Dan 的个人资料Dan's Life照片日志列表更多  |  工具 帮助 |
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12月17日 My doctor appointment todayBelow are 2 pictures from my last visit to the doctor in June, and then under that are the same views from today.     As you can see, and much to my liking, the healing has progressed a lot in the past 6 months. In fact I even got the okay to resume snowboarding (and just in time for winter!). 11月17日 Is your cat plotting to kill you?It's shocking, but I believe there must be some sort of science behind the results.  11月12日 My playlist for workThanks to a co-worker I discovered this website a couple weeks ago & thought I would share my current at-work playlist. I suggest listening on shuffle. 9月9日 Paris leg is overOur time in Paris is over and in an hour we'll be heading for Amsterdam. We spent the day yesterday at Disneyland and the weather ended up being perfect for it, despite the fact that it had been cloudy and/or rainy every day since we got here. We'll be in Amsterdam tonight and tomorrow night, then Berlin for 2 nights and then home on Saturday night. 9月3日 Summer vacationThe 4 weeks running up to our summer vacation were super busy at work so I didn't really have time to blog, not that I have much time now either really, I'm actually writing from a computer in the hotel lobby where we are staying in Rome. We're just killing time before our train to Paris leaves in about 2.5 hours. I'm sure I'll get some pictures here in a few more weeks after our trip ends.
Hope everyone had a great Labor Day & the end of your summer is going well. 8月7日 My internet addictions I just thought I'd take a moment to share a short list of the websites I visit daily, in case you are like so many who find themselves with a few minutes of downtime each day and nothing to do to fill them. http://www.engadget.com http://www.techbargains.com http://www.woot.com http://www.xbox360fanboy.com http://www.explosm.net/comics Additionally, since some may not know, let me make you aware of http://www.achieve360points.com. It's the one-shop-stop for all you need to know about Xbox360 achievements. Check out "Achievement List" from the menu. What sites can you add that I should know about? 8月1日 Someone's Eating the Sun Today there was a solar eclipse, just partial here in Helsinki though. For those who aren't aware of the phenomenon it can be a bit of a scary experience. Luckily I was exposed to this book at a young age so I was adequately prepared for today's event but others weren't so lucky. Anyway, I snapped this photo from the balcony of the office building and thought I would share. 6月19日 My new bikeI would be lying if I said I wasn't itching to buy a motorcycle every spring since arriving to Finland but this year, I finally pulled the trigger.
I won't talk about costs because everything in Finland is more expensive and, well, it's embarassing to say how much it cost, but some weeks ago I ordered a new Triumph Speedmaster and picked it up last Friday from Turku. This is the city where Liisa attended University so I'd been there quite a few times before, its' just about 2 hours drive from Helsinki. Of course they have a Triumph dealer also in Helsinki but I went around & around with a salesman there and the deal we made ended up falling through.
The train ride to Turku was filled with anticipation as I couldn't wait to get there, get the bike & start riding back to Helsinki. Everything went as well as expected and I snapped a picture of the bike before rolling it out of the showroom.
This is the first new bike I've ever owned, and before I took it away the odometer read between 00000.4 & 00000.5 km, I guess it had been pushed around a bit. I haven't taken any proper photos of it yet but I snapped one with my phone of the odometer when I filled up in Turku and a few more along the road on the ride back.
After almost a week it's now got about 300km on it and I'll be putting almost 700km more on it this weekend when Liisa & I take it to the summer cottage for the midsummer holiday, 3-day weekend. We'll be leaving tonight, returning on Sunday evening, praying the whole time that it doesn't rain (too much).
Oh yeah, and the unexpected side-effect is that at least 4 other co-workers I've talked to since buying it have now started expressing interest in getting their motorcycle license so they can get a bike too. My encounter with real world travellersThe same weekend Jusu & I were travelling through Estonia & Riga, a group of co-workers were doing the same thing on proper motorcycles. They were on the same boat returning to Helsinki Sunday evening as we were, and probably accomplished a lot more of everything (except time spent sitting) than we did, but surely we had more fun. Anyway, these co-workers met a couple in Tallinn on Sunday who are from Australia, and travelling around the world. They're currently one year into their two and a half year planned journey and were invited to come by the office last week to see what we do.
