Stuff

Lot's of stuff on the go at the moment.

Always at the back of my mind is the crack repair program.  I have now done all that can be done without a scaffold tower, so now I need to identify a spare weekend, and look to hire one, and blitz all the stuff to be done over the two days of hire.  The only bit I really really need it for is the grinding out, since I did not want to be doing that at the top of a ladder - one slip and I could lose a limb.  Everything else is possible from a ladder, just easier on a scaffold.

Also in the home mix is that Maggot 1 has started to play for a cricket team.  This involves Sunday mornings and plenty of hours sitting in the (hopefully) sun, and while we are keen to encourage both Maggots in any and every pursuit they would like to try, it does take some hours out of your day.  Nevertheless, I plan to dive in wholeheartedly and enjoy the experience.  Truth be told, they only have about half a dozen matches a year and do not really expect an individual to play in every one, family commitments and all, so it is not as if the rest of my life will be spent in a portable chair in a field somewhere.  To be fair, this first match was in Priory Park at Scobiville, and a nicer location you could not find for experiencing the thwack of willow on leather*.

At work, I am really busy again, and still trying to pursue all things Cloud shaped.  I have a day's training tomorrow, am revising to take a Cloud certification exam, and am still waiting for my new role to materialise.  I pinged my potential new boss on Friday and the answer was "not been able to give it any thought, will be doing so soon", so really a cheque's in the post kind of answer.

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* I think that is what they call it

Hot

It is hot chez Scobi.  Very hot.  To be clear, my home office is hot, the outside a bit less so.  I could open the window, but the bins are being collected so there is too much noise whilst I am on my 9am conference call.  This means that I am glowing a bit.  I think men glow, or is it horses, can never remember.
Call is nearly over, and can't wait until they all stop blathering so I can get the window open. 

It's open, I am happy, time for tea.

Busy

Bloody hell but I am busy.  Sorry for cussing, not seemly for a chap to swear in public, and even at the bridge club, where things can get pretty hairy, such bad manners is frowned upon.

A week off and everything has piled up, which combined with a super urgent project means that I have more than enough to keep me busy, and I say "more" advisedly; I really cannot cope with the volume just now.

This is 50% coz I am actually busy, and 50% coz I am still half in holiday mode, which for me means slow . . . if I am not able to find a place to stop.  I guess in a week it will all be back to normal, but who wants normal?

Gone in a blink

We had a lovely week off, but, as the title suggests, it was over in a blink.

Yorkshire is lovely.  The people are also, from our experience, pretty nice and friendly too, none of the expected stereotypical bluntness.

We saw some sights, and I caught some fish.  In fact, so did Maggot 1 and A&E's Maggot 2.

The accommodation was good, and the site very quiet and well equipped.  By the end of the year, mind, it will be more than double the size and we suspect the peace will be less and the business in the service areas much more.  Ah, progress, good for some, not for others.

All in all, a great week off.



P.S. Sorry Gorse Fox, forgot to respond to your kind comment on a local iPhone repairer.  I sent it away to a company who turned it round in a day, so problem solved, but thanks very much for offering the info.

Things are picking up

Workwise, that is.  I am getting busy and actually, I rather like it.

As this is my last day before a week off, I am in close-down mode.  That means as many small loose threads as possible being closed, and any larger pieces that will overrun being put in good shape for some kind of handover.  Standard process, you need to appear to the outside world like the cover and handover is seamless, but those of us on the inside know that in truth there is always issues in any handover, and no-one can really fully pickup another person's work.  Having said that, we will try.

I am really looking forward to the week away.  I will get some fishing in - always a pleasure - and we will of course spend some time together as a family, and will be visiting some interesting places.

I am on a conference call just now with some, let's call him Steve, and it turns out that Steve and his wife are taking their newish caravan and their very new Q5 to a site just north of York.  It seems almost inevitable that we will bump in to each other at some stage.


We had some problem with LO's car in the week, when a load of hair started hanging out of the exhaust.  At first we thought it was a covert Barbie mission gone wrong, but it turns out to be the damping material, horse hair often, for the exhaust silencer.  It is now at the garage, and bits have failed, and the garage is putting it right, for a price that is not too bad considering the age of the old girl, and the fact that the exhaust has been sounding a bit throaty for a while.
This means that LO has my car, which means all the carefully crafted plans for me to get the top box fitted and the car partially packed have gone south, meaning that this evening will be exceedingly busy.

Yesterday afternoon, there was some extreme weather, and at one point there was an almighty lightening crack, so load and intense I thought one of our ceiling lights had spectacularly exploded. It turns out, when I did the school run, that it hit a local house, about 200m from my home office.  Not a great picture, but you can see where it hit the chimney, which presumably had a TV aerial attached until don't-know-how-many-thousands-of-volts decided to use it to get to earth.  I imagine that the occupants of the house, if they were present, had a much bigger shock than I did. This house is across the green from Maggot 2's school, and it was the talk of the school most of the afternoon apparently.

Other than that, all is good.  Have a great weekend, and speak in a week or two (depending on whether I am able and willing to blog remotely).

Smashed

I broke the screen on my iPhone yesterday.  Damned nuisance.  Having Googled how to fit them, and then where to buy replacements, I was put off by the fact that for every item on eBay, there was a "this is not a genuine screen, do not trade with this seller" type comments, so I opted for a service that does it for me, with genuine parts (so they say) and a guarantee for half a year or so.  Being a trusting soul, I sent it yesterday and should get it back Wed/Thurs.

So, I am without a phone, which is proving most disagreeable, but very quiet.  Luckily I can access my mobile voicemail from my work laptop, and have been able to change it to not accepting messages.  Better to turn away the relative who wants to give me $5m than get loads of urgent messages from people who do not know I cannot hear them.

