about the bald dude
You're in the Web-complex (or rather more descriptively - simplex) created by Björn Törnroth, a Married Male living a disgustingly happy life in Finland. He once studied philosophy at the Department of Philosophy at Åbo Akademi University in the city of Turku.
If you think studying philosphy is an easy life, sipping wine and going "cogito ergo sum" all day long, you're partly right. The partly wrong, however, is a completely different pot of turds. Philosophy is like reinventing the wheel every darn time. And I'm not talking about starting with a nice roundish thing and going "hey, why don't I see if this goes down that hillside really nicely". I'm talking about starting with a flat stone and working your way upward through pyramid-resembling things to something remotely octagonal. When you finally reach the stage where you have a bumpy round stone it feels like a brand new Good-Year. Yup, it's a rocky path.
I am a married man and thus insanely happy. (No, it's not a contradiction.) Marrying Carita was the best thing I ever did. The second best was building a sauna. The third best was converting an old and small barn into our home. We live in the woods since 1999. It was quite a change from the city life of Åbo. We have a cat, Mr Pileser, who is a dignified furball.
My interests - and there's really too many of them - include films, books (preferably by Pratchett), sauna, food, wine, cigars, cognac, single malts, miniature painting (WarHammer 40000), house design & construction, lumberjacking (yes, it can be a hobby), ecology and a lot more.
The one hobby that is closest to my heart is music. A day without music is a day wasted, and two consecutive days without music is a crisis. I lack the gift to create music myself and therefore I am a listener. But boy do I listen carefully. I suffer from a chronic disease called audiophilia. Audiophiles get a kick out of music sounding really really good. We therefore spend obscene amounts of time and energy on our hifi system. Read all about it in the music and hifi section of this home page.
I really hate computers and therefore spend quite a lot
of time with them. Actually I worked with them for a couple
of years. It so happened that one of my pals suddenly jumped me with a
question
- "You wanna work for me, dude?".
- "Doing what, man?" I enquired.
- "Programming, dude." was the instant reply.
- "But I don't know how, man." was my eloquent retort.
- "Don't matter, dude." was the cool reply. "You'll learn."
And ever since it's been "Yes, boss!". Now I've got HTML, DHTML, ASP,
ADO, VBScript and SQL coming out out of my ears. I had no idea I could cram
such a lot of stuff into my thick head in such a short time. Now I know. And
it hurts.
Soon I wanted to try my own wings. At the end of year 2001 I started my own business under the name of WebGnome. (That's NettiTonttu in Finnish) Now I got headaches in PHP, MySQL, XHTML and CSS as well. Phew. Anyway, I make beauuutiful, fast and easy to use web pages at quite reasonable prices. Looking at the - 'scuse my french - crap that's out there on the 'net it oddly enough seems like a novel idea.
In November 17th 2001 at 8.06 am I became a FATHER. Holy shit what an experience!! (I'm gonna run out of exclamation marks writing this!!!) To save you the embarrassingly enthusiastic parental drool-drenched ramblings, just imagine me going on about what a splendid fellow he is for about five screen-fulls, ok? Right. Fine. Now then, where was I? Ah, yes. The name's Benjamin and there's a shitload of photos on Benjamin's home page. Since about October 2002 I'm staying home with my son full time while my Carita goes to work as a dispensing chemist's assistant.
In January 18th 2004 at 3.21 pm I became a father AGAIN. Holy shit what an experience! Again. I lack words for the immense respect and humble love I feel for my wonderful, brave wife. I am truly a privileged man. Men who haven't witnessed a woman giving birth to a child know very little of life indeed.The name's Edwin and of course there's quite a lot of cute pictures on Edwin's home page.
What the future now holds is blissfully unclear. For the moment I will enjoy family life fully. I will continue with web programming and perhaps even study some more philosophy, but that's all quite unimportant for now. Life is good.
At the end of 2006 I find myself at a junction. The boys are having a ball in day care and I'm trying to figure out what to do when I grow up. I thought I'd finish my studies at Åbo Akademi University, but I'm finding it really hard to concentrate for long enough time. What with family life and all. The programming and web design is also harder to give up than I thought. Frustration and disorientation aside, life is still darn good.
