Dr. my eyes..

Tomorrow I'm going to check out something pretty cool after work. It's a Craigslist find, but that's all I'm going to say about that. At least for right now. I'll have the camera with me so I'll be taking some pictures and if the deal goes down I'll get the pictures posted tomorrow night while I'm still in my deliriously happy stage.

Biggest. Gator. Evar.

On the way home this past Sunday I spied the largest gator I have ever seen in North Carolina. The only problem with this sighting was the gator was in a location that would have been nearly impossible to photograph and to complicate matters further I would have to drive across the Alligator River bridge, turn around, the cross the bridge once again. Worst still there was a sailboat slowly making its way towards the draw bridge and I would have likely been stuck for 10-15 minutes on the bridge. So this gator remains unphotographed. But he was big. Really big. Nine feet is perhaps bordering on the edge of a "big fish story" but I think eight feet is an honest estimation of this gator's size.

I had a great weekend!

We are back from the latest trip to the Outer Banks, and probably the last trip for a month (more on that later). This weekend was unique in that we had our friends Richard and Caroline join us in Rodanthe for Saturday and Sunday (the place was all ours Friday night). Keep in mind that the condo is 890 square feet and 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom - far from a palatial estate where four people could wander and not find each other for hours on end.

In the end it worked out better than I had expected. Kelly and I had the bedroom while Richard and Caroline took what I believe to be the most comfortable fold-out couch in existence (you can't feel the bars under the mattress - really).

I cooked a grand breakfast for everyone this morning, omelets for all along with bacon and sausage. Yum! There were a few problems to deal with on the wireless network next door, but nothing I could not handle (it was just inconvenient to have to deal with that on a Sunday).

I'm rambling on so I'll stop. In closing I hope you had as much fun as I did this weekend (and as much as I hope Kelly, Caroline and Richard had).

local hosting?

Is anyone interested in local hosting? That is you would have a server in-state within a 90 minute drive that would have dedicated 10/10 bandwidth and burst rate to 100 meg (bi-directional)? My company uses what are called Carrier Hotels. These are comm rooms located very close to the bandwidth provider. In these comm rooms (sometimes entire buildings) you have access into the building and access to your locked rack, closet, room or cabinet. You can go in, do what you need to your equipment and leave. It's more complicated than that, of course, but you get the picture.

The thought dawned on me why not set up something like this locally? I was looking at Mac Mini Colo (and, of course, the big daddy, Rackspace - and I don't intend of implying that I would be directly competing with either, in fact I'd prefer to say quite a bit smaller) and I thought "why not just host the device where the bandwidth is?"

There would be a major "got-cha" and that is all devices would have, and only have, a routable IPv6 address. It would be conceivable to set up a hosting enviornment where you could port-forwared from a single routeable to X number devices but having worked with IPv6 I would say it might be cleaner just to dive in and swim with the big numbers. Plus you could still map to hostnames. Granted, some applications would have issues I'm sure, but that is where port mapping and private addressing could come in. Private addressing would also work for someone who wanted to set up a VPN enviorment for remote workers where the VPN concentrator would have the public address and all protected hosts behind that concentrator would have private addresses defined by client.

Anyway, what say you, crowd? If nobody is inerested in this I'll just get a fat pipe of my own at my brother-in-law's house down in Wilson and forget about the rest. If anyone else is interested I'll start to put together a real plan and see where it goes.

My radio arrived last night!

Upon arrival home from work I found on my front porch a box from the far away land of Oklahoma. In the box was one Icom IC-T8A hand-held HAM radio. It's a cute radio, small in size and big on features. The box included everything down to the two belt clips, but was lacking the original documentation which the seller had informed me was long lost. Not to worry though, the seller was kind enough to download a copy from the web and print it out for me. What a cool guy!

So far I've programmed some local repeaters to use at home and work (this hobby will most likely dominate my lunch hours for the forseeable future). It seems my local Youngsville repeater is not very busy (145.11 Mhz) but the Rolesville repeater is (145.315 Mhz). Last night I was listening to the conversations on the radio and I was about to chat with a local HAM who was very close by my home when the battery on the hand-held gave out! The timing was perfect. The seller warned me this radion had not been used in quite some time so I the battery was probably discharged. I let it charge overnight and we'll see how long it lasts.

Will tonight be the charm? We'll see.

radio in hand

Ok, here goes nothing. A friend at work, Heath Roberts, also known as KD4DNX, brought in his Motorola MTS 2000 into work. I had no idea Heath was a HAM operator. As it turns out he has had his license for over 20 years, or nearly that long.

