Yuletide

So this is Christmas .... So sang that wondergroup Slade.

Yipee. A season of good cheer and good will to all men. Is it? And why should it be restricted to a season? Why not do it for a whole year? For a day or so a year, if you are a God fearing Christian you refrain from beating your fellow man over the head with a brick or rubbing a broken beer bottle in his face? What chance then the rest like me, for whom God is a word most commonly used in anger when the chisel slips and embeds itself in my palm or the car door shuts on my fingers or the last step is the one cat was sleeping on before I trod on it?

So why am I not rejoicing? Why take the easy route and be cynical? Well apart from the fact that this is what I do, it's also what I think. Over hyped - I should say! Christmas starts in August now. At least that is when the local garden centre put the first decorations up. By September they were playing Christmas music! I pity the poor staff- by December they must be sick to the back teeth with the whole festival.

Why then have we fallen victim to this over commercialisation? Why do we allow it? That kitsch vase your grandmother will never admit to hating, that next useless electronic gimmick used twice and consigned to the back of a random shelf. What do we acheive with this petty consumerism. I'll tell you what we acheive, a new Rolls for the al-Fayeds, a bowl of rice for a poor child in the Indian ghetto. So rejoice and that over used lyric from Wizzard will become true- the wish realised and it will be Christmas every day.

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The Watchers

So it appears we are the most surveilled nation. One CCTV for every 14 people in the UK. Every day there are up 300 images of each of us stored somewhere. Well, that's only the beginning!

Too add to the information from CCTV there are credit cards, every transaction tracked and localised, in real time. Store loyalty cards; tracking every item you buy, when and where you buy it. Oyster cards, tracing every journey you make on the underground or any bus around London. Your mobile phone, scanning across cells giving a rough picture of your movements. With GPS it could be better. Every phone call, every text, calling and called numbers stored for the moment the information might be useful. Everytime you log onto the net via your ISP your IP address is stored along with enough information to localise the connection geographically and in time. Send an e-mail and the full set of header information held who sent it, when, who too, how it was routed, what client was used etc. etc.

Are you getting the picture yet? The government certainly can. All this information is held about you, now. And more .... identity cards (coming soon at your expense), DNA banks, iris and retinal images, fingerprints records, tax returns, payment records, NHS data for medical and dental treatments, scolastic acheivements, records of which books you have taken from the library. It's all there. The amount of data currently held on any individual allows the most pervasive, complete and intrusive examination of their life without their knowledge, without their permission.

Maybe you think there are safeguards. Laws concerning privacy, appropriate access to data. Dream on! Just be sure ... someone, somewhere, is watching you.

Relatively Loud

It's the children's half term. This last weekend, the start, we went to visit my brother, his wife and my five nephews. They live just north of Plymouth, a place with the charming name of Crapstone. (Don't ask ...)

So we set out on Friday, it was quite early in the afternoon. the traffic should have been moderate. Wrong! The M25 lived up to its nickname as the highway to hell. By the time we had travelled about 15 miles and were irrevocably committed, to the extent that any alternative route would itself add hours of hassle, we were ensnared. So for some not insignificant piece of time we admired various number plates and exhaust pipes. It became patently obvious that, as an experiment, no lane moved any faster than any other. Having observed the ' lets change lane as often as possible' drivers, a van in the centre lane, a truck on the inner lane and ourselves in the outside lane it became evident that the only way to win was to lose two wheels and drive down the white lines between the cars. One slight problemetto - I haven't got a bike that can take four people and their luggage. Damn!

Off the motorway was no better ... to save boring you all completely to death, a journey that shouldn't take more than five hours took over seven. We tried the A303, that snarled up. Rather than queuing the whole route we opted for slow and steady, so we cut down to the A30; Salisbury, Wilton, Axminster, Yeovil etc. Very scenic, almost relaxing ... but slow. Hey, the upside is that the journey was eco-friendly!

Devon lived up to it's usual rep. It is the wettest corner of England I have been to. Periods of blue sky punctuated the grey, but woe betide the fools that thought that because it was sunny when they started the walk it would be sunny for the whole walk. Whoops!! That'd be these fools then! Did that twice - though we did take waterproofs with us once.

One thing that is worth noting is that when we are talking about a walk, this is in fact a logistics exercise which has to be executed with military precision. Organising five children, plus our own two, is no trivial feat. It is astonishing how many items of clothing need to be marshaled. Shoes gathered from various corners of the house. Socks, any two will do, the chance of a matched pair is too slim, so just the right size is good enough. Trousers? Definitely preferred. Be amazed at how long the nephews are prepared to wander around in pyjamas. Oh, I almost forgot, one or more will have to be forcibly disconnected from either games console or the PC.


