So not only is our WoW guild dying, but now one of my best friends is losing his job (downsizing – AGAIN!) and this woman I finally asked out is trying to patch things up with her ex…
Regarding the first one, you coul say “it’s just a game”, but it’s become so much more. It’s hard to describe to someone who hasn’t been there, but it’s another hurtful reminder that “all good things must come to and end”. Regarding my friend losing his job, that’s shitty but he’s young and has tons of experience and certifications so he’ll get a new one fast as hell, and he also has a girlfriend to comfort him. And the last one… well, I’m one of those “good for her!”-people so… good for her, whatever makes her happy!…
But I’m still depressed… Oh well, I have plenty of cookies!
Our WoW guild is dying out now, think we’ve been pushing it a bit hard and people have just woke up and realised “hey, I’m almost 31, maybe I should do something else than play computer games”. And yeah, I’m people… thing is, I’m not very good at taking on huge tasks like for example cleaning my apartment that is in serious need of a good cleaning crew… nah, just one more Rend-run (WoW talk)..
When I landed in Prague last friday and met the team (“Eventyr”) that was gonna take care of us during the weekend I noticed one of the girls and thought to myself “I so know her!”. Unfortunately you can’t just go up to a beautiful woman like that and say “don’t I know you?” unless you wanna get laughed at. At some point during saturday morning it hit me – she worked for one of our companies in the building next door back in the old “Min Dator” days, like 8 years ago!! So I finally got it and talked to her and indeed, it was her. But then she kicked me in the nuts when she had no clue who I was…
During the conference we had a teambuilding exercise and the most interesting thing that happened was when we were gonna split up into small groups of like 8-9 people. Everyone knew me because everyone that has worked there for a while have talked to me so many times they know me and all the new people had their IT intro’s with me so they knew me too. And I knew everyone for the same reasons. And I know when which lady got married since I had to change names and stuff in the network and I know when people transfer between offices. The problem was – alot of them didn’t know eachother! And that put me in a kinda unique position during all this since I had to introduce people, team up the girls to talk about wedding preparations and stuff since one had gotten married just a few months ago and I could easily strike up a conversation regarding the pub around the corner of our office in Brussels since I know this guy just came back after working for 2 years in Brussels. That was fun and unexpected.
The other day me and some friends went out for some beers and have something to eat and just enjoy a good night out. And it was really good, until around 12 when we were walking around looking for some place that was open, had beer and didn’t have a queue to get in. So we ended up at Bullwinkles. I haven’t been there for years but last time we were there it was a normal bar. But now it had been transformed to a meatmarket, pick up joint. After we’d checked in our coats, ordered the drinks and checking out the environment we realised just how out of place we were. Most of us where close to or over 30 which most of the other people (atleast the girls) wasn’t, we had clothes that fit which the other people (most the guys showing off their pecks) didn’t and none of us was looking to hook up. That was a bad way to end the night 🙁
Whoever came up with the idea of having nachos and salsa sauce on a hamburger should get a freaking medal! Best meal I’ve ever had on Burger King, which isn’t saying much since most of the time I’ve been there I’ve been intoxicated. I doubt it’s a coincidence they have restaurants at all the places I usually end up after a night out, but they’ve really nailed the spots – Medbrogarplatsen, Vasagatan, Plattan, Odenplan and Stureplan!
