Most of you might’ve caught that I’m a techie by now. In my day job, I work with computers and computer networks; my daily tasks consist of both system administration and project management (on a few software development projects in our company). Any way to find solutions to tasks I’m involved with does me a bit of good. I’m mostly partial to Google, but quite often, a site called Experts Exchange comes up in the search results.
Experts Exchange is a site where experts can get help from other experts with tech problems (and earn points for helping others), and I’m actually one of those who have asked for help and found it useful.
Recently, I discovered that they had given their site a major overhaul, and I have to admit that it looks even better now (it did look good before the upgrade, too).
If you’re in the computer tech industry, you might find it helpful as well. If you haven’t already give ’em a try. If you have, check out their new upgraded look.
My last update was back in late December, and that same week, I got the iPad 2 I was promised from my office (“day job”, so to speak), as a thanks for the big effort (and late working days) earlier in the year. I’ve previously mentioned my disgust for Apple, and that I wouldn’t go out and buy their products based on their policies and how the appear to treat customers and software developers on their platforms. That said, I wouldn’t pass up the chance of getting one of their products as a gift, which I did just before the new year arrived. It was especially appreciated that the iPad 2 I got was the 3G+WiFi edition with 64 GB storage. And during our annual dinner (with all of the colleagues), we all received an external 2 TB USB drive each, as a belated Christmas gift from our workplace (since this dinner was in mid-January).
As usual, this year’s Christmas catch was modest, and I don’t mind at all. This year, I got a large tea cup, two mugs, two small plates (which goes with several tea cups I already have with a similar design), some licorice/cinnamon tea (Pukka brand, not pictured) that was actually quite good, a small bath towel, a concrete @-sign decoration (which unfortunately broke the second after I had opened it due to bad packaging, also not pictured), a luxury soap with bath towel, a fleece hat, a scarf, and some DVDs. Out of DVDs, I got Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows parts 1 and 2, Hodejegerne (a Norwegian thriller released earlier this year), Cars 2 (Blu-ray+DVD edition), and the two first seasons of NCIS. All of these DVDs were on my wishlist, but I’m going to exchange Cars 2 and one of the last Harry Potter films, since already got Cars 2 about a week or so before Christmas, and I got two out of Deathly Hallows part 2. No biggie, though, as they’re in “exchangeable” condition (sealed). And, as usual, I got another thing I wanted, which is on my list every year: Time spent with family.
Earlier this week, I was on a brisk walk from my workplace to my doctor’s office. I was running about 10 minutes late (and since no taxi cab available for at least another 15 minutes, I had to walk), I was my doc’s last appointment for the day, and on the way, I was being stopped by some guy who made a quick comment about my yellow rain hat (it was raining and blowing, and as someone from Denmark, he seemed to want to know what it was called in Norwegian). He kept on talking, I was stressed out, and he casually mentioned that he was a monk (he didn’t look like it, but then again, it was cold), and was spreading the word of true yoga. I really didn’t have the time, so I had to cut him short if I wasn’t going to be too late for my appointment. The next day, I ran into him again, at the same location, and I was waiting for the bus onwards to work (it was another bad weather day, but at least it wasn’t raining). He started talking again, showed the book he was handing out, and again, finally asked for a donation of some coins (just so he could cover his travels). As the bus was arriving, and about to leave, I had to cut his speech short, but not before he handed me his book and kept badgering me for some money. I only had some small coins in my wallet, so I handed it off to him. Frankly, I was annoyed at him, I was the last passenger coming onto the bus, and this monk guy was holding me back.
On the brighter side of this week, I just got the 
So I was able to pick up my package today, although it was a little smaller than I imagined. Then again, I don’t think I’ve ever replaced a harddrive in a laptop before, so the fact that this was considerably smaller than what I’m used to when thinking about “harddrives” probably had something to do with it.