Category: charitable

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charitable End User

Donating Stem Cells (Part III)

It’s finally over. 8 million of my little stem cells are now on ice awaiting transplant.

The harvesting procedure itself is done on an outpatient basis and is relatively simple as I’ll describe shortly. The hard work is done in the build up to it. 16 injections of granulocyte colony stimulating factor (or GCSF) are administered over 4 days to get the bone marrow into stem cell production hyperdrive to ensure enough are in the blood for harvest.

These injections are done 4 at a time; in my case, two in the belly and one in each arm. They can be done in 8, but you have a choice – 4 relatively painless injections a day, or 2 slightly more painful ones. I opted for the former. These are administered by a nurse that visits you at home or work and who has to take your pulse, temperature and blood pressure before and 30 minutes after to ensure all is OK. In my case, 2 days were in the Supreme Court and I remain thankful to the help the staff extended in finding a room for this to happen.

I have been mulling over whether to tell the “no holes barred” truth about the process, or

Continue reading “Donating Stem Cells (Part III)”
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charitable End User Regs Weekend

Donating Stem Cells (Part II)

It’s the final countdown.

I am writing this expecting my first of four daily injections of granuloycte colony stimulating factor, or “GCSF” anytime soon. A nurse appointed by the Anthony Nolan Trust will seek me out in London / at home and administer a drug which will get them stem cells moving out of my bone marrow into my blood stream ready for the aphoresis machine to filter them out for the adult lady with leukemia who is in desperate need of them.

Unfortunately, on that front, apparently she now has an infection, so they’ve had to stop her build up to treatment. This faced the medics with a bit of a Sophie’s choice apparently. They can cryogenically preserve my stem cells until she’s fit and well enough to receive them (and risk some of them being damaged in the process), or delay the harvest but hope all the planets align with the timings – not just my availability but a 6 day collection cycle which given predictions of narrow windows of opportunity when she may be well enough had to be traded against the slightly more optimal nature of the procedure.

The medical boffins went with the latter, so I am about to be injected and will still donate on Wednesday/Thursday.

Fitting this around work is interesting though……. well, I mean it’s fine Saturday/Sunday, I am just waiting on a nurse to pitch up, but when you are lead in your company for a litigation and the court hearing is on the Monday and Tuesday before the donation, things get interesting.

I know I, and others, can sometimes get down on the former incumbent in our industry….. and its regulator, and sometimes even the judiciary. In this case though, I have to express my extreme gratitude to the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom for making the “Robing Room” available for the injections and BT offering their break-out room for the same if need be.

Many of you will have read the first article on this I posted here; and many of your have made or pledged financial support to Anthony Nolan Trust via JustGiving or otherwise. Importantly though, I am pleased to say that this story has encouraged at least 2 people so far to register themselves as potential donors – in amongst all this, and especially amongst the worrying news about the recipient, it’s truly heartening!

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charitable End User Regs Weekend

Donating Stem Cells (Part 1)

For those expecting some deep regulatory insights, alas, they will come in due course ….. But today I am hijacking Trefor.net to talk about my experiences to date helping someone suffering from leukemia.

There’s an adult female out there somewhere, afflicted with this cancer . Alas, that’s all I am allowed to know for 2 years….. and if she wants anonymity I’ll never know any more.

This time last year I had a phone call from Anthony Nolan, the charity that runs the UK’s largest register. I signed up in a moment of philanthropy 15 years ago…… And despite near misses before, this time I was supposed to be a proper bona-fide match.

More blood was taken (all the samples are done by your local practice nurse) and I kept getting holding emails thereafter. The recipients medical team where unsure whether or not to proceed. Then, two weeks ago, all of a sudden we were go…. and in a hurry.

I’ve now had my medical – this was 3 hours of poking and prodding and X-Rays and ECGs in a special unit in University College London Hospital. All apparently seems fine but I await the result. Assuming that’s OK, a week Wednesday I shall be in to donate.

In most circumstances, it’s allegedly complication free. Simply involves 4 days of injections to get stem cells moving out of your bone marrow into your blood, and then 5 hours on a special “dialysis” machine that centrifuges your blood and separates stem cells from the rest. Sounds like a very long blood donation, though involves bigger needles and one more of them.

