Pfffft

Not such a productive day today. Whilst the Gorse Fox has finished off modifications to two key documents (so all was not lost), he has spent significant chunks of the day on teleconferences to discuss the bid he has been reviewing. This has not been helped by a change in direction from the customer which requires a lot of rework, and an expectation that he will still get the answer tomorrow.

In Starfleet, nothing is quite that simple... we need to discuss these things and get permission to release information.

So, talking of these teleconferences, it does amuse the Gorse Fox how much "help" is available from managers - who clearly have very little (if any) understanding of the problem being addressed, the variables involved, or the approach we take in solving such problems. To put this in perspective, it is like knowing you have £100 to spend on books; the problem we are trying to solve is how expensive the individual books are and how many we can buy for the price. The "help" we are getting is "why don't you work out how many £20, £10, and £5 notes you have - and how much loose change". Doh!

Gorse Fox got a message from his manager. All but one of the retirement authorisations have come through - the case now goes to HR and Starfleet Corporate. Expectation is that things are coming together. That brightened the day.

Busy

It was a very busy day. Several phone calls interrupted the progress on GF's portfolio of documents - and one document started a completely separate chain of thought. This latter diversion may cost a few hours, but GF believes it will eventually prove to be a significant enhancement.

The phone calls were part of Starfleet's bid release process. This is the governance that ensures the response is actually affordable and actually addresses the customer's request. (Surprising how often this isn't the case). This process demanded yet another document from GF - a "Centre of Excellence" review to be placed on file and demonstrate that we support the approach being taken.

Possibly the most frustrating call of the day was from our builders, yet again they are changing the date on us and it looks as if it may be September before we get the keys to the new house. We are not amused. It appears the new MD wants to change the way in which batches of houses are released, so GF would guess we are dependent on the schedule for the last house in the batch an thus we are delayed again.

Pumping keys

The Gorse Fox is back at work pumping the keys on his keyboard. It has been a very busy day. Friday's review and feedback, on GF's portfolio of documents, triggered a degree of rework - not too much, but it did mean revisiting every document created so far.

Having been at it since 0800, GF is now finished and he has updated 34 documents and spreadsheets through the day. As an aside, one of the big projects that's on the go at present has asked for early access to the material as they have nothing to seed their work. GF has offered to prioritise the sequence in which he addresses the outstanding documents, if it will help them.

Over all - a very successful day.

Bank Holiday

The English Bank Holiday is characterised by rain and by sitting in long queues of traffic try to get to or from some event or location.

This Bank Holiday strayed from the norm.

Firstly, the weather was lovely, sunny, and warm. This always brings out the song in one's heart and makes the spirit soar.

Secondly, other than a quick trip in the morning to the local tip to dispose of old and decaying garden furniture, we stayed firmly at home. (Having said that, that is our normal plan for Bank Holidays). The afternoon was spent enjoying the sun in the back garden.

Driving around

Three test drives were scheduled for today. The first was at the Ford garage, providing us with an opportunity to try out the Fiesta again - this time with an automatic gearbox. The Silver Vixen took the wheel and we swept off towards Bosham. She took to the car easily and though we had to fiddle with the seat position - she was very happy with the car. GF, in turn, took the wheel and found it to be a very solid ride, and the the gearbox to be smooth and balanced. It is easy to see why so many reviews recommend it, and why it has won so many "Car of the Year" plaudits.

Stopping off at home for a coffee, we then headed into Worthing. The Nissan dealer had the Qashquai waiting for us and we took to the roads. Again, this was a test of the auto, having tested the car itself a few weeks ago. Despite the car's size the auto was seamless and responsive. It was ideal. The Silver Vixen took the wheel and it was clear she was completely at home. In fact she wanted to take the car there and then. The family car is effectively chosen now.

Finally, we test drove the Nissan Note. It was nice enough, and certainly more roomy than the Fiesta. We followed the same route that we had in the Qashqai, again swapping drivers half-way. Whilst we both found it easy enough to drive, it somehow didn't match up to the Fiesta.

Back home the spreadsheet was updated, then the brochures were re-examined over tea and cake in the garden. There isn't much else we can do now until the retirement date an pension details are finally confirmed.

Chatting

The Gorse Fox managed to pick a quiet time at the local tip. Several bags of garden detritus and several boxes were disposed of.

Back at home he logged on to see that Spurs were losing to West Ham (how low can you sink?) - but noticed that Cousteau-cub was online. A few seconds later he was chatting across the world.

The most important news is that whilst she isn't yet back at work, she is a lot better and no longer in severe pain. Intravenous morphine and handfuls of tramadol seem to have alleviated the flare-up she had suffered, and she's back home.

Saturday

The faffing about over the car has meant that Saturday is free - though we do have some extra test drives scheduled tomorrow.

It has been a lovely start to the day. The Gorse Fox has managed to mow the lawns and then settled down with the Silver Vixen to enjoy a coffee in the garden.

The sun was bringing out the best in the Acers, so GF had to take a photo. It will be nice when we get to the new house and find a permanent home for these (surviving) pots.

Legacy

With an ever diminishing amount of time to get things finished, the Gorse Fox was interested that his boss viewed GF's current project as his "legacy". This was nice, because it shows that it is regarded as a worthwhile contribution and got the Gorse Fox thinking about his oeuvre which he will probably summarise in another blog entry in the coming weeks.

Talking about the "legacy", he finally got some feedback on the material released so far. This was useful, and whilst it means GF has some minor changes to make, it is, in general, just what was required. There's still a lot of work to do over the coming weeks - but GF should manage to get the bulk of it done and out of the way.

Meanwhile the phone had rattled several times throughout the day - our scheduled test drives with Nissan were proving difficult to nail down. GF had to intervene and has made alternate arrangements with another branch of the same dealership.

Family

It is nice when you get a chance to meet up with family you rarely see. The Silver Vixen has a nephew who has been on holiday this week, staying in Bognor Regis. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss.

Having said we rarely see him or his family - we do stay in touch through the social media such as Twitter, Facebook and even Google+. It was nice to get a chance to meet up in real life (IRL).

We headed to The Oystercatcher. Matt, Katie and the boys were already there and the boys were busy colouring in their placemats. They were very quiet and shy at first - having never met us before, but soon emerged from their shells to reveal polite, well-behaved little boys.

We caught up on family news, plans and aspirations, and heard all about their "tots-week" holiday at Butlins. It was a lovely couple of hours and so nice to have some time with them.

Home office

It was a busy day in the home office.

It started with the Gorse Fox reviewing documents and spreadsheets prepared for a bid to new client, a bid which GF would be reviewing later in the morning. As usual the problem in a case like this is making sense of the mountains of data that have been provided. Fortunately, GF has the spreadsheet he developed in Brazil for just such an occasion, and pressed this into service. He was then able to review the data in any sequence and develop his questions for later, allowing the spreadsheet to pull the data into a sensible sequence.

The bid review started and it was clear that GF's homework had paid off. He was able to debate and contribute to the bid thinking from the outset. The team had done a good job, but there remained a few areas where GF recommended further discussions and clarifications with the client.

Most of the rest of the day was spent on GF's pet project - creating a full repository of assets for a large programme with the proper structure and common look and feel. This is becoming a "cause celebre" as news leaks out and people start to ask for copies, even if only a subset.

Cousteau-cub

Sounds like Cousteau-cub is suffering a bit a present. She is heading back to the hospital so that they can keep an eye on here and administer the meds on a regular basis.

We are all keeping our fingers crossed that this is a short episode and they can get things back under control.

And there's more

Another day working at home (no complaints there then!).

Today has been a mix. Several new documents created and added to the canon, and a bit more refinement of the spreadsheet which took centre-stage yesterday. At this rate, the Gorse Fox will not have quite finished by the time he retires. (Well there is a further 120+ documents to write or modify).

GF has also spent the latter part of the day reviewing material prior to performing a bid review in the morning.

