Tollef Fog Heen's blog

After my last diary post, we had porridge for lunch, as is customary on December 24th. Børre, Karianne's father got the marzipan pig. Dinner was good, with both lamb and pig's ribs and cloudberries with whipped cream for dessert. Mmm.

The rest of the evening was a bit like what I have had it like in Oslo, but also very different. Presents were handed out by Kristine, Karianne's little sister, one at a time. This took quite a while, so Karianne and I went to bed fairly quickly after we finished the gift session.

On Dec 25th, not much happened, at least not until dinner. Some of Karianne's aunts, uncles and cousins were visiting and we had a good time, including knocking down the pyramid Francis and I had built.

All in all, a different celebration than I'm used to. I'm a bit sure if I can get used to this way to do it, but we'll see.. Later today, we're going back to Oslo again. It will be nice to see our cats and such again.

Philipp Kern asks about mail-based tracking systems. Even though he specifically says "no" to RT, I would recommend it. The source is very hackable and making up commands for changing ticket properties is easy.

So, for the first time in my life, I'm not in Oslo and with neither of my parents on December 24th. I am in Molde, with Karianne and her family. It's a bit weird, but given that all the traditions on how today's evening have broken down after my grandmother died, I am hoping this will be nice.

Before, as in, when my parents at least lived in the same house, even though they no longer shared a bed, we always celebrated at my grandparents' place. There was a lot of rituals on how everything was conducted. Those would probably looked weird, silly and arcane to an outsider, but they were how we celebrated. Then, my father moved out and later met Vigdis. (I am in no way sad for this, but it was a deciding factor in how things later developed.) This (obviously) changed how we celebrated and my siblings and I shuttled back and forth between mum and dad.

Since this day is just a regular day if it weren't for all the traditions on how it is celebrated, this was particularly hard on me. (To be fair, I haven't discussed it with my siblings, so I can't tell if it was worse for them than for me, and it's not particularly important either.) I haven't looked forward to celebrating for the last three or so years. At all. I have also been a wimp and not really told any of my parents about it either, so they haven't been able to understand anything.

So, now I am in Molde and it's nice. I don't have much of an idea what traditions live in this household, but am eager to find out. And, I have Karianne here, so I'm sure it will work out fine, some way or the other.

I went to a music store today, since I got a 500 NOK gift card a couple of days ago. After a while, I just walked out again, since it's apparently not possible to buy CDs any more, just crappy DRM-infested expensive pieces of plastic discs. I'm considering either just giving the card away to somebody who cares less about it than me, or go into the store, make sure to buy discs which are marked with the "cd audio" logo (some of the DRM-infested discs have it on the locking plastic sleeve) and then later return and complain that they won't play in my DVD player. That might be an interesting discussion, or just a waste of time.

I got my account in the bank I'm currently using about ten years ago. It was, for the time being, a nice bank. Friendly people, usable internet banking solution and so on. I was a happy customer.

Recently, they have introduced this concept of "BankID", where they want to use the debit card from the bank for authentication (using a smart card rather than just the magnetic stripe, so it's not a terrible solution, security-wise). They also want to require using the chip and a reader and some other solution, which I suspect includes some java crap for authentication.

The current solution is based around the account number (which is not a secret), a secret PIN number and a single-use plastic card with one-time codes printed on it. The solution is low-tech and works, and I don't see the need to switch away from that and have absolutely no interest in switching away, but the bank wants to pressure me.

Also, the "agreement" contains such information as (my translation):

PersonabankID contains the following information about the Customer:

[...]

• Information about the Customer's name and birth date.

[...]

When using PersonBankID, this information will be part of the message flow and may be made available for the recipient, hereunder sales end points.

I have absolutely no interest in letting random places I buy stuff from get to my birth date or other similar information.

Now I just need to find a new bank which doesn't force me to switch to new-fangled and stupid solutions without asking me first.