Welcome to this boring walkthrough of the highlights of my life. This is how I see my self, and events told here, along with any people mentioned, may be misremembered or flat out lied about.

I was born to this world in Norway. Seeing as the chance of being one of those born in Norway the past 100+ years (and is still living) is less than 0,0007%, I consider myself rather lucky. We’re filthy rich, and boy do we ever like to brag about it. “Typisk norsk å være god” – It’s typical norwegian to be good as our former prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland once said.

Aside from the fact that I was born spoiled with norwegian wealth (truly, we are the 1 percent), I was born in the city of Mo i Rana in the second day in the month of june in the very year of 1979. A product of the 70s, as you might say.

Mo i Rana is a city situated just south of the arctic circle, and has a population of about 25000 people. Within an hours drive from the city there are huge glaciers, big natural caves, the coast and its beautiful mountains and islands, and a ton of nature to ski and trek through if so be. There’s also Sweden.

Mo i Rana started out as a small trading centre for local communities, but due to the discovery of iron ores there were mining companies established and later on also iron works and steel mills. Mo i Rana grew quickly over a short period of time, going from a couple of thousand inhabitants after world war 2 to 25000 within 20 years time.  The state owned iron works company was closed at the end of the 80’s. To help the city onwards, a new industrial area was created at the old steel mill plant, with several separate business (among them smaller melting plants such as fesil where many of my family members worked, including two of my uncles, my father and my self during summer vacations). Also several state-institutions such as the NRK License-bureau, the National Library and the National Collection Agency. The city itself is magnificently ugly. And there was also very little to do there when I was growing up. If this description has peaked your interested, go read more about it in this article: Mo i Rana@Wikipedia

Gizmo

My first few years went along without much trouble (except for that one time when I caught a silly little disease that could’ve killed me (meningitis), and the doctors ignoring it thinking me being black and blue came from being abused at home). In fact, most of my childhood was appallingly boring, when I come to think of it. Aside from the occasional venture into sports (mainly football (or soccer, for you american weirdoes), but also judo), I didn’t do much with my life. I was the epitome of geekdom, prefering books over normal kids stuff. I read so many books when I was little. And not just kid-books. You could find me reading tomes of scientific literature, mythological literature, being naturally curious. No wonder I’m so screwed up today.

Mina Ameli

I attended a musical school for a couple of years playing the piano (actually, started out in the school band playing cornet (a sort of mini-trumpet)). I also became self-taught on the guitar, although patience for pet projects have tended to cause my interest to fizzle out before I finished, never really becoming good at any of those instruments.

I was early on hooked by computers and video games, although I wouldn’t be able to get my very own until the age of 14. My first exposure to computers was through friends who owned commodore 64s, nintendos, segas, amiga 500 and such computers. My father brought home HIS first computer back in 90, a Macintosh SE/30. What a revolution it was for me. My first computer then also became a Macintosh, a Performa 450 – a pizza box-shaped computer, running the 68030 at 25mHz with an amazing 4 megabytes of RAM (which i later expanded to 12 megabytes), 120 megabytes harddrive and a 13 inch 640×480 color screen! And I’ve never looked back, never bought anything else than Macs.

After doing 12 years of education, I was enrolled into the mandatory military of Norway. Here I was for 9 months, at a fort up the coast, looking for planes on a mostly non-functional radar. The Coastal Artillery was an okay place to be, thankfully I was enrolled to a place close enough to home so I could go home almost every weekend.

Jonatan Elias

Thereafter, I moved to Trondheim, where I lived from 1999 till 2006. There I spent my time studying for a masters degree in IT (eventually, after a trial and error period at some computer engineering studies, and a year of not being accepted into the masters program). I wrote a masters thesis for a full years worth of credits. It was about Audio Retrieval Systems, with such features as content based search, and relationship based recommendations. It was very interesting to work with, and I learned a lot.

Currently, I’m living in Mjøndalen, which we recently moved to after living in Drammen for 4 years (which in turn followed a short stint in Larvik). I’m working as a data warehouse developer, and it’s a great place to work. We’ve got great opportunities to develop ourselves, and have many different tasks we can work with within the IT field, so I will always have something new to learn and do. When I first started out after university I worked for Accenture for 4 years, then Steria for 2 years. In 2013, further changes will happen as I will go to a more specialized Business Intelligence consultancy company.

In Trondheim, I’ve also met my girlfriend. Well, strictly speaking we met on the internet, but it was in Trondheim we met face to face for the first time. We’ve now been together since february 2000. We’ve lived together for a couple of years, and a couple of summers ago we got us a little dog, a chihuahua, whom we’ve named Gizmo (yes, after the little creature from Gremlins).We also have a girl named Mina Ameli, and a boy named Jonatan Elias.

I’m an avid collector of music and movies, and have an extensive library of DVDs with movies. My music collection is for the time being based on mp3s (shame on me). I’m obsessive compulsive when it comes to collecting: If I like a director, I want to have every movie he has directed. If I like an actor, I need every movie he has had a major part in. The same goes for music. I also collect some comics and books (mainly stuff like Pondus and Terry Pratchett).

My interest in music has led me to discover a lot of different genres. My favorite genre is progressive rock, however, which has led me to discover Dream Theater. Dream Theater has become my favorite band over the years, and since 2002 I’ve been a part of the team that runs the norwegian fan club. I’ve created several fanzines, and also been supervisor for the first fan club DVD project that was recently printed in 5000 copies. It’s incredibly rewarding to be able to give people who I have something in common with (the band we love) something that I’ve created, and have them enjoy it.

Well, that’s basically me.