Bring on the Night

Can you almost hear Chris Rea singing too?

So. as I wrote he other day, C and I went to the beach Tuesday evening. We brought C’s friend’s daughter and had a good time. The weather wasn’t the best and especially not compared to the latest days of sunshine and 28+ degrees Celsius. On the other hand nothing makes the sea show it’s raw force and beauty as some windy weather.

Here are some shots (update: just found out the quality sucks, as they are only saved in quality 3 of 12 in jpg compression. Think I’m too lazy to fix them now, but lets see):

South-west on the Beach at Blokhus

South view on the Beach at Blokhus (Kojaks car in the middle) Continue Reading »

Tags: Denmark, pictures

The following conversations have been translated using my super powers to babelfish stuff like: Chinese, Danish, English, Chinglish, female thinking, weird eyebrow movements, physical pain induced by punching, telepathy and of course: decipher Chinese astrology.

My wife and I borrowed a car (tnx Kojak) and wanted to take one of my wife’s friend’s daughter (let’s call her A) to dinner in our home and the later: a trip to the beach.

We picked A up and I noticed that she was nowhere prepared for the windy weather and the Danish sea. She wore a skirt and a T-shirt.

Dialogue when A walked towards the car:

Peter: “A! That’s not enough clothes. You know it gets really windy at the beach. You should grab a jacket”
A: No, I’m okay. It’s warm”
Peter: “Are you sure, it’s really different from here in the city?”
A: “Sure!”

Later after dinner and getting ready to go to the car:

Peter: “C (my wife), you should take an extra jacket with you. It will be cold”
C: “Are you sure?… Ok then” Continue Reading »

Tags: beach, car, china vs denmark, Denmark, man vs woman

A few shots of my new baby:

Mmm. Laaaaaptop.drool.

Tags: laptop, pictures

Some time ago, my parents decided to throw all of us kids a bone (I have 3 brothers). My parents are in their 70’s and as they say: “We have all that we could wish for, so why not give you kids some money while we still can enjoy seeing you spend them”.

Talk doesn’t do it alone so out of the blue a check followed. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Besides knowing that our coming trip to China will now not be eating away on an already empty bank account, it also gave me us an opportunity to buy invest a new useful toy tool for our trip.

Monday a brand new laptop arrived with the mailman. It’s not the newest or the best outfitted, but certainly not the worst I could find. Normally I would have picked one 3.000kr more expensive, but had to make a compromise between expenses and greed. Sense won, and I ended out spending less than I had expected. I even believe I made a real bargain only having to spend 5.000DKR (approx. 900US$) for it, which is round 1.000DKR lower than I could find it in other shops. Even for the price the hardware specs seem decent too. Comparable laptops are at least 1.000-1.500DKR more, so in that regard I am satisfied. I know that for that price the quality can’t be expected to be top-notch, but that’s what I wanted to spend. Initially I was ready to post out 6000DKR, so finding one this cheap seems like a good deal so far. Continue Reading »

Tags: economy, laptop

Pretty busy these days, but have a few entries lined up for the coming week. Just to let you know that I haven’t checked-in to a hospital or have been slain by the missus.

Meanwhile you can check out my blogroll if you’re bored.

Tags: bust, silence

My brother bought a new dog. It’s a German Sheppard and a pretty darn cute puppy as as well. I just had to post a picture.

Here’s C trying to manhandle it:

Tags: dog, family

Spotted a few days ago:

Why was this “sport” ever made popular?

If you wonder then – YES – this is a rhetorical question. Please refrain from telling me how your cardiovascular system benefits from the movements It still looks ridiculous.

Tags: rant

…the rabbits make a day of it.

C’s rabbits not only ate all tomato plants in the pot, but decided that this was an excellent spot to relax afterwards. This is what C gets for putting the plants out to lick sun, but forget to close the rabbit cage.

Tags: plant, rabbits, Tomato

Thought of the day:

If they ever invent a machine that can: open jars, press out the last tooth paste, act as a warm pillow in the night, lift heavy things, act as body-o-comfort when strange noise appear and take a verbal scolding with a straight face for something you haven’t the slightest idea what is about, then my days as husband may be soon over.

Tags: Humour, men vs women

Yeah – that sounded pretty girlish, but oh well.

Try this to check out ours (you know you want to):

Websites as Graphs

This is mine:

What do the colors mean?
blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags Continue Reading »

Tags: blogging

What the hell is up with bowties?

What man really wants a bow tied to his neck? For one I think it looks like a squid ink coloured Pasta Farfalle?

And why is it that bowties is expected at the Oscar Awards and not at weddings, office work or changing oil on your lawnmower?

So many questions yet unanswered

Tags: rant

If you for some reason haven’t tripped on Ben’s writing about working 1 month in a Chinese barbershop, I would highly recommend that you took a look.

He ventured into the project with open eyes and blog about his observations in-between 8 hours of sleep and 11 hours of work every single day.

Take a look here.

Tags: blogging, China

…Bjarne Riis used doping during the heights in his career.

Only questions still left are:

1) Why didn’t he admit it sooner?
2) Why is he still proud of his victories?
3) Why doesn’t he say that he knows that most other of the elite riders used it?

I’ll answer:

1) Because he didn’t think it was that big a deal, since many others did the same. Also he hates the press and would hate to admit that this time they are actually correct.
2) Because, even though he used drugs to enhance his performance, he still had to work hard (which other not doped riders apparently didn’t?).
3) Because some are his friends, and then maybe an ounce of integrity (match integrity with cheating, and then you got what?).

