My Online Diary

31/12/10

New year's eve, and of course a time to be thinking about resolutions for the new year. My good friend Connie has just resigned from her job, as she is not happy with the deal that she gets from her employees. Such thoughts have crossed my mind on a number of occasions, and I dare say they will enter my thoughts again this year. Perhaps I am just not brave enough to make that big step of a career break. Anyway, happy new year to everyone who reads this diary!

29/12/10

Rob is down to join us now, and of course that means a sudden increase in the amount of alcohol that is being consumed!

25/12/10

A quiet Christmas for my mother and me - my brother was going to come down to join us, but unfortunately the weather interfered with his travel plans. We didn't even have a turkey -just a nice piece of pork and mashed potatoes!

21/12/10

The shortest day of the year, and also my last day at work for the year. The day was spent checking calculations for Alex, who has made a pretty good effort at the calculation he's been doing for the last few months. Still plenty to do when I return to work in January though.

18/12/10

Heavy snow hit London this morning, while I was at the fair in Hyde Park. I got saturated and it was very cold, but I got some great photos both of the fair and of the snow in the park. I can see some new web pages coming from these!

17/12/10

Met a friend of mine, Sara, for the first time today. Too bad that the weather was not that good for such a meeting, but it was nice to meet her and to spend some time with her. Otherwise, am having a great time and it is nice not to have to do work!!

15/12/10

Off to London today, with the prospect of heavy snow fall at the weekend. I also intend to get my website up to date, as it has been badly neglected over the last few months.

8/12/10

Got the second report on time! Also booked a few days in London for next week, in the nicest room at a hotel near Hyde Park. This is going to cost me an arm and a leg, but it will be worth it to get away for some peace and quiet. The weather has turned very cold over the last week or so, not perfect weather for sightseeing in London, but I'm sure I'll manage to keep myself amused!

30/11/10

Got the report submitted on time, and I am happy with it. I now have one more week to improve the other report and get it off to LLWR. Have decided not to go to Washington DC this year, mainly because of the cost and the fact that the weather will probably not be good. I'll have a few days in London instead.

22/11/10

Another work deadline is approaching fast - this time its the end of November to finish off and improve one of the reports that I had to submit by October 20th. The report is starting to look good, and again I am hopeful that this will be a piece of work that I can be proud of.

15/11/10

For the last few days I have been having trouble with wax in my left ear, and it has now reached the point where I can't hear a thing out of that ear. Time to start using ear drops, me thinks ...

11/11/10

Was fascinated to receive an email today from someone claiming to be a cousin of mine. It turned out that this lady - Angela - was in fact a relative of my friend Connie. Connie shares my Ancestry account, and it was Connie's details that Angela had been looking at. Anyway, I was delighted to be able to point Angela in Connie's direction!

7/11/10

Still pondering the thought of taking a holiday to Washington DC some time in the next couple of months, but the thought of the cost is putting me off somewhat! Perhaps I'll just go for a few days to London instead.

31/10/10

Had some interesting discussions with Connie over the last few days, and some of the things she had to say did make me realise that sometimes my priorities in life are wrong. I have always given absolute priority to my work in the past, but from now on I will try to make more effort to keep in touch with friends. Work will always be high priority, but it also occurs to me that it takes only five minutes to drop someone a quick note to say hello.

20/10/10

After considerable effort - hopefully appreciated by the client - I got all my stuff done for the deadline.

18/10/10

By the middle of the afternoon, I thought I had submitted all of the work that I had to do for the LLWR deadline. No such luck. The client phoned to state that I had omitted an important component of the work, and that this component needed to be done by the 20th. Oh great. Two more days of hard work.

To October

18th 2010

Unfortunately, and perhaps rather boringly, October was dominated once again by the need to meet an incentivised deadline, October 20th, this time for LLWR. If anyone from the NDA ever reads this, they might like to note that these deadlines put tremendous pressure on the poor consultants that have to do the work! Up to October 18th, however, all seemed to be going to plan, and I was quite satisfied with the way things were going. But read on ... or up ...

