I’ve finally upgraded my image gallery and imported it into WordPress with a cool addon. Took me about 3 days of work to get it sorted and adding comments and stuff but it’s been fun going down that memory lane again.
Here are some of my favorite galleries:
As usual the password what the company I work at is know as in Sweden.
When I got a job at this here place one of the bonuses was that we could travel at a discounted price. Unfortunately we only do charter so that travel is pretty much bound to those really touristy sunny parts of the world. And my wife have had an item on her bucket list to “dive in the turquoise water of Greece”. So after looking through all our hotels we decided to go to Platanias on Crete and stay at Minoa Palace. We also agreed that it was best for everyone if Sam stayed in Sweden for alot of reasons – and some of them selfish I’ll admit. And since neither of us are fan of temperatures over 35 degrees we also agreed to go late May / early June.
So after sorting it out with our family who would take care of him when and where we did our best to explain to him that we’d be away for a few days but gave all the assurances we’d be back and said goodbye to him at the dropoff zone at Arlanda airport at about 6 am on thursday (May 30th) morning, checked in and then enjoyed a very early beer and shrimp sandwhich since we hadn’t ordered food on the plane.
The flight was ok but a bit boring for me, I usually sleep on airplanes but this time I couldn’t. Then we arrived at the hotel and man was it nice!! It really was top notch! But when we got to our room we were really disappointed at the lack of sea view, that we had paid for. We were so disappointed that I actually went to complain at the front desk – and they looked at their bookings and simply snapped their fingers and we got a new room with awesome sea view! Then my wife had to go dip her feet in the ocean and then we kicked back to enjoy a cold nice beer at the beach bar. We spent the next 7 days walking the same road in Platanias (there is just one road unless you want to go along the beach which I don’t recommend) trying out all kinds of different restaurants! The people were very nice and polite, especially the people at the resaurants! There weren’t that many people who tried to force you into their restaurants which was a nice change!.
To go through some of the restaurants to recommend:
We also found a great restaurant when we took a trip with the Fun Trains out to Therisso Gorge but I have no idea what it was called but they served up a great and simple dish of lamb! We really wish we had done more of those Fun Train trips because that was fun.
We also took a city tour of Chania as well but it wasn’t much to write home about, except for the harbor where there were a gazillion restaurants lined up and yes, people trying to force you into their restaurant 🙁 But we already had an evening of Meze planned, but after 4 hours and 8 small dishes we were still kinda hungrey so when we got back to the hotel we took the liberty of taking some desserts from the dinner buffé at the hotel.
Other than we spent the week in the sun by the pool and a quick little visit to the gym to work off that saganaki. But by wednesday we were actually missing our Sam and both felt that we could really go home today. But that wasn’t up to us. But on Thursday (June 6th) we boarded the flight home and when we finally got home I was rushing to the car to see our son again who was really happy to see us again. But so tired after a week of playtime with the family that he feel asleep in the car on the way home!!
Basically we had a blast! There were some things we wish we had done differently but that’s the way it is. Next time we will take Sam with us and go to a real charter resort.
Feel free to check out the pictures here. And you should know the password by now, right?
I’m kind of weird in some ways – like how I in some ways like things to just remain the same and keep on going with “if it ain’t broken why fix it”. Yet sometimes I love to change things around even when it’s already working perfectly. Like this site. This site has been on so many servers I’ve lost count. At one time like 10 years ago it was hosted at “Aleborg Solutions” that later became Binero. And then it moved around until I started hosting it at home, then to our server in the states and now it’s back at Binero! Why? Becuase it was just a bit slow when it was “over there”, I noticed that when going around in the image gallery. So I moved it back home to Sweden. I know it’s gonna cost me a little bit but now I don’t have to worry the least about the server going down!
I’m also trying out a new image gallery called “Justified Image Gallery” that shows the image gallery in a pretty neat way. Look at our gallery for our trip to Crete – looks pretty sweet, no?
I have finally had the time to index and upload all the pictures from our week in Platanias in Crete – so enjoy! You’ll have to do without my colorful commentary but I think you’ll live.
Unless you’ve lived totally unconnected for the past week I’m sure you’ve heard the latest “scandal” – that NSA is being fed data by the big computer companies in the USA, all to try to catch bad guys before they do something bad against them. And the guy who blew the whistle left his life in the states and fled to China and god knows where he is now, and he’ll probably always be a wanted man in the states.
Regarding the fact that NSA can read my e-mails? … anyone who thought anything differently really haven’t been paying attention! I’ve always said e-mail is one of the least secure ways of communicating. And I’ve always assumed that the US authorities _can_ access my files on Dropbox, so I’ve bought an encrypting software so anything personal that I’d never want exposed is encrypted. I’ve always treated my online data with the sceptic view that “if someone really wanted it they could get it” and very aware that with the Patriot Act so could the US authorities. And you know what? I’n fine with that. ‘Cause I’ve got nothing to hide really. I just wish all the IT managers around the world would consider this before being so fast to jump on the “could” bandwagon! As a matter of fact, only two months ago I wrote a recommendation to our IT manager about using Microsofts online cloud-based Sharepoint solution to host a collaboration site. I had the big reservation that “by doing so, we must acknowledge that all the data we put there is only as secure and safe as Microsoft states and as the laws in that country allows”. I almost feel like a prophet now for writing that!
Regarding the guy that blew the whistle … although I totally support people who blow whistles when they feel something is wrong and standing up for their principles, I gotta say, throwing your life away for something that most of us kinda shrugs our shoulders at and say “yeah, so?” at seems kinda dumb. I mean it’s a good thing he did it I guess, but was it really worth it? … especially now that both Google and Microsoft are coming out swearing that basically “no the NSA doesn’t have direct access to our servers, we only send them data they ask for and only when we’re told to”. Should we trust that? I’ve made it a practice not to trust anyone that stands to make a profit out of it. Call me sceptical or paranoid, but time and time again I’m proven right.
Wow, that felt good – getting away from it all for a week!!
So on Thursday 30th Helena’s mother dropped us off at Arlanda and drove away with our son. We knew he would be in a good hands and promptly checked in and bought our first pint – at 6 am! Got on the plane, I introduced myself to the cabin crew and got a really friendly welcome and off we went. We landed, got to the hotel and went to our room only to find that the seaview we were paying for was very, very limited. So limited that I actually went to complain and was expecting to have to argue what classifies as a “sea view” – but nope, the fixed a new room for us by Sunday so we were happy with that.
We walked around the town of Platanias, tried every restaurant we could find and we basically lamed around for 7 days trying not to do anything but work on our tan and we were pretty successful. With the first part of that – not so much with the latter!
I’ll write up a full report later when I have time but for now this’ll do.
But man it’s good to be back!!