Etiam victus

"It is impossible to achieve the aim without suffering"
- J.G. Bennett

Ps. the header is possibly wrong, but it should say 'still alive' in latin. Wasn't that clever...

Inner silence

Spiced up the morning jog some. I ran 3km interval at 11km/h, with the elevation following a standard bell curve over a 20 min duration. Looking back at some earlier posts, I must have been doing some slower speeds.. Back at Arcada I ran (trotted?) 3 km in 30 minutes. That's just barely over walking speed. 11km/h is alright.

When I'm practiced up I'll try to maintain 15km/h, which should give me a good 3km Cooper. This is more running than jogging though.. Maybe one day it would be nice to have run the marathon. To be a Marathon man. Level-up IRL. hah! It would be easier if they created like a 'miesten kymppi' event (after the women's 10km annual event).

... so much for that, here's something that came throug on my last.fm personal radio station here at work, and I wanna share it with you. It may seem a little emo, but I really like this song.

Anathema: Inner Silence

When the silence beckons,
And the day draws to a close,
When the light of your life sighs,
And love dies in your eyes,
Only then will I realise,
What you mean to me.

Have a nice wknd

Time flies..

Wow, weeks go on by. Here's a quick update:

1. I got the thesis done.
2. Got some free time now
3. Work is good, life is good/ok.
4. Fall sucks, it's just too dark.
5. I like my work & co-workers!

Good stuff. I've been trying to get a little more active with sports.
The training regimen I'm trying on now is as follows:

- Tuesday, before work: 3km jog and some weights.
- Thursday evening: Squash 1 hour
- Friday, before work: 3km jog and some weights again
- Sunday noon: Squash 1 hour

The main bulk of my new-found free time has mostly been spent on catching up on reading, watching movies and playing some games. The computer's been upgraded a little thanks to a motherboard meltdown. I'm now running an Asus P5k with 4Gb ram and an Nvidia 8800gts 640. Seems to be running games alright. A bigger, better monitor is something I'd like very much, the 22" is a little limited by the resolution.

Some other purchases: A Canon S5is digicam & Canon Pixma mp600. They get the job done for most of the digital work that needs to be done.

Minna's been quite busy trying to juggle 3 jobs and her final year at school. There's also been some unwanted drama from her family's side. Without getting into details, I'll just say that we're not currently on speaking terms with the most of them. Minna's little brother is still cool, but the rest I'm not so sure about. Sad state of affairs, but what can you do.

Anyways, that's it for now.

BLASTOFF

I think I'll start typing again, friends.

Some of the more recent events:

Workplace changed to Verkkokauppa.com
Thesis deadline 7 days!
I feel positive... :)

"Spring is in the air"

Well, it seems like spring is back again. The first symptoms of allergy are here, hooray. Time to dig out the old recipes and get some meds.. Have to cancel the squash game with Mr. M. today. So far I have not managed to write a single line of text for my thesis, but have instead been reading a 1950s history classic by Mr. Alf Henrikson: "Alf Henrikson: Antiikin tarinoita 1-2" third Finnish edition. "And how is that relevant to your thesis?" I hear you ask. None of your goddamn business! Perhaps I was trying to get some inspiration from the rhetorics of Cicero? :P

Anyways! It is a very readable history of ancient times. Periods covered are roughly 1000 bce to 500 ce. Great source of stories and highly acceptable. One thing that is bothering me, though - is the complete lack of accurate references. Given the sheer volume of quotable material, and the projected reader's interest in references (and the fact that the book was written in the 50s) this is arguably quite understandable. The author has a very casual writing style, similar to Veijo Meri (note: his non-fiction Finnish history series) & Henri Troyat (biographies..). Sometimes it is rather fun to just blaze through authors such as these. The more serious (from an academical perspective anyway!) writers, such as Anthony Beevor are a little more tedious to read. This does not mean that their books are any less enjoyable. The amount of detail and research that for an example Mr. Beevor puts into his books is quite respectable.


Back to other tasks...

It's been a while

Hello friends and e-friends. Looks like I will have to step it up some to make the 52 posts! That is still the big idea. Anyway, I will give an update of what's been going on in due time, perhaps with some backlogging posts, that'll go somewhere in the middle.

