Sammy, again

The Samsung Netbook is back with Mr Fixit. The charger has been checked and is delivering the right voltage, the pins on the motherboard are also delivering the right voltage - so the problem must lie with the new battery... so the Gorse Fox left it with him to get replaced and checked out.

On a brighter note, the chappie came with the stand-in Nespresso machine and took ours away to be fixed. At least GF should be able to get his fix! Unfortunately the replacement doesn't have a milk steamer/frother so the Silver Vixen will have to rely on copious amounts of hot milk.

News-speak

The Gorse Fox notices the headline: "UN deplores militants' capture of cities" in reference to the events in Iraq this week. He would imagine that the militants are quaking in their boots at such censure!

While we ponder the full impact of the UN's displeasure, the Gorse Fox would note the following use of English in the media:

Irritation becomes Fury or Rage
Annoyance becomes Disgust
Bug become Massive Flaw
Problem becomes Crisis
CCTV becomes Spy camera

Panic

A sense of panic has set in. The Nespresso coffee machine has just failed after the Gorse Fox went through the descale cycle.

Phoned the technical help desk and they are collecting the machine tomorrow - and providing a replacement while it's being fixed. Still, the Gorse Fox has to complete the day without the requisite infusions of coffee-based caffeine.

While talking of panic, GF notes the email he received from Old Father Time(OFT) this morning (subject was GF's impending retirement):

"Well done Granddad, you've made it.
Be warned, it's a holiday at first, then the shock sets in. You become a 'non-person' outside society, no status. Being 'Retired' carries a stigma... 
A hobby won't suffice, no interaction with colleagues, no mutual respect.
After a year I looked for work. Agencies told me I'd be a threat to whoever was reading my C.V. - No have chance, you will have to lie in the C.V. or work for a charity.
Don't despair, it passes... Then you start to not give a (expletive deleted) when you realise most retired people are hard up and you ain't! 
Good luck mucker... Going out with your slippers on and fly undone becomes a habit."

Perhaps a little cynical - but that's OFT for you!

Imprimatur

The Silver Vixen has been suffering with an intermittent problem whereby her laptop seems to lose sight of the printer. Once this has happened there seems to be almost no way of resurrecting the connection. The frustrating thing is that the laptop can ping the printer and gets an immediate response.

Gorse Fox has decided enough is enough and ordered a new printer for the Silver Vixen that can be directly attacked to laptop. No excuses.

Whilst talking of frustration, a new charger arrived for the Netbook. It isn't a cheap knock-off it is a genuine Samsung charger - but having said that it doesn't actually fit the plug in the side of the Netboook, so GF is having to return it. Pah!

Pros and Cons

The Gorse Fox was woken by the furry alarm we refer to as Jasper. Jasper started whining just before six and started walking up and down the bed soon after. GF had no option but to get up and let him out and feed him.

The advantage of this early start was that it is such a beautiful day. Wall to wall blue sky. It makes the spirit soar.

Back to bite

Regular readers will know that last year's appraisals were tense. One appraisal that GF had to deliver was not as good as the colleague expected, and whilst GF explained the reason for the the rating given, the person in question would not accept the appraisal.

An informal review was held, giving the Gorse Fox a chance, once more, to revisit the rating and explain the reasoning behind it. The person in question again rejected the appraisal and ultimately raised a grievance that GF had not explained why the particular rating was given.

Today the case was finally heard, and GF spent an hour or so on the phone answering a battery of questions. Without pre-judging the outcome, GF feels fairly strongly that he will hear no more - and he has been completely vindicated.

Meanwhile - back at the day job - GF has managed to plough on and create templates for a significant number of documents today. If he can keep this rate up - which he doubts - he will complete the portfolio by early next week.

The Right Stuff

The Gorse Fox met a chap during the week that is evidently made of the Right Stuff. He was a German colleague who, like the Gorse Fox, has worked for Starfleet for a long time. Indeed he was on assignment in the same part  of the Starfleet US estate as GF used to visit regularly. We chatted about old haunts and great restaurants and generally reminisced.

He then went on to explain he had a car like that driven by the Gorse Fox, but that he had been working in the automotive sector. He had developed some stuff for Mercedes-Benz that had brought in many tens of millions of euros for Starfleet. He had recently been assigned to BMW. The Exec he was working with objected to his car in the BMW car park and took him to one side and suggested he "got a premium brand".

