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.
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.
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.
It is now 0607 in the morning and I just heard some seriously loud music outside and the only reason why it is surprising is because there's an ongoing pandemic.
Every year in May, students who are finishing their twelfth (or so) year celebrate russetid, (“russ” time) by driving around, getting drunk, and generally being teenagers – but in Norway this has to be done before the exams 🤯.
When one thinks about it it is so amazingly stupid it is hard to describe, but here we are: even in the middle of a pandemic, getting drunk, getting way too little sleep, and generally wasting a few weeks on partying has to be done. And it obviously has to be done before the exams it seems.
During the weekend I enjoyed fixing the armrest on my porch swing.
I also ordered some brake parts which I hope will be here by tomorrow.
Yesterday, after trying to work a full day from my spare bedroom/office I filled the back of the car with assorted garbage and drove it to the recycling center. I feel kind of lucky compared to some friends of mine that I met up there that were dumping their third trailer full of stuff from their garden and basement.
Yesterday was also the day where I decided to take down the tent in the garden as it was starting to get annoying to have to move it around in the garden to avoid damaging the lawn. It is starting to become a family tradition it seems to tent outside around easter or as soon as the snow is going away, but this year the tent stayed up until now, partially as an emergency office should it become too noisy inside the house and partially as a place for the kids to play when they weren't allowed to go elsewhere.
While packing the tent I found a bumblebee that had somehow got trapped inside. Poor creature. I try to help those in the spring and I tried to keep the tent closed, mostly as a precaution against cats, but when the kids play they leave it open and I sometimes forget to check that it is closed before I go to bed.
It now seems my iPhone alarm clock is enough to get me out of bed before 0400. That would be great as the Sleep app does not exist for iPhone and all the others that did exist lacked the killer feature from Sleep: an NFC scanner that could be configured to be the only way to turn the thing off.
This morning I have found some interesting software/websites:
The bus arrives exactly on time.
Me: you stick to the schedule?
Bus driver from Northern Norway: no reason to do anything else as long as there isn't a bunch of local people clogging the road.
Conversations like above is pretty common in parts of Norway, and considered OK. (And BTW, while I'm Norwegian I'm not one of the locals, but it is OK when people poke at us from the west coast as well as long as they stick to the facts ;–)
A friend of mine had asked me to help him with the drive belt on his snow blower and today we fixed it.
It turned out to be really simple: the fan attachment was held in place by four 13mm bolts. I took out four and loosened the fourth, pulled the attachment slightly away from the motor and then I could pull out the old belt and insert the new.
People who receive work assessment allowance (AAP), sickness benefit or attendance allowance no longer need to apply to NAV to be able to travel to another EU or EEA country in connection with temporary stays.
This above is probably close to the nicest way it is possible to describe the scandal that has unraveled this week:
It seems bureaucrats have sent a good number of people to jail and/or fined them heavily on accusations of fraud because they traveled abroad while receiving allowance or benefits from NAV.
What was the problem? According to our agreement with EU they are not allowed to restrict peoples movement within the EU that way as long as recipients adhere to the rest of the rules, things like filling in necessary forms etc.
To make matters worse, it now seems NAV has been made aware of this a few times already after being defeated in court, but has continued anyway.
The government is also receiving some deserved criticism for not acting after they were warned last year. Some of the worst criticism has died down though as it turns out some of the parties that was loudest in their criticism was in charge when this started. Ooops.
When I was younger and more stupid than I am now I would probably have said something more: maybe I would have said that “bureaucrats and politicians should have gone to jail over this” or something to that effect.
That option is not in our laws as far as I am aware and I have also become more careful to stop judging others and leave it to those qualified, but I do wonder what will come out of this.
The last couple of years we've seen a huge diversification of bikes and I'm hoping to get some usable photos of all kinds of weird and wonderful bikes-with-electric-motors. (My phone is too slow to catch them in use ;–)
So for now, here are some ordinary bikes parked under a bridge:
Also E-scooter companies have been really busy trying to become a trend this year, but haven't succeeded yet as far as I can see. Here are some of them:
