Shazzer Surfing...

Tech-support with a twist!

This past weekend marked the third one in a row in which we entertained out-of-town guests…not a record by any means, but kind of stressful none-the-less.

This is because Dr. Darling, a classic INTJ, is physically exhausted by any kind of prolonged social interaction and I am driven crazy by my in-laws’ unwillingness to let us act as actual hosts. And by that I mean the simple things like having a vote as to whether or not we should attempt to have a cook-out in a windstorm. At the beach. Hauling everything (including the grill) by bike so that they can have wine or beer w/dinner. I wish I was kidding.

Now I need to be clear that I’m talking about my father-in-law and his wife, not my mother-in-law…who is a pretty easy-going house-guest by comparison. She was down from Halmstad the previous weekend for Midsommar and we had a very nice visit. My father-in-law, and more specifically his wife, are much higher maintenance in spite of the fact that they always bring their own sheets and towels.

First off, they always invite themselves, though I can’t really blame them for that because the Swede — whose responsibility I believe it is to issue such invitations — never seems to get around to it.  So I don’t really mind that part, especially since they tend to give us plenty of notice. But once they arrive, they totally run their own agenda…which was even more aggravating than usual on Friday night since it was Dr. Darling’s birthday.

This visit, besides the ill-timed BBQ at the beach (which did not happen courtesy of the weather, thank you Mother Nature), their plans included watching the EUFA Under 21 soccer match between Sweden and the UK (which we had to record so as not to interfere w/dinner), getting a tutorial with how to organize pictures on their laptop, and having us explain of all the accessories that came with their latest mobile phone, including installation of the accompanying software on the aforementioned computer. Oh, and did I mention it’s a WinDoze machine equipped with Vista? I wish I was kidding.

Now why they rely on us for this kind of technical assistance is kind of a mystery considering that my step-mother-in-law has two highly tech-savvy sons of her own, and Dr. Darling’s brother, a mobile network engineer, lives less than a half-hour away from them. The only thing we can figure is that none of those guys have the patience to explain things to them in terms they understand. Score one for the “alternative lifestyle” branch of the family that includes the foreigner.

They left about 3 p.m. on Saturday, which means they accomplished a hell of a lot in less than 24 hours. We, on the other hand, were left exhausted and kind of dazed, actually. On the plus side, they did give us our birthday presents (mine’s this coming Saturday) in the form of cash, but it was tempting not to see it as “payment for services rendered.”

Testing posterous from my mobile phone

And I’l be attaching a photo to see how it renders on the website.

Posted via email from Shazzer’s posterous | Comment »

Testing Posterous e-mail insertion

Image by Tom Raftery via Flickr

Posted via email from Shazzer’s posterous | Comment »

Second-class still

Many thanks to New York Times columnist Frank Rich for this Op-Ed piece commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, New York.  He offers a couple of plausible scenerios for why the Obama Administration has been so completely flat-footed regarding “the gays” since the inauguration.

He also rightly notes that even with the progress being made in places around the U.S. (besides Washington D.C.), full civil rights are still far from being available to gay citizens.

From the article:

It’s a press cliché that “gay supporters” are disappointed with Obama, but we should all be. Gay Americans aren’t just another political special interest group. They are Americans who are actively discriminated against by federal laws.

I hope the President read it. In fact, I think I’m going to e-mail it to the White House.

Irony is often lost on Swedes

My Swedish “hometown” of Malmö has been in the country’s news a lot lately for reasons that my American readership will likely find somewhat entertaining.

The first instance is a story about a cost-saving measure implemented at the city’s main police station in which several of the building’s restrooms were closed for the summer.

Nothing wrong with the plan in principle considering that much of the administrative staff will be on vacation during some portion of July and August. No, the problem was with the execution of it. Turns out the folks in charge of building maintenance didn’t bother to inform the affected departments before they locked them out of the toilets.

Don’t get me wrong…in these tough economic times, I truly do appreciate any government agency’s efforts to save tax money. But I’m not sure that forcing police to search a huge building (it serves as headquarters for regional law enforcement operations in this part of the country as well) just to find an open bathroom is making our streets any safer.

Then a few days later, the Malmö sports and recreation committee ruled that women have the right to swim topless in the city’s public pools if they want to, a ruling that can reasonably be considered more of a victory for teenaged boys than for the women who filed the discrimination complaint.

And finally, on the VERY SAME DAY, Malmö customs officials were in the news for a seizure of 9,000 Viagra tablets that someone was trying to smuggle into the country through the mail. Talk about bad timing…the topless female bathing policy will probably cut the demand for erectile disfunction medication by at least 50%.

Midsummer Weekend Survived

Today marks the summer solstice for 2009, but Swedes have been celebrating since Friday. They have a talent for conveniently re-scheduling their holidays so that a 3-day weekend results. It is also Swedish custom to celebrate the “Eve” of the designated holiday, presumably so that the holiday itself can be used to recover from the previous night’s party.

This means that the summer solstic, which actually occured this morning and marks the BEGINNING of summer for the rest the Northern Hemisphere, was celebrated on Friday here in Sweden, where it’s considered the “middle of summer”. Are you confused yet? Welcome to my world.

Since both Dr. Darling and our Midsommer party host, AKA the Alpha Geek, work in Denmark (where it’s not an official holiday), we gathered on Saturday for lovely meal with family and friends. The menu featured four different kinds of herring and two different strawberry-centric desserts…both Swedish Midsummer staples.

Saturday also happened to be the 7th anniversary of my move to Vikingland from the United States. Back in 2002, I thought it was a good idea to have my arrival in Sweden coincide with the country’s biggest holiday outside of Christmas, but in hindsight…not so much. The anniversary of the start of my life here gets lost in chaos of party planning and trying to remember the holiday opening hours for the the state-run liquor store. In fact, I’m not even sure Dr. Darling would remember if I didn’t happen to point it out.

