It's a braw, brict nict och the noo

Or some such nonsense. It is Autumn for real with daylight saving this last weekend and a very cold snap to accompany it. It put us off visiting the Falkirk Wheel so that'll give me something to write about in a week or two.

Work goes on as usual, although we have finished the first of the four phases of our project and are into the second which if anything, is even more boring. Again they don't seem fully prepared for us...

J is suffering the attendance of The Auditors at her work, and it would seem likely they won't be impressed. The company's accounting seems to be totally disastrous, so I wouldn't be investing in them in any hurry. But who's got money to invest these days anyway? Have a look here for an indication of the Scottish job market. Scary. And England isn't any better!

We went to badminton again tonight. I was total crap. Sometimes you just can't see the shuttlecock to hit it, and that was tonight all over. Still, it's a good runaround.

This morning I walked up the alleyway to catch my bus and found myself walking through the middle of a fire cordon! A run-down cinema/snooker hall near us had recently been bought and was being refurbished. Sometime on Sunday night it caught fire and when I came through at 7:15 there was water, fire hoses, smell, firemen and women, policemen and women, etc, everywhere. J and I had slept through the whole thing. The buses were diverted so I was late, then my Ridacard (renewable electronic bus pass) had run out of credit so I had to scrabble for change and finally they had no newspapers on board to keep me diverted. Mind you, last Monday was even worse as I managed to break my Ridacard in half and leave both my ID and entry key tag thing at home...

We went to Tropic Thunder a couple of weeks ago, which was actually OK. Good for a few laughs anyway. We might go to another tomorrow night - Ricky Gervais is in a new one that has had a good write-up, or the Coen brothers have a new one out as well.

Nothing much else has happened. I think my next article will be on a Commando raid in December 1943, so I'll have to start digging into the archives again for that. I was looking at getting down to London while J is away (Italy's weather wasn't looking good for photography so I've decided against going there) but in the end the accommodation ends up being a bit of a killer so I'll take a staycation instead and visit some of the Scottish archives if possible.

Another week

We had a nice night out on Thursday - plenty of good humour and good company. It was to celebrate one of the project team leaving - or 'escaping' as we prefer to call it. Our decision to leave was probably a timely one as I had just done the upside down pint trick which the victim had responded to by picking the glass up.

We went out again the next night but nobody else turned up. We got a call later when the first people arrived 2 hours after the supposed start time. The organiser didn't arrive until 2 1/2 hours after he had stated! This is the same guy who owes me L5 for a bet he lost and won't pay up. Lucky for him he graduated this week so I can't give him too much stick.

Today LH arrived to spend a few days with us in Edinburgh. We went for a stroll to show her the neighbourhood, and tomorrow will go see Edinburgh Castle and a little of the old town. It's nice to see her and catch up with some goss from home as well.

Little else has changed so this is a short one. Look at the pics instead. 8-)

Oh, W and I have started another game, and this one is looking bad for me so far. There's a pattern emerging here don't you think?

Not a good morning

We had a good sleep-in this morning and got up to find two anonymous notes in our letterbox complaining about our selfish slamming of doors. This followed one we had recieved last week, also anonymous. Given that we hadn't opened the door since getting home the previous day we were a bit miffed. You can imagine that we weren't happy with gutless anonymous notes, so we have posted our (named and signed) reply on the downstairs door. Our neighbour opposite made the effort to say hello and tell us they hadn't noticed any particularly noisy door shutting, so we can rule them out. 8-) Actually we are virtually certain it is the two downstairs - one an elderly lady, the other unseen - who seem to have got bees in their bonnet. I was tempted just to tell them to F-off, but instead asked them to come and talk to us. We'll see if that happens, but if they want a war they'll get one!

I managed to slice my finger quite deeply this morning so that's bandaged up and causing problems typing.

Oh, yes. To add to the great morning, we got a letter from our ISP saying that we'd gone over our 'fair use' allowance and would have our connection throttled back to dial-up speed next month in punishment. I've appealed, but if you are expecting any large attachments from me next month, you shouldn't hold your breath. We had been watching on-line video (having no TV) and this seems to have swallowed our allowance and then some. Unfortunately the warning letter arrived today but advised us that we had to cut our usage in the month up to Sept 30th to avoid the punishment - rather difficult if we are already over!

