inspiring quote

"I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
-- Pablo Picasso

hiatus

After a minor blogging hiatus (and taking a look see at my friends blog), I decided to add an entry; if nothing else, to prove that I remembered my blog password.
I've been busy the past few months working on a website so I have not had much time for hobbies.

Things I've learned since October...
1. The Mozilla Firefox browser has an RSS reader for "Live Bookmarks". I use it to get news from the BBC website, as well as RSS/Atom feeds from Blogs of friends. I prefer the Firefox Browser over MSIE hands down (it's not just for tabs anymore!).

2. Homebrew beer is better than commercial beer. I brewed my first batch a few months ago and have been very pleased.

3. Always make sure the bread machine paddle is not stuck in a cooked bread that didn't rise (since it may be thrown out with the bread).

4. If a bird flys in your house and flys around, it takes on average 5 seconds for one of your cats to catch it in mid-air. And it's pretty impressive when it happens.

5. Just because a cat lounges around all day, doesn't mean he can't move fast and jump half-way up a wall.

6. The BBC offers free foreign language lessons. I'm learning German, unfortunately I only have 15 minutes a day to devote to that endeavor. So far the grammer seems easier than Polish.

-s

Winders XP Service Pack 2 Install Instructions

Here is the what I did for my Winders XP SP2 upgrade.
Winders provides this most excellent feature called "Automatic Updates". "Automatic Updates" comes on all new computers and nags you to download and install security patches on your new computer.

1. Automatic Updates pops up when you turn your computer on and informs you that updates are "Ready to Install".
2. Ignore the nagging pop-up for 2 months
3. When you have nothing else better to do, turn on your computer and click on the Automatic Update button to commence installing Service Pack 2. Microsoft makes it very easy to begin this installation because they want you to be upto date.
4. Follow the instructions during the install process, clicking "Next" when all the disclaimers are displayed.
5. After about 45 minutes, you are notified that you computer will need to be re-booted for the update to take effect.
6. Choose the reboot now button.
7. When the Re-boot stops at the black DOS screen informing you that Windows cannot load properly, don't panic.
8. Choose the "Run Windows in Safe Mode" option on the DOS screen. You will need to use the up-down keys because the mouse driver is not loaded.
9. The Re-boot may hang when trying to run Winders in Safe Mode. Avoid the temptation to panic and have some Tea.
10. Try rebooting in different safe modes (With Curser, With Networking, etc..) . If this fails, have some more Tea.
11. Try rebooting with "Last Known Good Configuration". This will not work because you over wrote your entire operating system already - but it's worth a try anyway.
12. Lose some sleep.
13. Bring computer into work to have 2 network engineers evaluate problem.
14. Go to "Live Chat" with Computer manufacturer, explain problem.
15. Wait 1 hour for the live chat to begin.
16. Take a quick break to go to the bathroom because of all the tea you've been having lately.
17. Return to workstation to find the Live Chat person has logged on, given the solution and logged off. The solution is to boot in Safe Mode and uninstall service pack 2.
18. Get frustrated because computer can't be booted in Safe Mode.
19. Throw up your arms.
20. Put Manufacturer XP Recovery Disk in the CD ROM drive.
21. Choose option that Backs up Disk to a directory on your hard-drive.
22. Reinstall Windows.
23. Very Important... Disable "Automatic Updates" Service.
    
24. Reinstall Wireless networking, Apache, Tomcat, PHP, mySQL, Mozilla, Thunderbird, etc...
25. try to retrieve any data on the backup directory.
26. Write blog entry.
27. Have a good nights sleep.
    

People I've talked to

Here are a few people I've talked to (most of the domestic qso's are omitted):

Date/Time (UTC)	Mode	Call Sign	name	Location
2004-10-23 15:41	psk31	F5SNZ	Pierre	Mulhouse France
2004-10-23 15:22	psk31	9A5ABH	Branko	Zagreb Croatia
2004-10-23 01:06	psk31	HC1CB	Stalin	Quito Equador
2004-10-22 23:06	psk31	YV4FUE	Jose	Maracay Venezula
2004-10-22 19:44	psk31	DL1YE	Wladimir	Delrath Germany
2004-10-22 16:02	psk31	DJ2EF	Gert	Northeim Germany
2004-10-21 00:41	psk31	HK4OQI	Cesar	Medellin Columbia
2004-10-16 23:58	psk31	VE2CFJ	Jean	Grand-Mere Quebec
2004-10-11 19:17	psk31	EA6BH	Teo	Mallorca Island Spain
2004-09-05 15:02	psk31	DM2AUO	Max	Berlin Germany
2004-09-04 00:23	psk31	TG9BD	Mario	Guatemala City Guatemala

J-pole antennas

A couple of sites for roll-up jpole antennas.
The plans in this link is what I used to build a 440 roll-up j-pole antenna (made from 300 ohm twinlead).
I have this hanging inside the house next to a window and it works pretty well to hit some local repeaters. I only put 5 watts into it.

Here is a link for an inside the PVC 2 meter jpole used at my station (5/4 wave). This is also good for hitting some local 2 meter repeaters. This antenna is installed with a chimney mount.