This is nowhere like the general anaesthetic and excavation of the pelvis prevalent when I signed up….. and easily fitting around work – the injections are administered by a nurse wherever you are that day …… Though that operation may still have to happen yet (if enough aren’t collected). And for some recipients that is the best way of doing it, medically speaking.

I’ll let you know how it goes on the day; I might even live tweet it on the hospital WiFi. In the meantime though, there’s a shortage of donors, especially from ethnic minorities. If you’re between 16-30, you can sign up with Anthony Nolan here – read it all carefully and be sure before you commit!.

If you’re over 30, or it isn’t for you (there’s no shame in that), can I encourage you to give to the Anthony Nolan here via my JustGiving site, so they can continue to do their life saving work…… tissue typing isn’t cheap, and nor is the procedure. That, and they’ll have to keep me in coffee for a day!

PS. People have said that I’m brave – I don’t consider myself that…..the brave one is the anonymous adult woman battling this disease. That said, I will be teetotal for a week or so, which is probably, for me at least, the bravest bit!

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Business charitable

Mo’spotting gringo Timico

mospotting - it's that time of year again

I dont really know how to put this one across. Part of me wants to talk with a Mehican accent and go around saying things like I keel you Gringo.

But then again part of me thinks I should be talking in a rather suave voice, perhaps with a couple of marbles in my mouth for effect.

Whatever you may think yourselves there is one thing for sure I’m not sure I’d want to kiss any of them. Those moustaches must tickle1 big time.

Anyway well done to James Andrade, Richard Wright, Guy Beales and Simon Brown from Timico for making the effort. They have been raising cash for Prostate Cancer and other men’s health charities. You can donate here. Also well done to our creative genius Scott Wroe for the poster.

1 I should at this point establish the fact that I don’t go around kissing people with moustaches anyway, blokes or otherwise. It’s not my bag though if it is yours that is ok 🙂

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charitable End User

Children in need cookie sale

cookiesIt’s that time of year again – Children in need time. I guess there are always children in need but at least we get our minds focused every now and again and empty our pockets out for the cause.

This time we have cookies. Fabulous cookies baked by the wonderful people that are Kirsty Watt and Leslie Young. The good folk that are the Timico staff responded appropriately.

I offer here before and after scenarios.

The before is what the cookies looked like before they were eaten. The after is what they turned into – a jar of cash.

So this is the deal. Whoever can guess the amount of cash in the pot gets a prize. To give you a clue I asked for a minimum donation of a pound for each cookie.

As usual its a fantastic Timico mug on offer for the nearest right guess. If you get it exactly right I’ll throw in a quality Timico pen guess how much cash in the pot complete with the Timico Connect Host Manage branding.

Hey, you can’t ask for more than that.

No staff entries allowed for this one as some of them already have a good idea how much we raised.

I’ll give you until close of play Monday to enter.

That’s all…

 

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Business charitable social networking

Award winning Burton Road chippy in Lincoln @burtonrdchippy – eat their chips

Burton Road Chippy in Lincoln

charity begins at a chip shopI don’t follow many chip shops on twitter. In fact I think I only follow the one, @burtonrdchippy.

I like the @burtonrdchippy tweets. I like to know that they have offers on although seeing as I am trying to lose a few pounds I don’t typically frequent fish and chip shops.

When I see something good I retweet it and so hopefully in a modest way @burtonrdchippy gets more exposure and more custom. Many of the people I follow and who follow me are local to me so there is a chance they will go and eat there.

@burtonrdchippy has a personality I can engage with. Imagine my delight therefore when driving to drop off a trumpeter at a band practice I heard on BBC Radio Lincolnshire that @burtonrdchippy is now an award winning emporium – one of the best in the East of England in fact.

It wasn’t far to go so I popped round to congratulate them. Tweetmeister (for want of a better word) Lesley wasn’t there though and when I went back later this evening they were busy so I let them be.

So I’m just going to write this short blog post as a small token of my appreciation of the fact that this chippy has embraced the new world, mixed it with the old and is making a success of it.

Eat their chips, sit in their fine restaurant section and enjoy a bottle of wine with your fish. The fish will be freshly prepared and have come from a sustainable source. Check out their website here and follow them on twitter. I sense a tweetup at a chip shop in the offing.

