DVD shelf

So Alina and I finally managed to get our shelves up for the DVDs. We had been planning on getting them up for quite a long time, and we used just as much time having the planks stand in the hallway, waiting to be cut, painted and set up. Finally we got around to do it, and it turned out really well!
Out drinking with my co-workers

So on Friday (25/07) my work was having a party for Vidar (one of my co-workers) seeing as he was leaving us for a new job. We were going to start having a couple of beers and play Wii at work, then head for Solsiden to Peppes for pizza and more beer. When it was around 4 we started with the beers, but I had promised Alina I would get us a Wii that day, seeing as I received my paycheck, so I went to town and met her, we bought ourselves a Wii at Mamoz, and then we went back home. I changed some clothes, fixed myself up a bit, and went back to work.

By then of course most of the guys have had a couple of beers and was preparing to go, so we head onwards to Solsiden. We came to Peppes, got a nice table and more people joined shortly after. We were about 10 people when the pizzas and beer came, and boy there was a lot of beer after a while… When the company is paying for the beer, people tend to go little overboard, so I think we all had about 2 beers each at all times.

After having about 3-4 beers (or more?) at Peppes, we decided we should head out on town. We went to Bar Circus, where we got our own private lounge and more beer. Also, after a while I started on JD&Coke, which they decided I needed more of, so at several times I had two of them as well.

By this time It starts getting blurry, I remember having allot of drinks on circus, and I have been told later on that we went to Down Town, all tough I really can’t remember that. I can however remember being at the bar in Down Town with the previous boss for Crystone, and this is the last thing I remember him saying “I’m going to drink you under the table! Give us 8 drinks!”….. After that, everything went black and I woke up on the sofa in our apartment the next day.

Turns out I had managed to get Alina to come pick me up (which was by my part I think quite a good idea), which she did. Safe to say she was not pleased the next day, having to drag my drunk ass through town wasn’t exactly that much fun.

Safe to say, I will never drink that much again, or at least not with my colleagues, just with Alina and friends.

And yeah, I actually managed to forget my bag at Down Town, and had a couple of days where I was really scared that it might have been stolen, because none of my co-workers did remember seeing it either.

Wii and fit

This week we got ourselves a Wii Fit for our Wii, seeing as Alina really wants to get in a bit better shape (and I should probably work a bit on my physique as well). I tried it out after coming back from work, and I must say, it really tires you out! At first I was really doubting if anything like that could even work, but turns out you are doing some really heavy exercise.

Well, silly as I am, I might have just overdone it, because after playing for about 35 minutes, I felt really tired. And the same night, I had a seriously bad fever which stuck with me all night and the next day. Might have been that my body wasn’t prepared for such exercise, so it just decided to shut down instead of dealing with it. Good job body… Thankfully I feel much better now, so I will no doubt be trying the Wii fit again soon. Just have to remember to warm up a bit before I go at it.

By the way, If anyone want to trade the Wii key things, let us know! We’d love to link up with you guys :)
The rest of this week will be consisting of Alina and me celebrating our 1 year anniversary! I can’t believe it’s already been a whole year, but time flies when you’re having a good time :) We will no doubt be having a nice dinner, maybe a movie, and generally just spend the day together.

Rest in peace George Carlin, and I hope you make the people wherever you go laugh their socks off!

Onwards to Hamar
Hamar next stop. I’m about an hour on my way now, and I’ve had some food, a drink and read a couple of chapters in my book, world of warcraft: tides of war. I’s really interesting, as it involves how the different alliances were formed, both alliance and horde, and how the war in hillsbrad foothills fared.
Reading these books, I thought I’d get really into gaming again, but it’s not as bad as i thought. I believe it’s much more of a therapy then an agitator, and besides. I love fantasy novels, and the Warcraft world is so vast, with so much going on, that it’s more then enough reading and making oneself a part of the story.
I just realized by the way, I forgot headphones…. Which means I won’t be able to watch movies on my laptop on the train from Hamar to Skien, unless I 1: get some headphones in Hamar, or 2: borrow some headphones from a guy i know that is heading to Skien as well, or 3: that I’ll be alone in the wagon. I’m kind of hoping for the latter :]
Ah well, I still have my books if all else fails.Just one more thing before I’ll be sending this post.
People whom are forcing themselves into being nice towards strangers annoy me! Jeez…

At last, Skien
Or, well partially. I’m on the train towards Skien. I also set up my computer next to this guy I know that’s also heading home, and we’re chatting allot about sci-fi shows. Makes time go allot faster :)
Oh, and we almost lost the train for a second. The train warden blew his whistle and the alarm went off, so I pulled the guy with me in and we continued inside the train instead. Just seconds after the train starts moving and we’re off. Scary :]
And to top it off, my stomach kind of hurts :(
Well, I’m in Oslo now, home soon!

