It has been a while that I’ve given any updates of my life in the blog. In fact, I’ve been on holiday and quite totally restricted myself from using the Internet.

The itch grows every day and I’ve emptied my inbox a couple of times during the past week — mainly due to explosion of my holiday notification that looped over 14 000 messages to my inbox in less than 50 hours.

There is another reason for not writing anything here: the family. Travelling with a toddler and an infant takes its toll, and frankly I haven’t got any free time to write down something. Now, the whole family except me is sleeping and I’ve got my first time alone during the trip. I just finished an excellent book by Stieg Larsson, and the moment just feels right to write notes.

We left Helsinki to Miami via London last week’s Wednesday, so we’ve been on the road for eight days already. Time just flies. The flights were surprisingly easy, Niilo slept a lot and Aapo was somehow content with everything. We transferred through Heathrow’s Terminal 5 — quite impressive building and just okay airport.

On the other hand, arrival to Miami was anything but pleasant. It seems that most, if not all, US airports are really daunting places. Low ceilings, ugly carpets, complex set of corridors without proper signs, and so forth. The passport control was relaxed and for once I somehow felt being welcomed to the country.
Read the rest of this entry >

Wednesday seemed to be one of those normal hectic days at the office; emails were flowing and people were calling me at such a pace that I barely got myself out of the office to grab a sub for lunch.

The atmosphere changed drastically when I tried to savour my lunch between phone calls, and suddenly I knocked off a glass of Pepsi Max to my dear MacBook Air. It was a small wine glass, half full, so not that much of liquid — but it managed to splash shock middle my keyboard.

I instantly turned the laptop over and dried it with a bunch of paper. It seemed to be intact, so I continued working and went to a couple of meetings to a customer. While there, the keyboard started to send extra keypressed, from the QWERTYUIOP row. A dash of letters appeared three times during the afternoon.

When I got home, I plugged in my Time Machine hard disk to backup the system. I also opened Aquamacs to grab the keyboard input. When the backup was over, there were more than three thousand letters in the Aquamacs window. All from the same row.

Other rows had stopped working, too. I tried rebooting, but no avail. External keyboard worked, so I could log in and make another copy of my working files.

The rest of the evening was spent with friends, so I couldn’t worry too much of the computer. Thursday saw me copying files from Air to my old G4 12″. The old laptop wouldn’t recognise the backup disk at all, so I ended up copying 1.2GB of stuff with SCP.

While copying, I also upated Office, Thunderbird, Camino and Adium to newer versions — time seems to take its toll on software pretty fast.

Finally, the copy was ready and I walked to Humac, an Apple reseller and service center a couple of kilometers from the office. I (or Exove in fact) paid extra 75€ to get the system inspected and fixed right away.

They called me later on Thursday, informing that only the keyboard had got wet and changing it would cost 400€. What else can you do but just accept the price?

I gave the permission and they called me on late Friday afternoon. The laptop was fixed and available for picking up. I dashed to the store, got Air back with a shiny new top cover including the keyboard and trackpad.

Maybe I should invest to some kiddy mug or similar that can’t be spilled over…

We spent Midsummer once again in my parents cottage in Polvijärvi, Northern Carelia. Midsummer, known as “juhannus” in Finnish, is one of the bigger festivities in Finland — almost everyone abandons the cities and go to rural areas to spend some quality time with friends and relatives in tranquility. Some people select being drunk, too. We stick firmly in the first category, and had excellent time off.

The cottage is not that far north in Finnish scheme of places, but it is still quite up there for most of people living outside Finland. So, there no real darkness even in the middle of the night. Sun does set, but it does not go down enough to have complete darkness.

The weather was excellent during the whole extended weekend. There were some rains now and then, mostly minor showers, and then constant sunshine. There were no winds during the evening, which made the lake look superb.

I took a couple of snaps on Thursday evening, a week ago that is, after eleven in the evening.

The time difference between the images is about twenty minutes, but the effect was dramatic. The yellow hues were gradually replaced by orange and red ones, making the landscape darker and somehow more vibrant.

