2010 - wtf

Ok, who here thinks that maybe, just maybe, we, as a people, by the year 2010 would be able to construct a car - or every car - such that if you by mistake leave an interior light on it would, after a couple of days - maybe when the battery is about to run out of juice - by itself, decide that - hmm, this is probably not right - I will turn that light off so that the owner of me will be able to start me next time he/she requires my assistance?

Corn Succotash

I have gone around the entire day saying 'Corn Succotash' to myself. Not loudly I think, but still. The problem is that I can not deduce where it comes from. It is a fun thing to say so I do not suffer indefinitely but as I neither knows what it is nor why it is on my brain it kind of annoys me. (If I would have to guess I would say it is something that someone says in M*A*S*H but I have not watched an episode of that show in years...)

Industrial design

One thing that can really get me cooking is industrial design.
Today it is the plastic little flipp on the cat-5 cable connector that after some time, at least when it is connected to a laptop that is carried around the flat, breaks off. It really grinds my gears. I have not counted, but I believe that I currently have at least five cables that are broken. The cable is probably designed to be stationary, you plug it in to a router and a computer and then you leave it, and then there would be no problem. But I can not be the only one that use a cable connected to a laptop right? It baffles me that the connector has not evolved into something sturdier. (One reason might be that most people use a wireless connection and hence circumvent the problem entirely, but I don't since I got in a fight with my isp regarding a wireless modem that they promised me over the phone but then cheated me of).

AAAAAHhhh MVF

Alltså, va faan.
Kanske är jag löjlig. Kanske så ska jag sköta mig själv och skita i andra. Kanske tycker folk att jag är dum. Kanske så kan folk som inte bryr sig om att sopsortera flytta till en annan planet och sluta att förstöra den som jag och min blivande fru tänker bli gamla på, den planet som mina barn ska växa upp på, den planet som alla idioter håller på att köra i botten. Hur jävla svårt är det att slänga den gigantiska kartongen som den nya platt-tv'n kom i i lådan som det står 'förpackningar av papper' på istället för lådan som det står 'övriga sopor' på? Hur stor uppoffring är det att ägna en minut då och då till att sortera lite jävla sopor? Om man inte orkar bära kassen med tomflaskor till affären för att panta dom kan man väl iallafall slänga den i plast/glas återvinningen eller? Är det föresten bara jag som är snål eller är det någon mer som känner att om man har betalt pant för att få låna en flaska av butiken så vill jag ta mig tusan ha tillbaks dom pengarna? Jag vet mycket väl att sopsortering bara är en liten droppe i havet, en mjölkkartong som återvinns istället för att slängas i soporna kommer inte att rädda världen, men det är en väldigt enkel åtgärd för att dra ett litet strå till stacken. En sista fråga: Är det ok att plocka upp ica-kassen som är full av pantflaskor och burkar ur soporna och ta med dom till affären eller blir man då direkt klassad som en sunkig uteliggartyp? (Jag tycker själv att man borde bli klassad som miljöhjälte, men jag får mer känslan av det tidigare när jag står där och tittar ner i sopkärlet och hatet mot mina slöa jävla grannar får det att koka i mig. Jag lät flaskorna vara kvar, jag klarade inte av att möta någon granne i trappen med en påse jag plockat upp ur soporna, men jag flyttade svärande över tv-kartongen till rätt kärl).

MVF

Men Va Faan

Har spenderat lite tid med kära eniro.se för att lokalisera lite folk, och det är helt otroligt att dom har lyckats förstöra den siten så grundligt som dom har. Man blir så in i helvete frustrerad.
Till och med reklamen för deras sökmotor är ju helt uppfuckad, dom söker efter något i typ Lund och får upp svar i hela Sverige. Man kan väl i alla fall anta att om man vill ha en, låt oss säga restaurang, i Lund, så vill man att den faktiskt ska ligga i Lund och inte någon annanstans. Orten är man väl oftast rätt så säker på.
Om man går in på fliken 'personer' och söker men inte får någon träff så hamnar man helt plötsligt på fliken 'kartor' eller 'företag', men det var ju en person som man sökte, det är ju ändå en sak som man var rätt så säker på. Om man sen vill ändra sin sökning så måste man själv byta flik, och då är sökningen som man just gjorde borta, så då måste man skriva in allt igen.
Sen så kan man ju tycka att om man har fixat en adressändring via adressandring.se så vore det ju käckt om telefonkatalogen som folk faktiskt använder, dvs just eniro.se, faktiskt uppdaterar sitt register.