Well done  @burtonrdchippy. Frying tonight:)

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Business charitable

Newark Castle Rotary Club and Rainbows Children’s Hospice

Newark Castle Rotary club dinnerEarlier this month I was invited to a presentation evening1 by Newark Castle Rotary Club. Timico had made a contribution to a sponsored walk held in aid of the Rainbows Children’s Hospice.

It’s totally humbling when you look at the effort put in by some to help others. In this case there are two groups to mention. Firstly the enthusiasm with which the folk at the Rotary Club put their hands up to volunteer. We would all do well to imitate it.

Secondly is  the work done by the people at Rainbows. The mental strength and sheer goodness needed to work in such an environment is massive. It’s only when you have (four) healthy kids of your own that you begin to appreciate how lucky you are.

Rainbows helps families get through really difficult times and deserve your support. I’ll repeat the link here in case you want to take a look at what they do and maybe even make a small donation.

1I thought it was going to be a finger buffet and knowing how easy it is to eat too much at these gigs and being on a health kick I had dinner before I went. Turns out the buffet was an enormous meal with a traditional British treacle sponge pudding and custard for afters. Of course it would have been rude to sit there not eating.  The things I have to do in the name of charity/work/call it what you like.

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charitable End User

6 months after RNLI cheque presentation – Skegness in summer

A panoramic view from Skegness pier on a hot and busy day in AugustWhat a difference 6 months makes. Went to Skeggy today with son Joe. It was packed with tourists enjoying the 26 degrees heat of the British summer. Can’t say it was bracing at all. There was a gentle offshore breeze which made it very pleasant.

Interesting to compare the scene with February when I presented the RNLI with their £6k cheque following the world record attempt for most comments on a blog post.

Spot the tourist - the icy windswept wastes of Skegness sea front - a terrain ruled by the donkey in summerThe pic on the left is The scene in Skegness in summer - near the RNLI stationthe scene in February and the one on the right was today.

If you’ve never been you should go to Skegness – in August obviously. It’s a great British family seaside day out – beer ice creams, fish and chips, deckchairs, amusements etc etc.

Make sure you take plenty of sunscreen 🙂

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charitable End User

No swearing day? WTF?

Ashley Carl and Luke after being shorn

Taking a look at the narrow letterbox shaped photo Luke, Cark and Ashley before the haircutthat is the header to this post you might be forgiven for thinking that it was a police identity parade. The strange thing is that the guys, Ashley, Carl and Luke are smiling. Clicking on the photo you will see that they are Timico staff, proudly wearing their branded shirts.

The mirth is becasue they have just had a haircut after betting that one of colleagues, Adam Rutter (photo withheld to protectCarl the thinker - from Timico tech support the innocent) could not go for a whole shift without swearing. I know, I know wtf do I hear you say?

Well Adam, who is a really nice guy is an inveterate swearer and undertook to maintain expletive silence in order to raise cash for the “Dogs Trust”. Adam brings his dog into work every day and keeps him in the kennel in the data centre car park.

The guys figured he didn’t have a hope so said that if he succeeded in going the whole day without upsetting Mary Whitehouse they would have their hair shaved off.

Luke looks like something out of the Adams Family whilst having his haircutTbh they really needed the haircut. They will benefit from huge side effects of the act of generosity – their consumption of shampoo will plummet and whenever they go out on the town will be able to squeeze in that extra beer because they won’t have had to spend as much time “doing their hair”.

Thanks to Faye Hemingway for performing the shearing – she has undoubted skills in that direction. Thanks also to Graham Busby for the photographs.

They raised a total of £250 which is great – if you want to chiplooks like a poignant moment for our Ashley in you can do so here.

You can also check out the kennel here.

Well done to everyone involved – great sports.

Categories
charitable End User

Skegness – it aint bracing – it’s a sub zero frozen windswept wasteland with good points

RNLB Lincolnshire PoacherHave you ever been afraid? That helpless feeling whenSpot the tourist - the icy windswept wastes of Skegness sea front - a terrain ruled by the donkey in summer adversity looks you in the eye, evil veins popping out blood red against the whites of its own terrible eyeballs and the feeling of breath swirling up around your nostrils looking for a victim. When the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and you feel a cold sweat under the collar. Have you ever felt like that?

Me neither.

