After long discussions between my and Sanna, we’ve finally reserved a trip to California on end of April and beginning of May. I’ve been in need of visiting a certain business contacts there for half a year, so it is a good time to go there.

The flight tickets are pretty cheap now — we got an excellent deal from KLM to San Francisco and Los Angeles. We’ll fly to San Francisco, spend a few nights there and in Silicon Valley area, coupled with a trip or two to East Bay. Then we’ll drive to Los Angeles, and finally to San Diego.

The return flight leaves from Los Angeles, so we can skip driving back north. In fact, it was cheaper to fly this way instead of returning from San Francisco. Flight ticketing has mysterious ways… But this time, I don’t complain.

The whole family comes with me, and the trip has been carefully planned to keep boys active and satisfied while allowing me and Sanna to conduct business of our own, too. Hopefully it rolls out as we’ve been figuring it out.

We spent last weekend in Tahko in eastern Finland. I’ve been unable to write about it earlier due to work pressure, but finally there is some time to share the experiences before dozing off.

Tahko is a big ski resort near Kuopio, about 450 kilometers away from Helsinki. It is the biggest in southern Finland, especially with regards to services and accommodation.

We got a good deal from Spa Suites (see separate review), three nights’ accommodation in two bedroom suite with less than 250€. The only catch was that we had to participate in two hour weekly shares’ sales meeting. The sales guy was really relaxed and somehow the whole thing was way cozier than the usual weekly shares’ sales events. We haven’t made our minds yet.

Anyhow, we packed our stuff to the car and headed towards north on Thursday. The trip took about six hours, and boy were we tired. The boys dozed off pretty fast, and I could focus on some work items that needed my attention. The suite was equipped well, and there was a good Internet connection among other things.

Friday morning, we attended the sales pitch; the boys were ushered into play area and supervised by a nanny provided by the sales organisation. Nice touch! After the sales, I run some errands in Kuopio and Sanna spent time with a sled and Aapo.

After I got back, my parents joined us and stayed for one night in the extra bed. We visited also a friend of mine back from the university. Haven’t seen him for more than five years, so it was a good time to have a reunion.

Saturday was a cold day, -23C or so in the morning. We went to the spa, and soaked ourselves until lunch. Then it was time for boys to have a nap and my parents to drive back to Polvijärvi. Sanna’s brothers and their families joined us in the evening to celebrate Niilo’s first birthday — yeah, it has been a year already. Time flies.

On Sunday, Aapo and Sanna tried skiing with moderate success. Then I and Niilo joined them for a short sled session. Then it was already time to move on, eat some pizza for lunch and pack the car. Driving back to Espoo took six hours, and I felt once again drained. I deftly continued to work on an offer that I submitted on early Monday morning…

The trip was excellent in that sense that it moved our focus away from the daily grind, and the accommodation was luxurious enough to be really enjoyable — especially the sauna with always hot stove was splendid; it heated up in five minutes. Luxury!

We didn’t catch that much of snow time that we expected, and at the end the boys didn’t see much difference between Tahko and the hill next to our house. Maybe that will change in the next five years or so, and then we will go again…

I’ve been recently working with a new website based on WordPress, and it has taken most of my free computer time in December and also now in January. I haven’t been working with PHP and HTML that much in the past, so I had mostly forgotten how much work there is to get the site looking good. And I’ve not yet started testing with Internet Explorer.

During the process, I’ve come to appreciate WordPress’ plug-in system with the new tagging possibilities. The website is expanding the boundaries of WordPress in several different ways, being more like of a CMS than a blog, so I’ve created a specific plug-in that works well with my templates and their libraries.

As I’m solely working on this, the amount of small details is just astounding. I jump from Photoshop to Emacs to Camino to Photoshop and so forth, and also sometimes to Firefox and SeaMonkey to debug stuff that doesn’t work as I’ve planned. To be honest with you, templates in WordPress don’t really help you with managing the details. The whole system is somehow broken, but I cannot nail the reason. Someone should blow it away and replace it with a good Smarty based template engine. Volunteers?

Today is the last (real) working day before Christmas, and it is almost over…

The autumn and beginning of winter have been quite hectic, running a company with growth ambitions in a darkening economic climate. Fortunately, our clients have been so satisfied with us that we’ve been able to continue with full steam ahead.

[Knocking on wood]

The spring looks interesting. There is not much visibility, and thus our ability to maneuver easily and generic flexibility are going to be probably our most valued assets.

Before that, however, it is time to take a few days of well-earned rest; eat well, have quality time with loved ones, and think thoughts that are not related to immediate tasks and challenges.

I might blog something before the Christmas Eve, but on the other hand, I might not. Anyhow, better be safe than sorry: Merry Christmas.

[This is a slightly modified entry from my company's blog.]

Despite (or due to) the hard times in financials, web related innovative companies are alive and kicking here in Finland.

During this year and especially this autumn, I and my teams in Exove have participated in a number of projects for companies to jumpstart their business. This work includes helping them to conceptualise their offer, designing user experience, and implementing the needed systems to actually run the show.

Besides readymade and on-going projects, we are working with a number of other startups that have good and grand ideas for services that will shake certain segments or niches on the markets.

