Sea container sold Sunday, 23-Nov-25 21:07:07 CET

Sunday, 30-Nov-25 20:35:16 CET

Sea container picked up

This week, the sea container was picked up.

Monday 24 November

Good morning! How are we today? I have the feeling of a lurking migraine situation. It is so funny, my body delivers me a new unexpected health condition every week. Perhaps I am my father's son? Let's not get philosophical about these things; a week is a long time.

DW went to the office, and I worked from home. The iRobot cleaned the floors on the first floor. It rained intermittently throughout the day. We even had thunder this morning.

Like every week, I get this question on Monday morning from the feeds: Should I follow a random billionaire, and I am not in for that. Jens? Should you not follow Bill Gates? Bill was a personal friend of Hans Rosling, the author of the book Factfulness. It was the last book I bought new that I could not finish. I really liked Hans Rosling. Dry, humorous stapling of LEGO blocks to visualize statistics. He was good at TED talks. His typical English accent is from a native Swede. Magnificent. Hans died on 7 February 2017. Melinda Gates is a strong woman. The divorce from Bill was finalized on 3 August 2021. Melinda French Gates stated that her divorce from Bill Gates was due to a combination of factors, primarily a lack of trust and honesty in their marriage, which made it unhealthy and impossible to continue. Key issues included Bill's past affair, his continued meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, and a general feeling that the trust in the marriage was lost over time.

Let's put the question differently: Should Jens follow a child molester? No, he does not think so. We have a special place in hell for child molesters. I don't believe in hell either. All mothers, sisters, and daughters out there, what do you think? Are child molesters any good people to follow?

Last week's blog sounded interesting when listened to in Chrome for Android. Go to the page, and if you have Chrome on Android, tap the three-dot button in the upper-right corner. Scroll down to "Listen to this page". The page you try this on has to be in English, but my blog is in English, so we are fine. This sound is generated every week. It takes a couple of days to refresh this option. If I upload on Sunday night, then this function works on Monday at noon. A site can have one podcast as it appears, and that is it. The actors presenting the podcast are unknown. I tried to find out who they are, but that is a secret. Some say it is Chris and Jessica, but that is for another sender. I am not naïve; the names of these actors are secret and probably synthesized algorithmically.

I tried to download the sound, but to do so, I had to install various plugins and other things, and I didn't want to. Then I recalled that this is produced by notebook.lm, so I went there and produced a podcast to see if it is the same thing. It is similar, but not the same.

This is more in-depth on feelings and thoughts than the Chrome three dots version, but the male actor is the same. Or is he?

Tuesday 25 November

Tonight it was 0 degrees Celsius, mist at ground level, and a clear sky with stars above. At 4 AM, I stood up and set up my DSLR. I had to put everything on manual shooting: the lens, the body, everything. I could as well shoot RAW at that point. Neighbors were so kind as to leave the lights on, creating interesting scenes.

Thanksgiving is approaching in the US, and my old phone died. Well, it is not dead, but it is version 11 and no longer supported by the bank. My Samsung A70 phone has lasted well for many years. I got it in 2019. The support time for it was six years. I have taken many photos, blogged about it, and filmed with it. I am such a creative, demanding person. The choice was between the FairPhone 6 and the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. Well, it became Samsung.

I am now replacing my Citizen watch with a Samsung Galaxy Watch 8. I cannot read the date on my Citizen watch anymore. The glass is Sapphire, which has held up for over 40 years. I changed the battery a couple of times. I shower with it and sleep with it. It is with me always. The only thing I cannot do with it is to surf with it. I can ski and dive, but surfing is not allowed. It is time to find a new, more modern watch with new functionality. I will miss the stainless steel, the ten-year battery. Instead, I will have new functionality. It will be good for me. I hope it will be good for me.

I am blogging with dark mode, with Merida next to me. She is purring loudly. I might close my eyes for a while and see if the photo chances are improving as the morning progresses. It is Tuesday morning, and I am already at 800 words. Can you keep up with my writing? Is it interesting what I am writing about? We will not know until I enable the feedback functionality. I am not ready for that yet. I have work to do on the blog system before I can turn feedback back on.

