Time flies

Just sitting and thinking and can't  help but conclude yet once again that time flies. Yesterday I went to pick up the mail and found a letter saying we were invited to enroll our son in school. He is supposed to start next year. Well that is a normal thing of course, he is five and yeah the next year he should start wih school. What was shocking to me is actually that I was once again reminded that he is not a baby anymore. I just keep on thinking of him as my baby boy even though he grows and changes almost visibly on a daily basis. Every now and then I forget that because I still clearly remember the moment of his birth. 

The new me

It's been a while since the last post here and the most important thing that has happened is me starting to workout on a regular basis. The last ten to fifteen years I have been exercising on an off. For the most part it's been pushups and ab workouts with a little or no cardio at all. This summer everything changed.
First of all I am not a gym kind of guy. I like to workout at home. The second thing is that I am not really into pumping iron either. Light weights are ok and every weight that doesn't allow at least ten reps is a no-no for me. So to cut the long story short, calisthenics is how I roll.  That being said the core workout consists of the exercises where the resistance is generated by my own body weight. Basically, it boils down to pushups, pull-ups, squats, lunges and similar. The cardio part added a bit more variety and value to my workouts. I started with the elliptical and I must say I love it. I've realized that my body responds nicely to high rep and cardio routines.
The best thing is that I feel real good and much more energetic than before.

Confessions of an android convert

Its been a month since I made that swap from my Nokia 5800 to the Nexus one. At first I was pretty annoyed with everything on the Nexus one, but have gradually grown to like it a lot. Coming from symbian I was used to pretty much endless customization options that are native to the OS. The first time I went through the Nexus One's menus I was shocked how much less customizable it was compared to the 5800. I am not a power user by any stretch of imagination but am used to be able to control some things on my phones. The major annoyances have been and still are the lack of a native task manager and the inability to switch off data connection when not needed. There are third party solutions for both issues but I wish those options were bulit in the OS. What I really miss is something like destinations in symbian. I would like to have a list of access point that is prioretizied. Well, as it turns out I have gotten used to those things. As a matter of fact all the other goodness that the phone offers has made me quickly forget the initial problems I had with the Nexus one.
What do I really like with my current main phone? To begin with it is the speed. This phone is fast doing whatever you throw at it. It's actually super fast. What I really look into a phone is the browser ( I mostly browse the internet on my phones and barely make any calls) and text input.
The browser is just awesome. It is quick and renders pages very accurately. It's got the famous pinch to zoom feature and I must admit I barely use it and totally don't understand all the hype around it. Yeah it can be usefully but the lack of it is no show stopper for me. Honestly I am not sure if I would miss it if it weren't there.
Text input is again one of the things I had issues with at the beginning but have really become good at it meanwhile. For the most part I actually use it in portrait mode and with a bit of practice it works really well. It's so good that I don't miss a hardware keyboard at all. The capacitive screen tech really rocks and helps with text input after some getting used to time. Now typing on my 5800 feels really slow. I never thought I was gonna say this since I have been so good at typing on the 5800.
Every now and then I still think I should have opted for a cheaper midrange option like Samsung i5700 Spica that still offers a processor that is on the faster end of the scale but lacks all the pixels and size of the Nexus one's screen. This is my first android phone and I totally think not the last one. I still love symbian and would love to have the Nokia X6 even though it already looks a bit obsolete after just a couple of months after the release. Anyway just wanted to share with you all my thoughts on my new phone. Oh yes, the 5800 is here to stay, kinda. I am not selling it any time soon. A new firmware that brings some improvements has just been released so the good old 5800 is not looking for a new home.

Marketing fail no 2

Awh, how naive was I thinking it couldn't get any worse. You remember the facial hair and yogurt post? Well, check this out. An old lady smile with a mouthful of golden teeth (grillz is what they're called nowdays) is now accompanying the old and not so well groomed dude. Wowzer, marketing fail no 2 is, strangely enough, coming from the same creative team.

So, just look at the picture, look at it and tell me what you think the marketing people were thinking when deciding on the design for this yogurt tub. As a matter of fact the taste of this yogurt is not bad at all, but it took me some time and courage before deciding to buy it for the very first time. I actually just did it out of shear curiosity. While eating the yogurt though, I couldn't help but thought that a hair, or a bunch of them, might be hidden somewhere towards the bottom of the tub. No seriously, what were they thinking?

My living room on Jan 31 '10

This is what our living room looks like on this January 31, when the temperature outside is like -12c. The kids are trapped inside, and this is an obvious consequence.

Food in public restrooms-FAIL!!!

This is somethig that never ceases to gross me out. I always wonder what drives people to bring food to public restrooms. I took this picture at work. All right, had it been something in a sealed container I probably wouldn't have bothered even noticing but this is like a piece of calzone on a paper plate sitting next to the urinals. Ok, like 2m away from the closest one, but still. I'm never going to be able to understand this.

Reypenaer

These two fellows come straight outta Amsterdam. A friend of mine, who's half Dutch half Norwegian introduced this cheese to me a while back then. After trying it once there was no way back for me! This is probably one of the best cheeses I'v ever had in my life. It's got a very very nutty taste to it and it's very intense so it's almost imposible to eat large amounts in one sitting. I love it with the Wasa oats crisp bread and salted butter. Whenever I eat it I try to slice it as thin as it gets. Yeah it's that intense. All right, I'm off now to treat myself to some of this goodness.