Wow, well, what a fun-packed weekend that was. I’m going to have to provide a summary version of recent events because my ‘net connection is currently not working. BT are, apparently, dealing. Joy.
We had a debrief about the various callouts from last week on Thursday night, and an update on the Milford Haven chap and the location he was found. Apparently, the BBC got it slightly wrong (on purpose?) – he was found just North of our search area. In a post-game analysis back at base, with the benefit of hindsight and input of a number of highly experienced search managers, the result came out the same. We did what we should have done, especially bearing in mind the limited resources we had available to us. Had we been asked to carry on searching on Sunday, the area where he was found would have been within our area of attention and its likely we would have found him. As always, some small lessons learned from each callout, but we did our best and received grateful and heartfelt thanks for it.
Friday night my new tenant arrived – Alex. From Portsmouth, he seems like a nice enough guy and he had cash for me, so he’s gone up in my book already. He got himself settled in and we had a few drinks to get to know each other. He’s off job-hunting next week.
Saturday dawned overcast with the promise of sunshine later, so Alex and I headed into Cardiff to meet up with and missus and headed off to the cash and carry to grab “stuff”, some of which was for ‘s birthday party. I picked up some meat at the farm shop and we headed home where I frantically cleaned and re-arranged the house ready for guests. Sean unfortunately couldn’t get here until about 1700 – which is when I said I’d start cooking, so a frantic drive in and out of Cardiff to pick him up and I was back at the house cooking. The BBQ went well, with quite a few team members turning up and some old friends. Sean, poor thing, is suffering from his recent Meningitis C vaccination, so he crawled into bed feeling nauseous. I was knackered and when I checked on him about midnight, I fell asleep where I was sat. Fortunately, nobody much worried (or noticed?) and carried on partying until about 0400. So a good night all around.
Sunday morning and coffee and toast was the order of the day to settle a number of stomachs. Sean, Mal, Louisa and I all headed up to the climbing centre where Lee works, and we headed off for some fun on the climbing wall. After a few hours of mooching around the walls (including a fun attempt at climbing a nicely put-together chimney), we headed into the man-made caves. Two hours later, soaking wet, battered, bruised, squished and pulled, we emerged into the bright sunshine having thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I’m aching today in muscles I didn’t know I had and my knees are very bruised. Chips and a drunk later and we headed home to relax.
Monday was veg-out day. Matt and Yudit turned up and we sat around just chilling out on the sofa for most of the day. Mark turned up about 1800 and we talked for a bit until we finally got our selves together and headed into Charleston’s to meet Mal about 2100. Once again a great steak – we did manage to find a piece of gristle between our four steaks, but I think I’ll forgive them that one – the first either Mal or I have ever found in there.
Finally we headed home for bed (though a quick detour to Mark’s place for Matt to fix broken things at work was required). This morning I’m tired, well-fed and aching all over, so I think tonight I’ll just relax for a bit.
What a cracking weekend.
Well, it looks as though the gentleman we were looking for in Milford Haven has turned up, unfortunately dead.
We were searching in and around the area west of Hubberston. We’d had a positive sighting of him here, and Caroline and I were searching the area between the golf course and the LNG plant, and up to the road. Other teams were searching around here, and the police searched here, as well as various roads and paths around there. All of this was because the best information we had to go on placed a high probability of him being in that area.
From the BBC reports, it seems as though he was found “in woodland” near here, so according to that map[1], there could be three areas of woodland there. Interestingly, that places him quite a distance outside of our search area.
This whole callout has sparked a huge interest in me in search management – the skill of searching for missing people. I think I might talk to someone tomorrow night to see what resources I can absorb to get more information on this topic.
My thoughts are with his family right now. He was obviously loved dearly – a number of the family members joined the search efforts, and talking to local people the gentleman was well known and liked in the area.
[1] OS Maps are not always accurate, can be out of date, or just don’t have the space at that scale to show the detail.
It’s 1845. I’m in the office. I’m writing, from scratch, the first piece of documentation on the core configuration file of our product. The file has been there for several years (i.e. before my time). Customers have been trained on how to edit it. But this is the first document that tells you what the settings mean.
*blink*
On top of that, I’m coming across settings that I, and it seems, nobody else around here know what they do, or even if we need them. We have settings that are there despite being replaced by new, easier and powerful ones because “…[we’re] not sure if another part of $Product uses them without [us] knowing…”
Dear $deity….
The search on Saturday has made the BBC including a comment from Huw, the deputy team leader. The rescue in Aberystwyth on Saturday night also hit the news here.
I also forgot to mention that we saw the archaeological dig that they’re talking about on the BBC site in Milford Haven.
Shame they didn’t get something on the rescue in Ystradgynlais.
So I’m trialling a Plus account for a while to see how offensive it is. If you have an opinion, let me know.
Cheers,
Aled.
…you read an email that says:
“Can you set up /user/prom/site up for the customer as a UAT site please?”
as
“Can you set up /user/porn/site up for the customer as a UAT site please?”
..and wonder why we’re setting up User’s personal porn site as a UAT site for a customer…
It has been a particularly long weekend.
