Henrik Johnson's Blog

Another week another Apple problem

2009-09-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

Just have to share as a follow up to my latest post on not liking Macs. Yesterday my Mac broke down again. This time it unfortunately seems like it wasn't something easy that they could fix in the store.

Last time I was actually quite impressed by the couple of hours of turnaround that the Apple Store had to fix it. This was about what I expected from a major computer manufacturer and definately in line with what you get from for instance Lenovo or Dell.

This time around I was not that lucky and I was told they needed to ship the computer off to a separate repair facility and that it would take 1.5 to 2 weeks. This brings the level of service down to around what I got when I bought a laptop from Discount Laptops. They were great value, but as always (as long as you don't buy Apple) you get what you pay for.

Why I hate Mac & OSX

2009-08-28T19:58:00.000-07:00

I already wrote one article on why I don't like Mac computers or the OSX operating system. However, the last one was written before I had really used it that much. I have now been forced to use a Mac computer quite a lot because the iPhone SDK is only available for Mac computers and I have been playing around with that a lot lately.

The computer I have been using is a Macbook Air, which is supposedly pretty much a top of the line model when it comes to laptops. When I got it I got a lot of excited Mac users telling me to just give it a few weeks and I would come to love it. It's now been about 5 months and I can with certainty say that it is definitely the worst computer I've owned in the last couple of years. So here goes explaining why.

Hardware

First of all the most obvious flaw which is the track pad with just one button. It baffles me how anybody could be so stupid that when they had designed an operating system such as OSX which is so obviously made for two mouse buttons and then build the computers with just one button. With that I mean that there are tons of functionality in every application you can think of that is only accessible through the CTRL+Click context menu. On desktops you at least have an option to enable two mouse buttons, but it seems on laptops you have no such luck.

Next thing that annoys me immensely is that Apple have removed a bunch of very useful keys from the keyboard. The ones most obvious to me is PageUp, PageDown, Home and End. All keys which you as a coder use a lot. Granted I have the really small laptop, but even the 17" Macbook Pro still doesn't have those keys.

That brings me to the other problem with the keyboard. Mac computers have no less than 5 modifier keys. Granted Windows machine have basically the same set of modifier keys. The difference is that on Windows two of them are use very sparingly. On Mac you use all 5 modifier keys and a dizzying array of combinations. They have also tied up all the function keys with rarely used OS functionality so that when you are in X-Code for instance instead of using something easy like F8 for step you are forced to resort to Command+Shift+O.

Lets move on to the screen which compared to what I am used to really sucks. The resolution is simply atrocious. True I opted for the smallest version of laptop and I expect a smaller resolution, but the problem applies to all the models of their laptop line. If you go with something else than Mac you can get 1920x1280 resolution on a 15.4" screen but with Mac you need to go all the way to the ridiculously sized 17" model to get the screen size.

Finally lets go on to build quality. You would think that since Apple computers are so much more expensive than their PC counterparts you would get good build quality. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case. My Air broke within about one month which is a record even for me. Granted fixing it was easy and fast, but that is usually the case with any named brand as long as you go for the on-site warranty.

Software

I usually don't have a big problem moving between different computer platforms. I've been on Gnome, KDE most kinds of Windows and even though I might have grumbled in a few weeks I'm usually OK with it. Not so with OSX, it is simply too badly designed for me to get used to.

First of all the whole application/window separation where each application can have zero or more windows. You use one keyboard combination to switch between windows and one keyboard combination to switch between windows within the application. You also have a menu bar that isn't attached to the windows they are attached to. This setup might be acceptable for a non power user which only uses a web browser or one application doing a specific task. For a software developer it sucks. When you develop something in X-Code you will always have one editor window, one debugger console, one document window within that application. Then you have one application for the interface designer and finally one window for the iPhone simulator. So whenever you are going to another window you have to figure out which application you need first and then switch to the correct window. In Windows or Linux you have one list with all your windows and navigation is just much faster and more convenient.

Secondly also in regards to window handling is the fact that you can't maximize windows. All window systems I've seen (Including the ones that predate the original Mac OS) all have a maximize button and I can't imagine who decided that you didn't need that. There is an "optimize size" button, but for some reason the optimal size for a web browser for instance is not the whole screen.

You'd think with it's much touted BSD roots that OSX would play nice with X-Windows applications from Linux and the like. For some reason this is not the case. GIMP and Blender for instance works much worse on OSX than they do on Windows. In Blender you have weird painting artifacts and in GIMP there is a problem that whenever you click in another window you have to click twice for the click to be recognized.

