ID Check
Today will be a good day. Happy Mio Monday everyone.
4/4 2022
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So I had a big day of adventuring today.
I had to go downtown and do bureaucrazy stuff.
Down at BorgerService. CitizenService. It’s this big place, or places around the country really, where you can go and do stuff with the government and get help and stuff.
I’ve never been there before. My dad was kind enough to come with and show me around. He’s doing ok after his fall. Not back to 100% but he seemed ok. Other than the big black eye. I was a little worried the government people would think I was abusing him or something. Haha. No. I’m really glad he could come with. I don’t know how i would have found my way without him.
So why did I have to go? Well in Denmark we have this thing called NemID. EasyID. It’s basically your official electronic ID, you use it to interface with your bank and the government and various places.
But now the system is changing from NemID to MitID. MyID. For most people this is done quickly and easily with your smartphone and maybe a passport. But for us second class citizens who don’t have smartphones.. well we gotta show up at Borgerservice to get it done.
You have to get your identity verified. And unfortunately it’s not enough to lick all the pictures with a boat or a motorcycle. Nope. You have to show up and have photo ID. I don’t have any official photo ID. So then you have to have two forms of non-photo oficial IDs. I think I mentioned recently that I needed my birth certificate. Well that was for this thing. My social security card and my birth certificate.
And tTHEN you have to answer three questions from the old man at the bridge, no wait that’s a Monty Python movie. You have to answer three questions from the computer using information from your official registry information. It asked me the name of my mother, if I had any children and if I were married.
Now, when I told the computer that I was married to Kristen Bell it said I was a big fat liar. So I thought that was pretty rude. I think there must be a glitch in the matrix because it claimed I was unmarried. Hmm. I’ll hae to ask Kristen to check if all the paperwork was filed properly.
Anyway. Once I had sufficiently proven my identity to the bureaucrat she sent us on to talk to one of the “young people”. I guess there are bureaucrats to deal with bureaucracy and then there are tech people to deal with the tech.
We went on to talk to a very nice young lady, and she was great. Super sweet and patient and helpful. I’m not gonna lie, I had been dreading this whole thing. My anxiety levels have been really high the last few days. It hasn’t been the best of times really, with my parents falling and that bad news from a facebook friend and then this thing looming over my head. My mental state hasn’t been the best.
But it went okay. It was tricky at parts, but the lady was so good. I had to login a few times on my NemID on her tablet and then we setup the new Id with username and password. Even with fairly big text on a tablet I couldn’t really read it. Thankfully I had the foresight to bring along my favorite magnifying glass. So picture me there in the chair leaning in over the tablet with a magnifying glass in hand slowly pressing every letter of the the usernames and passwords one by one. I’m glad she was so patient with me.
I’m amazed when I see in a movie or tv young people on teir smart phones or tablets typing the touchscreen keyboard in a blur. It’s like magic.
Anyway. We got it all set up after a while. And while it wasn’t fun process, the upside is that the new system is a lot more accessible. The old NemID, for people without a smartphone, you had to use a literal paper card with codes. Like 500 codes in tiny text. A four number code followed by a six number code. When you log in somewhere you put in your user/pass and then it gives you a four digit code and you have to find that on the paper card and find the six digit code that matches. Even using my magnifying glass that can be really tough (the tech lady did it for me during this process thankfully). The new system no longer has a paper card. For people without smartphones you get a little codereader where the code shows up on screen. And I got the big fancy deluxe version, about the size of a calculator. it reads the numbers out loud. So instead of searching throught hundres of tiny numbers on a card I know press a button and leisurely type in the numbers that the machine reads out for me. Much, much easier. Assuming it works like it should, it’s a lot nicer. And I just tested it and it did work. So, it seems like it was worth the hassle. I’m just glad it’s done now and I don’t have to worry about it anymore.
Next up is dad! He doesn’t have a smartphone either so he has to go through hte same process. When we got out of there today he said “maybe you’ll have to come with ME and help ME when it’s my turn”. Haha. He’s not a tech savy guy (which is why I occasionally have to do tech support on the phone with him) and I think he was a little bewildered by the whole process that he just watched me go through. But I’m sure they’ll teach him how to do it too. It’s not hard when you know how. It’s basically the same process as before, you just have a new user/pass and you get the code from the code device instead of the paper card.
So anyway yeah. Big shut out to my dad for helping me get there and find my way. And big shoutout to the helpful people at the Borgerservice.
I wish I could tell you the password I chose, because it made my dad laugh and we had a little chuckle about it afterwards. But of course I can’t. Unless you’re a Nigerian prince willing to deposit millions of dollars into my account, in which case hit me up yo.
Sorry if you read all that, I tried to make it entertaining along with the dire bureaucraziness. I feel like a weight is lifted off my shoulders now that it’s done.