I came to think of it. I have never introduced anyone from work in this blog. I kept my colleagues anonymous and have not spoken about them. It is about to change. I have so many colleagues, but I will mention some of them and bring them into the blog as well. Here are some of the nearest colleagues, in no particular order:

• Franco, Local Branch Level Business Development Manager. Tall guy, but also large. Polyglot. The smallest car in this local office.
• Jan, Regional IT Architect. Short body builder type.
• Ed, Division Cost Center Owner. Tall and large on and off a diet.
• Nicole, Business Analyst. Smart and likes plants.
• Erika, Central HR Regional Onboarding Specialist. Biking to work. Likes crafts.
• Rita, Local Marketing Support Assistant. Long blond hair. Likes crafts as well.
• Jens, IT Engineer. That is me.
• Gwen, Regional Finance Support Specialist. Knows a lot about pets.
• Elly, Regional Business Team Officer. She does not like vegetarian food.

We also have colleagues in other countries, but I leave them out for now. It is just too much to mention in one go. If they are in my stories, I will start mentioning them as well. Now you would like an organogram as well, but I cannot provide you with that, and don't want to make it either. This is just some of the people at this location, out of many in mainly Europe. We are like an archipelago of companies, branches, divisions, and levels.

Large customers have our account managers to talk to and meet with us. They like that we are ISO certified. Smaller customers often misunderstand the archipelago of offices and branches. "Can I come to the office?" But that is not possible because, for example, that specific office is for analysts. That can be hard to understand. Additionally, we want small customers to contact us via our website. That is much better for our processes. How hard can it be? "I am standing here outside the office"—tough luck. But that is not how we talk to customers, but it is the essence, this is what it is, so to speak.

But what are we selling? We are making dreams come true. That is our product. It is a challenging product.

I'm biking to work, and it is a misty morning. Where I am biking right now, there are fallen leaves and shit, and that makes the path slippery. I have my DSLR camera with me. I must be breaking with my left hand because it's the rear brakes; I tend to use the right hand to brake. It's a considerable difference whether there are leaves and debris on the path, which can make it slippery. When falling, should that happen, it is better to start sliding from the rear wheel. Slipping from the front wheel is a more dangerous situation.

 

You can hear it in my voice that I am not at all anxious about the situation. Alright, I left the forest. There are no leaves, it's not slippery, and I am approaching the first bridge over the canal. It is the high farting canal. My hands are cold. Then biking along a concrete path beside the high farting canal. In my head is the song "Bad Boys, what you gonna do when they come for you?" It was my research on Bill Gates yesterday that prompted this association with music.

The landscape becomes a scene when the mist rises. So many times I have given up on capturing mist, but I do remember being a kid growing up in Vågdalen, Sweden. We had a shed. Behind the shed, the previous owner had left farming equipment. One misty moment, I took pen and paper, sat down, and drew the scenery behind the shed. I blogged about this painting in 2011!

It started raining. I had to stop blogging. I continued biking.

I am on my way home. Today I have almost finished a new product. The question was: should we release it or test it further? Obviously, this is something for Nicole, the Business Analyst, to have a look at, but she is on holiday. The tension in the office is higher when she is on holiday.

Franco and I talked about the situation, and we decided, or Franco decided, to freewheel this release. He stepped in and tested the product together with me. We sat testing for a long time. It was a sunset while we worked on this, and more and more colleagues left as we tested the product. There was an issue with the product; the release was called off.

We really want to release this feature, but no one wants to cause a disaster, especially when the analyst is out of the office, so the pressure was on. We searched for the issue by doing extreme programming; we sat next to each other. First, we checked the automated testing, and everything looked fine on the surface, but it wasn't.

Next, we took a closer look. Franco and I worked our way from the beginning of the program, through what was stored in the database, all the way to the front end. At the front end, we found something that could be the issue. I was not sure we had seen so much source code by that time, nor could Franco or I say for sure: "This is it." Tomorrow I will continue looking into this, and we might have this sorted before lunch. In the afternoon, the transport company would come and take away the sea container.

This department primarily used the agile methodology. We were not strict on this all the time, but we were doing our best. Now we are transitioning into the devop method. It is the logical follow-up to agile. Trends come and go. More to learn. Cloud computing flew over, and now we are adapting to artificial intelligence. It is fun and challenging.

When Franco and I decided that this was not the right moment, it was late, and we went home. I actually needed to go to the restroom for a while, but leaving the office went so quickly. I was standing by the bike when Franco drove away in his little car. I changed my mind and went back into the office to the restroom. I had to do that before biking home in the dark.

When I biked, I had my new 800-lumen bike lantern. So lovely.

In the evening, I tried to order a new telephone and a smartwatch. After an entire evening trying to get the KPN website to send me a phone and a smartwatch, we went to bed without the mission being successful—no time to program on my own sign-up page.

Wednesday 26 November

Today, the plan was simple. Work from home in the morning—lunch, and then in the afternoon, wave goodbye to the container. Slow, well-ordered, and easy to understand. How did that go? The plan was overturned.