So yeah, I finally got the nerve to rid myself of it today. Here’s how it went:

Early morning, got up around 7 and showered. Nervous level at around -10 to be honest. I was pretty self-confident at this point.
After some breakfast, tea and the opening of various calendars (as of course is common practice within any household during the days of December), I figured it was about time I head towards town and towards my doom.
Now the entire time while I was walking towards town, I wasn’t really worried. I kept persuading myself that the dentist didn’t really have to be as scary as I made it in my own head. I kept telling myself that “dentists are really good these days, and do everything painless”, but that only helps to a certain point. Nervous level climbed to a 5 pretty fast, heading for 25 once I lay my eyes upon Trondheim Torg.

Now comes the part where my fear for dentists really kick in. I enter the hallway, walk up 3 floors and into their office area, tell them I’m available and place myself in the waiting room. At this point my nervous level shoots straight up and my heart starts pounding really fast. I’m at a good 70 at this point (In case you were wondering, a 100 is max :p). I try to watch TV, but everything they say just goes straight trough my head. I try reading the magazines on the wall (not really flicking trough them, just reading the headlines across the room), but alas, my heart pounds faster and faster. At around 90 I finally get called in (even had me wait 10 minutes extra the bastards.)

At this point there’s really no return. I have to face my fears head on and get it over with. Now, the woman calling me in tells me, that she read that I had told the dentist yesterday, whom i made the appointment with, that I was very nervous about today, so she told me that some people like to use headphones and listen to music, which calms people down. As soon as she suggested this, of course I straight to my backpack, got my headphones and connected my mp3-player.

Well put in the chair, music (James Blunt) in ears, the dentist arrives. Now what I feared the most was a gray haired old man, with no manners or time to talk at all, but NO, the guy is about 26-30, dark hair, slight beard and glasses. And he actually takes time to just TALK to me, ask me what it is I fear the most, tells me what he’s going to do and how it probably is going to feel.
I’ve never been more relaxed in my life. I jumped from a good 90 on my nervous level, to a mere 5.

Now the procedure itself was nothing at all really. He put the anesthetic in (which is the only part that hurt a bit), and after a moment he scraped gently on my tooth to check if there was any feeling in it. When we both were assured that it was good to go. I plugged my headphones in, let him go at my tooth, and to my surprise, I was actually slightly amused. The cracking sounds my tooth made when he squeezed it, really sounded creepy and totally crazy.
After about 5-6 seconds, he had the tooth. Now I didn’t even notice, and it wasn’t until he poked me in my arm saying “Hey, we’re done now” I realized it was actually completely gone. He put a pad under my tooth and basically just asked me too bite together.

I was so happy after that, and shook his hand with joy as I left :D

Now, I feel pretty fine, all tough a bit sore it feels good (even though there’s actually one tooth less in my mouth…o_O).

And finally, just to gross you all out, here’s the result:

Yes, I brought it with me, just so I could glare angrily at it and tell it “HAH, IT’S YOUR OWN DAMN FAULT SUCKER!”

I’m kind of looking forward to it though, after it’s all done. The past two weeks has been a living hell, and this last week was totally horrible. Every day around 6-7 o’clock my tooth has started to hurt, and I’d have to pop pills in order not to go insane. And last night was the last drop. I was up at around 1, after trying to sleep for an hour, with a pain hurting like I’ve never felt before. I ate two painkillers, and walked around aimlessly on my carpet for about 30 minutes until the pain subsided. Then I spent another 30 minutes just sitting in front of my computer, trying to make myself a bit tired.
When I finally went back to bed, it was around 2′o clock. So today I called work, told them that I needed the day off and went back to sleep. At around one today I finally got the courage to call the dentist, and to my surprise, I got an appointment the very next day!

