Solo

The Gorse Fox will be flying solo for much of the day. The Silver Vixen has just asked him to load up her broomstick as she prepares to meet up with her coven and terrorise the denizens of Durrington.

Excellent

Friday working at home. This should be the norm, particularly when the weather is so inclement. It is fairly easy for the Gorse Fox, doing his job, but conceded it may be less practical for prison officers, train drivers, brain surgeons, and so forth.

Most of the day was devoted to the Surrey project - trying to extract a useful set of metrics to show progress. This proved more elusive than expected, but also stimulating to the little grey cells. GF ended up adapting an old spreadsheet with some modern twists that linked it to some other relevant data sources. Looks quite promising - though not finished yet.

GF sees that Cousteau-cub is off (in her new car*) to the hospital tomorrow. Hopefully the journey will be a lot easier with her own transport. Will hope to speak to her some time over the weekend.

* new being a relative term - i.e. it is new to her.

Joyless

The joyless soul that is causing GF grief over the annual appraisal seems intent on grinding down everyone and anyone over this issue. Today the person was offered a way out (not via Dignitas, though that may be appropriate) but with a payout and offer to move on. GF suspects that trenches will be dug and a war of attrition begun. The first salvo has already been fired with the comment that the wording of the agreement is incorrect. That salvo was focussed at HR, not the GF - so he is sitting back to watch the fireworks.

Gorse Fox decided to work from home. He will contact the Surrey crew and let them know - but it seems a bit pointless driving there to sit in an office - when he can sit here in an office and perform the same info.

While typing - an invite arrived for a telecon at 0800... which he would have missed had he been travelling. Excellent decision, GF

Flattered

Urban-cub got a call during her outing with Silver Vixen. The estate agent  was trying to arrange a third visit for a prospective buyer. Sounds promising; let's hope he follows through.

Gorse Fox had a productive day in Surrey - though one of his emails triggered an influx of new data that he now needs to analyse. He suspects it will reveal similar gaps to those he had pointed out - but he must re-analyse the info to be sure.

Good win (4-0) for Spurs at Newcastle tonight.

Thunder

Gorse Fox was woken. It sounded like a huge, heavily laden lorry was ploughing up the road at full speed. After a moment or two his ears focussed and he realised it was in fact a loud and local thunderstorm. (Not a lot of rain, but a great deal of noise).

Silver Vixen is up early today. She is meeting with Urban-cub and heading across to Brighton.

Shortcut

The Gorse Fox enjoyed his day on Surrey. Work was progressing well and he bumped into an old colleague who he hasn't seen for several years. It was nice to catch up. and reminisce about the project we had been working on. This was particularly sweet - in fact a case of schadenfreude as the execs who chose not to to select us to do the work are in the press at the moment for having wasted £100m of public money. It would be so nice to tell a bit more of the story - but that would be unprofessional.

The Gorse Fox tried a different route home. This was similar to one tried last week - but where he had gone wrong. This week it was more successful, and whilst it involved a lot more zigging and zagging - it didi knock about 15 minutes off the route home.

Unremarkable

Today has been unremarkable. A morning spent with spreadsheets, collating data from the Surrey project and an afternoon punctuated by an online course.

Starfleet is, justly, very proud of its business ethics (for example it will never destroy an inhabited planet). Each year we have to go through an online course and quiz to make sure we are all cognisant of these ethics and that we sign up to them. Fair play to Starfleet. Gorse Fox's only complaint about this is that in order to ensure you are reading the text, it times how long you are on each page... this is all very fine, but for quick readers like the GF he kept receiving warnings that he had not spent long enough reading the text. This was irritating so he took to reading emails between pages. Thta'll teach them!

Flooding has now hit the Thames. Many people are affected. GF just hopes it doesn't have any knock-on effects  in the surrounding areas as he heads back up to Surrey tomorrow.

Parting thought. Today is the birthday of the Gorse Fox's cousin, Mary. Happy birthday!

In

That is the summary - we were in.

Being in, however, allowed the Gorse Fox to notice Cousteau-cub online and get to have a chat with her. It's been a long time since we managed to link up, so it was nice to catch up on the news. Here rheumatoid arthritis was giving her trouble today, but nevertheless she was at work. She and the Coventry Hobbit have acquired a car. More surprisingly, they have registered it officially and C-c is scheduled to take a Thai driving test.

Having the car means that her regular trips to the hospital at Trang are going to be a bit easier, and in general driving a car will be more comfortable than using the bike.

Early afternoon, the Gorse Fox cut up some chicken breasts and marinated them in a mixture of soy sauce, sesame oil, salt, pepper, fennel seeds, ginger, de-seeded red and green chilli, and garlic and covered the lot with a thinly sliced lemon. This sat in the bottom of the fridge for the rest of the afternoon. Then the chicken was stir-fried and put aside under the grill whilst onions, peppers, celery, carrot, fine beans, cashew nuts, and spring onion tops were stir fried. The whole mixture was then put back together and a can of coconut milk added. After about 10 minutes of simmering we dished up a delicious Sunday Dinner.

On an historical note - today would have been the birthday of the Gorse Fox's father (and his twin brother, the Bishop). He would have been 88 today, had he lived - but it is now some 49 years since he passed on.

Smirk

Computer languages can start heated debates.

Many "purists" who are steeped in the lore of UNIX and its various distributions will swear by obscure editors such as vi, or tools such as awk or grep and roundly scoff at the uninitiated.

The Gorse Fox has a long history with computer and finds this attitude rather tiresome and childish. He sees computers as tools to be used by as many people as possible - and as such they should be simple to understand and simple to program. Many years ago the very talented Mike Cowlishaw produced an interpreted language for computers, called Rexx. It doesn't matter what language the Gorse Fox plays with - he always compares it back to Rexx.

Today he installed rexx (a flavour called Regina-Rexx) on the Raspberry Pi - and has achieved more in a couple of hours than he had in the previous couple of weeks. The biggest single benefit probably being the language's ability to parse text efficiently in a simple coding construct. No obscure patterns... just a simple and clear statement.

You can listen the script-kiddies and the experts, but most of them are trying to show you how clever they are - The Gorse Fox eschews that notion - he is only interested in how easily the computer can be instructed to perform on his behalf.

Just Checking (Will Ark be required?)

The rain continues. Given how flat the land is, and how low-lying it is where the new house is being built, the Gorse Fox thought it would be worth checking up on a) progress,  b) whether there is any flooding, and c) whether an ark may be required.

Though it was a muddy and slippery walk to get to a vantage point from which the Gorse Fox could check, it was clear that progress had been made and we now had a tiled roof and the windows were being fitted.

Unfortunately they seem to be building some hoardings that partially block the view - but it is heartening to see progress despite the dreadful weather. With the house now, essentially, water-tight they can at least continue to work through most weather conditions.

The next encouraging sign was that whilst the bund, on which the Gorse Fox stood, was muddy - there was no untoward build up of water. Indeed the balancing pond was still at least a metre below the edge.

The conclusion to be drawn is that the area, though flat and low-lying, is not likely to flood - and the Gorse Fox will not have to build an ark.

Drawing to a close

As time marches inexorably on and another week draws to a close, the Gorse Fox has worked from home again. His aim is that, on Fridays, this should be the default setting; and to be fair, it pretty much works out that way.

The day was, again, peppered with calls, emails, and messages from the unhappy appraisal recipient. The Gorse Fox finds himself walking a fine line between following the party-line and arming himself with a baseball bat for a face-to-face discussion. On checking, however, it seems to be contrary to Starfleet policy to beat someone round the head and tell them to get lost. The ridiculous part of this is that the protagonist is quite good at their job - but just seems to be incapable of any reasoned, social interaction.

Interestingly, GF has shed all of his other responsibilities in his old division and is just waiting for confirmation that his transfer is now complete. Certainly he is disconnecting from the old, but has yet to fully connect with the new.

In the background, GF has been watching some YouTube videos on Python and JavaScript as he tries to refresh some very old pathways in his brain.

