My Traveling Family

Back in the 1150’s the Knights Templar built their chief house and church in what is now called Temple Scotland.

After the the Knights Templar were disbanded the church and lands were taken over by the Knights Hospitallers, also called the Knights of St. John.

The ruins of this old parish church, which date back to the 14th century, are all that’s left on the land that once held the knights church.

Here is a sign discussing the Knights Templar and a bit of the local history.

A few of the interesting grave stones found in around the old Church

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This is an interesting one for Sir William Gillies.

On the way home last week I decided to go for a walk in Rossly Glen. You start down at the bottom of the Glen near the River Esk. As you walk north you pass under the walls of Rosslyn Castle and then back to the edge of the River Esk.

About 1/2 a Kilometer into the walk you’ll come down the path to the right, overlooking some cliffs down to the water roughly 30 feet below or so. Anyhow, there is a nice flat stone that overhangs the river, locally known as “Lovers Leap” As you’re looking at this rock of death you glance to the right and realize that you’re being watched.

There is a green man carved into the rocks. I have no idea of how old this guy is, but old. Really old. For those of you that try to find this it’s about 280 or so steps past crossing under Rosslyn Castle.

Also, a bit farther down the trail you will find a cave on the far side of the river. This is the cave that William Wallace and some of his men hid in before the battle of Rosslyn in 1303. William Wallace was played by Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart. This cave is across the river about 350 steps past walking under Rosslyn Castle. 

Not the best picture. But, hey, it’s still really cool. 700 years ago, THE William Wallace lived in THAT cave and kicked the English Army’s butt. He had 8000 men, the English 30,000 and the Scots won.

This is one of the funniest, and slightly frightening, commercials I have ever seen. This was on the local BBC channels when we first moved here.

Maynards Wine Gums. Set the Juice Loose!

Roberta and I went over to small village of Lasswade the other day to get a meal at the Laird & Dog Hotel and pub. It turns out that the Pub/Hotel can trace it’s roots back to at least 1709.  Here is a link to the Charter and Title of the original Larid and Dog from 1709.

There is a sign in the pub that gives a folk lore version of where the village of Lasswade got its name. It’s really kind of neat.

Jenny Lasswade

When there was nae brig to cross the Esk river,

On Jenny’s broad back they a’ gaed thegither,

For Jenny was honest, stout, sober, and steady,

She carried the laird, she carried his leddy;

When he was richt seated the doggie first gaed,

Then, weaving his stick, he cried: “Jenny, lass, wade!”

American translation.

When there was no bridge to cross the Esk river,

On Jenny’s broad back they would go together,

For Jenny was honest, stout, sober, and steady.

She carried the Lord, she carried his Lady;

When he was right seated the doggie first went

Then, waving his stick, he cried; “Jenny, Lass, Wade!”

This real name for Lasswade isn’t quite so colorful.

The rhyme was written by a Miss Walker when she was staying at Hawthornden Castle perhaps one hundred years ago. The name of Lasswade is most likely to have originated from the combining of the words leas (a meadow) and gewaed ( a ford).

I won’t regale you with the story of a denied work visa or the 4 months it took to straighten it out, after the hell of getting everything put together properly. That’s my story. Instead I’m going to give a brief overview of the hell my coworker is currently going through. And we thought he was going to get off easy.

Tomorrow will be the 1 year anniversary of Felipe moving to the UK to help maintain HECToR. Which just happens to be the UK’s biggest, fastest, and most expensive computer, ever! Now we thought Felipe was going to get off easy because even though he is Brazilian by birth, his father was Hungarian. This means that Felipe is allowed to claim Hungarian Citizenship AND Brazilian citizenship. Since Hungary is part of the European Union that means he could just move to the UK, send the Home Office some paperwork to register and get a work visa. Easy deal. Which he did and all worked well.

Until….

Felipe’s wife moves to the UK a few months after he does, and she is only of Brazilian nationality. So, she now has 6 months to apply for a Residence Stamp on her passport. They fill out all of the paperwork in a timely manner and send it to the home office, WITH their Passports, which the home office requires. This was in February. So, for the last 6 months they have been living in the UK without passports and unable to travel while the home office fiddles around with their paperwork. They cannot rent a new flat, change banks, she can’t get a job, and they can’t travel because they are living in a foreign country with no passports. Oh, ya, and they can’t get their UK drivers licenses either. Which you only have 1 year from the time of entry to get taken care of, or you can’t drive. Felipe has parked his new Mini Cooper in his driveway and started taking the bus because he can no longer legally drive. They threaten a 6 month jail sentence.

Now, it get’s even better. After 1 year of residence in the UK and proof of working for that year, Felipe’s work visa changes to a permanent residence visa, similar to the US green card program. So, this means his wife now needs a residence certificate instead of a residence stamp. They received in the mail yesterday, wait for it, a denial for the residence stamp because his 1 year wait is up and now she needs a residence certificate and would they like to apply for one???? This after waiting 6 MONTHS for the home office to issue the stamp.

So, as of the time I write this Felipe can no longer drive, cannot change flats, change banks, or even travel because the home office has screwed around so long, holding both their passports the whole time, that NOW all the paperwork and applications are no longer valid, they have expired. And now want’s to know if they would like to start over with a residences certificate application. Which, by the way, IS THE SAME APPLICATION WITH A DIFFERENT CHECK BOX!

I know I like to complain about my situation, if I were Felipe I would take my Highly Skilled A$$ and go back to Brazil and tell the UK Govt to kindly shove their bureaucratic paperwork in a definitely dark place, right there next to their heads.

Sure a EU member citizen can move to the UK and work. Well, technically it’s possible, they will just bury you in paper work until you give up and go home. Nothing personal to Felipe and his wife, I imagine they treat all EU citizens the same way. Like lower class citizens.

