Transport

With retirement a few months away, Gorse Fox has been considering the future of transport for him and the Silver Vixen. Do we really need two executive vehicles? What sort of mileage are we likely to do? and What sort of vehicles do we need?

If we assume we would still require one "family" vehicle for longer journeys and for carrying things about, and that this should have a flat loading space for the Silver Vixen's sewing paraphernalia, then that's one probably decision.

If we assume that we still need a second car - then that only needs to be a small run-about. As such it needs to be practical, and most of all, inexpensive to run.

With these criteria in mind we headed off to visit the showrooms of Toyota, VW, Skoda, Honda, and Nissan. Wandering around, it was soon clear that the decision was not going to be easy. There were plenty of vehicles that met our requirements. We returned home with a pile of brochures to wade through. There is research to be done, and test drives to be arranged.

London

For a change, the Gorse Fox's work dragged him to London. A relaxed start ment there would be no parking at the railway station, but in anticipation he asked the Silver Vixen to drop him off.

Once in town he had to deal with some investigatory interviews in response to a complaint received about a member of staff. This can be a bit tense, so he approached with a degree of apprehension. As it happens it went remarkably smoothly - and when he asked said individual to read his notes and agree them - she even commented what beautiful handwriting he had.

Silver Vixen, meanwhile, is helping out with an after-school workshop for children wishing to learn how to sew.

Network Monitor

The Gorse Fox had a fairly good day in the office. The various PMs seem to have taken on board the various lessons of yesterday and were working until late last night to try and bring things together. GF left them to it and got on with documenting further parts of the programme.

By early afternoon GF was finding the office environment less than conducive for work, so packed his bags and headed home. Once there he managed to complete the documents he was working on, and take one of the regular management calls.

Meanwhile he has now got the Raspberry Pi  sitting on the desk an acting as a network monitor. Though it displays a somewhat simplistic view of the network (using jNetMap) - it does at least show colour-coded map of the network status - with regular updates.

Normal service

The Gorse Fox headed for Surrey. Normal service had resumed. Half-term holidays were at an end and the Gorse Fox's journey increased by 30 minutes. At least it was predictably so.

A cluster of Starfleet colleagues arrived from Poland or the Czech Republic (He should know which, but got conflicting answers form his usual colleagues). They were there to work closely with the team, but also for the Gorse Fox to give them a quick "sheep dip" on how programmes such as this should be run and how they should be structured. This went down very well and they suggested GF should visit their base and run the course there for their colleagues.

Journey home was unusually quick. Quite a surprise given the morning's journey.

Code set

Maybe computer code is like jelly, and it needs to set.

The code GF downloaded yesterday and had trouble firing up worked first time this morning with no attention from the Gorse Fox other than pressing the key. Bizarre.

Good work day. GF has to deliver some cut-down course material over the next day or two, so he has spent the day going through in advance to ensure he is familiar with the flow. Heading up to Surrey for the next couple of days.

The Gorse Fox burst into life and continued with his modelling and with some tasks for the Raspberry Pi. The former was very successful, the latter less so. As GF has a stored image of the Pi, he was able to roll-back to a clean image by blowing the image onto a spare SDCard.

Urban-cub and Pistol Pete came round for a couple of hours. It was nice to have a chat over a cup of tea, It is clear that Pistol Pete had not been enamoured by his first exposure to the Ikea store yesterday. Certainly, our use of the catalogue, ordering online, and having it delivered saves endless wandering back and forth in the store and queueing at the checkout with a pile of stuff you cannot then fit in the car.

Fontwell Park had one of its big race events, today. We had decided to go to The Old Stables for dinner, so timed our visit about an hour before the last race. This proved to be the right approach as the restaurant was beginning to fill up and get boisterous by the time we were paying the bill to leave.

Chatting

The Gorse Fox has been doing some more modelling. In order to work out where his printers can go, it was a matter of digging out some models from the 3D Warehouse. This proved less successful than expected - there are no canned models of his Canon printer and the canned model of a similar Brother printer is scaled incorrectly (i.e. the printer is over 6.9 metres wide... that's almost the size of the house).

GF set about building his own models. Though not engineering drawings, they are close enough to be recognisable and they are drawn to the correct scale.

Slowly but surely he's getting to grips with this lark.

We managed to get a video-chat with Cousteau-cub. It's been quite a while since we have managed this, so it was a lovely interlude. The season seems to remain very busy for them, and she has been diving - despite her current discomfort. The medication she has been taking seems to be managing the worst of the symptoms - but diving two days in a row has left her very tired. She has managed to take some excellent photos of the whale sharks that seem to have taken up residence in Koh Haa.

3D

In the Gorse Fox's first "retirement practice day"  the morning was spent considering the new furniture that Silver Vixen wants for her hobby-room. Wading through the 3D diagrams GF had prepared he started to fill his shopping basket on the Ikea website.

