D Pollard

There are time’s that it is actually good to work a weekend – such as when overtime is available and it means you are staying close to some of Britains nicest roads.

With University Hospital Morecambe Bay trust about to go live with a new NHS national deployment, I had the task to be up in Barrow-in-Furness all last weekend. With a few daylight hours free on Saturday afternoon I managed to get a quick dash around the lakes.

I’ve finally got around to editing the video footage from Llandow, as well as writing up the days activities.   It’s stuck under the motoring section of the site,   but if you can click on the image above to go straight there.

I’ll admit that I’m not 100% with the YouTube compression on the video. Although it’s recorded in SD, it is still very crisp sharp and well defined in it’s compressed h.264 form.   YouTube however seem to take exception to all my hard efforts and are applying very low quality compression to the sound, producing what I can only describe as ‘warbling’ in certain places.  I’m using the same Apple Compressor settings that I’ve used previously,  so I can only presume that the distortion is something that YouTube is generating when they re-code the content.

The annual trip to South Wales for the 1.1 mile Llandow circuit. The campsite warden explained it had been raining a lot recently and when shown to the plot, it was already a muddy mess. As night fell, so did the rain – and it didn’t stop until we left the track the next day.

Plenty of videos to go on line over the next few days, but for now, lets just say there was a lot of standing water and my driving had to reflect that.

That’s it – I go back to work and young mister Pollard has decided to become mobile. He’s now rolling over and onto his stomach, kicking his legs and he’s determined to be on his way.

It’s been a while since I published the fact that I’d uploaded new pictures to the Family Album within the Image Gallery. There’s two new galleries – one each for July and August.

Yep – where has the time gone ? It seemed like only a week or so since I did my “Life on the Sofa” series of postings, and only last week since I left bezier.

Well I’ve now had three days working for the NHS and my head is full of new stuff. It’s clear that it’s a totally different role and working experience. Commuting by train rather better than sitting in the M62/M1 traffic – which is surprising quiet in the morning, but somewhat busy in the evening. (Castleford really has to be seen to be believed)

The most noticeable difference is Theo when I get home – I think he’s got used to Daddy being at home for a while.

Well I had a very nice letter this morning – so I suppose now is the time to make public what has been known in Private for some time.

After my time off for an operation, I returned back to work at bezier. After only 3 days back (at the end of May) I was asked if I could nip into a quick meeting, only to find the HR director waiting for me. I was put out on gardening leave whilst a consultancy period took place as my role had been identified for redundancy. Well after meetings with HR Directors, ACAS and solicitors, the process ended on the 15th June with me walking away from bezier for good. I’m not saying it was inevitable – but lets just say I filled the car with fuel and took photos of the fuel gauge & odometer before I entered the meeting.

Financially, there was nothing more than statutory offered, which considering my termination date was set a fortnight before my two year point was next to bugger all. Luckily I had a lengthy notice period and payment in lei of notice (Pilon) meant there wasn’t mega-urgent rush to get back to work. Of course, bezier didn’t want me to have the money right away, but spread out over a 3 month period. Thankfully enough there has been a payroll error that has resulted in me getting the money straight away.

Anyway, for the first time in my 39 years of life I got to sign on – Jobseekers allowance and six weeks later, I’ve been paid enough ’social’ to balance out 1 hours worth of tax (back when I had my own ltd company).

I’ve spent the time since the end of May carefully, balanced between getting those jobs around the home that have been put off due to lack of time – and applying for just about every IT Project Management role in between Leeds and Grimsby. Well I know there is a recession on and loads of unemployment right now, but thankfully my CV was well received and I’ve had a fair few offers of interview.

The interviews were spread across various sectors, but I have been wanting to get back into the public sector – particularly the NHS. That is why despite higher offers and jobs closer to home, I’ve decided to accept a role with the NHS Connecting for Health team in Leeds. It’s actually working for someone who was a colleague of mine back at LeedsMet – only this time he’ll be my boss.

So I’m just waiting for a start date now – whilst Shelley rapidly writes out lists of all the jobs I’ve still got to finish before returning to work.

A busy couple of weeks ahead with Job Interviews – so I thought I better start getting some of the jobs at home finished off.

Where the new patio is going to be, there was a very large tree – which with the chainsaw came down very nicely. I even managed to get rid of most of the branches into the garden shredder without incident. Rather than dragging them off to the council tip, I decided to chop the larger branches / trunks into logs for those people in the village who have real fires. A couple swings of the axe make short work and soon I had bags full of logs cut into 6″ lengths. However one swing of the axe snapped a branch some what more quickly than others and send a log flying straight back at me, the result – a thick lip and a very sore cheekbone.

So, the next job is working out how to explain this in the interview panels.

Standards can be pain when you’re trying to include Flash animation and video.  The forever changing targets of making swf and flv files  fit within the W3C standards meant my offer to update Eric Bartons website ended up taking the whole day.  It had been 3 1/2 years since I last edited Eric’s site – and since then the release Firefox3 and IE8 (as well as the upgrade to Flash 10) meant that my very rusty development skills were put to the test as I performed what was in effect a very minor update to his site.    It may not look any different – but I had to change over 50% of every page.

It reminds me why I stopped doing web development and became an IT Project Manager.

Harnesses are great things. When fitted properly to a proper seat they far exceed the safety of standard inertia seatbelts. You can use standard belts on the track, but nothing holds you as well as a harness.

The problem is, to have harnesses in a standard Lotus Elise you need fit a proper harness bar. Now the bar itself has to be of set dimensions and material to adhere to FIA regulations – but at the end of the day it’s a steel pole with some welding and threaded points. That’s why they’re not expensive. What is expensive is the fitting. With time on my hands, the tools and the know-how, I spend the whole of Wednesday fitting a new bar to my car. I photographed each stage and have supplied the lessons learnt to various technical wikis on the internet. I’ve even written the process up this site.

All in all, it took me about 6 hours, a packet of Elastoplasts and an apology to a neighbour for shouting out obscenities at the damn thing every time I cut my hand.

A rare daytime treat – to have a clear run on the Snake Pass. Video uploaded to the motoring section.