the IT girl

4 years - 4 days later

Can't believe I have neglected this blog for practically four years! And where am I at the moment? Where I was when I last posted; in Cape Town visiting Mike, Nicola and Jacob. Yes, there is another (little) person in their household - our gorgeous grandson Jacob who is 18 months old.

So much has happened in the four years that have flown by. On the personal front, two more grandchildren - Avie Leone born in September 2009 and Jacob George born in July 2010.

What a joy. Nya started school in September of last year and is loving it. Avie is very funny and makes us laugh a lot. Like Nya, she just loves books and will sit quietly on her own looking at them. Jacob also loves books but his passion is wheels and steering wheels! Now who does he take after?

We, well mostly Ed, have been very busy re-building a two-story cottage in the heart of our village. The layout has been turned upside down with the bedrooms and bathroom downstairs and the living area upstairs to take advantage of the views. The cottage is an eco-friendly passive building. We are planning to move in April or May. This will be a major downsize so a garage sale is essential. Busy days when I return mid February.

Motor racing has been a huge feature in our leisure time. We travel to racetracks in England and Europe as Eddy competes pre '66 Grand Prix car races. Last season he fineshed second in class. Fantastic.

On the work front, Ed in particular has had a very busy time with some very interesting projects. We are supposed to be slowing down and thinking of retiring but still enjoy the work too much.

 

Sun, Sea and shortcuts

Have been (and still am) enjoying a sabbatical in Cape Town and the Garden Route. We arrived on the 19th January and are staying with our son and daughter-in-law, Mike & Nicola. Although we are on holiday work does go on - more so for Ed than for me. Ed is working on a big tender for a German company and since we got back from our Christmas trip up the coast (see our family blog if you're interested), he has been beavering away at this project. This has meant that most days have been spent working on the laptop then we have gone into Mike's office around 4 in the afternoon to make calls to the UK (- 2 hours) and Germany (- 1 hour). While I've been at World Wide Creative's office, I've come to realise that although they use Word on their Macs, they would be whole lot quicker if they knew all the shortcut keys. A little project for me is to work out all Word's standard shortcut keys for a Mac. Guess they may be different for different versions. We'll see. Well that's my little project but I guess I'll go jump in the pool then have some lunch first.

Ghana - 9th to 17th Nov 2007

Have been really busy and out of the country, but that's no excuse for not keeping up with my blog. Decided today was the day to start afresh and found the below as a draft unpublished.

I've escaped the grey skies and cold of England for a week in gloriously warm Ghana. Not quite what it sounds, as Eddy and I are here to commission a dyno which his company sold a few years ago. I get to come along as I wrote the data acquisition software and need to install it and train the end user.
We've learnt a valuable lesson - don't assume your client will inform you that you need a visa and send the required invitation! We did check on vaccinations and anti- malarial requirements but not on visas. However, despite hiccups at both airport of departure and arrival, we finally arrived at our lovely hotel on the Accra coast in the warmth!

It was Friday night and we did not have to go into work until the Monday so we had two wonderful days lazing by the pool reading and walking on the beach. I was a bit apprehensive on Monday but the people we had to work with were great, both the owners and the staff.

Whilst Eddy sorted out the dyno room (one of the cleanest we have experienced), I was in an air-conditioned office loading the software onto their laptop and training . Despite a few glitches,everything went according to plan so the work side was finished on Wednesday. That evening, along with visiting Cummins guys, we were entertained to a typical African meal at the home of the owners of the company. Wonderful. They had also taken us to an amazing French restaurant on the Monday evening. Very generous.

Having finished Weds, we had the next three days to once again relax until we left for home on Saturday night.

Yes, there was a lot of time off but we were able to keep up to date with our work via the internet. What did we do beforehand?

Keyboard Shortcuts

Use as many keyboard shortcuts as possible to prevent RSI (caused by moving from the keyboard to the mouse and back again). These also save you time.

• Ctrl + A  Select All
• Ctrl + C  Copy
• Ctrl + X  Cut
• Ctrl + V  Paste
• Ctrl + F  Find
• Ctrl + Home  Go to the beginning
• Ctrl + End  Go to the end
• Ctrl + Z Undo
• F5 update the active window
• Alt + Tab to switch between open programmes
• Windows Key + D  shows the desktop

Blog Studio Number 2

Today after popular demand Karin and myself ran the second Introduction to blogging workshop.

We had three very keen new bloggers: Jamie, Peter and Nicola who are now excited about their blogging prospects, and looking forward to the advanced blogging course being held on 28th September.

Heron Practice at Lyddon

Glorious sunshine (at last) on Saturday when Ed went to test drive the Heron at Lyddon. He had just re-built the engine and needed to check performance as we have a last minute invitatione to  Goodwood Revival next weekend.
The Goodwood Revival is amazing - for we ladies it's a chance to get out the dressing up box and re-enact the late 50's and early 60's for a long weekend and for the men - well boy's toys is all I can say.

Our First Blogging Workshop

Karin Hermans and I had a great set of 'new' bloggers at our workshop on Friday. They each had very different reasons for wanting to start blogging and were not too sure at the start of the day. By the end of our sometimes fun, sometime serious day we had six converts. Check it out at The Blogging Studio. Your comments would be appreciated. We had support from Karin's blogging friend Kent Blumberg. Itook his tip and read Blog Wild! by Andy Wibbels. Thanks for the Advice, Kent. This should be a must for every new blogger.
I'm really looking forward to our next workshop on Tuesday 18th September - beginning to feel like a disciple!
Training Advanced Excel tomorrow which is always fun. Delegates get so excited when they start to realise what Excel is capable of doing!

Blogging Workshop

In addition to our software training courses, we are going to start running blogging workshops as there seems to be a great need for this. The 'we' in this case is myself and my friend and fellow BNI'er, Karin, who is an old hand at blogging. She has five blogs through which she has made friends worldwide and also gained many new customers for her Wooden Flooring company as well as fans for her book The Kiss Business.

Our first workshop is being run this Friday 24th August. I am beavering away at preparing a manual for our delegates whilst Karin has set up our blogging workshop site, invited all the delegates to sign up as contributors to our TypePad blog and is preparing her input for the day. We are thrilled to have received help from Kent Blumberg in the form of two PowerPoint presentations that he use for his blogging training. Many thanks, Kent, for your generosity. (Kent is one of Karin's many blogging friends).

Our first workshop is full and we have only a couple of spaces left on the second (18th September). Exciting times! Guess I'd better get back to writing that manual