Other stuff that has happened this week...

A big deer with antlers appeared in the garden 2 mornings in a row

The cat got more ticks and I had to remove them (try catching a cat, holding it between your logs, grabbed its head and tilting it backwards with one hand, while brandishing your tick removal device with the other - here's a tip, its bloody difficult and the cat can probably be relied upon to struggle intensly and make wierd noises)

I went to the swedish GP and had my ear syringed, after speaking a whole load of crap Swedish to the receptionist and the nurse. Good fun though in the end - and by god I can hear in my right ear again now!

I went go-karting again on Wednesday, but didn't win this time. I spun twice and came 3rd.

Things I'm reading - SQL Server development team intranet site - its full of interesting things.

I tried the new QOOP photo printing service which is tied into flickr. I've used their photo book service before, but haven't tried prints - we'll see how it goes - dead cheap and easy though - their interface was fairly impressive - as it was when I had my book printing previously. I can't recommend it enough.

I changed my blog template slightly.

I went to Croydon for the weekend and partied hard.

Why don't my toenails grow anymore?

a good question or what? ever since I've moved to Sweden they just don't grow. Does anyone have an explanation for this? Frankly I find it very strange.

Kings of Leon Rock

So I've been sitting at home all evening playing computers (as I often do at the moment) - well after its dark anyway - cos as a Swede said to me the other day - its summer , you must leave work by 5pm if not earlier every day - and take beer in the sun - its compulsory....they really mean it as well.

some guys were betting me at lunch the other day that I'd stop smiling come winter - or at least come half way through winter as I'm known at work for being a bit too jolly I think. Strange that - especially as I was a bit miserable in June, but then maybe its just that I stand out against the quiet and restrained swedish men somewhat...anyway

so yeah - I'm here and I'm listening to the kings of leon (youth and yound manhood) and frankly its just absolutely f'ing excellent and has had me dancing about the room and acting like a bit of a tit generally....nice!

On Wednesday i went to a party in central stockholm, and got absolutely ratted with a load of people from work. It was a pleasant evening indeed, I spoke alot of very bad swedish, we drunk alot of cocktails and I made a few friends.


It was a classic case of planning to leave at a reasonable hour, getting to the front door and then being confronted by drunken swedes saying "one for the road" - in swedish of course - and 2 hours and a bottle of whiskey later, well you know how it goes....

I can;t really remember how I got home, but I made it all in one piece, so alls well that ends well. It was good to be out and about and being social, although frightening difficult at times doing the whole swedish thing. fortunately of course we can alwasy break into english when anything gets tough, but I've been really trying generally.

Often at lunchtimes now, I have to speak swedish with my colleagues. They find it entertaining (sometimes) and I get some good practice.

Sarah has started a new swedish course this week, but I'm unable to because they're all during the day in the summer months. My next one ought to start in september hopefully.

anyway - beyond that my focus is about being excited with an imminent return to the Uk for toms stag at the the end of the month

so roll on croydon fun.

a quiet evening at home

So i worked a 11 hour day today which was far too long and my head was a bit rotted at the end of the day, from looking at query plan cardinality estimations.

The cat's sitting on my lap and I'm stroking her ears. Life is good in the cat world.

If anyone wants to instance message during the day I can IM at work now, and at home of course, but I'm always online during the day and my IM account is globalgoat@gmail.com

login and say hello....

A slow week

I've been a bit miserable this week. I've missed alot of people in London and wished that I could just go out for a quick beer. Hey Ho - I'm going back on the weekend of 28th July for 4 days, so that'll be good.

Obviously I went back to London on the weekend of 9th June and I had a pretty damn fine time all in all. I rushed around and saw a lot of people. It was totally great to hook up with everyone, even if it was only for a few hours sometimes, but it was a bloody great time.

So there we go.

Thoughts apart from that:

Reading: Debugging Applications for .NET and Windows (well re-reading some of it in truth)
Meaning to also re-read: Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance – its been a while
Meaning to lookup: is there a new Douglas coupland novel out? Its been ages since I read any fiction, its just been tech tech tech for past 3 months
Apart from: Guardian Weekly, and a copy of the “real” guardian I got at central station during the week – G2 heaven – I do miss it.

Thinking: Cycling to work – brilliant
Exercising: see above + swimming in lakes, and more swimming in lakes – nice!! And a few weights at home since my shoulders are feeling almost fixed…..

Working: SQL Performance issues mostly this week, and fixing next door neighbours PCs – well trying to anyway, I always find it hard to say no to request like this, but then you just know what you’re going to find – a mirriad of half installed half removed malware internet downloaded hardware conflicting device crunching driver corrupting application hanging type of crap. If it was mine I’d wipe it clean and start again!!

Drooling over: New Lego Mindstorms NXT , due out in 6 weeks to general release – I need to try this I think. I definately need to build some robots. My neighbour has one of those robotic lawnmowers. I watch it trundle around the garden. In terms of lawnmowings, its utterly inefficient, it takes about 3 hours to cut a tiny 10 sq metres lawn, but its dead good to watch.....(insert your own comment about how sad I am here!)

