Sleepypete's Pillow

Our little group moved offices today.

We haven’t moved far, just across a building and up a couple of floors. But it’s always a wrench to leave behind people who have become dear friends over the years. Some of us have moved, others have had to stay behind. It’s part of a reorganisation our place has been going through. Instead of arranging people by projects, it’s more arranging them by where the projects are in their programmes. My stuff is in the Support domain now, the people we’ve left behind are Buying new stuff.

That’s not to say we aren’t buying anything any more, we still have a bit of that to go. But because most of our babies have hit the real world, we’re moved over to support. It’s a wrench for us mentally because we’ve been so focused in delivering those babies. But, you always have to be honest and most of our Buying Stuff phase is done now.

For me, it’s a decision on whether to stay in the role I’m in and migrate from current project (with not much life left in it) to new project in same part of the organisation. Or I pack my things and find another bit of the organisation to work in. That’ll be a wrench too after all these years but … the great people of the project are still around the site.

Really hectic today. Yesterday was finishing up the packing, today was getting everything out of the crates and into the cupboards. And having the surprises when we got to where we are now. I didn’t have much of a problem (I’m adaptable and will happily adopt “clutter” as a pattern to recognise and bring “familiarity”).

Let’s just say the old office and the new office are worlds apart. We’ll clean it up, organise it (make it safe) and put our stamp on it in time.

Oh I was missing our people from the old office very quickly too. I tend to look around a lot (tis good for the eyes to refocus long distance) so I’d catch the eyes of people like Queen Bee, Miss F and the Snow Queen cos they were on a similar eyeline to where the clock I’d use for that long distance peek was.

I had a whinge the other day about the old office but what didn’t really come out of that was that there was a little group of people trying their hardest to lift the spirit down there. They’re organised, busy people who always keep their sense of humour despite all provocation by the more disagreeable down there. To mention a few that’d be :

Snow Queen ! She’s such a sweetheart and is just awesome in gifting her time to everyone else. She works That Hard. Just remember to keep some of that time back for what YOU Want to do instead of what you believe everyone else Expects you to do 🙂
Finance Angel E – who kept me out of trouble so much with my last job. She had my old desk today and I must have done something right cos the clear desk job got the Seal Of Approval.
Queen Bee – if there was mischief afoot, Queen Bee was usually at the centre 🙂 Queen Bee keeps us organised too and was my Go To person for asking the daft questions after Superspy retired.
Finance Angel R – who was oh so patient in getting me funding for some training (I can be hard work)
Ms F – who is one of very few people who I can talk through the personal stuff with
Mrs Sunshine – is still brightening up the office. Sun’s been shining outside but it’s shinier around Mrs Sunshine.
Finance Angel K – such a happy person with an amazing smile, always cheering me up with a “Hello Pete”
And it was good to see Thelma & Louise reunited this week too.

They’re all awesome people and that’s just a few. The ones I haven’t mentioned I either don’t have inspiration for codenames or didn’t have much contact with. Was missing them all by 9.01am this morning. (I get in at about 9am)

You kinda wish that you could pack ’em up and take ’em with you when you move. (One or two might fit in the crates too!)

It was good to come back down there for a visit this pm (work related sadly) and they sorted me out quick (as always) and kept us working. Thank you all so much for all your hard work 🙂

Had another trip up to the Mall tonight scouting cos I needed trousers …

Had other reasons too but trousers were the pressing one. Have to say, it felt great to realise that trousers I retired last year (pre-diet but after the leg infection) now felt baggy. Lots of room there and it was good that I have a decent belt. The belt is 2 (occasionally 3!) notches tighter now too than it was last year. I had to get a new pair though cos my keys were attempting to escape through the pocket. The last pair got retired cos of a “oops – I shouldn’t have bent down quite like that …” incident …

Other Mall trip scouting :

Fence and fence posts. Need to repair the fence to next door as the old panels were rotten after falling victim to heavy wind. Still need to investigate what’s there at the moment and therefore how big a job it will be. Need to repair the fence posts too which to be honest is the most icky part. Hopefully it won’t need concrete (saw something at B+Q today that would serve, if there’s concrete there already for it to work with)

Couldn’t investigate that over the weekend cos there were nasty chemicals but I can check it out tomorrow evening.