Choices

There are days when you have to make choices. Not life-changing choices, but design choices. The Gorse Fox has had such a day.

The reality of working in Starfleet is that we have to use various tools to do our jobs - but tools that Starfleet themselves create are not available to us. So it is that the Gorse Fox is try to bend Excel to his will and develop an easily maintained, but dynamically adaptable spreadsheet to define the structure of the way in which we run these large-scale programmes.

He has now developed three separate approaches, each of which has its advantages, and each has its disadvantages. Now he has to balance these designs and chose the best. That can be a choice for another day.

Watched the Bayern Munich -v- Real Madrid Champions League semi-final tonight - what and excellent game, and satisfying result.

Real Work

Today was back to real work, rather than the teaching of the past couple of weeks.

Now, by real work, the Gorse Fox does not mean deep-pit mining, road building, fire-fighting, or indeed anything that would constitute or imply heavy labour. No, anyone that knows the Gorse Fox would realise that would be a silly concept. What he means is that he spent the day at the computer increasing the portfolio of documents and intellectual assets that underline the area of computing services in which he currently specialises. He suspects that this will be the theme for the week.

Meanwhile, judging from the emails he has seen from his commander, Starfleet may just have dropped his retirement request through the gaps. This seems to have induced a degree of panic in the Starfleet management who have now restarted the process.

Wheels

It's Sunday and after a slow start we did have an appointment with a representative of Mr Henry Ford's esteemed company of carriage manufacturers.

We turned up early and made use of the time to pour over the particular Model T that was of interest. In the showroom it seemed larger than its dimensions suggested and inside it was comfortable. The boot seemed adequate and it ticked most of the boxes on the mental checklist. A drive was next on the agenda.

At the appointed hour, the representative arrived and took us to a car that had been prepared for us. He drove us round and out of Chichester, pointing out various aspects of the car and the performance achieved from the small 3-cylinder engine. Stopping in a pub car park we swapped drivers and the Gorse Fox took over. The test drive continued. The car was very stable and felt solid. The engine was quiet and responsive, and the instrumentation was easy to read and informative. We wound through the countryside and villages near Bosham before heading back to the dealership.

Our verdict was that we had found a definite contender - but we did want to try the model with an automatic gearbox.

Back at home the spreadsheet was updated. Some contenders were promoted others dropped. The list is narrowing down, finally.

Cars again

The weekend car search theme continued. Today we  were scheduled to test drive the Yaris Hybrid. This was an impressive little car and well-loaded with features,

Initially, the dealer came out with us to ensure we were comfortable with the features, but then we were let loose, alone. Around town it was benign and and easy to drive. The battery seemed to do most of the work. Then, on the open road, we got a chance to see a bit more of its performance. GF picked a course that included some fast roads, some winding roads, and a route up and over the South Downs. This was where the car started to show its flaws. It was really not comfortable on the hills and struggled to get much above 40mph, and on fast roads it was able to keep up but had no power left to overtake. Additionally, after 15-20 minutes we were both getting quite uncomfortable. So, all-in-all our verdict was that it was a nice car - but that it was not at the top of the list.

More cars to test drive tomorrow.

Another one done

Well, that's another course completed and great fun it was too. The Gorse Fox enjoys teaching these courses, and it's very satisfying to see the interest in the class and to hear their experiences.

By mid-afternoon it was time to clear up and clear out. GF told the SatNav to take him home and headed out into the rain. The SatNav was, evidently, feeling mischievous a decided to take GF the shortest route without too much regard for traffic. Eversley, Fleet, Farnham... where he just sat in traffic for about 30 minutes, then on to Haslemere, Midhurst, Goodwood and home. The 45 miles had taken nearly two hours. At least he had been listening to a new book on the way across.

Looks like the Silver Vixen has some troubles with here laptop. It is rather erratic when it comes to connecting to the printer, and has a number of niggling issues. GF is planning to rebuild it over the weekend. (as long as he can find all the pre-requisite software in the boxes from the house move).

Ducking and Diving

The Gorse Fox has been ducking and diving. There is pressure for him to get involved more directly with some customers. Starfleet's first quarter results have put the pressure on to ensure we are earning revenue wherever possible. This isn't easy as he has a lot of commitments which would mean that he can only get involved sporadically... and only for a short time.

Jean-Luc Picard has taken up the GF's case and is pushing back.

Meanwhile, in real life, he has been teaching again today.

Teaching Again

The Gorse Fox is back in Starfleet teaching again. The load is a little lighter this week as we have a rota of three lecturers. So it is that today, GF only had one module to present. However, it did mean that he could get on with some of his method-development work.

During the afternoon, one of the class exercises overlapped some of his recent changes - so he asked one of the teams to pilot his new material. Whilst giving some helpful feedback, it was clear that it was very well received and significantly easier than the old method (used by the residual teams).

Whilst working away - GF received a message inviting him to work for 6 weeks on a new client (with his old division). He has respectfully declined, for now. He is not sure, however, how long this will hold.

Ssh, walls have ears

The Gorse Fox has been working at home prior to heading across to the wastes of northern Hampshire where he will be be teaching for the rest of the week.

The morning was punctuated by a scheduled visit from an MoD Vetting Officer who came to get GF's view of an acquaintance who has applied for a post in HMG. It was interesting as GF has not had to do this for many years, but it is clear that it is still very thorough and some may consider it intrusive. The Gorse Fox has no reservation, however, when it comes to ensuring people are suitable candidates for sensitive jobs.

Still searching

Monday has seen the car search continue.

We started with the Peugeot and Citroen garages. Whilst they had some nice cars, the Peugeot 208 was the only model that may have fitted the bill - but the requirement for the automatic gearbox and increase in the VED category that comes with that, ruled it out.

Then we headed to the Ford garage. All of the reviews of the cars GF has been considering seem to conclude that the Fiesta and the Polo are the best cars in the class. It seemed logical, therefore, to go and look at one of these. More importantly to sit in one as the Silver Vixen has traditionally found the seats to be be uncomfortable in Ford cars. We looked around the showroom and found a Fiesta of the specification we would require. The Silver Vixen sat in it and we examined it in detail. The conclusion was that it was a contender, and as such we have arranged a test drive next weekend.

Then the Silver Vixen had an idea. What about the Mini. So we headed to Rustington in the hope that the Mini showroom was open. It was. So we poured all over the new Mini Hatch in the Cooper specification. It was quirky and comfortable and we decided a test drive was required. The salesman, ever eager, took us out straight away and the Gorse Fox had a chance to drive the car. It was really very nice. The engine was tight and responsive, the ride was comfortable, and the seats were ideal. On top of this, it was a fun car to drive. It did look a little cramped in the back seat, but how often do we use the back seat in our existing cars? This has become another definite, if expensive, contender.

NomRomCom

The forecast was for heavy rain. The forecast was right.

The morning was a leisurely affair occupied with magazines and brochures. The afternoon started at Nando's for some lunch. (Not quite the traditional Easter Feast). We settled at our table and selected our choices from the menu, then went to counter to order. They were busy but had only one person taking the orders. The Gorse Fox arrived just behind a you bloke who was clearly not au fait with the concept of a menu at the table and making a list. Unfortunately he was one from a table of twenty, and he was making their choices as he ordered. Really quite strange, and very annoying for those of us stuck behind him.

As usual for Nando's the food was predictably good and we enjoyed what we had. Non, nom, nom.

After our meal we wandered along to the cinema where we indulged in the latest RomCom - "The Love Punch" - with Pierce Brosnan, Emma Thompson, Celia Imrie and Timothy Spall. It was a totally inoffensive little film with some hearty chuckles (if not full blown laughs) all the way through. As demanded by the genre, there was a feel-good conclusion. It was a good way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Driving around

The Gorse Fox may have mentioned that we are considering changing our existing cars as part of the transition to retirement. Whilst we still need a "family car" the second car only needs to be a little run-around for the GF. So it was that a few weeks ago we started looking at the specs of various vehicles and considering the pros and cons of each - on paper.

