Erik I

Filed under #news and #lifeInNorway

One of the saddest stories from Norway this century has been “the Baneheia murders”. It is disgusting and while I have forced myself to listen to the verdict today I won't write much about it. More details than any sane person would want to know are already out on the internet.

For me the interesting part is that the verdict is extremely clear when it points out that Jan Helge Andersen alone was responsible for everything.

This is interesting because while Viggo Kristiansen has now been a free man for around two years already, the previous court decision – as far as I could understand it at least – didn't go far enough in clearing his name.

Ironically, Jan Helge Andersen, by desperately trying to pull Viggo back into the fray has forced the court to take a position on all his claims.

This has resulted in rather long verdict that destroys these claims – hopefully once and for all.

Please note that nobody is claiming Viggo Kristiansen is some kind of hero: he has a criminal past.

But he has been imprisoned for around two decades for something he did not do.

The verdict is also clear that the police work was shoddy, but according to people who have followed the case closer than me concludes it wasn't intentionally but rather they fell into a confirmation bias trap.

Still it is a terrible reminder why people should be considered innocent until proven guilty and why police should look for exonerating evidence as much as they look for incriminating evidence.

Filed under #innovation.

Steve Blank managed to summarize something that has bugged me a long time:

Why is it that innovations require heroics to occur in our organization?

- From Why Innovation Heroes are a Sign of a Dysfunctional Organization

This happens in a lot of places. At one point a few years ago I had what was then – in that town and with my experience – what I considered a very well paid job.

Problem was, in addition to a number of very interesting tasks, I also spent a significant time of each year literally logging into systems, clicking through various software components, copying values one by one into a spreadsheet on my computer.

Being a programmer I knew that it wouldn't be a problem to improve this a hundred times, so I went to my boss and asked if we could send a request to the programmers to save the values to a CSV file[1]. I know if it was my software it would take less than half a day, but since this was old C++ code developed in another country I gave him an estimate of 14 days.

I argued that across the engineers at his team it could easily save work comparable to the equivalent of a full time position, and we felt stretched at that point.

My boss, which is a nice guy listened patiently to me and when I was finished he asked: I understand you are busy, should we hire one or two more engineers?

Not long after the market took a dive and I lost my job, joined a startup and became a much happier man :–)

I have seen this both before and after, but now feels like a good time to write about it since I don't think anyone I work with at the moment should feel to guilty about it.

[1]: Why not Grafana? If you'd been there you'd understood. This was old C++ code and while I thought I could possibly managed to get through with something like what I described, no way they would have accepted that. Or maybe that was the problem: I didn't ask for a project team, a development budget and a lot of fancy hardware and expensive software. We'll never know.

Filed under #organizations and #productivity

I'm often lucky here, as I've worked with some amazing people.

Yet sometimes I catch myself hesitating over small details that doesn't matter because at some point in my life a small detail like that did hurt as someone caught it and used it against me.

I discussed user stories and acceptance criteria with some colleagues on a project recently and the team lead pointed out that the texts we write are just for communicating here and now, they won't be pulled out and used against us next year.

This might hopefully sound obvious to a lot of people but for me I realized this allowed me to lower my shoulders somewhat and like so many other details it frees up mental capacity for the task at hand.

And together all those small details make a huge difference.

Filed under #news and #lifeInNorway

He has been sentenced to 21 years which is the longest sentence you can get in Norway. (although you can get a harsher 21 year sentence, “forvaring”.)

I didn't want to say much about this case until now but as he is now considered guilty I guess I can say that I always felt it was either 20-21 years or him walking out as a free man. In my opinion there wasn't room for anything in between.

There's one thing I still wonder about: now that it seems he has nothing to lose, will he somehow try to get back at his former employer?

I might get back to this later but lunch break is over now.

Filed under #software and #tooling

I've long been using OneNote as well as recommended it for small businesses and small departments that were dependent on Microsoft Windows anyway but things are changing.

For now small businesses might still be happy to use OneNote. The desktop client seems to still be available and for many businesses the new Windows Store version that only syncs to Microsoft Office Cloud might also work.

I'll stop using it for my personal notes now. I've been waiting long enough to get internal links working on mobile and I am fed up.

Besides Joplin feels better in a number of ways and last but not least it is open source and can sync against my own hosted NextCloud server.

Filed under #100DaysToOffload

It is lunch break.

This year has been special in more than one way. I'm 40 years now and it feels time moves quicker and quicker every year. That is a milestone. Judging by life expectancy around here I am probably at least halfway through.

Spring 2020 has passed, summer has definitely started. Another milestone. I catch myself not caring too much about the fact that there will be no plums on my plum tree this year “...as there will probably be plenty next year.” As I realize what I am thinking it feels crazy: it's not that plums matter that much, it is the fact that I was caring so little about the time in between.

