Squashed

I got home a while ago. Played squash with Martti again. Ahh, I whooped him! Close & good games though, especially the last one (I managed to pull a 2-0 out of my ass..). Heheh. Now to other things: nothings changed as far as school goes, I'm still lagging behind on the Academic Writing piece of shit.. no matter, I'll get things rolling tomorrow and on friday. That's the plan, anyway!

A sidenote: Kela's trying to rob me out of ~ €2000. Isn't that sweet of them? But I got the fuckers cornered. I have the proof that will set me free. Basicly the situation is this: they know I made XX'XXX amount of money in 2003. I started my studies in the autumn of that year. They don't know which months those salaries are spread onto. So they try to get back their 4 month's of study aid + the works... But as I said, the situation is under control, now I just have to mail the damn complaint with all the documents that help my case.

By the way, there's nothing quite like having a cold one after squash :P

Over & Out.

Busy times again

ahh crap. I worked both days last weekend. I have tons of stuff to do. School's keeping me busy, I'm lagging a couple of weeks behind on my english project: I'm supposed to type out 5000 words in 'academic style' on some business related topic. It's basicly practice for the final thesis. I'm planning on doing it on business ethics, should be easy enough to bullshit my way out of that one! Then there's projects for quality management, investments and cost management. I also need to prepare a presentation for a Seminar course, and so forth..

So far, I haven't scored as far as summerjobs go. I really have to call some companies up and ask what the hell is wrong with them, if I'm not good enough! :P

Something's wrong with me since I can't be efficient with me studies while I'm home. I do schoolwork best when I'm at school. Maybe it's because there's less distractions there (I sometimes stick around after lectures, and do stuff for a couple of hours).

I've been reading quite a lot lately, finished Troiat's Rasputin, Clostermann's Big Show, and Brown's "Bury my heart at wounded knee".

Apologies for the lack of updates, but I have my priorities - and right now they are elsewhere.

Wednesday wining and dining

Hello again. Yes, I know I've been a bad blogger lately. Apologies.

The workload has been easing up a little now, and life is starting to win again :)
I've been listening to a lot of 'new' music lately, provided by a classmate, Tara. She borrowed me ~10 cds of music from 'up and coming' irish bands. Good stuff, I haven't heard anything new in a long while, and was frankly getting bored of listening to the same old songs over and over again.

I haven't cooked a meal since friday evening. We basicly spent the weekend at mine and Minna's parents - stuffing ourselves. From monday onwards this week's been pretty hectic, and frankly there's been no energy nor interest to do housechores. Today, as it's payday and the studies are starting to release their stranglehold, I think I'll prepare something nice to eat (instead of eating bread and fuits.. or warming something up in the microwave). Minna's coming home from work now, and is gonna stop by Alko for a couple of bottles of wine.

She's later on today going to go to the gym, so I've got time to fix something proper..
Things are starting to brighten up a bit, baby!

Hi

I've been out of steam but steaming on anyway.
The soundtrack to the last few days has been Tool.

"Mention this to me
Mention something, mention anything
Watch the weather change."

I can't believe it

I just typed a whole fucking essay, and then started doing something else... forgot which browser window the damn blog thing was on.... and closed the browser window(s) later on. So there you have it, cruel fate. No update for the whole week, I can't be bothered to type it all again. Let's pretend last week never happened. Now, towards new challenges!

That day of the week again

Went to school at 10am, came home at 7pm. Ouch. I'm doing 42 ECTS this semester, and I bet there will be more days like this to follow. I can't afford to lose time or miss deadlines. Gotta have the discipline to do the work in time - or even ahead of time.. because otherwise the workload will pile up, and it'll get difficult. Anyway, the highlight of the day: I managed to go and play squash at 9pm - I lost 2-0, damn you Martti, you know it coulda gone either way! :P

Quick wrapup of the weekend:

Friday evening: It was most pleasant. We arrived at my parents house and were led straight to the dining table, where we proceeded to eat quite a bit. Me & Jarno (my big brother) had brought over some wine, as we knew our cousin Anne had carried some exquisite danish cheeses with her... The evening progressed, and wine flowed. It was nice to catch up again. We left for home around 1am.

Saturday: I didn't go to work this weekend, as I had other things to do (studying, recharging my batteries). Later on in the evening we had our ex-neighbours (the engineer fellow, who used to live in Connor's apt) housewarming party in Viikki. We stayed there for only around an hour, but it was good times! Our timing was sort of off... and anyway, we had another party to go to. Martti's long-time 'better half', Pia (or is it with two i's?) was having her going-away party. She's going on exchange to lovely Spain, for 6 months, grrr. The party was cool, great punch.. and an excessive number of potentially lesbian floorball players were there (the shame...) We left 'early', and were sleeping by 4am.

