Accessorising

I've added a few blogs to the links. Both happen to be excellent resources for writers and aspiring writers alike.

Weinberg on Writing is an extension to Jerry Weinberg's book of the same name. Highly recommended. The blog is new but will surely develop into something wonderfully useful.

Neil Gaiman's Journal has earned a daily visit from me for years now. The topics cover anything and then some.

I also activated the Blogger NavBar to enable searching in the blog. Let me know what you think about it!

Testing 1-2-3

The content has finally been moved to new servers. This is really just a test post to see that also blogging works.

Gaming event yesterday was fun, Afrikan Tähti got a favourable reception (Here's a few Finnish links: wikipedia and Peliko) and Carcassonne (the city site) was Katrin's game, although she barely won the last game. Don't let the slightly underhanded questions, sneaky persuasion tactics and psychological tricks fool you, she's really good. Sascha, I might as well admit it; There are games I never win against Virpi. For example, I haven't won a game of "Carcassonne - Die Burg" or "Dicke Luft in der Gruft" against Virpi.

Today, our poet Dörte - pronounced [dirty woman] - has birthday.

Return

Recently, The Darkness released a CD called "One Way Ticket to Hell ..And Back". That's where I am, on the way back. The mixed work and holiday trip was just the right length, two weeks. Now it is nice to get back home and be able to concentrate on the usual business in the usual environment.

We've seen a lot of friends and some family during this two-week visit. I hope we managed to instill a spirit in the people so that they would really come and visit us for a change. The new apartment in a new city should make it more inviting. I dare you to make your wishes reality.

The coincidences just don't stop for this trip. I'm just sitting here with Hans-Peter, an ex-colleague from a few years back. In Tampere, I saw an ex-colleague by chance, whom I hadn't seen in 6-7 years. In Lahti our taxidriver was an old school mate of mine. I hadn't seen him in over fifteen years, I think. Tommi, I sent my hellos through Ville. Hope they get to you.

Hello from Helsinki

The sun is shining, it's getting warm and Helsinki is slowly turning into the summer city it really is. The sand so necessary during the snowy season has become a real nuisance. It is dry and dusty and gets up in the air along with the increasing amounts of pollen so that all people, especially the allergic ones, get breathing trouble. This is the season, when it grinds in the teeth. If you happen to open your mouth walking, you'll get grains of sand in it. I understand very well, why the beduins in Sahara wear protective clothing in front of their mouths.

Tomorrow, we fly back to Düsseldorf and the two-week business-holiday is over. Apparently and as anticipated, the weather in Germany is even more summery. We've had reports...

The K-word

Just before I got to Tampere some old colleagues from almost ten years arranged a get-together. I thought it would be nice to meet at least some and invited everybody for a spontaneous lunch. I think I sent the email invitation two days in advance. I reserved two hours of best lunch time so that everybody could come as they can. Luckily, I had a writing of mine to proofread, because nobody came. Not a soul! Well, I proofread the article for one and a half hours, ordered lunch, which was great, and left the restaurant.

I go out the building and who do I see? The only person I had failed to invite because of a missing email address. Pasi had been walking to his office before this chance encounter. So we went for a quick coffee to catch up. Boy, was it nice to talk after such a long time. We used to be real close, ten years ago. But then Pasi started his own company and soon afterwards I went to work for Nokia, which led me to Germany. Although he is no longer involved, Plenware is going strong and although I'm no longer involved with Nokia, I still live in Germany.

In the evening, from the old colleagues I managed to meet PAM, Mika and Mänttis (he's called Mänttis, although his real name is Marko, but because there is another Marko in the group, too, we need a unique name. Once we thought of calling him Marko-Marko, but then somebody misunderstood him for the other Marko and called him Mänttis-Mänttis, so we quickly returned to the old naming.) All the boys were great fun but seeing PAM was especially heartwarming as he had missed the get-together for a technical blunder of his own. He's the most technically adept person I know and he found a way to miss half of an email discussion. The geekiest geek (and I mean this with all due respect, PAM) who has been using email for twenty years, has still not learnt to use it properly. Isn't it ironic?

Well, we had a few whiskies to get over it and closed restaurant Natalie for Easter.

As always, we spent the Easter in Peurunka near Laukaa ja Jyväskylä. Bowling, badminton, table tennis, swimming, sauna, and general cheerfulness was on the agenda. This time the à la carte restaurant Peurankello delivered with quality. There had been other changes, too. The karaoke had been moved to a new "gastro pub", and our hotel rooms had been renewed completely. It was our tenth consecutive visit to the Peurunka Spa. It has become a real tradition.

I'm not ashamed to say where I now am, but the people who are from here, are. Suffice to say that it is a small town in Southern Finland starting with the letter K. Let's just call it town K. The best feature of town K is the railway leading out of town.

Speechless for a change

Here's the moment just before recognition. (Terry & Virpi)

The big surprise

Finally, one week after the "big shock" I am able to write down my feelings.

