In case you missed it it was election time here in Sweden as is customary every 4th year. I don’t know if it’s a sign that I’m getting old or what, but I’m actually really following this. I say “following” because it’s not really done yet even though the voting is closed!
I have for the third time voted for the environmentalists. There is only one party that puts the environment over economic growth. We have one green party that says they put them on the same priority but as we in the western world should realise by now is that they are unfortunately mutually exclusive. In our global world you can’t produce anything 100% green and be competetive with say the chineese for example. There’s a reason 99% of all Apple products are produced in China. So for me there was really only one choice (or as my favorite saying goes “it’s not a choice, it’s a lack of options” (from “Armageddon”)). And unlike last election it seemed that the red-green block would win this election over the “blue” alliance which they ultimately did. But not by much. Actually they only won with “enough” to outvote them but not “enough” to have a majority on their own. Which has created alot of commotion in all the different parties and blocks trying to for a new alliance led by the reds, instead of the blues, but still consisting of some blues.
For me I want the green enviromental party to get a majority on their own so they don’t have to make compromises at all. But unfortunately we’re not there yet, maybe in the next 4 years the situation is so bad for mother Earth that they actually will get a majority – we don’t know. As one of their leaders said in the campaign which sums up my opinion – “we are the first generation that knows, have the hard facts, that indeed we are destroying the planet, yet we’re doing nothing about it. How can we defend that when our children asks ‘you knew, why didn’t you do anything about it?'”. But I’m not really a big fan of them ending up in a government with the previously mentioned blue-green party (“Centern”) since they’ve dropped the ball so hard on so many things, everything from the SAAB fiasco, the Nuon fuckup and Vattenfall investing in more coal-driven energy in Germany. So not a fan of that.
But the option that unfortunately isn’t too far away is for an extra election to be had when the budget proposals from the different blocks go head to head. If everyone goes 100% with what they are saying today it shouldn’t be a problem. The red-greens will get their budget voted through because they have more votes than they blues. And SD, the block-free “we don’t want no more immigrants but we’re not racists even though most of out representatives are caught again and again posting very racist things on different forums”-party, aren’t going to vote for the blue party since it’s too immigration-friendly. So the red-greens should get their budget through. But there’s still uncertainty in the air and politicians are knows for not keeping what they are saying. Which is actually a good thing that people can change their minds.
We’ll see how it goes later this year.
I started writing about that “not racists, but”-party “Sverige Demokraterna” but it got so long that I’ll save that post for tomorrow…
I’m no expert at religion. Far from it. I did go through that enter confirmation thing when I was a teenager but that’s pretty much it. But I am a big moviebuff. And alot of times when religion have been shown in movies it’s usually done pretty well. Some stuff, like Star Trek, try to stay clear of it and when they do deal with it it’s an alien religion. Then we have movies like “Schindler’s List” which really didn’t have the Jewish faith in the center of the story but it was still present. And it didn’t bug me.
What did bug me was when I recently saw “Mom’s Night Out”. I was under the impression it was a movie about a mother who just wanted a night out with the girls and it all went comically to hell (no pun intended). And that’s what a good 99% of the movie was about. And those 99% were pretty funny and got some laughs. But unfortunately it’s that 1 remaining percent that I’ll remember this movie for. How Christianity had helped some characters stay on the right path in their lifes and deal with life’s challenged. And that bugged me – alot! In my opinion it’s you who chose to stay on the right path and you that deal with life’s challenges, God or Jesus doesn’t have anything to do with it. It may be that your faith is keeping you strong but that’s still you! Don’t go giving someone else credit! This movie went very far from just having “faith” somewhere in the story to it being downright Christianity propoganda. ANd I hated that. Not because I hate Christianity, not all. But I hate propoganda like that, especially that cheesy. But if you can take that 1% I’d recommend that movie because it has so many “I totally do that!”-moments of being a parent!
As far as I know noone have challenged me for the ALS challenge.
So I did this instead:
It’s a really horrible sickness to “get”. Anyone can get it at any time, it’s 100% mortality rate often within 2-3 years and the last months alive looks like hell. So I have no problem donating money for this research.