Sort of incidental, but I just installed Snow Leopard yesterday and their progress meter is if possible even more inaccurate than the Microsoft one when installing Windows. During the period of 1 hour it went from 42 minutes remaining to 39 minutes remaining. After that I went out to a pub and didn't get back until 4 hours later and then it was actually finished.

Since what I do on the Mac is software development it is inevitable to compare X-Code with Visual Studio (And also Eclipse, but they are pretty similar so I will stick with Visual Studio).

In Visual Studio you have everything you need in one easy to access window and it changes the layout automatically to include stuff you might need through different stages of the development cycle. In X-Code everything is spread out in a gazillion different windows and if you want to look at different things when coding and debugging it's up to you to move stuff around.
X-Code doesn't remember watches between different debug sessions. Debugging anything complex is ridiculously complicated. The only way that works kind of OK is the text based GDB prompt.
As far as I have managed to figure out you can't inspect the contents of an array at all without looking at the individual items.
Very mouse centric in it's user interface which is something you strive to avoid when working with code. I still haven't figured out which keyboard combination switches the file you look at in the editor without using the mouse.
X-Code is incredibly buggy (Even compared to Visual Studio). I have to restart it and even the entire computer all the time when it stops working (Especially the debugger).

Company

Just have to write a little bit about Apple's support. I've actually really tried to figure out how to use the Mac in a reasonable way so I have been visiting the incredibly ineptly named "Genius Bar" in the Apple Store a bunch of times and have also had some contact with support in regards to their developer program. Granted, when my computer was actually broken they did fix it pretty fast and hassle free but apart from that their support sucks!

I asked them about how you maximize a window and a guy seriously told me that yes, you can do that. No problem and then showed me how to use the mouse to resize the window to cover the entire screen.
When I was asking them about if there was a laptop with a PageUp/PageDown key they asked me why in gods name I needed to do that (Which is funny because their desktop keyboard still have the keys)?
It took the apple developer program almost 3 months to approve my membership. The problem was that instead of using the phone number I provided in my application to call me back they looked it up at PRV (The official records agency in Sweden) and found another phone number and used that to try to contact me. The problem is that that phone number has not been connected for over 5 years now. And with that they stopped and didn't even try the number I actually provided in the application. Even better is that though I contacted them several times through email all I got back was "in progress of reviewing your application" and not a peep about they not being able to get hold of me. Not until a friend of mine provided me with a customer support phone number (Which isn't listed on their web site) and a 30 minute yelling match with the customer service representative did they agree to try a working number.
It's not been over 3 weeks for Apple to approve my first application submission. Which incidentally is a lot longer than it took to write the app.
Apple is the only company I know of in the US who require a signature to their packages when you order something from their website. You can get around it by signing a waiver, but that requires me to have a printer. You'd think Apply would assume people having a job and not being able to sign for packages in the middle of the day. I don't why they insist on this, I've had much more expensive stuff delivered without signatures from other companies.

Epitet of a diet

2009-02-25T23:13:00.000-08:00

Some of you might know that I was diagnosed with high cholesterol about 6 months ago when I for the first time since I joined the military (Which was in 1991). I have to admit that I was actually pleasantly surprised that my doctor suggested that I would try first with changing my diet to try to fix it. My impression of the US medical culture has been that if there is a pill to fix it that is what you reach for first.

So I met up with a dietitian that described which diet I was supposed to follow. The first question pretty much everyone has asked about it is what it is called, and I honestly don't know the name of it but it seems to be pretty similar to the GI diet. Interestingly enough I was not supposed to lose weight with the diet I got, instead it was intended to increase my metabolism which should then lower my Cholesterol. In combination with the diet I was also supposed to increase my exercise. Not much though, I was already pretty good on that account.

Also in the diet was the notion that I had to eat at least once every 3 hours. To be honest I have never eaten as much as I did during this diet in my entire life. It was actually pretty weird to just never be hungry, to the point where I started missing it. I also needed to make sure I drank a lot of water. Actually a ridiculous amount of water. About a gallon a day in fact. Have to admit I hated running to the bathroom all the time. I also almost completely stopped drinking during this period (Alcohol, and beer in particular apparently has a lot of carbohydrates in it). I did end up drinking at three parties that were already planned before the diet started though.

So how did it all work out. I started out with a total cholesterol of 265 and LDL (Bad cholesterol) at 198. After the diet at which point I had also for some reason lost almost 5kg (10 pounds) I had another cholesterol test. I just recently finally learned the result of the test and my new total cholesterol is now 158 and the LDL is 101. According to this cholesterol range chart I went from High to Very Good.

