As previously mentioned Covid did eventually get me but fortunately I had 2 doses of the vaccine so it was fortunately mild-ish.
But I remember back in January of 2020 when I and a colleague at work discussed it and started hypotheticals about how bad it would get. And in February I realised that it wasn’t going to just go away so I did a bit of prepping- and yes I was one of the reasons there wasn’t enough toilet paper at our local store. Also bought masks, blood oxygen checker and stuff like that just in case.
And then me, the wife and our son got knocked out by something that could have been Covid but in late February 2020 they were only testing people that hade travelled to the high risk areas since it wasn’t out in the wild in Sweden yet. They said. And then we went to the Swedish Eurovision finale with thousands of people crammed into an arena. Right after that the shit hit the fan and those events became unthinkable because by now it was officially out in the wild in Sweden too.
And even though we took precautions and we spent over a year doing our best to social distance and going out as little as possible, I was never really afraid that I wouldn’t make it if I did get it because.. statistics! My wife’s grandmother unfortunately died from it just a few weeks shy of her 90th birthday. But when Adam Alsing died from it I actually did get a bit nervous.
At work this was a disaster since we pretty much had to stop working. No one was allowed to travel so very little we could do. After a few months of furlough for most of the staff (except me that kept on working at 100%, but from home) they eventually had to cut down on the staff. A lot of people in my IT operations team, a few of which I considered friends, was let go but I made the cut. Unfortunately my wife didn’t make the cut and her job so she was unemployed for a few months before finding another job.
Fast forward to October and my sister got it. She works at a hospital so it was just a matter of time. And she got it bad – not bad enough for hospital but bad. I don’t think her sense of smell and taste is fully back yet! But I was mostly worried for my parents and for my other sister in Scotland with comorbidity.
The winter was uneventful as was spring of 2021. During the summer we had a “staycation” on Gotland during which I felt that my place of work had lost its appeal a bit after so many people had left and things were really slow and no one knew how long this would go on for, so I decide to look for another job and pretty quickly found one. And I also got the vaccine as fast as possible because I didn’t want to be worried about it all the time, I had lots of other medical things going on so one less to worry about.
During winter I started my new job and a few months into 2022 our son got a mild case of the flu but we kept him home just in case. And I was still working from home. And the week after I got symptoms so I ordered a test and yep, it was covid! I was knocked out and in bed for a few days but nothing bad. My wife got it after me but she had just taken her third dose so she was only knocked out for a day. So that was disappointingly uneventful but I guess we have the vaccine to thank for that. Go science!
Hey. It’s me. I know, it’s been a long, long time since I updated this place. But the past months have been pretty boring. Which considering everything that is happening is a good thing!
It got a bit depressing after summer when my wife lost her job and was unemployed for a while but she got a new job so that’s over and done with. But other than that we’re pretty much in a holding pattern until we get vaccinated (or infected) so we can start living again and society starting to open up. Because I’m pretty tired of our house by now after spending almost 12 months here. I’m one of the lucky ones that can do 99% of my job from home but that also means I don’t get out much. Or at all…
But so far we’ve been able to avoid getting covid19, the closest it has gotten was my sister that got symptoms day after she was here for an evening of F1. She had pretty rough 2 weeks and is still suffering a bit unfortunately even after 5 months!
So here’s hoping we can get vaccinated and start living again and people can start travelling so our company doesn’t go down as a result of this considering how much we’ve survived. Tsunami, ash clouds, bankruptcy, we beat them all!
Since I’ve worked for a charter company for a while now we’ve gone abroad to Spain, Greece or Turkey for the past decade or so. But given the current situation that wasn’t possible so we looked at around at some place to go in Sweden together with some friends. And we ended up with Daftö Resort – a camping resort on the west coast of Sweden which we hardly ever go to. So we booked a cabin from Thursday to Sunday and packed the car for a 6 hour road trip and off we went!
We made a quick stop in Mariestad to eat lunch and were happily surprised by the local restaurant “Kingfisher”, that Google suggested. Then some ice cream and off we went again.
When we arrived and tried checking in they looked at me like I was the town idiot. Which of course I was because we had booked Friday -> Monday! So there we were, outside Strömstad on the west coast with nowhere to stay! 4 calls later we had 2 rooms booked at a local “spa resort” which was a pretty damn good hotel. But they clearly didn’t care for the covid restrictions like “no hanging around the bars” so I wasn’t too comfortable there.