Earlier in the week we had the dreadful news that one of my colleagues at OGHS, and a flatmate for a time (KYg), has been diagnosed with lung cancer. Our thoughts are with her.

The economic news continues to be bad and I can't help thinking that this is how people must have felt as the Wall Street crash loomed in 1929. The timing could not possibly have been worse with American elections crippling any reasonable response for fear of picking the wrong 'side'. Who'd've thought we'd hear George Bush and the multi-millionaire CEO of one of the biggest finance companies in the world being accused of being socialist! I had thought that lessons had been learnt from the Great Depression and that controls in place would prevent anything similar happening again. So too had politicians and financial gurus I guess, so everyone has had a nasty shock. Could this be the end of capitalism as we have known it, to match the apparent defeat of world socialism over the past 20 years? Or will the world markets continue to be driven by those only interested in profit once the dust has settled (like Chinese milk product manufacturers and their ethically confused NZ shareholders)? JP Morgan Chase seem set to continue for one, having picked up some bargain basement competitors. I hope those teaching 'Origins of WW2' are milking the parallels in their classes.

Regardless, my job continues in its inevitably boring fashion. We have completed the Scottish pipes in Phase I of this project and started the Southern (English) pipes yesterday. The landmark was celebrated with cake and drinks and a "thank you" from the boss. NOT. The first escapee appears to have been settled though, with Noni heading off to a programming job next week, subject to reference checks. Hooray! One up for the escape committee. A shame though as she was one of the faster working amoung us. I accomplished little yesterday, as for many pipes I couldn't even find the street, let alone the pipe! I feel a field trip to Lambeth (also home of the IWM) would be nice, but I think I'll struggle to convince the powers that be...

On that boring note I shall sign off...

A weekend away

We got away for the weekend as you will have read in J's blog. We toodled up through Perth to Forfar via a couple of castles and so on. There is no shortage of the former in the area, that's for sure. We didn't actually stop in Perth and will do that some other day as there is a great castle there - Stirling - which also houses the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders Museum and Archive, and the Black Watch museum is also in the vicinity.

Instead we saw a few little castles on the Saturday and a big one - Glamis - on the Sunday. The latter was where the Queen Mum was born and often lived. It was a good example of a lived-in castle, but it's all just a reminder of the huge gap between the classes over here. Sometimes the overwhelming feeling wasn't to be impressed, but rather faintly disgusted.

On the way back we saw some Pictish carved stones. These were the predecessors of the Scots, at least in the east of (present) Scotland. They were Christians so the carvings were combinations of Christian and pagan symbolism, some of them pretty gruesome. We finished the trip by driving over the impressive Tay bridge at Dundee and visiting 'Scotland's Secret Bunker' which isn't so much a secret any more. The latter was built during the Cold War as an early warning radar site originally, then converted later into a command bunker where a regional government could survive nuclear attack. It was surprisingly large and quite impressive for that, though the equipment now looks antiquated.

The economy continues to create headlines. LloydsTSB has bought out Halifax-Bank of Scotland, which was a bit of a shock here as HBOS was the largest bank in the country. Predictions are that thousands will lose their jobs as branches and offices are closed/combined, and of course ripple on effects can't help our own situation.

The jobs continue in their mind-numbingly boring fashion. Today one of my colleagues made the error of asking the bureaucrats whether they would like more paperwork, and surprise, surprise, they said "yes". Now a job that was taking perhaps 2 minutes a pipe will take 5. What the hell was she thinking? Sigh.

On Monday we started badminton at a local school. It was a good run around, and we weren't too bad for almost beginners. I did find that sometimes the shuttlecock went straight through my racket, but I'm sure it won't do that as often when I get my eye in.

All Blacks rule, OK?

We've settled into our routines now that we are both working, which is probably a bad thing. J still makes sure we get out and about though, and today's walk was to the cemetery to plant some heather in front of her relies' grave and thence to the botanical gardens. We followed a sign for a Wild Foods event in the exhibition hall where we found one table and an enthusiastic botanist. Rather underwhelming I thought, and hardly worth their advertising! We were expecting something like the West Coast WFF, on a smaller scale, but not that small.

The wargame was closer than it should have been - I don't think W was paying attention at the end 'cos he should have kicked my butt. Still, we were both rusty from so long not playing, so next time we'll both make fewer mistakes. J didn't like the late nights required with the time difference, so we'll have to give it a break for a week or two before we start anything else.

