Early Risers.

[Rugd1022]

Evening all, hope all's well.

 

Today's shift on the big railway consisted of :

 

Two hours waiting for a taxi from Rugby to Kettering, which had to come from Coventry,

 

An hour in the taxi to Kettering (heavy traffic on the A14),

 

Half an hour's wait at Kettering before relieving 6M39,

 

An hour and a half driving 6M39 to Radlett,

 

An hour and a half waiting at Radlett for the shunter to arrive (stuck on the M1),

 

An hour and a half  to unload the train, run round and do a brake test,

 

Three hours driving the returning empties 6V54 to Landor St,

 

An hour in the taxi back to Rugby.

 

Home just in time for tea...!

 

 

[Coombe Barton]

... When did it become a thing that “I can’t do maths” became a badge of honour? As our deputy dean said this week, “You can’t be in business without knowing about numbers” ...

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2023/06/02/down-very-sharply-and-more-political-malarky/

[Hroth]

14 minutes ago, Coombe Barton said:

... When did it become a thing that “I can’t do maths” became a badge of honour? As our deputy dean said this week, “You can’t be in business without knowing about numbers” ...

https://johncolby.wordpress.com/2023/06/02/down-very-sharply-and-more-political-malarky/

 

Lovely music.  I first came across Hildegard of Bingen in the early 80s when the Gothic Voices cd was released.

 

 

Emma Kirkby has a beautiful voice in "Columba Aspxit".

 

[Ian Abel]

Lunchtime with the Mrs, she wanted to take a couple of cherished pictures to be reframed - now I'm down a couple of deltics or more likely WC/BB/MNs <sigh>

 

Lunch was nice though 🤪

[jamie92208]

5 hours ago, Winslow Boy said:

 

Why is it that I now have a mental image of you foot to metal and your brother tapping on  Beth's window to say in broad Cumbrian/Yorkshire accent - 'ow do bro could you fetch it down a peg as 'm 'aving a bit of bother keeping up' 

Funnily enough Beth had an All Aggro, I didn't have a car, just a pushbike and a house. 

 

Jamie

[PhilJ W]

2 hours ago, polybear said:

How not to win friends:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/rail-union-boss-slams-uk-support-for-ukraine-as-an-obscenity-and-accuses-britain-of-aiding-war-crimes/ar-AA1c374a?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=7b1f67f00d0d4950a76cb2170317975e&ei=24

Don't forget that GB news is somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan and their reporting is not exactly unbiased.

[Winslow Boy]

5 hours ago, PeterBB said:

By definition he would have caught up if tapping on the window!

 

I did say that he was havin' trouble keepin' up', not that he couldn't keep up. So being able to tap on the window would be possible just not for long.

[PhilJ W]

Evening all from Estuary-Land. Had a quiet day today, even Arthur Itis stayed away. I haven't even looked at Farcebook for a couple of days so I've got some catching up to do.

[TheQ]

Evening Awl,

Drove back from the MRC with out lights, I didn't need them being a little earlier.

 

Earlier? Yep in 10 hours time I will be at Hickling sailing club, to get the rescue boat out for the 3 Rivers Race. Whereupon I be sitting in a motorboat for 24 hours +  counting the boats going past.

There should be 111 of them, the forecast is looking good for a fast race.

Radar Museum has been busy all week, as it was today. But I did get some muddling in. Painting roads and paths, painting radars, some grassing of the green sawdust type.

Finished an hour and a half early to go to the SC to pick up the buoy, first aid kit, radios, signs lights and flags.

 

Tomorrow morning I'll put an old wooden mast on the top of the Landrover ( horizontally) to take to get the radio aerial up high as we are right on the limit of reception / transmission back to the club.

The first race start is 11:00 and there will be roughly a 10 boat start every 5 minutes till 12:30 ish.

Web cams to view the race are here. 

https://www.horning-sailing.club/webcams/

the motor boat I'm in, should be sitting at the end of the pier on the Hickling web cam tomorrow. Between about 09:00 and until the motor boat turns up , you might even see me sat on the end of the pier awaiting.

 

Muggachoccy gone

Good night Awl.