This prompted the question - "What are we going to do about the study?"

This is not quite such an easy problem to solve as, though we down-sized last year, we need to down-size further, and into an L-shaped room with a large alcove. This would take some serious consideration.

We ran some errands whilst the problem processed in the back of the mind.

Back home, the Gorse Fox launched Sketchup and pulled up the 3D-model of the house. Initially simple blocks were constructed to represent different items of furniture or pieces of equipment that would need to be found homes. We came up with various combinations, but eventually hit upon a plan that would actually make the most of the space and provide a significant amount of storage and workspace.

The blocks were discarded and GF spent the rest of afternoon building accurate representations of the desks, the drawer-units, the storage units and so forth.

The desks will be the problem as GF will have to trim down one of the existing desks by about 6 inches to make it all fit. (And yes, he really did order the bright red EXPEDIT units from Ikea).

Oh deer.

Well, we nearly had venison for tea.  The Gorse Fox was driving home from Surrey and as he wound through the South Downs near Fryan's Hanger two deer raced across the road in front of him. He dimly saw their shadows in the lights of an oncoming car and hit the brakes. The first deer made it all the way across. The second, a full-grown adult wasn't quite so lucky and theGorse Fox's car knocked it over.

The GF's heart sank. It is not nice to hit such a magnificent creature. GF unbuckled his seat belt to go and see if he could do anything to help - but as he did, the deer got back to its feet and bounded away up the hill.

GF doesn't need incidents like that to keep him alert - listening to his books is quite enough stimulation, thank you.

TGIT

Well, working only Mondays through Thursday the Gorse Fox can say Thank God it's Thursday and therefore the end of the working week. It has been a very fruitful day in the office and GF has achieved much. He decided that there was limit to collaboration and adopted a more dictatorial approach today. He finished off with a clear email to all the team telling them eaxctly how he expected them to proceed. He doesn't foresee any problem in his absence.

Method

In Starfleet we have something we refer to as "Method". This is the means by which we should structure most projects. Indeed there are variations of the "Method" to address most problems and situations with which we deal. There are always, however, some people who think they know best and try to fly solo.

The Surrey project is just such a case. It has now been running for nearly 6 months and in an effort to create some structure GF ran a workshop to impose the disciplines on the "Method". At the end, all involved conceded that this should have been done 6 months ago - and expressed regret GF was not on board at that time. (Frankly, given the project he was working on - he too regretted he was not on-board).

Today would have been the GF's grandfather's birthday. A wonderful friend and inspiration. Sadly missed.

Fine

It was a fine day for the Gorse Fox. Half-term meant the commute was 30 minutes shorter and that tends to put a spring in the step!

In the office GF was introduced to a number of colleagues from Germany and South Africa. Amongst them were a couple of silver backs both of whom looked significantly older than the Gorse Fox. Indeed he wondered why they were still working as they were clearly well past retirement age. A feeling of uncommon pleasure suffused his being on discovering that despite their looks, both were five years younger then the Gorse Fox. Obviously the ministerings of the Silver Vixen over the years have allowed the Gorse Fox to maintain his boyish good looks!

Smirking again

The Gorse Fox has now booked his remaining vacation. This means that with the exception of one week, when he is teaching, he is only working 4 days each week until the early of April. Indeed he has viewed the remaining time until he retires and realised that he could (using the cluster of Easter and Spring Bank Holidays) actually do 4 days a week from now until retirement date. (Though he probably won't).

GF is heading to Surrey again tomorrow.

Baking

Well not really.

The Gorse Fox was actually playing with his Raspberry Pi for much of the day. Like most computers - the initial set-up is one step that tends to go fairly smoothly. From then on you have to install the various components and software packages that enable you to use the machine the way you wanted.

As you would expect, the Gorse Fox has been painstakingly documenting this (so that he can easily build more Raspberry Pis in the future) but it is clear that his attention to detail is not always matched by those who provide the products he requires. So it was that GF ground to a halt - unable to work out the instructions in the supporting manual. Question has now been asked of the community that supports the code. And so he waits.

Was hoping to catch Cousteau-cub online to get the latest news from her trip to Trang, but didn't manage to catch her.

GF has been looking at his vacation records and realises that he can take a day off each week from now until April (when the Starfleet vacation year finishes).

Just Checking

With the storms continuing, Gorse Fox thought he would check again on the new house. The Environment Agency has a flood map showing the areas that are at risk.

The red-lined circle shows the area where the new house is being built - and though there are some amber warning nearby - they do no encroach on the site.

Indeed, as the Gorse Fox saw last week, the attenuation ponds seem to be managing the volume of water without any issue and there is still at least a metre to go.

Solo

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

Excellent

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

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

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

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

Joyless

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

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

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

Flattered

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

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

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