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The son of Benny Bankboks denies any possible relation between the notorious bank robber and the mysterious Mr. S:

I am Jan Petter's son and he has only got me(a boy) and a daughter with a brazilian girl.

What a shocking revelation!

We'll be going on a much needed summer holiday tomorrow morning, and won't be back until mid-August. But there's no reason to fret! When we come back we will be tanned, hairy and stronger than EVER! ... Like this:


I put it in my Out of office auto-reply mail at work. Just in case.

Yesterday my colleague FRANK! and I put in 4 working hours at home after work to finish the living room flooring as well as move the 500Kg piano from 1880. It's a numbered piano by the Hals brothers, royal piano manufacturers of the Kingdom of Norway and is as heavy as it is old. But with my back problems I was not allowed to carry the damn thing, and Lady C had to step in and save the day. So very much thanks to FRANK! and the awesome muscular girlfriend I have whose ground upon which she walks I am barely worthy of french kissing - we can go on holiday with a clear conscience, and focus on ourselves a little.

We're going away for two weeks to the north to visit relatives on my father's side, including my father, whom has yet to meet Lady C. That will be interesting.

First we'll head up to Tromsø tomorrow morning. Come Monday we'll take the postal flight to Berlevåg near the Russian border to spend a few days with my grand mother. Lady C has never been so far north so it'll be quite the experience. We'll spend a few more days with my father in Tromsø before we head to the third northern county called Nordland (Bodø airport) where we'll spend a week by the fjord just relaxing and avoiding the Internet and work-related e-mail. But I might stop by every once in a while despite better judgement. So long fellas!

So, we've managed to fix the moulding roses and the window sills for the living room, as well as filled up the gap between the old wood floors so that we can lay out the parquet flooring pretty soon. In addition, I put up the 900x800x100mm siporex firewall in the study.




We managed to fit a standard EL ceiling box inside the rose, which is great for future use!


Quick and easy firewall. Add spackle and white paint.


Levelling the floor between the "living rooms"


Living room the 22nd of July 2010

The third and last fireplace will be delivered and set-up the 13th of September. In the meanwhile we must finish the flooring and (hopefully) the remaining finishing touches too (ground moulding) before that date. This presuppose ceiling moulds for both the hallway and the study, putting up the double door between the study and the living room and moving the piano.

We had some bad luck with our moulding supplier Floret who is going out of business, and therefore would not be able to get us the moulding that we ordered July 2nd. So tomorrow we'll go to Vesterbro outside Oslo to have a look at the assortment available at OBS Bygg. Hopefully, the Gracia cornice from Lundbergs will be an acceptable alternative to the F5L. Stay tuned!

Here are some photos of the current stage of our total renovation:


The box in the ceiling has turned out fantastic after Lady C's 6-8 rounds of spackling. She's brilliant. I intend to rent her out to parties, where she would even a wall while the children have cake.


Grace. Excellence. Superiority. The trademarks of my work.


Our living-room on July 12th 2010.


We just need some more paint, a floor and finishing along the edges.


We left a secret note to future DIY generations!

You can see more photos from our Extreme DIY project on flickr.


As you can imagine there is not much left to do here. Today and yesterday while I've been at work watching funny OMG lolcat vids on youtube, Lady C has been at home painting and finishing and painting. I hate it when she gets to be at home working on our "pet project" a.k.a Home, when I have to sit and rot at the office. Really brings me down low. I'll be taking some days off next week to climb up from this hole.

But what remains, really?
Practically, nothing that we can't handle. As you can see from the last photo above, there is a small chasm where there once was a wall between the dining room and the warm living room. We have no idea when the wall came down, but probably in the 70's when mr. I'll-fix-it carpenter lived here and turned it into a dump (see the sales-pictures for comparison).

You should put a parquet floor where the previous (wood) floor is at, but never where there is no floor, as between the living-room floors depicted. This is because the different underlying (wooden) floors move differently, and means that we'll have to lay 2 floors in the living-room separated by a self-made "hat". One of my uncles who's really good at this will make one custom for us.

We still need to put up the moulding roses (rosett) in the living-rooms, but only after we've made a secure fix for putting up heavy lamps. There are no such nooks there now, and today Lady C's been in yelling competitions with several hardware shops in town. But when you've done the heavy lifts and construction designs as we have, the know-it-all attitude of the hardware profession will only yield rage and a bad review. Ignorance permeates the business.

In the meantime, there's dust everywhere:)



We've bought the Jøtul F 100 cast iron stove in black for the library/study/guest room and will need to put up a firewall. The Dovre equivalent would let us do without, but the F100 can yield more heat and simply looks better. Besides, having had problems with our Dovre Wood Cassette in the living-room (now solved) and no such trouble with the Jøtul in the kitchen, Lady C put her foot down. Here's a picture with dimensions in millimetres.

Insanely enough, the wood stove workers at the store treated us as simple noobs and wanted to sell us 6 centimetre firewall plates at 1400 NOK per piece. We'd need 2 pieces + glue and the work = around 3500 NOK I guess. Here's what you do; check out the fire stove manual which has the specifics on external/built-in firewall and the right angles and distances to combustible walls/material. In our case we needed only 1 firewall because the other side of the corner chimney is in old brick, and the required dimensions for the F100 at a corner-angle are 800 x 900 mm x 100 mm.

Guess what's approved as firewall material? Siporex, a concrete building block that consists of 80% air, is ultra-light and easily manipulated with a regular handsaw and finishing paper! A 60 by 40 cm block costs you 40 NOK, and for 80 x 90 firewall you'll just need 3 of them, at a price of 120 NOK + glue. You just saved more than three thousand NOK ($400 USD). If that wasn't enough, the result is a lot nicer than the over-priced plates, and only builds 4 cm more. The shit you learn when you DIY is incredible. And economical.

