Lighting and data triumphs

Before I left the office yesterday evening, Ashley had established that the florescent lighting tube I'd been hunting for over the past couple of days could be obtained from stocks held at an electrical trade wholesaler's store in Canton, the family business of Alan Wilson Electrical Supplies, just ten minutes walk from home.

I was there purchasing a couple of tubes by ten past nine. By half past I'd discovered that not only had the tube died but also its mounting. I rang up to check if they had one. The man at the other end expressed doubt, but went and checked and found there was one left. It was waiting for me when I arrived for a second time at ten to ten. This time everything worked fine, though I had to wait for Clare to return from school at lunchtime to have another set of hands - one to hold the mounting and tube, one to screw it back into a most awkward place under a cupboard.

All sorts of places we enquired of had lighting tubes and fitments available on their shelves, but Howden our kitchen suppliers three years ago provided accessories to their own standard, which wasn't quite the same in length or power consumption as varieties of equipment commonly used. With their name and address actually printed on the dud tube removed, their commercial operation is clearly big enough to enable them to commission mass orders direct from a suitably competitive manufacturer.  So, anyone who buys their equipment gets locked in to their supply cycle for obtaining spare parts. 

This may benefit the company and be convenient to some customers. However, our experience of ordering lighting components through our local Howden outlet was less then satisfactory. The same was true for Kath and Anto, who also have a Howden kitchen installed a year after ours.  Kath got spare parts for her kitchen lighting off the internet. This is the first time any of our original installed kit has needed replacement, so it was most fortunate to discover a local firm that has sufficient longevity to carry all kinds of electrical spares and odd bits and pieces across generations which people may need, but which get swept away in the tide of commercial progress by bigger corporates. It's not just the parts but the huge amount of expertise shared by a family firm which makes a small family business like this an unique treasure.

In between the craftsmen who can make anything you need, at a price, and the mass manufacturers which increasingly supply global markets with useable consistent standard products, comes a huge range of companies - SMEs is the current jargon phrase - small to medium enterprises which make, store, or distribute accessories or components that greatly prolong the life of useable equipment or installations with replacement parts. Sure, this service can be and often is achieved effectively by big corporate bodies using suitable computer inventory software and storage, but not always.

What's amazes me is how something even better and more efficient than this can be achieved by a company whose life and collective memory spans generations, a team of people able to remember what customers may need after the big guys have moved on and are busy promoting 'bettter' replacements for everything, although nobody asked them for this. Knowing what the customer may need is a different kind of service from persuading customers what they may next need but don't yet know. In the ecosystem which is trade and commerce, there's room for all types.

This afternoon, Ashley found his lost phone and spent half an hour negotiating BT automated answering menus in order to persuade someone to re-instate his blocked phone. When he'd succeeded, he observed that none of the real people spoken to asked him to confirm his identity for security purposes. Strange. 

Anyway, I succeeded in getting him to part with his recovered phone for long enough to perform a full system back-up, and a separate file of all his contacts on both our computers, just in case there's another incident of this kind in future. I wanted to do this nearly three years ago, but our RadioNet service is so dependent on telephone contact that it's taken me this long to get around to securing the vital information. I'm glad and relieved to have done it, but ashamed it took so long. These are hidden risks we didn't need. Thankfully, it's the first time such a nightmare data loss scenario has confronted us, and we survived - wiser for the experience, I hope.

 

Half term break - part one

The week began with a funeral, end of Monday morning, at the Stone & Ham funeral home followed by burial at Western Cemetery. The organist, a Tongwynlais parishioner, told me how the congregation was enjoying having Phil, one of my tutees on placement with them. Nice to have this to feed back to him. Then after lunch, I went into the CBS office for a few hours before going into College for the Family Eucharist, at which Phil gave the address. It was his first since arriving. He said he was nervous about it, but in performance he was relaxed, confident with a straightforward message and engaged the children's interest in an original way.  

Tuesday I spent working in my new office in College, getting started on devising rotas for next term's staff involvement in running worship and preaching before the tutor group met. Being half term week, there was no Chi Gong class to attend, so for a change, Clare and I went out together to dine at Stefano's Italian Restaurant just around the corner from home, in Romilly Road.