Here is a "thought for the day", taken from the proposed Blogger's code of conduct (against trolls):

"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it."

Lite brådis

I've been doing some hardware upgrades. Here's the short shopping list:

22" Samsung LCD display
Intel Core 2 Duo E4300
Asrock 4CoreDual-VSTA motherboard

The old 22" CRT display went bust and I had to get something to replace it. After a short browsing frenzy I went and got the Samsung from downtown, from the only place that actually had it in the shelf, Serv-it. A week or so later, I got annoyed by not being able to play HD-Divx movies. So it was time to look at a budget-friendly computer upgrade. The asrock's motherboard makes it possible to run either ddr or ddr2 memory, it supports both agp and pci-e slots, and takes any goddamn intel socket 775 cpu. Another plus is that it's dirt cheap. See, as far as motherboards go, you can shelf between 50-300 euros on them. This one is at the bottom range. I noticed it too, as soon as I had installed everything. Lots of crashes and freezes. Apparently their hardware support for ATA drives is pretty bad. Luckily it seems most of the problems are gone now that I used the drivers from the CD, and did not use new ones from the web. Strange. The E4300 is running at default clock speed now, I cannot be arsed to fiddle with it since everything is running smooth as it is.

Found a new, very handy image backup application. Acronis True Image 10. Speedy backups possible, easy to run restore (you can either install a boot menu, or run it from usb/cd, cool stuff). It helped quite considerably when my C:\ partition was being raped by the ASS-Rock motherboard. Luckily no important data was lost, but it was not a pleasant experience. I'm not used to fighting shitty hardware. But I'll have to say, now that it's running smooth, all is well.


Eventually I'll make the jump to decent motherboard and buy a monster 8800-gtx series graphic card. And overclock the HELL out of this cpu. But as things are now, I don't want to spend money in more hardware untill I've graduated.

Another monday half spent

Been a while since the last update. I've got to keep up! :)

Been a little sick again. Some fever, but it went away in the same day. Situation now: home alone, drinking coffee and getting ready mentally to work on my thesis.

I've been pulling 3-4 work shifts per week. On the off time I've been watching some episodes of twin peaks, Rome second season & playing games (America's Army, Continuum, Europa Univeralis III, Fable, Medieval 2: Total war). I've done quite a considerable amount of reading as well, sadly I don't have the library receipts to see the reading history. Anyway, it's been history mostly + some business books.

I've also done some work on the thesis. Btw, procrastination is a bitch.. but have no fear friends! There are ways to combat it, such as goal setting. The following is a dirty copy-paste to make this post appear longer:

Goal Setting
This is a very effective mechanism for limiting procrastination. The process requires taking some larger goal and breaking it down into a series of smaller tasks. For optimum effectiveness, these goals should have four properties: Specificity, Challenge, Proximity, and Routine. It works very much as Discounted Utility Theory, outlined on the Theory webpage, would predict.

1. Specificity
   Goal specificity refers to explicit standards and conditions that indicate their fulfillment. Increasing specificity has been shown to increase performance and, in turn, should decrease procrastination. To the degree one does not have a clear understanding of when goals are about to be achieved, the motivational benefits of temporal discounting do not occur. In other words, you should know exactly where your finishing line is.
2. Challenge
   Challenge of goal essentially increases its value. Achieving a difficult challenge is more rewarding than achieving an easy task. To avoid procrastination, challenging goals should be set as they have higher value and less easily overshadowed by other alternatives. To be effective, challenging goals should be set as they have higher value and are less easily overshadowed by other alternatives. Of note, expectancy is somewhat diminished by challenge. Consequently, there is an optimal breakpoint where the decreased expectancy of a goal outweighs the potential gains in satisfaction.
3. Proximity
   Ideally, your goals should be set though that they can be completed in a timely manner, perhaps today or even just this morning. Distant goals are substantially delayed, reducing the motivational effectiveness. The only reservation regarding proximity is that by dividing a large goal into variously spaced sub-goals, each sub-goal must necessarily be easier to achieve and thus less satisfying. Consequently, there should be a breakpoint where the further subdivision of a goal decreases achievement motivation more than can be offset by the decrease in delay.
4. Routine
   One predictor of procrastination is the number of “choice points” a task requires. The more junctures that require choice, the more likely it is that we will procrastinate. Consequently, one of the most powerful self-control techniques is the development of automaticity through routines. Automaticity refers to a habitualized course of action that can be conducted with little or no conscious attention. These automatic routines can maintain goal pursuit as they limit decision making to that relevant to the task at hand. Consequently, you should try to schedule your goals to occur at a regular time and a regular place. For example, if you trying to exercise, choose a day, a time, a place, and stick to it as best as possible. If sickness makes you miss a day, get back to it as soon as possible. Eventually, you won't be deciding to do other things. You will just find yourself effortlessly performing."

