Yes, apparently it’s casual Friday here today with the topics. 🙂 Let me be a male pig, just this one time, and just list some of the movies that made me gasp (and some of them were also good movies overall):

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When you’re a consultant, you once in a while get to overhear (alright, I’m constantly eavesdropping) some interesting conversations that amuses you. Today’s one: a technical one.

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This is about a conversation I overheard many many years ago, taking place between a couple of teenage guys. It was about the “wrong hole”…

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Firefox, The Little Memory Hog lived happily together with his family, the Mozillas, in a land far far away. Firefox had now turned 2.0.0.1 and it was time to attend kindergarten.

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Ok, this might scare you a little, but I had the weirdest dream just before I woke up this morning. I (don’t?) hope that anyone of you are good at interpreting dreams, so here goes:

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I was thinking about whether to write this post or not, but here it is. I have a confession to make: I have coded naked. No, not at work or amongst other people, so don’t worry… 🙂

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If you had to choose between being King Arthur or Merlin, which one would you go for? And why?

Maybe it’s just me, or maybe I share this feeling with other people. What, you ask, what? I can’t stand how people write smilies…

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We’ve all thought that CSS is short for Cascading Style Sheets and that’s all it is to it, but apparently that’s far from the truth. The other day I found another meaning, perhaps the true one, that I think applies to me…

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There’s something I haven’t told you; I’ve even kept a secret, if you will. As you might know, a number of web developer bloggers also create secondary blogs that deal with their other interests; topics such as coffee, wine, food etc seem to be very popular. So, now it’s time for me to reveal my new blog, and it will, hopefully, be nothing like you’ve ever seen!

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When I first heard about Flickr I liked the idea, but being the rebel I am, I was a bit reluctant to use it since everyone was hyping it so much. However, for those of you that haven’t noticed the little Flickr icon and link I’ve added to this web site: I now have a Flickr Pro account.

During this summer I decided to finally take the plunge, and this post is about what I think is good respectively not-so-good with Flickr.

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By Robert X. Cringely:

Soon we may have two new portable media devices: one sleek and sexy, and the other designed by Microsoft.

Funny! 🙂
And accurate…

Another superb video, a must see, is If Microsoft designed the iPod.

In Stockholm we have two morning papers for free, Metro and Stockholm City . Since I have about one hour to commute one-way, reading these really helps to make the journey to my job as pleasant as possible.

What stands out, though, is one columnist from each paper: Nima Daryamadj writing for Stockholm City and Stephan Mendel Enk writing for Metro. Both are very eloquent, and skilled enough writers to throw in just the perfect amount of humor to be entertaining and spellbinding while at the same time driving through very important and serious standpoints. Examples can be found in Nima’s excellent Ska kungen kalla oss ”svennar”? and Stephan’s Brottsmoral lär sig barn i sandlÃ¥dan .

If any of these would ever produce a book with a collection of their columns or something of the like, I’d love to read it (actually, Stephan has previously released the book Den problematiska manligheten if anyone’s interested).

So, Nima or Stephan, thank you!

If any of you ever read this and are in the Stockholm area, please contact me and we’ll do lunch, ok? 🙂

A couple of nights ago, I went to the first out of three sessions dealing with the topic rhetoric. It is something that my employer is kind enough to treat me and my group to, and also something that I’ve always been interested in.

Funny thing happened, though, when the guy presenting said an unexpected word. What did he say? He said:

Fitta

Instead of “Hitta”, which means “Find”.

Why is that funny? Because that word means “pussy” and isn’t really a word one would expect from someone teaching the fine art of rhetoric. At first I thought I was the only one hearing it and that maybe it was only my perverse imagination, but afterwards everyone attending the meeting sneaked up to each other, saying:

Did he really say fitta, or was it just me?

So, I guess no one is perfect… 🙂

I saw this four things meme going around the blogging world but was kind of hoping it would miss me. Just as things seemed to quiet down, though, Roger got me. Make sure to follow the links from this post, some of them are actually interesting! 🙂

Here goes:

Four jobs I’ve had in my life

• Working in a gas station
• Packaging trucks for UPS
• Sales man
• Web developer

Four movies I can watch over and over

I love movies, and I also have reviews of some in my movies section. Not sure I would really watch Big Fish over and over, but it’s an amazing movie and everyone should see it.