After the painting and finishing of the moulds are ready we can focus on the floors. This means eventually having to move around large amounts of building material, a couple of couches and equipment that's no longer needed or just needed for a little while before we can move up and in. And a piano.

In-between there's our summer holiday in the North, of course, where we'll both die from frustration. I'll blog about that later.

It's the Year We Make Contact. And fluffernutters. And our own home! The jingle:

Happy Birthday Sigg3.net!




Here's a quick re-cap of other themes:

• September 30th 2002: Sigg3's Keep 
• 25th of January 2003: news@sigg3.net 
• 12th of June 2003: news@sigg3.net tropical 
• 20th of September 2003: Life Between Stations 

I had a lot of spare time in 2003 apparently. Hehe, please notice how that if you click a link to Koew.tk in the archive, my design pops up: Koew.tk @ 2004. I had forgot I made that. Ah, the days of 800x600 over modem.. websites <20Kb, reminisce!

Why make a new theme when I could just return to the UNCHALLENGED AWESOMENESS of the Tropical theme I used in 2003? Because it contains graphics from two major trademarks (and in violation thereof); namely the Tropical masthead that I snatched from a flash vid of homestarrunner and the Guinness beverage educational icons at the bottom which alone make me regret I went to work today..

But I might consider going with something just as colourful.

Thanks to a blog post from Ivy I recently re-checked my XHTML 1.0 Strict version of this very template in Internet Explorer 8. And it works! Sort of. You can't scroll. Instead you have the infamous javascript mockup at the top reading: "Internet Explorer prevented you from experiencing a better internet." That's cute.

There are many contenders to the title of 'Sigg3.net new backend', ranging from the academically appraised Plone to funky Django and enterprise Drupal. I've recently meddled with MongoDB and other non-relational databases, but they are not really needed for my kind of site. Though I have a good PageRank and receive new readers from all across the world every day, I don't really need to scale for great masses. This site is my personal webpage, and nothing else. Happy birthday!

PS. Also, you should buy Pauly's book right away: Lost Vegas!
I know I would. And guess what, I have bought it! And so should you. Stop licking the fence and get down n' dirty with the poker priest of NYC.

So we had a busy week last week trying to get everything done, or at least as much as possible. I mean, we knew we wouldn't be 100% finished because we don't have all the remaining materials yet. But we're getting there, despite the fact that we have added some work for ourselves as well as had to do some other family stuff. And was sick inna hedge.

This post is freckled with pictures from the Extreme DIY 2009/2010 gallery.

I took Friday 18th off work as comp time and we headed down to Place du Carl Berner, Oslo, to retrieve our mouldings. Turns out the shipment was split up, so we only received the moulding roses ("rosette") for our two living room ceilings:


See also this top-view blurry picture

It's very modest but still attractive, even though it's not attached yet. They were ordered from Floret Interiør Design who will accept orders till around September when they're closing the business. They are the cheapest in Norway on these kind of products, as far as I know. As well as friendly and professional.

The rest of Friday was spent setting up one and a half wall, leaving one remaining wall.

Come Saturday 19th we were almost out of tile mortar, the economically viable alternative to plaster mortar ("gipsbruk") from Norgips. Being without a car though, we emptied our peach-colored roller suitcase and headed for the nearest Maxbo only a bus stop away. They didn't have any tile mortar cheaper than Norgips' plaster mortar, so we ended on 25Kg of the latter.

Upon arriving home we found that the last shipment from Floret had arrived with the mouldings for the living room and hallway ceiling, so we just quickly scurried down to Carl Berner hoping that we would be able to carry the package(s) between us. Turned out Floret had done a nice packing job, and we managed to haul it home before the skies opened:


That package is taller than me. See sample of blurry close-up here

Here's the mouldings for the living room and the hallway respectively:





We finished the day by putting up the the last wall of our apartment!

Saturday evening my brother Koew had a get-together, and since my sister was in town we decided to join in and get drunk. POOR DECISION. It was a lot of fun, no doubt, but since this year's been cold as frak you can't stay warm in the evenings. So Lady C got really cold, then hot, then slept for two days.. All Sunday and parts of Monday were wasted.

On the third day, more specifically Tuesday 22nd, I rose up from the dead and began working out different solutions to our timber log problem while Lady C was asleep. As you may have seen from previous pictures and below, there's a beam across the ceiling where a light brick wall between warm living room and dining room once stood. The wall's removed long ago, making a pretty decent 40 sq. metre living room, but we got a pretty ugly and SATANICALLY UNEVEN log to stiffen the outer and inner walls horizontally in return. They obviously didn't care how it looked when they set it up, just see this picture feat. electricity tubes and networking cables, because they subsequently lowered the ceiling by some 40cm. So we needed to box it in, but being that we would have to live with the results, it had to be carefully levelled.

After some trial and error (not to mention all the sleepless nights prior in planning this) I ended up constructing 8 U-profiles in 23mm wood with metal mountings for an approximated 90° angle on either side;


3 of 8 handmade U-profiles



Each of them took around 30 minutes to make, after which I would have a breather, being I was not entirely well. This last photo shows my quick and dirty hack of using a Norwegian crowner (1 NOK) with a slightly expanded hole to serve as support for the screws that were just too small-headed for the hole. This is actually QUITE ILLEGAL, namely defacing a Norwegian coin, and I could be arrested for treason for this attack against the King and the Kingdom of Norway. Guantanamo next, I suppose, since I had to spend as much as 3 NOK to get the profiles done proper.

That same evening I got an SMS from my uncle telling me he needed some of his equipment back, including the plaster board elevator needed for this project! This left us with little choice but to go on with my plan. On Wednesday 23rd, even though Lady C was still a bit feverish, we began boxing in our arch enemy, the log:


5 of 8 U-profiles, all level to each other, fastened with 2 high-strength screws on the ears and 1 stabilizing screw from below.


