Toadfish Monastery

Good Swato!

Now if someone should hand you a bazooka please go for the suits at planning not the uniforms at the floor level, actually while you're at it why not give the weapons to the uniforms instead, out of experience I'm pretty sure they know who to aim them at... 

I have thaught someone the sequence of events needed to get the line breaker of an Rc class locomotive to close and energize the main transformer. Want me to repeat it for you? Air pressure in pantograph riser piston >380 kPa, No Earth Fault relays for traction motor Field, Rotor 3+4, Rotor 1+2 all energized, transformer cooling oil circuit low pressure or thermal overload relays not energized.... I'll spare you the rest!  

Right now I am acting as a minder driver to a trainee driver from the training centre I have done some work with previously. The trainee driver follows the minder driver's roster and performs all the duties of a train driver under the supervision of the minder, learning on the job. The student I have at the moment is one of those students that makes teaching a pleasure. The student in question, Caroline, is a young woman about three apples high, with a very good understanding of not just the letter of the rules, but also the intentions and the wider implications, and considering her very limited experience of train driving (a four week practice session on the Stockholm commuter trains), very good indeed at operating freight. She also has a talent for asking the sort of questions that you really have to think through before you answer, which is if nothing else is a good refresher for me.

Another positive note is that the big green freight (fright?) company I work for is heading for a big reorganization right now. This will be the third one in about as many years, but this one is actually making a lot of sense. Our former managing director was essentially sacked by the board of directors for his way of handling the economic slump, and an interim MD was brought in untli a permanent replacement could be found. The interim MD started looking long and hard at the comapny and it's organization, and poked very hard at some holy cows and entrenched coteries. The new permanent MD recently launched his plan for a complete reorganizastion fo the company, with a focus on simplification, slashing of excessive administrative functions, re-focussing the administrative side to act as a support for the production side and not as an empire on it's own, and more or less a bloodbath at headquarters. 8 divisions are being reduced to 2, for example, and there will be very strict and clear lines of responsibility drawn up  between the various sub-divisions. I have no idea if it is going to work, but I do hope so.

Best of luck to you.

I just finished a script adaptation of "Heidi" for my little theater company. I hope to produce it later this fall.

Quote from: Darlica on September 09, 2010, 08:53:06 PM
Good Swato!

Now if someone should hand you a bazooka please go for the suits at planning not the uniforms at the floor level, actually while you're at it why not give the weapons to the uniforms instead, out of experience I'm pretty sure they know who to aim them at... 

Hmmm...

Armed trade union representatives might be an effective, if slightly novel, way of facilitating and expediting negotiations between the unions and the employer organizations. Perhaps we should write a book about it and try to become rich by flogging it as some sort of new, trendy, management philosophy. "The web 2.0 guide to the Zen of workplace negotiations the CNT-FAI way", perhaps?




Swato: You poor bastard. Sounds a bit like my experince trying to commute between Eskilstuna and Hallsberg some years ago. When you are gone for 12-or-so hours each day if everything goes according to schedule, any further delay really starts to grate. Especially when it is such a senseless one. Arrgh!

And we have tube strikes over here. Perhaps Swato, you could pop over when you have dealt with your problems.

Wrote a couple of sentences of my essay today.

Acquisitioned a new cutlass...



_{(for brushcutting, not buccaneering)}


EDIT: Hides it from Swato during commute hours 

Also the buses are full of mosquitos. I wonder how they manage to bite one in the face without one noticing their approach.

Set up auditions for this coming weekend for "Heidi", which will be our first community theater production. I've never done this before, but I figure I ought to go ahead and do it while I'm still under the impression that I can.   

For the first time I acted as teacher and held the first day of a two day course educating other customer service attendants in the use of the new programs and applications for our hand-held computers with 2 assistants of my own (I've only done the assistant bit before). I think I did OK.

Well done!

Completed day two of two. 
It seems like I did well, my pupils where happy and so was my assistants. It was interesting and fun and I expect it to work even better next time since I hopefully will be more relaxed as I know the material better.

Now I have a day off then it's back to supporting for two days before I have the week end free.

Go Darl!

If you taught, and think you did okay, you were probably very good.

Today, I have dug out a stand of the Evil Plant of Death, Japanese Knotweed.

Well, supervised the digging out, anyway. I don't have a ticket to drive a digger.

I'd love to drive a digger. Another thing to put on my Before I Die list. (Bucket List - great film).

I got the offer to try it, a time or two, but can't be arsed, generally.  I'm sure it's fun, but I'm usually too busy getting the job done to take the controls.

On a related note: