Hard on the heels of the Divemaster and the Assistant Instructor program, I completed the OWSI course last weekend.
All in all quite demanding but also fun and you can learn tons of good things.
Sad note: The IE that was scheduled for this weekend was cancelled because there are not enough candidates. The next date is mid-October so somehow I have to make sure I don’t forget anything until then.
Keep your fingers crossed for me.
The Tomy tracks are a great toy. Not only for kids, also for parents and grandparents. And with all the available parts you can create some really astonishing layouts.
One of the properties of a well-planned layout is the direction in which the trains can run. Sometimes accidentally and sometimes on purpose, tracks limit trains running in just one direction.
This one is not and it uses all the special tracks parts that we have at the moment: crossroads, switches, the bridge:
If this doesn’t sound like much too you, try building some tracks for yourself and you’ll be surprised.
While still doing the PADI Divemaster internship, I started and recently finished the PADI Assistant Instructor course. The certification card should be on its way.
Whereas the Divemaster has a lot of practical aspects, the next step in the PADI career focuses on teaching, teaching techniques, structuring lessons and applied lessons in confined water and open water.
First time supervising an open water lesson was pretty stressful. All of a sudden you have to deal with things such as bottom topography and current, which you don’t really have to take into consideration in a pool.
One of the most painful lessons I learned was the aspect of control – even if you have an assistant, you need to constantly monitor everyone around you, even the assistant – unless you know him/her pretty well and you make a good team.
I have to say, I really enjoyed the first dive *after* the course because after weeks and weeks of tasks, homework, assignments and such I finally got the chance to enjoy a quiet, no-pressure dive again. Felt good…
(Edit on 2017/08/25: corrected three typos)
Guess what kind of shoes I’ve been wearing this summer so far…
And don’t look at my weirdly shaped little toes… which you probably can’t unsee now.
What can I say… this year seems to progress as planned…. I finished the divemaster course yesterday and signed the necessary documents which means I’m am a PADI Divemaster. Apparently there is no mandatory PADI Divemaster tattoo.
To think that I only started diving less than two years ago… it’s been a busy and interesting time. Next step: Assistant Instructor.
If you ever have to do a dive briefing, feel free to use the below template.
In some spots, you will need to fill in the details of the dive location e.g. phone number of the local hospital whereas in other spots you can delete whatever is not necessary (you do obviously not enter a dive spot from a boat AND walking from the beach).
When you have adapted the template to your diving spot, you will have covered all the major points of a dive briefing.
If you use the template for several dive spots, it will give your briefings a consistent look-and-feel (listen-and-feel, if you prefer) which makes it easier on the divers regularly attending your dives.
Feel free to add contents or delete what is not necessary. Use a map if you have one. Make one if you don’t. Remember to keep briefings short and to the point. Make it interesting but keep it relevant.
Update: Fixed a typo
Sometimes I get a bit thoughtful and slightly depressed. There is so much going on in this world and without doubt I’m engaging in many activities as well.
But should I? Is it really ok to spend time, again, not with my family? Shouldn’t I be with him? Does it matter as long he is still very young?
See the previous post… preparing for that test took a lot of time although I spent many hours reading late in the night and tried to keep time away from the family to a minimum. Those were difficult three years. My resolution is not to let that happen again, at least not in those dimensions.
But then again, the business world seems to be turning faster and faster and keeping necessarily ends in concessions. With personal changes looming I wonder to what degree my environment will accept my resolution to put the family first.
Then again, I want him to proud of me once he is old enough to understand what that means. I want his eyes to light up when he says “my dad…”. I’ve chosen my path partly based on such considerations but as the future is hard to predict he might not necessarily share my interests, neither in profession nor in hobbies. But that’s alright – he is a different human being and should have his own interests. I just hope he will be able to see through different genres and recognize the effort I made to become what I became.
As for the future… nobody knows for sure what will happen. Plenty of people have ideas and expectations but that means exactly nada. Might as well pursue the path I’ve embarked on and pull it through to the end.
2017 könnte ein grosses Jahr in Sachen Auszeichnungen werden… im April seit Jahren wieder einmal TOIEC Test geschrieben und mit 985 von 990 Punkten geschafft.
Im Mai dann die ICT-Manager Diplomprüfung und Ende Juni dann endlich die Bestätigung – bestanden. Das letzte Jahr der Wirtschaftsinformatiker Fachausweis und dieses Jahr das Diplom nachgeschoben.
Wenn ich nicht gerade ein PADI Divemaster Praktikum absolvieren und mich auf die Cambridge Proficiency Prüfung im Oktober vorbereiten würde, könnte ich ein wenig durchschnaufen…. naja, vielleicht nächstes Jahr.
Mal schauen, was das Jahr sonst noch mit sich bringt…
Although the feature “Open remote files” has been around in LibreOffice for a while, I only got it working recently, at least for WebDAV. Success on remote files on Sharepoint is still on the horizon, maybe I will follow up with another post once I get that working.
In Writer, go to the menu File, select Open Remote File…
Click Add service
Select WebDAV from the dropdown menu
If the WebDAV url for your host is https://host.yourdomain.orgorg/remote.php/webdav, then fill in the details as follows:
(Selecting “Secure connection” should change the Port number to 443. If it does not change, change it manually.)
After clicking OK, a dialogue box should ask for your usernamen and password, which can be saved if you want to.
If your username and password are correct, the usual Open File dialogue will show but the content is of course your remote location.
To save the file in your webdav folder again, select “Save to Remote Server”. You can choose to overwrite your existing file or save as a different file.
I’m a cautiosly avid user of memrise (memrise.com) – every tool has its advantages and disadvantages. So far, memrise has worked well for me and this weekend I was able to celebrate a 555 day streak (everyday continous learning). Something to be a little proud of.
This means two things:
*What’s a Schnapszahl, you ask? Apparently there’s no direct translation in English. It’s defined as a number which consists of several equal numbers such as the above 555. Before trying to find a translation and checking the definition I though it also included patterns e.g. 737737, but this could be a regional difference.