My colleague returned to Starfleet and searched through the pool. Next time he visited the he parked a top of the range E-class Mercedes in the car park. The Exec again took him to one side and said "I thought I told you to get a BMW" to which my colleague responded - "No - in fact you said a Premium Brand; and by the way Mercedes spend more than ten times what you do with Starfleet every year - when you match that I may get a BMW"

Definitely the Right Stuff.

Sammy

The Gorse Fox has just got his old Samsung Netbook back from the chap who has been fixing the keyboard. Problem is that it hasn't had any updates for over a year, and it has taken all day today to get all of the security updates downloaded and applied. While this was going on GF cleaned off some of the old stuff that was no longer required. It does seem slow after the Mac.

Unfortunately it seems to have a further problem - it won't charge and hold the charge on the battery. This is a new battery, so the problem is obviously with the charger, or with the circuitry in the Netbook that manages charging. GF has ordered a new charger to see if that solves the problem.

Threatening

The weather forecast spoke of thunderstorms and flash floods for today. It certainly looks threatening at present. We'll see what emerges.

And as if by magic - there is a huge rumble of thunder!

Closing out the week

The Gorse Fox is back home for Friday. There was no way he was going to sit through a further day of lectures by the two colleagues that had so comprehensively bored him yesterday afternoon.

One of the first mails to arrive contained an estimating spreadsheet that Jean-Luc had wanted adapting to use the Gorse Fox's standard template. This should have been a fairly straightforward task.... but as the details were copied across, GF started to understand the construction of the data. This is when he noted how different the approach to spreadsheet construction had been from that which the Gorse Fox would have used.

The simple copy and reformat task became a copy and restructure task. It took longer this way, but at the end the spreadsheet was much better.

Pain

GF and Jean-Luc Picard have finished and handed over to some Starfleet colleagues from the US to tell us about a tool they have developed.

This is painful... their presentation technique is dreadful - bordering on utterly useless and the tool - which was meant to be the great panacea for our projects, barely scratches the surface of the problems we have to address.

The good thing is that it should make the class appreciate Jean-Luc and Gorse Fox!

Day 3

Well yesterday's class finished well and we arranged a class dinner at a local restaurant in Middle Earth. It was thrashing down with rain, so whilst GF had planned to walk the couple miles from the hotel to the restaurant, he ended up taking a cab.

The meal was excellent, considering there was such a large group. GF's colleagues were great fun and we had a really interesting evening.

We are now into Day 3 of the class and GF is waiting for the class to finish the first exercise of the day. He only has one more session to deliver... and then will listen whilst Jean-Luc finishes off the final sessions.

GF has changed his plans and will head home at the end of the day as tomorrow's agenda (a separate subject) really holds little value for the Gorse Fox.

Day 2

Day one went very well and Gorse Fox even had dinner with several of the students. This actually gave hime a chance to clarify some of the questions they had outstanding from the day. It also gave a chance to talk (to German colleagues) about the World Cup.

Day 2 is well under way with the class split into their syndicate rooms to complete the second of this morning's exercises. GF has also completed his first lecture of the day and now has a couple of hours of Capt. Jean-Luc Picard to listen to before he is next up on his feet.

And so it begins

The Gorse Fox is in Middle Earth. Starfleet colleagues have arrived from all over Europe and we are now several hours into Day 1 of the class.

The attendees were a bit quiet to start with, but have now got over their initial shyness and are fully engaged in the class. 

Cracking through

The Gorse Fox has been on a mission! He has cracked through another handful of documents that will form part of the overall portfolio of documents and templates he plans to leave as his legacy. Slowly the number outstanding is decreasing... but whether it is feasible to complete the whole canon is yet to be seen.

GF is off to Middle Earth for the rest of the week where he will be teaching, so whilst he may get the odd bits done here and there, he suspects progress will be slow.

Feeling satisfied

The lawns got done, the hedges were trimmed (where they encroached on neighbours, or the paths), and the edges were whipped into shape.

Twelve bags of trimmings were loaded into the car and deposited at the tip.

Now a quiet afternoon with a the Silver Vixen, sitting in the sun and enjoying a jug of sangria. The only thing missing is the lapping of the waves on the beach... but living some six or seven miles inland now, that seems like a tall order.