Their car was parked outside the office on Tuesday and caught a lot of attention.
I had the fortunate opportunity to meet them and spent some time talking as well. They left from Australia with their car on a cargo ship headed to Japan a year ago, and have been driving ever since. Their journey has taken them through just about everywhere including Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Siberia, and now Scandinavia. Their plans eventually take them across Canada to Vancouver, then down the west coast of the US through Seattle, San Francisco and ends a year and a half from now on the southern tip of South America.
More than anything it was really cool to talk to them because they are super nice people and have such great stories to tell. If you're interested in seeing a bit more about them they have a website here on MySpace. There's a bit more of their story there including pictures of their car being built from the ground up.
If you're interested in showing them some hospitality or meeting them (they love meeting and talking to people, it's the reason they are having this journey) then let me know & I can get you in touch with them. I've already spoken with a few people at Microsoft as they said they'd love to see the campus, but please let me know if you'd also like to show them around or meet them or something.
My scootering weekend, bonus contentWhat was the coolest thing you saw?
Jusu: This one is a close call, but I’ll have to go for the stork we saw during the first day at sunset. I had never seen one live and that just totally surprised me. A really good runner up was the seeing the church bell being installed in a small village in Latvia.
Dan: Opposite for me. Church bell first, runner up the stork.
What was the funnest thing you did?
Jusu: I definitely did laugh most on the Pärnu hotel balcony when we had a chat after a few shots of salmiakki kossu.
Dan: Yeah, definitely the first night in Pärnu but not limited to the balcony, just the whole evening between checking into the hotel and falling asleep.
What was your favorite part of the trip (or was it the same as one of the above)?
Jusu: Favorite part was the small road between Estonia and Latvia. Really nice road to drive with nice views to the sea.
Dan: The whole thing in a way I guess. Just being relatively far from home, having "guy time", experiencing so many new things and not being at work.
What was your least favorite part of the trip?
Jusu: Must have been Riga, horrible traffic and the scooter started acting up.
Dan: Definitely Riga. Losing my glasses, death defying traffic and just wanting to be out of there.
What one food place would you recommend to someone else?
Jusu: I don’t think we ate at any place that would really stick out.
Dan: Definitely the steak join in Riga. It was, for this trip, Riga's only redeeming value.
Biggest disappointment?
Jusu: Riga was a bit of a let down, but I would not call it a big disappointment anyway.
Dan: Scooter troubles
What would you do differently?
Jusu: Not much, possibly tweak the scooter to do 55 km/h to match the traffic a bit better and check that everything is attached after the bumpy roads of Riga, but that’s pretty much it. Dan: Buy a luggage box for the back of the scooter, take a sleeping bag, take headphones that I forgot for the iPod. My scootering weekend, part 4 The long-awaited continuation, Sunday: Camping in a free campsite next to the beach on a Saturday night in Estonia is quite an experience. You may be able to tell from the pictures that the tent isn't very big. In fact, it is rated for 2 people but probably should only ever have 1 in it at a time unless you're stacking (which we weren't!). I could easily touch one end of the tent with the entire sole of my foot and the other with my head, yes, at the same time. Not bad for a 12€ tent I suppose. The other downside to this type of camping arrangement is that there are lots of drinking youngsters and no campground officials. There was loud music pretty much throughout the entire evening and at around 6am this song came on which provoked the partiers to crank up the volume to somewhere between deafening loud & "OMG make it stop!". We were finally awake and out of the tent by 7:30 and on the road by 8:00, on a mission for food. We passed a few roadsigns on the road back to Pärnu which pointed to food, but with much effort we never actually found a place. Before we knew it (well after 3 hours actually) we were again in Pärnu city center and eating breakfast. The next plan was to head immediately to Tallinn so we could be at the harbor by 5pm to make the 6pm departure. We fueled the scooters up one last time & started heading out of town around 11:30. We were only riding for a few minutes when Jusu's scooter started acting up again, this time more serious with complete lack of scootability (read: no power). We figured the spark plug would just take a new