Working Tyrelessly (Geddit ?)

At least for the first couple of hours today, the Gorse Fox was still trapped by the lack of fully function tyres on the car. The nice man from e-Tyres turned up just as the rain started. He took stock and showed the Gorse Fox the huge gash in the wall of his front tyre. This was not something that could have been fixed with the tyre's self-sealing quality and some compressed air.

Some 30 minutes later the car was properly shod, and the hooded stranger headed back into the distance. GF was technically mobile again... even if he had no intention of using this re-discovered ability today.

The on-going saga of the difficult appraisal continues. The Gorse Fox finds himself in the cross-hairs of a daily barrage of questions, sophistry, deliberate misinterpretation, and abuse. Today was no different. Fortunately, he has advice, guidance and support from Starfleet's HR. It seems that an accident with a teleporter might not go amiss. "Bones, I wonder if you could pop down to the transporter room..."

Wet stuff has been falling from the sky for most of the day. It must be intolerable for those affected by the flooding. There seems to be no respite.

Trapped

The flat tyre and GF's inherent laziness (couldn't be bothered to change the wheel) kept him trapped at home today. New tyres are ordered and should be fitted tomorrow - but for now, he's trapped. Given the state of the weather, this is no bad thing.

He continues to have trouble with one of the appraisals from last year. This is becoming a saga, and will in future times be sung about in the great epic poems of Starfleet. For now, he has to maintain his equanimity and try to shut this issue down.

GF was interested in the LibDem Party Political Broadcast regarding the European Elections. Even in the world of politics, it is rare you see such dissembling and such assertion that possible future scenarios are absolute fact. He must conclude that of the three major parties, the LibDems seem the least trustworthy. The Labour Party seem the least capable, having historically created economic chaos every time they have been in power since the 1960s. Interesting how both of these parties worked to crush the referendum bill that would give the electorate a say in the Country's future. The GF is not sure which way he would vote in such a referendum - there are arguments for and against. But he bitterly resents the self-serving political pygmies who believe the electorate should not have a vote.

Flat

It was an excellent day in the Starfleet office in Surrey. GF had time to collate some of the information that he had received from various sources. This was beginning to take some shape. Many of the team were in South Africa for week of workshops - but teleconference facilities allowed us to join in where needed.

The dreadful traffic at leaving time, in that part of Surrey, encouraged the Gorse Fox to try and find an alternative route home. SatNav duly programmed, he set off. The first part of the route was fine, but the overview provided by the display is not really detailed enough and GF had not noticed some of the finer points of the route selection!

These finer points were such that GF headed out in a different direction and then after a longer detour looped back round into the heavy traffic he had been trying to avoid. Doh!

To add insult to injury (or in fact, the other way round) as the GF approached the final mile of the journey home - he struck a pothole that ripped his front nearside tyre. It was the second time of the way home that he had hit a bone-jarring pothole - but this one was destructive. Not amused, he limped home. This would have to be fixed tomorrow, he wasn't going to touch it tonight.

HQ

The Gorse Fox spent much of the day at Starfleet HQ. It makes a change - and was his first visit in about a year (or more). Shame to see such a magnificent complex being split and leased out.

The purpose of the visit was to review the outcome of a recently completed project. This proved to be both interesting and longer than expected. In fact, in the two hours allowed, we managed only about half of the questions GF had prepared.

Back home, late afternoon, GF had to hear an informal appeal against the appraisal he had awarded. He hoped to be swayed by the arguments, but despite 45 minutes of intense discussion he remained  convinced his original assessment was correct.

Documents please

One of the outcomes of yesterday's house-clearance activities is that the Gorse Fox has a batch of new documents to file in the family archive. Predominantly old Wills and Estate Distributions they provide an insight into the extended family. This is going to provide several interesting hours of analysis and research.

We also found a set of 35mm slides from our wedding - slides that we had never seen before. Now GF just has to find the scanner attachment he has squirrelled away for scanning slides.

Defeat

We went to Buckingham to meet with the family and start to sort out the effects of the Silver Vixen's mother. Urban-cub came along to help. We had a major clear out a couple of years ago, so the task should not have been too daunting.

Several hours later we had taken over 40 bags to the recycling centre, a further 20 to the clothes bank, and provided enough metallic items (knives, forks, saucepans, racks, etc) to melt down and build and inshore patrol vessel.

Finally there was a sort through the material that could be kept. This created a further 6 bags for the tip, and a similar number for the charity shop. It also raised the spectre of defeat. Our downsizing exercise of last year being significantly undone as more and more stuff found its way into our car.

It was a long day, but everyone worked hard, and it was a job well done.

Encased

The Gorse Fox ordered, and has now received a protective case for his Raspberry Pi..

Most satisfactory.

These cases are available in a number of colours, but GF went for the translucent one so that he could observe the coloured lights when he is fiddling around with it.

Now he just needs time to come up with a project that will make use of it.

All done

The course is over. A bit of formal education is always fun - even if the education centre is almost totally devoid of modern communication technology. There is virtually no mobile phone signal at the location, and the broadband WiFi is useless - falling over every few minutes.

It's nice to get back to civilisation!

The forecast for the afternoon was pretty dire - with an expectation of further flooding and further storms. It was good to get home whilst it was still light - though even then it was clear many of the roads were flooding. The Gorse Fox feels dreadfully sorry for those poor people who have been affected by the floods.

Family History

What an interesting evening. The Gorse Fox sat between a chap who's wife is a rofessional genealogist and a Canadian colleagues wo, like the Gorse Fox, has genealogy as a hobby. He suspects that everyone else on the table may have felt a little left out... but it was, without doubt, an intriguing conversation.

On Course

Well another day at the Starfleet training centre and another day sitting in, as an observer, on a very interesting class. Strange place to be in this modern era, with almost no mobile phone signal at all. This stops the interrupts, but does make it difficult when you have to make business calls.

The Gorse Fox is off to the gala dinner in a few minutes.

7K+1

Today was a change from the norm. After an early-ish start the Gorse Fox headed across country to one of the Starfleet training venues on Hants/Berks borders. He will be sitting in on a class for the next few days with the aim of both learning from it and prepapring to run it in the future.

As the class has drawn to a close for the day, he must admit that he has been very impressed y the materialpreseneted so far... and as he is just an observer he doesn't have to get involved in the various exercises that are being run throughout the day.

The weather is both foul and cold. The Gorse Fox has had to park on the grass by the driveway to the venue. He hopes the car will not have sunk too far into the soft ground by the time he has to leave on Friday. 

7k

The Gorse Fox has noticed that this is his 7,000th blog post. For such an auspicious number it ought to be full of deep philosophy, humour, and insight. That, however, is not how the day went.

The banality of the day was only broken by discussions with the HR trolls regarding some disciplinary matters that the Gorse Fox is going to be investigating. Why can't people just be nice to one another, and why do people believe that they are entitled to exalted appraisal scores, when patently, they are no better than average?

GF did start to look through his computers for a paper he wrote back in about 1989/90 - he realised that it was likely to shed a bit of insight into his current background distraction of the Raspberry Pi. He suspects that this document may only exist on a CD somewhere as it is nowhere to be found online on his West Sussex data centre, nor in Starfleet (at least so far).

Impressed

The Gorse Fox has had a good day.

Work-wise it was spent reviewing and redrawing the document maps he had started a few weeks ago. The Surrey project had provided so additional insight, and highlighted some anomalies - these are now eliminated.

After work GF got the chance to play further with is Raspberry Pi (RPi). He still hasn't done anything of note - but now has it on the family network and it's accessible from the MAC, the PC, laptop, and indeed iPad.

As easy as 3.14159

Well, that was fun.

The Gorse Fox now has his Raspberry Pi running and is remotely logged in to it from the MAC. It has several dinky little browsers and GF is using one of them (Midori) to write this blog post. He still needs to fiddle with the keyboard settings to adapt to the MAC and also the screen size - to make better use of the display size... but first impressions are good.

