Well, Field Day was a blast this year. I was at the site from 2pm Saturday afternoon until 9am Sunday morning. I was glad I brought my 6 meter setup, as the band opened up nicely out west and into Texas and Louisana. Colorado and western Nebraska were also contacted by W8VP. As an added bonus, some friends and I worked a young lady in Texas with a very sexy voice. Ahh the Magic Band. . . I love a good band opening.

Today I helped a ham friend troubleshoot his 2 meter mobile setup. He has a Kenwood TM-261A that starts buzzing when he transmits on high power. It works fine on mid and low power, and he can run high power without problems with the engine running. I suspected he had a voltage drop. Sure enough, he did. His power cord to the battery is about twice as long as it needs to be, and is joined in the middle with a small gauge wire that probably can't handle 10 amps @ 12 volts. When his alternator runs, the car voltage ramps up to 13.8 volts, which overcomes the loss in the power cable. I fixed it temporarily, but I think he'll eventually need a shorter, thicker power cable ran directly from the radio to the car battery.

On the job front I took a look at some job apps, one from a gas station and another from a grocery store. I'll fill them out and deliver them tomorrow.

I've been struggling to write a program in Pascal to incorporate Fibonacci's sequence. I haven't thought about it enough to make any progress. I think that taking real-world problems and translating them into mathematical expressions is the hardest part of computer programming. So far it hasn't been easy to learn some of this stuff because my understanding of calculus and even algebra is weak.

I'm at Field Day.

Wouldn't it be refreshing if politicians actually said what they thought? Cheney has done just that. Bad day, indeed.

I take back the minor complement I gave Bill Clinton in an earlier post. In his interview with the BBC, Clinton seems to place blame for his problems at others' feet. His inability to effectively combat the growing Al Qaida threat is due to not wanting to be perceived as "changing the subject" from the Starr investigation. He pulls a Perot and repeatedly makes references to others' driving his ambitions, not himself. I did find the theme of parallel lives in the interview to be an interesting study in the man who still holds such sway over the Democratic party.

I find it strange that he says he did all he could to combat terrorism, and that he couldn't have invaded Afghanistan without raising distrust and fear in the international community. I'll concede that. But by his own admission he could have done more to put pressure on the people who struck at our embassies overseas and the USS Cole. I know that when it comes to 9/11, there's plenty of blame to spread around. But to place the majority of the blame on the nine month old Bush administration is blind partisanship. I think its clear that September 11 was such a event that nothing could've been done to stop it. At least, not without the benefit of 20/20 hindsight.

As a staunch Republican with some socially moderate views, I find the coverage of Bill Clinton's My Life quite interesting. I find it refreshing that he admits he made mistakes, even though it seems that he takes every opportunity to bash Ken Starr. Because, after all, we all know that the Monica Lewinsky scandal was Starr's fault, not Bill's.

Yeah, right.

Starr was always the left's whipping boy during the independent counsel investigation. I do not believe that Starr was motivated by a venomous, nearly rabid hate of Bill Clinton. Starr was not desperate to bring down Clinton at any cost. He was not the visible face of some nebulous "right wing conspiracy." He was a man driven by duty and the rule of law. To see Clinton's excesses and indiscretions during his investigation must have lit a fire under him. He was outraged, as anybody who holds the office of the Presidency sacred should be. As My Life shows, Starr was not Clinton's worst enemy. Clinton himself was.

During a BBC interview, Clinton became visibly angry and indignant after a series of tough questions about the Lewinsky affair. He's as tired of the Lewinsky mess as everybody else. People, just read the book and shut up. I will do both.

As a followup to a previous post, the Time Warner Cable Online site was actually www.twcol.com. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a relevant job posting related to the newspaper ad on that site. Geez!

I spent the day providing amateur radio communications for the The Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure. Its a tour of Ohio that's held every year in a different part of the state. Its got some great scenery if you're willing to view it while pumping your heart out across this fine country. The hams on the event covered a huge route that crossed three counties. Its doubtful that the event would be possible without our support.

Yesterday I called the local municipal court about my application for network technician. The woman that answered said that she'd received over 40 applications, and that she'd be conducting interviews in mid-July. Hopefully I'll make at least the first cut. Even if I don't get the job, I'd feel better about myself if I just had an interview with a live human being. Yes, I'm just that desperate.

I also noticed a local gas station is hiring. I got an application, but was told that the HR person would be calling for interviews TODAY. I may try to return it by the end of the week and see if it will still be accepted.

If I was a conspiracy nut, I would find this rather interesting. A commercial jet lands at a military airport and the passengers are instructed to pull the shades on their windows and not look outside. Creepy. This comes after I watched the latest Bond installment Die Another Day. In the movie all hell breaks loose in the Korean DMZ and it makes the papers as a "freak electrical storm". Art imitates life, or vice versa?