Adding the first plaster board


Ready to add the last board (feat. the much loved plaster elevator)

As you can see the result was rather professional looking. Being that the log itself was not level, the only easier method would have been to first cut it with a chainsaw to allow for level attach points and then box out from there. Since I don't have a chainsaw and Lady C would never let me use one, we had to box it out like this instead. Takes some more levelling but you'll get there eventually!

We don't have a car that we own. Instead, we've been borrowing a car from The Army Dude, which is more like a Volkswagen wreck than a rolling dream of safety. But it's perfect for our dirty kind of projects which involves driving a lot of waste material to the dump in the back.. Unfortunately it was in repair when we had to deliver the plaster board elevator to my uncle, Thursday 24th, so we finally ended up renting this car from Hertz:


Volvo V50!

Counting all the extras, this car new costs more than an entire year on my salary.. And I learned to drive in a metallic green Volvo 940. Being that I was still feeling a bit iffy, it was the perfect car for the long journey out of rush-time Oslo, despite my being paranoid about the paint coat. The only downside I could find were the large beams between the windows blocking the view. This exercise took all day and we were back at 8 o'clock in the evening.

Friday 25th I cut up the remaining materials, wood and plaster, and vacuumed dust while Lady C began the spackling horror job. I say horror because I don't like spackling very much. In fact, I hate it. I like doing something useful, but since I could never get into the zen of spackling I only seem to work against myself, removing too much or adding too little. Luckily, Lady C does a GREAT job and has the mild temper that I lack with this sort of thing. While I do my best to assist her and not get in the way.

Getting in the way means toilet-lockup for 30 minutes for each error that I made. "Bad Sigg3, very bad Sigg3!" she shouts, and turns the key. Then she turn off the lights and turn on the ceiling fan, and I sit there in the corner, trembling. No wonder I don't like spackling.. but while I rock back and forth in the aura of a not-recently-cleaned WC, I remind myself of the results, which are great!





Come Saturday June 26th we didn't have much spackle left, even though the job requires more. Instead we headed butt-first into repairing our last ceiling. It doesn't have many flaws except the few cracks it has sustained over the course of 80 years since it's birth. Just spackling it would postpone the problem a few years, but we didn't want to stretch a canvas across the room, taking some 5-10cm of the height, or put up plaster boards.

Instead we used a special wall-paper reinforcement called wall-renewer from Leco Reno. We both hate wallpapering, since that dreadful day we found an entire wall in our bedroom filled with BUBBLES! and broke down crying. Luckily, this product was much thinner and easier to work with than the last renewer we used. It also helps to be nazi about the preparations; first you go over the ceiling with a fine finishing paper to remove any flecks of paint that's loose. Then you wash it with a special cleaning product. Then you wash that with pure water. Then you pre-glue the entire ceiling. When all that's done? You can start doing the effin' job. But kids, I shall say this only once; the result of your labour depends 90% on your preparations.







As you can't see from these photos, the seams are nearly invisible. I think a good 4 layers of ceiling paint will take care of the rest.

Having been through all that and more, I collapsed on Sunday 27th and slept all day. Lady C, bless her, held up the torch and mended the windows she's repaired in the living room. And today it was back to work again!

According to our plan posted about a week ago, we only missed "Start laying out the floor". Here's the current status quo of what needs to be done, in somewhat chronological order, before we can finally move our stuff up from storage:

What remains, then:
- Moulding and moulding roses; living room, hallway & study
- Firewall for the study *
- Start laying out the floor; living room & study
- Moving the piano (hiring professionals); living room
- Setting up the double door; study
- Paint the place in full 24-bit technicolor; living room & study
- Finish EL (hiring professionals); living room & study

+ finish network cabling
+ new fireplace in study (hiring professionals)
+ moving up all the boxes

This may seem like a lot, but actually the worst part is over. Most of this we can manage on our own, not having to take any extra vacation to finish. Moulding takes time and precision, but I can do that myself in the weekends. The only problem is transport since The Army Dude's car is in repair for an indefinite period, and we need some more spackle paste as well as siporex blocks (aerated concrete) for the firewall. Not to mention the now on-sale Bosch PFS 65 spray-paint system.

That's right, I'm taking a short break from office life to continue work on our flat. During this time I'll only have cellphone access to the internet, meaning no blogging except perhaps a flickr photo posting every once in a while. See my profile @ flickr.com/photos/sigg3net

What we're hoping to get done in 1,5 week is:
- Setup remaining walls in living room
- Finish both living room ceilings
- Box in the timber log between rooms (ceiling)
- Start laying out the floor
- Move away more garbage and cut up extra materials
- Finish imperial living room fireplace

What remains, then:
- Finishing moulding
- Moving the piano (hiring professionals)
- Setting up the double door
- Paint the place in full 24-bit technicolor
- Finish EL (hiring professionals)

But who knows? Maybe we'll just have sex and drink champagne all day..?

Today we laugh hysterically at all the fond memories we have from reading Douglas Adams' great philosophical contributions to the human condition. Alas, the usual Towel Day website @ kovj.net is gone now, RIP Tobbe. There's a new site up, keeping the spirit of Adams very much alive @ www.towelday.org



Did I bring a towel from home today? Again an alas, I did not. I was 10 minutes from my home when I realized that the sun in my face and the curious glances from passerbys LEFT ME UNSHIELDED! Naked and vulnerable, I checked my e-mail to see whether it would be one of those days. Luckily, there was only a growing panic and hatred towards the IT dept. for the intranet and our website being down internally. DON'T PANIC.

I stopped by JYSK that mostly deals in beds & accessories but they didn't sell 'em. They just keep them, the Asian lady said, for safekeeping. Clever, but evil. I ran down to one of the small boutiques at Carl Berner's, grabbed a hold of the old lady running the shop and said: «TOWELS! Do you have any towels!» and she said no. Quite naturally. You don't do business in your small boutique with strange men come running in shouting about towels. I took a bus to Tøyen but there weren't any towels in sight.

