Yet Another Gripe From Me
I must admit that I am doing this for fun now, my life is basically ending, I have no control over it, I am well and truly falling apart whilst everyone around me is treating me like normal, well kind off, I supposed that I am just pissed off with everything, I should care more but I am well and truly kind of fed up now.
So lets get started…. Oh and By the Way – There is no order to this…
Ham Radio
This has not only been a big part of my life, I suppose that we all need a hobby, and like most hobbies we all get hooked and like most hobbies we can never have enough gear, well I have enough to put most of the Ham Shops out of business, the problem is that – for me, every item has a story hidden behind it, whether it be a friends, or a restored radio, most people can let go, the rest are called hoarders, I kind of think that I have fallen into the latter more often than not.
For me the biggest part of this hobby has been the people that I have met over the years, the friends that I have come across and a few still here, but most sadly have now gone SK (Silent Key), I suppose in a way it has become a very lonely place these days, especially now that I have Cancer, it is surprising just how many people find it hard to talk to anyone who’s clock is basically counting down.
You can find that ‘Friends’ will always fall into two categories, a true friend, or just someone that just wants you to know that they want all the gear that you have, maybe I am just being bloody horrible but when you get an e-mails from someone that has never even talked to you before, and talks as though you are a lost friend, and the very last thing that is mentioned on the e-mail is, if you have anything that would be of interest to me (A Fellow Radio Ham) then they would be willing to take it off me, yeah right and it goes straight in the bin.
Okay, Lets get back to the Ham Stuff that I have here… As with a lot of the restorations that I have here now, most are still waiting parts or finished and waiting alignment, I did not ever expect to have an expiry date. So taking that in mind I need to box stuff up and send it off to the new owner, taking that into account I need to let people know what needs doing, I have a lot of gear that is OK, Fully working, but there are a few items that I know needs minor things to be done to it, then I will need to enclose a note under the covers for whoever takes the project on, most of the finished radios and the good kit I will make sure goes to the few that I have come to me in Friendship, I know a few that I have already offered the kit to, but they have said that I should just sell it instead, other have shown interest in the gear over the years and I have remembered them, and certain packages will be sent to them on my passing. Sadly for me Amateurs that I have known as a good friend have either gone SK or just gone quiet and I have not heard from them since, so my list of good Hams on the island has basically become a list of just 3, so when I manage to find all the Cables, Literature, Boxes and Accessories it will be split into 4 large piles, the 4th being a Pile to be Sold.
What I find sad now is just how pathetic locals get, I think the last time I was in the local Ham Radio Club was back in 2009, over the years I have heard so many rumours from people, and I have seen just how they operate myself over a few things, SK Sales are fun over here, with equipment strangely vanishing, or items being sold before items are published at a very cheap under-priced cost.
Since I left I settled in to restoring one of the many KW Vanguards that I had here, I soon found out who was being helpful and who not to listern to, I made a few mistakes, but in the end I managed to find a few good people who I could fire questions to, I have found many true friends when I have been restoring a lot of the Vacuum Tube Radios, Test Equipment, and RF Power Amplifiers, you still come across what I call ‘pricks’, but they are easy to ignore with a few clicks of the mouse.
I have managed to collect way to many RF Linear Amplifiers now, from manufactures such as Drake, Heathkit, Henry, LinearAMP UK and MicroSet, and a few Home Made ones to boot, these just range from about 600 Watts up to the Big Henry that is Pushing nearly 10K, I was aiming to one day find a decent Power Meter and see what she is pushing, I know with the built in Fan Upgrade that I did on her, she would heat up a room by just being on and glowing away.
I have lost count with Antenna Tuners/Matching Units, I think I have about 15+, and it may be a hell of a lot more, Everything from MFJ, LDG, LinearAMP UK, Kenwood, PalStar, SGC, and Yaesu, and obviously Transceivers from Elecraft, Icom, Kenwood. TEN-TEC, Yaesu, sadly no Kenwood or Flex HF Equipment which I was always trying to get hold of, but even this has gone stupid, HF/50 MHz Radios I have 12, VHF/UHF I have strangely got well over 20 and yet none have been even switched on since 2011, but when you start looking at accessories such as Data Interfaces, Leads, Amplifier Buffers, SWR/Power Meters, VHF PreAmps, and a lot of weird gear for 1200MHz which I have never used, The more I try to sort all this gear out, the more gear that I come across, and I am still missing items that I can remember owning but have not seen for years, as I make my way to boxes that I have not opened in years I find even more kit that I have forgotten, I need more time really..
Training Material and Useful Data.