Jag kan inte minnas att det var så kasst förut, så jag undrar hur dom har lyckats göra så många saker så mycket sämre?

Hur svårt kan det vara?

Hur svårt kan det vara att komma på ett kassasystem som funkar på krogen? Hur kan det fortfarande vara så att om man är ett sällskap som går ut och äter en bit och dricker några glas på krogen och sedan betalar var för sig så är det alltid killen som är sist, den blyge killen med lite krassligt självförtroende, som får ta ölen och maten som de andra tryckte i sig men sedan glömde att de tryckte i sig.
Det är klart att man inte kommer ihåg exakt vad man drack och åt efter fem timmar. Och det är lika klart att det är den osäkre killen som är kvar i slutet och får ta slattarna. Han som inte vågar ta diskussionen med personalen, eller för den delen ta diskussionen med kompisgänget dagarna efter. Han får ta smällen och se glad ut. Hur svårt kan det vara att skapa individuella notor, genom att tex fråga efter namn på den som beställer, eller genom att stämpla gästerna med en stor jävla stämpel i pannan för att identifiera dom.
Den här gången så var jag näst sist och slapp de extra ölen, men jag fick betala för en dyrare maträtt än den jag åt, för den jag åt hade nån annan redan betalt och det var bara de dyrare alternativen kvar, och jag kan erkänna att jag säkert vet att jag gått tidigt nån gång och betalat för en öl mindre än jag drack (något som jag kommit på genom en rannsakan dagen efter), men oftare händer det nog att jag är den som betalar sist (nu är inte det så farligt eftersom jag inte är ute så ofta så den smällen kan jag ta när det händer men roligt är det faan inte). Så jag undrar - hur svårt kan det egentligen vara?

If you are wondering

If you are wondering why this lille katt video suddenly climbed to the very top of the YouTube charts it is cause we showed it to Tage once, and then he demanded to get control over the 'replay' button. If you are wondering why this is my last post it is cause my computer tripped and fell over the balcony rail in a freak accident that has nothing at all to do with me freaking out over this lille katt video.

Significant figures

I have a problem with the tv show Biggest looser. They calculate the weight loss for the contestants as a percentage based on measurements in whole pounds. So a person that has gone from 310 to 305 pounds has lost 5 pounds => 5/310=1.61%. And then they use this number to eliminate people. It is just plain wrong to get a number with three significant figures from a division that contains a number with only one significant figure. The true answer to the above example should hence be 2%. They really ought to buy a more precise scale and learn some maths.

Shit

Another thing that happens in the woods bother me. It also involves stupid people like in my previous rant where someone destroyed my lens hood that I dropped, found and then left hanging on a tree in the same forest that inspired this little rant.
It is shit. Dog shit to be more precise. Having had dogs all the time growing up I am fairly familiar with the subject, but I find that I am a little bit undecided. I mean, if a dog shits on the streets you pick it up - no problem there. But if a dog shits on a path in the forest I do not really know. To just leave it for someone to step in is not acceptable. I think it is quite all-right to just push it out of the way with a stick so that no one would have to step in it, it will be gone pretty soon so no real harm is done. To pick it up with a plastic bag and throw it in the trash is also an option, but I must say that due to the extremely low density of dog poo trash cans out there in the woods I would be a bit hesitant to do that.
But there is a fourth option - to pick it up with a plastic bag and then throw the bag a few feet away from the path. It is just so fucking stupid. I mean I get annoyed of all littering, I have been so darn close to confront people that I see throw their crap on the streets like if it were their own personal trash can, my blood has boiled and I have wanted to just cut their fucking heads off with some choice words (I have only been held back by the fact that I live where I live and hence would most likely have been stabbed or the like by the perpetrator...), but to put something bio-degradable into a plastic bag and then throw it where everyone will see it for years to come is so darn stupid that I  [now I am so worked up that I am hyperventilating, maybe this sentence ought to end soon so that I wont pass out] that I can not even begin to describe it.