Now it's time to do what I've been dreading: make my first radio contact. I'll give it a whirl and see how it goes. Hopefully I won't make too big an idiot out of myself!

Be it known that I transmitted using my license at 11:59 am, 21 July 2008. Nobody responded. I think that is a good thing!

Saw me a gator!

Today I caught a glimpse of Alligator mississippiensis, also known as the American Alligator. Just like the last two gators this individual was viewed in the water-filled ditch along US Highway 64 between Manteo and the aptly named Alligator River. This gator was a small chap, clocking in around 4 feet in length. Gators in NC grow a lot slower than gators in Florida so I expect this little guy was somewhere around the five year mark, but I really don't know.

I wanted to turn around and snap a picture but we had the hammer down and we wanted to get home ASAP. Next time I see a gator I'll make sure to stop and get a photo or two.

Oddly I saw no turtles on the way home and normally you see so many yellow belly sliders that you lose count. No black bears were spotted either. Or red wolves. But I saw a gator!

Waiting is the hardest part

The beach is waiting for me yet I'm sitting here waiting for 5 pm to roll around. Thankfully I have only two and a half hours to go.

Tick tock. Tick tock.

It's starting to hit me like, um, a 2 ton heavy thing

My first amateur radio is going to be shipped this Saturday! I found a nice little Icom hand-held and the price was really good. Plus I sold my old weight distributing hitch today (thank you, Craigslist) so I had the cash.

So what did I purchase? I bought an Icom IC-T8A. It is now discontinued but very highly reviewed. It does tri-bands, 6 and 2 meter along with 70 cm, and will receive a bunch of other bands. The only thing it WON'T do is listen on two frequencies at once. I think I can live with his for a hand-held (my eventual mobile and base stations will be able to listen on two frequencies as a future requirement).

I'm excited! I can't wait for it to arrive which should be some time next week. The the "Wimp Watch" starts. Any best on how long it will take for me to actaully transmit? :)

All quiet on the radio front

I was going to listen to the scanner today at my desk but so far I've heard precious little chatter. I'm five floors up in downtown Durham with a window fairly close to my desk. I've had my scanner on 444.9250 but have only heard one conversation all day.

Honestly I thought even my meager scanner would pick up a bit more chatter. Perhaps I'll switch back over to the 2 meter band for lunch, see what can be heard over there. Honestly I'm nervous to talk on the airwaves anyway, just like I was the first time I was flying and plane and had to talk to a tower. I was always worried I'd say something wrong or sound like a total idiot. I still have much to learn about my new hobby.

KJ4FFC - that's me!

The FCC has seen fit to grant me a amateur radio license. Henceforth I am known on the HAM radio bands as KJ4FFC.

Now the hunt for the radio really gets underway!

The Short Stories of Earnest Hemingway

I'm reading The Short Stories of Earnest Hemingway and, I have to say, these are a violent collection of stories! So far people have died from a) bullet to the head b) knifed in the femoral artery c) bull goring d) gangrene (not to mention a possible hyena attack) and we have also had a bit of adultery, war, (other) dead bodies, dead babies, dead mules with their forelegs broken a presumed dead cat, plus a deflowering of a maiden and a suicide by slicing of one's own neck.

All this and I'm not even done reading the book! I'm not even half way through! I can only wonder what lies ahead. For some reason I thought the tone of the stories would be more towards the happy side.

To change gears slightly I'm also reading a collection of Stephen King's short stories and I finished The Mist and what a fantastic short story it was (though it was nearly long enough to be a novella). I can see why they optioned this story for a movie of the same name. I hope the movie held true to the book and I hope to see it one day on DVD or the Apple TV.

Radios I want

I'm looking into different types of radios now that I'm this close || to being a licensed amateur radio operator. So far I've been searching for the "holy grail" of radios: the single radio that can be set up in a house and used as a base station that can also be mounted in a vehicle to be used as a remote station. I've got a lot of time to think about such things as I am flat broke at the moment (which is probably why I'll end up with 2nd hand hand held radio, at least I can listen to that at work).

Trouble with hand-held radios, as has been pointed out to me, is they lack enough power to reach repeaters from distant locations. Given my home address in Youngsville and my beach address in Rodanthe (and the drive between the two) I'm not likely to spend any measurable amount of time close enough to a repeater to even bother considering a hand held radio. So, once again, I'm back to searching for a single radio that can "do it all" and for some time to come (a new hobby is an ok thing at Chez Brown, but a "new EXPENSIVE hobby" is not).

