2009-12-30

God damn

God damn what a week. God damn. I hate everybody who gets the hm catalog and/or ellos catalog. Hate. God damn.

(This has been a translation of the previous post)

Fy faan

Fy faan vilken vecka. Fy faan. Jag hatar alla som får hm katalogen och/eller ellos katalogen. Hatar. Fy faan.

2009-12-27

Quiz #5

Ok, Christmas is over and Monty Python is 40+.... So the question is:

What was it that Brian wrote on the wall to protest the Roman presence. The first thing in poor Latin gives you 2 points and the corrected version that he writes a hundred times in meter high letters gives you another point.

You have until 2010 to come up with the answer.

2009-12-25

Success


Oh man did I succede with the eggs on the christmas dinner!!

It is hard

It is damn hard to not sound ironic when you say 'oh you poor little thing' to a child that cries his heart out over his first ever common cold. And it is also damn hard to suck out the snot from his nose when he yells his lungs out if he just spots the snot suction thingie.

2009-12-23

Quiz answer #4

As the once who answerd (except cmh) said, 'han shot first' is just what he did in the mos eisley bar in the original part IV of star wars. But this was changed in the remastered version so that Greedo shot first, probably to make Han look more like a good guy. Pure nerd trivia!

by the way, no more questions until the mellandagar...

2009-12-22

It happened

Today
It
Really
Happened!

Got a call from the office when I was out on my round today. I was to ring the bell when I got to one of my addressees: they had something for me. I was more than an hour away and hence had some time to think about what it might be. Maybe it would be a heap of letters that I had delivered falsely over the year. Or maybe it would be a punch in the face. I did not know and since I didn't have much else to think about I thought about it quite a lot. When I got there I actually was a bit nervous and then it turns out that they had a Christmas present for me. 'I just thought you needed a bit of encouragement' she said. My god, I was really touched by this. I have dreamt of this and then it actually happens! Now K is giving me jealous looks and think that I have something going on with all the lonely house wives that I meet all day...

2009-12-21

Ice road truckers - bah

Driving big rigs on an ice road, whats the thrill in that? Now, driving mopeds on un-plowed icy roads, in -16°C, for three hours, delivering mail - there is a show that I would watch! (Or rather, I would very much like to watch it from the comfort of my couch, under a blanket, instead of experiencing it in real life.)

Quiz answer #3

Dr Jan Itor. How hard was that? And the name of his made up a cappella band was 'the Hibbletons', which none of you got. The response rate was low on this one, and the correct answers were even lower. Don't you watch Scrubs people?

2009-12-20

Quiz #4

'Han shot first'

If you know what it means you'll get two points. Email the un-googled answer to me within two days. And remember, it is never to late to join in, there will be at least 10 questions so you do have a shot at the first prize even if you start now!

Quiz answer #2

Rosebud has of course been mentioned in many movies, but there is one that revolves around the word, a real classic that I recommend to one and all.

Citizen Kane, Orson Welles 1941 classic, where a reporter tries to find out what Kane's dying word 'Rosebud' referred to. And in the end scene (spoiler alert) we get to see how they burn Kane's childhood sled named Rosebud.

I am quite pleased with the participation, with the quality of the responses, but not with the prize. Maybe the winner will get a book instead.
By the way, do you want to have a break over the holiday or should we continue but with a longer response time? Your input matters!

2009-12-18

Quiz #3

Scrubs:
 
When the janitor pretends to be a doctor, what name does he use? (1p)

And what is the name of the a cappella band, actually the best 'hospital a cappella band in town', that he dreams up in one show to get out of an embarrassing situation? (2p)

New to the game? No problems, we are just getting started. If you know the answers to the questions above, without googling, email them to me within two days from now and you are in. A fantastic prize is in it for the winner and a huge amounts of fun is in it for all of us!

2009-12-17

Quiz #2

More movies....

Rosebud.
What movie (1p), and what is it (1p)? You have two days from now.

By the way, how does a CD of your own choice sound? As first price that is... 

2009-12-16

Why??

One of my pet peeves is poor design, and I just have to tell you about one heck of a poor design that I encountered two days ago.

It was snowing here in the wonderful town of Eskilstuna and even if the town is excellent in almost every way plowing the streets is an area where the town falls short. That is not the design I was talking about, it isn't a design at all. The poor design was on a zimmer frame (aka rollator här i sverige). The zimmer frame was equipped with mudguards (stänkskärmar). Now why in hell would a zimmer frame need mudguards? I have seldom seen old folks running along in such high speeds that muddy water splash up from the wheels of their zimmer frames. If they did, I hardly think they need the device in the first place. Anyhow, the poor design was not just the fact that the zimmer frame was equipped with devices that was totally unnecessary. The poor design was that in this climate, in this town where plowing the streets just does not happen, snow piles up between the wheel and mudguard and acts as a very effective break. It was freaking hilarious to watch the old man trying to get home with a fucked up zimmer frame, he looked so incredibly helpless. Then I saw his wife and thought 'why the hell are you trying to get home, run away damn it' but of course he couldn't. He was stuck right where he was. Poor fella.  

