On my way home last night, I was mentally writing a entry for today based on the metrics post on the COIN Blog but as usual I forgot most of it overnight…even I hadn’t, the loser I had to follow into to work this morning would have made me forget anyway….one of those dicks that slows down to 80kmh when you can’t pass (like along the Hippody-Hoppodies – 10 km of undulating yellow-lined highway) and then speeds up as you as you get to a passing area. OK, fair enough I had a trailer on but even then I could still legally go faster than this tosser…finally got by him at Smash Palace (where they made the movie)…so I got to work angry and not at all cool, calm and collected to make cutting insightful commentary…maybe after Wednesday afternoon sport (firewooding hence the trailer) Iwill be more coherent…
Author Archives: SJPONeill
Dealing with tornados
Got home last night to find the dogs still outside and not happy about it…normally this is a combat indicator of one of two things: either they have tried to consume the cat again and/or a tornado warning has come to fruition…yep, sure enough, the TTT has decended for a night, TTT being the Two Twin Tornado…sure enough, open the door to find a sea of toys and the twins playing little Ed Hillary’s on the back stairs (under supervision). Feral the Cat has taken opportunity of the dogs’ banning (they are both good with kids but just too big for romping inside with them) and occupied the ground floor which is why 91kg of Rottweilers is faceplanted against the bi-folds “registering their concerns” at this impudence…
It’s always great having the girls to stay but just like the COE don’t enter this missionspace too attached to any existing rules or conventions…welcome to the shifting sands of grandtwins, c/w communications barriers (though it is amazing just how much can be conveyed with a vocab of just ‘oh-no’ and ‘uh-oh’), fickle allegiances, conflicting aims and outcomes, and competing needs. Unlike the COE though, at deployment’s end, you can just fill them up with sugar and coke and return them to their parents…we had plans of sitting back for the Monday Night Action movie (Smokin’ Aces) but instead got reruns of Ice Age…switched on Breakfast this morning as is our habit but one look at Paul Henry (understandable!) and it was tears and back to Ice Age…at least I got to get out of the house early….
I had plans of sitting back beforte the movie and reading the Wave fan-fic short story posted on CheeseBurger Gothic yesterday but that will have to be tonight’s pleasure after Coro, and before doing some more work on the problematic engines (attempt 234) for the Ilya Murometz – the plan is/was to do a little each night and eventually finish before Y3k, certainly it woultn’t before the Expo 6-7 September (again, I haven’t got anything finished on time so I guess I am at least consistent in my approach!).
Good news is that Terri got her Outrageous Fortune Series 5 yesterday (so much for NZ Post promises of 3-4 days delivery Raurimu-Kalgoorlie!!) and rated it a T-shirt on the towel scale….
Squashing the info hierarchy
I ran across Peter Hodge’s The Strategist a month or so ago while doing some research on CIA/CIT. His entry over the weekend opens up a whole can of worms regarding command and control concepts, trusting subordinates (and superiors) and also making sure that they have the tools including the training and experience to actually do the damn job!! It is so easy these days to talk the talk and be found wanting when it is time to actually get out there and walk the walk.
The Procarta web meeting I had last week really drilled into this issue and the question about whether you want nice safe validation and verification processes or whether actually getting the good OIL rippled across the system now now now is more important. The trouble with this approach is that people in charge need to accept risk and all players need to be able to accept responsibility for their actions – applying doctrine with judgement comes at a price, you know…
Well here I am
…first tentative steps into blogville…spurred on by reading a lot of everyone else’s blogs and then through another WordPress blog finding tonight just how simple it all is to get to here…like so many things, something I should have done years ago when I was writing so much more prolificly (and possibly better – maybe time for another coffee-free year?) and when so much was going on – so now I do this as it all seems to be slowing down….
A home alone weekend and just potterring around today as it is juicing down so all those outside jobs just don’t appeal – I should be BATTsing in the ceiling space but have put that off (til tomorrow?).
Have also suggested to partner in crime Josh that we should do one of these blog thingies for the project we are doing together as it will be a cold day before we get one an official way…