Trouble

The trouble with being an early riser is that when you are at your most productive and itching to do things - you have to wait until a sensible hour so that you don't disturb neighbours and loved ones. The Gorse Fox has been for quite a while and wants to get out to mow the lawns - but feels, for the sake of the neighbours - he needs to wait until at least 10:30 before firing up the mower.

Check

We went to check on the new house. The agents had told us the hoardings had been moved and the scaffolding was down. The builders still will not allow us anywhere near the house, but there is a vantage point from which GF can take his long distance photos.

We arrived at the vantage point. Some of the hoardings were indeed down - but not those which obscured the ground floor of our house. From what we could see, the tiled sections of the walls was complete and everything was looking fairly clear.

Reality check.

The Gorse Fox had another reality check this morning. An official-looking letter dropped through the letter box. He opened it with a certain degree of trepidation, wondering if there had been some problem with his taxes or NI payments.

No.

It was an invitation from the DWP to apply for the Winter Fuel Payment for 2014/15. Pah!

Err, you know you...

The Gorse Fox got a call at lunch time.

"Hello, it's Captain Jean-Luc Picard here, how are you?"
"Fine thanks. How can I help?" GF replied.
"Well. It's just a thought but...."
"Yes. Go on." GF's warning antennae started to twitch
"You know you are retiring on 4th July."
"Yes."
"Well, you wouldn't fancy coming back on contract for 6 months or so. would you? We'll make it worth your while."

He then went on to quote the contract rates for someone like the Gorse Fox. And it would probably mean spending a fair bit of time in Madrid, which is an attractive thought (if the Silver Vixen could come along - but then what about the Jasper the cat). It was hard not to be tempted, but then the Gorse Fox isn't driven by money. He promised he would think about it, but in the next breath suggested that Deep Blue would be another very capable candidate.

Thinking about it, Jasper the Cat could probably take on one of the Project Management roles. Based on recent experiences he would be just as effective.

GF and Deep Blue had a long chat over Facetime. GF felt he should brief him, in case the call came in. In doing so he found out that the Scottish Project is worried they don't have a particular strategy defined - and here they are 12 months into the programme. GF pointed out they do - because GF wrote it, and pointed Deep Blue at the document. A few minutes reading and it was clear this addressed just the sort of things they wanted - but because they never listened to a word GF said - they didn't know they had it. If only Jasper the Cat had been there!

Middle Earth

The Gorse Fox had an early start. He had a meeting in Starfleet's offices in Middle Earth. He was delighted by how quiet the traffic seemed - forgetting that it was half term and therefore many people were on holiday.

Once he had arrived in Middle Earth, breakfast was the first priority and whilst heading for the restaurant he bumped into the Mighty Atom. It was nice to see him, though we didn't have long to chat. Maybe next week we will get longer as GF is teaching in Middle Earth for much of the week.

The meeting that GF was there to attend went well and it is clear that the work he has been doing was well appreciated. We went through the outstanding items, and agreed a policy for each of them and also prioritised the key documents.

The journey home was less successful - a broken down lorry on the slip road from the M40 to A34 causing a 90 minute delay.

Progress

An email just arrived from the house builders. The email carries a photo which is a view of the chappie laying the floor in the hallway of the new house. The photo is a little dark, but it looks good so far. Clearly the plastering, painting, and second fix electrics are done in the hallway - though the photo doesn't show any other parts of the house.

It's nice to see progress.

Re-certify

One of the great things about Starfleet's "Architecture" profession is the rigour which is applied in the process of advancing through the various grades. This is further enhanced by the requirement to re-certify every three years - and this means showing that you have attended relevant education, showing that you are using and extending yours skills, and showing that you are giving something back to the profession.

The Gorse Fox is at the highest level of certification, and this morning has received an email reminding him that he needs to re-certify before November to retain his qualification. (Yes, you can drop back down through the ranks as well).

He chuckles to himself as he deletes the email. Another hoop through which he no longer has to jump!

Benefits

One of the benefits of the Gorse Fox's advanced age is that he is now eligible for a Senior Railcard. This affords him a significant discount on railway travel (off-peak). Examining this for a trip to London next month, GF was pleased to see that with tube and bus travel included it was only £15.50 return, and if GF wanted to tie himself to a specific train, he could get to London for £5.30 and get home for £3.30.

The Gorse Fox can't complain about that! To make things even cheaper, if GF books through Starfleet's Rewards program, he can get a further discount.

