My Personal Blog

By 💫 Jimi Wikman · September 30, 20205 yr

I look at the bills before me and frown,
I ponder on my life, feeling stuck and lost,
I rage against the world that changes,
I get frustrated over not being in shape.

Then I remember.

I remember that there are those in the world that have no money,
I remember there are those that have no freedom or hope of one,
I remember that in some parts of the world change never happens,
I remember that there are those that starve to death.

Then I feel ashamed.

What problems could I possibly have that others do not face a thousandfold each day?
Our world is ravaged and exploited, man and beast alike are tortured and killed,
greed and envy break bones and kill infants before they are even born.
What could I possibly have to complain about that could rival the fate of others?

I am blessed.

Not just with a healthy and protected life,
but with freedom others only dream about,
food, water and shelter I take for granted,
while others starve, die of dehydration or face the elements without protection.

I look in the mirror.

I no longer see the jagged edges of my existence,
I see the things that make me whole.
I see family, friends, peace and comfort,
and I know that I am truly blessed.

I look outside my window.

Out there people are hurting,
out there people are hungry,
out there I can share my good fortune,
I can reach out and make a difference.

I think I will.

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By 💫 Jimi Wikman · September 30, 20205 yr

Yesterday I submitted a self test for COVID-19 and today I got the SMS with the result. Fortunately it was negative, at least for now. That means there is another reason why I have had symptoms of a cold for weeks, so I will check that up.
It's a bit weird making self tests for COVID-19 because it's not exactly and easy test to take on your own. Because of that I can't help but to feel that maybe I failed because I did the test wrong...
My situation is however far better than that of my wife who is down with far worse symptoms than I am. I would not be surprised if she have been infected with COVID-19 because she have a really bad one now.
That means that all three of us are down with a cold that seem to drag on forever.
Fortunately it is not COVID-19 for me at least.
...unless I failed taking the test...

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By 💫 Jimi Wikman · September 29, 20205 yr

As I move further inte Year 2 I have also updated this blog a bit. I am adding a new color that is brown-redish and I am updating the fonts on the banners. I am also restucturing things a bit to make this blog a little easier for me to understand how to organize.
Adding a new color makes sense because this is very much a personal space for me and I want to make sure that is clearly visible. I have added some new icons as well, but that is less important right now. For me it was more important to define the areas and prevent the chaos I felt was going on.
Now the blog is defined into four sections, which should be more than enough for me for the time being.
Thoughts - This is the general area where I put my thoughts. The bulk of posts will be here. Debate - Things that upset or confound me. Probably the one category that will incite most interactions. Health - I am getting old, but this is not just physical health, but also mental health. Hobbies - Anything related to movies, martial arts, going to the gym, books and so on will end up here. The aim is to write a bit more here now that things are less cluttered. Probably will be far shorter texts, but more frequent.
I hope you will enjoy it.

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By 💫 Jimi Wikman · September 27, 20205 yr

Nothing make my skin crawl as deceit and greed and Disney is pretty good at that. Their release of Disney plus in Sweden probably takes the cake however and I instantly cancelled my subscription when I realised that they are drip feeding old content, just to make me stay as a paying customer longer.
As Disney plus finally arrived in Sweden I was happy to jump in to enjoy the Mandalorian and season 7 of the Clone Wars. I paid for the monthly subscription because like many other services they don't have enough content for me to remain a constant subscriber. Instead I cycle the services to get the most out of them.
If you are unfamiliar with the Mandalorian, then you should know that it was released in November 2019 and season 1 was concluded in December 2019. So it is a 9 month old series with the season 2 releasing on October 30th. Even if content sometimes, for some weird reason, is realease differently in different parts of the world I was not expecting to see only 2 episodes available!