So the year is 1998. I’m sitting in my room in my parent’s house in Lyngsta on an idle Sunday and randomly ends up on the channel showing Formula 1. It’s the Belgium grand prix. At the first start there was a massive car pileup in the first corner. At the restart two more were taken out. And then Schumacher in the lead was about to pass Coulthard who slowed down and due to poor visibility Schumacher plowed right into the back of the McLaren. After they both came back to the pits, Schumacher was as red as his outfit and stormed into the McLaren garage to give Coulthard a piece of his mind. (highlights are here)
And I was hooked right there. Previously I’d watched F1 when I more or less accidentally flipped channels to it but now I really started following it and 15 years on I’m still hooked. And I’ve always been a Ferrari fan. I dunno why but I have a thing for Italy. The year after he had an accident on Silverstone and crashed into a wall and broke his leg. But he returned later that year and was better than before the accident. Then Ferrari went ahead and pretty much dominated the sport for 4 years. Then it’s been up and down. And then Shumacher retired from Ferrari which most of us feared would be the end of their dominance – which it unfortunately was. Kimi did a good job of it and brought home the title and Felippe was pretty damn good too and so close to winning the title but noone stood out as much as Schumacher. And when Massa had his accident and Ferrari called Schumi and asked if he could drive the remianing races it was so close but didn’t pan out. But he came out of retirement to help his buddy Brawn out with the Mercedes team for a few years and then calling it quits to just be with his family.
And what most people don’t know is everything he did beside drive Ferraris. He was a big force behind car safety, especially in F1 after being there for the fatal Senna-crash. And he was also big on charity, not just money but also events. He used to rally together enough people for charity football events all the time. And he was also a family man, not a player like some of F1’s stars.
So it’s a real tragedy that he’s injured like this, when out skiing with his family. I really hope he pulls through this as well! It’s also a reminder that life is damn dangerous! How he can drive a F1 car for almost 20 years and only break a leg, but has a lethal accident skiing.
This year my sister AC turned 40. Like always we planned something special. And this is the story…
Due to scheduling conflicts we had to do it last weekend in November. And since my other sister Amy had to be present it had to be in Scotland. And since AC loves Edinburgh so much we decided that’s where we were going to go, much like we did when Amy turned 40 two years ago. But we couldn’t let AC know what was going on at all so we served up plenty of curveballs to keep her guessing. Then Ryan Air did what they do best – cause problems. Out of the blue the cancelled the flights to Edinburgh! Fortunately we got our money back but it still meant we had to look at options, and KLM it was. Unfortunately with KLM it means stopping by Amsterdam! And we’ve kept her in the dark all the time and even got her thinking she was going to Budapest. And we all lied that we were too busy to go and she was going all by herself. I actually didn’t have to lie – because we did have a mandatory kick off on the friday, and the kindergarten was closed and my wife had to attend a funeral and there was a sci-fi con that I was going to miss!
But on Wednesday the 27th my father Lars, brother Jocke, sister’s boyfriend Matte and my sister’s son Alex got into the car and drove not to Skavsta, where Ryan Air flies from, but to Arlanda. And to terminal 2 (which is for non Star Alliance flights). And then they boarded a flight to Amsterdam and she had no clue what was going on. Unfortunately they couldn’t keep it secret for long once they got to Amsterdam since she had to state her final destination to pass a checkpoint, so the cat was dragged out of the bag there. Meanwhile I was in Sweden working since I didn’t have enough paid vacation days to go. And it also kept her from thinking I wasn’t actually going. But on friday I had already a vacation day granted and my wife handled everything herself so I could actually go! Made the same trip as they did and when I arrived I just came into the pub with a bang and joined the fun!!
Most of the weekend was spent at pubs. Or walking around wondering where to eat – trying to find a place that can take 9 people spontaneously that vegetarians and non-vegetarians can eat at during Christmas shopping-days wasn’t easy! On Friday evening we found some place on George Street/Charlotte Square but that turned out to be really disappointing. Atleast for me – never had such a dull burger before. Then bed at 1 am for me. Up the morning after to enjoy a full english breakfast at a bakery on Rose Street. Then some shopping and a quick visit to a pub before we had to say good bye to my sister Amy and her daughters that had to go back home to Aberdeenshire. Then some more shopping before we ended up at KFC. Because we don’t have KFC in Sweden so we had to try it!
