House building in three easy steps

1. Park truck, attach house to crane, push orange button to start lifting

2. Lift and swing house over hedge

(Note that truck already backed out – the road was probably not closed more than 30 minutes. That’s bad enough between 7:30 and 8 without advance notice, though – the road is a cul-de-sac)

3. Lower onto foundations

OK – these three steps will have to be repeated. As I drove off to work I saw two more big flatbed trucks with the remainder of the house. One with the first (second if you like) floor and one with – ermmm – other bits and pieces.

Photographic details: Exposure 1.28 seconds with the camera on the window sill (hence the decent sharpness and motion blur on the house), f3.2, no flash. It’s actually interesting how much stuff is written into the EXIF data of digital images…

Seven weird things about me

Well, we did “8 random things” and here’s then the “7 weird things”. At least I read Reed’s and apparently her words carry weight enough for me feeling tagged

Let’s see if I can avoid duplicating too many things from the random list:

1. I count steps. Going up any staircase, I count ’em – and if it’s one I go up or down regularily, I do know how many steps there are. Not a clue why. But my father also did and since I don’t remember him teaching me the importance of this, I consider it hereditary.


2. I’ve grown to like Chinese green tea – a teaspoon of dried leaves in a glass and not-too-hot water over. Quite frugal, too, as you can add water several times to the same leaves. Weird? I don’t know, lots of Chinese wouldn’t think so, but my wife certainly does. So it qualifies.


3. I like bicycling uphill. One of the things where I get to value that I am thin and lightweight.


4. Not liking Bailey’s to me is very normal indeed – in this area of things, I have been vaccinated against rum. Thoroughly. Many years ago. And I still do not touch it. They say it can be good though. If anyone suggests a Mojito, please make mine a Caipirinha instead.


5. I am unable to speak Norwegian. This is a language very close to Danish – but if I try, what comes out becomes Swedish instead. If you can call it Swedish – I do. Apparently I can only hold two closely related languages in my head at any one time.


6. Not that I pursue it a lot, but I like classical musical. I enjoy opera. But I just never got the hang of liking ballet. On the few occasions where I’ve been to see one, I’ve enjoyed the music.


7. As a ‘cuddly bear’ I have a small stuffed animal that I often take with me on travels just to have a little bit of home along. It’s a much-enlarged Ebola virus that my dear wife gave me… It is very cute, believe me!

Apparently, I am a geek

Scoring 21.69625% (I confess in being geeky enough to firmly believe that the number of digits to the right of that decimal point is ridiculous ) on the geek test qualifies me as such.

One thing that puzzles me – does being a scout for 10+ years add to or subtract from the score? In my humble opinion (I know, to keep up my geekiness, I should have abbreviated that), scouting is decidedly un– or even anti-geekish. I’ll explain at length, should anybody disagree or just be in for an argument.

(as so often before, azahar got this one before me)

The strength of associations

We were looking at some very boring, regular, system-oriented business categories in our IT systems and came upon the product group “Elderberry”.

Within 15 seconds, three people in an office were shouting at each other: “Your Father was a hamster and your Mother smelled of elderberry!” and from there deteriorating into “I fart in your general direction!”