Dan Q

Tag: geocaching

With The Bod

I know that there are about a million things I ought to be writing about; I’ll try to get time at the weekend. In the meantime, I thought I’d share with you this snippet from Outline, the internal newsletter of the Bodleian Libraries:

Welcome to Dan Q: a snippet from Outline, the Bodleian Libraries internal newsletter. Click to embiggen.

What does this tiny appearance on page three mean? Well; it means that the many libraries that I’ll be visiting over the next few weeks (I have a surprising number of meetings set up!) will know I’m coming, for one.

The article mentions geocaching, because the editor asked me for “something personal about me”, and it was the most family-friendly thing I could think of on the spot. I was also asked “what I did”, which I struggled with a little because, despite having been here a week, I’m still not entirely sure what it is that I do. That said, I achieved the first productive parts of my work, yesterday, helping a user with a self-inflicted (probably!) bug in the Libraries’ CMS system. Apart from that, I feel like I’ve spent most of my time running around the city meeting people and networking! Lots of new faces and names to learn!

Two things keep coming up in conversation with people, upon discovering that I’m new here:

  1. Several people have asked “What university I worked for before?” The majority of people here were either Oxford undergrads or worked at other universities: to have somebody come in from the private sector is a little… unusual, it seems.
  2. People keep telling me that I shouldn’t expect (or be expected) to achieve anything for the first six months or so. Six months! It’s taking a while to get started, certainly (I’m still finding my way around all of the systems I’m now responsible for), and I still don’t have logins on half of the computers and services that I’ll need them on, yet, but that’s just ludicrous!
The main Bodleian Libraries website; one of about 32 websites for which I now find myself responsible.

On the other hand, I’m seriously enjoying the comparatively-relaxed attitude that everybody seems to have, here. And I’ve been given a bugs-list as long as my arm that I’m sure they’ve been saving up for me to arrive, so there’s plenty to sink my teeth into even if I will have to go through half a dozen committees before I can implement any of the new features that these websites so desperately need.

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Dan Q couldn’t find GC1Q1TW SideTracked – Oxford

This checkin to GC1Q1TW SideTracked - Oxford reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

It’s not been my day! With the help of the co-ordinates, the clue, and confirmation from another cacher, I’m pretty-much certain that I was in the right place, but it looks like it had been removed. Will try again another time…

Dan Q couldn’t find GC25WGX The ox-stream caching series – Osney Stream

This checkin to GC25WGX The ox-stream caching series - Osney Stream reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Lots of muggles around which prevented me from mounting a more thorough search. My job will put me in this area from time to time, so I’m sure to mount a proper hunt sometime soon!

Dan Q found GL541R7D Spies Like Us – The Dead Drop

This checkin to GL541R7D Spies Like Us - The Dead Drop reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Found the numbers, and they lead us straight to the “drop”. Nice location, and a great idea for a cache: we’ll certainly be looking out for Spies Like Us – Honeypot sometime soon!

Massage

This weekend, Ruth & I went to London for a short course in massage. After hitting up a couple of geocaches in the beautiful Holland Park, we trotted into Notting Hill and met up with the woman who was to show us a variety of different ways to massage a variety of different body parts. “This is going to hurt,” the instructor warned us, as we sat ourselves down alongside the other two students – a Spanish couple about ten years older than us – and introduced ourselves. “We’re going to be experimenting with the extremes of hard and soft pressure to understand when each are useful and to find the middle ground. If you don’t wince at least once during that process, then your partner is doing it wrong.” She wasn’t kidding. At one point, I remember musing over whether the instructor might run an S&M dungeon on her days off. I think it was right after she said, “Come on; I want to see red marks!”

A variation on the 'S' move, common to hand and foot massage. As opposed to the 'M' move. Hang on... these moves are called 'S' and 'M'...? Seriously?

Feet, hands, shoulders, heads, backs… we took a tour of the body, swapping over from time to time to alternate who was the masseur and who was the… masseuee? Apparently I was the star pupil and picked it up quickly, but I may have had an unfair advantage because I’ve got “just the right kind of thumbs” for massage – they’re fat and straight, which is apparently ideal. So if the world of software goes belly-up when we someday invent computers that can program themselves, at least I now know that I could retrain as a massage therapist.

It’s a profession for which I’ve discovered a new-found respect. Massage is hard. Surprisingly harder than it looks. Despite her slender arms and shoulders, our trainer had a hell of a grip and a lot of upper body strength: emulating the level of pressure that she was able to apply was incredibly challenging, and by the second time that we were switching positions, I’d begun to work up a bit of a sweat. In my case, at least these bouts of exercise were punctuated by getting a nice relaxing massage (or, at worst, being used as an experimental punching bag), but for a professional masseur there’s no such relief.

All in all, it was a fun afternoon/evening out. We learned some enjoyable skills and got the chance to practice them under expert guidance. Once I’d learned to think of the rhythm and looseness as being similar to drumming (“What is that? 3/4 time?”), I really got a knack for loosening up back and shoulder muscles with hand-tapping. And Ruth learned to do an awesome hand massage trick using her knuckles.

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Dan Q couldn’t find GC1R2BV Kensington Town Hall Ghost

This checkin to GC1R2BV Kensington Town Hall Ghost reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

We were only able to spend about 20 minutes searching for this, but didn’t manage to find it, even after looking at the clue. We found what we think must have been its hiding place and wonder if perhaps it’s been muggled again…? Hope not: it’s rare to see such large caches in such urban areas, and it’s always quite satisfying to find one. Good luck, future cachers! Hope it’s still there!

Dan Q found GL4ZB9QK Oxford United FC

This checkin to GL4ZB9QK Oxford United FC reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

My favourite cache of the day! A wonderful little adventure!

I’d not noticed when I copied the data to my GPSr that this find was going to involve as much leg-work as it did! Starting in Headington, I collected the clues, zipping effortlessly around the locations by bike. Then, sat on the side of London Road, I came up with the coordinates. HOW FAR? Wow… it’s a good job I’m ready for a decent cycle, today, and I’ve got a few caches down that way that I’d like to collect anyway.

Several miles (and many caches) later I found myself getting close, hoping that I’d not miscalculated or gotten the wrong numbers. When I got close, it became clear to me where it was likely to be hidden: but the recent rain had made the ground treacherously slippy, and I struggled to get the cache, between groups of people walking past, without falling over!

I have no interest whatsoever in football, but I thoroughly enjoyed this cache… as well as enjoying learning a little bit of local history! TFTC!

Dan Q found GL4ZBA6C Son of the The Lonely tree

This checkin to GL4ZBA6C Son of the The Lonely tree reflects a geocaching.com log entry. See more of Dan's cache logs.

Looks like I must have been there JUST before mumzoid970! Following the coordinates, I was standing almost on top of it (well, as close as one can get!) before I thought to look down and spotted it. TFTC.