After spending the night there we went into Strömstad to explore what this coastal city had to offer. And there were some nice vistas and atmosphere and we even started fishing for some crabs down in the harbor. Not to eat though, just for fun!
Then back to Daftö resort and we were allowed to checking and get comfortable in our rather large 8 person cabin. Unfortunately they had some covid restrictions here that mostly applied to how many people could be in the pool area at any given time but we managed to get a spot to get some pool action but you can clearly see that people weren’t too concerned about covid here. Safe to say I wasn’t jumping in when it looked like this!
Another covid thing was that they had shut down their little ammusement park which was really sad for our kids. Even though we had told them it was closed so they didn’t mind much but we knew how much more fun they would have had with there. But I fully support them not having it open given the current situation.
What was open was their crazy golf course. And it was really, really good. Nice designs and themes, well maintained and if it wasn’t for the queuing I’d say it was perfect. I wait, we were at the front of the queue all the time! Unfortunately the restaurants at Daftö left a bit to be desired but I guess for a camping site it’s ok – we all got something to eat and it wasn’t horrible but it wasn’t up to our standards of “going out”.
We also got some time bathing in the sea and just kicking back in the cabin enjoying a few beers and I have to say that cabin was awesome – it had everything we needed and more (didn’t expect wifi!). We also tried some more restaurants in Strömstad and I can recommend the tapas restaurant “Il Toro” – but stick to the tapas. Not only was the tapas really good but the waiter even made a movie reference based off my wifes T-shirt that even I didn’t get, so kudos for that!
Then on Sunday it was time to pack up the cars and go back home. 6 hour drive back then unpacking and settling in to try to enjoy the F1 race from Silverstone. Which is hard since the Mercs are 1 sec faster than anyone else.
So that sums up our vacation for this year. Which was fun but also sad we didn’t do it more because our son really had fun without a computer!
It’s been 10 years since me and my wife met. It’s been an unexpected ride that I’m incredibly happy I took a chance on!
Wind back the clock about 10 years and I was living very happily alone (but not lonely!) in my apartment in Visättra. My life was computer games (mostly WoW), movies, TV, F1 and my family in Nynäshamn. And the job at the lawfirm. Everything was great and I didn’t feel like I needed a girlfriend or live with some other person, I had way too many “special” habits to live with another person for long especially a girl. But I was still signed up to some dating sites and had the odd date or two. But then a mail dropped in through Parship from this chick who I just loved the way she wrote and expressed herself, she was funny, she was honest and open and the “straight to the point” kind of person I can really dig. So we set a date after work, hooked up and just walked around in Stockholm for a while, only stopping quickly to grab a coffee. Then I tried kissing her goodbye (DENIED!) and off she went. But I felt and knew this was something special so when I got home that night I ordered her flowers. Nice and romantic right? It was my way of saying “I don’t mind getting turned down for a kiss, I really dig you and I wanna meet again”. Little did I consider the fact that she works in “logistics”, which is a very male dominated area so when her male co-workers saw she got flowers the day after she’d been on a first date they jumped to conclusions! Anyway, a few days later she decided (without telling me!) to test how allergic I was to her cats by inviting me home to her place! Fortunately for me it wasn’t a big problem and after passing that test we went to see a terrible movie (“Jumper”) and made out a bit. And then we met a a few days a week but eventually I felt it was “do or die” and moved in with her after only 6 months. Yeah, I know, crazy but that’s how perfect this relationship felt. And 4 months after that we signed on for a house together. And 3 months after that we were pregnant. And the hits kept on coming!
It’s been a few lows here and there but as I see this has gone way better than I could have hoped for and I can just hope it keeps going that way because I’m having a blast!
Last weekend we had booked a room at the B&B at “Kastellet” at Vaxholm. That’s an old fortress on a very small island. It was used to fend off invaders in the archipelago but now it’s mostly a tourist site. But because of the extreme weather we had in Sweden last week there wasn’t anyone there during the weekend. At all! Not even the staff who had given us the code and put out the key for us for a room. So we had the entire place to ourselves! And it was absolutely amazing!!