Grønland it is! I know there's a baby shop down there (that's where they manufacture and package the babies in Oslo) and it has all kinds of baby stuff including, I would guess, towels!! I headed down there, stopping by Details - an accessory shop mostly for teh ladies, but I was very much welcomed - and Indiska, the number one faux "exotic" merchandise place courtesy of the little children in China but to no avail. It would be the baby shop or nothing.

I got in there almost stumbling over the baby buggy exposé, which was very much like a car show, only in baby buggies and without the playboy lady on the front, and browsed the shelves that were stocked from top to bottom with everything a baby carrying parent could dream of. Which is a lot. They had mattresses for baby buggies, small car signs for baby buggies, they had babies in jars and everything! FOCUS! I need a towel!

Then, turning around the corner, I saw them. Square, pink napkin-sized towels for 5 NOK a piece. Undoubtedly a bargain, just incredibly gay.
"I'll have them as a backup option", I said to myself, scaring the wit out of an assistant walking by.

But then! Then, I turned another corner and I almost crapped my pants from the excitement (which was the right thing to do, given the immediate circumstances); towels all over the place. STACKS of TOWELS! Neatly folded, but slightly vulgar at the same time, tempting me. I had come to the right place I said, the assistant nodding besides me. In direction of the security guard.

They had white rectangle towels for 25 NOK a piece. GREAT! I headed for the counter, already being half an hour late for work, but there was no one to be seen. Instead I was stuck there with another baby parked back to front, staring at me with his (or her) weasely little eyes. "This isn't right" I said to it. "I'm a grown up. You're a baby. You don't have any cash. Why are you hogging the line here?"

The baby looked concerned.
"Hey! I'm talking to you!"
I made a stern face and the baby started babbling.
"Oh my Gods!" I exclaimed. "You're drunk!"

The mother came hustling to from the other side of the shop with some 30 pacifiers for her offspring, and I made thoroughly wide open eyes before I rolled them, just to make sure, and muttered something about it being ten in the morning and the kids these days didn't have a sense of common courtesy WHATSOEVER when the baby barfed all over hisself.

"Oh, that's just great!" I said.
The mother looked at me like a malignant cancer looks at a cup of chemo therapy.

Mothers are territorial creatures and if you come upon them unsuspecting, you must expect a fight to the death. If there's a cub nearby you can double the death sentence. Hence the towel. Mothers are confused by dangling towels and other pathetic performances that belong in the last resort category. If you ever come face-to-face with a mother who's ready to tear your face off, hide behind the towel. Her mother instincts will take over and you'll be left unscathed, since you're clearly insane.

It worked.

The mother paid her dues and rolled off her buggy, just in time for me to flip it the finger. Then it was finally my turn. "I'll just have this!" I declared, carefully but sternly putting the white towel on the counter. She took the cash and was about to pack it in a plastic bag for me, but "There's no need for that, " I said. Finally able to relax a little. "No need at all."

I put the towel over my head and walked out of there. Head held high, due to a small breeze trying to steal away my towel, and everything was back to normal.


And here I am, working like a baby, with my new, shiny towel.

It's the 17th of May, Norway's national holiday, and I'm on the crapper. All over the country, in every little cottage and god forsaken township, people are cheering the marching bands who - and nobody seems to notice - exclusively play old war marches.

But due to our history, constantly pwned by other nations and not being sovereign for a hundred years when the Germans came, history is very much alive this one day. For good and bad.

The Best Thing about this day is that thanks to some of our early intellectuals the national holiday in Norway stands firmly apart from everybody else's in that it is The Day of the Children. Not parades of military killing equipment or obsessive drinking and fighting over local trifles, but hot dogs, ice cream and silly games in the parks.

I'm not a nationalist, I find the history of nations interesting, but I'm not convinced that they are anything else than manageable-sized eco-villages in a part of the world where infighting was engraved in our everyday lives before. And football teams.

Today everyone's outside looking at the children in their parades and eating ice cream. Lady C and I will be joining them shortly, I just need a shower and to get my shiny clean clothes on. Happy birthday Norway! Time to wipe.

EDIT: It's also the only day in the year when radio jockeys lose their minds and play songtracks based on their titles, so they can make inexcusable puns related to the national day.

A couple of examples from this morning:

"And here's Some Singer's song Happy Day, and 17th of May indeed is a Happy Day for everyone."
Then the track begins, and you realize that it's a sad song about a boy pondering his lost love.

"And today we'll have quite a lot of ice cream, but don't get a brain freeze, here's Cold to Warm by Some Artist."
And you get a grandmother's rendition of her grandson's death struggle through the end of his HIV infection.

But anyway! It's Monday for you and a day off for me! Congrats!

With the recent update in Blogspot policy regarding their themes, both Pauly's own blog and the Truckin' E-Zine have gone through a fundamental face-lift. I say fundamental because even though a superficial theme can make a big difference in terms of user experience, it is the underlying infrastructure which filters the good from the bad. And Truckin's new backend supports indexing by labels and keywords, meaning you can pull up all of my stories (for instance) by label, like this Truckin: Sigg3 S. Amdal. Playing around with it I even discovered a quick and sweet story I wrote back in January 2005 that I had forgot to add to my Truckin' archive page, now duly added! In any case, Pauly writes:

Welcome back to another delicious issue of your favorite e-zine which features writers from countries such as Canada, Australia, Sweden, and Texas. We have a cast of regulars including Sigge's foray into pet store erotica and Johnny Hughes with a tale about cowboys and Indians. This issue also marks the return of two former Truckin' scribes with Katitude's road story about motorcycles and pie, and Australian playboy Johnny Vincent's tale about booze and hermits. Tenzin McGrupp makes another cameo with a short story. And I penned a bit of fiction.
(...)
And lastly, thanks to all of the readers for their unwavering support. That's you. If you're reading this... you rock.