cleaning and be good to go for awhile, but this wasn't the case. After a bit of inspection it was discovered that the air intake was completely loose from the air filter housing so most likely his scooter was sucking up dust, Estonian & Latvian bugs and whatever else, compounding the problem. He tightened the hose clamp & I went on a mission to find a new spark plug for his scooter. Problem #1: Very few places in this part of Europe are open on Sundays Problem #2: His scooter's spark plug is extremely rare and apparently only shows up in stores when the moons is full and Jupiter is in retrograde. We even tried bribing a 17 year old kid, who I spotted that had the same type of scooter, for his spark plug but he said his mom would not be happy if he sold us his spark plug, even for a ridiculous sum of money. It soon became clear that Jusu wasn't going to be scootering back to Tallinn so we started looking at options. Scooter on a train: doesn't leave until 5pm, it's too late Scooter on a bus: The cargo bus has just left and the next on comes, well, nobody knows. The passenger bus driver refuses to put it in the luggage compartment even though it would easily fit and we've promised to drain all liquids and put plastic and a blanket underneath it. Scooter in a van: Aha! We found a rental van that we could drive to Tallinn. We went to pick up the van and the driver, who was very nice despite his lack of responsible driving skills, offered to drive us to Tallinn himself since it would be a few days before he could send someone to fetch the van. This was a great opportunity for us to sit back, have a drink and relax for a couple hours on the way to Tallinn. Not only that, but we'd be to the harbor probably an hour early giving us plenty of time. Picture every stereotype you know about European drivers and their driving habits like high-speed tailgating, driving fast, passing even though there's oncoming traffic, braking late, etc. Now apply those to the guy driving our van. There was more than a few moments on the road between Pärnu & Tallinn where I may have wet myself a little. Despite that I figured this guy knows what he's doing and probably knows how to avoid accidents, so I tried to relax. Then about 10km from the harbor the traffic started picking up and he had a close call with braking at a line of stopped traffic, almost rear-ending the car in front of us. Two minutes later at the very next stop light, the call was not so close & he smacked the car in front of us pretty hard, and so the car behind us also rearended us. The van was large, we were seatbelted and there was no chance for injury for any of us in the van at the speed we were going. It was fast enough though to bust the radiator of the van so we knew we weren't going any further in this vehicle. We unloaded the scooters about as quickly as we could and Jusu's scooter was running well enough to get us the remaining distance to the harbor, even with plenty of time to spare. The boat ride back seemed to take an eternity and more than any other time since I've moved to Finland, it really felt like I was going home. All in all this 3 day weekend felt like a week and a half and the walk from where I parked the scooter at home to the front door of the apartment were some of the sweetest steps I've taken in a long time. To sum it all up, a great time, will remember it for the rest of my life, am definitely glad that we did it but I don't think I would do it again, at least not anytime soon. I think everyone should have an adventure like this at some point in their life. 6月14日 My scootering weekend, part 3Saturday morning:
We woke up around 9:00 and headed for breakfast in the hotel restaurant. Nothing special here, it was the standard European breakfast layout. We spent about 30 minutes riding around the city to see if there was anything interesting (snapped a couple pictures of a church near the hotel) and headed out. Saturday would prove to be the most expensive day for me and you'll soon understand why.
Just minutes after starting to head out I wondered why the sun was so bright and realized, though I meant to, I didn't put my sunglasses on. Seconds later Jusu says on the intercom that my sunglasses have just fallen off the bag on the back of my scooter. What happened next was straight out of a movie: Jusu was 50 or so meters behind me and stopped right next to where my glasses came to rest on the street (2 lanes of traffic in each direction). Just as he was starting to bend over to pick the up he spotted a car coming and, yup you guessed it, the car ran straight over them. It's almost certain he actually tried to hit them, not surprising considering there's a lot of rude bastards in Estonia & especially Latvia (no offense Alik). Luckily the glasses weren't expensive, ~$10 (USD) but the day was young, the sun was bright & we would be driving with it in front of us for most of the day.
