Unlike the rest of my friends list, I’m not (primarily) going to be posting about Terry’s knighthood (although that is nonetheless very good news). Instead, I’m posting about Wendy Hall, my former PhD supervisor, who has been made a Dame in the New Years Honours list. Jolly good news, and much deserved.
It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegonethe Gark household. Actually, that’s a lie. Got back from Luxembourg on Tuesday night, fortunately with my luggage this time (made sure that I was checked in for both legs, and that my luggage was marked as priority). Also, to those folk who suggested that I carry everything as hand luggage, I checked the maximum size for carry-on on the LUX->CDG leg, and it was barely large enough for my not-overly-big laptop bag. As it turns out, losing my luggage was a blessing in disguise. My case turned up while I was at… Read More »The week in review
Things are starting to settle down here in ECS. This morning, we were allowed back into our offices in Zepler, so I’ve been able to commune with my books again. My umbrella plant is beyond saving, however. I’ve donated my meeting table to one of the secretaries from Mountbatten who is being rehoused in Zepler, and a bunch of my shelves (most of which are empty) to a professor from Mountbatten who is moving the contents of his old office into the rather smaller office next door to mine. We’re only allowed into the building during business hours (0845-1730), which… Read More »Work as normal / A day at the zoo / Birthday redux
Well, it’s Thursday, and I’m still working from home. The reoccupation of Zepler (the building I work in) has been put off until next week at the earliest – we’ve been told that there is no firm date. The salvage contractors are in Mountbatten, and staff based there have been told that they’ll be able to give directions to the contractors in order to retrieve up to one plastic crate of belongings each. Given the book collections of some of the professorial staff from IAM in Mountbatten, this is likely to be a difficult choice. For up-to-date news, there’s a… Read More »Fire aftermath
Big all-hands meeting this morning, with senior University management in attendance (vice-chancellor and registrar). The upshot is that the clean rooms are completely destroyed, and that the top two floors of Mountbatten are badly damaged. The fire spread downwind from the clean rooms to the upper floors of Mountbatten (which is a separate building). The comms group on Mountbatten level four have probably lost almost everything, though the damage is less severe on the north side of the building (facing away from the clean rooms) and towards the Zepler bridge at the east of the building. Mountbatten level three has… Read More »ECS Fire
See this? That’s where I work, that is. Fortunately, it’s not the building that I work in, but the building next door which holds the electronics half of the department. and I drove up to see where all the smoke was coming from before we actually knew any details. Looks like the School of Electronics and Computer Science has lost the entirety of its microchip and fibre optic fabrication facility, which was the leading such facility in a UK university. No details yet as to how the fire started, but there were at least sixteen appliances present, from as far… Read More »Oh no, not again