Good thing I’m not “the romantic type.”

Tales from the Commute: Nightmare Edition

It all started a week ago Tuesday when my monthly commuter card mysteriously disappeared from it’s specially designated pocket on my backpack. Which of course I didn’t realize until I was already sitting in the Quiet Car on the way to Landskrona. This prompted me to hide from the conductor in the unisex bathroom, which already smelled like old pee at 7:10 a.m. NOT a nice way to start the day, I can assure you.

And yes, I could have paid the conductor for a ticket, but they charge you an obscene amount extra to buy it on the train…and as far as I was concerned, I’d already paid for the trip, I just didn’t have the card on my person.

When the commuter card did not turn up at my office, I rode “stealth” on the way home, hoping to find it on the dresser in The Batcave. No such luck. And there was no point in buying a new monthly card since the transportation company’s discount Summer Card was going to be available on the 15th.

So I spent the remainder of the week either paying for single trips at 62 SEK (a little over $8) a pop and resenting the hell out of it, riding “stealth” and sweating the possibility of facing a big fine if caught, and hitching a ride with my scary-driving boss who sees her commute as “work time” and spends the entire drive on her mobile phone (hands-free, but still a HUGE distraction).

So needless to say, I was very relieved when the week was finally over and I could anticipate starting Monday with a Summer Card.  I should have realized it wouldn’t be that simple when Dr. Darling and I went to the ticket office on Sunday afternoon and had to wait in a queue over 30 people deep to buy it.

This is a prime example of customer service in Sweden…on a Sunday afternoon at the start of tourist season, the day before their hugely popular discount Summer Card becomes valid, the ticket office thinks it’s okay to have just two windows open to serve customers.

I’d had a similar experience on Thursday morning when my rebate card suddenly stopped working in the station’s self-service machines and I had to go in to the ticket office to get it straightened out. On a week day, during the morning rush hour, they had just one customer window open despite there being at least three other staff members on hand…two of which had to interrupt the clerk when it was finally my turn to be served. Needless to say, I missed my train and was late for work that morning.

So I guess it shouldn’t have been much of a surprise when my brand new Summer Card wouldn’t work in the self-service machines on Monday. Unlike my monthly commuter card that’s valid for unlimited travel for a specific period of time and can just be shown to the conductor after I board, the Summer Card is only good for 50 trips. You have to put it in a self-service machine, which then issues you a “ticket” that shows how many trips you’ve got left. Failure to get this ticket before getting on the train means you’ll be charged the highway-robbery price to buy a regular ticket onboard.

Fortunately, in this case it was a problem that virtually every other Summer Card holder had…so we all got a “free” trip while the train company fixed the technical glitch.  Tuesday was amazingly trouble-free, and then Wednesday morning a switching-error put my Landskrona-bound train on the tracks headed for Copenhagen. That’s right…the train took a WRONG TURN. We had to wait for clearance to reverse direction…and then get in a queue behind several other trains that left the station AFTER we did. Another day late for work.

On the way home, my Summer Card was rejected by the ticket machine in Landskrona, but the train was so crowded that the staff onboard didn’t even bother to check if people had them. Once in Malmö I went straight into the ticket office and remarkably, there wasn’t an interminable line for service. The clerk informed me that the card had become de-magnetized, probably from being too close to my mobile phone or iPod. GREAT.

So they replaced the card, which I promptly shoved in my pocket next to my mobile phone.  Quickly realizing the folly of that, I started to move it to the outside pocket of my backpack…where my iPod was parked.  Clearly keeping my Summer Card separate from my electronics was going to be tougher than I thought. So when I got home, I traded my backpack for a messenger bag that has an outside pocket so narrow that ONLY my Summer Card will fit in it.

I set off on Thursday morning confident that I finally had my commuting act together. The Summer Card worked as expected and the train was only 5 minutes late departing Malmö. I strode up to my office relatively on time and ready to have a productive day.

And that’s when I realized that the key-card I needed to get in the building had not made the transition from the backpack to the messenger bag.

Thank God tomorrow is a holiday.

Myers-Briggs soothes the savage Swede

Dr. Darling came across the Myers-Briggs personality test this weekend and, having never heard of it before,  decided to take the online version to see what career field best suited her.  You know, in case the junk mail delivery by bike thing doesn’t work out.

Not surprisingly, the results came up INTJ and pointed to “Scientist” as the top field for persons of that personality type. This was something of a disappointment since her Ph.D in molecular medicine has proven to be even less than useless over the last couple years. Adding insult to injury was the discovery of an official online forum for INTJ’s touting itself as a hangout for “masterminds, innovators, villains and virgins.”

On the plus side, she did learn that the ideal partner for an INTJ is an ENFP, and guess what I happen to be?  BIGTIME.

Russians' lead feet warmed by Brad Pitt

Image via Wikipedia

It seems that police in Siberia have come up with a novel way to get speeding drivers to slow down.

According to this news item in the Idaho Statesman, cardboard cutouts of Brad Pitt dressed in a traffic cop’s uniform are being credited with reducing the number of accidents at some of the most dangerous intersections in the Siberian city of Omsk.

Now I’m one of the few people in the world (apparently) who is not instantly transformed into a quivering puddle of goo at the thought of Brad Pitt, though I do  admit a police uniform would up the stakes considerably.

But based on this information and the gratuitous photo above (have mercy!) I think we can safely surmise the following:

1. A cardboard cutout of Brad’s partner Angelina Jolie would have a related but opposite effect…slowing drivers down to the point of causing a chain reaction of multiple-car pile-ups.

And…

B. It was a very slow news day in Idaho.