Let the holiday begin

Dec 15, 2020 | ,

Ah it’s funny.  it’s the end of my first official day of annual leave for Christmas.  I had time to take off so I decided to extend my Christmas holidays by a little.

Staying true to form though, the first part of my time off was spent putting this video together for a local group called the Loving Life Choir.  Here are two of the members singing silent night.  With social distancing etc, this is about the most we could do for the choir right now.

(12) Silent Night – Loving Life Choir – YouTube

I did everything for this video. I recorded it, edited it, I defined the shots that I roughly wanted to get.  Emma, my wife captured the videos then I edited the clips and added the previously edited audio.  It’s not perfect by any stretch. But I’m neither a videographer, editor, audio engineer or professional musician for that matter.  But For my current skills in these areas, I think it’s okay.

On the technical side of things, I decided to upgrade my wireless network controller at home in the small hours of Sunday morning.  I couldn’t sleep and it was something that I had been putting off.  I’m running Ubiquity kit here in the house and it’s been a bit about a year since I updated the controller.  Unfortunately this latest version has quite a few changes that break my config.  I have, or rather I had, different networks and SSID’s attached to different access points.  This allows me to have different firewall rules for my cameras, my smart lights and the standard wireless network.  Also my smart lights are very particular about what channels of the 2GHZ band they want to work on so by having a specific SSID that they connect to makes it much easier to troubleshoot when something goes wrong.  I have some work to do now to replicate the old config on the new version of the Unifi controller software.  I’m looking forward to it though.  Now that I’ve figured out why all my smart lights have suddenly stopped working.  Perhaps I’ll document this to make it easier for others to find the solution.

Innovation verses service excellence.

Nov 20, 2020 | ,

I was at a meeting outside work about two years ago.  This local interest group were making the point that they should get what they want because when you combined this number with this other number, The answer was bigger than any other answer in the country. What they were saying was absolutely correct and no one in the room could disagree with them. Technically, what they were saying was correct but in reality, those numbers were not permitted to be added as for the sake of this story, they were in two different datasets.  I left that meeting wishing that I had this skill. To make an argument by shaping language and facts into irrefutable shapes  that were actually quite logical even if they didn’t actually comply with rules of law or common sense.

There’s another example of this kind of conversation shaping that is actually a lot easier to explain.  I was on a sales call a week ago. It was going reasonably okay up until the Q&A at the end.  It was then that I noticed that even when a feature that was request wasn’t supported by this system, the sales person started every answer with a posative yes and also finished his answer with a yes or a posative statement.  Here’s an example: Question: Can your application support backing up specific databases. Answer: Yes!!! MSSQL is a brilliant database management system. I love that we can set the recovery model to simple and not full so that simple means circular logging so where an application such as ours doesn’t actually tell SQL that we have made a backup, the SQL transaction logs won’t grow to fill the database server volume. So yeah. That’s a great feature. I love that question!  Clearly he’s saying that he can’t support that functionality, but his answer is much more posative. Even when his answer is no, it’s still yes.

So now I get to the reason for this topic, I had a conversation yesterday where someone told me that there was a discussion necessary where the policy decision of Innovation verses service excellence needed to be made.  Did they want to be quick to innovate or did they want to provide the best possible service, up time and reliability to their end users.  Well, of course, when this question is posed, anyone in their right mind is going to say that service excellence is the most important quality.  By shaping the question in this way, the answer is already established.  But it’s a perfectly reasonable question. Innovation and service excellence aren’t mutually exclusive aspirations. It requires planning, proper resourcing, good people, a clear strategy and methods of measuring and rewarding success. Sometimes, it also requires a bit of good luck as well. Why? Because things will break. Companies that embrace devops culture seem to be attaining a build fast, break fast and fix fast philosophy. This approach makes so much sense to me.  Build repeatable scalable and fault tollerant services based on even more repeatable, scalable and fault tollerant infrastructure. Everything should be a template. If something isn’t automated it should be pushed out the door as quickly as possible.  Anything that’s absolutely business critical that can’t be automated should have a very poor SLA to encourage who ever is buying the next latest and greatest solution to think more about how it fits into this modern ecosystem. I’ve dealt with a company recently that operates this way. I was really impressed by the speed that they operated at.  Unfortunately, the person who had this conversation with me is highly intelligent. The other people he will be talking to are no slouches either. But I worry that he’s one of those brilliant people who shapes questions and statements that are perfectly logical and in the moment, anyone would be hard pressed to disagree.

