Roskilde, Denmark

The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde

I’ve been working from Denmark for two weeks now and wanted to give you an update. So far everything is going very well. I’ve been able to get into all the sites that I’ve needed to for my job and to stay in touch with my team. The only snag thus far has been that TunnelBear was down for a few hours one day. This did cause me a couple of issues. That’s bad enough but even the web page where you report such problems was down. That’s downright concerning. So, the jury is still out on that one. Stay tuned.

Due to some personal matters and the fact that I was on call last week and needed to stay close to home base, I haven’t had much of a chance to travel very far afield. I am no longer on call so I was able to go into Roskilde today and do some of the typical tourist stuff including visiting the Viking Ship Museum. It was certainly interesting. I always enjoy learning new things and supporting educational projects such as this.

I currently have an iPhone from Sprint in the United States. I can tell you that in the few places that I’ve been so far the service has been very good. So there’s another test that is going well. I’ll be sure to try it out in each town that I travel to for the next couple of weeks to see how the coverage is. I’ll be sure to let you know.

USB Monitor for Extra Real Estate

I did cut down on my collection of gear for this trip. For example, I only brought one lens for my DSLR camera. It is sort of a trial run for a world tour. I wanted to only bring what I could fit in my carry-on and laptop bags. Mostly I skimped on clothing to tell the truth. One thing concerned me though. I generally have several large monitors on my desk to handle all the windows that I need open at once. Working with just the display on my laptop sounded pretty sketchy.

Just before leaving on my trip I came across a YouTube video from Warrior Trading where he showed how he connected one of these panels to his laptop. I ordered one immediately and got it just before leaving the country. It’s a 15.6-inch display running 1920 by 1080 resolution and connects to any laptop using a supplied USB cable. It only weighs 800 grams and slips right into my laptop bag between my two computers. I do travel with two laptops as I never do any personal stuff on my work computer. Also, my personal machine can act as a backup if my work computer fails thousands of miles from the office.

ASUS USB monitor

So far, this thing has performed flawlessly. It doubles my screen space and allows me to be much more productive. My wife and her sister have each already bought one as well. Here’s the Amazon link (not an affiliate link) in case you’re interested.

ASUS MB169B+ 15.6″ Full HD 1920×1080 IPS USB Portable Monitor

Exploring Outside of Holbæk, Denmark

Ladegårdsalleen – My favorite walking path

I was hoping to make it into Holbæk for a while today but it rained all morning and I do still have to work. I was able to get out for a little while and walk along one of my favorite paths here. It was very quiet and relaxing as I had the whole thing pretty much to myself.

Kunsthøjskolen

The path takes me past quite a few beautiful buildings. From what I can tell this is a school focusing on the arts. Here’s what their site says:

Kunsthøjskolen is a state-recognized and state-supported Danish folk high school. The high school is housed in the old Holbæk Slots Ladegaard, whose history can be traced back to 1200, where there has been a settlement on the spot.

I’ll have to ask my hosts what exactly this is all about and how their schools work. Sure looks nice though.

Barn Across from Kunsthøjskolen

Park bench in need of rescue

I am planning on a trip into Copenhagen tomorrow. That should be awesome. I will post plenty of pictures. I will also try to get to Republikken which is a local co-working spot. I’ll be sure to let you all know what I find out about it.

For now, it’s 3 PM here but it’s time to start work in Chicago.

Tools of the Trade

TunnelBear Screen Capture

Since I’ve been working remotely from Denmark there are a few tools that I have found to be indispensable. First let me explain to you just what it is that I do. I work for a company that produces medical devices. These devices connect to a hospital’s network to communicate with application and database servers. I provide technical support for the devices, application and servers. To provide this support, I need to be able to access the hospital’s network.

As soon as I arrived in Denmark I began testing my connections. I found that several sites simply would not allow me access from here. The first that I thought of was a VPN tunnel to the USA. The first VPN application that I thought of was TunnelBear. I know that some people switched from TunnelBear when it was acquired by McAfee. All that I knew was that it had worked in the past, so it was worth a shot. There is a free trial version that allows 500 MB a month of data transfer.

It took less than 5 minutes to download and install the free trial version. I was able to log into all the sites that had blocked me the prior day. I counted that as a win and paid for a subscription immediately. More than worth it to keep my job and keep working from anywhere I want to in the world.

As a bonus I can now VPN to places such as Japan and see all the internet content that usually tells me ‘not available in your region’. Another win.

Denmark – Getting All Set Up

My Little Work Space in Denmark

I am now working in Denmark. I’m in a fairly small town named Holbaek. I’m all set up with my own little work space in a friend’s apartment. It’s a bit tight but the price is right and the views are good. Now I’m getting exciting about exploring the area and taking the train into Copenhagen. It’s about one hour away and it’s one of my favorite cities in the world. Due to the time difference between here and Chicago I have all morning to wander about.

There have been some challenges getting everything up and running. I’ll be writing about those issues and how I was able to resolve them soon. Still a couple of items to tackle. Meanwhile, remember that time difference? it’s quitting time at the office but 1 AM here. So time to relax with a cold Carlsberg. I’ll get some pictures up soon to document my travels.

Danish Krone

Danish Krone – front

I don’t always trust my credit cards to work in a new country immediately even with a travel notice on them. It’s good to have some local currency for snacks, taxis and such anyways. I have also found that none of my cards work in some places such as the kiosks that sell the train tickets in Denmark. I always get an ‘invalid currency’ message on those damn things.

I recently picked up some Danish money to use while I get up and running.  I couldn’t help but wonder why every bill had a bridge on one side and some ancient artifact on the other. Here’s what the ever informative Wikipedia had to say on the matter.

The process of designing the ‘Bridge’ banknotes was initiated in 2006 by the Danish National Bank. The theme of the new banknotes is Danish bridges and the surrounding landscapes, or details from these landscapes. Danish artist Karin Birgitte Lund has chosen to interpret this theme in two ways: bridges as links between various parts of Denmark and as links between the past and the present. The present is represented by the bridges, the past by five distinctive prehistoric objects found near the bridges. 

Well I guess that explains it. At least I believe it to be more colorful and attractive than our US dollar. Now, what about the holes in some of the coins?

Danish Krone – back

 

 

San Diego

Working from my hotel room in San Diego

I was sent to San Diego for some training this week. So I get to train during the day and try to catch up on all of the work that I missed at night. The usual. At least I’m out on the road and have a different view out of my window. Even though in this case it’s a busy highway. Can’t always have the ocean or mountains I guess.