With a single power connection (micro-USB), and using a small USB WiFi dongle GF has it down to the bare minimum.

A slice of Pi

A full English breakfast was a treat. It is not often we have a cooked breakfast at home - but today we made an exception. Out came the George Foreman grill, and within minutes a whole pack of sausages was cooked and being kept warm whilst a pack of bacon was similarly treated. A few eggs, some bread, some sauces and mustard... perfect.

The Gorse Fox bought a Raspberry Pi a couple of years ago. He has not touched it since that original flourish of opening the box.

The weather tomorrow is forecast to be dreadful, and the Silver Vixen is out for the day with her coven, terrorising the poor folk of Ardingly. The Gorse Fox sees this as an opportunity to, finally, get the Rasberry Pi working and have a play. If all goes well he should have a sub-£30 computer working by the time he's finished and thanks to You Tube and some of the videos he has seen on there, should be able to control it from his existing screen and keyboard (though he does have a spare keyboard and mouse, if needed).

Runes

The Gorse Fox should have read the runes. It was all there, in plain sight. He even commented on it yesterday.

The day started well - good progress on the Surrey Project and plans in place for next week. Then the Gorse Fox had another appraisal scheduled. That is when everything went a bit pear-shaped. The individual was not happy with the appraisal and has decided to appeal. This has been followed by several email salvos.

This would be likely to escalate into a long-running saga - but for the fact GF only has 97 working days until retirement, and is busy completing his transfer to another division. Whilst sorry to be leaving colleagues to deal with this - he is glad that it won't remain his problem.

Oh well... the weekend starts here.

Beware - smooth running

The Gorse Fox is concerned.

Everything seems to be running remarkably smoothly. The appraisals are going pretty well (only 2 to go). Thursday's traffic was light. The Surrey project is not yet on a stable foundation, but the foundations are now defined, a sensible programme structure is agreed, the resources are defined, and the required artefacts are identified. The Gorse Fox even had time to go for a short walk at lunchtime.

His transfer is now public. His new Starfleet Business Unit Executive has announced the Gorse Fox's arrival: Gorse Fox - DCM Chief Architect - Gorse Fox is a Consulting Architect from elsewhere in Starfleet and is joining us for the first half of 2014.  He will help our efforts to enhance the DCM Method and asset portfolio.  In addition, he will be taking a broad review across all bids and inflight projects to ensure that we are adopting the DCM Method.

It is a little disconcerting. This is redolent of a calm that precedes a mighty storm.

I'm Surrey

Today saw the Gorse Fox nestled in the Starfleet offices in darkest Surrey. Several more appraisals were scattered throughout the day and because he couldn't find a quiet office from which to conduct the calls, ended up strolling in the town square in order to ensure some privacy.

Traffic in this part of the world is troublesome. 35 minutes after leaving the office, the Gorse Fox was still only 5 miles from his starting point, but once the traffic did start to open up, GF was able to do the last 35 miles in about 45 minutes. Never mind, the traffic ensures that he gets longer to listen to his books.

GF got off lightly. The Silver Vixen and her new playmate, round the corner, had a meeting with the regional sales rep for one of the big sewing-machine manufacturers. They ended up renting several of their machines for the workshop in the village... but at least there wasn't a pile of them waiting to be distributed round our house.

Ring, ring....

The Gorse Fox has spent the whole day on the phone - only the shortest of gaps between calls has permitted comfort to be maintained.

• There have been several annual appraisals.
• There have been interviews.
• There have been presentations on review findings.
• There has been a resource assessment call.
• There has been a project planning call (as if the Gorse Fox could contribute to that !)

Ears are now having a rest.

GF was thinking that one of the projects with which he is involved is truly international - a South African company for who Starfleet in the UK runs Data Centres in Germany using resources in Poland, Czech Republic and India, and the first part of the system we will move is for Latin America so that they can complete the merger of an Australian company.

While on the last call of the day, GF was able to dig into the Office of National Statistics website. Urban-cub had been trying to find out how many over 50s there were in the South East. She phoned the Gorse Fox (he assumes that as he is over 50, she thought he might know them all). It took a bit of digging around, but based on the latest published data there are 3,168,868 over 50s in the South East (which excludes London). That is out of a total population of just over 8,000,000; so quite a sizeable proportion.

Back on the road tomorrow.

Write ups

The Gorse Fox has succeeded in finishing the write-ups for all his staff appraisals. Now he just has to deliver them. But as his staff a pretty fine bunch, he will be able to do this over the phone, throughout the week.

A couple of lunchtime calls saw the Gorse Fox talking with the Spanish project and the German members of the local project. Interesting in the latter case as the architect seems to think he can carry the whole design in his head - and doesn't have time to write it down. Then he complains he is stressed. The GF said he would help - but the first thing was to start a spreadsheet that recorded all the fleeting questions and ideas so that he didn't have to try and remember them. This seemed like an epiphany and had not previously occurred to him.

He notices that in his old job (where he is still thought of as the Service Area Team leader - with a rising headcount - now 170) that the level of utilisation expected of his people would have increased by 5%. When you calculate this using the old methods from last year this actually means that you would have to bill every working day of the year + 1 day of your vacation. He suspects Starfleet needs to adjust its sights as that is clearly unsustainable... unless the basis of the measurement has changed.

Hants

The plan for the day is to meet up with Betty and Barney Rubble over in the bandit lands of Hampshire. First visit of the year and first visit since their trip to Finland for Christmas. Always good company, we are looking forward to it.

Seeing clearly

The morning  was occupied by a few chores and a trip through the marvels of the interweb to look at designs for orangeries, and possible suppliers. There may be a number of months to go, but we need to start considering a design.

The afternoon meant a trip to Chichester. Firstly stopping at a supplier of orangeries and conservatories to see what ideas they had. Whilst they refer to it as a showroom - it only had 3 or 4 displays in all. A bit disappointing, but the quality was good.

The best part of the trip was picking up some new spectacles which were obtained free of charge - despite their usual price being £650. A scratch on the lens of the Gorse Fox's usual pair caused the optician to order replacement lenses under warranty and as GF had a spare set of frames he had the lenses fitted in there.

We finished off the trip with a raid on M&S to renew and extend the Gorse Fox's extensive collection of underwear and shirts. Most of the former being relatively antique by now, and most of the latter suffering wear and tear to the collars.

Maps

Most of today was spent reviewing and discussing the outcome of reviews. Firstly it was a review of an annual appraisal and the way in which a person's utilisation was measured. Though controversial, the Gorse Fox believes we have arrived at a fair position.

Next it was a project review, the output from which has to go to some Starfleet Execs. Then it was a tooling review to evaluate and discuss the current home-built tool that many of our projects are using. Sophisticated though it is, it is based on a competitor's product - and thus seems a perverse selection. The strategy going forward will be up to the Gorse Fox, it was decided. (Right answer).

In parallel with all of this Gorse Fox was drawing a series of document maps to illustrate the flow and precedence of information through the lifecycle of one of our migrations. Now having his own A3 printer, it was possible to print these out and look at them as a whole. What this has high-lighted is a few gaps in some areas, and some repetition in others.

All in all, a very good week.

Day of the Long Knives

The second day on this new project, over which the Gorse Fox has a watching and guiding brief. Responsible exec calls GF and the delivery reviewer into his office and requests a person-by-person analysis of the suitability to do the job.

The Gorse Fox suspects this is one jumbo jet that will have all its engines changed whilst in-flight.

He must say that the Starfleet offices are very pleasant compared with most - consequently he assumes they will soon be vacated and everyone moved into a tent on a nearby piece of waste ground. Also the traffic round Woking is dreadful at peak hours - it taking more than 20 minutes to travel the first mile this evening, but at least things picked up after that.

Back to basics

The Gorse Fox turned up in Woking, parked and then had to find his way to the Starfleet office. You can get to a point where you over-rely on technology. He left the car park through the the shooping centre and called up Google Maps to find the directions to the office.