To not call out my own bias here would be unfair. I am driven by innovation. It’s what gets me up in the morning and keeps me here well into the night. I am willing to acknowledge that the idea of service excellence may not hold equal weight.  However, the mantra of the first company I worked with is still with me today.  Exceed Customer Expectations. I worked with a company that instilled the principal of customer satisfaction with every encounter. So I understand it’s value. I also come from a family of small business owners so I know that the customer is the person that keeps the lights on.

Chair walks.

Oct 22, 2020 |

Emma came up with the name chair walks for these pictures that I’m taking. Speaking of Emma, she arranged all of the photo’s today. I took hundreds of them from different angles and she picked out a few that actually didn’t show my feet, or someone elses feet. :). Seriously, I modify the angle that I hold the phone at several times for each shot and she picks the shot that actually turns out right. She is really busy making things right now so I appreciate her time on this.

Come with me for another walk through Drogheda today. This morning the route was very different. I also used a different lense on the iPhone. It’s the 18 mm lens from Moment.

At the top of Mary’s street looking toward Gerard’s church
Steps to the old school house.. Someone said this could be an album cover.
The famous Millmount tower. Fondly refered to locally as the cup and saurcer. Or in Drogheda, the cup and sawsaw.
Autom is starting to show.
Going from the Dublin Road to Shop street
Looking over the Boyne toward Scotch hall.
More churches in Drogheda.
This junction is usuall packed with people. Today it’s just traffic unfortunately.
Bad timing!
The dominating land mark in Drogheda’s golden quarter mile.
It was a lot quieter here today.
Personally, I actually love all the hills in Drogheda. It makes the walk enjoyable.
Looking toward the council offices on Fair street. Where all the really really really important work get’s done.
I don’t know why I bothered taking this one. I suppose I took a picture from the other angle yesterday so I thought, why not. This is the least interesting corner / junction in the town. I don’t know what I was thinking.
ON nearly every street in Drogheda the old is mixed with the new.
Looking at Clarkes, one of the oldest pubs in Drogheda. Carberry’s is the oldest I think.
I managed to catch the dog while working again. Delighted with that.
This is a really lovely quiet area.
I think Kaiser loves this part of the walk. He knows I have no idea how to find the paths around htis area so he loves taking the initiative.
Just like that, we are out of John Paul Court and back to the busy north road.
Joe Reid runs Floor Style, a shop just to the left.
By this point, Kaiser is thinking “Ah come on dArragh! There’s no foot paths!!!”
Looking over at the Coffee box in the Fair green. I must pay this place a visit soon.
Fair green. It’s a busy spot in the centre of town but most people never go in here.
Imagine having to travel to work in the morning? I feel very fortunate at the moment.
There’s a park down there. Not like our children will get to use it much now until next year some time unfortunately.
I wasn’t really expecting this picture to work out. I’m glad it did.
Traffic around Drogheda is mad today but it’s light here for some reason.
I must find out more about this place.
I didn’t even know this path way at the bottom of the hill existed until earlier this year.
This is a really nice quiet area to walk through.
A horse lives in on the left. It regularly sticks it’s head over the gate to get some attention.
Lots of happy children in that school this morning as we walked by.
Delighted I got some pictures from Kaiser’s perspective today. I had been trying to do this for ages!
Probably thinking, “When are we finally going home?”
And just like that we are back on the main road and the tranquility is gone.
Emma said, “I didn’t know that Guide dogs came with a hinge! :). Kaiser is playing after a hard morning of work.

Come walk with me.

Oct 21, 2020 | ,

A few of my posts lately have been a bit negative maybe. So let me change things up a little. Come for a little walk with me around Drogheda. I walk about 5km every morning before work. Today took me a little further than usual. We walked just over 6.5km just because the mood took me and it was a very mild morning.

