Earlier today, while repainting our garage, my wife came up with the expression “Pod detox”. We have been painting for days on end now, often more than 10 hours per day. Neither of us have listened to any music, audiobooks or podcasts during these days. Usually, I listen constantly to conversations or audiobooks, so it has been a new (old) experience for me to only listen to silence. It is just like it was before, only that I had forgotten how to do it.
Read MoreWe are currently re-painting our houses, starting with the dog kennel and the garage the first year. The houses haven’t even been cleaned for a very long time, perhaps never, and it is a massive undertaking, at least three years. To outsource it would cost a small fortune and it isn’t that difficult to do a half-decent job so we went the DIY route to invest the money in more challenging tasks like plumbing and construction. However, things are only free if your time has no value. And time is the most precious commodity of all. Projects like these really highlight the importance of choosing a place you call home that you love.
Read MoreA common conception regarding vacation is to travel somewhere. To change your everyday environment for something else. I used to think exactly that way for most of my adult life, until we moved to our house. Now, I want to go on vacation to go home, which is the precise anti-thesis to my previous stance. There is no place on Earth I would rather want to be than home. How did that happen?
Read MoreFor the past ten years, I have been practicing a musical instrument for 15 minutes per day. But in the past couple of days, I finally faced conditions too challenging to prevail. On the night between Wednesday and Thursday, both my boys decided to reenact Gary’s puking scene from Team America simultaneously. It was without a doubt the worst I have ever seen with regards to stomach sickness. And shortly after the boys had re-generated, it was my turn to do my own interpretation of the classic scene. As horrible as stomach sickness can be, I had a real eye-opening experience.
Read MoreLast Thursday I had one of the best cups of tea ever and on Friday I visited the nicest public toilet in a gas station ever. And it was all because of unforeseen events that messed up my original plans. It was a great reminder about how important it is to always snap back into normal mode as quickly as humanly possible and not be upset. If your thoughts are elsewhere, you will certainly miss a lot of opportunities. Good planning and preparation is my personal savior in this regard.
Read MoreLast week I was lucky enough to spot two Aston Martins, one of which was a super-rare custom edition (only about 300 produced) and get a private presentation of the car. We were having dinner at a restaurant in a small village in Schweiz when my petrolhead colleague told me that something very special had just pulled up outside. I love anything with an engine that produces a good noise and curiously went out to have a look for myself. I was really blown away by what might have been the most beautiful car I have ever seen. A Vantage V12 in the perfect color – British Racing Green – with equally green rims, golden brake calipers and details, and brown two-color leather trim.
Read MoreI read somewhere that smell is one of the strongest sensations we have, and that it is strongly connected to memory. Indeed, I can easily remember the smell of things, when I was as young as my own son is now. And perhaps even further back in time than that. I do not know whether this is true or not, but if smell is one of the senses that evolves first and that it serves an important function to protect us from danger, it makes sense to me. This weekend I had several strong memories wash over me induced by odor sensation. Combine it with some auditory sensation and you can get very powerful memory triggers.
Read MoreA couple of weeks ago, me and my wife introduced a good habit. Between 06:20 and 06:30 we enjoy a fresh cup of coffee together. At this time, the sun has just risen above the sea, bathing everything in golden light while the boys and dogs are sleeping. There is zero chance that you will be interrupted by a phone call or an email or just about anything. Those ten minutes per day will add up incrementally over time to something very special. A relationship is the sum of 10 000 atomized tiny actions.
Read MoreLast week I spent four hotel nights at various locations, but they were all hotels in the same chain – Scandic. It was interesting to see how much the experience can vary, even though it is the same in so many ways. The last two hotels in Uppsala and Gävle were especially noteworthy because the rooms were so nearly identical that I would probably not have been able to tell which one was which if I had randomly teleported to one of them.
Read MoreOutsourcing is fantastic. I do it all of the time for many things both professionally and in private. But there are also things that I spend a lot of time on, even though I could solve a specific problem 10X faster by simply handing it over to someone else. The problem is that I enjoy certain problems, crazy as it may sound. The perfect example for me is to build a new workstation PC. I could solve that problem in minutes by outsourcing it. But to build it myself is something that I enjoy so much that I simply cannot rob myself of that pleasure. Even though it will certainly drive me crazy at times.
Read MoreI remember driving in the early noughties. The first thing I did after I got my driver’s license was to install a nice car stereo and a 12” subwoofer in the trunk. I always listened to music. I could figure out excuses to go for a drive just so that I could listen to more music. And I listened to music constantly when I was not driving too. Nowadays my music consumption isn’t even close, and it has to a large degree been replaced by audiobooks and podcasts. Why is this?
Read MoreLast week I had a couple of sound measurements planned in Eskilstuna and Uppsala. However, just a couple of days before departure, I realized that I had forgotten to book a hotel. In big cities, that is usually not a problem, but in a smaller city like Eskilstuna it is quite possible that all the rooms run out on a given night. And that is precisely what happened to me. I found one room left on a place called Thottska Villan, about 20-25 minutes from the city centre. When you consider that you park in front of the entrance, I am not convinced that I even lost any time. But when I arrived on site, I was blown away by what turned out to be jackpot as far as hotel nights go.