About 60km after leaving Pärnu we decided we'd had enough of the highway & wanted to hit some side roads. After all, when you can only do 45kph and all the traffic around you is doing 100kph, it can get a little frustrating being constantly reminded how much faster you could get to where you're going than the method we chose. It turned out for the best because we ended up on a nice 70kph side road which paralleled the sea all the way through into Latvia. This was the first we'd seen the sea since leaving Haapsalu and we soon spotted a nice bird watching tower that Jusu climbed & took a few pictures from. For him it was strange to see open sea without a bunch of islands in view, which is what the southern coast of Finland is like. Driving this road paid off extra because we spotted a campground which, while we didn't plan it so at the time, we would end up camping at Saturday evening.
Finally we made it to the Latvian border, a bit of an anti-climatic experience lacking any sort of border station, armed guards or passport control. I had hoped, after all, to get a couple more stamps in my passport on this trip. The choice to drive this road paid off a 3rd time when we spotted a large gathering outside a church. It only took a second to realize it wasn't a wedding and what was actually happening was they were raising a new bell into the bell tower of the church. This is one of those very cool experiences where, unless you're there, you probably won't ever realize how unique & cool it was. But we took a bunch of pictures anyway & watched on with the crowd of this small town, as a very small choir sang, and the crane lifted the bell very cautiously to the tower up above. This stop lasted about 30 minutes and, while we didn't get to hear the inaugural ringing of the bell, it was very much worth it.
A few boring, mostly uneventful hours later we were on the outskirts of Riga & it seemed my scooter wanted more oil so we stopped at a gas station and bought some. I also found here another cheap (~10 euros) pair of sunglasses & decided to replace the ones I lost. In about an hour we were downtown among the craziest, most disrespectful drivers I've ever encountered. Riding the scooter in Riga was the most tense part of the trip and more than a few times I thought that me or someone around me was going to die. Nobody there has any regard for their own life when they're on the roads, let alone anybody else's. Not that Estonian drivers were the safest on the planet but compared to the folks in Riga, they looked like angels at the wheel.
We promptly started looking for someplace to eat and ended up stumbling on a really good steak place in the middle of the market square in old town. After a really long day of scootering we were both so hungry that anything would have tasted good at this point, but the steaks here really were spectacular (at least in my opinion). You can see in the picture that my sunglasses are on top of my head when we were sitting at the table. About 3 minutes after that picture, and for no reason at all, one of the lens frames just broke with a slightly disturbing *pop*. This would be pair of glasses number two to die today.
We wanted to find the shortest route back toward Tallinn while avoiding highways so we found an internet cafe near the steak joint & looked it up on Google Maps. Problem with Google Maps (and all other map services I could find) don't think the highways in Latvia/Estonia (and probably many other countries) are really highways, so when I chose the option to avoid highways, it still gave the same route. We decided to go back to Tallinn the shortest/quickest route. The sun was getting low in the sky so I took out my regular eyeglasses and we started heading out of town.
All that was left was a quick fuel-up and we'd be gone, but it was at the gas station (20 minutes/5 kilometers from where we left the internet cafe) that I realized I no longer had my glasses. I remembered taking them out of their case, could have swore I put them on my face, but they're nowhere to be found. Crap! (glasses pair number 3 for those keeping score at home) I guess they suffered the same fate as my first pair of sunglasses and there was no sense in turning back to look for them, I just wanted to get the heck out of Riga.
We left Riga around 6:30pm and to cut a long Saturday story short, Jusu's scooter started having some sputtering issues, we stopped and he cleaned the spark plug which seemed to fix the problem, and 5 hours later we were at the campsite, tent pitched and turned in.