Quiz answer #1

Hard eeyy? It should be hard, it is hard and it will continue to be hard. Hope you will enjoy it.

Anyhow, it was from Pulp Fiction of course, it is Jules that pulls up a quote from Hezekiel 25/17 before he kills someone. And one of the unfortunates he tells it to is Brett, whos burger from Big Kahuna - that Hawaiian burger joint, Jules takes a bite from.

m guessed right on Hezekiel but missed the chapter and verse, and gets one point for that, and one for the burger place.
Dog got big Kahuna right.

2009-12-14

Quiz - #1

Ok, so there seems to be a demand for a quiz after-all, so here we go.  I do not know how many questions there will be, perhaps ten or so, It might depend on your participation.

Remember, no googling.

Question 1 (2p): Where did Jules find the 'cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass' i.e.: "... and i will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothtes..."

Bonus question (1p): Where did Brett get his burger from?

Send me an email with your answers and an alias that you want to have on the scoreboard. You have two days from now to answer. And remember, the winner gets a fantastic price!

2009-12-08

Re:Nops etc

Oh yes, as some of you missed the last exciting quiz that took place maybe two years ago (on the blog that predated this one), maybe I should tell you about it so that you know what to expect if it would take place again.. The idea was to bring more readers to the blog by having a fun quiz with equally fun prices. And the idea worked, even if the new readers were just imaginary people part of a big conspiracy.  The winner though was real and received a Pearls before Swine book as a reward.

Anyhow, I posted a question on the blog and the participants had a day or two to answer to get credit. Googling was not allowed and I relied on the honor system and the fact that the questions was inherently hard to google as a way of controlling that people in fact did not google the answers.

So, what do you think, are you up for the challenge??? (please leave a comment if you are so that I know that you are)

Nops

Four persons does not a quiz make.

2009-11-28

Quiz

Darn it if it isn't time for a new quiz! It was a lot of fun last time don't you think???
Are you with me? (if enough people say yes I will start to think of questions)

2009-11-24

Theory

One of my theories (I have many as you might be aware) is that 'the vet on bondi beach' gets to score more than any man alive. 

2009-11-10

Showers

Is there anyone else who has noticed that if you increase the temperature in the shower while you are in it there is a spike in the temperature that lasts only parts of a second before it evens out at the new setting. I think of this quite a bit and am rather convinced that it is a real phenomena and not an imaginary one, but I need a fast IR thermometer to confirm, which I do not have. The only explanation that I have is that when you turn the dial a turbulence is created that momentarily disturbs the flow and for a moment sends more hot water than it should down the hose. Why the spike always are hot I have no explanation for.

And while we are at it, have you noticed that while taking a shower at a communal shower (like at the gym/training hall) where you push a button and get a random period of shower time, that while you are in the shower that period is very short and you have to press the button over and over again to get the soap out of your eyes, but when you are finished and get out of the shower the water just keeps coming. How the hell does the shower know that I have soap in my eyes?

2009-11-06

I forgot the laws of physics

I used the mailman vest yesterday when delivering mail in the snow. It is like a BabyBjörn but instead of a kid you have bundles of mail on your chest. The bundles are held together by rubber bands which I take off and put on the stiff plastic back of the vest when I start on a new bundle. As I said, yesterday it was snowing, and when I came back to the office most of me was soaked and hence I put most of my clothes in the drying cabinet, put said cabinet on 70°C and then went and had lunch. This is where the laws of physics come in. Most materials expand when they get hot, but some does quite the opposite. Rubber is one example. When rubber gets hot, the carbon chains that it is made of start to vibrate more vigorously and when they do they contract. As you have guessed by now, the rubber bands that I had put on the vest got quite a bit smaller in the heat and totally warped the stiff plastic back... So, there you have it, proof that knowledge of physics can be useful even for a mailman, sort of.

2009-10-27

I was

I was going to rave about how much 'cirkus möller' sucked, but then I took a look at my tracker results and noticed that almost no one reads me right now so I can't be bothered. Why should I waste some great raving??? I have always looked at this as a way of being creative and never cared about the low reader count but today I cared. Today the person checking in does not get to know how much I thought the program sucked. He/she does not get to know that the quality was oh so much lower than Glocalnet. I just had to watch the first episode to make sure that it could not be as bad as the trailer hinted at, and it wasn't. It was fucking worse.

2009-10-24

Memories

We lived in a yellow house with two floors. The stairway to the bottom floor was in a 90 degree angle and had a small shelf at the same level as the top floor. One time we played hide and seek, me my sister and my dad. I can hardly remember any time that I played with my dad, sure we went skiing, fishing, riding bikes etc etc, but I do not have many memories where we played. Anyhow, this time we were playing hide and seek and my dad was hiding and we searched the entire house. Every room, under all the beds, in all the closets, we ran up and down the stairs several times but he was nowhere to be found. I can not remember clearly but I suppose that we finally had to yell 'olly olly oxen free' and the game was over. When he came out from his hiding place we asked him where he had been and we could hardly believe that all that time he had been standing on that small shelf over the stairs and that we hadn't found him. This is a memory that I really cherish.

