The Raven
Death by Failures
Two Royal Navy Submariners (pron. sub – marry – in – ers) who died in an explosion onboard 
HMS Tireless in 2007 were caused by systematic failures a Coroner has ruled – what ever that means. The incident that happened under hundreds of feet of arctic ice where the Sub was on excercise.
The Royal Navy Board of Inquiry had concluded that the explosion which caused the death of Leading Operator Mechanic Paul McCann and Operator Mechanic Anthony Huntrod, was caused by a faulty self-contained oxygen generator (SCOG) which was part of the backup generator a
nd was lit during a routine drill.
The deaths occured during the Arctic filming of Stargate Continuum – for which the film was dedicated to Leading Operator Mechanic Paul McCann (32) and Operator Mechanic Anthony Huntrod (20)
A night of work and 5 hours in hospital
Sunday mid afternoon I get a call (first time in over a month) asking if I’d do a double trunk to Severnside Dairy. Obviously I take the job and at 18:00 I’m on my way.
I get up to Severnside, drop off millions of empty cages, drop the trailer in the trailer yard and head to transport to get my return trailer number.
Returning to the trailer yard, I hook up to my trailer and I’m walking down to the rear to put my numberplate on the back in the dark when I trip. You see, it turns out that (and not uncommonly) they use old railway sleepers as wheel stops so we don’t reverse through the fence. The thing is, I didn’t see it at all. I tripped with my right foot and immediately threw my the same right foot/leg forward to stop me falling. It did stop me (initially), but it took my entire falling weight and with the sound of creaking and an incredible feeling of tension and searing pain my leg gave way under me and I was down. Down and could not get up.
Suddenly, you realise how quiet a trailer yard is! Eventually I kinda got to my feet and tried to hobble thinking ‘hey, just bruised – I’ll walk it off’. A moment later and I’m now face down on the floor thinking ‘ok, maybe I have a problem’. Of course you instantly flash through you’re mind all the things/places you need to be the following day and that really, this can not happen.
After 15 minutes I managed to get back to the cab and half climb in to reach a mobile phone – of course it was the wrong one (I have 3), but second time lucky I sat back down on the floor and rang my home depot, in turn asking them to ring the transport office here and send help.
A moment later there were people coming from everywhere and a trip to hospital was on it’s way.
I managed to ring my mate – who thought it was all very funny as too, did I. And rang my family to say that the NHS was about to try and kill me with MRSA at the Gloucester Royal.
I get there, get wheeled into a cubical for an hour and drugged up with Codeine – when my Aunt walks in!! Now to explain, my aunt has been a career nurse her whole life and my uncle – a Dr, both live in Gloucester and it just proves that the family grapevine (for all it’s sins) still works.
5hrs, 5 long aching hours before I was seen!! The news I actually wanted, was the news I actually got – it was fatal, sorry, I’ll try that again… Trying to get my jeans off my leg gave way again but more importantly showed the now awfully discolored thigh from knee to hip. So I stand there with a leg turning black with bits in and the Doc says, I think that leg is much more swollen that the other – I, on the other hand think ‘no sh*t!!’. So after much proding and poking, feeling of new lumps, bumps and dips in my leg – basically I did bruise, rip muscle and upset ligament. I was told that at some point over the next couple of days that my leg would probably seize up and this would hurt, to take painkillers and try to keep it moving. They tried to give me crutches but being a guy, a Brit and more balls than brains – I refused.
I left.
Thanks to the family grapevine and to the staff at Severnside for their help and for not letting me drive my truck home – even if the Codeine did make me wanna give it a go – really, it would have been no problem (honest) LOL..
Ahhhhh (sigh) tomorrow is another day….
Writing and my lack of skill thereof;
Anyone who has followed this blog or any of my web-based things, will, for the most part note that I’m terrible at writing. Ironically, 
writing technical documents and designs are really not a problem for me though, but writing to other humans is!
You see, we all know that writing what may be in our thoughts or in fun, might not actually translate as such
to the reader. In fact 90% of the time it is either seen as attitude or simply being rude. Now to be honest, I’m rude to all my friends, really – I do it on purpose. But then there are the people you don’t actually know, I don’t know what makes them tick, what kind of humour they have, if they’re tired or stressed and so on. At the same time they can’t see the smile on my face when I, in turn write a note to them. And lets be honest here – for all I know, they may not suffer fools gladly at all.
