I'm fine, really!

Song of the day:
Tocotronic - Pure Vernunft darf niemals siegen

Now, before I have to repeat it over and over and over again: I am perfectly fine. I am living proof that you can get hit by a car without getting injured.
However: Kids, don't try this at home!

I was lucky. It could've been a lot worse. I landed in a pile of snow, so I don't even have a scratch or bruise. I was so drunk that my body just went limb when the car hit me, so nothing happened there either, not even a concussion. I think the driver is a lot worse off, I guess I scared the living hell out of him by running in front of his car. He kept blabbering on in Finnish, I can only imagine that he was asking if I was alright. I don't think he understood my drunk excuse for English, or he didn't understand English at all. Either way, he did understand in the end, I kept on stumbling home, took a shower, wrote that entry down there, chatted a few minutes on IRC (so many typos, it's embarrassing!) and happily went to bed.
So fortunately, for both me and the driver, it turned out to be a glass half-full.

There. That was me being positive. Now stop worrying already. ;)

Ta-taa.

God save eht frunks

Snog of teh night
TRage against teh moachine - Kilinig in teh name of

Hhaaaha. If there's eraly a God, he gotta liek me. I was just hit ny a car on my way home and I survied wihtout a scrathc! Being drnuk was worht it fro wonce!
I am so off ot bed onw. Gppd night!

T-ataa

A different kind of wasted

Song of the day:
Kettcar - Die Ausfahrt zum Haus deiner Eltern

Up since 6 in the morning, arrived at work at 8, shut down my laptop 11 hours later and went home. I'd never have thought non-physical work could be this draining. On the other hand, I managed to do almost the entire set of tests today, which ain't too bad I guess. So on Monday it'll just be clean-up work, and then wait for the new set. Rinse and repeat...

On the positive side, at least there's something to do now, and with the schedules being as tight as they are, it's not going to get boring soon I guess.

Played a game of pool with my cute colleague today. I'm really starting to believe she's got a thing for me. Bad thing is, she's got a boyfriend already, and I don't want to tamper with relationships anymore (that goes to all the people who keep telling I'd never change ;|).
Would be fitting though, to meet the first girl in years who is both nice, good-looking and interested in me (and not under-age) in Finland. What are the odds? Yeah right. 'Hello Murphy' and all that...

I thought it was time for a picture again, and since I've not posted a decent one of myself for a long while (I actually can't remember if I ever uploaded one to be honest), enjoy. It's taken with my phone's cam though, so quality ain't too great...
Please take special note of the vast amounts of hair I've actually managed to not only grow, but even to put in something remotely resembling a 'style'. By the time I get back from Finland, it should have grown to a length that allows decent headbanging again...!

I'll finish with a quote today, from the song of the day. Those of you who understand it, enjoy.

"Also wo fängts an / Und wann wird es enden
Mit Spatzen und Tauben / Dächern und Händen"

Silence now!

Song of the week:
Maria Mena - You're the only one

This week, I didn't know what to say anymore. Well, actually, I did know what to say, I just couldn't: my voice had left Tuesday morning. It briefly returned yesterday evening, just to sneak away again like a thief in the night. After some pleas from my side, I seem to have been successful in conjuring it back home now.
My throat feels a bit raspy still, but I'm hoping it's all over now, I'm bored beyond boredom, I've used up pretty much all the tea and honey I had since yesterday morning, my back hurts, I wanna get away from the Japanese vocabulary I actually picked up out of boredom, I'm almost out of food, apparently there's a hot new colleague at work, and from Germany, too ... no, it's not been exactly my week so far and I definitely feel like whining.

Anyways. I'll be heading downtown soon, food-shopping has to be done. At least the weather is nice and I have enough warm clothes.

Ta-taa.

St Patrick's Day

Song of the week:
Audioslave - Be yourself

The week was pretty boring, the most exciting thing happening was the arrival of 4 new testers; alas, all are male, so almost unworthy of being mentionned. ;)
Ruben (from Spain) talks a lot, but seems to be a decent guy, Stephen (sp? from UK anyways) is pretty silent and father of 2 kids (he's 39, but looks like 30), Carlos (from Columbia) is a nice match at the pool table and Marko (from Italy) looks like I did back when I didn't have hair. In fact, he looks so much like me, that the HR supervisor asked him if he was me when first meeting both of us at the same time...

