First of all, I’d like to thank all my chineese and russian fans for spamming me continuously for the past half year, it’s your support and dedication that keeps the internet working and motivates me to write, a sincere thank you is in order. Of course, I will be reinstating spam filters and automatic isp notifications after I’m done writing, but still.

Now let’s return to what I wanted to say. Recently, I had an idea about developing a website. Maybe it was the lack of activity, boredom or being an all around great guy ( and if you, the reader, don’t select the last option as the reason I will do stuff to your connection – I KNOW WHO YOU ARE ) but I said “Hey, let’s give something to the internet community”. This manifested itself as a plan for a simple website knowledge base. As the internet is crawling with payed tutorial websites, most of them requiring a lot of know-how just to be understood, I would write simple and clear information for the every-day user. But wait, there’s more, I also thought that, seeing as this is a free service I will add a donation button, just for the fun of it. ( I know, I know, not setting it with a hidden window and automatic completion so that everybody gives me a donation by default is bad, but hey, I thought that being nice would work for this one occasion)

So first things first, I tried to register my domain name. Seeing as any .org or .com domain that had anything to do with the topic were already taken, I lost 2 days just finding a decent name. Next up, registration…I found the very cheap godaddy.com and proceeded to create an account and pay with my credit card. Now, the first thing that happened after I payed for the website was to receive an e-mail notifying me that, via a random username check-up, I would have to confirm my identity by sending some photocopies.

I said, what the hell, it’s not my nationality, for sure, it’s just…random…and proceeded to upload my photoID. 2 days later the account is still frozen and I am still waiting for a reply from their support line. Now I realize that my face is not that of a model’s ( now I was just being modest ) but still, to freeze up an entire support system…now that takes skill.

Now this being said, my domain is registered, thankfully, my servers are supporting the ns so, for what it’s worth, it’s working decently so far.

I developed the website and wanted to add a paypal button. Easy, right? Well, first off, I created an account and confirmed my credit card ( loosing 1E in the process, but gaining it back as 12.5DKK later ). After going through an entire ordeal for confirming my ID here too ( again, what is with me and random checkups, i prolly should try to play the lottery with random numbers, if my luck holds out I won’t even have to finish working on the website, ey? ) I was notified that I have to create a business account for a working donation button ( and by working I mean – if people donate I can get my money in the real world, not just keep it as virtual ascii currency online ). Easier said than done. I went to upgrade my account, knowing full well that I was not a BUSINESS but an INDIVIDUAL that just wanted, in case this ever happened, to get his donation money out in to the real world; but rules and procedures are rules and procedures ( and tautological statements are, very well, tautological in essence ) SO I completed their form and selected that I am an individual and all that.

Everything seemed to be working in order, until today when i received

Hello $name,

We need your help resolving an issue with your PayPal account.

What's the problem?

Your PayPal account is registered as a charity or non profit. We would like
some more information from you to help us understand your organization.

Case ID Number: $CASENUMBER-86

How you can help

It's usually pretty easy to take care of things like this. Most of the
time, we just need a little more information about your account or latest
transactions.

Please log in to your account and go to the Resolution Center to find out
what you need to do. If we don't hear from you by 3/8/2011, we may limit
what you can do with your account until the issue is resolved.

Naturally, I logged in to my account to check out what could be the reason for the issue

Now, you would think that, hell, confirming my ID and my credit card would be enough, but now ( besides the ridiculous message over the issues ) I had to send proof of tax exempt, bank statement, payment information and check e-mail papers.

Ok, let’s say that I can ignore the first 4 issues, due to their stupidity, but meh, let’s check the e-mail to see what documents are left, maybe they want a full sized scan of my penis, both erect and idle, sperm count, hair color, length and thickness etc etc etc so i went back to my e-mail, only to discover that the documents I have to send are the check your account documents. Naturally I sent pay pal a friendly e-mail asking them for more information and demanding, as they did, an ultimatum for their reply

Good day,

I have received a number of e-mails from you and am wondering exactly what do you need me to send.
First of all, while registering for a business account i selected INDIVIDUAL, as a result, and following the steps and help menus on your website, it seems to me that I don't have to have a tax exempt for my business seeing as, and i think i mentioned this before, i am an individual. The only reason that I did modify my account to a business one is to be able to have a simple donate button, so please, let me know exactly what do you need, relevant to the correct situation.

