I just thought I'd post a picture of my babies. :)

My solitude is less than two days away from finished. It's been nice to have some time alone, but I must admit (without getting touchy-feely) that I miss Anders a lot. I don't think we've been away from each other for this long before - 8-9 days have been the maximum (and then it was I who left - which is less pity on myself since I am in a new place anyway), and extensive single-travelling will probably not be the norm for the near future either :-)

Today I did some shopping and cleaning, and relaxed a bit. Quite nice :) My parents came over in the afternoon, they had visited my little brother in his cottage together with grandma. Apparently a good day for everyone. I made pizza for dinner, and got some help from dad afterwards. Productive :) Now I am spending the Saturday in front of the TV with a pile of magazines mum brought and a bowl of chocolate. The weather hasn't been too pleasant today, so reading in front of the fireplace seemed like a good idea.

I've seen plenty of information on what to feed gliders, but none on how much. I've got two gliders, and I began with just feeding them what looked like would fit in their stomachs overnight, and made sure there was just a little bit left in the morning. This worked well for a couple of months, but now they have suddenly started eating a lot more.

I've got four 1/3 cup bowls. One has their dry food, which they used to nibble on over the course of a week or so, and now is almost finished overnight. One's veggies, which I used to fill halfway and there'd be some left, and now I fill full and it's usually gone. Boiled chicken I've increased from 1/4 full to half, but there's usually a bit left there. In the last I put about half a teaspoon of yogurt 'cause I'm pretty sure they'd eat that stuff 'til they died.

Anyway, I think they're consuming like half their weight in food nightly. I might be exaggerating. But are they feast or famine animals? Do I need to regulate what I put in the cage?

And if it matters:
-Dry food: Recently changed (after the increase in appetite, but not because of) from a chicken blend that looks like dog food to eucalyptus pellets
-Veggies: Whatever I'm eating that week, currently carrots, asparagus, green beans, and bananas

I’ve always been sensitive about water. I remember camp counselors amused when I would turn off the shower to take the time to shampoo my hair; it felt like a waste to just let it run. I almost had a panic attack at a water fountain in a Barnes and Noble once, the first summer I came back from Afghanistan. The water was running continuously for some reason, and it wouldn’t stop. I had just been in a place where so many didn’t have access to water, where we saved the last inch of our daily bottle to brush our teeth at night - and here we wasted it so mindlessly.

I remember walking through rice paddies in rural Java with other women who had traveled long distances with long-reused containers to get clean water. We were very careful about what we consumed there, but I left Indonesia with a case of giardia that took weeks to get over.

1 in 8 people in the world lack access to clean water supplies. 3.57 million people die each year from water-related diseases. It’s not just that they get sick – it’s that they die. 98% of these deaths are in the developing world.

Now I work for NASA, and we can turn urine into water and have a big party to celebrate it. There isn’t available water in space, either, just like in many parts of the world, but the six astronauts who live on the space station can create their own water – and it’s more pure than many of us get out of the tap.

One of my colleagues plans and implements community water purification systems in Rwanda and applies the lessons learned there to creating water out of lunar regolith. The moon isn’t that different from parts of rural Africa: bare, rocky, little water, no infrastructure. Clean, efficient technologies are providing clean water for Rwanda, and those same experiences will be applied to water production and life support on the moon.

Creativity, technology, and commitment to a purpose make all the difference.

Many of you know that I don’t think technology is the answer to everything; often it is the less technical solution that is most sustainable. My daily life is teaching me, though, that we have an abundance of readily available technology that could meet all sorts of human needs, if we will be inventive in our methodology and our application.

Last week I attended a conference at Rice about transitioning technologies from the lab to the developing world. The day was filled with amazing stories of students, businesspeople and scientists collaborating to meet social needs. What most affected me, though, was the constant reminder to not just find a technology, but to engage your users to find a solution. Technology is not the agent of change – people are.

But technology can sometimes put all the right tools in their hands to change their world… and maybe their whole universe.



Ashoka: Innovators for the Public are hosting Tech 4 Society, a conference exploring technology, invention and social change, in Hyderabad, India, in February 2009. Find out more about the conference at http://tech.ashoka.org. This blog post is an entry in their competition to find the official blogger to travel to and cover the event.