Sunday (final day) in part 4 6月11日 My scootering weekend, part 2Friday evening: Our initial plan, before the mechanical difficulty came, was to take coastal roads west out of Tallinn & follow those all the way to Latvia. Unfortunately, there isn't really an efficient way to follow those roads without having to do a ton of backtracking. Since we were already so far behind schedule, we decided to give up on that idea and instead make sure that we made it to Riga before we ran out of time. The good compromise seemed to be to head for a city in Estonia called Haapsalu. We took highway 9 all the way there and passed by a lot of really old buildings, most of which are broken down and/or falling apart. Later we would discover dozens of these scattered along our route in Estonia. Once we got to Haapsalu we tried to find some place to eat dinner, but there wasn't much to be found. There was some nice looking old castle where there was a concert or show of some sort, it seemed the entire town's population must have been there. We decided that maybe we weren't so hungry & headed south out of town around 7pm. Of course I couldn't (and wouldn't want to) document the scores of stops we made to ust stop and have a quick stretch, but we did happen upon a stork and nest, perched atop a power pole. Eventually we'd see half a dozen or so different sights like this, but the first one was magnificent. The bird was much bigger than I would have imagined and the nest was just gigantic. We made another quick stop for a coffee & pastry at Lihula around 9pm, where the sun was hanging low & orange in the sky, masked by a few thin lines of clouds casting the most perfect colors over the whole sky. Unfortunately there were also a few hundred mosquitoes and while my scootering gear covers me pretty much neck to toe, it leaves lots of unprotected head for mosquitoes' blood-sucking enjoyment. It's not so fun scootering down the road with a helmet on coupled with that unique hellish itch courtesy of mosquitoes. Upon leaving from the coffee joint we decided to try to make it to Pärnu before quitting the day. Once it gets dark, riding on the scooters becomes much less fun for me, whose scooter's headlight is about as worthless for seeing any distance as a tea light candle. We made it into Pärnu around 10:30 and found a Best Western hotel that looked especially inviting considering the day we had. We chained up our scooters to the bike rack in front of the hotel & went upstairs to trash the room. The view from the balcony was pretty nice & it was clear that the place probably looked a lot nicer at night than it would in the daytime. To some extent this was true, but we didn't have time for that now, we were badly in need of a drink and after a quick refreshing shower (separate showers, get your mind out of the gutter) we headed over to the Lime Lounge for the best tasting beer I've ever had. I'm pretty sure even Pabst Blue Ribbon or Milwaukee's Best would have even tasted like sweet nectar at that point, though A. Le Coq does have a decent reputation for quality. It was around 1:30am when we were heading back to the hotel and probably within another hour after that we were asleep. Saturday continues in part 3 6月10日 My scootering weekend, part 1Thursday: Friday: Jusu arrived to my place at 8:00, right exactly as I was returning from the bus station. We went inside, installed the headsets to our helmets, then strapped my bag on to the scooter & headed out. We filled up the scooters with gas & then headed toward the boat. It was suggested that we show up at 9:30 for our 10:30 boat ride so we had about 45 minutes before we needed to be there. We stopped at McDonald's on the way for a bit of breakfast & coffee. Around 9:15 we were in line to board the ferry to Tallinn along with all the other cars and motorcycles. The weather was fabulous & it was clear we were in for a great weekend. When the line started moving we started up the scooters but mine quickly died, and just wouldn't start again. Hoping that it was just too warm I pushed my scooter onto the ship with hopes that it would work fine once we got to Tallinn. On the ride over we pretty just sat next to some electrical outlets for the whole ride to charge up our helmet headsets as much as we could, using the restroom and visiting the tax free shops for refreshments in shifts, so as not to leave our stuff unattended. We made our way back to the car deck when instructed and strapped our stuff back onto the scooters. When the doors were opened & everyone was starting their engines, I was hoping with all my might that mine would too...but it didn't. I'm no mechanic but it was clear the engine wasn't getting either fuel or spark. I ended up taking the scooter off the boat the same way it