There seems to be something on the horizon...

... and I think it is the weekend.

I wish I had a bit more to tell you, but things are work are steady, although there was a note advertising some new Cloud roles in which I have, obviously, expressed an interest.  This achieves two things:

• It gives my management an indication that maybe I want something else
• it spreads my options on the next move.

Without casting aspersion..., ah, dammit but I have to cast a few to give the message.  Our management is not great.  I believe they are very busy, fair enough, but they are also not the right people to be in their role, in my opinion, and this manifests itself by everything seeming to go off half-cock.  This time, they send a note, but have no information on the roles.  Nice.  So I have currently expressed an general interest in something of which I know nothing.

This weekend, with the weather looking pretty good, I shall be doing some DIY and so DIN*, and we are planning a day out Sunday, to where we know not, but somewhere outside and fun.

I hope you all have a great weekend, speak next week.

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* do-in' nuthin

Mid week, who'd have thought it - A correction

I would like to issue a small correction to my previous blog, since a casual reader may be getting my maggots mixed up.

Please note that maggots with a capital "M" are my offspring, and maggots with a small "m" are the little white (or pink or red) things that wriggle around and are loved by nearly every fish.  Both wriggle, both can turn a bit grotty if constrained in too small a space, so the main difference is the size of hook needed for each type.

Also, in response to The Gorse Fox's comment on passports being required for York, all I can say is now now, let's not believe everything that UKIP are telling us about them Yorkshire folk, coming down here, tekking our jobs.

Mid week, who'd have thought it

We are off to Yorkshire in ten days time, and need to start planning the packing of items.  This trip is sans 'van, staying in a static 'van, but we want to take our topper foam, which is bulky, so I have invested in roof bars for the X1, very nice quality at a reasonable price, so we can take the top box.

There is also a fishing lake at the site so my preparation also includes rod licence and various baits.  It is mainly carp, tench and perch, so while the Maggots may enjoy the easy sport of perch on worm, I am after the carp and tench, so have hemp seed, soft pellets, luncheon meat, bread and sweetcorn (also got a bit of strawberry flavouring with which to experiment), and am also contemplating a few maggots just in case.  I am on strict time-limit instructions, so will be doing early mornings, which suits me, and the fish, just fine.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Oh how I have missed Friday.

This Friday finds me with not a lot of interesting stuff to report, so I am going to have to revert to the boring stuff.

This weekend I would like to start repairing my render cracks.  This may be scuppered by a couple of events:

1. The weather does not look great.  It is dry in the day, but wet early and from the evening Saturday, and most of Sunday.  I will read up on the dos and don'ts, but fear that render, even fast-drying render, may need more than 5 hours to cure.
2. On Sunday, there is a street party in our road (if that is not mixing up our concourses).  This is for many a source of sharing joy.  It is fair to say that the Scobi household is made of sterner, and dare I say it bah-humbuggy, stuff.  This is not our idea of fun, but what to do.  Our cars will be blocked on the drive until 10pm, unless we move it, in which case we are all but ostracised from our own house by our meanness.  What a dilemma.  

Other than that, nothing out of the ordinary is likely to happen, so I wish you a fun-filled and exciting weekend, and speak next week.

Friday is a wonderful day to have in the calendar

Phew.  What a week.

Not really, all much the same as last week.  Some stuff was done, some issues resolved, some more problems arrived.  Work is not that busy, and so home has been taking some of my time.  I am planning the repairs to the exterior render, with the help of Uncle Google, and I think I have it fairly clear in my mind.

I have also been making inquiries on the t'internet with some companies that offer the "never paint again" type services that can repair render and paint it with a flexible, water-permeable but waterproof (never worked that one out, but everyone says it so it must be true) and made of a substance that never needs painting again.  I have just come off the phone from the MD of one such company, following up on my submitted inquiry.  He said that he used the treatment on his own business premises, and it is still looking good after 28 years.  It is just the cost that needs some consideration.

We are off the Stonehenge this weekend in the 'van with A&E.  The weather is looking good, at least not wet, and the site seems to be of the natural variety, allowing open fires, and being self-confessed VW lovers.  Hmmm.

Have a great weekend, and speak next week.

Well bless my cotton socks, it's Friday

Only a four day week, so however it was experienced, it really was one day shorter than a normal week.  And for that, I salute it. 

To be honest, it was a fairly steady week for me.  We have been requested to complete an insanely large amount of training by the end of this month, so I did take the opportunity to catch up on some of it.  I have been chipping away at the courses, and am four courses from the end, so not too far to go.

No news on my potential new job.  A colleague/friend, who is in a similar role to me but a contractor (a very rare breed in Starfleet at the moment, with a pretty comprehensive cull under way), contacted me the other day to say that his CV, which was sent to the prospective new boss on my potential new job (lot of variability in that statement), had been forwarded to another bit of the business requiring his skills, a combination of solutioning, Oracle and Cloud, and the colleague/friend has had an initial phone interview which seemed to go well.  He would be more than happy to go permanent if the deal were right, so here's hoping that something comes of that.  But not before something comes of my job lead.

This weekend, if the weather permits (and it currently says that 10-4 on Saturday may be dry, but otherwise the whole weekend is wet), I will be starting to prepare the garden for the upcoming work, and generally pottering around, taking the Maggots to their clubs, until late afternoon when we will be preparing for the visit of David and Samantha, minus the eldest Maggot who is on a Duke of Edinburgh's weekend*.  It is always a pleasure, and many promises to "not drink too much" will be made at 8pm, to be utterly ignored at 10pm.  Such fun.

I hope you have a great weekend, and speak next week.


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* Don't fancy being in her shoes this weekend.