On sunday morning Minna went to a gym to do some neck/shoulder exersizes, and then riding, and later on cleaned the corridor! What did I do? I slept, I read, and catched up on some schoolwork - hoo-fucking-ray. Later on we went to M's parents, as seems to be the case almost every other sunday. All was okay untill me & M's dad went to our customary after-supper cigarette. We had the usual smalltalk about weather and all kinds of nice things like that, but after we got back, M's mom was trashing M's little brother's girlfriend (he's 16, she's 18), who had just left the house mid-supper to see a friend. It was like walking to a warzone. I'll not go into any gory details, but let's just say that voices were raised, tears were shed, and there was more than one storming out of the room-kind of thing. I stayed at the dining table and tried to talk & figure out what was going on, but it was difficult and generally speaking the whole thing sucked. What a fucking waste of a sunday evening. We ended up taking M's brother to our place for the night...

And of today, I already typed about. There you have it, folks. I haven't had any time to play HoI2 lately. That is not necessarily a bad thing - there's lots of better ways to spend (I wouldn't say waste, as it is a good game!) ones time. I've found it quite true that when there's lots of stuff to do, time does fly - indeed. Of course, it is presupposed that you do the things that need be done, be they house-, school-, or just regular work.

Screw this, I'm starting to sound old. I feel tired, I'll catch you all later.. got a long day of schooling to go to again, this time from 9.45am to 6pm.

History takes a strange turn

Let's start with the game update, since that's been asked for! Well, it's 1943, and I'm engaged in a two front war. One good thing though, I have the USA in my backpocket, and they will not attack me. I begun my campaign by grabbing Hungary (blitzkrieg style), then Austria with dirty politics , and finally Czechoslovakia (creating Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia + an Independed, Axis Slovakia). Then I tried to appease all the allies and spent a lot of time and money on diplomacy, all the while still of course building my army :P

I managed a huge breakthrough, and got an experimental nuclear reactor going on around late 41, and I if all goes well, should have the a-bomb by 44-45, depends how things go. It would be neat to nuke London and Moscow, buwhahaha :P (as if I have the resources for building two bombs..) Anyway, France is getting pounded hard, I've already got Paris taken. What's left is just the cleanup. I used the proven, dirtyBelgian trick.. Btw. a nasty thing the Russials pulled, they declared war right just a little after I had taken Paris, and are now trying trying to cross the polish border (I went through the Ribbentrop plan)

Also, as soon as I got through & behind the Maginot line, the Italians wanted to join the Axis. I turned them down. They'd get run over by the Brits in Africa and I'd have to go bail them out. And I can't spare Rommel to play around in the sandbox of sahara. We'll see what he can do vs the Russian hordes with 9 divisions of Tiger tanks (which will not run out of oil.)

------- ahem, back to real life

Busy school week. I got 3 papers to do for next week. I canceled tomorrow's work shift. Got other things going on right now. My cousin, Anne has come over from Copenhagen. We are just about to go and see her. It should be a nice evening, and I'll be sure to update later.
Cheers!

Loose

Saturday was pretty neat, I was surprised. Work went by pretty fast. The evening was filled by the following events: sauna, supper and wine & conversation. Today's been pretty alright, I've gotten some things done. I filled out a huge job application to Fortum and put up a little webpage for recruitment purposes, it has just the basic information about me, a picture + a cv. We shall see if I can score a proper job for the summer. I've already sent applications to Wärtsilä, ABB, Nordea and now Fortum. I also emailed a couple of CEO's I know, asking if they'd have any use of me. I will make follow-up calls during the week. You can't trust email to be read. It's too easy to skim & delete.

I think I'll now reward myself by getting absolute immersed in Hearts of Iron 2, perhaps the greatest WW2 simulation/strategy game ever. The game starts in 1936, the buildup. I'm gonna play as germany, with a non-historical strategy in mind. I'm thinking of keeping my belligerence to a minimum, while secretly building a very competetive fighting force that'll be technically at least 2-3 years ahead of any allied technology. I'm gonna scrap the Bismarck & other marine projects (except submarines, maybe) and use the extra resources on tank & fighter research and manufactoring.. of course I'll have to keep my army techs up-to-date as well. I'm not going to occupy Rhineland untill 1940 or so, and let Poland and Czhechoslovakia take it easy while I proceed with the Anschluss, and make a drive to the oilfields in Bulgaria, effectively grabbing Jugoslavia, Romania and Hungary in the same campaign. That should keep me well stocked when the Allies start blocking my ports :) I may give some updates on the game situation during the days/weeks on how I manage. (Anyone out there interested in the "what if's of history?)