So who's from Sweden, huh?



Lovers' Whirlwind by Paul McGuire
I don't know if you want to know the real answer. You're a new arrival. It's not proper to ask all these questions on your first day. The real answers are not important...

The Dog Lover by Sigg3
I had a chat with my pet fish and decided to check out the local pet store to see if they had frozen larvae – a delicious to hungry Kili fish that'll make 'em fornicate like swine given the opportunity...

A Hermit Faces the Drunken Public by Jonny Vincent
People are still - generically - boring as all fuck. Guys are still - generically - pathetic in their desperate and pitiful sleazy crabbing for attention when placed in the vicinity of the Unfair Sex...

Pie by Katitude
Her gray hair was caught up in a bun that had become untidy and thin wisps had escaped it to frame a pale face. A much-washed pastel pink t-shirt proclaimed her to be the "World's Greatest Grandma"...

Crazy Colonel Ranald MacKenzie by Johnny Hughes
In the scene in Dances With Wolves where Kevin Costner rides around between rebel and union lines trying to get shot, that was based on Crazy Ranald. He was brave like only a crazy man can be. He got shot with bullets and arrows. He was also called Bad Hand because he lost two fingers in combat...

Hip-Cat Jargon by Tenzin McGrupp
I secured a one-way rental. $300 for the week. Would it take me a week? Maybe more? I had no idea. I'd probably want to make a couple of spontaneous stops along the way. My new life in California would have to wait a couple of days, maybe a couple of weeks. Who knows, maybe I wouldn't even end up there at all...

Today my GF turns 27 and we're taking time off construction work to have some fun:)

Happy birthday Lady C!



When we got up this morning and Lady C pulled away the incredibly expensive curtains, she joyfully declared how good she had been this year, referring to the nice weather. Must be some sort of southern thing.. My own birthday, on the other hand, was more of cats-and-dogs climatic situation, and it proved to be the all time statistical high for spontaneous abortions across the country.. So it stands to reason that Lady C has been very good, not to forget that she's very good to me, and I love her.

We're having X-mas dish tonight, her favourite, and we've got my brother Koew and the Mysterious mr. S coming over to help us with the half a pig we're going to consume. Happy birthday, baby, only the best is good enough!

omfg I'm 26 years old today!

Still not online @home, but I've got my trusty Nokia N95 to share the tides. So 26 years old, huh? What kind of age is that? It's like move along people, nothing to see here! Except people keep calling from way else in the world to shout me down over the phone. Even got an SMS with a full length birthday tune TYPED IN, which was nice and lame at the same time. Which kind of sums up my attitude towards my own birthday: it's nice and lame.

But I've got Lady C here making me bacon pancakes and giving me all kinds of special treatment. That's right, you didn't get that wrong. The world simply wouldn't be right without bacon pancakes. And as I'm typing this they're getting cold so I need to hang up immediately. But it was nice talking to you, internet. Can't wait until I get a qwerty keyboard to surf the tubes. I'm off work all week, so I've been having withdraws. Need some time to digest the pancakes.. Speaking of which!

It's been a while now, around 3 years to be exact, but here we're back again with childish IRC quotes from the wonderful people at bash.org. What did I just say? I meant hilariously funny quotes from the guys at bash.org. Skip this post if you're a minor in your respective country, or not. I couldn't care less, thanks!

#917215
<AxelDesade> Good god, I need a life.
<Colty> Why's that?
<AxelDesade> I was entertained for over an hour today by refreshing a captcha until it said something funny or made a cool band name.

#875652
<MisVampyre> i'm so outta questions....i'm horrible at asking them
<rhys_rhaven> questions are cute
<rhys_rhaven> but the real way to understand a person is simple
<rhys_rhaven> you wind a cord around the top of the biggest pair of stairs you can find
<rhys_rhaven> and then you wait till a person is about to walk down the stairs, where they will obviously trip and have horrible things happen to them
<rhys_rhaven> and then you walk 20 feet way. and you put a thing of frozen bacon in a skillet
<rhys_rhaven> and you make the skillet so it can only be heated by a locked drum underneath it, which can be lit only by a single pilot light, which you then line with det cord trailing to a small mortar next to it. which you fill with kittens
<rhys_rhaven> hungry, meowing kittens
<MisVampyre> oh. my. god.
<rhys_rhaven> And lastly you put a timer on the on the propane for the bacon. So they have a choice
<rhys_rhaven> save the person
<rhys_rhaven> save the kittens
<rhys_rhaven> or eat the bacon
<MisVampyre> you're awesome
<MisVampyre> omg..eat the bacon
<rhys_rhaven> Thats it. I love you

#916079
<Takargi> Perfect weekend for me. Liverpool beat the Bitters with 10 men, England win at Rugby and Freddie's first words are Daddie ;)
<Takargi> Freddie was looking at the milkman at the time though which is worrying...

#916519
<Velkyr> Why is it when your wife or girlfriend gets pregnant, all her friends rub her belly and say "congratulations!"
<Velkyr> But nobody rubs your dick and says "Good Job"?