Then there is the other saide to all this, what if you/I read something the wrong way? What if someone used the wrong formatting by accident? and so on.
This is very frustrating, but you see, it happends to me on a daily basis (go figure) So I’ve decided to back off from other things for a while and just annoy people from this blog – which I’m also apparently good at LOL. But here, well – frankly I might be trying to be annoying lol. No one instance has made me do this and I have a lot on at the moment and basically can’t be bothered.
Actually, being horrid to people is the way I am, I will catch or pick you up if you fall – but then spend the rest of the time trying to trip you up LOL. Never the less, I save that for friends.
You don’t have to be big to move a mountain
So, how many times do you hear that whine of ‘I can’t reach that’ or ‘I’m not strong enough’, ‘I’m not tall enough’ – better still, ‘my grasp isn’t big enough’ OR, ‘you can because you’re a man’. Well, ladies – you can!! and here is a video that proves it 
Terry, aka ‘LittleTrucker’, who barely reaches 5 feet in height made this video just the other day of her delivering heavy furniture in Illinois.
Nice one!!
Microsoft’s Virtual Earth
I downloaded this a while ago and never really got around to looking at it. I’m very used to using Google Eart
h which has been around for quite some time now and for the most part, it appears quite a polished product. Well, not always – you see they recently went live with the UK version of street view and skipping from one image to the next can actually turn the whole thing into a mashed up nightmare.
Virtual Earth from Microsoft is a little more simple to use, appears to have more recent ariel shots and while the transition from high altitude to up close and personal mapping is a little clunky (assume net speed to be the problem) I’m loving
it. I’m not sure for why, may be it’s because you can see so many differences between a plac
e on Google Earth and Microsoft.
There is one thing I have found odd though; if you zoom in to the Google HQ, the 3d of the draw buildings is really very good, while a look at the Microsoft HQ is not good at all… But, to be completely fair here – MS have over laid images of the buildings onto the 3d faces – they’re just not very clear.
The future of this style of mapping/cartography is huge, yet sadly it’ll never be ‘real-time’ – unless there is an individual satellite for every user. That said, they is a possibility in a handful of areas where this will be possible.
Now all they have to do is get all the webcams and public CCTV hooked into the systems and we’ll be rocking!
PS. Hi, Bothell
Slower Blogging
I’m doing a full-on spring clean at the moment. Well, the truth is that I get my place inspected on Tuesday morning by the landlords agent and I have a ton of other stuff to do also.
On top of this I’ve pulled a muscle or trapped a nerve in the old back and with other stuff I have planned for this week, I need to keep moving before I seize up.
So its a little quiet at the moment.
However, it wont be next week as I should have plenty of new stuff to share.
20 Years of Dell Ireland – goes to Poland
For those who don’t know, when it comes to Laptops I heartily recommend Dell products for many reasons. They are generally stronger and far more reliable than most. I certainly would never recommend a Sony Vaio. But then, I’m not a fan of Dell workstations at all. That said, I’m seriously not a Mac fan, why? Because I like to keep my money in the bank and not piss it against the wall – derr!
So, what am I writing about? 
Almost 20 years ago, Dell built its flagship production facility in Limerick, Ireland. They came to Ireland with huge financial incentives and got workstation and laptop production down to under 3 minutes per unit. They went on and grew to employing a staggering 10,000 people, 1/10 of the population of Limerick.
Now Dell is a huge company and while people and there dedication to a company can only be purchased so far, it’s important for them to do the right thing by the soon to be – former workforce. I really hope they do because when a company does not like unions – it’s important for the company to be better than any union! Dell offer a one stop shop solution, from servers to full blown data centers and the people who work for the company do so by way of believing in both the company and the products they make. This belief in turn does not come from a wage packet, it comes from the very same two way relationship. That said, with all the greatest intention in the world – business is business at the end of the day.
Well, come April it all stops as production switches from Ireland to Poland. This is not a major shock – but it’s devastating for Ireland and certainly for Limerick.
Since the loss of the Cork to Swansea ferry, vehicle access to the emerald isle has been seriously reduced. Taxation changes there have hurt Dell and in these economic times Dell has had to act.
I won’t be buying a Dell product in the foreseeable future as this Inspiron 6400 is just great – but by the time I am ready to order more, I just hope they’ll ironed out all the initial production teething problems in Poland.
