Dude, have the past two week been the laziest of my life? I would think so! Especially the weekends – last weekend I was so bored I actually had to go an extra mile to find something to do. Don’t know when was the last time that happened. And this weekend has been “movie-catchup” weekend. “Troy”, “Girl Next Door”, “Timeline”, “Hellboy”, “Punisher”, “Godsend” and “Elf”. Puh… most of them were disappointing (“Timeline” was soooo bad, and I usually like time travel stories), some just what I expected (“Troy” made up and bended Homer’s work about as much as I’d expect) and some were even better than I thought (“Girl Next Door” was funnier and more serious than I though). And another Ferrari victory. A pretty successful weekend all in all. Looking forward to this working week when my future area of expertice will be decided.
Alot happening on the natalieportman.com side of my life (changin servers) but not alot else happening. Enjoying the summer and being in sweden and actually getting my life back together. This site may go down and up over the next few days because I’m changing stuff but that should only be temporary. Don’t worry – I’m a professional… “a professional what?”..
As usual I’m not nationalistic or patriotic in any way, but when big championship comes along that changes. All yellow and blue! And today was the big day for swedish soccer in the Euro2004. Versus Italy. Noone expected it to be much of a match, but hell it turned out to be the best one yet. And Zlatans equalizer… guess I can’t say “he’s not that good, he’s just hyped up by the media” because that was a helluva goal. Or to quote Irene Cara – “oh what a feeling!”.
I’m so not 20 anymore! Picture this – I limp back to the hospital to return the crotches and decided to donate blood. After that you get iron supplement pills. The day after I go out having a couple of beers (more like a dozen) with some friends and wake up today TOTALLED. With lack of blood and the mess in the stomach that iron supplement causes, added with alcohol and OUCH today is not a good day to do anything at all.
As I mentioned in yesterdays update I did my annual physical in may and last friday me and the doc went through the results. I was expecting her to say stuff like “you REALLY need to cut down on the fat, lose some wight and start excercising”. Which she kinda did. She said “you really need to cut down on the bad fat like fast food, chips and candy and get more good fat like olive oil. And it wouldn’t hurt to lose a few pounds”. As if I didn’t know that last part! In christmas of 2002 when I hit 110 kilos I got an excercise bike from my parents. And yes, it was on my short “all I want for christmas”-list. And I actually used it alot and was down to 104 when I started travelling and stuff and didn’t have time for it. So now I’m up to 112 kilos. And since I’m not gonna be travelling anytime soon I can’t use that as an excuse.
Too bad I busted my ankle 🙂
Today I did something I haven’t done in over a year. Donated blood. I haven’t been allowed to do that since I’ve been to “malaria infected countries” which results in a 6 month ban from giving blood. And obviously they have read my entry about me not being able to donate blood at Huddinge hospital, because now I can. Unfortunately, their computer systems aren’t connected to the ones at the donor place I used to go to so I had to fill out all the forms and take new blood tests to ensure that my blood is clean. They didn’t trust me when I said I had my blood tested twice in may -03 (blood donation & pre-vaccination), august -03 (pre-vaccination), twice in november -03 (once for malaria and once in nigeria), december -03 (trying to diagnose salmonella), january -04 (pre-vaccination), may -04 (annual physical) and once just two weeks before when I busted my ankle (still don’t know what one has to do with the other!). I had to take one more blood test to be sure. So I’ve REALLY made up for never having my blood tested before that and now I’m so positive and reassured I’ve got no bad things in my veins.
You’d think that when I’m on sick leave I’d have some time to update this site with more updates and stuff… yeah, you’d think! But I’ve had stuff to keep me busy all the way which makes me kinda worried what it’ll be like when I actually go back to work next wednesday. But then I won’t have weeks of Star Trek to catch up on or a Dead Zone DVD box to watch. Or this good weather!
Saw “Day after Tomorrow” today (thanks sis!). Liked it. Alot. I’ve always liked catastrophe movies. And I always like US of A getting their asses kicked in movies. And I’ve always liked Dennis Quaid ever since “Innerspace”. And I’ve always liked Sela Ward. But there was just one minor teeeeeeny little detail that got me upset – again they portray the US president as a nice, decent and righteous dude.
[Stop readin now if you don’t wanna be spoiled about the movie!] The role of the asshole is the VICE president who later in the movie becomes the president and all of a sudden he becomes a good guy. So vice presidents can be assholes but not presidents? Why? When we all know that it’s George-boy we’re talking about and bashing, why not go all the way? Little disappointed over that.
