Sorry, after all that bitching earlier it only just dawned on me that y'all don't know the itinerary.
So, where it says Day 02 on the list below, that will be November 11th to put it into context
Day 01 Arrival at Kathmandu airport and transfer to hotel. Group meeting programme for detailed information about trekking. Overnight at hotel.
Day 02 Fly to Lukla (2804 mt.), trek to Phakding (2610 mt.). Walking 3 hours. Overnight at guest house.
Day 03 Phakding to Namche Bazar (3441 mt.). Walking 6 hours. Overnight at guest house. (honestly I think this day will be a killer. Mongcho to Namche is bad enough)
Day 04 Acclimatization day in Namche Bazar. Overnight at guest house.
Day 05 Namche to Dole (4040 mt.). Walking 4 hours. Overnight at guest house.
Day 06 Dole to Machhermo (4470 mt.). Walking 4 ½ hours. Overnight at guest house.
Day 07 Machhermo to Gokyo (4790 mt.). Walking 5 hours. Overnight at guest house.
Day 08 Gokyo to Gokyo Ri (5483 mt.) and retreat to Dole. Walking 7-8 hours. Overnight at guest house.
Day 09 Dole to Tyangboche (4040 mt.). Walking 5-6 hours. Overnight at guest house.
Day 10 Tyangboche to Monjo. Walking 5 hours. Overnight at guest house.
Day 11 Monjo to Lukla. Walking 5 hours. Overnight at guest house.
Day 12 Early morning fly back to Kathmandu. Overnight at hotel.
Day 13 Transfer to airport for departure from Nepal.
Although obviously now the Day 13 is also incorrect as we are all in Kathmandu for several more days.
I don't mind the change to the return route as it's an interesting pass from Gokyo to Dole and for those who followed my blog last year, you will know that I had to walk past Thyangboche as the monks were meditating. I think the Day 09 walk to Monjo is optimistic and frankly I would prefer to spend another night in Namche (I dig that berg) but Mongcho to Lukla is good because the Namche- Lukla walk is a bit much.
At Lukla I'll probably try to break off to stay at the Sunny Gardens again because they have such nice beds, en suite bathrooms (!!!) and the best veggie burger I've ever had and I ain't a veggie.
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
Managing from the Mountaintop - Planning Madness
Wow. Ok so I did a little exercise in translating the Gokyo Ri Itinerary to my Outlook calendar including timezone shift so that it would be clear to my team when I would be available to work. In the course of this I checked a few things that were niggling me with the trek leader over in Nepal.
Well. All I can say is that it's a good thing I did. It turns out that the itinerary that I originally had was wrong. In the end, after much to-ing and fro-ing, it transpired that the itinerary I was given was off by 2 days and the return route was wrong. Frankly I had thought it looked a little odd - there were 2 days of trekking which looked weird because I know the area and they looked like quite a bit of milling about. And indeed, the optional day hike(s) for the rest day at Namche had been pulled out and described as separate days of hiking.
On top of that, the "original" itinerary was a straight shot there and back but it now transpires that it's actually more of an ellipse and the return is via a different route. The nice thing about this is that we will see more BUT it affects my planning because I was going to drop caches of laundry so that I would have clean and fresh clothing. So I'm going to have to rethink how I manage that.
Also this means I need to study the variation to the route. Luckily I know most of the new leg from last year. I'm just worried that everything will be ok for the other trekkers. I mean, we all booked our flights based on the intial understanding of the schedule so now we will have an extra 2 days in Kathmandu. Will they have to pay for 2 days extra accommodation and food? I know some folks are on a tight budget so I hope it doesn't cause too much hardship.
I'm just glad I discovered this now rather than there! After all, we'll be flying out in one week and that doesn't give folks much time if they need to alter their plans. Personally I don't mind a few extra days to kick around Kathmandu. I may even take a day trip to see another city or something.