There was no signal.

He tried his other phone.

Again there was no signal.

He stood there for a moment trying to remember the map he had looked at before leaving home. Then he looked up to try and get his bearings.

Ten metres in front of him was the building he wanted. In front of it was a great big sign. If he hadn't been so focussed on his new technology he would have found it a lot more quickly.

Consolidation

Today has been spent in the Midlands with Jean-Luc Picard. Well, perhaps the Gorse Fox should refine that statement - with "after the three and three-quarter hour drive" to the Midlands...  Fortunately, he is in the middle of an audio book - so the journey was not too much of a hardship.

The review work has now been refined and categorised into findings, conclusions (categorised into a number topics), and recommendations. All of these are further divided into those areas of the project that most effected. J-LP will turn this into a presentation over the next couple of days.

With the results of last year's appraisals now "out there" - GF is getting lost of queries coming in from the dispossessed and disconsolate. This is the worst part of the process - having to justify the unjustifiable and explain to some people that because some accountant somewhere made an arbitrary decision over the spread of appraisal scores you have been deemed below par.

Monday - Easing into the week

Quiet start to the week with further consolidation of the notes from last week's review. This took all morning on the phone with Jean-Luc Picard. Then a telecon with the German arm of the programme to get their view and their problems.

Next few days on the road.

Sound

The Gorse Fox received a message from John Lewis to say that the Sonos sound system he ordered yesterday had arrived and was ready for collection.

This was a wind up.

GF had, indeed, ordered a Sonos and expected it to be delivered today. However, when he turned up at the aforementioned store he was told he could NOT collect his parcel until 1100 because for Sunday Trading laws. He pointed out that a) they had contacted him to tell him to collect it and the note did not contain any restrictions, and b) the transaction actually took place yesterday when the order was fulfilled and the credit card debited.

Never mind the utter stupidity, this was JLP's opportunity to wind up the Gorse Fox. He waited until 1100 and duly picked up his package.

Back home, the Sonos Bridge was installed alongside the existing ADSL modem and paired with an App in the Silver Vixen's iPad. Next the small Sonos PLAY1 speaker was paired with the bridge and within a few seconds was streaming music into the kitchen. Next, the controller app was installed on the MAC and the iTunes library connected. Impressively simple. Finally the Sonos app was downloaded to all our other devices (iPads, iPhones, Android phones etc). Now we can control the streaming of music from any device. Will have to extend the system when we move to the new house, but for now, it serves its purpose.

Resurrection

The Gorse Fox notices the headline: "Man who wrote on Facebook that he had 'really hurt someone' is jailed for 20 years for brutally stabbing his 'gentle giant' neighbour to death 20 times for no reason"

Now this raises several questions:

1. How stupid do you have to be to announce on Facebook that you had done someone damage?
2. How many times do you have to kill someone?
3. How did this gentle giant resurrect himself between each of his killings?
4. Is the art of the sub-editor dying?

Where's the face?

The Gorse Fox has tried for the second or third time to move his photo library to the MAC. The movement of the photos (all 50GB) is moderately straightforward. The issue lies with the recovery of the albums, edits, and face tags that had been assigned on the PC.

It would appear that whilst the Picasa Backup and Restore will (with the help of a crowbar) restore the whole environment to the MAC, the face recognition information regarding the geometry of the face tags (i.e. where the identifying rectangle is on the photo) seems to become randomly screwed up. GF suspects it is a feature of whether the tag was assigned before or after the photo was straightened or cropped. It is, however, causing some strange results and is about to trigger a significant bit of work!

Now, in his innocence, he thinks this is a design flaw. All tags, edit decision lists, or identifying information that involve or reference the image geometry should use the original image as the origin and inherit relative references in any cascading edits.

What?

There are times when you begin to wonder if the gene pool has become too diluted.

The Gorse Fox reads today of a woman who is suing her solicitor for professional negligence. It appears that he did not explain to her that finalising her divorce would terminate her marriage.

Yes, they walk among us.

Notes

The Gorse Fox, after a very good night's sleep, worked at home.

He thought it would be a chance to catch up on some personnel management, but in the end most of the day was spent on the phone with Capt. Picard consolidating, synthesising, and summarising our notes from the past few days of reviews. One of the outcomes was a decision NOT to travel to Germany next week - but rather to deal with the German review by phone (as we already had a good summary from one of the team whilst in Madrid). As it happens this proved useful as it means he can get involved with another project for a couple of days next week.

Old days

It really was like the old days. The Gorse Fox and Capt. Picard commenced their reviews and then as it approached midday they were escorted out to a near by coffee shop for chuuros and coffee. Very agreeable.

Back in th office we completed the review and were again escorted out to a street-side restaurant for lunch. An hour or two later, Capt Picard was getting twitchy as he had to get to the airport. We left one of our hosts to finish the next course of the meal and the other host drove us to the airport. This is how business used to be done. This was most convivial, and the Gorse Fox was pleased to say that the review team have been invited back.

Now he is sitting in the VIP Lounge at Madrid airport waiting for his plane, nibbling on some peanuts and enjoying a quiet G&T.

Sleep

Considering the Gorse Fox can normally sleep at will, that was the second night where he hasn't slept deeply. Will be good to be back in own bed tonight. But first he has a day of project technical reviews to conduct.

Supper

After a bit of a walk to try and find a restaurant that was open before 8pm, Capt Picard and the Gorse Fox found a nice Italian where we had paper thin pizza the size of a football pitch and nice bottle of wine.

Starfleet, Madrid

Nice day in Starfleet Madrid. Nice to be in decent building rather than the usual dilapidated old shack that we seem to think is appropriate in the UK. It had a lovely restaurant also where the Gorse Fox chose what he thought was pasta verdi with bacon - only it truned out to be big, chopped runner beans in garlic and bacon. Probably a mistake that he will not repeat.

Local project team were very hospitable, and not at all defensive (as teams often can be when being reviewed by an external party). The Gorse Fox is meeting up with Capt. Picard in a few minutes to review today's findings.

Had a call from Deep Blue. Currently under pressure to join the Gorse Fox's last project. Thought the the Gorse Fox should do the decent thing and warned him off the vortex of despair that it had become.

Early

The clocks are one hour ahead here inMadrid, so this seems like an early start - particularly as the Gorse Fox didn't have the best of nights. Never mind, the day looks as if it will be challenging and that is half the fun.

The Gorse Fox arrived last night at a decent hour, only being some 15 minutes from the airport. Having checked in to the hotel, phoned the Silver Vixen and unpacked he went down to the lounge to meet with Captain Picard. There followed an hour of planning as we discussed the strategy for today and then we went our separate ways. The Gorse Fox will be meeting him for breakfast in about 15 minutes.

Lounging

The Gorse Fox has arrived at Gatwick - and was astounded by the speed at which he got through security. He would estimate that it was under a minute from entering the security hall to the point he was collecting his scanned stuff and putting it all away. Very impressive though he expects mid afternoon on a Tuesday is not a peak travel time.

He's now sitting in one of the airport lounges with a bit of fruit cake and G&T waiting for the gate to be called for the flight. Looking out of the window, there is clearly a great deal of development under way at Gatwick

Not spreading the News

It is clear that some of the news regarding the Gorse Fox's internal transfer within Starfleet has not been adequately disseminated. He has just received a slide deck showing the new European-wide organisation for his old service-line. He is shown as a team team leader for the new organisation, with a headcount of 156 staff.

Ooops.

Stoned

Plans change.

The onset of a kidney stone whilst a colleague was preparing to fly to the UK to meet with the Gorse Fox means that his plans have changed. Hotel in Slough has been cancelled, Tuesday will mean working from home during the morning, then flying to Madrid during the late afternoon.

Where's Noah?

It would appear that an Ark would be the best means of transport today. No trains are running from Barnham to Horsham because the Arun Valley is flooded. Fortunately, the Gorse Fox was not planning to use the railway today. He does expect that the roads may prove interesting, but will plot his route carefully before leaving.