The week is running at fast pace, but it seems like it turns out more relaxed than anticipated - which is good. I still haven't quite managed to calm down and work less. I am not working A LOT, but generally I end up with 30-60 minutes extra every day), but today I was at least home by 1600, which is progress. Even though I don't have a stressing job, it probably isn't good for my blood pressure to work long days, so I really should try to spend some of my previous extra hours now. Sigh.

On Monday we had an internal planning seminar at work. It was a bit amputated for me, as I found my doctor offered the H1N1 vaccine during the day, and I really wanted it since I have been away for the previous two possible days. So I took a seminar break in the middle of the day and got my shot. I was wondering if it was a placebo shot - I didn't feel a thing when I got the injection! Now it's a bit tender, but it doesn't hurt - maybe it's placebo pain?

My dad came over in the evening to do some electricity work. We now have several new outlets on the ground floor, but still no light on the veranda. As I told my mum when she was sorry for this, "it's worst for you". She's the one using the veranda for smoking ;-) I also tried to "fix" his computer, at least he has updated anti-virus software now - but it's still extremely slow so we'll have another look at it later. Windows still is a mystery to me! I tried to tell dad I don't do Windows support, to which he replied that he didn't do installation of power outlets either. Touché. (He is an electrician, but works outside with power line maintenance, repair and building.)

Anders is away for two weeks (home in less than 6 days! Hurray!), so I am not only eating for one, but cooking for one. Which is perhaps not the best thing when you generally don't want food (I am definitely not eating for two!). I was travelling most of last week, had frozen pizza on Friday and Saturday, and finally made a proper elk stew with the ingredients from the monthly bag from Fru Pedersen on Sunday. In addition to freezing two boxes for us to have later (they should yield two dinner portions and a lunch each, at least with my current hunger) I planned to have it for dinner for a couple of days. So Monday it was stew, but yesterday I wanted something else - and reached for Fjordland Lutefisk (TV dinner). My mum was laughing out loud (after being silent for a few seconds) when she called in the middle of the "cooking". It tasted decent, though. Today I made pizza from the left-over stew (no, no lutefisk left! Maybe as well when I am in use-left-over-mode), ate 1/4 of it and now don't have to think about what to have for lunch or dinner until Saturday.... I miss Anders :)

In other news I decided to upgrade my desktop computer at work to Karmic Koala. Everything went well until I rebooted. No picture. Luckily we have the wonderful internal sysadmins at work, so I have just left the problem to their hands and don't even care what graphics card I have and will just bring some chocolate to cheer her up tomorrow. Life will be good again ;-)

Amazon.com is selling the complete Greatest Hits of The Ramones for $2.99. DRM free.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001A3GSFW/ref=s9_simz_gw_s0_p340_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0SAC75FQDHE79JRGAQBF&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

The last week has been quite busy. I spent most of it in Stockholm, at Internettdagarna arranged by the Swedish ccTLD registry. Quite interesting, I will write a separate entry on it later.

In retrospect we might have put some space between our niece's naming day and our travels. I told my brother this weekend was good about one hour before realizing Anders was going to USA at the same time, and then later signed up for Internetdagarna. Too late to make everyone change their plans, it wasn't like it was easy to find a suitable weekend for the parents, two sets of grandparents and three sets of aunts and uncles.

So Anders ended up leaving for the USA at 4:30 in the morning, since the only plane from Torp with decent connections left around 6:30. We were already on an early-morning-schedule after switching from DST (or summertime as we more logically call it in .no), then leaving for mother-in-law and at last for Skien, so it wasn't that hard to go to bed early or get up late.

I went home on Sunday, unpacked my suitcase, threw a pile of laundry in the washing machine, and was glad it was reasonably dry when I came home from work on Monday. The airport taxi picked me up at 1815 and I was in Stockholm just after 23, after two flights and a rather busy walk between them (I thought I was supposed to be the slow one, but I was a metre in front of my colleague).

