Turn of the decade

It's not just another new year a couple of hours from now. It's the turn of the decade. The last decade has been interesting in many ways, both good and bad. I hope the next decade is as interesting, in good ways only.

Happy New Year

Merry Christmas

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas =).

Spontaneous is better

This blog been lying around her for a while, silent. I've sat a few times in front of this page a few times with no words finding their way to this post. I saw an interview on TV with a blogger earlier this week and he said something like if you sit down in front of the computer and intend to write something for the sake of writing, forget it. You need inspiration and you need to write it down before the inspiration dries out.

This post was actually written as I sat down in front of the computer in order to write something for the sake of writing and I got inspired to write about how spontaneous blog posts are better then the daily blog at 9 PM. Well they are...

Unless you have a really good post, those that need planning, everything from hours to weeks, that feels so important that the inspiration doesn't dry out until they are written...

Waiting for the storm

According to yesterdays weather forecast we would be hit by massive storm today. I work for a power company so they had prepared for a long evening and night. I'm working the night shift tonight and I was expecting a very busy shift. Power outages was expected, up to a feet of snow and really bad road conditions. At home I put everything that could blow away in the storm in the garage and I put on winter tires on both cars.

Then nothing, well there where some strong winds, lots of rain and the snow that fell melted away immediately as it fell to the ground. It's good that the storm wasn't really a storm, but I'm sort of disappointed. All this preparation and it's just another rainy night in the fall.

I haven't stopped blogging

I still have a blog and I haven't stopped blogging. I'm simply having a break or something, due to laziness, lack of inspiration or a full house. I don't have the time or the inpiration to be a productive blogger right now. Maybe when the kids go to college ;-P. But seriously I'm trying to kick start my inspiration and this is a small step for a blogger ...

Barefoot or why I'm not allowed in the kitchen

Right now I'm at work without shoes or socks. I'm barefooted and there's a good reason why I am. I think it was on Monday (but it could have been Sunday too) that we had some sticky leftovers in a pan and I decided to boil some water in it to get the rid of the sticky leftovers before I put it in the dishwasher. The sticky leftovers were soon seen floating in the boiling water. I turned off the kitchen stove and waited until the water had stopped boiling.

I then proceeded to pour out the hot water in the kitchen sink ( I always turn on the cold water tap when I do that, just in case). Unfortunately the pan was sort of full of hot water and I dropped some of my left big toe and it was hot enough to give me a singe. Let's just say that it's easier to use shoes and socks as little as possible right now. But I should be able to walk normally with shoes and socks next week.

It's been a month

It's been a a month since I last updated this blog. A busy month in both good and bad ways. The twins are really keeping us busy. Fortunately  I only have to get up at 6 AM four mornings every third week because those nights before I get about four hours of sleep. And I really don' t get the sleep that I need after my night shifts but then again that's only four nights every third week too. That's the good way because in my mind children are the meaning of life. Whatever happens down the road they have profoundly changed your life in a positive manner forever.

But strange things happen in our world, call it karma or the will of (the) God(s) but sometimes when life is given to a family another life is taken. Four weeks and one day after the twins where born my mother passed away. We had the funeral last weekend and two weeks from now the twins are going to be baptized. I'm sorry for the fact that we really haven't had the time to mourn my mother. Her passing and funeral passed by in three weeks and now it's gone. We are now busy planning and arranging for our twins baptism. The birth-death phenomenon are quite common so people who have experienced that says that you will mourn when you have time to mourn, whether it's a year or three years from now.

In this gloomy mood it's only fitting to be in the beginning of the fall. The days are rainy and right now it's about 10 °C and it's in the middle of the day. But I like seasonal changes. The fall can be incredibly beathiful with all the red and yellow leaves and the brisk cold air always makes me feel so awake and alive.

Twins

I'm sorry for the lack of updates lately but I have a good excuse. Our twins(boy and girl) were born on July 5. Having twins are not easy and there were a few medical complications along the way. But everybody's home and doing fine right now.

This is my first day at work after my paternity leave so I finally ha time to write a blog post ;-)

My batteries are recharged

I noticed one thing when I wrote my blog post yesterday. It was error free. I even dragged it trough MS Word's spell and grammar checker and it was flawless. I always have the spell checker on in Firefox, to correct my errors, which are plenty. I have at one point even suspected that I'm dyslectic. I can now confirm that's not the case.

But usually I have so much going on in my life (family/work/virtual reality) that I can't really concentrate on how I'm writing when I blog. I do know however what I'm writing about. So having a vacation once a year is a good thing =).