I’m so looking forward to a Christmas without pain :D (lets just hope the dentist drugs me enough. I’ve had some baaaad experiences with dentists…)

After some work with the almighty ductape and some cardboard, I managed to attach the webcam to my window and aim it towards the road. See on Saturday I had a quick trip to Clas Ohlson, and I got this bright idea about getting a 5 meter long USB extension cord, so I could put my webcam anywhere I wanted. Thus I was able to put the cam in the window.

So the cam was up, and everything is running smoothly, so I decided I’d might as well place it on this mainpage as well. Got this javascript running and everything, so the image on the right actually updates every 30 sec without loading the rest of the site, which is pretty cool.

Once I’ve recorded an entire day in pictures I’ll make a stop-motion video of it and post it here for all to see. Safe to say it’s pretty fun seeing all the cars, people and the different shades of light. Only problem I’ve had so far is that wen it snows allot (like it does now) the cam has problems catching the light properly, and it gets very dark. And when its very bright outside, the cam can’t dim the light and everything gets very bright.
I’ll probably experiment a bit with that later, but it works ok for now.

I also put together my old computer parts, and tried to get a new server working, but it seems the graphics card is busted, so I have to get a “new” one somewhere. If anyone got some old card lying around, do let me know! I’d love to get this computer up and running again. It’s probably just going to be a simple server for me to play with for now, but there’s not much I can do with no display :p

As for this night, man I had the worst toothache ever….We went to sleep around 12′o clock, and by then my toothache really hurt, so I tried to sleep for about half an hour, but finally it was just too much. So I 2 ibux and went back, but after another 10 minutes, I figured the best would be to just get up and walk around for a bit. To get the pills to work quicker. They started working around 1:30, but by then I felt pretty awake, so i stayed up for another 1 and 1/2 hours just starting torrents and playing around on the Interwebs.
So yeah, I really need to get to the dentist and get this fixed. I was at the dentist the other day, but paying 900kr just to check my teeth, and get to know how much it would be to fixed it, really scared me off…
Still, this pain is just too much to bare, so I’ll probably try to get an appointment before I head home and get the bad tooth pulled out. It will probably set me back around 1000/1200kr, but I can’t go around eating painkillers all the time, I’ll be a drug addict if I continue.

Seeing as I didn’t get much sleep last night, I called work and asked if I were set up to work today, which I wasn’t, so thankfully I could go back to sleep and get a few more hours of shuteye.

Right now I’m waiting for Alina to send me a text, and let me know that she’s done cutting and colouring her hair, so I can go meet up with her at Solsiden. I’m very excited to see how it looks :)

After dropping off the food at the place we’re meeting up after the ceremony, we head for the church.. We met up with quite allot of family on the parking lot. My Uncle and Aunt, some uncles and aunts of my mom and uncle, and of course, grandpa. I went over, gave my uncle a hug, then after having a chat with one of moms uncles, went over and gave my grandfather a good hug. After some hanging around in the freezing cold, being around 0 degrees and foggy, we decided it would be time to walk inside.

We walk up the aisle, towards my grandmothers coffin, and I get to see all the bouquets from friends and family. I really felt a little lump in my throat already there, and I who was so bashful as to say no thanks to a tissue earlier in the car on our way there, thinking I would probably not get teary eyed, boy was i wrong.
So, we get to our places, my stepfather, mom, grandfather, uncle and aunt in front (in that order), and a brother of my grandma, me and my brother on the next row.

Now this is where I would like to cut in and make a little comment on how incredibly annoying the church is. Thing is, in most cases, when a person dies, of course you should mourn, but at the same time, you shouldn’t really feel horribly bad about not being sad constantly. Death is just as normal as birth, and by being pushed into mourning and depression because you should mourn, is by my views a bit too silly.
Thing is, we sat around waiting for the sermon to start for at least 10 minutes, just sitting there in the silence, waiting for something to happen. After quite some time, the organist starts playing. And even the music is somewhat depressing at times.
I sat there, waiting for the priest to appear, but oh no, there had to be at least 3 songs before he appeared.

