Short update – I’ve finally gotten around to upload images for 2015 to my image gallery!
You can find images from Christmas here and here are other miscellaneous pictures from 2015. Enjoy!
(as usual the login is “gäst” and the short name of my employer with a capital first letter)
So day 6 arrived and while the rest of our entrourage started their trip back to Sweden we went to a local Zoo. It was actually surprisingly good and had lots of animals and big enough to entertain us for about 3 hours. But after that we went back to the hotel because we were all totally beat after the past few days. We’d been walking so much and hurried from A to B that we just needed to relax for a while. To be honest we felt like it was about time to go home at this point but that’s totally in keeping with all of our other trips so far as well – 5 days was enough for us, 7 days was pushing it! We didn’t even go out to eat, we went to the local supermarket and picked up some sandwiches and yoghurt. And again Sam went ballistic how this sucked because he couldn’t buy some small toycars.
On day 7 we set sights on Milan. Of everything we’d done we had totally missed out on Milan and I wanted to show it to Helena, atleast the Cathedral and the shopping mall around there. So problem 1 was getting rid of the car and if you’ve ever been to Milan you know there are cars parked _everywhere_! We found a garage, one of those small subterranian dark garages where the girls gets raped and killed in the movies and managed to get over the translation barrier to park there for 3 hours. Then we walked – way longer than I thought. But then we got to see the Cathedral and tick that box! By this time my wife was desperate for something to eat so we parked our bums at a little restaurant right behind the duomo where a 33 cl. bottle of coke cost €6 and a pizza €15! I kid you not! But the view was unbeatable so we didn’t mind much, I mean I have paid more for less. (€25 for 2 cups of cappuciono at Starbucks at Antalya Airport!).
Then we navigated back to the parking garage and started on our next mission – finding a gas station! If we didn’t fill the car up before turning it in there was a €100 fine so I really wanted to avoid that and doing a crazy “I’m going this way until I find a gas station, SO THERE!” argument with my GPS we eventually found one. One that didn’t want to accept 3 of my credit cards – but fortunately I had a fourth. But trying to read error messages in Italian is .. well impossible since all it probably said was “transaction aborted” everytime!
After that we got to our last two hurdles before checking in and going home – handing in the car and paying the parking ticket. Handing in the car was surprisinly easy even though I had to take crap from the garage guy about how F1 is more of a business than sport nowadays but paying the ticket turned out to be harder. Avis couldn’t help more than to say “just go to a post office, they’ll fix it for you” – “ok so where is that” – “there’s one 100 meters around that corner… which closed one hour ago.. so no, we can’t help you. At all. We know you’ve leased a car for €500 and did everything right and turned it in without a scratch and all that, but no, we can’t help you to pay this €30 ticket at all”. Ok, I added the last part but it’s totally true and I still can’t wrap my head around a post office that closes at 2 pm on a normal Tuesday – at an _airport_!?! So we could just forget getting that paid there and checked in and waited for our flight. Fortunately they had a game there Sam loved and spent an hour playing. So we got on our flight and thought this is it, nothing can stop us now!!
.. except a pending Lufthansa strike that was bound to break out in a few hours! Fortunately our flight wasn’t affected so we landed at midnight in Arlanda, got our luggage, took the buss to the long term parking, managed to dig up the ticket I got a week ago and went home to sleep for four hours and then it was back to work again!
All in all a kick ass week in Italy, packed with food, sights to see, places to experience, a F1 race, awesome company and just awesome!!
Last weekend was the weekend of Eurovision, which in Sweden is a big deal. No matter what people say (and most people will say that they are above this sort of thing) this is still the biggest TV event of the year in Sweden.
We had invited friends over for a BBQ, dip in the spa and then some Eurovision to top it off. No kids allowed so Sam was with his grandparents. Everything was great and as you know Sweden won. I was actually surprised. I never believe the build ups since they are almost always wrong. Like when Bergendahl was going to win with her sneakers and a song that I actually really liked. And she didn’t even make it to the finals. So I was really surprised when Måns won.