2009-10-22

Vaccine

I do not know what you are going to do, but I am going to get vaccinated when my time comes. And my reason is simple. It is cause I just know that if I don't I'll get sick and just before I die I would say 'if I just had not been so stupid and ignored the vaccine shot´. I know that the chances that I would get sick are slim almost none, but I also know that there is a law that states that if something can go wrong it will. That law is also what keeps me from downloading stuff from e.g. piratebay. I just know that if I did that now I would get caught and then used by some company as an example and be fined an infinite amount of money. Even if the stuff that I would download would be a tv-series episode, one that has been aired on tv, an episode that I hence could have recorded on my vcr and watched whenever I wanted. I could even have skipped the commercials by pressing the fast forward button. I can not get into my brain why the hell that would be illegal. I. Do. Not. Get. It. I do know that because of us downloaders (yes I used to be one) the tv-companies in Sweden started to air tv-shows with only a couple of weeks delay instead of several years as it was before. Man, I really wish I could get my thumb out of my ass and get a anonymizer service and a faster internet connection so that I could start to watch whatever I wanted instead of the crap re-runs that are on the tube... Fucking hate politics. 'no no, we will never go after the little man, that I promise you'. yea. sure.

But still. I do not download. And I will get the vaccine shot as soon as I can.

2009-10-15

Don't you hate it when it happens?

You have been craving potato crisps for several days, but you have resisted. It has been rough but you has hung in there. And then one evening you walk over to the store and buy not one but two different kinds of crisps (sour-cream and sweet chili and the new taste Bearnaise and sour cream). You go home with a warm feeling in your belly and a secret smile on your lips. Then you spoil everything by eating to much food so that you could not force down even a handful of the lovely treat. I really hate it when it happens.

2009-10-14

Memories

When I was in first or second grade I smashed my thumb in a car door. I had gotten a ride with my neighbour Lena to school in their Volvo (I think) and when I closed the door the first time it didn't work so I had to close it again. We walked away to where the other kids were and after a few minutes I realized that my thumb was hurting really badly. When someone asked me (suppose it was one of the teachers) what had happened I did not know. It was not until some time later that I realized that the pain in my thumb was connected with the uncooperative car door. Lena asked me that evening why I had not said anything when it happened and I could not tell.

I grew up in Lesjöfors in Värmland. In a yellow house. With a mother, a father, a sister (three years older) and one or two dogs (it is not that I do not know how many dogs we had, my memory is not that bad, it is just that the number varied with time). I will in a series of blog entries try to remember things from that time, to give you the reader, and more importantly, me the writer, glimpses of my past. A past that is hidden in a fog inside my brain.

2009-10-13

Flightplan

Watched Flightplan on the tube yesterday, (here K and I fell into a conversation about whether or not 'the tube' is a synonym for TV or not (it is)), and I could never understand why the plane was so fucking ugly on the outside. The inside was extremely designed while the outside was not even painted. By the way, I think the movie would have been better if there would have been a couple of snakes on the plane...

2009-10-07

Im a bit worried

I discovered rather by accident last week that the funniest thing Tage knows is when I slap myself. He laughs hysterically and it never stops being funny. I do not know If I should be worried of this fact or if it is just something that he will get over...

2009-09-30

98.3 FM

This is Mattias Eklund on blogspot, and good night world... wherever you are.

2009-09-26

What am I supposed to do?

Some people in this household think I really should have thrown out the now well dried remains of my sons umbilical cord long ago, but I can't do that can I? Today I took some photos of it and then almost threw it out, but it ended up in a specimen jar instead. I think it looks kind of cool, in a weird kind of way...

2009-09-24

Can't sleep

My brain went into overdrive and I can not fall asleep. So, let me try some ideas on you to see what you think.

- On one of my mail routes there is a garden where they have put white and black pebbles in a 1 meter circle around one of their trees. Wouldn't it be extremely funny to sneak in one night and either remove all the black pebbles, or alternately put them in some nice pattern???

- Fruit. Almost every garden in this country has some kind of fruit tree. And almost all of the fruit on said trees go to waste as the people who owns the gardens are to lazy to pick the fruit. Hence (yes, this is what my brain does when I deliver mail, it tries to solve some of our worlds biggest problems) would it not be a great idea if other people could come in and pick the fruit. So, all of you out there who has apples that you are not going to pick, why don't you put a sign out on the curb that on Saturdays between 10-14 it is ok to come in and pick your fruit. Alternatively, why can people not sell the fruit to stores/dealers the same way that you can sell mushrooms or berries??? (In my mind these ideas are on par with 'pass it forward')

- This is not an idea, just a nice thing that happened to me yesterday... I was entering a building with an arm-full of mail and a young man passed me in the doorway. And when I came around to the elevator I noticed that he had pressed down the elevator as he passed it on his way up to the first floor. He anticipated my need of the elevator and helped me in a small but very nice way. Or maybe he was drunk and lost his balance and just stumbled onto the button, there is no way of knowing.

