Late Autumn in Auckland

I'm sat in our motel room again, trying to convince my code to connect to an Excel spreadsheet. (I'm doing an expense programme for Mrs. Willsy), and not having a lot of luck. I've got an awful feeling that one of the books I threw away to come here, had all the information in it that I needed.  Isn’t it always the way?  Well, I’ve learnt it all once, so I’m sure I can do it again.  It’s very fiddly using interops though, but you only have to do it once, and when you’ve got it right, it’s right forever.

I’ve had a look around the web at various things, and it would appear that the old school is hemorrhaging staff.  I wonder why that is?  Could it be something to do with management style?  As always, when the junta that run an establishment like the school begin to believe their own propaganda, then things are going to go from bad to worse, and it’s almost impossible to stop the slide.  When management notices that things are bad, it’s usually too late to stop them, and the ‘told you so’ from the trenches doesn’t help.

This new school that Mrs. Willsy is at seems a model of how to run a school properly.  The management follows all the things I learned in leadership school in the Navy, and they are so obvious that when they are pointed out to you, you shrug and say “I thought everyone knew that”.  These are things like giving praise where it’s due, when it’s due, and supporting peoples ideas, as well as a fairly open hand approach to budgets,  just to name but a few.  The trouble is that it’s very easy for a management team to think that they are important, and not just a steering mechanism.  The really bad thing about it is that at the old school, they seem to have forgotten that they are dealing with people, (if they ever knew that in the first place).

Far Away Friends

It was so good to hear from Cecile, (Alec’s mum).  She really is a lovely lady, and Alec is really at the start of a long successful road I’m sure. Cecile is one of those people that just seem to cheer you up when you meet them, so unassuming, and gracious in every sense of the word.  I really miss all of the people I left behind.  Goodbyes have been so much part of my life, since I joined the Navy, but they never get any easier.

We’re back in Okere Falls for the weekend, after a bit of a road trip through the Coromandel, (that was a place I used to read about when I was a kid), it was really impressive scenery, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

OK, back to my rant.  I see the HM has finally got round to writing another blog, after 6 months silence.  Still in PDF format though, you would think that the net wizards the school is paying for, would set up a real blog.  Maybe not, that would be far too technical.

As the time separation from the school gets longer, my memories get more and more fuzzy about it.  However, I will never ever forget the events that Mrs. Willsy and I were privileged to be part of at the school, such as the fantastic trip to Portsmouth with the Year 7s, and the day trip to Rome with the Legion.  It’s such a shame that these will never happen again, they could have grown into a real tradition at the school, but as always, the shortsightedness of the management foiled it all.  I believe that the classics department is in the doldrums with the new (old) teacher not being able to hold a candle to Mrs. Willsy.  Well she is a hard act to follow, as her present school keeps telling her, and the HM never seems to know what he’s got ‘till it’s gone, to quote an old song.

Right, back to work.  Keep watching this blog, and you never know, one of these days.....

Easter Holidays

Here we are, back in Auckland again.  It’s a short term though, only 10 weeks, and there’s a bank holiday in that.  We did a bit of travelling during the holidays, round the Hawkes Bay area, and then down to Feilding (yes that is the right spelling).  Back to the grindstone now though.  I had a look at the school website, and I noticed it’s still the same, no changes made at all, the HM’s blog is still from last November, and the school still offers the Legion and computer programming as activities.  I really do think it’s about time they woke up and fixed it, but from what I hear, they are in a lot worse trouble that an out-of-date website, with a staff turnover of about 15%.  One of the selling points offered to us was that the turnover of staff was zero, with retirements being the only loss.  There’s a common factor running through this, and it could be something to do with management.  Not that we care any more, we’re glad to be out of it, and judging from what I’ve heard, it was the best move we could have made. 