Wednesday morning I went over the St German's to celebrate the ten o'clock Mass, as Fr Dean is taking a much needed half term break. I get to stand in for him again, at St German's and St Saviour's, the Sunday before I leave for my Taormina locum duties. I'm looking forward to that, as it's nine months since I last spent Sunday in the parish, before he was inducted.

I went straight from the altar, down to County Hall, to a meeting called by senior officer Martin Hamilton to review the work of Cardiff Business Safe after three and a half years of digital RadioNet operations. The Business Crime (prevention) Partnership of which CBS is the public face is due soon for a constitutional overhaul. This meeting was the first opportunity since setting up the new service, for us to be able to report properly on the development of the organisation from scratch. I felt my presentation on finance and strategy was well received, and reassuring to participants. 

There'll now be a further meeting in three weeks time, assembling original stakeholders, to obtain their approval for the constitutional revision. It means more preparatory work to get done on a tight schedule, which is rather unfortunate since, after the meeting, I returned home to collect luggage and set off with Clare for a few days of a half term break in East Anglia.

Our cross country drive via Gloucester and Oxford to stay at the Menzies Hotel north of Cambridge on a two night bargain break special offer. It took all of five hours, the last hour and a half was in the dark. Clare was able to swim in the hotel's spa pool. I forgot my trunks and went to a nearby Tesco superstore to see if I could buy some, but there were none in stock - out of season I was told. So, I settled for half an hour's Chi Gong/Tai Chi at the side of the pool instead, and then we dined in the hotel restaurant. 

Getting on line to check mail afterwards was a nightmare, as my BT wireless dongle would only deliver data at old analogue modem speeds for no reason I could fathom. This is the same dongle I used for skyping and surfing in Spain this time last year, via a third party service providor at broadband speed, albeit slowing. The BT blackberry office phone worked OK, but it was much to small and fiddly to use to respond to as well as read incoming mail. In the end I gave up and went to bed, leaving it to the morning to collect the wifi password from reception, as it hadn't been included in the room's hotel handouts.

 

BT incompetence

Thursday afternoon I took my work laptop into the Motorpoint office and set it up. The BT broadband link was quickly up and running, along with an email requiring urgent attention. We were less fortunate with the phone connection, running on the same line however. It came and went several times - rather unusual, the man on the help line thought - somebody in the Stadium House telephone exchange not far away, was messing with something they shouldn't have been. We had two BT Open Reach engineers visit within half an hour of each other, neither knowing of the other's assignment. Although the line was declared fully operational, no incoming or outgoing calls were possible from the land-line soon after the second one left. But thankfully the broadband stayed running. 

Today I took the car into town with files I had been safeguarding at home, and then we shuttled the heavy network laser printer and smaller items of furniture which hadn't yet been collected, across to the new office. It'll take a while to sort everything out, but I have my important stuff where it should be, under lock and key. More than a dozen people are working in the new office. It's twice as large as the second floor of Charles Street. Our workspace is about the same size. It has a door on to the balcony opposite, for fresh air, vital in so warm an environment, and the kitchen is next to us.

Some time during the day, the facility for call divert to Ashley's mobile was switched off, robbing our clientèle of a vital lifeline for hours. He spent hours on another phone complaining, arguing with a succession of call centre operatives to get the service re-instated immediately. CBS pays British Telecom for the highest standard of service as a business client to ensure things like this don't happen during a move, to avoid  any impact on the service we provide. What a mess.

I returned at five, to cook an early meal, then go to Ely to visit a bereaved family and prepare a funeral for the elderly mother of seven children. She had brought them up single handed after her husband deserted her, and what a lively happy bunch they were, so proud and appreciative of their Mama, who'd raised them to make the most of their lives and support each other, with a great imagination and little education. She'd lived in the same house for fifty three years - where she'd moved after her Bute-town birthplace home was demolished for redevelopment. How very precious is the stability and constancy brought to home and family life by generations of working class mothers in a century of great upheavals.

After the visit, we went to Chapter Arts for a late showing of 'War Horse'. Well worth the acclaim it's had, though I didn't think much of the over saturated colour rendering of the film, and un-natural natural lighting. If it was intended for theatrical effect, it wasn't a success, to my mind, as it made some scenes look contrived, like the film sets they probably were.