Earlier I have talked about a decision and it is now official so why not write it here as well. After 4 years employment as senior lecturer at LTU I have come to the conclusion that there just isn’t any room for free research within the Swedish university system. Thus I have decided that I am going to leave my current position as research leader for the Media Technology group. I have not decided yet where I am heading from here and we will see what happens. I am of course very concerned for the people at the division and I don’t just want to leave without a clear situation for the division’s future, but at the same time I won’t stay on forever. Jerker (by boss) didn’t react too negative, almost as if he welcomed my decision.
I told Jerker before lunch today and the rest of my division in the afternoon and it is quite fun to see the different reactions I get from different people. One of my graduate students actually sounded very happy about it and some others went totally quiet.
The unclear situation for myself makes me a bit uneasy but I am certain that it will work out for the best. I have a few leads that I am working on right now.
Well there it is…

I am sitting here getting more and more indifferent about my mission to get a financial overview of the division’s economy. I asked my admin about it almost two weeks ago and said several times in both speech and text what I wanted (one page in the end with plus and minus) but I get over and over excelsheets with tons of details that I don’t care about. Today I sent her a template for what I wanted.
THis stuff really drains my energy…..

I has been a bit quiet here. Today, I have been doing what I like the best, create new things. I got almost the full day for fun stuff and only some boooooooring administrative issues like financial reporting had to be done. Got to meet with the replacement for my last division admin, who is leaving us on Monday. The replacement, Thomas is young and seems eager to learn. Hope it turns out good. The division needs a good admin.
This morning I woke up just before 5.30 (I checked the watch at 5.32) and Anna Lindt left us 5.26. That is a strange coincidence, isn’t it? I feel a bit bad about waking up at 5.30 full of energy and stayed in bed reading until the girls woke up around 7. My current book about Arn, “Vägen till Jerusalem” is really good. Thanks Rolf for getting started on this one (again).
Spent the evening with J in front of the computer. We watched several episodes of 24 season 2 in a row. There is a lot happening in that series. Much more action than in series one.
Tomorrow, I will meet with my boss Jerker for a general future talk…. and in the evening I have a date night with J. Guess which one I look forward too?! Not that I dislike talking with Jerker, it is just that I don’t care anymore about what he has to say. All big issues are still made his way independently of what others say around him. His way, or no way. Why are there so many people like that, especially in management positions?
Oh well, why ponder on such worldly issues when I can get into bed and dream myself away to the 12:th century and the life in “Sweden” at that time. Much more interesting than what is going on at LTU, like people complaining about the bosses (who me?), and trying to find scapegoats for the low number of students applying to the University this year.

J took me out on a date yesterday. We had shrimp and drank Strawberry cider (Swedish cider) and watched Legally Blond 2.
Thank you, it was very very nice 🙂

Are people with a PhD better than other people?
Within academia there are many tasks that can only be conducted by faculty members. This is controlled by Swedish regulations but sometimes I get really upset when faculty members push the faculty requirement to hard.
E.g. what makes a fresh PhD that has been a graduate student for about 4 years more qualified to decide the content of a course than a teacher and researcher that has worked within the academic system for say more than 10 years? Another e.g. What makes a faculty member that is not really interested in teaching more qualified over a highly dedicated subject teacher (“adjunkt”) or research engineer?
Shouldn’t the best qualified person be chosen for each specific task? Cannot a graduate student with a specific knowledge be more suitable to decide what is supposed to be part of a course than a random faculty member? I think that in a modern and adaptive organization this should the case, or am I totally wrong?
I have a PhD… but am I proud of being part of the LTU faculty?

