Back to the fun factory

Back in work for a week tomorrow as we trip our way into December!!! I was just looking at last years weather data and noticed that on the 1st of December we awoke to this!

We then had a number of days where it was below 0c and a minimum of minus 14.9 on the 7th of December.

With that in mind I deployed the heater rods into the pond because we don't want to get caught out with the pond freezing over.  One of our smaller ponds froze solid in 2009 and I fished out 34 frogs come the thaw!  Even though they can stay underwater for ages the need now and again to take a breath, poor old frogs.

I finished at last all the scanning of documents and photographs for the book and have a total of 766 items but don't suppose more than 10 or 12% will make it into the book.  I might pop them all onto picassa web albumns and point people at them in the book.

Now that rather mammoth task is complete I have no excuses left not to start the thing so might try the introduction and first few pages next week.

Book what book!!!

I have spent a considerable amount of time this week scanning photos & documents in an attempt to get everything catalogued before I even think about book content but its starting to raise its head so to speak.
Funny thing with the photo's even though the events I have been scanning were back in the 70's I can remember 99.9% of them.  The problem I have is "when" as in year/date were they took.  The odd one I had scribbled the date on or something in the view is dated but for the most part I'm going to have to do some research of the well documented bits and bobs.
I don't suppose the reader will be looking for historical accuracy but it makes sense to get dates for significant events correct.
I'm wrestling with "how" I should write it.  Any tales I relate to people are normally the amusing ones and it would be easy to make light of the whole book, however there are a number of "deadly" serious bits that need to be told and its how to fit these in.  More thought on this is I think! ?  
Paul a colleague at Sainsbugs is fascinated with the little snippets I feed him and wonders why I have not put pen to paper earlier.  I'm putting up pics on facebook with stories and if his reaction is anything to go by the book should be an interesting read.
I still think my time in the forces was "just what I did" back then.  I don't get this enormous feeling of "pride" that many ex soldiers seem to have.  Wearing their medals and berets at various events, I just cant bring myself to attend any of the "reunions"?  I realise my time in the Army helped hone me into the cynical old fart that I am now but I think I have always been a "half empty" viewer of the glass and wonder if that's why I'm still here!!!

To end this rambling let me put up a photo that I particularly remember the details of.  Its a black and white from the Oman when I was in the SAS.  We were searching a small part of the Wadi Naheez which is an absolutely huge wadi that you notice right away when you step off the plane at Salalah.  We had realised that it was "almost" certain no adoo were there but the ever present booby traps could still be in the caves we were looking at.  The look on my face says it all.  Scary, serious, exiting and what the F are you doing taking pictures for now!

A short week!

Having had my unexpected 3 days off as catalogued in my DOH!!! post of the 17th Nov the last working week was a short 3 days.  The growing list of Christmas lines helps remind shoppers that they are in for a prolonged period of "conditioning to buy" before the big day!!
On the "days off" scene the water repair men continued to rip up the road and generally get in the way.  This was  tempered when a workman knocked on the door Thursday to tell me "you'll be fine now we've finished your bit".
This i took to be the apology the Severn Trent help desk mentioned when i phoned them 2 days earlier about the water going off when it hadn't been scheduled to.

Secure in this knowledge i decided to go shopping only to find 2 vans parked either side of our exit blocking the view out.  I did however get a jolly wave from one of the drivers.  On returning from shopping one vehilce had gone but the other was now blocking the drive entirely.  The driver however was in the van and moved it" I gave him "a jolly wave!" of gratitude.

Is it me?

You know what its like the water company or lets point the finger directly here the contractors "Enterprise" are digging up the road outside your house. They put up temporary traffic lights that you cant see either end of and when you pull put to go somewhere its a better than even chance your going to meet the moron from Mars coming the other way who would rather re-arrange your teeth than listen to your explanation!