Packing

Tomorrow sees the twelfth day of Christmas and so, today, the Silver Vixen took down the Christmas Decorations and packed them away knowing that next year they will dress different rooms in a different house. For now, GF has packed them back into the loft.

Meanwhile the Gorse Fox was preparing for a return to work - and in so doing packed a case ready for a week on the road (two days in Slough and two in Madrid). Whereas this used to be second nature, it took a little concentration and planning this time. Fortunately, tomorrow's meeting is dependent on the arrival of a colleague from the North and so the Gorse Fox can make a leisurely start.

He must say that the Christmas break has been wonderfully relaxing and he feels quite chilled. How long that will last, who knows!

Cup

The storms continued to blast the coastal regions. Again, the Gorse Fox was glad to be a little further inland than last year (and 20 metres or so higher, above sea level). Touch wood, we have not been affected, but must comment on the extent of the thunder we have heard over the past few nights and how load the hail was when it rattled through.

The new house is only a couple of metres above sea level, on the old alluvial plane between the Downs and the sea. However, the area is criss-crossed with drainage ditches, pumping stations, and a huge balancing pond. Recent weather has suggested that this should not be impacted in any way buy such pluvial excess, but the Gorse Fox would guess that it may affect the build schedule until the house is water-tight.

Pistol Pete and young Jake were heading for St Mary's to watch the Saints play Burnley in the Cup. The Urban-cub decided that she would rather spend the afternoon with us, than sitting in the windswept terraces. So it was that she arrived around mid-day and had a quiet afternoon as we chatted and settled down in front of a film.

Keeping an eye on the score, we saw it see-saw 1-0, 2-0, 2-1, 2-2, 3-2, 4-2, 4-3 and realised what a tense last few minutes there must have been... but at least they  had seen lost of goals and Saints had won. Game over, Urban cub took over the kitchen a prepared a huge lasagne ready for their return.
This was an excuse to open out our kitchen table to its full size, for the first time. We were pleased to see that it would easily accommodate 6, though only 5 were present today.

Making the most

We made the most of the last day of vacation and chose to visit the local Cinema. It was the opening day of "Last Vegas" featuring Michael Douglass, Robert de Niro, Kevin Kline, and Morgan Freeman. It was a gentle comedy about a weekend "bachelor party" in Las Vegas for the four septuagenarians... and it was great entertainment and a very enjoyable couple of hours.

After the cinema we strolled across the rain-swept courtyard to Nando's for a bite to eat. As usual, simple but satisfying.

Fin

Well last day of "vacation" today, obviously there is the weekend to come, but that doesn't really count. The Gorse Fox is enjoying, and getting used to this life of leisure and must now change gear again and get back into the swing of work, next week.

Margins

The Gorse Fox, though still on vacation, logged on to his Starfleet system. There was travel to arrange for next week - and so he used the Starfleet Online Travel Reservation system to arrange flights and hotels. This went without a hitch, and the trick he developed last year of pre-selecting seats in rows 1-5 means that he should still get speedy boarding.

Whilst there he checked his email and sees that the Division in which he has been working is reorganising again. What a relief that he is moving on. It is clear the the "Innovation Services" group of consultants and designers is being further marginalised as people are allocated to specific pan-European industry-focussed divisions. This is the usual woolly thinking from the centre... believing in industry specialisation. This is where innovation gets stifled as there is no longer the cross-fertilisation of ideas as people move from finance to insurance, and insurance to media, and public sector to aerospace and so forth. However, the Gorse Fox shouldn't be surprised - if this group of "leaders" had been that brilliant then Starfleet wouldn't have bought them for small-change ten years ago. (They did have some good technical people and some good consultants, but they too have really been marginalised).

Good Start

Well that's an excellent start to the New Year - a quiet and relaxing day, a win for Spurs (against Man Utd at Old Trafford), and a new episode of Sherlock on TV.

Happy New Year

The Gorse Fox and the Silver Vixen would like to wish you all a very, very Happy New Year.

For us, it is likely to be a year of change with the impending retirement of the Gorse Fox (112 working days to go), and moving into our new house sometime in the middle of the year. No doubt lots of adjustments to accommodate!

Anyway we wish you health, we wish you peace, and we wish you happiness.

Linguine, the Lensman, and the Knife

Some days your luck just seems unbounded.

It started with a decision that we would pop into Chichester (always worthy of a stroll round the town). We had some vouchers for a store, and they were approaching the point where they expire.

Now, a quick aside. Several weeks ago the Gorse Fox went into the opticians to have his glasses adjusted. The technician noticed a scratch on the lens and said he would order a replacement. Just before Christmas the Gorse Fox got a call to say the lens was ready and and he should come in to get it fitted. Now, back to the main storyline.

Parking up, we strolled into town and the Gorse Fox dropped in to the optician, and clutching his spare pair of old glasses he explained why he was there. Realising the old pair and new pair had identical frames it suddenly occurred to him to get the lenses fitted in the old pair. As the technician wasn't in, they agreed to this and GF left the old glasses with them. Result - he would end up with, effectively, a new pair of glasses.

We strolled on and spent our vouchers as planned. Then the GF remembered he had broken the spring on the scissors of his Swiss Army Knife, so strolling back he stopped at various shops to see if they were dealers. Eventually he found a super little shop that sold everything. The chap took the knife, opened his box of spares and within a couple of minutes the spring was replaced and all was well with the world; the GF had a fully functioning set of scissors on his knife, again. Result!

We were going to stop a Prezzo for lunch, but they were busy and there would be a 15 minute wait for a table. We decided to go next door and try the Cote Brasserie. Though busy, we managed to get a table immediately and were presented with a superb menu. We enjoyed our starters: a charcuterie board for the GF, and smoked salmon for the Silver Vixen. A superb start. Then we waited for the main course - a seafood linguine for the GF and a fish pie for the SV. And we waited. And we waited. The Maitre d' noticed we had been waiting and came to apologise having chased up the kitchen. The food duly arrived and was excellent. When we came to pay the bill, however, the Maitre d' had deducted the price of both main courses as a gesture for having kept us waiting. Result, again! What service.

Now, leaving the restaurant the GF had a thought - "had the original optician ordered two lenses or just the one replacement?". Rather than end up with a mixed pair - half old and half new, the Gorse Fox returned to the optician to check. The manager had noticed that there was only the one lens, and had gone ahead and ordered the second. This will mean the GF has effectively got a £650 pair of glasses for nothing.

With luck running like this, it is worth doing the lottery.

Forecast

The forecast for today's weather is pretty dire. Gales and heavy rain is expected. The Gorse Fox feels sorry for those who have returned to work and have to contend with the disruption that will, no doubt, ensue on the roads and railways.

Progress

The Gorse Fox started the day by preparing a load of files to share with his cousin. This took slightly longer than planned when the Gorse Fox realised there was a batch of paper files he had not yet digitised.

Two of the three scanners were pressed into action and all the relevant files were soon ready for further analysis, and for transmission.

With all of that done and it being a lovely bright (if cold) day, we decided to go along and see if there had been any progress in the last month on the house build.

It was difficult to see in the bright sunlight, but with a little bit of fiddling, and a very long zoom, the Gorse Fox got some shots of the house. It is clear they have now finished the walls and the roof trusses are in place. He would expect the roof to be tiled by the time he next visits. It's all rather exciting!

Do not disturb

A quiet day at home. There had been an initial intention to pop out for a while, but both the Silver Vixen and the Gorse Fox got bogged down into their tasks - and before we knew it it was getting dark.

The Gorse Fox had spent some time on the genealogical research - frustrated by the apparent absence of the Silver Vixen's g-grandfather and g-g-grandfather from census records where one could reasonably expect to find them. He was equally dismayed to realise that he had not filled in records for some recent additions to the family (this has now been addressed).

