My commute to and from work takes about 25 minutes without traffic and some bending of the speed limit. And, as you’d expect, I’m not even keeping up with the fastest traffic. My midlife crisis car still doesn’t get the mileage you’d think it should (it’s a frigging Prius, after all) but the sound system has quite a lot of bass punch to it. I was driving 3MPH and trying to stay sane so I had my iPhone playing my usual shuffle, fast-forwarding past the non-dance music. I had a Justin Timberlake remix playing so loud that the rear-view mirror was vibrating and I couldn’t clearly see the guy right behind me. Fuzzy or not, I could tell how far he was so it wasn’t that dangerous.
I seem to have all sorts of acquaintances who are going out with women who are around 30 years younger than they are, and the recently deceased 63YO editor of our local newspaper, The Oregonian, died at his 23YO mistress’ house. This from a paper who is too chickenshit to print the Doonesbury cartoon this week because they’re pointing out the ridiculousness of some of the recent anti-abortion or contraception laws.
Well, I’m reading the comics online, and I think I just “talked” to Nigeria on the ham radio using Morse code. They were going really fast and I’m not sure if I sent them enough info or not.
Sitting at my desk, late at night, reading comics on the intarwebs and sending Morse code to Africa. That’s what really gets the chicks.
I just spent a lot of ridiculous time trying to get my USB microscope working so I could look in my ear. I’ve given myself all sorts of grief in the past doing just this. I even irritated my ear to the point of getting an ear bleed once. But I’m still stupid enough to want to look in there to make sure I can clean things. After hours of updating my VMWare Linux boxes, I’ve gotten nowhere. For now I think I give up.
Yesterday was similarly exciting. Since I already did my taxes, I did my mom’s taxes. Woo. Life in the fast lane.
I drove two-and-a-half hours from Portland to the Puyallup Fairgrounds in Washington to the Puyallup Hamfest. It’s a swap meet focusing on ham radio equipment and is a lot different than the ones down in Oregon. What I’ve found is that the same stuff shows up year-to-year at the same swap meet, just owned by different people. But if you go to a different swap meet there’s different stuff. When I walked in I only wanted to buy one thing, and it is new and available on the intarwebs. So I knew I was driving 5 hours today and paying $8 to do almost nothing. Then I realized it was like visiting a museum. There’s all sorts of old ham radio equipment from my youth and even earlier and it was fun to look at. Plus there were old friends there I could talk to.
I generally don’t buy old ham radios because they have tubes in them and they don’t work as well as modern equipment does. As another friend says, it’s like we’re Civil War re-enactors. Using old gear pretending that we’re in olden times. I have an old receiver and transmitter in the basement and I don’t need to add any more.
One of the best parts was the drive back. I went through Lakewood, WA where there’s a huge Korean population and had Korean BBQ at Honey Pig. I also stopped for gas in Longview, WA, driving through the town and fantasizing about living by the lake. I really needed more sleep and less driving.
The high point of the day was getting checked out at the ham fair. An attractive and probably age-appropriate woman gave me a head-to-toe scan. She was probably a bored spouse and you can imagine that there wasn’t a lot of competition if I was getting the once-over. I still haven’t gained 100# and gotten my comb-over yet.
I had to get up early for a 7AM meeting. It’s not all that hard, since I’m usually at work around 7:40AM but just waking up a half hour earlier means my stupid brain worries about what time it is and I wake up during the night. I’m a little tired but I’m still screwing around updating my iPhone to iOS 5.1 and doing other useless things. I think I’m getting tired enough that I’m just googling random crap to answer questions that really aren’t that important. How long does it take to get to Puyallup (and am I going to drive by myself to the ham radio swap meet up there on Saturday – most likely yes)? How did I run out of windshield washer fluid so goddamn quick on my new car? Why can’t I find the obituary for my old ham radio buddy whose funeral is some time Friday?
I was fairly crabby tonight because I stupidly checked my work email and because of the half-assedness that goes on at the gym on Monday nights. I was honestly daydreaming about quitting my gym and trying to get a membership in the Multnomah Aryan Club because I hear that the weight room is empty most of the time. I’d never last because I’d never get along and I’d have to dress nicer than I do to go to work just to get in the front door.