Not only are they not releasing the full 8 episodes of the 9 month old Mandalorian series, they are releasing one episode each week. The same is true for Clone Wars and it is an obvious attempt to keep people subscribing to their service for at least 2 months. It's such a bad way to treat new customers that have waited almost a year for Disney plus to even be available.
I see absolutely no reason to pay for old content only to get 1-2 episodes of old content. I am pretty sure we will not see season 2 of the Mandaorian anytime soon either.
This is such a douchebag move from Disney and it pissed me off to the point where I will just skip their content, or pay for a month next year to get access to season 1 and 2 and then cancel again.
That is a solid way to treat potential customers.

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By 💫 Jimi Wikman · September 27, 20205 yr

I am down with yet another cold. I have been sick on and off for almost five weeks now and it is getting a bit tiersome to say the least. This during a period where finding a new assignment is crucial is far from optimal if I put it like that. I also just upgraded this site and I have things to do, but not the energy to do get it done.
For weeks now I have had headche, low fever, coughing and a very soar throat. I do not sleep well and had to take some nose spray for about a week just to be able to sleep. I thought things was getting better last week, but then it hit me again so I had to call in sick...again.
In a time where I am looking for new assignments and have a ton of things on my plate it is far from optimal to be down with a cold. We are also building the new business area at work so me not being present is not a very good thing. There is a lot you can do on remote, but some things you need to be present for.
I guess I have to see a doctor next week or at least confirm that this is not COVID-19 so I can get that out of the way.

The upgrade of this site was also supposed to be followed up with new templates and they have been delayed. Most pressing is the block template because I do not like the current layout. As soon as I can muster some energy for it I will do a new update to the beta site and fix that. I already have the base so it's just some CSS fixes and some logic for the colors so it works for multiple purposes.
A new template for the post view is also needed and that one also is not very hard to do. It just take a few hours if I can focus on it and it will be similar to the current design, but with a different organisation of items. I will also add conditional rules to make sure that the review tab only show for posts where a review has been placed.
For now though I will crawl down under the covers and watch some movies. If I have the energy I might play some Path of Exile later even.
I hate having a cold.

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By 💫 Jimi Wikman · September 8, 20205 yr

Back in 2017 I tried to play Path of Exile, but I did not like it very much. The skill mechanics, the gritty graphics, the complex skill tree, none of it appealed to me. As Destiny 2 is pretty much dead at the moment with little to no activity to be interested in I figured I should give it a go again. So far it has been interesting and fun.
To say that Path of Exile is a complex game is an understatement. Just the base mechanics with the huge passive skill tree and the skill gems are enough to scare some people away. I am still struggling with that so adding all the other mechanics on top is a handful to say the least.I have cards and essences dropping and at every turn I discover something new it feels like. It is a bit overwhelming, but I decided to just accept that my first characters will not be very great. It will take time to explore the game, so I might as well just have some fun with it.
My first character this time around is a Ranger, which fit my playstyle pretty good. I started with a rough idea of what I wanted to focus on and so far it is going pretty well. I die to the bosses now and again, but other than that I am ok I think. I pretty much melt the mobs and now as I hit lvl 64 I got some new toys to play with and we'll see how that works out. So far everything dies a bit to fast for me to test out the new quiver for example so I will have to take it into something a bit more difficult to see how it works.
Gearing up has been pretty easy as I got my hands on some currency early and trading has been pretty fast and easy so far. I can see that being a thing to do as the game itself start to become a bit less interesting. I did a ton of trading for Diablo 2 back in the day and that was a lot of fun. Path of Exile are a whole lot better in regards to trading however and the community is on top of it, which makes it super easy to get into. I pretty much have all the gear I need right now for the Ranger builds I want to make. I say it in plural because I will make a new build as the passive tree need an overhaul, which was expected.