I love it when the swedish newspaper have nothing interesting to report. Like last week, the day after it had been established that this current bird flu had hit sweden and people were all like “so?”, the next day the published The List. The List of people, or rather positions/institutions, who was on some kind of priority list for vaccination should this mutate and kill people. I thought that was hilarious as hell, but from a journalistic point of view, what tha hell where they hoping to accomplish by that? Sow some seed of discension or what? Noone really cared it was here so why would anyone care if our King was very high on that list? And they had absolutely no reference to where the list came from or anything. But I found it amusing that the IT departments did get a special mention. Even if it was the governments and healthcare IT departments. Thing is, everyone there knows you can just order home your own supply of this vaccin on the net if you want to feel like the king…
Now I’m gonna force myself to play WoW less ’cause I’ve been putting so much stuff off in the past months that I have alot of stuff to catch up on. This place being one of them…
So 4 years ago we had all the expectations in the world to get some olympic medals and that didn’t happen. So this year we didn’t, but we did get tons of them. Think we ended up like 6th or 7th all in all. Biggest one ofc was the hockey, and now there’s alot of legal issues with that because of the celebration party they had here in Stockholm. Since it was arranged by the swedish ice hockey organisation it had their logos and sponsors, not the official olympic sponsors which goes against some rule somewhere. I just love legal mumo-jumbo and there are even talks that it might disqualify our hockey team. Good luck with that 🙂
I was going to work on monday in my normal “monday morning, yet another week” mood that I’m in on mondays, got off the train and started the long walk to the office. That’s when I just walk around looking at things all around me and laugh at the small things and enjoy the smell of newly baked bread. But this monday I saw some funny new posters on the wall going to the subway. It was advertisement for our biggest lingerie chain, and the slogan was… “We love boobs!”. I thought that was so damn funny and unexpected it really made my day. And guess what’s on the news today? Some people think that’s offensive and have protested against the text, so they are gonna take the text away and all that’s left is a zoom of a womans cleavage. Did that make it any better for them?! Some people just don’t get humor… and don’t get me started on the Denmark vs. Islam thing…
This is terrible, I’m falling so behind on updating this place I feel kinda guilty about it. But there isn’t that much going on. Well there is, but nothing you would ever be interested in. Like our plans to migrate to another WoW server, doesn’t sound at all interesting but you’d be surprised at all the discussion about it 🙂
But the good news is I haven’t had a headache in quite a while. Actually can’t remember when was the last time I had one. The bad news is that the problem migrated to the left front of my head! Something is really messed up with my blood circulation in my head because now I feel the blood pumping through my veins behind my eyeball sometimes, extremely annoying. So maybe that MRI is still on 🙂 But I guess I shouldn’t complain, if that’s all that’s bothering me right now.
Well hello there, long time, no update! Sorry about that, been busy with levling up my third lvl 60 character in WoW…. yeah, it’s screwed up how much time that game can take away from you!
But happy new year everyone! 2005 wasn’t really a good year for me but I’m expecting 2006 to be much better and more fun and I hope that your 2006 is too! The standard question, atleast here in Sweden, after this holiday is “so what did you do on New Years?” at which point you usually reply “I was at this wild party and made out with this crazy chick” or something. But for the first time ever I thought it’d be interesting to see what it would be like doing absolutely nothing! And to quote one of my favorite movies “It was all I hoped it would be”. It wasn’t that I felt anti-social or anything, I just thought that the past 10 years I’ve either spent it with my family, with female company (which so far has been the most awesome way to do it!) or out partying – so for once I just skipped all of that and did nothing. You should try it 🙂
The other day I did something really, really bad. As I was driving a friend home along Huddingevägen (a road FULL of traffic lights all the way!) I accidentally drove against a red light. Those lights are always green except that one time and I missed it. The spontaneous reaction right after was “SHIT, I hope noone saw me?” since it’s one of those things you lose your license over. But after I drove home and through that same intersection again I realised just how badly that could’ve been. It was just pure luck that noone was crossing the road at that spot! If someone had followed the lights and crossed it I might’ve killed ’em! Even though I was doing slow 60 KPH, a car vs. human at that speed is not good. But that didn’t happen. And I still have my license. But after feeling like shit over how badly it could’ve gone I’m gonna be way more observant in the future.