I saw an ad in today's paper about a tech support position for Time Warner Cable in the cable internet division. Its an ideal position for me, since I have experience in customer service and tech support over the phone to friends who can't seem to get their computers up and running. The ad stipulates that I visit www.twol.com to apply for the gig. The wierd thing is, the site at that address has no relation to Time Warner Cable, at least none that I can discern. Creepy.

I spent today working on that simple Pascal program that I couldn't get to compile a few evenings ago. It turns out I was trying to change the value of a identifier that I had declared a constant. A rookie mistake. That's appropriate, considering I'm a rookie.

I tried programming a few years ago in college, but I had no idea what the hell I was doing since the classes moved so quickly. Plus we were using C++, which I've been told is overload for beginning programmers. I have the distinct feeling that all those folks I was in class with coded every day before they ate dinner. Or, instead of dinner. Either way, they knew craploads more than me.

I'm also trying out Pascal because a.) Its easy to get a compiler and run it under Linux, and b.) I'm really bored and looking for something to occupy my time during job searching.

I saw an ad in the local paper today about needing help at a gas station. I don't relish the prospect of doing that kind of work again, but I'm running out of options. I think I'll ask for an application the next time I'm in town.

I took it easy today. I spent some time watching From the Earth to the Moon on DVD. Also, I had a wicked grounding issue here in the radio shack. When my computer keyed up my radio, the audio coming out of the soundcard into the radio was trashed with a ground-loop hum. Its hard to describe, but those of you who have encountered this problem know exactly what I'm talking about. In the end all I had to do was tie a ground wire to my computer and it cleared right up. Sometimes you can get nasty interference effects when you use radios and computers side by side. Although I didn't refer to it when changing the ground, I recommend The ARRL RFI Book. Its chock full of good how-to tips and directions on troubleshooting interference issues.

After getting back from my friend's viewing hours, I decided to kick back with a little home entertainment. Being a broke SOB, I'm forced to check out DVD's from the local library. Its really not the hell that it sounds. As long as I'm patient I can get whatever title I want, provided its not too obscure. Or risque. After all, we are talking about public funds.

I mentioned in a previous post that we'd had some serious thunderstorms move through the area. It turns out that it dumped over two inches in the span of an HOUR. That's a lot of rain. The whole yard has basically become a swamp, and the field next to my home sounds like a waterfall. Crazy. I haven't heard any reports of property damage, but there was some serious problems around the county for a few hours after the storm hit.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow. It will be a bit of a respite from what has otherwise proved to be a troubling week. Assuming of course it doesn't rain.

And the rains come

Written 6/15/2004, 4;20pm

After trying to work in a late morning nap after attending the first
part of the CERT training class, I am rudely interrupted by a double
whammy. My mom continually asks me pointless questions that can't wait
until I acheive full consciousness, AND a nasty thunderstorm moves
through the area dropping over 2 inches of rain. Believe me, a storm
like that makes enough noise to cause concern, even when you aren't
trying to make up for lost sleep.

I just sat through the first hour of CERT training. It was interesting enough considering it was held at 8am. The best aspect of the training is when a skilled professional adds their input to the basic curriculum. For example, this morning we heard from a local fire chief on the incident command system. He's knowledgeable and prepared to give his perspective based on 27 years of active duty as a firefighter.

I'll visit my late friend at the funeral home this evening. I don't know how to feel about it. I guess I'll find out when I see him.

I learned this afternoon that a friend of mine had passed away. It wasn't altogether unexpected, but in a way it was. Gee, can I be more vague? I haven't felt really teary eyed about it, but throughout the day I've found myself thinking about things we had done together, or conversations that we'd had. No more of that now.

A mutual friend feels the same way. "I can't help thinking about him," he says, and that's it exactly. I'll miss him. But, given his personal circumstances, I've been missing him for a while.

As for the job quest, I mailed my application for a network technician opening to the local municipal court. I think its a long shot. I got the opening from the local paper, which means that they probably have at LEAST a hundred applicants. All of them with better credentials than I, no doubt. I sent it anyway, as I can't let my self-defeating mentality get the best of me.

Tomorrow morning (or this morning, as I look at the clock), I'll be attending the first class of CERT training. For those of you who aren't aware, it stands for Community Emergency Response Team. It was the brainchild of some folks out in L.A. Its designed to give people a modest background in disaster work and preparedness. Nice to see all those post-9/11 dollars trickling down to the local level. If you're interested in reading more about the program, check out EMI's CERT page.

Test

Is my email-to-blog function working? Or do I need to fetch the hammer?

Hello.

This is just a test to see if I've got the settings for the blog correctly implemented. I'm not going to keep it, since it seems a thunderstorm is closing in that will certainly play hell with my electricity.