Update - 10.37pm

Nothing is as simple as it seems. But neither is it otherwise. I didn't get around to do any HoI2, but instead ended up typing silly little text for school (in swedish), and later reading Leon Goldstein's Nuremberg Interviews, pretty interesting stuff... Gotta love those Nazi bastards spilling their guts out to the psychiatrist author :) Now it's getting late but I still feel like reading the book. I guess you could consider this as getting some backround information, e.g. I won't be appointing Wilhelm Frick as minister of the interior :)

Blues, anyone?

Five days zoomed by. Who gives a shit? Tomorrow, work.

Weekday morning number one

School started. I didn't go. I only had swedish, and I just couldn't be arsed about it. I managed to get a book for that swedish class. I chose Henri Troyat's Rasputin - it's around 200 pages, but well-written in a good style. Why read Astrid Lindgren or some other shit, children's stories? What good is that for language-learning purposes..

Tomorrow I'll be getting down and dirty with Quality Management and Investments. On wednesday I got Business Research Methods and Environmental Engineering. Thursday's it's Environmental again + some swedish. On friday it's just Cost Management. Not a bad period. I still have to finish a paper for Business Ethics, but it's almost done.

I really didn't want my holiday to end, it's a sad story isn't it? Getting back to studies is not so bad, starting the regular saturday shifts at work is. I've been working mostly only sundays for the last few weeks, with double pay. Now it's back to shitty saturdays, with shitty saturday pay. Guess my real worry is about summerjobs.. I'm rather going to starve than go back to where I was last summer. I'll take any pencil-pushing piece of shit office job they put my way. I'll work at a bank, at an insurancy agency, anything, but not that place. Down to earth logistics suck balls! That in my case has meant low-level *but medium pay* warehouse stuff. It was a huge leap down from my years in the IT sector, where the pay was good, and the benefits spectacular.

Today I woke up around 11, had breakfast.. went to the library to pick up the Rasputin book, proceeded to read a bit of it (it's hard) and later on made some chow with Minna. The daily grind, nothing much to write home about. You do your everyday chores and then try to cheer & stimulate yourself by doing something you think you might want to do. Most of the time it works, sometimes it doesn't, and you end up with a light case of the finnish disease, depression.

The modern day man is so busy keeping time and making time. But what's done with the time that's been fought for so hard? It's spent on dicking around doing nothing of any purpose.

Ain't it cool?

Partied out

We had a little party with the neighbours. A group of us (7) begun with blacklight bowling, then came back to our little cellar conference room, ordered some food.... and started drinking! The whole night was free, as it was sponsored by Nuorisoasuntoliitto (the Youth Housing Association.) I remember going to bed around 7.30 in the morning, after eating breakfast.

We woke up a while ago, at 4,15pm. I don't really like living like this. Yesterday was cool, it was fun, but it took away a big chunk out of my sunday. Of course I could have woken up at say noon and made do with a little less sleep.. To make things absolutely clear, I'm not in a bad hangover of any sort. Minna was fine when she got up, but no she's a bit worried that she might not be. We should start heading off to see her parents soon. They're preparing us some food. Let's hope we make it.

Tomorrow, school starts.

On the mend

Hello there. I've been sick the last few days. Some strange flu struck me on sunday, accomppanied by a lovely addition of coughs from hell.

I managed to get outdoors today: first to the post office, to pick up the just arrived new li-ion battery for my digicam, Canon S40. I ordered it from digitarvike. Later on me & Minna went to Arabia's mall, where we shopped for some groceries and did some odd purchases (a 150cm tall mirror) and a flapjack pan :)

Later on today, we're going upstairs to my neighbour Connor's, where my buddies Ville & Ali will also be joining. The evening will consist of drinking (less for me, I'm still not 100%), going to the sauna, and who knows what.. Knowning Connor, there's gonna be lots of listening to Pearl Jam at least!

Minna & her friend Maisa are making Karelian Pies behind me as I'm typing. Let's hope they manage it, as it's supposed to be one of the more difficult types of bread/pie to make.

Link of the day, Dragon Illusion! make sure you watch the video.

January 4th, 2005 already!