But it also showed a big double standard that I’m not sure I’m ok with really. Because even before the show got started he wasn’t “Måns” – he was “Mums” which translates to “yummy!”. There’s no denying he is an attractive guy ad he seems to be a really nice guy as well but the chicks were both screaming “yummy!!!” as the points rolled in. And this reminded me of the Swedish trialouts for the Eurovision back in 2010 when an all girl band named “Timotej” tried to pull off the “Bond”-concept and finished 5th. But what I remember is that it was NOT ok to root for them or vote for them, because they were eye candy and that was not ok. Somehow that was not ok but “yummy!” is.
It seems everytime I say to myself “right, now I really have to get better at updating my blog” the worse I do. ‘Cause I really want to get better at it! But again I fail. It’s been way too long since my last update.
So what’s new here? Not alot really, life is chugging along nicely. Alot of drama and uncertainty at work but nothing compared to my short time at Carema.
But I’m also trying out Office 365 (Business pack) since it’s great value for money right now. For a mere $10 a month you get the full Office package to install on your computers, you get 1 TB of storage space, you get both an Exchange and Sharepoint instance in the cloud, and even if I really don’t need all of this it’s still great to have if nothing else for my work. And it is a great experience learning how Microsoft is thinking that the business of tomorrow should operate and setup. And if I ever were to startup a company I’d most definitely use it. Also trying to see if I can move my blog in some good way, but to be honest it doesn’t feel like Sharepoint Online is really made for blogging. And I still haven’t found any good way of backing it up and without that it’s a no go.
Have a few more updates planned in the week now that both the F1 season of 2014 is over and a Warcraft expansion etc so my hope is to update it more. Again.
Yeap, we’ve been travelling again! This time to the UK! I would say “London” but I actually never sat foot in London. We we’re in Brighton, Farnborough, Croydon and alot of time at the Gatwick airport (thank you for that Norwegian Air!).![IMG-2014-07-19-14.03.39[1]](https://kristoffer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/IMG-2014-07-19-14.03.391-169x300.jpg)
The point of the trip for me and Sam was to go to the Farnborough Air Show. My dad loves those air shows and I thought it was time to introduce Sam to them. Unfortunately it became too hot for him so he got tired and fell asleep and woke up just as the arrows we’re landing!
My sister had convinced my wife to tag along so they could spend all saturday in London, enjoying a good old English afternoon tea and some shopping at Harrod’s. Let’s just say things don’t always goes as planned!!
I saw Gravity the other day. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it so expectations were high although I was a bit sceptical – I mean a movie with only two actors portraying 2 doomed astronauts falling from space towards earth, how good can it be?
Well it was. It was definitely the best movie I’ve seen .. maybe all century!
Why? Well the story was pretty damn good. The acting was top notch. The laws of physics was respected (mostly). The f/x were awesome, never could I imagine space destruction could be so beautiful! The music maybe a bit too epic. But there was something else, something I’ve realised only I and Paul Buchman appreciate (mail me if you get the reference!!) – the mind blowing cinematography!!
Ever since Cameron’s groundbreaking The Abyss I’ve always had the idea of “how are they filming this?” in my head when I see movies. That’s why I put Contact and Forrest Gump on very high pedastals, and why I even remember movies like Bonfire of Vanities (with the very long uncut opening scene). And this movie pretty much made those other look like college projects. Granted computer effects have come a long way since those movies. But the opening shot that never seemed to end (was it 13 consecutive minutes?) , the way they got inside her helmet, the way the camera moved during the dialogue in the capsule (that should’ve been impossible given the cramped space), it was all just a mind blowing experience for me !! And usually I’m only this impressed with epic movies, but this, 2 actors and the voices of 2 other actors, can you get a smaller cast !?
