Yellow Jacket Diaries

Two years older & wiser

2009-02-04T13:13:42+01:00

Last Thursday marked the end of my second year bouncing around the Irish civil engineering industry like a ping-pong ball in a tumble dryer (thanks to Dilbert for that analogy). So, what, if anything, have I learned in that time? I will present the bullet point summary below, because I am a bullet point summary type of person.

- "Did I say that?" gets you out of most unpleasant situations.
- "I did say Friday, but I didn't say which Friday" gets you out of the rest.
- Don't blame anyone for anything.
- Try not to get blamed for anything, either.
- If it's not documented, it's not done.
- It's not possible to charge enough for your work.

So that's it. Some of it was fun.

If you have been, thanks for reading!

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Leaves in the wind

2009-01-15T10:35:18+01:00

January 2009 has blessed us with pleasant weather out in the field. Since we returned from Christmas holidays, every day has been cold but dry, and one could ask for no more. Walking around, the ground was solid underfoot. One wasn't bogging down in the slop like before Christmas. Good times, while they lasted.

However the weather has changed these last few days, turning mild, windy and wet. The forecast said so much, but of course no one thought it would change. Yesterday was mild and windy, today added wet to the equation. It was a day for sitting inside looking out.

Looking out the through the perspex portholes, I was fascinated at how the wind hunted the Autumn leaves out of the recesses where they had hidden since December, how it tossed them up in the air, only for them to find new crevices to hide in until the next gust, or maybe the one after. I was fascinated by how they piled, one after the other, into the next convenient gap they could find.

How this reminds me of our economy and its current woes. Crevices and gaps existed and multiplied during the fair weather, when whatever mild breezes there were hunted the dried, brightly coloured leaves (with bridges on them) on to the next stop on their journey. Maybe some of them keep going, bouncing on into the abyss, or at least into the next field, never to be seen again, but there were so many it was easy to see a large pile form, safe for now, and keep gathering, as where one stops, another is sure to follow. And so the leaf piles built.

Safety in numbers. And so many layers mounted up, one on top of the other, and with time it was all but impossible to tally up how many lay in each nest. But when a strong enough gust of wind comes along, how they all give themselves up into the air. Maybe there weren't so many there after all? Maybe as they lay there, in a large, dense heap, a dose of leaf mould set in.

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On attempting to become vegetarian

2009-01-07T02:51:05+01:00

I have some really important news and given that it is late, only very limited possibility of a receptive audience.

I have this evening decided that I am going to attempt to live as what I will describe at the moment as a practical vegetarian. This means I will avoid mammal meat where possible, initially at least. This choice may penetrate further into avoiding mammalian meat totally or may relax into preferring to eat other foods but consuming said meat on a choice basis. I do not feel the need to stop eating fish or animal products like cheese or eggs. I also feel that it may be ok to eat animals which have been treated ethically and with respect throughout their lives and not as consumer goods to be moved from shed to checkout as quickly as possible.

My reasons stem from three important events today:

1. A vivid description of how a Halal meat factory operated given by a former worker in said facility and in particular his description of what constituted "a laugh" for particular staff members. I do not believe humans have the right to treat animals in this way and object to this form of butchery very strongly.

2. On my way home from visiting a friend this evening I passed the sad corpse of a small dog dead by the side of a footpath in a village. What has our world come to that initially a driver can mow down someone's little pet and carry on driving in their personal tank, and subsequently that no one who passed by, on foot in particular but also in car, chose to respect the poor animal's existence by doing something about him lying there. I stopped, but could not summon the stomach to get out and even try to do anything to help. I have particular feelings about blood and injuries which would have left me unable to carry out any positive actions so I admit that I just left well enough alone.

3. I noted today that Steve Jobs of Apple fame is having health difficulties again and I wish him the best and a speedy recovery (being very much impressed by Jobs and in particular the ethos he infused upon his return to the company with the creation of Mac OS X and the iPod, two of the most important technological happenings of my time). I noted that he used to live as a fruitarian - consuming only fruits, fruit-like vegetables (tomatoes, olives etc.) and seeds. If someone who lives on such a pure and simple diet can encounter enormous health problems, what magnitude of greater hazards and risks are the rest of us exposed to through our choices of nutrition?

I am enthused by my quest, hopefully for the right reasons, and will see how it goes. If you have been, thanks for listening.

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More green issues...