Christmas came & went, so did new years? What's new? I can't be bothered to type too much about it, and want to focus on more current issues. I've been reading a lot, and basicly relaxing my holiday of 3 weeks. Have been working on sundays, and drinking perhaps a little too much. Some books I've finished during the past couple of weeks:

- Berlin 1945 - The downfall
- a book on Robespierre by Albert Manfred (in finnish)
- "Kirottu Sota" a WW2 ace biog by Pierre Clostermann (now I just HAVE to get my hands on this)

I'm currenting on page 160 on "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee"
Add on top of those a staggering pile of various comics (including the stellar MAUS) that I borrowed from the library.

My plans for this year? Get a good summerjob, go tour eastern Europe... and try to maintain the decent level of effort that I have been able to exert in my studies. Let's hope this year rocks. I'm looking forward to big, enjoyable, funny things happening in the summer.

Excuses

Christmas is hell, what can I say? I have been busy.

Let's see, on friday: I beat Martti 2-1 in a set of pretty good games. When I got home around 10.30pm, Minna was just getting ready to go party with a friend of her, Anu. As warmup, she had already finished a bottle of wine which we started on earlier (well, I had a small glass only, as I was going to go play squash) during supper. As Anu was running late, she had time to consume 3 warm gloggs laced with 80% vodka. She seemed ok when she left. But things took a bad turn for her when she and Anu + a few others were walking to their club/pub of choice ('System') - and Anu produced a bottle of sparkling wine out of her purse. The girls proceeded to engulf the contents inside a very brief walk of only a few minutes. Minna managed to get into the club, and ordered a cider, and that's just about where the memories start to blur for her.

I was woken up by Minna's call at around 3am (I had work that saturday, my wakup at 6.20.) Luckily the girls had stumbled onto my friend Osku, and he had eventually escorted Minna to a bus homewards.. The problem was, Minna didn't know which bus she was on, or where it was going. And I was trying to figure it out, and she wasn't making any sense, being very much off her chops, seeing her visuals in triple (I'm not joking, it has happened once before) and so forth... Anyway, I kept talking to her as she was getting closer to our place -upon her insistance, mind you- when suddenly I hear a noise as if the phone was dropped, followed by some drunken woman noise (screams, you could call them). I knew she was only a few hundred meters away, so out of bed I went, cursing like a mad sailor, put on my clothes and started on a dashing jog of rescue. I found her almost immediately. The girl was zig-zagging her way as if it was ww2 and she had a few enemy fighter planes behind her. The thing about the screams and all was related to her losing balance and keeling over onto the pavement :P

After this latenight episode I didn't sleep much. I'm lucky if I got even 3 hours in that night.
Woke up at 6.20, had a quick breakfast and went to work. Once there I pulled my shift, and agreed to come work on sunday as well. Got home, ate a little something, and then me and the now sorry hangover-queen of the day proceeded to go pay a visit to my parents. We got home from there 2-3 hours later. I went to bed almost immediately, tired as used up old bastard.

Sunday: woke-up, went to work, got home. Then a little bit of tidying up the place, going to the local shop to buy some foodstuffs, shower and -> ultimately entertaining guests. I had 4 classmates (Carina, Tara, Leena & Ville) + my upstairs neigbour, Connor (he studies at the same school, in industrial management) come over for a nice little get-together. We had a great evening - the atmosphere was warm and pleasant. We had a laugh! Carina has roots in Lebanon, while Tara & Connor are Irish, the rest of us were barefoot finns - lots to talk about..
Party ended around midnight, as some of the participants had work on monday.

Monday: Shopping hell. Minna's work shift got canceled, so we had the whole day for.... you guessed it... christmas shopping! Yayer! We only got to downtown around 12. First thing we did was to get us librarycard's to the University of Helsinki - it's free. Minna needed to get some books for her examinations on Jan 17th.. After that, we visited a million shops and spent plenty of euros. We got together with Minna's sister & brother at Iguana (a bar) and later on spent some time with Minna's friend Hanna, ultimately coming home around 10pm. Same evening still, I started to install the videocard heatsink I purchased recently, but I couldn't get my computer to boot with it. Maybe I was too tired to make a proper effort, because when I took it off the vidcard and attached the old noisy piece-of-shit heatsink+fan combo onto it, the bastard booted as if nothing was wrong with it! I shrugged, went to smoke a much needed stress cigarette (don't you just hate those moments when after installing or putting something together into your computer, you don't hear the damned monitor get signal and make the familiar noise it does when you start the computer - that's when you know you've got trouble!), and read one of my classic late 80's Conan comics and went to bed. Later on I think the only reason it didn't work was that it must have had poor contact with the GPU. Installing the thing was a bitch, you'd need 4 arms or a proper toolbench for it.

