Another armpit of the night entry

Seems to be that the only time I can get online to blog is during a night shift. Ah well, ce la vie.

During a night shift I'm supposed to get some sleep, legally I'm required to take a break (during the day shifts we can sign off the break but we're not allowed to do that at night). As I'm still getting to grips with the forecasting I've decided that it'll be best to ensure that all the stuff I need to do is done and if I've got time I'll get some kip but as I've got 24 hours between shifts after a night shift (unless I'm on a double night of course) getting some extended sleep is not a challenge.
So, this shift it's not looking too difficult (more than usual anyway) so I'm doing the usual thing of getting the work done early and sticking something interesting on the TV. At the moment I've got the first series of "Spaced" on, although I might stick the radio on later. Such is life.

The most routine thing I have to do is that every hour I pop out and do an observation. It's a great night for it tonight, clear, cool, light winds. Saw a shooting star earlier. There's thunderstorm off the Pembroke coast and another about 50 miles north of the Outer Hebrides but that's about it except for the wind. There's a gradient wind (about 2000 ft) of 50 odd knots but the surface is about 6-15 knots.
As you can tell it's quiet and I'm bored. Which is GREAT!!! Being bored is wonderful. Means nowt is happening and no dangerous weather problems are happening.

I moved up north for a few reasons

This is one of them. I'm rather proud of this image. I took it while driving to Cairn Gorm to go walking (my first Munro - a hill over 3000 ft.) in the snow. Well, I'd stopped the car to get the photo, but ya'know. It was cold, it was windy, my backside only defrosted an hour after I'd got back in the car and I loved it.
The hill is about 4084 ft I think but I went up the easy route, only went up to my thighs in snow a couple of times.
On a night shift now (hence the post) and this one should be easier than the last shift - the comms failed and I had a 13 hour backlog of data that took until 2 am to clear beore I got the model products I needed, two hours before the first briefing.
There's a few more photos but I think that was the best one.
Well, true to my title, I'm a metman and I was up a mountain.

From work

I’m at work at the moment, sat at a desk working on a computer.

This is true of lots of people.

Many people have things in their work-place that make noises, such as photocopiers, people cleaning or talking loudly, that kind of thing; and telephone calls that disrupt what you’re trying to do. For me, sat at the keyboard 12 hours at a time (less quick breaks), the noises are generally the bombers taking off and the phone calls are usually pilots asking for information on the weather over targets. Also the guys at work are usually refereed to by nicknames, Misty just came in to borrow a disk, Millhouse is the room next door in the mess, Crazy Thom showed me around one of the squadrons and I’ve been refereed to as the “Mitch” or “Met-B!tch”, just because I’m the junior forecaster.

This is not true of lots of people.

I think there’s something different in the jobs that we do so that for each of us there is an amount of individuality. It could be the music that you listen to, your approach to the work that you do or the little extra bit of skill you have in the job that other don’t have or use.
Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m bragging a bit about the jets but come dusk when the light’s fading and the evening flights are taking off, there’s little that can match seeing the aircraft take off with the tongues of fire behind them.
True, getting the weather right more often would be nice. Not that I’m getting it wrong all that often, it’s just inhuman accuracy would be better.
Currently watching the sun set on the satellite images, you can tell because the visible image gets darker from the left and then goes black. There’s also the radar return as the rain comes up towards us and I’m thinking, “damn, should have brought a waterproof.” Oh well, good thing I’ve got the spare in the locker here.
Up here we use a series of webcams from around the country to give the pilots an idea of what’s happening in the areas they might be flying in. For example a picture of Eskdalemuir showing clear blue skies (rare) or one of Loch Glascarnoch showing snow on the hill tops and cloud covering the hills tells them what’s happening much more clearly than our words will. Most of the webcams that we use can be found at the Met Office Site although we’ve got a different page as a guide with some others like the Kyle of Lochalsh store 9-1-4 cam which shows a castle that some may recognise. Try the high res snapshot of the castle view.
Or the Cairngorm mountain cam and the Ben Nevis cam.
I’ve just been told that there used to be a “gnomeometer” based by the Glascarnoch cam that was used to record snow depth by remote monitoring. This highly respected piece of equipment consisted of a garden gnome, securely tied against the elements, with a calibrated measuring rod that could be used to tell how deep the snow was. Brilliant.

Plans for the next few hours/days: Call the mess and book a late meal. Watch the new Bond film before going on a night shift. Climb Cairngorm on Saturday (may be snowing, pack ice-axe). Listen to loud music.

On chairs and bombings.