Another tradition around this time is to change your tyres to handle the snow & ice. It’s a real hassle to do it and takes over an hour and I always end up with some muscle I haven’t used in a while aching for days after. And it’s cold, and boring. So yesterday I set a few hours aside to do this, put on shitty clothes, grabbed a beer and went to work. And on the second bolt of the first tyre I had to give up because I broke the damn tyre iron (or whatever it’s called in english, you know that steel cross thing you take off the bolts with). I don’t know who put that bolt on but it wasn’t coming off – at all. So I admitted defeat (even though it was the tools that broke, not me!) and put the first bolt back on…
… and drove 400 meter to the car mechanics and had them do it in 15 minutes for $20…
Guess we’re building up for Christmas now. Got the first snow this weekend which wasn’t a good surprised considering the tyres on my car. But the Christmas decoration at NK is up anyway and that’s always a nice thing to see. Unfortunately I’m totally swamped at work since we’re doing this huge migration from Groupwise to Exchange mail system. And you’d be surprised how important the integrity of the lawyers mailboxes are – by law! 🙁
But download this and enjoy! Griswald, eat your heart out!
Here’s a thing I’d like women to explain to me – the blonde issue. First of all I’ve never understood why a person would wanna go blonde in the first place, but that (much like the breast-size issue) is up to them. What I have a problem with is other women, and it is exclusivly women, commenting “oh she’s not a naturual blonde!”?? Does it matter?? Does it make a woman less attractive for having faking that? Or in one of those “what do people on the street think!” things I saw in Metro the other day when a woman answered “naturual blonde”, as if that makes her more attractive? Out of everything awesomely wonderful in women, hair color is not even in the list. But history shows I’ve always prefered brunettes…
And just when I started to cheer up our communiting service is there to slap me back down. You know, the assholes that don’t demand stuff like “must be able to cope with swedish winter!” when they buy new stuff. Now they bought new trains for us commuters and today was the first day I got to ride one. And they Suck. Basically you get the feeling that the ones ordering it never really use them because then they might have cared about more seats instead of more space for the people that have to stand up. And the ones that do have to stand were severly lacking bars to hold onto when the train twists as much as it is now with all re-construction going on there. I wanna go back to taking the car to work instead. It wasn’t cheap, it wasn’t environment friendly but atleast you were comfortable.
But this will cheer up your day.
Today Metro did something really nice! Metro is a free newspaper that doesn’t have to create stories by twisting facts, they make their money off advertisements. ANYWAY, they had picture with the Crazy Frog and text that said “SMS to this number and pay $4 for an annoying ringtune and support a millionaire”, and right next to it a picture of an orphan pakistani child with the text “or SMS to this number and donate the money”. I think that really hit home cause it was so in your face. And if I wasn’t donating money to Unicef, Amnesty, Greenpeace and the Red Cross as well as donating blood – I’d feel guilty.
I don’t care what anybody says, when it’s the 27th september and I can go around stockholm in a t-shirt and still feel comfortably warm – that’s just wrong! Something’s really messed up with the weather. And the fact that Bush says the opposite makes it even more likely.
Another sad day for journalism. Aftonbladet, the tabloid that likes to think of itself as the biggest newspaper in sweden, had a front page today that was… totally irrelevant. Some guy in “Idol 2005” (our version “Popstar” or whatever) performed some song to his new girlfriend and started crying. Yeah, seriously, that’s the story on the front page today! Maybe if he had sung some love song to his boyfriend or something it might have been miniscule newsworthy, but not even that.
If I’d done the front page I probably would have had a some kinda memorial to Simon Wiesenthal. But that’s just me.
I think I may have spoken too soon. When I was thinking about it I think I owe september 11th 2001 for working here at the law firm! Because at the time I was working as a consultant hired out on a long term assignment to the biggest swedish airline (SAS). But after september 11th and another accident in italy they got rid of all their consultants to save money fast. So it was back to the office for me and just when that happens this law firm called wanting more people and I was the only one in idle mode. And who knows, if I’d been at SAS I might not be allowed to participate in the world tour of 2003 & 2004 🙂 So I guess I was affected after all.