Now that's a Relief

Gorse Fox has problem with the web server on his MAC. This means that he cannot use his private blog until it gets resolved. However, he has written a number of programs over the last few years that can access the underlying database. Checking these out during the morning, he realises he can still place entries in his private blog, even if he currently can't see them.

He concludes that the sooner he moves this function off the MAC and onto a dedicated Raspberry Pi, the better. Having said that - while he might dabble a bit - he doesn't plan to get too far into that until he retires and has lots of time.

ADF

Well the cat got the Gorse Fox up and out of bed at six-thirty this morning. It was a gorgeous morning so he wasn't too troubled by the unearthly hour. He has spent much of the morning going though old files and scanning documents that have some inherent long-term interest or value. He must say that he is glad of the "automatic document feed" feature of his device as he has been able to load it up and let chug away in the corner.

Paper reduction therapy

Let's start by stating quite clearly: "the lawns need mowing".

But it had been wet overnight, so GF had to wait for it to dry out (hoping that we would not get more rain). He retired to his study and a little paper reduction therapy. Papers were examined and either discarded, shredded, or scanned-filed-and-shredded. Several hours later the computer's hard drives were many tens of megabytes more full, the shredder had been emptied several times, and the waste bin was overflowing.

Most therapeutic.

Knowing how long it takes us to select furniture and furnishings, we headed out to start the selection process for a new living room suite for the new house. Not easy as we have not yet got the feel of it and thought about how we would use it - in practise. It was worth starting the process though. It has enabled us to determine what we don't want, even if it hasn't helped find what we do want.

We got back home. It still hadn't rained. In fact the sun was shining. Out came the power cable and the lawn mower. Gorse Fox wandered up and down, and finally got the lawns back to a presentable length.

Less therapeutic, but satisfying none-the-less.

Bile

The Gorse Fox worries about the effect of social media. It has so many positive aspects, but it does seem to draw some desperately unpleasant behaviours out of people.

The Election on Thursday was a case in point. Reading through some of the comment on the social media it was depressing that so much vitriol and bile could be spewed at anyone who took a differing view from that of the commentator.

GF believes his views are fairly middle-of-the-road and balanced, but is interested to see reasoned debate on alternative views. All he actually saw was demonstrations of filthy language and bullying.

The empirical evidence of these outpourings show the total intolerance that those on left seem to have, and their ability to ignore or deny facts whilst spreading disinformation. Gorse Fox is sure it is not limited to those supporters of the left... but they were by far the majority involved yesterday. It always worries the Gorse Fox that there is a group in society who seem to base their ideology on sharing the wealth of others, without the aspiration of working to achieve wealth of their own. This destructive "politics of envy" is divisive and self-defeating, and like the emotion of hate it feeds on its followers.

Tick

That's another week done. Only six to go. Three of those GF was meant to be teaching, but Starfleet's accountants have deemed education to to be superfluous - so now there will be only one week of teaching.

Gorse Fox has also "announced" his retirement to his circle of friends within Starfleet (hoping he hasn't missed anyone). He is now trying to arrange an opportunity to meet with them all for a farewell drink.

Sssh

Quiet day working at home. Only a few teleconference calls to break the silence - well, that and the hail and thunder that has punctuated the periods of sunshine.

We heard from Cousteau-cub, who is - of course - in Thailand. She was writing to tell us not to worry about the military coup; but that she may have limitations to her internet access. As she said, it is the third or fourth such incident since she first went out there - and it doesn't really affect them too much on the islands (though TV goes off at 7pm). Also there is a curfew in place - but it doesn't really have any impact on them as they are tucked up at home by the time it comes into force (and there's probably no military on the island to enforce it, anyway).

Result

Well that was a result.

Firstly, despite having to be at Starfleet by ten, the Gorse Fox had a terrific run through and had time for a coffee before the workshop started.

Secondly, the workshop went really well. It makes such a difference when the sales drones shut up and let the technical staff talk and discuss what needs to be done. As a result we seem to have closed the deal in terms of the client's due diligence - now the commercial functionaries have to release the prices.

(Meanwhile GF is resisting getting sucked in to a meeting next week to cover the same material again).

Workshop

The Gorse Fox is heading back to the Starfleet Offices near Heathrow for all day workshop. He took a call last night from a sales drone who insisted on giving him lots of advice regarding the his document (which will be the subject of the workshop). GF has studiously ignored every word.