Fridge/freezer – mine’s getting old now. It needs defrosting again (next weekend when I don’t have to keep an eye on workmen) but still works well. Had an initial peek tonight for new ones, so I know a little more about what I’m looking at.

That’s how I buy stuff, some would call it procrastination (it is) but I call it gathering knowledge so you know what you’re looking at. Then when you buy, you get something perfect instead of merely shiny. Like I now know how big a variety of these there are, so before I go looking seriously, I’ll measure the hole.

Same with – washing machine. It works. I think. But I’m not confident that it works 100%. Either that, or I need some serious stain removal stuff to get the grass stains out of my cricket whites :-).

Loo – I could do this on my own. If … I could acquire something with like-for-like fittings. That means having the same place for the drain (not a problem), the wall fixing (issue), the overflow and the water inlet (both problems). I’d like to do it on my own because that’s the way I like to do things. I may have to bite the bullet and get a plumber to replace it (cos of the overflow + inlet) but I have another idea for tackling those pesky wingnuts …

Wait … this was supposed to be about fitness wasn’t it ? (it was a busy Mall scouting run)

I used to grade myself as A, B or C level fitness for how intact I was, with 1,2,3 etc for how match ready I was.

Grade A would have everything working correctly, with no residual injuries. My knees were the first thing to degrade but didn’t knock me out of A too much.
Grade B has something complaining. Like a sore back, a broken finger or something else that means I’m not 100% intact but there’s no reason for me not to play. My groin tear puts me at Grade B, because while it’s annoying (minor limp again today) I can still run at full speed with it. Same with the spectacular bruising on my right leg.
Grade C means something major is broken. My shoulder would put me at Grade C, as did the leg problem from 2 years ago.

I’ve accepted now that my shoulder is seriously compromised. I can’t bowl with it and I maybe have 1 good throw per game. But that 1 good long distance throw will hurt like hell, so I save it for when it’s crucial. However, because I have a role batting and fielding where throwing is short distance, I can still play with it.

Last year’s cricket was spoiled by 2 things that dropped me to Grade C – I hurt my back at the start of the year and the leg infection made my skin to weak to risk on the field (it would break when I walked!). While I have the minor groin tear this year, my back is happy as long as I keep using it plus the leg infection is sufficiently healed for cricket.

The numbers said how much of a lazy git I’d been. A1 fitness meant I’d finish 40 overs of cricket as strong as I started, having done a full quota of bowling overs. I’d have a resting heart rate of 56-60. 2 meant I’d be ok but not quite match fit. 3 meant I’d be struggling. At the moment that resting heart rate is about 80.

How am I at the moment ? Honestly – C3, hopefully B2 by Thursday’s game. C cos I dunno about the damage to my left shin, plus hayfever is in my lungs. But time should help with those. I’ll be ok for Thursday’s game by abusing natural fitness and ignoring pain again but I’m nowhere near “match fit”.

Oh – I also scouted vacuum cleaners as one reason my lungs are bad is because of an attack of house cleaning. I knocked over a glass of coke with the vacuum, which led to me scrubbing the floor and getting dust in my lungs. It shows how bad the football was on Saturday that it drove me to cleaning. I had done some vacuuming in the afternoon but the vacuum had declared : “It’s too darn hot, I’m shutting down for a while”. Hence scouting for a new one … it worked later when it cooled down.

Ramble over – in the style of a Dodger vid, the latest of which I’m about to watch – Cya tomorrow (maybe) 🙂 MWAH !

Seen another one for the Crazy Ideas club today … (actually saw it before but it hit El Reg today)

Or is it a crazy idea ?

Here’s the Register story
Here’s the home site.

If you’ve got a bit of Mad Scientist in you, they’re well worth a look. I’d love it if I could look upstairs in a telescope and see one of these in our night sky. But … as another Mad Scientist, I have to say it’s a little silly …

One tenet of engineering is : if it doesn’t serve a purpose, take it away. In this case, it’s the shape :

Enterprise nacelles are for the warp engines. They’re on the stalks to give the ship a good Look (with the excuse being that they need to be away from people. Unless we get a major breakthrough (or a gift from aliens), we aren’t going to get warp travel any time soon. So take the nacelles away and bring them closer to the main saucer.