Bless their "Contractors" cotton socks though they do put a postcard through the door explaining what day and when they are cutting off the water.  This obviously lets you "prepare" by filling pans etc to get you through the "dry period"

"You know whats coming dont you!?" They then switch the B water off at 8am on a day when they are not scheduled to.  Sally in shower does not appreciate my suggestion of dipping her head in the rain barrel by the shed to rinse out the soap.  Soooo ungrateful!  "you could use the T towels I bought you for your birthday", i joke - - - - she doesn't see the joke!  Once out of shower and using some cold water we bottled previously to "rinse".  The water is switched back on although it has the colour of the Ganges in full flood!!!

Is it me?

Lots of visitors to our website through camstreams.com

Each evening I look at the Apache access log on the webserver to see where visitors are looking at our site from .
I noticed this evening that there seemed to be quite a few visitors and i guess they are mostly coming from the recently revived link on Camsreams.com where our streaming webcam is hosted.

I dropped the access file into XL and removed all my refreshes and duplicates of visitor IP addresses and the visitor count between 0001 and 2000hrs today was 489! I used an IP locator on the net on 10 IP's from the list and the results are as follows. UKx2, Australia, Germany, Russia, China, Greece, Canada, USA & Italy.  Nice to know we are "being seen around the world"

A case of identity!

You know what its like, standing there jostling with the other passengers looking for your case coming around the carousel at the airport?
Ok going on holiday its not so bad but coming back you have just endured 11 or so hours on a plane and you just want to get home.  Your cases look just like all the others, in fact, "hasn't that strange looking bloke just taken one of ours?!"

So with the holidays looming, at last at last!  we decided to get some new cases.  As well as them being the biggest I could find I went for a bright colour.  Pink, puce call it what you like but I still had "a cunning plan" for better identification.

Both our vehicles have the Wolfskin paw stickers on and I had one large one left over that's been kicking around for ages.  I made a stencil out of it and splodged a few paw prints on each one!

Easy to spot or what!!!!

Top terrace modifications

Sometime ago we had looked at some old photographs of our top (sun) terrace and decided it looked better without the Plum tree we planted and Pergola we erected years ago.

Removing the plum tree was simple and will provide a bit of wood for the log burner once it dries out.  The pergola is used for our swinging seat which we use quite a lot throughout the year so we decided to chop it in half.  This we hoped would give us the best of both worlds.  An open area on the terrace as well as being able to continue to use the seat.

So for the last couple of days that has kept me busy.  One of the hidden benefits has been a dramatic effect on our webcam photos.  Removing the pergola from in front of the cameras has given us a wonderful view across the valley.

This shows the terrace "before" with the plum tree back right and the pergola covering 4/5ths of the terrace.

This is the after shot with the plum tree and half the pergola removed.
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.This is a shot of the birdcam before the removal of the pergola on the viewing side of the terrace
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This was the view yesterday just as the sun dipped below the other side of the valley

Pics from the black lagoon/Kevins hot tub

Definitely and experience not to be missed when we visited Kevin & Karen at the weekend.  There are 4 seats in the thing each with a different set of jets that can be set from gentle to "pummel and drown the occupant".  

Doh!!!!!!!!!!

I have just been into work when I'm meant to be on days off!!!!!  .  lol    In fact I have 3 days off so I shall take full advantage of them and finish the top terrace modifications pack the new page "old Gallery" on the website with pics and do a bit of work on the book.

No water! - - - website work!

The water people Severn Trent are a curse on the neighbourhood at present replacing worn out mains and have been threatening to switch of the water in the past few days.  The first couple of times you fill up the bath for loo flushing and pans for cooking.  So typically they don't turn it off.
Today I just filled a couple of pans before it dried up!!

