Santa Has Come Early

After a fantastic week away from work on holidays down the coast with the family the previous week, my mood suddenly took turn to horrific, when I had to go back to work, and stuff-up after stuff-up was uncovered when I got back to work.  I just think I am surrounded by turkeys and they are not the edible types.  Well it truly was a bad week back at work.  Anyway, I left early on Friday and a group of us ventured over to Brendan’s for a BBQ and a modelling night.  In attendance were Geoff, Darren, Grover, Anthony and of course myself and Brendan.  Dinner was great.  Besides BBQ snags, we also had some kebabs and a bit of a salad.  We again spent quite a bit of time just talking, looking at Brendan’s progress on his VR layout and did I mention talking.  Oh of course we may have a coldie or two or three while we were talking.  The night ended up why Brendan producing a mango cheese cake (made by his better half) and we had a great time demolishing most of that.  And no we did not get to any modelling.  

To put a big U turn on my week, later in the evening, Brendan presented all of those in attendance with a Christmas gift.  Wow.  Totally unexpected and out of the blue.  I received a KLY wagon and a NSW North Coast DVD.  Damn Brilliant.  Thanks for the present Santa Brendan.

Saturday started off with a mow of the grass as it was starting to look pretty overgrown after not being touched for two weeks.  This was followed by a trip to a local Umart to pick up my new Raspberry Pi and a power supply.  Next up was a trip east to my next appointment for a stop off at a burger bar over near Anthony’s place where 6 of his Operating Crew gathered for a Christmas Lunch.  About 50 minutes later, 5 or the 6 were back at Anthony’s for his regular Operating Session.  Luckily I was admitted, because I left my radio throttles at home.  Oops!  Sorry I won’t do that again.

The Operating Session at Anthony’s was another great one.  I won’t admit to doing a ‘Craig’ with my first train = np one noticed anyway.  I also will not admit to not swapping over the loco cards on another of my trains when I did an engine swap at Tatiara Downs.  But I slipped back and quietly returned the cards to their correct place without anyone knowing.  However, I did see the owner driving his loco down the grain loading siding, way past the outloader, in contravention of his operating rules. 

When the session ended, we always sit down and have a chat.  Anthony then produced a bottle of wine each for his Christmas crew.  A very nice gesture indeed.  Thanks Santa Anthony.

Today after cleaning the pergola and the outdoor setting for next Tuesday night’s gathering at my place, I went down to the shed and wired up my new Raspberry Pi that I picked up on Saturday.  It fired up in seconds.  I changed the settings, rebooted and I was away.  However, I still have issues with my wifi devices not responding when I tell them to do something.  Well it is starting to look a lot like it is the wifi dongle.  Damn.  I may be able to swap mine for another as a trial, to determine if that is actually the cause.  I have an upcoming operating session, so I might have to seek some assistance to remove the external wifi dongle and use the internal wifi in the new Raspberry Pi.  There is more than one way to skin a cat.  However, I don’t know how to do this type of work.  So the Pi will now be packed back up and wrapped up and put under the tree for another week.

As said previously Tuesday is the last get together for our Tuesday Nighter’s group before Christmas and indeed New Year, but Santa will not be present unlike the two other events mentioned above.