Gremlin’s Fireside Chat

A life time ago I was in the army – basic grunt, but I specialized as a combat signaller. There is barely anything I remember from those times (the early 1980’s) about signalling; but there is one-thing I do remember (and is not covered by the official secrets act) which has stood by me with the passing years and is useful in situations where you have to report or analyze; These things are covered by the labels:

1. Who
2. What
3. When
4. Where
5. Why (optional)
6. How

This is especially true in an ambush situation where you need to tell your superiors what is happening in as accurate and succinct way as possible. What these labels mean is:

Who is making the call/being observered.
What is happening.
When is it happening,
Where is/will it happen,
Why is it happening, and finally
How did it happen, and how are you going to respond.

For example as a member of a section being ambushed I would say for example:

“Hello X this is Y, Ambushed by Enemy Infantry at 12:10 zulu grid reference A, retiring to point B”

Nothing that interesting in a military context, or in a civilian one? Well don’t be too hasty since it is useful in providing succinct reports or preliminary analysis on a subject or research paper. For example regarding reading a technical paper:

Who is the author
What are they writing about, and
what are the circumstances in which it was written (external effectors) including what sources influcenced the paper/idea.
Also what are you going to do as a response to this paper (ignore, cite, incorporate ideas etc).
When was the paper written.
Where was the paper written (location, company etc – and how would that effect/influence the paper and its impartiality/content),
Why is this paper important/interesting,
why was it written,
why am I reading it.
How will/did it influence you, the company, the field, global events.

It can be more mundanely applied to status reports:

Who is making the report
What did you do and what are you going to do next.
When did you do it.
Where did you do it/make-changes.
Why Did you do it/make-changes

On a side note one thing I always found disturbing as a combat signaller was being told that the first person an enemy kills (especially in an ambush situation) is the signaller – that said it was always a better job than carrying a heavy machine gun or anti-tank weapon around.

On the train in this morning I came across a little article which blew my mind away – the very odd story (listed in many places) about an American woman who has sat on a toilet seat for two years!!! so long in reality that her skin had melded with the toilet seat. In the end they had to use a crow-bar to remove the seat and cart the lot off to the hospital where they managed to eventually separate woman from toilet. Bizzare or what!!!
Why did not the boyfriend do anything sooner rather than just leaving her to sit on the loo – not feeding her I would have thought would have helped her leave the safety of the bathroom. Anyway its nice to know that life definitely has it whacky side.

One year ago today my father died peacefully, but unexpectedly in his sleep. Its been a long, yet short year if you know what I mean. I really miss him. He was my closest male friend, advisor and mentor; and there is never a day that goes pass that I don’t think of him or hanker with the need to ask him a question.

Life can be cruel, and I know that he would loved to have seen and held his new grand-daughter – he loved children, and children loved him.

Dad I miss you. I love you.

Spring is almost here and the bushes and other-things in the garden need a little tender-loving-care; you know the kind – the kind only deliverable by using a hedge strimmer/cutter. Trouble is it almost killed me.

Like many people (I would not dare call myself a gardener) I have electrical gardening equipment. Anyway to cut a long story short I have a Black and Decker GT110 hedge trimer and in one sweep I sheered through its own power cable!!!! I saw a flash, and instantly knew what happened but I was saved by having a trip plug on my extension cord. Talk about lucky. From from this Garden Safety web-page I now realize that not only did I not have the cable over my shoulder, I wasn’t wearing goggles either. What an idiot I am.

I could not stop shaking (non-electrical) from the shock and stress of it. I have a wonderful wife and six week old baby daughter both of whom I adore – and I almost left them without husband and father. I must be more careful in the future.

I – NO we have been eagerly awaiting three months, for reasons which will become obvious when we say that we are having a baby!!!!

The Baby is due (please God) around January 8th 2008. We had to wait for 3 months since the first trimenster is when you are in danger of loosing the baby, and then we had to tell all the nearest and dearest. We went to the Hollis street hospital last week for the first ultasound scan – and what a thrill. We could see a little head, arms and legs waving around and the heart even beating!!!! Fantastic. We were so excited we forgot to ask for a photo of the little – un.

I still have not gotten my head around the fact I am going to be a first-time-dad at 43!!!! Wow.

Life is fantastic Still cannot stop grinning.