Where have I been recently?
I’ve spent this last week in Reading. We’re using a billing system made by a company called Portal. Except a while ago Portal got bought out by Oracle and now the product’s had its name changed to “Oracle Billing and Revenue Management”. Snappy title. So I’ve spent a week down in Thames Valley Park in Reading learning how to run this system. it would have been a boring trip except Sean came with me.
So, we got a slightly more homely hotel than the Travelodge and we spent a week together mooching around and just pottering around Reading. It’s not a bad place – I have to admit, it’s not the most exciting of places, but we had some nice evenings down by the river and some decent food. This weekend I’ve been sorting out the house, somethign that needed doing. All this isn’t work….because work is going to take over soon.
We have between now and September to roll out our live system for our triple-play offering. We start testing soon and although 
we’re progressing well, there’s a lot of work ahead of us. So there’s going to be a couple of things – friends will notice me around less. Mountain Rescue and First Responders will see me less. The Monday night D&D group may get a bit sporadic – Si, you may want to start digging out some of your Firefly stuff.
The good thing is that Sean is spending the summer here – not all of it, he’s got a trip abroad and a few weeks in Herts planned, but he’ll be here for the summer. Woot.
I was going to write a post on how thanks to someone deciding to upgrade Xorg in the FreeBSD ports tree, it caused me a problem or two.
After two days of compiling, installing, tweaking, and generally spending time on trying to a desktop system working at work, I really couldn’t be arsed.
I appreciate that people have worked hard on getting this to work. Thank you. I mean that sincerely. However, it’s caused lots of people no end of issues. Blerg.
I’ve been touched this morning. Oy, you in the back, stop sniggering. Not like that…
I am moved by my muse to write a blog entry. It’s not particularly fascinating, but hey, it’s 0600, what do you expect from this time of the morning.
I’m sat in Aberystwyth, just got up. I’ll be leaving shortly for the 2-and-a-half hour drive to work where my week is incredibly hectic – which is how things have been recently. This is in a good way though, it’s all good, interesting work. It’s just not particularly blog worthy – largely because we haven’t launched yet so corporate secrecy and all that. Um, might chat with Simon later to see just how much I can blog because some of it is quite interesting.
But right now, it’s peaceful. I’ve spent the weekend with Sean relaxing which means I missed a two-stage search for a woman near Fochriw. I have done some work this weekend – getting 7 servers installed (did I mention that I adore Sun kit for it’s remote maintainability?), but nothing strenuous. Sean’s flat doesn’t have the most amazing view
– his room faces inwards and the windows facing downhill are blocked by trees, but the picture was looking out of his kitchen window where I saw a fantastically clear double rainbow. It had faded a little by the time I grabbed this image, sorry.
Anyway, coffee’s cold now, and I have to be in work before 9 to greet a chap who’s flow over for the week from…er..somewhere. Amsterdam? North America? Not sure. Oh well, off we go.
A fairly uneventful first responder shift on Saturday ended with a bang about 0400 on Sunday with a little old lady with chest pains. I did manage to get back and get another few hours sleep but it wasn’t too long before I was in Cardiff getting breakfast with Jon and Rich before we headed up to the Beacons for a bimble.
We called into base to pick up a radio – it’s a habbit that I’m getting into that I’m sure will really pay off one of these days. Trig was there and we chatted for a bit before we decided to head off. We were just about to walk out when the pager went off.
There was a brief pause before things swung into action. Doors opening, enginese starting, a flood of people arriving. Fallen female in Ystradfellte, leg injury. We swung into action and pretty soon I was heading along the heads of the valleys road on blues. Didn’t take us long to get there, and we headed off down to a valley I’d not been in before. We didn’t take long, the young lady was on the ambulance pretty quickly. We shuttled down the 16 or so others in her group to their pickup point at the pub in Ystradfellte before heading back to base.
Jon and Rich had the joy of looking after base whilst I was away and once I got back, we jumped in the car to head out Ystradfellte as originally planned. Again. Some fantastic pictures (on my flickr site), I’m constantly amazed at how quickly that river rises and falls. We got very, very wet. Which was good fun.
All in all, quite a nice weekend. I have to get out on the Mountain more.