GF got a message from a cousin. She too has been researching her branch of the family tree and is eager to share research. GF will prepare a package in the morning and put it on a shared drive so that she can see what he has found.

Lovely day

Well, the day with Gorse Fox's tiny sister and her her family was lovely. Despite the dire warnings, the journey was trouble-free and indeed the route selected turned out to be fairly quick and cut the distance down to 51 miles.

Blade and Mask were there, though Blade was upstairs in his command centre, finishing off a University project, for much of the time. Mask was generally helping out, but also keeping us up to date with his progress now that he is working/studying in London. He has a big exam looming, but seems pretty relaxed about it.

The Master of the Household (always most pleasurable company) was his usual hospitable self, and we discussed everything from politics to backup regimes, from mobile phones to stuffed rhinos.

Meanwhile the Gorse Fox's tiny sister and the Silver Vixen chatted about the Beloved Aunt, Cousteau-cub, sewing, health, Urban-cub, Starfleet, and the Nursery (I suppose, in the circumstances, and with her involvement, what you might call a miniscule) at which she works.

Overall it was an excellent day and we look forward to meeting up with them again in the New Year.

Magnifying

The Gorse Fox is polishing his spectacles as he and the Silver Vixen get ready to visit the Gorse Fox's little sister (once she becomes a grandmother, you could classify her as a masterpiece of nanotechnology).

As the latest storm tracks through - the journey does promise to be "interesting".

Boxing Day

Boxing Day was planned as a quiet day, and so it has turned out. There was a flurry of phone calls and the Gorse Fox made sure Skype was active in case Cousteau-cub got time to make contact. (She was diving today - apparently that is one of the few times she is pain free).

We had a turkey crown and a gammon joint to cook, and the Gorse Fox was feeling adventurous. He spent some time looking at various recipes and idea online, and got stuck-in.

The gammon was simmered in Coca Cola and a peeled onion for a 90 minutes (it wasn't a big joint). Then, skin removed, left to rest. Once cooled down, it was scored and pinned with cloves, then drizzled in syrup before roasting for a further 30 minutes. So simple, really, and yet the results were excellent. This approach will now be the "standard". The ham was sweet and moist, and almost irresistible.

The turkey also got attention. Having rested a room temperature it was coated in a past made from garlic and hole-grain mustard. This was put into an hot (220C) oven for 20 minutes, and then the temperature was reduced to 120C for a couple of hours. Cooking it slowly on a low temperature kept the turkey incredibly moist. Once cooked, it was left to rest for a couple of hours before we carved it.

Wishes

The Gorse Fox trusts that you all got the Christmas you wished for; that it was a time of joy, a time of giving, and a time to think of family and friends.

The Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen spent the day, as planned, with Urban-cub. Whilst there, we had a long Skype call with Cousteau-cub and the Coventry Hobbit - so despite geographical distance we all managed to get together. It was a shame Pistol Pete was on duty, otherwise he would have made the call perfect.

Quiet day at home is planned for today... though the nearby racecourse has its biggest meet of the year, so we may be regaled by the distant sound of their commentary floating on the wind.

It's a Wrap

Well, we tried a recipe from Tom Kerridge last night. The problem was that we didn't quite get the cut right. It was meant to be a a smoky bacon joint (smoked pork belly) - but we only remembered the pork belly bit. However, the Gorse Fox extemporised, when he realised, and cooked the joint for an hour before introducing the honey with which it would be basted every 10 minutes for the following 40 minutes. Well, in essence (despite the wrong basic joint) it worked well - but GF had selected a very strong Greek honey which turned quite bitter. He is sure that with a normal honey it would have been perfect. Oh well, next time.

This morning everything is wrapped and ready. The Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen are heading for Urban-cub's for Christmas Dinner. Pistol Pete is on duty, but should be home late afternoon - and we will settle down to eat on his arrival.

We have exchanged text messages with Cousteau-cub, and hope to Skype with her in a few minutes. Family may be scattered, but technology allows us to be close when we want.

Happy Christmas

The Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen wish you all a happy and Holy Christmas.

Winding Down

The country seems to be winding down for the Christmas break. The weather has not been cooperative. Thousands of people are stranded at airports, railway stations, and at sea. The Gorse Fox is relieved that he and the Silver Vixen did not have to venture out and feels very sorry for those who have had their plans disrupted. He also notes that many, including some of his own staff, are in areas that are without power. This must be frustrating in the run up to Christmas when you have a young family. GF notes one of his team is talking of using the barbecue as "Plan B".

Work has been very quiet today. This has allowed the GF to review some old documents, presentations, and files and extract useful pictures, text, and diagrams from them so that he doesn't have to go hunting around in the New Year. Talking of the New Year, the trip to Madrid seems solid - but the Gorse Fox cannot get confirmation of the travel arrangements or hotel yet. As a result he is yet to book, and will probably have to log on during the holiday to check for details.

Starfleet have also managed to sign a major contact with the client that Gorse Fox was working with until recently. This is huge bit of business and excellent end to the year for the team.

Stormy Monday

They call it Stormy Monday.... and watching the news reports it certainly has been. We have been fairly lucky, with blustery winds and squally showers throughout the day. However, it looks as if the worst is due between ten tonight and the early hours of tomorrow. They are forecasting 90mph wind on the coast - the Gorse Fox is glad to have moved from the old house in weather such as that.

In the expectation that GF will have to fly to Madrid early in the New Year, he started the approval process this morning. This can be troublesome generally, but doubly so when the Gorse Fox works in one division and the expenses have to fall to another division and the idiots who wrote the approvals tool made no allowance for such an obvious requirement. Nevertheless, GF persevered and, somewhat amazed, saw the approval hit his mailbox before the close of business.

Listen

One of the features that comes built into the Mac is voice dictation. I have only just started to use this as an experiment. With Cousteau-cub having problems with her hands I thought this may provide some relief. Cousteau-cub has a new Macbook laptop and as this is a built-in feature in the Operating System - she should be able activate it.

Once enabled, anywhere you would normally have to type (like creating a blog post, or answering an email) can be fulfilled by dictation. This can be taken a stage further to control the compute also, but the Gorse Fox suspects that like all features, it is best to become acquainted with one at a time.

This blog entry an example of dictated text. The text can be analysed locally on your computer or across the Internet by Apple's servers in California. I have chosen to help my text analysed locally.

Cut

Well things were looking iffy. There were two further power cuts in the evening - one in the middle of Strictly Come Dancing. The Gorse Fox suspects the people who run the power distribution network realised that the wrath of the Silver Vixen was about to descend upon them like a swarm of screaming harpies, and managed to restore power within about 30 seconds or so.

Power restored, followed quickly by household equanimity.

This morning has involved some household chores but the plan for the afternoon is to go to the local moving-picture palace. This to see the latest offering from Mr Jackson, depicting part of one of the books by Mr J.R.R Tolkein. Having been greatly entertained by theses books when young and when dragons still walked the earth, the Gorse Fox is looking forward to the show (or "movie" as he believes they call it in the Colonies).

Dark

Momentary power cut caught us by surprise just now. Fortunately, the Silver Vixen had a candle alight in her study and the Gorse Fox had just picked up his mobile phone so we could still see to get about. There was no need to panic, however, 30 seconds later power was back on. Jasper the cat seemed a little confused though.

A good job

Well, it's a good job that it is the shortest day of the year - because it is absolutely foul outside. Blustery winds, squally showers and dark enough to require lights on in the house.

Unexpected pleasure

Schools having broken up and many people evidently not going into work meant that the Gorse Fox's trip to Midlands was a motoring pleasure. Cruise control set a 75 and hardly varied for 150 miles. During the journey the sky lightened and the sun came up bathing Oxfordshire (where he was by then) in lovely golden light.

Arriving at the Starfleet Base the Gorse Fox grabbed breakfast and met up with his new colleague, Commander Picard. A few minutes into the pleasantries a light bulb appeared above his head and realised the Gorse Fox was a resource he had not previously considered. So it was the the Gorse Fox became part of a two-man review team (with the Commander), who would have to visit Spain and Germany at the start of the New Year. A large multinational project needs some direction, and it looks like we will be providing it.