September

2010

After completing the Sellafield project, I had no respite - it was time to move onto the next major project under my control, two assessments for the LLWR. Virtually all of September was taken up on this project, and there isn't a huge amount to say really. On the social side, I was delighted to receive an email from someone that I knew many years ago, and who seemed to be going through a bad time. Sadly that line of communication turned out to be short-lived, for various reasons that I won't go into here. It was also in September that I started to think about plans for more travels overseas, possibly to Washington DC or back to Toronto. With so much work to do, though, those were only thoughts at this this time of the year.

August

2010

The remainder of August was largely taken up with completing the Sellafield risk assessment and responding to the comments of the customer. Once again, the end of August was an incentivised deadline for this work, and so we had no choice but to be complete by that time. We did indeed complete the work by the deadline, and the result was a piece of work that I was very proud of. As ever, one could always find further ways to improve the work, but conversely one also has to finish at some stage, too. I think we got the balance right on this one, and the result was a fitting conclusion to a £13 million project.

06/08/10

Had today off, and am just sitting around doing nothing at the moment. I'm watching England do very well in the cricket, and just generally being idle. This is so nice, after all the weeks of strain to get the Sellafield report done. We've had informal, but good, feedback on the report from Sellafield, which is very gratifying to hear.

02/08/10

It was my birthday yesterday, and Rob and Wendy came down to my mother's for the weekend. Ironically there was no boozing since I had too much on Friday evening, and Bob and Wendy had had too much themselves on Friday evening! I was able to make some more progress on tracing our family history this weekend. I now have my mother's side back to early 1800's, but my father's side is much more difficult. I have his grandparents, but not much else. Never mind, I'm a scientist and will keep plugging away to see what we can find out!

30/07/10

We made our deadline!! We got the risk report uploaded to Sellafield at about 4:30 pm this afternoon, and I have to say, I think we have made a reasonably good fist of it. I will await with interest the review comments from the client, and will certainly enjoy a few ciders this evening!

25/07/10

Had to work this weekend. No other way that we are going to get this report done by 30th July. Or more strictly, no way we will get a decent quality report to submit.

20/07/10

Great frustration yesterday. I wasted a whole afternoon processing some calculations that had an error in them. This is just what we don't need when we are heading for a report delivery date of 30th July. The calculations need to be redone and then it will take me another half day to do the processing. It's nobody's fault, but just very annoying.

18/07/10

Had to interrupt the Sellafield work to do a job for the other project that I am involved with, LLWR. This meant a trip out to Warrington on Friday. That meeting could have gone better, largely due to a lack of time to prepare properly for the meeting. Oh well, Sellafield will be over and done with in the next few weeks, and then I can come back to the LLWR stuff.

11/07/10

The grind of report writing and trying to finish all the calculations for our Sellafield project continues. Tried this weekend to help my mother learn how to work the DVD player - a somewhat frustrating experience. It's no wonder I have high blood pressure when I have students like her!

01/07/10

My holiday seems a very distant memory right now! I had to start the job of writing our Sellafield risk report this week, and that is going to be a long job in the next month. Why? Because we must deliver on 30th July or we are subject to "liquidated damages" for each day that we are late! Needless to say, we don't get rewarded for delivering early!!

27/06/10

Got back from the Lake District yesterday, having had a lovely time. The weather was great and the scenery was just as breathtaking as ever. With retrospect I might have booked accommodation in a different location. One aim of my holiday was to gather photos for my website, and most of the places I haven't yet visited are a long way from Glenridding. Plus the hotel food seemed to have deteriorated since I was last there. Never mind, it was still a lovely week away from Didcot.

20/06/10

Off to the Lake District a bit later today. I just hope that the fine weather holds up and that Glenridding isn't over-run with kids. Must remember the England Slovenia game on the 23rd, a must-win game given that we could only draw with the USA.