My apologies for those who find offensive language intolerable – you may want to turn away now. Because words fail me in expressing my utter disgust at how fucking stupid this idiotic woman was. If you’re that bloody stupid, YOU SHOULDN’T EVEN HAVE A BLOODY DRIVING LICENSE!
Right. I feel better now after that little Victor Meldrew moment.
I’ve had a cracking weekend. For those of you who remember these things, it was a year ago that Sean and I first met. At this juncture I’d just like to thank my Volunteer Pimp. You did good.
On Saturday morning, after I went to pick Sean up from Aber we headed off to Llanddeusant, where a bunch of us from the team were camping out over the weekend. A few swings of my machete to clear out the over brush will really clear my head, as it always does. A nice little picnic by the river on Saturday was followed by a nice steak and an evening in good company and good beer. Sean and I headed to bed early with the night getting cold and we spent the night in peace in my tent while wind and rain did its worst outside.
Sunday dawned a bit damp and we got up and had some breakfast with everyone before helping those with mansions for tents to pack them up. We headed off home after a while and spent the afternoon sorting out our things. I cooked and cracked a bottle of wine and we eventually headed off to bed about midnight…
…just as the pager went off. This was a search for some missing people on the mountain, but considering I’d already had a few glasses of wine I couldn’t drive, so silenced the pager and went to sleep.
Sunday was a bit blustery and so we headed in to Cardiff to pick Jon up – he wanted to go to Cotswold’s to get some kit. As Sean and I reached the center of Cardiff, the pager went off again. This time it was an area call – in Sgwd Yr Eira. I weighed up the options – we were in Cardiff, it was a Bank Holiday and good enough weather that we should have plenty of people on the mountain. I was more than 45 minutes away, especially with traffic, and from experience I knew I’d probably get there just in time to see everyone leave. So, we carried on, picking Jon up and heading to Cotswolds. As it was, the incident lasted two hours, so I did wonder if I would have had time to attend. More to the point, that’s two callouts I’ve missed…. *sigh*
So Monday night I finally took Sean back to Aber. It’s been a cracking weekend, and Sean got some great pictures. Mark’s put his up already. I like weekends like this one.
We had an incident tonight. I headed up from work to base where we got the vehicles ready. We had enough people so all 3 vehicles left base and we headed along the Heads of the Valleys road to Trefl Quarry. Once there we started our search for our casualty, reported to be trapped on a ledge. What could it be? A motorcycle rider fallen of his scrambler? A 4×4 driver stuck? A climber? A diver? A walker? None of the above. It was a sheep.
Or at least that’s what we were told. Though we searched the areas described by the original caller, we didn’t find any sheep. So after a few hours of searching, we went home. Another exciting day for Mountain Rescue.
This weekend I mainly spent at my Grandmother’s in west Wales. About 10 years ago my Grandfather died, leaving my Grandmother with a large detached house and a rather large garden to look after on her own. I, unfortunately, moved away and my father’s never been with living things – he’s an Architect and spends his time with buildings. Plants are a bit less precise. I’m by no means an expert, but I know how to take cuttings from a Geranium, how and when to prune a Butterfly Bush (Budlea) and other stuff.
So when I arrived on Saturday, I was greeted with an awful sight. My grandmother has a local lad come and cut the lawns, but they’re both about 80% moss (they’re both about 10-15sq.m). The edges sloped down where he’s strimmed them a bit too much – my grandfather used to trim them with a spade and keep them crisp and sharp. Worse than that, the borders had weeds up to waist height and some of the old platns that had inhabited those borders for years had been strangled by the weeds and lack of pruning.
So I set to work, pruning, weeding, digging over, transplanting. I know it’s the wrong time of year for some of this, but it needs doing and there are limits to when I can do this. Out of 4 borders and the vegetable patch I managed to clear a 2m patch of border on my own. Hrm.
I’d managed to get about 2 hours sleep on Saturday night when the pager went off. We had two missing 12-year olds in Cardiff. Great.
I quickly got dressed and headed off down the M4. The police station was busy, with team vehicles all around. Information was coming in fits and spurts and we were finally dispatched to some woods near Cardiff Gate services where a positive ID had been made on CCTV. We stumbled across some kids out camping, which is what we’d been told our two were doing though they weren’t with this group. About 0700 we finally heard over the radio that they’d been spotted and at least one was being detained. It transpired that the kids we’d spoken to had probably known where they were and had got over there after we’d left them to warn them that the police were looking for them. We were stood down once the police confirmed that they’d both been located fine and healthy.
After a hearty breakfast at Ramone’s I headed back to Carmarthen to sort out my grandmother’s garden again. I caught a bit of sunshine – it was a beautiful day and we got a reasonable amount done. Sean and I are going to head over for another weekend soon I think.
First, an apology. For those of you who hang on every word I write (yes, both of you), I apologise for not updating you. Things have been quiet recently. Well, no, not quiet – because I have been manically busy, especially at work where we have far more work than time. It’s just there’s not really been anything blogworthy going on. The new job is excellent (Hi, Simon) and I’m loving the work and the toys, even if one of my current jobs is going through a thoroughly boring piece of Ofcom documentation and summarising it so that I’m the only one that has to risk falling asleep in odd places because it’s so damn boring. Sean’s been staying down, which is another reason why i haven’t blogged – in the grand scheme of things, snuggling on the couch wins every time over playing on the laptop.
We’ve had two Mountain Rescue callouts since I blogged. The first I missed because I was away and that was a chap who fell on his ankle up near Rhayader. The second was last Friday and we got stood down en route and was some kind of request for help in finding a 4×4, again near Rhayader. So our Landrover’s haven’t moved much recently.
But against the backdrop of this weekend has been a rather controversial argument going on that the press seem to have missed, though they’ve been reporting parts of it. I am of course referring to the recent Coastguard strike much publicised on the BBC news site. How did we get involved?
On Thursday, we were asked by the various police forces if we would be prepared to respond to Coastguard callouts. Of course, the initial response is that we could, but a bit more thought put the brakes on things and a number of people have asked why.
The initial problem is our insurance, although it was fairly quickly ascertained that so long as we stuck to our training, and that we didn’t go into boats of more than 3m in length and that we were content with the risk involved – just as we asses the risk in every callout – we were covered. Then there was the question of morals – should we get involved and potentially undermine the position of the Coastguard? Would we appreciate them doing our job if we were on strike? But the final nail in the coffin that stopped us from responding was finding out that if we were to perform their duties we’d not be covered under our usual accident and disability policy, but rather under the MCGA’s. So, would we respond to calls covered by an insurance policy which was at the heart of the entire strike itself? In the end, the simple answer was “No”.
Finally, we’ve had a few calls with the Ambulance service whilst on First Responder duty recently. Nothing too exciting, although last night’s was good – a nice old lady’d fallen 2 steps up the stairs and hurt her wrist. Lovely woman, with a caring family. So nice to see people being looked after like that. Mal might blog a bit more about this one, as it was technically his first shout.
Oh and in other news, I’ve just bought a Garmin Foretrex 101, so I’m looking forward to going out and playing with that. Huzzah.
It’s been a quiet weekend in the house this easter. On Thursday, my man-flu was bad enough that I decided to head down to see the Doc, who diagnosed a chest infection and put me on some anitbiotics. Blech. That rapidly turned into tonsilitis by Friday night and so the last few days have been spent trying to swallow small quantities of warm and soothing liquids and trying to deal with a hypothalmus that couldn’t decide if I was too hot or too cold on a minute-by-minute basis. Indeed, I’ve spent much of the weekend staring wistfully at the glorious sunshine and wishing that I were on the Beacons somewhere.
I even missed our latest callout – we had an area call to a fallen walker just north of Rhayader yesterday afternoon. Not much detail on that one so far, but there’s a few pictures up on the team flickr site.
Today was the first day that I felt good enough to head out to do anything other than buy more Ribena and other throat-soothing items, so Sean and I headed down to B&Q for a quick browse. Lots of talking about kitchens and boilers – let’s hope that the legal claim I have in at the moment will come through soon.
So after a weekend of…well…vegging out, mainly, I’m back at work tomorrow. One good thing about being ill though – I haven’t had a single piece of chocolate this easter.