My hotel was 50 metres or so from the train station, and had two Belgian and a British pub within a 100 metre circle. Under other circumstances I would have been very happy :-P The hotel was nice, the room was small but clean, and had everything I might need except a fridge (which I don't need, but it's sometimes handy). I think they were the first hotel that actually didn't change my towels when I hung them up to dry - I think all the other places have ignored this, despite signs telling me to hang them up to reuse. The breakfast was very good for a three star hotel - no luxury, but very delicious, everything on nice trays and no plastic wraps. Many kinds of rolls, three kinds of bread, lots of crackers, something sweet to finish the meal, gluten-free alternatives. The organic alternatives were clearly labelled, and they had a list of them by the cereals. They also had several kinds of local spreads, like ansjovis, three kinds of butter/margarin, and six kinds of jam - everything labelled. I only missed Swedish caviar, and some non-swedish bread (it's very sweet, from cyrup) - but after all this is Sweden, so I won't use the bread against them. So if you are looking for a central hotel in Stockholm, go for Adlon. (If you are on vacation, you may want one in a more interesting area, though. The City area is, well, City. Very close to the station and to the City Convention Centre (Folkets Hus).)

On Monday I just collapsed in bed and slept until my alarm went off. On Tuesday there was a social event, but I was exhausted after a day at the conference so I headed for my bed in stead. After a while I felt less exhausted and decided to go out and get some food not from the Burger King across the street. I ended up in Kungshallen, a food court close to Hötorget. It was close to fast food, but more varied than burgers - I ended up with a plate of falafel with a HUGE pile of rice, salad and more sauce than I could eat. I couldn't eat half of it - and it wasn't only because I didn't really want food.

Afterwards I went to the cinema and saw The Girl Who Played With Fire, based on the book by the same name by Stieg Larsson. I saw the first one with Anders, so I might see this one again with him so we can see the third one together. It was pretty good, and close to the book as I remember it - at least no obvious big changes in the story. I recommend the books by Stieg Larsson, and also the films based on them; I am pretty sure most people I know will like them. Don't let the female hacker scare you :)

The next evening I had dinner at belgobaren with Torkild, an old friend from university in the 90ies. He later switched to Sociology and now had a PhD in Demography. We had some interesting discussions and swapped news on everyone we knew from back then. Later we met up with Bangsi, another guy from irc. It's been a while since I met him, too, so it was nice to catch up. Two decent beer places checked off the list that night, except none of them had any decent non-alcohol beer.

I had two diet cokes instead, and ended up sleeping very badly (at least I blame it on the caffeine, I have hardly had much of that stuff recently and certainly not at night), waking up several times and not being able to sleep much when I decided to postpone the alarm by an hour. Not so fun, but at least I was able to sleep on the planes home on Thursday night.

The trip home was ok. I had a lot of time at the airport, and it was almost empty so it was very calm and almost relaxing. Well, this ended when I arrived at OSL. I had 50 minutes there, and since it's a small airport it should be possible to get to the gate on time. Well. The only problem is that since I arrived from abroad, I had to pick up my luggage and drag it through customs myself (even if it was checked in all the way). After customs you leave to the arrivals hall, then have to carry it upstairs to the departure hall. No shortcuts to that either, I could wait for the lift (but everybody wanted to bring their trolleys in it so it only took about two people at a time) or run for the escalators, which are placed towards the end of the hall, where people arrive from the train.

So I hurried with my suitcase, skipped the elevator and headed for the escalators in stead. The bag-drop counter was of course quite a bit from the escalators, so more walking to get there (I saw time was getting short at that point), queue, then dump it and head for security, which for some reason also started to fill up as I arrived. When I finally was through, I glanced at the monitor and saw my flight with flashing "gate closing". Now it was time to run.

The problem is that I am in really bad shape now. Not because of lack of exercise, but because of lack of lungs. They are being squished up by the contents of my tummy, and while they do a decent job for daily chores (like...breathing) they are not up to stairs. Or running for more than about 25 metres. Gate 18 was much more than 25 metres away, to say it the least. I tried to run, but ended up sounding really asthmatic - so bad that people turned around to look at me as I walked towards the gate wheezing like a maniac. And then I wasn't even the last person to enter the plane! I almost felt fooled after all that running.