Second of all, while trying to understand what exactly is required from me, I noticed something on my account's page ( where you kindly notified me about my current account issues )" EU regulations require that we collect and confirm your account information by 1/1/1970. If you don't do so in time, PayPal is required by law to limit access to your account. When PayPal limits an account, your funds may be held until we've confirmed your identification per the UserAgreement.". I'm sorry to tell you that the date has passed for about 41 years and 2 months, and considering that I probably wasn't even a project in my parents' life, i think it would be rather hard to blame me for not giving you my identification BEFORE 1970.
So, as a conclusion, please try to let me know what RELEVANT information you require. At this point, I was asked to upload the following documents " check your e-mail account ", checking the e-mail account I was notified that I have to check the case page from my paypal account, and after checking my paypal account I was asked to... see the pattern here? If this situation is not fixed as soon as possible i'm afraid I will have to withdraw the entire sum of 12.5DKK that I have in my account and move my (INDIVIDUAL) business elsewhere, perhaps install a donation jar with a tax exemptform outside my window.

With respect,

Now I hope these guys won’t close my account, I’d hate to explain the fact that they have a shit system and that, although I think I remember giving them my birth date  ( along with my scanned id card ), asking me to give them my information before 1st of january 1970 will (have been) rather dificult. Legaly speaking, I doubt that THEY were in business at that time so…is this some sort of time-shift paradox?

Shall keep you posted

/BOFH

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By settled in I mean me and Jordan rented a place somewhere here. Gulnare is a decent place to stay in for a few days before finding an apartment ( or if you are on holiday ) . The double rooms are 500KR(66E)/day, and although they are a little bit cramped, they make up for it with the free internet, shared (clean) kitchen, terrace and general friendly atmosphere. Anyway the other possibility was a cardboard box ( witch we will be using starting next week if we don’t find a place to stay )
I dunno, perhaps it would be better like this, nice skylight, water whenever it rains, a nice warm beach view, etc.

Ok so this is the first INFO post i’m making ( Jordan is writing about her life with the Danes, I’ll prolly link to her later for a more complex info stream )

I’m doing this in the hopes that any other poor sap that has trouble finding out info would benefit from these short listings

SO here goes :

1) Housing

Being a newcomer/student in Aarhus ( ASB ) I’ve signed up on the studenthousinginaarhus website. To be quite honest it’s not the best system i’ve seen so far and you need a lot of luck to get a house where you want ( not to mention WHEN you want it ) The website is http://www.ungdomsboligaarhus.dk/ ( use google language tools ) .

The system here ( not only for this website, but for all the housing associations  ) is like this : You make an account, find your dream-house, then enter a queue for 234983242 days. When u get down on the first 10 places you start getting offers ( in theory ) In practice, me and Jordan are on 3rd place for 2-3 months now and still no offer. I’ll be paying them a visit tomorrow and fill in this post with WHAT they did after seeing my face

Anyway, you get in the queue and nicely wait your turn. The problem here is that the influx of students is quite large and the number of graduates that chose to stay here after classes is even larger BUT the number of apartments is limited so… we’ll just see how it goes.

Other nice/interesting websites for housing are

http://www.aarhusbolig.dk/

http://boligfinder.dk/

http://boligbasen.dk/

http://bolig-ad.dk/indeks/links_lejebolig20050921.htm

http://www.aarhusbo.dk/hjemmeside/

http://www.boligportal.dk/

If you DO decide to come here and study you should use these websites a.s.a.p. The waiting lists are HUGE.

Price-wise, a nice two-room apartment ( 60-70 sqm ) is like 4000KR ( 550E ) per month and this includes water/heating/cable tv and internet.

EDIT : ALSO – you can visit them and talk live BUT be careful – their working hours are like mon-thursday 10:00- 14:00. FRIDAY OFF ( WTF )

2) Jobs

This is, again, a touchy subject.

Due to the influx of foreigners the job market for students is pretty much like this :

Women – cleaning

Men – Newspapers ( there sure are a lot of newspapers to deliver here, right ? )

So as I was telling Jordan, this will be a great career move for me – IT manager in a multinational company to paperboy in a danish town . WORTH IT.

The idea with getting a job is that you have to have some sort of recommendation from somebody that already works there. that way you will get hired for the low level jobs.