- If I wrote something, like a book or something, do you think I would have the slightest chance in hell to get it published? If you think yes, tell me what you think I should write. If you do not answer I will interpret it as 'What? The way you write? Hell no! You have the same chance of getting published as my blind cat'. I do hear that writing about your childhood is very popular at the moment. It would be quite fun for me, especially since I do not remember anything... Maybe if I sat down and pried into my brain I could open up some knots and things would come back.

- Oh yea, I almost forgot this nugget. Would it not be funny to roast Tage?? Hmm, I can not remember why I found it extremely funny last week, I had all these one liners that just got me cracking, but now I can't remember any of them. Let me sleep on it and it might come back.

2009-09-17

Rolling over

Yesterday Tage learnt how to roll over from his back to his stomach. And now there is no stopping him. He does it all the time. Even if he has just eaten a huge load and hence tend to puke if he is face down. I do find it a bit odd that he can learn such a big thing that turning over is and still not draw the connection between: food + on my stomach -> puke -> me lying face down in puke. How hard can it be?

2009-09-15

A first happened today

Today I got my first four. And it all happened in a time space as short as ten minutes. We were walking home from a date in the park and I saw car 207 to 210 (I am talking plate spotting here, the noble game in which you try to see all the numbers, from 001 to 999, all in the right order (on license plates that is). The game which I started in December 2003 and which was kind of slow until about two years ago. In April last year I spotted plate 100 and now I am 21% through). It would have been possible for me to see five plates today, as we have 211 at work, but I will save that nugget for the future much in the same way that pole jumpers increase the world record cm by cm to be able to say that they have set a large number of records...

Oh, I almost forgot. We got our rings today, that was why we had a date in the park in the first place.

2009-09-09

Oh

deer: one. dead. by car. on road 56 this morning... just if you all wanted to know.

2009-09-05

Only me

Only someone as lost as me can go shopping for new t-shirts because most of his old ones have holes or irremovable stains in/on them and come home with a shirt that has a stain on it (that I thought would go away in the wash but of course didn't).

2009-08-27

Voodoo

Would the person with the voodoo doll looking like me please stop putting a needle in the back of said doll.
It would be much appreciated.
Thanks

2009-08-26

units

While studying, and especially while teaching, I have always put an emphasis on units. A number without a unit don't mean squat. In fact, one of my favourite pet peeves is when a news article/report becomes jibberish due to a lack of, or wrong, unit. Why I bring it up now? It is because the newspaper said that when uploading a photo of the newly born/family so that it can be published (a service that is free of charge (unlike any other announcement, like for example a text of the newly born or a few lines saying that Mattias and Kristina are engaged (which they are by the way (but this you will not read about in the newspaper)), which all cost money (which is why you will not read about that engaged thingie in the newspaper))) the photo should be 200 dpi or 10 cm large. As one is a measure of resolution and one is a measure of length (hence hardly interchangeable) I first rolled my eyes and made a snide comment about it, and then I uploaded a photo that I thought was large enough. I have not seen the one in the paper (it is supposed to be nice), but I have seen this and I do not know what they did to screw up the resolution, but I do know that if they had asked me for an image of a certain size and used the right units I would have delivered.

Oh, by the way, to take a good family portrait yourself is not all that easy. We could have gone to the photographer (that the newspaper pays for) but I just could not bring myself to do that :)

update (at 21:54)
I thought about the last paragraph while making loads of pizzas and I figured out why it was so hard. It's because I really dislike being in front of a camera. I carry around a camera almost all the time just so I can be behind the lens and not in front of it (it is a weak protection I know, but what are you going to do???). Hence, the problem was not getting Tage to look good, the problem was my own psyche.

2009-08-25

A total of three

Forgot yesterday, so here it comes:
# hares = 1
# roadkilled squirrels = 1
# asses of really old ladies whos skirts has exidentally hiked up so that everything is visible = 1

2009-08-20

tv

I can watch almost anything on TV. As I said earlier I have even found myself looking at Ellen. But there is one show that I just can't bring myself to watch, and that is 'scarred' on mtv. For those of you that are unfamiliar with the program, well, it shows real home made films of (mostly) guys getting hurt. And it is not like 'jackass' where that is the plan all along, they just get hurt doing something else - like doing tricks with their skateboard/bike/roller blades. And they show how it looks when, e.g., a leg breaks - in slow motion. They also show how it looks afterwords, when they are in the hospital all bruised up, and the x-rays displaying shattered bone.

To watch the show is like seeing a guy getting kicked in the groin - you just know how fucking painful it is so you curl up a bit, distorts your face and pull a breath of air in through your clenched teeth making that 'iiithh' sound. It is just all to real and I can't watch.

2009-08-17

I was just about

I was just about to write to the network companies to say that at this hour (1900) there is really nothing that appeals to me on TV. Hence the lucrative advertising audience where I fit in is up for the grabbing. But then I noticed that 'How I met your mother' is on so I didn't write them and now I am sitting happy in the sofa with Tage on my chest, watching TV and writing this.

2009-08-13

A blog entry a day

keeps the readers at bay??

Or maybe it is linking to fun stuff that I found on the net that makes people come by?

I have tried photos of Tage and that didn't work as well as I expected... Maybe it is nude photos of Me and Tage that you want!?