#909427
<@moss> oh jesus
<@moss> its 6 PM
<@moss> not am
<Tiq> XD
<Tiq> What have you missed, moss?
<@moss> uh... wednesday
<Tiq> HAHAHA

#901201
<DrBob> You'll never get it. Men weren't meant to understand women.
<Odin> not true.
<Odin> I've managed to solve for the fundamental logic operation of women.
<DrBob> It's just best to let them do what they want, so they'll let us do stuff to them.
<Odin> Nono let me explain.
<Odin> Women are fundamentally amplifiers.
<Odin> Anything you give them expect to get back multiplied
<Odin> give them money you don't have in the form of a credit card, expect a huge debt
<Odin> give them a little love, and they'll give you a lot of love back
<Odin> give them a little DNA in the bedroom
<Odin> and they give you a baby
<Odin> So if you give them crap, you'd better be ready to receive a ton of shit

#916740
<prote> apparently "my dealer got arrested" is not an acceptable answer when mom asks "What happened? You look sad today"

#887444
<Neo> so you know those peta campaigns, "I'd rather go naked than wear fur"?
<Neo> it's a pretty horrible idea when you think about it
<Neo> "stop eating animals or we'll keep showing you pics of hot chicks all naked like"
<Neo> yeah, brillant plan there guys

#887536
<@baka> anyone here ever eaten sushi off a naked woman?
<Sloshed> no thanks
<@baka> i'm intrigued
<@Sadrak> I'd volunteer to do the dishes

#889637
<GoldyOrNugget> who would bother decompiling windows
<GoldyOrNugget> thats like breaking in to a top secret company to steal a mop

#890929
<amb> let's make a coloring book
<amb> and then sue kids for unauthorized derivative works

#893378
<Vinny> they should build another barad-dur
<Vinny> give sauron some depth perception

#894062
<Chapdizzle> i fucking hate when people think guys should shave their chest. Its what makes us men, suck a fat dick. shaving bodily hair is for women. my chest hair serves multiple uses such as floss, fishing line, warmth, crumb catcher, and if i wanted i could pull a shitload of it out and make a net to catch small animals or fish

#906256
<popemichael> I was in line to buy a new DVD player. The woman in front of me was having something delivered.
<popemichael> The clerk asked for her 'street name' she replied "I don't have one I go by Shanice."

#912101
<x-c0n> Dude I was so drunk last night.. apparently this girl said I drew a line on her forehead with my cum and whispered, "Simba".

I met up with Lady C down at Oslo City after work to burn some cash and save a lot of money as well, acc. to C.

We where in line at a woman's underwear shop when something went BOOM very loudly. I headed out to see what was going on.

Nothing really. People were looking around in disbelief and a few kids were running down the escalators which were going up. Amusing. I wrote this in my notes:

TERRORIST ATTACK IN OSLO CITY. OR NOT.
There was a loud bang in Oslo city @16:30 and the following panic that ensued was largely, well, not all that much to talk about.
Security was running around but that was more or less it.
Like I said to Lady C, we should get a move on to the next shops so we don't have to stand in a big line. Unfortunately that's what everybody else was thinking..

I don't know what it was but since the news ain't catching up with the story, I guess it was just someone getting shot or something. It just didn't seem real nor dangerous.

Now we're home again, and Lady C is showing me all the clothing she bought to save alot of money. And she's asking me to comment everything: "What do you think bout this?"
I tell you friends, this here? This is WHAT DANGEROUS FEELS LIKE!

When I got up late this morning and turned on the radio, the news reporter was drowned down in shouting, police dogs barking and helicopter noise. The warzone she was reporting from was downtown Oslo, because one hour prior to my rising up from bed TEH OBAMA MAN! had landed on Norwegian soil. They effin' closed down one of the busiest highways in Norway (Oslo-Gardermoen) for this guy.. Let's hope he's worth it, not to mention the gold price in peace making. I mean, the speech was good, but I've heard speeches that ended upon the last word in the sentence and carried no effect on the space-time continuum other than broken expectations.

Didn't I go to see it?
Heck no. A man's got to work. Put food on the table.

I've added 30 new photos to the Extreme DIY 2009 gallery. Enjoy the weekend!

This Saturday my good old friend Kornelius turned 25 years old! The jingle:

Happy belated Birthday Kornelius!



I've known Kornelius since we were like 6-7 years old when he was a complete asshole, solely because he was in the A-class and I was in the B-class, until we teamed up with the Army Dude to form Crescent - the one and only grunge band of Northern Norway. And the best.

Kornelius is a very good friend of mine and the infamous author of great works such as Untitled 1, Untitled 2 and Misc. untitled tales that are yet to be published. Sadly, both I and Lady C were too exhausted from construction work on Saturday to even consider a night out to celebrate, but we promise a great party when our flat's finished and ready for the test. For another 25 good years, skål!

It's been a while now since my last update on our makeover, so I thought I'd bring you up to speed. We've been looking at kitchens the last couple of weeks, and even attended a large DIY fair in Lillestrøm a late Friday evening, but we've managed to narrow it down to a few re-sellers. What I have learned from this is that even the cheapest DIY shops sells the exact same kitchen models as some of the market leaders in the business, high brow at that. Luckily, since I got shotgun on the study/guest room I thought it only appropriate that Lady C gets to decide on how the kitchen's supposed to look. That and the fact that I can't tell one kitchen from another unless one is black and the other is white. And there are so many accessories!

We haven't shared any plans with you yet, so I thought it would be nice to give you the general overview of this 100 square meter apartment which is nicely situated on the far right end of a 1920 building. The neighbourhood is protected by law, since most of the buildings range from 1910-1930s, with large squares in the back and wide cobblestone streets in between. We're going for something of a 1890s look however, meaning tall ceilings, open white spaces and nice decor, which is what we both want in an apartment. Shamelessly, I should add, because the neighbours upstairs did a futuristic non-ending white surface theme when they remade their own apartment. It's like a goddamn gallery up there. But I find it nice that people can live like they want to and not have to worry about what the other neighbours did. Here are some drawings based on copies of the original plans:


In this first image you can see how the the original plans intended two apartments in each sector of the building (three sectors totally over three floors). We bought the one to the right.


In the early years of the building the owner of our flat, could even be the first owner for what we know, bought one of two living rooms from the neighbour and took down the light wall between the two original rooms making it one if not the biggest apartment in the building!