I have included pictures of most parts of this morning’s walk. I forgot to take a pictures of a few places but you will still have a few nice places to look at.

I tend to try to pick routes that take me off the main roads to areas that are a little quieter. The morning walk for me is a way of getting myself ready for the day. It’s hard to do that when the accompanying sound track si a constant din of noisy traffic.

A tranquil spot that is just a stones throw away from the middle of town.
Very steep steps into the Dale.
It’s so nice and quiet here.
Sometimes going under this, I feel like I’m playing chicken with the traffic that is queueing at either end trying to agree who is allowed to move next.
I love this part of the walk. It feels like I’m walking a path a little less traveled. Although hundreds of people going to school every day probably use it as well. 🙂
I like listening to the sound of Drogheda waking up from this vantage point. It gives me a kind of disconnected calm. Knowing that all that activity is across the river.
I went down this on a scooter before. It didn’t end well. 🙂
Visit www.musicatthegate.ie to see this come to life.
When I was very young, I lived on this road.
This was a very hard road to cross.
This part of town was always a dead spot. But over the past 10 years, it has been integrated very well.

NVDA really coming up in my opinion.

Oct 19, 2020 | , , , ,

I’m so impressed by NVDA at the moment.

  • It works really nicely with VSCode
  • It’s working really well with the new Terminal UWP app
  • It’s very responsive
  • I like the sound effects and to replace speech.
  • It’s settings interface is really efficient
  • The Plugins repository is absolutely fantastic.

There are a few things stopping me using it right now.

  • I need remote desktop access out of the box
  • I’m nervous about pressing escape to get out of forms mode / get back into browse mode. Sorry. I’m mixing my terms. I also know that I can probably re-map this but I try to use it with the default keymap.
  • This is my own fault, but when in the terminal, it seems less efficient to copy and paste text when using the review cursor. Again, this is probably down to my inexperience with the application.

There is an NVDA remote add on available. But it’s not working with my current configuration while working from home as I’m using several machines with different VPN / routing configurations and as a result, although it get’s a connection, I never hear speech. I don’t have time to investigate further.

Oh, I also wish NVDA would not give me so much information when arrowing around message lists in Outlook. But that’s probably personal preference as well.

Feeling like an idiot.

Oct 19, 2020 | , , ,

There’s a thing that I think people have only started giving a name to recently. Maybe this name has always been given to it, but I’ve only come across it recently. It’s called imposter syndrome. It’s encountered when you try something new and you feel that you won’t ever get it and your questions are in fact stupid and really, you shouldn’t even try because there are millions of people out there who have been able to figure this out without asking questions. I’m in this rut right now but I’m finally coming out of it. I’m quite decent when it comes to coding in PowerShell. I can alway get the desired result. But there are people who live, eat and drink this stuff who write code that is in ways much more technical than mine. It could be argued that my code is a bit more readable, but that’s getting off the topic. The point is, I’m confident in my abilities in PowerShell. But a tool that I have been trying to use lately is absolutely knocking me senseless at every turn. I have finally come to the realization that it’s not me that can’t figure this out, it’s bad documentation. Here’s a quick eample:

There’s this thing in the tool called scripts. Think of scripts like a controller in the MVC world. The scripts handle all the dirty work. I have a module that pulls out the last log in date from active directory. Well, that script uses my module that does this and then it converts the date to a human readable format for use in the user interface. Seems simple enough doesn’t it? Well, although the scripts work really well, I’m completely unclear as to how scripts are called from within the UI. The documentation on scripts covers automation, scheduling, running from an API and running from a command line but no where in that documentation does it say how to run the scripts from the UI. AKA the dashboard.

Until I actually found a specific example of something that just wasn’t explained properly, I honestly thought I just wasn’t good enough to grasp the technicalities of this tool.

There have been other problems as well.

  • I spent twelve hours on something as it wasn’t working properly only to find out a few days later that it was in fact a bug.
  • I had problems getting intelisense working only to find that the version of the released module was for the previous version of the dashboard framework. That started a very frustrating hour where I was trying to get rid of dependencies so that I could cleanly install the pre-release version of the module.
  • Oh and the menu example in the documentation doesn’t work and the example it links to uses a different implementation of a menu.