• American Beauty
• Big Fish
• Finding Nemo
• Forrest Gump

Four places I have lived

• Bromma, Sweden
• New York City, USA
• Stockholm (Södermalm), Sweden
• Vallentuna, Sweden

Four TV shows I love to watch

Same goes here as for movies; I love watching TV. To be allowed to only pick out only four TV shows is excruciating to me.

• Lost
• Prison Break
• Friends
• Seinfeld

Four places I have been on vacation

• Easter Island
• New Zealand
• China
• Mexico

To travel is something fundamental in my life, and I have been to many places. Our longest trip is when Fredrika and I went around the world in 2002 .

Four of my favorite dishes

• Scampi
• Quesadillas (chèvre cheese, jalapenos, honey and prosciutti in a garlic-flavored pita bread, nicely warmed up in a grill frying pan)
• Pizza
• Fish soup with saffron and garlic bread

Four websites I visit daily

• GMail
• Netvibes
• Google
• StatCounter

Four places I would rather be right now

Since I’ve been to many places, I thought I’d mention four places I haven’t been to but that I really get to visit one day.

• Egypt
• Peru
• Antarctica
• Madagascar

Four bloggers I am tagging

• Jens Meiert
• SilentWarrior
• Steve Williams
• Julian Rickards

Technically speaking, he hasn’t got a blog (to my knowledge), but I still just have to name him as a runner-up, because I know he would put together an outstanding (and maybe horrifying?) list: Mr. Robert Wellock.

I would actually want to tag each and every one of you kind enough to read my ramblings, so please please feel free to share your four items in any or all of the categories below in a comment!

I’m sorry, but I just have to share this amazing list with you: Top 10 Wackiest Conspiracy Theories. I mean, a list with the items mentioned below is just to good to miss!

• Dinosauroid-like Alien Reptiles are dominating the World
• Apollo 11 Moon Landings were faked by NASA
• September 11 was orchestrated by the U. S. government
• Barcodes are really intended to Control people
• Charlemagne never existed, is a fictional character
• The Truth is out there, on Area 51
• Microsoft sends messages on Wingdings Font
• U.S. military caused the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami
• The Nazis had a Moon Base
• Kentucky Fried Chicken makes black men impotent

Happy conspiring!

(Through CNET)

This is just too cute not to write about!

A year after they first met, Owen, the baby hippo that survived last December’s Tsunami, and Mzee, a 130-year-old tortoise are still best pals. They live together at the Haller Park preserve in Mombasa, Kenya.

Read more in Tale of the tortoise and the hippo.

I just thought that I’d share some of the things I’ve read in the paper lately… Please have some oversight with my not-so-appropriate comments.

Want to get rid of your problems?

Apparently a 54-year old police man started to give indecent proposals to a 27-year old woman he was questioning about an assault case. I just love this sentence he said to her (maybe something I should use more at work… or at home… ;-)):

Do you want to fuck your way out of trouble?

Practically harmless.

I saw an ad for how women could get bigger breasts (yes, I’m just a simple man with simple interests) the “natural way”, which apparrently was through some pills and such. But what really got my attention was the slogan they had:

Practically harmless compared to surgery.

The only way I can interpret this is that it’s risky as hell, but there’s at least something out there that’s riskier…

Look at me!

The Swedish Migration Board has gotten a lot of criticism lately because they celebrated with champagne and cake after a woman was rejected and not allowed to stay in Sweden. Another story I read this morning was about a supervisor dealing with a blind immigrant that came to their office and needed help with his apartment. Apparently they weren’t getting along in the discussions and had a somewhat heated argument, resulting in the supervisor exclaiming:

Look at me when I’m talking to you!

Tactful. I just love it when the most emphatical and professional people get the most important posts…

I have never believed that my web development skills would put me on the red carpet, but it came true Wednesday night. I had the immense pleasure of being invited to the gala premiere of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe here in Stockholm.

The reason I was invited is that I’ve become friends with a guy working for the client I’m currently doing some consulting for, and he got invited to it, and in turn invited me. So, a little far-fetched, but then my line of work actually did get me on the red carpet (or, actually, it was white due to the ice theme). A lot of Swedish celebrities were there, and little me. 🙂

When I got there, there was a long line of people outside the movie theater Rigoletto. After queuing for a while, we got to the door and got to go through a tunnel of some sorts, totally white and inside of it fake snow fell down on us. Lots of cameras, journalists, interviews; tables filled with wine, just for your pleasure. However, my impression was what some (most?) famous people were rather there to be seen and/or to see a movie for free and get something to drink.