My glasses were surgically removed last week. I’ve been pondering on this for more than a year, after a couple of my friends (hello to Singapore!) had their eyes operated early 2007. Their positive experiences led me to think of the operation, but to be honest, I was quite afraid of it. Not the procedure itself, but loss of sight. As a web programming house owner, I need to see what people are producing.

After we paid our mortgage late April, I was free to try this — if the worst happened, at least the family would have a proper shelter.

The operation started with a thorough eye examination for making sure that there is nothing remotely risky in the operation. The examination went well and then we were already preparing for the operation.

It was surprisingly easy and unpleasant at the same time. No pain, but the first laser instrument (that makes the flap on the eye) pushes one’s eye pretty hard. Fortunately, there were only two eyes.

Fifteen minutes later I was escorted to a dimly lit room to keep my eyes closed and munch good Fazer chocolate candies. After frequent checks from the nurses, I visited the local pharmacy downstairs and then was examined by the doctor. My eyesight was already good enough to drive a car under laws of Finland. I thought it to be pretty poor and wouldn’t drove a car.

My vision is getting better every day. It is not yet perfect, but quite close. The clarity depends a bit how tired my eyes are. The examination is in three weeks, so hopefully by then I have 20/20 vision. Let’s see.

The eyes have been a bit dry, but not that much. There has been slight sensations of having sand in the eyes, but those go away with proper drops. Today is the last day with antibiotics and tomorrow I can go to sauna. Oh boy, have I been waiting for that?

I visited Oulu last weekend, to meet a few acquitances, reunite with my family — Sanna and boys were in Taivalkoski for a wekk — and attend a wedding in Hailuoto.

I ran through various activities on Friday; meeting people and developing some customer HTML in the hotel room, to name a few. I had some time to visit the shops in Rotuaari, found one book and the giant Lego Technic mobile crane that I’ve been craving for (for Aapo, of course) since last Father’s Day. Didn’t get permission to buy it, though.

The hotel room was equipped with sauna, so I spent some time in rather slowly heating sauna room and then lounged in the sitting area — a generic tip for people visiting Finland: check whether you can get a sauna room in Sokos Hotel. They cost about 10-20 euros more, but are more spacious with sitting space and of course they’ve got sauna.

Saturday, Sanna and Niilo joined me in Oulu and we prepared us to wedding taking place in Hailuoto — an island about 50 kilometers away from Oulu. The ferry departs once an hour or once every 90 minutes, so we hurried down to the pier not to miss it.

We were tenth in the queue and the ferry takes 50, so no problems. There was one later ferry that we could have used and still be on time, so we had plenty of time to explore the island.

Time has been relatively still there. The main village was small and distributed, and suddenly we had driven past it. The wedding party was in the western tip of the island, about 30 kilometers from the ferry. We spent our time there, had a cup of coffee in a smallish café near the shore, and finally found our way back to church.

I was named as the main photographer and fortunately I was able to shoot some decent frames in the ceremony and the party.

The island itself is quite beautiful by itself and I found myself drawn towards the nature many times during the evening. Not that the party was dull or anything, but the light was just so magnificent, as you can probably see from these images.

We left the island on the second to last ferry and were back in hotel half an hour before midnight.

Next morning, Aapo was brought to Oulu by grandparents and we started our journey to south. That took the whole day, and as usual with children, the trip was not exactly quiet or eventless. We were finally at home around seven o’clock, after eight and half hour drive.

I was once again in London last weekend, again in business. This time I flew in on Thursday morning and returned on Friday night — you know, the refreshing kind of schedule.

The trip itself was quite eventful, yet busy with all kinds of tasks that spilt over from the beginning of the week. The only exception was the hotel; I stayed in Radisson Grafton that I frequented last year. Usually I’ve reserved a single room that are a bit bigger than a normal closet. This time I booked a double that was only ten pounds more expensive. When I was checking in, the clerk told me that I was upgraded to a suite. Nice.

Maybe the hotel was full and I arrived in a good time, or then I’m such a good and frequent customer that I was upgraded before arriving. I’d like to believe the latter, but probably first is what actually happened.

