One less wire!

I’m still full of enthusiasm as January draws to a close and was again up at some ungodly hour plonking away on here, I’m sure it will soon pass but for now I’m making the most of it and even managed to catch up on some paperwork. OK I’ve still not done the VAT return that should have been in today but as it’s the VAT man that owes me money I’m sure he’ll let me off Who knows at this rate I might even do it tomorrow before I go to work! Anyway being Saturday today it was pretty quiet enabling me to do some serious boaty type jobs on the ferry without getting distracted by loads of traffic. Today is also bin day, the bin men went north today to empty our bins and scratch the pigs! OK they didn’t actually drive the whole 11 miles to go on a pig scratching mission but whilst they were there that’s what they did Sandy our intrepid postman dropped his camera off along with the mail from Thursday and Friday that had been storm bound, he’d been busy taking pictures of the Loch Striven trying to get on the slip with the mail the last two days and gave me permission to put them on here.

Loch Striven 29/1/09

Here she is approaching the slip on Thursday at around 11:00am

A few minuets later!

Here she is a few moments later caught in a squall

Fridays effort

And this is her exactly 24 hours later on Friday and that’s me on the ramp

A technological milestone

Despite being quiet, the day flew by and I was home just after 7:00 to discover some exciting mail, the much awaited cheque and a wireless router for my laptop. Now normal people in the real world seem to have no problems with getting Broadband internet and a wireless connection to their laptop but here at the ‘end of the road’ it’s been a 3 year battle. It took me about 3 months to get the pathetic dial up working at 31.2kbps! then a further two years to get satellite broadband via http://www.avanti-communications.com/ and the http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/People/BroadbandforScotland/SEBroadbandInitiatives/LatestNewsAnnouncements . A nice man came and installed our 90cm dish on the 21/11/08  http://lifeattheendoftheroad.wordpress.com/2008/11/21/broadband-at-last/ and since then I’ve been trying to get it to work wirelessly. Well today a ‘Lnksys WRT54GP2′ cable router arrived in the post and I actually managed to get it working! having tried an ‘Apple airport extreme’ and a Phillips without success I wasn’t going to hold my breath until I got it working but much to my surprise I configured it quite easily and now I’m able to have one less ‘booby trap’ trailing accross the floor!

Deja vu

Must be the new moon the other day that’s got all full of enthusiasm because yet again I was awake at before 5:00am and plonking away on this infernal ‘puter. The morning did however have one important difference, today I had found my insulated coffee cup or to be more accurate, darling wife had found my insulated cup. Whilst being very much a ‘morning person’ I cannot, like certain members of the household , get out of bed and go straight outside. I do have a long and involved routine to go through which I’ll not bore you with but the very last thing I do before leaving the house and heading down ‘Calum’s road’ is to fill my insulated cup for the half hour journey. Having mislaid my cup last week my morning drive to work with John Humphries has just not been the same, so today as I listened to yet more doom and gloom at least I had a drink.

The post must get through!

Apart from the red sky and rain today was uncannily similar to yesterday, though this time I refrained from saying anything to anyone about the weather Which is just as well because it turned out even worse than yesterday, not quite as strong but longer lasting and once again we were unable to land the mail at the Raasay slip.

Patient postie!

In what was virtually a re run of yesterday we tried in vain for about 20mins to land before giving up and heading for our berth which was just a little calmer than yesterday.

A good safe berth!

Sandy, Raasay’s only postman as there are two other post ladies was not going to be put off by not being able to drive onto the ferry. Once we’d safely berthed Sandy came onto the pier and we threw the mail over to him. I know we should have done a risk assesment first and probably signed the official secrets act but it did seem far more sensible than taking it back to Sconser or leaving it on the ferry! Not only that but I was expecting a cheque in the post

Above and beyond the call of duty!

And that was about it for the day, I spent the rest of it re fitting the forawrd hydraulic cabinet, doing routine maintainance and ordering stores. The Loch Striven spent the rest of the day well and truly tied to Scotland and as I write this the stranded school children are probably having a great time in Portree! Oh and the famous ‘cheque’s in the post’ never arrived