The biggest problem with agreeing something in a group is that someone always have to compromise. And if that someone doesn’t know this useful ”skill” it always ends up worse for everybody else involved. I remember a conversation I had with my neighbour a while ago when we accidently fell on the subject of politics – oh, this sensitive area of discussion – politics is like walking on thin ice, luckily we ended up having quite a decent conversation of it all, she told me this:

How should I choose which party to give my vote..? What if I agree with 9 out of 10 things that a party promotes, but that last thing is something I really don’t like [...] – I can’t lay my vote on something that I don’t agree with to 100 %.

I told her that she would never find a party that agreed with everything she thought, and that everyone needs to compromise. You take the best of what you get – can’t eat the whole cake on your own, you gotta share.

It has been an eventful November so far. At work we are in the middle of changing into a new document database system – something that is not entirely easy on many points. It is not only the fact that it does not share many things with the old system, but it also has its problems – problems that must be solved before we leave the old. Among other things, we are still discussing how to best implement the concept of generic documents in the new database system hence it seems its an issue that none has yet thought of. Until the last couple of weeks.

Other than that, I’ve been in the works of cataloging my department’s many documents that up until now has only been present in 12 year old printed files with handwritten comments. This is easier said than done, but at least making up a thorough list of things will hopefully give the overall handling of documentation at the department more structure. Wish me luck.

A lot is going at work for my part. I remember how I had a discussion with my manager when I recently started this job, about my personal development. I remember him saying he’d like me to take an active role in our department’s business development (verksamhetsutveckling) program. At the time I had no idea how I would be able to contribute, but then again, you need to have gotten into working properly before you can really see any areas of improvement.

Perhaps one of my ”problems”, if you will, is that I tend to get overly excited about things that I think can (and ought to) be improved in order to create more efficiency, standardization, and most of all structure. Whilst I’ve come up with several ideas I also stumble upon the fact that not everyone shares my point of view – an elder colleague said it very well:

It is always exciting with new people coming into the company because you see things with a fresh eye. There is just the not so little challenge of convincing all the stubborn ”oldies” that its time for something new.

So I suppose I’ll have to take it slow, make one change at a time, and kind of ”grow” on the senior engineers so that they have a change of heart.

During this week I have had a meeting that has cleared the air concerning my involvement in the EWIC (video) project. A person like me enjoy having things around me under control – acting on a whim has never been my strong side. So it was decided then that despite being responsible for all documentation on the department towards EWIC I will also be working closely with the two commissioning managers in managing and planning the commissioning of the two stations. My manager made it clear that he sees this project as a definite step towards my goal to be a commissioning manager myself.

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Microsoft (Clipart)

För två dagar sedan satt jag på tåget hem från jobbet när chefen ringde. Samtalet:

Jag: Hej, det är Johanna.

Chefen: Hej, det är *******.

Chefen: Italien. Sardinien. Alhgero. Kan du åka vecka 30-31?

Det var först när jag kom hem på kvällen som jag insåg att vecka 30-31 faktiskt är redan nästa vecka (!). Stationen som ligger på Sardinien är del i projektet SAPEI som är en länk mellan Sardinien och det italienska fastlandet. Jag har tidigare skrivit ett inlägg om SAPEI och bl.a. de tekniska framsteg som gjorts i samband med projektet. Det skall bli både spännande och intressant att åter besöka stationen som jag 2009 var nere vid i samband med min andra co-op period.

När jag ringde upp commissioningchefen så blev jag glatt överraskad att han mindes vem jag var. Han erkände dock att han inte hade gjort kopplingen att det var samma Johanna.

Jag lyckades övertala sambon att följa med på resan, två veckor på Sardinien tackar man kanske inte nej till. Men känner jag min kära rätt så skulle han hellre vistats två veckor på antarktis.