3 April 2019 (Wednesday) - Late Shift

I got a little bit cross over brekkie. A family member had re-posted something to Facebook. It was a pro-Brexit hate-filled racist rant about how the EU has invested UK money in EU projects. The original article contained the line “Find something that's gone the other way, I've looked and I just can't” Perhaps this bloke is a bit thick? There’s this brilliant thing called “Google” which (in less than five seconds) gave me thousands of examples of EU investments in the UK. Pro-Brexit, pro-remain… neither side of the quarrel is helped by deliberately spreading lies which can be debunked so easily. Mind you it amazes me that so few people take those five seconds to debunk the lies.

My in-box then went doolally as the geo-feds activated that series of geocaches that I hid yesterday. With an email to tell me that the reviewer had done his bit, an email to tell me it had been published, an email to tell me that *my* geocache had been published, and a notification about a new cache for each of them, that was one hundred and twenty-eight emails.

I got the leads on to the dogs, and we did our usual circuit of Bowens Field, Viccie Park and home though the co-op field. Sometimes our walks can be hard work; today’s walk was fine. We chatted with quite a few people, we had no fights. We met OrangeHead who (without her little gang) was quite chatty. Interestingly the foxy Jehovah’s Witnesses were dressed rather demurely today. Either because it was cold, or because that’s what you do when aspiring to take the moral high ground. (Though how you can take the moral high ground when you’d let someone die for want of a blood transfusion because the Bible says you shouldn’t eat uncooked pigs’ blood is beyond me).

There’s no denying that Fudge could have got a move on more than he did. Admittedly he has only got little legs. But if he employed them more in going forward and less in going off at right angles to the way we are going, or in running back the way we’d come from then we might get somewhere.

With walk done we came home. Within minutes all three dogs were fast asleep. I spent a little while working on the last module of my Coursera course. Are plants conscious? Are they intelligent? Intriguing questions.

I then drove up to the Medway towns. There is a geocache there which you find by solving a puzzle which is based on a plaque on a Naval memorial. I went there on February 15^th when I entitled my blog entry for the day “Wasting Time in Chatham”. Despite my best efforts I couldn’t come up with a solution to the puzzle which looked to be sensible. At the time I took a photo of the plaque, and I thought I might have another look at the puzzle from the comfort of my sofa.

So I had another go at solving the puzzle this morning. Something which wasn’t evident from my phone’s app (but was on the lap-top screen) is that there is a checker that you can use to see if you’ve got the right answer to the puzzle. I tried the solutions I came up with last time. Both were wrong. So I tried again. And again. On about the twentieth time I got the right answer. If any of my loyal readers have been struggling with the puzzle I can explain exactly which one of the ten questions is open to misinterpretation.

I got to *exactly* the place that I'd seen on Google Street View,  looked in *exactly* the place that the hint said, and there was nothing there. Ho hum...

Just as I was about to search again for the umpteenth time I had a message on my phone. And another... And another...

I'd made the teensiest error on one of the cache pages for the series that went live this morning. Being a generous sort of guy I'd set thirty geo-checkers to allow people to have solutions accepted that were within ten metres of the actual result. In geo-speak that's pretty generous. I'd intended to set them all like that, but I'd overlooked to change the default setting on one of them, and that one would only accept absolutely spot-on solutions. Which arent easy to get when you are trying to work out where something is from over a mile away. Consequently people were struggling to get the green light on that one. Some messages were friendly; so weren't as aimiable as they might have been.  It took about fifteen minutes for me to spot what I'd done wrong, and about thirty seconds to put it right. ​

I drove in to work where I had a rather good dinner. Chicken and chips in curry sauce followed by spotted dick and custard. It's almost worth doing the late shift for food like that...

All of those geocaches I hid yesterday have now been found except one. From the description of what was found where the missing one had been hidden, it seems as though an animal has had it. I’m not entirely sure it wasn’t Pogo…

​

2 April 2019 (Tuesday) - A Day Off

Not a bad night, I suppose. Treacle did try to scrap with Pogo in the small hours but it blew over as quickly as it started.

I was laying quite contentedly when I suddenly realised that after all the hours of preparation for setting today’s geo-series (and there has been a *lot* of hours spent preparing) I hadn’t updated “Hannah” with the thirty-three final sets of co-ordinates that I am going to use, and would need for this morning.

That was another half-hour…

As I updated my GPX file (a rather tedious pastime) Fudge sat with me hoping for toast crusts. He gets some these days. A couple of years ago he was quite the barrel, but as he’s getting older so he is losing weight. I wouldn’t say he’s gaunt, but I might just take him to the vet and waste thirty quid to be told I’m worrying about nothing.

I then had a look at Facebook. I sent out a couple of birthday messages. One chap who was having a birthday today… I always thought I was older than him, but fifteen years older? And I then had a wry smile at the latest meme that was circulating. Those who never post anything original were re-posting “I wanna see something cool – not a meme or a selfie but a pic you’ve taken”. I agree entirely with the sentiment – that’s why I go on Facebook. I want to see what others are getting up to.

I spent a few minutes solving geo-puzzles, then got myself organised for the day. The original plan for today was that I would be working, but having swapped out of last Thursday night (and got two day shifts instead) and having acquired last Sunday’s early meant I was owed some time.

I loaded the dogs into the boot of the car and we drove to the garage where "er indoors ^TM" had left her car for its MOT. Up until that point the dogs had sat in the back of the car as good as gold. The moment that they heard "er indoors ^TM" they started screaming and Treacle tried (and succeeded) to come up-front. We drove "er indoors ^TM" to work, and once we’d dropped her off so the hounds all went back to being (relatively) well behaved.