Milestones passes me all the time. There are small milestones: weekends, slightly bigger ones: payday, projects are finished, projects are started, birthdays, all my grandparents are gone and other relatives I used to know personally and not just through my parents have also started to pass away, kids are starting in school one by one and are growing up. What actually prompted me to write this was the other day when, for the first time I ordered takeaway for my two oldes kids. I felt joy that they were growing up. And suddenly I realized how much it is also a giant sign that I will disappear.

I can live with that. Unlike a number of other techies I don't want to live forever. Or, more precisely, I do not want to live forever here on earth. I mean: I enjoy almost every day, but I guess if I knew I would be stuck here forever I would feel trapped.

Meanwhile: While I'm almost certainly halfway through life, it is also almost 25 years until I am 65. If nothing too unexpected happen I should be able to get some things done during the next 25 years, as long as I use my time well.

Two quotes comes to mind, they are from the Bible, they are both useful for me to put things into perspective, and at least the first one can be read outside of a religious context as well:

«Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.” How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone.» ‭‭James‬ ‭4:13-14‬ ‭NLT‬‬

«Here’s the lesson: Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home.» ‭‭Luke‬ ‭16:9‬ ‭NLT‬‬

Lunch break finished.

Filed under #100daysToOffload and #linux

Depending on your definition you might argue against it – Linux only desktops are still a minority for example – but here are my arguments for why it is:

• All ordinary Windows installations now comes with the option of running WSL, and it is now really seamless and really fast!
• It is trivial to set up VS Code to develop in the Linux machine and with WSL2 it gives you the performance boost you are used to if you are used to Linux.
• Chromebooks are Linux based and can run Linux software.
• IT at work is supportive and goes out of their way to support it.
• Customers have stopped asking questions long time ago.
• And finally: I have seen developers starting to use Linux machines for a few years already. It kind of reminds me of how it felt like when devs started to adopt Macs around 2005/2006 or so when Ruby on Rails became popular. And just like when Macs became popular, mainstream adoption seems to follow: I've already seen a sales guy running Ubuntu Linux (by his own choice) over a year ago. Finally the reason why I'm writing this now is that I've recently realized that people can present using Teams from a Linux desktop in a meeting, and it Just Works™ and nobody thinks it is strange at all.

(BTW: I should note that howtogeek announced the Year of Linux on the Desktop in May 2019](https://www.howtogeek.com/414036/2019-is-the-year-of-linux-on-the-desktop/), but it seems to me nobody noticed including me so I try again this year.)

Filed under #100daysToOffload and #lifeInNorway

This week I made a sign on my office door at home.

It is placed approximately at the middle of the door.

It is part fun and partly I also hope that the kids will understand that I'm actually at work.

I am also planning to tidy up my tool shed and create an almost 2 x 2 square meter office there. That will have to wait until next week or the week after though.

Also I would probably use more images in my post if adding them wasn't so much of a hassle.

Filed under #life and #100DaysToOffload

I've been quiet here for a few days.

A good friend of mine died a couple of weeks ago. He was old. It was no surprise.

He was a good man, I think almost everyone loved him, especially those who knew him well.

I became 40 earlier this year, and it strikes me that I am one of the grown ups now. I'm the one who's responsible for making life better for those around me now, in the same way generations before us have done.

It is mostly small things: hiking in the weekends, inviting people over (when allowed), fixing bikes, driving kids around to meet friends and for soccer (again, when allowed).

It feels like a huge responsibility, but it also makes my life interesting.

Filed under #100DaysToOffload and #ideas

Several things have happened since last time I wrote on the sixth of May, most of them irrelevant to this blog. Suffice to say is that I'm reminded why I didn't take this 100DaysToOffload challenge until I realized it didn't have to be 100 consecutive days.

Generally there are way too many things that tries to get my attention, or worse, start background processes that causes me expenses if I don't pay attention. One particularly annoying one is free trials where one has to sign up using credit cards or Apple Pay.

I can easily realize why companies try this. Recurring revenue is fantastic after all, it is just that I cannot subscribe to every

• newspaper that I ever follow a link to
• and every useful app or website that I use from time to time
  

and while I might sign up for a free month's subscription and put a task with a due date in my system to disable it after 29 days I don’t care anymore. My attention is better spent elsewhere. Also, and this is worse: in many cases it seems like a dark pattern.

This means many newspapers and apps that I would happily have paid to read/use once in a while doesn't get anything since I also block ads.

The latest ones to miss out include Duolingo, a rather nice language learning app that I play again now that my kids are old enough to like it. Knowing that they'll probably be bored or have forgotten it in a month I don't want to subscribe and also, as mentioned above, 7 days free seems like a dark pattern to me at this point.

If they had tokens however I would have bought, both to support them and because I wanted some of the perks (most notably the test to check my current skills so I wouldn't have to ho through all the basics yet again).

No however they get nothing, same as almost every newspaper (I have two subscriptions and I also send some money to the Guardian about half the times I read anything there it seems, since they are the only one that I read that accepts that).

Edit: ran this text through Grammarly. They too miss out on any payment as the hassle of having to deal with more subscriptions just isn't worth it for me.