No longer do I suffer the tyranny of, well, my OWN stupid obsession with football. At least until next fall. I’m free to do whatever I want with my weekends and not be tied to the TV where I watch large dudes run headlong at each other all in an attempt to move a stupid pointy ball around. This just leaves me more time to spend on my hobbies and that just means a big drain on my wallet. Lately I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on ham radio, and this weekend I made several trips to Home Depot. Instead of living with the $0.19 outlets that the electrician put in, I’m replacing them with the “industrial grade” outlets for $5.44. At least it isn’t the $4.79 light switch I replace with the “industrial grade” $45 light switch.
Maybe it would be better football if was on year ’round.
Well, I have plans for more antennas. One up on the roof and one on the garage. Unfortunately, all I got done today was taking down the old antenna from the garage. I’m missing cabling, connectors, a rotator, and the second antenna. I don’t even have enough parts to put together one of the two antennas yet, but I’m getting closer.
I also rewired an outlet in the basement which ended up taking me on a drive out to the Home Depot for a $2.53 receptacle cover. Kind of a long trip just for something so cheap, but I thought it said it was closer to $20 but I misread the web site and that was for a pack of 10. Unfortunately my local hardware store didn’t have it, but I did end up there three times today to get things that they did have.
After declaring victory over the new outlet, I started putting together a kit that I’ve had sitting around for a while that decodes radioteletype signals. Unfortunately, I realized too late that it’s supposed to be connected to a another kit that I put together years ago (possibly a decade ago) and I’m not sure where that is any more. I think I saw it last week as I was looking for something else, but that’s going to be another mess to sort through. Wish me luck.
My sister thought I would like to know that a friend who is seven years older than me is going out with a woman who is less than half my age. Actually, she’s five-twelfths my age. That means she’s four-elevenths of his age and younger than any of his kids. I’m not really sure I’d even want to talk to someone that young except to say things like, “GET OFF MY LAWN!” and “WHAT ARE YOU KIDS THINKING WITH THE TWITTER AND THE FACEBOOK?”
I think I’ve noticed that women are much more friendly to me when they’re not single. I wonder if they’re thinking, “Oh, god, I’m single and he’s single and there’s not a chance in hell that I’ll ever be desperate enough to end up with him so I may just have to die alone and where did my dog go now?” Maybe that’s why I get along with grandmothers because they’re probably thinking nothing of the sort, but, “What a nice Asian man, I wonder when he is going to bring me my chow mein noodles?”
Clearly I either have a horrible lack of telepathic skills or the world is much odder than you would have expected. The best news for me, of course, is that my boss told me he is bringing in 75′ of cable to connect my antenna to my radio. Geeks unite!
I was thinking about that ad for a gym I’ve never seen where the guy just repeats, “I lift things up and put them down,” which is really what I do most of the time I go to the gym. I also tend to get weird bruises and cuts, but I’m not real clear on how that happens. Today we did some rowing, which is a degenerate form of lifting (to the side) and putting things down (letting the chain go back in). Plus, I’ve met plenty of super nice bodybuilders and they’ve all put a lot of thought into their passion (I was about to say hobby) so I’m probably not the one the ad is trying to target.
I suppose I was also the one who described my job as, “Gotta go move the mouse; it’s not going to move itself.”
That could just mean that I spent all that time and money at MIT to be able to reduce things to ridiculousness. Now if I could only turn that into something useful.
