Sunday morning grin

Just had to share this one from UserFriendly.org.
I may well put up something about how ill informed (trying not to say stupid there) the worries of strangelets and rogue black holes are, but right now I'll let it slide.

Aside from that, it's a Sunday morning and while I'd rather be asleep for another couple of hours various doorbells rang earlier, none of them mine. But it's still a lie in from my normal 5 am wake up (or start to wake up). With me being such a morning person, it's probably a good thing that no one sees me until almost an hour later...
Well, time for the Lie In on Radio 1, probably the best two hours they do.

Less drained, now just slightly culverted.

Much shorter day at work today.
Feeling better and wondering who'll be called in to cover the night shift tonight.

That's it. So to stop this from being the shortest entry ever (after the talk like a pirate day one), have a few youtube clips:







Thanks to Sian and Matt for pointing out the "Torn" one.

Drained

At work, regional guy went sick so I stepped up and took over the regional desk. Means I was working "above my level" again covering pretty much everything happening in Scotland. Actually not as bad a deal as it sounds, I've done a shift on the desk before, but this time I was also looking after the local stuff as well. Partly, this was a great challenge; partly this was a pain in the arse.
I like work that stretches me, which is part of the reason I went down to the Falklands, but conditions were grim. I ended up playing that plate balancing game of watching the weather, doing everything I could to keep the guys informed and try to find options for them. Isn't exactly difficult, it's just tiring.
I've just got home after a shift that lasted 12 and a half hours without proper break (my choice, so doesn't break the European time directive) and I'm on early shift tomorrow (which does). Again, my choice to do the early start, the other station forecaster offered to swap start times but I felt like holding the moral high ground.
Ended up riding home in a shower with wet roads kicking water all over, which wasn't all that much fun - the showers were due to finish an hour before I left but the low pressure went a bit too far north (gave us the stronger wind as well) and they continue now.
Doesn't help to get back to calls from banks, insurance agents and the like. There's a limit to how often I can say "no, I don't want to insure my house with you," or "yes, I sorted that out ten days ago, yes, with your company, yes it's on your records. Have a look, yes I'll wait.....yes, that's right, ten days ago. Yes. Goodbye."
On the plus side, it sounds like Obama is using Barlett's speech writer and the Prodigy are playing Rockness this year. Don't know if I'll be able to get tickets, or if Mr Obama will be able to carry out his plans, but I think he's got a chance.
But with the lack of better things to say I'll grab a bite to eat and hit the sack. Night all.

Painfully true

I was thinking about Twitter, I mean Obama, Neil Gaiman and Schlock use it, but I think Ctrl+Alt+Del has hit the nail on the head for me. Okay, Mr Obama only updated until he won, and that does somewhat reek of plugging into the zeitgeist, but none the less...
Also on the "painfully true" side of life, we've been receiving some odd faxes at work, a pressure and a correction (getting the value that you read corrected to sea level) on a blank bit of paper. We thought it was from Garvie range as we were expecting observations from them, faxed across every hour. I had a thought, prompted by Dilbert, and yes, the guys at range head had been faxing the observations the wrong way round on the fax.

On a different note, one of the blogs I follow has had some brilliant posts recently, Amanda Bauer's AstroPixie blog had this to say. And I can't top that really.

Well, almost.
Head over to Schlock Mercenary soon (especially if you are eligible to vote in the Hugo Awards!), Howard Taylor has put up a pdf of a Schlock book up for consideration for a category in the Hugos and we lucky people can benefit from his largess by getting our grubby mitts on a book of comics in handy pdf format.
If that's not cool then I don't know cool. Now please excuse me while I listen to Mantovani and crochet a cardigan in beige!
Or, as it's Wednesday, check out Girl Genius, xkcd, Penny Arcade and Kimono's Townhouse.

New Years Eve Eve.

Last year we (Tash, Chris and a few of Chris' relatives) were up around Loch Ness doing stuff. This year we thought we would head up to North Wales and do a two or three day jaunt on Calder Idris or something of the ilk. Just after Christmas Tash and Chris popped over and they (Chris especially) were looking grim. So we decided to bin the big walk but had plans to try a smaller hill for fun. We settled on Pen Y Fan, the highest hill in southern Wales. Neither Chris or myself had made it up, I'd almost got to the top with a Duke Of Edinburgh's group from uni but we (the supervisors) decided it was too windy to push right to the summit so we stacked early.
As it was, Chris was still too ill to join us so Tash, myself and her dad started off at 7 (which, given my love for mornings, is remarkable in itself), drove to the hill and walked up, starting boots wet at just gone 9.
It was cold and we were in cloud almost from the get go with about 50 m visibility, people heading down told us that the top was clagged in and frozen. I knew we were in an high pressure situation and was hoping that the inversion (where the temperature increases, the air dries out radically and the cloud is capped) would have been below the summit but ahh well. One fell runner passed us (still don't understand them) and many, many people, often with dogs.