Enter the Yaesu FT-897D. This radio looks like a contender though it's somewhat large to use in the vehicle. Looks like a good home/beach base station, though. I'm going to have to get very creative with antennas at the beach as my condo has exceptionally strict regulations regarding ANY deviation from standard exterior modifications (down to the color of and materials used in your front door). But I'll worry about that later.

Back to the home radio search. I think I'll visit that guy out off highway 98 south of Wake Forest. I used to purchase CB radios from him back in my 4x4 days. He was all too eager to clip them for a small fee and increase the power output. I wonder if he's still in business.

I passed!!!

I took my HAM radio Technician License test today and passed with flying colors! I managed to get 34 out of 35 questions correct. I was very happy with my score though I don't know what question I got wrong. One of the VEs asked if I'd like to try the General License test and I wimped out!!!! I should have tried it, after all there was truly nothing to lose. Oh well, I was happy passing my Technician License exam for today and still am.

Now The Watch starts. In about four days my name should be posted to the FCC database along with my call sign. You'd better believe I'll know what my call sign is the day it is assigned.

I can't quite say "73" just yet, but I'm close.

:)

If all goes well...

I should be taking and passing my Amateur Radio Technician test tomorrow at 9 am. This depends on three things are they are a) my change is completed at work tomorrow in a reasonable time frame allowing me to travel back to Wake Forest and not arrive late, b) actually arriving on time and c) passing the test.

I'm not leaving anything to chance. Tonight I'm going to find the Fire Department and make sure I know where I'm going and I'm doing all the pre-work I can for my change as well.

Hopefully it will all come together.

Wish me luck.

What a difference a day makes

I've hit the books and, wow, what a difference it makes. I am now passing all attempted tests in a reliable fashion with scores mostly in the 90's. I've got the V= I x R thing all sorted out along with P = V x I for DC (though I occasionally do something backwards and where I'll come up with "120 amps" instead of "1.2 amps".. just like back in middle school I have to "slow down and read the context of the question").

That said I think I'm getting close to ready for the test. The problem is I don't spend many weekends in the Raleigh area though I can assure you that the next weekend I am in town I will make special arrangements to ensure I can get to wherever the nearest test location on the day of testing (along with preregistration, etc).

The bummer is I'm in town this weekend but I have to upgrade code on the data center switches all day Saturday. BUMMER! Early August looks like the ticket, though. K is going to England for a week in early August and my parents are occupying the beach place for the next two weeks. By that point I should be scoring in the upper 90s with a 100 or two thrown in for good measure.

Let's get to the really important matters: what should I purchase as my first radio? I'm thinking hand-held. I rarely drive my super-tanker and I don't think Kelly wants to mount a mobile station in her Infiniti. Plus I'd like to have a station both at home and the beach. So it sounds as if mobile is the first and best solution. But what brand? What functions? The Yaesu radios look pretty cool, but I have to admit, I don't even know what I'm really look for.

Suggestions are welcome!

testing not going so well

I realize I have to study more in order to pass my first Amateur Radio license test, and the on-line tests are giving me a good idea of where I need to concentrate my studies. But that said I'd like to start passing the tests of a regular basis. I'll put the nose to the grindstone and really get moving tonight.

Next up on the dedicate to memory list: Ohm's Law. I shall know this fairly simple law inside and out after tonight.

Of motorcycles and manufacturers

Yesterday I signed up for my Motorcycle Safety Foundations Course through Durham Tech. Glass isn't for a while, they tend to fill up quickly and my class is going to eat an ENTIRE weekend but I'll suck it up and deal with it. Besides I'd like to drop a bit more weight before I get there as "the big guy", a title I'm still likely to carry at that time even if I dropped some major poundage.

What bike will I get? The Suzuki V-Strom DL1000 is the front runner at the moment though I'm likely end up with a used something-or-another come bonus time next year. Honestly, until my Chevy is paid off, I probably won't be riding a new motorcycle though there are several models I would love to swing a leg over each and every weekend.

I demand a four day work week

This past weekend was nice, very nice in fact. I could easily get used to a four day, ten hour per day work week. Could you? Think of the energy savings that could be realized by taking every commuter, or the bulk of them at the very least, off the road. A four day work week would help my bottom line.

A Time Machine/Capsule Workout

My laptop is restore, though not without a bit of drama. The good news is the backup and restore did work; my laptop is running along just as it was prior to the disk crash. In that sense the Time Capsule, and for that matter Time Machine itself, was worth the purchase cost (t. capsule) and cost of the upgrade (t. machine).

