The Cathedral, where
we graduate students.

It’s been graduation week at the university, and as is now the custom we streamed it all over the internet, because of the relative high profile nature of this, and the fact that I wrote some software for our day to day media capture stuff, I usually end up having to sit through at least 5 of these graduations each year. Given that the graduations consist of; An overly long procession, a speech by the vice Chancellor, a long section where graduates walk across the stage, and a little bit where we give an honorary fellowship out doing this many can be quite boring, but this year I got away with that bit.

Work is such that it was deemed that I am far to busy to do graduations, so I got to stay in the tower and do some work. Well that was the theory, of course for the first two days it the graduation stuff wasn’t quite going to plan (mainly with the archived versions) so I spent quite a bit of time running around trying to get that working.

then I’ve had this stupid hera form to fill out, quite why we as a department have been chosen first when a) the university is unsure if this job evaluation will even effect local contract staff b) we are one of the most complex departments to do, with everyone having a different role c) summer is our busiest time of year. Anyway ours is not to reason why, ours is just to do our job, and occasionally drop everything to fill out a form telling the university why they Pay me (I sort of hoped they knew this).

Graduations eventually went quite well. On the streaming front we maxed out the server only once when we gave an honorary fellowship to Paul O’Grady (a.k.a Lily Savage). You obviously tread a fine line when working out who to give these honorary fellowships to, because let’s be honest it’s mainly about publicity, although its meant to be about acknowledgement of ’services to Liverpool’. Personally (normal disclaimers apply) think that Paul O’Grady is a bit to much publicity and not enough about services to Liverpool. You have to be very careful, if you go to far then you devalue not just the honorary fellowships, but also the ‘real’ awards we give out. Having said all that the fact that we maxed out the server, proves it was a popular event and there is no such thing as bad publicity

You didn’t think we were normal did you? Yes, we read the Harry potter books, it’s not like we are mad mad Harry potter fans or anything, there was no queuing outside borders at midnight to get a copy to read through the night, oh no, our copy arrived with the post this morning right from Amazon.

We are mellowing to; this time around we only got one copy. For the last couple of books we got two copies delivered so we could both read them it at the same time, but to be honest, the lack of decent editing down (here’s me with three years of drivel on the internet, complaining about editorial control) meant that the fourth and fifth books dragged on a bit.. The good news is that this book isn’t as long as the last two, true it’s 606 pages, but at least it bucks the trend of ever increasing storyline.

I’m quite happy to read Artemis Fowl:The Opal Deception, while Ruth reads Harry potter, she’s already about a third of the way though it, so I don’t have long to wait.

It’s been a while since we’ve talked about daisy her, and for those of you who check regularly, I’m sorry. It’s been a bit hectic over the last month with a number of other things (that we will tell you about in due time, on the other blog).

We’ll first things first, we all know you’ve come her to see pictures of our beautiful daughter, so her is daisy, playing with her hat, on a recent trip to parkgate on the wirral.

Daisy is doing very well, thanks for asking, we still haven’t mastered crawling yet, and to be honest I don’t think we will bother, sometimes it looks like we are going to try, but then we just roll-over, Daisy can get anywhere by rolling, and is a big enough handful like this thank you very much.

Our big achievements over the last few weeks have been clapping, and waving goodbye to people, mainly to Jelly and Jackson at the end of the storymakers. Clapping just happened, after loads of prompting by daddy, and ignoring by Daisy. It was our friend Eric, who just randomly did the clapping motion and got the response. Since then we like to clap when ever we can, not that we make loads of noise, but it is fun.

Sounds are good things too, we are trying to say Mummy, but at the moment, we can’t tell how to do the Mmmm sound, it always comes out as a B, so every time we try mummy, we get Bbbbbubb, I think we are only days away from mummy, but we will see.

Our other favourites sound games, involve coping and out doing other people, the cough game is good, where we do little gentle coughs whenever anybody else does. And then there is the game nobody else can win the screaming game. Mummy Starts with a reasonably good high pitched scream and Daisy just up the pitch a little bit, if anybody gets close to me (like Niamh did the other day) then Daisy just goes of into sounds only dogs can hear.

I think it’s official now, this bloomin’ hera job evaluation form has sucked my will to live.

For a while no we’ve struggled to get people in to give us quotes on the little jobs that needed doing around the house, just to stop it falling in around our ears really, the odd bit of plastering her, a couple of plumbing jobs there, some window work. you see when you try and get people to come out and do these small jobs, they never arrive it’s not worth their trouble (why i went and got a degree and didn’t just become a plumber or plasterer i don’t know.. well i do, I’m not very handy).

In the end it all got a bit frustrating, so we decided to go for the other extreme, get all the big jobs done, so over the last few weeks we’ve got quotes for the windows, the roof, and replacing the boiler. It’s amazing how easy it is to get these quotes when the costs run in the thousands.

