A terrific drag act............

It hasn't helped that we have only had about 6 or 7 logs today. This is between 7 people and I have no logs in my queue either. I have been grubbing around offering to do simple jobs that I can finish before I go home at five but very few have come my way. I managed to fill my morning reasonably well but this afternoon has been a wasteland of finding things to do. I even ended up crawling on the floor beside the colour printer to look at the third tray and see if I could free it. I couldn't so the printer engineer will get all the fun. I have not missed being idle in the past 18 months and this afternoon brought it home to me just how lucky I now am to be working in a, normally, busy office. Pooh!

This is a diary!

That was just a reminder to myself that the whole point of this blog is to be a diary of my life. The trouble is, I keep forgetting. Something that should have gone in here last week was my medical check up on Thursday, all well at 2.3 and my dental check up on Wednesday, all ok, back in six months. Yesterday evening, I set up my fon wifi and checked out the ipod on it. Works well on my personal channel but couldn't connect on the public one. That may simply be a time issue as it can take up to 80 hours to get through the system.
Well, I hit level 40 by Tuesday evening so there's not much left to do for now There are no more levels yet and I won't be getting any more gold either so I am stuck with a physical limit to just how much further I can go It's a good time to take a break and think about whether it's worth continuing.
An interesting day at work, I cleared my logs, took on three more and cleared them as well. Tomorrow might drag a little................

39 and rising!!!

I have spent the day clearing logs at the speed of sound............ Well, fairly quickly anyway. I am now down to only two and that includes the extra two I took on this morning as well. One of the ones left is on hold as the customer is also away for the next few weeks and the other is just waiting on a call from the customer to close it.

In the meantime, I have not only hit level 39 in Blackwood and Bell, I have also gone on and am nearly half-way through the next level. 40 by Wednesday!

On Sunday, I was greeted by Corey with a run and arms out for a lift and cuddle, very satisfying. Samuel was not only very well behaved this weekend, he also came back to give me a kiss after he left the car!!!! Pigs may actually be flying!

Did you ever have one of those 'clumsy' days? I did today, I have spilt stuff, bruised myself and jumbled my words all day today. Still, better today than Wednesday.

I sometimes wonder

where all the days go. We have all put in our applications for the new system and, hopefully, we will all get a job out of it. David has signed his voluntary redundancy form so he is now bound to go. We have all, I think, gone for the higher level jobs as well as our own but it will remain to be seen whether we get one. I have been thrashing away at getting my desk clear of logs and have managed to get down to five remaining, only two of which are important enough to need finishing or re-assigning so that's looking good too. Hazels interviews are supposed to be while we are away but her boss isn't too concerned as she is the chair of the panel and she can re-schedule to almost whenever she wants to. I have just installed a speech only version of ooVoo on to my iPod in order to test it out before we go away in case I am able to use it from one of the sites.

Level 38 and approaching 39 rapidly on Blackwood and Bell so I may make level 40 by the time we go away.

The Arduino It! blog has not only passed 1000 hits, it has nearly reached 1100 in the space of just two days. It has also now had 44 countries take a look so I have installed the Google translator on the site to help as much as possible.

That's the way to do it!!!

That should always be said with a swazzle in your mouth, this week we celebrate 350 years of Punch and Judy.

Well, the application is almost ready to submit and we will then see just what happens. I am in the fortunate position of being on holiday when the results are to be processed so I should return to a done deal no matter what the result is for me. Hazel is in the same situation but her result is not as sure as mine, at least I should get something out of this. My colleague David has had his voluntary redundancy accepted so he will be off and away sooner or later. The intriguing thing is that the university seems to suddenly be worried about the numbers wanting to leave and is demanding that they stay on after the end of July. This is despite the claim that anyone who didn't submit a form or apply for VR would be considered to have given notice to quit at that time. The expression, "Cake and eat it" springs to mind. On a lighter note, the extended weekend was good for us. Saturday was spent discussing the applications, Sunday was spent with the family and, especially, looking after Corey whilst Lulu and Ian had an evening off for a change and Monday was our veg out day when I set up and used the system to copy from the Sky HD recorder to the DVD recorder.

Hi ho, hi ho, to make your troubles go................

Filling in application forms for your own job is about as low as you can get, I suspect. I have spent the best part of two days, spread over the week, writing and refining my application form. The process will have been worth it only if I end up with a job at the end of it. The number of lemmings who have opted for voluntary redundancy is now rumoured to be approaching thirty. Whilst this is fine from the point of view that there will be less people going for the available jobs, it also means that a lot of very talented and useful folk will be leaving the university for pastures new. As this will lower the level of talent here for some time, it's not so great. In a way, filling up the form has proved something of an insight for me into my own achievements over the past thirty years or so. I can now look back and see how much I have learnt and how much I have done with a somewhat dispassionate eye. Things which seemed very ordinary at the time now appear to have been extraordinary with hindsight. Running all those tiny radio stations in the 90's was hard work and a lot of fun but now I can look back and see just how much Bob and I acheived in those days when we didn't have the technology to do what is now very commonplace. Some of the things I have done here at the university on the Ratio Project seemed pretty simple at the time but, in retrospect, I did a very good job and sustained a very high level of quality over a long period of time. In fact, I only stopped when I was carted off to hospital with my heart trouble. Even that has a positive spin in some ways. It pushed me into retiring from broadcasting and coming to the university full time for a start. Working here has given me so many skills that are more applicable in the real world and, just as an afterthought, paid me more money than radio ever did.

Eye on the ball lads!

Reading through my posts, I am reminded that this is a diary and I must use it as such. A few things have happened on one of my other blogs that I simply haven't mentioned here because the thing was documented anyway. That attitude is wrong, this is the diary and it should be here as well.

On Arduino It!, the number of hits is rising rapidly as is the number of interested countries. As I write, there have been 925 hits on the site since the middle of January with 42 countries represented. This is not a terrific number compared to some commercial sites but, for a limited interest blog with no publicity, I think that's pretty dam' good. The spin off Google code site is having a slower growth but is still gathering hits as we go along. Very soon, I should receive a couple of non robotic boards that may prove to be a bit of a breakthrough for both the Arduino and the blog. We shall see.