It was cold enough that the dogs had ice eyebrows and my eyelashes froze together. We stopped for a break at the subsidiary top then carried on to the summit, at which point, things changed.
Just as we got to the summit the inversion dropped to our level, the temperature started to increase, the visibility increased to about 60 km and the cloud cleared. I'd never managed to be above the clouds like this before and the beauty was just sodding jaw dropping!

Apart from a "little" navigational mistake involving two paths and 20 minutes extra walking we made it down comfortably although there were SOOOO many people on the hill. Seriously, there must have been a couple of hundred people on the paths that day. Chris would have absolutely hated that part of the walk.
Next day being NYE I drove up to Tash and Chris', about 320 miles including about 1.5 or 2 hours stationary in a traffic jam on the M6. They were both still ill so I saw in the New Year with the cats and a few beers. Shame I couldn't make it down to London when Tris called, that would have been epic! I think next year I'll hit a city/biggish town for the parties. Might be working for Christmas, but if I am I'm going to bounce over to Inverness for Hogmany. Might be elsewhere, but we'll see what happens, neh?
So now I'm back home, with at least one of the viruses I've been exposed to making life less than pleasant at the moment and my bank still being a general arse and it's back to work tomorrow on an early shift. Still need to sort out a new bed (falling onto the bed while drunk shouldn't lead to a collapse of such disastrous proportions!) and still some unpacking to do but it's good to be home. And the fish survived, which is nice.

Catch up entries 3 - the last of these ones

Latest Catch up entry, written about the 21/12

On the way north I stopped off with Tash and Chris, drove right up from Andi and Sarah’s Halloween party, which was great although I did end up somewhat passed out in the front room with stuff written on my face. Fortunately not in permanent marker. Tasha had got some tickets for a play so I drove straight up and into Glasgow to meet them. Initially the plan was to meet them at theirs and we’d take the train into the city but there was some evil traffic so I was running late. We met up at a service station outside of Glasgow and we went into Glasgow in convoy, running from the car park to the theatre. I had no idea what the show was going to be, apart from the fact it had something to do with “Mrs Brown.” I thought it might have been something to do with Queen Victoria but it turns out it was about an Irish family and oh ye gods was it hilarious!!!! If you get the chance, there’s a whole set (four at the moment) of plays about Mrs Brown and they are very rude and very, very funny.
We had a relaxing day and then on my way home we dropped off at the Lecht ski centre for a days boarding. The nice thing was that pretty soon I was back to the point where I left of last season. By the end of the day I was getting some proper linked turns in, which was brilliant.
A couple of weeks after I got back up north work changed. We went from having just the four of us working 24 hours a day from Sunday night to Friday afternoon, doing 12 hour shifts, to working three (or two) shifts through the day from 6 am till the end of flying. There is now 24/7 cover provided by the regional unit but we have to use some of the charts from down south, rather than producing our own. That’s the bad side of things, but on the plus side we’re now doing many, many more briefings face to face with the squadrons, which is fantastic. I enjoy hooning around the camp in the works car and dealing with the squadrons face to face.
Apart from that I’ve volunteered to drive the weather survey van (some time, when I can) which is basically a set of sensors mounted on a small van, the idea being that we drive it on set routes in certain weather conditions, usually in the wee small hours. To make it a bit safer the office sent us on some skid prevention and control course (aka skid pan fun!) which was an absolute blast! I learned some things I hadn’t known before, including some emergency brake and steer techniques that were new. I still haven’t had the chance to go on a run yet but should get the chance once I’m back up after Christmas.
I’ve done a bit more on the slopes since the first trip back up, at the Lecht as it’s cheaper than Cairngorm and ok, the slopes and the snow aren’t as good as you’d find in France or many other places but it’s here and it’s enough to have fun with. When it comes down to it, I’ll take “fun” that’s an hour away from me and reasonably cheap, over “fantastic” that’s in another country and costs a bomb to get to any day. Especially if I can go there with friends. Of course, if I could go abroad with friends for about the same cost I'd be there in a shot (note to Tris, March good for you?).