So here’s hoping for another awesome 10,20, 30 or even 40 years!!
Lobby of OCCC South
And it really was fortunate that we were the ones to go since sooooo many of the sessions and talk was about Office 365, Azure and the cloud! It was really hard to find sessions that talked about on premises stuff but I managed to go to a few! The event started officially on Monday morning with a vision keynote by Satya, the CEO of Microsoft and had a bit of this and that in it.
Trying to get the new about OneDrive
Another great thing about these events is that you meet the people who are actually working on the other side – when I’m freaking out over the bad SharePoint Online admin center “well that guy right over there is the program manager of that, go talk to him”. Which I did. “Well you’ll glad to know we’re working on version 2, mail us and we’ll get you into the preview”. Done and done! And seeing some really pros at doing presentations, like Anne Michels who constantly made jokes on her expense (and sometimes even Mr. Michels).
And on Thursday evening Microsoft had “rented” the entire Universal Studios Orlando theme park for us! All you can eat, drink and ride all evening long! That was certainly an experience since we don’t have anything close to these theme parks in Sweden! We have plenty of amusement parks, but no theme parks, certainly not like this where you can walk into Jurassic Park and have a dinoburger!
Then friday was kind of winding down and collecting thoughts and writing reports on what I’ve learnt and then on Saturday the long trek back to Stockholm began. I checked in at the airport at about 2pm on Saturday and passed through customs in Stockholm at about 1pm on the Sunday.
But all in all it was an absolutely awesome experience and conference to attend for me. The downside was of course being away from my family for 8 days, that really felt long in the end. My and the wife have never been away from each other for that long since we moved in together 8 years ago!
Just a quick update to say we’ve now sorted through and uploaded the pictures from our trip to Alcudia (Mallorca). Will post a full update about the trip later.
Enjoy! As usual, the password is the short Swedish name of my employeer with 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!!
After the night in old Bergamo we went to bed and set the clock early. Very early. Like 6 am (which is the usual hour for us to wake up – but not on vacation!!). We got up, got dressed, got into the car, picked up Alex and Jocke and dropped Sam off with his favorite aunt and then we set a corse for Maranello! Last time that I was in Milano I hit the Ferrari store but never made it to Maranello since that’s like a 2 hour drive. But now we did!
The Ferrari museum opened at 9:30 and we were there around 9:15. We took the tour around the place, checking out all the F1 race cars of old, the normal road cars, the exclusive “one offs” but the most impressive was the hall of champions where they had all their trophies and their championship winning cars all lined up. It was a beautiful site indeed, definitey a “I’m not worthy!” moment for me. Also around the museum they had plenty of “test drive a Ferrari for 10 minutes for $100” but I really didn’t want to risk it. I know that in Sweden they have a sucky insurance for them so you have to pay like $3000 if you damage it one little bit. So no, maybe for next birthday!
After the museum we set our Navigon to take us back to Monza. And I knew it was going to be tight for the qualifying but we had 1 hour margin on our side. That margin was eaten up by a quick stop for a bite to eat and then the other problem of finding somewhere to park! After driving 140 kph for almost 2 hours we almost got to the track but the police had blocked it off so we went around in circles trying to get as close as possible. Eventually we gave up and dumped the car and walked for about 4 kilometers! And just as we sat down the first car came out on track so the timing couldn’t have been better!
After watching the two Ferraris qualify 2nd and 3rd we walked back to the car and drove home to our hotel where we met up with the rest of the gang that took the train from the track. The plan was to dine at our hotel but it was a wedding going on there so it was fully booked. So we ended up at a local pizzeria that had some awesome pizza and pasta. The service was awesome, the food was awesome but there was this lady that must’ve been the owner because she was so rude and pushy that she should’ve been fired because she kinda ruined it for us. Also trying to pay was very very difficult.
Then it was sleepy time to get ready for Sunday, also known as Race Day!!
