This house is hidden behind the multi story apartment buildings near Orlov Most. I only recently noticed it’s there, even though I walk on the main boulevard almost every day.
Hidden Treasure
The Chesnut Man by Søren Sveistrup
The smart homicide detective Naia Thulin has to supervise her colleague Hess, who messed up at Europol. They are faced with a case involving a serial killer who leaves rivers of blood and signature little chestnut figurines.
The book is engaging, well-written, but at the same time unnecessarily gory and disgusting. The main characters are repeatedly praised for being intelligent and brilliant, yet they constantly make silly mistakes that reek of foolishness and overconfidence. Real police officers probably make similar errors, but sometimes it becomes too much. Some of the mistakes feel like they’re straight out of a comedy horror movie—like when someone sits in front of a slowly moving steamroller for 15 minutes without taking the one necessary step to avoid getting hit.
The style is a mix of Chris Carter’s blood-soaked descriptions and the demigod hidden villain trope from The Mentalist. The Chestnut Man is excessively elusive, like Red John, but slightly more believable. His motivation is fully revealed and obvious almost from the beginning of the book. In this regard, The Mentalist falls short. Also, Hess is nowhere near as gifted as his TV counterpart, which makes the story far more interesting.
Naia Tulin is supposedly the lead character, but overall, Hess gets more page time and does more of the actual investigating.
Objectively, I’d rate the book around a 4.5—about 150–200 pages longer than it needed to be for a solid 5. What I didn’t like doesn’t make it a bad book, just slightly incompatible with my tastes.
I’d read other books by this author but maybe not right now.
The Power of Old GitHub Issues
I’m starting believe that a rule exists such that if you file an issue on GitHub, the older it is, the more weight it has and the probability it’s taken seriously increases. As it gets older, the issue either gets randomly closed, or becomes like a space-twisting gravity well.
Let’s imagine a task like visiting the dentist. The more I postpone it, the more I’ll want to do it now as it reaches a nerve and hurts. Something like that happens with issues as well. When a bug report (or a request) is submitted, it starts living its own life, and the clock of decay starts ticking.
- The problem will be noticed by others and they’ll refer to it (due to the Single Cockroach Rule)
- Embarrassment may start building up. Why is this still hanging?
- Familiarity happens. People checking the list of open issues will read that one and postpone it many times, turning it to an old friend.
So even mildly unreasonable issues may eventually get done by the gravity of their own age.
Dream Home
When I was a kid, I wanted to live in a mountain hut. I liked Pirin so I imagined my hut being there. It woud have a very large window in the living room and a fire pit with a big chimney. Why would anyone want to spend more than a few days in a hut is beyond me. I don’t remember. It means any trivial thing is a journey. You need to visit the dentist? Walk 5 hours, then take a train. School? No schools nearby.
I’m a city creature now, stuck with the conveniences of the urban environment. I like the big grocery stores and the malls nearby, the ability to walk to the school and the kindergarten. So the dream home, apart from being in the city, mostly needs to be solid, not too small, with no issues, and with good neighbors. Mountain view preferred.
Old Door
We have this tiny storage room in our shared co-working space that likely used to be a toilet and had no door. Ever since we rented it, it’s a source of smell. The door for it was just hanging inside, too tall to be put in place. Today I decided to shorten it and mount it.
Unfortunately, the door had twisted, perhaps years before the last “renovation” that left it placed by the wall. I’ll have to figure out some alternative way to close it. The metal piece that holds the lock was cut or broke before our time here. I think I can find another one but it won’t make the door any less twisted.
Some door is likely going to better than no door in terms of odor. Fingers crossed.