The movie itself was ok. I really liked the first hour or so of it, building up the ambience. But after that, it kind of felt like they rushed through the movie, just crossing things off the list. Some of the digital effects were really spectacular, but one was, for no understandable reason, pretty shabby. So, all in all, definitely worth seeing but not as good as it could’ve been.

Wonder which my next gala premiere will be? 🙂

This morning it got a lot colder outside; -5 Celsius where I live. Therefore, time to switch to another jacket. The new jacket I wore today has got all these extra pockets and zippers, but only one inside of it. Since I need to stuff my gloves, cap, PDA and iPod in it, I started going through the other pockets, since I was slightly leaning to the left with a lot of things in that inner pocket.

After some searching, while standing on the subway, I found a pocket on the top right hand side. Wise from previous experiences, I know that some of these jackets have zippers like this that you only open up to get some air flow through, i.e. it’s no pocket so things will fall straight through, so I put my hand in to check that it inde ed was a genuine pocket.

However, I felt some kind of lump in it, and with me, curious as hell, I had to pull it out and see what it was. Sometimes I put paper in pockets just in case I ever need some to blow my nose or similar. But what I pulled up, amongst all the people standing around me, was a sock! After some weird glances, I promptly put the sock back into the pocket. I think I’ll go through the pockets within the safety of my home the next time…

I’m sorry, what’s that, honey? When I need to get up? Well, now I guess. Thanks for reminding me, sunshine!

is how it sounded in my head. But what came out was:

Uuuuggghh… My head.. God, I’m tired… Yeah, yeah, I know I have to get up and go to work… Ooooffff… Slowly, slowly…

The background to this is that we had a Halloween party at my work last night. Since I’ve been working at a customer’s for a number of months now, it was great seeing some old friends in the office, although I didn’t have the time to talk to all I wanted to. I also had an intriguing discussion with a woman I’ve never met before about lesbians, and she told me a fascinating story about one of her female friends. Oh well, this is not the time nor the place to go on about that (maybe girlspoke is rather the place to go for hot stories)…

Naturally, it got a lot later than it should have, and I got home around 1.30. Maybe not too late for some of you, but for me it is. Especially if I have to go to work the day after. So, anyway, I eventually managed to get out of bed and haul my body down to the breakfast table. Once there, my self-pity wasn’t well-met. For some reasons, my girlfriend and my daughter, both having terrible colds, seemed to think that their lack of sleep and being in bad states, was worse than my self inflicted pain.

Just to point this out more clearly, my daughter mustered the little strength she’s got in her body right now (poor thing), to bang things together and throw them really hard on the floor. I guess I deserved it…

Took a quick shower and got on my bike down to the train station. I knew time was sparse when it came to making in time to the train, but it turned out to be worse than that. As I got to the station, the train had just arrived and most people had already gotten on it. Since it was later in the morning than usual and the fact that I’m living in a suburb, means that if I miss a train I have to wait twenty minutes for the next one. Not acceptable.

So I locked my bike, and darted across two lanes of traffic without throwing a single glance in any direction but the train’s. I heard the hissing sound of the doors starting to close, and jumped. I was literally in mid-air when the doors closed behind me. I landed in the train, bounced a little on my shaky feet, and hit a metallic trash can. It gave out a loud ring and everyone in the train turned to look at me. Well, I made the fucking train, didn’t I? 😀

Once I got to Stockholm, I picked up one of the free morning newspapers that are offered. Its first page headline read:

Every third Swede is home from work today

God, I really should’ve been one of those (it was an article about people that are unemployed). Also, this newspaper has a spot for guest comic strips. The one today, a brand new one, was called Robert’s store. It was about a guy having a record store with all kinds of hard to find records, but apparently, the income from selling them wasn’t sufficient to make ends meet, so he sold second hand porn magazines in the back. Felt like a worthy line of work for someone with my name…

Oh well, I’m glad it’s Friday at least. Have a nice weekend! 🙂

Tonight the company I work for host a (late) Halloween party for its employees. What I’m going as? A prostitute. Or rather, I’m wearing slacks and shirt, going as as a consultant. Same shit, different name…

I mean, really! They’re lying there, looking oh so pretty, with their passionate orange color and shaped like female breasts. They lure you in, they call and they seduce you.

