molex connector, so to use the adapter, you’d have to either (a) only plug in half the connectors it wants, which seems even worse than plugging in a cable that provides 6/8 of them, or (b) unplug something else and go through even more trouble. The lazy way dictated plugging in what was available and seeing what happened.

As it turns out, the video card is working just fine with the 6-pin cable. Had I done a little research beforehand, I’d have learned that it’s entirely unsurprising for the card to be working fine with an incomplete power connection. But that would have been less fun — because, after all, brash confidence with no rational basis is more fun than careful consideration. Not that I’d really know.

Anyway, the above-mentioned upgrades were paid for by my 2008 federal tax refund. (My state tax refund paid for a refurbished TomTom that I’m rather satisfied with.) Despite (because of?) working only 7 months last year, I got a decent chunk of change back. Part of it is earmarked for next month’s rent, and the remainder is earmarked for gadgets and other useless crap. I’m thinking of buying a netbook of some sort with the remainder, because (a) god knows I don’t have enough computers and laptops lying around, and (b) my current primary laptop is just a bit too big and bulky and heavy to keep schlepping back and forth every day.

Futurama turned 10 years old on Saturday, and there was much rejoicing.

In addition to the Slurm, LöBrau, Olde Fortran, and robot oil, there were Popplers and a cake. The cake, appropriately enough, bore the message: “Good news, everyone!”

In other news, a happy birthday to those of you whose birthday it is today.