Today we stepped up a gear (see what I did there?). We had an appointment to try the VW Move Up! and so it was that we found ourselves driving round Chichester and the surroundings in this cute little car. Actually it was surprisingly good, and for most people would be a perfectly adequate second car. The gearbox was light and the car very responsive. Unfortunately, though, the seats didn't quite adjust enough for the Silver Vixen to be comfortable - and so it drops down the list.

We always had a "favourite" for the main family car. The question was whether that would be comfortable for both of us. (The Gorse Fox finds the Silver Vixen's RAV4 uncomfortable and get back ache and sciatica if he is in it for long - whereas it is perfect for her). We headed for the Nissan dealer and took a Qashqai out for a drive. This was a much longer test drive and gave us a chance to get comfortable and have a really good look around. Our initial review was that it fitted the bill perfectly - at least as far as we could tell with only the Gorse Fox driving. The demonstrator was a manual gearbox, so the Silver Vixen was unable to try the driving - but we have booked an automatic to test drive in a couple of weeks time.

Whilst in the dealership we also looked at the new Nissan Note. This had not been on our original list, but having looked at it, it has nudged its way into contention. We have more cars to test drive next week and will make our decision based on comfort and running costs.

With rain forecast for Sunday, Gorse Fox cracked on and mowed the lawns when the fun part of the day was over.

Visitors

It certainly was a Good Friday. The Gorse Fox's sister and brother-in-law came to visit. They are always good company and we had a lovely day.

We drank coffee and chatted for a couple of hours, discussing small cars, computer backup regimes, and sharing the latest news on the various children. It was interesting to realise that GF's sister actually drives one of the cars that's on his mental short-list (it was just a shame they brought the other car today).

We wandered down to the Old Stables for lunch. They were clearly busy and we would be in for a bit of a wait. This was no problem as we settled in for a long and leisurely meal. As we were finishing, Urban-cub walked in. She had received offers on her flat and needed to consult over whether any was acceptable, and if so which she should choose. Throughout the next couple of hours her phone buzzed with calls back-and-forth to the agent. By the end of the exercise the price offered had risen by six thousand pounds and she had accepted an offer and taken the flat off the market. This was excellent news.

We went across to Bersted Park to show J&T the new house and its show house. This was interesting as we bumped into some residents and heard from them of some of the teething problems they had experienced, and their view of the after sales service they had received. One does suspect that, as in many areas, the treatment you receive is related to the attitude with which you deal with people. Somehow, it seemed unsurprising that they had not received the service they wanted. Hopefully, we will not have the degree of problems they experienced.

Working at home

The Gorse Fox had a good day following up on the Madrid class. Some of the discussions had triggered a number of ideas and GF spent the day exploring and developing some of these. A bit more refinement is needed but it is certainly looking ready to publicise and discuss on the course he is running next week.

Not much else to report unless you want a discussion on self-adjusting, dynamically merging worksheets in Excel.

Lunch

The class lunch was an epic affair. We wandered back to Calle Cartagena and piled into a small, almost unnoticeable restaurant. After a few moment of discussion with the proprietor, jugs of beer arrived closely followed by the first course - Mussels with a light salsa served in the shell.

It was two o'clock and all was well.

The beer flowed and the conversations ranged from one subject to the next and back. The second course arrived - Jamon and Manchego.

The house elf shuttled back and forth and more jugs of beer arrived and every time you finished your bread roll, another would magically appear.

The courses continued to arrive and by three-thirty we were 5 courses down and preparing for the main event.
Three huge cast iron paella dishes arrived with what the Gorse Fox could on describe as a paella-soup. All of the usual paella ingredients seemed to be there, but is was served in a seafood bisque with huge pieces of lobster breaking the surface. Though messy, this proved to be absolutely delicious.






It was four o'clock and Capt. Picard and a couple of German colleagues were getting worried about getting their flights.

GF and the others paid our bill, and grabbed a taxi to the airport. GF was in no hurry - he had several hours to wait, but the others were cutting it fine. He hopped out the taxi at Terminal 1 and left the others to complete their journeys.

Despite warning of Bank Holiday chaos - the airport was relatively quiet and GF was soon sitting in the VIP lounge, sipping on some sparkling water, and watching the activity on the airfield.

He finally got back to Gatwick about ten o'clock and drove home. It had been a very nice day - but it was lovely to get home to the Silver Vixen.

That's it

The Gorse Fox has just delivered the last of the lectures for which he is responsible. Only another 90 minutes to go (taught by Capt. Picard) then we are heading off as a team to have lunch together.

Conviviality

The Gorse Fox just enjoyed a most convivial evening with colleagues. Jean-Luc Picard, Alun-the-Intense and Norbert (from Germany) all came along to the local restuarant where we had enjoyed pizza and a wine last night.

Tonight the Gorse Fox chose tagliatelle with seafood - and was delighted with his choice. Assisted by a nice rioja it eased the slightly sore throat and satisfied a rumbling tummy. If the Gorse Fox has to return he will certainly choose that again.

Day Two - done

Well that's day two of the course complete. The class was far more animated today - particularly when we tried to impose UK working practices. In the end we adapted and follwed Spanish practices which meant a break to go an get coffee at the coffee shop and a 90 minute lunch at a local restaurant. What a civilised approach to work.

Voice is holding up at present, but fear it may disappear over night.

Another colleague has arrived from the UK this evening so no doubt we will head out to dinner as a group

Look who's talking

Half way through day two and GF feels as if he is losing his voice. He is frantically downing bottles of water to try and keep the pipes lubricated.

Day one - done

Well that's the first day done. The class seemed to run well and the students were attentive and engaged.

Capt Picard and the Gorse Fox headed back to the hotel for a cold beer and then headed off to grab something to eat when the restaurants opened.(GF will never get used to this idea that you can't eat before eight in the evening.)

Interestingly Capt. Picard's retirement plan is based on property rental - and he has shown an interest in the house that Silver Vixen's mum lived in.

Manana

The course started late - getting our colleagues together is like herding cats. It appears that agendas are merely indicative!

Civilisation

The Gorse Fox  really likes Madrid and the civilised approach to work. He strolled along to the Starfleet offices, then met with his local colleague. We strolled around to the lecture theatre (which is "state of the art") and got set up and ready. Then it was time for a coffee, so we left the building and wandered along to a nearby coffee shop where we sat down over coffee and churros.

Very civilised.

Coach?

Madrid airport is huge. So huge that we seemed to land and then taxi from Bilbao or Toledo or some such distannt point. The Gorse Fox suspects that the flight time is scheduled based on 90 minutes of flying and an hour of driving round the airport.

Never mind, Gorse Fox arrived early and was esconced in his hotel by 20:20.

On the move

After a quiet morning the Gorse Fox and the Silver Vixen strolled down to the Old Stables for some lunch. we were early enough that it hadn't become too busy and we enjoyed a very pleasant lunch before strolling home.

Early afternoon the Gorse Fox headed off to the airport for his flight to Madrid. He must say that travelling on a Sunday afternoon or early evening is so much more relaxeing than trying to fight your way out on a Monday morning - particularly the Monday of Easter week. Gorse Fox parked and whistled through security before heading for the lounge to sip a cold drink and watch the planes lining up for take-off.

The next few days should be fun - teaching again.

Loss

It is a day of loss. It started with a trip to the barber where the gorse Fox lost his long flowing locks. It continued with mowing the lawns where the grass managed to lose half its height.

Finally, the Gorse Fox has to lose some of his boys' toys. So it is that he has written to the Stitch Witch and given her a list of all the tools(*) he wishes to pass on to a new home (her husband is an enthusiast and part of a collective of like minded individuals):

• Router Table
• Heavy duty router
• Table saw
• Compound mitre saw
• Dust extractor
• Thicknesser planer
• Morticer

So finally, as he approaches retirement and would have time to use the tools, he needs to get rid of them because there will not be sufficient space in the new house/garage for a workshop.

C'est la vie.