Me and Helena decided to not go with the train as we were supposed to since that involved walking for 2 kilometers with Sam so we took the car and we went in extra early. The traffic wasn’t bad and we found what we thought was a parking spot and dumped the car and walked over there. Sam wanted to play the Playstation games in the F1 village but as everything else F1 related – it’s not very child friendly. It’s too expensive and too long queues, also he’s too young to handle actual simulators with actual pedals and wheel. So things started off bad for him that early. After grabbing a quick bite to eat we parked our asses on what we thought was our seats only to be shoved away because Italians can’t be bothered to mark things or handle such simple things as information. We eventually found our _real_ seats and parked there, watching the drivers lap on a lorry and the very weird protocol of ordering the grid with the flags and the girls and everything. Then the race started and it was just awesome! I pretty much put the camera down for the entire race and just enjoyed it. So did my wife, although she was trying to take care of Sam as much as possible. But she was really happy when her pretty-boy Rosberg was threatening Vettel – only to have his engine gave up!
After that we went back to the car only to find a parking ticket! 20 meters in front of our car was a “no parking” sign that was put up that we could’ve swarn wasn’t there when we parked! (and it wasn’t a fixed sign really so could’ve been placed after we parked) We called everyone trying to get it sorted but was told we could sort it when we handed in the car to Avis on Tuesday. So went back to the hotel then on to Bergamo again and found a nice restaurant to eat at. Unfortunately this nice restaurant thought we were there for the entire evening so they were really, REALLY slow serving us so that took almost the entire night. Then some more ice cream and say good bye to AC, Alex and Jocke who were going home the day after.
10 years ago for my 30th birthday we went to Silverstone for a F1 race. It was a legendary trip. So now for my 40th we booked a trip to Monza but with me and my wife taking Sam there for a few extra days as a bonus vacation.
So last Wednesday me, my wife Helena and my son Sam boarded a flight from Arlanda to Milan, with a short stop in Frankfurt. The cabin crew on the Lufthansa we kind enough to give my son a free Lego set of a A380 to build while we flew over there. After arriving (and with all luggage this time) we went to Avis to pick-up the car. We got a size-bump for the car which was nice, however we hit the first out of many, MANY! unexpected expenses – the insurance. I hadn’t checked up what insurance was covered by what so I ended up paying €120 for nothing since it was covered by my Mastercard! So I recommend everyone to check that before they go!
Then we set off to our hotel with the help of my preprogrammed Navigon GPS app and that’s when the second unexpected expense popped up – tolls to use the highway! Noone had told me about that and at first we didn’t even know what the hell this was and we ended up with an unpaid toll ticket! In my defense we tried calling everyone (Avis and even the company running the toll system) but the hotell staff said it shouldn’t be a worry.
Then after about an hour drive we ended up at the beautiful hotel Settencento. Small hotel but placed right next to a road with pretty high traffic. Fortunately we didn’t spend much time at the hotel so wasn’t that much of a bother. We reconned the area for a super market but ended up having our first dinner at the hotel – which was awesome! Sam insisted on taking a dip in the pool and although the weather wasn’t the best for it that didn’t stop him!
On day two I insisted on a trip to Como to check out the lake and everything that everyone makes such a big fuzz about. After about 2 hour drive (and 4 toll booths) we arrived and it was as beautiful as I’d hoped! The scenary there is amazing! It was a tourist friendly place to say the least and we walked around for a few hours and drove to a small village just outside for a better view. Time very well spent indeed!
Then we went to Bergamo where my sister AC, her youngest son Alex and my brother Jocke was about to land and stay for the weekend. We drove the “scenic route” to see more of Italy and less of toll booths and we ended up at a restaurant called Pasti Frutti. As a restaurant it was by Italian standards decent (but awesome by Swedish standards!) but as a command post it served it’s purpose well. And that’s when the heavens opened up and let loose a few tons of water and thunder! We had checked the weather reports and it said rain & thunderstorms all week so we were just grateful we’d had a beautiful day so far. Eventually they showed up, grabbed some food and some beers until we had to go back to our hotel and get some sleep. Sam was a trooper pretty much all day but we bribed him with ice cream all day.
On day three we split up. Me, Alex and Sam went to watch the F1 free practice while AC, Helena and Jocke went to a vineyard – Castello di Grumello. They had a blast (since I wasn’t with them I can just take their word for it) and tasted alot of their wines and managed to offend the owners when AC didn’t really appreciate it. But still impressed how they’ve managed to keep the business in the family for so many generations.
