Paul’s Random Ramblings

As you are probably aware Ruth and I are expecting our first child.  All is going well even though I am still coming to grips with the whole idea and how life will soon be completely different.

Here is our first baby photo from the 20 week scan, a very computer generated image.  Still totally neat 😎 even though.

New South Wales Waratahs played Fiji in a trial game in Newcastle last Friday night (30/1/09).  Not the highest standard game with many passes going to ground (not surprising I suppose for a trial) but still great to have professional standard rugby union in Newcastle.  The final score was Waratahs 60 to Fiji 0 (Zero).

Here are some photos I took during the game, for the full gallery visit Waratahs vs Fiji gallery.

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During our Christmas break Ruth and I had the pleasure of making a short visit to the Wombeyan Caves south of Sydney (see map below).  These are some of the most beautiful caves caves in Australia and several are readily accessible on self and ranger guided tours.

Being the Christmas  to New Year week all of the guided tours were booked out so we did the self guided tour of Fig Tree Cave without great expectations.  We were to be pleasantly surprised, Fig Tree Cave features several quite large caverns and a range of well preserved features thanks to a very well thought out path that gives good views of the cave while keeping people far enough away to protect them from the worst of the effects of visitors.

While the caves are a long drive from main roads it is well worth the effort.  The easiest accesses are from Golburn and Oberon, while the most interesting drive in is from Mittagong.  Allow plenty of time for this route however as it includes about 60 km of very slow dirt road.

This months photo’s show some of the highlights of Fig Tree Cave.

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Some good sites with further information on Wombeyan Caves are www.walkabout.com.au/locations/NSWWombeyanCaves.shtml and http://www.showcaves.com/english/au/region/Wombeyan.html.

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My second article on Maintenance Management has been published on the bluepencil blog;

Does your RCM Process Identify and Manage High Impact Plant Failures?

Most maintenance practitioners are familiar with the plant reliability benefits that can be gained from using Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM) to design the maintenance regime for your plant, but does your RCM process identify and manage the risk of high impact plant failures.

To read the entire article please visit the blog at www.bluepencil.com.au.

Photos of Northern Lights taken in Northern Norway in September 2002 during a trip to Scandinavia & Russia.

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