(*) Gorse Fox should point, for the elimination of all doubt, that none of these tools should be used in quilting or other fabric-based pursuits.

Distraction

The day started with a teleconference involving one of GF's old colleagues from his last job. It is clear that GF has made a wise move, though evident that some of the news and issues we had highlighted twelve months ago are finally being recognised and a major re-planning exercise is under way. It's such a shame that the arrogance and self-importance of some the so-called leaders is such that they have wasted a year before recognising we were right.

Then Gorse Fox returned to yesterday's exercise and continued to work on some supporting spreadsheets. As he was working he hit a snag and decided the best solution was to do something in a linked spreadsheet that he could then reference. This was complex. This was very complex. In fact it took him several hours of experimentation and deep thought. During these few hours he was interrupted by a series of phone calls. These calls distracted him to a degree.

Eventually, the code was completed and worked. Gorse Fox was feeling very smug. What he had done was really very clever. The problem was that the various distractions had made him forget why he wanted to do it in the first place. So now he is scratching his head, looking at some clever code in a spreadsheet with no idea how or why he was going to use it.

Doh!

Another Slice of Pi

The new Raspberry Pi arrived in this morning's mail.

Because the Gorse Fox had already prepared the SDCard on which it runs, it took less than 5 minutes to put in its case, attach it to the network and power it up (most of that time was finding a screwdriver to assemble the case).

Current plan is that this will acts as a dedicated appliance to manage the home network and its domain.

Accelerator

Reviewing the process (or method) by which we help our clients move their data centres, it was clear that there needed to be a "Lite" approach that we could apply for the smaller or less sensitive project. The Gorse Fox has been wading through the material and carving out an accelerator for such projects.

First he has identified those parts of the project that are required for all projects, then he has been chipping away at the other parts, discarding those that may not be necessary for the target projects. Having done that he has now started developing a set of sample documents that could be packaged up and used as templates for such a project. There's still a bit more work to do, but GF is quite please with what has been achieved so far. He can see an opportunity to package the lot together in a single distribution file that can be seeded into each new "lite" project.

Research

Today has been about the three r's: reading, research, and reviewing.

The problem with working for an organisation the size of Starfleet is that there is always some other bit of work someone has done somewhere in the universe that overlaps what you are doing. The trick is to bring these together and make the most of the hive-mind. GF has been looking at this today as he researched tooling options for our projects in preparation for next week's course.

This, in turn, lead to more reading and with a degree of concern entering his consciousness some serious review (if not re-write) of one proffered document.

As an aside - a second Raspberry Pi ordered this morning. This will run as a dedicated DNS server/cache on our home network.

Marie Celeste

The Gorse Fox had to visit the Starfleet offices just along the coast from home. A couple of meetings were scheduled and he had to return an old laptop. Being the Easter break for most schools, the traffic was light and GF was pleasantly surprised by how quickly he made the journey.

The old laptop was first on the agenda. It has sat in the corner of his current study, and his last study for a couple of years. The hard drive had been cleared and the system shutdown. He was impressed therefore when he arrived at the transfer station to see that when the operative opened up the machine and pressed the button, it fired up immediately - the battery evidently had retained some power over the last two years.

The first real meeting of the day was changed to a telecon as the other invitees all had other priorities that meant they couldn't travel. Meeting was good, however, and for the first time on this subject (tooling) GF felt we made some real  progress.

The afternoon's meeting was the completion of a "Lessons learnt" exercise for a project that was now finished. This turned out to be very interesting as some really valuable recommendations arose.

One thing that GF did notice about the Starfleet offices - they were like the Marie Celeste. What a contrast from Sao Paulo - there they had 3000 people in the building and a huge thriving restaurant. Here, various blocks of the building had been sold off, and even in the oldest residual part there were few people about.

Pottering around

The Gorse Fox has been pottering about on the computers. Some reviewing of the (private) master blog got him thinking. At the moment this is hosted on his MAC - but wouldn't it be better to have a dedicated server?

So he started to look at the Raspberry Pi again and this got hime reading various write-ups and and the results of other peoples experiments. It seems like a feasible approach - but GF still has a few reservations.

• By default the Pi uses an SDCard as its storage. GF would rather have something more flexible.
• If he continues to use Wordpress as the blogging platform he will need MySQL for the DB.
• Should the DB server be on the same machine or should he set up a separate MySQL server?
• Can he make the MySQL service (wherever he chooses to install it) use his external NAS device as a storage repository.

Lots of thinking needed, and then a final decision that will allow him to continue (fairly) seamlessly and with the data security and protection he requires.

In the midst of this deliberation he did manage to have a chat with Cousteau-cub for the first time in several weeks. It was good to hear from her and learn that, whilst very busy and quite tired, she isn't feeling too bad.

Lost year

As the Gorse Fox continues his occasional burst of transcribing old diaries, he has just realised that he has almost no record of 1984. He assumes Big Brother was keeping an eye on whatever went on that year because GF evidently didn't. Even his photo record for that year was a little sparse.

It was, however, the year that GF joined Starfleet - that much he does remember.

Progress

It seemed like time to check on progress.

It has been about a month since we last checked and in theory we should be moving in in about three months.

Clearly the building is watertight, but the decorative tiles are yet to be hung on the right hand side of the house. With the long telephoto lens it was possible to make out some features we had previously missed - and allowed us to start a "snagging list".

It's a shame they have put up that fence as it prevents us from seeing the progress on the ground floor.

We were pleased to see the list price of the house has risen by £10,000 since we paid our deposit(and fixed the price) - so we are, in theory, already making money on the deal.

Tidying up

The journey to Buckingham was, as ever, slow but when we arrived we opened up the house and got stuck in immediately.

The house may not be big, but is was cosy and ideal for a person on their own, or indeed a couple just starting on the housing ladder.

Over the past few years, everything had been done to bring it up to standards - with new insulation, new double-glazing, and Paul had gutted and rebuilt the bathroom with a walk-in we-room/shower

The lawn has taken a bit of a beating over the winter. The lack of direct sun and the incessant rain has encouraged a lot of moss. Whilst it all looks lovely and green, a great deal of it is moss and will need to be sorted out by the next owners. The one advantage of this is that mowing was a lot easier than expected and raking up the cuttings took no time at all.

The Silver Vixen got on with tidying up the raised beds and by mid-afternoon we were done and after a stop to deposit the sacks of cuttings and other detritus at the dump, we headed home.

Gardening

Today we are heading for the late Mother-in-Law's house to do some tidying up in the garden and if the weather is inclement, the house. The idea is to get it ready to go on the market.

Half day

The Gorse Fox had a busy morning. Notes had come through from a colleague in preparation for a "Lessons Learned" exercise GF will conduct next week. These needed reviewing, tidying up and documenting properly.

Email has arrived from HR. Looks like GF's retirement had slipped through the cracks - so it was a good job his natural cynicism kicked-in and he checked. New HR partner seems to be on top of it though, so hopefully there should be no issues.

AT 12:30, the laptop was closed. It was a half day.

GF did manage to have a quick chat with the Coventry Hobbit. He hadn't seen the Thai contingent online for a while so was pleased to make contact and hear that all was well and things are settling down.

Quiet afternoon started with mowing the lawn. The sun broke through briefly, and GF spent a pleasant hour wandering aimlessly around behind the mower.

Silver Vixen was off to help with the after-school sewing club, so GF was left to his own devices. This meant that he had some time to transcribe a couple of extra diaries and subsume them into his private digital journal (which stretches back to 1965). This was fun and brought back many memories, but did highlight to GF that there are many entries among the 11,500 in the journal that have gone through some conversions that have changed quotes or exclamation marks to strange ASCII characters and need to be sorted out. GF can feel the need for some code.

Admin

The Gorse Fox is back at work. Work, however, is focused on admin today: expenses for the work last month, expenses for the course he was teaching the week before last, and expenses for the Brazil trip. These were then topped off with a request for permission to travel to Madrid to teach again, then on the assumption that permission would be granted, booking the flights and the hotel.

