stoff
If you’re swedish, read this. If you’re not, let me summarize. An expert and translator of Manga (animated stuff from Japan) here in Sweden was caught with some animated magazines and images portraying animated 12-13 year old characters in sexual context. So they raided his home and computer and found alot of it. So he was charged with one of the worst accusations – posession of child pornography. The reason was – this was children in sexual context and it didn’t matter that it was animated and thereby without victim, it was the fact that this guy had these in his possession and, supposedly, enjoyed to look at it. And they didn’t care that this was his job. He was found guilty by the first two courts but today the supreme court acquitted him on the grounds that it was animated and could not be confused with the real thing.
And I gotta give credit to the guy for defending this and taking it all the way. And he didn’t hide away or try to cover himself, he publicly admitted to having these things but didn’t agree it was a crime to have them, if anything they should go after the “twisted mind” (his words) that created them.
Two problems with this story:
1) So the state decided to put a man on trial for what he likes to look at? … I mean I would seriously want to give any person who watch child pornography for enjoyment a good beating and yes it’s illegal, but really, if it gives the state that much power to put a person on trial for what he likes to look at, where could that end?
2) This has set a legal precedent for whoever makes these godforsaken images and films to just add a filter in post production to make it look animated and it’d be completely legal to sell in Sweden! Somewhere someone has to decide what constitutes “animated” and where that line is drawn.
I really hope the lawmakers sit down to go through this decision and comes up with some way to handle this. And all I can say is … Lawmakers, tread carefully!
Here’s the story of when we (or rather I) bought a new projector.
After looking around the web for “what’s the best projector I can get for under 10.000 SEK” (which was the approved budget) I found the answer – Epson TW3200. It had gotten great reviews from reviewers and consumers and it was going down in price. So on Saturday before we went to a 2 year old’s birthday party and then my own birthday party we stopped by one of my favorite stores in the whole world – Netonnet. They have good electronic products for good prices, good internet store and a “no bullshit, no fanciness, no flashy stores, just the products”-attitude I love. And they had just lowered the price of it to from 8.300 to 8.000 SEK so I was happy camper. When we got home on Sunday (yeah, I managed to wait a whole day!) I mounted it in my universal ceiling mount and turned it on. I guess I should have turned it on first because I was met with a “Auto iris error, please contact Epson support”… tried the old “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” and it started up without the error. Did some quick calibation and tested a bit of Star Wars Episode III (the opening space battle is pretty sweet) and it looked decent. Turned it off again, did what a husband, father and homeowner does on a Sunday (which included mowing the lawn).
On the evening my sister came by for the F1 race from Canada. Turned on the projector .. same error. Turned it off and on and it worked. But I don’t want to have to turn it off and on again until the error message goes away, especially not on a newly bought product for 8.000! So I called Epson who simply said “return it for a new one”. Called Netonnet customer service who agreed, no questions asked. So after I got home from work on Monday evening I took a 20 minute drive to Netonnet to have it replace, making sure they had one in stock. I turned it in and no questions asked, money back or buy a new one. So I went to pick up a new one … and no, as I’d feared they didn’t have any. According to their inventory they were suppose to have one, but reality said otherwise. But their other store in Slagsta on the wrong side of town had one, or I could get my money back. More than that, I noticed on their computer screens it cost 8.500 now! Yeah, for some reason it had gone from 8.300 on friday, to 8.000 on saturday to 8.500 on monday? But I argued against that since “there’s no reasons I should pay 500 more today for something I bought on Saturday just because I had to return it” and they agreed. Also I could have bought it anywhere else cause 8.500 was the price it was going for everywhere else!
But I was really set on this projector so I took another 30 minute drive to Slagsta and eventually found the one TW3200 projector they had in stock (which wasn’t where it was supposed to be). Went to the cashier who played the “I’m just a blonde girl at the checkout counter I can’t authorize this reduced prize, I have to call my manager”. Fortunately for me he had the very good service mind I had hoped for and I ended up paying 7800 for it after a 200 reduction for mileage and fueld for the car since I had to drive all the way there! And another 45 minute car trip home, tested it quickly to see I didn’t get the same message and mounted it.