(In)discipline

Just a quick update. Typing frenzy. Thesis not coming along that well at all. There are so many distractions in the world. I'll keep this post short and wrap it up with a short responce to my problem from Mr. Robert Fripp:

Here is a question: what do you do when you have
no enthusiasm, no interest, and no energy?

Another question: what do you do when you
can't do anything?

The answer is simple: You do what has to be done.

The principle is this: suffer cheerfully.
Deliver your commitment on what has to be done.
Reliability is elementary.

RF

2007, another go at it

Hello all you boys and girls. My new years resolution is to try to give you 52 updates this year. I'll give you a brief 5-points update on what's gone down since the last time I updated:

1. Got married
2. Went on honeymoon (Bratislava & Prague, missed Wien due to shitty weather)
3. Started writing on a thesis
4. Got sick with pertussis, still recovering (!)
5. Started studying spanish

Untill next time

Ruisrock

Last Sunday we went to Ruisrock. The weather was hot (30-something celcius) and the music was good. That Sunday sported an amazing roster. I got to see four of my favorite bands. It cannot get much better than that. On top of that, there were quite a few decent bands to keep the good vibes rolling (Teräsbetoni, The Crash, The Cardigans, Poets of the Fall, Amorphis etc). Ismo Alanko threw a tremendous gig, I'd say one of the best, most intense performances I have ever seen live. It was well worth missing two songs from Morrissey's set to see Ismo Alanko Säätio. Speaking of Morrissey, he was surprisingly heavily built. I would not say fat, but stocky. Nevertheless, the setlist comprised of a few Smiths songs, while the main focus was on songs from the last two albums. I was really glad that they played "To me you are a work of art", however the performance of the guitar parts in the latter section of the song left something to be desired; perhaps the problem with that was in the mixing - the band seemed professional enough. Also, we were foolish not push our way to the center of the action (right in front of the stage), and thus were not really part of the performance; more just witnessess to it.

It was all different for the Ismo Alanko gig. There we went quite close to the stage, and as we knew almost all the songs by heart - we had a good time singing/shouting the lyrics. Ismo was all into it and really gave 110%! At times it seemed as if he had lost his mind turned into some primal creature. It was magnificent sight to behold.

Another favorite band that performed in Ruisrock was Scandinavian Music Group. We have seen them like 5 times in Tavastia. This was our first 'open air concert' with them. They were quite good, though they sadly did not play any songs that we had not heard before. The only unrecorded song which they played was "Lopulta Olemme Kuitenkin Yksin", which is one of their best slow tunes so far. The guitar playing and melancholy feel of song bring to mind an impression of Sade. That is a high compliment imo.

Anyway their gig was one of the highlights of the day. Joel Melasniemi was high on 'rock'n'roll' (compare with Ismo Alanko). At the ending stages of the song 'Rannalta Toiselle' he stepped up to the mic and began to scream as long and loud as he could, all the while giving his guitar a terrible riff-beating. Laughter and amusement! :) This is the kind of stuff good summers are made off.

Finally, the last band we got to see was TOOL. It was the last gig of their european tour. Tool is perhaps a studio band. They played absolutely brilliantly, but sounded 1:1 with their albums, which for me was a bit of a turn off - however not enough to ruin it for me. I would not have minded seeing them work some of the songs towards new paths. Improvisation and song transformation does not seem to fit into their consept. They put in a good show however, and I'm really glad to have seen them live. It's one of those bands that I've always wanted to see live (right up there with say, Nick Cave & King Crimson).

Jak se máte?

