TexasSwede

 The last month or so, I have been pretty busy at work and in my personal life. My sister came over from Sweden for a 10-day visit, and at work I been working on wrapping up a project we been working on for a while. I have been having some time to do private things, but I have not put a priority on computers/blogging. This coming weekend I am going to Austin for a friends birthday, but then I should have time to do some blogging again.

As many of you may know, I am originally from Sweden. A small, neutral country in northern Europe, who have not been in war since 1814. Sweden have been having a fairly strong defence force, at least until about 10 years ago, when budget cuts been reducing it to basically non-existant... Sweden always had a conscript army, like most European countries. All males must serve for about a year around the time they turn 20, and I served 11 months in the Air Force. There are pros and cons to this system, of course. The pros are that you have a huge army trained, and can call it up in case of war. The cons are that you need to pull the men out of their regular jobs every few years for additional training/repeat training. Due to budget cuts, that has not been done on a larger scale for the last 20 years or so.

Anyway, the mobilisation is supposed to take 72 hours. To protect the mobilisation, as well as important locations and object (bridge, air fields, TV towers/buildings and other infratructure sensitive to early attacks and/or sabotage), a volonteer unit called the Home Guard was established in 1940.

I joined a youth company in the Home Guard when I was 15, and served there for 13 years, until I moved to the US. Yes, we could join at age 15. The first year we did basic stuff: marching, erecting tents, recon, operating radios, target practice with bolt action rifles, using map and compass, etc. At age 16 we started learing assault techniques, ambushes, and combat skills, still with bolt action rifles. At age 17 we got full automatic weapons (sub-machine guns and assualt rifles). I spent many weekends out in the field on manouvers, while other kids at school were out partying or having fun. I did not expect any thanks, I did it because I cared about my country and was willing to make sacrifices to protect it. People were actually sometimes making fun of us.

Later, after my miltary service, I transferred to a regular unit of the Home Guard, and continued my training. We actually got paid, the same amount as a conscript soldier. That meant about 5 dollar a day back in 1991/92, for each 8 hours of service. A weekend manouver counted as 4 or 6 hours... So nobody did this for the money.

Last spring, I went to a Nascar race here in Texas. I went to watch a movie about the US Air Force with my son, and a female soldier came in and wished us welcome. She asked "is anybody here in the service or a former service man/woman". A couple of people raised their hand, and I did too, even if I did not serve with the US military. I thought she was just going to see how many were military/ex-military. She then said "Thank you for your service" to each of us. That was amazing. In 13 years, nobody in Sweden said a word of thanks. Here in the US, people respect your soldiers in a way you should be proud of. You may not support the war, but I feel the soldiers are supported and rightly so. I have to admit, I was choking up when I was standing there. I think I actually teared, it was a very emotional moment for me.

On my mother's side of the family, I have a long tradition of soldiers. My mom was from Germany, and grew up during WWII. She was 19 when the war ended, and she had to run from her hometown to avoid the advancing Red Army troops. My grandfather, who also served in WWI, became a POW with the Russians after he served on the Eastern front.

My uncle, Karl-Heinz (whom I am named after) served as a glider pilot in the Luftwaffe, taking part in the airborne invasion of Crete in 1941. Later in the war, when Germany was pretty much out of fuel, he was assigned to a anti-aircraft regiment who was part of the Luftwaffe. On February 26, 1945 he was shot through the left lung. On March 10 he arrived to a hospital ship in Denmark, but on March 16, he died from his wounds and infections. My mother also lost a sister a year later, due to Diphteria.

My aunt in Germany married a veteran from the French Foreign Legion. He served for 9 years (1951-59) in several parachute regiments, in Indochina (Vietnam) and North Africa. He jumped over Dien Bien Phu and was a POW for 2 years.

No matter what politics you support, and what you think about the government, you have to respect the soldiers doing the fighting.

So, for all the soldiers, in all countries: Thank you for your service to your country.
 

A little while ago I wrote about how I started with Lotus Notes. When I read some other people's descriptions, they told more of their background how they got into computers as well. This has prompted me to share (if anyone really care) how I started with computers.

Back in 1974 or 75 or so, when I was 5-6 years old, my then about 20-21 year old cousin from Blekinge (where my dad was born and grew up and where most of his family lives) moved up to Stockholm. After his military service in the Swedish navy (seems like most males on my dad's side did the service in the navy, for some reason) he got a job at Hewlett-Packard. I think he started as a service technician. For the first few months he was living with my family, and he brought home a couple of different computers. Most of all I remember him bringing home a plotter one evening. I believe he even hooked it up to the phone line and downloaded some images that were then printed on the plotter. Some were just geometric patterns, but for many years I had a Snoopy cartoon created that night on my wall in my room.

In 1981 one of my good friends in school got a VIC-20. The first day he had it, we sat for hours in his room and typed in a program listing for a game from the manual. Of course it did not work. My friend started programming in his spare time, but my parents could not afford a computer.

When I started 7th grade in 1982, the school had been choosen as one of the four schools in the country to participate in a new government sponsored program to increase the computer knowledge in schools and to develop a Swedish computer for school use. Some different products were evaluated, including (if I remember correctly) MicroBee, TRS-80 and a couple of other systems. In the end a brand new computer was developed, based on the 80186 processor and using CP/M-86 as operating system. My school recieved a number of older Swedish made computers, the Z80-based ABC 80 and ABC 800 while the new computer, called "Compis" (an abreviation of "Computer in School" and also meaning "friend" or "buddy" in Swedish) was developed.

The school decided to start a computer club, and I was there for the first meeting in fall of 1992. The school provided a room for the computers and a card reader. To get a pass card, you had to take 3 evening classes, led by older students or teachers, in Basic programming. Then you got your card and could use the computers any time the school was open and the computers were not used by a class.

