You Are Not Familiar With The Focusing Disintegrator Ray?

avatarchangeReally nice day out! One of the few remaining for this year. I tried to stay outside as much as possible. Really tried. Almost made it. Busy putting “stuff” together for the trip though. Which meant being inside way too much for such a nice day.

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Not much else going on. Playing with my 857d and the new Alpha Antenna. Added a couple of counterpoise wires to it. Made 4 but have room for only 2 to fit on the thing. Need an extension for the screw thingie that holds the coax attachment thingie. (There are a lot of “thingies” in Ham Radio.)  Even managed to check in to the Noontime Net on 7.268.5 using only 25 watts! That’s good.

Made Fried Chicken, Boiled Chunked Potato’s, and barely warmed up Home-Grown Peas for dinner. Was yummy. Now to remember that I have to save some for SWMBO. Or else. (Not really. I mean; she wouldn’t really, like, hurt me or anything. But there is that look.)

Went back and attached two wires each to the connectors for the counterpoise. I figure it should work. Hopefully. No harm trying.

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Heard on the radio today: “Lady calling says she keeps getting texts that someone is trapped at the bottom of a canyon. Injuries unknown.” Several small fires in the area. Non-Injury Hit & Run. Altercation at Safeway in town. Three episodes of people passing out. (Probably the heat. It got up to 75 degrees today.)

MCARC 2-meter Wednesday Evening Chat Net went well with about 8 check-ins. I had to switch to the directional I built so they could hear me, and their signals were broken and scratchy, but we got it worked out. One of these days I’ll find a sweet spot for the 2-meter/440 antenna that will work just fine. Of course, I may wind up buying another 100 feet of coax to reach it in that spot.

And that’s about it for tonight. Just not much going on around here.


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Someone Hacked Our Damned Netflix Account. Lost All My List!

Sunday. Nice, warm, partially cloudy Sunday. A day to finish the mowing of the back yard. Get out the whack-weeder and do around the house and garden. (What little garden I put in this year.) Whack-weed the walking path around the property. Pick the last of the blue berry’s and the peas that are ripe. (Yummy!) Water everything that needs to be watered. Mowed the upper-back and pet poop yards.

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Someone hacked our Netflix account over the past month. I tried logging on cause I stopped getting discs and wanted to see what’s up. That was what was up! Someone hacked it and changed everything to Spanish, deleted me (and my lists) and added someone called “Kids” and a Streaming Plan at $12/month. Luckily they only got us for a couple of months. But, still. Damn!

So I’ve cancelled the account online cause it’s just easier than trying to get through to a “Service Rep.” I’ll wait a couple of days until my new cards get here then start it again under my name with the new numbers. Then start rebuilding our lists. What a pain!

SWMBO’s Home Teachers came over for their monthly visit. These seem a bit more dedicated than any she’s had the past few years. Nice people. And they don’t stay too long.

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MCARC 2-meter Sunday Evening Chat Net went really well. We had 12 Check-Ins. If not a record then very close to being one. Several of the new Hams (KG’s) managed to join us. That was cool! Afterwards AC7VA (Gary) tried to explain 6-meters to me. It somewhat worked but I still haven’t heard anyone on 6-meters. Tried tuning into the 6-meter repeater in Shelton but didn’t hear anything there either.

Anywho, nice day. Only had to get dressed once (for SWMBO’s visitors). Nothing fell out of the sky and landed on the house, or us. Don’t really have to worry about Tornado’s here.


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Really A Nice Day Wx Wise.

I bought a 5 TB drive at COSTCO for $140 today. FIVE Terabytes! Let me explain why this is exciting. My first “hard drive” was actually a “Hard Card;” a hard drive mounted on an expansion card that fit into an 8-bit slot inside my XT computer. The drive was a whopping 40 MB (which had a Max 32 MB partition available with 8 MB in another. Or however you wanted it partitioned as long as you didn’t try to go over the 32 MB limit). It also cost a whopping $460.

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My Mom got it for me, once she understood what it was I wanted, by playing the slot machines for about 8 minutes. Big jackpot out of which she gave me $500 to get that “thingie” I wanted. (She could do that. “We need a new boat? Hang on a minute.” and off she’d go and win enough to get whatever it was she wanted. She once paid cash for a brand new Z380 (380Z?) with a customized male voice that said “Clara, you’re running out of gas.” “Clara, you left your lights on.”) But she couldn’t win enough to be “Rich” and stay that way. But she was fairly comfortable.

So, yeah, getting a 5TB drive is sorta kinda a big deal for me. And, what am I going to DO with all this storage space? Why, store things, of course. Backup. And Organization. Finally, all the scans I’ve done that are spread all over creation and back I can move to one place. All the video we’ve taken over the years; in one place. All the documents I’ve converted to .pdf format that I need to keep but hardly look at over the course of a year (or two or three); in one place and off my working hard drives. (Working meaning drives I use every day.)

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Of course, I’ll probably buy another one to backup the new drive “Just In Case!” I’m pretty anal about backing up all the scans I’ve done cause 1) some of those pictures are irreplaceable, and 2) that’s a LOT of damned work to duplicate for any reason. (Which reminds me; I need to buy some more 50 GB blu-ray discs.)

Made a trip to Fife to the Toll Court. Judge threw my case out because I had done all I could and it was the Toll folks that screwed up. Still have another hearing coming up for the other one though. Got there an hour early cause traffic was a lot lighter than I thought it’d be. Judge did my case early. Nice of him.

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Other than that I didn’t get a lot accomplished today. The usual chores. Did manage to vacuum half the big room. But other than that I really haven’t done squat. Nice day to be lazy; so I was. (Hey, I’m Retired!)


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Sunny, Hot, Itchy, Itchy, Itchy Day!

Still cleaning up after Field Day. Finally got the BBQ cleaned. What a chore that was! After 3 days of use it really needed cleaning. Think I’ll line the inside with tin foil this time. May make it easier to clean. May not.

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KE7NUQ and family came over to look at the Tent Trailer. Gave them the complete setting it up and let them sit around awhile in it. They liked it so much they want to buy it. Cool! I’m going to be taking it to their house Friday; they have to get their van set up to tow and they’re not sure when that’ll be. In the meantime it can sit in their driveway and they can practice setting it up and taking it down. (And I accidently put a hole in the screen door while showing it to them that I’ll have to fix before then. Klutzy me!)

Not much else going on. Planet Of The Apes (1968) marathon going on my monitor. Can of Dinty’s for dinner. Kind of lounging between outside and my desk.

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SWMBO just called and I get to pick her up at the bus stop this evening after work. Cool!

Wednesday: And I forgot to post this last night. I blame it on SWMBO. She makes me forget things.


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