I’m sitting here at work reading a section of the “Programming Perl” book by O’Reilly, which is a really good Perl book, and going blind reading statements like

To dereference this scalar means to use the reference to get at the referent. Both referencing and dereferencing occur only when you invoke certain explicit mechanisms; implicit referencing or dereferencing never occurs in Perl. Well, almost never.

A reference can point to any data structure. Since references are scalars and you can store them in arrays and hashes, and thus build arrays of arrays, arrays of hashes, hashes of arrays, arrays of hashes and functions, and so on.

Now, if that makes perfect sense to you, well, GET A LIFE! Holy cow! (Sadly, it is starting to make sense to me.) One of the down sides to being self educated is I have to go over stuff like this again and again till it actually makes sense. Otherwise I end up with unknown holes in my knowledge that might burn me later down the line. Trying to figure out what is important and what isn’t can sometimes be difficult. Where having a professor just say, this might be good to know later, but ignore it for now, can save a lot of time.

Learning to program is really like learning a new written language, and then a bunch of different dialects of that language.

Perl, C, C++, etc all use very similar syntax. The underlying logic is very similar, a loop is a loop, a variable is mainly a variable. I suppose it’s like growing up speaking Spanish, then learning English, American English that is, then Scottish English, then maybe Welsh English, then maybe Indian English. They are all fairly close to each other in certain respects, but don’t mistake Pants in American English for Pants in Scottish English. Oh buddy will ya get a red face.

Languages I’m either currently learning or already know enough to hack in. Basic, Pascal, C, C++, Fortran, Perl, Korn, Bash, Expect, Ruby, Tcl, MPI.

And yet I can barely speak a lick of Spanish. Go figure. It’s time for a nap.

I’ve updated the backend wordpress to the latest version and also updated the plugins and themes. If any problems pop up drop me a note and let me know.

I’ve gone from a 3 column template to a 2 column template. Will try different versions and looks over the next bit of time for grins.

Also let me know what you think. Good, bad, indifferent. Should I change something?

Hey,

I finally had a chance to take a couple of pictures of our new Cray X2. The new vector unit was attached to HECToR, our Cray XT4. So, I guess this means we’re now technically a Cray XT5h system. What a bunch of hokey names. The X2 was originally called the “Black Widow”. Which was a cool name.

The way the room is laid out it’s really hard to get a good picture, but here goes.

Notice the pretty blue lights on the front? They don’t move, they are just pretty blue lights.

Does anyone but me notice a resemblance to Dr. Who’s Daleks?

Well, It seems I now have a new trade. Dishwasher repairman, and not by choice. Here at our house in the UK we have all built in appliances. Our Bosch dishwasher has now broken twice in the last six months. The first time it stopped draining we called the leasing agency and they sent someone out to repair it, 4 days later. So this time when it stopped draining I figured, instead of waiting 4 days or so, I’d have a gander at it myself.

The problem is it won’t drain. So, first guess is the drain pump impellor has something stuck in it. Now, how to get to the thing. Grab a glass and slowly bail all the water out of the bottom of the dishwasher. That done I pull the filter assembly out from the top. Nothing there, but some slime. Disassemble the bottom of the dishwasher and get to the pump. Looks siimple enough. It has a twist off pump housing. Twist it off and find some broken glass in the impellor. Take the glass out and reassemble.

Pour some water in the bottom of the dishwasher and put power back to it. Water drains out just right. Whoo hooo. Uhmmmm. Why isn’t it stopping? It also seems to run with the door open or closed. That’s not right. I pull the power and scratch my head. Something stuck in the float? Take everything apart again. Nope, looks okay. Take the door assembly apart to check the door locking assembly and switch. No, that looks okay. Take the pump assembly apart again, just because, and IT looks okay. Some water in the bottom of the dishwasher, like in underneatch in the pump area. This happened when I pulled the pump the first time. So I drain the water and poke around. There is a styrofoam float there that’s not attached to the float assembly up in the dishwasher itself. Hmmm… that’s ood, what’s it for? Turns out it’s in case water gets into the bottom of the housing, I guess. Only thing is it doesn’t WORK right.

Water in the bottom of the housing caused the float to rise, which turned on the pump to drain the water out of the TOP part of the dishwasher, which had no water, not the bottom part which had water. So it just ran the pump continously. It also bypassed the door lock switch and caused the dishwasher to run with the door open or closed. NOT a good safety feature. Once I figured this out it was a simple fix. Shove a towel lin there to dry all the water up. Test the system and now everything works fine.

Can you say design flaw??? Oh well, our dishwasher is working again. I just won’t ever buy a Bosch dishwasher. Not after our experiences with this one.

And the winner of today’s Political Fool award goes to …..

GORDON BROWN the UK Prime Minister

And why has he won this prestigious award you may ask?

In response to the rising food prices, gas prices, energy costs, and estimated crippling winter heating costs, his answer is….

Buy less food and don’t throw away the leftovers! Yes ladies and gentlemen, you have heard correctly. The cure for all your wallet woes is to just buy less food. I sure wish I could have thought of that! And this from a man who is supposed to be one of the highest educated PM’s in England. Wow, really says something about the British education system eh?

The PM said “unnecessary” purchases were contributing to price rises, and urged people to plan meals in advance and store food properly”

It just gives one a warm fuzzy to know we have such brilliant people in charge of the economy.

I’m waiting for this winter when it’s cold, rainy, and miserable for him to tell everyone “Turn down your thermostats and save money!” “Do you really need it above 50 degrees at night?” “If you can’t afford a doubling in your heating costs, then turn down the thermostat!”