One of the tricky parts about it is that there’s a time limit. Every citizen has to do the change and your bank notifies you when it’s your turn. And you have 30 days to get it done or you will no longer be able to access your onling banking account. Now the problem that I have read about on the Danish subreddit is that it can be very hard to get an appointment at Borgerservice. They are swamped what with the pandemic and Ukranian refugees and so many people needing help with the IDs. There are some parts of the country where you literally can’t get an appointment. I have read that you can all your bank and get an extension on the deadline if that happens though. I had to wait 3 weeks for my appointment, which was one of the things I was stressing about. That left me one week until the deadline and I’m just a fatalistic person, I was already envisioning all the ways it could go wrong, some mistake I’d make or some tech failing or whatever. And then I’d only have a week to deal with it.
But. It seems like it worked out. All is well that ends well.
Andthat’s the well end of this long entry. I expect to be receiving my grammy for best spoken word not spoken any time, thank you.
4/4 2022
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Here’s a little video of little Lily getting up in the camera business.
4/4 2022
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Today will be a good day. HappY Yogi daY everyone.
5/4 2022
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Hope you got your tickets to Milo at the opera.
5/4 2022
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Today will be a good day. Happy Hump Day everyone.
6/4 2022
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You’ve goata be kidding me
6/4 2022
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Good goat times today. And if you saw the picture I posted, yes good snow times today.
Oh my. We had, apparently, the driest month of March in recorded history. And now a week into April we got snow. Climate change smimate snange.
It was a wet kind of snow. I don’t think it will last very long. In fact the weather forecast for next week shows considerably higher temperatures. But hey, today was a snow day.
Of course the goats were not too happy about this turn of events. Cold and wet, booh.
Sassy came running to the fence with her head hanging low, like she could avoid the downfall. Cute but unsuccesful.
So yeah just a lot of hanging out in the shelter and the house. And later when it stopped snowing we got out in the pen for some fun in the snow. Pretty sure they wouldn’t have followed me if it wasn’t for the bag full of treats in my pocket.
Now, let’s get back to spring please.
6/4 2022
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It’s beginning to look a lot like boring winter photos again.
6/4 2022
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And a happy birthday to my father. He is still on the mend after his fall. Sounds like he’s doing fairly okay, just tired and sore and such. His doctor has given him some referrals to some rehab / physical therapy, so hopefully that will help even more. One day a day.
6/4 2022
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Snow below the Sky.
6/4 2022
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Today will be a good day. Here’s Bob from 2012.
7/4 2022
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Watch out for the yellow snow.
7/4 2022
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Today will be a good day. Here’s Magnethe from 2006.
8/4 2022
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Happy Soup Day!
My parents were good enough to cook me up a pot of soup. I’m not quite feeling up to going to family dinner, so dad came over with all the soup for me. Yes, I am a spoiled boy. Last soup of the season. i will enjoy it for the next few days.
8/4 2022
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I wanted to extend my thanks to you all, once again. Thank you for the love and support and for just being there.
It hasn’t been the best of times lately. With my parents’s problems and that beaurocracy stuff giving me anxiety. And as most of you probably now by now Tanya Cliguh lost her sweet goat Azende, which brought back a lot of memories of Palle, and others, from the past. And there’s other stuff on facebeook that’s been tough. And then there’s the whole real world going from pandemic to war and I’m sure we’re all still traumatized by the oscars slap which, as far as I can tell by social media, is the worst thing in history.
Anyway, I haven’t been feeling great. But I feel very thankful that I have my facebox full of good people. I always feel bad that I can’t give back as much as I give, with broken notifications and broken comment typing and weird feeds that don’t show me what I want to see and then sometimes I take a day away to just sleep and so on and so forth. But rest assured that I am grateful that you’re here. All the names that you see day after day, some years after years. It means a lot to know that there are people out there who are about me, because for a long time I did not feel that. It makes a big difference to get up in the morning, or evening, and see that hey I’m not alone.
Thank you for that. And lots of love to everyone going through a hard time. Sometimes it feels beyond unfair, how much pain and suffering there is in the world. From small scale close friends and family to large scale war crimes and environmental collapse. Sometimes I wonder if life is worth it when suffering is inevitable. Why put people through that? Would it be better if we weren’t here?
But then who would feed the goats? So hopefully the good days outweigh the bad ones. Thanks for helping tipping the scale in the right direction.
8/4 2022
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Snowgoat Nuller.
8/4 2022
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Today will be a good day. Here’s Peanut from 2015.
9/4 2022
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Mia with her adoptees, the bandit and the little one.
9/4 2022
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Today will be a good day. Happy Funday everyone.
10/4 2022
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Have I told you lately that I love soup?
Just finished a big lunch pot of it. Not much left now, just half a serving for tomorrow.
10/4 2022
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goatlog
10/4 2022
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Lily in the snow. I’m pretty sure the snow is actually gone inside, so we’ll be out of snowphotos soon.
10/4 2022
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That’s all for now.