So you give in. You take one and start to peel it; then it happens. It turns on you, its peel is impossible to separate from the actual fruit itself, you use your best finger work, but nothing. Nothing!. And if you’re one of the actual few, someone people talk about in folklores, a person that has actually managed to remove the peel, you come to the next level.

Trying to separate the orange wedges. There’s some kind of white unknown cocoon around them, preventing you from actually separating one of the wedges from the other, and you get a tingling sensation of the orange actually gloating now.

Then, as always, you end up jamming your thumb and your index finger into the orange, spurting fruit juice all over yourself and the room. You’re fingers are all sticky, but you won. You won!

Here’s one of those posts again that will put me as not apropriate to be being a company-run blog…

There might not be a whole lot of truth to this story, but I read about fashion designer Alexander McQueen, that when he was 16, he stitched this phrase into the lining of a suit jacket for Prince Charles:

I am a cunt

Maybe it’s just the rebel in me, but I do like this sense of humour… 🙂

Friday night, we had a power outage in the area where I live. Pretty cozy when everything goes dark, and looking out over the neighborhood, I realized how much everyone’s overusing lights and electricity. Anyway, Fredrika and I lit a lot of candles, crawled up in our couch and…

No! What did you think there? 🙂

We watched a TV programme on the laptop, since it was the only thing working in the house. Pathetic or nice?

Oh my God. I just sat in a meeting, and present were also a non-Swedish speaking attendee, so it was held in English. I was going to describe a scenario, but in the same sentence I repeatedly used the word “cunt” instead of “count”…

That’s me, folks. Building bridges…

This morning I read this really dirty joke by Sarah Silverman:

A couple nights ago, I was licking jelly off my boyfriend’s penis . . . and I thought, Oh, my God – I’m turning into my mother!

Maybe there’s something wrong with me, or I’m sick in some way, but I find that hilarious!

PS. Me publishing things like this is probably one of the reasons why my blog can’t be owned or endorsed by any major company… DS.

Yesterday I went to Björn’s birthday party; he was turning 80 years old! Great food and meeting lots of people I don’t usually meet. As is custom at these occasions, Björn got lots of bottles of wine. One of them came in a nice styled golden bag, he picked up the bottle and the conversation went:

		- Oh my, this was a nice bottle. 
		Turning to his wife:
		Who was this from?
		The wife rummages through the golden bag, 
		picks up a card, and reads it aloud:
		-Merry Christmas, Ville!
		Best wishes, David.
	

Freaking hilarious! I love it when these things happen!

How is it in your life? Is it common that you pass on gifts like bottles of wine (i.e. gifts that shouldn’t be traceable) to other people?

I thought I’d write some short comments about some recent Swedish news, just to express my view on them.

Deputy Prime Minister Bo Ringholm thinks the Swedish police is lazy

Apparently he did an interview over the phone, and didn’t hang up properly. The journalist stayed on the line and taped a two minute conversation between Bo Ringholm and another guy, saying things that should only be said behind closed doors (especially if you’re the Deputy Prime Minister).
But I guess this goes to show what happens if managers don’t learn the technical aspects properly… 😉

Man evicted for standing up when peeing

An old guy living in the town of Sundsvall in an apartment building was evicted by his landlord for the reason that when we went up to pee at night, it evidently made such ringing sound throughout the whole building so everyone got disturbed. The man, of course, fights this and says that it’s definitely his right to pee whichever way he wants to in his own apartment. I couldn’t agree more. Get some isolation in the skanky house instead.

Column about the ruckus in Ronna

This is quite a long story, so I won’t try to cover it here. I just wanted to say that Nima Daryamadj has written a great column expressing his view (a view I share a 100%).

Saturday night we went to a party at some friend’s house, partly to celebrate that they’ve moved to a new house, partly that he’s turning 30 in a couple of days. There were lots of people there and we sat outside at long table having a great dinner, playing freaky games (at one time I had a plastic bag over my head, paper teeth and plastic glass eyes…) and generally having a good time.

For all of you that don’t live in Sweden: it gets cold at night. I kid you not, smoke was coimg out of my mouth when I was talking, and conversations were like:

-Where did all the mosquitoes go?
-The frost took 'em...

In the middle of the night I ventured inside, into the kitchen, to where some others had also fled to escape the cold. Three guys were standing together, seeming to talk about something with great engagement, so I gathered it was really interesting and went up to them. Their topic was how different kinds of salt could enhance the taste of different meals, and one of them was proudly showing two salt cans and lecturing about them. Man, was I disappointed!

