Year: 2004

The above is the paper where I will be working

I’ve got a job! Finally, after 105 job applications and a total of two interviews, I’ve now got a halftime job for about five (5) months. I start on January 3rd and am on the job including the first week of June. The half-time is scheduled as such that you work 2 weeks full-time, is off 2 weeks, work 2 weeks full-time and so on. On the “off” time I will continue to work on and off for my former employer but they will no longer have access to me at any time during this period but only on my “off” weeks.

The new job is at one of the largest Swedish daily’s, at their internal Helpdesk. I will give Mac-support. Got it via contacts, not regular job-ads, and because of my knowledge of InDesign and other graphical applications among other things (they have recently gone over to InDesign for the production of the paper and will be ready with the whole conversion some time during spring 2005).

Contacts is probably the only way to get a job for people in my age-group. It is not a steady job and it is not full-time, but at least it is something for a period. I look forward to it.

The house opposite mine at night

It is very dark. Depressing. The sunup is approximately at 8.30 AM and sundown at around 3.30 PM. It will soon turn though. The longest night and the shortest day of the year is Dec 22nd. Then it will get lighter again. The only nice thing about this season is all the lights that everybody puts in the windows from Advent Sunday until about a week or two after New Years Eve. I do it too. I don’t celebrate Christmas (or Hanukkah), my neighbors that are from all over the world, many of them Muslim, don’t either, but we all put up the Advent Lights in the windows. Makes the darkness seem more friendly somehow.

Have said no to a short-term job at a competitor to my previous employer. Cannot work there if I still want to work on and off at my old workplace. It wasn’t worth it for a job for about 3 months even if that would have paid better. A pity, but… not possible. I need to still have a foot in at my old job also after the three months. Had it been for a longer period I might have accepted. Because of the competition between them and some old trouble between them, it was not doable.

All the snow is totally gone again. About +2 centigrades and the grass that was temporarily covered by snow now looks green… Wrong season.

In the night to November 23rd, the second snowstorm in a week struck with about 30 cm snow as a result. Everything covered with white, new snow. Very beautiful. Very early in the season. I normally do not like snow. Bu when it is fresh and clean, it can be beautiful.

See winter-photos here

Downstairs and the yard, Friday, November 19th, 2004

Day before yesterday the first snow for this season arrived. It was heavy snowfall with heavy winds all day long and resulted in about 20cms of snow. When it finally stopped snowing, it became cold. Today has been sunny and -5 centigrades. Tonight is even colder. It looks like it is going to continue like this for still a couple of days. It is very early in the season. The neighbors below (a young couple who have no idea about how to tend their piece of garden) have still not moved the garden furniture inside – or an office chair that they brought out some time in August. All is now covered by snow, including their grill.

In the end Ulla called me Thursday. Her daughter Rafaela has now moved in with her now boyfriend and left home. I will go to Ulla tomorrow, see her and her husband Feri and the dog Igor and eat her good food. That will be nice.

Malca also called the other night from Israel. She keeps wanting me to come for a visit. I still feel the safety situation isn’t what I would like it to be to go to Israel. I also cannot afford it presently. Would be good to leave the winter though.

Got the latest brochure from the SF bookstore here the other day. Saw that Stephen Donaldson has released the first part in a third and final trilogy about Thomas Covenant. I’ve read the previous books (and all his other books as well) and am looking forward to go get this one too soon. Stephen Donaldson is one of my favorite Fantasy and SF authors.
The Runes of the Earth (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Book 1) Stephen R. Donaldson More info here

When yesterday reorganizing my workroom and making room for some papers, I found Tedy’s letters from 1974-75. All nine (9) of them. Re-read all but one yesterday. Have one more to go. Slow reading for me because of handwritten Hebrew – even if his handwriting is easy to read (compared to letters I get from Malca) – and his letters are long. I really have to write to him. Or call him (calling to Israel from Sweden is a bit too expensive though). He has been on my mind a lot lately. I wish he had email.

I also should call Ulla. I am bad at keeping in contact with people. She is as bad as me with that, which does not make a good combination.

Weather is boring, grey, very cloudy, +5-7 centigrades, some rain. It is November. Worst month of the year when it comes to lack of light and sun. You can get depressed for less.

Some people hate you – and say they do – just because you speak your mind and do not agree with them or to some idea you won’t just accept at face value and agree to it.

Saying they cannot stand you because you do not agree with them leads nowhere. Saying on a mailinglist that “You’re foolish brat. And quite frankly you don’t belong” and “frankly, I cannot stand you” is way out of line. Calling me a brat I should maybe take as a compliment. I am not really in an age where I can be a brat. Call me a bitch, but brat? Bitch I can live with.

That is sad, very sad. For him, not for me. To me it points to a frustrated person that has difficulties listening to other peoples opinions. Maybe he also has difficulties not being agreed to by a woman. I don’t know. I don’t know this person other than by name on a couple of mailinglists.

With that much anger on a mailinglist (for something that didn’t even have to do with politics but ideas about UI for software), maybe it is luck that I am on another continent than he is. If I wasn’t I should maybe have to be scared for what this person might do. As it is, I feel sorry for him. And I don’t scare easily.

PS. I finished reading the Catteni/Freedom books by Anne Mc Caffrey. The fourth one was not at all as good as the three previous ones. Felt like an artificial add-on to the first three.
Am now reading a new book by Julian May called the “Conqueror’s Moon”. It isn’t at all that good as “The Saga of the Pliocene Exile”, “The Galactic Milieu Trilogy” and “The Rampart Worlds”. Those three series I enjoyed a lot. This new book, is.. eh… not sure yet after 151 pages of the first part of the “The Boreal Moon Tale”. We will see if it gets any better further into the story. The beginning was even boring.