Easter Monday I visited the dig at P*d*ng*on and agreed to bring my total station along and take some measurements, I will be loaning it to the guys on the dig via Marc as well. I also offered to lend Marc the old Pathfinder ProXr, I will have to find it first, but it will allow them to map the site in real time, even if to only 25 to 75cm accuracy. If we can find an L1 logging station, or can get our hands on one we can improve that to about 3 to 5cm with post processing. I will see what I can do.
I am planning to spend Wednesday there, so will be taking sleeping bags etc and kipping in the car. I suspect it will not be the best nights sleep, but what the hell? You only live once.
I have saved up £200 for the HF radio, I should really have paid Ken off with this, and I feeling very guilty about that. I have another £100 for Ken, and I will be able to pay him off totally next month. I would have done it this month, but I only got slightly over basic pay this month as I was off the other month when the client did not want a surveyor and then I got the winter vomiting bug! Not a good three weeks!
Anyway, I am paying everyone off now, so I am going to treat myself to a proper HF radio, even if it is a bit cut price. Keith, who is selling it is being a real gent letting me have it for such a low price, and allowing me to pay it off over a period of time. Not many people would do that. Ken is always a gent and that is why I am going to try and pay him off totally next month. He has been really, really good about the debt the company left me with. Some people are just nice people.
I have got a sexy little power supply for £8, it is a bit ugly, it is old, but it has a near perfect spec for the HF radio, it is almost free of noise on the output! A lovely smooth, spike free, noise free power supply, that stays clean even when I load it up with 7amps. I am pleased. I did not think I would get something this nice for such a low amount of money.
Yesterday I was "playing radios", I have been mapping the access to local repeaters from local hill tops. I still have quite a lot of experiments to do, but I am starting to get a decent indication of where I can get into and from where. I hope to be able to produce a map of radio shadow so that I can plot where I should get good radio signals. This is all in preparation to getting the new (second hand) HF radio, as it also has 50Mhz on it, so I can start playing with that, something I have wanted to do since BBC days.
OK. Book.
The 4th book is proving to be a bit long. I have written it a new way. I normaly lay out the book on a single piece of paper, putting the chapters on one side and then bulding the characters and the events on the other side, matching each to a chapter.
I started to do this, but then I got into bullet pointing and this is how the book as grown. This book is a fictionalised record of all the studpid, funny, odd, silly things that have happened to me or people I know on surveys around the world. For it I have invented a job, a company and a whole host of people to populate the book with. I have not used any single person as a direct character, although the temptation was huge! All the people are ficticious. However, all the stories are real. I have changed the location, and some of the ancillary details to protect the inocent. I am still planning to upload it next week, but as I add more and more this may slip back, sorry about that.
My wonderful girlfriend asked me to write her a letter of invitation last week, and the following day the PC decided to crap out on me. I have managed to rebuild it, but it it still not 100%, I now have to have a fan on it just to keep it running! I need a new PC! I have nearly finished the letter and hope to send it to her probably later today. I really do not like being short of money, it is just such a pain!
I am still hoping to be able to fly out and see her,I just don't know when. I need to have at least £1000 available, and I do not have anywhere near that at the moment. Hopefully when (ha ha) I get the council house I will be able to sort out all the little cables of rubbish I have laying around and I can sell this to clear some more debt. I will not get as much as I paid for the lemo connectors, but I have about 20 to 30 of them that are brand new, I should get £5 to £10 each for them, that will be usefull, and I have 20 to 30 cables that I can offload for about £30 to £40 each. Those alone would pay for me to be able to see her, but until I have somewhere I can unpack them and sort them out, I am a bit stuffed.
I am very lucky, I have a good job that does pay a decent wage, it is about half what I used to take home, but it is good enough. But first I have to shift the debt. Once that is done, I will be laughing. On current repayment, I should be debt free in just over a year and a half. But this means living on what is left over until I am debt free. Not nice. But, I see it as a sacrifice worth making. Once I have offloaded the debt the company left me with, I will be free. And I do earn enough to have a decent house, marry Abel and start over again. For that I thank the company that took me on!
OK, got to go, I have to take my mum shopping now!
Catch you later
OK, I am overweight, hence BIGMAN. I am just blogging my recovery from debt laden unemployed guy, back to tax paying worker, and hopefully onto millionaire playboy author! Well, maybe not. This is about me, dull, broke, failure me. I am down, but not out, despite being broke, in debt and having been effectively out of work for two years, I am still in the game, still trying to make a success out of life.
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