There is happening a lot also outside of Exove, too. Finnish startup scene has been pretty lively for the past year or so.

This all is due to the fact that implementing a web based business has become really cost-effective compared to the old ways of doing software business.

If you are pondering on an idea, consider also discussing with us. Let’s talk.

This is the thousandth post in Nomadig.com! More than four years have passed since I created the first incarnation of the site.

During this time, I’ve got two sons, moved to a new apartment, changed my employer twice, and finally established my own company.

The site has not fulfilled its original promise of freeing me to be a digital nomad — and now the times have changed. With the kids, you do not want to wander around, but stay put. Of course, it would be nifty to have gained enough capital to be independently wealthy, and be nomadic at least in mental sense. That hasn’t happened yet, but Exove is on its way to a bright future.

Despite not meeting the targets, Nomadig.com has given me a lot of good openings in both privately and business-wise. So let’s call it a moderate success.

I’ll plan to continue writing here, and reviewing the interesting places I’ve been. Stay tuned for the next thousand articles.

Father’s Day is celebrated in Finland on the second Sunday in November. For me, the event has been much more low-key than Mother’s Day in May, and that’s the way I like it. The day somehow feels a bit too much like a commercial ploy to sell more books.

Anyhow, I got to read newspaper in the bed — luxury that we haven’t been able to do for years. After that I continued to build a Lego Technic mobile crane (8421) that I bought during last summer in Oulu. Sanna had her parents to bring it home. She didn’t bother to inform me, so I was taken by complete surprise when the box was hauled from under our bed on Saturday evening.

I and Aapo spent almost two hours on Saturday evening, and at least four or five hours on Sunday to get the crane up and running. It was completed just before the bed time, but fortunately it didn’t disturb Aapo’s sleep.

I was really relaxed after the building — my fingers were sore, but I could still write on my laptop, so no real harm done. All in all, very good Father’s day.

We spent the previous weekend in Tallinn with our extended family: our family + my younger sister’s family + my parents. Total ten people – you can probably guess the amount of hassles on the way.

Tallinn is usually visited by ship from Helsinki (you can also fly there by plane or helicopter); this time our ferry was Tallink Star. Quite big and fast (two hours) ship that has been built recently. Due to some miscommunications, I ended up staying in cafeteria on 9th floor for the whole journey, so I cannot say much about the shops or anything else.

We had booked rooms in Viru Hotel that is centrally located, and inexpensive due to staff discounts. Grandparents had a suite with sauna, and we ended up in tiny tiny rooms — they were so small, that the extra beds for the boys wouldn’t fit it. At the end, we got family level rooms that were much more spacious and had bunk beds for the children.

When hotel gives you too small room and then later corrects the situation, one would expect that the luggage would be automagically transferred to the new rooms. Not in Viru hotel. There were no service to speak of; we had to queue to check in (twice), to request crib for babies, and to check out. The service was not swift.

I also heard some echoes from the soviet past: nobody got any rooms before 14.00, and then there were huge queues, as everyone raided the front desk to claim their rooms.

After finally getting the rooms, we spent some time shopping in Viru Keskus, and then went to Pegasus restaurant in the old town. My dad has his 70th birthday in these days, and the trip was the celebration. The food was excellent, and the service really nice in the restaurant. The bill was decent. Much recommended!

Next day, ladies went to spa for treatments, and men and boys went to Sikupilli Prisma to shop some Legos. There are, of course, Legos available in any store, but once again some of us got staff discounts from Prismas. We first tried walking, but nobody knew where to go and then we walked back to the hotel…

There should have been a free bus from Viru Hotel to Prisma, but it was nowhere to be seen. We decided to take a tram instead. As the hotel map sucked golfballs through a garden hose, we hopped off the tram two stops too late, and walked another kilometer for the mall. Then, we spent about 20 minutes there, buying small boxes of Legos (and bigger ones as Christmas presents, but don’t tell the boys), and then drove the bus (that was now available) back to the hotel. Spent two hours for a five euro Lego box and a juice for Aapo. Time well spent, eh?

Back in the hotel, we checked out (and queued) and had a lunch in Amarillo restaurant. It is sort-of Tex-Mex, but blanded down — almost every portion has their (in)famous BBQ sauce, so it doesn’t matter that much what you eat.

After lunch, we visited a few stores, including Stockmann and Kaubamaja, founding nothing. Then we took a taxi back to the harbour to board the ferry. This time we travelled with Tallink Superstar; it is a newer version of Tallink Star, and a bit more luxurious in every aspect.

This time I made sure that I could visit the store, and bought a load of candies, chocolate and champagne. People were hauling cartons of beer or cider — I don’t really get the point, as those are not that much cheaper anymore.

We had to wait about fifteen minutes in pretty packed deck before the doors were opened in Helsinki harbour. Niilo threw up, and the atmosphere was getting tiresome pretty fast. After walking almost a kilometer from the ship to the terminal, we got out of the masses — just to wait a bus that never arrived and to end up walking to our car that was parked about 2.5 kilometers away in Exove’s parking lot.

I have seldom been so happy to be at home.