October 31, 2003
Adventures in Radio
I spent the day trying out new antennas for my amateur radio station. I like to work CW (that's Morse code for the non-initiated) so I recently bought some CW-only radios to use. I originally built a wire antenna, but my wife took "mild" exception to the sight of the antenna strung up in the trees in the backyard.
As a compromise, I got some mobile antennas which normally are used on vehicles, but when used in pairs make a reasonable facsimile of a dipole antenna.
I should mention that I have been inactive for about 6 years, so I'm sure it was a shock to my wife when I suddenly started to take an interest in radio again. She probably thought she had seen the last of the radios.
I use both 40 meters and 15 meters (look it up, I'm tired), and the 40 meter antenna just did not want to tune. There did not seem to be much activity on 40 today, either, although this may have been due to the antenna tuning.
I switched to 15, and the band was alive with U.S. stations. I heard stations in Michigan and Minnesota, and worked stations in North Carolina, New York, and Florida.
15 meters is normally a DX band, that is, a band where U.S. amateurs can work stations in other countries. I worked a station in France with the wire antenna a while back.
But DX propagation on 15 meters is highly dependent on the sunspot cycle, and the cycle is in the downward phase. Also, the solar storms this week have not helped conditions on 15 too much. Conditions today favored "short skip", so that most of the stations heard were within about 1500 miles of my location. I did hear a station in Hawaii calling, but could not work him. My transmitter only runs 4 watts, so all contacts are a challenge.
So I have a few new states to add to the list. If I can get the 40 meter antenna working, I should be able to add to the list pretty quickly.
October 30, 2003
Wrong, wrong, wrong
LA Times A&E writer Geoff Boucher spends three paragraphs getting it all wrong about the band Eisley. That's not the family name, it's a (part of a) name from "Star Wars". The family name is DuPree.
The band originally went by the name "Moss Eisley", but had to shorten it after the movie studio threatened legal action. Putting out bad movies and threatening legal action is the main business of studios these days.
October 29, 2003
October 26, 2003
In the neighborhood
There is an armed police standoff going on on the next street over from mine.
Responding to a shots fired report, police have surrounded a house a block from where I am and are calling for the resident to come out. They do not seem to be getting any response from inside, which does not sound promising.
Update: as I feared, upon entry the police found that the owner had killed himself.
October 25, 2003
Getting close
The Marlins just ended the 8th inning with a double play. They are ahead by two runs going into the 9th.
Update: Florida Marlins win the world series in 6 games, final score 2-0.
October 23, 2003
SCO takes one in the shorts
News from India -- Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) is dumping SCO and skipping Windows in favor of Linux for their operations.
LIC was one of SCO's "success stories".
Linux: pure, powerful, free. Gotta love it.
October 22, 2003
Report: UN Security in Iraq Dysfunctional, Sloppy
"UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A chilling report of the August bombing of U.N. offices in Iraq says some lives might have been saved if a 'dysfunctional' and 'sloppy' U.N. security system had heeded advance warnings and followed its own rules."
The UN poobahs were nervous about being associated with the U.S. forces, so they demanded that the U.S. remove their tanks and road obstacles, and dismantle an observation post on the roof of the Canal Hotel, where their headquarters was located.
Shortly after these things were done, against the advice of the U.S. authorities in Iraq, the UN headquarters in Bagdhad was attacked by a truck bomb, killing 22 people.
Sometimes stupidity is its own reward.
October 21, 2003
Losing a wheel
Remember I said I lost a wheel? Here's the pic.
That's the wheel hub lying by the wheel and tire. There's a certain intensity of focus you get when you see one of your wheels pass you on the road.
October 19, 2003
Wow, wish I'd said that
Wow. Henry Sheehan has a powerful and incise analysis of the 7th AL championship game
Minor Annoyances
While traveling from Fort Worth to Lubbock, the right rear wheel of my 99 Suburban came off. Just came right off the vehicle, no particular reason. This necesitated $1400 in repairs plus $100 in car rental to continue the trip.
The water company just installed a new water meter in our line. Now every faucet in the house sprays in funny ways from all the grit in the strainers.
This laptop quit loading image files until it was restarted. No particular reason, it just wouldn't load images of sites anymore.
And, oh yeah, my old web host changed hands and the new owner pulled the plug on all the existing accounts, and wants everyone to sign up with a new agreement that would cost twice what the old one did, without most of the features I had before.
Starting Over
I have started my weblog over on this spiffy new host (Corner Host) because my old host, metronet.com, got a new owner who decided to cut all his old subscribers loose when he took over.
I had not made any entries to my weblog on metronet, (No Pundits Here), for over a month in any case, because the databases had gotten corrupted by high load levels on the server. On Friday the 10th of October I checked my email around 4:00 before leaving work, and then tried again around 8:30 that night. At 8:30 there was no response from the server, either on the web or by secure shell login. It continued that way through the weekend. On Monday I posted a question asking what had happened to metronet on the dfw.internet.providers newsgroup, and learned from the replies that metronet had been sold, and there was little likelihood of the old site ever coming back.
After a few days to convince myself that this was the case, I started looking around for a new hosting service, and here I am on Corner Host. MT installation went reasonably well by ftp (didn't spring for the shell account), save one vexing problem with getting the entries to actually appear (default entry mode is draft -- not publish. D'oh!!)
I originally intended to import my last backup from the old weblog here and just continue as before -- same name, same styles, same everything. But I looked at the Google cache of the old site and it looked kind of tired, not really what I want to present any more. So let the other site die in dignity, I guess.
And here I am in my new home. I expect I will continue to look for news and links that are quirky, outrageous, or generally interesting to post here with my take on them. I mean, that's what a weblog is for, right?
As for the name, one phrase that I seem to have heard a lot in my life is, "What was in your mind when you ...". So maybe this is what is in my mind.
I am sure it will take a while for my (12-20) readers to find me again, but I will post away just as if this were a topgun blog. Bon appetit.