That’s then the other setback hit. I had measured and mounted everything in my home theater, most importantly the ceiling mount, after my old projector. And the lens on this projector was about 4 inches off. Had it been more towards the center it’d been easy fix but this was more away from the center. And this very specific projector doesn’t have a digital compensator for keystone effects like my old one had, which means when it’s that high and that much to one side the image if projected in a straight line is skewed. The way this projector compensates for it is optically, which when it comes to the final image the result is better than digital compensation. And because it’s not only to the side it’s also mounted in the ceiling which means I needed to compensate both vertically and horizontally for it. What this meant is I had to mount my projector so that if the image would be projected in a straight line it would end up in the upper left corner of the room. But when adjusting the lens the image ends up where it should be and with straight lines (or more accurately, “right angles” i.e the corners are 90 degrees). But it took aloooot of fine tuning and with my ceiling mount it was way too much precision for it to be fun or challenging, it was just annoying. Why didn’t they have a digital compensator AND optical compensator for it like my old Panasonic projector had? It was so much easier to sit in the couch and adjust the screen with the push of a button than trying to find that sweet spot where everything lined up! .. but for now the deed is done and it’s sweet as hell!
That usually goes without saying but I’m loving her a bit more right now (and some would argue “love” is a binary thing, you do or you do not, there is no degrees of how much you can love someone).
After a week of peaking and lobbying she said it’s ok to buy a new projector 🙂
Happy Birthday to myself. 37 years old now. But don’t feel older than last year. Although I have changed jobs twice in the past year and learnt alot from it!
And thanks to the best wife in the world my birthday turned out pretty good! The first, “small” present was a Diablo III t-shirt. The next present was a mini-fridge with room for one Coca Cola can, driven by the USB port. Geeky as hell, right 🙂
Then we went to the shopping mall at Kista to eat, shop and watch a movie. None of those things worked out as we’d hoped. The first problem was getting a parking space in their garage which was a very frustrating 15 minutes. Then when we got to O’Learys and eventually got a table we sat there for 20 minutes without any service at all so we left for the foodc ourt instead and that worked out alot better. And I was going to shop for new jeans. And guess what? I’m up to 38″ waists again… I’ve been at 42″ once but I was down to 34″ 🙁 Better watch that! And they were rebuilding the movie lobby but duing the rebuilding it’s completely crap because it’s just too small for the amount of people going in and out. I think the fire department would shut it down cause incase of a fire, that would be a deathtrap!
But fortunately the movie, “Prometheus” (remember?) was pretty damn good!! And then we picked up Sam at his grandmother and went home. All in all a kick ass birthday!
Had a bit of a “life is great moment” yesterday because life right now is pretty damn good. I have a good job, stabile economy, I have the best wife ever, a wonderful son, a Ferrari driver is leadning the championship, the sun is shining, my allergies have calmed down and Diablo III has turned out to be as replayable as I wished it would be! As a matter of fact, the only one negative thing I have to report now is that our faithful projector finally gave up! I bought it back in February 2006 when I was enjoying two salaries per month for 3 months and it replaced my TV in my apartment. Countless nights was spent playing World of Warcraft on my computer with mostly Discovery on my 100″ screen. When I moved into Helena it went into storage because there was no room but when we built the house it was one of the first things that went up and at first we enjoyed movies and TV shows there but since Sam was born it has mostly been used for watching Formula 1. So much so that when my son walks into my mancave he’s disappointed when there are no cars. The lamp in the projector had an estimated lifespan of 2000 hours in “full power mode”, 3000 in “eco-mode”. Of course I had it at “full power” but it still went way beyond 3000 hours which I think says plenty of the quality of Panasonic!
But now we’re faced with the decision of either trying to find a new lamp for it (about $400) or buying a new one for $1200. Had you asked me a year ago I would have said “neither” since we hardly watch anything there but we’ve just begun to enjoy movies in there again so …
Me and Sam at the Bergian Garden
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PjGtPiM_iO0 … just watch …
A week ago Blizzard finally released “Diablo 3”!! If you wind back the clock to 2001 I actually took 2 weeks off from work to play “Diablo II – Lord of Destruction” so you can imagine how much I’ve been looking forward to this game! The biggest difference though isn’t in the game itself, rather that I’m a husband, father and homeowner now. That doesn’t give me much time for playing computer games! Fortunately for me I have the best wife in the world and she’s given me a lot of time to play in the past week because she knows how much I’ve been looking forward to the game and love gaming, so although she doesn’t like it when I go into my crypt, boot up the computer and put on my headphones she still respects it.