However I did have to go to Skegness today. I know, I know,Skegness in February - nuff said Skegness you say!!?? In February, with the glass reading minus two in the full glare of a dazzling Lincolnshire winter sun barely rising above the white tops of a cold and inhospitably grey North Sea, just visible across the vast expanse of beach that allegedly contains sand below its frozen snow covered crust?? Yes Skegness in February.

Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a mans gotta do and in the interest of technology, the readers of this blog, and the RNLI ISkegness is shut in February (for some reason) did it.

Regular readers will remember the World Record attempt for the most comments on a blog post in 24 hours. Well we didn’t get the world record though there is a strong case that we might have a British record. However we did raise £6,034 for the RNLI and today I braved it over the Lincolnshire Wolds, looking austerely beautiful in a fresh coat of snow and ice.

My destination was the Skegness Lifeboat Station to meet coxwain John Irving, RNLI Press Officer Russell Matthews and Me and the RNLI boyssome of the 30 crew that man the RNLB Lincolnshire Poacher.

I must say it felt a privilege to meet these guys. In all it takes 80 volunteers to man the lifeboat station at Skegness, including people serving in the shop, fundraisers etc. When I arrived John sent out a call for volunteers just as would happen in the case of a real emergency and in short order a full crew turned out for the photo opportunity. It takes 7 men to man the big boat you see in the picture and they have a smaller inshore craft that takes 3 men that is used to rescue unwaryTrefor Davies with the crew of RNLB Lincolnshire Poacher in Skegness - cox John Irving to my right swimmers floating out to sea on lilos etc.

I am glad we are able to help them even if our £6k is a relatively small part of the £150 million a year the RNLI needs to keep going.

A lot of people retire to the Skegness area. As I get older I’d like to ask a small favour of you. Keep whispering in my ear “Spain, France, Southern Italy” – anywhere that is warmer than Skeggy in February 🙂

That’s if for me now. I’m off for half term and won’t be online except perhaps for the occasional tweet. Have a good break if you are off too and if not keep that nose to the grindstone and one day you too might earn a trip to Skeggy1 – it’s bracing, apparently.

1Perhaps I need to organise a trefor.net day out there in the summer 🙂

the icy wastes of Lincolnshire en route to Skeggy

PS – the good points? The RNLI

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charitable End User social networking

world record attempt – the results are in #comment24

世界記録のコメントWe had a good go at it guys. When I first discussed the world record attempt for “most comments on an online news post” with the Guinness World Records® people there was no record in place. We came in at 5,455 comments in 24 hours.

Unfortunately in the meantime a Japanese pop star – don’t ask me his name, I was too distraught to register it1  – has come in with 56,800 on his fan website. Apparently a quarter of all his registered fans left a comment. That’s life folks.

However we should not be dismayed. We should rejoice. First of all we raised just over £6k for the RNLI. The RNLI needs £150million a year to keep going. That’s a lot of two pences rolling down that lifeboat donation box and every little helps.

Secondly I contacted Charles Arthur, Tech Editor of the Guardian who after digging around a bit discovered that the most comments ever on a Guardian news post was 4,789.  The Guardian is reputed to have a monthly unique readership of 50 million people globally so the fact that we beat their number for most comments is huge news. NOTW phone hacking not unsurprisingly seems to be the subject that generally attracts most people to comment at the Guardian.

Perhaps I’ll change the subject next time to something more inflammatory. I think we will have another go – next year maybe. There was huge enthusiasm amongst everyone who participated. The main feedback from GWR, apart from the fact that they enjoyed following the attempt was that it appears that this sort of record is generally best suited to celebs with huge  followings. A bit obvious but perhaps we can prove that wrong someday:)

Still to do: tech post & look at the “most inspiring comments”. As regard the latter if anyone has any they would like to highlight let me know – leave a comment on this post linking to their favourite comment.

That’s all folks.

PS world record attempt blog post here

1 tbh it’s ‘cause I couldn’t understand it & didn’t want to look stupid asking for the name again 🙂

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charitable Cloud datacentre End User social networking surveillance & privacy

The social media summary of the world record attempt

UK trending for @tref & #comment24 on twitter The world record attempt started at 6am on Thursday 5th Feb and ended at 6am the following day. There are three stories to tell here. The first is the charity fundraising aspect that was covered on Friday.

