Ports Thoughts

Our top mates Si and Sally have moved from Boston to the little Lincolnshire village of Heckington. They have got a little cottage with a big garden for our God daughter Millie to play in. Ali and I popped up to see their new house this weekend and as luck would have it our visit coincided with the Heckington Agricultural Show which they claim is the largest village show in the country. It was like being in The Archers . Largest leek contests and displays of Falconry, sheep shearing demonstrations and the local farrier showing how to shoe a horse. Fascinating - especially for 5 year old Millie. Simon was more bothered about how good he looked. After the copious tractors, tug of war, Sealed Knotters , show jumping and stalls the obviously centre piece of any agricultural show is a trip to the beer tent. Millie sat quietly on her Uncle Ports' lap and didn't draw attention to herself at all. Later on, back at the ranch, Millie persuaded Sally that is was a good idea to have sparkl...

Last week I met up with a whole group of frollegues at the annual IT Specialists Institute in Nottingham. It is a chance for a load of IBM propeller heads and geek types to come together and "network". The idea is to speak with folks who work outside your usual sphere of interest to broaden your horizons and expand your mind. As a result they employ every trick in the book to try and get people talking. This obviously starts with opening a bar to get the social barriers down and then following that with giant games like Jenga and Connect four. It isn't as lame as it sounds. Anyone who has been on any kind of teaming event will recognise the next trick. After dinner, an envelope of "bits and pieces" was left on each of the 20 tables. Instruction on the envelope showed that the aim was for all the people on the table to work together to construct a self propelled floating vessel. Of course everyone on our table cynically mocked this task until it became apparent t...

Well after the problems of Wednesday when my car seemed very poorly, you can imagine how happy I was to be accelerating down the motorway back from Liverpool at 90 70 mph. No longer were hills causing the car to slow down to 45mph and all an sundry were passing in my wake like when the Millennium Falcon enters hyperdrive. The only problem was that I was in a Vauxhall Astra whilst my beloved BMW was sitting embarrassed on a tow truck being returned to Heathrow. My previous unmitigated praise for HR Owen might have been a little bit premature. By the time I had got to the customers in Liverpool the Beemer was struggling to even manage 25mph. It was clearly on the way out. The AA man who turned up was very friendly but when he plugged his box of tricks into the car it reported that there were no faults. Clearly it was lying. So there was no option but to arrange a hire car to get me home. Given that the trip back from Liverpool is around 220 miles I was hoping for something equivalent t...

Just lately my car has felt as bit under powered. It's very difficult to be sure though. It can still manage to cruse along the motorway at a bit over the speed limit so it clearly isn't a major problem, but I have found myself being out accelerated by cars which I would not expect my 2 litre turbo diesel to be left standing by. I'm talking Nissan Micra's and VW Polo's. Anyway, I wasn't too worried because the ol' jalopy was due for a 36,000 mile service and I hoped that this would sort out my embarrassing little problem. I have been using the BMW Heathrow (HR Owen) for servicing for over 10 years and they absolutely rule. Not only have they never put a foot wrong in terms of the standard of their servicing but they also pick up the car from work and drop it back before the end of the day - so no queueing or waiting for me. They also wash the car AND valet the interior. If they would only put the car seat back in the position I left it before they took it t...

I have been up in Scotland this week spending a couple a days visiting some of our Lotus customers. I've been to Glasgow loads of times in the past and pretty much every time I have been their it has been drab, grey and washed in a miserable mist of drizzle. Because of this it has always impressed me how warm and friendly Glaswegian folks are in the face of such a cruel environment. Don't get me wrong, they are perfectly happy to have a pop at me for being a filthy sasanach but it is always with a wink and an offer for me to buy them a pint ;-) So what a revelation this week has been! Along with the rest of Blighty the temperature has been a bit tasty but in Glasgow it was 29 degrees. To put that in perspective I'm told 30 degrees has never been recorded in Glasgow ever! So on Monday night my frollegue Simon, who has been on this Scottish tour together with me, and I were sitting out side in an Italian restaurant off Buchanan Street at 10:30pm in our T-shirts. In Glasgow!...

So I was visiting an IBM Lotus Domino customer in Wales today. I won't go into the details of how much they love Domino and consider the competition to be initially slick but lacking in real enterprize deliverables. Because what I wanted to comment on is actually about the return of my Tom Tom One Satalite Navigation system. My poor TomTom went wrong a couple of weeks ago and to put it mildly I have missed my little navigational friend whilst it was off being repaired. However, I didn't expect this journey to Wales to overly stressfull since the trip basically involved travelling down the M4 from London until just before Cardiff. But a few miles into the journey the radio started reporting that the M4 was closed between Junction 18 and 19 because of a lorry fire. Doh! Obviously I'm going to be late for my meeting. Not at all - at junction 17 I told the TomTom that I wanted to avoid the M4 and low and behold it charted me a new route that missed all the trouble. Welcome hom...

I've never seen the Reoffenders before but my friends Glastonbury Jon and Heather are the singers and they have modestly told me that they are very good. Glastonbury Jon and I used to work together about 15 years ago when we both lived in Hull and we used to write depressing folk songs and play them at The New Adelphi Club amongst other places. Jon used to tell me that he used to be a Punk and used to play in a punk band when he was younger. I never believed him. He programmed computers. So I was totally surprised that at the tender age of forty something he has started a new punk band, but more specifically, that they are really great! Ali and I travelled down to Devon this weekend where Jon and Heather live for the gig (I must stop calling him Glastonbury Jon - it is heroically inaccurate these days). It was a great weekend with great weather, great company, lovely location (Topsham if you fancy a nice historic village), great beer and wine. On the downside - terribly un punk v...

Fantastic news. My sister in law Niki has given birth to Nathan Hugh. He's a little boy. Obviously. Niki sent a camera phone picture of the liddle fella to Ali and this is more or less what he looks like. Like all little sprouts. Without the bow tie. Obviously. For some reason it is the form to mention his weight, which was 8 pounds. Like wise, mentioning that mother and baby are doing well seems to be the done thing. They are back home now. Hurrah! So good luck little Nephew dude - over time you will realise how lucky you are to have such an excellent and cool Uncle. And your Aunty Ali is already plotting how to spoil you. Expect to be cuddled :-)