Vacation is over

My four week vacation is over and I'm back at work. I'm doing my first morning shift out of four on Midsummer Day. In this part of the world Midsummer is as big as if not bigger than Christmas. So today, everything is shut down, except us who keep society running when everyone else is out partying in their summer cottages.

The weather is cold and I 'm pretty sure it will rain later today so partying outdoors today wouldn't be much fun. And my fiancée is expecting twins at any moment. Expected date of delivery is the 31st of July but the twin's estimated weights at this point are around 7-8 pounds EACH. If we where expecting just one child he/she would still be considered to be a BIG baby at that weight. We are awaiting c-section within the next two weeks but the doctors haven't set a date yet. Then of course the delivery could start at any moment so I feel slightly nervous sitting here at work, actually more nervous than when Mirelle was born.

During those four weeks of vacation I have also taken a partial vacation from the Internet. No blog writing, no Facebook updates (except mentioning that I'm on vacation). I've played some World of Warcraft, read the news and a few blogs, made a comment or two and logged on to Facebook every now and then to see what's going on. But that's it, no active social networking. It feels good to be offline for a while, to live in reality. But it's good to be back =).

This weekend Vasa is hosting a US Naval visit. The United States Navy guided missile frigate USS Simpson is open to the public between 13.00 and 17.00. I go off work at 15.00 so if it's not raining it should be an interesting ship to see.

Separation anxiety

Six nights ago we began what had worried us for some time. We moved Mirelle to her own room at night. We worried about what happens if she wakes up in the middle of the night and we're not there? Will she cry? Will she feel lonely? What if she suddenly figures out how to climb out of her bed and falls to the floor?

She has never slept better, ever. During those six night she has awoken us once, it was the second night and after a half hour in our big bed she was sleeping again and I carried her back to her own room. She sleeps to around 9:00 every morning. She woke up anywhere between 6.00-10.00 when she was sleeping in our room and usually at least once every night.

So we the parents had some sort of separation anxiety that was uncalled for and Mirelle sleeps much better in her own room.

MSN?

What was once called MSN is now called Windows Live Messenger, although most people still refer it by MSN. It's probably the most popular IM or instant messenger out there. ICQ was once the most popular IM out there, but then it sort of faded away. I'm beginning to suspect that that was a forecall of things to come, the end of IM.

People still like to chat but everyone's got Facebook and Facebook got a chat function. It's not even close to how advanced MSN was about 10 years ago, even further back when it was called Windows Messenger. But that is everything else in Facebook is for.

I log on to MSN every now and then, usually when I'm at work and there are about two people I talk to regularly although I got about 70 people on my contact list and there was a point in time about 5 years ago when I thought the 150 people limit on your contact list was set too low. When I log in there are quite often a couple of bots that has either sent me a message or try do add me to their contact list.

IM isn't dying but it's definitely fading away, and has largely been replaced by Facebook and/or Google...

We don't call ice cream ice cream anymore

The word for ice cream in Swedish is "glass". Unfortunately our daughter knows what glass is and she knows where the freezer is. So we have began talking about "jäätelö" instead. That's ice cream in Finnish. But I think she might be on to us so we might eventually have to begin talking about "ice cream". Being somewhat trilingual have it's benefits but at some point we might have to resort to code words...

Learning the art of photography

A few weeks ago I bought a new camera. Our old digital camera was of the tourist type of camera and our daughter managed to get hold of it and the battery hatch is now kept shut with duct tape. Nina's birthday is also coming up next week so it was definitely time for a new camera.

The camera I bought is a Nikon D3000. I have read trough the manual and I have taken some pictures. But I have realized that I need to sit down with the manual and the camera. Read trough a section of the manual and then try it out with the camera and then read another section and try it out. I have taken some really great pictures, far, far better then our old camera. But then there are a lot of crappy pictures. I realize that an SLR camera is a bit more complex and that I need to learn to master it if I intend to take those really great pictures.

So I'm slowly learning the art of photography picture by picture. It's spring here and soon nature will become green again and I'll have many opportunities to practice.

MySpace isn't Facebook isn't Blogspot

I think three of my top favorite out there are MySpace, Facebook and Blogspot. In a sort of way they are all social networking websites. Blogspot used to be a a dedicated blogging service but with Google Friend Connect and Followers it's slipping into the world of social networking.

MySpace and Facebook has been the most similar but they have never been the same. Similar interfaces and content but while Facebook had wrapped their users experience around the people you know MySpace's thing is cultural exchange.

Facebook's popularity has grown past MySpace's. But I think Facebook will never replace MySpace. They each have their own niche. MySpace blogging was also quite popular, for a while. Then most MySpace bloggers moved their blogs to Blogspot for various reasons.