I’m not mentioning the name of the tool here. I have asked the developers for some time with them to iron out a few of the issues that I have encountered. When that’s done, I’ll happily use this. So I don’t want to cause this small business any trouble.

But please let this be a lesson to you. If something isn’t working out, don’t default to the expectation that this is your fault. Sometimes, if you have given this enough time, consideration and research, it might actually be the developer that has screwed up.

That Damn Rabbit Hole Again!

Oct 12, 2020 | , , , , , ,

I’ve written previously about Tracking work and getting some kind of sense of achievement even when you fall down a rabbit hole but this post isn’t quite so positive. But it’s quite technical so if you are into that kind of thing, stick around. If not, please return to your regularly scheduled browsing.

Here’s the ultimate aim: Run PowerShell Universal to show some dashboards relating to information from active directory, azure, DUO and probably VMware as well.

Here’s what actually happens.

  • Day 1: Spend over ten hours trying to figure out why I couldn’t get VSCode to talk to the PowerShell Universal server.
    • During this I determined that NVDA was way more efficient than Jaws when using VSCode.
      • Realized I had to update NVDA finally and my old Eloquence plugin wouldn’t work. So, had to update that plugin too.
      • Remapped my keyboard commands in NVDA because the defaults annoy me a little.
      • Took some time to look at the new options in NVDA
    • Installed the PowerShell Pro Tools and the PowerShell Universal modules. But ran into anti-virus problems because part of the file name of one of the commands includes the letters c r y p t. With everything going on in the world around ransom ware, these letters are blocked from executing any action. Still, got around this easily enough by adding exceptions on the server side.
    • Uninstalled and reinstalled the VSCode plugins to try to get this to connect. Still, I was getting weird error messages. When I looked at the logs for VSCode, I saw it was trying to run a module called temp. I searched high and low for this but couldn’t find anything remotely useful. Finally, I Emailed the developer. I got a response back a few days later saying that there was a bug in the plugin and to try again. This worked finally. But I wasted a massive amount of time on it.
    • I should add that I also tried doing everything all over again on a second PC. I even uninstalled and reinstalled VSCode and VSCode insiders, the PowerShell plugin and I tried it with the PowerShell preview plugin as well. Nothing worked.
  • I converted all of my old PowerShell scripts into one module. I also modified that module to return objects for everything. This is going to feed directly into the dashboard. When I finally get to create it.
  • A week passed before I could try the Dashboard stuff again because of work commitments. But now, although the VSCode extension / plugin is connecting, there’s an error with a lot of numbers that mean nothing to me displayed when I start the service from VSCode. Fortunately, this doesn’t actually make a difference. But you’ve probably guessed it, I have spent over an hour troubleshooting this as well.
  • Oh, there’s a really annoying section in the configuration. It says, “Path to Service Executable” Now. To me, that includes the full path to the executable file. But no!!! It’s just the path to the folder containing the executable. This is incredibly frustrating. I encountered the error twice before I finally took a second to read the error message and realized my mistake.
  • Finally. I got the dashboard connected. Oh, and I can make changes to the dashboard files in VSCode! But guess what? Now on my work machine, I notice that the dashboards are not running. so, I swap over to the other computer and happily find out that the dashboards are running correctly on that system. I have now finally made some minor edits to a dashboard. I install my lovely new active directory module and get ready! But no! This machine isn’t domain joined. So, there’s two problems. 1. RSAT (Remote Server administration Tools) isn’t installed. And 2. Even if it was, this isn’t domain joined so the user context I would be running the module as isn’t going to have access to any domain resources. Yes. I should have thought of this without going all this way. But in my defence, I haven’t had a day off in over 3 weeks for various reasons and many of these days have been stupidly long.
    • This took me down another road. I decided that as I was going to ultimately run the dashboard from a server, I may as well just install the Dashboard on that server anyway and just get on with it.
      • Firstly, NuGet wasn’t installed.
      • Then I had a problem with PowerShell. It couldn’t look at the online PowerShell Gallery. The incorrect version of the Cryptographic libraries were running. To fix this, I ran the following two commands.
        Set-ItemProperty -Path ‘HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\.NetFramework\v4.0.30319’ -Name ‘SchUseStrongCrypto’ -Value ‘1’ -Type DWord
        Set-ItemProperty -Path ‘HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NetFramework\v4.0.30319’ -Name ‘SchUseStrongCrypto’ -Value ‘1’ -Type DWord
      • This let me download NuGet but again, because of Anti-virus, I’m having problems installing some modules such as AZ for Azure because it also includes Crypt in the name.
        PackageManagement\Install-Package : Package ‘Az.DataFactory’ failed to be installed because: Access to the path ‘C:\Users\%UserName%\AppData\Local\Temp\blpbm1k0\Microsoft.DataTransfer.Gateway.Encryption.dll’ is denied.
      • OH, I should also say that I tried all of this on another server as well. For some reason, I thought I remembered that PowerShell is broken on this first server. I remembered that incorrectly. But it was still a useful test.
      • So, I’m giving up on this for the moment because that crypt issue seems to be causing me other issues around running the Dashboards.
    • I decided to take my mind off this by trying to fix something else. I have 54 RDS session host servers but recently when I try to administer them over the VPN, I get WinRM timeout issues.
      • I decided to update the applications directly through PowerShell. This confirmed that WinRM was hitting a timeout of 30 seconds but nothing I do let’s that timeout increase.
      • ON the upside, I’ve written a very useful module that has some nice functions in it that when the WinRM issue is fixed will let me do a few normal admin tasks faster directly through the CLI.