Many things have passed since I last posted. I studied an intense course of 'Czech for beginners' at the summer university of Helsinki. "Why the fuck did you want and go do that for?" I hear you ask. Well, firstly for the ECTS, secondly in preparation for our honeymoon. The schedule was grueling. For two and a half weeks, there were lessons from Monday to Thursday, 4.30pm-7.45pm. This mean going to work at 7.00am, so that I could leave at 3pm. I went to the classroom early, to catch up on homework (or should it be calle coursework, we're not in gradeschool anymore, folks). Due to my schedule (work, wedding plans etc), I had some difficulty doing the forementioned homework after class (in the late evenings), since usually when I came home I was hungry and had to cook something. Quite often there was also the regular chore of doing dishes before being able to do that. Naturally after having done all that crap & eaten, I regularily lacked the energy to pull off a proper final effort of the evening (say plowing through 4 pages of Czech grammar homework + learning 20 verbs by heart + 30ish nouns per day). Long days, they were, yes sir indeed. Not your average cakewalk summer, goddamnit. To top it off, there was the constant detail-minding of wedding related issues. You get the picture. It was hard times. I don't think I have ever been tested as much as with this course. The professor was constantly on your case. Would not leave you alone. Got you involved, whether you wanted or not. I suppose even getting it wrong is a matter of learning. Certainly makes you remember how to NOT say something, yeah? His methods were effective, though stress levels were high. Reminded me of the first week or two in the Army.

This is a good time to comment some of my fellow students. Out of a class of 15, two were male. Average age I would estimate to be around 40. During the course, three people dropped out - shame on them, and what a fucking waste of 98 euros! Out of the final 12, 8 were either teachers or university level students of languages (one was writing her thesis Russian language at the time). Rather academic a bunch. I have some aptitude for languages, but I could not hang with these damn women, with their superior language/communication oriented brains. Goddamn them all! Very discouraging. But of course it made you either 1. drop out or 2. try harder. I tried harder, but it was still annoying to see some of these women with their Czech workbooks filled before hand. Of particular annoyance to me was this approximately 45 year old 'student' majoring in russian. She was the worst. I bet you she had bought the book months in advance and learned it beforehand, even done all the homework. There was not a single eraser mark on her worksheet. Psycho. She was visually disappointed whenever she made a mistake in grammar or could not find the right word(s). And then when she got it right and -particularily- when the teacher praised her for her efforts, she had an annoying knack of raising her hands to the sides of his head, and pressing the palms of her hand to her cheeks, in order to not reveal the glowing smile that started beneath. Oh man. Overachiever. Nerd-geek-bastard. No-lifer. Loser. Ok I digress - I'll give her props for being good at what she's good at. Yawn... Languages are not my main forté, so I should let it slide. But still, her satisfaction with herself reached almost autoerotic heights. Pathetic.

Anyway! Eventually I managed to pull off grade 1 (out of 5) for the 4 ECTS. Not bad, considering how goddamn demanding the course was, and how limited my resources were. I am proud that I passed, truly am. After our honeymoon, there will be a continuation course starting. I plan to study a little bit for it in advance, and outdo myself...

What the fu**

I cannot keep this shit updated, it is impossible! Short scoop: I'm pulling 50+ hr work/studyweeks, and busy prepping the wedding. It has been a while since I last had 'proper time' just to do whatever the hell I liked. Next Wednesday is my Czech exam, untill then I will be grievously busy. Untill then & after, adios

What's new, pussycat?

Holy crap it's been a while has it not!? I've been keeping busy, honey. Keep your pants on. Or take them off! I turned 26 yesterday. Nice festivities at a nearby joint called Soul Kitchen. It's a cool theme bar: 60s 70s funk & groove music only. Cheap dishes of food, quite good too. We were there with a small crowd of 7. Started at 8pm, got home eventually around 1.40am. It was not so nice to wakeup at 7.40 to go to work. Minna had it worse, since she had to wakeup a little after 6. Ouch. Speaking of which, we are both working now, gearing up the financials since we're getting married this summer. I'm at my comfortable office, doing some accounting stuff. Minna's working at a hospital on a surgical ward, serving food & making beds and the sort.

I'll try to update some more shortly

Breaking promises

Sorry dear readers. Time is too scarce to fulfill my duties. I make no promises, except that my schedule should become quite a bit easier after easter holidays. Thank you! I will end this post with a quote from a Prince song, which is rather fitting considering the time of year.