And we haven't even got to the car yet. There is the inevitable debate over who goes in which car. Baby all strapped in. Assorted kids in the appropriate seating - thank you nanny state for that - and we're off. Now which direction did they turn out of the drive? Lets guess left. Phew!

One walk later, decamping from the car is much quicker, we can relax back in the house. Rewind .... did I say relax? Wrong, the kids relax, the adults run around sorting out food and stuff. We don't get to relax until they've gone to bed. This is rather like herding butterflies. Three degrees of freedom means that whilst one is settled the rest run amok, and when you turn your your back on the settled one he's out like a shot joining his brothers. Hmmmm, scene one, take two, three, four ........

And now the return, we set out later than advertised, see above for excuses. It was raining a little, by the time we got to Exeter there was enough electrical discharge to power a small country for a few weeks. Roughly one lighting strike every 2 minutes. I not see horizontal lightening before, but this stuff was running between clouds as well as cloud to earth. Oh, and the rain .... that was monsoon style. Sheets of the stuff, so heavy there was an inch or more of standing water on the motorway in places. Still, it made for a more interesting drive I suppose.


So what learning do I take from this:-
1. Do not have 5 children ... they are very loud and very hard work.
2. During any particular interval when they are not in bed any two or more will be at each others throats for one reason or another. Corollary - Do not expect to understand the reason.
3. Do not turn your back on any of them.
4. Whatever time you allocate for preparation to go out is increased proportionally by the number of children under 10 involved.
5. Consider yourself lucky if you return with the same number of children, boots and gloves as you set out with.

Request for Proposal

What is he on about? Request for what? Is he looking for a marriage guidance council, a dating agency? Just desperate for a relationship? Errr no! Actually non of these things. This is what my life seems to revolve around at the moment; 'Request for Proposal'.

At one time I used to be on the other side of these wonders, I used to be a supplier. Now I'm a buyer. (NO! Not drugs ... despite Amsterdam) So this is how it works - I, the buyer, know I have a gap in my ability to provide a service. I can either buy the skills and build it myself, or I can go to someone else who may have the expertise and a ready or partway ready solution and buy that instead. I really can't bothered to go into the arguments for build versus buy right now ... maybe another time. But it boils down to horses for courses - sometimes one is better than the other.

Ideally the request should be an outline of the business, and an outline of the requirements. Nicely structured so the supplier can understand what those requirements are and address each one in turn. This will take a few hours to draw up .... well, I lied ... OK, maybe days. If you think that's tedious; on the other side of the fence the supplier gets the RFP and issues their response. This takes them some tens of hours and quite heavy duty personnel commitment .... at least if they want a good chance at the work it does. I've played this game, it's at least a week of hard labour preparing a decent response. The solution proposed is always glossy, assured and bears no resembelance to reality. Areas where maybe just a day has been spent reading up suddenly become relevant expertise. It's all one big spin exercise. Finally, the response is ready - 30 pages of preamble, the detailed response to the questions and as much associated bumf as one can find on the company, it's products, personnel, commercials, references and accounts head towards the buyer. 2 truckloads later .....

The buyer takes delivery of the Responses to RFP. They will have set aside a small warehouse and assembled a team to evaluate these. This is tedious, amost as tedious as producing them. But as the buyer you will have maybe 4 or 5 of these to plough through. Don boots and start wading. Stiffle laughter as you discover that point after point has been missed or misanswered. The solution proposed bears no obvious resembelance to your problem. Vendor briefing is required to clarify requirements. RRFPs reissued in the light of new found understanding. More stuff to plough through. Brain goes into melt down and all the answers merge into one.

Finally you pick a couple or three that look viable and invite them to present their solution in more detail. And after this comes a drawn out series of commercial negotiations to agree a price and contract terms. And finally you get to pick the winner. Yippeee!!!

One slight problem. This has taken months now, the business has moved on. The problem has been worked around or just bypassed. The solution is no longer required. Damn!!!

Ah well .... there's always the next RFP just around the corner!

Hamster? Damn!

Another long absence, another post. Well if there is pattern emerging, it is that there is no pattern. Still better random than never I suppose. So here goes. Subject of todays post is Amsterdam - if you hadn't guessed.

'Well! What are you looking at?'

Once in a while my company allows me out of the office to pastures further afield than the other London office. Sometimes, and this was one of them, I extend my stay. And anyway, I like Amsterdam.