You know how “they” say that your health takes a dramatic turn for the worse when you hit 30? I’ve heard that it just get’s worse and you have a much easier time getting sick? I guess I’m a little bit ahead of schedule. Cause one year ago I had never been on sick leave (not once!) and had never been to the hospital since my little operation when I was a kid. I was going on almost 20 years without going to the hospital (and no, visiting someone else doesn’t matter). But then BAM, 3 times in 2 weeks in november and now once more unto the breach! Got off the Arlanda-parking buss and my foot just gave away. I guess there was some rock or there that just made my foot go all wrong, but that doesn’t matter cause the result was the same – busted ankle. So now I’ve been to the hospital for x-rays (rather that than limping for the rest of my life) and been on sick leave twice – in the past 6 months alone. And I turned 29 yesterday so it must be that. Or bad luck.
Oh no, it’s that time again. That time of the year that you’re reminded of just how fast time flies. Which I guess is a good thing since that usually means you’re having fun. Which I totally am. But I don’t want another birthday. Thank god I’m out of the country…AGAIN!
Unfortunately this is the last trip I’ll ever do for this government project. I’ve done my 15 or so embassies, and we were 7 techies so that about covers them all. 🙁
Have you seen Evanescence video to “Everybody’s Fool”? Powerful stuff. Not only a good singer, she can act too. But most of all – great music! Btw, what’s happened to that group, totally split up?
Busy little bee, but that’s almost over and I may actually be able to post some of the cool stuff here.
So we arrive here at the hotel Dorin in Holland and checking in, everything is going as usual. When all of a sudden, the clerk hands me a gold card and says “this will get you free drinks in the bar”.?? We’re all like “how many, like one a day”, but no, really – free drinks, all you can drink. As the bartender said – It’s your headache! A think like that would never, never EVER be allowed here in Sweden. For some reason, our politicians thinks that we can’t handle alcohol in a sensible manner and if we could buy it anywhere we’d all be drunks, so the government has monopoly on importing and the sale of alcohol. That’s just the way it is. So for a hotell or bar or anything to say “free drinks” would be really outrageous in Sweden. So how much did we take advantage of this? That’s between the three of us!
Have you heard about Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11”? Michael Moore did the documentary “Bowling for Columbine” a few years back, trying to get to the bottom of “why are americans so triggerhappy”. His conclusion then is that americans are being bombarded by fear from everywhere in a way you can’t see in any other country. And now he takes it a couple of steps further by examining the Bush family & administration, how it got to power, what it’s done during that time, 9/11 (ofcourse), the two wars and the nonstop lying ofcourse. And guess what happenes when it’s all done and ready to premiere in the states? Disney decides to shelve the movie, atleast until after the presidential election. And their excuse? Nothing noble as neutrality or anything like that. No, they are afraid of what’s going to happen with Disneyland in Florida if they realease this movie and upsets the Bush family, ’cause there’s a Bush in power in Florida as well! Talk about proving the point Moore is trying to make! Fortunately it’s getting so much attention that they probably will have to release it or sell it to someone who have some balls. It’s getting awesome reviews here in Europe anyway, it was shown during the Cannes film festival. And the international release is still a go. It’s just the american’s that don’t get to see it. Isn’t that kinda screwed up? A movie made by an american about the american leadership done for americans with americans, but they don’t get to see it? I like Michael Moore. He might not be the brightest most neutral person in the world, but he’s got humor, he doesn’t take alot of suff seriously and sure as hell isn’t pretentious if you look at his wardrobe!
I work at your everyday computer firm, and as you know the last couple of years have been pretty tough for the biz and still is. So in an attempt to make us more profitable the powers that be have decided to re-structure us and change the way we work to make it better, leaner and meaner. And I’m all for that! As long as people don’t lose their jobs I’m all for “better, leaner and meaner”. And today we travelled down southwest to Gothenberg for the kick-off of the new and better Pulsen Integration/System. And after that, when even the bosses couldn’t make the new systems work you kinda got a bad feeling about it. And after all changes with all the hype, buzz-words and the usual abstract talking when you look at how it actually effects the day to day operations… well, it might all work out. With the new ordering systems for us consultants it all kinda depends on everyone else doing their jobs before I can do mine. Nothing against “everyone”, but I kinda liked it the all way. And when I have to submit 5 unique reports on my activites for just one day as oppose to 1 in the old system you kinda understand all doctors out their crying that they spend way to little time actually being a doctor and too much time dealing with administrative duties. Is that the price we pay for “leaner”? Maybe, but we’ll see how it works over the next few months.
