Monday Details

Trying to cover all this week’s events.

Boris was supposed to fly in on Sunday, right after I would bring my mom home from our matinee CSO concert. I had Monday off, so we were planning to spend it together, and had a long list of what we were going to do.

I didn’t expect anything unusual, so I checked Boris’ flight status at midday just to make sure it departed on time. Nowadays, it’s not always easy to find the flight status online unless it’s your flight and it’s in your app. To my astonishment, a Google search showed this flight approaching Reykjavik! I thought it must be a mistake; but one of the other searches also showed Reykjavik as the destination point. Another one still said Chicago.

I just locked the door of my apartment and started to walk down when I got a call from Boris: We just landed. I asked: in Reykjavik? And the answer was yes.

Nothing was clear for the next twenty-four hours, but now I know the complete sequence of events. Shortly after the departure, one of the four power generators located at the engines died, and they could not start the backup generator in the tail. (As they say in my world, “if you do not test backups regularly, you do not have backups”). This posed no problem for the flight itself but was not enough to support all the sensors, so they had to land in Reykjavik, which, BTW, has no American Airlines presence, so they could receive only limited equipment help.

Boris said that everything was very well organized, and throughout the ordeal, they were kept informed about what was going on, the options and possible outcomes, and all the moving parts behind the scenes. First, they tried to repair the generator, but since no parts were available, the AA decided to bring in another aircraft. All the passengers were transferred to hotels and transferred back to the airport in the morning. It took way longer than expected to reregister all passengers because this airport is not equipped to service aircraft of that size.

Fortunately, I found a website that showed all the “flight notes,” so I knew about all the expected delays and new estimated times. After the aircraft finally landed in ORD, I tried to take several screenshots to capture all the changes.

Approaching Chicago

I almost never post the views from the airplane window, but I like that one!

Prague Dev Day

On Monday evening, I flew to Prague to deliver training at the Prague PostgreSQL Developer Day. I used my full-size (10 hours long) PostgreSQL Query Optimization Training, cut out about 1/3 of it, and updated it with the examples from the book’s second edition. The preparation took way longer than I expected when I submitted this training proposal, but I am happy with the result.

It was a super-short visit to Prague; I barely was outside. I upgraded both my flights to business class because I have nine European upgrades, and I can only use them on Finnair flights. There were only two business class passengers besides me on the way there, and I was the only one on the way back 🙂

Salmon lasagna – I don’t know what Italians would think about it, but I liked it!

I chose the Grand Hotel International due to it’s proximity to the venue, but to be completely honest, it didn’t impress me, although I understand it’s historical significance.

At the entrance of the Department if Information Technologies where the event tool place

And if you are wondering – yes, there were only two female participants out of twenty-five

Together with one of the event organizers, Gulcin Jelinek

Seen By Helsinki Railway Station

Suomenlinna

We made it to Suomenlinna (in search of the salmon soup, which, as we found out, is not being served on Sundays).

In Vanille Cafe, they still bake fresh pies each morning, and they are still the best in town

Post-Christmas Helsinki

The weather was/is really miserable; it’s warm, but no sun, no snow, no nothing. Probably the worst I ever saw at that time of the year. However, still a lot of Christmas decorations up!

I met up with my friend Natasha, and we walked around a bit before sitting and chatting at the Fazer cafe.

The city is still beautiful, even with this miserable weather 🙂

More Pictures Of Valo Coworking

I posted tons of pictures in October when I worked in Valo for the first time, here are more.

On Friday, I was in a room in a different wing, and it turned out that there are more coworking spaces which I didn’t see before:

A view from the first-floor coworking space into the cafe. I love that you can sit anywhere, and there are electric plugs everywhere!

Work-Life Balance

The coworking space I use in Helsinki does not expect anyone to stay later than 6PM. Although the contract says that we can use the space if nobody else needs it, in reality, the cleaners usually start kicking you out closer to 6 PM. Last Friday, however, there was something new!

I went for a short walk outside, about a quarter to four, because it was the first day I could see some sun, and I wanted to catch it before the sunset. The next meeting was not until 4-30 PM. When I returned, I couldn’t open the door to my room, although my magic button was working on all the other doors. In panic, I rushed to reception, and they said: oh, that’s because you already worked for eight hours today! How much time do you need?

I told them that I had my things in the room, and I needed at least another hour, or better two, because I work for an American firm, so they gave me a separate one-time pass 🙂

When I told this story to my co-workers at the zoom meeting, they had a good laugh and said that our firm should introduce similar policies!

Back To Work (In Helsinki)

Resuming my work at Valo coworking space didn’t go smoothly. The app kept saying there were no rooms with extra displays available, and even a room without an extra display was not available until 9 a.m. I made a reservation, but the room number didn’t show up in the morning, so I decided to go to Valo and figure out everything while I was onsite.

I arrived five minutes before 7 AM, and nobody at reception could tell me why the rooms with displays were unavailable. I knew I couldn’t officially claim my room until nine, but I also knew it should have been assigned by that moment. The next thing I realized was that since the room was not assigned, my magic button did not work for anything, so I couldn’t go to the gym or close the locker. The morning reception shift came, but they still couldn’t tell me what was going on “until Jarkko comes.” I knew from the last time that Jarkko could fix anything in the system, but he is not a morning person, so I couldn’t expect him to be around at 7:15.

Suddenly, a room with an extra display popped up as available on the app, and I grabbed it, but nobody at reception could help me to cancel the previous reservation: “You need to wait for Jarkko!” But at least I had a room, and my button started to work, so I hurried up to drop my things, change, and go to the gym.

One more change since last time was that the breakfast price went up; however, it remained the same for the tenants, so I could still enjoy “all-you-can-eat” for 10 euros. Also, it turned out that they had several conferences going on, so many rooms were converted back to hotel rooms, and all the staff was busy servicing the conferences.

On my third trip upstairs, I finally found Jarkko at his desk, and everything started magically working: my canceled reservation was credited back to my account, I was able to book the rooms with an extra monitor for the remainder of the week (“Try now, I added five rooms!”)

I remembered how to make the magic button work on the elevators and realized I could pour cappuccino into a ceramic cup and take it back to my room. I found a fruit bowl in the cafeteria and grabbed a couple of pieces for later. Life is beautiful again 🙂

Tallinn- Skating And More

I saw a skating rink on the way back to the hotel on Sunday evening, and sure enough, I wanted to skate. It was already close to 10 PM, so I didn’t do it right then, but I was hoping that they will open early enough in the morning. It turned out that they opened at 10 AM, and they had not only the skate rental but also all possible equipment, including socks and gloves :). I didn’t need them, so I just rented the regular skates. When I got on the ice, my first thought was that it was a mistake: since that was not an artificial ice, they didn’t do any resurfacing (although there is some “maintenance schedule”), so the ice was in really bad shape. Also, the skates were not sharp enough, and once again, my initial feeling was that it would be impossible to skate even for 30 minutes. I stayed just for the “check” mark – when else would I have a chance to skate by the 13th-century walls – and I moved very slowly.

Gradually, I started feeling more confident, even in the presence of grade-schoolers who were racing, bumping into the rink fence with full force, and immediately racing back :). I figured out how to manage on these bulky, dull skates and definitely took pleasure in the surroundings.