Advanced eco-friendly transport - just watch the wear on the heels!!

So, arrive, get hotel space, unpack a bit, go find food. Missed the Kantjil, my fault - should have been a bit more observant - but found a decent Thai. One thing Amsterdam is very good for is Indonesian and Thai cuisine ... so just as well I like it then! The other thing(s) Amsterdam is good for I elected to avoid - so no interesting visits to 'coffee shops' and the window shopping was restricted :-) I had enough to amuse me in other directions than turning left out from the Central Station.

I finally got to see the house of Ann Frank. If you don't know the story then Anne_Frank_House is a good start. Now this is probably not the time to be cynical - but suffice to say that never has the absence of anything tangible made so much of an impact on me. Hats off to the Dutch - they absolutely got maximum impact from almost bare walls and floors.

Surprising what you you can get in good cafe these days!

Then on to the Van Gogh museum. I 'ear its supposed to be good - but that's as far as I got. Tad late in the day, by about 4 or 5 minutes, having found the wrong way round the Rijk's Museum, the security guard wouldn't let me in. Well thanks - I suppose the walk was useful, but really would have liked to get a quick look as well. I bent his ear a little to no avail.

So, Monday's a work day. Data centres ..... yummy. I eat them for breakfast, lunch and tea. Nothing quite like a few thousand kilometeres of Cat 6 network cable, multimode fibre, inter-rack patching, kilogrammes per square metre floor loading and watts per square metre of cooling. Each one of these major datacentres consumes as much electricity as a small town! So, next time you browse the internet, surfing from site to site, streaming high def video and audio just spare a moment and think of all those megawatts of power underpinning your on-line experience.

What happens when you're knackered?

Well ....... Goood Eeeeeeevening VietBlog!!!

'S bin a while, some weeks actually. Not had much inspiration for blogs recently. The news has been disastrously predictable ... Tony and Gordon Show, Iran, Iraq, Terrorism yada-yada. Yawn!

Actually been doing a lot of that recently ... yawning that is. Having just come off my first all night stint for a quite a while, I'd forgotten the peculiarly bizarre effect fatigue can have on the body. Not being 23, snorting interesting white powders, popping pills, or generally overdosing on any caffeine based substance I still managed to make it through the night and most of the way through the following day before admitting defeat and going home for a rest.

But a 30 hour stint can take its toll and it is interesting to note how many ways I found of effectively shutting off. For example, sitting in the chair half my brain would shut down, with the result that I felt I was slipping sideways. It was after a couple of vertiginous episodes like this, despite my best efforts at concentrating on the task at hand, I decided that riding a litre or so of motorbike 40 miles home might not be such a good idea. I reverted to primitive train man - still at 3 in the afternoon there's plenty of space and seats were easy to come by.

Another trick of the brain, trying to subvert my attempts to work, meant that entire minutes would disappear without my noticing them. Just gone, vapourised, vanished. Specks of my life, obliterated without trace. OK, so I was just sitting in front of a screen, so no harm done. But if this had been some critical task, what then?

Of course, when I allowed myself to shut down - on the train - I managed to lose large swathes of time, no problem. Not quite sleep, but a half consciousness. Now that is weird stuff. Not that sleep deprivation is mandated to reach this state - there appear to be a fair number of people who are permanently like this, many of them behind the wheel of a car in the mornings. But, the strange thing is the brain's ability to respond to salient input whilst ticking over - like train inspectors, proximity to home and livid green cycle suites. Near instantaneous ability to respond appropriately, yet able to return quickly to a quiescent state. That's quite a handy trick to have in one's arsenal. I think it's a trick I'll need to develop further for those tedious meetings.

And, when I was finally able to get my head on a bed. PHONE CALL!!!!! Aieee Karamba!!! What? where?!! Wow, was I confused. Whole seconds passed before I was able to re-orient myself. That, and the irrational, immediate reaction to a) fling the phone out of the window and b) find the individual responsible and encourage them towards a long term career pushing up daisies. Fortunately the homicidal stage didn't last too long, most of the people in immediate vicinity have survived without serious or life threatening injury, but that flash of anger. Interesting - as Spock would have said.

Still, awake now, moderately sane and scribbling this blog (OK, maybe that's an oxymoron) I'm good for another few hours before I'll need to crash. All this on less than 2 hour's sleep throughout - makes me think, how much sleep is really necessary, how quickly does the debt become too great and what happens when it does. (Yes I know there are books on the subject - but it's the individual response I'm really interested in)

Well, that's about it for now. It's a bit random - no social comment, no cynical dismemberment, just the story of tired bloke. Go figure.

