Hi all

Not sure if you all know this, but I am actually a War Veteran.

I served my mandatory 10 months in the Danish army from August 1’st 1995 until May 31’st 1996. After that I signed a contract with the Danish International Brigade and was therefore in the reserve in the army while I studied computer science at the university from August 1996. In June 2000 I was summoned for a 6 months mission in Kosovo, so I spent 2 months of training in June and July 2000 and in august 2000 I went to Kosovo. Fate would have it that my little sister was going on the same mission, so that was pretty cool

After coming back to Denmark in February 2001 (Boring Christmas and new years evening) I resigned from the army. While I am happy to have tried it, there is no way I will leave my wife (girlfriend back then) and kids for 6 months. Quite a lot of the buddies I had in Kosovo lost their girlfriends during the mission.

Anyway, some days ago I received my “War veteran”-card from the Danish army. This is a new card that the ministry of defense decided we should all have. So they have spent God knows how much money and man hours deciding that we should all have this card, creating them and sending them out to us. The problem is, that I have no idea why on earth we need to have this card. Apparently the idea is that using this card I can prove that I am in fact a War Veteran, but come on… I have never really had the need to prove that. If I tell people that I am a War Veteran I have never experienced someone say “Really? I don’t believe that!” But should someone do that in the future, I can now simply pull out the card and prove it!

You can see the front side of the card here (My SSN is removed):

And the backside here:

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eliasen

Hi all

I am VERY happy to announce, that the book I have been writing alongside Brian Loesgen, Charles Young, Scott Colestock, Anush Kumar, and Jon Flanders is now finally out.

You can buy it here: http://amzn.to/qYuPHb

I am responsible for the four chapters about:

• Schemas
• Maps
• Orchestrations
• Pipelines

I welcome ANY feedback about what I have written, but should you have feedback to other parts of the book that you are anxious to write to someone, feel free to send me an email about that too

It has been quite a journey and there have been times when I was REALLY tired of writing. It is my understanding, however, that my chapters have turned out very well and I am looking forward to learning more about BizTalk, reading the stuff from the other great authors.

If you buy the book, you can see my acknowledgements, but just in case you are not buying the book, let me just quickly mention Randal van Splunteren (MVP) who did me a great personal favor and reviewed all the stuff I wrote before I handed it in for official review. It was a fantastic help.

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eliasen

Hi all

I was contacted by Packt Publishing asking me if I’d do a review of the Microsoft BizTalk 2010: Line of Business Systems Integration book.

I have the PDF and the printed version should arrive any day now. Once I’ve read it I’ll post a review of it on my technical blog at http://blogs.eliasen.dk/technical/

BTW, you can find a sample chapter of the book at http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/1902-chapter-9-microsoft-dynamics-ax.pdf?utm_source=packtpub&utm_medium=free&utm_campaign=pdf

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eliasen

Hi all

Just a quick note to let you all know that the next meeting in the Danish BizTalk User Group (DBUG) will be on September 21’st. I won’t be speaking for a change, so do come around

You can find the invitation at http://www.dbug.dk/files/biztalk%20brugergruppe%20september%202011.pdf

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eliasen

Hi all

Turns out that I was caught on camera a couple of times during the run. See the pictures here: http://spotted.stiften.dk/gallerier/dhl-stafetten-2011-torsdag-loeberene#405286 and here: http://spotted.stiften.dk/gallerier/dhl-stafetten-2011-torsdag-loeberene#405288. I’m the one on the far right of the last picture

The certificate for my team can be seen here: http://aarhusmotion.dk/diplomabg.aspx?Id=22080&type=team – ignore the team I am registered for – that is due to me being late for the switch. The 5km took me just below 24:30 minutes.

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eliasen

Hi all

The “DHL stafet” is a 5x5km relay race that is held annually here in Denmark in the largest cities.

My employer Logica always participates and this year we had about 20 teams as far as I recall. I participated last Thursday on one of these teams and despite the fact that my achilles tendon and knees are still bust I ran a pretty good race for someone who hasn’t been training seriously for 3 years.

The 5km took me 24:27 minutes and this is actually a lot faster than I had thought I could. The official time, unfortunately, is 25:55 because I was late for the switch so my time started almost 1,5 minutes before I received the depeche.

Anyway, my team was the fast mix-team from Logica, so that’s great! And actually we came in as number 31 out of 1214 teams. Had I been on time for the switcch we would have come in around place number 20 instead of 31.

Next year I will really try to be on time!

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eliasen

Bummer! It seems I have busted my knees so yesterday I ended up pending 45 minutes on a cross trainer instead of the treadmill.

Those cross trainers bug me – I can’t help thinking that I look really silly when I use them.

And it is quite impossible for me to keep up the pace if I need to wipe sweat of my forehead using a towel.

And finally, the calorie consumption isn’t anywhere near a good run…

I really hope my knees are back in shape soon…

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eliasen

Hi all

I have previously written part 1 of a book review at http://blogs.eliasen.dk/Personal/post/2011/07/10/100-Essential-things-you-didn’t-know-you-didn’t-know-part-I.aspx.

I have now finished the book and thought I’d write my thoughts about the book here.

First of all, I am not sure the 100 things are actually essential… some of them are more “Nice to know” than “Need to know”, but hey, that’s subjective, right?

Anyway, some of the things I didn’t know I didn’t know require some more-than-basic math skills to understand, which at times was rather hard to follow; I mean… for a book that is supposed to be bedtime reading, I think it requires too much. Had it been a book where you are supposed to sit and use time to study calculations, that would have been fine.

Out of the 100 things, I found these to be the most interesting;

• Why pylons consists of triangles
• Why it is easier to walk on a tightrope using a long pole with heavy buckets at the ends
• Why Barbados had to score an own goal against Grenada to move on in a tournament
• Some strategies for dividing something equally
• Why no one has ever travelled in time
• A new proof of Pythagoras’s theorem
• How Calculus once saved the life of a mathematician
• A lot of information about how to cut a diamond
• There are no uninteresting numbers
• Some different ways to score sports events that are more or less silly
• Why A4/A3/A2 and so on paper formats are SO much cleverer than the US letter format and so on

It’s been a good read, but without some interest in mathematics and physics, you won’t like it.

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eliasen

Hi all

My achilles tendon is still aching and my knees have begun to hurt as well… But I am still running regularly (3 times a week) and today I made it to 9.58km in 50 minutes. Definitely not as fast as I used to be, but it feels great to be running again.

I am only running on a thread mill in order to try to not be mean to the achilles tendon. It can get boring to run on a thread mill, but it is better than nothing. I have bought a music system so I can listen to music while I am running and I am using my Garmin Forerunner 305 to measure pulse while running.

I have also started using Endomondo – you can find my account at http://www.endomondo.com/profile/390235.

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eliasen

Hi all

So… finally… I joined a gym again. just went there this morning for the first time in 3 years or so.

I ran 2,5-3km with an average speed of 10,6km/h – I need to take it slow because I have some pain in one of my Achilles tendons which is bugging me.

Hopefully I will keep up training and get back into shape… or at least partly!

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eliasen