Clothes Drier

Dazzle has shamed me into posting on my blog… such a long time since my last proper posting.
Hmmm, so much has happened. I guess, first off there was the un-planned excursion with the Land Rover. The less said about that the better. There have  been a couple of trips off-shore since then, the first entirely in Norway. The second, well, I went to Norway supposedly for four weeks. When I arrived however, I was told that it would be six weeks. Two weeks into the trip I was asked if I could go to Australia to attend some meetings for a project we have coming up there at the end of the year. So, off I went, via a short visit to Buckie, Aberdeen, London, Dubai to Perth Australia. A day in the office, three days of meetings. Now I filling in the day before departing from Perth at the crack of dawn tomorrow to head back to the ship, via Dubai, Frankfurt and Stavanger. The Australia jaunt has now broken up what was starting to look like a long trip.

Sprinklers on the New Garden Area

Last leave we got a lot done around the ranch. We got our little clothes drier up, we got a lot of the new ‘adult area’ sorted out – a little vegetable garden area with some nice seating where only certain dogs are allowed and only under express invitation! We even finally put up our humming bird feeders, something that has been on the ‘to-do’ list forever!

Humming Birds at the new Feeder

So, next stop Norway, then around two weeks later, back in Colorado. This next leave could be my last one before winter sets in – I know, it’s 90 degF and we’re talking about winter – so there will be a lot of things to get done, most of which were on this years ‘Springs’ list, but have been over-taken by events.

1. Do not walk behind me, for I may not lead. Do not walk ahead of me, for I may not follow. Do not walk beside me for the path is narrow.. In fact, just piss off and leave me alone.

2. Sex is like air. It’s not that important unless you aren’t getting any.

3  No one is listening until you fart.

4. Always remember you’re unique. Just like everyone else.

5. Never test the depth of the water with both feet

6. If you think nobody cares whether you’re alive or dead, try missing a couple of mortgage payments.

7. Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.

8. If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.

9. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will  sit in a boat and drink beer all day.

10. If you lend someone $20 and never see that person again, it was probably well worth it.

11. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.

12. Some days you are the dog,  some days you are the tree.

13. Don’t worry; it only seems kinky the first time.

14. Good judgment comes from bad experience … and most of that comes from bad judgment.

15. A closed mouth gathers no foot.

16. There are two excellent theories for arguing with women. Neither one works.

17.Generally speaking, you aren’t learning much when your lips are moving.

18. Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

19. We are born naked, wet and hungry, and get slapped on our arse … then things just keep getting worse.

20. Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

Bill Gates is given credit for this but it actually came from a book called, “Dumbing Down Our Kids” by Charles Sykes.

Bill Gates gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

• Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it!
• Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself.
• Rule 3: You will not make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a fancy car until you earn both.
• Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait ’till you get a boss.
• Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it “opportunity.”
• Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
• Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
• Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to anything in real life.
• Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you “find yourself.” Do that on your own time.
• Rule 10: Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
• Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Long, long time since I posted last.
Since my last post, I’ve had two trips offshore. The first was on-board the “Skandi Neptune” in the Gulf of Mexico. There I was working with the “PVLS”, essentially a clone of the main piece of equipment that we had on-board the Perseus. Although physically similar, there were enough differences in the control system to make it a good learning experience for me… I kept wondering how would could incorporate the improved points of it into the system that we had on the Perseus. That system, in the mean time, was being worked on in Dusavik in preparation for it going onto another vessel.
The second trip, which I’m heading towards the end of now, is on-board the “Skandi Seven”. On here I have been reunited with ‘my’ VLS, which has now been renamed “PVLS02”. Something of an irony really, as the ‘P’ is supposed to stand for ‘Portable’ and PVLS02 is now on it’s fourth vessel, whereas, PVLS has only ever been on the one vessel. I somehow feel we’ve been downgraded a bit!
I have been asked to be interviewed for a position on the “Seven Pacific”. I’m not sure how I feel about it. Before, when there was little word of the work on the “Skandi Seven”, it would have been a logical move. Now, I feel that there is little to gain from it and potentially a lot to lose. Even if I do interview, I don’t have to take it or even make up my mind immediately.
As I said earlier in this blog entry, I’m heading towards the end of my current trip. I’m due off in three days in fact. However, Eyjafjallajokull may have different plans for me. The Icelandic volcano’s eruption has played havoc with European air travel for four days now, and at the moment – to quote Icelandic geologist Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson: “It’s the magma mixing with the water that creates the explosivity. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight.”, This coupled with the fact that weather experts say wind patterns mean the cloud is not likely to move far until later in the week, means that Wednesday’s crew-change could be in doubt.