Of course, after the diet was over I went home to Sweden and ate like a total pig. You just have to have a lot of pizza and Sibylla burgers when you are home there. Now I intend to settle down to somewhere in the middle between the diet and my normal life and hopefully that way still live great and have a good cholesterol level.

Went to Chicago for a weekend

2009-02-08T02:00:00.000-08:00

I went to Chicago for a weekend in January taking a short break from my Sweden trip. It might seem weird to some of you but the reason was pretty simple. I met a new girl right before I left and it just seemed like seven weeks was a little bit too long. So we discussed it and met somewhere in the middle (Actually Newfoundland would be in the middle, but none of us wanted to go there).

This article was supposed to be longer, but I apparently forgot to write it.

First brush with Mac OS X

2009-01-22T22:42:00.000-08:00

The Apple juggernaut seems unstoppable these days and where ever I turn I seem to run into people asking me why I'm not running a Mac. That said a few days ago I had the opportunity to work for a little bit with an iMac by myself. I had a very simple task at hand. I needed to print a couple of flight itineraries that I had in an web mail account. Here are my impressions that I came away with.

First of all there is that whole bull shit mantra that "Mac always works". First Firefox locked up on me within 5 minutes and then Safari locked up after a little while after that. My problem is that I don't know how to kill an app on OS X so after the last of them locked up I was effectively done. I have way better mileage with browsing on Windows than this regardless if I use Firefox, IE or Chrome.

I really hate the whole menu at the top of the screen thing they have going on Mac. I'm sure in some ways you probably get used to it, but I also dislike it on a philosophical level. The problem with it is as your screen starts to fill up with documents it is very disconcerting to have the menu end up sometimes far from your actual document. I also dislike the fact that the menu has a mixture of global and application items. I also don't like the buttons on the left hand side of the window without icons in them. I'm sure you learn this, but which of red, green and yellow means maximize window. Perhaps it's me, but it just isn't obvious in my mind.

Also very annoying is that Mac doesn't remember your last used print settings. Every time I tried to print something the page size was reset to a CD sleeve (Which I'm sure is something that Johansson had set up somewhere). On any other modern OS the print dialog simply remembers what the last settings you entered in the print dialog was.

Then there is the issue with the mouse. I can see that one mouse button can be easier to use for a novice. But the way they have apparently done it on an iMac is that it looks like there is only one button, but you can still press it as a right and left mouse button (And have different actions occur). That is just plain retarded, and how can that possibly be construed as simpler?

Also, during the entire time I was using the computer there was also this weird quiet chirping sound coming from it. I assumed that it had to do with IM or something like that. However when I asked him about it he didn't know either, but he guessed it was a problem with having too many USB devices connected to the computer. User friendly indeed!

Finally I have the number one gripe with this whole mess. The keyboard layout! What the hell kind of idiot decided that the Swedish layout of the keyboard shouldn't match what is actually printed on the keys (It was a Swedish keyboard)? I could never figure out how you got a '@' character on the Swedish keyboard. It was printed as being on the equivalent of AltGR+'2' which is the same as a "normal" keyboard. However, that didn't work. In the end I had to switch to an English layout for this one character. I later learned from Johansson learned that it was located on something like AltGR+'ä'.

Before I did this I had basically always thought Mac's had kind of cool hardware (Off course except for the glide point which would just have to go) and the slick UI based off of a unix kernel appealed to me too and that I would probably have liked running it as long as I could for work. Now I know not to believe the hype and when I don't have to run Windows anymore I'll be switching back to Linux.

2008 in review

2008-12-31T08:51:00.000-08:00

The year is ending and I thought I'd sum it all up in a post.

Trips

Managed to visit these places during the year.

Amsterdam
London
Münich
St. Anton
Sweden
Palm Springs
Las Vegas
Seattle
San Francisco (Finally got to go to Alcatraz)
Napa
Maui

Toys & Gadgets

Got the following new toys during the year.

BMW 335i car
BMW R1100R BMW motorcycle
Sony Ericsson K850i phone
Nokia N810i internet tablet
Two Lenovo T61p laptops (One for work and one for play)
Added another completely silent player for my media center for the bedroom
Got another IPod (This one a Nano)
Nintendo Wii
Microsoft XBox 360

Concerts & Shows

Actually managed to go to quite a few shows this year.

Coachella (Was sick the whole time)
Eddie Izzard
Guys & Dolls
Madonna
Coldplay
Above & Beyond
Deadmau5
Cirque Du Soleil Beatles Love
Armin van Buuren
London Beat
Foo Fighters
ZZ Top
Pagent of the Masters

Media

Added 1852 songs, 109 movies and 2074 TV show episodes to the media center. Started listening to a bunch of lectures from The Teaching Company mostly about history, religion, science and philosophy. As always, read a bunch of books but I can't remember which without access to my book case.