The only one complaint I have is that Sandra Bullock have lost so much weight that it was worrying …
So go see it, totally worth it!!
What’s with the new Facebook app permissions!?
I got my HTC phone back after being sent to the shop for taking really blurry photos. They didn’t bother to fix it so they gave me a new One (see what I did there 🙂 )
So I promptly proceeded to install all the apps that I’m used to having. Everything went smooth right up until I got to the Facebook app. It requires pretty much every permission you can give an app, everything from making phonecalls to writing to other apps. Seriously, why does it need all that? If I want to call a friend I won’t use Facebook for it! I really don’t get it, why can’t they have an explanation side of the permission requirements to explain why they need it ’cause to me it doesn’t make sense. But I’m no Android expert so I wouldn’t know but it just seems weird!
It was time for a facelift on this blog so I got this theme which I think looks pretty ok. Not “great” but it’ll do for now.
Other than that I’m dropping Dropbox (see what I did there?) for GoodSync ’cause $200 per year is more than we can afford right now in these days of next-gen consoles, Christmas and everyone’s birthday is coming up. I think November is gonna be a killer month for my credit rating.
I’m kind of weird in some ways – like how I in some ways like things to just remain the same and keep on going with “if it ain’t broken why fix it”. Yet sometimes I love to change things around even when it’s already working perfectly. Like this site. This site has been on so many servers I’ve lost count. At one time like 10 years ago it was hosted at “Aleborg Solutions” that later became Binero. And then it moved around until I started hosting it at home, then to our server in the states and now it’s back at Binero! Why? Becuase it was just a bit slow when it was “over there”, I noticed that when going around in the image gallery. So I moved it back home to Sweden. I know it’s gonna cost me a little bit but now I don’t have to worry the least about the server going down!
I’m also trying out a new image gallery called “Justified Image Gallery” that shows the image gallery in a pretty neat way. Look at our gallery for our trip to Crete – looks pretty sweet, no?
This is the real reason the internet was created – for me to watch a compilation of how different people react when on Chatroulette people end up on a guy dancing to Call Me maybe. It’s pretty hilarious stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCiY1y3uJ3o
Gotta love them flash mob events, especially when they’re performing one of the best, if not THE best, piece of music even written!
Had a bit of a “life is great moment” yesterday because life right now is pretty damn good. I have a good job, stabile economy, I have the best wife ever, a wonderful son, a Ferrari driver is leadning the championship, the sun is shining, my allergies have calmed down and Diablo III has turned out to be as replayable as I wished it would be! As a matter of fact, the only one negative thing I have to report now is that our faithful projector finally gave up! I bought it back in February 2006 when I was enjoying two salaries per month for 3 months and it replaced my TV in my apartment. Countless nights was spent playing World of Warcraft on my computer with mostly Discovery on my 100″ screen. When I moved into Helena it went into storage because there was no room but when we built the house it was one of the first things that went up and at first we enjoyed movies and TV shows there but since Sam was born it has mostly been used for watching Formula 1. So much so that when my son walks into my mancave he’s disappointed when there are no cars. The lamp in the projector had an estimated lifespan of 2000 hours in “full power mode”, 3000 in “eco-mode”. Of course I had it at “full power” but it still went way beyond 3000 hours which I think says plenty of the quality of Panasonic!
But now we’re faced with the decision of either trying to find a new lamp for it (about $400) or buying a new one for $1200. Had you asked me a year ago I would have said “neither” since we hardly watch anything there but we’ve just begun to enjoy movies in there again so …
Me and Sam at the Bergian Garden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PjGtPiM_iO0 … just watch …
When I started my career back in 1996 at Min Dator I was the new guy for a while but grew out of it so quickly I don’t even remember it. Then when they merged with Pulsen it was a merger and it was to completely new offices so I wasn’t the new guy much, since I knew half the crew already and noone else knew where to get the best lunches either. And when I worked as a consultant you never really had the problem of being the new guy since you worked there for a few days or weeks and you got a new assignment. And when I started working for Vinge I had already been there as a consultant on and off for a few years so I wasn’t the new guy there either. In fact I’d worked there longer than most of the other people I worked with.