No web access at home

So here we are – it must be about 3 weeks or more since I managed to post something. My lack of internet connection at home is beginning to become tiresome. Here’s the thing, I’ve moved house (check out the pictures on flickr) and its f’ing amazing, but its taking an age for the internet to be enable at the exchange its just like UK really in that regard, there is the ex state run monopoly fixed line provider who has all the infrastructure, and my ISP, who has sold me a lovely deal of 24MB connection with first 3 months free, is being delayed in enabling my connection. Anyway, only about another 2 weeks to wait now hopefully, but its quite frustrating.

OBVIOUSLY, I can use the web at work, but for reasons to long to write here I haven’t – well not for much personal stuff anyway. A simple point would be to say that during the days I’ve been too busy to blog and upload photos etc, and in the evenings I haven’t been in the mood to stay in the office and do personal things.

Both mums were here for a week and Emma is here now, so its not been a good time to geek out at the office, when I ought to be at home socialising. Suffice to say I have much web withdrawal symtoms, so the girls have gone into town today and I’ve been walking round the garden outdoors, trying to find the optimal spot to connect to my neighbours unsecured wireless connection.

This isn’t as bad as it sounds, as he said I was welcome to share it its just that I can’t get a good signal anywhere. So I’m now sitting on his terrace, at his garden table – uploading my flickr and writing this. He’s away in the archipelago anyway, with the rest of Stockholm for midsummer weekend, so I have the place to myself – its just not the most ergonomic of desks!! I may actually go into the office later to use their connection as it might be easier.

There are about 4 other wireless signals in sight of here, but unfortunately all are encrypted…..

A busy but interesting week

Its Saturday morning and sarah has just returned from a flying visit to the UK to have all our possessions packed at the old house and shipped over here. This all went suitably to plan by all accounts, and in just 12 more days I can get out of this bloody hotel room and move into a proper damn house with some furniture. It can’t come soon enough frankly….I’m sitting here catching up on email etc now though listening to the artic monkeys and life feels good.

Anyway, all this feeling has led to is my continuing devotion to study and reading of various natures. This week has had 2 major events.

1. Microsoft finally letting me loose on real work – admittedly I’m still a bit slow compared to most other people there so I haven’t quite got a full workload in any sense, but at least I’m starting. I’ve done much bloody theoretical training the past 4 weeks, its been good to look at some real situations, and get back to solving people’s problems, although I haven’t actually solved any yet as they’re so damn difficult, but then that’s the whole point.

The basic point is that even the easiest of cases within my new workload is at the higher end of anything I’ve done before. This is what I’d hoped for and this is what I’ve got. Now I’ve made by bed I’d better damn well lie in it.

I’m loving it.

2. Swedish Classes starting

I thought that I would love this, but its not turned out quite so well so far. I am learning stuff and I’m enjoying the homework and self study but I’m not enjoying the actual class that much. I think this is probably because I don’t like the teacher that much which is something I‘ve never experienced in Adult education previously, I just don’t like her style very much. I think she may well be a good teacher, we just don’t gel very much. But anyway I‘ll finish the class, its only another 4 weeks and then maybe I’ll change to a different tutor.

Currently I’m reading:

“How would you move mount fuji”

which is a book about Microsoft interview puzzles and logical thinking etc.

Plus of course the usual amount of technical information which has become my style for the past 5 weeks.

I’ve also been playing with speed reading techniques and trials and evaluations following some interesting conversations at work about enabling yourself to take in more information and comprehend it better as well. I’m finding it shockingly fascinating. It may well be something I’ll put some time towards in the coming weeks. In fact it definitely will be if I think about it more now – its amazing stuff. I’ve always been a vey fast reader anyway (well so I thought) so it was interesting to quantify myself against an average set anyway, and then the idea of being able to double your speed is frankly remarkable. We shall see if it works or not…

So yeah the mid week section has just been work – Swedish class – homework – work – Swedish class homework.

Now that sarah’s back though I can just have a chilled weekend 9with maybe a little Swedish homework!).

Last weekend I spent a long time out walking on my own in the nature reserve up the road again. I found a great animal / bird watching hide and spent a while checking out some deer and lots of water / wading birds. As ever it was eerily quiet and I only saw a couple of other people in 4 hours or so, and yet its not like it wilderness, its just 10 minutes from the motorway and right inside the suburbs of Stockholm. There’s just so much space here.

I’m feeling halfway to being a proper employee Swedish resident now, as I got my first pay slip this week and used my sweidsh bank account and that type of thing. It all helps.
I’m going off in a few minutes to eat fish in a big indoor market in the city, which ought to be rather cool as well.

I learnt another interesting thing about Swedish employment law this week as well. Although I get paid holiday from Microsoft, apparently you also get paid by the Sweidsh government when you take holiday. The guys were having trouble explaining this concept to me, and they were saying things like “it seems to good to be true eh, but it really does work like this”. From what I understand it’s something like when you claim SSP in the Uk, or maternity benefit, in that your company may choose to pay you or not pay you under certain scenarios, but there is a minimum covering payment you get from the government in case you don’t get this as an employee benefit, thereby allowing people to take holiday without too heavy a financial benefit. It’s a legal right of any Swedish employee to request a 4 week consecutive holiday between June and august and the employer HAS to grant it.

So basically the more holiday you take in a month the more you get paid!! I have yet to see quite how true or valuable this is, but I’ll know next month when I’ve taken some.

Beyond that, well I’ve booked a flight back to the UK for flying visit of 48 hours on 9 june so I hope to catch up with lots of people then.