London Calling

The Gorse Fox seems to have been on the end of a silly number of calls from colleagues in London. Evidently his intervention yesterday has triggered a flurry of "help" from some of Starfleet's commercial and sales troops. As a result he has spent most of the day explaining some basics to them, or slapping them down when they got silly.

GF will have to head back up there tomorrow.

At last

The Gorse Fox has finally received his confirmation from Starfleet that he can retire on 4th July as hoped.

Saved

Looks like Gorse Fox saved the day. The client meeting went well, and now Gorse Fox has a couple of days work to do, but looks like we have a deal.

All Change

Panic text message over the weekend changed the Gorse Fox's plan for the day. He would have to head up to Starfleet's centre near Heathrow. It was clear that several things had conflated to cause some concern at the end of last week - and GF was in the frame to try and sort it out.

Fortunately, he did not have to be there until mid morning, so left home towards the end of the rush hour. This made the journey far more palatable.

Having spent the morning debating and preparing GF now awaits the arrival of the client.

Cross country

We had a hearty breakfast and then packed our things. We had decided to head home across country.

We drove through Bredon and down towards Pershore and from there across to Broadway.

At Broadway we took a detour to go and see the famous Broadway Tower. The views were immense.

Then it was on to Stow-in-the-Wold and Bourton-on-the-Water, Cirencester, Marlborough, Hungerford, Winchester, Cheriton, Petersfield, South Harting. Lavant and home.

It was a beautiful drive, taking in some wonderful scenery and some beautiful villages and towns.

Over all, it was a great weekend.

Making a Meal of It

Evening was approaching. What would we do for dinner? A cream tea had punctuated the afternoon, but that would not see us through until morning. The Gorse Fox looked at various "apps" for advice and plumped for a restaurant call My Great Grandfathers.

He called and whilst they were fully booked, one table was available until eight-thirty. So if we were happy to eat early, they could accommodate us.
We like to eat early, so this was no hardship. We leapt into the car and headed to Tewkesbury. The restaurant was almost opposite the Abbey and we were the first patrons for the evening.

Well, GF knows Tewkesbury fairly well, and cannot believe he had not eaten here before, but had always assumed it was a tea room rather than restaurant.

What a find it turned out to be. The food was absolutely exquisite, and the service was attentive, yet discreet. GF highly recommends it, but advises you to book ahead.

After dinner we need to let the meal settle, so took a gentle walk round Tewkesbury.

Countryside 2

The walk continued down the Severn towards Tewkesbury and crossed to the Avon at The Mythe.

On the Avon side, the views were much more bucolic. Having said that, the Gorse Fox did divert his planned route at one point when an angry sheep started bellowing at him. He left the planned path and took an alternative for a few hundred yards before cutting back to the original route - way beyond the irritable ovine.

There were more people using the River than GF had seen on the walk. This view was taken, looking back towards Tewkesbury.

One of the advantages of a good zoom lens is the ability to pick out features of distant shapes. The Gorse Fox could see this church nestling between the trees, but could not really pick up any detail. Now he can look at the photo on the big screen, it is much clearer.

The hot weather was taking its toll. It had been a long tome since GF had been on a decent walk and he was out of practice. The route was heading inexorably towards Twyning, and the Gorse Fox has become acquainted with a good pub by the Rivera at Twyning.

A long cold cider was calling across the fields and GF quickened his pace; it would be rude to keep it waiting.

After a refreshing stop, GF carried on through the village and back up to Puckrup, where he had started.

Countryside 1

It was a stunning day. We went down to breakfast and watched a few golfers wandering aimlessly about the course under an unblemished canopy of blue. The sun was beating down and it was already getting quite warm.

The first thing on the agenda was to take the Silver Vixen across to Malvern for the Quilt Show. We headed off and soon got stuck behind a silver Renault Clio who was so worried about exceeding a speed limit, that the hat that was driving reduced speed to 5 mph beneath the limit. As we entered a series of roadworks with and advisory 20mph limit, this became silly. The Gorse Fox had instantly assessed where this person was headed; and so it was that we followed her all the way to Quilt Show.

Having dropped off the Silver Vixen, GF headed back to the hotel and donned his walking boots. It was time to take a stroll.