Then one of the highlights and biggest surprises – “Limbo“! Matte had googled “what to do in Edinburgh” for that weekend and that was one of the things that popped up. So we dished out some money to go see it. It was a bit of a gamble. And man did it pay off! It was a great combination of circus acts, dancing, music, comedy and one or two magic tricks. But the most surpring thing was the energy and chemistry of the performers! It was just awesome! If you’re anywhere close to Edinburgh you have to go see it! And the bendy guy, Jonathan Nosan, is really active on Twitter so he’s a “+Follow” for sure!
After that we tried another pub but realised we’d be better off buying two 6 packs and going back to the hotel and talk about stuff. Then off to bed and up – at 3:30 am! The flight left at 5:50 am but we had luggage that needed to be checked in “an hour before the flight” so that’s the way it had to be done. Then stopping in Amsterdam and waiting for the flight home. As we boarded that flight I saw that Maria Montazami was on the same flight which was kinda fun, I like her. Also on the flight was the medical rescue team that flew from Sweden to the Philippines to help with what they could. And they had some stories to tell. I’m really glad we have people like that! When we got home it was ofcourse awesome to see my wife and son waiting for me in the arrival hall, it was one of those Hallmark moments!!
I hate flying. Well not the actual flying part, but all the stuff that goes with it. Everytime I go flying I’m reminded how we as a civilization needs to come up with a transport-system! The saying “time is money” would indicate that there is a helluvalot of money to be made from such a patent, right?
Ryan Air used to fly to Edinburgh directly but now in time for Christmas they’ve cancelled that line so we had to go with KLM instead with a stop in Amsterdam. When flying home we started from our hotell at 4 am on sunday morning. I arrived home at 1:45pm. That’s almost 10 hours. Out of that only 4 hours were spent in the air!! First it was the taxi to the airport, got there early because we needed to check in 2 bags as luggage, then security checkpoint then wait…. and wait. And off to Amsterdam and after we landed it was atleast 10 minutes to the actual terminal, then another checkpoint. Then wait. And more wait. And then the next flight and we got home. And waited for the luggage. And then going home from the airport is another 30 minutes (which for Arlanda is pretty decent since we live on the “right side of town”, for the others it’s atleast a full hour.
That is such a waste of time! Not that I’m too important for this, not at all. It’s just .. a waste of time. 10 years ago when I was travelling to our embassies around the world I didn’t mind as much, probably because I got paid even when sitting at a pub on the airport. But now that it’s my spare time, I kinda mind. In this modern age where hours are important and your life is so stressfull, having a transporter to instantly beam you over to where you’re going instantly might be worth it. “What about all those transport accidents in Star Trek” you ask? Well what about all those air crashes in real life!? But considering how many gazillion people that work in logistics would get laid off I guess that’d be bad for employment figures, not to mention the airlines 🙂
I haven’t made a post for a while, not that there hasn’t been anything to write about, quite the contrary. I’ve had so much to do that I haven’t had the time to write anything here. And now that I do, I can’t remember all the stuff I was too write. Totally my bad. But I’m pretty sure it’ll come back to me.
Right now I got a Sharepoint farm to get stable enough to work with which is, as always, easier said than done. But thanks to google and alot of blogs I’m getting there.
And tomorrow we have our annual kick-off, yay! I’d be glad about if it wasn’t so badly timed with the kindergarten being close and a funeral for my wifes grandfather – not to mention a party in Scotland I can’t attend… oh well.
I’ve said this before but it can’t hurt a repeat – expectations are bad! There should be a class in high school called “lower your expectations” because in high school all you wanted was to be a grown up and look how that worked out. Another thing about managing expectations is very much related to the video above. Guys growing up expecting chicks to look like they do in the movies are so in for a disappointment, ’cause not even those chicks look like they do in the movies.