It's St Patrick's Day, and I'm leaving in 10 minutes to grab some serious beer, and hopefully some girl(s) along with it. Wish me luck for a nice weekend and a merciful hangover. ;)

Ta-taa.

Another lazy weekend

Song of the weekend:
Marilyn Manson - The Last Day on Earth

And there goes another lazy weekend, spent following 2 of my 3 primal instincts: feeding and sleeping.
After the sauna on Friday, I spent most of Saturday (two thirds, actually) in bed, sleeping like a baby and then I idled a bit on the net.

Yesterday wasn't much more exciting, but I actually went out to catch some fresh air and took some nice pictures, as can be seen to the left. I took a hike around the lake, which was very nice and reminded me that I have to get my hands on a pair of cross-country ski before it starts to thaw!

Anyways. Time to start revising test cases again I guess.

Ta-taa.

The baby, the beer and the sauna

Song of the day:
Trapt - Headstrong

Well, well, well.
I've enjoyed a rather layed-back and relaxed Friday, including leaving work at around 0300, acquisition of the games 'Homeworld', 'Homeworld 2' and 'Korea: Forgotten Conflict' and the movie 'Mindhunters' and my amazon order finally arriving ('Demolition Man' and 'Deep Blue Sea'), something I've been waiting for for almost a week now. I also got a postcard from my mom, and finished a letter for her that I'll put in the mail tomorrow, something I'm sure she'll like a lot.
Then there was a snack-ish dinner with ruxu, meeting his fiancé ... and their 3-months-old baby, which is close to the cutest little boy I've ever seen!
I'm usually not the biggest fan of babies and young children (noisy, unarticulated little buggers!), but this one is so cute! And he's got the sweetest teethless smile I've seen so far, too. :)
And then there was Finnish sauna for me, including beer and all that ... well, almost, since it was only ruxu and me, and we didn't get drunk; but it's a good start I guess. :D

Now I'm all relaxed, a bit tired - and hungry. So I'm going to get some midnight-snack prepared and report back tomorrow night .. or maybe on Sunday, depending on how tommorow plays out. ;)

Ta-taa.

I'm sure it was the milk

Song of the day:
Disturbed - Down with the sickness

Drinking milk that says "Best before 4/3/06" was probably not the smartest idea, considering that yesterday it was 3 days over already.
Too bad I didn't check it before this morning, when I started trying to figure out why I was suffering from a very sick stomach and had to throw up every few hours. I'm glad my mom taught me some sneaky non-medical ways of combating stomach sickness; she used to give me pretzel sticks and coke (the drink) when I was a kid and sick to the stomach, and if that didn't make things right again over the length of one day (well, morning to afternoon), she'd go take me do the doc to get some real medicine.
Lucky me, for I bought pretzel sticks some time last week, and I had gotten myself a bottle of coke just 2 days ago. I guess it was a good idea to bring some of the basic medical stuff I had at my place in Germany too, and it was an even better idea to bring the stuff against stomach sickness.
Combined with pretzel sticks and coke, it seems to have fought off the reign of terror that sour milk had established in my stomach, and I'm starting to feel better; still a bit wobbly in the legs, but at least I've kept in the dry bread I tried almost 2 hours ago for once, so yay for me.

Poor girls were still at work a few minutes ago, seems that there was lots and lots of stuff to do today, guess it was a bad day for me to go all sick. :(
I'm confident I'll be back on top by tonight, and I'm positive I'll be at work again tomorrow. Being sick one day is more than what was needed, anyways.

Now, I got some catching up to do in the feeding department, still lots of dry bread left that begs to be annihilated.

Ta-taa.