The Roof

The roof has holes, and it’s the original 100 year old slate roof, with no lining, and lots of slipped slates, when a slate falls of ,we quite litrially have a hole in the roof, you can see the sky from the loft. there’s nothing wrong with the slate, slate is slate it doesn’t degrade, but it’s not fixed on very well.

We’ve had two Quotes so far, one from Lacy Roofing, and another from Chestnut Roofing, Lacy just did a drive by quote, while Chestnut at least looked around the back of the house. this is important because we have a huge wooden bit at the back that is totally rotted and needs replacing Lacy just missed this bit off.

Lacy where a bit funny too, the quote they gave us was for concrete tiles, which have a life span of around 60+ years, we want to use the slate, after all it’s nice and it lasts forever. so when i rang Mr Lacy and asked for the quote with slate, he was all uppity, “it’ll cost you more” (this is because they sell your slate on!), “and you’ll be using a second hand material”, yes the slate it’s billions of years old, it will last many many more, so lacy are losing (despite being cheaper) anyway i think we need more quotes the Chestnut one was way of the scale, and no one has yet looked at the underside of the roof, i want to know that the main struts are OK, before i let anyone start the job, otherwise it could spiral quite quickly.

The Windows

The Windows are a bit easier, we want to keep the sash windows, because well they are nice (if a little rotted) for sash windows you have two choices, find a joiner (who you trust) and get him to repair the windows,or get Ventrolla a sash window company to retrofit the windows with some modern gadegetly and make them all nice again. we’ve gone with ventrolla, it’s not cheep the quote for our 12 windows has come in at ?7,500. but at then end we will have fantastic windows.

True we might move out and then the next person will just replace them with UPVC, but I’m not sure, one they are repaired and lovely, you would want to keep them, besides, i think Sash windows (fully repaired) will add value to the house. We don’t know how much UPVC would cost (and we are not about to invite a windows sales man into the house to tell us) but i think we are only talking around ?1,500 difference so we are going with the sash.

Besides UPVC can have a life span as little as 25 years, our windows are 100 years old, they are shot, but they can be repaired, UPVC units have to be replaced.

The Boiler

The boiler is dying, he last people to have the house before, put the cheapest heating in they could find, hence the radiators are to small for the house, and the boiler is constantly having problems, and because it’s cheep tat, no one will touch it. So pre-empting the total failure on the coldest day of the year, we are going to get a new boiler, some of the radiators changed, and a warmer house for all.This is probably the first thing we will get done summer is the best time to get a heating engineer before everyone turns there heating back on, it brakes and they are on 24 hour call out all winter. we’ve had a very good quote from Merseyside Central Heating, so When i remember we will be calling them and arranging a time for the work to be done.

Potentially if we get our act together we could have a totally new roof, windows and heating system by the end of September.

I’m not a great fan of Job Evaluation, for one it’s not very moral boosting to be asked to describe your job in detail to your own managers, it smacks a bit of them not actually knowing what you do.

It’s quite a lot of work, to go back and workout in detail what exactly your job is. Your always a bit unsure if something is a critical part of your job or not, but then too afraid to miss that out in case it goes against you.

So today I find myself in the position of filling out a Role descriptor from for my job (it’s all part of a move by all universities onto a single national pay spine (Actual Agreement)), and I can tell you it’s one yewge form, I’ve spent all of the morning filling it out, after going through it briefly at least two times, and now my brain hurts. Apparently it will only take 3 hours, but so far I’ve probably spent around 6 hours on it, and I’m not finished.

The real problem I’m having is shoehorning my technical post into a form designed to describe an academic related job, so there is a large section on teaching and learning, and another on research, that I dare not leave blank (I do occasional do some informal teaching, so does that count?), but equally I don’t want to over exaggerate what I do.

Then there is the grey line that appears to have been drawn between the job I do, and role I fill, if I am being asked to fill in and give examples of the things I do on a day to day basis I think this is my job, but it’s all apparently to do with my role. now given my job is quite specific (programming) but my job title is very generic (everyone in the department is a computing officer) what is my role and what is my job?

then there is the little issue of whether or not it matters, the whole pay unification system is based around getting the two primary pay scales used in universities (academic, and APT&C) unified. Well I’m not on either of them I’m on a local contract, and as of yet we don’t know if this will even effect us (but we do have to fill our the form).

The other thing I will say following up on our trip today to the Ferry and Albert Dock. Is you must go and see the Time and Tide Exhibition, which is actually 54 photographs dotted around the railings of the Dock.

Each one is a 360 degree, panorama of a different British beach, it’s very good, even if you aren’t going though a panorama phase at the moment, unlike me.

I’m enjoying playing around with the photo-montage effect much more than making real panoramic photos at the moment, this is the Albert dock today, maybe when I’ve got a bit more time, i will do this is much more detail, it would be a good complimentary photo to the Liverpool skyline ones.