Also integrated the Rockbox running IPods with my media center and with my car so I finally have a pretty sweet system for listening to music again wherever I am at.

Finally thoughts

It has generally been a great year. Also started the year single and ended it in a relationship. All in all I've had a really good 2008. Don't know what everybody is talking about that this was supposed to have been a bad year. If 2009 is as good as 2008 I should be so lucky!

Happy New Years Everybody!

Another successful Christmas party

2008-12-07T21:15:00.000-08:00

Hosted another Christmas party. My fifth for those keeping track. It seems like everybody enjoyed themselves so I'm counting it as another great success. There were a few notable absences this year though which brings the total number of people who have attended every one of the parties down to 4 (Me, Magnus & Eriko and Doug Daniels).

It seems like my conditioning of my friends to drink Glögg is moving along nicely too. This year I bought 8 liters of it and I ran out ridiculously fast. Fortunately I had plenty of alternatives available when that occurred.

There are tons of photos taken of the event available in my photo album.

Thanks everybody who came and made it a great party and I'll hope to see you all when I get back from Sweden (If not sooner).

How you know you are addicted to gadgets

2008-12-03T22:21:00.000-08:00

I managed to leave my phone at the doctors office this week and I realized after I got it back that while I still hadn't found it instead of freaking out that I lost my phone instead I started getting excited about which new one to get. That said I am very proud of myself I have for the first time ever managed to almost wait it out to get a new subsidized phone from my carrier (By the time I get home from Sweden I will be eligible). And I've only bought one unsubsidized one during those two years.

The annoying thing is that I still can't really find a phone I want to upgrade to. I'm hoping a sexy Android phone will be out on AT&T by the time I get back, but I'm not holding my breath. Or if a really good follow up to the one I have now (A Sony Ericsson K850i).

A fare weekend

2008-11-30T21:34:00.000-08:00

Have had a really nice lazy Thanksgiving weekend. My boss gave me an extra day and a half off for our team finishing up a release last week so I've been off almost all week. Haven't really done anything and it's been great. I've used this opportunity to really enjoy the last weekend I will have by myself before the beginning of February. Next weekend I'm having my annual Christmas party and then I'm heading home to Sweden for Christmas again.

That said, I did manage to do a little bit though. I was invited to a traditional Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday at two friends of mines Bill & Mary's house. That was great.

On Saturday I went to a gun show. I've never been to one, and a friend of mine had a booth there. Not really my kind of scene although I did end up buying a really cool lighter. My dad would have loved it though. Also had lunch with a friend from growing up Anders Svärd who I haven't seen in probably 20 years. Turns out he had been in Long Beach a lot for work this year and will probably be next year too. It was great seeing him again.

Today I went to the SWEA OC's Christmas fare. Saw my first "Lucia Tåg" (Roughly translated Lucia Procession) for a couple of years, that was great. Also stocked up on about 9 liters of glögg for my Christmas party.

Also today I went through my email archives and dug up my postings I made to my friends at home about moving here before I started the blog and posted them here. If you look in the history all the posts from 2004 are new as of today. Some of them are quite long since the length of my posting here has pretty much gone down as I've gotten more and more of a life over here.

Took the bike up to San Francisco for the weekend

2008-11-24T23:14:00.000-08:00

I went to San Francisco for the weekend on the bike. In retrospect I would have to admit that it was a little bit too far in too short of a time. The way up took around 7 hours of driving and the drive back took around 8 hours. To sum it all up, next time I'm taking a flight instead.

I stayed at a fairly new friend Kris who has a condo right smack in the middle of downtown San Francisco. I've already done most of the tourist things in San Francisco so this time I basically just hung out and partied. I don't know how many times during the weekend I got the question. "Do you live in the city?". For the uninitiated "The City" refers to San Francisco (It's funny, because New Yorkers have a very different idea on what "The City" refers to as far as I remember). In the end I just replied that I lived in "a city", but somehow most were unsatisfied with that answer.

In general I have to admit that I really like San Francisco. I can totally see myself living there in case I for some reason would have to had to leave Laguna Beach (I think there probably are a lot more jobs in my field up there than there are down here in case I would want to change work). This is in stark contrast to Los Angeles where I can never see myself moving to even though it is a lot closer to where I am now (For the confused of you reading this from back home even though where I live is technically part the greater LA area it is very different from actual Los Angeles).

Fantastic weekend weather

2008-11-15T19:11:00.000-08:00

Today was a completely fabulous day in Southern California. Clear blue skies and temperatures around 25C to 30C. It was almost like a regular summer day.

