Thursday 25 February 2010

I've got no sympathy

Apparently a killer whale has killed it's trainer during a show in Seaworld Orlando .....the whale in question is a 12,300-pound bull Orca named Tilikum. And although it's sad that Dawn Brancheau was killed during a show or come to think of it at any time, but I can't help thinking that by making these magnificent creatures perform tricks in something the size of a bath tub to them is nothing short of cruel.... They are after all hunters and highly intelligent animals at that.

In my mind it's like playing Russian Roulette with an Uzi 9mm.... it's not a matter of if the Orca will kill as more when it will kill.... it's compounded by the fact that this particular Orca has killed twice before.... you would think after the first death they would have got the message... The Orca simply doesn't want to play ball and what makes it worse is people are queuing up and encouraging this kind of cruel treatment by paying money to watch these fantastic creatures perform completely unnatural behaviour..... Sure if an Orca can't be released into the wild because it's too dependant on humans because of whatever might have happened to it as a youngster fine... but don't make it jump through hoops for reward and especially not to line the pockets of it's jailers...

So I've got no sympathy that a Killer Whale has lived up to it's name and I'm not surprised in the slightest..... That's what they do

Wednesday 24 February 2010

It's funny isn't it


How something as simple as Sun warming your back can bring back a memory..... "spring has sprung" I thought as it warmed my neck and back as I stood on the decking outside our house looking across the valley ...

It took me back to when I was 16 years old and we were being transported back from Otterburn ranges after a particularly bone chilling few days on exercise on that God forsaken place we'd spent the last four days or so eating, sleeping and generally farting about shooting imaginary enemy, being attacked by real enemy (firing blanks of course....yes the MOD had money in those days we didn't have to shout BANG!!!) from our sodden trenches and throwing our first live grenades..... at our "Battle Camp" (<--- it hasn't changed much) ......The picture above is of the actual grenade ranges ....the exact same place I threw my first...... (one of several) from the middle bay... I even remember we had Spam sandwiches laced with very cheap MOD margarine and very hot sweet tea with no milk because the cookhouse had run out !!! but you know what those Spam sandwiches and black sweet tea were the BEST !!

I remember vividly sitting on those cold concrete benches inside that bunker holding on to my un-primed grenade with fingers that refused to work properly it was so bloody cold.....and eventually it was my turn and I was ushered into the priming bay..... the alcove on the right of the bunker, priming the grenade and walking into the throwing bay adjacent to the priming bay.... and throwing my first live grenade.....Pull !!! check pin..... THROW !!!!......2...3...4 DOWN !!!! .... even today.

I can remember how excited and scared I was.... it wasn't helped by the fact that the range officer was throwing great handfuls of grit into the bunker through the slit windows around the side with each grenade that went off making all of us in the bunker think "OMG that was a huge explosion" .....

But it was after all that uncomfortable coldness and misery wore off on the trip back to camp as my feet warmed up for the first time in days and I got some feeling back in them ......that I thought ..... "yes... this is what I want to do" as I closed my knees on my SLR to stop it from hitting my groin and bringing tears to my eyes.......as we went over several bumps in the track.....it was then the Sun warmed my neck and back and I said "Spring has sprung".......

Monday 22 February 2010

Fashion - Turn to the left...Fashion - Turn to the right

Andrea and Lauren have been asked to model at a fashion show on Tuesday... I suspect that the clothes they model for the Muscular Dystrophy Charity will be slightly less revealing than the type shown on the left here, but even so it should be a good event and it's for a good cause.....

The clothes have been provided by Tesco and it is they who are sponsoring the event.... I've got to be honest it takes a fair bit of guts to strut your stuff on the runway and a fair bit of confidence as well.... But Andrea is looking good after the many months of Marathon training she's been doing.... toned in all the right places :)

I'm going along to provide moral support with Niki one of our friends and between us we should be able to keep Freya and Hannah under control and hopefully take some nice photographs of it all .... :) Although I suspect Freya will squeal with delight when she sees Mummy walking down the runway !!!

I'm still in the throes of fighting off this chest infection, I seem to have good days and bad days.... last night was awful I seemed to be coughing every twenty minutes or so, so I didn't get very much sleep, so I'm completely chin strapped this morning and was so out of it Andrea arranged for Freya to go to the child minders today so I'll have her Wednesday through Friday.... it gives me a bit more time to get over this cough I've got.... I think it's getting better but I thought that two days ago as well .... hmmm we'll see I guess.....

Not much else to report except Lauren has now had her eyes tested by an optician for her Army college application, so one step closer for her... I'm really proud of her doing this, more so because neither Andrea or I talked to her about it beforehand, she just decided to do it all by herself, I don't blame her really because the opportunities around Carmarthen are pretty limited and a years training in an Army foundation college will set her up nicely she'll even get to see a bit of the world and enjoy herself. There are two colleges for her age group open to her, one in Harrogate which used to be 11 Signal Regiment AAC (Army Apprentices College) and the Army Training Regiment in Winchester.