On our way to the F1 track we hit a very expected problem – parking! Taking your car to an F1 race is normally only “hard” but when the race is in an urban area like this it’s almost mission impossible. Since this was only Friday free practice it wasn’t that hard but we ended up parking where noone knew if we could park or not. Then a long walk to the F1 track and we hit the next problem. Serious lack of information and language barrier! Some people said “go left” while point right, some said up, some said down. But this being free practice it wasn’t that important. Unfortunately after about 80 minutes some got very tired and bored of the entire thing and wanted to go home.
So we went back after seeing Mercedes owning it on the track. We went back to Bergamo to meet up with the rest of the gang and took a tram up the hill to the “old town” of Bergamo where we ended up at a tourist friendly restaurant that served up some pretty good food. Although the people that ordered what they thought was “pasta with beef” that turned out to be just beef were seriously disappointed!
It’s that time of the year again when we go on vacation to some family friendly resort and just relax for a week. Last year it was the Sunwing hotell on Rhodes in Greece and this year we went to Long Beach Resort outside of Alanya in Turkey.
We went with another couple who has a daughter that we know Sam likes and they play great together and we decided to go to this hotel because they had a .. well a long beach and some pools, some waterslides, they had a small amusement park, plenty of restaurants and just seemed like a place you could stay at for a week without having to leave the hotel much.
We were not disappointed!
The trip started with an evening flight to Antalya airport where the crew excused the poor tax free delivery due to poor IT switchover from the old IT system to the new. Although I have nothing to do with the IT system of our tax free service I still felt embarassed but that’s probably because of my occupasional pride than anything else.
When we landed in Antalya we proceeded to the luggage belts where my wife’s and son’s luggage arrived after waiting a while but after waiting for over an hour I ruled out that my luggage was going to arrive at all so I went to customer service to report it missing. After that we went to the Ving representative and asked where the taxi’s were because by now the transfer bus to the hotel had surely departed. But it hadn’t. So we boarded a buss full of people upset they had waited for over an hour – on me! Even though it wasn’t my fault and I didn’t want the bus to wait it did – somewhat embarassing compunded by the fact that I actually work for this company! Then the bus made a pitstop at some place they obviously get kickbacks from because we had to be there for 20 minutes aven though everyone just wanted to go to the hotel.
We got to the hotel in the middle of the night, checked in and got to the room that they hadn’t prepared for 2 adults + 1 child at all! So I had to call the reception to order more linen to make a bed for my son and then we had to wait an extra 15 minutes for them to actually come with our luggage, which wasn’t at all fun at 3 am!
I woke up the next day to a text saying “they found your luggage and will send it at 8 am so you should have it soon”. I’m down with that and so we went out to check out the hotel area and that took over a day to explore because it was HUGE!
They really did have a very long beach area by the sea but unfortunately the closest tunnel to get to it was closed and we had to walk quite far for the other tunnel so we got a lot of exercise from walking back and forth to the beach all week! They also really did have lots of waterslides and even a pirate ship which became Sam’s favorite place to hang out. What we didn’t realise was that you could rent gazebos by the beach and by the time we did realise that they were almost fully booked but we got one for three of the seven days we were there. It really helped alot to have a somewhat of a private “base of operation” when we were at the beach – which was pretty much everyday.
Then we had dinner at the buffé and it was great! Great food and service, nothing to complain about. And at 8 pm I finally got my luggage, only 12 hours later than promised but not a big deal for me. Then it was bed time since we were still lacking sleep from travelling.
The next day and all the other days pretty much followed that same pattern – get up, catch some breakfast, pack up for the beach, go to the beach, have fun, get tanned, go back, have dinner, relax with the couple we were there with and sleep. We really didn’t ever have to go off the reservation! We went a full 100 meter from the hotel to the bazar they had outside to do some shopping (my wife really wanted a *cough*genuine*cough* Michael Kors bag that I paid a full €30 for but other than that we were content being in the hotel. There were enough restaurants to keep us satisfied and enough to do to not get too bored.
But it wasn’t perfect. The buffé was the same in every restaurant every night. They only changed one thing that they barbecued there and then, but everything else was the same all the time which got boring quite fast. Did they ever hear of themes? And also that the tunnel under the main road on our side of the hotel was closed which forced us to walk, that wasn’t cool at all! And the level of english of the staff really left alot to be desired as well – sometimes I felt that they would have understood me better if I spoke russian because 90% of the people there were russians and some of the staff were also russian. Not that I mind russians, but I expect an international hotel of this size in Turkey to have staff that can understand english without having to draw them a picture (which I actually did once, but more on that later).