Second is the social media story. This was an event largely promoted using the #comment24 hashtag on twitter but the story was also posted on Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. The effort also caught the imagination of a good number of friendly journalists as the list of names in the table of top referrers for 5th Jan illustrates.

referring site

# visits

pages/visit

time on site

1

t.co (Twitter)

2,012

2.73

00:04:08

2

 facebook.com

903

4.44

00:04:56

3

 gizmodo.co.uk

310

2.38

00:02:19

4

 thinkbroadband.com

291

4.38

00:04:36

5

 forums.moneysavingexpert.com

265

3.24

00:02:58

6

 m.facebook.com

240

2.2

00:01:53

7

 guardian.co.uk

233

3.07

00:03:50

8

 thenextweb.com

221

2.83

00:02:47

9

 telegraph.co.uk

207

3.6

00:04:47

10

 hootsuite.com

67

2.88

00:04:10

11

 community.plus.net

63

2.84

00:02:43

12

 plus.url.google.com

59

4.05

00:05:45

13

 linkedin.com

57

4.84

00:07:03

14

 thelincolnite.co.uk

51

2.25

00:02:07

15

 celticquicknews.co.uk

50

1.36

00:00:23

 

In all according to Google Analytics there were 162 referring sites over the 5th and 6th January. A Google search for

Continue reading “The social media summary of the world record attempt”
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charitable End User

The morning after the week before #comment24

The world record attempt finished at 6am this morning. Phew. We didn’t get the 100,000 comments we were after. According to the screenshot I took at 6am  it was 5,455 though there are potentially a few “non-qualifying” comments in there that I will have to check.

final comment numbers - snapshot at 6.08 am
final comment numbers - snapshot at 6.08 am

At this point in time I don’t know whether we will be accorded a world record for this one. There is no existing record to break and the 100k was an arbitrary target set by the Guinness World Records® organisation as one considered appropriate based on a different record category concerning Facebook comments. I will report back on this one over the next few days as the info comes in.

More importantly the current tally of funds raised is £5,809.50. This comprises 110 donations made online via just giving (includes a very generous £1k from zeninternet – thanks boys)  and also includes £2,360 worth of pledges made to me offline that I know we are good for (£2k is from Timico & £250 from ipcortex – both great contributions) .

The total funds raised is yet to be firmed up as money is still coming in and

Continue reading “The morning after the week before #comment24”
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charitable End User

World record attempt for most comments on an online news item in 24 hours has started. #comment24 #RNLI

At 6am Greenwich Mean Time (that’s in the the UK) an attempt at the world record for the most comments on an online news item in 24 hours began (ie this blog post). According to Guinness World Records® we need around 100k unique comments. That’s just over 1 comment a second! With your help we think we can whoop that.

This is also charity fund raiser for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) the UK. The level of funds raised is not associated with the number of comments and it doesn’t cost to leave a comment but if you want you can make donation by clicking on the big green “DONATE NOW!” button in the sidebar – the bigger the donation the better.

When you leave a comment you have the option to tweet it – please do so if you can as this will help to spread the word using the #comment24 hashtag.

To comply with the rules the comments must be at least 10 characters, a minimum of two words and not comprise solely of punctuation marks. Basically comments have to make sense. Happy commenting & let’s see if we can raise  some cash for the RNLI.

Postscript – conclusion here

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charitable Engineer

The tech detail of the platform being used to host the world record attempt #comment24

trefor.net is powered by WordPress, CIsco, EMC and TimicoThe attempt at the Guinness World Records® Record for most comments on an online news post in 24 hours is set to start at 6am on Thursday 5th January. This is going to be an interesting experiment which will hopefully raise a lot of cash for the RNLI.

In order to make a success of the record attempt we have moved the blog off its old shared platform onto a new state of the art job hosted at Timico’s new data centre in Newark. This is before the data centre is officially up and running so we have all its resources to ourselves. I am heavily indebted to Timico for this.

We have been quite busy getting the new infrastructure up and running so I am also very indebted to neighbour Steve Nice and his company Forlinux for their help with the platform software.

The basic architecture looks like the diag on the right (click to enlarge).Cisco UCS server architecture used to host trefor.net for world record attempt A load balancer fronts a number of wordpress servers that in turn feed off a two database (one replicates to the other as a backup).