I gave them a scolding for being such sissies, told them that they should be ashamed of theirselves. Drunk men should talk about boobs and asses. That’s the way it’s always been, and the way it should stay (doesn’t matter if it’s about womens’ or mens’, as long as it’s a sexual conversation).

I eagerly moved on to the next group of people, this one consisting of only women. God, does women change when they get drunk, or what? Their conversation used many words I couldn’t even write here, but it’s suffice to say that it was about sex and it was way too revealing. Drunk men are just the same, just thinking and talking a little bit slower than usual. But women, man, they know how to party, how to let it all loose!

Also, sadly enough, later on I got to know things I really shouldn’t know, terrible stories that really left me dumbfounded. Sometimes I think I know too much… I just feel like I’m gonna burst. But don’t worry, trust me, your secrets are safe with me.

The morning after, I got out of bed to go change diapers on my daughter, Emilia. When that that was done and I exited the bathroom, I heard a loud knock from our front door, just next to me. We have a little round window in the front door, so visiting guests can peer in. Unfortunately, it was my mother-in-law doing the knocking and peering, and even worse, I was standing there butt naked with Emilia in my arms. Just the way I wanted the Sunday to start…

PS. If you like life reflections like this, I’m full of them. Preferably I should tell them in person, so you get the chance to see me gesticulating with an elated look on my face. 🙂 DS.

I just read a headline from one of our big Swedish news papers:

10-year old panda stuck in tree

I mean, WTF!

First, what news value is that?

Second, isn’t the whole purpose of a panda’s life to climb trees? How the hell dit it get stuck?

If you’re one of those persons who are fed up with people talking about their babies, or you just want to only read about web developing, you should stop reading now. Othwerwise, please read on and let me share something from my weekend.

It goes without saying that Saturday morning, after two weeks of intensive sun here in Sweden, it was cloudy when I got up (why wouldn’t it be clody, when i finally had some time to go out). We did some things inside for a while, like putting up paintings and pictures on the wall, but then I suggested that we get out and take a short walk to get some air. Fredrika (my girlfriend) and Emilia (my eleven-months old daughter) seemed to be up for the idea, so out we went.

Emilia was put in the stroller and we walked around the hill where we live and past the nearby golf course and its driving range. I found some range balls that Emilia and I played around with, and she found it hilarious!
Then, as we turned into the steep climb up to the hill again, I turned to Fredrika and said:

Aren’t you happy now that I suggested that we go for a walk?

The moment I uttered those words, the sky literally opened. Straight away, the rain was pouring down with such intensity it actually hurt when it hit your body. I managed to get the small roof over Emilia and the umbrella to protect her from the “sun”, and then I sprinted uphill with her to get home. After me and Fredrika running through the rain for some minutes, we got to the house. We were drenched, and all the fabric in our clothes were so wet it had become see-through, no matter the original color.

After that, the rest of the day the weather switched schizophrenically between shining sun and pouring rain; as soon as I tried to go out, I could feel driplets falling on me again. I decided to spend the rest of the day inside.

So, instead I was just playing around with Emilia. It’s hard, if not impossible, to describe how amazing it is to have a child. It doesn’t matter how hard a day has been, how many narrow minded or just plain evil people I’ve met; when I come home and see her smile all my troubles are gone. She’s been walking for a couple of weeks now, and is currently trashing around, totally fearless.

She has this little book with pictures of animals, and being the pedagogic father I am (read: try to be), I point to the pictures and make the sound of that animal: Cow – Muu, etc. But then came the tricky part: what in the hell kind of sound does a hedgehog make???!!!

I quickly browsed past that page and continued with my excellent sheep and horse impressions. Emilia is the reason I want to live, she’s my everything. 🙂

No, not another one of my travel anecdotes. Just a hilarious FAQ from an Australian Tourism web site.

Today I officially dub Friday the off-topic day, i.e. the day when my post won’t be about web developing. Fridays will contain different anecdotes, maybe some general opinion about something or so, but no web techniques discussed. Let me know if you think off-topic Fridays are a good idea!

Three years ago, my girlfriend and I went on a long trip around the world. We were away for almost five months, and pictures can be seen in our travel web site documenting it. Unfortunately for you non-Swedish speakers, the accompanying diary extracts are in Swedish, but if we meet one day I’ll be happy to tell you all about it!

Just the other day, I told a short story from that trip to a couple of my colleauges at work, and since I like the story, I thought this would be a good place to re-tell it.