On Friday, we had a leaving do at work, so I popped out for a swift pint before heading back to the office to pick up my coat and bag and head off. As I was leaving, one of the project managers set off the alarm for the building so after helping with that, I headed up to pick Lynfa up from Merthyr. We finally got some beer and headed back home to have a nice curry. Halfway through, the pager goes off. We grabbed details of a search due to start the following morning for an elderly gentleman in Milford Haven. Putting the beer back in the fridge, an early night was in order and we went to bed.
Sat dawned early and wet for us at about 0515. Lima left base at 0700 for the 2-hour journey down to Milford Haven. We were quite short-handed and with lots of people on holiday, there were two other teams who were effectively non-operational this weekend as well, so enough people had to be kept back at base to deal with other incidents, if (when?) they occurred. We did, however, manage to get the first response vehicle, if only because it has a radio (of the usual listen-to-music kind as opposed to a 2-way radio) in it and it’s a 2 hour drive to Milford Haven…
I spent the day navigating with Caroline – one of our dog handlers, and Keeper (the dog). We had some awful areas surrounding the new LNG plant in Milford Haven, but we did our best with more than one person during the day succumbing to the pull of the bog. Heavy rain hampered our efforts at times and by lunchtime, we were looking forward to the nice hot meal from the Tesco café that the Inspector had promised. For whatever reason, there was a change of plan (for the better, for once!) and we ended up in the restaurant of a very nice hotel on the seafront. Steak and ale pie, wild mushroom and goats cheese lasagne – this place had REAL food, and we happily devoured it. My greatest thanks to the Inspector – this really did make a difficult search in poor weather far more comfortable for us – and don’t underestimate the morale of the troops as a factor in the probability of detection when you’re searching.
With no sign by the end of the day, we finished off with a search of a nearby cornfield (that’s corn-on-the-cob corn, not wheat) and then headed off. The vehicle was quiet home as we were lost in our thoughts about the misper. Back at base, we re-set the vehicle in case of another callout and headed home – Lynfa and I to a nice stir-fry and showers along with a well-deserved couple of pints.
We sat down with a nice cup of tea (why does tea always taste so fantastic when you’re knackered, wet and cold? Never mind chicken soup, tea is the food of the soul), and Lynfa was wandering around the hose after her shower with a towel around her head when the pager went off again. We looked at each other.
“Do we go?”
I shrugged. “This is what we do. This is what it’s all about, isn’t it?”
We jumped back into our still-wet gear and headed off to the callout. We made base in time for the second vehicle and with Tim driving and me on the sirens, we headed through Hirwaun and on down to Porth yr Ogof. The details of this callout are sketchy (well, I don’t know them, obviously someone does *grin* ), but we did have a number of people injured and a few more who were not suffering from injuries, but were quite cold. There was an excellent turnout as vehicles arrived from both Brecon and Bridgend to join us, two ambulances and an ambulance officer and a collection of police officers. As family members and walking wounded arrived at the control point, ambulances were dispatched with cold walkers and more ambulances arrived. At around 2345, with Rescue 169 on its way we were making arrangements for evac when the message from the police came in – another callout, in the Rheidol Falls near Aberystwyth. I have even less details on this one – apparently some people were in the river – on purpose as I understand it, but with 6 people going in, only 5 came out. Brecon team, with their fast-water response equipment were pulled off the current incident and headed up to Aberystwyth and a request was made for the Aberglaslyn team to attend this call and provide assistance.
We carried on where we were and despite some communications problems, Rescue 169 did an incredible job of airlifting two casualties out of the area at night and in poor weather. They were quickly dispatched to hospital and we rapidly made preperations to move the control vehicle to Aberystwyth to help with that callout – but a quick phone call and we were informed that they didn’t need the assist from us. So after a few cups of tea we headed back to base, put the equipment to dry and reset the vehicles as best we could before heading home. I think I crawled into bed at about 0300.
…only to be woken at 0655 by the stand down for the Aberystwyth callout (cheers guys!).
Sunday, Lynfa and I decided to rest, and we did. Finally getting that stir-fry done and just relaxing. Last thing on Sunday after taking Lynfa home, I re-packed my now-dry kit ready in case we had a callout on Sunday night. Well, it’s what we do, isn’t it?
You know how, as sysadmins, we often need to “fixor” things? Well, here’s one sure-fire way of making sure that whatever is broken is most definitely f1x3d.
Well, we just had an area call in Tonypandy, but it got stood down as I was on the way. So I headed back to park near the Fire station where I was originally (Hello nice firemen! Sorry about turning around in your driveway!). Decided it was far too warm and not enough rain to use my proper waterproof, so i grabbed my fleece. So what happens on the way back to the office? Flash! Rumblerumblerumblerumble. Yup, a nice big storm. *sigh*
So, with lots of thunder and lightening….I wonder if there’ll be any power cuts? That’d be a shame…
I’ve just received the most random text I’ve ever received in my life:
From: +363059387**
Message: Hi, Babydaddy! Mind if I stalk you? 🙂
Er….w t f???