Sorry but I’m about to go very political and existential on your asses so buckle up!
I dunno if you heard, but Greenpeace did a pretty fancy job of taking a swing at Shell during their biggest PR event of the year, the Belgian Grand Prix. If you missed it, here’s the clip.
Also I recently saw the SG1 episode “Fallout” in which a planet with 3 major powers who never can agree on anything is about to blow up. The entire planet, yet they can’t get along even in the face of imminent wipeout. I also remember when the Kyoto Protocol was up for voting the US president said that they couldn’t agree with it because “it would hinder their economic growth”. And a few weeks ago, Vattenfall (the biggest producer of energy in Sweden) went on TV and answered the question “don’t you have a responsibility to invest more in greener energy sources?” with “we also have a responsibility to our shareholders to make a profit”.
Here’s a thought. You know that pandemic people seems to be convinced is coming, that will be majorly contagious and infectious, will kill people without prejudice and threaten mankind’s existence as the dominant species? Well I’m thinking it’s already here and it’s called “greed”.
I’m all for making a profit. But not at the expense of people’s life or the health of the planet! Ever since the industrial revolution we have poisoned this planet more and more and we can try to blame our parents or grandparents for it, but the difference is they probably didn’t know it was causing the damage it was. Well my generation has been brought up knowing we’re destroying the planet. And when people use the excuse of making money to defend the destruction of the planet I get upset- Because we know the effect our way of life is having yet we seem unable – or even worse, unwilling! – to change.
I wish I could make more of a difference, but I’m content with donating money to Greenpeace and voting for the Swedish environment party!
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?
So how was that weekend you wonder?
To start off, meeting up with my trekking buddies for a beer and burger, great! Always a pleasure. Then came the movie… well I don’t know why I still bother going to the movies actually. First I had to pay extra for the 3d glasses! They should also have offered earplugs because the sound was way too loud. And not “I can hear this through concrete walls”-loud because that I can enjoy. This was loud as in sharp hurting my tinnitus-ear, so I spent half the movie covering an ear. And who needs an AC when you have a thousand people watching a movie when we can make them sweat?! Why do I bother!?
Afterwards I went home (which took longer than it should) and spent a few hours playing computer games until I was tired enough to fall asleep. And I thought I’d be enjoying lying in bed and just not do nothing without having a son yelling at me to get up. But I didn’t, got up at 8 again and watched some TV, movies, Formula 1 and whatnot and playing games, just like I planned. What wasn’t a part of the plan was a phone call telling me that an acquaintance passed away during the night. He’s a guy I met every month at our Star Trek gatherings, a really nice and all around righteous dude. So that pretty much ended that day on a downer. On Sunday it was back to the same stuff and the F1 race from Barcelona with another Ferrari win! And by now the family was back home so it was back to normal life again.
So yeah, it could’ve been better, definitely. But it was still pretty good!
As usual I hate to get my hopes and expectations up. Because it almost always leads to disappointment. But this time I can’t help it!
To start with, today is what’s called a “squeeze-day” in Sweden, which isn’t as cuddly as it sounds. It means it’s a workday between two non-workdays. And there’s the tradition that “squeeze-day” is a very unproductive day of slacking since most offices have a skeleton crew, including this one. So today will be a very slow day at work with no meetings and lots of labbing with Sharepoint 2013!
And you know I love my wife and son, right? But they’ll be away for the weekend, which means it’s just me me me. And the new Star Trek movie premiers tonight. Although I’ve already seen it but not in the full glory of 3D! And there’s an F1 race this weekend, Spain nonetheless which means Alonso will try extra hard. And I’ve got my Ben & Jerry’s in the freezer and Red Bulls in the fridge. And Diablo 3 just received a small overhaul. So yeah, I hate to get my hopes up but this weekend has a lot of ingredients to be a weekend of awesomeness!