As you can see I also did a bit of Harest League, but I decided to focus on Standard League for now to get used to the many mechanics. I also did the first ascendancy for my main character and I actually enjoyed that mechanic with traps and so on. I was at lvl 60 for the first one so a bit over powered for sure. I will probably do the second one later, but first I have to figure out my skills.
A the moment I am just being a bit lazy using Ballista with Tornado shot or Caustic arrow to clear out the mobs, but I need to figure out my other skills. I just remapped my mouse and Tartarus, so I think the setup is decent right now. That means I can focus a bit more on what I need, mostly for boss clears and survivability since I am a complete glass cannon.
I did invest a bit into the game (which I think is fine since it is a free to play game). I bought some stash tabs for currency and some premium tabs for trading and stash management. I also bought some cosmetics to test that out and also tried the Mystery box feature that was pretty interesting. These things are very expensive though so I will not invest to much at regular prices, but will wait for sales that happen pretty frequently. I will probably buy some additional tabs later because focused tabs make things a whole lot easier to organize, but for now I am just focusing on learning things.
At the moment I am at Act 8 (out of 10), so I will focus on getting the campaign done to est out endgame a bit before I start working on my first guided character. The new league called Heist is coming out in 10 days and with it there will be a new patc with changes. So I will wait for that to see what changes are coming before I start my new character.
Overall this is just a nice change from Destiny 2 and there is no shortage of things to learn or do for quite a while playing Path of Exile.
So, so far so good 🙂

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By 💫 Jimi Wikman · August 23, 20205 yr

Invision Community 4.5 is finally released in a stable release. This means that the time for upgrading is almost here. I will wait a few weeks longer because there are still some bugs and I want to make sure the plugins I use have been upgraded properly.
It has not officially been announced yet, but 4.5 is in stable release since the 20th. There has been some bugs found so there will be some bugfix releases most likely in a week or two. Once that is done I think I am ready to start working on the upgrade for this site. The first step is to recreate the theme, which I will do some changes to to make it less vulnerable to upgrades. That is because I have made changes to the global template and the footer which is not really good.
I will also rearrange the code a bit to use some CSS updates that will make things a bit more dynamic. That should keep me occupied a while so the plugin developers can get their plugins updated as well. I think most of the plugins I use are already updated, but there are a few that are in progress still.
For this upgrade I also plan on making the changes to the start page, add a few new pages and of course create the new templates.
I can't wait 😉

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By 💫 Jimi Wikman · August 5, 20205 yr

Yesterday me and my wife got some new wardrobes from Ikea to put in our bedroom. It started out as a simple project and it ended up in a 12 hour marathon. I also almost crushed both me and my wife with a bad decision and threw away ton of stuff!
First of all the wardrobes was the easiest wardobes to assemble I have ever seen. Not a single nail and only the rails for the drawers and the door hinges actually needed any screws. It was all click and assemble, which was very nice! It literally took 5 minutes to put together the frame and a minute to put together a drawer.
So, why the 12 hour marathon?
Well, the reason for that is that I have a bunch of comics and books that I thought I should put in our old headboard. It has a nice space and it is pinned against the wall so it should be a good fit. It probably would have been fine, but as I packed everything and we started to look at the lamps to get them fitted I noticed that one of the legs was bending and risk snapping. So I tried to move it with my foot so it would stant straight...
...and it it came crashing down.
My toe got scraped and slapped silly. My wife got big bruises on her legs as the full weight came down on us both. It was a stupid mistake, but probably a good one as the leg might have caved later anyway and that would be bad. So I had to find new place to put my magazines and books, so after discussing it a bit I realized we have a space for it in the living room below the tv.
That space was filled with old IT books and trinkets we just stuffed in there to get it out of the way. So I went over all of that and then moved the magazines out there. It resulted in almost a dozen bags or things to donate and throw away, which was in addition to the day before when I cleaned out old electronics and drawers in the hallway.
So besides cleaning out the livingroom cabinets, moving furniture around to build things, building 2 new wardrobes with lockers and mirrored doors, moving away two old drawers we had there before and then moving things to the new wardrobes and cleaning up after the frantic cleaning out of all crap we also had some dinner and watched tv for a full day of Ikea madness.
Today is a sore day instead so I am doing some planning for this site and trying to relax a bit. Tomorrow is time to go over our storage as well, which will be hilarious I am sure....

