Month: June 2006

GNR – Axl Rose – in the Globe Arena

The day mentioned in my previous entry on the subject had arrived, and Axl hadn’t cancelled! It was time to go to the GNR show held in the Globe Arena of Stockholm, Sweden.

In today’s papers, the Swedish tabloids as well as the “respectable” Daily News managed to conclude that “this was not the Guns ‘n’ Roses of the late 80s or early 90s”. I’m impressed. You really have to work with your grey matters to come up with that line of thought. No shit sherlock this isn’t the GNR of old. It’s Axl Rose without his better halves (sorry mr Reed). Either you like it, or you don’t. But it will never be the GNR of the late 80s.

I went, I listened, I liked it. I was entertained for two and a half hours, and have seen both better (Wembley, 1991) and worse (Milton Keynes, 1993) concerts with GNR and Axl Rose. Some concerts have been on par with this one, like the one in Cologne. Unlike some or most, I think some of the new tracks from the probably-never-to-be-released-stoned-democracy sound promising. But the audience could have done with an album release before the tour (there’s a hint in there Axl)..

Apparently Mr Rose still likes to get really drunk, stay up late, and get into fights, according to cnn.com.

If they’re playing in your area and you like rock ‘n’ roll.. go have a beer and entertaining two plus hours.

Other sites:
  www.mygnr.com
  www.heretodaygonetohell.com

3G archipelago hopping

This summer’s access to the on-line banking services provided by our banks could very well just have been optimized, and improved compared to last summer. One of the few problems with having a house in the Stockholm Archipelago is network coverage. Forget about tri-band and quad-band, fancy phone features, and what not.. if you live in a shadow spot as far as the networks go, it doesn’t really matter what features your phone or wireless card has.

After having read a number of reviews and tests, I finally settled for Sierra Wireless‘s AirCard 850. It’s a very pricey piece of hardware at USD 395 (Sierra Wireless’ webshop price), but if I get what the card promises, it’s worth every penny. The card is a quad-band card, with support for 800/900/1800, and 1900 MHz as well as 3G (UMTS 2100 MHz). Depending on your setting, it will automatically fall back to GPRS if it cannot establish a decent 3G connection.

Installation of the card was a real no brainer in our HP NC6000 notebook, as was the insertion of the SIM card. It took just over two minutes to get it configured, installed, and operational. A complete driver and firmware upgrade from Sirra Wireless over the Internet took five minutes to complete and it didn’t lose any important settings.

I’m coupling this card with the Tele2 “mobile broadband” (“Tele2 Mobilt Bredband”) service; getting that service activated on an already existing Tele2 account turned out to be a major operation, involving two hours of phone conversations with some nimrod at what they refer to as “Customer Service”.

Unless something earth shattering occurs, I’ll be testing the 3G access-from-the-archipelago this weekend. If I can keep myself from going out in our new boat that is 🙂

Our new boat, a Terhi Nordic 6020C

So what ended up as an idea for a quick and dirty “buying a used boat with a suitable outboard engine” turned into “we now have a Terhi Nordic 6020C with a suitable engine” 🙂

Thomas and I took it for its maiden voyage from LÃ¥ngholmen in Stockholm to Blidö. It was a mouthful, to put it mildly; but it was a lot of fun. A lot of sea and wind, good company, absolutely outstanding weather, and good fortune made it into a trip I’ll remember. We’ll be getting the pictures up soon.

Some useful (?) links in regards to this purchase:

terhi.fi
terhi.fi/static_2003/eng/boat_nordic_c.php
hammarbymarinservice.se (where we bought it)

Oh, and after having asked Filip and Alexander to name the boat, it was given the name of “Katti”, my mother’s and their grandmother’s nickname.

UPDATE 2006-07-03; the pictures are finally here.