Thursday 3 January 2008

Post Christmas and into the New Year

I've been in work everyday,except yesterday,sinc Thursday 27th December,on nights,through the weekend,New Years Eve and Day_ugh!But the rewarding part of all of that was I did my commute every evening and morning,on my way in and on my way home.It threatened to rain alot,but I hardly got wet on any of my rides.I missed going out on my bike today,but I had to go to Cardiff,for our 15 weekly company safety briefing,and cognisco testing,which is supposedly a method of checking our,as siganllers,knowledge of the rules and regulations.None of us like it,but the company in its wisdom got some computer genius',to produce a computerised system to test us.Unfortunately,the people who designed the questions and answers,knew nothing about signalling,and the end result has been questions that don't make sense,or are so ambiguous,that one needs to be a professor of English to understand them.The worse thing of all is that no one can give the person who sat the tests a clear readout of what questions they got wrong or right,it mystifies me,who came up with this system and put into practise,but they won't give it up,and have persisted with it for about 18 months now,all the signallers I've talked to about it,hate it,and feel it diminishes their achievement,of qualifying as a signaller,and also the tasks that they carry out on a daily basis.

Enough of that,except to say I got through OK,despite feeling I'm coming down with some kind of cold bug,for the last two days I've been hitting the cough bottle,got a tickle in my throat,and now have just taken a couple of paracetamol,to try and ward,whatever it is,off.The weather forecast,gave a severe weather warning for today and tomorrow,for snow and freezing temperatures.Fortunately it seems to have missed us for the moment,the north of England and Scotland got it,though.I'm just hoping I can get away with this cold,so as not to affect my commute tomorrow.

I'm wrecked at the moment,yesterday,and this is the reason I missed my commute,because I had to take Keiron junior(32)to Cardiff airport,he flew to Belfast,wher he's staying with his granma,before going on to Dublin and then Cork.He's a Dr. of History and is researching for a book he's writing.The day started at 03.30,though I had had very little sleep,I drove him to the airport,then drove straight to work for 05.45,did my 12 hour shift and then came home.If I'd had to cycle I would not have made it,I take that back,I'm sure it would have been a welcome relief.Anyway I'm still feeling bushed,a ride would have been very refreshing,very sorry now didn't make time to do it.

2 comments:

Doug said...

I keep threatening to write a book about how technology does not make our lives easier like it's been sold to us. Your computerized testing is yet another testimonial.

Hope that bug doesn't get you!

we;shcyclist said...

You're so right Doug,someone needs to write that book asap,technology is starting to run our lives,not improve the quality.I know it is needed so much in the third world,and can do alot to bring great shifts in the quality of life there,but to use computerised methods to assess personel standards is,in my humble opinion stupid in the extreme,we are really in "Big Brother" territory now.