Away

I am now away for 6 days, until I return on November 6th.

< .r a n t. >
Just want to put on record that I am appalled at the way we have been treated by AOL Journals Team. They knew since late July this year that their product was going to be 'shuttered' 'sunset' or in plain English closed down. Why the bloody hell they could not start working with us on solutions for shifting our blogs here, I don't know. They have been making solutions on the hoof over the past 4 weeks, without really addressing the major problems encountered by countless people. Most prominently Donna [nightmaremom] and Jeannette [jeanno43]. I was sickened by the simpering platitudes that were meeted out to us "oh we were so sad to work on your demise whilst not being able to tell you". Why the f*ck couldn't we be told? Yes, I am really not going to hold back here.

We have been treated like so much shit by America Off-Line, and having wasted 4 years of subscription money on that bunch of losers, I think it is time they were sunset themselves. Don't get hit by the door as you go out.

Corporate America can go to hell, and I hope the lot of you go down with the current financial crisis, brought on by yourself and your own immeasurable greed. You don't care about people. Only about your own wallet, which is already too bloody fat.

< / r a n t >

See you all next Thursday,
Guido

Picture Links

All my pictures are on Flickr.com. I'll set up a separate journal for them.

The transfer from AOL Pictures to Pixum looks like a disaster in progress. 56 out of 1184 albums have been transferred - with nil pictures in each and every one of them.

So, here's another dose of AOHell graphics to express my disgust.

Email

I am in the process of shifting my email from AOL (pharmolo (at) AOL (dot) com) to Gmail (adb422006 (at) gmail (dot) com). Any emails sent to pharmolo will be transferred automatically to my Gmail account.

New links

Here is a list of my blogs here on Blogger. A number of them were transferred from AOL, but others already existed. I finally published the last of the 4798 posts of Northern Trip this morning, wallowing my way through a steady flow of 502-errors. Crapola.

Northern Trip (17 November 2004 - 8 October 2008)
Northern Trip (The Start) (11 August - 16 November 2004)
Atlantic Lines (this blog)
Call for Support (current)
Call for Support AOL (archive)
Tropical Cyclones (July 2007 - now)
Tropical Cyclones (2006 - July 2007)
Jokes off the seawall
The Shell Gallery (Dutch journal)
Recipe Book
Mod 2005 Stornoway (Royal National Mod)
St Martin's Storm 2005 (Hurricane force winds in November 2005)
Hurricane Ivan at Madagascar
J-land 5th Anniversary
Faces from the War Memorial (Tribute to the Fallen from Lewis)
Harris War Memorial
World War II Tribute for Lewis (Tribute to the Fallen from Lewis)
Iolaire Disaster 1919
Heather Isle Views (pictures of Lewis villages)

Isles FM

We just had a hailshower, and it nearly drowned out the presenter at the local radio station (just up the road from me), where the stones were clattering on the roof of the studio. One heck of a racket!

Thursday 30 October

Quiet morning, with the odd shower and some beautiful cloudscapes. MV Muirneag (shown above) was late coming in this morning. Muirneag is our freight ferry, which leaves at 11.30pm each evening (except Saturday) to take lorries back and forth to Ullapool on the mainland. She normally returns at 8 am, but was an hour late this morning.
Muirneag is named after the hill shown below; it lies 5 miles west of North Tolsta, in the centre of Lewis.


Our usual ferry, the MV Isle of Lewis, carries out two sailings each day (except Sundays), leaving at 7.15 am and 1.45 pm. It takes 2 hours 45 minutes to make the 45 mile crossing to the mainland. Once there, Inverness is 55 miles away; 80 minutes by bus. The image below is how I see the ferry leave each afternoon just before 2 o'clock.


I shall be on board her tomorrow morning at 7.15, as I leave for my trip to Holland. It will take me about 18 hours to reach there, travelling via Inverness and Aberdeen before flying into Amsterdam. I'll be blogging on the Shell Gallery until my return to Stornoway on November 5th. I shall resume blogging here the next day.

Meanwhile, I'll probably find something else to write about before today is out.