I had a good go at the website yesterday trying to make it look a little more attractive.  I had spent 2 hours on the gallery page http://hakuraman.gotdns.com/gallery.html  when my free wysiwyg website (Blue Voda) builder crashed and I lost the lot.  Thinks? why cant they have an auto save like XL?   Anyway I digress, so I downloaded an app with a 30 day free use option.  WYSIWYG Web Builder 7, Its as near as damn it a copy of Blue voda although I guess its the other way round.  The only upside is that it saves pages as .html where BV has its own extension because your meant to upload to their servers where on the way the extensions get changed to html.

I persevered in the end, saving the page everytime added something so will be sticking with BV.   The site looks fine in IE but in Google Chrome the background to the pages doesnt look long enough unless you "zoom out" on the page.  I looked on the net and there is a solution that I will try on my next week off.

I must, must, must get my head around this html code jiggery pokery,  so will do an online course starting this afternoon!  honest Paul.

Is It Me?

I bought my wife a pack of T Towels for her birthday, well they were on special offer!   She seems a little miffed? I will never understand woman!

Website development and Budgie smugglers

I made some time yesterday to re-arrange the website a bit.  Still the same format for the home page but a bit more unorthadox I guess you could call it.

I have put the XP5 webcam on its own page and will add another to link up with camstreams.  The XP5 one is far clearer than the camstreams picture but I will play around with the camstreams broadcast options once its in place to improve the output.  This is mainly to try and get a few visitors as the camstreams home page shows your webcam and is quite well patronised.  http://www.camstreams.com/

The Gallery wants re-doing and I'm into that but having second thoughts.  What I need is a Gallery of "past pics" to show a bit of history or any significant events e.g. the snow the flood etc, then a page where i can just drop pics in.  Kind of a dynamic gallery. Bits could just be dropped in and then shuffled off into the Gallery if they warrant it.

Budgie smugglers! well not exactly.  We are off to visit Kevin & Karen a couple of friends from the Army days and Kevin has this enormous Hot Tub in the back garden and I am going to give it a go today.  Pics later.!

Website bits and bobs

Now that I'm firmly embedded with the sky broadband I'm into upgrading our little website.  With W3Z I couldn't afford the bandwidth to run animations and decent webcams streaming.  With sky I'm getting 13664 Kbps downstream and 804 Kbps upstream so  in the next few weeks I will be trying a few more bits and bobs and adding additional pages.

I'm being urged by Paul form work to have a go with "Wordpress" and it looks quite good at first glance.  The only problem I have is I'm a GUI man not a code man.  I will give it a go once I have mastered the html jiggery pokery which I'm hoping to start in late December.  

I had a bit of trouble to begin with getting the port forwarding working in the sky router.  This is the bit that allows surfers to actually see the site and streaming webcams etc.  I tried the camstreams encoder this afternoon and it worked first go.  I'm reluctant to abandon my webcam XP5 so might even get another just for  camstreams.  It just lets me get the odd visitor from their website display of the webcams.

Tesco meets Mr Nastyface!

A very grey day but at least I managed to get the new porch frame painted to some degree, I'm using a wood stain and it needs a couple of coats so it will be a case of how many before i find it tedious and give up.  

Anyway sloshing away with the old brush and there's a heck of a squeal from near the shed so I step down from the ladder and see the large Tabby, christened Mr Nastyface having a go at little Tesco.  Luckily for her she was near to or already under the shed and the attacker couldn't get at her.

I make a lot of noise and chase him up and out of the garden and go back to the shed.  By this time Sainsbury has arrived on the scene but does not appear to know whether to run in or look for trouble.  I save him the bother by scooping him up and showing him where Tesco is hiding.   He cautiously edges forward with her growling at him until they both recognise each other.  They both then retire swiftly to the kitchen and recover from the ordeal with a biscuit or 2.

The rest of the day passes quietly having shopped and gone over to Chestefield to pick up yet more bits for Sally's Defender to enable us to fit the replacement headlights.  As usual you think its just going to be a case of old light out new light in.  Once you get into the job other bits a rusting away the clip need replacing that hold the light to the unit.  So what was 2 lights at £62 becomes 2 more bits and sets of clips at another £63.  Still it doea help if you can see where you are going and the present lights are past their sell by date!