The school wrote us a very snippy letter about six weeks ago, asking for a bucket full of money to fix up the cottage we were staying in, and they wanted to charge us for cleaning carpets (they were so filthy when we moved in, we had to put rugs down to cover them), a broken bath (???), electricity and gas bills, which they have been paying for us as per their contract with us, and a lot of other things such as holes in the walls (I had got permission to hang pictures from the landlady), and for moving a lot of stuff that our so-called friends had promised to move for us – just as an aside on that, these people offered to buy all our furniture from us, but we haven’t seen a penny yet, and we really don’t expect to.  It just goes to show doesn’t it?  By the way, in case you’re thinking that this is sour grapes on my part, our contract with the school was that the school would provide accommodation for us ‘At no cost to yourselves’.  They have short memories don’t they?

Thursday - going home

Here I am in Auckland library, waiting for Mrs Willsy to finish teaching, and then we can go home, back to the lake. On the way, we have to stop off at my sister in laws to fix her computer.  I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but I hope it won’t take long.  I’m over the cold now, but I can’t seem to shake the beat up feeling you get after one though.  We’re going away for a few days this weekend, so I think that should fix it. 

I was just thinking back to the time I got called to the HM’s study to explain a blog I had started before – it had been pointed out to him by another member of the staff, and at that time I had a watch set on my website to record who visited it, so I have a fair idea who it was, and I can’t say I’m at all surprised. (have a look at my previous blogs, and you might be able to see who I’m talking about)  it’s hard not to be a little paranoid when things like the evaporating job happen, you do a lot of looking over your shoulder.  Mind you with the way the boarding house was run after that, with all the petty little rules, and the kids moaning at me nearly every day about how they didn’t like the way it was run, I didn’t have much to worry about.  The fact that this was the kid’s home was lost somewhere in the bureaucracy that was the boarding house in those days. 

Now I believe they have someone who left his last position under a cloud (daren't mention the 'B' word).  That place just goes from bad to worse.

And Again..

Here I am back again, I've just had a cold, and didn't really feel like doing much at all. summer colds are the worst aren't they?  Back to my rant:  I haven’t been to see if the HM has done another blog yet, but I’m willing to bet money that he hasn’t.  I must tell you about the saga of the management software though.

The outgoing HM (remember, the big Jock?) had asked me if it would be possible to write it, and after a lot of to and froing, which included me giving up a couple of paying contracts, the school decided to go with some software that was written by two teachers from another school (talk about the old boys network).  This has got add ons (that you have to pay extra for), like on-line reports, a bundled in web page, a single linked in database and quite a lot more.  These are things that a professional developer (like me) would have done as a matter of course.  Not to mention that mine was about half the price. 

To top it all off, I find out it’s been written in one of those pseudo languages that make it very hard to do anything else with, like output useable data and have user defined views of the data, without going through a very expensive re-write by the developers.  On top of all that, if the Big OS in the Sky (you know the one) decides that the pseudo language is taking too much away from their own languages, then nasty things will happen to it.  Remember Netscape?  Oh, and BTW, I hope they don’t even think of upgrading to a 64 bit OS.  Then they’ll learn all about the phrase, ‘paying through the eyes and nose’ means. See you next week.

Wednesday - Long afternoon

Still writing that household accounts software.  I’m glad I’m not getting paid for this, as every hour or so, I change my mind, and try another way of doing things.  That’s the beauty of writing for yourself though, and that’s how most programming constructs are learnt.  I've found it’s no good if you just read about a construct, you have to use it the real world for its function to really sink in.  There’s nothing like working in a real production environment though, I really do miss that.   It’s great to be able to bounce ideas of people who are at least on the same thought plane as yourself is also a fantastic way of learning things.

Incidentally, I notice that the school is still offering the Legion as one of its activities.  I wonder who’s running that?

Tuesday Morning

Tuesday morning, on a beautiful early autumn day and I’m just about to start my day's work. I'm writing a home accounts software package mainly for the practice, but also because we need one. Have you ever wondered were your money went at the end of the month? I do, and as I don't like questions, I’m writing this.  It’s looking pretty good so far, and I’ve come up with some good ideas.  Talking about software packages, I’m still smarting a little bit about not being given the job of writing the management package for the school.  This is a thread that you’ll hear more of, so I won’t belabour the point here, just a small warning that I did give to the IT people before they went the proprietary software way.  Any software that is not part of MS and gets too popular either gets taken over by MS (the good way), or gets sidelined by MS (the bad way). If you want to know how the bad way works, remember Netscape?