17/06/10

We had our risk assessment workshop today, and it went very well. Luckily the results we were presenting were acceptable, and that makes life easier for everyone. Now the task is to finish all the calculations and write up the final report before the 30th June.

14/06/10

Booked a week's holiday in the Lake District, from the 20th to 26th June. I can't wait. I'll be going to stay at a hotel in Glenridding, where I've stayed before.

11/06/10

Not very much to say really. Work continues, as does the very fine weather that we have been having. We have a "risk assessment workshop" on the 17th, which I will need to lead. I just hope we can get some results for me to present at the workshop! England's first game of the World Cup tomorrow, we should beat the USA without too much trouble.

04/06/10

More of the same this week, good old plain hard work. I've decided that I'm going to take a holiday towards the end of June, either in the Lake District or in London. Do I want noise or peace and quiet? Probably the latter, so I may well be spending the week in the Lake District!

28/05/10

Am I glad that the weekend is here! Lots of hard work for me this week, trying to make progress on calculations for our Sellafield project. At least my cold has now cleared up, so I am feeling back to full health again!

20/05/10

Well we're having something of a heat wave at the moment, with temperatures getting over 80 Fahrenheit. Maybe that doesn't sound much, but when you don't have air conditioning in houses or offices, it can get quite stifling. I have a cold at the moment, so am feeling somewhat under the weather right now.

16/05/10

Ha, so the no-fly restrictions are back once again because of the volcanic ash plume coming from Iceland. So is this a reasonable safety measure or being over-cautious? Very difficult to say. My own view is that planes should fly if at all possible, but of course if a plane were to come down with all 300 passengers killed, there would be a hell of a fuss ...

14/05/10

The end of a busy week that has seen me in meetings up in Warrington and also down here at Harwell. Talking of the latter, a moment of history happened this week, as the site boundary was moved and for the first time in 17 years I was able to get to my office without a police check at the main gate. Was interested to see on the news our new foreign secretary, William Hague, acting like a love-struck kid while meeting Hillary Clinton in the US today!

09/05/10

Well we had a general election on Thursday, and the result is that no one party has an overall majority. So we're currently looking to see if the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats can do a deal to allow government of the UK to continue as some sort of alliance between the parties. All fascinating stuff!

04/05/10

Had a lovely time on holiday and managed to take plenty of photos and videos, mostly of Tess swimming in rivers. The weather was pretty good for most of the time, which is good because Exmoor can be a pretty miserable place when it is raining. Was back to work today and straight back into the stresses and strains of consultancy. Already the holiday seems a long way back in the past.

04/05/10

22/04/10

We're off on holiday tomorrow, to Exmoor for a week. It's only 150miles away, but will take the best part of 5 hours to get there, mainly because we have to keep stopping for Tess to answer calls of nature! It should be a good week, as it seems that the weather will be good and warm. I managed to get all my work done before breaking up this lunch time, so just for once I won't have to take work away with me. What a change after so many months of slaving away. I will probably add some new web pages to this site instead!

16/04/10

The end of another week, and quite a testing one - my peer review meeting was rather draining, but a useful exercise that one can look back on in order to give a more polished performance next time. The family and I are off on holiday to Exmoor next Friday, which will be a nice break. I just hope the weather stays as nice as it is now. At least we don't have to fly anywhere - which is just as well with all that volcanic ash in the skies at the moment!

08/04/10

Good news today as it seems that we will be getting an extension on the Sellafield project that is going to be taking up all my time in the next couple of months or so. Also, I must start preparing my presentation for the LLWR peer review group meeting next week.

07/04/10

Hooray, finally finished the two assessment reports that I've been working on for the last few weeks! I spent much of Easter working on this, so intend to take a little time off in the next few days to make up for it. Also, it will be nice to move back to the Sellafield work for a while, before we start the final push for LLWR in a few months' time. It was also nice to catch up with Connie on the phone this evening, as I have badly neglected her over the last few weeks.