I'm still at MySpace although I prefer communicating with my friends on Facebook and blogging at Blogspot. MySpace was everything for a few years until your grandma created a profile on Facebook and opened a blog at Blogspot. MySpace was and still is one of the biggest players out there but it is a tool for more artistically inclined people, people who like having a cool nick instead of their real name and well, trolls...

First look

I'm somewhat of a video game fan and I've probably seen 95 % of Star Trek television series and movies ever produced. I wouldn't call myself a Trekkie. There have been a number of video games made under the Star Trek franchise and unfortunately none of them have been any good according to player reviews. None the less I decided to try their latest game Star Trek Online. There's was a t-shirt in the box so if it is a total failure at least I got a somewhat expensivet-shirt for 49,95 €.

When it comes to MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing games)  or MMO (massively multiplayer online games) games the benchmark is World of Warcraft. WoW was launched 5 years ago and they have never lost it's momentum, their player base are 11 million players. Contenders like Warhammer Online and Age of Conan got great reviews and got a large fan base, around a million players for each game, in the beginning. Today they're almost dead. Numbers are uncertain but is definitely below 100 000.

Star Trek Online didn't get great reviews. But they've are constantly patching and updating it so it might be a great game yet. Unfortunately Cryptic(the game developer) have to work fast while they still have momentum, while still being in the launch phase. If they loose momentum while having a game that the players don't like the will face the same fate that Age of Conan and Warhammer Online is slowly dying of. Trekkies my be compassionate about their Star Trek but even they won't play a bad game.

Those of you that played WoW 5 years ago might remeber what it was like then and what it's like now. It too sucked in the beginning, but on the other it had no real competition and people realized it's enormous potential, and in the end it proved to become much larger than it's potential...

We gave up the aquarium

We have read books about aquariums,we feed our fishes, we clean the pump every now and then, we have a working thermostat/heater , we refill the water, we buy new fishes, we have had plants there and at some point we even took a water sample to the pet store for analyzing, it was fine.

The fishes die and the plants rotten. It's as simple as that. So we gave away the last 5 living fishes to my fiancée's brother's family. They have an aquarium and it looks great with plenty of living fish and green plants.

So the aquarium with accessories is going into the storage room (part of the garage) once I get it properly cleaned and dried up.5-10 years from now someone will probably think it would be a great idea to set up an aquarium and we will have all forgotten about the fact aquariums in our family is not a place for the living but for the undead ;-P

Summer time isn't here yet

We will switch to summer time on Sunday. I think it's more problematic then useful but a worked in system is difficult o change.

I'm working the mornings shift  this week, actually four days of it. I have noticed that the sun has risen when I start driving to work 6:40 (AM). Next week it will rise around 5:30 (AM). I'm still sleeping then.

I write about those things since the snow layer has gotten so thick that one of our dogs walked over (notice that I didn't use the word jump) over our 120 cm (4 feet) high dog fence the other day. But the snow has begun melting in the spring sun, that's why the surface of the snow are hard enough for dogs to walk on. Not hard enough for me to walk on with a snow shovel...

It's official

Some of my regular readers are probably aware of this fact due to various reasons. But we have decided to make it official now. The fact is that my fiancée is pregnant and the expected date of birth is 30 July. And not only that, we are having twins =). Well it's really not official until I announce it on Facebook and I haven't yet ;-P. Nina did has but she did it in a cryptic way and then someone asked if she was pregnant and she had to answer yes.

You don't want to be overconfident in cases of pregnancy, especially in the case of a high risk pregnancy such a twin pregnancy. I can do that when we are a family of five.I've heard of people who have denied everything to everyone until they sent out the invitations to the baby shower, but that is just mean ;-P.

Beauty is a bitch

Don't be fooled by the title, this post is weather related. We haven't had minus °C since the 29th of December and before that a few days in early December. And plus °C in those cases mean a few hours of around 1 °C. No snow melting temperatures. The last of those were the 1st of December with around 5 °C. Then the temperature turned minus °C and has stayed that way. Century old records have been broken.

In a normal winter it gets cold, it snows a bit, it gets warmer, the snow melts away, sometimes it rains away, before it gets colder again. So even if it snows alot with a winter like that the snow isn't a problem because a large part of it melts away every now and then. This winter we have close to three months of snow and none of it has melted away.

And it's not just that it's minus °C it also very cold, around -10 °C to -20 °C with a few freak days with -5 °C or -25 °C. You have to be careful before going out, you have to dress yourself in warm but bulky winter clothes. Cold temperatures are unforgiving. Two winters ago I worked outside with a tuque on but it did not cover my ears. Last winter I couldn't go outside in minus °C without covering my ears, they ached. This winter I can go outside in minus °C without covering my ears, but I'm careful The frostbite has healed, it only took two years.