I've been to the Harrogate one when I was in Ouston and I have to say even back in the 1980's it was brilliant but looking at the pamphlet you are given now it's even better with fantastic facilities available....

The rest of the family are ok, we're just getting on with it I guess :)

Saturday 20 February 2010

I'm coming to the conclusion

That getting a job in IT around here is like winning the lottery, you've got to be in it to win it as they say.... I am seeing lots of jobs posted for "post graduate" type people.... or basically people fresh out of University who have no experience and are willing to work for a pittance to pay off their student loan... on the flip side this means that employers simply aren't willing to pay more for experienced IT professionals... probably because of the recent economic down turn, but you get what you pay for I guess and that's all they are willing to pay for, so there isn't a lot that can be done about that.....

I've worked with quite a few post graduate students who got their degree in computer science or a similar discipline and to be quite honest in most cases their qualification wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. Probably the most shocking example of this was a freshly graduated student who didn't know what DHCP was or how TCP/IP worked.... not a clue. He knew what it was but just didn't know how it worked, "it didn't go into that kind of detail on my course" .... he said, he didn't even know that every network adapter had a unique MAC address.....

But the funniest was when he was asked if he had ever configured anything SCSI and he said "Yeah I once had to repair a laptop which had sticky coffee spilt in it" ... which I guess is only funny if you know how SCSI is pronounced in geek speak......which begs the question what exactly are they teaching students at University ???

I'm honestly beginning to believe that I am rapidly becoming one of the silver technicians, the ones who were there at the very beginning of the computer boom back in the early 1980's, the ones who can remember when computers had black or green screens and you communicated with it either via a Unix dollar prompt or the good old C:\> (if you were lucky enough to have a hard disk instead of floppy drives).... or further back still with the CPM prompt .....anybody remember PIP ?????

In other words the days when it was cost effective to have your hard disk controller repaired because a new one would cost roughly what you pay for a new computer these days....and the ONLY way to format the hard disk was to enter the Debug command in DOS and then G=C800:C to execute the bios code which ran the format .......but better than that you could ACTUALLY repair it with a soldering iron and a replacement integrated circuit...

And when you had pixel drop out on the the screen it was because you had a failing RAM chip on your graphics card and by noting where the pixel drop out was on the screen you could work out which RAM chip it was that was failing.... and you confirmed it by spraying the chip with Freon to freeze it and make it work temporarily.... You know the days when the IBM AT(X) computer would set you back at least £5,000 (for one).... Furthermore if you wanted to add number crunching to your personal computer you had to add a Math Co-processor called a 80387 or 80287 which you could fry an egg on when running at full tilt.......

I actually cut my digital teeth at Control Data Institute on a 38 week course shortly after leaving the Royal Corps of Signals......the climax of which was building a digital traffic light controller from scratch.... just a circuit diagram and a circuit board which I had to etch and drill myself.... after which it was programmed via switches using machine code by hand directly into the Z80A CPU not a high level GUI programming language and a compiler... each and every bit had to be set perfectly with over 17,500 separate instructions to get the traffic lights to sequence correctly....one mistake and you had to start all over again..... I passed the course and it grounded me in digital and analogue electronics....although I did find the course fairly easy because I did have a head start in electronics because I had been repairing TV's in my bedroom from the age of about 12 years old.

I could run rings around all of the current and new wave of IT professionals, and probably other IT professionals of my age would say the same......I actually understand what is going on under the bonnet of a computer.... the new blood flooding the market and driving the wages down are simply a gaggle of button pushing Microsoft Certified swap out monkeys.... Bitter me ? Nah .... Just twisted.....

Thursday 18 February 2010

I'm ill and other memories

It started with my nose hurting then it spread to my eyes and now I have a full on upper respiratory chest infection, which is starting to clear after I started dosing myself with Penicillin VK left over from another bout of disease one of us suffered there are enough left for a full course, so I'll take the lot ....

Onward and upward.

The other kids are down with their dad for a visit, Xboy boy took his girlfriend, FOMO boy took his Nintendo DSi, and Lauren just took her attitude.... it's only for a few days and although we miss them it's a nice break.... a change is as good as ....eh ? ....Freya is getting a lot of attention and is currently being potty trained which seems to be going well (thus far).....

We've just had what seems to be our monthly delivery of heating oil again, it's ridiculous the amount we seem to be ploughing through, but I guess with the recent cold weather it's all that can be expected....Roll on Global Warming .... sorry.... Summer ;¬)

the only other thing that's worth mentioning is that I have got back in contact via Facebook with a fair few of my old friends from days in the Army (at last a genuinely useful aspect of Facebook !! )

I've even been sent photographs of that time... this one is of the main gates outside the camp, I remember Ibbotson (or Ibbo as he was known) the guy on the left and I remember the other guy on the right but I can't put his face to a name.... (the ravages of time eh ?) you can tell it was the 80's those short denim shorts were all the rage..... I blame Wham! mind you I do remember it being VERY hot in Germany when I was there.....

