Parking @ OSL -- fraudulent practices?

So you want to travel via OSL, the Oslo airport called Gardermoen. Well beware! You may stumble into the fraudulent practices of the parking company there.

Last week I was traveling again, but I wanted to reach a meeting shortly after my return on Thursday. So I took my car and I planned to park within walking distance of the airport. But early in the morning of Monday 7, January the only parking lots that were open was one far away with a bus connection and the expensive parking house. When I checked the web during the weekend there was no mention of this. So what to do? The bus would jeopardise my chances of reaching the meeting. So I had to use the parking house, even though I could see that many of the other lots were almost empty.

If information about this had been available in advance I would have planned differently, but the willingness to help travelers this way is not a priority when you can rip them off instead. I ended up paying more than 150% more than the expected price.

In my mind this way of ensuring income is very bad. They could have made an effort to help customers avoid this with information on their web page.

So if you really want to ride a bus when you travel via OSL check out Parking @ Gardermoen. The one to suspect of bad information is Euro Park. On the other hand, there is an excellent train service as well as long distance buses.

Will Xoom Defy Nexus?

See my Android devices - a Motorola Xoom, a Google/Asus Nexus 7 and a Motorola Defy (phone). The phone is crappy, it hangs from time to time, but the small footprint is too convenient to replace. But I am looking!

Last week the Google Nexus 7 arrived here in Norway, and I ran out to get one. So now the question is; will I prefer the old Xoom or the new Nexus?

So far I am very pleased with the smaller footprint and it is significantly faster.

One of the applications areas I will be looking at is as an alternative to the graphing calculators allowed in Norwegian schools. With decent calculator apps I see a tablet as a much better investment than a regular calculator which has few other uses.

I have six calculator alternatives installed already, including a Gnu Octave based ecosystem. This one has a user interface that runs in a unix terminal, but I doubt if my kids have that background. Then there is the Mathlab alternative. I may end up upgrading to the payed version for off-line availability.

And writing this post on the Nexus worked very well!