As you can see from the image above, the room was huge. The living room had a good working space, sofa and a couple of chairs. The bedroom was equipped with extra-large king size bed and for once there was enough closets. The bathroom was the size of my previous single room.

It has been a while that I’ve written something here. My apologies. I’ve been busy, sick and travelling — in this order.

After my last post, I’ve been working like a dog; pulling strings inside Exove and within our customers, running errands and so forth. The most hectic times seem to be over, but the summer will be busy.

I was going to go to London at the end of April, but fell sick instead. I had the word sickness since I was child; can’t really recommend this spring’s influenza to anyone. I had high fever for three days and then lingering fever for two more days. No chance of using computer, reading or doing anything intelligent. I was still quite weak for a few days after the experience, and of course there was a huge backlog of items waiting for me.

Fortunately, I got better in time to have an excellent first of May celebrations. We had a family picnic in Kaivopuisto and then drove to Polvijärvi to spend a few days with my parents. Really relaxing family time.

This week I’ve visited London for a few days, had a few business meetings there. I flow in on Thursday afternoon and back on Saturday, being home at 21.30. Very nice schedule compared to the usual one that involved getting up before five in the morning and arriving past midnight. I had also some time to shop, and found all the things that I was looking for. The weather was nice, too.

Today is mothers’ day in Finland, and I made breakfast to Sanna and served it on the bed. Niilo woke me about seven o’clock and I needed to drag Aapo out of the bed before coffee would be cold. Usually it is the other way around; Aapo demanding to watch Winnie the Pooh half past six or so.

We bribed Sanna with Wii Fit, a really fun exercise game from Nintendo. Wii has provided the best gaming experience that I’ve ever tried — for the record, I’ve played with Amiga 500 and Playstation 2 mainly, so I might not be an expert in the field. I’m anyhow amazed with the intuitiveness of the games and the excellent user experience Nintendo is able to craft into the playing.

Our traditional celebration (third year in a row) is lunch in Savoy. The place was not that packed as usual, maybe due to excellent weather, and the cakes were not as good as they have been. Hopefully this is not a sign of gradual downhill…

Next week, I’ll be gone to London for two days and then on Sunday Sanna will drive with boys to Kuopio and then to Taivalkoski. They’ll be there about one week. I’ll fly to Oulu on Friday to meet Sanna and Niilo on Saturday morning; we are going to wedding. Aapo will join us on Sunday, brought there by grandparents and then we will drive back home. Complicated? This seems to be the life of entrepreneur and father of small children.

It has been a busy week, and I haven’t been able to update my both readers here in the blog.

Anyhow, we got back from London refreshed — the trip was surprisingly easy considering that it was the first trip outside Finland to Niilo. He slept most of the time, including flights, train rides, tube, shopping and Legoland.

I run some business errands, and then we had also some time off — flight ticket pricing system makes these cumbersome stayovers that sometimes can be used in the advantage of the family.

One of the high points of the trip was full-day visit to Legoland in Windsor. The theme park is really worth a visit; especially if you have children or are otherwise interested in Legos. Both the rides and the Miniland were really nice and suitable for a wide variety of age groups.

I shot about two hundred photos on the site, mostly in Miniland or then having Aapo riding something with Sanna. For some reason I was not that photogenic and Sanna didn’t bother taking too many pictures of me and Aapo.

My only disappointment was that there were no individual Technic parts on sale. We ended up buying three boxes; one Technic and two basic Lego sets — Aapo is swiftly moving out from Duplo range, and maybe Niilo will inherit them in a year.

We managed to visit also Hamleys and Aapo spent a good deal of time admiring various Thomas the Tank Engine toys. We lured him out by promising him a hamburger in a nearby fast food joint.

I finally found an adequate summer jacket — I’ve been searching for it a few weeks and raided a number of shops in my first visit on last Sunday. Now, Sanna was with me to approve the style.

After two days of returning from London, I was already planning a new trip — once again in business. I’ll be there next week’s Friday. And a new trip has already raised its head, so it looks like that I’ll commute to the UK quite a lot.