Saucer section – awesome idea. We need Earth normal gravity to keep healthy and without another gift from aliens, our best way to do that with current tech is to step into what amounts to a tumble dryer. Quick lesson in artificial gravity :

Centrifugal force is a myth. It doesn’t exist. Newton told us “An object in motion will remain in motion until acted upon by an external force” (He’s the deadliest son of a bitch in space dontcha know). If you throw a ball, it’ll gently fall. It would go straight but it’s being acted upon by the force of gravity. If you attach that ball to a piece of string and whirl it round, it’ll go in a circle. That’s not centrifugal force, it’s “centripetal force” where the string is exerting a force on the ball so the string doesn’t fly to bits.

So if you’re in that giant tumble dryer/hamster wheel, you’ll be standing on the outside of the wheel while the wheel is spinning. If there were no floor, or you stepped in a hole, your angular momentum would make you “fall”. However, the floor exerts a force on you equal and opposite to the force you are exerting on the floor. So to your body, it feels like you’re in normal gravity. If you increase or decrease the spin or change the distance to the wheel (different angular momentum) then you change the artificial gravity.

Actual gravity is a whole different beast that works on Very Big Masses. If Earth were hollow or lighter, our gravity would be much less.

But I’m getting sidetracked yet again.

Saucer section – great idea. However … How do you go from the gravity wheel to other parts of the ship ? A point on the outside of the wheel is going at about 100mph (site calcs). You’d need to either have a Ringworld style mass accelerator/decelerator to get you down to 0mph along the ring or you’d need to go to the zero g centre and step off there.

On the spaces inside the gravity wheel, you could put all sorts of cargo bay, space for power generation or space for parasite lander craft. Or zero g work space.

Engineering section – gotta say, this is one of the things I liked about the rebooted Enterprise. In the original, you didn’t really know what this big tube was used for. But in the reboot, most of its length was shuttle bay. And that would work here.

At the moment here I'm :

Watching delayed coverage of the Indy500 (15 laps to go)
Forum, Facebook and Blog commenting 🙂
And listening to the latest The Game Station podcast

And thinking I should close the downstairs window before I take a shower when the Indy500 finishes.

PS There's a little bit of thinking that I should be rearranging my main room too. Gotta decide whether I want to be able to watch the telly at the same time as doing stuff on the desktop PC.

I see you are a multi-tasker. 🙂 I am currently watching little one nap, sorting some things on my desk, reading a cookbook and planning blog posts, planning a kitchen rearrangement,getting ready for a visit from my Brother,thinking about turning tennis back on and reading Facebook/blogs….all sort of simultaneously.

As I start typing this, I’m about to hide behind the sofa so I can :

Watch the cricket off Skysports on the proper telly,
Have the Grand Prix going off iPlayer on my desktop PC monitor.
(the laptop doesn’t really have the puff for it any more, plus it would get in the way of me trolling Facebook and forums)

Plus I’m wanting to avoid “downer” and born of frustration posts which have been a theme lately.

There’s a few things that have struck a chord from this morning from the cricket commentary :

Superstition. Andrew Strauss before today never got more than 6 runs the next morning after scoring a 100 the day before. He’s on +10 now (112 not out), so hopefully that bit of superstition is behind him. It had been in his mind though, you could see the smile from under the helmet.

No ball trouble – this is where a bowler flings the ball down from a position that’s too close to the batsman. It’s deemed an illegal ball where if the batsman gets out it doesn’t matter plus the bowler has to try again. One of our boys was out twice yesterday on no balls. (Didn’t last much long after)

I had a massive problem with no balls when I bowled. For my main action, my run up was really bad. It should be 10 or 11 running paces to get you to the stumps in the right position and with enough momentum to deliver the ball at pace without taking much out of yourself. My run up was horrible, there was a lot of shuffling before I got to a running stride. And that shuffling meant my landing point was fairly random, leading to me giving away no balls.

A no ball is bad enough before it gives runs away (hated doing that)
But if you would have taken a wicket with it … that’s a game changer.