"Sometimes it snows in April
Sometimes I feel so bad, so bad
Sometimes I wish that life was never ending,
But all good things, they say, never last"

Btw, I'm not depressed! It's just that it's snowing in April!

Oops I did it again

18.00 Hi. Yeah, a month rolled by. Blame it on the Hockey game Finland lost. I'll try to update a little later today, just letting you know that I'm still alive!

Rather decent tidings

Well now. The skiing holiday was a trip. Sitting in front of a fireside is one genuine pleasure. Adding wood when needed, drinking something warm (Stroh+water+sugar) & just relaxing. Hartola is pretty nice place. We have been there a few times together. It's Minna's uncle's old family place, a couple of cottages by the lakeside. Beautiful scenary, fresh forest air. We got lucky and managed to have one cloudfree night. The stars shone something incredible. It's simply impossible to see so many stars when you live in a city. Makes you feel rather small.

A few days away from Helsinki does one good. You get to tune out. Wake up when you feel like it, eat good food, drink wine & other alcoholic beverages. I enjoy being outside, but not so much in the city I guess. Having a sauna over there is different as well, as the bathhouse stove is manually wood-heated. The washing water has to be obtained from under 30 centimeters of ice.
This includes a few tasks. A littlee ice-boring, water-pumping, and bucket carrying. By the time you're done and actually have the sauna warming up & ready to go, you'll be needing it :)
Anyway, I got to know last friday that I was picked for the job. Excellent! I'll start working there from the beginning of May. I'm eager to see what it really is, though I can't say I'm expecting too much. But at least I will get to know something I've learned in school, even though I'm not specializing in financial accounting...

Finland vs Sweden in the Olympic hockey finals! Tomorrow's game is going to be a huge nailbiter. Let's hope we finally win gold. It's about goddamn time, and the team's good too!

Quick update

We just returned from a 4 day skiing holiday. And yes, indeed - it put on ski's for the first time since like the 80s! Wow. A proper update with some good news shall be given tomorrow. Now it's email frenzy & a quick roundup of what I've missed due to being disconnected for 4 days. Tomorrow also marks a nasty return to everyday life. Lectures from 8.30 to 16.00. Son of a Bitch.

It has begun.

Good day to everyone. With bacon and eggs on the stove, I begin my quick typing exercise. My final thesis is on the way! It's a humble beginning, a mere page: managed to type out a bit of an introduction. Only what, 39 pages to go? Hurrah. It's still something. I have yet to hear from the potential employer to be. I'll try not to get nervous about it. But I have to say, I was expecting an email to be sitting at my inbox saying 'welcome'. [The author returns to the kitchen to flip over bacon & eggs - returns] Sizzling - every now and then it's good to have a proper unhealthy breakfast. Or dinner. I confess, I slept a bit late. It's not so bad, I only have lectures from 3 to 6pm today. [The author has quick breakfast - returns to chair with a cup of coffee]. Simple pleasures, folks. A bit of the old salty & peppered bacon & eggs followed by a cup of joe.

Let's have a recap on the weekend:

Friday evening: King Remedy: honest rock n' roll @ a seedy bar downtown. Came home around 2.30am. A bit of a latenight snack & off to bed...

Saturday: Rather uneventful, a bit hungover. Did not get much typing done at all. Spent most of the day maintaining my windows XP installation on C: partition. I had not done a proper backup in 4 months. Speaking of which, stay the hell away from Norton Ghost 9 or 10. Keep to the 2003 version, or perhaps Acronis True Image 9. Why? Because Norton has gone shit. While going through all sorts of backup options, I managed to get my computer infected with a rather nasty worm. I managed to clean it out without using any antivirus program, but it took bit of time. Now I've Norton Antivirus 2006 installed - but I plan on uninstalling it. It didn't find anything wrong with my set, other than the zipped files I had made of the worm infested dll's & exe files. What a wasted saturday that was. I could have done a lot more interesting things than backing up my files, geez. That was my fun for the first free Saturday in ages! Pathetic. Just goes to show that weekends are overrated. Relax & get some piece of mind whenever you can...