I know that the number of deer that I see don't really interest you, but how about the number of hares I see on my mail route? (=2)

I do not know, so please tell me! What do you think I should blog about???

2009-08-12

Keeping tabs

I am, just for fun, keeping tabs on what the little man is costing us. Now, almost 9 weeks old, we are out 14900. And that is just for stuff we have bought. Maybe I should include a little ticker in the sidebar of the blog so that you can follow his galloping debt. By the way, what is the standard going interest rate?

2009-07-29

Re:

Regarding the update frequency:
It is not that the inspiration is low, nor that I don't have anything to write about. It is just that it is really hard to get a time long enough when I can sit and formulate my thoughts into a readable mass instead of this kind of jumbled mess. There are times of peace and quiet, but I must confess that those are often spent recuperating (in front of whatever is on the TV).

Regarding what's on TV:
Most of the time there are something that I can watch without hating myself, but at about five in the morning there is really nothing worth watching. I have even found myself watching 'Ellen'... It is bad.

Regarding the Lions:
It is quite fun to live in a place where you hear Lions roar (I do deny the fact when Kristina tells me to listen. I say that it is an MC with problems, which always earns me a stern look... (but just between you and me, I do know that it is a Lion))

2009-07-17

Procrastination

I tend to procrastinate. In the old days back at uu there was nothing strange about it, I mean, that what a PhD does. Check email. Check dn on-line. See if there is something new up on wired or slashdot. Scan through the rss feeds to see if anyone has updated their blogs. Read phd comic, ctrl-alt-delete and get fuzzy, frazz and pearls before swine on comics.com. And It was all good. A welcome break... But now? I don't have 20 articles that I should have read last week. I don't have data that I should have analysed and understood some time ago. I don't have a thesis to write. I am just home being a dad. And yea, I understand that a few laughs is great as relaxation between periods of screaming and or diaper changes, and it is fun to keep updated on what's going on in the world. But why do I almost manically watch if I have received any new emails when the fact is that I get one perhaps every other day (at most)?

2009-07-06

More needle work

Of course the kid needs his name on the sheets in the perambulator.

Eskilstuna

I have long been meaning to write about my current home town. What I think of it. I do not think very much of it. It is rather crappy in many ways. (And here I would talk about all the things that I think sucks, it would go on for pages and pages and include bike lanes, pedestrian crossings, gravel, shopping etc. etc. but I will spare you, or maybe save it to a later post...) But then you find something that makes you smile.



Do you see it? I have walked and biked past this place daily for more than a year now and noticed it only a month ago. I do not know if that is cause it was not there until then or if I just did not see it. Anyhow, it was something that I did not expect to find in this culturally deprived place called Eskilstuna. Nerdy guerilla street art.

2009-06-24

Perambulator vs Koenigsegg

When waiting to become a parent there is a lot of stuff you have to do. The main part that I did was to block out the fact that I was becoming a parent. This I successfully did most part of most days. But sooner or later you have to start getting prepared. One big part for us, in fact the most expensive part at least so far, was to get a pram (or a perambulator that I just learned that 'barnvagn' is called if you live in Britain).

My thoughts on this was that, 'well, you go to a store, pick the one you want, pay what ever is on the price tag, and then take it home with you'. But no. It turns out that the brand that we wanted (emmaljunga) only build their stuff on order. So I changed what I thought to, 'we pick the one we want, pay what ever is on the price tag, and then wait a couple of weeks before we get it, no problemo'. But no. It turns out that it takes no less than thirteen weeks to get it. Thirteen weeks. That is a third of the length of the entire pregnancy. That is the fucking time it takes for the team of builders to build a fucking Koenigsegg. We went out of the shop in a haze. We had heard rumours of this but we hadn't believed them. We had about ten weeks to the expected due date so this was obviously not an option.

On our way home we changed what we thought to 'lets see what we can find on blocket'. That was a good thought. The very same day I strolled home with a new looking (although one year old) pram of the model we had chosen in the store. I stuffed it as far into the storage room I could and then I worked hard to get my mind back into the nice state of ignorance. (Which worked fine until some later when we took a trip to IKEA to buy a baby cot...)

2009-06-17

Stupid

I am so stupid. Why the hell did I wait two years since the last backup of my photos? I know that shit tend to break. I know that my hard drives especially tend to break. I know that I would take that loss really hard. Ok, this time nothing happened, so now I also know that it takes quite a while to save >7000 raw images at a total of 50GB onto DVD's.

So, have I learned my lesson? Am I going to do it at shorter intervals in the future to not risk the loss of thousands of photos and avoid the tiresome work? No, probably not.

2009-06-12

Needle work

Apparently I have said that I will never be one of those who only blogs about their kids. So today I will write about something else completely.

Look at this cool hat I made today, I must say that I am quite pleased with how the needle work on the mouse turned out!

2009-06-11

Eye candy

To tired to write, but I thought I would share some eye candy with all of you. Enjoy!

2009-06-09

Tage

The most fantastic thing happned on the 6 of june. A little man called Tage took his first gasp of air, had his first physical, had a little something to eat and made a grown man cry.



I am a bit lost for words, but trust me, more will follow. And since the little fella is cute as a button and just loves the camera more photos will come as well.