J and I got to see our first rugby since the World Cup, and this time the world was as it should be, with the ABs at the top. Still, it was a close run thing which kept us engrossed until the end. We are trying to get to the Test at Murrayfield but haven't found any seats left together. We'll keep trying though.

The Large Hadron Collider cranked up the other day, and there were doomsayers aplenty. People were genuinely convinced that it was the end of the world as we know it. Much of the scaremongering was by a 'scientist' whose calculations proved that a black hole would be created into which the whole earth would be sucked within a week. I suppose I might have to eat my words next Friday, (but of course would not be in a position to do so...), but I find it a little hard to credit as he is a chemist with no background in physics at all. BTW, Dad went to see the LHC when he was over last year.

The economy is in a bigger black hole though - it sucks to be frank - and the latest news is the crash of another travel group who left 65000 stranded. A company that J didn't go to work for in Bristol also went bust last week, leaving hundreds of Hens and Stags without a party. Perhaps she could have saved it? We'll never know.

It's definitely autumn here and the days are getting rapidly and noticeably shorter. I guess by mid-winter we'll be having lunch in the sunshine and the rest of the 'day' in darkness. At least J will escape it for a while, but I'll be experiencing a real Scottish winter for its duration.

Fireworks

I know more about laying pipes than I ever thought I would, though that's still not much at all. Actually the bigger lesson is how a database can fill with crap unless you have some tight controls on what goes into it. I've instituted some 'efficiencies' already, but the biggest hold-up is still the slow connection to the server. Today I hit my target of 23 investigations. Well, not really as we aren't making the changes we've recommended until our supervisors have checked our work, and that doesn't seem to have started yet.

The wargame is not going well. The Japs had a good Pearl Harbour raid but then I (as the Yanks & Allies) made a serious error and am trying to claw my way back from it. We're raiding the Japanese homeland (as Doolittle did historically) so we'll see how that goes. Meanwhile the Japs have cut off Samoa and blocked the trade route from the US to Australia. It'll take some effort to get that reopened...

J is settling in to work (see her blog from link to right -->) but it is a steep learning curve. I'm hoping she will bring home drugs to test on me.

We went to the end of Edinburgh Festival fireworks on Sunday, and they were quite spectacular. Click here to go and see some more pics.

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go...

Well, I was a little hasty in saying J had a job last week - it fell through after her second interview, but only because the job evaporated from under her! The good news is that she went for another interview on Friday and got a job that starts on Tuesday. Pay is reasonable but not as good as her last jobs.

I started on Wednesday in a crappy job checking that gas pipes have been correctly digitised. The company was poorly prepared for us, with PCs not set up, programs not working and printing not enabled for one of the necessary reports. It's one of those places where if you ask why something is done the way it is the response is always "because that's the way we do it". Not very open to change or improvement.

The programs we use run through Citrix WinFrames which means that they connect to a remote server, in this case somewhere in the south of England. It was so slow on Friday that I timed a screen refresh at 1 minute, and we have to do dozens of refreshes every time we work on a pipe. (Every time we pan a map it has to refresh, or if we turn layers off or on, or if we zoom in or out.) That morning I managed 2 pipes. In the afternoon it was better and I finished the first phase of the 10 in my batch. I asked them what the targets would be and they said 23 per day. Fat bloody chance with their infrastructure! I would think the money they are paying us to stare at a screen would have been better spent on infrastructure improvements first.

I am now being paid the same as the job I had in England the last time I was here. So much for 12 years of experience. Our team has a .NET programmer, and a graduate in AI amongst it, which gives an idea of how difficult it is to find work at the moment.

I had an interview for a better job last Tuesday but didn't get it. I've never got a job by interview yet, so I guess that says something about my interview skills.

W and I have managed to find a way to wargame by email, something I have missed for the last few years. I have just made a serious error in judgement (serious enough to cost the game I believe), but that's what it's all about. R will probably be giving W a hard time for it. 8-)

We haven't been doing too much recently as we're waiting for the bank balance to start moving the other way. J makes sure I get away from the computer for walkies, and tonight we are going to watch the fireworks at the end of the Festival. Of course it is raining.

J is signing us up for Badminton and Italian lessons. I'll have to start looking for a hockey team soon too.

My article has been mocked up and will get 9 pages in the mag which is more than I expected. If the IWM can get their act together in time it may get published in November's edition. Fingers crossed.