Now, the weirdness: my restore never really "finished", rather it just sat locked up on a restore screen for hours. So.... I did the unthinkable and rebooted the laptop while the screen was still locked up. It was a leap a faith to be sure, but it worked. After the next bootup my screen desktop, applications and everything else was restored! Sweet!!

The only bit of weirdness was my laptop decided to back itself up to the Time Capsule. Fully. As if it was the first time it had ever backed itself up, all 50+ gigs worth of data. So that ran for a while (a LONG while). Actually it wasn't that big of a deal, I just let the backup run all night.

The good news is I'm back in business!!! I didn't much care for being laptopless and I'm glad to have my Mac back.

The mac is back

Huzzah! The Macbook is fixed and has returned home. Good news, good news. Upon boot up I selected the "Restore from Time Machine" option and off I went - slowly. I have somewhere between five and eight hours of restoration ahead of me.

I should have dragged one of the UPS units from upstairs down and plugged the laptop and Time Capsule into that just to be on the safe side. Thunder is audible outside and my fancy new GPS/XM Weather handheld thingy is showing that I'm in for a serious case of whoop-ass in about 20 minutes. It is my hope that I do no lose power in the middle of the restoration, not even for a second! Wow, that would just suck. I would hope that upon reboot of the Time Capsule the process would simply continue on as if nothing happened. Hopefully we won't have to test that scenario out!!

Ah, just knowing my Mac is back makes me happy. Oh, and I stand corrected from an earlier post - Macbook Airs ARE on display in the Apple Store, just in a different place.

Apple.. let's be friends again, ok?

Today my Mac is off somewhere being repaired and I am stuck surfing on the couch with my work-issued T42 Thinkpad. The Thinkpad is a nice machine and the corporate-issued desktop is functional, but it's just not a Mac. When asked to compare the Mac vs PC I say that working with a Mac is like working with a computer that was designed and through through to work as in instrument to further the experience of the user. Using a PC feels like sitting in a cave, bashing away on a clay tablet with the hopes that the tablet won't break and someone may someday decipher what you were trying to say.

So, Apple, I do hope you get that hard disk thing worked out. This really should have been handled by a recall instead of just hoping that the disks wouldn't fail in record numbers. In short, the whole "disk failure" syndrome could have been managed better but that said, I just want my Mac back. Please?

Frye? Frye? Frye?

Yesterday I took a trip to the apple store to drop off my head macbook. I shouldn't have been so harsh on Apple. True, they picked some faulty hardware as a component of their expensive laptops but I'm sure it's biting them on the rear end right now about.

One thing was absent from the store: the Macbook Air. There were, literally, none on display. And I looked, quite hard actually. Perhaps they are going to revision two of internal hardware? Maybe. Perhaps. Who knows. Let's hope they come up with a user-changeable battery (and I'd really like to see one more USB somewhere an 10/100/1000 dongleless Ethernet port - PLEASE!). To that thought why do we have to have the long, flat USB port on the side? Why can we have long/flat and one mini-B USB connector? I'm sure there's some kind of reason but what that reason is I do not know (though I would venture to guess the mini-B USB is low power, USB 1.0 only, or something along those lines).

One more thing: Apple dropped the price of the Macbook Air with the solid-state 64 gig drive by $500.00. At over $2500.00, and close to $3k with Apple Care, the laptop is still wildly expensive, but at the same time, very cool. Plus with a solid-state drive you remove the major vulnerability of the laptop lines: weak hard drives. Still, with a solid-state drive you can now have a laptop where the only moving parts are the hinged laptop lid and keys on the keyboard. That alone is a pretty compelling argument for ownership.

Roku movie wated: Heavy Metal

Another classic from days of yore, 1981 to be exact. If you want to see firsthand how far animation in cinema has come over the years watch Heavy Metal. This movie is probably the last major motion picture that will be animated in this particular way, so it is a classic in that sense.

If you haven't seen the movie I don't want to ruin it for you but I will say that even though this is an animated movie it is NOT for children!! There is quite a lot of (animated) sex and nudity. My favorite story of the five presented was the B-17 sequence. Good stuff.

*** out of *****

One more thing

My wife has reminded me that we had another laptop which brings the total to five Apple laptops owned in our household. The "other" laptop was a G4 iBook and that laptop was never sent back to Apple for repair. That brings the hardware failure rate downt to 80% from 100%. 80% is still far from acceptable, just for the record.