Today: Well, nothing much happened today. Highlight: I went to a new library in Arabia (an area of helsinki named after a somewhat famous finnish pottery company of the same name) and got a ton of goodies from there. It'll take plenty of hours to skim through all the books & comics I got from there (mind you, I don't loan Donald Ducks or anything silly like that - I mostly prefer the, ahem, adult themed comics: Milo Manara, Frank Miller, Art Spiegelman etc..) Minna managed to go see her aunt, and to go to a concert in a church with her parents, where they performed Adiemus-style music. I'm sort of glad I missed it :P

There's the update (~1000 words!) - worth the wait!

7 days and counting

So, it is one week from Christmas, and counting

creepy!

Woke up, got lost in wikipedia, and here's a nugget of information:

On this day, 101 years ago, Orville and Wilbur Wright managed to get their POS aircraft (more a kite) "Flyer 1" (more popularily known as "Kitty Hawk") off the ground.

Wilbur Wright 'Flying' - notice that there is no engine yet.

After looking into the subject, it seems they were not that revolutionary after all. For the curious, here's a list of the greatest technical breakthroughs in manned flight.

*pause, gonna make some coffee *

Anyway. What's new? Jake brought me some of my old comics back. Nothing better than to read a little Conan the Barbarian at the breakfast table! It feels like old times. Guess it's good I never sold my comics. Perhaps they will eventually pass from father to son, getting a status of their own as the scrolls of my family :P

I reserved tickets to a Judas Priest gig here in Helsinki, going to go check it out with my big brother . That should be fun. I'm not a Huuuge fan, but let's just say I own a few of their albums and be happy at that. I hope they will be playing some of their older classics, as I haven't been listening/following any of their stuff after 1990's Painkiller album.

I might be receiving the recently purchased passive-cooling apparatus today. I believe I may just have to install it on the same day it arrives, screw Christmas! :P Suppose during installation I fuck something up, and end up making my Videocard useless? That would make for some happy holidays. So I better do it now - so that if I happen to do a blunder, I have a valid excuse of purchasing a proper monster of a videocard, just in time for happy holidays *grin* :)

Later on today, at 21.00 it's time for the traditional squash game vs Martti. I need to do some stretching & warmup before, as last time it took me almost 30 minutes to start playing right..

*update 16.39*

Oh my god, check this out: Mr Methane

X-mas break - the decadence begins

Got out of bed around noon. I was surprised when I looked into the mirror. Almost had forgotten that I had dyed my hair darker yesterday (it's basicly black now)!

I then got on to browsing for some potential christmas present candidates. I think the old trusty computer needs a small upgrade: a noiseless, fanless cooling system for the videocard. The old fan broke some months ago, and I had to get a new one for it - and it turned out to be damn noisy. It creates a loud, high pitched humming noise that gets to my nerves every now and then. Anyway, here is a review of the thing.

I've yet to have breakfast, it is now 2.37pm. Guess I'll read some comics borrowed from the library nearby and sip coffee. As the chore of the day, I am going to venture out and take away the ~15 misc bottless that can't be returned to any regular grocery store. Having nothing to do is strange, after all the rush & fuss of final exams. Maybe I'll do some laundry as well, clean clothes are cool.

-- update -- 8.24pm

Minna went to a gym to do something similar to bodypump. A sort of 'forming/shaping' class. I fixed us supper, my elite version of the finnish culinary classic, Makaronilaatikko :D

I think we're gonna watch Woody Allen's 'September' this evening, as it just finished downloading. I remember it as a fairly serious, and (surprisingly) good grownup's drama about relationships. Hope it's as good as I remember it to be.

On a sidenote, tomorrow I plan go to my last class before the x-mas break really begins. Swedish. Even though it starts as late as 3.15pm, I think I'll have major motivational problems :)
After class, the plan is to meet up with Jake - an old friend of mine - for a few beers & maybe some pool. He is going to be a (planned) father soon, so it's interesting times..

First post

So I finally got around to creating a BLOG. Wow.
I'm happy with just getting these first few lines in.

I envision this as a dual-functioning service,
helping me clear my thoughts, and giving you, the
reader an insight into what's going on in my life/head.

Link of the day: an online art gallery... this site has
come in handy for Minna from time to time.
Example: works of Leonardo DaVinci



If you haven't seen this before, where have you been?