Done...

Finally done....
My capability to underestimate the time needed to do stuff eternally surprises me (both personal and work/project related). However, I have to say (knowing that Nina will never read this ;o) that Nina is even worse in this.... if I would not know her estimations for time required to move from place a to b in the city I'd be tempted to say that she trusts in my comptencies to build things ;o))

Drought - price of oil barrel - Finnish country side...

It's bloody dry outside this year... surprisingly our neighbourhood's trees have not been suffering about it. Bees have found our Sunflowers.

In Pihtipudas Marja was reading (aloud .... and especially during our looong breakfast sessions) an interesting book about "History of extinction of the cultures" (or something like that). We had many interesting thoughts around how places/cultures have been destroyed over relatively short time period and how vulnerable we are after all "even" today for any major enviromental changes. I also saw a BBC (?) document about fall of Mayas were explained the current understading that it was actually a very unfortunate climate fenomemas which eventually lead to destruction of the empire - 30 years of dryness followed by 30 years of flooding or something like that ...
I wonder how we would (or will) actully with all our modern fantastic technologies survive years of global dryness in key food production areas (mid west in US, middle EU, ...) ?

I also had quite interesting discussion with Sauli (our "next door", long time (for 40 years) neighbour farmer) about what's going on in Finnish/EU agriculture politics. He claimed that at the moment food that is shipped to us in Finland from middle EU is actually mostly over production aka subsidised aka not baring the right price label. Leaving the price issues on their own, my personal favorite basic worry still remains - what if the current EU over production would "disapper" due eg to longer dry season in main EU farm lands ? ... This combined to the fact that price of oil barrel will just keep rising - how much will a kilo of oh so precious barley needed to brew my beer cost when over production is over (due to inevitabel climate change) and when an oil barrel will cost 100USD (equally inevitable on 5 year basis) ?

I wouldn't really care (not completely true) if there would not be Otto,Vili&Valtteri to be thought of ... having your own kids makes you think how their life will be after we are gone.
I sure hope that the current global economy illusion ("free"/very cheap transportation of goods from lowest possible production site to anywhere) will not lead our society to short shightly run down our own country side and force those few still earger to wake up at 5am to milk the cows with practically no holidays to move to cities and abandon the real stuff - crucial food production for the rest of us doing other stuff to keep other things rolling.
I'm afraid we will need our own production sooner than we notice.

Btw, it's quite "funny" to read/hear media talk about how oil price is now "catastropically" high and should come down.. why would it ever anymore really ? On the contrary it should just keep rising since every year we need to move to more challengign areas/depths to pump it.

Excuse but I found a bat in my pocket

Today I took Valtteri to kindegarden. He has now moved into a group of older kids soon starting their pre-school. Since they are "old" they have of course new priviliges... like being able to bring a toy everyday from home to kindergarden ("the best thing in starting the pre-school" according to Valtteri). Today he had 2 toys, a spaceship and a bat, and I told him that he has to give me the other one. I got the bat. Bat went into my shirt pocket where I happily forgot it.

From 9-12.30 we had an intense meeting, and at around maybe 11 I noticed that I have something in my pocket. I dug the bat out, was totally confused about what the heck it was and how did it get there... "Sorry to disturb you but I found a bat from my pocket!" slipped very naturally out from my surprised mouth. The guys were also somewhat surprised not to mention AJK ;o)


Bat has left the building.

Summer night driving and mine did go to 11...

I took Nina, Otto and Vili back to Helsinki from Pihtipudas at the end of the 3rd holiday week. The boys were quite firm (a mild understatement to be honest) in their opinions ("we have stayed here for ages... we must get back to the city!!") - Valtteri stayed in Pihtipudas with my sister Marja.


During the 4 days I was in Helsinki I managed to do some home building duties & efforts...










....Otto and I helped our friend Markus to get his "monster" boat finally to sea. This was a nice new experience to me and Otto. I've never been participating to "veneen vesille lasku". We also managed to see very closely the new Helsinki cargo harbour which is under construction right now. There were some amazingly BIG sea signs waiting to be put into their places. Also saw some very nice cottages and saunas on the way to Katajanokka where Markus keeps the boat.