2009-06-02

Surgery

As I wrote some time ago, doing stupid things can result in shit breaking. My skin is healing nicely on its own but my phone needed some surgery. The circuit board is all bent out of shape but since the phone works I don't care. The main bit was to replace the screen and the front part of the case, all in all a pretty standard operation.



2009-05-27

Note to self

If you are going to drop something on the floor, could you please try to ensure that that something is not an ink jar that can break and mess shit up.

2009-05-25

Fonder

Fonder, jag tror på fonder, och att detta är en bra tidpunkt att köpa. Men jag behöver hjälp, så säg mig, vilken fond ska jag lägga mina pengar i??? Nu ska jag gå och träna, men när jag kommer tillbaks vill jag ha era tips, kompletta med djupgående analyser. Det tips jag tror mest på investerar jag 4% av mitt disponibla kapital i.

2009-05-20

Note to self

Please remember that when you are about to bike home with the recently bought pizzas in one hand do make sure that your sandals are tight and secure on your feet so that shit does not happen.

Shit might be painful.



And might also cost you a new cell.

2009-05-18

Life is rolling along

Life is moving forward at a steady pace. Working, eating, training, sleeping.

2009-05-10

Omelet

If there is one thing I never expected to see in the shelves of any grocery store it is Omelet mix. For crying out loud, it is eggs, water and salt that you stir all about. It is fucking impossible to fail. But it is there. Someone came up with this crazy idea on how to make money, someone approved it, someone made the product, someone at the store took it into their assortment and no one along the line stopped and thought 'Hmm, now wait a minute, Omelet is eggs, water and salt whisked together, this is one stupid product'. It is times like these that I loose all hope for mankind.

2009-04-29

An ethics question

I've got an ethics question for you (your wote counts, be sure to make your voice heard by writing a comment!).

Is it ok for someone, lets say for example a humble mailman, to pinch of shoots from flowers in staircases to take home and plant?

2009-04-25

soup #34

French onion soup. If you consider the ingredients, which are basically yellow onion, butter, flour, broth and Dijon mustard, it is amazing that it turns out so good. The soup is made pretty much the way you make soup, but then it is gratinated in the oven with some roasted white bread with cheese on top.
Great! But it was maybe not the best idea ever to do it on the hottest day so far this year..

2009-04-23

Japanese game show

A thought happened to cross my mind for no apparent reason today. Why are they going through all the trouble of coming up with crazy ideas like 'I survived a Japanese game show'. Why not just make a show (yes I do realize that this is just such a crazy idea that I spoke of in the previous sentence) where you win if you manage to shop at ikea without getting anxiety attacks.

# of deer spotted during the drive to Västerås and back: 4

2009-04-19

;)

Searching myself I happened to stumble onto this: a blog about nothing My old blog. My old blog that is on my uppsala university account. The account that has been closed for a year or so. The blog that I thought was lost as my backups was destroyed in multiple hard drive crashes. It is back. And it is well worth a read if you have time over and are one of the few that did not read it 'live'.

2009-04-10

Mayby not original

I like to be a little original when I write here. Maybe you have noticed, or maybe I have failed and am more like everyone else. Anyhow, in this post I am not trying to be original.

I am going on a trip down to Herrljunga today, to spend the weekend hitting other people, and trying to avoid being hit myself. To get there I am going to ((oh, highlander on tv6, classic)) use the excellent service that SJ provides. Or wait, no, to travel with them is a lottery and although I do enjoy to take part of a lottery now and again I actually prefer to get where I am supposed to get within a time frame agreed upon beforehand when I travel. I am kind of boring that way.

2009-04-02

Turn of shame

You all probably know of the 'walk of fame', and the term 'walk of shame'. The 'turn of shame' is maybe not as known to the large masses, but in my life it is a frequent thing. It is when you have sorted the mail wrong on a villa street and you have to do a 180 to go back to the mailbox you just left. To me this sucks, mostly cause I like to think that I am rather careful when I sort the mail and hence should not make such mistakes and now I show to anyone out there that 'hey! look at me, I made a mistake!!!'. (This is of-course related to my total lack of self esteem, (a subject that I have been meaning to write about but have not been able to make it funny enough to publish here...)).
The 'turn of shame' does have a nastier cousin, the 'turn of even more shame', this is when you give the mail directly to the person living at an address, say 'good day' with a smile and drive of, and then realize that you have to do a 180. This just screams incompetent idiot loud enough so that everyone can hear.

2009-04-01

Action

I was met with this sight today:

After a close study of the blood splatter pattern I deduced that it was not the result of a gunshot wound, nor a knife stabbing. I thought it was a nosebleed and continued on with what I was doing. I later met up with the cleaning ladies and got the true story behind the crime. The Posten lady had been attacked by a cat through the mailbox. It had planted a claw in her hand and managed to afflict quite a bit of damage. Sometimes it's exiting to be a mailman.

2009-03-22

Why bring a camera???

