Category Archives: Nyheder 2010

Merry Christmas 2010

I wish you all a Merry Christmas. The most wonderful time of the year has almost passed, and everybody is looking forward to the new year, but I think it has been a fantastic Christmas - and it has been a white one! We have got a lot of wonderful white snow this year, and a lot of it fell on December the 23rd. Therefore, a lot of people had problems getting to their destination and celebrate Christmas with family and friends. Well, it was not a complete surprise because the weatherman had warned us.

We succeeded in getting to our family, partly because we were picked up halfway since the public transportation had to give up later that day. Christmas eve was successful as it should be, but it was too bad that not all the presents had arrived. But what else would you expect when most of Europe is snowed in?

When we had to go home, we were lucky and were able to borrow a car. Our local train was out of service because of too much snow. So we slowly drove home, which, of course, took a lot longer than normal. When we came home, we were met with a half-closed street and absolutely no way of getting in our driveway. Our street was closed in one end since the municipality had not been by to remove the snow. We were lucky, though. Our neighbor had already been out driving and had removed the snow in the street running past our house. Therefore, we only had to shovel snow away from our driveway, and that took 45 min - we are not complaining since it could have been a lot worse. 

Christmas tree

The last exam is passed

Before Christmas, I succeeded in passing the last Microsoft exam for now. That means that I have upgraded my MCSE to an MCITP: Enterprise Administrator. It was hard work since I had to work full time at the same time. It would have been nice if there had been less pressure at work, but, well, I cannot demand everything. The exams were passed with good results, and I started the holiday vacation with a good conscience and a great mood.

The question is whether I am done taking Microsoft exams for now. To this my answer is no, I am not done. It is a good way for me to acquire new knowledge. The standard Microsoft courses are not for me, and studying by myself is more productive. Therefore, I plan to take 3-4 exams next year.

Next year also brings a new colleague, and that is something I am looking forward to. It will be nice not to be the only one that can carry out certain tasks. I am also looking forward to having more time for acquiring new knowledge and follow trends which also makes it more obvious to take a couple of Microsoft exams. And with the anticipation of an Exchange 2010 project at work, it would be silly not to take the corresponding exams. 

Microsoft certification

One more exam passed

Microsoft exam no. three was passed last Friday. It was the upgrade exam from the old Windows 2003 exams to the new Windows 2008 exams and thereby also the new titles from Microsoft. The exam covered 3 core exams, and the exam was split accordingly. That is, there were three sections, and each section had to be passed with a score of 70% or higher. One section only had nine questions, so the answer to seven of those questions had to be correct. But it went well, and I am now an MCITP: Server Administrator. The last exam is scheduled to be in two weeks, and after that, I can relax while having a Christmas vacation.

The last couple of weeks have been booked with reading plans for the exam, and believe me when I say that there is a lot of ground to cover for an upgrade exam. And since it covers several topics, there is room for a wide variety of questions. So, last weekend was planned relaxation.

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot - we have bought an XBOX Kinect. So we have been jumping around waving and kicking, which have been resulting in sore muscles - but it is very funny. And because of the Kinect, we have invited our neighbors for this weekend so that we can jump around and laugh at ourselves. It is highly recommended. We also own a Wii, which we use a lot, but it is different and fun when you don't need a controller to play the games. The question now is whether or not I will be able to persuade my boyfriend to buy a dancing game so that I can watch all his 'trendy' moves... 

Graduate

New dining table

Finally, the result of our car trip in week 42 arrived. We had been very 'unwise' to borrow a car so that we could visit several furniture stores to look for a new dining table. Our old dining table needed replacing (10 years old), and since we had some very particular demands to our dining table, we thought that we might as well start looking around.

Our dining table has to have a laminate tabletop because we want to be able to leave a cold soda on the table without worrying about leaving marks. At the same time, we also want an elegant table, and we do not want some cheap crap. We found a table made by Skovbo, which is made of solid oak with soap-finish and a tabletop made of laminate. The extension leaves are stored underneath the tabletop, and the extension of the table is brilliantly made, so there always is a leg in each corner.