Anyway, really glad I embarked on my planning exercise to get everything scheduled with my team. I'll be distributing my Nepalese phone number to them so that they can call me and we will be scheduling our daily stand-ups so that I can skype in (although I hope they can figure out a way to call me and patch me in as that will be both cheaper and use less of my precious batteries). Plus it will be hard to both skype AND run the Jira board simultaneously on my kindle.
I also still need to record webex's of how to do some things on Jira and Confluence, train Pam in the admin duties, and hand her admin access.
Oh crap, and I have to redo half of the entries in my calendar to reflect the new understanding of the itinerary and then reflect that in the scheduling of our morning stand-ups.
It'll get there but in the meantime, please don't forget to donate to TNMOC. The button is on the right side of this page, it's really quick and easy and, of course, ALL proceeds go to The National Museum of Computing.
Well. All I can say is that it's a good thing I did. It turns out that the itinerary that I originally had was wrong. In the end, after much to-ing and fro-ing, it transpired that the itinerary I was given was off by 2 days and the return route was wrong. Frankly I had thought it looked a little odd - there were 2 days of trekking which looked weird because I know the area and they looked like quite a bit of milling about. And indeed, the optional day hike(s) for the rest day at Namche had been pulled out and described as separate days of hiking.
On top of that, the "original" itinerary was a straight shot there and back but it now transpires that it's actually more of an ellipse and the return is via a different route. The nice thing about this is that we will see more BUT it affects my planning because I was going to drop caches of laundry so that I would have clean and fresh clothing. So I'm going to have to rethink how I manage that.
Also this means I need to study the variation to the route. Luckily I know most of the new leg from last year. I'm just worried that everything will be ok for the other trekkers. I mean, we all booked our flights based on the intial understanding of the schedule so now we will have an extra 2 days in Kathmandu. Will they have to pay for 2 days extra accommodation and food? I know some folks are on a tight budget so I hope it doesn't cause too much hardship.
I'm just glad I discovered this now rather than there! After all, we'll be flying out in one week and that doesn't give folks much time if they need to alter their plans. Personally I don't mind a few extra days to kick around Kathmandu. I may even take a day trip to see another city or something.
Anyway, really glad I embarked on my planning exercise to get everything scheduled with my team. I'll be distributing my Nepalese phone number to them so that they can call me and we will be scheduling our daily stand-ups so that I can skype in (although I hope they can figure out a way to call me and patch me in as that will be both cheaper and use less of my precious batteries). Plus it will be hard to both skype AND run the Jira board simultaneously on my kindle.
I also still need to record webex's of how to do some things on Jira and Confluence, train Pam in the admin duties, and hand her admin access.
Oh crap, and I have to redo half of the entries in my calendar to reflect the new understanding of the itinerary and then reflect that in the scheduling of our morning stand-ups.
It'll get there but in the meantime, please don't forget to donate to TNMOC. The button is on the right side of this page, it's really quick and easy and, of course, ALL proceeds go to The National Museum of Computing.
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
New funding enables TNMOC to seize the opportunity to support schools in computing learning
New funding enables TNMOC to seize the opportunity to support schools in computing learning
"Any self-respecting science needs to understand its past" 30 October 2012 New pump-prime funding is enabling The National Museum of Computing to develop its unrivalled, hands-on, computer learning programme for schools, colleges and universities. This year, the Museum is already on target to quadruple the number of visiting groups who have an educational and often hands-on experience spanning the 1940s Colossus to the 2011 Touchtable, from valves and tapes to chips and touchscreens.
The new funding has come from Google UK and private individuals and is already enabling TNMOC to increase the number of educational group visits, and to enhance those students' experiences with more hands-on activities with TNMOC's unique range of working vintage computers.
You can read the full release here: http://www.tnmoc.org/news/news-releases/new-funding-tnmoc-learning-programme
Monday, 29 October 2012
Weather forecast - EBC
The weather forecast for Everest Base Camp. Closest I can get to Gokyo Ri and I figure it's close enough as it's just the next valley over. Guess it's coming from the Pyramid weather station?
