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?