There are a few problems here:

Firstly, I’m putting way too much pressure on myself. There are a lot of projects and problems in work at the moment. I’m focused on them for most of the day on Monday to Friday. Including outside normal work hours. But I have projects that I want to work on myself. Both because they are technically a lot more interesting and also will add value by decreasing overall administration time and will probably even reduce support calls as well. But so many things are going wrong. It’s probably a catch 22. I need to take more time off during rest periods. I.E. When I’m not meant to be in work, I shouldn’t be working still. But If I don’t put extra work in, I’m losing interest because the projects I’m currently working on are very dull and are not technically challenging.

That’s not all of course. I haven’t told you about the other things I’ve tripped over while doing this extra work. For example, during a meeting on Friday, someone asked for global admin access. I wasted a few minutes finding that person and checking their permissions only to find that they already have it. Or getting asked for a certificate without being provided a CSR. So, I have to generate the CSR as well as the certificate. Even though I know the system they will use to upload the cert has a native way of generating the CSR and associating the cert created with the key. Oh, and I have another computer sitting in the office in Dublin somewhere but it’s either been powered off or I can’t remember it’s IP or hostname. I think it’s been powered off. But I wasted about 30 minutes over the weekend trying to get back onto that. Because if I can’t sort the WinRM / WMI timeout issue, I know I will be able to work around it by connecting to a machine on a trusted network on site.

Finally, then there’s the urgent meetings that I get pulled in because there’s an issue with authentication. Only to find that there’s nothing wrong with authentication at all, it’s something else completely different and if some basic testing had been done on the login, the company contracted to do this work would have noticed very quickly that user attributes other than the Email address were now displayed therefore, it’s logical to conclude that login was successful but there’s an unrelated problem with the application.

So many things going on. I’m so tired. But yet I’m up at 4am today and I’ve just wated 3 hours without making much progress and there’s still 2 hours before the workday even starts. Why am I up so early? Because my stupid brain won’t turn off at night if there’s a problem that hasn’t been solved. So, this PowerShell stuff that I should be able to do easily is really getting on my nerves because supporting systems / modules aren’t behaving correctly.