The day started with ad hoc support to Erika for an error that did not exist. Usually, Nicole would step in as second-line support, and I would handle third-line support, but Nicole is on holiday, so it was my call. At the same time, the buyer, Pawel, of the sea container called me and asked if it was okay to pick up the container at 11 AM. I agreed! I then informed Franco that I would be offline sometime in the morning. I boldly promised to continue working on the issue from yesterday until it was solved. He replied, "That is the spirit!"

	The truck arrives.
	How can this small truck possibly carry a 40-foot sea container?
	Extending the chassis!
	Folding out the crane.
	Hooking up chains and straps.
	Connecting the straps to the corners.
	The sea container is connected.
	Preparing the lift. Straps are still hanging loose.
	Tension on the straps.
	Houston, we have a liftoff!
	Up over the trailer.
	Started turning 180 degrees.
	Turning.
	The turn is almost finished.
	Homing in on the trailer.
	The turn is finished. That is one hundred and eighty!
	Straps are loose again. We have landed!
	Securing the sea container.
	Installing ONE strap over the container. Just one.
	Folding in the crane.
	Still folding.
	Big crane. Much folding. All Swedish cranes and the truck are from Saab Scania, which was still Swedish.
	Pikaboo!
	Feet back in. Right side up. Left side down.
	Support plate back.
	Five meters overhang!
	Strap mechanism. Simple and strong.
	Turning left. Bad choice.
	Oh well, here goes.
	Overhang has a long radius.
	All wheels are steering.
	Three meters left on the mailbox.
	Will it work?
	The buyer, Pawel, came to look.
	Here goes the mailbox to the ground.
	Off we go—bye-bye sea container. You served us well.
	Mailbox lying dead on its face down.
	The audience is warming their hands.
	The sea container is gone!

 

The truck driver took down the mailbox! How arrogant. I said, "Turn left, then reverse out of the area." Nope, he did it his way.

I went inside and started programming on the challenge from yesterday. We had lunch, and after lunch, I continued on the challenge. At 2 PM, the software was released. That is, this version. We are releasing the software in stages. This stage is the minimum viable product. The next stage will be bigger and better! Franco was delighted! We did not talk much because it was my free afternoon.

After work, I went outside and repaired the mailbox. I got it resurrected when it got dark. It was cold. I replaced the light bulbs with stronger bulbs. Now we can have our campus lit up at night. These lamps have motion detection. People can have light from these in the street, too.

In the evening, I sat trying to order a new phone and smartwatch. I managed to order the smartwatch. The ordering system of the KPN webshop is so bad! It can only hold one item at a time. The telephone failed.

Thursday 27 November

Today, both DW and I went to work. We went early because DW had a really early meeting. This was one of those days, and there are many of them, that I arrived as the first in the office, or almost first, and then people are dripping in at different moments. Gwen and Rita were already present. Then comes Erika, and after her comes Ed. Finally comes Franco. Nicole and Elly did not come today.

We did not do the polonaise (walking dance) to celebrate the achievement yesterday; instead, we discussed the steps leading up to it. It is the Dutch sober attitude: do what you have to do, no fuss about it.

What happened during lunch? I got a push message that my package had arrived with my smart watch. It is a Samsung Classic 8 smartwatch. We will see if it is any good. I had to go home during lunch to pick up the package. It worked! I got the watch! I went back to work with my new watch and continued developing the next version of the software.

Then Gwen left, and after a while, Rita. Franco and Ed. Then Erika. I know both Erika and Nicole already got smartwatches. They are much more advanced than I am. Perhaps Gwen has a smartwatch; I am not sure. Then I am alone again. DW attended a farewell party for a colleague, Jan, at her office. She was late and slightly tipsy when I picked her up at the train station.

When we came home from the office, I called DM. She celebrated her 83rd birthday. She said DF was at the hospital because of pain in his chest. She was not particularly worried this time. I showed DM around in the barn via WhatsApp video call. She was impressed with what we achieved. She told about the snowfall they had recently had and that the neighbor, Marcus, had plowed the road spontaneously.

In the evening, I ordered a new telephone. It was the third day of banging my head against KPN's webshop. My frustration was running high. I was tired, and so was DW. We went to bed early.

Friday 28 November

Today I had a day off. I was glad for that. It had been a long and active day yesterday. DW worked from home today. She would hear more news about the ongoing reorganization at her work. It is the second layer above her that hears whether they got their place.

