In January of 2011, I made my first trip to Europe. I visited Poland, Germany, Sweden, and Norway. I have German and Norwegian roots, so I was especially excited to see Germany and Norway. My last name is Knag, which is Norwegian and it is very unique. In fact, if you share my last name, I have always been able to trace our relationship on the Knag family tree. Before I went on the trip, I friended other Knags on Facebook and actually met up with Alf Knag in Bergen, Norway. We recognized each other while meeting up from a restaurant window, which is a pretty funny feeling. My family uses Geni to track our family tree and so far I have found out that I am related to Prince William and Barrack Obama.
In addition to Bergen, which I think is one of the most beautiful places on earth, is the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo Norway. During the time, they gave Lui Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize for peacefully fighting against China’s one-party system. Liu was and remains incarcerated for undermining the state authorities when he won the award. His actions follow one of my favorite quotes that was said my Martin Luther King jr:
I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
In the Nobel Peace center exhibit was a quote that you can see at the top of this post that inspired me. I kept it as my cover photo until I moved to Hoboken. I was the youngest adult that was living in my building. I ended up replacing the photo I took while working all night, and the sun started to rise.
I no longer work as hard as I used to, because I think it is important to manage my stress levels. However, I’ll bet you that I still work harder than most people. Well maybe not work harder, but I probably get more done. In the last two weeks, I submitted two Apple Watch apps, a rigged Heads or Tails app, and a Calculator app. Next week, I’m going to publish a third Apple Watch App, an interface extension to Instalist. I am competent in every programming language to get anything I want done, using primarily Objective-C, Java, Python, PHP, and C++. I refuse to learn any ‘new’ language because it is the new trend, I work with what I am most comfortable with. That is why I have never picked up Ruby on Rails or Node.js. Learning these technologies won’t enable me to develop anything I couldn’t develop before.