I went out inline skating and was met by a completely disgusting view as i went from Newport Beach to Huntington Beach though. There was almost like a wall of dark gray/brown smog laying over the landscape. I have seen the smog here before, but never as bad as this looked like. Unfortunately I had no camera to take a picture of it with me. It probably isn't all smog though, a lot of it is probably coming from one of the fires inland from here. It looked really strange on the beach because with the brown colored sky you could hardly see where the ocean ended and the beach started because they were both the same color.

Saw a Madonna concert in San Diego

2008-11-05T10:37:00.001-08:00

Went and saw Madonna live in San Diego. Even though I have to admit I was a bit skeptical going there it was completely awesome. One of the best concerts I've seen in some time.

Also kind of funny was that a couple of minutes before the concert started word spread that Obama had won the presidential election and as people were waiting for the concert to start there was random chants of Obama and "Yes We Can" going on around the stadium.

Madonna also performed the last couple of songs wearing an Obama shirt with the text "Express Yourself" and at one point took a break and talked about how happy she was with the election (With every monitor in the back showing a picture of Obama.

All in all a pretty fun way to experience the end of this election season.

Went to Las Vegas for Halloween

2008-11-02T22:01:00.000-08:00

Took the bike and drove up to Las Vegas this weekend for Halloween. It was pretty much insane. My "favorite" costume must have been the girl dressed as Roller Girl who wore roller skates, really short cut off jeans and nothing else. Just strolling through the Mirrage Casino topless, got to love Vegas.

On Saturday I went on a really cool house/trance party with Armin van Buuren and Deadmau5 among the DJ:s playing. It was really good although I have to admit after aorund 4 or 5 in the morning my memory starts getting a bit blurry. Still managed to get up at 10 in the morning, had brunch with Dawn who just happened to have flown in for work and was on my way back to Laguna Beach before noon.

Did end up taking a 3 hour "nap" the moment I got home though so missed sleep finally caught up with me then.

I have some pictures of the ordeal put up here.

Went to Love Ride 25th Aniversary

2008-10-26T22:02:00.000-07:00

I've been to the Love Ride up in Pomona which as far as I've understood is the biggest motorcycle gathering in California.

I went with Helena, a fellow Swede who also drives a motorcycle (Off course she fit in better since she has a Harley)

There were a lot of really nice bikes. Mostly Harley's or even bigger bikes, some to the point of being completely ridiculous.

I also saw Foo Fighters and ZZ Top who were playing at the even. Really nice to spend a day in around 30C (90F) temperature even though it is almost November. Gotta love the weather of this place.

I have some more pictures of the event over here.

Pumpkin Carving

2008-10-26T00:28:00.000-07:00

I just carved my first pumpkin in preparation for Halloween. The one in the picture on the right is the end result of my endeavors. I took some more pictures of the even which took place at my friend Eric's place (A local artist).

I'm bringing back big arms tradition again

2008-10-21T07:09:00.000-07:00

Basically, this was something that me and Madelene Olsson started doing back in the day (Somewhere around 2001 I think). The original idea stems from a bit by the comedian Eddie Izzard called Big Arms (It's at the end of the clip). Basically the tradition was that whenever you travel anywhere you take a picture of yourself in a big arms pose.

To start it off I figured I would post the big arms pictures I have so far in my photo album. Whenever I go traveling somewhere where I haven't taken a picture at before I'll post it here.

Big arms at the McDonald homestead in Scottland

Big arms at the beach in Scottland
(Seriously, the one we have in California is a lot better)

Big arms parachute jumping

Big arms inline skating with the gang

Big arms sailing in the Swedish archipelago

Madde with big arms at Picadilly Square in London

Under a mangrove tree (That is all one tree) in Lahaina, Maui

Random updates for the last year and a half

2008-10-18T10:56:00.000-07:00

Ok, since it has been way too long since my last update on what I've been up to so here goes.

Going home for Christmas for 6 weeks is now a tradition. This Christmas will be the third year.
Went to Costa Rica about a year ago to visit a friend. He's now moved on to Panama so I guess that is another trip I need to do. Here are some pictures.
Went skiing in St Anton last winter with Stefan. Here are some pictures.
Bought a new car. This time it is a BMW 335i.
Spent New Years in Amsterdam with Joe and Nicole. Here are some pictures.
Went to Coachella (Big music festival near Palm Springs) but was sick the entire time so that was not a pleasant experience.
Went to Seattle a couple of times to visit Microsoft for a new project. The project itself was a little bit of a mess (We were developing an add-on against a non stable beta Microsoft release) and I've now managed to get off it.
Went on a Napa trip. Here are some pictures.
Have had visits from John, Henrik Johansson, Anna-Karin and off course my parents.
Got a motorcycle license and then a bike (A BMW R1100R). Also went on a motorcycle trip through San Francisco, Yosemite, Death Valley and Las Vegas. Here are some pictures.
Went to Maui with my parents. Really cool place. Here are some pictures.

