Filed under: Uncategorized
Scribefire just got updated on Firefox so thought I should jot some thoughts down for the first time in too long.
Just got back from paintballing in Kegworth and I’m knackered. I’ll have to count up my bruises later but it has been a great day. We ran it as trip for the Civil and Building Engineering Department students with a few randoms along to makeup the number, with 29 going in the end. The Department were great and threw in a double decker bus for transport for us and my Vice Chair had got us a deal on cheap entry.
We played six games in total with two rounds of each. Sometimes this meant switching starting bases, in others one team was dedicated defence/offence. Got some personal glory too, raising the flag in “Castle” and stealing the bomb in “Jungle” so that just adds to the day.
I really feel that the Committee is beginning to get somewhere and it is fantastic that we are actually running some successful socials. In Loughborough everyone has their Halls and sports teams or clubs, so as a body whose primary focus is academic representation (and therefore seen as boring) to get a social going can be pretty difficult.
Unfortunately from Monday I am not technically in the job as at Union Council we will be ratifying the results of the recent Department Elections. However since only one person bothered to go for the CBE Committee, and they forgot to vote for themselves there is now no longer a Committee to run events. It’s be really sad if all the hard work over the last couple of years setting up our Committee went to waste so I’m trying to persuade some people to get involved. Just as long as the Union get the election process right this time…
Thought it was way past time that I actually put something up here about what I’m up to. I’m currently in Newport working for my sponsor company. We are building an extension to the existing water treatment works that cleans the water that the people of Cardiff and South East Wales are drinking. This will further filter the water so that by the end there will apparently be less impurities in tap water than bottled water!
I was selected for the job to gain some experience in mass reinforced concrete. That’s fine but unfortunately the job has only been going for a couple of months so we’re not exactly flying! However each week more guys come onto the job and so the work picks up. It’s a pain (or it’s painful perhaps) when your hour’s setting out on a Monday keep the steel fixers going till Wednesday, the chippy’s going till Thursday (given an extra half hour to set some levels) and the concrete gang Friday.
There are perks though. I recently attended a scholarship event at Head Office. There were various parts, some more fun and/or interesting than others. We had a presentation regarding precast concrete structures by our subsidiary, Malling, which as far as concrete goes was pretty cool (they can hit 60Nmm-2 in three days!). We each had to give a five minute presentation on our own project. Fortunately we weren’t all in together though I did have to sit through presentations from a lots of QS’ which I didn’t always follow. One guy (an Engineer I dread to think) managed to take 15 minutes however, ironically concluding by stating that the number one lesson he has learned on site is time management. We pissed ourselves.
The last few weeks have seen some resounding results from the Ladies in my life. Or perhaps I should say my favorite Ladies.
The Gymnast. My Sister went to Durham to compete. I had the pleasure of watching her in a recent class. She seemed very confident in her work despite being about six inches shorter than everyone else in the class. This doesn’t stop her and she had been selected to partner the daughter of the couple who run the sessions. This was amusing in itself seeing as her partner is several years older so the synchronised rolls left her to shuffle a foot back.
So off they went to Durham and I received the phone call from my Sister around lunch time. “I’ve got a silver medal!” That was for the solo event so pretty impressive. That afternoon she competed with her partner and gained yet another medal.
The very next week I get another call. My Step-Dad ran a “Mini Olympics” at his school with another five school there too. It was basically a big sports day at the school but they totted up the points at the end of all of the events (egg and spoon race, sack race, jumping, etc.) and surprise, surprise, li’l Sis comes in third against seven, eight and nine year olds. As Mum keeps reminding me “you were pretty good when you were little don’t get me wrong, but she’s… she’s something special”.
The Economist. Mum studied Economics at University but gave up her work in that field when I was born. Yet every so often she talks about how she would like to get back into it somehow. In the mean time she seems to be toiling away with working for Education. I think she has enjoyed her current task. It has been a step up in management terms, really looking at long term strategy rather than implementing itself. Running the show has been pretty good for her though I think there was a little shell shock coming from her last job where everyone was cherry picked, into a team already established.
Now however she has got a job with the not-for-profit organisation PFEG (Personal Finance Education Group). In all honesty the job description described her absolutely spot on. After an intial phone interview then, imagine how surprised she was not to get an interview! No matter they were quick to realise their mistake and phoned back to apologise. A quick trip to London and before she was even on the return journey the offer was made!
The Athlete. My girlfriend has been searching around for a PhD for a while. She applied to several top Universities but the first couple didn’t go her way. Feedback was irritatingly that she has everything it takes just someone else had more. What can you do?