But the game is just so addictive and the “just a little more” and “I just wanna try this as a different class” feelings are all over the place so no matter how much time my wife gives me it’s never gonna be enough for me to do all the things I want to do in the game. But I’ll survive. After all, at the end of the day it’s her that I wanna fall asleep with and wake up next to.
Oh, and the game kicks ass! .. too bad Blizzard is screwing it up so hard with all these server issues, which you kinda saw coming when they said “no offline mode”.
Maybe I should make it an item in my calendar once or twice per week to stop and appreciate all the good things I have and stop worrying and bitching about the other stuff.
Like this story about baby-Grayson. I totally don’t care about the Facebook part of the story, more about the story that these two parents knew their baby was going to have birthdefects and not live a day yet they went through with the pregnancy and made it the best 8 hours they could. And here I am bitching when Sam has a bad day or two.
Actually for the past week he has been very easy to deal with and he’s the bestest boy ever!! 🙂 But he’s a bit monotomous – he loved the first half hour or so of Rio so he wants to see that over and over again and he has a thing for “Puss in Boots” too. Guess how tired we are of those two movies by now, but out of all the problems to have that’s one of the better ones.
Woke up at 5 am today. Everything was silent and calm but I couldn’t sleep. So I went up and played some Diablo III until either the wife or son woke up. At 8 am I heard my wife was awake so I crawled back into bed. After a while we realised it was 8:30 and Sam have never slept so late so I decided to check up on him. And found him sleeping in his own vomit. Sometime during the night, because this was dried up vomit, he had thrown up and alot of it. And that kinda sets the tone for the day when we’re feeling guilty for sleeping late and playing computer games instead of just quickly open the door to check up on him 🙁
If you think this place is a bit unstable right now it’s because last week we transferred servers to try a new place out. And that worked pretty well although their services and support was a bit lacking so we managed to press the price of the old place and get a virtual server running there so hopefully this’ll be stable enough. Talk more when I have a chance…
I’ve worked for 4 days here now and time for to write down some first impressions.
So far it’s the professional IT team that I wanted our IT department at Vinge to be and the crew at Carema almost was. Here they share alot of my views that my work is to give service back to the organisation. It’s not to sit on a throne and use my power and deflect every issue that’s not specifically on my table, it’s to listen to what the organization wants and needs and do my best to service them. And it has the clear lines of first, second and third line that was severely hampering is at Vinge and where a bit grey at Carema. And it’s the only placed I’ve been employed at where I wasn’t given Domain Admin access to the network, here I get the access I need to do my job. Which may sometimes get in the way of doing things but it’s a good sign that they really do believe in high security and live up to it!
Those were the pros. As for the cons, the only one I have is that I’m sitting in the middle of a very open office with alot of people. That’s not a bad thing, at Vinge we were three in one room and later we got that down to two and that was pretty sweet. At Carema it was an open office aswell but we atleast had some screens that separated things. And I had a screen wall behind me so I didn’t have alot of people that could see my monitor, here there are atleast 6 people who at any given time can check what I’m doing on my monitor. That has the effect that I can’t do much private stuff here which again goes back to being the professional place I want. Ask me again in 6 months if that’s a good thing or not cause I don’t know yet.
When I started my career back in 1996 at Min Dator I was the new guy for a while but grew out of it so quickly I don’t even remember it. Then when they merged with Pulsen it was a merger and it was to completely new offices so I wasn’t the new guy much, since I knew half the crew already and noone else knew where to get the best lunches either. And when I worked as a consultant you never really had the problem of being the new guy since you worked there for a few days or weeks and you got a new assignment. And when I started working for Vinge I had already been there as a consultant on and off for a few years so I wasn’t the new guy there either. In fact I’d worked there longer than most of the other people I worked with.