Who the fuck?

Who was the bastard that designed the standard that controls how stuff you put into the usb port works? I mean, why in hell must it take an infinity of time for a memory stick/sd-card reader or whatever to be disconnected from the fucking computer? If I tell it to eject it should fucking disconnect immediately. I have no patience for that crap.  (I am a little annoyed since this mornings failed attempt to get the ethernet card in one of my computers to work (the non working ethernet card is the reason for the non existence of photos on this here blog recently)).

Memory

The other day when I was on my way to the hospital to exchange some blood against two pairs of socks I went down to the bus stop just 100 meters away from here. It is in plain view from our flat and a couple of days before I had noticed that someone had smashed one of the glass walls of the wind shelter. The day I went down there I came around from the back and for some reason I bent down and picked up a shard of glass. With this in my hand I proceeded to walk around and sit down on the bench inside the hut. And then I leant back to rest against the glass wall. The glass wall that had been smashed. The glass wall that I had a piece of in my hand. Can someone please tell me just what the fuck is wrong with my brain.

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.

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...)

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.

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.

Catastrophic breakdown

One of the key components in my water squirt bottle, that I use to mist up my orchids, suffered an unexplainable catastrophic breakdown the other day. The spring that returns the pumping mechanism to the starting state broke. And not just once but in two places simultaneously.

How is that possible? The spring was never under any extreme conditions, there was no corrosion attack, it just gave up. The only theory I have right now is that the spring was made to do this - It is made to break after X number of squirts so that they can sell another bottle. The bottle has a built in maximal lifetime. I do give them credits for their sails tactics, but my orchids are not very impressed.

Bad ### day

You all know of the concept 'bad hair day' right? I hardly have them anymore, I do have the occasional bad beard day, but mostly my facial hairs behave. I did however have a different kind of bad day today. A bad underwear day. No matter what I did they returned to the most uncomfortable position within a matter of seconds. It is a bit strange, I mean, there was nothing odd with the underwear as such, they were of a kind that I clearly rank as A (if I would have been down to a C ranking pair I would not have been surprised), but today they just did not work.

Nice neighbor

Neighbors can be very helpful and caring at times, like this one who does not want anyone to get hurt:


(approx: Please do not step out on the balconies this weekend. They hang in the air right now and it is unclear how well they are anchored to the wall. Want to avoid accidents if possible. Have a nice weekend!)

I also tried to be a good neighbor. Knowing just how fucking useless UPS are, I accepted when they asked me to receive a package for the guy next door (he was not home, few people are in the middle of the afternoon) this Monday. I thought I was doing him a favor. Now the problem is that the guy moved and probably never got the note the ups schmucks left in his mailbox, and hence he has no idea that I have his package. Hopefully it is not lifesaving meds...

I like

I am weak. And probably rather stupid. I know the value of money, and I try to spend the hard earned few kr as wisely as I can. I can avoid buying a jar of jam cause it costs 30kr, but put me in front of the candy shelf and all my built in blocks hide away. To buy sweets for 50kr, sweets that I will devour in a day or so, is no problem. The jam would be great and would last a long time, but still I hesitate... Why is it like this?

Designers

My firm belief is that designers, who design clothes that are part of a uniform, should be forced to use the clothes that they have designed while doing the job that they going to be used for. Due to the wonderful weather today I used our new (we have changed color and are now green) raincoat. And I used the zipper quite a lot since it is nice to have it closed while outdoors and opened while indoors. This zipper is one of the worst I have ever experienced, or rather, the zipper in combination with the cloth that gets stuck in the zipper is one of the worst I have ever experienced. I think that I have to take out the sewing machine tonight and get a little creative.