For the high level jobs, well, first of all you HAVE TO KNOW DANISH. ( will cover that later )

3) Prices

This depends a lot on where you want to go and what you want to buy. If you wanna get, say, drunk, then you are better of doing it home ( or drinking petrol )

For drinks…well asb/au have the Klubben where beer is a bit less expensive (2-4E) but if you wanna go out somewhere you will get rid of 60KR (8E ) / beer SO MAKE IT COUNT.

Food, on the other hand, is pretty ok priced. You have cheep supermarkets ( lidl / netto ), normal (fakta ) and expensive ones. Mostly everything is closed on sunday ( besides one or two places ) but you can do your shopping during the week.Every day has a new discount ( that is also available for cloths – you can walk down the commercial avenue each day and find different discounts on different products ) .
If you don’t mind going all hawk-eyed and ninja-ing a product from an helpless old lady that JUST HAD TO HAVE THE LAST ONE, then you should be ok.

4) Weather

Mixture between cold rain and nice warmth. The average so far was about 20degrees . You can see people everywhere (and mind you this is AUGUST ) having short sleeved shirts and a rain jacket tied to their bikes . So the thing here is always be prepared for when it rains. Comparing to Romania, for instance, this place is like an icebox ) ( 45degrees in bucharest, wtf ?)
Mostly you will end up dressing in full rubber clothing and be made a mockery of when getting to any public place BUT AT LEAST YOU WILL BE DRY. ( Jordan thinks she can find a bathroom and quickly change before anybody sees her….and I’ve got a car :> )

5) Public transportation

You can get around from everywhere to everywhere via the bus systems. It costs about 20KR for a trip OR you can get a ticket for one month on 350KR . People here don’t encourage cars..they use them but not that much. Instead they use bikes a lot. ( Every first Wednesday of the month the police is auctioning second-hand bikes http://www.1-auktion.dk/ ) The only bad thing about them is that they ARE IN DANISH so you could end up buying a broken down bike with 1000KR

Parking is free from 19 to 9 in the morning and taxed with 15KR/h otherwise. You can also find parking places that allow you to stay there for 1-2hours. The main thing about this is that YOU MUST HAVE a car clock. It’s all very trusting in here and people seldom take advantage of this.

6) CPR Number – The resident permit/cpr number and all the formalities take up to two weeks ( starting soon on it – will let you know )

I’ve also added an .xslx with the current OK housing ( from ungdombolig ) with a normal waiting list. Price ranges are 3000-5000KR, relatively centered – 2 person apartments

Will update them as I find out more info
UPDATE 2:
I went to 4 housing agencies today and it looks like there is NO 2 room apartment free in all of aarhus. Will continue my hunt tomorrow.

ALSO i went to the student housing in aarhus HQ and met a nice young lady that was so good as to NOT HELP ME AT ALL. When I told her that I’m on the queue since NOVEMBER she just replied that she doesn’t know when i’ll get a house and that my guess is as good as anybodies. GG.
I payed about 500KR for access on bolig basen and got nothing yet but…i’m still hoping

For in thine presence when they are all pale they look to thee

Nor sun, nor mountains, the furthest lights, nor deepest depths of worlds

Shine brighter than when though eyes gaze upon my mortal words

Thine fire-lips they scorch the deeps,the essence of the sky

thou song of life of love and strife no one could just come by

Whens tears of gold thine black-brown eyes would cry in lights of night

I’d give my essence and my being to stop and close thine fright

No words in rhyme, no acts of strength, no actions that would be

Should take away your bright white smile or make you stop and flee
I say these words from all my heart and though this is implied

I’d give my oceans and my stars for thine arm by my side

Funny how life throws you a bone then grabs your spinal cord, telling you that it’s your fault.

Ofcourse it’s my fault that I didn’t accept what happened but this is a lesson well learned, I just hope it’s not the last one to die.

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It was with him that i first saw a modem and a connection, the first signs of piracy and much more. It was then that I decided what I want to do when I grow up.
After a few years I got my first internet connection ( GOD BLESS XNET – 16k connection, 256 color, grayscale PRON ), the first suicidal thoughts at 14 hating winmodems and looking stupid at a shop asking for an external one.

After a couple of years I got my first IT <> job and went on to do more great things ( like this blog )
The point I’m trying to make here is an easy one, and although I could have skiped the foreplay via endless rants of my childhood, I chose not to; back to the subject at hand, the point is that you should never give up on what you want, it’s always worth it.

{E.o.R.}