Separately we met with another multi-national team who need to move data-centres. It was decided that the Gorse Fox would be their advocate and mentor for one or two days each week.... assuming they can secure the funding for his time. It sounds like an interesting role and it will make a nice change to have a programme team that actually want to listen to the advice and guidance - rather than turn a deaf ear as the last project did.

Feet - keep still

The Gorse Fox is restraining himself from doing his little happy dance (imagine a walrus on a griddle). He is really enjoying this new job of his... it reminds him of the old days in Starfleet. Time to research, time to develop points of view, and a varied portfolio of things to attend to and projects to get involved with.

Today has been about stitching together a series of documents. not writing them, nor editing them, but identifying them and their interdependencies so that it is clear which ones are needed at what stage of a project. This is not a simple list as their are well over 100 documents and each has multiple interdependencies.

Tomorrow sees the Gorse Fox back on the road. He has to meet with Commander Picard up at the Starfleet base in the Midlands... and in so doing should get news of one of the projects for which he will provide oversite.

Automation

When you have a large diagram to create in Visio, and it contains many hundreds of nodes, some limited automation is available and useful.

So it was that the Gorse Fox took the spreadsheet that he had been working on for a few days and connected it to the various pages of the diagram and created suitable data links. This allowed all of the nodes to be generated and populated with the correct information, at a stroke. Then GF just had to worry about layout (there is an automatic layout function - but GF wanted to determine this himself) and the connections between the nodes. This latter aspect would be great to automate but the very purpose of the exercise (in this case) was to work out and document the connections.

Definitely chuffed.

Last Input

The Gorse Fox was back in town. Able to travel at a sensible time, however, this meant no parking available and so the Silver Vixen was kind enough to provide transport to the station.

An aside to today's trip was the intention for the Gorse Fox to pick up  free headset for the IP phone built into his laptop software. Needless to say he found the location closed when he went along. Starfleet seems incapable of recognising that mobile workers are rarely on Starships and when they are they need to make the most of it. He retured to his desk.

He needed to return his access badge to the administators at the previous project (or vortex of despair as it is descibed). He went to the stationary cupboard but there were no envelopes and was referred to the post room. The Gorse Fox went back to the basement and found that the Post Room  is closed between 11 and 1400, so again he returned to his desk.

The afternoon was the final chance for the Gorse Fox to input and influence the appraisals for his department. A couple of hours was spent looking for anomalies and debating who whould be moved between scores in order to fit the arbitrary distribution dreamt up by some accountant somewhere in the depths of Starfleet. Overall it was pretty successful - not many changes were needed, and those made were sustainable.

Smooth

You would have thought it would all go smoothly. You would have thought that as 2013 draws to an end the technology its support is now up to scratch and all you have to do is plug devices in for them to work.

Perhaps the Gorse Fox shouldn't complain - this is, after all a first world problem. The A3 printer and scanner he ordered on Saturday and was destined for delivery on Wednesday, turned up at lunch time. He is not going to complain about a delivery two days early - particularly when it was shipped from Dunfermline.

So the first thing he notices is that it is huge. This should not come as a surprise - it has to handle A3 paper, after all. Problem is that there was no obvious space to put something of that size. A lot of head-scratching ensued. Finally a decision was made, and the printer nestles on the desk to the left of the Gorse Fox. (He uses the word nestle, loosely. It nestles the way a fully grown buffalo nestles in a window-box).

Then came the pleasure of installing it and getting it all working. Well, on the MAC he had already read that he should download fresh drivers. This was fairly painless and within a few minutes the printer was churning out a printed image.

Then the Gorse Fox moved on to Windows machine. To be fair the problems were not really directly related to the printer - more the fact that his disk was full and the installation ran out of space. This has triggered a major clean-up - 11GB of files deleted from the trash. 20GB of iTunes library moved to the Mac. Everything now on an even keel (though still have to check iTunes).

(No news from Cousteau-cub today - so not sure if she got her diagnosis, still)

Changes in Society

The problem with the changes that have occurred in society over the last 100 years is that it is so rare to get decent domestic staff (or indeed find somewhere to accommodate them). So it is that the Silver Vixen, with occasional help from the Gorse Fox, will have to provide her flourish and decorate the house for Christmas.

Grey

The weather is inclement.

Outside the sky hangs low with grey cloud, inside it is dark enough to require lights. The rain, at first just drizzle, is escalating to a heavy down pour.The Gorse Fox feels for his friends and colleagues who live North of London and must have to put up with such meteorological misery on a daily basis.

Comparisons

We often chuckle when we hear from people concerned about a trip to Thailand - and what would happen if they are taken ill. We have learnt over the the years that the health provision in Thailand is fantastic.

Time and again Cousteau-cub has had to avail herself of medical and dental profession and each time they have done an exemplary job.

We received a message from her over night. She is in hospital in Trang, a medium sized town in the south of the country. She is having some tests to try an diagnose a problem she is having with her hands and joints. Speaking with her just now she explained the tests that were being performed and the interim diagnoses that they are trying to nail down. What was stunning about this was the description of the tests and how the results are returned within the hour. The Silver Vixen had similar tests here and had to wait ten days for the results.

You may have to pay for Thai medical treatment (but not much), but you certainly get an excellent service.

What, it's Friday?

Another really good day in the Gorse Fox's office. The deep dive into the supporting documentation for his new role has proved a very interesting read - and now he is starting to introduce some of his own practices into the wider discipline.

This has meant a lot of cross-referencing and a lot of thinking regarding the approach taken by the developers of the material. Bit by bit he is seeding new components and artefacts into the portfolio. As he does so it gives him a chance to view the problem from a new perspective more relevant to the new organisation, but elaborated by the experiences of the old.

Author, author!

The Gorse Fox having struggled from the kitchen to the study, got stuck-in to his work.

There is a "Lessons Learned" exercise to conduct in the New Year and it seemed a sensible exercise to try and get ahead of the game with a questionnaire for those involved, and the basic template for the report - infused with advice and guidance ready for the workshop. Very satisfied with the outcome.

This really is a most productive way to work, and long may it continue.

Reading

No, not the town in Berkshire.

Reading, as in books and documents. That is where the Gorse Fox has been focussing his time today. There is so much collateral that needs to be absorbed in this new role. Today he was able to have a fairly uninterrupted run at it and in so doing has found a number of areas that need his attention. As good as this material is, the authors have missed some of the classic "gotchas". These will need to be addressed.

Also, the Gorse Fox has spent a significant chunk of time today reviewing the options regarding tooling to support this service area. It seems perverse to him that, given Starfleet builds tools to support this venture, its own people buy a tool from a third party - then have to do a load of development on it to make it do what we need. This will be stopped, particularly having spent time understanding what we have put together using the Starfleet tools and what the potential is.

Random Acts of Irritation

The Gorse Fox knows that it is part of the Apple philosophy to irritate users through its arrogant "Apple knows best" policy - but for goodness sake. The Gorse Fox's nice Mac is connected to 2 separate NAS devices - which, by their very nature, are also connected to his other computers.

The Mac seem to, completely randomly, decide it can't see certain files, or when it adds new files to the device will sometime give the a meaningless 8.3 style address and other times successfully use a proper long name.

Consistent irritating behaviour is one thing... but the randomness of this is driving the Gorse Fox to distraction.

Moderation

Today saw the event known as moderation. This is where, within Starfleet, the managers get together and review the ratings assigned to each of the professionals within their span of control and ensure that they have been rated fairly and objectively, relative to their peers. In previous years this has taken an extraordinary amount of time. Indeed, the Gorse Fox estimates that last year this process took 19 hours just to review the senior staff (the more junior staff were reviewed in parallel).

