Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Snow

Two months (or so) ago the snow fell over the general Stockholm area resulting in complete chaos. First trucks and buses got stock, then the afternoon traffic rush hour began and lasted all night. A lot of people were unprepaired with bad tires often combined with a lack of basic driving skills.

It took me over five hours to get home from work that day -- it takes about half an hour if there's no traffic.

The snow quickly melted away though. It was all gone just about when we finally had managed to buy tires for Ellinor's car. (I had been telling her to get good tires made for snow for over a month by then).

Anyway. Today at about 16.30 a friend on msn messenger told me there was about an inch of snow in BĂ„lsta. I went to the window. No snow at all. A few minutes past five I went out to my car and found it covered in snow. I brushed it off and prepared myself for a few hours drive home.

I took my oridnary sneaky shortcuts and managed to avoid most of the traffic. The E4 wasn't moving much -- but I was. It took me about an hour to get home. At this time of day it's average time.















As I passed Vallentuna I saw a car in the ditch that had crashed into a street lamp. I took a picture, but it's not very good.

Too bad I had my car washed this morning though. It probably will look dirty when the snow melts away. I'm hoping the snow will last, but I have no such illusions. This Christmas won't be white.

Monday, December 18, 2006

Christmas Card

How hard can it possibly be to send a few christmas cards? It doesn't sound very advanced. You really shouldn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure it out.

Yet I spent eternity -- that's what it felt like -- trying to send 20 something cards using a service called "real postcards" from the Swedis postal service "posten". I retrieved my password and realized it was two years since my prior use of this service.

I uploaded my jpeg and was told that the quality was excellent - of course it was. I had followed the instructions to the letter. The interface was really slow as I entered address after address. For each address I had to agree to a security warning since not all info on the webpage was encrypted. It took ages.

Finally it was time to click "next". I did. I waited. I got an error message. I tried again. And again. And AGAIN. No luck.

I was wishing I could have the systems developer responsible close enough to hit everytime something went wrong. Maybe it was a good thing, that there were no such people in my office.

Eventually I gave up and went home.

Then I found out on webmasternetwork.se that someone actually managed to send Christmas cards using the webpage today. I tried again and it worked. Apparently my VISA didn't and I wasn't trustworthy enough to get an invoice -- but I did it! I've sent all my Christmas greetings.

Two to the US. It will be interesting to se if they actually get there.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Everybody has a blog

Everybody who's anybody has a blog these days.

I've spent my share of time on the internet, in newsgroups, IRCs, mailing lists starting up a web hosting company - you name it. I haven't really gotten around to having a real blog though. Until now, that is.

I have no grand world changing illusions for this blog. There's a chance it will end up being just another crappy blog. Or maybe, just maybe, I'll make the mountains crumble through my keyboard, or more likely something in between.

Eventually a lot of my thoughts are destined to end up here. Except the too personal ones. But then again what ever is personal these days.

I got rid of the volvo for a new toyota this past monday. Fewer horsepower, but it's brand new and less expensive in the long run. It's almost time to head home, so this will have to do for now.