But then I changed jobs and started working at Carema and I was totally the noob around there. I didn’t know anyting about their IT platform, I didn’t know servernames, logins, I didn’t know where the printers was, where the bathroom was or where to get lunches. But my ace was the fact that I was working next to my cousin so he gave me alot and forgave all the gazillion questions about stuff. But after a few months there I got into it and knew the place pretty well.
Then I changed job again and started working at Thomas Cook. And already again I’m the new guy! And I hate it, feel like such a noob! I mean I’m all for learning new things, experience different things and stuff but I do wanna know what server to login to atleast to do my job! Although I’m confident I’ll learn this place just as well as Vinge in a few months, I just don’t wanna take that ride again this soon.
As I posted the other day Sam have been ill for a few days but on Saturday he was getting better and didn’t have any fever or throw up or nothing. But we saw already on Friday that he was getting more and more cranky and needy. Maybe it was for all the extra attention he got when he was ill and the fact that he got anything he pointed at for those 3 days, but he’s has been annoying as hell all weekend. Or maybe it’s a phase, we don’t know, but no matter how or who we ask the answer is always “that’s normal”. So I took him to kindergarten today to see if they can straighten him out and 2 hours in and they still haven’t called. But it’s hard to be home with home just because he’s cranky and bitching about wanted to be carried around all the time just because he can’t be arsed to walk himself.
And it’s particularly hard for Helena. I don’t know if it’s the maternal instinct or if it’s the fact that 9 times out of 10 it’s her that he goes to but she gets really stressed out with all this. Or maybe I’m just better at ignoring it but if this is the way he’s gonna be from now on I don’t know how we’re gonna get through it. But as always people adapt so hopefully he or we will.
I’ve been working at Thomas Cook now for three days and I can’t really say I’ve been all that focused. Because kindergarten called my wife during lunch on wednesday that our son Sam had a 40 degree fever and we should come and pick him up. Which she did.
And he’s spent 2 nights throwing up (we ran out of clean sheets at about 3 am this morning) and a fever that we give him some pills up his ass for and he’s almost normal again for a while. But basically he’s back in the soffa watching TV with that “I’m too tired for this shit”-look. And it’s really painful for us to go through this again, it wasn’t that long ago.
But when you go online and you read about shit like this and you’re reminded that we’re pretty lucky it’s only a fever and some vomiting, it could be a helluvalot worse.
Today my sister and mother are gonna pick up Sam at kindergarten and gonna take care of him for a few days. It’s not the first time they’re doing that so hopefully there won’t be any issues this time either.
So tonight me and Helena are gonna have a mini bbq, uncork a bottle of wine, open a beer and just be us and taking care of our relationship which has suffered a bit in the past weeks. Mostly because of me and my focus on getting a new job, but also Sams changing behavior (lately he’s been demanding we sit next to him while he’s trying to go to sleep and goes bananas if we leave him there) even the weather has been against us in the past weeks. So we’re just gonna have a few days to focus one each other. We’re picking him up again on Sunday so we have a few days just us 🙂 Not even Formula 1 weekend or Star Trek or anything!
I know I’ve said this a few times but one more time won’t hurt I guess. I have a really good feeling about this job that I’m starting on Wednesday at Thomas Cook!!
When I first read the ad for the job it really felt like an ad written for me. Every checkbox was ticked with ease. Everything they wanted I can offer. And the fact that I applied for it twice (once with a recruitment firm that never forwarded it to them and then again directly to them when I hadn’t heard anything from the recruitment firm) kinda underlines how badly I wanted that job. At the time I didn’t know how it was gonna go here at Carema so this was a job I applied for because I needed another job, this was because I wanted the job. When it was decided that I wasn’t gonna stay at Carema I applied for tons of jobs but forunately this was settled before any of those got beyond the first interview.