....I build the 3.6m trampolin which was Vili's birthday present - I have not seen Vili so happy for so long so very often - he was smiling with every jump ! I gotta build one into his room.

Well, I then headed back to Pihtipudas on Tuesday evening at 8pm. I loaded the car with CD's and turned the car stereos on to "11" (Normal amplifiers go to 10... mine goes to 11/infinity). Roads were practically empty from Järvenpää to Jyväskylä, and after Äänekoski ther was almost literally nobody else than me (only some occasional trucks). Summer night was gorgeous, stereos were at 11 and the driving speed was hmmmm OK (452km in excatly 4 hours ;o)

In Ämmänsalmi bridge (near Viitasaari - beautifull place) I actually parked right into the middle of that bridge, opened the window and took some pics about the evening - no cars "disturbing" the event. I had my voice down almost completely since I was singing with the Egotrippi's CD "Vielä koittaa uusi aika" trying to compete with the amplifier's 11. That CD seems to be now geeting to be one of my all time favorites - I think I'm upto about 30 times listening now and that's since March when I bought it... which was noticeable also when I tried to put it on at car with Otto he cried "No 'Asfaltin pinta' !!!" (one of the best tracks in the CD). I did play "Asfaltin pinta" couple of times during the trip ... at 11 of course.
Then it was some days upto 5hours surfing with bursty lake winds, cooking & wine and ending the evening with sauna - that for 5 days - Nice ;o)

Suutari pysyköön lestissään .. vai ?

"Employ rather attitude than know-how. A person with normal 'brains' will certainly learn the new work but if attitude is not correct it will not be changed by anything."

This reminded me of another slighly similar old thought I've been thinking of ... Somehow companies tend to give their trust to a person and his/her attitude only once - when they employ him/her for the first time. The reason for employment in essence is the trust that even if you come straight from school you'll be able to learn the new task and the required competences - you just basically seem to be a good person for the task. However, somehow magically this trust seems to vanish after this "reqruitement moment" - from then on you'll be wearing a label of some special set of competencies and only by that. As a result in practise, it will be very challenging to try to move radically from one area to another within that same company since somehow the trust ("This person seems to be a person whose sure to pick the needed skills... we trust him/her") that initially was the reason to recruit the person to company has disappeared and been replaced by "but hey you've not really been doing anything like this earlier, you do not have all needed competencies right now"-reality.

"Management" as your career is an exception to above mentioned. There is a strong belief that management skills are always transferrable to any level and any organisation. Well, true very often. But so are the thrive for constant learning, open mind and fun. Still, for persons pursuing manager career companies are much more willing to give significantly more challenging task than for those pursuing for constant learning& open mindness.

Maybe the reason why so many very talented "++10years in high tech as specialists" friends are getting frustrated in their previously so very interesting jobs/companies and are dreaming of doing something completely different (which is totally bizarre since we work in dream jobs within dream industry according to all reasonable meters) is that companies do not really challenge their specialist's after the first job but tend to give fairly small iterative challenge increases within the initial competence/job scope in order to minimize the risks that person would not be able to handle the new tasks. Many experienced and very talented specialists are actually kept totally under-challenged in their core competence work scope but neither can they look for specialist challenges within new competence areas since thay have already been labelled by another set of compentences. Their capability to learn, their open mindness and their thrive to master any new things are not weighted. Big companies simply have the luxury of keeping their talented specialist on risk comfort zone ?

Lamb lies down on broadway

"Lamb lies down on Broadway" from Genesis ! Pretty much nothing beats it still... the sound is also surprisingly very much upto date (upto any date)

Valtteri and signs

During the last week in Pihtipudas Valtteri found wild strawberries and got into doing signs. This turned out be eg sign "Males are forbidden to pee here" to a place were wild strawberries were growing. A sign showing were he'd gone is also worth of remembering. (He did the art work and ordered the writing from me and Marja) ....














Almost every morning also started with drawing session from bed.

It is so incredibly nice to hang around with Valtsu - always has something positive going on ! I wish I'd be more like him ;o)