04/04/10

Well here I am at Easter, continuing to finish the project work for LLWR. At least the assessment results we're achieving for them are more encouraging than in previous studies. The weather is gorgeous at the moment, and this is expected to last into the next week.

29/03/10

Well it turns out that we are not going to meet our end of March deadline for LLWR! Luckily LLWR can be quite understanding about these things, so I now have an extension to Wednesday next week to finish. Oh joy! That means I will have the pleasure of working through Easter to get this stuff done!

22/03/10

It seems that Connie is suffering a bout of ill health at the moment, hopefully that will turn out not to be as serious as she thinks it is. The push towards finishing LLWR work continues.

15/03/10

It's about now that the strain begins as we aim to finish two assessment projects for LLWR by the end of March. I'm not sure if we will make that deadline or not. We can make it, but the quality in the work may not be there. We shall see.

08/03/10

Had the car serviced and MOT'd today, with an eye-watering bill noting that it needed four new tyres! Took my mother and Tess out for a walk in the countryside yesterday, which was very pleasant except for Tess, in her enthusiasm, trying to jump into the back of the car before the rear door was opened properly and banging her head! Tess was fine but it sent my mother into a fit of panic that she might be fatally injured!!

05/03/10

Yet another trip up to Warrington today, for a meeting with my colleagues at LLWR. It's just unfortunate that they are based at the opposite end of England (Cumbria) from Serco (Oxfordshire)! Warrington is the best compromise, so that we all have to travel about the same distance to get to the meeting!

22/02/10

Today would have been my father's birthday - he would have been 71 years old. It is true what they say about experiencing the loss of a loved one, you never really get over it, but you do adapt to the changed situation. Just as well really.

19/02/10

Yet another progress meeting with LLWR today - but again this went reasonably well and they all seemed to go home relatively happy. It's hard work preparing for these things, but the reward is when the customer is happy with what's been done.

15/02/10

One of our new young guys at work managed to solve a long-standing technical problem with one of the mathematical models that we are developing for our Sellafield work today. It made me feel rather old and past it, until Alex let slip that the solution is only possible because of some new features in the computer code that we use! Perhaps I might have found the solution too with that information - who knows - best not to worry about it!

11/02/10

Not too much happening at the moment, apart from the usual slog to get things done and delivered at work. It's a good job that I enjoy my work! Went up to Warrington for a meeting with LLWR yesterday, to determine what calculation cases we would run in the final assessments in the this project work. It was about as inspiring as it sounds!

29/01/10

My mother has booked a week's holiday in Exmoor for the end of April, and so that will be something to look forward to. I just hope that the weather is good - Exmoor is lovely in fine weather, but a bit dreary when it rains!

20/01/10

One of the biggest problems I have at work at the moment is the sheer number of projects that I am involved with. I have now managed to get some easing of my workload, which means giving other people the task of achieving the milestones on projects that I have no hope of achieving myself. Hopefully all this will make life slightly easier from now on.

15/01/10

Had a progress update meeting with LLWR yesterday, which seemed to go quite well. This is probably the most important of all the projects that I have every worked on, and the LLWR guys are very keen to ensure that we are making good progress. I understand that, but these meetings are quite stressful because in order to report progress, you actually have to make some progress! Making progress = hard work.

11/01/10

At long last we seem to have a slight thaw in the weather. It will make a nice change to not have to scrape ice off the car every morning.

07/01/10

Well the business meeting I was supposed to attend today was cancelled because of the bad weather - so we had a teleconference instead. Very strange doing that from home, especially when there are so many other distractions! You just have to keep concentrating and forget about the TV! LOL

05/01/10

A very happy new year to everyone who reads my diary! As I'm writing this, the UK is undergoing an unprecedented cold spell at the moment, and heavy snow is due to fall on my area of England this evening. This all adds to the fun, as I have to make a 170 mile journey tomorrow for a business meeting. Like my colleague John, I think the train might be the best solution to get there. Roll on spring! I'm all for protecting the environment and the planet, but "global warming" is not the first thought that comes to mind right now!