This last one shows some of the changes we've made and the intended use of each room. The pantry was torn down completely in the 70s to make the kitchen bigger, and all that's left of it is a small closet with access from the hallway. We've widened the door to our study (the extra living room) where we're gonna put double doors with glass windows. The kitchen is not going to have a door at all, we've closed up the 2nd entrance into the living room next to the chimney and moved the bathroom walls about 10 centimeters to the left. There's gonna be a fireplace in the living room, iron oven in the study and a fireplace in the kitchen, making firewood our main source of heat. The fireplaces are a lot more energy efficient these days, even burning up the gas emitted through the process, meaning we will have a neutral impact on the environment.

We made a bargain on the kitchen fireplace, picture and specs here, which has been showcased in the store for about a year and saved almost 15k on the deal. No one will ever know it's used goods, except you internet people.

A couple of Sundays ago we started to plaster the walls, putting up one entire bedroom wall in less than three hours. It's fun when you actually start building things again, instead of just tearing down, and this Tuesday we put up 50% of the new ceiling in the study and another wall. It's hard to make people understand how much work that has to be done in order to get where we are now, because all the stuff we have removed (that's 6 tons, baby) and transported away is naturally out of sight and out of mind! This is why I dread the thought of taking down the kitchen and driving away all that garbage, fake brick walls etc etc.. On the other hand it's so reassuring to see how nice and level the new walls are. Gotta say I love the sight of ninety degree angles in the morning!


Comparison of old and new. The old walls looked cool after we steamed the old wallpaper off, but they are really uneven and crumble easily, meaning that while they are not dangerous to be around in terms of falling down on you they probably pose a serious health hazard if you've got bad lungs or asthma.


Here's the new ceiling coming up in my study, complete with hidden EL installation.

We're taking it step by step and realize that our initial plans, which included moving in the 15th of August were overly optimistic. When people ask today we just say 'Sometime before Christmas' and look the other way. Here's what happened to the bathroom:



The bathroom as we bought it


And this is how it looked 12th of September. The only change to date is that the new walls are up, increasing the length of the room by 10 centimeters

What's going on with the bathroom? Nothing! What happened? The Swine Flu, apparently. But I can't go into details about that now. At the moment we're just happy that we have a toilet we can use whenever we are working on the flat. The plan today is to finish the bedroom and the bathroom, move in, and finish while we begin to live there. Good thing the fireplace in the living room is due this Monday.

Like I said we are taking it step by step, and that is because we both work, and in addition I study at the University every Friday. I've managed to get Tuesdays and Fridays off work, and while three-four hours Fridays are lost to studying we try to do as much as possible those two days of the week. Then there are the weekends when we just have to get something done, be it building or transporting, depending on how much and when Lady C is working. Nurses have to work at the most terrible hours I tell you, and get very little in return. But when this flat is finished it's gonna be the greatest place ever to spend your time, and right now I'm really excited about how things are going. A thought well worth keeping in mind. More to come later!

The complete redecoration of our new flat is taking shape, although not as fast as you'd expect. I'm saying you but I was just as astonished by the amount of shit hidden in those walls and under the floors. Floors as in plural. Not to mention all the bricks. My shoulders are still crying. Here's everything else than bricks:


Waste material

We're 90% done with the deconstruction I'd say, and only a few percentage into actually re-building our home. With our old flat sold and left behind to a very happy young couple, we're temporarily staying at Lady C's sister's place, where we even have our own room and a personal housemaid! .. Just kidding. It's on the 5th floor with a glass veranda and lots of old, smelly people in the hallway. Anyway, here's a before and after of our livingroom as of today:


Livingroom AS PURCHASED


Livingroom DECONSTRUCTED

As you can see the last photo was taken a bit closer to the study, the piano in the first image is in the middle of it, and the door has been widened to allow for a classic double door from Sweden. But it is the same flat nevertheless. The floors are off and only need to polish them and they are done. Before that though, the new ceiling and walls have to be laid:



... not to mention impregnate this wall.. hehe..



We are working every single day on the makeover, so we're often positively surprised when someone visits -- such as my brother today -- and says how much work we've done. Because the list of Absolutely Everything that Needs to be Done is still very long, and very little is checked out as of today. Except the garbage. We're still waiting for the bills:)

I've been living in Torshov, Oslo, for this past year, sharing the apartment with the venerable and very sweet Lady C. She's my girlfriend, sweet little thing, who'll kick your face in if she thinks it's worth it. Women are like that. Always revealing amazing things about womanhood that's been wrapped in a shawl of mystery since you started looking up their skirts, and staring dreamily down the isle of the waiting room at the vice dept.

Anyway, I'll be writing more about her some other time.

On June 4th we bought our new home. A 100m² flat in the middle of Oslo. These kinds of flats are usually reserved for the ones comfortably situated, or spoiled brats who've inherited a shitload of cash. But this flat in particular needs a little redecorating, esp. a new bathroom, which brings the price down to a bearable sum of money for a couple of working class citizens.

People still commend us on our choice and the low price..!

But there is a lot that needs to be done to make the flat fit our very exquisite taste. So, on Lady C's request, I'm opening this thread of posts labeled DIY Extreme Makeover to document our progress. Unfortunately my camera is at the flat right now so I've got no images to show for this very moment. But they'll popup once in a while.

Tuesday 14th of July at 3 pm
We took over the keys to the apartment one day ahead of schedule and were officially the new owners. At the same time this happened, a sum of money larger than anything I've ever seen suddenly appeared in Lady C's account, only to disappear again the next instant, heading for the seller's back pocket. "Oh, I've got no idea how to make all this money fit in my bra," she said and blushed. "Don't worry. Let's see you try!"

We were thrilled to finally have a new flat.
*cough*
Well, the bank owns it but we're the only ones permitted to live there.

The next thing we did were immediate measurements of the place. Phone calls from different entrepreneurs were already making my cellphone battery hot, and if I'm not mistaken we began tearing down an old closet which practically freed up 20% of what will become my study/our library. We also checked what's underneath the different floors. Away with the parquet flooring, back to the original wooden floor, is the plan for more or less every room except the bathroom.