One thing is that luggage has to be taken through customs, I don't really see a big problem with that after all. But why did they replace the bag-drop counter downstairs with a kiosk?? They did have bag-drop there "before" (not sure when they closed it), so at least you were rid of the luggage before having to run upstairs - it saves time and energy and it's less stress. They are talking about moving customs to the end destination now, which means the passenger is responsible for visiting customs if needed. Of course this won't really work, and it will probably also take much more resources at the new end points - although it will be convenient for the passengers. I guess a new bag-drop desk just outside customs would be a cheaper trick.

For the weekend I have spent a bit of time cleaning and doing laundry, and today I plan to rake some leaves in the garden - the weather is wonderful, but quite cold. Maybe I also get around to do some baking, the apples in the basement aren't storing too well, so they should be consumed a bit faster. The apple juice from our own apples, that Anders took from the jar for cider, have spontaneously turned into cider. It was....lively. The segments at the bottom have probably been a nice place for the yeast to grow, and even if I re-sealed the bottle very fast, we now have small drops of sticky apple cider over much of the kitchen. Time for a throughout cleaning later today, I guess... The remains of the bottle is now in the fridge (so any explosion will be limited, although it may be expensive), and the last one is still in the cellar. It's swing top bottles, so the cap won't incidentally pop from the inside pressure. I will leave them to Anders to deal with - so we can have a taste of it in case it's actually good :) (The easiest would of course be to bring them outside and water the lawn...)

The beer people among you may be interested in reading about Anders' pub experiences and beer tasting in the USA. He has been regularly blogging about it (in Norwegian), Google provides a decent translation here. (The translation is quite close to how most Norwegians would write long English texts (or imagine Thor Heyerdahl), and they mostly work like automatic translators do, by translating word by word. Or word for word, as they'd say.)

Stockholm Arlanda is a large and modern airport. And very empty. I arrived here by the express train at 16:30, and not once has it been crowded. Actually that has almost been annoying, as the signposts at the airport are few and bad. I almost needed the people in front of me to be sure I was going in the right direction when getting off the train. In security (at 16:45) there were three open desks, and no queue (and that means "no" as in "I didn't delay anyone when I spent half a minute moving my laptop and the plastic bag from my bag to the trays"). For a few minutes there was a queue in the liqueur store, but when I was done there were no people there anymore.

And this continues. Nobody in the sandwich bar, nobody in the toilets, vacant chairs everywhere. It's like Oslo Airport 20 minutes before the two last domestic flights (they leave around 2330). It's just that this is between 1700 and 1900 on a Thursday afternoon. Weird. (As I write this there are a crowd passing behind me, probably from an inbound plane. In a minute they will be gone.)

I guess I understand the lack of urge to spend time here, there is absolutely nothing here, and so far I have found two small kiosks and three sandwich bars. A good thing I am not craving pasta, pizza, grilled fish or any other warm items.

I have a massive update coming but in the meantime, I'd like to share this with you guys.

This is Ian Fisher. Starting at age 17, for 27 months, a photographer followed him around from the Army recruiter's office, a military entrance processing station, basic infantry training at Fort Benning, Georgia, to his assignment to the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colorado, to a deployment to Diwaniyah, Iraq.

It is an excellent warts-and-all portrait of kid in over his head. He barely graduates high school with a 2.0 GPA. He is not a good soldier. He gets busted down at least twice (he has PFC rank in Basic, but gets knocked down to the blank velcro of an E-1 Private, and even after two years, has only gotten back to PFC), goes AWOL, smokes pot, and is on his second marriage by age 20.

Ian Fisher: Portrait of an American Soldier.

On the road this weekend. And in the air. We flew down to Kristiansand on Thursday morning, in a frenzy of short-of-time legs. First the taxi to pick us up at home was late, I had to call back after ten minutes to ask where it was (we live 7 minutes from the town when the traffic is low, which it is at 6:15 in the morning, so getting a car up there shouldn't be a big challenge - there are closer taxi stands, too), after another 3 the taxi driver asked which end of the street we lived in (I thought they were supposed to know in what direction major roads ran? At least when it's 2 km long.), and after a couple of minutes more he finally arrived. We caught the airport shuttle with 8 minutes to spare - or lost the previous one by 7, depending on the view. The shuttle was running late, so we arrived 4 minutes late at the airport and was about 15 seconds too late to get luggage tags at the self-service counter. Luckily I always trust technology and check in online, so we were allowed to check in the luggage at the counter even if we were late. We got to the gate with little time to spare, took off on schedule, landed in Oslo and had just enough time to get through transit to the gate - at "gate closing".

