SWMBO and I went to the Bremerton Airport restaurant mid-day last Friday for lunch. We don’t get out and about on New Year’s Eve, if possible. Had a nice lunch with her and got to watch the planes taking off and landing. Some were doing "touch-and-go’s" and that was cool.

We did go to Home Depot and SWMBO bought me a 13" Planer. She really wants me to learn to make cabinet doors! I will; just in my own time.

Spent the 1st just lounging around the house. Well, I say lounging. If you don’t count housework! Come to think of it; Sunday was spent pretty much the same way.

WAY too cold out to get out much. Poop Dog and I have been going for our walks but I can hardly wait to get back inside. I Just Don’t Like The Cold! I’d much rather be too warm.

Been studying the ARRL manual for the General test coming up next Saturday. Phew! The formulas are killing me! And remembering things like capacitance and inductance and how many volts across the connecting points in a diode and stuff it way beyond me. But I still take the practice tests at qrz.com. Last night was the first time I passed one of the tests! Got a 89%. Cool! Total tally was 3 tests passed & 2 failed. But I’m failing with a higher score! I think I’m going to pass this one by memorizing all the answers.

This General study material is geared towards folks that will probably someday build their own radio. I’m never going to build my own radio. Nor any "mods" for a radio. Nor a switching power supply. I’m just not electrically minded. I’m the guy that will buy a radio that does what I want it to do. Now, the section on antenna’s will come in handy since I’m building all my own antenna’s; but I don’t feel I really need all the electrical stuff to operate a radio. But that’s the way it is….

That’s about it for now. 2-meter net went well last night. Made a contact in mid-Mexico last saturday. Still spending too much time listening to the radio and PSK31. Copying all the tv shows I’ve ripped to a back-up drive so I can set the NAS up for a RAID (3?) where it will automatically mirror each drive. That’s taken almost 40 hours so far with about 10 hours to go! Then I get to copy everything back!

Not that it’s been a *bad* holiday season or anything. Except for the Christmas music and commercials (which are still airing!). The only reason I don’t really enjoy the "Holiday Season" is because the damned stores start it just after Halloween. By the time Christmas comes around I’m totally burnt out on it all.

But, Christmas here was pretty good. I was home with the love of my life and that was enough. SWMBO got me a big box of Imax videos. I love those "educational" type of shows! It was a nice Christmas…

Weather around here has SUCKED for the past month or so. Still getting lots of rain; none of those sudden downpours that flood us out. Just steady rain. Even had some sloppy wet snow/rain mix last night. I tell ya; I hate the rain so much I’d prefer it snowed. Wind has been a big problem around the Seattle area also. Trees down all over the place and such. Not so much where we live but close.

Enjoying my Ham radio and getting into it more. Studying for my General; test is on Jan 8th. Playing with "Echolink" the past couple of days and have already talked to Australia twice (VK4SN & VK4FSRD Hey!) and looking for more places to talk to. I’m slowly learning what to talk about but still kind of stilted and at a loss for words sometimes. Funny for a guy that spent 20 years giving some pretty good first-aid lessons. Echolink uses the Internet to make contacts. Sound quality so far has been better than tuning in on the radio. But it does take some of the "guess work" out of making a contact. I’m still going to log them though!

Getting my long wire antenna up on the roof for my real radio. That should put it about 25 feet or so up in the air. Ought to be able to make some better contacts then. Hopefully! Antenna tuner works pretty good for that long wire antenna. Still saving up to get that handheld unit…

Putting together a website for the NMARC club and am going to take over the blog for the MCARC. Something to do… I’m thinking about a major overhaul of my personal site…

Not much else going on around here. It’s raining out again and already plenty dark. May have a bit of snow tonight. We’ll see….

Playing with Apophysis

Well, other than having to completely rebuild my hard drive, that wasn’t so bad. "Upgraded" to Windows 7 on my desktop over the last couple of days. Haven’t crashed it. Yet. (If it can be crashed, I’ll crash it! Got the BSOD in Vista TNTC!) Still reinstalling all the programs I usually use; and a couple that I don’t usually use. What a pain!

The Storm!: Had a LOT of rain over several days last week that caused some flooding around the area. Trees down. Cars in ditches. Set my radio to scan all the local repeaters, Fire Departments & Police/Sheriff frequencies; it was interesting. I took some video of cars going through water running across the road coming out of Belfair, sent it to Q 13 Fox News, and they used it. Even mentioned my name. Cool.

Our place did okay through the storm even with all the water running across our lawn. Back portion of the property is soaked though. I mean it’s wet back there! Had to take the digger out and do a few channels to drain all the standing water. Cleaned out our major drainage ditch. Maybe it won’t run over the next storm. It’s been raining off and on most every day. Had a really nice line of thunder & lightning storm come through late Monday night. Rain was coming down so hard it sounded like people running across the roof! Wind slammed us a good one once or twice. Was nice. Wish I hadn’t been so tired and could have stayed awake for all of it.

Radio stuff is going okay. Studying for my General ticket. Mostly talking on the 2-meter band. 10-meter is mostly dead. Yeah, everyone says 10-meter will open up this summer; but I haven’t seen it yet. Joining several 2-meter *nets* during the week is okay though. Lots of interesting conversations going on.

Thinking of buying either a 144/440 handheld that I found "on sale" for $100 or a 144/440 moble unit for my truck. Not sure which. The handheld I can take with me if/when SWMBO and I go on trips and would need only a mag mount antenna for it. The moble unit I’d have to mount in my truck. Not that I mind taking my truck on any trips. Hmmm. Lots more to think about before I splurge for another radio. And I still need an antenna (6-BTV looks good), automatic antenna tuner, data cable, & maybe a linear amp for the radio (and other stuff) I have!

I’ll let y’all know what I think of Windows 7 in future posts.