Each server is a Cisco UCS B200 blade and connects with 2 x 10TByte EMC Storage Area Network (SAN). The blades are dual 6 core (hyper-threaded) Xeon processors with 96Gigs of RAM each and with the Hard Drives disabled for mtbf optimisation purposes. The components are all connected using a 10GigE backplane.

The data centre initially has 2 x 10Gig connections coming into it so there is plenty of bandwidth available. The site supports IPv6.

We are using WordPress 3.3 on top of CentOS 6/Apache 2.2/PHP5.3 and mysql 5.1 – version numbers are hidden from people querying the web server (Apache).

The blog itself, already relatively light on plug-ins, is based on the Thesis theme and has been pared down to the minimum to maximise performance.

Some plug-ins are worth a mention. Caching is employed using WP Total Cache for performance optimisation. Simple Twitter Connect is used particularly for comment tweets and AddToAny is used in the post for sharing.

We were kindly offered CDN capacity by Limelight Networks but we as we have already been working overtime to get the data centre ready there wasn’t time to incorporate this. The CDN is probably just a “nice little extra” on this occasion anyway as the content isn’t particularly heavy on bandwidth.

If you want to help with this world record please tell your friends – the post is going live at 6am on Thursday at http://www.trefor.net. If you regularly use a forum or have your own blog please leave a post with a link to this site.  If you want to donate please use the JustGiving page or click on the big green “DONATE NOW” button in the sidebar.

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charitable Cloud End User

promo interview with BBC for Thursday 5th Jan world record attempt #comment24

More world record stuff. Keep the sponsorship coming in by the way. It’s starting to build momentum.

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charitable End User

calling all sponsors – help a good cause and be associated with a fun event #comment24

Many of you will already have heard of the world record we are going for on Thursday 5th Jan. This is for the most comments on an online news story in 24 hours.

Timico is sponsoring the first 2,000 comments. Yesterday Rob Pickering of ipcortex (great company) came up with £1 for each of the next 250 comments – totally unprompted and keen to support the cause (RNLI). Thanks Rob.

Now we are looking for more donors. Donating is easy – you can use the JustGiving page or hit the big green “DONATE NOW!” button in the sidebar. Leave your twitter username if you can – here or on the JustGiving site.

Note that the number of comments made is not actually associated with the amount of cash raised. In other words we don’t have to have the same number of comments as pounds and vice versa.

If you are a corporate sponsor and would prefer to send a cheque or do a bank transfer you can email me  or call me – number is here.

This event is going to get some serious media coverage and sponsors will get very positive global PR out of it.  As the world record is going to be formally submitted to Guinness World Records ® there is also the possibility of being associated with a long lasting record online. The value to sponsors could continue long after the event is over.

I will publish a list of major donors but in the meantime the Twitter list of sponsors here. (needs updating)

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charitable Cloud End User social networking

The story behind the world record attempt #comment24

This attempt at a Guinness World Records® Record all started back in November when I took a customer out to dinner to celebrate a bit of business. The customer mentioned that he read trefor.net and, to cut a long story short, I said that Timico would donate £1 to his favourite charity for every comment left by one of the staff from his company. I capped this at £100 – it was just a bit of fun. His favourite charity is the RNLI.

A glass or three of wine followed and we decided, as you do, that we would go for a world record. Considering this I upped the ante to 1,000 comments from his employees (£1 each) and said Timico would double up if we got a world record out of it. The record, whatever it was, seemed eminently doable. This customer has thousands of employees globally with many of them being industry analysts and commentators with large twitter followings.

I was sure that we could have a good time with this important customer and raise some funds for charity at the same time.

I woke up the next day thinking hmm what have I committed to

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charitable Cloud End User social networking

World record attempt – Most comments on an online news story in 24 hours #comment24

To get 2012 off to a racing start we will be having a bit of fun on trefor.net and aiming for a world record for “Most comments on an online news story in 24 hours”

This is a genuine Guinness World Records category in which the current record stands at 100,000. That’s just over one comment a second. Should be easy huh? 🙂

The attempt begins at 6am GMT on Thursday 5th January 2012 and ends 24 hours later. It would be nice to think that we could smash the existing record by a country mile. Someone mentioned 1million comments – why not?