I believe I went to the classes right before christmas 1982. My family spent the Christmas break in Blekinge, and I brougth some programming books, read them and wrote programs on paper since I did not have any computer. 

Starting in January 1983, I was spending most of my free time in the computer room, learning to program mostly on my own or with help from fellow students. In 1984 we got some prototypes for Compis, and in 1985 the production version was released. The programming languages were COMAL (a structured language that was a mix between Basic and Pascal) and a version of Turbo Pascal 3. I quickly switched to Pascal, and (to my parents dissatisfaction) started spending every free hour in the computer room. I printed my programs on continuous sheets and taped them to the wall of my room so I could look at and read the code, make notes and then bring it back to school and fix any bugs. I even managed to convince the school to let me borrow a computer home over some vacations...

In Sweden, school is mandatory for 9 years, with 2 or 3 years "optional", but in reality most students will go those extra years. Those last years are similar to what is called High School in the US, but it is (just like in Germany) called "gymnasium". According to Wikpedia, they are comparable to "college preparatory high schools" in the US.

Since the 80's, the system has changed, but at that time you had to choose between 5 different 3-year programs, where the subjects and hours were pretty much set. There were some small adjustments we could make, like choosing between psychology and philosophy. I took the "natural science program", where the main subjects were math, physics, chemistry and biology. Of course we also had languages (Swedish, English and in my case German), history, geography, social science, sports, philosophy (in my case) and a few more.

The other programs were an engineering/technical, humanistic/languages, social studies and financial/economics

So why did I take this program? I hated math, and it was always one of my weaker subjects. Well, this program also included computer science and programming. That's the only reason.

During these years, I wrote a bunch of different programs, including my first commercial product. It was a geography learning tool for use in schools, showing a country on a map and asking the student for the name and capital, keeping track of points, etc. I sold a couple of copies to a few schools.

I also started using modems at this time, we had a 1200 baud (later 2400) in the computer room, and you paid by the minute (since the phone company in Sweden charg by the minute, no flat fee for local calls). We even had our own BBS for a short time.

After graduation in 1988, I choose to take a one-year systems programming class at a different school. It was an intensive class, cramming 2 years into one by having classes 8 am to 5pm every day, with just a lunch break. and two short breaks in the morning and afternoon. Well, after about a week, the teachers said that the number of students were not sufficient to run the class. They had tried to get a few more to join, but they had to cancel the class. The class would start again in January 1989.

So I picked up the Yellow Pages and looked under computer companies. I called a few places about an internship, and at one company I got a positive response. They were looking for someone in their support department. I was asked to send in my paperwork, grades, etc. A week later I went to an interview with the head of the support department, who happened to live on the same island where I grew up and lived. The interview went something like this:

"Have you ever user Microsoft Word?"

"No, we used WordStar and another word processor in school."

He started Word for DOS 3.x: "Here, type something"

I typed a few words.

"Select some text and make it bold."

I selected some, not sure if I used the keyboard or the mouse. I had used a mouse just a few times in the past.

To make it bold, I had no clue how to do it. I knew ^K^B in Wordstar, and Alt-F in the Swedish word processor we also used in school. I saw "help" in the menu, so I clicked on it, and noticed that most commands used the Alt key here as well. So I first tried Alt-F (bold in Swedish is "fet". I then realised it was an english version of Word, so I tried Alt-B.

"Good. What is yor salary requirement?"

That's how I got a job at Microsoft...

I worked at Microsoft that fall, and during the summer break next year. After I graduatued the systems programming class in December 1989, I alternated between Microsoft and teaching C programming and english at a gymnasium down the street. At the same time, I got my forst computer, a 386SX-based machine with 256 MB memory and 20 GB harddisk. I quickly upgraded the memory to 1 MB, got a better graphics card (Tseng Labs ET3000) and got me a 2400 bps modem from a co-worker at Microsoft. This is when I started visiting BBSes more frequently.

In April 1990 I started 11 months of military service with the 16th Fighter Wing in Uppsala, about an hour north of Stockholm. After the service I intended to go back to Microsoft, but I was hired by a company called Esselte Voice to program IVR systems (Interactive Voice Response). After two years of doing this, the company went bankrupt. I now had a 486 computer with a 200 GB SCSI harddisk, and 4 MB of memory.

A good friend of mine saw an ad in the newspaper for a publishing company looking for a tech support person, and in the same ad they also were looking for a journalist. I appled for both jobs, and amazingly enough, I got the job as a journalist, writing about PC hardware and software.

We are now at the point whee I started my article about how I got into Lotus Notes, and you can continue there if you haven't read it already.

A couple of days ago (well, March 3) it was my birthday, and I decided to bake a cake, as I usually do. I enjoy baking and cooking, and that way I also get to have a cake the way I am used to from Sweden. I will post the directions when I get home, but it is really easy.

The main difference between the cakes made the traditionally way in the US and in Sweden/Europe are listed below, but there are of course exceptions:

Well, plenty of things going on since I got back from Lotusphere and not much time (or energy) for blogging....
Part of the office moved to a different location a few miles away, about 100 users were moved to Citrix and Notes 7.0.2 as a result of this, and several servers were upgraded to Domino 7.0.2.

I got an upper respiratory infection after Lotusphere, took me about 2 weeks to get well. Went on a cruise to Mexico the week before the move (was planned way before the dates of the move was set), so that added to the stress... Felt like I was deserting the rest of the team, even if I was not that involved in teh actual move as a developer. And finally I finished an article for The View.

Well, things are slowing down. Some personal issues still have to be solved, that will take some time. But now I should have time for some more blogging.