I drove the dogs up to Kings Wood; having done all of the preparations for a new geo-series it was time to actually shove the film pots under some rocks and sticks.

We had a rather good walk. The only cattle we met were on the other side of a fence. We met two other people, but that passed off without incident. We met a horse rider; she was civil enough but I *think* she shouldn’t have been there. I don’t think horse riders are allowed there. I even took a few photos as we walked.

In fact the only problems I had was when I was actually trying to hide film pots under rocks; Pogo wanted to play with the sticks I was using to disguise that which I was hiding. He got quite frantic in wanting the sticks. Mind you the dogs were a lot easier to manage than on previous geo-maintenance missions.

The problem with taking dogs out on a geocaching expedition is it soon becomes all about the dogs. On-with-leads, off-with-leads. Crossing roads. Crossing stiles… It is all very well when you are mob-handed with two people to every dog, but when it is just “me and three” it can be hard work. Kings Wood has none of this nonsense. Once we are twenty yards from the car park the dogs come off the leads, and bimble about doing their own thing until we’ve walked all the way round. Five miles over three hours – not a bad walk for the dogs (or me!) I’m hoping that this route will make for much easier geo-maintenance than the previous eight series I’ve put out did.

It was rather foggy this morning. The weather forecast had predicted rain for mid-day, but we got round whilst it was still dry.

Once home I scoffed a sandwich whilst watching an episode of “Uncle”, then told the geo-feds what I’d done this morning. That took half an hour. When I was half-way through so the rain started. I then archived the route of film pots under rocks I put round the north of Challock a couple of years ago. It had been logged as visited by over a hundred and thirty people and (from experience) that’s probably about as many people as are going to go visit it. It’s run its course; time to go.

I did have a plan to mow the lawn and generally pootle in the garden this afternoon, but the ran had put paid to that. instead I set about solving some geo-puzzles. The solutions to these puzzles will lead us round a walk that I expect we shall be taking in the not-too-distant future. These puzzles were about the TV series “Dancing on Ice”. I’ve never seen a single episode of the show, but (as always) Wikipedia told me all I needed to know. I did chuckle as I called up the “Dancing on Ice” page on Wikipedia. Have you seen it? Have a look by clicking here. As you page down through it there are tables of celebrities who have been on the show. These tables list exactly what these so-called celebrities are famous for. Isn’t this truly a sign of our times in that with celebrities being ten-a-penny, we need to be told why people are actually billed as being famous.

I drove out to collect "er indoors ^TM" from work and take her to the garage. All is not peachy with the "er indoors ^TM"-mobile…

We had a rather good bit of dinner and a bottle of plonk whilst watching “Young Sheldon”, “Derry Girls” and “Bake Off”. “Bake Off” *really* proved my earlier rant. It was the celebrity show – we’d never head of any of them…

A day off without doing any laundry… that must be a first…

1 April 2019 (Monday) - Another Early Shift

I had something of a restless night. Eventually I gave up trying to sleep, and watched an episode of "Uncle" that the SkyPlus box had recorded for me. It seemed vaguely familiar. I can remember seeing the first season - have I already seen the second season too?

I thought better of turning on the lap-top; being on an early start meant I needed to get a move on.

The roads were far busier today at seven o'clock than they had been yesterday.

As I drove the pundits on the radio were interviewing the UK Children's Commissioner. She has had a revelation. Apparently those children who get themselves suspended from schools are *exactly* the sorts of children that are likely to get into trouble when not at school. Consequently she thinks that schools shouldn't be so quick to give suspensions and should think of other ways to work with these "challenging" children. 

The woman is a genius - even if I did write to the head teacher of Swadelands school (many times) saying exactly this some twenty years ago. "Suspension" is no punishment at all for a recalcitrant child. If you reward their bad behaviour with a day off, they are going to play up again and again. Finally someone in authority has realised this; even if it is twenty years too late.

There was also Brexit talk. Parliament is to review two petitions today. One petition demands that the Brexit referendum of three years ago should be honoured. The other demands the decision should be reversed. Despite one petition having ten times the signatures of the other, the politicians being interviewed insisted that the "democratic" thing to do would be to support the minority position.

Go figure (!)

I got to work early. I like an early start if for no other reason that I get to work early anyway because the roads are quieter then. During a lull in proceedings I phoned my local hospital. Three weeks ago I went for an appointment about getting my lose re-bored. I was told I'd probably have surgery some time around November. I hinted that this was perhaps an unreasonable length of time to wait. The secretary with whom I spoke said that I'd not been on their books for very long. I explained that I was scheduled for surgery in January 2017 and I'd had to postpone as I was starting a new job, and that they had lost all the paperwork. She didn't actually say "f... off fatso", but that was effectively her sentiment.

I can remember that the last time I had my nose re-bored, I only got anything done by continually putting in formal complaints. Do I really need to start whinging at them again?

An early start made for an early finish. I came home and took the dogs round the park. As we walked we met an old friend, and an ex-cub’s mother. It was good to have a little catch-up. I did try to get the dogs to pose for a photo in the Chinese garden. They weren’t having any of it…

And with dogs walked I spent over half an hour putting little slips of paper into the film pots I intend to shove under rocks tomorrow.

"er indoors ^TM" boiled up sausages and chips, then went bowling. I watched last night’s episode of “Victoria” then found myself getting a little bit cross..

The series of geocaches I intend to put out tomorrow is (effectively) to replace the series I put out round Challock three years ago. Someone who only started hunting out film pot from under rocks last September sent me a rather comprehensive list of the failings of that series round Challock. Had she not seen that one hundred and seven other people had already walked the route without incident?