went on, leg power. If Fred Flintstone had driven a scooter, it would have been in this exact same fashion. We spent a quick 10 or 15 minutes checking for any obvious problems (dirty air filter, loose hoses, etc) but couldn't find anything obviously wrong. Unfortunately we didn't have a wrench to remove the spark plug so we couldn't check that. By 2pm we had found a motorcycle repair shop that said they were busy, but could try to fit me in to take a look, but couldn't give promises. We called for a taxi in the form of a van, which could fit my scooter in the back. A nice guy was dispatched to the harbor so we loaded the scooter up & transported it to the shop, Jusu followed on his scooter. I'd say we arrived to the shop around 2:30pm, already over an hour behind the time we hoped to be long out of Tallinn & on the road. The shop said it could take an hour before they'd have a chance to look at it & just when we were ready to head off together on Jusu's scooter, the mechanic came to start looking at it so we decided to stick around. Within 10 minutes he had replaced the spark plug & had it running again, though he suggested that the problem came because we put the wrong kind of oil in the engine, they recommended a fully synthetic 2-stroke oil (we filled it with 2-stroke mineral oil the day before, the same kind Jusu's scooter uses). Draining the liter of oil from the tank took between 45 minutes and an hour and by the time we were ready to get going, the shop's internet connection failed so they couldn't take credit cards. Jusu quickly scootered to an ATM a mile or so up the road & came back so we could pay with cash. I think we got out of there a bit before 4:30, headed to the next place we could find lunch (which happened to also be McDonald's), ate & were finally on our way out of town around 5pm, only 4.5 hours behind schedule. Will continue part 2 a bit later. 6月5日 My 3-day weekend For a few months my good friend & co-worker have been talking about how cool it would be to buy a couple scooters and take a long trip somewhere, so we made the purchases & started planning our destination. I bought a 2001 Yamaha Aerox. I haven't taken any pictures of my actual scooter yet but it looks like the one below. Originally we planned to to head to the northern most part of Finland, cross straight north into Norway and continue on to the Barentz Sea. During the summer there would be 24 hours of sunshine and nothing but water between us & the north pole (oh yeah, and about 18 zillion mosquitoes). We had a couple options to make this happen. The first would be to ride the scooters all the way there but that would mean we'd need a week at least to do it, and our aim was to take a long weekend. Option two is transport the scooters and ourselves by train to Oulu or Rovaniemi which would take care of the time problem, but that brought up a new problem. Bicycles are free but cars cost about 85 euros to transport by train to those places. We thought that scooters would fall somewhere in between those two prices but it turns out the train company charges the same price for scooters as they do for cars. 175 euros each for the trip was too much. The second trip idea was to ferry the scooters to Stockholm and then ride to Oslo. This is also a little time consuming since the boat ride each way is an overnight trip. We ended up deciding on not-quite-as-fun-but-still-has-the-cool-factor option 3. Tomorrow morning we ride ourselves to the harbor in Helsinki & take a 2 hour ferry ride to Tallinn, Estonia. From there we plan to head west from the city & ride along the sea and see how far we get. We figure we should be able to make it all the way to Riga in Latvia, but it depends a lot on our pace & if we get robbed/hijacked/killed along the way. We're going in true nomad style complete with backpacks, tents & sleeping bags so we'll probably make camp somewhere off the beaten path Friday & Saturday night. Our aim is to make it back to catch the Tallinn-Helsinki ferry Sunday evening at 6:30. If all goes well the scooters won't break down, we won't get robbed/hijacked/killed and we will reach our goal of making it to Riga & still making it back to Tallinn in time to come home. 2月3日 The new girl's name We've decided the new girl shall be called Libby, so she finally has a name. She has spent the entire day under the couch, despite our best efforts to lure her out. We decided this evening that we'd be better off just ignoring her for awhile, until she starts to show interest, this seems to be the popular opinion amongst those with cat experience too. We were relieved that she showed adeptness in litter box usage, so my fear level of kitty accidents is all but gone. 2月2日 My February post Ok so perhaps I should really post more than