He headed down Puckrup Lane towards the River Severn, turning south just after the old, disused railway bridge. The ground was still a bit squelchy here, where it had obvious flooded during the winter, but it soon firmed up as he headed across the fields.

Because of the routes of the Public Footpaths and Bridleways, GF was a bit further from the River than had hoped, but the views were lovely, and so quintessentially English.

Everything was so lush and the green was so fresh and vibrant. Being May, the trees were in blossom.
The GF had been going for some 30-40 minutes and had not seen another human being. This, somehow, makes you feel as if everything in view is yours - you do not have to share it.

Looking back they way he had come, the fields were dappled with drifts of buttercups, and in the background the Malvern Hills kept watch over the Worcestershire and Gloucestershire countryside.

As the Gorse Fox followed the paths, the route got more challenging. This section followed the old railway embankment and was quite overgrown. Nettles grew above waist height, and in a number of places there were trees or branches down across the path.

The Gorse Fox had to scramble across and balance upon a number of fallen trees, and managed to finally emerge at the far end with only a moderate number of stings and scratches.

This afternoon

We are staying in a lovely spot near Tewkesbury

and went to a nearby pub by the river for our evening meal.

More Practise

Another pre-retirement practise day today.

Right to forget

It seems that the Court has made a ruling regrading the people's right to be forgotten. That is they can ask to be removed from the search results on various search engines. Already there has been a flurry of requests to Google from all manner of knaves and ne'er do wells. Given that one such knave was an MP who has asked for unfavourable articles to be removed - its seems to me that it only a matter of time before Blair and Brown ask to be eradicated from history.

By the way - the ruling does demand that the articles which report or criticise are removed - only the links from the search engine. So this means:

1. knaves, cads, perverts, and villains can ask to be removed from Google's search - but what about all the other search engines? Will they have to ask each separately.
2. Should the requests be subject to freedom of information styled requests.
3. The article is not removed, so you can write your own search to crawl the net for information (something we used to do a lot in the early days of the web). It may be slow, but it should still work.

Updates

One of the enduring challenges of working with computers, and this is very noticeable in Starfleet, is the need to keep them up to date to ensure that security is maintained and that you have the latest (ROFL) features available to allow you to complete your work.

To this end, Starfleet have started to roll-out the latest version of one of their more prevalent packages. This involves an 800MB download and the completion of several arcane rituals. Three hours later GF is still watching his laptop go through the process - for the second time as the first one didn't work. This is no great hardship as he doesn't feel disposed towards handling his email at present.

Talking of updates - something has changed on GF's Mac and in so doing has broken his private blogging software. This is a bit of a pain as he now has to start debugging that when he gets time.

Funny Old Day

It's a funny old day - moments of intense activity, and periods of relative boredom. Contract writing is now finished, and GF has given some advice regarding presentation to the client. GF has now washed his hands of this work.

Urban-cub turned up. The Gorse Fox had bought tickets for the Silver Vixen and Urban-cub to go and see the dancers, Vincent and Flavia. The tickets have been stuck to the fridge for months - but the day has finally arrived. They headed off to Woking, late morning. GF got an email from U-c a few minutes ago to say what wonderful seats they had and they were getting quite excited.

U-c also returned the old Samsung Netbook she had been borrowing. She had warned the Gf a while back that some liquid had been spilled and the keyboard was not working. GF has found a local business that will refurbish it for him, so he'll drop the Netbook off on Friday. It will be nice to get it working fully again, now that he's got it back... and will have to return his work laptop soon.

GF is finding it hard to "get stuck in" this afternoon.

Cutting

The Gorse Fox was buried in the contract. The first two calls of the day were over and it was time to tidy up the main parts of the contract. It drives the Gorse Fox mad to find, yet again, that the people who put the template together really have no idea how to use MS Word, its language locale, or its styles. This made the job tedious as the paragraphs switched form UK English to US English, and some headers were styles, whilst others were normal text that had been rendered bold and expanded. For goodness sake, this is a basic tool of our trade - Learn how to use it!

The doorbell rang. Gorse Fox opened it to a big chap in work overalls who introduced himself as Andy. It turns out that he is the brother of the landlord and had been dispatched to assess what needed to be down regrading the hedges and shrubs. We wandered round the grounds and the Silver Vixen passed on her recommendations. He nodded, he assessed, he measured and concluded there was a lot to do. (Well there would be, we have been asking the landlord to attend to this since July last year). Andy needs to check back with his brother, but expects to return over a weekend to get it done. At last.