Weather by meteoexploration
Meteotest is an excellent resource and this info shoudl help tremendously with my decisions about what to have in my final mix for packing.Sunday, 28 October 2012
A Wee Snort
I always bring a wee snort of whisky (well, 10oz. if I'm to be honest) and have selected my tipple for the Gokyo Ri trek. And the winner is... Chapter 11 from the English Whisky Company.
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I think that legally it has to be called a single malt rather than a whisky but I don't care, it's gorgeous.
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I think that legally it has to be called a single malt rather than a whisky but I don't care, it's gorgeous.
Friday, 26 October 2012
Walking Boots
Your boots will probably be the most important piece of kit that you buy. All it takes is one tiny blister to destroy your hike.
My first suggestion is that if you don't have good walking boots, buy some NOW and start breaking them in. I wear new boots several days/week for several months before I take them out on the mountain.
Look for good ankle support, something like a vibram sole, waterproof, etc. Personally I wear 2 pairs of socks with my boots (1 thin inner and 1 thick outer which is sometimes referred to as the double-socking method) so if you plan to do that make sure you're wearing them when you try on the boots. And leave enough room in the toes for your foot to travel on descent.
Update: My brother reminds me of a quote from our fave author, Robert Heinlein: "If possible, have your feet clean and dry. Smear your feet all over and especially between your toes with cold cream. Or Vaseline, carbolated is best. Use lots, a thick layer. Then put on socks-clean if possible, dirty if you must, but don't skip them-and put your boots on. When you first stand up, it feels as if you'd stepped into a barrel of soft soap. But your feet Will thank you for it and you won't get jungle rot between your toes. Or not as much. Take care of your feet, Ted, and keep your bowels open." -Time Enough For Love
Hopefully such measures won't be necessary where you are trekking. And I really must read that book again. Maybe I'll download it for Gokyo Ri.
My first suggestion is that if you don't have good walking boots, buy some NOW and start breaking them in. I wear new boots several days/week for several months before I take them out on the mountain.
Look for good ankle support, something like a vibram sole, waterproof, etc. Personally I wear 2 pairs of socks with my boots (1 thin inner and 1 thick outer which is sometimes referred to as the double-socking method) so if you plan to do that make sure you're wearing them when you try on the boots. And leave enough room in the toes for your foot to travel on descent.
Update: My brother reminds me of a quote from our fave author, Robert Heinlein: "If possible, have your feet clean and dry. Smear your feet all over and especially between your toes with cold cream. Or Vaseline, carbolated is best. Use lots, a thick layer. Then put on socks-clean if possible, dirty if you must, but don't skip them-and put your boots on. When you first stand up, it feels as if you'd stepped into a barrel of soft soap. But your feet Will thank you for it and you won't get jungle rot between your toes. Or not as much. Take care of your feet, Ted, and keep your bowels open." -Time Enough For Love
Hopefully such measures won't be necessary where you are trekking. And I really must read that book again. Maybe I'll download it for Gokyo Ri.
Thursday, 25 October 2012
Managing from the Mountaintop - Software Selection and Implementation
Sorry I've been a bit lackadaisical but no worries, everything is copacetic. It's just a bit difficult maintaining this and prepping for a trek and managing my project while occasionally making efforts to maintain my relationship as well.
Anyway, apart from building Shelving and wardrobes and working on the house and all that shit, lets go back 3 weeks to when I returned to work from the team holiday. We had an ongoing problem in that there was a distinct lack of visibility between the folks on the development floor and TPTB. I was doing daily reporting to TPTB but, nonetheless, the inevitable BS that gets in the way of declaring work DONE was not being communicated effectively.