But then I changed jobs and started working at Carema and I was totally the noob around there. I didn’t know anyting about their IT platform, I didn’t know servernames, logins, I didn’t know where the printers was, where the bathroom was or where to get lunches. But my ace was the fact that I was working next to my cousin so he gave me alot and forgave all the gazillion questions about stuff. But after a few months there I got into it and knew the place pretty well.
Then I changed job again and started working at Thomas Cook. And already again I’m the new guy! And I hate it, feel like such a noob! I mean I’m all for learning new things, experience different things and stuff but I do wanna know what server to login to atleast to do my job! Although I’m confident I’ll learn this place just as well as Vinge in a few months, I just don’t wanna take that ride again this soon.
Today my sister and mother are gonna pick up Sam at kindergarten and gonna take care of him for a few days. It’s not the first time they’re doing that so hopefully there won’t be any issues this time either.
So tonight me and Helena are gonna have a mini bbq, uncork a bottle of wine, open a beer and just be us and taking care of our relationship which has suffered a bit in the past weeks. Mostly because of me and my focus on getting a new job, but also Sams changing behavior (lately he’s been demanding we sit next to him while he’s trying to go to sleep and goes bananas if we leave him there) even the weather has been against us in the past weeks. So we’re just gonna have a few days to focus one each other. We’re picking him up again on Sunday so we have a few days just us 🙂 Not even Formula 1 weekend or Star Trek or anything!
It’s finally arrived. We waited them out but now the wait is over. And it’s big. And comfy and cuddle-friendly as hell! It really is in the face of adversity that you need this 🙂
A few years ago someone at NASA’s PR department must’ve gotten a weird idea and said “hey, we have the ability to produce some of the most amazing visuals with out technology and access to ISS so let’s start doing that” because in the past months we’ve seen some amazing videos and images from them, including the incredible hi-res shot of the americas.
But this goes about and beyond!!!
NASA – Aurorae from Space from Camilla SDO on Vimeo.
If we disregard the actual result from the F1 race, that was a helluva weekend!
Saturday morning we went to do a bit of last minute shopping (even bribed Sam with a guitarr) and on the afternoon my sister AC, her son Alex and my brother Jocke came by and we had a small little BBQ (just burgers and bacon and all that good stuff), then watched the F1 qualifying (yeah, I waited a full 12 hours to see it ’cause it’s more fun to do it with other people). Then we played alot of PS3 move and some normal board games into the wee hours. Well for us anyway, we went to bed at 1 am and I think the last time we did that was when we took the small cruise together! Then woke up early on sunday to watch the F1 race, some more PS3 move and just talking and they went home. Great fun!
Then my wife had invited two of her friends over with their kids so we had our hands full until around 6 when they went home. Then it was a quick dinner, Sam to bed and after 8 we decided that we’d had an awesome but busy weekend and just went to bed. And it didn’t take long for me to fall asleep.
Awesome 🙂 .. if we disregard the actual F1 race..
Right, so remember a few updates ago that I mentioned that “I’ve been sick enough for the whole year”. Well I spoke way too soon on that one! After we’d gone to the cemetery on Saturday to honor Eden we went back here to watch some Star Trek now in Bluray. And all of a sudden I got this vibe that not all is right with me. And on sunday I woke up with a fever and banging headache. Popped a few iprens, drank alot of Coke, stayed in bed and watched F1. It was so bad I was totally delirious all sunday night! Monday was even worse, my fever spiked at 39.5! And my throat started to swell up. Tuesday not much better. Wednesday the fever went away but still very swollen throat and today my throat is dry as hell, I dont have much energy so I’m home from work one more day.