Sunday was bit more eventful. Me, Minna, my brother & Martti & Pia went to do some sliding at the peaks of Paloheinä (using classic model plastic sleds, aka Pulkka's). I have no idea how long it has been since I had last been on one. It must have been in the early 90s. A lot of fun! We started out rather roughly at the highest peak. (yes yes, it pales in comparison with the bad boys). But let me tell you, were up for a rough ride. Consider around 140 kilograms of manflesh riding down a semi-steep, ice-covered, hillocky descent on top of a flimsy, treacherously crooked pulkka, it's serious business! Only my bro managed to ride it all the way down without tipping over. I failed both with Martti & Minna. The first ride with Martti ended up in disaster after we hit a big bounce. We both got thrown out of the pulkka, rolling & tumbling - eventually sliding downards in prone position for maybe 20-some meters with the sled who knows where. Nice! I was foolish enough to leave my wallet in my right hip-pocket. When we landed down after that big bounce, all the change I had in my wallet (which was all neatly packed in one corner of the wallet) struck me rather nicely at abductor magnus muscle. The bruise is not very visible, but it hurts. Pooey. The second descent on that peak was with Minna. It started out rather nicely, but then something went wrong again. We fell over properly. I actually ended up somersaulting over Minna! Dangerous business. I remember seeing her rolling downhill (this is all happening in split seconds), she was all hair (it had spread out like a fan!) and I was just trying to keep out of rolling over her... Luckily neither of us got hurt, and it was all laughs :) Later on in the evening, I did have a bit of a headache. Suppose it was more due to the constant small bumps on the hill, rather than the big crashes. Sliding is not too dangerous since you are right on ground-level. It is only the damn bumps that screw it up! There were many more fantastic descents, but I think you get the picture. What made this trip really rather out of the ordinary, was that 1. It was on a Sunday 2. It was during the day (1.30-3pm) 3. There was no alcohol involved! It was great though, and we intend to do it again, inside 2-3 weeks time.

By the way I fixed the link on the right-hand side. The lastFM one should be working properly now. You get to see what kind of music I have been listening to lately. Or rather, what has been played in our winamp. After all, it is not I alone who use it. This turned out to be a rather long post as opposed to the short 'morning update' I had envisaged. Time to head out for my Synthesis I:Import/Export class.

Let us hope this week is a good one!
I'll update later today if I get the email...

Score!

The interview went rather well I must say. While I was waiting at the lobby, I met an old co-worker from my ICT-specialist days. We had not met in 3 years, and it was really good to see her! It was most convenient too. As my interviewer arrived, we all three took the same elevator up. The former co-worker gave my interviewee a quick recommendation on my behalf while we were ascending. Nice start indeed. Then what followed was the usual. "Would you like some coffee?" etc. The interview took about an hour, and it was easygoing, face to face. I'm pretty sure I got the job. She said she will call me today or by Monday at the latest (slyly noting, that she's pretty sure we'll be seeing each other again soon enough). I hope so. That would make my future all set until the late fall, or perhaps even beyond. The only big question mark is: accounting - is it really for me? That remains to be answered. Nevertheless, the least I can do is give it an honest shot. Maybe it's not all that bad. Though I must say, sitting in a cubicle surrounded old women does not sound excessively tempting. The main thing is that I get to try my hands on a job on the same field where I've been trained to work in. Though it's not only accounting I can do. It's actually perhaps the least favored of my possible orientations, alongside with marketing. Finance & Investments is where it's at. Perhaps a little human resources? The IT-sector is still quite close to my heart. A job in the purchasing side of a large company would be quite interesting. Speaking of which, my potential & probable future employer is rather large in size, with net sales in billions... There will be loads and loads of insider-only job advertisements. In fact, my old co-worker said that she came to the firm just to get her foot in - and managed to land a much better job within a year. Nice! She's working on the 6th floor, while I will be on the 7th. I'm looking forward to having lunch together getting to hear all the dirty gossip about her last days at our former workplace.

Now it is time for me to convert the amount of the hours I've been putting in as a sales rep into decimal format. The wages clerk will be most happy to get my time list pre-done. I can't wait until next Wednesday to get paid. After fixing the numbers I'll eat something quickly and head off to work. Good stuff. The only thing bothering me right now is the fact that I've yet to begin typing my final thesis. That's a real son-of-a-bitch of a boulder on the sole of my shoe! Glad I have this weekend off work, so I can perhaps commence work on it. Here's hoping!

Over & Out.