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By 💫 Jimi Wikman · August 3, 20205 yr

Even though life is pretty good these days and despite today being the first vacation day, I feel a bit blue. Maybe I just need some alone time. Maybe I feel the lack of creative outlet as I have been doing very little actual work compared to how I usually work. Maybe it is just the way the world is right now...
Feeling blue is not a bad thing. It is just an emotion like any other and feeling is good. It is also good to reflect a bit on why you feel the way you do because sometimes things have impact on both physical and mental health.
The madness that is the world today
While Covid-19 are causing all kinds of issues for the world I do not feel the effect that much to be honest. Sure I feel a bit isolated, but my Introvert side balance that pretty well. The biggest impact is probably that I get annoyed with all the stupid questions about the strategies Sweden have been using. It just feel petty to try to find flaws after the fact, when it's quite clear that because people are either incompetent, stupid or just misinformed we don't need to lock people up.
I figure it's quite clear by now that the way we treat our elders are not really working and it has not for many years. It is not that Covid-19 suddely become a killer for elders, they have suffered this for decades with the flu and other viruses. We just never measured it before so it became evident as it is now. We still have old people starving in their homes and being treated like shit as they get sacrificed on the altar of greed.
The United States just cause headaches these days...
The fact that I once looked at the USA as an amazing country of opportunities and freedom feels strange these days. I have long considered the USA to be a dangerous country, but lately they seem to have lost their minds completely. I don't just mean the fact that they allow someone like Trump to have any form of power, but there is a growing madness spreading as well. A sort of intolerance of intolerance that is going way beond the absurd. It is becoming dangerous.
There are so many people being hurt over the mass hysteria mobs that ride on their high horses and judge every moral misstep as a capital offense. Still, no one bat an eyelash over the rape of other contries or the fact that their country torture and murder people openly. It is just so tiersome to watch such hypocrisy and to see the hate mobs run amok on social media.
Running, running, running!
Even before the COVID-19 situation there has been a sense of mad running among many companies. Rather than doing things well, they run headfirst into everything with little to no thinking. People with strong opinions rather than the ability to lead seem to be promoted, making decisions on managment level slow and hard to understand. Reorganization is done for all the wrong reason in a perpetual top dow approach where the latest buzzwords are more important than clear communication and proper tools for the ones who actually do the work.
Holding a blackbelt in pointless meetings and talking about things that you do not understand just to look good seem to be the top priorities in some organizations. It's a bit frustrating at times, and in others it is a challenge to try to navigate to actually make a difference to the people that suffer.
I am offended, now you must burn!
Everything you say or do is offensive to some people and somehow offending someone is a cause for a moral crusade to begin. Recently I read that someone was offended that people looked at them while wearing a facemask and somehow that was harassment. I just get so tired hearing these ridiculous complains about how people are offended by the most stupid things.

"Just because you are offended, does not mean you are right."

Over all people just seem hell bent on being angry over everything lately. Respect, compassion and actually caring for others seem to be traits that more and more are pushed back in favor of intolerance, ignorance and egocentricity. It just make me feel tired in my soul and it scare me a bit to see how people take any good cause and pervert it to hate.
I guess I need a bit of vacation and recarge. Most of all however I think I need the time to feel creative again.
First I need some sleep however and let my mind wander and rest a bit.

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poem I Think I will - A poem from my heart

I do not have COVID-19 according to the lab results

updating Updating my personal blog for a new beginning with more structure

Disney+ is drip feeding content to keep you as a paying customer

Down with a cold...again.

Getting into Path of Exile

invision community 4.5 Invision Community 4.5 has been released

Going full IKEA mode

Feeling a bit blue as vacation hits

My Personal Blog Filters

Articles

Stepping back and refocus

Rebuilding the About Me section

Reworking the Articles section

Atlassian Rovo Dev Agent - should you get it or not?

Structure, Assets and Bitbucket - how to get control over your technical debt

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