Not at the same time, I was in the chair, other people were doing the "bombing."
Sat at work. Yay. Well, at least I've found which web sites I can access from the works net now. Classic FM is out, as is Bentley cars, but all of the BBC is fine, as is most of the rest of the net. We sit at the computers for pretty much 12 hours a day, except for trips outside to look at the weather (not something we HAVE to do, but it can help. Fortunately the office here have good screens and better seats than the last office but these are still not 24 hour seats. Almost, they've got decent adjustment but not as good as others I've used. Yeah, thinking about chairs occupies quite alot of the day, after all, we're shinies (sat down so much the backside of your trousers gets shiney.) so sitting down alot and your arse gets more than its fair share of use.
Anyway, on to the more interesting part of the day (I know, chairs and arses, can it get any better?!) Yesterday I spent the day with one of the squadrons here on camp. All the way from Met brief in the morning through planning (lots of restricted and above stuff - thank God for clearance) out to the line with the crew, watching the plane getting prepped (damn it was cold) then hanging with another crew while they went through night planning and the first crew were off "bombing" one site and then strafing another. When they got back we went through the de-brief and then watching the highlights of the cameras from the bomber. Was REALLY cool (okay chilly on the line). Learnt alot about the process of planning the mission and what they need from us, or at least more of it.
Turns out we, as MoD civil servants, can qualify for AT (adventure training) but I might need to take time off for it. Shucks, would I take time off in order to go on organised outdoors pursuits stuff for free? Ha!
Might try and go walking again this weekend. I'll see how it goes.

Again, backdated.

29/10/06
Clocks went forward today. No biggie, my alarm clock is self adjusting, but it means that time at work will be a bit tighter, we're now on GMT (or "Zulu") time. Makes things alot easier, you don't have to check which time people are on about, Zulu or local, but we loose an hour first thing. I do wish the government would stop using daylight savings time. I know most of the arguments, which mainly involve the increase in safety in the morning, when people are heading to work or school. To be honest, this will only work for a couple of weeks max, and people seem to be generally more awake in the morning than during the evening coming back from work or picking people up. Anyway, I digress.
Didn't have my alarm on this morning, I was planning on having a late morning and getting up around 11, having a late breakfast/early lunch and head out onto a hill before light levels dropped too far for comfort.
Unfortunately when I woke up the clock showed 12:40, which was too late for safety. Ahh well, there's always next week. Or this week on a night shift, although that would mean heading out about 10 in the morning. Hmm, might do that. Ahh, actually I've just remembered the charts for this week, Tuesday (I'm on a night then) is the only day I can do and the wind is looking a bit strong. Now, I've got the kit and the experience to walk in high winds alone, although I know it's more dangerous so would leave a route and timings with the mess reception, but it's looking like the winds will be into gale force and there's a good chance of snow. Again, not generally a problem, just need to carry the old axe and take more care, but I'd rather have a pair of crampons as well, and that's not possible until I get some debt cleared.
So I'll see how it turns out.

Aside from that, bought a printer from Tescos the other day (they stock everything except squash balls and chopsticks - aparently noone in Scotland uses chopsticks, I almost had to buy the silly costly collapsable titanium ones, but fortunately found a pack of 50 in Asda. Felt silly buying that many but at 50p it was okay, might even give some to Matt so he can snap them on his neck. Crazy Wing-Chun stuff.) mainly to run off some maps for the walk. It's not a brilliant printer but does everything I need and it costs less then Matt spent on print cartridges last time. Bloody silly economics that.

Adverts, some are good, some are terrible, a few are fantastic. My favourite one is "cog" the Honda one with all the bits of machinery. I also like the Honda "choir" and the one with the bloke going from his caravan on a variety of Honda things, culminating in going over a waterfall. Looks like fun. The Guiness ads are usually good, the horses was great (good use of Leftfield's Phat Planet as well as using quotes from Moby Dick) and the time running backwards was memorable. Sony are using a series of "Colours" ads, "Balls" was the one with loads of coloured balls falling in San Fransico and the new one has cannons and jets of coloured paints exploding all over a Glasgow council estate. The thing I like about Cog and the Sony ones is that they don't use computer graphics, they used real balls, real car parts (and about 617 takes) and real paint (and a two week clean up). Bonza.

Yes, I have been watching too much TV. Am now as it happens, it's episode 3 of Torchwood, a Doctor Who spin off. If you're interested Torchwood is an anagram of Doctor Who. It's not bad as such, just not as good as the build up and no way near as good as the Doctor Who series have been. But it's based in Cardiff and I know some of the parts of the city that they're using. If you know Cardiff, you'll know that the chase scene that they just had is physicall impossible, they just ran from the Castle to the train station (about 800 M) in under 3 seconds. Hah! I know the train station fairly well because I spent about 4 hours there one morning waiting for the 6:30 train home to Swansea. I'd been in Cardiff with seeing Tasha while she was at Uni. Phil had come down as well. This was in our fist year I think. After we'd finished at the club we'd gone back to Tasha's halls (girls only-very odd) and about half an hour later Tasha and Phil felt ill so were heading home. They dropped me at the station, but I'd missed the late night clubbers train back by about 40 minutes so had to wait for the next one. Tell you, you need to spend a morning in a train station, but if you can, make sure that the toilets aren't shut due to drug use, and the cafe and waiting rooms aren't closed for refurbishments. Waiting is much more fun with others, just down the road at Port Talbort (much worse station) was more fun. Mind you, Chris, Sally and Jo and myself had just been to a Levellers concert and we spent the three hours at the station running around like loons or sleeping against each other on the benchs.