Right at the start, I predicted that initially I'd update this blog fairly frequently.

And then I'd update it from time-to-time.

And then I'd stop the updates.

I was right, wasn't I? Doesn't happen very often, so it's worth making a bit of a fuss about it.

In the 12 months since the last update, all the brickwork has been completed. That was a path, two garden walls, and a repair to a pre-existing retaining wall.

At the start of the work I was using a particular pre-mix of cement and sand. As I came to the end of one wall, the next batch of mix was noticeably different. It was sandier, less blue, and didn't mix up. With the addition of [copious] amounts of cement, it came closer to the previous mix.

I contacted the makers by email, suggesting that their quality control wasn't what it could be. I got no response. So, I contacted them again by email. Again, no response. Then I tried a phone call to their "customer service" number, and got no response. Finally, I wrote to them, this time enclosing copies of the receipts. A year later, I'm still waiting for a response.

This is basic customer service. If you don't look after your customers, they won't come back. You can have the best product in the world, at the best price. But if you don't look after your customers, you might as well not bother.

A Path, A Wall, A Door

As I said in my previous post, in order to finish the garden path I had to start the garden wall (previous episode).

To start the wall, I had to dig a trench, put in a concrete foundation, and put down a couple of courses of bricks. Then I could fill in the gap with dirt, put down some sand, and only then could I lay the path on that sand.

Of course, I could have just built the walls first, but there was some pressure from the beloved to get the path done before anything else.With the path done to the beloved's satisfaction, I could go onto the rest of the first of the walls. And now it's done.

And, it doesn't look too bad. Certainly not as bad as I thought it could have been. Oh, a brickie would take a quick glance at it and laugh him/herself all the way to hospital. But I am quietly quite happy with its looks. Yes, I'm very careful to say "looks", as its strength in holding back a garden bed is yet to be tested. I'm now quietly confident in my ability to build another wall for another garden bed for my beloved. But that will have to wait until after the new doors have been painted.

The Path Is Done

Today, I finally finished the path (previous episode) after weeks of procrastination and pontification. Actually, I couldn't finish the path until I'd started the walls, and that's where the procrastination and pontification came in. As an IT Help Desk-er, I knew I'd make a seriously bad brickie. So I put it off and put it off and put it off. In the end, I decided I had to do it at some time, so it might as well be right then.

I was wrong. I am not a "seriously bad brickie". I am an Horrifically bad brickie. The first wall arcs through 90 degrees over a couple of metres, straightens for a metre, and goes off at a right-angle for a metre or so, enclosing what will become a garden bed. One layer of bricks below ground level, three layers (oops, sorry) courses above ground. And... but the rest can be for another day. This is supposed to be about the path.

Customer Service - part 1

Out in the wilds of the Internet, there are newsgroups. They used to be very popular, but (comparatively) hardly used these days.

One group I read on a fairly regular basis is aviation related. One posting on this group was from a pilot. I would consider this person to be one of my modern-day heroes: he has saved a large number of people from disaster (among other things, there was a life-threatening "incident" on his aircraft, and it got down safely), and he has a large dose of common-sense. So, when he says something, I listen: when he writes something, I read.

This pilot wrote recently that a particular system on a particular aircraft was next to useless because it was designed and build by "the IT boys". Having been an IT Help Desk-er for over 20 years, I think that was a bit harsh, but essentially true.

The problem is that people make assumptions, and that they do not talk to each other. The first time you build a house, you are amazed at all the detail that has to go into it. How big the house is to be, where it is to be on the land, how it is to be laid out, what the walls will be made of, where the interior walls will be, where the lights are to go, the power points, the taps. And you can only get all that worked out to your satisfaction by talking to all the experts involved so that they do their part the way you want it done. And talk some more, and some more. If you don't talk to them, they'll do what they think you want: they'll make assumptions.

Cancer and Survivability

My mother died of pancreatic cancer, over a decade ago. At initial diagnosis, she was given 6-9 months to live. She fought it for 2 years. When she died, I felt as though part of my guts had been ripped out. I still feel that way today.

Not long after she died, I was made redundant and then started work at a new place. There was a guy there who had started before I did, but was still on a temporary contract, while I was permanent. I didn't know that he was a temp until many years later but, in the meantime, it caused some frigidity between us. And then we became firm friends ... some might say that we became firm co-conspirators.

Oh, we weren't going to bring the organisation down to its knees. But we did, unintentionally, conspire to bring some frivolity and lightness into our work area. When he and I started on one of our public conversations - private conversations were VERY different - there was a mix of anticipation and agony from those we worked with. Which, in its own way, did much more for staff morale than anything management tried to do.

Air France AF447

A couple of years ago, an Airbus 330 aircraft went down in the South Atlantic with everyone on board being lost: Air France flight AF447.

Recently, the main part of the wreckage has been discovered, but not - yet - the "black boxes". So we still don't have any better idea of what happened to the plane.

There have been a lot of theories and ideas and talking heads and bloggers and all sorts of people with all sorts of thoughts.

Path Progress

I've laid the foundations for the garden walls. It took me two days, on and off, and multiple trips to go and get more of the "cement & sand" mix.

Seems like a relatively easy task: dig trench; mix concrete; put concrete in trench. Digging the trenches was bad enough, but fairly straight-forward you'd think. Mixing the concrete was just tedious and hard work - I've never liked physical work. And putting the concrete in the trench was fall-over easy.

Once the concrete had had a day to set, I started laying out the bricks, to see how the walls were going to line up. Hmm. These walls, low as they will be, need piers (that's a technical, wall-building, term), piers supported by concrete foundations. But I didn't know that a week ago, when I was digging the trenches.