Here’s a few more accessibility things that have caused me major delays and more trips down this rabbit hole of pain and torture:

  • This morning, when I decided it would be a great idea to get the dashboard running on a server, I decided it would be a good idea to use NVDA remote on the server with a direct connection back to my computer.
    • The problem first was that I had multiple languages installed for some reason so the shift and caps lock keys weren’t working properly. Two reboots later, this was fixed. The problem here is I have a rather strong PC with a RAID array so a reboot takes well over 5 minutes.
    • Okay, So I got NVDA installed on the server and my local machine and thanks to some messing around, I opened a port on my home network to let the computer in work communicate directly to it. This isn’t as insecure as it sounds.  The connection is strictly ….. restricted.  The traffic is encrypted and it can only be initiated by me.  Unfortunately, when I’m connected over the VPN, NVDA want’s to listen on the new default IP which doesn’t use my home network connection route as all traffic is routed over the VPN.  Even when I start the server on one IP then connect to the VPN afterword, it still get’s it’s nickers in a twist and doesn’t work correctly.
    • Side note, There are some really useful NVDA plugins available these days. That took a good half an hour of my time but it’s my own fault I suppose.
    • Anyway, I couldn’t get NVDA remote to work in this situation. With the combination of PowerShell problems, NVDA not working as I expected and the anti-Virus blocking crypt, I’ve just given up for a while and have moved onto something else.   Such as writing this long and pointless blog post, creating that CSR for that person and in a moment, I going to wake the children, make breakfast for them, walk them to the bus, go take the dog for a walk before coming back to sit here in an hour and 40 minutes to actually begin my real working day.  FUN TIMES!

Find out the name of a process using a port and stop it if necessary.

Oct 9, 2020 | , ,

Just a quick one.
Here are a few useful commands to have in your toolbox to find the process bound to a port in Windows. Then stop it.
I’ve provided commands for both command prompt and PowerShell. The PowerShell way is much nicer in my opinion.

In command prompt:


# Get the process ID (PID) of processes listening on port 443.
netstat -a -n -o | find "443"

# Get the process name from a pid.
tasklist /fi "pid eq 1234"

#Kill a task with a given PID:
taskkill /pid 12344

Now in PowerShell:


#PowerShell get the process details listening on a given port:
Get-Process -Id (Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 443).OwningProcess

# Stops the process that you found listening on the port with get-process.
stop-process -confirm (Get-Process -Id (Get-NetTCPConnection -LocalPort 443).OwningProcess)

Jaws scripts for Wireshark. I never thought I would ever see the day.

Aug 17, 2020 | , ,

This is amazing news. Doug Lee is an amazing script writer. He has scripted dozens of applications and has perhaps made more new applications accessible than the developers of Jaws have themselves!

Wireshark is a network analysis tool. It is basically a packet capture utility but it has been around for years and has so many features, I couldn’t even begin to explain them

Doug’s scripts for Wireshark can be found here.

Go explore around the rest of the DLE.org site using this link. If you don’t know that site well by now and you a are a screen reader user, you are missing out.

I cant thank Doug enough. This is going to make the odd time I need to use a packet capture application a whole lot easier.

Day 5 – Training with the chief, my new guide dog

Jul 25, 2020 | ,

Standard disclaimer.

Training with a new guide dog is hard work. Some days go really well. Some days go terribly. There will be times I think this is the best dog in the world and there will be days that I’m near the point of sending him back to the training staff in Cork. This is no reflection on guide dogs, Irish guide dogs for the Blind of Ireland, anyone else who uses a guide dog or even the long-term viability of this new partnership. I write this account of my training with the Chief, my latest guide dog mainly as a personal account that I can look back on but also for friends and family who enjoy getting a bit of insight into this process. I have also heard over the years that perspective guide dog users enjoy these personal and honest accounts. But please remember that what works for me, may not work for you. In the unlikely event I mention something here that verges on tactics or techniques for working a guide dog please be aware that these work or may not work for my situation. Every guide dog and handler partnership is different. So, your situation may be entirely different.