Birthdays

Well here we are in September, and apart from the fact that all the schools have gone back and the roads are now cluttered with mothers and their precious kids doing the 300metres from their house to the school, this is birthday month. Now a few seconds thought about timings indicates quite quickly why there is a preponderance of birthdays around this time of year. And it would appear that this particular family and associated psuedo-relatives is no exception. The first week alone has 4, though one has demised so we don't tend to celebrate that one explicitly. But the others all require cards and of course some celebratory gift. Woe betide you should you happen to forget! The rest of the month is merely host to another 3 or 4 birthdays, but at least there is a short space in which to catch ones breath between them. What madness!

My mind is drawn to that timeless children's tale by Lewis Carrol; Alice in Wonderland with the Mad Hatter's concept of celebrating unbirthdays. The consequence of this could be that all the celebrations tail off into meaningless blur - where one day is undifferentiable from the next. Or maybe it should be interpreted another way - that every day is worth celebrating, and that to save it all the joy up for a single day in the year is madness. So it's make your mind up time ... just how mad was the Mad Hatter? And a very happy unbirthday to you too!

Christmas

Annual rant.

WTF are they doing putting Chrismas cards and wrapping paper in the shops now! It's the end of August you bunch of wazzocks, Christmas is months away. Do I want to see the same banal selection of Christmas cards for the next 5 months, No! No, I damn well don't! Nor do I want it thrust down my throat everywhere I look. Are we such a sad bunch of f*$ks that we have to start looking forward to the next festival 5 months before it arrives? Is there nothing else in peoples lives but the next celebration. And after Christmas, it's Easter again!

Get a grip! If people want to buy Chrsitmas cards and such then a month or so is ample time. If they are the sort of people that are that well organised they will have brought next years cards and paper in the previous year's sales at a quarter of the price. Want to know a secret? I don't think I would recognise that it was last year's card design. Want to know something else ... I wouldn't care if it was. Nor would I care if I'd received one previously. Somehow the thought behind it seems more important.

Oh yes, the sales ... they used to start after Christmas, but now strangely start before. That would be because some bright spark noticed that people would put off buying stuff at full price when they could buy the exact same item for significantly less if they were prepared to wait an extra 3 days! I have a radical new idea. Why not charge what the item is worth? No 'sale' required. Just provide the goods at a fair price, not hiked up to exploit a fad, but just a reasonable price. Another idea ... design stuff that doesn't have a fashion shelf life of 15 minutes. The worst examples of this are in womens' clothing where by the time you've bought the goods they are out of date. A new line is being hung on the rails as you depart. But, aside from womens clothing there are plenty of other examples of short term fadism, take a look around.

With one breath we are being preached at to conserve energy, and with the next exhorted to buy new X, buy, new Y, because A and B are now so passé. No wonder we have a confused angry generation growing up, the messages they are getting are so mixed you could put it in the oven and bake them as a cake. Of course you' d have to take it out early so it would be only half baked.

A friend of mine used to recycle his Christmas cards. He'd sign and date them and return them the following year. Some cards lasted five or six years this way. Seems like a good idea to me.

Back to work

Well the holiday season is over and it's back to work. So no more Mr Nice Guy, no more travelogues and pretty piccies. The topic of the moment is prizes. Has anyone noticed how many there are. They are everywhere.

"Congratulations sir you are breathing, this qualifies you for our special inhalation prize. Just ring this premium rate number and sit on the line for a couple of hours and we'll tell you which worthless gift you've won."

Or, you open the paper and yet another scratch card falls out. You scratch the panels off and lo and behold you've won one of the Grade 'A' prizes which could include any of the following: a week wallowing in Hippopotamus shit, being the live bait for a Great White Shark fishing trip, 10 chances of contracting AIDS by re-using random needles found in a dump etc etc. All you have to do is text STUPIDMORON to the following number 05417.

I have to ask what is it with this society that we are so obsessesed with the quick win. The easy route to riches and idleness. Are we really so full of envy and sloth that all we can think about is having more money than we can spend in 3 lifetimes so that we can surround ourselves with overpriced crap and eat ourselves into oblivion watching yet another episode of The Simpsons.

Call me old fashioned, 'You old fashioned staid git!' but wouldn't we feel better in ourselves if we were able to say we had made a positive contribution to the society we live in. The idea of voluntary work, helping your neighbour or contributing in some way to the neighbourhood seems to have died out since Scouting's 'Bob a Job' was withdrawn. The WI still exists, but tends towards an increasingly geriatric group of biddies. Christian fellowship has degenerated to having tea with the vicar in the church hall on Sunday.