I started the day by giving the sheep new, fresh hay. While doing that, I had a brainwave about the door of the temporary hay shed. It can accidentally close when you are in the shed, and there is no way to open it from the inside. Not good. The mechanism is just a metal hatch that falls over a pin. When the hatch is greased with fat, it eagerly captures the pin. Until now, we have let the open door flutter around in the wind. I have been annoyed about this.

When you buy these slots, you get the pin and the lock together. We bought several of these sets. Two for the kitchen garden. One for this temporary shed. We also had one for the gate next to the workshop door. We removed this gate temporarily when the barn was built. This was a year ago. Recently, I found the lock mechanism on a pole. I was standing there, and it hit me that I could use it for the hay shed. The vacant lock mechanism could be mounted on a pole for the door in the open position. It would be great!

This way, the door cannot move freely in the wind, so a sudden gust cannot break it. Now this is the good side. Proud of the new solution, I went to DW, and she provided a devastating evaluation of the new feature. The new pole prevents the door from opening any further, making it impossible to see any light reaching the shed when it is dark. I will have to think about how to solve this with a workaround solution. She was not amused.

I continued cleaning up the area around the now-removed sea container. We had polyvinyl chloride pipes. We bought these pipes as downpipes for the rain pipes until the regular downpipes were installed. Do you remember? It was 8 January 2021 when I bought the downpipes. The larger PVC was a gift from our previous electrician. We might make use of them, but that is not clear just yet. I could chop up the pipes and bring them to the recycling center, but I will wait with that. I have seen people make the most beautiful things from PVC.

Then we had lunch, and after lunch, my new telephone arrived. The driver recognized me from yesterday, when he delivered the smartwatch. I placed the old and new phones next to each other, and the two phones started migrating all the junk from the old to the new.

Of all the migrations I experienced, this was the most swift and easy. First, I had a series of Nokias. This was around 1996. I used the Nokia phone together with a PDA. Migration was no issue. I recall migrating from a Nokia to an HTC Windows Phone with an integrated flip-out qwerty keyboard. That was okay. I got the SIM card moved over, and that was it. Since Nokia had no innovative features, it was easy. From HTC to Samsung S4 was horrible. I struggled learning that on-screen keyboard stuff and gestures for a long time. Had to recreate everything from scratch. From Samsung S4 to A70 was okayish. This, here and now, from A70 to S25 Ultra was excellent! Later, I realized that even my laptop does not have a 512 GB drive. Haha, have I gone overboard with this purchase? I have received support for 7 years, and that is what I am looking forward to. It is a pity to stop using a fully functional phone just because the bank I do business with thinks it is too old. Too bad. It would have been better for the environment if I could have kept using it until it died on its own.

When I migrated from S4 to A70, I also moved the SD card. That was not a good idea. The SD card broke, and I lost my data. I still miss that data. I am now thinking of a data recovery service to get it back. It is just a thought.

This migration was swift and easy. It was too easy. Some tasks had to be done manually, such as activating the phone's NFC payment system. I just went to the grocery store to buy two chargers with USB-C ports, but I could not pay with my new phone. I went home and configured the contactless payment features, and when I came back, I was able to pay with my phone. I could not pay with the watch. Something was not right with the watch, just yet. I also bought an old-fashioned frozen pizza for the three of us. When I came home from the grocery store, I noticed the speedometer's kilometer counter had stopped at a funny number, 186666. Four 6 in a row is unique. I doubt I can stop at 2222 kilometers to take a photo of the funny number that follows. We will see!

It had been a long time since we had a Friday evening frozen pizza time. DS came over, and it was nice and cosy. I lit a fire in the woodstove. There was no time to program the sign-up system for lyrics-editor.com, which will be something to do again next week.

I was glad I was done with ordering things from webshops this evening. I was even thankful. Thank you, KPN, for your services. I hate you for discarding things in the shopping cart without telling me, but in the end, you got me the stuff I want. Thank you for that. You had two buses arrive at different times because of your remarkably stupid webshop functionality; what a waste of my energy. I hate you for that, KPN, but I am still thankful. That is how Thanksgiving is, or have I misunderstood Thanksgiving?

Saturday 29 November

This was a gray morning. We had a slow morning. I decided to install the new kitchen tap.

The new tap is extendible. It is lovely!

We bought it last week when we went to IKEA. We could keep it in the box, but why would we? This was the perfect moment to mount it. The tap reaches all corners of the sink. That is wonderful.

What do you do when you have just mounted a kitchen tap on a Saturday morning? Let us fill up the trailer and go to the recycling center, but DW suggested a walk in a park. That was a beautiful idea! This was 15 minutes away. One of the most beautiful parks in this area, so we were told by someone on a course DW attended last week.