2008-12-11T10:04:51+01:00

The writer has become rather interested in all things green in his old age, and is having some profound thoughts involving flashing dollar signs upon reading Myth 8 from the following article, "The 10 Big Energy Myths", whose author tries admirably to debunk many negative sentiments in circulation about alternative & renewable energy, while offering suggestions about how various solutions could be put to use in the real world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/27/renewableenergy-energy

Myth 8 is of particular interest to a dirty capitalist contractor like myself.
"Myth 8: zero carbon homes are the best way of dealing with greenhouse gas emissions from buildings"

Buildings are responsible for about half the world's emissions; domestic housing is the most important single source of greenhouse gases. The UK's insistence that all new homes are "zero carbon" by 2016 sounds like a good idea, but there are two problems. In most countries, only about 1% of the housing stock is newly built each year. Tighter building regulations have no effect on the remaining 99%. Second, making a building genuinely zero carbon is extremely expensive.....

Instead, we should take a lesson from Germany. A mixture of subsidies, cheap loans and exhortation is succeeding in getting hundreds of thousands of older properties eco-renovated each year... German renovators are learning lessons from the PassivHaus movement, which has focused not on reducing carbon emissions to zero, but on using painstaking methods to cut emissions to 10 or 20% of conventional levels, at a manageable cost... Careful attention to detail in both design and building work has produced unexpectedly large cuts in total energy use.... Rather than demanding totally carbon-neutral housing, the UK should push a massive programme of eco-renovation and cost-effective techniques for new construction.

Now there is a fine idea, especially in the economically troubled times we are in. The queues are shorter than ever at the hot food counters, and not just because they have no pork.... (On a side note, thankfully that situation is being addressed...). The reasoned and logical thinking above, if acted upon by the powers and QUANGOs that be, would produce so very many jobs and allow the movement of so very many pound notes, that the environmental benefits would come to the government practically for free, if only an effective process was put in place to get large scale work done all over the country.

It's early in the century yet...

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Budget 2009 Ireland - Sustainable Buildings

2008-10-31T00:14:29+01:00

Yay, there's some funding for sustainability in building in this year's bad news...

...

capital funding of €71 million is being made available to fund sustainable energy and energy research programmes, continuing the priority given to these areas last year and allowing for the expansion of some programmes;

funding for the Home Energy Saving scheme run by Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI), and piloted since 2008, is being increased from €5 million in 2008 to €20 million in 2009; €5 million will also be provided for the Warmer Homes Scheme;

the provision for the Greener Homes Scheme run by SEI has been scaled back from €27 million to €12 million reflecting the maturing of the market;

...

Budget 09

We shall wait and see...

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More construction industry woes in Ireland

2008-08-19T00:26:18+02:00

Bah.

More bad news.

You start to think you're a state, then you definitely are a state.

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Ireland's Budget 2008

2007-12-05T13:21:08+01:00

Within a few short hours, the Irish Government will announce it's financial targets for the next 36 months, Budget 2008.

I have a few hopes for this year's important budget.

1. Let's see a readjustment of the Stamp Duty thing, for the following reasons:

Stamp Duty on new houses is charged by the Government at a rate of up to 9% of the price of the property. There have been calls to abolish this before, as it does not make particularly reasonable sense to charge 9% of the price of a house to simply change the ownership documents, when it is not unusual for houses to sell for over €1m.

This issue has been under scrutiny for a long time in Ireland, under various guises (example). Up to recently, it was suggested that any cut in this tax would encourage auctioneers and developers selling a house to increase their selling price in proportion to the cut in Stamp Duty, leaving the property costing the buyer exactly the same as before any cut, in real terms.

However, given condition of the property market in Ireland at the moment, I do not thk anyone is in a position to increase the selling price of a property.

So let's cut Stamp Duty back to a nominal charge per transaction, and have a reduction in actual cost prices of property by this amount, giving a much needed psychological boost to the house buyer and encouraging continued prosperity in the construction sector.

2. Carbon-type Taxes

Let's have a sensible scheme to achieve a cut in transport related carbon, which is producing emissions which are growing at a faster rate than any other sector of the economy. We need something reasoned and positive, which will encourage people to think about the way they travel, and not a blanket rise of car taxes, as has been speculated.

It makes no sense to increase car tax on larger engine sizes, as people will pay up and pollute happily away.

So let's have a points based system, taking into account factors such as vehicle age, fuel, weight, enigne technology (such as particulate filters, hybrid drive trains, stop-start system if fitted), annual mileage, number of vehicles in the household and the purpose the vehicle is used for. If the system allows people to save money by choices they make I believe it will lead to positive change.