After a week of that it was time to go home – at night! Again the bus stopped at the some joint as before and forced people to go out to buy refreshments “as a service” when everyone just wanted to get to the airport. When we arrived to the airport I was apparently the first one to understand how security checkpoints work and information screens because for the first time in my life I was #1 in the queue to check in our luggage! Unfortunately that also meant that when the check in counter opened the guy behind it had alot of issues getting his computer to work with him and it took atleast 10 minutes for that – 10 minutes of the same people looking at me with annoyed eyes that had waited for me on the buss earlier. That was not cool but again not my fault! During all of this we had to keep our son awake since I know you have to walk through the next checkpoint on your own feet – you can’t carry your child though it, they have to walk. But 5 minutes after we had cleared that he was out for the entire night. So my wife asked me to get her some coffee and I ran around and only found a Starbucks and that’s when I purchased the most expensive coffee I’ve ever paid for – €25 for 2 normal cappucinos with vanilla syrup!! €25!!!
After that we got on the flight, had to be embarassed again when they excused the poor tax free with IT issues again, landed on Arlanda at 3:30am and when we stopped at the gate we had to wake Sam up. And he was sad that he slept through the “getting on the plane”-phase, the take off, the movie, the meal and the landing – basically everything he’s looking forward to about the actual travelling part of a vacation. Thankfully Helena’s mother met us at the airport at 4am so we went home, unpacked the essentials and hit the bed at 5am and slept until 9am.
So to sum up – we had a blast, especially Sam! Photos can be found here – login as “Gäst” and the short, Swedish name of my employer, with a capital first letter as the password.
I’ll post some other random thoughts about our week later.
I’ve updated the photogallery with photos for 2014 – which include Sam’s 4th birthday, Adrian’s christening, H’s trip to Barcelona and our trip to Rhodes. Awesomeness ensues!
(as usual, the password is the short Swedish name of my current employer, with a capital first letter)
Now I’m just slacking! Vacation and everything and not a single update?
Well surprisingly enough, now that I’m on vacation I have the least amount of time to care about this place. You see I have a wife that get’s worked up everytime I sit in front of the computer so I don’t have much opportunity to post things here from home. Yeah, you could call me whipped and you wouldn’t be wrong.
But now I’m back at work so now I have time to post things here. And I have time on the train to get through the rest of SG1 as well and all of that other stuff that I don’t have time to watch at home. And unfortunately F1 is on summer break, and besides, the Ferraris aren’t doing too well this year. Oh well, there’s always next year.
Most of my vacation was spent at home with my family. We tried to do things, we went to Gröna Lund and Skansen but in the end it just costs more than we can afford right now, especially since we bought new phones and we spent alot more money in Crete than we thought we would. “Don’t do the crime …” eh? But this week my parents will take Sam for a few days so we can get a slow weekend. “Slow” as in “celebrating my brothers 30th birtyday this friday”, let’s see how that turns out!
Other than that, I’m chugging along just fine!
I’ve finally upgraded my image gallery and imported it into WordPress with a cool addon. Took me about 3 days of work to get it sorted and adding comments and stuff but it’s been fun going down that memory lane again.
Here are some of my favorite galleries:
As usual the password what the company I work at is know as in Sweden.
When I got a job at this here place one of the bonuses was that we could travel at a discounted price. Unfortunately we only do charter so that travel is pretty much bound to those really touristy sunny parts of the world. And my wife have had an item on her bucket list to “dive in the turquoise water of Greece”. So after looking through all our hotels we decided to go to Platanias on Crete and stay at Minoa Palace. We also agreed that it was best for everyone if Sam stayed in Sweden for alot of reasons – and some of them selfish I’ll admit. And since neither of us are fan of temperatures over 35 degrees we also agreed to go late May / early June.
So after sorting it out with our family who would take care of him when and where we did our best to explain to him that we’d be away for a few days but gave all the assurances we’d be back and said goodbye to him at the dropoff zone at Arlanda airport at about 6 am on thursday (May 30th) morning, checked in and then enjoyed a very early beer and shrimp sandwhich since we hadn’t ordered food on the plane.