Starfleet is in danger of becoming totally constipated with process... as accountants try to cost and control every instant of the working day. The Gorse Fox thinks that Starfleet would actually perform much better if it spent a little less time worrying about Earnings per Share, and a little more time worrying about its employees and how they are treated. An appreciated and motivated worker will be far more productive than those treated as cannon fodder.

Gf wrote to his new manager and HR today to ensure that the processing of his retirement was under way and had not been dropped down the cracks when he transferred to the new department.

55 working days to go...

Traveller's Tales - A Case of Brain Fade

The Gorse Fox had two incidents of brain fade during his recent trip.

The first, if you have read the blog, was the failure of his power adapter. Though it would power USB devices, it would not power normal 3-pin UK plugs. The Gorse Fox resolved to sort this out. He has trip to Madrid coming up, and needs to be ready. He took the plug out of the case and started to look for any fuses or other feature that may need to be reset. This is when he noticed the On/Off switch on the side - and it had been switched to Off. His eyes rolled. He switched it On - and behold, he had power.

Stupid.

The second was as he settled at the airport prior to the flight home. He was considering whether there was enough power left in the iPad (see above) to watch a film on the flight - if necessary. As he considered this he realised that his earphone were missing from his iPad bag. Cursing silently his carelessness he decided that this was important and he would go to a suitable shop in the airport and get some new ones. Selecting a suitable pair, at a reasonable price, GF paid and headed back to wait for the plane. He stripped the packaging away and discarded it and then sat down. He opened his case to remove the iPad. (His case is a Samsonite, and has 3 covered cubby holes near the hinges). As he grabbed the iPad, he caught the cover of one of the cubby holes, and there were his "missing" earphones. He had put them away safely so he didn't lose them during the week - and forgot.

Still stupid.

ToiL

In the Prison Service they call it ToiL - Time off in Lieu. The Gorse Fox, having lost the last two weekends travelling is taking today as ToiL.

After a slow start GF and the Silver Vixen headed for Chichester

It was a lovely sunny day and we had some errands to run now that some of the final documentation is available regarding the administration of the Silver Vixen's mum's estate. (And paying in GF's latest Premium Bonds win).

Errands run, we headed for Costa and leisurely coffee. This raised the subject of the superb coffee GF had last week - dispensed by the Nespresso devices in the hotel. We resolved to go take a look at the nearby John Lewis's store - and after considerable debate and discussion - left clutching the aforementioned machine.

It comes with 16 capsule, each of a different type. It will take a little work to narrow down the flavours we like best, but research of this kind is important.

Back to work tomorrow (for a day and a half!)

Finishing the job

As the Gorse Fox was enjoying another pre-retirement practice day, he pottered. The first serious action of the day was to put the doors on the shelving unit he had put assembled a few weeks ago. The Silver Vixen's unit is now complete.

An inordinate amount of time was also spent trying to get all the photos from the trip into Picasa. This all used to be so easy on the Windows machine, but somehow the MAC conspires to make life difficult if you do not choose to use the Apple applications. It's all done now, but was unnecessarily time-consuming.

Here's a glimpse of Sao Paulo looking north east from the Starfleet building

This second panorama is looking south west.

As you can see it is just a forest of high-rise apartment and office blocks as far as the eye can see. (In the bottom photo the road disappears into the Ayrton Senna tunnel, which carries the traffic under the park).

Mother's Day

It was Mother's Day.

Urban-cub and Pistol Pete came round and collaborated on preparing lunch. It was a lovely day, though GF could feel himself fading a bit, towards the end of the afternoon.

Urban-cub was very pleased with herself as she had picked up a new car during the week, but kept it quiet as a surprise to show the Gorse Fox. She has a Peugot 207, in white. It seems like a super little car and it should make life a lot easier now they have two cars.

Home

Eleven hours seems like a long time to hang in the air.

The young lad in the next seat was on his way home after six weeks travelling with friends. His friends had budgeted day by day, but 33B had decided to have fun. As a result he had blown £9500 in six weeks and was now going home to get a job and earn some more money - his friends were still in South America enjoying their travels. GF suspects there is a message there somewhere.

GF's UK taxi driver was waiting for him as he emerged from immigration and customs, and we were soon on our way on the highways and byways of Surrey and Sussex and GF couldn't help but contrast the driving styles he had experienced over the previous 24 hours. And for that matter, the density of the traffic. M25 early on Sunday is quite a contrast to Sao Paulo early on a Saturday afternoon.

GF got in just after nine in the morning and after a good cup of tea and a shower was soon feeling human.

Taxi

The Gorse Fox requested a taxi to take him to the airport. A few minutes later a medium sized Fiat lurched to a stop and a tall, slim, swarthy driver, wearing dark glasses and a moustache modelled on on countless Hollywood westerns stepped out and invited GF to place his bag in the boot.

It was 32c and that car was hot - he muttered something about the air conditioning - turned a dial, kicked the footwell and hammered on the dashboard. A few moment later a breath of cool air, as if from an asthmatic butterfly, wafted into the back. The Gorse Fox felt this was likely to be a long drive. As it happens it was drive divided in three distinct phases: housekeeping, football, and music.

In phase one, Marco decided that some housekeeping was necessary so as we entered the dodgem arena (or road system as we would call it) he started to tidy the car. Moving CDs and placing them into their sleeves and then into a zip-up bag. Then moving the bag to a cubby hole in front of him. Then he moved a remote control from the there to seat, and started to shuffle papers - sorting them into piles and putting clips on them before placing them in the glove compartment. All the while the car was lurch through the traffic, screeching to an abrupt halt a few millimetres behind the car in front, or swinging wildly across lanes as gaps opened up. Gorse Fox was concerned that March was not devoting his full attention to his primary task.

In phase two GF broached the subject of football - a fairly safe topic in Brazil. He then got a lecture on the magnificence that was Palmeiras - Marco's team. GF could offer no comment, having never seen them nor really being aware of them beyond their name. This however, had loosened his tongue and given him the opportunity to practice his English. By now, also the traffic was opening up. This was not, necessarily a good thing as we moved into...

Phase three where Marco, stimulated by a Boy George track on the radio explained that he was a classical guitarist and played classical music (Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi) on electric and acoustic guitars. In Hoffnung's words "at this point I must have lost my presence of mind", for the Gorse Fox made the fateful mistake of replying that he too loved good guitar music. There followed a litany of great guitarists and bands. Somewhat more worryingly he bent almost double to rummage for his zip-up bag of CDs and started to page through them. Out came a CD and, at volume that could be heard on the International Space Station, Toccata and Fugue blasted out of the car, followed by Beethoven's Fifth. This was troubling enough as GF was concerned as passers-by covered their ear and screamed in pain - more worryingly, however, was Marco's insistence on demonstrating the fingering (by both hands) on his air guitar. As the music changed and keyboards took over - the air guitar was discarded for a air-keyboards, and as the music changed to Santana, the dashboard became a substitute for the tablas and congo drums. During this stage of the journey, the Gorse Fox doubts that Marco touch the steering wheel for more than a minute or two in the 40 minutes it lasted. GF was caught between the emotions of utter terror, and total amusement.

This was a taxi drive that GF will long remember. Scared out of his wits, but wouldn't have missed it for the world. The car lurched to a halt and as GF grabbed his bags a sour faced woman barked an order at Marco, and climbed into the back of the taxi - GF suspects that one of the two of them was in for a very different ride back to the City.

Twiddling continues

Gosh thumb twiddling for hours on end can be boring.

Twiddling thumbs

The Gorse Fox is twiddling his thumbs in the hotel. It's just gone nine in the morning and he needs to get the taxi at at one-thirty for the five o'clock flight. He would love to go out for a walk to the nearby park (visible from the hotel) - but colleagues have warned him to stay put. Shame to visit such a vast and vibrant city but not able to actually to wander about, safely.