[Gwiwer]

13 hours ago, Hroth said:

My CD collection is all stored in "Useful Boxes"

 

11 hours ago, iL Dottore said:

I too am an enthusiastic CD buyer. Apart from the durability of the CDs, you also actually own them outright

 

We have, between us, a modest collection of a couple of hundred CDs.  Upon his passing I then inherited my dad's collection.  He had amassed over 600 classical music CDs many of which I suspect he played once if at all.  They are absolutely pristine other than his cataloguing number applied in small stickers to the spine of each case.  

 

I am very slowly playing my way through those out of a largely academic interest.  It is a joy, on occasions, to hear something which I was not previously familiar with but like.  On the other hand he was a great fan of Wagner which for me is music to avoid but which shall be heard in its turn.  He was also a fan of earlier music considering Tallis to be "recent" though CD recordings of anything much earlier are hard to find, it seems.  

 

All of that now quit respectably-sized collection lives in chests of drawers which have CD-rack inserts.  Ours are filed alphabetically by artiste; his by sequential number in order of purchase.  The CD player must get as confused as anyone overhearing the output at times; Haydn followed by Steeleye Span is far from unknown.  

[Gwiwer]

51 minutes ago, jamie92208 said:

Beth had an All Aggro

We had two of those.  The first was the better of them mechanically and the second structurally.  Each lasted until its next MoT at which point the cost of making it fit to pass was far greater than buying something else.  

 

I also owned a Chevette Shove-it briefly.  For about three days.  It was part of a deal in which yellow All Aggro was replaced with something which had at least passed its MoT.  It didn't pass anything else and was returned pronto when it failed to reach 20mph on the flat.  

 

We then got the Maxi - older than both the All Aggros but built like a tank and a good solid drive.  It passed a couple of MoTs too before it gearbox had had enough.  Without warning first and second in the five-speed box could not be selected probably due to some broken linkage.  Not ideal in a hilly area like Cornwall.  Every trip had to be route-planned to avoid (so far as possible) the risk of being stopped facing uphill.  Parking was always forwards-in, reverse-out as I had momentum from road speed to park up without using a low gear.  The technique of clutch-slipping without smoke or too much noise was quickly learned for use when essential.  Maxi carried on for another year like that before we had to give her up as ailing and failing.  She remains Dr. SWMBO's favourite all-time car.  

[PhilJ W]

Goodnight all.

[southern42]

33 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Corfforaeth Darleddu Prydain Radio Cymru.  

 

Otherwise the Welsh are anglicising their own language.  And I'm sure that won't go down too well in the chapels of Bethesda nor the Brains bars of Cardiff.  The Welsh, along with other Celtic nations, have not, by and large, invented words for recent technology so this one is pronounced to rhyme with "add" not with "aid"

 

Cardiff Central

Along with Radio in Radio Cymru - go down Caernarfon Road in Bangor and you will see: MOT Gwasanaethu, teiars, brecs, ecsost, batris on the car servicing building. On the other hand, Welsh, like English, abounds in words coming directly from Latin brought over with the Romans or later from Anglo-Norman words which had their origin in Latin itself assimilating some Greek. The one thing in English at school that I did actually enjoy was finding out the origin and meaning of words. I also found it captivating when learning other languages, often seeing connections with English and other languages. When I learnt Latin, Biblical Hebrew and NT Greek, it opened up a lot of understanding of both English and Welsh words and construction of sentences, both aiding the learning process - most of it forgotten now, though, through lack of use. Needless to say, the Indian languages which crop up in my flute playing now stimulate the brain cells.

 

The song that drew me to the bamboo flute in the first place. I do love that peacock and cuckoo and, yes, I heard our cuckoo a few days ago.

 

Anyway, the lullaby, played several times, I  might add,  is just enough to see me to bed, so, night all and nos da. 💤        

[Coombe Barton]

CDs - many, many years ago my mother in law, for Christmas, bought me, saying the phrase "you like CDs, don't you" one entitled "Love songs on the Pan Pipes."

For my birthday I got another one.

The next Christmas I got a triple set.

They're still in their cellophane wrappers.