I am worried. Am I doing the right thing? Will my decision affect my work environment in the right direction? I really hope so. It looks very promising, but (there is always a but) what if it isn’t the right thing? So I worry, but I guess I shouldn’t. I have taken the decision and I shall stand by it, right? Right!
Anyhow…..
Johanna’s back went out of order today so I got the honor of putting T to sleep today again (second day in a row). Usually we do it every other day and I was really surprised how easily Tovah accepted that I would put her to sleep today as well. It must be all my nice singing and my stories about the “Red Lava Bubble” from the lava lamp. Today the red bubble went to China by digging a whole through the earth and then moving in with a new lava lamp family, a blue one with glitter 🙂 T really enjoys those stories and I make it up as I go along.
During the evening I went for a cycle ride but only got a few kilometers before turning back. I just didn’t have the energy and will and by not having that I got really cold.
After putting T to sleep I feel quite good actually. When I lye there besides her waiting for her to fall asleep there isn’t much else I can do than to contemplate my day and my problems.
Tomorrow is my second lecture in SMD151. MBone and Scalable Media.

I had a nice and relaxing weekend with my family. Yesterday we spent the whole afternoon watching TV and we saw among other things the 3 first episodes of 24 season 2. I like season 1 very much and season 2 started very promising.
Today we worked a bit in the backyard preparing for the winter (it feels like it will start snowing tomorrow). We created a new stone step in front of the garage back door and stacked the last of our fire wood. We only use the wood for enjoyment fires in the garden. For dinner we had sushi (yes, again 🙂 followed by a nice fire and marchmallows.
After a while it started to get really cold (like 5 degrees) and we headed inside for a movie, The Pianist. It was a very good movie but I think IMDB readers are overrating it. It currently has a rating of 8.6 which puts it in #29 on the top 250 list. E.g. Schindler’s List got a 8.8 and I feel that that movie is very much better than The Pianist. Don’t take me wrong. I highly recommend both movies.
Tomorrow is my first day of teaching in SDM151, Multimedia Systems.
Sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite!

This week has been filled with my management education and many long meetings. During the management course we worked with sociograms revealing good and bad about ourselves and our projections about others in the group. This, once again gave me new insights about myself and how I work. “What you see in others, you must have within yourself to recognize.” I think that is very true.
When I was cycling home from Brändön (in shorts with rain and HEAVY wind) I made a rather substantial decision that hopefully will make me happier in the future. I cannot share it with you (yet) but I will as soon as possible. Some things have to get settled first. Just taking the decision has lifted a big stone from my chest.
I haven’t had time to write very much on my blog this week and that is something I really miss. I have instead chosen to prioritize sleep and my family,, which I think is rather important 🙂
Now Tovah is asleep and I am going to watch the second half of “The Ring” together with my lovely wife, some candles and crackers with cheese.

Shouldn’t service be something that is provided as a service for the user, not a hinder? Right a very very minor thing happened but it still annoys me. I requested the sysadmin to remove the DHCP service for my laptop so I could provide it from my own server instead, but they refuse with the argument that they cannot keep track of the computers otherwise. Wonder how they managed for the last 8.5 years which is when I started working at Systemteknik and I already had my own DHCP server running. I guess I better not tell them that I have 17 other hosts handled by my own DHCP server.
Argh, why do I get upset about such minor issues. I just block the DHCP traffic from their server and be happy. Quicker than asking them to remove it in the first place :-/

I will be gone Monday until Wednesday evening on a seminar in Brändön. It is the final seminar with sleep over in my management education course, but I cannot really say that I want to go 🙁 I would rather sit under my corkoak and program on my SIP prototype. It is like all the work related issues are washing over me. Issues I am not really interested in or care for. Being a researcher is very fun. Being a research leader with the financial responsibility is rather boring and creates a lot of anxiety (for me). For me getting funding for research feels like begging and I don’t like doing that. In the industry it can be compared with living of stock money but the main difference there is that eventually the goal is to live of the profit. I.e. do something good that the market want then you don’t have to beg anymore. That is unfortunately not the case in the research world. The individual researchers can get rich (spinoff companies, patents etc.) but that doesn’t make the situation easier for the research group (unless personal profit is put back into the research). The latter is really a Swedish problem where the inventor owns the results, whereas in the USA the university owns the results. The Swedish academic system is a bit strange where if a researcher is successful that only creates envy instead of admiration and the researcher doesn’t really get anything “for it” (unless s/he commercializes the results on their own).
Anybody interested in hiring an assistant professor in Media Technology and Chief Science Officer at Marratech?