The flight was ok but a bit boring for me, I usually sleep on airplanes but this time I couldn’t. Then we arrived at the hotel and man was it nice!! It really was top notch! But when we got to our room we were really disappointed at the lack of sea view, that we had paid for. We were so disappointed that I actually went to complain at the front desk – and they looked at their bookings and simply snapped their fingers and we got a new room with awesome sea view! Then my wife had to go dip her feet in the ocean and then we kicked back to enjoy a cold nice beer at the beach bar. We spent the next 7 days walking the same road in Platanias (there is just one road unless you want to go along the beach which I don’t recommend) trying out all kinds of different restaurants! The people were very nice and polite, especially the people at the resaurants! There weren’t that many people who tried to force you into their restaurants which was a nice change!.
To go through some of the restaurants to recommend:
We also found a great restaurant when we took a trip with the Fun Trains out to Therisso Gorge but I have no idea what it was called but they served up a great and simple dish of lamb! We really wish we had done more of those Fun Train trips because that was fun.
We also took a city tour of Chania as well but it wasn’t much to write home about, except for the harbor where there were a gazillion restaurants lined up and yes, people trying to force you into their restaurant 🙁 But we already had an evening of Meze planned, but after 4 hours and 8 small dishes we were still kinda hungrey so when we got back to the hotel we took the liberty of taking some desserts from the dinner buffé at the hotel.
Other than we spent the week in the sun by the pool and a quick little visit to the gym to work off that saganaki. But by wednesday we were actually missing our Sam and both felt that we could really go home today. But that wasn’t up to us. But on Thursday (June 6th) we boarded the flight home and when we finally got home I was rushing to the car to see our son again who was really happy to see us again. But so tired after a week of playtime with the family that he feel asleep in the car on the way home!!
Basically we had a blast! There were some things we wish we had done differently but that’s the way it is. Next time we will take Sam with us and go to a real charter resort.
Feel free to check out the pictures here. And you should know the password by now, right?
Wow, that felt good – getting away from it all for a week!!
So on Thursday 30th Helena’s mother dropped us off at Arlanda and drove away with our son. We knew he would be in a good hands and promptly checked in and bought our first pint – at 6 am! Got on the plane, I introduced myself to the cabin crew and got a really friendly welcome and off we went. We landed, got to the hotel and went to our room only to find that the seaview we were paying for was very, very limited. So limited that I actually went to complain and was expecting to have to argue what classifies as a “sea view” – but nope, the fixed a new room for us by Sunday so we were happy with that.
We walked around the town of Platanias, tried every restaurant we could find and we basically lamed around for 7 days trying not to do anything but work on our tan and we were pretty successful. With the first part of that – not so much with the latter!
I’ll write up a full report later when I have time but for now this’ll do.
But man it’s good to be back!!
I say that a lot, maybe too much for her to really believe me. So let’s put it in writing –
I Love My Wife !
So many reasons, most of them unexplainable and unmeassurable. But this weekend it’s because of this little birthday present she gave me. Not because it was an expensive gift but because she knows what I want and goes the extra miles. So yeah, I definitely love her 🙂
Having a wife, house and a son is really time consuming. Gone are the days when I could just tuck myself in in my couch and have a “24” marathon. Or even watch TV shows – cause as things are now if one of us doesn’t like a TV show it’s hard to find the time to watch it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining, just observing that nothing is perfect and even though I may look back at my 10 years of single-life in my rented apartment in Huddinge as a bit of waste of time it did have some upsides compared to my life today – I’d be lying if I said anything else. But it doesn’t mean I want that life back! But I digress …
One of the things I missed out on was watching shows like “Stargate SG-1”. Which, for a huge sci-fi nerd like myself, really was my loss. Ironically I watched “Stargate Atlantis” for a while and absolutely love “Stargate Universe”. But I’m slowly making up for it. About a year ago I bought myself an android tablet. And even though it’s already old technology-wise it still let’s me watch through that show a little bit at a time. Because I’m done sitting idly on the train for 30 minutes just waiting. So nowadays I’m watching “Stargate SG-1” instead, usually get through one episode per day, sometimes two when the trains are messing up. The only problem is it’s kinda hard to watch a sci-fi show, which has some darkness in it, when it’s daylight. I’m all the way into season 4 now and so far it’s good. Sometimes I hear an echo in my head going “Star Trek did it” but hey, you can’t run a show for 10 years without having some influence from the leading sci-fi franchise!
