I’m spending piles of money on ham radio geekery.

I’m being very un-hamlike, spending a lot of money on radio gear. In fact, I’ve even bought the wrong accessories for my new handheld radio and it only made me go out and buy the correct ones. I figure I’ve been doing this since, what, 1978, so it’s not like it’s a whim. I have found out several things from my new Yaesu VX-8R radio.

  1. It’s hard to use but the instruction booklet tells you exactly how to do more than you ever would need to do (unlike the Chinese POS).
  2. I can listen to all sorts of things like aircraft but I need a better antenna.
  3. There ain’t no one talking on the ham radio.

I still have to admit that the Chinese POS got me interested in radio again.

I’m really just waiting for my new antenna to arrive so I can get back on the low bands and talk to all sorts of odd exotic locations. I have to buy more cable, and I have to find where I packed my radio away. Hooray for geeky hobbies!

Transrectal prostate biopsy.

DON’T READ THIS IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE SUBJECT IN THE TITLE.

So, this isn’t the most pleasant thing to read about, I’m sure, but I just wanted to see if I can get this into the google search results and say, it wasn’t as painful as the rest of the intarwebs made it out to be. The worst part was insertion of the probe which felt, well, larger than was comfortable. The numbing of the prostate with lidocaine was only a warm sensation and the actual biopsies felt uncomfortable but weren’t that painful for me. Sitting was uncomfortable for a couple hours afterwards (like while I was driving myself home) but it got better fairly quickly. I only had to lie down and read a chapter of the Steve Jobs biography before I was mostly back to normal.

The worst part was finding blood in my bodily fluids. They warn you that you may see blood in your stool and urine, but they didn’t tell me that even after knowing it would happen that actually seeing it would make me feel a little panicky.

I guess I was a bit of a smartass about the whole thing. A nurse and an ultrasound tech both asked my name, birthdate, and if I knew what I was having done. I replied with my name, my birthdate, and that “the doctor is going to shove something big up my ass and stick pins in my prostate.” I also told them that I searched the intarwebs and they had one opinion (“the most painful thing that could happen to you”) which is not what the doctor indicated. Once again, the intarwebs were wrong.

In any case, I got the biopsy because of a slightly elevated PSA test. Not dangerously high, but it was higher than normal for an Asian male in his 40’s. Since my dad had prostate cancer, my doctor wanted to do a biopsy. Since I trust him (he’s geeky like me) I went in for the biopsy. And that’s my story. Results come later.

More nerd time.

I spent most of the weekend sorting through QSL cards. Those are postcards that you send after you talk to a guy on the radio, to confirm that you talked to him. The cards can be colorful or just plain boring, depending on who is sending them. I was just checking to make sure my computer records matched the actual cards I had. My geeky hobby has progressed to the postal service, not just radio.

I spent a lot of time today trying to figure out why my email is sometimes broken. kickstarter, for example, is violating some internet rules regarding DNS, but that shouldn’t keep me from getting email from them. Unfortunately, I have to call in some help on this one. I’m not sure what all is broken.

So there you go. More geekery over the weekend. I need a vacation from my weekend.

Man, I am a geek.

My name is Todd and I am a ham radio operator. It’s been two days since I’ve been on the radio.

For about ten years I’ve volunteered during the Portland Marathon as communications at an aid station. I used to have a handheld radio that I only used for that, but it was stolen during a break-in a few years ago. Since that time I’ve been borrowing my buddy Greg’s radio every year. Every year I think about buying my own radio, but I only really use it once a year.

About a month back I was talking about this and an old friend gave me a brand new Chinese-built dual-band ham radio. What a pile of shit. Honestly, the radio is shit, the manual is shit, the shitty thing talks to me in Chinese, and you can’t even set it up without the shitty Chinese software. The settings are all in Chinglish and are incomprehensible and if you select the wrong thing the radio won’t work. It took hours and hours of trial-and-error to get it actually function as a normal radio. I spent $80 on accessories and I’ve had fantasies about hitting this thing with a large hammer until it was  a pile of Chinese dust. I really don’t even want to give it away because anyone I hate someone enough to give this shit radio to is someone I’m not talking to.

On the plus side, all the frustration from this Chinese POS has got me interested in radio again. I spent $1200 on ham radio equipment the other day. I bought a Japanese-designed Yaesu handheld radio with a bunch of accessories. I also bought an HF antenna that I’m planning to put on the roof so I can start talking to other countries again. I even downloaded a bunch of Morse code training software.

I’m old now and women were never interested even when I was younger, so I’m going to buy some pants with a waistline that comes up to my nipples, change to a nice comb-over hairstyle, and get back into ham radio 100% in 2012. Cool plan, right?

Now my mom has the crud.

I’m hoping my mom doesn’t get sick as badly as I did but so far she seems a lot better off than I was when I got the crud. She slept all day but didn’t have a fever and seemed fairly good otherwise. It also gave me an excuse to take a day off from the gym, which is something I should have had the sense to do anyway. Ease my way back in rather than try to kill myself right off. I did have the ‘flu after all. I felt kind of logy all day long.

I may have done it to myself by staying up too late and by eating “loco moco” for lunch. I kept hearing about it on Hawaii Five-O so I had to try it. A bunch of rice topped by two burger patties, a fried egg on each, covered in gravy. All the big eaters who usually go double what I do stopped halfway through but I hoovered my  whole lunch. My stomach felt kind of strange but I’m not sure it was because of the food since I felt bad even earlier. I think it’s the coffee at work and the mind control drugs contained therein. Actually, they probably don’t wash the sludge out properly, but it’s more interesting to think of conspiracies sometimes.

Back to normal (whatever that is).

I had to work on January 2nd and I think my company is the only one who didn’t get the memo that the 2nd is a holiday. Even the gym was closed. Well, today I went to work AND the gym. I even pooped a fairly normal poop (and I won’t go into how the ones from the past few days weren’t quite normal.)

In any case, I’m back to eating solid food with color. The BRAT diet (bananas, rice, applesauce, and toast) is quite boring and pale and I’m happy to be eating other things including all the stale cookies I’ve been ignoring. Actually, we GAINED more cookies, some Bergers from Baltimore, and I’ve been eating those before they go stale.

Now it’s time to hit the hay. I finally noticed that my sister brought back one of my “old” computers and it’s now in the basement as one of the servers. Getting it to do my bidding took longer than I thought and it still isn’t 100%. Oh, well, there’s always tomorrow.