Wednesday 15th of July
More entrepreneurs and finished the job with the closet. Then we actually removed the entire parquet in just about 10 minutes. It is very easy to remove, and if we'd been a little more careful ripping it out we could probably have made some money from it. But what the heck, the woodworms have to eat too! We also got a lot of paint at 40% discount at Maxbo, the DIY store for everyone, the Ikea for real men with hairy breasts, a woman on the shoulder and a gorilla in the garage!

Thursday 16th of July
Lady C's baby sister came to join us tearing down wallpaper mixed with 1920th newspapers, while I dealt with all the entrepreneurs and did some heavy lifting. We decided it was time to schedule a run for the dump with the parquet, baseboard and the weird funny smelling mat that we found under the fake parquet in the bedroom.

Friday 17th of July
I woke up from a nightmare about entrepreneurs chasing me down with their folding rules and notebooks in hand! Then when we were headed to find a trailer for all the trash, it turned out I'm not allowed to handle trailers above 750-760 kg. Which is a problem when most rent-a-trailer services go above a ton (1000kg). It's not that anybody cares but it's a stupid thing to get a fine for. We ended up dissing the idea and renting a car to be ready the following morning (tomorrow) at 8am.

In the meanwhile Vicky got a lot of handjob done in the study, scraping off the rest of the poisonous fungus-ridden paper wallpaper. That's when I decided to have a look what's underneath the lowered ceiling. People in Norwegian cities lowered their ceilings in the 70s to allow less heat to disappear, but today the style is quite the opposite and if we get enough firewood for the fireplace in the living room I think we'll manage.

So after I managed to break a hole and tear down one width of plaster ceiling using true manpower, Lady C had conjured up a way to do it rather effortlessly, thereby putting the trademark on our relationship. I provide the muscle, she provides the head :D

Leaving today we had halfway finished the tearing down of the ceiling, and we also discovered the original 30's style roof panel in mid-dark brown with baseboards down and across which was in perfect shape with the exception of a hole they'd pulled the wiring through.
Tomorrow's a big day 'cause all of our friends are coming over to help out, so we plan to get a lot of things done besides having fun... More Extreme Makeover logs later!

On entrepreneurs and bidding
We've used a well-proven method of putting away little and big jobs on tender. This has proven to be a very inefficient way of doing things, because a lot of the people calling me up and arranging a meet are only interested in showing us how cheap they can do it. I don't care about cheap, I care about quality. I don't want to face a disaster 5-10 years down the road. The work you do here today should last at least twenty odd years.

In addition we've had some probably very brilliant "total entrepreneurs" here, guys who oversee and arrange an entire project. They have long experience, oversight and brand new ideas. I like ideas, and I gladly welcome ideas that lift a burden off my shoulder, but when a guy says to me that my solution is good but not perfect (as his solution at double price) it pisses me off. After having a couple of guys like that over, me and Lady C were in a dark abyss of despair. What if we can't afford it? What if we can't pull it through ourselves? What ifs....

You know what that is, don't you? It's FUD.
Here's a professional a-hole feeding us with fear, uncertainty and doubt so he can reap the benefits. If you're in a similar redecorating process such as ours you know that it's a long war with many tiny battles, and a lot to learn each step of the way. I've learned so much about the insides of buildings in four days than I could ever learn watching the Discovery Home & Living channel. Steer away from those who may appear very experienced but seem to question everything you say and every plan you've made. I'm gonna have CAT 6A network cable in my rooms too, whether you like it or not. C thinks it's a great idea, as long as I hook her up with a kitchen computer. Why not? We can do it.

And what's up with the late trend of wall-attached toilets? What the fuck is up with that? It might look cool in a picture, and it is probably a lot easier to clean, but if I wanted to take a shit in a camping WC I'd go and shit in a fucking caravan! Thank you very much, but you thread lightly when it comes to the king's throne. Wahubba-hubba.

July 6 is the 187th day of the year and there are only 178 days remaining until the end of the year. Incidently, it's also the official unofficial birthday of my website. Actually it's the first post that was made 6th of July 2002, but the domain wasn't ready for use until the 9th. DnScoop.com lists my site as created the 7th of July approximately. You can't actually pin it down to a single day because DNS stuff can take a while to sink in, especially on a global scale. But "frist post!" has gotta be a good point of origin. Or birthday, if you please.

So to celebrate I drove Lady C right up to RightPriceTiles where we looked at *drumroll* TILES! We even decided on what we're gonna go for in the new bathroom. We've also a) checked out a machine that grind/polish old wooden floors, b) looked at fireplaces for my little library/study, c) discussed doors and how to make room for them, d) had sausages in a kiosk instead of C dragging me kicking and screaming to the local McDonald's and x) XXX! By the way if you're into interior design you should check out Lundbergs.com, who's got the moulding rose we've been looking for. What can I say? We're better people.

No vacation? Not really. I'm working until the 14th of July. The 15th we get the keys to the new place (formality), take some measurements and on the 16th it's on! We're gonna break up the floor, pull down the roof, hit down some wardrobes and start fixing up the place. I may work the following 1-2 week(s) depending on demand, but I'll have most of August off work to get us settled in. And the 15th of August we have to be completely out of this place 'cause today we actually signed the contract with the new buyers. I feel like going ...suckers! but Lady C would kill me. She's been living here for six years. Perseverance. She's gonna need it to stay sane in my company.

If that isn't enough for you, check out this fish that changes from predator to plant eater and back! I was gonna add it as the scariest picture of the day, until I realized what day it is, and that it ain't so scary with single cell fish after all. Could fit millions of them in my little tank. And my Killi would win. Now I am tired and must go to sleep. Leave congrats in the comments, please. See ya!