And right away comes the next reality check – namely this. To summarize – it’s your everyday normal family and the mother drops off their 2 year old son at kindergarten every morning. Except this one day she can’t and the dad steps in. Except this one time he forgets and goes to work and leaves his car in the parking lot with the kid still inside strapped to it’s seat. And the worst timing ever since yesterday happened to be the first really hot day of the year in Sweden and the sun cooked the car and the kid dies of heat exhaustion.
The tragedy is just amazing!! And it makes me happy that I’m in charge of dropping him off at the kindergarten because I’m not sure this would never have happened to me if I wasn’t. Because one time when my wife had asked me to pick him up I actually drove all the way home before I remembered I was suppose to pick him up so I turned right around to remedy that. So I’m afraid what might have happen if it was the other way around. But it’s just so tragic that it can happen. And I can’t say it’s the kindergarten’s fault for not following up why the kid never made it, with their limited resources they can’t investigate shit like this too.
Nothing like a terrible story about how absolutely evil people can be to give you a reality check about things, eh? I’m of course talking about those 3 chicks that finally broke free after being held captives in a house for 10 years. 10 freaking years!!! I can’t even wrap my head around that, it’s just absolutely absurd the evilness that lies behind something like that! Compared to that one doesn’t really have much to complain about. Because it has to be one of the most evil thing you can do, right? What makes people like that tick, really?! It pisses me right off, and all those TV series and movies you’ve seen with innocent girls being kidnapped and held captive by some psycho, that hasn’t gone on for 10 freaking years!? …Here’s hoping they can adjust to life as free people again :/
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!
10 months ago when I was hired it was for one main purpose – to upgrade our Sharepoint 2007 to Sharepoint 2010. Sure it’s normal IT operations, some SQL and Exchange management and other stuff too but mainly it was to upgrade Sharepoint. And now 10 months later the day has finally come for me to start and reap the fruits of the past 10 months work!
All the scripts are written, polished and tested 3-4 times and everything is prepared so at midnight tonight the old Sharepoint 2007 will go into read only mode and I’ll start copying all the 250 gigabyte or so of data and migrate it to 2010. And we’re also taking the opportunity to clean up some previous wrongs (like “SiteDirectory” things). So it’ll take more or less the entire weekend but lot’s of downtime waiting for copying, backups, restores and moving things around in the content databases, all those nifty scripts will do that work, I just have to check in once a while to make sure there are no errors and start the next one. So I’m actually triple booked this saturday – first this work, then Star Trek day in Skarpnäck and in the evening we’re having our neighbours over for dinner and to celebrate Sams birthday. Then on Sunday I might still have some job to do (although if all goes well it’ll just be building the search index which I’ll just start and leave for 12 hours) and off the the kids funhouse at Barkarby. All in all a busy weekend.
But it really feels good that FINALLY! I can put all my scripts and preparation to good use, I’ve waited for over 6 months to get the go-ahead for this!
That title is a little inside joke, but anyway. Today as I walked back to work after taking a little walk after lunch and I saw our building with our logo I got this weird fuzzy feeling. It took me a while to get it but I think I do now. I’m actually proud to be working here at Thomas Cook (aka “Ving” for all you Swedes!). It’s been over 10 years since I could say that.
After working for companies like “Pulsen” who never saw me as an individual but rather something there to make them money, and Carema who tried to make the most of every dollar they had, it’s such a pleasant thing to be able to say that I work at “Ving”. Because unlike “Vinge” (the lawfirm), this company is very well known, have a very good reputation, are very visible in the media and really takes care of their brand. Recently we just had an ad drive and some of the pictures of people on holiday were of gay couples, and it’s not like they made a big deal out of it or anything, the pictures were just there just like that “happy man / woman” couple pictures. I liked that. And yes I do realise that I’m defeating the purpose by actually making a deal out of it, but it can’t be helped! Also the fact that Ving take very good care of their employees. Even though I was a bit peeved at my boss 2 weeks ago for not giving me the bonus I was promised all year, I’ve gotten over it and it’s not like it was personal or anything. And besides, me and the wife are going on holiday soon that’s alot cheaper than it would be had I not worked here.
So yeah, for the first time in 10 years I can actually say I’m happy and proud to be working where I am. Let’s hope that never changes!
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.