We had to change our cell-phone provider about 6 weeks ago. As a result we also ended up getting new Blackberries. So what do I think of the new one?

Well, the screen has a higher resolution than the old one, it seems to be a little faster for browsing, oh, and it has a 3 megapixel camera (complete with flash) built in.

The down side? well, two things really both to do with the USB charging connection. First, it has a USB plug that is completely different from every other USB device I own (whatever happened to the ‘Universal’ part of USB?) and second, the USB port is in such a position that you have to take it out of it’s case to charge it, which seems a bit daft.

It’s been over a month since my last update and a HUGE amount has happened in that time.

First off, yes, the Toisa Perseus has been de-mobilized and handed back to Sealion. The project ended (well, it was cut short eventually!) and we managed to get a good deal of the preparation for the demobilization done in parallel with the project de-mob. That meant that the vessel de-mob that was originally scheduled for 10 days was completed in eight days. After the demobilization, I spent a few days in Norway at the Dusavik base, sorting out some stuff and putting together a list of things that need done to the VLS in preparation for it to be re-mobilized on another vessel.

Then it was back home to Colorado. Dazzle picked me up at the airport, and when we got home, we found that one of the dogs had ate the sofa…

The last few days have been so cold that it’s been all we could do just to get the chores done. We’ve been working in relay so that we can keep warm!

It was our tenth anniversary on Monday. I had a surprise gift for Dazzle but, with me being me, of course it didn’t actually arrive until today. Still, Dazzle did seem to be really happy with it!

The local Art center had a new exhibition open last night called ‘Take Your Best Shot’. There were a number of categories, and Dazzle and I each had a total of 12 entries.

Abbey feeling down

‘Abbey feeling down’ won 2nd prize in the ‘People and Portraits’ category.

Orchid

‘Orchid’ won 3rd prize in the ‘Abstract and Macro’ category.

My first prizes! Cool.

It’s been a long time since I posted a blog entry, so there’s a lot to catch up on.

Well, during my last leave we got a huge amount of work done on the ranch. Even so, there were still some things that we had wanted to get done that had to be postponed. Anyway, the major things were getting my work benches and tools sorted out in the barn, then getting some lambing pens built inside the main area of the barn. That necessitated a big clear-out, moving a lot of stuff into the hay barn while construction was on-going, then moving it all back in again after-wards.

We also got the washer plumbed up in the well-pump house, with only one gusher, but the least said about that the better! “There’s a limit to what can go wrong with a bit of home plumbing”, as we keep saying. In line with fitting the washer we also plumbed in a small electric water heater, and while we were at it we got the old UK tumble drier going too.

We did some work dividing off a bit of the animal pen to give the dogs a bit more room to roam, as we also managed to cut down a bit on the number of livestock we had. No more angora goats, now we just have sheep and dairy goats. We have added some angora rabbits though.

On the last two days of my leave we put up two trailer loads of hay. On the second run, while I was loading the hay, I turned wrong and pulled something in my leg. Absolute agony. Luckily the farmer arrived just at that time and he and one of his farm hands finished loading the trailer for me. When I got back to the ranch I’m afraid I had to sit on a bale and watch Dazzle unload. Chauvinism at its best! The leg is better now, but still quite colourful with the bruising.