But this winter is also the most beautiful I have ever seen. A cold night covers everything in white and I'm not talking about snow. There's moist in the air, even in the cold winter, sometimes fog, covers everything in hard rime that can be up to a centimeter thick. Ant it's not ice, it's snow crystals, much like snow flakes. Imagine such a landscape after a foggy -20 °C cold night lit up by the morning sun.

Our winter is a beautiful but she is cold and unforgiving to the unwary.

I'm on Google maps

I finally made it on Google maps' street view. They have put together the material they've filmed here and made Finland "street viewable". Anyway go to Google maps street view, trough this link. That's me, too bad they've blurred the faces, my surprised expression would have been priceless.

To the right behind the mailboxes and a couple of birches there's a small green field(lawn). Behind that field you see a red painted wooden fence and within that fence there's a red house, a garage and lots of trees. That's where we live. Have a nice look around my neighborhood =).

Satellite TV

I wrote a while ago about we're going to switch from cable TV to satellite TV. We'll I finally got the dish up. I built it myself. I got a leftover dish from my father-in-law and I ordered the rest from Germany. Except for a few screws, the DVB-S module to the set-top box and a bit of cable I bought in town. The stuff from Germany I got for 42 € (the stuff itself was 29 €) and that includes package and delivery to the door. I ordered it on the Internet on last weeks Thursday and it got delivered to my door on Tuesday. I'm deeply impressed by the German Post. If I had ordered the stuff from some company in Finland it would have taken at least a week to arrive, 100 € added to the price and you have to collect it yourself at the Post office. You could buy the stuff in town, but we're still looking at a price tag around 120 €.

It was a bit snowy and windy but the temperature was only around -2 °C. That meant that I could actually take my gloves of for the more delicate work and that the sealant I put around the cables where they went trough the wall will actually harden. I didn't have any applicable frost resistant sealant at home.

So all that remains now is to connect he ground cable to the ground and the four cables from the LNB:s to the DiSEqC-switch and replace the cable receiver with the satellite reciever in the set-top box and we could actually se something on our TV tonight. Well if I have positioned the dish correctly which I tried to, otherwise it's tomorrow's work. I'm doing the evening shift right now.

On a funnier note, after I had left for work my girlfriend decided to go to the grocery store. Well she was looking at the dish while driving away and managed the drive her car into one of the snow walls on the side of our drive way. She had to ask the help of two neighbors to get her car free =).

Winter

We're having a severe case of winter again. The last few days the temperature has been around -20 ºC to -25 ºC. Since the snowfall hasn't been heavy there's no need for yard work. I try to avoid heavy clothing because it's difficult to move around in them. Get out, get into car, if possible have the engine heater and compartment heater plugged in, like at home and work, drive, get out, get inside.

One of the guys at work who lives 50 kms away in a less populated area use heavy winter clothing while driving to and from work. He figured that if his car breaks down it may take a while before someone comes to pick him up. I manly drive in the city area and a lift home is not far away.

But for longer drives in this weather I stuff some heavy winter clothing in my car, just in case...

Busy

It's been a while since I've written anything here. I've been sort of busy lately. We are renovating our kitchen and I'm trying to figure how to loose a dog in 30 days or keep it. The reason or more correctly the two reasons why we have too many dogs are the fulfillment of lifetime dreams. But as said by George Graham Vest: "He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog. You are his life, his love, his leader. He will be yours, faithful and true, to the last beat of his heart. You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion." And right now I feel unworthy.

Facebook profile

I'm thinking about linking my blogs to Facebook. Either on my Blogger profile as my homepage and/or as a profile link. You can choose what you put in your profile link but it's a small box that could contain your picture, e-mail and status update and when you click it you find yourself on my Facebook page. There's also a link on how tocreate a profile link of your own. But I'm not sure it's a good idea. I mean it's not difficult to find my Facebbok profile. It's a matter of not making it too easy. What do you think?

-15 °C

This is what you have to wear if you intend to work outside all day long in -15 °C. Due to various reason (mainly work) I haven't had the time to shovel all the snow off the yard that has fallen this week until today. This should work down to -20°C , -25 °C. After that I have a heavier jacket. When the temperature approaches -30 °C you are going to have to start taking breaks (inside). The colder it gets the longer and more often you have to take those breaks If you intend to work outside below -30 °C it has to be very necessary work, like a tree that has fallen over your driveway. If it's below -35 °C you are crazy. There are clothes that you can stay outside with in any temperature but they're difficult to work in, think spacesuit.

But I can tell you that you feel very alive after a day outside in this cold.