Over the years I have managed to build up a great stock of Training Material on many Subjects, But it seems stupid to just delete this stuff off the RAID, A lot of this has cost a small fortune at the time by and has been supplied to me from the companies that I have worked for or I have bought myself over the many years of working for these companies, and being the Hoarder that I am I have managed to save everything, especially when I was working when I worked for a small Telecoms company called Cisco, it may have been years ago, but most of it is still current and especially as my Logins still work, I keep updating a lot of it, when new stuff becomes apparent. And when I pulled away from IT Support and went into Graphic Design and Worked with many Different packages such as Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Newtek LightWave 3D, Microsoft Softimage|3D and then later Autodesk Softimage|XSI and later when I went to work for Autodesk and mainly mastered in Maya and Flame, I always picked up a few more tutorials, Plugins, Textures, Materials and Arnold Shader Libraries, of late I Started evaluating the rivals and especially Maxon Cinema 4D which is a Game Changer these days and something that empresses me lots especially in the VFX Markets such as Broadcast and Corporate Support, I have come to know Maya and as working as a support person for some of Autodesk’s larger clients, mainly on Maya or Arnold Shader Issues, Most of the stuff on the RAID now has been Tutorials, Plugins, and Materials, it just seems a shame to just bin it all because it will need to be deleted because know one here has a use for any of it.
MacMillan
If you have Cancer then you will have been pointed in the direction on the MacMillan Trust, don’t waste your time, they are defiantly a ‘Who You Know’ company, well on the Island anyway. All they have ever done for me was offer me some fire lighters to read, zero help, waste of space. I was very disappointed in them, Pass a few leaflets over and that was all that you get, maybe if I was a MHK then I would be entitled to more help.
Hospice Care
I have been nothing but totally surprised at just how good the care from the local Hospice has been, They sorted out every bit of care that I have had, from Talk Therapy, Help with my Pain Meds, and Help getting me Disability, which even though I have worked all my life and never asked for support in any way, I have now got a whopping £450 every 4 weeks which does not even cover the cost for my career, let alone everyday living expenses, but at least they managed to get me something, I tried myself but the local government is a bit of a joke and very much ’Who you Know’ organisation, if you know the masonic handshake and a few well known MHK’s then your in, if you don’t then tuff. I have kind of gone off on another slight branch here, but getting back on kilter I cannot recommend the local Hospice high enough, they have been utterly great.
Immigrants
So why do people trek all the way from these far off countries to get to the UK, I remember watching a show on TV that was watching people leave IRAN and they were asked where are they going, and they displayed leaflets that said if you go to the UK you will get a nice house, you will be looked after and you will get free health care, so when you see these people coming across the channel, then of course you know why, else they would have stopped in many of the countries along the way. This is also why people have seen French customs boats follow boats out to international waters when they could have returned them to the shore, but at the end of the day they are just passing on the problem, it saves them having to deal with it, after all, they will get put into Hotels, given free meals, and basically looked after better than our own homeless, or the elderly, we can never complain or say anything about it, after all our own superrich prime minister is looking after it, in his own way, just grinning whilst talking crap, he never needs to worry about anyone, after all he will just make money without even having to work, it is alright for some, after all how can someone care about anyone when he is earning more money every day than we have worked for for just a year, and when you no longer can work and need care, how do you expect a full time carer to survive earning less than £130 a week, it is bloody disgraceful, it will not happen but they should just shut the boarder and start just sending them back to France.
G-Technology Storage Solutions
Having spent a small fortune on G-Technology GRAID drives I think I have earnt the right to bitch off about how shit they are. I am not sure when this happened, but I have bought 4 of these now and I should have learnt my lesson, they used to have Hitachi Drives in them which are basically indestructible, Some time recently they sold out to the Dark Side of Western Digital and since then I have had no end of crap from these drives, I used to contact Support, but now they are under the Western Digital logo it has all gone tits up, Having worked a lot with computers for the past30+ years, early on it was always Seagate that was great, then it was Hitachi, but every time that I have bought a Western Digital they have failed big style, I have never had a WD Drive las more than a year, I have bought the NAS approved drives, Solid State Drive’s, even there new 12Tb Drives. And all are bin fodder, So pissed off, I just wish there was a manufacturer that I can rely on.