Sainsbury gets blooded!

The 2 kittens were racing around the garden as usual this afternoon when there was an almighty squeal.  Tesco (the girlie) raced in and hid behind the curtains.  I looked for Sainsbury and saw another large tabby who patrols our garden now and again legging it.  Sainsbury appeared with a tail like a bottle brush and obviously a little peeved.  I noticed a few minutes later he had a small wound on his nose and near his eye.

No doubt there will be further confrontations between these 2.

Earlier in the day I had lit the log burner and all of a sudden Tesco had disappeared.  After a couple of minutes i spotted her down the side of the log burner sat on the small pile of wood.  So the title of the pic below is "When I said "a seat CLOSE to the log burner I mean CLOSE"

Days off at last

Having worked the last 6 days straight off I now get 8 days off which is a nice thought.
Work yesterday finished ok with what we call the tops being put on the isle.  This means that the full range of Christmas puds and associated paraphanalia will now be flooding in.  The more grumpy element of our clientel are expressing their disgust that we already have so many Christmas items  around already.  I normally counter this by telling them the Easter eggs are out in the warehouse!

I have tried for years, yes years to get myself some checkout training as I cant see me having the energy to do the bread job forever.  During a training session yesterday Bev the trainer mentioned that some staff checkout training was scheduled soon.  In talking to my boss Tracy she managed as usual to feed me a confusing diatribe of drivel about hours and when and how it could be completed.  So thats it then I get the checkout training when "the moons a balloon and in its 5th quarter".  All a bit of a joke really but Its something that must surely be on the horizon.

So today lots of things to map out for the days ahead, a trip over to Chesterfield for a couple of DIY bits and a trip to the Lanrover Dealer to pick up a headlight for Sally's beloved "Boris" the Defender. We bought some high intensity halogen bulbs but the lenses are a little past it to let all the light through.

You know the thing its a 40 minute job if all the screws aren't rusted solid and the spring slips don't break.  So  I will experiment with 1 unit to discover all the gremlins.

To horse! the day is upon us!  

Kittens turn to killers!

It had to happen but I didn't think they would get a bird so early.  Sally thinks it was Tesco (the girlie) who actually nabbed the green finch.  As cats do she then had to bring it down to the house to show off "the spoils".  Sainsbury then joined in and was growled at for his impudence!

A nice pleasant day at the store quite busy but not manic.  We will soon get the Christmas feel to the store and the final 10 days before Christmas when the shoppers seem to take on a Jekyl and Hyde persona!

Sally had some good news yesterday, after her brush with cancer last year.  She was called for a mammogram last week and told it would be 2 weeks before she got the result.  The all clear came early yesterday so she was relieved to say the least.

Rainy Friday

Quite a bit of rain this morning so lots of shoppers smelling like dogs when they get wet although some seem to be like that all the time!
A brisk morning on the bread was tempered by me being given the new girl from the bakery Lucy.  A pleasant girl quite well spoken, well when you come from Leigh like wot I do most other people seem well spoken.  We however rubbed along quite well and managed to keep the bread and cakes in tact so to speak.
We are relaibly informed that the MAC lady will be in tomorrow.  This is a person who will come in "unannounced" and check items which we are meant to have in stock all the time and scan the odd gap to check if we have stock sat in the warehouse.  Its all part of our bonus scheme so worth the effort to get right.

The 2 kittens are having a whale of a time tearing around the garden and associated areas after their cat flap success although a little earlier it started to rain and they shot in and decided in front of the log burner was a better idea.
Sainsbury had a bit of a scare last night when his right eye looked swollen and he was rubbing it, we put in a couple of drops and even though it was still a little swollen at bedtime by morning all seemed fine.  I think he maybe got a little ash in it from the hearth in front of the wood burner.

