Back On The Air Again, Sort Of
It's been a busy week for me. Since Friday:
* I built my wife a Windows 7 computer out of the box my daughter donated us (the one she got from her brother). It has the new hard drive in it. So far it seems to be working OK, except that sometimes it takes a while for a command to fire up. I'll have to see if I can figure out why that might be happening. All of her files are there and her browser's home page is set to her favorite MMORPG, so she declares herself happy. (And will probably be even happier when I put Age of Mythology on for her.)
* Once she was up and running I used her former Windows XP machine as the basis for rebuilding my server/ham radio machine. The installation actually went quite well so far. All of the programs I regularly used on the previous version of the machine are in place. I can ssh into the machine, use squid as a remote proxy, serve up the family's pictures and music in samba and just generally keep the house running. I don't have mail for penguinsinthenight.com set up yet, but that will come soon.
* The ham radio programs I've been using lately are on the machine now and are working pretty well, except that one of them insists on resetting the volume to 100% every time it launches. I don't know what's going on there, but I'm a member of the program's Yahoo group so I can ask if anyone's seen anything like it.
* Unfortunately conditions haven't been that good on the ham bands recently, at least for me. For instance this morning I sent out a CQ on 20 meters to see what would happen. The reverse beacon system said only one station somewhere in the Midwest reported hearing me, and my signal level was pretty poor. I don't think it's an equipment problem. Radio propagation comes and goes, and there could be externalities like the solar flare we had last week that could be disrupting communications.
* I never did make contact with the station on Socotra Island off Yemen, and I think they're probably tearing down their camp now and getting ready to head back to Russia and California. I actually never even heard them. I could tell they were there by the pileups, though.
* The fact that I haven't done much radio time isn't necessarily a bad thing. My wife's aunt died over the weekend and she and my daughter drove down to southern Idaho for the funeral. They took Igor the Younger with them. He enjoys long car rides and trips to see great-grandma, at least in principle until he's been in the car for 14 hours. So I've been spending a little time with Igor the Older and my oldest granddaughter.
* I did get out of the house for a couple of hours yesterday. One of the local boys organized a project for his Eagle Scout badge to map out communication capability around the area. A group of teams consisting of Scouts, radio hams and adult Scout leaders fanned out to various locations and we did a survey of how well the hams in each location could hear each of the other locations. This is going to be factored into an area communications plan so we know how well, for instance, we can communicate between my location in Shoreline and another location in Bothell. The distance is only about five miles but there's a lot of hilly terrain and a lot of trees. We were using a frequency right at the edge of where trees start interfering with the signal.
* Once in a while I actually remember to practice my banjo.
Anyway that's what I've been up to the past few days.
* I built my wife a Windows 7 computer out of the box my daughter donated us (the one she got from her brother). It has the new hard drive in it. So far it seems to be working OK, except that sometimes it takes a while for a command to fire up. I'll have to see if I can figure out why that might be happening. All of her files are there and her browser's home page is set to her favorite MMORPG, so she declares herself happy. (And will probably be even happier when I put Age of Mythology on for her.)
* Once she was up and running I used her former Windows XP machine as the basis for rebuilding my server/ham radio machine. The installation actually went quite well so far. All of the programs I regularly used on the previous version of the machine are in place. I can ssh into the machine, use squid as a remote proxy, serve up the family's pictures and music in samba and just generally keep the house running. I don't have mail for penguinsinthenight.com set up yet, but that will come soon.
* The ham radio programs I've been using lately are on the machine now and are working pretty well, except that one of them insists on resetting the volume to 100% every time it launches. I don't know what's going on there, but I'm a member of the program's Yahoo group so I can ask if anyone's seen anything like it.
* Unfortunately conditions haven't been that good on the ham bands recently, at least for me. For instance this morning I sent out a CQ on 20 meters to see what would happen. The reverse beacon system said only one station somewhere in the Midwest reported hearing me, and my signal level was pretty poor. I don't think it's an equipment problem. Radio propagation comes and goes, and there could be externalities like the solar flare we had last week that could be disrupting communications.
* I never did make contact with the station on Socotra Island off Yemen, and I think they're probably tearing down their camp now and getting ready to head back to Russia and California. I actually never even heard them. I could tell they were there by the pileups, though.
* The fact that I haven't done much radio time isn't necessarily a bad thing. My wife's aunt died over the weekend and she and my daughter drove down to southern Idaho for the funeral. They took Igor the Younger with them. He enjoys long car rides and trips to see great-grandma, at least in principle until he's been in the car for 14 hours. So I've been spending a little time with Igor the Older and my oldest granddaughter.
* I did get out of the house for a couple of hours yesterday. One of the local boys organized a project for his Eagle Scout badge to map out communication capability around the area. A group of teams consisting of Scouts, radio hams and adult Scout leaders fanned out to various locations and we did a survey of how well the hams in each location could hear each of the other locations. This is going to be factored into an area communications plan so we know how well, for instance, we can communicate between my location in Shoreline and another location in Bothell. The distance is only about five miles but there's a lot of hilly terrain and a lot of trees. We were using a frequency right at the edge of where trees start interfering with the signal.
* Once in a while I actually remember to practice my banjo.
Anyway that's what I've been up to the past few days.