We head over to get a friend of Tyler and then go to this beach on the west side. It’s just awesome over there. Sun, sea and sand baby!

Here we got a few more pictures. On up left is my first drink. I think it was called Rum Runner. So yea, it had rum and some other stuff and some juice. Really good to be honest. So I had two of those until we left and went to a place called Chili’s (I think that’s how it was written). Now that place was amazing! Why? Well imagine a shopping crazy female at a shopping mall… Now imagine a Finnish guy in a place where you can get 2 beers for the price of 1. Yea, I was that excited. So I had 3 sets of those (I think it was Samuel Adams beer) before we head out. I think we came over to Tyler’s place, but I can’t be sure to be honest. I was getting drunk at that time and it was like 4pm. I guess it was a payback time for Tyler because apparently we got him drunk the night he got to Finland as an exchange student. Glad I was kind of expecting this so no prob! Then we stopped by in places that I can’t remember the names of. I was completely wasted. Got back home and woke up on Tuesday morning around 10am with a hangover like never before.

So what has stuck into my mind so far from this place…
- everyone seem to be in love with their phones and Facebook. It’s a “beep” here and there when they get messages from friends.
- SUN!
- mornings are a bit chilly, but if you step out from the shadow to the sun, it’s warm. Kinda natural, but yea… It’s warmer outside.
- Bobby’s awesome but friggin’ insane!
- wine, beer, video games, friends… awesome!
- Tyler’s apartment, awesome!
- Oliver, damn sweet dog. I will teach him Finnish and make him forget English.
- the streets are so damn simple. In Finland you need to know where something is. Here it’s for example 5th avenue, 24th street… It’s like finding a spot from a grid with numbers. Go sideways to 24th street and to 5th avenue up or down.
- SUN! NO SNOW! \o/
- cars are so shiny over here
- very nice people all around

Once I’m more used to this place, I will probably have the guts to go out by myself, but so far I don’t mind just staying in and catching up with stuff online.

More updates to come so stay tuned!

But the flight got underway and we arrived to Helsinki at 1pm, I rushed to terminal 2 on the other side and got there just in time like 15 minutes before boarding. So I was finally about to leave for New York and I had a close to 9 hour flight ahead of me. My preliminary thoughts were that I might get bored on the flight, but it actually went quite nicely with the personal entertainment system onboard. I watched 6 episodes of old Family Guy episodes, a couple of movies and just hung out. So time really flew by and although it was frustrating to watch the damn map on the big screen in front with the plane location changing and information about time zones and all updating all the time, it was going pretty good. When I got to my seat, there were these 3 teens who kept going on about “who’s hot and who’s not” etc (you know the usual teen talk with the silly voice) next to me. Glad they slept most of the time and were concentrated on the movies and all so no harm done really. I was just a bit annoyed after the flight being cancelled, another flight delayed etc… Then these teenies yapping. Gosh the ear plugs were really necessary.

So, we got to NYC a bit late, around 4:30pm but it was ok. It wasn’t too warm, but there wasn’t much snow either so I felt a lot better already. The flight attendant was damn hot by the way. She sat next to me during landing and take off. Damn… So anyway, NYC was huge. I mean like a guy from Tornio, a city of 23k people or so, NYC is huge! So I got out of the plane and went to passport control with all the other people and the queue was like 50 meters long so I thought that it was going to take ages. But most of the desks were open so there was a lady telling us which one to go to and there was only one in line before me when I got there. Then I was called over, went there, handed my passport and other documents needed for getting to US, she asked a couple of questions and that’s it. Took only like 2 minutes so the horror stories about having to stay for even hours didn’t happen to me. I went to get my baggage and walked out from the airport. So from getting out of the plane to outside the airport it took like maybe 10-15 minutes. Most of the time I just waited for the baggage.

Outside there were a lot of taxis taking people to places so I went to the end of the queue, waited a couple of minutes and a lady asked me to get in the taxi, asked where I wanted to go and handed me a paper. Not sure what it was really, but had the taxi information and all. I told the taxi that I needed to get to Clarion hotel at the La Guardia airport, but he didn’t know where it was so we just took off, he called someone and apparently got the address because we got there eventually. Took around 30 minutes so that’s not too bad since it was afternoon and the rush hour could have been a lot worse. On the way to the hotel I just watched the views and followed the small screen in front of the backseat that had a map and video advertisements. Once I got to the hotel I just checked in, went to my room and that’s it. Now it was around midnight for me so due to slight jetlag I felt a bit tired already after all the traveling. So I went to front desk and asked if there was something to eat and the guy gave me this pizza place’s menu. I called there from the phone at the desk and the guy brought my pizza to my room. I think I got ripped off there though because it cost like 20 dollars and the menu said around 10 dollars. But I was too tired to even care so I just ate the damn pizza, watched some TV and chilled out.

After I ate some I was thinking of maybe heading over to some pub nearby just for experience, but it was close to 7pm and I really felt tired already so instead I just went to bed, watched some TV and fell asleep around 8:30pm. Got up at 4:45am, took a shower and used the complimentary airport shuttle to get to the airport. I was there well in time and just hanged around near the gate before it took off at 7:40am.