Oh man I’ve got that “Chuggington”-song playing in my head now! Our son Sam just loves watching trains on YouTube so it’s Thomas The Tank Engine and Chuggington all the time!!
But life is proceeding pretty well. It’s ok at work, I’m having daily battles with Sharepoint 2013 trying to get it to work with an upgrade from our Sharepoint 2010 which isn’t as simple as going from 2007->2010 mostly because of the claims thing. At home I’m having weekly battles with our budget, trying not to spend much for anything ’cause we’re off on vacation in about a month. Finally! And my woman has just recovered from being i’ll for about 2 weeks. For her the worst part is going back to work only to see that noone has done nothing and her mailbox is swamped with stuff and she already had a backlog … she’s what you could call a single point of failure, and if it was a small company there wouldn’t be much fuzz, but this is one of the biggest phone operators in Sweden so they really should know better.
Also planning to build a deck on the front of our house. I built a huge one 3 years ago on the back but my woman wants one in the front too so that’s what I’ve got to do. So I’m keeping myself busy all the time 🙂
This weekend it was time for Father’s Day. Since Sam is only 2 3/4 he has no clue what that means so it’s as usual up to us to fix things. Usually we don’t really make that big a deal, but this time my wife had decided that yes we were going to make a big deal. But on Saturday she made us dinner and set a very romantic mood but was very secretive about her plans for the evening. And at 7 pm we got into the car and drove off. I had no idea where but soon realised we were going to her mother’s place. Reason for that was to drop off Sam for the night so we could go out to the movies and basically have a date night. Yeah, that’s pretty ironic, her “father’s day” arrangement had Sam staying at his grandmother, how about that 🙂
After we’d dropped him off as we were driving to Kista we kinda looked at each other, remembering the last time we tried to go there to see a movie, and decided to just go home instead, stopping by Willys for some treats and then got comfortable in our home cinema and watched “Ted”. Then we went to bed and we woke up at 10 am! I have no idea how long ago it was that I woke up that late! I mean I may “get up” at 10 but not actually waking up! That’s exactly what the doctor ordered!
Then we were off to pick up him and do the grocery shopping for the week and resume our normal lifes as homeowner and doing the last bits of tweaking in the garden before calling off the season.
A few years ago when we were sorting out our bank loans we were millionaires thanks to the wrong press of a button on our banks side, but was was quickly fixed. Yesterday it happened again!
As I was sitting in the couch I decided to check our bank accounts. And as I was checking our funds that’s what I saw – we were millionaires! Of course I know exactly how much should be in each fund so I quickly realized that somewhere it had been multiplied by a factor of over 100. I know exactly how much but I’m not telling since that’s none of your business and it’s irrelevant to the question of how the hell this happend? If it was a factor of exactly 100 you’d just assume someone missed where the seperator between dollars and cents goes, but this wasn’t an even 100. It was a interestingly a prime so not even at all except that it was an integer. And as the programming nerd I am I was asking how did this happened? And considering our entire society is based on systems like this to keep working it’s kinda scary how it could make me into a millionaire just like that. And if it wasn’t a fund that takes two days to sell I would easily have transferred money from the account to the real one but that just wasn’t possible.
And this morning when I checked it it was back to normal. I will mail them and ask “what the hell happened here” but I’m not expected any answer, not anything more than “it was a glitch” when I wanna know the exact glitch. Only thing I can think of is that the file the system was importing and reading had a line missing resulting in it importing the wrong fund values for the funds which would result in this. Which of course begs the question “who can an import routine accept an input over 100 times what it should be?”?
But yes it was easy for the mind to wander off into the “what if it’s real?”-zone. Because for me it was easier to explain our funds increasing the value of a factor greater than 100 than a program glitch this big! And it was a pretty picture of my wife sitting in our greenhouse enjoying coffee and her creations while I work 50% for the rest of my life. But you also know that the entire economic system in Sweden is built to stop people like me from becoming millionaires. And once again that theory was proven correct.