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We build 3 million homes - or leave these families in Dickensian misery

2007-12-01T20:47:38+01:00

George Monbiot
Tuesday November 27, 2007
The Guardian
Article here

It sounds preposterous: 3 million new homes in England alone by 2020. My instinct is to fight this project. It threatens Britain's countryside, the character of our towns, our water supplies and carbon targets. Today the housing and regeneration bill, which will help to implement this building programme, has its second reading in the House of Commons.

Where should we stand? Is the housing crisis as acute as some people have claimed? Or has it been whipped up by the House Builders Federation, hoping to get its claws into the countryside? To find out whether these homes are really needed, I asked the charity Shelter to take me to meet some of the people it works with in London. I had no idea. I simply had no idea.

Reading this article I was filled with a mixture of sadness, hope and a bit of builder's buzz.

Amid the stories of vulnerable people living in truly miserable conditions, the overwhelming message is that these houses need to be replaced, and fast. Not just upgraded, but replaced with more than one house for every one torn down.

(While schemes like this in Kildare are a help, and a more frequent occurrence in Ireland due to local authorities reappraising their housing "stock" with the help of GIS systems and databases, it is hard to fix that which is fundamentally wrong in the first place. It cannot be economical to update houses built 40 years ago to acceptable modern standards.)

That's what building is about, the excitement of taking on an enormous challenge, making it happen, getting the work done, nearly getting it right, making a few quid in the process, and bringing new buildings to people who need them.

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Small victories!

2007-11-28T21:44:58+01:00

More than two good things happened today but here I am going to address just two events:

1. Found a bonus tub of Neapolitan, the best ice cream ever conceived by man, in the freezer.

Happy days.

2. I go for lunch quite often with a colleague who admittedly is quite a bit up the salary scale from me. However my colleague always insists on buying lunch for us both, and are rather clever in creating diversions to allow this covert payment to take place. But today I was the faster and got to pay everything during a hastily announced restroom trip. Score!

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Too busy earning a living to make money

2007-11-28T00:04:23+01:00

I was reminded of these wise words this evening, as I struggled to find a clean, reasonable crisp shirt to wear tomorrow. How much of our lives are taken up with the most mundane repetitive tasks? How many great things are left undone, how many great thoughts are left unthunk?

It's in a new light I'm seeing things like laundry, doing dishes (as I am presently living without a dishwasher... I say living in it's most general sense, as without a dishwasher I am as alive as a small snail), and putting out the garbage.

While these events and their completion bring a certain sense of hunter-gatherer satisfaction, and that was before I began timing myself doing the ironing and setting up a benchmarking scheme for the proportion of my rubbish that goes into the recycle bin, is it not when idle that the most profitable thoughts are formulated and the most creative plans are put into action? I wager that Bell (or Meucci, depending on how you like your history) spent many hours sitting on his arse doing nothing, and with no intention of doing anything, before the telephone was invented. It certainly wasn't on a Tuesday evening in the half-hour after he hoovered the hall and before he cleaned the microwave.

So leave aside an evening to think, plan and scheme.

Here's to going to work in a smelly, crumpled shirt, with half of last night's dinner hanging off your unshaven chin, and filing the most creative expenses claim ever.

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What does this one do?

2007-11-26T00:09:21+01:00

To kick things off I want to get an answer to something. I was walking down by my local wildlife park the other day and photographed a goose-type animal I've never seen before.

Any ideas what it's called or where it's from?

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Welcome and introduction

2007-11-25T23:52:52+01:00

Welcome readers,

This is a project I've been meaning to embark on for a few years, but better late than never.

I'm a young construction professional occasionally working in Ireland's vibrant and wonderful construction industry. During this time I have inhabited and possibly worked in a variety of roles - general operative, delivery boy, truck counter, setting out engineer, site engineer, resident engineer, cowboy and tea-boy.

As I write, it seems Irish construction has begun to collapse around us, with bad news printed in every newspaper, every day. Perhaps this is a good time to begin documenting our times, along with my memories stretching back to around 1995, when it all began.

So this blog is a chance to muse on the construction sector in Ireland, my experiences past, present and future, and various misguided observations on the world and it's atmosphere, land and oceans, the global economy and the day-to-day lives of those who wear yellow jackets to make a living.

Enjoy!

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