Just irritate the Gorse Fox this power adapter seems to have given up the ghost so he is relying on what residual battery power he has in the iPad, and his phones.

Office

The morning was spent in the office up on the nineteenth floor. Slowly the revisions began to take place and the presentation deck summarising the week's review came together. We went through slide by slide and in the end we were happy.

Lunch called. The Gorse Fox does like the fact that the Brazillians take time to go to lunch - and to be fair the Starfleet canteen serves a good selection of salads, hot food, grills and sweets. To give a sense of scale - in the Starfleet restaurant in London the are 4 cashier stations and usually only 1 or 2 cashiers. Here in São Paulo there are 14 and all are manned.

The view from 19th floor

Fabio headed to the client site and would call with details of when we would be required. The Gorse Fox returned to the 19th floor and got on with other work. Finally the message came through. They were happy with what the Gorse Fox said yesterday and he wouldn't be required. Great... just too ate to switch back to his original flight. Now he has 24 hours to twiddle his thumbs.

Back in the hotel the Gorse Fox took the opportunity to phone the Silver Vixen as it was still early enough. Must say that he is looking forward to getting home.

Refinement

The Gorse Fox has spent the morning in the Starfleet offices in Sao Paulo refining the findings of his trip. Some of it was basic word-smithing, some was providing greater detail. Must say that he feels fairly happy with the outcome.

Now to wait and find out what is on the agenda for this afternoon.
#

Plans change

There you are - the rest of the week planned out and an an email drops on the metaphorical doormat inviting you to the client's HQ for a 1-2-1 with the CIO. A planned eight hours of revisions and preparation get cut to to three... and one colleague has a bee (or is it a parrot) in his bonnet about one aspect of the review.

In the midst of all this prepaprtion the Gorse Fox finally got throuh to Starfleet's travel advisors and managed to slip his return flight to Saturday - accommodating a Friday afternoon board meeting.

We headed down town at breakneck speed, driven by an American colleague here on assignment. He seems to have picked up their road protocols without any difficulty. He was explaining that being here as a resident, rather than a visitor was very different. In particular with a wife and two kids he has to be very careful over security.

We arrived at the bank HQ and the Gorse Fox could only contrast it with those he has visited in the UK. It was exquisite, and the owning families of the bank are great art collectors. They have thick books listing their collections - which are on display all over the bank for all to see and admire.

Back at the hotel another plan changed. The Gorse Fox had planned to eat in the hotel restaurant, but when he got there he found it didn't open for a further 45 minutes. Worse still, there was no pizza on the menu and the Gorse Fox really fancied a pizza. He returned to his room - pizza was available on the room service menu. He now awaits a knock on the door.

Traffic

The Gorse Fox was collected from his hotel about 0830 and stopping to pick up some colleagues we headed out to a suburb called Campinas. Traffic was unbelievable, and the Gorse Fox suspects that the rods were planned by droping a bowl of spaghetti onto a map. He is convinced that some of the road networks probably end in knots. There seems to be no way to get around using logic or dead reckoning. Gorse Fox suspects that a London cabbie would actually explode in the face of such a network.

The first meetings were in an older data centre which, whilst in a rather dangerous area, was highly secure and really rather interesting. It was a series of concrete buildings surrounded by walkways and ramps leading through tropical gardens to the offices. All of the walkways were covered at a very high level to provide shade from the hot sun and protection from the tropical rains.

Gorse Fox and his colleagues completed our interviews then headed for a very plush shopping centre for lunch. The Gorse Fox had assumed this would be nearby, but it was about 45 minutes drive through some rather dodgy areas before reaching the expensive part of the suburb. It was a reall nice shopping centre, very similar to many the Gorse Fox has seen in the US.

AFter lunch we burrowed back into the traffic in order to get back to office we visited yesterday. Again the traffic was incredible but Arnaldo had a knack of zigging and zagging acoss lanes, and using bus lanes, and pushing his way across the traffic to make the one and three quarter hors both terrifying and memorable.

final interview was fun. We had expected a tough time. Gorse Fox believes that you should always try and make contact at the human level before the business connection clicks. He spent a few minutes making that connection and actualy got the chap to the point he was joking with us. From then on, the meeting went very smoothly.

a good day

Brazillian Philosopy

There were two items of Brazillian Philosopy that caught the Gorse Fox's imagination today.

"When God created the World he gave The Carribean hurricanes, He gave America tornadoes, he gave Japan typhoons - but he gave Brazil politicians."

That made the Gorse Fox chuckle and showed the high regard the citizens have for their leaders.

The second saying was "better lose a friend than miss an opportunity to make a joke" - this seemed to gel with the Gorse Fox (who has been ticked off for joking at a funeral before now).

Another day

It is another bright start to the day in São Paulo. The Gorse Fox is suited and booted and ready to prosecute several further interviews today, before spending tomorrow preparing his findings. First thing on today's agenda is to see if the flights can be changed. The Gorse Fox has decided to try, and then take an extra day off next week to make up for the lost weekend.

Less than amused

It has been a good day. The Gorse Fox has been interviewing various managers and directors at the Bank. What comes across is how nice they all seem and how dedicated they are to the success of their programme.

What has irritated slightly is the fact the Gorse Fox has been asked to change his travel arrangements so that he can attend a Board meeting on Friday afternoon and present his findings. This means a 24 hour delay as there is only one direct flight a day.

Back in his hotel he has ordered room service and plans a quiet evening.

Up and about

The Gorse Fox is up and about and waiting for the restaurant to open for breakfast - he has a 7 am pickup and interviews scheduled throughout the day. 

That's better

 A solid 9 hours sleep make a significant difference to you opeartional capacity. The Gorse Fox is feeling keyed up and ready to rock - unfortunately his host has phoned to delay things by an hour. So he's stuck in the starting blocks at present, waiting for the metaphorical gun.

Gorse Fox can see the Starfleet bulding from the hotel, but has been warned about walking in the area. He will await his host as the teleportation devices aren't working.

As an aside, this hotel seems very popular with flight crew. There seems to be a daily influx of crew from at least a couple of airlines.

...

Well it's 13 hours later and it has been a long day in the office (and the Gorse Fox would say how nice the Starfleet offices are in São Paulo). Must say that the day was quite stimulating and tomorrow look interesting too. However the Gorse Fox is being picked up at 07:00 which seems a little excessive.

That's better

The Gorse Fox finally got into his room, and dropped onto the bed for two hours shut-eye. It probably wasn't enough but it certainly helped. A long hot shower was next on the agenda before the Gorse Fox  sat down at the laptop to review documents in preparation for tomorrow.

I suspect it will be an early night tonight (currently it's 19:43)

That sinking feeling

Batteries beginning to run low on phones... and still the Gorse Fox has to wait for a room to be available (check-in is officially 3pm - that's another three and a quarter hours). He wants to get in, shower, rest and then review files he has been sent, ready for tomorrow.

By now, he's high on strong Brazillian coffee, but delving into his pack he withdraws his universal charger. He fiddles for a bit and then gets that sinking feeling. He can't see the appropriate setting for local power socket.

He starts to play with the plug like a Rubik's cube. He was getting worried that he would have to buy yet another power adapter. Finally he recognises a setting he hadn't tried. Voila! One of the phones is now on charge. 

Democratisation

The democratisation of travel has resuted in some great benefits for the world, but has also thrown up some disadvantages. Some cases in point make you wonder if some travellers should be out without supervision. As we queued in the interminable immigration line at São Paulo (2 747s full of passengers and only 3 immigration staff on duty for non-Brazillian visitors), the Gorse Fox overheard a discussion.

A "sweet young man", probably in his late twenties (clearly a Civil Servant judging by some of his other comments) admitted that he had gone to a a corner shop and asked the proprietor to get him a cabbage - admitting that while he had eaten cabbage he didn't know what they looked like. He then went on to explain to a nearby middle-aged couple how a cabbage is like a really dense lettuce.