We were in Santiago, Chile, for a couple of days, mostly just waiting for our flight to Easter Island. Since we had some non-scheduled time and being that close to the Andes, the vast mountain range that is stretching across the majority of South America’s west coast, we thought: “Why don’t we go see them”. Trying to get around on my extremely simple knowledge of Spanish, we started to ask people how to get to the Andes. Surprisingly enough, no one understood us. At all. But finally, someone we spoke to nodded and said: “Ah, los Andes!”. And I thought: “Well, los is plural and Andes sounds fine, so yes, we must talk about the same place here”. We got directions to the bus terminal from where we were supposed to take a bus.

Once at the bus terminal, we eventually found out what bus to get on, and boarded it. The system they have there for tickets is a conductor on the bus that asks you where you’re going and charges you accordingly. So when the conductor came up to us and told us the price, naturally, we didn’t understand him at all. The Spanish got a bit too complicated and their currency isn’t worth too much, so the number he gave us was too high to understand (once you’re past “cinco”, which means five in Spanish, you’ve lost me). We tried to ask him in English, but his knowledge in the English language was, shall we say, somewhat limited. He just kept on saying: “More money, more money” in a thick accent.

But then I came up with a brilliant idea: “Let’s give him some paper and a pencil, and then he can write the figure down for us”. So I handed it to him, thinking the problem was solved. He accepted it, jotted something down on the paper, and gave it back to me. I turned the paper over, and it literally read: “More money”…

Anyway, after (probably) paying the correct fare, we eventually got going with the bus. After a two hour bus ride we were finally at our destination. Or were we? I looked out of the bus’ window, and saw a village sign that read: “Los Andes”. It was the name of a small pueblo (village in Spanish), not the actual mountain range. But the village was located at the foot of the actual mountains, so it was close enough. Unfortunately, though, it wasn’t actually up in the mountains, where we wanted to go. So after talking to the (not one, but the) woman in a small tourist information office, she advised us to take a local bus to something called Rio Blanco.

After one hour on the local bus, which was so overheated the bus driver’s son had to fill water into the engine all the time, he announced to us that we had reached our destination. We got off the bus and realized that Rio Blanco basically just consisted of a gas station and a river (guess the river’s name…). We took a short stroll up in the mountains, looked around and got back down to take the local bus back half an hour later. Three hours later, we were back in Santiago, after having spent a total of 6 hours on buses that day.

Interestingly enough (maybe some subconcious connection), I’m going to have a salary negotiation today with my boss, and what the heading reads comes to mind…

PS. Have a nice weekend, next post will be on Monday! DS.

New York, New York.

During the midst of the IT hype companies offered a recruitment bonus, if one could find other skilled (or non-skilled, that didn’t really matter…) developers that wanted to start working in your company. So did the company I worked for back then too, and their bonus would be some kind of trip. We ended up going to NYC in February 2000.

I hadn’t really had a crush on new York before this, but it was a great trip, and we did and saw many things during those days. After this, I fell in love in the city. Given the business climate back then, pretty much everything was possible, so I decided I wanted to get a job in NYC.

I got in touch with Razorfish who got very interested. We discussed back and forth and I got an offer that was, in my eyes, unbelievably good. I still haven’t earned as much before tax in Sweden, than I did in NYC after tax. Needless to say, life was gooooood.
There were going to be some problems getting me visa, though, but after a lot of hassle I flew over June 2nd 2000 (as a normal tourist visit, one was allowed to stay in the country three months without a visa) and the plan was to sort those things out while I was there, on location.

Still terribly sun-burned from a kick-off trip with Razorfish Sweden to Ukraine, of all places, I took a cab to the city and checked in into my Holiday Inn in ChinaTown. Sleeping the sleep of the jet-lagged, I woke up around 6 AM the following Saturday, and got myself to Central Park, watching some kids play baseball while having a bottle of water and an ice-cream.

Razorfish were supposed to get me a place to stay, but, how should I put it… It wasn’t the firsth thing on their list, so to say. After my initial stay in Holiday Inn I stayed a week in the company apartment in Battery Park City with two other guys, then back to Holiday Inn again.

Finally, after presenting myself in a company meeting in the main office, a girl came up to me afterwards. Her name was Lisa and she was originally from Sweden, but they had moved to the US when she was four years old (although her Swedish was still almost impeccable) and her father was a professor at Stanford University. She told me that her room-mate had just moved out and that she had a spare room, if I was interested. We talked for a while and it turned out that she was going away for business for a week, but that I could live in the apartment during that time, and if things worked out, we could prolong my stay.