Anyway, he held a prayer, read from various parts of the bible and held a rather moving speech about grandma, which i really felt described her in a really wonderful way. I was very touched by this and there were several times I just had to bow down, dry my nose and eyes with my wrist and try not to let it all out. I was not prepared to react like that at all, and it really surprised me. So after the priest had said his stuff, my aunt read a poem and we were called up to carry the coffin.

This part was pretty much a blur, mostly because my eyes were drenched in tears. As we carried the coffin down the aisle, I just kept staring at the floor, trying not to look anyone in the eye, but still seeing enough to be able to not stumble. We carried the coffin outside, and put it on a trolley, then waited for the rest of the people to come out of the church. It was so freezing cold as well, around 0 degrees and slight fog. We rolled the trolley down a gravel road and to the place where she was supposed to lie. Carried the coffin over to the pulley system and put it down on it.
The priest said his final speech, like “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” and so forth, and they lowered the coffin down into the ditch. All the time while this was happening, I was looking at the ground, lump in throat and blurred vision.
Turns out, lots of the family on my fathers side was at the sermon as well, aunts, uncles and even my dad (whom I haven’t talked to for almost 2 years, for personal reasons..), but I was too upset to notice anything and just wanted to get away as fast as possible.

Me, my step dad and brother went straight to the place we were going to eat and greeted the guests. There was of course allot of old people, everyone saying “oh you’ve become so grown-up!” and there was the usual questions “What are you doing these days?”, “Where do you live?”, “Do you have a girlfriend?”. Great fun -_-;

So we had some food, I talked some with my granddad and uncle, but most of the time it was me and my brother just being bored and having sword fights with tiny cocktail swords. Was nice though, food was good, and so was cake.

After we were all done, and the rest of the guests had left, we went back home, got out of our good clothing and just relaxed. We talked a bit about how we thought it went and were all quite happy it was over.

So my first funeral, and I can’t really say I enjoyed it. I sure hope it’s a long time until the next one…

Rest in peace Grandma’

Anyway, new post, need something to write about. As you might have noticed I’ve been playing around with my webcam allot, but I’ve also done some cool stuff with my GNU/Linux setup. I’ve enabled something called kexec in the kernel. What it does is that it makes rebooting 10 times faster, by simply booting the kernel over again, instead of the entire computer. So you don’t have to go trough the bios bootup, or the grub menu (if you use one like I do, I have several kernels), so by cutting away all that dead time, a reboot takes less time. Now all I need to do is figure out why my display crashes when i run in framebuffer mode in console and reboot with kexec….I’m guessing it has something to do with the fact that the kexec code in the kernel is marked EXPERIMENTAL :]

I’ve also tried lately to fix up my system a bit, clean out old files and such, but It’s not easy seeing as I have allot of application I just install to test, then forget to uninstall them, which leaves tons of crap files lying around. And the fact that when I first set up this system, and only gave the / mount 6.5gb of space doesn’t help…
If anyone have any good hints or tips to cleaning up a Gentoo system, let me know. I’ve so far done revdep-rebuild, cleaned up several temp files and deleted allot of unnecessary doc files.

So, plans for the day…..meh, I’m not sure to be honest. I talked with Silje yesterday about meeting up at a café later on today, but when I was heading to bed last night (around 4 am..) she was up because she couldn’t sleep. She was going to send me a text though, to let me know if she was up for it, so we’ll see :)
I also had a message from Inger-Lise this morning asking if I had any plans, but she was offline when i tried to talk to her so I’m not sure what it was about.
Hopefully I’ll find something to do tonight, sitting alone at home again is kind of a drag. Yesterday was ok, even though I kind of said I would go to Mikroen, I decided I much rather wanted to stay home and play around with my webcam. Today though, I’m not that keen on staying at home doing squat.

Oh, and I watched Fantastic 4: Rise of the silver surfer last night, man that’s a crap cheesy horrible flick….I do NOT recommend it. Only fun moments in it was 1: When Stan Lee (creator of Spiderman, Fantastic 4 etc.) wasn’t allowed into Storm and Mr.Fantastics wedding. I was amused by that :p and 2: When the silver surfer confessed his true reason for being there.