There’s no worse feeling in cricket than turning around to see the umpire give that No Ball signal just after you’ve just sent the stumps flying.

Anyway – they’ve been talking about a West Indian fast bowler called Kemar Roach who has been having the huge no ball trouble, which has given me a suggestion I’d have tried out had I still been able to do the bowling – mark a closer reference to work off instead of where you start the run (or shuffle). Moving the start point back gave me worse trouble, as I’d stretch my run to get to that closer reference point.

Short balls – they’re giving young Jonny Bairstow a hard time at the moment. Most of the time, a bowler will try and get the ball so it would hit the stumps or just outside. It’ll be coming past your body typically at knee to hip height.

But … a valid tactic is to pull the bounce point back a bit, with the target being the batsman’s throat. Above that is no good because it’s easy to duck. Throat high is perfect because it takes a decision to figure out what to do with it, duck out of the way or try and whack it. I used to love short bowling because it made my blood sing. Plus I had good shots against it. In the level of cricket I play, if I hit the ball in the air it was unlikely a fielder would get to it let alone catch it so it would be a safe shot.

I used to encourage it too when I wore a sunhat for batting, by occasionally stopping the bowler as he was about to come in and adjusting the hat in a “Hit that” kind of suggestion (Mind games). I loved the challenge and accepted it as part of my job in the team – absorb the dangerous stuff so it doesn’t get the better players out.

And my “you really are talking mindless drivel” detector is going off …

Time to concentrate on the cricket and the motor racing, while trying to avoid a headache (coffee soon will sort that out – when I said I had no vices, I lied) and hoping my lungs improved. A short attack of housework yesterday has led to my lungs being full of dusty rubbish. [hack][hack][cough]. But the floor is looking a bit better 🙂

PS For some reason I watched the Norway vs England football last night. Let’s just say it hasn’t convinced me to go out of my way to watch any more football any time soon.
PS2 The couple of times I have been hit on the head while batting, it wasn’t a short ball, the ball came off the top edge of my bat. The closest I’ve come to wearing a short ball is the one that got me on the tip of the elbow – just bounced more than I expected.

Realised I’d upset someone with a few of the comments yesterday and it’s probably the closest I’ve come to going back to a finished post and hacking bits out of it.

While I don’t talk that much, I always speak from the heart (I’m a terrible liar too) and try to say what I mean. Trouble is, when you’re forming impressions from very limited information, that’s when you can really upset people. Seemingly innocent phrases (like me getting called by my brother’s name) will kick the legs out from under people.

Been thinking about what made my old team so good to work in. We had such a good attitude that people wanted to work in our team. We worked hard under pressure from outside and above but worked together. The norm for my place is for people to do 18 months to 2 years in one place, then they’ll move on. I disagree with that (and call it Tourism) because it takes a while to figure out what you’re supposed to be doing. As soon as they do, the tourists leave and all that effort gone into teaching them is wasted.

My old team turned that around, with tourists turning into lifers. We care.

But what makes that team spirit ? It doesn’t come from the top. It comes from Worker Bee level. Worker Bees tend to be scared of their bosses. If one gets too friendly, we get suspicious. When one turns into a bully (this goes years back), then the Worker Bees come together.

We were very lucky to have a core of Worker Bees who set a tone that everyone followed. I like to consider myself as one of them, because of the always grinning at people thing, generally being an IT Guru willing and able to help with sensible suggestions to fix problems and I ran a few team building type things with the cricket. Oh and as an integrator, I had my fingers in just about everything in the project.

That’s what’s causing my increasing sense of isolation – I miss all that stuff and feel excluded from the team-y type stuff that happens. I need to feel a sense of being involved.

There was also Diablo, with me and Diablo forming our own little nucleus of crazy daft comments and Mad Scientist ideas that just got everyone else going.

We had The Boss, who was another one of us Worker Bees. She wasn’t the team leader but she told a succession of them what they’d be doing. She’s got her own special brand of empathy and is still one of very few people I’ll turn to when I need to talk heavy stuff.

About that heavy stuff – there’s a fair bit that goes on that I don’t put on here. Either because it’s too personal, too private or because it involves someone else’s secret.