I went by a couple of days before she was leaving and picked up the key. Sitting around in my Holiday Inn room, I eagerly packed my things (again) and waited for moving day. Her apartment was located in Greenwich Village in West 12th St, which was a golden location. It was on the top floor (5th), but it was actually 8 stairs and with at least 30° Celsius and about 100% humidity, it took some effort to climb them.
From the living room the view overlooked WTC, and I liked those towers even more than the Empire State Building and the Chrysler building. When my brother came to visit, we went up on the roof of one of the towers, and standing up there really felt like being on top of the world!

I moved there and the week went by and I was as happy and content as can be, when I realized that she would be coming home the next day. I scavenged the apartment for cleaning tools, but to my disappointment I only found a handheld vacuum cleaner, aptly named Dirt Devil.

I crawled around the apartment for what seemed like forever, and cleaned every inch and corner that could be found. I mean, I just had to be allowed to stay in that apartment. Luckily for me, she was really easy-going and I got to stay there for the remaining time of my visit.
Lisa’s boyfriend was a professor at MIT, working with AI. The funny thing is, one day when he was visiting her, he saw my JavaScript – The Definitive Guide book lying around. He turned to me, and said: “Wow, I’d really like to learn JavaScript one day”. And the thing is, it didn’t sound as he was mocking me, it sounded like he actually meant it! 🙂
Once during my stay, I found a picture of her father and the Swedish King, during a trip they did to Africa.

Not for bragging purposes, but just to describe what will happen during a stay in NYC:

One day when I was sitting in the office, Michael Stipe of REM just walked in. As it turns out, he was a friend of one of the Razorfish founders and had just decided to stop by…
Other things were:

• Having dinner next to Calvin Klein in a small restaurant in the meatpacking district
• Going to the David Letterman Show with Bruce Willis as the guest (Bruce was playing around with his harmonica during the commercial break).
• Seeing Little Richard playing in a small club called B B King Blues Club & Grill, being just just 5 metres from the stage!
• Going to concert after concert in Madison Square Garden.
• Getting to hear Gloria Gaynor perform ‘I Will Survive’ on July 4th, a day that also had its fair share of fireworks.

and so on…
Amazing things in an amazing city.

I also really enjoyed the American Museum of Natural History wich has such fantastic displays that I was speechless. One of my favorite things of theirs are the different fossils and remnants of dinosaurs and other unthinkable creatures.
A thing that was a really inconceivable and unbelievable event was going to the The New York Public Library, where they had the actual notes and sketches from Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Tyco Brahe among others. I mean, their actual work! I was baffled.

Being in NYC, going to Broadway shows is also mandatory. I went and saw The Phantom of the Opera, Miss Saigon and Jekyll & Hyde, where the former vocalist of Skid Row, Sebastian Bach, played the leading the character (after I went home to Sweden, we was replaced with, lo and behold, David Hasselhof!).

So many other things happened too, but there will be another time and place to tell about them.

In the end, things didn’t work out with getting a work permit and visa, so I had to go home to Sweden again. But I had three amazing months!

PS. I’ll write more on Monday, take care of yourselves and have a nice weekend! DS.
PS2. Markus, aka wobbler, is unfortunately leaving the company I work for today. Sad, but life goes on. Good luck, Markus! DS.

First of all, I have to tell you something funny that happened at work yesterday…
I was trying to convince the girl sitting next to me to watch the movie Finding Neverland, and we talked generally about the movie. Then I went to Aftonbladet.se and copied a quote from their review of the movie and sent it to her through MSN Messenger.
It read something like: “A fabolous tribute to the lust of dreaming and writing”.

The
thing was, they had talked about our intranet in between while I was
doing this, so she thought the quote was my opinion about our intranet!
🙂
I really wish we had an intranet that gave me that feeling!

Which leads me to the topic of today…
Naturally,
everyone wants as much internal information as possible. but are
traditional intranets the way to go? How many visit their intranets at
all?
They who don’t or who rarely does, is it out of lack of time, boring intranet layout/form or “dead” content?

Something
I think there’s a lot of talk about is internal portals in the
companies, where people shouldn’t have to look for documents on a lot
of mapped network drives, but instead use a common general interface to
access all relevant information, which of course would be role-based as
well.
Is this the way to go?