Eventually the Gorse Fox was through and marched out into the arrivals hall. Mr. Pedro was there waiting and Gorse Fox slipped into the back of his car and headed off for the hotel. Unfortunately, it so early that there were no rooms ready, so Gorse Fox is waiting in the lounge to get a key, a shower, and some (additional) sleep having only managed a few fitfull hours on the plane.

Weather has been a bit overcast so far, and there have been a couple of light showers. Temperature is pleasant at 21c... and the Gorse Fox can see some blue patches in the sky to the west.

Stretch

07:52 (GMT) Flying over Belo Horizonte at prresent.

The Gorse Fox really needs a good stretch. Trapped in this seat for the past 9 or 10 hours is making him fidgety. At this point we are only an hour from landing and the plane is getting noisy again as the breakfasts are distributed and consumed.

Fairly naff choice of films and TV shows. The Gorse Fox chose Elysium which was a fairly interesting view of dystopian future where the rich live on an orbiting space station and the poor stay on the earth and are kept in line by robots. In the end, Gorse Fox would admit he enjoyed it.

Herding cats

The Gorse Fox made his way to the gate, along with half the population of Brazil. The instruction said to take a seat and await the announcement of your row. Only a few complied and the gate crew were loosing control. It was clear that herding cats would be infinitely more simple. Gorse Fox's fellow passengers were an elemental force and were as excitable as school kids on additives. Careful analysis told the Gorse Fox that the staff should have been issued with megaphones, whips, and cattle prods.

When finally it was time to board the chaos got worse. Travellers seemed to wander to the vicinity of their seat and then stand chatting in aisle rather than let people through. Gorse Fox finally got to his seat and found that he could just get a sheet of paper between his knees and the seat in front, and anyone who has ever had a sqaure meal would find the seat width tight. Oh yes, and person in front has just reclined her seat and in doing so thrust the ipad up the Gorse Fox's nose.

Go

A very nice taxi driver kept me entertained the whole way to Heathrow. Security was a little slow, but nothing too inconvenient. Now the Gorse Fox is waiting for the allocation of the correct gate number, and may partake of some medicinal liquids to stave off any dehydration - in advance.

Ready.... steady....

Gorse Fox is packed and virtually read to go. Any one that knows him will know this is his usual approach as he hates leaving stuff to the last minute. Travelling can impose enough stress, without artificially increasing it with procrastination.

Preparations

Gorse Fox is up and about. There is lots to prepare and some errands to run before he heads off to Brazil tonight.

In the swing

The last day of the course went very well. By this point, the Gorse Fox was in the swing of it and thoroughly enjoying himself - possible more to the point, the students seemed to be enjoying it also. Certainly the feedback sheets were very very positive.

At lunchtime, GF was pleased to see an old colleague - who had retired several years ago - sitting in the Starfleet restaurant. We had a brief chat about the meaning of life, the Universe, and the cost of fish - and generally put the world back on its axis.

The course closed down by mid-afternoon and GF was soon on the road. Despite the Friday traffic on the M40, round Oxford, round Winchester, and round Chichester, he still managed to get home before the early evening news.

Course Day 2

Well that was the second day of the course over and done with. Again the Gorse Fox only had two modules to deliver (out of 6 today) but even still he found it both stimulating and remarkably draining (if you can have both of these at once).

The Gorse Fox has been asked to teach this course again after Easter - so that is now 3 more courses; one in the UK, one in Spain, and one on Germany.

Course Day 1

A leisurrely breakfast before heading to the Starfleet offices and the start of the course, The Gorse Fox was nervous. It is a long time since he has taught a class, and particularly one that he had not written. 

The class turned up and were split into their four teams ready for their case study and their exercises. The lesson began with Capt. Picard leading the first session before the Gorse Fox took over and ran his first modue. He overran somewhat, but it did go well. Another session in the afternoon also went very well, the Gorse Fox was back in the swing of it.

Back at the hotel, Gorse Fox is preparing for tomorrow's sessions.

Away

Another day working on course preparation and now that widened out to include reading background information regarding the Brazil project. And yes, finally the information is through so that Gorse Fox has got his authority to travel. Flights and hotel are booked, and the Gorse Fox is heading to Latin America on Saturday.

The Gorse Fox's pre-retirement world tour seems to extend further. Yesterday it was a request to teach in Madrid, today there is another request, this time for Frankfurt. The Gorse Fox has asked if any courses were required in Hawaii or Australia, but it seems they don't feature in the plans.

The Gorse Fox left late afternoon to head up to Warwick ready for the morning.

Manic Monday

No not really.

It was a busy day, but far from manic. The Gorse Fox was spending another day preparing for this week's course. It is moderately easy to deliver a course, if you have written it yourself. You understand the flow of the lessons, and you know what to expect next. When the course was written by someone else, you have to try and learn that flow, and work out the links from one slide to the nest. So it was that Monday was spent wading through slides and writing new notes and transitions.

Other highlights were a request to go to Madrid next month to deliver the course again, and an hour on the phone with a colleague getting the background on the Brazil project - on the assumption that they get their collective finger out and send me the codes to get the authorisations in place.

Visitors

We had visitors.

Betty and Barney Rubble came to visit. After all the trials and tribulations we suffered whilst trying to sell our house, you would have thought they would have learnt a lesson; but no. They have decided to put their house on the market so they are going through the process of redecoration and tidying up ready to call in the agents.

We had lunch down at the Old Stables. It will never set the culinary world alight (short of a kitchen fire), but it is dependably good and friendly.

Back home, it was an afternoon of chat and family news over tea and scones, before they made their way home, early evening.

Unbelievable

Did you know that the grass that GF had cut so assiduously last year has started to grow again?

It seems that this is not a one-off consequence of last summer's weather (or global warming), but is happening again. GF has spent the last hour or so walking back and forth with the mower, trimming the grass to its optimum length. Now that's down, he trusts he won't need to do it again.

PRPD

Today is another Pre-Retirement Practice Day. This meant a leisurely start and breakfast with the Silver Vixen. After that the day just ticked over nicely. Early fog meant the lawns were very wet, and though GF had planned to give them the first cut of the year, it was clear that would not be practical. He will have to try again tomorrow.

GF was waiting for some information to send to the guys in Brazil, but in the end it took a mid-afternoon call to elicit the facts and get them sent off.

This didn't stop us from going out and taking a stroll round the local John Lewis store... GF had ordered a further component for the Sonos system, and had been informed it was now waiting in the store.

Back home the new speaker was installed in the Silver Vixen's refurbished hobby room, and before long was streaming radio to her whilst she continued the big sort-out that had been in progress since the new furniture was built last Saturday.

Back in Surrey

It was a foggy start, which made the drive up to the wastelands of Surrey a little more interesting. Gorse Fox's current audiobook drew to an end, and a new one began.

The Surrey project was expecting an influx of new (contractor) architects and GF was there to meet them. In the end a meet-and-greet turned in to an all workshop (rather unexpectedly). Seems like we have a good bunch, and they seem to have been chosen well. We spent time talking about what was expected, working for Starfleet, the Gorse Fox described the process by which such projects are run. A German colleague then provided a briefing on the client and the project itself, at which point we brought in the project managers that the newbies will work with.

Overall - a good day.

Was please to see an old colleague as GF prepared to leave the building. GF stopped and had a chat about the good old days and various colleagues with whom we had worked twenty or so years ago. It was funny since he had been re-reading an old diary, at the weekend, discussing a business trip he had taken to New York and Chicago with some of those very people.

On Course

Well, strictly speaking, not on a course but the Gorse Fox is working at home preparing to give a course next week. He's on course to give a course. As he is not the author of the material, he is going through, slide by slide, writing up notes on each and making reference to particular examples. It's time-consuming, but necessary.

Travel - really?

Gorse Fox is liking this new role. He has just been asked if he could free up some time to go to Brasil and conduct a complex project review before the end of the month. No doubt there are a few hurdles to leap, and it may not happen, but at least there is the offer. That wouldn't have happened in the old job.