That's pretty much the highlights of the last year and a half.

So long and thanks for all the fish!

2006-12-20T02:28:00.000-08:00

Sitting on the plane going home to Sweden for a month and a half. Need to renew my visa so I am taking a longer trip home this time. SAS has free internet access on the flight now so I'm actually posting this in flight, how cool is that? Will be coming back to the US by February.

Also put up some pictures from this years Christmas party available here.

For the people that are joining me on Thursday we have a table reserved at Humlehof on Folkungagatan at 7pm. Hope you can make it! If not, I'll hopefully see you soon (If your in Sweden).

Going home...

2006-11-22T07:32:00.000-08:00

I today got notice that my Visa extension was approved so I can stay in the States for another 3 years. By a strange twist of events this means that I can come home for Christmas this year as usual. Also, this time I'll be going home for a little bit longer than usual. I'm heading home on the 19:th (Arriving on the 20:th). Hope for all in Stockholm to join me for my birthday on the 21:st as usual. Then I'll be staying all the way until the 28:th of January. Part of the time in Karlskoga and part of it in Stockholm. So hopefully this time I wont be as rushed as my usual visits.

Halloween party

2006-11-02T21:57:00.000-08:00

Another Halloween has passed. We had another party at Doug's place. I've got some pictures over here.

I've also been to a wedding between John-John and Enid, some pictures of that over here.

Two months into my electric scooter purchase I am also pleased to note that I've managed to cut my gas usage to about half of what it was before. I've filled up my car once since the beginning of September and I still have more than three quarters left of my current tank. I think this purchase will actually pay itself of in about a year.

Random site house keeping

2006-10-09T08:43:00.000-07:00

First of all some photos from my first trip to Mexico. As an explanation for me looking so bored and tired I went there for just one day and I left the same day as Henrik and Maria left for the airport so we had a big bash the day before I even left for Mexico.

Next are some pictures from my first Charger game, courtesy of Joe also.

There were also some more random pictures here and there too, but I don't even remember them.

I also upgraded the application that runs the photo album. The new one first looks a lot better and the "Random Image" on the left is awesome I think, at least when I have been playing around so much with the album lately anyway. I'm not sure, but I think this upgrade might also have broken all the old links I might have had to the album before too. The images should still be there though if you take the time to find them. I also fixed the Underscore website which has been broken in years. And finally I removed the guest book and disabled commenting on the blog because it was just getting completely filled with spam.

Trip to Dubai

2006-10-08T01:22:00.000-07:00

Dubai is a truly remarkable place. The first thing that strikes you is that there is construction going on everywhere. And apparently it is not just a matter of there being active construction sites everywhere. They also get a lot of stuff done. The entire part of the city where I live (Dubai Marina) has been constructed mostly in the last year. The building I live in is one of the first completed, but even so the entire skyline from my window which now consists of mostly finished tall buildings were just iron skeletons of buildings when my friends were here 6 months ago.

Off course, with so much construction going on there are bound to be some cut corners. I heard about one tower where they didn't realize that they had forgotten to put in water pipes in the entire building until it was completed. Another example is the flat were I was staying where none of the shower drains worked.

Something else that hits you immediately (even in my case where I landed at 6:30 in the morning) is the heat. This place is definitely too hot for my taste. Even at night it's still above 30C (~95F). It is simply too hot to do anything outside. Just walking a single block is a major undertaking.

For me, having lived in Southern California for a while, I can say that in this country Mexican is spelled I-N-D-I-A-N. It is a remarkable system they have set up here. There is basically no poverty for citizens of this country. Even better than that, a lot of people don't even need to work. This is accomplished by enforcing a rule that except for a few "free zones" no foreign entity is allowed to own a controlling interest in a company. So if you are a big foreign company who wants in on the whole Dubai commerce thing you find a local who is willing to own 51% of the company. So a lot of local people just own companies without actually needing to work for them.

This brings me to who actually does the work. That is being done by Indians that are brought here to work 12 hour shifts for around $120 to $150 a month. These guys are also the people who work 24/7 building the sky scrapers all around town. Even better is that if I go to a restaurant, pay with a credit card and then add tip to it the people waiting on me don't get that money here, it is kept by the establishment. So if you go here be sure to tip in cash.