And when I finally got there for the first interview I was firstly really impressed with their lounge area they had which looked like someone tried to do a Japanese garden, a really nice play to sit down at for a coffee or something. And then I met my future boss and she was combined niceness and professionalism like I’d never seen. And she went through her slide about the IT department and on every slide I was thinking (and sometimes saying) “yep” “damn right” “I totally agree”. Even when she started talking about “practicing disaster scenarios” I was totally into it. And she could tell. Then I met my future teamleader and he was nice and friendly and seemed like a cool guy. So I left that place feeling I wanted it even more. So much more than I wanted to rush it as much as possible. Did the EQ test and met with a rep from HR to go through it and after she ok:d everything I was finally offered the job. And at the same time I was offered the most safe and secure job in the world, but I chose this anyway because it felt so good.
And so I went back to sign the papers and we went through all the practical things and signed the deal (which as I’ve said earlier doesn’t mean much, they can tell me I’ve outstayed my welcome as much as I can say “nah this sucked”). And I hope I can live with having an iPhone but I will really disagree with their iTunes license agreement so I hope I won’t have to accept that.
But I’m really looking forward to starting my job there. As always ask me again in a year from now if it was a good choice.
Oh shit it’s happening again!!
About one month before I started working for Carema there was alot of reporting about how Carema was making so much money on the expense of the little guy. I didn’t really care that much about it at the time but it kept growing in November and December and I can safely say I wasn’t bragging about working for Carema then.
Well now it’s exactly one week until I’ll start working at Thomas Cook here in Sweden. Which owns the Swedish travel agency called “Ving”. And ofcourse the media is starting to write bad things about them now as well! Already last week I saw a small little article but today they have another article and how people travelling on their dream vacation only to be disappointed and ripped off.
What are the odds that AGAIN exactly when I’m supposed to start a job that company is having bad things written about them in the media!? I don’t know the truth about all the stories but I just don’t wanna be embarrassed that I work for Ving the same way as with Carema! But judging from what their PR rep is saying in the media, unlike Carema that mostly didn’t say anything about nothing, it’s not gonna be bad. Because I am really excited about starting my work there. And I’m not just saying that, I actually am!!
Sam has managed to get over it, it’s been two weeks without a pacifier now and he’s doing pretty good. However, the staff at the kindergarten noticed that he had trouble going to sleep after lunch so they ended up sitting next to him so he could feel calm enough to go to sleep. And unfortunately that has resulted in him demanding we sit next to him while he’s going to sleep at night. And that’s just not gonna work so we’re now trying to be harsh and just leave the room even though he’s having a fit. It’s tough and we’re not sure it’s the right thing to do but we really don’t want to sit there for 30 minutes holding his hand. I mean I could do it now and again but we can’t make it a habit for him so he can’t fall asleep if we’re not sitting right there with him.
But it’s just hard to say no to him cause we love him so much and he sounds so very needy 🙁
Last friday to celebrate me signing on to a new job I bought a NAS (Netgear ReadyNAS DUO V2). A NAS is just a black box with harddrives that share them over your network so you can access them fro wherever in your network. It’s really geeky to have one but I thought I needed one. I used to have everything on a server but decided that wasn’t working anymore now that I’ve upgraded to a Windows 2008 server complete with an active directory and stuff, all of a sudden we noticed some lag when playing stuff off it. So off I went and bought this toy.
Function-wise it lives up to expectations. It does what I want it to do and it does it well and smoothly. But Netgear really should have take a page from Apples book and asked the question “how would the end consumer want the interface to work”. Because their interface is a giant mess with gigantic problems. For example, if I attach a USB drive to it there’s no way to tell the NAS to copy a file from the USB to the NAS – you have to have a computer to copy it through. So Say you have a 10 gig file on your USB drive and want to copy it. Instead of copying it straight away on the NAS, you copy it through the PC meaning alot of network being used for nothing! You have to enable the SSH through their site saying “you’ll lose warranty if you install this” and copy it through Linux commands! What’s upp with that!? Ok bad example since the bottleneck is still the USB port, but if you want to copy a file from one drive to another, you still have to copy it through your PC and all of a sudden the network is the bottleneck. And it shouldn’t need to be!
And you can’t create a directory on a drive that isn’t defaulted to the root and automatically shared to “everyone” with full rights. And you can’t manage the “admin” user access in any way either…
So if you can learn to live with a crappy “it made sense to us” interface, than yeah, go buy it.