Concentrate

The Gorse Fox has been working at home today - it enables him to concentrate on a single issue at a time rather than receiving external interrupts all the time.

Living in Fontwell has the advantage that we are only 5 miles from the public recycling centre. This meant that during his lunch break GF had plenty of time to finish disposing of the junk from yesterday.

Good day all round - but nothing too exciting.

Change / Catch up

The Starfleet systems have finally caught up. They now reflect the fact that GF has transferred to a different division... even though he has effectively been working for that Division since the beginning of December.

This will probably mean a whole new portfolio of junk mail arriving each day... and he bets that the old junk mail will not cease quickly. (Indeed he has just read some this morning that implies his utilisation targets for the year would have increased by several % had he stayed put).

The Deed is done

It may have taken all day, but the deed is done.

(A bit bright aren't they?)

Working, like yesterday, as a team, Gorse Fox and the Silver Vixen have gutted the study, emptied the 10 remaining removal boxes, put up the new shelving units and moved the desks.

The old shelving has been taken to the recycling centre, and all of the cardboard boxes, and general junk has been loaded into the car ready for a quick trip to the tip tomorrow lunchtime.

Everything is plugged back in and the tested and everything has survived the upheaval.

Study

The Gorse Fox is about to rip his study apart and reorganise with new shelving units. This means a major shift around. Hopefully everything will go back together at the end of it!

Withdrawn

The Gorse Fox has had to inform Tim Sherwood that he's not available for the game against Chelsea this evening. The dismantling of the old furniture, the building of the new, and the disposal of the debris at the local recycling centre, has left the Gorse Fox with tight hamstrings and insufficient time to get to get to the ground.

Besides which, he fancies a curry.

Power

800W Sabre saw did the trick.... though it frightened the blazes out of Jasper the cat - particular as it ate through wood and screws.
All done now - just need to shift the debris out of the way and start taking the new units upstairs so that they can be assembled on site.

Engineered not built

The Gorse Fox is starting to dismantle the old furniture in the Silver Vixen's hobby room. It is clear the old book shelves came apart easily - the unit that the Gorse Fox constructed, however, looks likely to withstand a nuclear attack. No chance of dismantling. Only option is destruction!

An abundance of boxes

The men from IKEA arrived at eight o'clock this morning. Boxes emerged from the back of the truck and slowly the Gorse Fox's study has filled up with flatpack furniture for the Silver Vixen's hobby room and the Gorse Fox's future study.

He suspects this will be an industrious weekend.

Smirkle II

The Gorse Fox has contacted the team at the Scottish project to try an get an understanding of the challenges they are currently facing.

It is clear that they still have to deal with the general mendacity of those involved. It is clear that exec on all sides are making commitments without a full understanding of the impact (or even feasibility) of their statements. What amused the Gorse Fox most was the fact that it has finally dawned on them that GF was right (though they will never admit that). Regular readers may remember that last November GF likened their approach to a car manufacturer building and opening a showroom before working out where to build some cars (that they had yet designed). Well it turns out that is a fine analogy and they are now demanding the "car plant" be provisioned immediately.

Gorse Fox is so glad he is out of there.

Smirkle

That's a cross between a smirk and chuckle.

The Gorse Fox has been asked to look at a project and see if anything can be done to get it back on track. The reason for the smirkle is that the project in question is a certain Scottish project with which his is intimately acquainted - and who had steadfastly refused to take any of his advice when he worked on it!

GF better play the good Starfleet citizen and at least talk with the teams involved - but he has n intention of getting involved (at any depth) again.

Surrey again

The Gorse Fox was in Surrey again today. Interestingly the project has finally got a new Programme Director - and it is someone GF used to work with back in the late 90s. It was nice to see him again and will be nice to have someone at the helm who can distinguish between a large muscular area at the bottom of the spine and a hinged joint in the arm.

Meanwhile the saga of the person unhappy with the appraisal ticks on. GF has been archive emails from each of his former team... typically about 40 emails over the year. Not this person, though. 385 emails in six months! Rarely has he come across a more joyless, and cantankerous individual who seems to revel in confrontation and offence even when none is there. Said individual was born in the wrong time. Said individual would have been better suited to being a shop steward in the 1970s.

Out and about

So the Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen headed for Brighton. The Silver Vixen had an appointment to fulfil and the Gorse Fox killed some time wandering around the shops. Once back together we settled down for a coffee and plotted out the rest of the day.

First stop was JB's American Diner where we planned a light lunch.

This didn't quite work out. To start with, we headed the wrong way along the front before realising we had missed it and turned back. Then we settled down with the menu. Something light. Maybe a club sandwich? Would that be enough? We decided to have a starter.

Mistake. The starter was big enough that GF left half of his. When the club sandwich turned up, GF marvelled that one waitress could carry it alone. It looked as if it would need at least two people - or one person with a trolley. Silver Vixen had ordered the same and was finding it difficult to see the Gorse Fox over the top of hers.

Needless to say, we did not finish.

Next stop was Bersted Park and an opportunity to touch base with the developers of the new house. Clearly all is still going well and it was nice to catch up on all the latest news. We now know who our neighbours will be. Indeed, it turns out that we met them on one of earlier and spent quite some time chatting with them.

Pre-retirement Practice

PrP continues today. The Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen plan to head across to Brighton.

Transfer

As you may remember, Gorse Fox is in the middle of a transfer. Whilst Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Spurs have shown no interest in his services, another Division within Starfleet has made him and offer. This is finally going through and within the next few days he should be part of the new organisation.

A by-product of the transfer is that he no longer has to worry about being a manager for a number of professionals. His access to the sensitive HR systems has been revoked, and his old team have been scattered to new managers. Some residual responsibilities will peter away over the next few weeks. As much as the Gorse Fox cared for his team, he is not sorry to lose the extra responsibilities.

Controversy

Whilst the Gorse Fox and Jasper awaited yesterday's return of the Silver Vixen, the door bell rang. Jasper scurried to the top of the stairs and watched and GF opened the door to nice lady clutching a handful of car stickers.

There is to be a public meeting to consult on the development of new houses nearby. Would the Gorse Fox put a "NO" sticker in his window. The Gorse Fox paused, smiled and entered into a debate.

• With the change in the make-up of the family and the migration of people to the South, and continued immigration - people have to live somewhere.
• The Government have imposed house-building targets on the Regions, and the Councils have to comply.
• Given these two imperatives - and the extensive building that is already under way elsewhere in the District, why should the houses not be built here?
• Fontwell has the advantage of being on the intersection of the A27 and A29, and has a nearby railway station at Barnham

This caused an intake in breath. Well, she explained, there is an old Roman road, and have been historic finds in the area - and the Secretary of State declined permission 19 years ago. More pertinently the proposed development would radically change the nature of the village - doubling its current size... and what about the recent flooding?

The Gorse Fox discussed each of her points and commented that he wished her campaign well, and was encouraged by the community involvement that it engendered - but could not support the proposition. She then said that what was needed was someone like the Gorse Fox on the Planning Committee of the District Council.

The problem is that planning decisions are so emotive as they change the perceived quality of life of those affected. In practise GF suspects that in most cases this is really just a period of adjustment and adaptation - but people do not like change. They do have to realise, however, that people need homes and we have an ever growing population - and the fragmentation of families means that we need disproportionately more homes than the population growth would suggest, traditionally.

Quiet Saturday

The Silver Vixen was out with her coven (as she will be tomorrow, also). There was a regional event at Chichester - so they all headed off for their jamboree.

Gorse Fox made use of the time with a trip to Rustington and a look at the Mini garage. Once back, laden with the appropriate brochures, GF started to put together a comparison of the vehicles that have made it to the short list. As you so often find, when doing these comparisons, it can throw up some surprises. Ostensibly the Honda Jazz looks like a great little car, but seems to attract an insurance rating of 17, whereas the Toyota Yaris and Auris only attract a rating of 7 or 8.

Whilst there is a clear leader in the selection of the main family vehicle - the small run-about is proving a challenge.