Read MoreA couple of years ago, I was very interested in stargazing. One important and useful lesson that I learned when carrying around large telescopes in very dark places, was that red light is your best friend. When you spend time in darkness, eventually your eyes will adjust their ability to see in darkness. If you are exposed to strong light from e.g., a flashlight, headlight or device screen, you will instantly overload your sensitive eyes and consequentially wait for a while until your eyes adjust themselves back. Needless to say, it is thus crucial to adapt your eyes when stargazing – and to keep them that way until you are done. But how to orient oneself in pitch black darkness? By using red light!
Read MoreAbout ten years ago, I was the lead guitar player in a successful metal band called Meadows End. Playing on that level, including international tours, was something I had dreamt about since I was a little kid. A couple of thousand hours of hard work later I finally achieved my goal. The joy was unfortunately cut short. After only two albums, my life hit a fork in the road. I was writing my PhD thesis at the same time and had been under heavy stress for a long time. After many long conversations with my wife, and mental gymnastics on how to make it work even though it meant placing three suitcases (career, family and the band) in a baggage compartment that had room for two, I finally realized that I had to let go of one of them. That was the hardest decision of my life.
Read MoreYesterday I decided to clean one of my computers, which had a thick layer of dust on every single component inside. I used compressed air, which is a very nice option. However, you must be careful not to point the jet directly at a fan, because it will spin up to extreme speed in no time. That’s why it is a good idea to block the fan from moving, before your compressed air goes anywhere near the fan. I was in a bit of a hurry and slipped with my blocking of the CPU cooler. In a couple of 1/10ths of a second I heard the sound of a fan spinning up from zero rpm to like 20000 and it instantly ripped itself to shreds. There were broken plastic fins everywhere. To assess the damage I decided to remove the heatsink and inspect the cooler. I loosened the fasteners and pulled straight up and BAM. The CPU was ripped out from its socket because the thermal paste had hardened to something resembling epoxy glue. I also bent a couple of CPU pins in the process. Two pretty serious mishaps happened in about one minute. However, I am grateful for the important lessons I learned.
Read MorePerhaps the best thing about the Christmas holidays is that pretty much everything stops. The email is silent. The phone is silent. It even got more silent than what we had planned. Our respective families are split between two cities separated by a 4-hour drive, and we take turns every other year on the 24th of December. This year it was Umeå’s turn. We were planning to head North a day or two later to celebrate “small” Christmas/New year instead with the other half of the family. Unfortunately, that didn’t come about due to illness and on duty work. That’s rather sad, but there’s usually a positive flip side to the coin.
Read MoreWe were just about to leave for Christmas celebration this past Saturday, when my soon to be 4-year-old son shouts out “Wait dad!” and runs off back into the house to our two Labrador retrievers. First the old one got a big hug and a “Merry Christmas Gibson!” and then the 2nd dog got an equally big hug and a “Merry Christmas Jussi!”. And then he tells me “Dad, we must give chewing bones to the dogs because it is Christmas eve, and they should also get gifts.” I was so surprised by this spontaneous display of love and couldn’t stop laughing and smiling because it was one of the cutest things I have ever seen. It was so nice of him, and I was not expecting it at all. But he had it all figured out. That’s one of the coolest (and scariest) things with kids. They are always at least one step ahead of you. I.e., they always understand a lot more than what you think.
Read MoreThis year I finished the Christmas presents with a couple of weeks of margin for the first time ever. The most important thing is to find some wonderful experiences for my boys. I managed to grab a couple of 2nd hand bargains on Tradera (Swedish Ebay). My older son loves Legos and vehicles and before long I found a super nice and large fire truck which I grabbed for 200 SEK (new price close to 2000 SEK) and a small jet plane for half the price of a lunch. The only thing that is missing is the sealed boxes. He’ll get cardboard boxes and plastic bags with Legos instead, and I don’t think he will care at all. I wonder what the Lego group is thinking about my 2nd hand purchases. Reusing instead of new is wise of course, but I also wonder if they consider it a lost sale?
Read MoreMonday evenings is writing night for me. I’ve been doing it for several years straight. And still, here I am, half past eleven when I should been in bed long time ago, blogging together this week’s piece. For some reason, I often end up in “talking mode” with my wife on Mondays, which is easily the worst day of the week to sit down and talk. Because I know that it is my sleep hours that will fuel the conversation. On the other hand, you will be hard pressed to find anything more meaningful way to spend your time than deep conversations with your wife. And thus, it is probably a price worth paying.
Read MoreSometimes things happen, that are so unlikely that they can only be explained by some kind of divine intervention. We’ve had two of those occasions recently during our renovation project. The first one, and most unlikely, was the impeccable timing of our electrician who arrived here just in time to install new wiring in my office at the same time as the construction workers had torn down the old roof. To have a house without a roof is obviously a bad idea, so this type of work is dependent on weather conditions. Then they work very fast to remove and replace the ceiling in a day. So, we’re talking about a time window of 4-6 hours, maximum, when the roof is gone (i.e. half of it). And there will never be a better time to reinstall the electrical wiring. I booked my electrician months ago, with a gut feeling that “this day will probably be the day when the roof is removed”. And he arrived with the precision of a Japanese bullet train, exactly when the roof was gone.
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