There is also an amazing amount of hypocritical moral superiority going on. You can only buy alcohol in hotel bars for instance. If you live here permanently you can get a license to buy liquor as long as you can prove that you are not a Muslim. Also there are off course no strip bars or anything like that, but in pretty much every bar you can play the game "spot the hooker". I and Johansson have been debating which country is best at it. Here in Dubai or in the USA (Which is also pretty good at hypocrisy as a society). I tend to lean towards Dubai being worst, but Johansson disagreed.

The place itself though has a lot of really nice restaurants and exceptional shopping. Price wise I would say brand clothes are about the same as in Southern California (Or Sweden), but electronics is a little bit cheaper (20 to 30%). And off course there is no value added tax.

One fun thing about this place is that just before I showed up H&M launched in Dubai (Opening a whole bunch of stores at once). By the time I arrived their ad campaign said simply “H&M: We're Finally here”. Given that H&M is the reason for my nick-name Mauritz, me and Henrik thought this was very appropriate given that we were both there at the time.

One last thing that struck me about this place is that it is so overtly religious. For instance the last day I left was the first day of Ramadan and during this time you couldn’t even get a bottle of water before 6pm (Or actually, you could, but it was illegal to drink it in a public place) in the entire Mall of the Emirates. This is regardless if you are Muslim or not. I just found it weird that they would enforce this in a place so overtly geared towards tourism.

Finally here are some pictures of the spectacle (Also including some pictures of me skiing inside the mall of the emirates).

Some more random updates

2006-10-03T02:04:00.000-07:00

First of all I made a trip to Seattle with work (Got to do some sightseeing too though). Went to visit Microsoft Labs. It was surprisingly rewarding actually (Pictures).

Got a visit from Lovisa and Ludde (Friends from back home who I got to know while working at Spinbox) (Pictures).

I also bought an electric scooter to get me around town. It is sort of a testament to my own dementia in that I set up a rule for my self not to use my car to get around town and then spend a grand to cheat for my own rule. It's really convenient though and the main reason for not using the car in Laguna Beach is not my own rule, but the complete hassle of finding parking so I'm not that crazy (Really).

Went on a trip to Dubai for a week and a half, but I will add a long write up on that later.

Another crappy midsummer

2006-07-02T01:58:00.000-07:00

As a follow up from last years post. This years midsummer was also no picnic. But since I haven't posted anything in such a long time I'll start with a quick recap.

I've been hanging out quite a lot with Henrik Johansson since he has been working in the States a lot during the spring. Unfortunately this period in probably mostly over for now.
Mom and dad came to visit.
Went to Cabo for a bachelor party.
John and Anna Sandell came to visit.
Went to Camden, South Carolina for the wedding of Derek and Kate following the bachelor party.
Went to London, followed by Sweden and another wedding of Henrik and Maria (Not Johansson, he got married earlier in the year. This one was Sandell). Went to St Petersburg Russia (Pictures) for work. Came back to Sweden and hung out for another week and a half (Pictures).
Briefly after coming back Kaitlin broke up with me on the Midsummer's eve... Which leaves me to the crappy midsummer now two years running.

Since then life has returned to pretty much normal now. Summer is finally here with 85 to 95 degree weather constantly (25C to 30C). Unfortunately a lot of tourists too. Also finished up a release this Friday of Toad for SqlServer 2.0. Finally I'll leave you with a quote. This time a demotivator from Despair.com:

"The only consistent feature in all of your dissatisfying relationships is you."

A Merry Christmas

2005-12-26T14:54:00.000-08:00

As some of you may recall I tend to do a write up of trips as I head home on the flight. This time is no different than previous times, however there is one big difference in that I will be able to post this one while I'm still in flight. The flight I'm on right now actually has internet access while flying. According to the advertisement thingy in the seat in front of me SAS is the first airline in the world to offer this. Either way, it's the coolest thing ever.

I'm just on my way back to the States after having made a quick visit home to surprise my parents on Christmas. I left from Los Angeles on the 21:st (Worst birthday ever) and am now going home on the 26:th.

The trip back home to Sweden turned out to be a real nightmare experience. I arrived at the airport a little bit less than 2 hours before the flight was supposed to leave which I though was ample time to check in. Especially since I had no luggage (I wonder how many travel from LAX to Europe with only a cabin bag).

First of all the shuttle driver from the long term parking lets me off on the wrong terminal. I was supposed to go to terminal 7, he left me off on terminal 4. If you know LAX you know it is layed out in a horse shoe shape so terminal 4 is actually as far from terminal 7 as you can possibly get.