Between now and then the blog is moving to a high availability, high performance platform, details of which will be made available in a blog post on Tuesday 3rd January.

In the meantime there is much spreading of the word to do to make this a great success.  You will be kept up to speed with any relevant news regarding the world record either on the blog, Twitter (#comment24), Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn (actually all of the above).

We will also be letting you know in advance the type of content that will be in the post for the record attempt so that you can get your thinking hats on in advance for your own comment.

It would be great if you could spread the word on this by “liking”,” Linking”, “sharing” “tweeting” or just telling your friends by good old fashioned “word of mouth”.

Trefor.net also has a page on Facebook where you can find out more and a Facebook event here.

Hope you can help  🙂

Tref

Categories
Business charitable

Meet Andrew North – modern man and all round good egg #childreninneed

meet Andrew - a butch kinda guyMeet Andrew, a butch kinda guy. He likes shooting Timico Account Management Director Andrew has his nails done for Children in Need and has been known to jump out of planes “just for fun”.

Andrew is clearly a happy go lucky bloke and nothing excites him more than getting ready for a night out at the weekend. This weekend is a big one. It’s Children in Need.

Andrew really likes to sit in front of the TV watching all the celebrities doing their bit to empty your pockets and raise cash for a worthy cause.

Timico Account Management Director Andrew North has his nails done to raise money for Children In NeedAndrew though is no couch potato and today has got off his butt to raise some cash himself. In fact as you can see from the pics he has gone more than the extra mile.

Andrew has gone and had his nails done.

It took a whip round to do it. It’s funny how the whole company responded to the challenge opportunity. The £145.18 was raised in no time at all.

As you might imagine it took Andrew some getting used to,Timico Account Management Director Andrew North has his nails done to raise money for Children In Need especially the drying bit. There was some serious wrist action going as you can see from the photos and no small amount of puff.

Anyway he got there in the end and has been strutting round the office proudly showing off his nails to everyone generous enough to have donated.

The lad has promised to keep the varnish on for the whole weekend so that his mates down the Rose and Crown on Saturday night can take a butchers. Perhaps they will buy him a pint – he deserves it. They should at least add to the donations already made.Timico Account Management Director Andrew North has his nails done to raise money for Children In Need

The last photo is in stark contrast with that of the header where he is trying to look tough.

In it he is obviously a happy chappy and has already worked out the best position to hold his arm to display his nails to best effect.

Well done Andrew, proud to be your workmate.

Well done also to Kirsty Watt, the ingenious instigator behind the important fund raising initiative. She is evidently a talented Timico Account Management Director Andrew North has his nails done to raise money for Children In Needartist 🙂

Meet Andrew North – modern man and all round good egg.

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Business charitable

Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research @radiotomdavies fundraising tour

My son Tom, who is now at Warwick University, has a schoolfriend Leo who has been diagnosed with Leukaemia. The interview below was put together by Tom who visited Leo at home over the weekend.

Tom is interested in a career in Radio and fits in a couple of days a week at Mercia Sound in Coventry as well as having a show on RaW, the university radio station.

This week the guys at RaW are having a fund raising drive for Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research. I say drive and mean that literaly – they are driving around 59 student radio stations in England with Tom spending 5 minutes on air at each location to appeal for donations.

Details can be found here. Justgiving page is here and tom’s website is here. Please donate whatever you can. You can also follow him on twitter at @radiotomdavies.

I realise that this post is slightly off topic for trefor.net but hey…

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Business charitable

Timico Golf Team finishes in top 4 of Stroke Association fundraiser

Great day out with KCOM yesterday at their annual Charity Golf day at Forest Pines.

The weather didn’t put us off and the company (Steve, Steve and Chris) was great. The Timico team came in fourth, which considering I had probably the worst game of my life, was a credit to the others. I did win an umbrella in the raffle.

The charity being supported was The Stroke Association which is a very valued customer of Timico.

Photographed below are the team with the Pines as a backdrop. I can recommend the course although it is amusing to note that online the club announces itself as being “near Brigg” whereas in reality it is “near Scunthorpe”. Maybe of interest is the fact that down the road is Holme Hall Golf Club which, unless I’m very much mistaken, is where Tony Jacklin started his career. End of travel agent spiel.

from left to right Steve, Tref, Chris and Steve
from left to right Steve, Tref, Chris and Steve