Week 2 feat. ruxu

Song of the day:
Massive Attack - Heat Miser

If it hadn't been for the snow, I'd say it was warm today. At least that's how I felt when I left my place this morning to go to work, I really though "hey, it's warm today". That was until the bus passed the first public thermometer. -9°C is not exactly warm .. yet it did feel warmer than last week's -9, I'm absolutely sure of that; and considering that it's been scientifically proven that absolute and perceived temperature are not exactly the same, I'll go with that. I swear it didn't feel like -9. Probably more like -6. :D

ruxu is back from his trip to Rome, said they had around +14 over there, said it'd be quite a drop getting back here; well, I guess that's what a whopping 25 degrees Celsius difference can do to you.
He utterly beat me at pool, but oh well, I'm getting used to that, Noran keeps doing the same. I try to tell myself I'm starting to get better, but .. I'm not really.
Ah well, I have work to do anyways, can't be slacking around that much. :)

Struggled with one of the applications I had to test today. Or rather, I struggled with a select few test cases related to that one application; getting the device into the desired state kept me busy for several hours, in which I moved on to the other remaining test cases, always keeping a watchful eye on my colleague's battery, which needed emptying to the point of the device shutting itself down.

Other than that, the only thing worth mentionning from today was meeting a pretty cool guy during lunch, who happens to have grown up in Germany, went to an Italian private school near Frankfurt and has been working in Finland for 8 months now. He's fluent in English, German, Italian, knows enough Hungarian to get where he wants to and speaks a mean Finnish for 8 months in the country - at least that's what my supervisor said, personally, I wouldn't have noticed the difference between good Finnish and a random combination of y, ä, ö and the odd consonant thrown in. :)

That said, I'll try for a Finnish exit today, so:

Ta-tää. ;)

Lost weekend

Song of the weekend:
Willie Nelson - Are you sure

My weekend has been very relaxed and Lost-intensive. I've caught up from Episode 7 to Episode 21, and I'll be finishing the first season (ep 25) by tonight.

I am slowly starting to develop something that could be called a biorhythm again, today I woke up at 9am without any alarms going off and actually thought about getting up right then. Then I remembered it was Sunday, turned around and slept another 3 hours. Aah, bliss. :)

Time for ... you guessed it. ;)

Ta-taa.

2 done, a whole lot to go

Song of the day:
Foo Fighters - See you

Long day again, but at least it was somewhat productive today, with 2 entire sets done; only 1340983413 million to go until end of next week. \o/
Our senior test engineer - a very funny guy from Rome, Italy, who's always smiling, smirking or laughing .. if he isn't frowning over the ridiculous bugs - actually called us all to his desk today to show us some feedback sheet from the customer that pretty much said we pwnd their bugs, and we pwnd them good. He also keeps referring to all of us as "experienced testers" .. considering that the two girls have been working as testers for quite some time already and I've only been doing it for the second time now, I feel a bit overwhelmed by that kind of title; I guess that should keep me motivated to work on a high level and have high expectations of myself. Motivation psychology at its best. What a sneaky bastard... :)

Had a great bug at work today though, when going through the calculator applet. The device actually tried telling me that

999,999,999,999 ^ 999 = 0

Even a total math loser like me could tell something was "a bit off" there. But even for the math genius inside the device who calculated that, it was impossible to divide by zero; which was very reassuring. ;)

Anyways, time to slack off a bit, grab the left-overs of yesterday's snacks and settle for a couple of episodes of Lost again, before it gets as late as it did yesterday.

Ta-taa.

A long day's end

Song of the day:
Machinehead - Trephination

It's been a long day, probably the first in a long series; but it's also been an almost frustratingly unproductive and inefficient day.
Having spent the time between 10:00 and about 18:00 at the office, I hate having to admit that I hardly even got through one set of testing. On the other hand, I had plenty of other things to do before I could really start: first, I didn't have a laptop and didn't even know what the test instructions were looking like, then I spent about an hour with the HR woman which included signing my contract of employment, getting an introduction to the company, being shown around the office, being introduced to all the people (including the CEO), then I went for lunch .. and then when I was just about to start working, we realized my laptop needed lots and lots of updates, that took way too long and way too many tries before they had all gone through. And then it was past 17:00 already, my two colleagues (the girls) had left already and I was challenged in a game of pool; which I horribly lost. :|

Ah well. Now that my laptop's been set up and updated properly, I shouldn't have any problems diving right into work first thing tomorrow. That's the spirit, eh? ;)

Anyways, some quick snacks and an episode of Lost on my nice and shiny company laptop, then I'm off to bed ... which I am not allowed to keep; but it's a Fujitsu-Siemens, I wouldn't want another one of those anyways! ;)

Ta-taa.