Went down town to do some Sunday shopping (came home with 2/5 items) and thought 'no, why would I bring my camera, it is just so gray and uninteresting outside anyway, and on top of that it is rather heavy to lug around'. The answer came when we were about to pass the train station. A small falcon had captured a dove and sat with it in its claws on the road looking confused. They were about the same size and to me it looked like the falcon had never actually caught one before and now it didn't know what to do. We looked at them for several minutes, them struggling on the road, cars stopping to see the action, me pondering whether or not to go home to get the camera. Finally a pair of bicyclists scared the falcon away, the dove quickly jumped up and hid under a nearby car and the action was over. It would have been an amazing set of photos. Among the coolest I ever would have taken. Instead the episode is just a memory quickly fading away.

2009-03-19

Smart pocket

My pocket is to smart for my phone. It knows how to outsmart the incredibly tricky lock for the keys (what I need is some kind of intelligence test coupled to the lock, a test that you need to be smarter than my pocket is to pass) and then to send messages to various people in my address-book. I thought I was clever when I put a fake number at the top of the list but that only helped me so far. The extent of the problem is so huge that I do not dare to look in my outbox, probably half of my messages are 'accidental' ones. Am I the only one with a smart pocket? Is there a market for smart pockets? Or is there a market for the smarter type of key-lock that I was talking about, and in that case is there anyone out there who could create one and sell it to the phone manufacturers and let me have a small piece of the cut?

2009-03-14

I used to be a snob

For all my life up until just now I used to be a snob. Bags was out of the question. They were used on camping trips at most. In the morning earl gray was the standard brew, and Tower it had to be. At night I was more flexible and I would choose from my 'free weight' bought assortment. Crazy scented bags from lipton was (and still is) totally out of the question.

Then I got a job that starts at 7 and my snobbish ways went out the window. I get up as late as possible, boil some water and trow in a bag. If I slept three minutes to long it also happens that I pour some cold water in so that I can gulp it down, a procedure one of my old professors used and that I was totally taken aback of. (ok, am not really sure of the way I used the last expression) It was simply something that I would never Ever do.

I used to be a snob. And I liked it.

2009-03-07

Disaster

A small disaster took place yesterday. My vanilla sugar crashed to the floor and was destroyed. How will I now flavour the whipped cream to the last batch of semlor for the year? At least I got to try out my new tripod as I crawled around on the floor documenting the event.

2009-03-04

We did it

We did it manually for a long time. None of us liked it so it tended to pile up on us. Which did not make it any more fun. Then one day K said, lets do it, lets buy a machine. And after a little research on the net, a couple of visits to some shops, weighing different brands against each other and then a pricerunner comparison to find the cheapest place, we bought one. It took some time for it to arrive. But yesterday it came. Today I biked around town to buy a longer hose and then I installed it, and washed the first of many loads of dishes. My oh my did it feel goood!

2009-02-27

I GOT IT!!!

I just got a really good business idea. A untapped market. A market that is just screaming to be tapped.
Home delivery of Potato chips and beverages. Its so simple that I marvel at the fact that it does not exist. I mean, all you need is a small van, you fill it up with chips and beer and then wait for the phone to ring. It is just so fucking brilliant.

I get these ideas quite often, ideas that would result in a blooming business in the hands of an entrepreneur. Unfortunately I am so far from an entrepreneur that it is just possible to be so the great ideas just vanish into thin air. So this is a cry for help. Are you the person that can turn my great ideas into guaranteed moneymakers, or do you know the person that can do it, contact me asap!

2009-02-26

Mmmm pancakes

To gulf down a massive load of American pancakes with crispy fried bacon and maple syrup after a hard training can mean only one thing. Coma. A rather nice way to spend a night when you are all alone.

2009-02-22

Oh deer

Eskilstuna Nyköping and back again:
# of deer (anything looking like a deer): 23
# of foxes (hunting something below the snow): 2

2009-02-17

Inspiration

There has been a certain lack of inspiration here in our Eskilstuna base camp lately. The dishes build piles that I don't feel like washing. The flowers looks like they need care that I do not feel like providing. Thousands of photos have been left unsorted on my computer. Books that I bought during the Christmas break have been left unread. Letters from half a dozen pension companies have been left unopened. I thought that the recent return of daylight would do wonders but so far the only thing that has happened was the baking of a batch of Semlor and the half finished construction of a sudoku-solver in c++.

2009-02-11

Close

I was close. Really really close. We had finished cooking a tomato sauce and then a pasta gratin with that sauce. We had eaten. I had put the rest of the gratin in tupperware for tomorrows lunch. I had put almost all of the left over sauce in tupperware to be frozen. I had done all this IN A WHITE SHIRT without getting a single spot on me. I made K aware of this astonishing fact, 'I was going to be the first amateur cook to accomplish this feat' . Then I scraped the two remaining tablespoons of sauce out of the pan and managed to make a big splash that covered me in red dots.

2009-02-08

Bitter - sweet

I met a Posten-worker last Wednesday and he was not very nice. In a long tirade he expressed his view of the company I work for, bankruptcy was high on his wish list, that it would rain (I drive a moped while he sits protected in his heated car) was on top too. I do not know where he got all that hatred from, but I do know that I would never want to be like that myself. I also know that he is not alone. People hate us. We are the lowest of the low. On the bottom of the barrel. That is why it so warms my heart when, just prior to my meeting with the hateful postman, a lady stopped me and told me that I had delivered a letter wrong and I turned to her, looked at the letter with a little worried frown on my forehead and said 'Sorry but no, that letter has an handwritten address, only Posten deliver those' . The lady excused herself and I continued up the stairs. With this in mind I had no problem smiling through the bitter old mans tirade.