So look around you. Do something, no matter how slight, for some one else and feel better in yourself, it surely can't be that painful, can it - and who knows where it might lead.

Vive la France

It's post number two, and another holiday post at that.

First Wales, now France ... Vive La Difference? Quelle Difference? We're in France for a couple of days and we're rained out of Rouen and drowned in Dieppe. Fantastique!!

So having managed to dump both the children, one in summer school, one at Explorer camp, it's off to France for a couple of days. We've booked a couple of days in Hostellerie near Mesnil-val. When you get there it's surprising how many places are called Mesnil-xxxx. Confused? I was.

However, I must give the French their due, getting there was a pleasure ..... used mostly side roads, very scenic, no traffic, little stress, road signage was up to scratch, road surface was smooth, not riddled with speed cameras or groups of policemen in vans armed with radar guns every 6 Km. In fact the 'side' roads were so good I used them in preference to the motorways for all our travel.

So, if it's Monday it must be Rouen and Dieppe. Not the best idea in the rain and drizzle, but what the hey. Rouen was grim, Monday? Oh yes, on Mondays everything is shut, except for the big stores. Still the architecture is on the outside, and it is fantastic - so a few piccies of that then.

Bored of Rouen in the rain we head Dieppe. Bad mistake. If it was wet inland, it was even wetter on the coast. The umbrella sounded like the drums in a Black Sabbath concert. Rain bounced off the streets, so if it didn't get you on the way down, it got you on the rebound. Every now and then the clouds broke and the sun hinted at its presence, but then gave up and let the rain have its way again. Still, bought an Opinel folding knife, some jam and some other viandes, so it wasn't all bad.

It was sunny as we arrived back at the hotel, minutes before sun set!

Day two, last day! Oh look, it's sunny. Lets visit a few places on the way back. I recommend Eu. It's fantastic. What a charming place, could rave about it for a while ... but basically it's eveything you expect of a small French town. There is a Hotel Dieu .... which is kind of different. And a chateau, where they signed the Entente Cordiale - which is like Lime Cordial ..... not!

Then on to Abbeville. Bad mistake! This is everything that Eu wasn't. Modern square architecture. Grotesque, peeling concrete. Probably the most depressing place I've seen - living there would drive me to take my life in a brutal and messy manner as a protest. We lasted 30 minutes before we left.

Boulogne sur mer. Bit of a cliche, but if you ignore the brash new town and head for the old walled town it is possible to spend a couple of hours there quite enjoyably. We did, walking about admiring the narrow streets, enjoying the views from the walls - general tourist stuff, but that's not always a bad thing. We even managed to get a climb up the bell tower on the town hall.

Then Calais, and straight onto the boat for the trip back. Work on Wednesday ..... ho hummm.

Welsh Rarebit

First of all - welcome to all those migrating from my previous blog space on eponym.com. Why move? They want more advertising - I don't, 'tis that simple. Anyway - Hi! to old and new alike.

So to the point - if there is one. Previous entries (capsacin.eponym.com if you must) have been poking holes in the common view, picking at the collective scab if you like. However, I've been on holiday for the last week, so here's a quick sketch of a week in Snowdonia, Wales.

Clouds, low clouds, rain, wet grass, wetter trousers, hill walking in the gloom, aching legs, boggy ground, heather clad hillsides, clouds, more clouds, some rain, camping shops, Pete's Eats, flat beer, Canarfon Castle, Menai Bridge, Anglesey, low flying jets, more low flying jets, irate drivers, slow drivers, pigs, sheep, more sheep, shorn sheep, unshorn sheep, bleating sheep, cows, clouds. Oh there was some superb scenery, when you could see it as well.

The Welsh are a friendly bunch, provided you aren't speaking English as you walk into a pub, then they all switch to Welsh to make you feel at home. However, or should that be ,hwefer, they are a genuinely kindly bunch who will take the time to tell you where to go, should you need telling.

One other feature of Welsh worth noting is the general lack of what we English, and other common western countries would call vowels (excluding Poles & Czechs - because their alphabet is similarly challenged). So we have places like Pwllheli which is not pronounced 'pwellheli' but more 'poohkheli'. And, only the Welsh could possibly have invented Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, look only 12 vowels!

And there we have it - a week in Wales. We had fun and enjoyed ourselves, that's the main thing!