[jjb1970]

8 hours ago, Coombe Barton said:

... When did it become a thing that “I can’t do maths” became a badge of honour? As our deputy dean said this week, “You can’t be in business without knowing about numbers” 

 

I used to be a hiring manager in a classification society, despite offering a good career (the world is your lobster in the maritime world if you have experience in class and have ambition) and salaries which if not spectacular were far from minimum wage we became steadily more reliant on hiring naval architects and engineers from Asia because finding people with the necessary expertise to do analytical work in Britain (and in fairness, Europe) was painful.

 

Most people think class surveyors wander around ships in white boiler suits looking at things and acting full of self-importance, or that design approval is looking at a nice picture of a ship and saying 'yes, capital design, go ahead' when the majority of the work is running shed loads of calculations, a lot of FEA modelling and analysis and being able to work from first principles for novel designs. Meaning people need a mastery of math and theoretical engineering/science, it's not just knowing what the bits are in an engine room or the hull. In my time in the organization I only visited a handful of ships, I sat at a desk making mass elastic models, running FEA, doing calculations for engines and shaft-lines etc as well as the more interesting regulatory and investigation stuff. So it needs people to be comfortable with the stuff we learn at college and university then imagine we'll never have to use again (it was a steep learning curve for me to go back to it all, but it's surprising how it does come back).

 

Sometimes we'd take a chance and offer graduates a role (this was outside the graduate scheme) but in a majority of cases they objected to being offered a trainee surveyor role and salary as they considered themselves suitably qualified to be a senior surveyor (at the level people are expected to be able to take on the difficult cases and applying a high level of professional judgement, taking responsibility for quite far reaching decisions) and could get quite anti when told they lacked the expertise and experience for a senior role. They were being offered an opportunity to build that expertise and experience, but that didn't seem to register.

 

I found it sad to be hiring people from Korea, China and other parts of Asia (nothing against Asian people, I'm married to a straits Chinese lady) but it'd have been nice to offer opportunities to young (or not young) British people. And it is expensive and burdensome, there's a myth that companies just hire foreigners to be cheap, that may be the case for some but for us it cost £££££££££££££s and was much more expensive than hiring local people. It wouldn't be so bad if it was that one organization, but I had a similar experience in electricity generation with the difference that we relied on Eastern Europe, and I get the same story from friends in all sorts of organizations and segments. I find it a damning indictment that we have unemployment and a population which in theory is very highly educated yet if you want to employ somebody to do a job you end up looking overseas.

[TheQ]

Mooring Awl, 

It appears to be sunny out there,

I'll head out with Ben the sleeping Collie shortly, then get ready for the next 36 hours.

 

I'll gone some time floating around.

 

Bye till Sunday afternoon maybe Monday.

[roundhouse]

7 hours ago, Gwiwer said:

 

I also owned a Chevette Shove-it briefly.  For about three days. 

An old school friend had a red Chevette. Prince had a hit with Little Red Corvette at the time. You can guess what we would often change the words to. I have caught up with this friend again after many years. Must remember to remind him about that.

 

Overcast and cold here this moring. Its a bus into Croydon stopping off at a Wetherspoons in Purley that is due ot be sold. Then its pub oclock using the trams and bus back home later due to no trains.

Edited June 3, 2023 by roundhouse

[polybear]

2 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

I find it a damning indictment that we have unemployment and a population which in theory is very highly educated yet if you want to employ somebody to do a job you end up looking overseas.

 

Bear blames the loss of so many apprenticeships over the years (and those that are available seem to be, 99% of the time, a very poor shadow of what they used to be).

Sadly it's got to the point where competent people to (a) train, and (b) are prepared to do it (usually earning a lot less than they could be in a work environment) are very, very few and far between.

 

Bear here....

Danglin' on a brush - then a roller day.  I may be some time.....

BG

[jamie92208]

Good moaning from a warm and sunny place.  A very good day was had yesterday with a lovely meal out at a restaurant that we discovered recently.  Only 1miles away with N award winning chef. They don't do walk in, reservation only but the couple who run it are lovely and the price is excellent.  The food is a fixed menu but if warned will provide such things as vegetarian options. 

 

This morning we are soon to talk to the girls then are going to see the Belgian widow who is recovri g froa heart attackand having stents fitted. Then cherry picking this afternoon. 