A new dining table also 'requires' new chairs - maybe. Firstly, we thought that we might get a bigger discount and secondly, we wanted eight chairs. That would provide us with enough chairs at the annual family gatherings. The color of the chairs was a tough choice - even though the choices were few. We ended up choosing the blue color, which matches the color of our sofa, and we have not regretted it.

The dining table has arrived and is smaller than the old one, so it takes some time to get used to. The table is very elegant and suits our kitchen/family room very well. The chairs are better than the old ones, and it is very comfortable that the back of the chairs is upholstered. In the picture, there are six chairs around the table, but ordinarily, only four chairs are going to be placed around the table. I'm confident that we won't regret buying the table and the chairs - on the contrary.

Dining table

Autumn holiday

Now the autumn holiday has passed. And for once, I have had a vacation in the default week 42, but I also had a vacation in week 41, and that was an exciting week. My boyfriend's parents had invited us to Disneyland Paris to celebrate their wedding anniversary. We chose to drive to France, and since we did not want to drive the entire distance in one day, we spent a night in a hotel on the way.

The journey to Disneyland began Saturday morning, where the trip to Aachen had to take place - our destination to stay overnight. The last time we drove to France, we did not encounter the 'famous' german traffic jams on the highways, but believe me, this time we did. For almost 1½ hours, we were going nowhere on a distance of 73 km of roadwork. Luckily we had plenty of time, and we did not arrive at the hotel too late. Sunday was without problems, and we arrived at Hotel Santa Fe in Disneyland around 1 o'clock. Here we met with my boyfriend's parents and had arranged to go look at the outlet center nearby. Unfortunately, it was a complete waste of time.

With five whole days to spend in the two parks at Disneyland Paris, we had enough time to see everything. We rode on most of the amusements, and we met Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, Peter Pan, Jack Sparrow, Lilo, and many more. To my big surprise, my boyfriend gathered enough courage to ride in Space Mountain, which is a roller coaster with loops and screws. In my opinion, the ride was too short, but there were a lot of beautiful scenes in the dark. The roller coaster is placed in a closed/dark dome. This year the theme in the parks was 'New Generation'. Therefore the Halloween theme was not as dominating as it was in 2005 when we were in Disneyland Paris for the first time. So vi missed pumpkin men and witches in the streets to make stir things up. We practically only saw them in the parades. In 2005 they were running around the park playing tricks with the guests and each other - that was fun! But all in all, it was a great trip.

What we did in week 42, is something I will reveal later. 

Disneyland Paris

Remote control

I finally got to the task of programming my new universal remote control. A while ago, I bought an IR transmitter/receiver for my iPod Touch including software. Seen in the picture is a pouch, the IR-thingy, and the iPod Touch. 

It is supposed to replace my Logitech Harmony 1000, which has a couple of cons - one of them is the speed of the remote itself. The new piece of software, Re, hasn’t got the large database of devices that Logitech has, so I had to use the learn function more extensively than with the Logitech remote. After some practice, it went smoothly. I have also been a little annoyed with the fact that I couldn’t rename the buttons, but that has been corrected in the new version of the software. Besides that, the functionality is very good, and the time it takes to switch between activities or devices is very low. It also doesn’t have the selfish idea that it is the only remote control in the house. This means that changing activity doesn’t result in the tv changing channel and so on. Instead, you can create a macro that turns on the devices and puts them on the wanted input channel.

Finally, I want to express my dissatisfaction with danish distributors. You would think that it is very old people who control it. Why is it that it takes an extended amount of time to follow the international market when it comes to ebooks and audiobooks? Why are they so very pricey? Isn’t it obvious that they are kneecapping themselves? I know several people who accept that English is the second native language because then you can buy ebooks and audiobooks at reasonable prices. I just bought 5 ebooks for less than £ 20 - of them, 2 were less than a year - take that danish publishers.! 

iPod Touch and remote

Visited by a bird of prey

The holiday is spent and I have begun working again. After 4½ weeks of vacation, it is good to get back to work - sort of. Because when you begin with getting inflammation of the bladder then it is no longer fun, and it was, even so, disobedient that it returned a couple of days after the penicillin treatment, so here we go again! Furthermore, my new colleague had his first day at work this Monday, so my planning was absolutely not the best.