The park was called Stille Kern. It has horses and Scottish Highland cows doing maintenance. We have a massive respect for the animals, especially the highlanders. They have horns measuring 1.5 meters from tip to tip, and they're super sharp. They are calm animals that probably will not do anything, but an unintentional accident could always happen, especially when one carries around spears like that.

	So much text, no time to read. Press pause if you need to read it.
	Rotten benches for resting.
	More text. I skipped this as well. There may have been user instructions for operating a Scottish Highlander buffalo.
	A remote animal. Nice.
	A group of young people. Some spoke English with an excellent American accent.
	Was it a crocodile? Nope, it was a log.
	More Scottish Highlanders.
	Black bird. Red berries.
	Green logs.
	Humans? What are you doing here?
	This cow did not have super-long spears. Perhaps it was a young cow?
	We hid in the bushes.
	Checking the stock market.
	A foobar from an alternative grocery store. Probably delicious.
	Happy walking.
	It is an oak tree.
	A building construction.

 

The new watch can capture loads of information. I can die in a sea of statistics. The walk was 6.39 kilometres. We met a cow on the path. That was not a delightful experience. He stopped, and we wondered what we should do. I decided to walk into the bushes, but I did not communicate this well with DW. This is a typical communication error on my part. I think I said "We go here," but she didn't hear it, and it wasn't nice of me. Anyway, she understood my intention and followed me into the bushes. In the telelens of my camera, through the shrubs, I could see that the cow accepted our disappearance trick.

It was such a nice feeling that he continued without looking to see if he could find us. It was nice with this excitement for this walk. Highly appreciated.

When we came home, I was drained. The rest of the afternoon, I took it really easy. I rested, enjoyed the feeling of a walk, and blogged.

Merida was lying next to me, making funny faces while licking her feet.

 

Sunday 30 November

This week I started blogging very well. Then on Tuesday, I started lagging. It was as if the material grew quicker than I had time to process it. It was not until yesterday evening that I got back up to date. We had a cup of tea in bed, and I felt good about the blogging. We could do something spectacular today as well, and I should be able to cope with it, but we are aiming for a quiet day. Continue cleaning up the garbage in front of the barn, and DW wants to wash and fold laundry. She also wants to card wool, spin yarn, dye, knit, and all that.

I went outside and continued to clean up the area in front of the barn. I filled the trailer with old pieces of wood. Gathered tiles from the foundation of the sea container. Some stones were broken, and some were whole. While working on this, I listened to the Ezra Klein Show podcast titled "The Quiet Catastrophe' Brewing in Our Social Lives." From 25 November. He had invited Sheila Liming, who has recently written the book "Hanging out, the radical power of killing time". It was a nice, really nice podcast. There was also a segment about the Finnish author Tove Jansson in this episode. Tove made the stories about the Moomin Valley. I found it a special subject that connected well with what I am doing here on this blog.

When it was time for coffee, I went inside and there DW had found a bag of her soap covers. She wants to make an art project with these, but first, she wants to figure out how to sort them. We played around with the shapes.

Really nice colors and shapes. She wants to fill each soap cover with wool and then sew the covers together to a pad you can sit on. It will be grand! We already had a go at sorting these soap covers. Could not find it. I think I even blogged about it.

DW cut my hair today! It turned out nicely. Perhaps my forehead is getting higher and higher, but I still have some hair, and I am thankful for that. On DM's side, they had much hair. Their hair grew down to their eyebrows. On DF's side, they were bold and grey-haired. DM and DF made me, so this is how I became—crooked hands from Heberden's knots and hair on my skull.

I finished cleaning up the area in front of the barn! The rubble still lying there is the ramp I need to drive the tractor in and out of the barn. Many of the stones we piled up to support the corners of the sea container were shattered, but some were still okay. I filled the trailer with the shattered tiles and brought the entire set to the sheep. There, I built a little path.

The sheep was happy with this new feature!

But what should you do when you reach the end of the path, Jens? Sometimes these ladies are so funny. Sometimes they can make me so frustrated, too. They know what they want, and they are stubborn in their choices. Hannah spoiled many of my ideas about growing trees. Now we have found a way to make Hannah coexist with our trees. Hopefully.

This evening I spoke to DF. He was back from the hospital and fine.

Here ends this week's blog. It has been an eventful week. I turned frustrations into successes on some fronts. The phone, for example. You probably already notice a difference in photo quality. It has been an active week, but it feels good on all fronts.

I wrote a fantastic amount of words; I wrote 5130 words! Welcome back next week. I predict there will be fewer words next week.