Last Tuesday we were in Tampere and I wanted to go to a bookstore and buy me a book. I found it, looked at it and heard a voice over my shoulder: "May I help you?" My first reaction was: What the ***! Can't I just look at this book without being disturbed. As I turned my head, ready to be polite and answer "no thank you" I saw a familiar face. A very familiar face. A round, familiar face. My brother's face. My brother's who lives in Leeds, England. A very familiar face but in a very wrong place at a very wrong time!

And his girlfriend beside him. And my husband taking pictures of my face, looking very confused. Okay, they got me this time. They really got me. I am always the one to come up with surprises like these, arranging other people or myself to be in places where nobody expects to. But this time they really got me. Me who always said that I'm ungotchable. ;-)

Thank you Miska and Terry and Rachel. I have to admit that it was really a nice surprise. And mom, I never ever thought you could act on something like this, be a part of this mean conspiracy. Can't trust anyone these days, can you.

The hard(l)y traveller Samuel

Samuel's still a little green from the flight.

Brave Samuel

We've arrived in Finland. We are staying at Cumulus Hotel on Koskikatu. Internet connection is not too expensive, 5€ for 24 hours.

I went straight on arrival to the sauna, which is warmed every day and complimentary. The hot "löyly" felt really good. Last time I was in sauna was almost four months ago in December. I've been in this hotel before and the sauna has one construction fault. If you throw a full spoonfull of water (about a coffee cup) on the hot stones, the door of the sauna room will open. It's as if the sauna elves are saying that too much "löyly" has been thrown.

"Löyly" is, by the way, a very old Finnish word meaning the steam of the water thrown on the stones on the sauna stove.

Tuula and Tapani were kind enough to meet us at Helsinki-Vantaa Airport and transport us to our hotel in Tampere. We had also a nice, although one-sided, supper with them here. We ate and they enjoyed the view, I hope. We'll meet again tomorrow and at the end of this trip. We'll go see a musical in Helsinki called "Evita".

Samuel flew with us today. Before this he's only accompanied us to Finland if we did the trip driving. This time he dared to come to the airplane. Of course, he became airsick, on arrival he was completely green and not feeling very well.

About the housewarming party

Our housewarming party on 1.4.

Some people have been disappointed not to find any word about our housewarming party last week. So here goes.

But I'll make it short: 30 guests - the first one arriving at 7 p.m. and the last one leaving at 5 a.m.
5 cases of beer ( I still wonder who on earth drank the non-alcoholic ones).
Other than that: What happens at Hiltunen residence stays at Hiltunen residence.

It was a great party. Thanks to everyone who made it so much fun!

Mini pictures

Here a few pictures from the miniature fair.

You'd think I'd been to Cuba, wouldn't you?
Train passing a station.
I would have been fooled by this picture to think that it was really taken from a helicopter, had I not taken it myself and for the sweater in the background.

Mini post

Today's program included a visit to a fair in Dortmund. Kaj had time to burn, and lured me to accompany him with promises of Ferraris. My collection of twenty two Ferraris could certainly need updating so I had agreed to go. We spent well over three hours walking in the eight halls of Westfalenhalle. We saw minituare trains, toy cars, boats and airplanes. The product development was almost unbelievable. If making artificial grass stand vertically with the help of electricity isn't proof of the inevitability of product development in a capitalistic system, I don't know what is. Many other details of the mini-machines had clearly ran away from their buyers, makers and sellers. It seemed that if real machines have a detail, the miniature ones must have it, too. Like a safety belt is much needed in a car that stands in a vitrine only to be looked at.

Most visitors, by the way, were boys, although the average age was probably higher than 55 years of age. Boys will be boys. I sensed even a little bit of bitterness at one stand. The men there had built exquisite mini trucks, which were set near enough to be touched. To avoid that, there was a sign
"Our cars are like little girls, you can admire them, but you can't touch them."
Another stand had found a better way to preserve their exhibition piece in one piece:
"Please, look only with your eyes."
Well put.

Today's saldo: three new Ferraris for my collection and a debt of €20 to Kaj.

No mention of the Party

First of all, I'd like to apologize to the readers (well, anybody else is hardly going to see this) for the interrupt in the postings. It's just that I've been in between servers. I have a new webhost and apparently transferring the domains takes some time.

I'm sorry.

This week, I've been able to write my book. On Monday and Tuesday I managed probably 2000 words and on Wednesday I typed 3000 new words. I'm happy with that. I typed the first drafts of chapter "2. Problems" and half of chapter "3. Root Causes". Much of the other chapters is ready, too. Soon the book should start to take up shape. Which brings me to SHAPE, the forum of Jerry Weinberg.

I posted a short description of a model I've developed. It seems that I might be onto something with my Vicious Circle of Busyness. It is a simple model, drawn as a diagram of effects, which I learned from Jerry's book Quality Software Management (I forget which volume). The model tries to explain how being overly busy is trap and innocent people get caught in it if they are not careful. It probably has traces of addiction in it as some people seem to relate their own importance with how busy they are. "The busier I am, the more important I seem", goes the thinking.
With the model, I explain why not having enough time to do things properly will come back to bite one later. The model shows also a way out of it. It is the Way of Quality, but that's another story for another day.

Check out Don Gray's website for more diagrams of effect. I think he calls them Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs). Check for example January 2005.