After being moved from line to line a couple of times I end up in the longest one at least in that terminal. I pretty soon realized that there was no way in hell that I was going to make my flight. At one point there was one person servicing the check-in counter for a line of several hundred people. It ended up taking two and a half hours until I finally made it up to the check-in counter. At that time my plane had already departed 30 minutes ago. It was a strangely serene feeling to stand in the line and simply know that there is no way in hell you will make your flight. I didn't feel stressed out at all after I realized it.

After a quick check that there was no way that I would be able to catch up to my connecting flight out of Newark they had to delegate me to line number 2 at the ticketing desk. This one was nowhere near as long though so that probably only took 30 minutes to get to the counter. After hearing some discouraging mutterings from the person on the other side of the counter like "Let's see if there is anything tomorrrow...", they actually found me a flight that would take me through LAX-Wahington-Munich-Stockholm. Perfect I thought, and I would only end up in Stockholm a couple of hours later than originally intended. The only problem was that when I left the counter with my new ticket I had 10 minutes to go through security and get to the gate. The gate turned out to be around a mile away and after I managed to convince security to let me jump the line a mad dash ensued.

As I arrive to the gate a flight attendant ushers me immediately onto the jet way, but as I get halfway out it I can see them close the door to the aircraft. I kid you not, another 5 seconds and I would have made but no such luck. After this the one attendant left on my side of the gate started trying to find me another way home and managed to find a flight going LAX-Chicago-Frankfurt-Stockholm. But unfortunately before she was completely done with this ticket she had to leave and she said that I should talk to someone at gate 71A (Or that's what I thought at least). She didn't in any way indicate to me that I was in a hurry so I started walking back through the walkways I had ran through minutes earlier. At gate 71A there is nobody there, but there is a service desk right next to it so I start standing in line there for them to help me. As I stand there I hear someone calling for me on the PA that I should go to gate 71A again, and now there is someone there.

The person there has no idea why I had been called to that desk though and after going through my increasing stack of tickets and boarding cards she deduced that I should go to gate 70A, not 71A. Unfortunately by now that gate was empty and the airplane had just departed from there too. Downtrodden I resort to go back to the service desk I was standing in line at before and she actually manages to find another flight to Chicago so I can catch my connection to Frankfurt. Unfortunately it is only a stand-by seat, but by this time I was willing to clutch at any straw they were willing to extend me. And I actually managed to get on that flight to get to Chicago and from there to Frankfurt.

In Frankfurt I had for some reason gotten a 5 hour wait for the next flight even though there is a flight that leaves in about 1.5h. I set out trying to change my ticket and after having been passed around a couple of times I end up once again at the United Airlines ticketing desk. One of the first things I ask is if they can also check me in if I have no luggage but unfortunately that was not possible since it was for a flight operated by a different airline. They do manage to change my ticket though for the sooner flight, but by the time they start getting ready (I can see my tickets being printed out) I only have 45 minutes left before the flight leaves, and I still have the problem of checking in (The check in line in Frankfurt looked just as bad the one in LAX, but I hoped that I could find the people I had harassed earlier and be able to skip the line).

But then all of a sudden the nice women helping me with my tickets asks me for my passport. I was a bit perplexed since I didn't think you needed that to just get your tickets, especially traveling within the EU. After she gets the passport she just wanders off... She is gone at least 5 minutes (Which to me seemed at least like an hour and I can see me going back and needing to do this again just to get back to the flight I was originally on). But lo and behold when she returns it turns out she had wandered off and checked me in. I could almost have kissed her right there.

After managed to get through a very crowded security check in I actually made the flight and in the end I landed in Stockholm at around 2:30pm which was only about 8 hours later than I was supposed to have been there. And with the party that I was going to with a bunch of people not starting until 7 I actually managed to get a couple of hours sleep in at Johansson's before we went out and hit the town until 4:30 in the morning (Ending it with a thin-bread-roll).

The day after I went home to my parents and after having waited a little bit more than an hour for them to return from shopping managed to completely surprise them by just ringing the doorbell and saying hello. I don't think I've ever seen them as surprised as when they saw who rang the doorbell.

After this I spent a few pretty uneventful days just hanging out with my parents and some more friends that happened to be in Karlskoga at the time.

This morning I got up at 3:30am and took to the car and ended up driving for 3 hours through a blizzard to get to Arlanda in ample time for my flight (I wasn't about to miss it again after what I went through on the way here). In the end I was at the checkin counter almost 4 hours before the flight was to depart and off course there was no line at all so I just had to sit there for 3 hours in the end. At least I got to get some tax free shopping done. Which leads to me sitting here demonstrating the completely awesome features available when flying SAS. Hope you have all had a Merry Christmas and wish you all a Happy New Year!