I thought it wouldn’t be a big problem to put the house up. I already had the right place for it, since I made a “fake” greenhouse 2 years ago, using left over wood and plastic. The fake greenhouse wasn’t meant to last more than a summer, and but it lasted 2, but barely (not the sturdiest of constructions, plus the ventilation was very bad).

So, I ordered, and 2 weeks later it arrived. It’s already a bit too late to grow the things, but I thought I could put it up during the first weekend. Well well. First problem, after opening the package; Assembly instructions. They containted illustrations and numbered parts. Problem was, the parts themselves weren’t numbered, and as many parts looks virtually identical, this turned out to become a giant puzzle.

One of the things I did wrong with the previous house was the ground. I just cleared the worst week and built the house on the soil. Bad move. Lots and lots of week also enjoyed growing in a greenhouse I realized… So, with this greenhouse I thought I’d do it properly. I cleared off all the week, put on a cover cloths which blocks the weeks, but lets water soak down. I also dug holes which I will fill with concrete to keep the construction in place. I then covered the area with a layer of crushed roof tiles, which we had left after we changed roof tiles some years ago.

Turns out its not very easy to crush roof tiles into little bit. In fact, it’s a pain in the ass… I pounded the tiles with a sledgehammer and pounding tool for several hours, and still it looks nothing like how I’ve seen when roof tiles are used as pretty orange walking paths. They must have a professional machine which grinds the bits…

So. Groundwork is now almost done anyway, and I started assembling the house today in earnest, which, as I said, is more like putting together a puzzle than building after clear instructions. I managed to get one side and the front end done today, and I’m hoping I can get the other side and the back fixed tomorrow, and then another day for the roof, and finally the plastic which will be the glass (I opted for 6mm plastic because of the better insulation, which I hope will enable us to keep plants there a few more weeks in the year…

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- I downloaded all the files via FTP
- I changed the settings in the general options of wordpress to go to the site root
- I re-uploaded all the files via FTP
- Went through each single page and changed the permalinks and the url’s for all the images.

This might sound simple, and it was, but the fourth step took about 3-4 hours to complete. Good for our club that they don’t pay me, because it would have crippled the club budget a bit

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In the past I’ve been quite comfortable with having my website at one.com, and it has responded well, even after I started using WordPress, and so I contacted the one.com support. They basically responded, yes, we can see it’s slow, but I can’t see why. Since I work with IT support I can read this response between the lines I can tell that this means; “yes, it’s slow, and it’s because we’re putting more clients on each server in order to get a bit more profit, but we’re not allowed to tell you this.”.

One.com is a very affordable solution for anyone who wants to have a very cheap website, you can get a website with a domain name for as little as 25-30 Euro per year, and for many people and small companies it is a very affordable and simple way to have a web presence. However, it’s not as expensive as you might think to get a better solution, especially if you have several domains, like we do. What we did was this;

I signed us up a for simple account at Binero. They have been voted the best web hotel in Sweden for two years, running, and I can see why. Their pricing is totally clear, no hidden charges (you can quit your account any time, and they will pay back any prepaid amount you have left). I sent two e-mails to their support, and both times the answers came in a reasonable time (3 hrs and 1 hr) and both times the answers were in clear and simple language.

A simple account at Binero costs about 80 euro per year, and includes 100 GB of space (33 times more than at one.com) and enough trafic for a very popular site with thousands of daily visits and heavy graphics. One thing that I really liked was that for those who know a bit more about Webdesign you have the chance to adjust practically all of the settings of your account. You can set up tons of mysql-databases, tons of domains connected to one account etc, so now mine and Judits site are on one single account, which means in reality the price increase wasn’t so big, and we can really tell the difference in speed! I think Binero works on the assumptions that their customers pays for making sure their sites aren’t throttled or slowed down by pushing too many customers on their servers…

So far, we’re happy with the experience we have at Binero, and I would gladly recommend it to anyone who considers their website an important part of their marketing or online life.

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I took a few snapshots, of which I’m posting a few here…

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And oh yes, of course I bought some chocolate to bring home as a gift for Judit who was at home taking care of business

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This morning there was 20 cm of fresh snow, and quite windy, so the snow had gathered up in drifts, in some places as much as 40-50 cm, which makes shovelling really “fun”

Now I wouldn’t mind if this snow went away and we got some spring, I’ve taken more winter-photos this year than all previous years combined

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I’ve had three Semla this year, my 3rd being the one I had today, and I don’t think I’ll have any more now this year. There are a few seasonal specials that used to be sold only at certain times of the year, but now many of them are becoming standard products which can be bought all year round. Julmust (Christmas softdrink) can now be bought early in the fall, Påskmust (Easter softdrink, identical to Julmust) will be on sale in a few weeks I guess, and it’s not going to be long before there’s Sommarmust (summer softdrink), if somebody hasn’t already invented it…

Am I turning into a cranky old bastard who will go around saying; “It was better before!”? Who knows, I guess time will tell

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