Hypoxic witterings » Uncategorized

“A whole new world…”

Aled — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:01:06 +0000

So the time has come.

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, I mentioned that I was looking at various blog-serving software. I have Decided.

I’m going to be moving away from Livejournal to WordPress running on my own site. This is going to allow me more flexibility and power for doing StuffWhichIsCool^TM, like moblogging (updating my blog from my mobile) complete with photographs.

I have configured WordPad to update my LiveJournal account automagically (I hope it works!) so you folks on LJ should now see my blogs but they’ll be mainly hosted on my main site http://www.thinknuts.net.

Look out for more changes over the forthcoming months…

…and relax!

Aled — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 08:37:00 +0000

I’ve resigned from the ATC.

There have been a few things that have brought this on, but most of them are fairly simple really. Two things stand out.

First of all, time. On top of a 9-5.30 (and then some) job, I volunteer for: Mountain Rescue, SARDA, ATC, First Responders and occasionally the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association. I have a fairly active social life. I do “computer stuff” for lots of people. Last, and most definitely not least, there’s Sean, who’s in Aberystwyth and who deserves more time than I could give him with this lot going on. Something had to go.

Secondly, I’ve been trying to get my cadets out on the hill, however Wing need to see some kind of certification before I can do that. The starting point for these is BELA, then up the ladder we go to WGL, ML(Summer) and then ML(Winter). Beyond that tends to be people who do this for a profession. I have none of these, however I trained for 10 months with the team before I passed my assessment and I have 3 years experience on the team. None of which apparently matters.

So I’ve run out of energy and time for the Corps. Monday night after popping in to see the new commanding officer (not the best of starts for her…) I popped down to Mal’s to chill out for a bit and play a roleplaying game – AD&D, they’re currently in a Cthulhu game at the moment.

I’m going to write up our adventures here I think, perhaps even writing them as first person in-game, though I’ll tag them as such for those of you who don’t care to read about what happens.

Update on last night

Aled — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 09:37:00 +0000

We’ve just had a message from Huw. Last night’s misper has been found safe and well – more details on Thursday night I suspect.

Also, this one’s made the BBC.

One good deed sorted already…

Aled — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 04:30:00 +0000

I was just settling down last night, in fact I had gotten one foot under the quilt when the pager went off. Knowing my kit was in order I got dressed and rushed off to find that we had an honest-to-God mountain search - a missing male walker in his 50’s had not returned from his walk around the Carreg Lem/Fan Hir area of the Black Mountains. So we kitted up and headed up – the weather had been horrendous that day with storms and torrential rain and winds gusting up to 40mph. By the time we were walking up the hill, the rain had fortunately subsided but the winds were very, very strong.

We started here, and our search area involved the Haffes Valley up almost as far as the word “River” on that map and as much of the mountain to our eastas we could. It took us quite some time to get to here, but we did and got quickly retasked – we were to move back down our search area but this time paying particular attention to the valley itself and the riverbanks – the river itself is in quite a deep gorge and apparently one of the dog teams had picked up an indication but had been unable to make anything of it. We tracked down that valley for some time without any success and with the night wearing on, our torches running low and searchers becoming tired, we called it off. Heading back was interesting as we ran out of path on our side of the river which necessitated basically stomping through undergrowth all the way up one side of the gorge.

I understand that the search will be continuing today and I’ll give updates on this as best as I can.

Good food, good company…

Aled — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 15:25:00 +0000

I’ve had a nice relaxing weekend. Friday night I spent in the company of et al and we ended up, somewhat unsurprisingly at Charleston’s. A cracking good night out. Saturday was mostly spent sorting the car’s brakes out and and I were twiddling with them up in base until around 1900. The reason we did it in base was not just convenience, but was staying there that night ready for the Helo exercise the following morning. I on the other hand had the Caerphilly First Responder training starting, so we quickly texted around and convinced Mark to come out for a quick curry which was enjoyable. Sunday I spent in Llanbradach doing our training, which is interesting.

So yeah, so far a good weekend. I’m looking forward to relaxing a bit tonight.

Paranoia…a good thing?

Aled — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 11:05:00 +0000

Paranoia is part of my job. I’m supposed to be paranoid, that’s how I stop security breaches. Someone once answered the question “Is that too much paranoia?” with “It’s not paranoia when you know they’re out to get you.”

The problem is that it fuels my insecurities. I’m so used to imagining worst-case scenarios at work and in other places that it rolls over into my private life, which is a BadThing[tm]. So, an Apology – sorry. I just hope that that person loves me enough to bear me with as I catch up with recent changes.

Um, for those of you who are utterly confused, sorry. This one’s cutting a bit close to the bone, even for a Friends post.

In other news, I’m thinking of resigning from the Air Cadets. I’ve been going there for the past year and I’ve seen nothing change apart from our commanding officer, who’s now stepping down. That’ll make this next person the 4th CO within a year. That’s just ridiculous – it’s incredibly disruptive for our squadron. On top of that, despite talking to two Wing staff officers and a whole host of other people, they’re refusing to acknowledge my Mountain Rescue experience/qualifications as suitable for leading parties, even at the lowest level. As a result, I’m in the daft scenario that I’m not qualified enough to take cadets onto the hill, but if the people more qualified than me can’t handle a situation, I’m perfectly qualified to go in and take over then. Completely stupid.

In addition to that, I’m spreading myself a bit thin – , Mountain Rescue, Work, First Responders, SARDA, possibly some role-playing a-la AD&D…as well as general socialising – I’m a bit stressed out. So time to relax and enjoy the finer things in life for now I think.

World Marmite day?

Aled — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 10:49:00 +0000

For the first time in ages, today I had cheese and Marmite sandwiches.

So imagine my surprise when I heard over the radio that it was World Marmite Day today…or not:

Female presenter: …and today is World Marmite Day.

Male presenter: [guffaw] Er, I think you misread that…
Female presenter: What? It’s World Mar…Marm…Maritime Day today.
Male presenter: [collapses in fits of laughter]

…and stand down.

Aled — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:29:00 +0000

I didn’t even get out of the office this time. This was an informational message from the police – we were supposed to be attending a training day with them tomorrow, but it’s been cancelled “…for operational reasons.”

Callout

Aled — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:26:00 +0000

Here we go, no details yet, but I’m off to pick Christian up.

What have you done today to make you feel proud?

Aled — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 09:29:00 +0000

Over the weekend I, along with around 200 other mountain rescuers descended on Lancaster University for the biennial Mountain Rescue conference. We had some fascinating talks, including visitors from ARCC Kinloss (where SAR helicopters are tasked from); a FltSgt from RAF Lossiemouth who talked about the Sea King that went down in the Cairngorms last March; talks on various medical topics including analgesia and a drop test of a stretcher with rescue load on various auto-arresting devices used as safeties.

Of course, it was all very fun filled too – I seem to recall abseiling off of a stairwell, with one of the barmaids having a go as well (don’t worry folks, plenty of safety measures including a safety line) and I do believe that we finally finished drinking on Saturday night at about 0530.

Back from the conference I had a meeting of the Caerphilly First Responder’s group, where I met the rest of the team and they met me. Nice bunch of people, I’m really looking forward to the training now which starts next Sunday.