I wanted to share a couple of pictures of a bird of prey that visited us the other day. It sat very majestically on our neighbor's roof and overlooked the area.

I am almost done reading the 8th book in the Morganville vampires series and have to wait till the next book is published. Actually, it is ok with me, because I need to get started on preparing for the next Microsoft exam. It is an upgrade exam, which means that there is a lot of reading material to get through. 

Bird of prey

One year older

Last weekend, I got one year older, and then my boyfriend said that now he could make a trade-in and get two 18-year-old girls instead! And my vacation is also ending.

I have been busy this last week. Last weekend we had the family for dinner because of my birthday, and I got some great gifts. Well, the iTunes gift card I got from my boyfriend was not a success. Apple is just as bad as other companies when it comes to service! It took them five days to respond to my email about not being able to redeem my gift card. In my opinion that is very bad and slow service.

I also met with my old friend again, and we spend the entire Tuesday walking and talking, so we had a very good time together. She had bought an e-book reader since the last time we saw each other, so of course, that had to be studied closely during lunch. It was a long day since the entire ‘world situation’ was discussed during the day. Wednesday, we went to Copenhagen together with our neighbors. We saw the changing of the guards at Amalienborg, and after that, it was time for a city tour by boat. The day was ended with dinner at a restaurant at Bakken. So also that was a long day.

Thursday we had to get up early because we were going shopping. We had made an appointment with my parents' car. It makes it so much easier to get around and buy a lot of groceries. So, I don’t think it comes as any surprise that Friday was a ‘day off’.

All in all, it has been a great summer vacation. 

Danish flag

The holiday has started

The first week of the holiday has passed, and it has been a very good week. It began with a reunion with an old friend, and we had such a good time together. It has been a long time since I talked that much about computers and gadgets with somebody who was not a colleague of mine. And she’s a bookworm just like me, so we talked about where we could buy e-books and audiobooks cheap online. The most annoying part was that she commanded me to read a series of books about vampires, which I’m now ‘possessed’ by, and I’ve already read the first two books in the series on the e-book reader - it’s easy and cheap, about four pounds pr book.

It was also the week where the gardener began this year's work. This first week has passed with digging out for and placing the grass concrete next to the carport - see photo.

Of course, the holidays should also be spent doing something fun, so I went out and bought a computer earlier than planned. Originally it wasn’t planned until autumn, but I sped it up till now. I was getting tired of having some data on a laptop and another set of data on a desktop. And by buying the iPod Touch, I escalated the problem. So right now, I’m spending time moving programs and data to my new computer. Besides, I have more time for that now than in the autumn, and on top of that, it’s nice to be able to do it sitting on our garden sofa, enjoying the warm weather at the same time. 

Garden
Græsarmering

1 more exam passed

Last Friday was the day I passed Microsoft exam no. 2. It was the exam that I expected would be the toughest - and I also thought that it was touch - but I apparently didn’t have any trouble getting the answers right - I got 95% correct. So now I can start my vacation with a good feeling.

I must say, though, that it has been a couple of busy weeks. I’ve been busy with all the applications we got in response to our job advertisement. We got approximately 280. The list with the lucky applicants that will be called in for an interview had to be ready Thursday last week, which was also the day that I had planned for exam preparation. So it was a little hectic. My vacation starts this Friday so there are also some things that have to be done - and at the same time, we are also having the interviews.

I have also received my IR-thingy. I received it one week after I ordered it. I think that was quick! Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to test it yet, so you’ll hear more about it some other time.

And I’ve been working! Hard labor. Two weekends in a row I’ve been visiting my parents together with my boyfriend because we had to spread 6 m3 of wood splinters (sorry, I have no idea what it’s called in English) in their flower beds. That’s hard work for an office worker like me. It’s also a little bit ironic that we help my parents in their garden while we are having a gardener doing ours. Well, maybe it’s also a bigger project. I have also received my IR-thingy. I received it one week after I ordered it. I think that was quick! Unfortunately, I haven’t had the time to test it yet, so you’ll hear more about it some other time. 

Graduate