You Learn

Gidday.

Time for another update I suspect. Another busy day today, which is good. Makes the days whizz by, that's for sure. The only downside is having several unfinished jobs and without the time to get back to them.

The day started out OK, with a bit of bench work for a change. I was planning on spending all day fixing things in the workshop, until about 1:00 when the supervisor asked me to quickly duck up to one of our repeater sites to swap out a part. I was going to meet a bucket truck, (which had been booked for another job at the site, but the guys were still getting gear ready for that job, so I was a delay tactic to keep the truck busy). He told me there was a painter up at the site, and to just get the keys off him to get in.

So, I headed up to the site, met the truck, and went to open the gate. Except, of course, I didn't have the keys. And, there was no sign of the painter. Rang the supervisor... arranged for some keys to be bought up. Finally got the bucket truck in, and I was elevated up to the area where I was to make the change. I swapped out the part, and then proceeded to descend. I decided it would be a good idea to go and check the status of the equipment after I had made the change. Unlocked the door, took one step in.... right into the wet paint. Turned out the painter had been and gone, and he had painted the floor in the hut in the process. Didn't tell me that though.

So, I gave up on that idea, and went back to the bucket truck. Still no sign of the other guys. Rang the supervisor, he told me to move another aerial while I was waiting. Except... they didn't know which aerial it was, and, they didn't know where it was supposed to be moved to. Great help. Gave up on that plan, and decided to change some guy wires over. Except, we didn't have any equipment to do so. So, another call to the supervisor... he arranged for another guy to run out some gear.

So, we waited. And waited. Eventually, the other blokes showed up, about the same time as the gear to do the guy wires. Luckily, they happened to know where to move the aerial to as well. So, we did their job, and moved our aerial, and then went to do the guy wires. Until we discovered the bits that had been bought up were the wrong ones. So, rang work again... finally got the correct bits bought up. Then the other (Australian) guys decided to go back to work, as it was long past knock off time, and they conned Ryan (who had bought up the spare bits) into helping me to do the guy wire change over. So, us good old Kiwi's carried on working and got the job done.

So, for a quick "duck up to the hill" half hour job, it turned into all of the afternoon, forget about getting anything else done, job.

On the bright side, cyclone damage here was minimal, although we have a bit of work checking sites just in case. Plenty of work on anyhow.

Right, I'm going to call it an evening, this week is going to be one of those weeks I reckon.

TTFN.

(Here's a photo of our duck pond)