Last of the Worker Bee Core but definitely not least – the Snow Queen. For a very long time, our Snow Queen was the Heart of our team. Someone who everyone (from team leader down) looked to. More than anyone else, she held us together over the years. When it looked a few years ago like her own place was becoming untenable a few things were going through my head :

Her friends and family and hubby make for an awesome support network that would help her through
It would break my own heart to see her leave
And it shattered that heart to have to advise her that leaving was the best of bad options
(the situation was not good)

That’s one thing about going off incomplete information or bad assumptions, it disrupts the advice that you give.

So that was the core of that team that worked so well over the years. People followed the lead of the Worker Bees. Top level management can arrange the people but if the people aren’t interested, then the team spirit doesn’t build. That’s not it though. We didn’t worry so much about the management though, we wanted to deliver something awesome. And we have.

I don’t see that so much from the team I’m in now. There’s no core of the team for other people to follow. Their finished product is a long way off.

I said stuff about Anti-Team yesterday and there are a few of those influences around. We managed to moderate them down through disapproval in the old team. That moderation doesn’t seem present in this team leading to the bad behaviour spreading. For the people who came with me from old team to new, it’s felt like a losing struggle trying to integrate.

Will I miss this team ? Still no.
Will I miss the people we brought with us from the old team who are getting left behind ? Hell Yeah.

Oh sweetheart – whenever I see that smile of your's, all is always forgiven 🙂

Just so want to help you get those problems off your mind instead of on it.

Perhaps she has a lot on her mind?

(quick edit and addition – I said a few things below which upset people – I wasn’t in a happy mood and took it out on people who didn’t deserve it. This much happier post says it so much better ! Missing the old team people already)

British Summer seems to have arrived …

And it’s been like someone’s switched on the microwave beam sunlamp. The temperature according to the car this afternoon was 28 degrees C. That’s up about 15 degrees C from the start of the week. Global warming 2012 style.

I didn’t play in the 2 games this week because of the bruising on my legs but after yesterday, kinda glad I wasn’t too. I don’t do that well in extreme cold or heat but at least you can wear extra layers when it’s cold. When it’s hot, all you can do is get air flow and lots of cold liquids. I’ll be on the milkshakes later.

Wasn’t feeling too great yesterday when I came home from work. We move office next week, which will hopefully be an improvement. There’s a selection of reasons why I’ll have few regrets about being away from the old floorplate :

Bad air. There just doesn’t seem to be much airflow, leading to excessive stuffiness.
Atmosphere. I was spoiled by how things were in my last team. This team has made us feel like we’ve invaded.

Will I miss the old floorplate ? Unlikely. I’ll miss a selection of the people like the Finance Angels and Miss F (they smile). But a lot of them need to seriously look at themselves and ask if they think their attitude is correct for an office. Like not ignoring messages in the hope that the person will go away (especially if that message is work related and is something the other needs to be aware of). Or being Anti-Team in attitude – and I’ve observed some of that on the old floorplate. They have a terrible superiority complex without actually having delivered anything to justify that.

No – I won’t miss the old floorplate. Hopefully the new one won’t be suffering from the same malaise.

Or it could be the time to go back to something I said ages ago – it could be time to move on both professionally and personally. (Personally ? Yes, I got bored of being shut out by the person I’d been unable to stop thinking about – has she changed so much ?)

Anyway. I’d intended for a while to get a few things sorted out and I’ve had some catalyst for that today. Workmen have been in to clear the debris from a long neglected back yard. Need to stay on top of that so it doesn’t get out of control again. Or maybe even do something with it – could be good to lounge out there in the fresh air, reading a book with the cricket commentary or music on in the background.

Other stuff I need to do is :

Get rid of a huge amount of old rubbish in the house
Scare the vacuum by actually using it
Possibly replace fridge/freezer,
Possibly replace washing machine
Definitely replace loo*
Get car serviced
Rearrange main room

*I’ll have the chance over the Diamond Jubilee break to do some of this stuff, although the next time I can get the bin emptied comes in almost a fortnight.

But in the meantime, it’s cutting into my end-of-loan car fund but it’ll be worth it to have the light able to come in from the back yard instead of it being blocked by foliage.

Time to see if the ice cubes have refrozen 🙂