Fortunately I got a call from my buddy Il with good news. He and his girlfriend just bought a house together. It’s in a sketchier part of town than I like, but really everywhere is sketchier than where either of us lives now. That, and possibly listening to Notorious B.I.G., pulled me out of my funk, even after talking about his mom’s funeral and my dad’s funeral which were just a few days apart.
Speaking of which, why is it so hard to find an obituary for someone?
It was a beautiful day but a ham radio contest was going on. I finally dragged myself away from the radio only to be reminded that I hadn’t finished my taxes yet.So, instead of sitting inside having fun talking on the radio I sat inside typing numbers into boxes and hoping I didn’t have to pay the government more money.
Most people would think I’d have a nefarious import from the Ukraine or some poor deluded mail-order bride, but it’s an antenna analyzer. It checks to see if your antenna is properly tuned. Really useless for most people and quite uninteresting to them as well. Updating the firmware took a bunch of fiddling and I’ve used it one whole time already to see what the frequency span of my antenna was. Wow, talking about it was even less interesting than I thought.
I’m not sure if I feel any better or any more adult now that I’ve finished my taxes, but at least that’s done. And I got to play with my radio too.
i think I hear a bunch of stations on the radio tonight from all sorts of exotic countries, but I can’t tell for sure because they’re sending Morse code so fast that I can barely understand it. Was someone calling Montserrat or was someone calling from Montserrat? Sheesh. I know I heard Texas, but that’s not THAT interesting. Who knows?
OK, I have no love for Andrew Breitbart, but it almost sounds like someone called a hit out on him. But if they did, they must have been just sort of rich. As they say, a millionaire can have you killed, but a billionaire can have you disappeared. I’m guessing it wasn’t someone with billions or the power of someone with billions. Or the poor guy could have just died of actual natural causes.
More important people have died lately, including my friend Megan’s grandmother, but I didn’t think Davy Jones was that old. It doesn’t help that I’ve been almost sick lately and went to the gym and just kind of flopped around. Funny how tired a guy can get even without doing much of anything all week.
I’m getting excited about the DX contest on the radio this weekend. That just means a lot of people will be on the radio from all over the world. I participate in a weird branch of a weird hobby, trying to talk to as many countries as possible. Plus I’m a little hampered by the antenna I have, which is a 3-foot loop on the garage rather than some huge aluminum monstrosity on a tower. Oh, how I wish I could have a huge aluminum monstrosity on a tower sometimes. But this is like fishing and it’s only that much better when you get to do something a little out-of-the-ordinary. If the fish just jumped onto your hook, what fun would that be?
After I got home from work I started to feel kind of craptacular. I felt so puny that I decided to skip going to the gym and, like always, started wondering if I was just being lazy. But I didn’t even feel like turning on my radio and that, to me, meant I was probably might have been a little under the weather. I didn’t even feel like eating dinner. My sister thinks it’s hay fever and if I’m lucky that’s all it is.
Of course, even better, instead of going to sleep I’m having to figure out why Google Chrome is asking for permission to use all my passwords. Is it time to delete everything and start over? Argh.
This is the one day a year I can prove that I’m not gay: I’m not watching the Academy Awards and I’m not attending an Academy Awards party. I suppose that could also mean that I’m gay and unpopular, but I’m not having that, either. The other day there was an LGBT soirée next door to the gym and a friend who is “L” and I discussed whether the inclusiveness was proper there. I think it she told me LGBT wasn’t enough and the new proper term was LGBTQQ where the second “Q” stood for “questioning”. My question was who is doing the questioning; would it be me or is it the people around me?
Besides, I’m still on track to gain 130 pounds and get a combover for my hobby. I spoke to five countries (US, Alaska – it counts separately for radio, Japan, Korea, and France) and two new states including one new rare state (South Dakota) this weekend. That’s 40 out of 50 states I’ve talked to.
So what have we learned here? Most likely not gay and very, very dull.
I’m not sure if there’s not that many people on the radio (most likely) or if the antenna doesn’t work that well (also likely) but I just talked to Troy, NY on 40M. That’s actually quite a rarity for me. I also was too chicken to send any Morse code but I heard a guy in Chicago and a guy in Hungary sending Morse code that I could barely decipher. My code speed is pretty slow.
Sounds like the antenna works and I need to wire up all the gizmos so I can send Morse code as well. Oh dear, this could be a huge time investment, couldn’t it? So much for getting any sleep.
