Today is my last work day before Christmas. Woke up around 6 and surprisingly not tired at all. Started the day with some reading (the DaVinci Code is VERY good) and then an early e-meeting at 07.45.
The snow arrived today, and it arrived in high amounts. It is still snowing but not as heavily. Nice to get some snow though. We got a few cm earlier this week but the real winter started today.
Tomorrow I am heading down south to Jönköping and a visit to the mother in law, Siv. My mother and Håkan will come up over the weekend and Jonathan plus his family will be there as well over christmas. As well as Johanna’s other brother, Jakob. It is going to be a full house!

It looks like my patents are coming along nicely. We got the official papers from the patent office for the first patent today. Here is the first patent that is approved in Sweden and here is the world version that is currently being handled. Here is a summary page at the Swedish patent office.
Here is the summary page for the second patent currently being handled.

It is way too early to be up at this hour! The reason I am up is that I am heading to preschool with the family to watch Tovah’s “Lucia”-show with all the other kids.
By the way, Elon-Lindvalls called yesterday and said that they are tired of it all (i.e. the dishwasher business) and told us that we can either get a 1800 refund (down to 22K for all the appliances) or we can get a new better machine. J chose the better machine and sometime around christmas or early next year they will come and exchange our dishwasher for a better one, a Miele 694, instead of the 641 we have now. They will of course pay for the extra cost of connecting a new one.
Perhaps, it isn’t that early after all. I feel good and perhaps I should get up this early every morning? Nah, 07:40 is early enough 🙂

Got to do some coding today. Hurray!
Went training and ended up on the threadmill running a 4 km round. Actually first I ran 300 meter and then fell of the machine 🙂
Yesterday we took a walk on the ice and when we were as far we could go from land the ice started making loud cracking noises. It was a bit scary and headed back to shore as quickly as we dared 🙂
Lost some money on the stock market today. I am down 2K now :-/
I dumped the plague book and started reading the DaVinci Code instead and already after a few pages I can say that it is MUCH better!!

It turns out that the dishwasher is actually NOT the same machine in Sweden as in the rest of Europe. We have today spoken with both Miele in Sweden and Germany and apparently they do this all the time. They make a special version of the same machine for the Swedish market with extra features and then they sell it as a special offer machine. The strange thing is that they keep the same model number on the machine. Strange, don’t you think?

Why should it be so hard to buy things? Last week J bought some new stuff including a dishwasher. It turns out that the dishwasher wasn’t as good as the salesperson promised. Johanna told the shop last Saturday and we have been talking with them every day since. The thing was that Johanna wanted a model with AAA classification (energy consumption) and she was originally set on a Miele 647. The sales person said that she could get the 641 for a better price and it had a lower sound level, 46dB (the 647 had 48dB). Yesterday we found out that the 641 actually has a sound level of 51dB!! As it is no longer generally available (last years model) we cannot find any technical information on it in Sweden but checking around the net we found specs for it that it actually is a 51dB machine in UK, Norway, Finland, Germany, Netherlands and USA. Nice. NOT!
I lost 600:- yesterday on the stock market, not so nice either. Got to get it back on Monday 🙂
This morning we went downtown and I totally lost all energy. It took me several hours before I got it back during the afternoon. For lunch we had stuffed bell peppers followed by “maräng swiss”. Yummy. But I ate toooooo much 🙂

Tovah’s preschool training lasted one day, and not a full day either. Only 2 hours. Yesterday was her first day alone and it worked perfectly until she saw mummy and didn’t want to go home. As of next week she will start going 5 hours per day, 3 days per week. This morning I left her at the preschool and she was really happy to get there.
Yesterday I had my first real spinning session and I was really beat when I got home. 32 minutes active cycling. Nice but it does not beat my own cycling during the summer. A spinning bike doesn’t behave the same as a real bike.
Today I did day trading on the Stockholm Stock Exchange for the first time in my life. I actually earned 20:- (SEK).I one “bet” 2700 but tomorrow I will bring up the stake. I have given myself 58000:- to play with and if I had staked all that today I would have earned more than 400:-. Not bad for a few minutes work. I bought the stock at 270 and sold at 272, but it actually ended at 275.
In the afternoon I got into a heated discussion regarded budget issues in a group of projects we have. The contracts have been dragging out in time (since April). That is not the thing, but that I get so agitated when discussing these issues. I make myself miserable and my environment likewise. And it makes me really sad that I get angry for no reason 🙁

Went spinning today! It was the first time in my life and it was rather nice. I am going on Wednesday again. This first time was only an introduction lasting 30 minutes but I feel good.
This morning me and J took T to her first day at preschool. She is going to Udden’s preschool, the “Biet” group. This first day she was only there for 1 hour playing on her own. Tomorrow she will be there for 2 hours without me or J around. I am convinced that she will do fine there!
Puh, training takes the energy out of me.
Saw the first half of Kill Bill yesterday. Cool movie. I hope the second half will be just as good 🙂

I am sitting here in the sofa watching TV (Robinsson). This is the first actual TV program I’m watching since last Saturday. I have more and more switched over to only watching series and movies downloaded from the net. Earlier this week I finished the series John Doe which I highly recommend. The availability of so many movies and series (before they get up on the big screen or are aired) totally changes my TV habits!!
Earlier this week I was out at Brändön with my leadership education group (three days) and as always it had its lows in the beginning, but after 1.5 days I felt great. I had a very good session with Jerker where we ironed out a number of issues, both professional and personal. As always I learned a number of new things about myself and I also came to some conclusions. The latter includes that I should not plan for the rest of my life but try to keep the horizon closer. Since the summer the horizon has drifted further and further away from me making all decision huge. The conclusion I have come to regarding my personal future is that I should relax for a while (weeks? months?) and let the future iron out itself. Barbro “painted” me a nice picture where I am standing with one foot on each side of a trench with each arm being pulled by myself in different directions. Her suggestion was to relax, take a good stand and let the solution grew out and show itself. I was out at Brändön Monday to Wednesday and since I got back my energy level has risen and I feel rather good. My trip to San Francisco was very good and relaxing. A climate change is always good, but as soon as I got back my energy disappeared. But as I said, now it is back and I feel rather good!
The only concrete thing that has happened with my work situation is that Kåre now is the division head. It was settled Thursday a week ago and Kåre announced it to the division Monday this week. Unofficially I was demoted before I left for the US, about one month ago.
For recreation I have been reading a lot (a book update will come later) and playing the car racing games Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 and Need for Speed Underground. The latter is really cool!!
Last week our dish washer broke down and while I was out at Brändön J went out and but a new one, as well as a new freezer, a new refrigerator and a new microwave oven. Even T got a new toy, a “baby” dish washer 🙂
Yesterday we watched S.W.A.T. which was a disappointment. A while back we watched Identity and it was really good. I like movies with a new kind of story or a twist in the end.

For the first time in a long time I wrote a long message about how I feel this weekend. I had been writing it on and off during the afternoon and to be honest I forgot about it. While installing a new webcamera under Windows it asked me to restart the computer, and hey I wasn’t doing anything important was I? No, and it rebooted. Of course my blogging tool, w.bloggar doesn’t save anything by autosave and my whole post got lost in /dev/null. 🙁 🙁
To summarize, I don’t feel to well this weekend. All agitated and jumpy. I have not been sleeping very well (woke up at 5.30 this morning). Now I have to iron a bit before putting T to bed.