New year, new me lol.

Goals of 2025

Financials

I need to work on my view on money. Ever since I started earning my own money, I’ve been keen on spending them. Part of my spending have gained me some really good experiences, such as getting a boat and a motorbike, but I do spend too much money on stuff that doesn’t matter. For 2025 to work out, I have to become better at managing my money, given that we’re getting married this year as well as moving to a house.

Moving to a House

Me and my brother are herriting our grandmother’s house. After the wedding, me and my SO will move in there. We have a lot of stuff to do before we can move in, and I’m sure it will be a lot of work.

Relationships

Maintaining and deepen my existing relationships will be an important part of 2025, since we are moving away from many of our friends.

Health

I’m getting married this year. There will be photos. I could benefit from losing a few kilos. Ending up on double digits would be nice.

Experiences

I have no specific goal for this topic, but I’m sure 2025 will offer lots of experiences. We have a wedding trip which I’m sure will be awesome, and I really want to do the Iron Butt: Ystad-Happaranda-Ystad. I also have a voucher for sky diving which I have to use this year.

Be On Time

I hate being early to things, but I have to get better at be in time to stuff. I’m never late to stuff that really matters, but I have to start be on time to the small things as well.

Grafana, Prometheus and Time Series Databases

I’ve been working with Grafana and Prometheus for a while now, but I’m still not comfortable with it. I want to get better at it and use it for some personal projects as well. One idea is to use it together with GarminDB to visualize my training data.

Events of 2024

2024 has been a rather eventful year. There has been both ups and downs, but over all mostly ups.

10 Days in Norrland

In March, me and my SO went to her relatives in Norrland for ten days. I worked remote most of the days, but we managed to do some skiing, ice fishing and rinding the snow mobiles.

Drivers License for Heavy Motorcycle

In April I started taking motorcycle lessons. Getting a motorcycle license in Sweden is comparably though compared to many other countries, and most people fail at least one driving test. However, miraculously, I succeeded!

I’m very happy that I finally decided to actually go ahead and get it.

10 Days in Sicily

We had an awesome vacation in Sicily. I’ve been working during the day for the last two “vacations” to Italy, but this year I decided to take some paid time off instead.

The weather prediction said rain and clouds for most of the days. It turned out to be false, but it really made you appreciate the good weather we had. I normally prefer to explore and experience stuff, but this time I got hooked on the second-to-last book in the Expanse series while at the beach. I should probably put together a post with my thoughts on Sicily. I posted some pictures of the trip here.

An Extended Weekend in Cinque Terre

Our company went on a conference trip to Italy. A week full of good meetings and even better food :)

Saved by the SSRS (Svenska Sjöräddningssällskapet)

So we said that 2024 would be the year we actually commit to sailing. In June we set out to have a week of sailing and the weather forecast looked really promising for the week we had planned for. We set out and got no farther than Barsebäck before the engine stalled.

We got pulled to the nearest harbor and were stuck there for three days, until we finally committed to be pulled back home. I fixed the issue (the pump on the heat exchanger had failed - it was also older than me). In hindsight we should have tested out the engine in Barsebäck and tried to get home on our own.

Anyway, this kind of ruined our plans. We only managed to go out sailing once more this summer, and while that time was amazing (a perfect amount of wind!), I think this summer made us realize that we don’t have the time and interest required to own and maintain a sailboat.

Iron Butt SS1000

In July, me and one of my closest friends gave Iron Butt SS1000 a try.

The Iron Butt Association (IBA) is a US-based organization dedicated to safe long-distance motorcycle riding, which claims membership of over 75,000 people. The IBA is a loose-knit organization with only one way to earn membership: ride one of the several rides the IBA certifies. The minimum is the Saddle Sore 1000 – 1,000 miles (1,600 km) in 24 hours or less.

For the last couple of years, my buddy has been on talking about how we should do an Iron Butt. I finally went ahead and took my license, and two months later we finished an SS1000.

We started in Malmo and rode to Karlskrona, Stockholm, Falun, Gavle, Orebro, Goteborg and back to Malmo. Due to heavy rain from Orebro and onwards, we finished at 23:45 hours - just 15 minutes to spare.

