Kicking Horse Canada

Well it's nearly 4000 feet up. The roads are interesting, up hill and down Dale(well mountain) and there is still snow on the verges and fast moving meltwater in the streams. It's 20c outside but the breeze has a sharply cold edge to it and in the shade the temperature drops 15c instantly. Wildlife on the roads round here includes 2 young black bears grazing oblivious to the cars roaring by and to the row of cameras held by mesmerised photographers scarcely able to believe their luck. It's amazingly quiet everywhere. Parked cars are all unlocked and bikers roar up on their Harleys, take off their helmets and leathers, leave them perched on their bikes and, revealed as normal late middle aged couples, walk to the supermarket. I suspect they are buying gin and tonic....

More of the same

Well, the accident in Japan has been upgraded to a 7, the same as Chernobyl. More and more people are being moved away from their homes but despite the 7, all we hear is a comforting gush of PR saying that things are under control and its just a matter of time. Time before what?

Well, I suspect most mean before it falls out of the journalistic target zone for good stories and becomes a once in a while "whatever happened to..." update. After that I suspect the nuclear brigade are hoping that we will all forget that the most basic rule of big engineering has been broken once again.

What do I mean? Well, in the Challenger disaster, the Columbia disaster, Texas CIty, Macondo and now Fukushima, the engineers were not quite as confident as management, didn't want to jeopardise their positions or weren't consulted and the unthinkable happened.

Key ingredients:

No assessment of the impact of very high impact, very low probability events

No Plan B

A corporate culture lacking focus on process safety

Poor management information and weak reporting structures

Unnecessary corporate complexity

Arrogant management used to getting their own way or politically influenced decision makers

Who next?

How fast things change.

Just a week ago the word Tsunami was linked in the public mind with the Boxing day disaster. Now it is far more likely to be remembered as the word that led to a wholesale rethink of energy policy. Yet another unplanned for high impact ultra low probability occurrence has done just that, occurred. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Macondo, and Fukushima. It seems that we don't want to learn. It's hard to have a plan B for a 9.0 magnitude earthquake offshore and a massive tsunami wiping out reactor backup systems, so we didn't. So, 3 reactors are probably melting, one is hot and all three will never work again.

By the way the Chinese are still going to build their planned 155 reactors....

New computer, new post

After 5 years of use my old macbook pro has finally reached the point of no return on a cost benefit basis as its screen has gone walkabout again.

So, greetings to the new macbook pro. 17" screen again and not all pretty and shiny but matt and ready to go for photo editing after only a smidgeon of colour correction. After the 17" screen and the similar size, almost everything else is different. Quad core processor, heaps of ram, and a video processor that once would have graced a laptop as the main processor and been feted in the nerdy magazines, probably not that many years ago. But, the piece de resistance is the the thunderbolt port. mega-times faster than USB 2.0 and multiple times faster than firewire 800.Finally, HD video editing may be a real time activity rather than a ho-hum I wonder how long it will take to render that - shall I have supper, a drink, a bath, go to bed and have breakfast the next day before checking or is that premature?

I just love techno toys....

Longish gap

Well, despite best resolutions I have slipped. It's now Op+29 I think. Claire the physio has been doing her polite soft spoken and minimal movement maximum pain muscle stretching and knee straightening for over two weeks now. I keep telling myself it's worthwhile and I know it is but when the muscles ache it's tempting to say "oh sod it...". Walking is better and the knee is bending again now the swelling is going down.

It's oddly frustrating now being housebound still for long periods of time, impatience is getting the better of me now...

Day 3

Well, it is actually Day three. I have had quite an interesting couple of days. The recording program is having some difficulty with my speech at the moment as I have had an almost tiny stroke. I have got a slight difficulty with my speech which won't get to go away for a couple more weeks. We have made some progress with the hospital food, and we've talked to the catering manager and the dietician and they are supplying just about okay omelettes.

I do have to have some more investigations next week. I have learnt just how claustrophobic and MR I scanner can be as I had to spend that they had to spend quite a lot of time inside one the day before yesterday.

I have made progress with my walking which is very positive. I have also found that the hospital TV system is a proponent of Chinese water torture, as it allows you to watch quite good films only in part, and then it generally fails to allow you to finish them! It also has no useful fast forward button when you try to restart the film.

New knee day one

Well new knee Day one. About one hours sleep overnight. I guess that was predictable given the pain level, the difficulty of finding anywhere comfortable to position myself and the fact that even small movements still hurt!

I have decided to use this blog for the time being to record how things are progressing rather than send out loads of e-mails. I will get Jean to send a link to those who may be interested. I have just had my dressing changed for the first time, for those are squeamish, you can't look at these things because there was still a lot of blood.

Another interesting thing is how difficult it was to relieve myself after the operation. I think I spent half the night stressing about that, certainly nothing happens until 4 AM! That despite 3 saline drip bags. I am also becoming addicted to pressing the pain relief button on the machine that gives me regular infusions of the magic pain relief.

The food last night was classic rubber chicken in dry over spiced tomato sauce and instant long grain rice. Not surprisingly, I didn't manage to eat very much of it.

They have now got an ice pack on my knee which, surprisingly, I can't actually feel at the moment. I'm not quite sure what that mean as the intentin is, I think, to reduce the swelling.

Later this morning the physiotherapist is going to come to make me get up and start moving around. Although I'm sure it's necessary, I have to say I'm not especially looking forward to it.

More anon.

New knee tomorrow

Strangely enough, I am quite looking forward to going into hospital tomorrow. At least, when I get out in a week or two, I should have a new and hopefully working right knee. With a bit of luck it will also be substantially pain-free.

I don't quite think I shall ever be able to gambol around like a spring lamb but maybe spring mutton would do.

There are all sorts of strange things happening in the world at the moment. Most of them are man-made or human induced in some form but the floods in Queensland seem to be of the order of those that made Noah famous. It is hard to imagine so much rain falling in so short a period of time that an area the size of a large part of Europe is under many metres of water. My worst nightmare consists of having to wade through large large areas of water containing snakes. People in Queensland are being warned about snakes in the water. If i was there, I think even if the water around my house was only a few inches deep I would probably not risk putting my toes into it. I know that that is almost the least of most people's problems in the flood areas but I would find it very hard personally to focus on anything else.

I am following with some interest how Sarah Palin will deal with the massive Morton's Fork on which she finds herself impaled. The dilemma runs as follows, Sarah together with her followers are supporters, vocal and active, of the right of all American citizens to carry firearms, but following the recent shooting of a Congresswoman and a number of people around her by a gunman, it will be very hard for her to continue to argue her position. On the other hand much of her credibility seems to have depended on her credentials as a wielder of significant near military firepower - it is hard to describe some of the pieces with which she has been photographed shooting wildlife as mere guns!

More anon...

Happy 2011

This year I am more determined to make regular posts, even if there is no one actually reading them at the moment. Since my last post a lot has happened and Gordon Brown has finally departed, quite unlamented. We now have a coalition government, which on the face of it seems to be somewhat more stable publicly than the last New Labour government.

I do not have many airport stories at the moment, my knees making it very difficult actually to fly without major problems. I am quite glad of this given the mess Heathrow airport was in during the snow at the end of last year. It just shows that allowing acquisitions of capital hungry companies by highly geared entities which will require all of the cash generated by the target to pay off the debt is not a good idea.

BP has also had a very poor year, the Macondo well disaster being the culmination of a fairly predictable series of corporate behaviours. Although the deaths were clearly quite tragic, I have to say I am interested in the outputs of the various enquiries - these should make a major contribution to the learnings on process safety, in particular the management of very low probability, high impact disasters.

More soon.