It’s finally over! Big Brother that is. I haven’t been watching it at all, not the swedish one anyway. I did see the italian version and even though I didn’t get shit it seemed much better than the “let’s get everyne drunk and laid”-approach they have in the swedish one. And I actually thought now that that’s over with we might read some real news in the papers. I was very wrong because their first pages was all covered with… Britney Spears! She was in Sweden for a whole day and they followed her footsteps – even interviwewed the waitress at the Sandy’s she stopped by and, get this – the actually got a copy of the credit card slip (with the credit card number blurred) signed by Britney herself. Wow, now that’s what I call news.
I love messing with other companies Helpdesk! I’ve got a couple of years of Helpdesk-service in my CV and I’m a pretty good techie if I may say so. So calling other Helpdesk can sometimes be fun because as a rule I know more about the problem than they do. So the only time I call them is when there’s a problem I can’t fix myself. Like this week when my internet connection started acting up and I had to call Bostream, my ISP, and talk to a Linda. Maybe I should’ve introduced me as the certified administrator that I am, but I thought that would either scare her or make her go “yeah, right, as if you know our stuff!”, but I didn’t. I started out pretending to be an average user but after a while she started giving me these really terrible advices (like disconnecting my firewall/router and allow my computer to go straight out onto the Net – unprotected!). Then I felt I had to kick it up a notch and tried telling her the problem was in their router located 3 km from me at this specific IP that was being bombarded with TCP packets. But she wouldn’t buy it and still told me to go home, try the things she told me and then call back. Being one that can’t say no to women I did exactly that and ofcourse it didn’t work. So I called back, talked to a Jacob and told him exactly what I told her – their router was being bombarded with TCP packets. He checked it up right away with a monitoring tool and “oh my god, look at that, i’ll send a techie to that router right away”. And they are still working on it though, but I thought the entire episode was pretty funny how she could sit there and insist on me trying things on my computer when I told her again and again that the problem was with their equipment. Although that’s not the worst helpdesk I’ve heard of, my friend called Telia Helpdesk and talked to this woman who claimed he was incompetent and didn’t know shit when he was saying he was running Windows 2003 because there was no such version as Windows 2003. In her troubleshooting papers that is.
My grandmother dying didn’t come as a shock to anyone I guess, she’s been ill for a long time and already last wednesday we were pretty sure she wasn’t gonna make it over the weekend. So my family started making arrangements to go over to Scotland for the funeral. But I couldn’t. For a lot of reasons like my economy couldn’t handle it and I’ve been travelling so much in the past 12 months I’m so tired of it and I also have a ton of stuff to do this week that I couldn’t reschedule (my wisdom tooth has got to go) and so on. But the main reason I didn’t want to go is that a hate funerals more than anything else in the world and this time, as oppose to the last funeral I went to, I was never close to my grandmother. I don’t even remember the last time I saw her. But that’s my fault and loss. So the only reason I had for going was to be there for my mother. But I’m trusting my two sisters will handle that, they are far more capable of that than I am. And as I’m writing this I realise how egotistical it sounds, but it’s how I feel right now.
I hate to be one of those mainstream people that’ll say “I’ve always liked them even before they became famous!” but I guess I gotta – Nightwish. Recently downloaded the musicvideo to “Nemo” – that’s some heavy shit right there man! They’re a finish band that’s kinda like “Evanescence” only twice as good singer (sorry Amy!) and much more to the heavy metal genre. As I said – heavy shit!
This weekend had all the ingredients to be absolutely awesome! Star Trek Voyager DVD box #1, two new Enterprise episodes, a Stockholm Trekkers day which usually means I get to see friends I haven’t seen in a while, the hockey championship finals, a Formula 1 race and beautiful weather. So what happened? I forgot how many times I’ve seen the first season of Voyager so I already knew all the episodes by heart, I haven’t had time to see the new Enterprise episodes, one of my best friends came down with the flu and couldn’t make it to the Stockholm Trekkers day, I got a speeding ticket, we “lost” the hockey final to Canada (again!), the F1 race was pretty boring since noone can come close to the Ferrari’s – and to put in the biggest blow – my grandmother passed away. Now I’m gonna go to bed, forget all about this weekend and try to deal with that last part.
But atleast the weather kicked ass!