For 2025 we plan on riding Ystad - Happaranda - Ystad in 36 hours.

A Week in Spain

My brother and our SOs went on a road trip to Spain. His SO’s mother has an apartment that we were allowed to use for free. I worked remote half the time, which I’m quite pleased with since the temperature peaked at 32 degrees celcius those days.

We underestimated the road trip part though. We were planning on using their car, a BMW 118i, which is a tiny hatchback. However, just a couple of days before the trip they went and bought a new-ish VW T-Cross. It took a bit over 30 hours to reach Spain, and we drove without stopping for any extended period.

On the way back we planned a bit to avoid the worst traffic jams in France. The way home went much smoother, though I tried to squeeze in some work in the car…

Lost Grandma

My grandmother passed away rather unexpectedly. She was old and had a full life, but her passing still came as a surprise.

I will miss her, and I’m incredibly happy that we managed to get her to move from Stockholm to Hven for her last years, so we could see her more often and for my mother to see her on a daily basis.

Built My Own Keyboard

I ordered a Sweep kit from 42keebs. It’s a DIY kit where you pick out all parts by yourself and solder all the components to the PCB yourself. I’m currently typing on the new keyboard, but it’s been a bit of a struggle to migrate from ZSA’s magnificent Oryx configuration tool to a plain old C-file for ZMK.

ZMK seems extremely powerful though. It will be a blast exploring its functionality.

“Fully” Migrated to Signal

Our family chats and almost every one of my close friends are available on Signal today.

When I finally deleted my Facebook account last year, I also lost access to my Messenger account. It’s a good thing, since I didn’t want to have that app installed anyway and in turn people left without a response from me.

The thing is, in Sweden, most people assume you have a Facebook/Messenger account, so it’s the standard way of creating group chats. Alas, I lost access to the chat I had with family and many of my friends.

One by one (or honestly more like snowballing) people joined Signal this year, and I’m happy for that.

Achievements

Cykelvasan, cykelvasan & Vätternrundan

This year I finished both Cykelvasan and Vätternrundan. Both were done in company of good friends, which makes it so much more enjoyable.

The gym I (occasionally) go to had an event during the ski vasa - the “original vasalopp” - where they hosted a spinning class for the duration of the Vasaloppet. The class finished when the first skier reached Mora, which typically takes about 4-5 hours.

Run Streak

After a whole lot of indulgence in Spain, we decided to start a run streak when we got back to Sweden. Both me and my SO managed to finish the set out goal of 30 days, and I continued for 138 days. It ended due to a cold with fever, unfortunately.

The Motorcycle License

I’m proud that I managed to get my license in little under 6 weeks.

Review of Goals for 2024

I failed a few of the goals I set out for 2024, and succeeded with a few too. 2024 has by no means been a bad year, it’s just been a bit different than I expected.

Do a Three Day Sailing Trip.

Technically we went on a three day trip, but most of the trip consisted of waiting and doing repairs in harbor.

Read one of Alistar Reinolds works.

I read Pushing Ice and enjoyed every last bit of it.

Complete Vätternrundan in Less Than 12 Hours.

My race bike broke then week before the race, so I had to do the race on my touring/gravel bike. I finished in about 14 hours. It was painful this year…

Complete Cykelvasan.

I finished Cykelvasan! It was an incredibly fun race to participate in. The only downside is the travel to and from the race, otherwise I think this would become a recurring race for me.

Delve Into AWS.

I didn’t.

Do a Checkup on My Asthma.

Haven’t done this yet. I managed to keep running even during the colder months without medicine, but I should do a checkup anyway.

Be Able to Keep a Simple Dialogue in Italian.

I gave Duolingo a year. Sure, I could have done more than the daily stuff needed to keep The Streak going, but when we went to Sicily this year and I realized Ican’t so much as reliably order something, I kind of gave up on Duolingo.

For learning a new language, I think you’ll need actual lessons with a tutor or someone you could speak to.

Don’t Buy Brand New Non-functional Clothes.

With then exception of one or two “merch” items and some functional clothes, I haven’t bought any new clothes during 2024. I even found a few running shirts second hand.