People on TV
Is it just me or has something happened over the last 2 years that has totally dumbed down television presenters, I know that most black people have an issue with everyone that is not Black, but it seems to have been taken to a whole new lever of stupid on TV. I think the thing that kicked all this off was the ‘Black Lives Matter’, and I totally agree that they do, but then why can I not say that ‘White Lives Matter’ as well? Now over the last 2 years it has gone so silly, every TV News and Talk Show has now gone way over the top as if they need to prove that ‘Black Lives Matter’, on some shows there are people who sound like they have never presented a TV show ever, and now the image on TV seems to have shifted completely, I do not hate the fact that there is a black presenter, Sometimes it works, but other times they have just changes the presenter just to fit in at the cost of a good person, I cannot even watch good morning Britain now, The have totally ruined it, I am not Racist, and I do not have enough time left now to even care about it if I was, it is like when they brought back the Magic Roundabout with new Voices, It was not the same, it was crap, and then they stopped certain programs from being put on TV like stuff like most of us grew up with like Aint Half Hot Mum, Everyone knew that it was racist in a way, but it was kind of harmless in a way, I used to have a lot of Indian and Pakistani friends who loved watch those old shows, So if they liked watching them, why is it called racist, I just hate that the bosses of these TV stations have had to take this Black Lives Matter to a level that they have, Over way too many years I have seen prejudice, I suppose that I was brought up well, early on to except people that were different in any way, I have had some good times working for people that were coloured, or even Jewish and that hurts me more when people show a hatred of all Jewish people, I was once head over heels with a Jewish girl, and her family and friends were just unbelievable and so kind to me when I was a bit lost in the wilderness, They used to tell me stories of a very bad time in their families lives, and they offered me only kindness and care in return for loving a girl who was Jewish and close to then. We should never forget that any Jewish family has had losses, we should offer only kindness to all that have had this sort of shit thrust upon them, not hatred, an pushing the point of all this hard against other groups of people will only make hatred rise in the world.
Electric Vehicles
Are people that mad. That they honestly think that if everyone buys an electric vehicle we will save the planet, They have already worked out that once everyone owns an electric vehicle then the UK alone will require 8-9 More Nuclear Power Stations and as we already have too much Nuclear waste that we have to ship it to other countries, on top of that some of us need a big 4 x 4 just to get home , everyone that I know who has bought an electric vehicle has sold it on. The look great on a pad of paper, but you try driving one to the South of France and see how many days it takes, let alone how many times you have had to type out your life history and inside leg measurements to try and get a charging point to work on a big journey, it would be OK if all of the charging point around the world talked the same language. Then you have Ferry companies stopping any electric vehicle from being even let on the ferry after the 3 great big car container ships going up due to problems with the batteries, it seems that the most unstable ones at the moment are the VW Group ones, but I just think your mad to trust your life to an Electric Vehicle, I was watching videos of them just going up in flames on roads for no reason what so ever, and one the batteries blow, you cannot put them out, they have found that you can drown the car in what is basically a lorry filled with water, but an hour later if you took the car out it would still go up in flames, you just cannot put them out at all, and why would anyone buy a car that that only does 300 Miles, it is alright if you are just taking it to the shops, but what if you want to say drive to the coast with the family, well I suppose they might get to feel what a BBQ feels like from the inside.
Cancer Consultants.
I was offered a way out from Cancer, but because I live on an Island I was basically told that it would cost them too much to get me off the Island every 3 days and then a Hotel stay 2 days and then to repeat all of this, over and over, Initially I was excepted for a program that worked, then I received a phone call and his first words to me were, I am sorry but I did not know that I lived on the Isle of Man and the cost of getting me to and from Clatterbridge every few days for Treatment and Scans, just my luck, I know like most that the Isle of Man is basically a very if you are in the ‘in’ crowed then you will get lots of care, But I have never been in the ‘in’ crowed, from the get go, I was told very early on back in 2004 after trying to get to become an Isle of Man Residency Permit , three times I was refused a residency, and I was also refused a Working Permit by a few local Companies such as Manx Telecom who checked out my Cisco credentials and after giving me a few interviews and tests which included me pointing out where they were going wrong with a few things, but they could never get a Work Permit sorted and just said that they had hit a brick wall and for whatever reason I never could get any help, I have not worked in IT since 2004. When I was diagnosed with Cancer it took the Hospice to get some movement, I get a small payment now every 4 weeks that does not even cove the cost of a Carer, During the early stages I was told haw easy things would go, I was told that I ‘may’ loose some taste bud and I ‘may’ get a slightly dry mouth, But this would happen at the far end of treatment. Bollocks. I lost my Saliva Glands in the very first 56week of Radiotherapy, My taste buds lasted a few weeks longer but they have never returned, I have been to a Few Manx Swallows meetings to meet other, this soon depressed me, a few people still attended after 8 years and looked so depressed, talking with them I felt as though they wishes that it had ended many years back, it is not good to see the sadness in eyes that wished they were dead already, The consultants skipped over so many things and they make you feel as though this is just a walk in the park, don’t believe them, they kept holding a carrot in front of your face and then throwing it away so that you will never get it. It is fun listening to them talk, but it is too hard to even believe what was said,
Last Time Updated : 14th August 2023
