Got back from Italy last sunday, as you’ve probably already realized from the new photos in the albums. What you didn’t realize was that I was food poisoned by the pizza breakfast I had. At the checkin line at the airport I started sweating more and more, and my stomach really started to hurt. After about an hour in line in a 30 degree hall I finally got the departure hall where I ran into a toilet. After finishing up that business I got in line to get something to drink since I was still sweating my extremities off. Just when I reached the counter I got that tingly feeling at the jaw-muscle, so I knew what was coming. I ran back to the toilet and up came the same pizza I ate for breakfast, albeit not in the same condition it was going down. After wiping up the majority of the mess I went back to the hall to see that boarding, unfortunately, had begun. That left me with no time at all to get some tax free goods.
The flight back home to Norway and the drive back to Kongsberg felt like an eternity. When I finally got back home fever had set in and I was shaking like the old pope when he tried to say Amen. I slept a few hours, got back up, took a shower and went to bed where I slept for about 12-13 hours. Needless to say I didn’t go to work the next day. The other guy who ate the same kind of pizza started feeling bad monday and when I was back at work tuesday he wasn’t. That makes it a whole lot easier to blame the pizza.

On another note, I managed to ruin my TV on wednesday. I was inside a service menu adjusting the picture (horizontal position, vertical size, et al) and suddenly all the menus went black. I could see the outline of the menu but not the content. This had also caused all other text on the TV to turn black (channel information and teletext) making all text unreadable. After googling all wednesday I hadn’t found a solution and called a Sony certified service department on thursday to get a rough estimate of about $200 to fix it (reprogram the EPROM). I realized that I just had to pay up to get my TV back in working order, but I tried one desperate attempt at some more googling, and there, in the deep bowels of internet where no man has gone before I found some service codes. I didn’t even know if they were for my TV set, but I figured I had nothing to loose since I was gonna have the EPROM reprogrammed anyhow. And lo and behold, it actually worked. Which reminds me to call the service department on monday and remove my scheduled service as well as complain that they didn’t suggest I try that code since I had nothing to loose. So $200 saved is a new bike waiting to happen.
Yes, I’ve bought a new bike. It came to a bit more than I had originally anticipated, but I figure $1000 will hold a long time and give me some much needed excercise. It’s time to finally remove these love handles… or maybe they’re bike handles. The bike is a Giant Terrago for those interrested, and looks like this: Picture and Picture. Seeing as I got an acute case of asthma from taking the 5 minute bike back home from the dealer, I figure I really needed to start biking to and from work instead of using my AC’ed car… ahhh… AC… hmmm.