Its throwing it down just now so Sally will be glad of her high intensity headlight bulbs I fitted Wednesday  to her beloved Defender "Boris".  Even when I was in the Army the Landrover headlights were dire and they seem to be the same even now.  We have new headlights ordered as the old ones look as if they have misted over but I guess its just poor materials.  Once they are fitted she will be at least prepared for what is being forecasted as a "bad winter

Nose to the Grindstone

Back to work and my right knee is giving me gip so i might have to go back to the knee supports for a while.  Once again sitting on the check outs looks inviting!

Heck of a rain storm last night gave my new porch roof a battering and exposed a couple of areas that need attention.  No doubt it will take a bit of work to get it completely right.  When we first had the lean to bit put on the back of the cottage we had a window in the roof that we finally had to admit defeat with as the rain always got in!

Both kittens have now worked out how to get through the cat flap so its going to be a tense time making sure they don't get into any mischief, well not too much anyway.  We lock it at night and only have it open through the day if one of us is in just ot stop them wandering too far.  We have a little ploy that "generally" brings then running in.  Whenever we feed them we ring a little bell so if you want them to come in you just ring it and in they swoop.

We used to do this with Grumpy the cat we had to put to sleep in summer.  It however only took one trip to the vets after the bell ringing and he would sit up in the garden with a look of "no thanks" firmly on his face.

Day off today (Wednesday)

I'm trying to take a bit of time off today as I start my weeks worth of shifts tomorrow but I think it might only be a couple of hours in the garden reading.

I finished the cover (porch) for the steps down to the back door yesterday.  Its not the most attractive covering but at least its practical and hopefully will keep the snow and rain off the steps this winter.  I wanted to keep as much light going down the steps as I could so I covered the top in Polycarbon sheeting and my next door neighbour John, let me have some perspex to cover the side.  Due to the shape of the ground around the top of the steps its on 2 levels so looks a little odd but hey ho. picture later when it gets light.

I was working away yesterday and a man hurried along the back of the terrace asking if we had a phone as a lady had fallen down.  I grabbed my mobile and followed him to the end of the terrace where I could see an old lady on the path that leads down to the A6.  After dialling 999 we tried to make her comfortable but it looked as if she had broken her wrist/arm and had a couple of gashes on her face.  Once the ambulance arrived the 2 medics took over and she was put in the ambulance which took her off to hospital.

At one point during the drama a friend of hers turned up who happens to be a local councillor.  Our neighbour Alan, ever the practical soul, took the opportunity to complain not only about the state of the path but the fact that Peak Rail have erected a second set of gates on the approach to the facility which is a concessionary footpath.  

So "to horse" and face the "challenges and opportunities" of the day

update 14:30 I had to laugh as Sally went off to work this morning.  She looked disapprovingly at the new porch as I had not painted/stained it.  I must admit to not even considering it.  Anyway I splashed on a bit of stain this morning and will have to disassemble it a little next week to finish it off.  It does look better stained !  pic below 

Halloween - - - November and all that

We survived Halloween last night with 10 children visiting in various states of ghoulishness.  I have always poo poo'd trick or treat as a nasty American idea but Sally tells me that on Wikipedia ("so it must be true")  that we can trace a similar antic back to the middle ages.  The poor would go to the wealthy's doors more or less for a "treat", not sure how the trick bit works there.
The pumpkin pics below are the 2 Sally carved for our front windows to attract the ghouls.

I spent the greater part of yesterday putting up a frame onto the porch at the back of the house in an effort to stop the rain and soon the snow from getting onto the stairs down to the back door.  it does look  little odd as at the moment as I dont want to spend the considerable amount of money necessary to put tri-wall poly carbon sheeting over the whole structure.  I have enough to do the roof today and will gradually do the rest before Christmas.

November already, Christmas will be here and gone before we know it and it will then soon be time for us to go on our long awaited holiday to Kurumba in the Maldives.  We are both looking forward to that.