Then I was on my travels again, back to Europe. First to the UK where I had a day in the office to discuss some control system issues for the Perseus’ replacement. Then straight from the office in the evening for a flight over to Norway before joining the Perseus for my third ‘last trip’. This one does seem likely to be the last. We still have the on-going project to complete, but there is definitely a light at the end of the tunnel. Lots of planning for the demobilisation, but until the project is officially complete we’re straining at the leash before starting all out disconnections.

I do keep joking that we can’t start the demob until the 13th of November, as the 12th is the last of my ‘contract days’ so I’ll be on to day-rate after then!

Well, I haven’t commented much on this years Formula 1 championship for a while, not since my comments on the Brawn teams early success. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been a lot to comment about, there has.

The little matter of Lewis Hamilton getting caught out on fibbing to the Stewards, frankly a little omission of no great consequence that seemed to be blown out of proportion to the actual even. Then there was the power struggle between FOTA (the teams ‘union’ Formula One Constructors Association) and FIA (the sports governing body) over the subject of cost capping.

No sooner had that died down then we had Felipe Massa‘s unfortunate accident which, had it happened only a couple of years ago would have been fatal, has merely sidelined him for the rest of the season. Word of 7 time champion Michael Schumacher returning to Ferrari to fill-in for Massa soon fell by the wayside due to Michael’s earlier motorcycle injury.

The next scandal to hit the sport were the allegations that during last years Singapore GP, the Renault team boss conspired with their engineering director to force their second driver to deliberately crash his car at such a time and place that it would benefit their number one driver to the extent that he would go on to win the race. The boss and engineering director have been sacked for then team and banned by the FIA. The rest of the team, who likely knew nothing about the arrangement, have been given a suspended ban.

During all this, the Brawn team mostly sustained their good form, with Jenson Button winning six of the first seven races. A great deal of column inches has been devoted in the British press to the subject of Jensen ‘choking under pressure’ or ‘going off the boil’, both of which are overstating things somewhat. He may have had a dip in form compared to the start of the season, but he has only failed to score points in ONE race so far this season. And that was only a result of being taken out at the start of the race as the innocent party in a collision between two rookie drivers. He has benefited during the drop in his form, from the fact that the other race wins have been split between five different drivers.

Positive highlights this year, so far;

Mark Webber getting his first race victory (now the record holder for the most races before his first win at 131!);

The Force India-Mercedes team getting a superb second place, on merit, for their first ever Formula 1 points. Then showing that it wasn’t a flash-in-pan by getting a fourth place in the next race, without Fisichella, their star driver

Vijay Mallay, owner of Force India, showing that there is still some integrity left in the sport by allowing (without any financial benfit) Giancarlo Fisichella to got to Ferrari as it “had been a dream of Fisichella’s for a long time”

The fact that, with four races left, it is still mathematically possible (however unlikely) that any one of four drivers to win the championship. Realistically, the only driver that does have a chance of catching Jensen is his team mate, veteran Brazillian, Rubens Barrichello. I’ve got a soft spot for Barrichello, he seems to be a genuinely nice guy, he scored the short lived Stewart GP team’s  first championship points, and he spent a good deal of his career being somewhat stifled as Ferrari’s second driver to Michael Schumacher. I wouldn’t be totally crushed if Rubinho managed to pip Jensen to the title!

Whatever the outcome of this season, it’s looking like there are to be a number of new teams joining formula 1 next year, including the return of a Malaysian backed Team Lotus. Now wouldn’t it be good to see Lotus back at the top of the time sheets?

As I suspected in my last entry, this will not be my last trip on the Perseus. The current project has been seriously hampered by bad weather (something that’s unlikely to improve at this time of year in the North Sea) and we still have a number of things to get done before the demobilization. The usual rumor mill has been churning at full speed and the latest good one is that, soon, if not immediately, after we demobilize the VLS from the Perseus it is to be mobilized on one of our other ships..
As the old Chinese curse says: ‘may you live in interesting times’