2009-01-29

Photos

Had some fun the other day with some pieces from a broken DVD drive, an LED and my camera.

2009-01-28

Cat and mouse game

I happen to interrupt a cat and mouse game while riding to work this morning. A game with a real cat. And a real mouse. The cat looked at me and while it was distracted the mouse saw its once in a lifetime opportunity and ran away. I could not hang around to watch the rest of the game, and maybe that was good, cause it seems that the outcome of these matches are influenced by the spectators and that is simply not the way it is supposed to be.

2009-01-26

Its a beautiful day

On days like this it is impossible to resist. You just have to sing! 'ITS A BEAUTIFUL DAY!!!!', and as I was riding along on my moped, singing loudly, smiling from ear to ear, people lifted their heavy heads from the morning paper and porridge saying to their partner 'what is that nut-job up to???'. I was high, high on the sweetest drug of them all, the reality of leaving my job way before lunch cause all the work is finished!!! I am still high, sitting in my couch with a big grin on my face, ordering some photo-gear, the rest of the afternoon is free,
and I am singing ... 'Its a beautiful day!!!'

2009-01-22

Driving around

'Driving around on my EU moped,
my two cold hands at the handles,
both the visor and glasses are fucked,
due to all the humidity and mist,
can't really see nothing at all,
when I'm going back to the old office´

Ok, maybe Chuck Berry's version had a more poetic twist to it...

2009-01-16

AAhrrgh

I was met by a loud 'AAhrrgh!!! Ride your bike faster!!!' (eller mer korrekt 'AAhrrgh! Cykla fortare!!!) on my way to work. This was rather surprising. It was also quite surprising to see someone that drunk at 6:52 in the morning, outside in the cold (-10°C), kicking an electric cabinet, yelling at people passing by. I mean, If for some strange reason I would be that intoxicated that early in the morning I would not go out into the cold. I might kick cupboards, and I might yell at people, but I would stay inside where it is warm. But then I might be wrong.

2009-01-15

Returning to my roots, and it feels good

I have returned to my roots after a couple of excursions into other styles, and my oh my does it feel right to be back! Shotokan was ok, Aikido was fun but I met a girl and moved away, Goju ryu was not for me. Wado is for me. It feels like I have found my way home. It feels good. (Oh, I am talking about budo/karate if you are wondering...)

2009-01-07

Will it not end?

It has been hard since Christmas. Lots of mail, lots of heavy catalogs, lots of 30 kg heavy boxes to lift, a couple of people short every day, long days that start in the dark and end in the dark (Ok, to be fair, we are outside in the sun 3-4 hours every day). It would be nice with a short regular day now. HEAR ME MAIL GODS! ONE SHORT EASY DAY, THAT IS ALL I ASK.

Oh, Do you have a dog? Do you live in a regular flat? Do you have a slit in the door for the mail? Did you get a catalog one of these days? Is your dog limping? I think I know why. Well, at least maybe it learned a lesson, not to bark at the mailman.

2009-01-03

Soup #33

If you are blind you will like this one. Green lentil and bacon soup. It was easy enough to make but it took some time on the stove. And the taste was rather good, reminded a lot of pea soup (and in fact I tried it with some mustard, which was good). But it did not look tasty at all, a green brown mush. Ingredients? Green lentils, a carrot, a yellow onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, bacon, a stem of celery, parsley, a bay leaf, chicken broth, that was about it I think.

(oh, by the way, I had made a mistake with the numbers once again, maybe it is correct now. And I know how much you all have missed the early soups so I will see if I can find them somewhere.)

Många döda i Stockholm under nyår

Det har inte varit en nyhet, men jag är säker på min sak. Det var många som blev allvarligt skadade och många som dog efter sviterna av korsordet som DN publicerade på nyårsafton. Problemet var inte att det var så svårt att folk begick självmord, nä, problemet för dom stackars stockholmarna var att det kryllade av göteborgshumor i det. Några exempel 'Spetsig fågel? Nä, olikhet' (kontrast), 'Arlandafrukt? Nä, men snabbtåg'' (arlandabanan), 'Brittiska raspen?, nä englandsvännen' (10 bokstäver), 'hög tax?' (13) etc etc. Sånt här är ju något som roar såna som mig, men jag kan tänka mig att DN's huvudmålgrupp drog mycket djupa suckar (som ledde till hyperventilation och alla komplikationer som det medför) och många slag för pannan (med allvarliga hjärnskakningar som följd). Jag vill att ni minns detta inlägg när ni läser om alla oförklarliga dödsfall som inträffade i storstaden under dagarna kring nyår. Nu är bara frågan, var det gjort med mening? Är det så att korsordsskaparen har något emot stockholmare och vill dom illa? Och borde man isåfall stoppa henne?