But on the same day as my mum went for her interview to London, my other favourite lady was heading through London to the University of Greenwich where she showed what she was made of and got the job! I don’t know how much she believes it but I think this could well have been the best University for her. Her first choice of Loughborough I think would have been tough. Having already spent four years here I think she needed a change of scenery and at the time she was going for it for the wrong reasons – mainly money and the fact it was a good whack more funding than Birmingham. She will now be heading to a much smaller Department where she can really shine and I hope it will be a much tighter knit community than the Beast that Loughborough Sports Science is.
All in all a pretty hot month for all my girls. Long may that continue. Congratulations!
Filed under: Engineering
Day to day I don’t have a lot to do. I need to make some time to hold a meeting every now and again. I’ve got various ideas I want to get going such as actually running socials. I’d like to try get some sponsorship aswell so we can get some fresher t-shirts.
I also have to attend fortnightly meetings of the Department Chairs. Not so bad really since for each i attend I receive two Shark Packs – each with two free entries and two half price drinks to FND. This gives me some pretty handy links. Through these I have met the Union VP: Education. A handy girl to know since she has the ear of the Senate and when there’s issues with lecturers she is the one to see. Particularly useful after one of my lectures with a particularly horrendous lecturer. Let me put it this way: Today he was assessing our presentation techniques. Giving the feedback you must imagine a man leaning forward against a table, muttering into his notes thinking we will take his advice when he comments about people leaning on objects while presenting and reading their notes too much. Wonderful words! We were almost in stitches.
Filed under: Uncategorized
It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. With massive amounts of coursework on the go we chose Monday night to go out to Freefest and have a few beers/train the missus to down pints. A great opportunity to climb over a gate, slip and fall on arm it seems! That meant a late night with her only getting to bed at 5.30am.
A week and about 30 something hours sleep later I’m pretty knackered. Could have some thing to do with the two pieces of coursework I left pretty late to do. the hospital visits didn’t help but there we go it’s all done now. Only my French to do now. And Contract Documents. And a French test… rats!
Does feel like I’ve got a bit of time now though. Means I’ve been playing with Twitter/Brightkite, etc a little more. The annoying thing about all this new tech is it’s new and therefore no one knows about it argh! Brightkite looks like it has potential but when my only “friend” is the owner in the US (I really don’t care about the latest local ice hockey game and which Italian he ate at last night), it gets a little tedious.
Right now I need to get my act together to tackle the next lots of coursework. But hey it’s all a giggle ey?
Filed under: Techie
Procrastination is a wonderful thing. It has led me to discover all sorts of things, each of which leads to more possible procrastinative efforts.
At the beginning of the Easter holiday it was all sparked by my discovering I could get Firefox 3. I was investigating this development where somewhere along the line I heard about Flock – I had also seen it advertised on Facebook. Looking around Flock I read their news that they had won an award at the SXSW conference. Obviously this lead to reading about all kinds of goings-on at this geeky sounding event.
Nevertheless I started using Flock, much to my satisfaction. I like being able to log into the tools I use day to day and being able to monitor them constantly. But what is this I see in the side bar? Twitter? More investigation (and quite a few stories from the SXSW conference) that sounds pretty funky too so now I’m signed into that as well!
And of course other than a new browser and notification service, I decided to set up a blog! I chose WordPress simply because I’ve used it to manage the Loughborough Students Ultimate site previously though since then there has obviously been lots of improvements and I like it!
So I’ve had a great time geeking it up and ignoring things like coursework and selecting final year projects but trying to think about all the possibilities open to me now.
Filed under: SHFTFDG!
Super Happy Fun Time Flying Disc Go! (or SHFTFDG! for short) have returned from Festival Italia triumphant!
Having played six games over two days and with 13 people in the squad we were never stretched other than in the semi final against Brunel. In that game we were 5-7 down with under a minute to go before scoring to go 6-7 just before the hooter went for end of time. The point had to be completed and we managed to score again making it 7-7 and sudden death. The Super Happy vibes continued to make it 8-7 and you could see Brunel were devastated but they played well. Overall I estimated we had a score difference of +60!
The parties were awesome, the beach cool and the people there were awesome. Definitely intending to be there to defend our trophy next year!
Tags: SHFTFDG!, Festival Italia
Filed under: Uncategorized
This blog isn’t going to cover any specific topics but will act as a website to voice my thoughts on a variety of subject matter.