Starfleet had another mandatory online training course. Gorse Fox had avoided it for too long. Finally he got round to completing it. It took a lot longer than expected, but as far as these courses go, it was one of the most practical and useful.

Monday, ahhh Monday

The Gorse Fox is beginning to savour Mondays. After all there are only a few more to go before they become part of his weekend. Today was no different - GF was committed to help out by writing up the contract for the bid he has been reviewing... and throughout the morning he was sent a number of previously used samples. This made life a lot easier as he didn't have to invent from scratch. He made good progress, but there is more to do tomorrow.

He finished the day responding to an email from Taiwan. It's funny how the problems we are dealing with here seem to translate all over the world. The issue to addressed was the same as that we are handling here in the UK, the same as that GF reviewed in Madrid, the same as that GF reviewed in Brazil... and now seems to be a challenge for Taiwan.

Talking of Brazil, Roy Hodgson named the England squad for the World Cup in Rio. I must say that I think he has made some good and brave decisions. There is a small cadre of experienced players to provide stability - but also a large contingent of new young players who have done well this season in the domestic game. I think it could be an interesting tournament... and can't wait for it to start.

Domestic Day

As we struggle on without any domestic staff (you just cannot get people of the right calibre any more), the day has been dedicated to chores.

There was no mechanic available, so GF took the larger wagon down to a nearbyMotor Garage in order to check the amount of air that was nestling within the tyres. Then we had to return and GF helped the Silver Vixen with some mail - as she no longer has a secretary to relied on. Having printed various forms regarding the sale of her mother's country residence, Gorse Fox left he to it.

Then without a housemaid, GF mucked-in to help with some ironing. He did this whilst watching the football, so it was no real hardship.

It is clear that this is unsustainable, however, and next time GF travels to the north, he will have to see if he can employ some more domestic staff.

Highlight of the day was a call from Beloved Aunt. Just a general chat and catch-up, but really must try to find an opportunity to head to the distant areas of the Commonwealth and visit her.

Out Visiting

It was day of changes - a strong south-westerly was sending the clouds scudding across the sky. With them cam short sharp showers, but in between it was bright and warm.

We headed out from Fontwell, crossing the Downs between Lavant and South Harting and onwards through Petersfiled and Alto to Old Basing. Betty and Barney Rubble have just sold their bungalow there, so it may be one of the last times we follow that particular route.

After an initial coffee and chat we headed off to "The Leather Bottle" at Mattingley for an early lunch. Over the years we have often eaten here, but the Gorse Fox would observe that recently it has really stepped up a gear and serves some fantastic dishes. Even several hours later he is savouring the pleasure of the bread and butter pudding with apricot sauce and clotted cream.

Back in Old Basing we spent an afternoon chatting and gossiping about all and sundry - new houses, flooring, family, laptops, sewing, friends, education, multi-culturalism and heaven's alone knows what else. Absolutely lovely day.

Had a very quick run home and during the evening GF saw a tweet from Clive Harris regarding a walk in Mohonk. GF used to walk in the Mohonks and nearby Minnewaska (Shawungunks) when he was working in Starfleet's Mid Hudson Valley offices. He tweeted back his recommended routes... but was appalled to find that he cannot track down any of the photos he took during those walks.

Non-productive

The Gorse Fox had not planned to achieve much today. He was expecting a very busy day handling calls and reviews related to bid he has been discussing.

As it happens, there were no significant calls and no reviews. Indeed the one call there was went something like this:

 "Hi Gorse Fox, can you be free to present to the client next week? We want to put the Programme Exec in front of them" was the opening gambit. 

"Well, the Gorse Fox could make time to present to the client, but not as the PE." came the counter. 

"Oh! Why is that?" the voice said, gearing up for an argument. 

"Well, the Programme is slated to start on 1st of July, right?" queried the Gorse Fox 

"Yes" came the reply 

"Well Gorse Fox retires on 4th July." Checkmate.

There was a stunned silence at the end of the phone. Then a sheepish "I can't really argue with that, can I?"

Anyway, being geared up for calls and discussions, GF has not really been mentally attuned to the continued development of his project asset portfolio. As a result he has only managed to add about 5 items to the "done" pile... leaving 128 to work through. Today, clearly, is not going to be the day.

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!)