I've run into this sort of problem before - how do I bridge the gap between the project plan and people working day-to-day without boggng them down in endless and profitless reporting cycles? I'm not going to get into the nitty-gritty of how and why I selected my solution because, honestly, I've been through this any number of times over the years. Suffice it to say that I have wanted to use Jira by Atlassian for ~3 years but have been thwarted by the sort of projects that I tend to work on (global enterprise). So my options have been to buy software for this purpose that then needs to be approved for installation and management on corporate infrastructure (a project in itself), or use an on-demand service based outside fo the corporate infrastructure (which always gives security the willies).
Fortunately my programme manager at the site had previous experience with Atlassian products from his previous project - managing ~50 people so when I happened to be wearing my Angry Nerds shirt to the office one day, we very naturally got into the conversation about using it on our project.
And that's it - within minutes we were up and running. I signed up for the JIRA OnDemand evaluation for <10 users and had set up our issues board and started populating it. I'd called the entire team in to be onsite for the day and we did a monster all-singing, all-dancing project re-planning session. The post-it notes were flying all over the shop!
Next all I had to do was to translate the post-its to the Jira board, creating issues, assigning them as appropriate, including estimates and breaking them out into the sprints.
As the week progressed we learned to use things like commenting and including things like @joe.bloggs in order to make sure that the right people are aware of problems, how to create subtasks and dependencies, etc. The team responded really positively and then started coming up with ideas and requests of their own and so we then got Confluence OnDemand so that we could set up a Team Calendars and a Project Wiki so that we're now working collaboratively on our documentation. Hallelujah! Goodbye knowledge silos!
It's not perfect. There are definitely improvements that I'd like to see (although to be fair I'm still learnign how to use the toolset and may just not have figured out how to do everything I want yet) but it certainly beats the pants off of working from project plans that are always out of date almost as soon as they're updated.
And then it dawned on me. I now had a web interface to my project. I could use this when I'm working remotely...
Anyway, apart from building Shelving and wardrobes and working on the house and all that shit, lets go back 3 weeks to when I returned to work from the team holiday. We had an ongoing problem in that there was a distinct lack of visibility between the folks on the development floor and TPTB. I was doing daily reporting to TPTB but, nonetheless, the inevitable BS that gets in the way of declaring work DONE was not being communicated effectively.
I've run into this sort of problem before - how do I bridge the gap between the project plan and people working day-to-day without boggng them down in endless and profitless reporting cycles? I'm not going to get into the nitty-gritty of how and why I selected my solution because, honestly, I've been through this any number of times over the years. Suffice it to say that I have wanted to use Jira by Atlassian for ~3 years but have been thwarted by the sort of projects that I tend to work on (global enterprise). So my options have been to buy software for this purpose that then needs to be approved for installation and management on corporate infrastructure (a project in itself), or use an on-demand service based outside fo the corporate infrastructure (which always gives security the willies).
Fortunately my programme manager at the site had previous experience with Atlassian products from his previous project - managing ~50 people so when I happened to be wearing my Angry Nerds shirt to the office one day, we very naturally got into the conversation about using it on our project.
And that's it - within minutes we were up and running. I signed up for the JIRA OnDemand evaluation for <10 users and had set up our issues board and started populating it. I'd called the entire team in to be onsite for the day and we did a monster all-singing, all-dancing project re-planning session. The post-it notes were flying all over the shop!
Next all I had to do was to translate the post-its to the Jira board, creating issues, assigning them as appropriate, including estimates and breaking them out into the sprints.
As the week progressed we learned to use things like commenting and including things like @joe.bloggs in order to make sure that the right people are aware of problems, how to create subtasks and dependencies, etc. The team responded really positively and then started coming up with ideas and requests of their own and so we then got Confluence OnDemand so that we could set up a Team Calendars and a Project Wiki so that we're now working collaboratively on our documentation. Hallelujah! Goodbye knowledge silos!
It's not perfect. There are definitely improvements that I'd like to see (although to be fair I'm still learnign how to use the toolset and may just not have figured out how to do everything I want yet) but it certainly beats the pants off of working from project plans that are always out of date almost as soon as they're updated.
And then it dawned on me. I now had a web interface to my project. I could use this when I'm working remotely...
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