once per month, I've been a bit bad lately I know. Sometimes I just don't feel like there's enough of anything new to really write about. The healing after the last surgery is going ok. The progress is slow, but it seems it's better now, 3.5 weeks after surgery than it was 3.5 weeks after the first surgery, so I suppose all & all, things are going ok. I'm still scheduled to be back to work on the 10th of March, so one way or another, I have to get better. Last Sunday Liisa & I went to look at cats. We've been talking about wanting one for months & months, but after our visit to Oregon (which included a trip to The Humane Society) we decided to start looking right when we got back. Last Sunday we took an hour long train ride to Lahti and found a kitten we wanted. She was delivered today, which means most of our day has been spent oohing & aahing over everything cute (some might say retarded) little thing she does. This is her first real interaction with humans, having lived her whole life in a cage, so the atmosphere & space available to her is probably quite overwhelming. She spent the first 5-6 hours of the day hiding under the kitchen cabinets and finally came out to start exploring. She's still too timid to really let us touch her yet (few more days & we'll break her down) but we did manage to snap a couple adorable pictures of her.   At least now I'll have some really good company for the next month while I'm at home during the days. =) 1月11日 My first 2008 postSunday night Liisa & I arrived home from our 3 week Christmas & New Year trip to the States. Tuesday night, so did our luggage. I have to admit I was worried a bit about our luggage arriving in tact, if at all, but thankfully it did. After our trip, most of "my readers" are caught up on my healing progress but a quick summary for those I've neglected (sorry for not replying to everyone's emails yet). Right before I was supposed to return to work in the beginning of December, I had a check-up & the doctor showed me that the bone wasn't healing like it should, which was already apparent to me. He scheduled me another surgery for the 8th of January, 2 days after our return from the US. The problem was that the screws probably weren't placed quite right in the nail & so the two parts of the femur were probably not as close together for optimal healing as they should have been (exhibit A). Tuesday morning at 7am I was admitted to the hospital for the new surgery, where they removed the top two screws from the nail & bone. They cut open the same top two incisions they made in the first surgery so there won't really be any new scarring. Fortunately, I was discharged around 4pm the same day, being very opposed to spending another night in that place. I felt pretty good too, until all the good hospital painkillers wore off that night. It's a few days later now & I think I've got a handle on the drugs so that my days since the surgery have been relatively easy. We've found homes for almost all the stuff we brought back from the States and are well on our way to having a normal looking home again. The next step, once I'm well enough to get out of the house, will probably be to go looking for a cat to bring home. 10月11日 My new toyI spoiled myself a few weeks ago & ordered a new 16GB iPod Touch, my way of consoling myself during my break from work I guess. I fell in love with the UI, form factor and feature set of the iPhone when we got one at work. At that time I told myself I'd have to buy an iPod if they ever made one in that vein. My new iPod arrived, hand delivered by an American friend who lives here & travels to the States every couple months, on Tuesday. It has so far exceeded my expectations. The form factor is great, it's even smaller than the iPhone if memory serves, and the resolution of the touch screen is fabulous for its size. My favorite feature though is the built-in wi-fi, which works great with my wireless router at home. My only complaints are that it lacks a few features, which I think Apple would have been wise to leave in, like Google Maps and an e-mail client, which the iPhone boasts. These seem, though, to be the complaints every reviewer has had, so no surprises there really. The surprising fatality in the past couple days has been Halo 3, which arrived on the same day as the iPod. I have played it for a few hours, but the iPod has commanded way more of my time. I never would have guessed it... By the way, if you're in Finland and you want a brand new 16GB iPod Touch, let me know, I have an extra that I'm selling on Huuto. 10月1日 McDonald's in AfricaIt's been almost 15 years since McDonald's opened its first franchise stores in Africa. So what kind of affect has it had there?
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