This year we amended the process, and Gorse Fox ran it. He set aside one day - today. Everyone said it was not enough and it could not be done in one day. Well, they were wrong - we processed the junior staff in the morning and the senior staff in the afternoon. The morning schedule overran by 10 minutes. The afternoon schedule by about 15 minutes. But we finished. The main difference was the realisation that for the vast majority of people, their position relative to their peers was irrelevant. It would make no difference to their rating, and no difference to their rewards. The only people who we needed to focus on, were those on the boundaries between ratings to make sure they were being fairly assessed.

At the end GF was thanked, and everyone was happy that the approach had been much more efficient, but most importantly absolutely fair.

On a slightly later train home, the Gorse Fox is satisfied with a very successful day.

Private Investigations

The Gorse Fox was puzzled. The census refers to Canonbury Avenue as the location of part of his family in 1891 and 1901. Canonbury Avenue doesn't appear on the present maps. There's Canonbury Road, Square, Gardens, Grove, Crescent, Place, Park North, and Park South... indeed there is a surfeit of Canonburys. But there is no avenue. Digging into his archive he extracted an Ordnance Survey map from the 1890s (you would be surprised what the Gorse Fox has tucked away) and started to review the area.

No Canonbury Avenue.

Google was not a significant help, either. However, it did point the Gorse Fox at the Charles Booth archive held by the LSE. There, deep in the recesses of his notebooks, the Gorse Fox found the clue he sought.

"the open space on the map north of Canonbury Square is now occupied by Canonbury Avenue - 2 rows of buildings next to the Board School. 4 Stories - working class; paved passage down the middle"

The Gorse Fox can now rest. The mystery is solved. He no knows where the McDonald side of his family lived in the 1890s and early 1900s.

Scanned

The Silver Vixen is dealing with the paperwork that is building up regarding the recent death of her mother. As she prepares a bundle for the solicitor, the Gorse Fox has spent time this afternoon scanning all of the relevant attachments, invoices, statements, and miscellaneous files.

Thought for the Day

"The meek shall inherit the earth"; if it's quite all right with you.

But who would act as Executor?
How much tax would there be to pay?
How long would it take to to sort out the phones, gas, electricity, water, bank accounts, investments, properties, and mail redirection?

On further analysis - don't bother.

Mandela

The Gorse Fox couldn't let the day go by without a comments on the death of Nelson Mandela. During the GF's career he was asked on a number of occasions to visit South Africa - and steadfastly refused until the end of the Apartheid era.

Many obituaries and eulogies will speak in great details about his achievements, his struggles, and his charisma. The Gorse Fox never met the mana and can only comment on what he has heard and what he has learned over the years. For the Gorse Fox, his abiding greatness and his legacy to mankind was his ability to rise above the adversity of his imprisonment, and rise above the oppression of Apartheid, and then forgive his oppressors and try to reconcile all sides. A lesson for all was his approach of owning up to the facts of history and then moving on.

Consulting

Friday has been fairly quiet. There was an early call from Deep Blue at the airport en route to Chicago. He had timed out on some of his admin. GF told him that it wasn't worth worrying about - after all GF is the one informed about the problem - and GF will ignore it, in the circumstances.

Next it was a matter of finishing off the review spreadsheets and sending to the people that will co-moderate the session on Monday to complete the full review. This freed the Gorse Fox up to dig further into his new role and the assets that are available in support of that. This occupied most of the rest of the day - with the exception of a cry for help from Urban-cub. She had a spreadsheet problem and needed to find a solution.

This was a challenge. The spreadsheet was quite huge and needed selective extraction of similar records. GF is sure there must have been plenty of ways of doing this and isn't really very satisfied with the solution he devised... but though it may be inelegant, it worked.

Random network issues have niggled throughout the day. Not sure if they are within the house, or triggered by external flakiness. Things seem a little more stable this afternoon.

Reviewing reviews

Very chilly overnight. Quite a hard frost this morning when the Gorse Fox emerged from bed. Even Jasper, the cat, was not particularly pleased at the thought of going outside.

Tea made, the Gorse Fox commuted to the study. No traffic problems involved.

Really today was more of the same - a split between the year end appraisals and the new job. The lion's share going to appraisals today.

Most of the gaps left from yesterday have now been filled - which took a bit of cajoling, but finally got sorted. Then Gorse Fox tried to come with and refine several algorithms that would allow the cross-checks to continue and would highlight anomalies. Bit by bit they came together and after a long afternoon teleconference with his boss - GF is pretty satisfied that he has come up with some objective means of verifying the results of the population.

Still appraising

The problem is simple - there is just too much to do in the run up to year-end. On top of the "too much" is the annual appraisal exercise. The Gorse Fox is trying to collate this and cross-check it, but there still exists huge gaps where colleagues have yet to provide their analyses.

The day was split between the appraisals and the new job. This has meant that much of the afternoon was spent reading and trying to assimilate some of the background thinking behind the underlying techniques. Interesting, but not always the way GF would have approached it.

As the walls of the study glowed red late in the afternoon, the Gorse Fox realised what a lovely sunset was painting the skies over Fontwell.

Being at home, the camera was at hand and a trip to the Silver Vixen's hobby room allowed a fairly uninterrupted view of the glowing clouds.

Mixed bag

There are two main areas requiring Gorse Fox's concentration - the first is the annual appraisals; the second is the new job.

The annual appraisals are more complex than usual as the Gorse Fox is not just limited to his immediate team. He is the lead manager for all of the technical staff in his service line. This means gathering and collating the appraisals from all of his manager-colleagues and trying to ensure that we are demonstrating fairness and objectivity across our 170-odd staff. Needless to say this is challenging enough without the added dimension of everyone working flat-out to close out the year successfully. This means GF is having to chase and cajole in order to get the material together ready for the next set of reviews. This is taking far more energy than it should.

As for the new job - the Gorse Fox's head is a bit like an engine that is waiting for the clutch to engage. It's spinning round thinking of loads of stuff that will need to be addressed, but the clutch hasn't settled yet and allowed GF to focus on one thing.

All Change

The new job meant an early start. The Gorse Fox had to be up at the Starfleet office in Warwick for a ten o'clock meeting. The traffic was kind and the journey trouble-free. The Gorse Fox arrived in time to stop for breakfast and bump into the Mighty Atom.

The rest of the day was spent acquainting himself with the new job and planning the next few months work. This looks as if it is going to be very enjoyable. Some research, some writing, some development, some reviews, and some teaching.... all the while being based at home.

Sounds like the perfect job.

Celebration

The celebration for the Silver Vixens birthday was almost flawless. We headed to town, hopped on the tube and arrived at Covent Garden with about 10 minutes to spare.  At the restaurant we waited at the bar until everything was ready - and couple by couple the various friends and family arrived. A few were, sort of, expected but several came as a complete surprise (if not shock).

At this point the Gorse Fox should pick up on the "almost flawless" comment. The Gorse Fox had invited Mrs Tiggywinkle and Badger. He was only half expecting them as they had a long way to come from Devon, but he had not heard from them. It was only afterwards that he checked and realised that he had the wrong email address and had been inviting a complete stranger. (Good job they didn't turn up... and deepest apologies to Mrs Tiggywinkle).

The meal had been pre-ordered and, frankly, everything went like clockwork. The service was excellent and the company was great fun. Everybody seemed to join in and all the food was good. We were meant to vacate the table within two hours - but they didn't push us and we were there for closer to three.

When we left we headed out into Covent Garden for a stroll around the stalls and displays. It was a lovely afternoon. Bit by bit, people dropped away to head home, and eventually we too headed back to Victoria and the train.

Up Town Girl

We are heading for London today. It was the Silver Vixen's birthday a few days ago, and we decided to meet up with Urban-cub and Pistol Pete and the kids for a meal in Covent Garden and then to have a wander about.

The fact of the birthday made the Silver Vixen eligible for a new Railcard, and this Railcard knocked one third off the price of the ticket. As long as we make a few trips in the year, this could work out as quite a saving.