Unfortunately my photographs of then were left at my ex wifes house and knowing her she has probably burned them or thrown them out, which is a shame because I'd have loved to have looked through them again...... It was really nice to see old faces and talk about times gone by..... We really did have a great time looking back.... it's amazing what some people remember and the things you yourself forget about.... like the time we got the Padre (Graham) absolutely hammered on Radler's (German weissbier) on the way up the Grunewald and when he was medivac'ed to some Austrian A&E when he cracked his skull after flying off the "Death Slide" on the assault course, and Sgt Waters muttering under his breath "he's going to die" ...and when "Stretch" sunburnt his feet and was unable to walk on them and was put on OC's orders for self inflicted wounds .... and a group of us walking up to the Eagles Nest and taking shortcuts directly up the mountain ignoring the winding road and climbing over fences marked with "Achtung Tollwut" and not knowing it meant (Attention!! Rabies) .........happy days :)

Thursday 11 February 2010

There is a God.....

Not only has "Ugly Betty" been canned but today I hear that "Friends" has been canned from Channel 4 E4 and E4+1 !!!

Happy days :)

Friends was ok the first time around it had a freshness to it that you rarely see in American made TV.... but like all things you can get utterly sick of it when you've seen it countless times on the Nth repeat, there is such a thing as a TV station getting it's money's worth but I think Channel 4 has beaten this one to death since 1994....

lets face it 16 lonnnnnnnnng years of the same episodes day after day would stretch the patience of a saint let alone the average TV viewer .... we don't even have to suffer politicians for that long, and besides the original cast probably have been moulded into different people now with frightened rabbit smiles and chins where their noses should be by plastic surgeons trained by the makers of play doh.....

So hopefully "Friends" will be laid to rest to gather dust in the TV archives of yesteryear... only to be dragged out once a year on one of those low budget "Top 1000 TV shows" to fill a gap between peak viewing hours and the insomniac hour.... no doubt though some failing channel will be offered a cut down bargain basement price for the entire series and it will reappear .... but lets hope its on one of those encrypted channels like Gold or the likes .....that nobody watches :)

The only other news is that Xbox boy has finally got himself another job I hope he does well in it ....his sister on the other hand is being BARB tested to join the Army Apprentice College (I have a theory about that..... in that her pocket money stops at 16) ... so good luck to both of them :)


Monday 8 February 2010

How do you repair a 28 year old dish washer ?

Yes our dish washer gave up the other night..... I mean how dare it !!! it's only 28 years old !!! white goods aren't what they used to be are they ?????

it's an Indesit CCCXX ....(I wonder how many will get that joke) ..... basically it was made in 1982 just after the fall of the roman empire.....(for those of you slow off the mark) .....suffice to say there are NO parts you can buy on the planet which will fit it.... lets just say the kids were getting very nervous of having to wash by hand the amount of plates this family gets through in an average day....

if you click on the photo you can see just above the top bearing of the electric motor the windings which power the motor.... and if you look very carefully you can see what seems to be a copper wire pointing upwards.... Yup it was damaged when the spring that stops the dishwasher door from slamming down on the floor when you open the door snapped.... it whipped back and in the process ripped out a load of wires from the windings of the motor... killing the motor dead.... the dishwasher just carried on filling up until the cut out activated to stop your kitchen floor from becoming a swimming pool....

Anyway I first off had to manage to get a picture of the pump by thrusting my hand under the dish washer and guessing where the pump was and hoping my autofocus worked..... it did .... and I showed the picture to my Father and he said "Yup I think I have one of those motors in my shed" needless to say he rang back and said "when do you want me to bring it down ??" no sooner said than done we had the dishwasher out and on it's back and with some completely inadequate tools for the job, namely a set of mole grips and an adjustable spanner we had the old motor out..... that's when we hit the major problem in that the new pump would only fit in the machine if we compressed it with a 40 ton press and it lost about 3 inches in height....

Obviously we needed a rethink, so on closer inspection and much spatial awareness grey cells firing in unison we eventually concluded that the motor although of a different type was actually of the same pattern albeit bolted onto a different pump..... Ahhhh we were getting somewhere....or to use an old army term.... "we were cooking on gas"

.... No.....we weren't....... it turned out the rotor shaft was a different diameter to the bearing on the existing motor housing (following me still ?) .....


ahhhh but we "could" in theory remove the bearing from the old motor and replace that in the new motor housing..... there followed much grunting and various swear words under my breath.... eventually I got the bearing out and I replaced it......


VoilĂ  .... one rebuilt electric motor using the old rotor and bearing..... being of the wary type I insisted that we test it so sweeping aside all health and safety I cut off a mains cable and bared the wires with my teeth...... and plugged said mains cable into the socket, then gingerly touched the live and neutral terminals.....(I didn't bother with earth.... I live life on the edge I do..... besides I was holding my lucky rabbits foot....)

it (of course) sprang to life.... all that remained then was to put the new cannibalised electric motor and pump housing back into the dish washer, put the kettle on make some well deserved tea and wait for the drain cycle...... as you can see from the picture above on the right we have the old damaged motor and on the left we have the donor motor .... and the offending door spring which caused the failure in the first place......

Get in there...... job done and no screws left over !!!