The plane to Tampa was c0ol. The flight attendants were very nice and gave us soda and snacks, as usual. Most of the time I just read a book and listened to music on my iPod, so the flight was quick and I had no problem there to use my time. The closer to south we got, the more clear skies I saw. In Tampa I got off, got my baggage again and headed over to Burger King to grab something to eat. The left-overs from NYC pizza were not that good as they were cold and just not eatable. So I went to BK and got myself a Whopper meal, connected my phone to airport wireless and checked my Facebook stuff.

Then I went outside and oh my gosh! Sun and green grass! I fell in love immediately. I took a picture and posted it to my Facebook status. Then I had to wait for Tyler to show up, but I knew he was going to come later as he had an appointment scheduled just when I landed. But no problem, I was in a new country, new city, there was sun and warm. So I just hung around for a while, then this driver… Limo driver mostly, stopped next to me and got out the car. “Oh it’s so cold here.”… I almost broke down laughing, but instead I just said “nope”. So we got to talking about me being from Finland and all. He was a nice guy so we chatted a bit before his clients came out to the car. Just right that moment Tyler also arrived so we left to St. Pete.

It’s like a 30-40 mins drive from the airport to Tyler’s place, but man… I just can’t emphasize enough how much I love the sun over here! St. Pete is like a Guinness record holder for most sunny days in a row or something. So I knew that it was going to be sunny, a lot! I looked around while Tyler was driving, we caught up with the latest stuff and all that.

Now, this is where the trip really begins. More to follow in a bit. This post has grown out of bounds in size so it’s better to split it :D

Oh and no, it’s not all there! Got myself tickets to Florida in January for 5 full weeks. Finally a getaway from this cold hellhole and -20 degrees winter! And snow, don’t even get me started. It’s finally time to say arrideverci to all the snow for 5 weeks and welcome a city of 360 sunny days in a year, St Petersburg, FL!

Now there’s only one thing to do for now… BEER, PLEASE! :P

Will start sorting out the graduation party and travelling issues next week. Now I can’t be much bothered to give a damn about any worries :D

There’s been a sequel before this one, which was quite ok with Kal Penn in the lead and it wasn’t really about Van Wilder as much as the idea behind the whole movie. Get to school, party hard, see titties and have fun… That’s pretty much the plot. But the original had that something new and old at the same time after movies like American Pie and so on. Check it out!

So this latest one, Van Wilder: Freshman Year… First impression: seems like just the same as the first one. First conclusion: is like the first one. Second impression: different actors and actresses. Conclusion: indeed. 3rd: rubbish. Conclusion: spot on!
It’s basically a copy of the first one but happens in college and the actors are shit, especially the lead actor. Ryan Reynolds was just awesome in the first one and now this… wtf! Fucked up a good franchise there! Makes you laugh a couple of times, but naah…

Guy Ritchie is known for movies with action filled comedy such as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels which is a great piece indeed. This one is quite the same basically, but the plot is of course different. With a couple of known actors and actresses, this actually maintained the good feeling I got from watching it and made me laugh a few times pretty loud :D

Can’t say too much so I just reckon you check it out :D

Password Safe [direct download]

This is an extremely handy tool if you have plenty of logins and passwords to various sites and services. Like myself, I’ve currently over 70 logins and passwords to maintain from library card to forum and website logins. So there’s a lot to remember and I can’t use the same password or login with each one of them so using this I can easily store the logins and passwords. And if you’ve problems coming up with a hard-to-guess password, use the built-in password generator and you’re safe.
The program install on your computer, is light-weight and hardly noticeable. And when you need something, you open the program and it opens instantly. Now this could be a security risk, but the passwords are actually saved behind a password as well. So here you need a password that will get you there. I have a simple and easy to remember one as I’ve the passwords on my USB-stick and I use them from it. So it’s pretty safe to say that no one can get them :)

Pros:
+ simple
+ extremely light
+ safe

Cons:
- adding the first logins and passes

MediaMonkey [download page]

Well I got my iPod Shuffle like 3 years ago and I love it. It’s light, it’s simple and it plays music + it has space for so much music that it’d take a whole day to listen through. But with iPod’s comes a huge problem, iTunes. These two are connected since Apple uses its own software to import music to your player and iTunes is known to be really heavy to use and it takes shitloads of time to move the songs to player and to synchronize it.
So I started thinking that there has to be a better way and as it turns out, there is. MediaMonkey is a nice and versatile tool for all your music needs and especially I love it for the iPod support. You might have to turn on the data use on from iTunes in order to use it properly, but once it’s ok, you just open MediaMonkey and move the songs. Takes about 2-5 seconds to move one song and the program itself is really light.

Pros:
+ light
+ no more iTunes
+ versatile

Cons:
- might be a bit hard to use for beginners at first

So there’s a workaround for this and it’s pretty simple actually:
1. Head over to the start menu, find Windows Live Messenger
2. Right-click on the main application shortcut and select Properties
3. Pick the compatibility tab
4. Tick the first box available and pick Windows Vista

This will make the program work as it was in MS Vista. Now you get your beloved MSN icon to system tray and MSN works “normally” in the “superbar”.