I just hoped he would have said those things instead of just admitting and say “sorry”…. Continue Reading »

Tags: cycle sports, Denmark, doping

…. to get rid of tomato plants.

Today I gave 4 more away to colleagues and I also pimped my own department to foster two them. The first one a week ago and today I gave it a buddy. Well, a wife really.

When I brought the first one, I asked C what it’s name was. She gave it a 2 sec thought and shouted: “HOMER!!!”.

So the name for nr two should be pretty obvious, right?

Tags: plants, Tomato

Almost thought I lost the database to this blog this evening. Everything went bonkers and WordPress told me there were no posts anymore. Fortunately WordPress has a forum for troubleshooting, and a moderator gave me a hint.

Even though it included some nerdish stuff like messing with a repair-command query inside MyPHP Admin (which I rather not do as it’s like fighting in the dark to me) it worked out. I think my newest database backup is at least 2 months old, so I wiped some sweat of my forehead when I saw it worked.

Anyway, this is nerd stuff, but I’m just so happy nothing was lost :-)

Now lets get to backing up the database, right? Nah… real men doesn’t take backups.

Tags: blogging, wordpress

A little update on C’s tomato plant adventure. This is what our window pane now looks like:

C makes sure the cuties get their water and love (unlike me)

Note that we actually had luck giving away more than 20 tomato plants already. At least 10 were given to C’s schoolmates. My parents were also given 5, and then family and friends had their turn. We still have too many. I need help. 1 month more and I won’t be able to look out the window for green and reds.

Also note that we still have more plants placed in other windows and on our dinner table and so on. These suckers grow pretty fast. Some of them even show signs of flowers which equals possible tomatoes. Soon C will do her best to act like an insect and pollinate them.

Tags: plant, Tomato

Kojak dropped by with this bottle of chili a few days ago:

He bought it in a new store in Copenhagen, where they only sell chili related products like: Honey with chili, mustard with chili and so on. He was told it was one of the hottest on the market. I know that there are some insanely hot fresh chilies, but I haven’t yet had a bottled one which uncontrollable hot. According to Kojak this particular bottle should be hot that just a needle drop would give you immense mouth pain for 10-20 minutes. So of course he had to buy it, right?

Anyway, he was kind enough to buy a bottle for me too and yesterday we decided to try it out together.

I must admit, that the bottle labels made me doubt the hotness. Not only is it called “Stupid hot” and the warning signs on the bottle are made in a humorous tone. If it really was that hot, wouldn’t there be some serious guidance to fools like us? Apparently not. Continue Reading »

Tags: chili, china vs denmark, food, stupid

NERD ALERT! Turn back now if you want to keep sane.

Sometimes I make a few hardware tests for a Counter-Strike community called SLAP Ligaen. Mostly it is related gaming gear like mouse pads, mice and headsets, but the other day a box of different goodies dropped in.

As always it’s exciting to test the thingies, but also a hard job to actually write the review. This time it is even harder. One of the things I had to review this time is a raid controller. This vouch for heavy fiddling with my computer case and setting up in the bios, drivers and so on. Also I have to install Windows XP and all my software from scratch.

Recently I upgraded my mainboard and my CPU, which of course forced me to unlock/register my original copy of Windows XP yet another time. The registering part is pretty easy. You just plug in the net cable and click a few buttons inside Windows, and voila, done. The hard part is unlocking Windows when Microsoft decides that “you have made significant changes to your hardware”. This part pisses me of. Continue Reading »

Tags: internet, microsoft, rant, windows

Dick Turpin – The series. Who can forget his adventures and his fairy haired sidekick Swiftnick….

I know… You forgot about those two, right? And now you either hate me or want to kiss me for reminding you?

Anyway, heres your chance to vote (and my chance to try out my new WordPress Poll Plugin):

[poll=3]

Tags: rant, series

About 1½ month, and I’ll be off to China to visit the in-laws and short sightseeing in Beijing. We’ll be in China for a full month.

I bought the tickets ages ago, well, at least 1 month so that’s all taken care of. Then there’s the obligatory insurance (well, obligatory for decease attractors like me anyway), and then the last of 2 vaccines for Japanese Brain Decease. Whatever that may be, and why ever that would apply to me (insert humorous rant about my brain in the comments). After paying the bill of 760DKr (140US$), I’d almost rather have taken my chances, but that’s too late now anyway.

Some time ago we purchased some gifts for Cs so that’s all well and taken care of too.

C is put in charge of finding a hotel in Beijing for a 3 day duration, and I trust her to find one that has both quality and cheapness attached to the big toe. Last I heard from her was a price of 180RMB a night, which by Danish standards is pretty cheap and way below budget. So that’s cool.

Last night as we had tugged in to bed, C told me it would be wise to bring our wedding certificate as well. I know China Expats may raise their brows and sigh, but I never thought about it for one second. Denmark really is a no fuzz country. C told me that not bringing this could bring us trouble at the hotel. Simply because some hotels would refuse us a single double bed room, as we couldn’t prove to be married (apparently having the same rings is not proof enough). Especially as I am a can’t-fool-anyone-Laowai and she is Chinese. Gotta seem suspicious right? Not that C in anyway could resemble a girl of divious profession at all, but the police apparently do raids to the hotels to round-up these girls. Would be some scene to have her dragged away for questioning in the middle of a jetlagged sleep one of our first nights in China. So I better grab a copy of those papers too just to be safe. Continue Reading »

Tags: China, travel, vacation