Another One Bites the Dust

Today was the day my Macbook hard drive gave up the ghost. Now, let me do some calculations. Two Macbooks in the same house.. subtract 2.. carry the 1... divide by 10. Ok, that means that my Macbooks have had a 100% failure rate within the first three years. *NICE* Oh, and keep in mind our old G4 TiBook went back to the shop once and my G3 iBook went back twice.

Apple, I've owned many, many laptops and yours are the only ones that I've ever witnessed have a predictable <3 year hardware failure rate. This is simply unacceptable, has been unacceptable and remains so. Why am I paying a premium, and a fairly hefty one, to continue to have these kinds of problems? If you figure it out, please let me know.

While you're thinking about that keep in mind that I just dusted off a eight year old beast of a HP laptop out of mothball, installed Linux and made a file server for a local business that couldn't afford decent hardware. Guess what? IT WORKS! I still like OS X but with the advancements in Ubuntu I ask myself what would I really miss if I switched right back to where I switched from? Back when I got my G3 iBook OS X was a clear leader on non-Micro$oft desktops. Now, not so much. Some OS X only applications are nice, but really, let's face it, I could unlock my iPod all the same and use it under Linux. Or I could just toss the damn thing. Or resell my iPod Touch (e-mail if you're interested, I might make a sweet package deal on a Macbook with a fresh OS X install, new HD and a 16 gig iPod touch).

Should my Macbook die again (my Applecare expires around June/09) the laptop picture above, or one like it, could well be my next personal use laptop.

Apple, I've been a good ambassador for you and your products. I've personally helped switch people. But a 100% failure rate over the life of FOUR laptops is, as I have stated, simply unacceptable. Get your hardware in order!!! Really, Mr. Jobs? How are you allowing this to continue? Where is your eye for detail? Does it stop at the desktop and a pretty case these days? It should not. I had my sights set on upgrading to a Macbook Pro next round of bonuses. Now, I'm not so sure. This is getting more than a little annoying.

Movie Watched via Roku: Beer Drinkers in Space

The Roku delivers another gem. This time around it was Beer Drinkers in Space. Created in 1983 by a group of friends who worked for Disney this movie showcases what early home movie-making was all about: VHS on SLP (super long play, you youngins') manually "cut" using a playback VCR and a record VCR. Lighting is horrible, acting is little better (these aren't professionals, just a few guys who wanted to make a movie) and, oh lord, the puppets.

What is the movie about? It's about Captain Slosh and his merry men who need to delivery beer to "Nebulae 7-11". Along the way they meet aliens and run into all kinds of disasters. "Keep drinking men!" "Code RED!"

It would be easy to dismiss this movie but I won't. In fact, I loved it. Why? This movie shows what a small group of regular people can do when properly motivated. These guys wrote their own script, built their own sets, filmed, edited and released their own movie. And this was all well before anything like digital cameras and Final Cut Pro were on the scene. In fact, I'm willing to go out on a limb and say exactly ZERO computers were used during the filming of this movie (as safe bet for a movie filmed in 1983).

I take my hat off to Frank Delle. Frank, you had a vision and rather then do nothing you assembled a cast and crew of friends and brought your vision to fruition. I hope your movie lives on as inspiration to future filmmakers now and forever in the future. Oh, and Frank, I just added your follow-up documentary, "Keep Drinking Men! The Making of Beer Drinkers in Space", to my Roku list and I intend to watch that film this weekend.

Do you want to make a movie? You have nearly limitless tools at your finger trips these fine men could only have dreamed of back in 1983. Dust off that camera and start filming!

What do I do this weekend?

For the first time in a long while I am both a) not on-call for work and b) not going to the beach. Odd sounding, isn't it? Why not go to the beach on a "free" three-day weekend? In short, it will be far too crowded. Too many people end up going down there on Memorial Day, the 4th of July and Labor Day. It's a small island and when it's invaded to that degree with prefer to stay away.
So, what do we do? The garden needs some work. I have to install an new muffler on the riding mower and the yard needs to be mowed. Past that.. I don't know. I'll probably give the Roku player a serious workout. I might even watch some movies that will bore Kelly to tears, that is if she's doing something else and I can play a few things that interest me but have no interest to her. We'll see. (In my defense I don't recall being asked anything along the lines of "do you like documentaries that most people would find less interesting than watching grass grow?" That said, I should have offered that information without being asked but honestly, who could have envisioned back in 1995 that we would have something like a Roku player? Or high-speed Internet to the home?)

So that's it for me. It will be a celebratory weekend of NOT spending $100 at the pump. Sounds good to me.