The plane was scheduled to land in Kristiansand at 10:05, which incidentally was the same time as the airport shuttle was scheduled. Unfortunately this is by incident, the bus isn't actually connecting to the flight landing at that time, and does not wait. The bus leaves hourly, so when the flight landed ten minutes before schedule I ran to catch our luggage (the airport is small, so we walked from the plane in parallel with the luggage trolleys and watched the luggage being put in the conveyor band just outside the terminal building), then ran for the bus (which of course was parked 50 metres from the exit) with two suitcases behind me, and just caught it. Puh!

So absolutely no time wasted waiting, and we were at mother-in-law's less than 6 hours after getting up this morning. Anders admitted it was stressful, but was quite amazed by my organizing skills :-)

(With regard to airport shuttles we are really spoiled in Trondheim. The shuttles leaves from just south of the towncentre every 15 minutes all day (maybe every 20 minutes early on weekends), spends 20 minutes to get to the central station (basically on the other side of the towncentre), then 35 minutes to the airport - maybe 45 minutes during heavy rush hours. Back to the city they basically leave once they are full, and at least every 15 minutes. There is always a bus there, and unless you arrive by the very last flight (which they wait for, no matter how late or delayed it is) it always leaves more or less immediately - enough time to sit down and relax, but not enough to start getting bored. In addition we have a decently organized airport taxi - individuals book a trip to or from the airport, and share the taxi with up to 2 passengers along the way. Very convenient for early morning flights, and much cheaper than going by the taxameter.)

We spent a couple of days in Arendal, which was ok - and enough. We did some chocolate shopping downtown, went to the cottage (only for an hour, it's nothing to do there other than checking that everything is ok, and it's way too cold for just a couple of nights in November), and then to the yule beer tasting at Nøgne Ø - which was worth everything :-)

On Saturday we got up early and went by bus to my brother in Skien. It was the naming day of my niece Marthe, so all the family was there. Mum and dad drove down with grandma on Friday, my littlest brother and his girlfriend drove down during Friday night and arrived at 3 am, and then it was Cath's family who all live locally. It was nice to meet them all again. They had made delicious dinner, game stew with deer and elk, the meat was so tender that we hardly needed knives, yet it didn't fall apart, and then a traditional dessert based on sago and milk. After a little break we had coffee and cakes, before (almost) rolling down to the hotel.

Anders was leaving for USA at 4:30 this morning, so we went fairly early to bed. After an hour my brother called to inform me that Anders had left his jacket at their house. So I called my dad and for the first time in my life asked to borrow his car :-) I planned to go on my own, despite not quite knowing where we had been driving from the house to the hotel, but dad insisted on coming with me and I didn't protest. Probably quite smart, as I was uncertain at the first turn and would have been lost at the first roundabout... But we picked up the jacket and I almost found my way back to the hotel without hints ;-)

After Anders left this morning I had expected having trouble falling asleep - but no, I just fell asleep and then almost overslept for breakfast... After checking out we went back to my brother's for more food and play with the kids - they have grown (not since yesterday, but since last time we met them). Grandma and I were flying home, and my brother drove us to the airport (so we didn't have to spent 1.5 hours at the airport waiting for the plane - I would have gone crazy...). As usual on this trip we did't have a lot of time - something like 5 minutes too late, but since I checked us in online before we left, we once again got to check in luggage a bit late... The flight left on schedule, and landed in Trondheim a few minutes early. To make a long story short, I finally got home after a little heart break for grandma, luggage pickup, airport shuttle and a taxi trip via grandma. This was probably the most stressing part of the entire journey - if this was just before a blood pressure checkup with my doctor, I would have been forced to get a sick-leave. Not good.

Tomorrow it's back to the road (or air) again, but this time I am going on my own and I expect everything to be much less stressing :-)