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.

We spent the Easter holidays in northern Finland — I haven’t got time to write about the trip during the last few days, but finally boys are sleeping and there is some time before I need to hit the bunk.

Sanna and the boys flew to Oulu and travelled then to Taivalkoski already on Sunday one week before Easter. I spent the beginning of the week busily running my business and then rejoined them on Thursday evening after a day of meetings, telcos and travelling.

Helsinki region didn’t have that much of snow when Sanna left, but during the week we got some. Not much compared to Oulu and especially Taivalkoski that had at least a meter of snow. Most of our activities were related to snow, as this year there hasn’t been enough days to enjoy going downhill with sleds and bobsleds (Stiga Snow Racer).

There were some hills around Sanna’s parents house, but to get good fast and long rides, we visited the local ski centre Taivalvaara. They had a slope dedicated for sleds, so I and Aapo, or Sanna and Aapo had much fun with our Stiga going down the hill. It goes pretty fast with one child and one adult…

When we were not out, I spent my times with books — read four of them during the holidays. I had to prepare a few work related items, so some time was spent in front of laptop, too.

On Monday, Sanna’s mother drove us to Oulu and we visited Sanna’s old schoolmate for one night. We saw a few other friends and Aapo played (and also fought) with their children. The amount of noise that can come from two toddlers is amazing.

Tuesday was spent with work related items and flying back to Helsinki. From there onwards, I’ve tried to catch up with work — finally succeeding to spare some time to my hobbies, such as Nomadig.com

I’ve recently made a bit startling discovery. My frequently visited websites are no longer remembering me. Instead, they show the login page. No longer greeting Janne Kalliola and welcoming me back to use the system instantly.

This is, of course, due to being once again so busy that I visit the sites more seldom. I maybe should not say this, but also my beloved WordPress at Nomadig.com has been giving me the login screen. I try to be better in the future.

I’ve been forced to move out from my current hosting company (OnSmart) as they are moving out of business.

They first lost one domain for me (kept the money, though) and then had radio silence for a couple of weeks — until today they informed that they are swiftly going out of business. I had reacted a few days earlier and moved to HostMonster.com.

The site moving was surprisingly painless. I made a tarball of the files and dumped the databases, unpacked the files to the new location, and recreated the databases from the dumps. A few configuration file needed changing and then everything works ok. Or at least it looks like that. If you notice any glitches, please inform me.

Fortunately, nomadig.com is not registered through OnSmart. Better keep my domains and hosts in two different vendors.

As you might know, we’ve been expecting a baby for better part of 2007. The estimated due date was on January 31 that passed without any signs of delivery.

Things changed rapidly during the night, and Sanna left to hospital at 4.00 AM. I tried to sleep with little success and found myself soon in front of my laptop, cancelling meetings for Friday and trying to kill some time before waking up Aapo. The kindergarten opened at 7.00 and we were promptly there, so I could swiftly continue to the clinic.

After a few hours of waiting for me and intense labor for Sanna, I was proud father of a baby boy. I was honoured to wash him, measure the mass and length, and spend time with him before meeting the happy but exhausted mother.

The image below is from the first half an hour of a new life.

We have a peculiar habit in Finland to name children after a month, so you have to wait until the christening in March.

The proud big brother Aapo has visited the clinic a couple of times to see his new little brother. My mother has also joined us to help with the chores. Sanna is still in the clinic, but should be home tomorrow with the son.

As you can probably guess from my current update frequency, I’ve been busy for the whole beginning of the year. Fortunately in a good way. This year looks good for business.

While I’m busy at work, I try to focus on my family, too. Weekends have been safe havens that I try to keep uncluttered. There are certain things that spill over from the weekdays, usually web gigs. Also my hobbies include mostly computers, so Sanna can’t always tell whether I’m busy with work, hobby or wasting my time in front of computers.

Last weekend was really exceptional in the family perspective. First, I bought Super Mario Galaxy on my way home. And also on Friday, I got permission to buy a huge Lego Technic set for Aapo and myself — a black tow truck with pneumatics and tons of other cool features.

I spent the Friday evening building it, and continued early on Saturday — Aapo woke me up in order to get it ready as soon as possible. I spent six hours just building it, so I was pretty happy to see Aapo so joyful with his new toy.

We towed a ton of other cars and trucks during Saturday. When Aapo was sleeping, I played the game for a few hours while Sanna was watching it and talking with me. Aapo participated watching on Sunday, too. I couldn’t guess that a game console would bring family together in such a way.

Sunday was an active day, as we spent two hours in HopLop kid activity park. I escorted Aapo in all kinds of climbing area that looked like miniature scaffolding filled with kids. It has been designed for people under ten years, so sometimes I felt quite crammed there. But I had a lot of fun, too.

Both days were rainy, so no football playing this time.

This weekend Aapo has been sick and thus we have been mostly inside. The regimen has included Skype calls to grandparents, jigsaw puzzles and some Super Mario Galaxy — it’s getting quite hard and I’m only halfway through.