 

Regards to all

 

Jamie

[Barry O]

Ey up!

 

Off to undertake my first ever umpire observation/assessment on my own...scary but it just has to be done!  Laws.. reviewed..local regulations.. Read (boy are they poorly written) on line form goes live at the start of the game..  not really helpful as what do I note?  Well I will do the same as my old people observations/assessment taught me.. write it all down and sift it later.

 

Interestingly enough I had a conversation about skills and  what younger people want to do with life. A retired vet and a retired GP. Their opinions matched.. when they chose a career it was what they wanted to do..now its I will be a vet/GP as its well paid, I don't have to work 24/7 and I can make even more money by doing private consultations as a GP. Work ethic? What's that?

 

I couldn't take my chosen career path (I was a budding Dave Hunt when younger) but my eyes are hopelessl.  I became an engineer instead. It was hard work,pay wasn't always good, job security was iffy but boy! I have enjoyed the work I have done!

 

Right,mugatea time then off to Malton.

 

Stay safe!

 

Baz

[DaveF]

A fine sunny morning with a hint of warmth after a much cooler night, my heating turned itself on for a short while, even though it is turned down for the summer.

 

Careers - I always wanted to be a teacher, perhaps that is because on both sides of the family two previous generations had taught for part or all of their working life at various levels.  I did consider biological research but when I had completed my degree there were no grants available to work towards MSc/PhD level - most of my University friends hit the same problem so we all either taught or got jobs which did not use our degree specialisms.

 

Today will begin with a quick visit to a shop, a walk and then continuing sorting things out in the garage.  I have a sort of plan of action for it.

 

David

[jjb1970]

I know I'm a record with a scratch but the one bit of career advice I offer young people is to try and find something they enjoy. I hate being asked to offer careers advice because my experience of careers advisers is that as often as not it is about the adviser justifying their own choices, and I'm under no illusions that I'd be any different.

 

I do feel comfortable advising people to study something they enjoy and to find a career that they want to do in a field that interests them and that they have a heightened chance of enjoying. No course of study or career will be without its bumps and times when you think 'what's the point?', and especially when learning foundation knowledge it can be very boring. If you enjoy the core subject you are more likely to get through the troughs in good shape, and bumps in the road may be stressful but they are just that - bumps on a long road with better times visible. And career wise, if you enjoy what you do then you're more likely to be happy and productive and perform well. Although it's not universally true if you have a good employer and work hard and perform well then the careerist stuff will look after itself. I've never asked for a pay raise or promotion or felt like I was being neglected largely because I have been blessed to have had jobs I genuinely enjoyed with good employers. I could have been paid more, but I've always preferred to do something that struck me as interesting, and the vulgar career side of things has worked out pretty well.

[tigerburnie]

I went to a careers advisor in Leicester in 1965, "go into engineering" he said, "they'll always want summat made", what he didn't tell me was they'd shut all the British companies down and I'd need to go to China now for a job..................................

[Gwiwer]

8 hours ago, southern42 said:

Cardiff Central

Which is correctly and bilingually signed Caerdydd Canalog.  
 

I am entertained by the bilingual announcements there (and elsewhere). A longer distance train such as the Milford Haven (Aberdaugleddau) to Manchester Picaddilly (Manceinion Piccadilly - with the double L in the latter pronounced in the English style) can require an announcement several minutes long. Trains to Portsmouth Harbour also go to Harbwr Portsmouth. 
 

GWR only identifies itself in English ….. or does it?  
 

Here’s the Paddington - Penzance sleeping car stock proudly proclaiming itself in both English and Cornish 

 

 

And once west of the Tamar the buses are run by the bilingual body Karyans rag Kernow ( Transport for Cornwall) which has taken a leaf from Celtic neighbour Transport for Wales (trc.cymru)  Cornwall does not yet have a parallel website in the native language but it may do at some future time 

 

Honours also to those other parts of these Isles where the native language is used, in some cases in preference to English. Scotland, Ireland, Fraggle Rock all offer information and signage in two languages. 

[Coombe Barton]

I sometimes tell students that one of the success stories from my students in analytics is that a female graduate went to work for MacDonalds.

Then I add "in their head office in a graduate position."