The big Shmoke! I have not missed that place at all. I’ve also been quite hesitant about taking public transport for the past few months. Not because of Covid-19. No. Because I’ve been on and off busses now for 20+ years and I’m absolutely sick of them. I’m tired of sitting on smelly busses with smelly people. Yes. You with the perfume. It’s going to smell amazing in a few hours but right now, at 8am in the morning, 10 minutes after you stepped out of the shower, it’s just too over powering for an enclosed space where air is constantly circulated for an hour. And hey you, the person with the coat that smells like stale cigarette smoke, it’s revolting. Covid-19 of course plays a bit part in all of this. I’m genuinely concerned about putting my hands on the seats and the hand rails but of course, my hands are my primary method of sensing the world around me in such confined spaces so I don’t really have a choice. Wearing gloves is pointless. With the gloves, I’m going to touch the guide dog so it’s obvious that cross contamination is going to be a problem. All I can really do is sanitise my hands regularly and ware a mask. But anyway, the bus part of the trip came and went without much incident. I had been lucky enough to bring the chief onto a few different types of busses yesterday so I was quite confident he wouldn’t have a problem. With everything going on at the moment, the guide dog mobility instructors aren’t allowed to train guide dogs on public transport. Lucky enough for me, I have ample experience with getting dogs to do what I need on busses and trains. I walked to the bus station in Drogheda yesterday and was very fortunate to meet a fella by the name of David. David was amazing. Not only did he give me access to several busses, he also explained without any prompting the standard convention for social distancing on busses. This was incredibly useful as I wasn’t even aware that there was a convention. As companies have developed a standard that they are all working to, it’s actually quite easy to determine what seats are safe to use. This means that taking public transport is a little safer than I had expected. But by David giving us unhindered access to busses, it meant I could get the chief to get on and off busses, get in under seats exactly as I need and generally behave in a consistent way so that when the time came to catch a bus, I had no major concerns. The chief isn’t as natural at getting on and off busses as Nama was from day one. Also, he’s a little larger so getting under seats takes a bit more work but I’m very confident that given a week or two of consistent work and high expectations he will rise to the challenge.

We got off at white hall as normal but 20 minutes earlier than expected. Being the stubborn pain in the rear that I’m known to be, I decided to take matters into my own hands and walked to DCU alone. Fortunately the instructors are quite happy with the chief’s work and Collin’s avenue is very long and straight so as they could keep an eye on me from a distance while I approached, I think they were happy enough for me to proceed. This started quite an enjoyable morning of walking.

  • First, I walked to DCU from White hall.
  • Then I walked the 2.04km through Albert’s park.
  • Next I took a stroll over to DCU Sport. There, we tried out automatically revolving doors. Again, the chief hadn’t used these before but he took it in his stride.
  • Finally we walked back to white hall where we practised targeting a curb approach for a crossing where the path resumed at a point on the other side of the road. This was interesting. I’ll explain more shortly.
  • We walked back to DCU again just to make sure the chief was clear on the route. In total, we did about 8km.

The targeting part was something I really enjoyed. I had done this with Nama and it gave him a real sense of achievement. The chief is a little less delighted when he does something like this. It’s different for him. Every crossing point is a big win for him so although this was also a big win, he didn’t get the same sense of victory as Nama did for working in this unusual situation. The training method for teaching this was also a bit different. It involved more food rewards and less verbal praise . I also found it interesting that the clicker was used on the other side of the crossing during the last time he found that point. This actually really helped him make sense of why he was being asked to find a random crossing point.

There was one point today where he encountered a distraction level far higher than anything he had found before. A squirrel was see in Albert’s park. The chief hadn’t seen something like this before and he was absolutely transfixed. Commands, distractions, standing in his way. Nothing worked. This is something I’m certainly going to encounter again but I’m quite confident that a combination of massive positivity with a touch of firmness should help the distraction level reduce over time.

Let’s talk about poo again for a moment because I’ve gone a good few paragraphs now without talking about this topic. Unfortunately, the chief pood again at a time that was a little unexpected. I knew he would need to do it soon, but not as soon as he decided. These solid spends need to become more reliable. I’ll work on it tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday to try to help him get into a structure. Also, the training schedule next week is quite different so it may help him get into a different routine where this is more easier to handle mid afternoon.

Over all, and to this point, I’m very happy with the chief’s training. I find the instructors very easy to work with. They are providing me with good background information relating to training techniques. I hate just doing something. I like to know why something needs to be done. Because they are explaining the technicalities behind some of these new approaches, it means I am much more able to implement what they are asking me to do.