by srhuston

Toasty!

All right! This chick is TOAST!

–Dr. Peter Venkman, “Ghostbusters”
Screenshot from near the finale of Ghostbusters showing Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Ernie Hudson.

Comenity (aka Bread FInancial) can join the ranks of places that can suck me.

Yeah, really starting strong out the gate with that one aren’t I? Well, not without good reason. Stephanie and I got new iPhones this week, and last night I helped her get things set up in Apple Wallet. She hadn’t really used it before, so nothing transferred from the old phone. No problem, this is pretty painless – especially with the NFC reader in the phone that can literally grab all the card data out of thin air. We set up one card which asked for a 6-digit code to be SMS’d, no problem. Then we came to my PlayStation Visa card. Her card doesn’t have a tap-to-pay feature so the data had to be entered by hand. No problem, that’s easy enough to do and we did. Then it came to the verify stage, and the only option was to call them. Well, neither one of us felt like talking to someone, but OK fine we’ll do that.

Stephanie was answering the questions at first which was fine, but as soon as I spoke the agent got really shitty all of a sudden. I said I’m the primary account holder, my wife is the authorized user, and we’re trying to set this up on her phone. Continuing with his snippiness he asked a few other questions, and then finally said he would have to verify me to continue. No problem. He said can we use the number on file as (last four digits of my phone number) and I said that would be fine, I just did that a couple weeks ago when logging in. Quite a bit of time passed, and then he came back and said that he couldn’t verify using that phone number, so he would be unable to continue. I said that’s unfortunate, and was just about to ask what do I have to do next to verify things, when he let out the more interesting part.

“Further, that means we have to place a hold on the account until it’s been reviewed.”

The fuck? He went on to explain that because my phone couldn’t be used to verify things, he had to put a hold on the whole damned card – not just hers, but mine as well, the one that has a bunch of monthly bills go to all the time because why not that’s how I’ll rack up PlayStation points I can redeem for gift cards and get free games or even just pay for PlayStation Plus for a year. I asked what do we have to do about this and he said there’s nothing he could do. So I said something I rarely do: “Then you’re going to march your way up the chain of command until you find someone who can do something, because this needs to be fixed immediately. Don’t worry about the time, I can wait.”

A few minutes later and after a few times of “sorry about the wait”, he hung up on me.

I got the number off the back of my card – which is different than the iPhone told me to call, understandably so one is for customer service and one is probably specialized for activations – and called Comenity directly. Interestingly, when their system answered, it asked for the last four digits of my SSN, and then knew who I was without asking for my card number. So apparently they DO know who I am based on my phone number, don’t they… anyway, a nice gentleman answered and heard me out, understood what the problem was, but also said he couldn’t help directly but that he could transfer me to the account security office or something like that, and they might be able to give some more information. He then proceeded to hang up on me instead of transfer my call.

Ok, now I’m fucking pissed.

I sat and stewed for a bit, and took some time to look through Google Voice settings; specifically, there used to be a blanket setting in GV for incoming calls from people not in your contacts list. At some point that got removed, so I was not sure how I would set things so that I would get phone calls from people not in my contacts. After some more experimentation it seems that the answer is to use the setting in the phone itself now – turning it on there means nobody outside my contacts will ring the phone and the calls will go to Google voicemail, and turning it off makes the phone ring and I can answer or dump the same as I would before. This is fine, just wasn’t expected since I didn’t know things moved around, but now that I know I’m OK with it. But I noticed something else while looking through these settings – that first agent, the one who tried to verify my phone and said he couldn’t, did so by having the system MAKE A PHONE CALL TO TALK TO ME. That was never stated ANYWHERE that it was going to make a call. If it was, I’d have said you’ll have to wait a moment because things are configured that my phone will not ring right now, and I may have even said let’s deal with this tomorrow instead. I assumed, and perhaps that’s a bad thing but I think it was a safe assumption to make, that “verifying your phone number” meant they were going to send me a six-digit number in an SMS and I’d read it off to him. I’d even joked with Stephanie that this guy was being a bit of a prick or else I’d point out that I shouldn’t give that number to anyone, that’s how phishing works, but he probably wouldn’t get it.

So now I know that the first asshole was so incompetent as to not actually tell me what the process was for verification, but then to “fail” me for not doing something I had no idea I had to do because he didn’t tell me. And, Comenity’s phone system sucks because I got hung up on twice now. Three times, actually, because after taking some time to collect my thoughts and discover this information, I called back and this time the automated system said it was routing me to whatever department that was immediately. I found this amusing a little, because it’s as if they already know “this person doesn’t want to talk to the initial CSRs, get them right to the point.” I stopped being amused, however, when after it said I would be transferred I again got hung up on.

My fourth call also got routed right to the department I wanted to talk to, and this time a nice woman answered and took down all my information. Unfortunately she also claimed to have no control over it, but that the department would look over things and there would be an answer in “three to five days” (later confirmed to be business days). So if you’re keeping score, this means some idiot who got pissy that there was more than one person on a phone call then screwed up and didn’t tell me how exactly he was going to verify my account (nevermind if I was calling from my phone, that wouldn’t have worked either), then locked my account and hung up on me, and has basically shut me out of all of my automatic payments and billings for up to a week.

Suddenly, the fact that I can get PSN gift cards for free games isn’t worthwhile to me anymore. Time to take my money elsewhere.

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2025/04/30 Quick Thought

Dangit, I really want to go sit outside by the fire pit with some number of the children (whomever wants to join)… but the NWS alert from this morning is reminding me that fire danger is high, and while I may have a hose near me and know how to properly put things out at the end of the night, I don’t want to be the next one shown as arrested after a multi-kiloacre wildfire. Even though that wouldn’t happen here. Meh.

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2025/04/13 Quick Thoughts

Getting late. Not tired. Hand isn’t aching but I’m not pushing it. Oh yeah, the left started feeling “left” out and now it’s hurting worse than the right. Yay. Laundry just went in, everyone else is in bed or close to it. Guess I’ll sit here with some crosswords, music, and incense and wait until my shirts are dry.

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by srhuston

Not So Quick Thought

Is it any wonder I’m not crazy
Is it any wonder I’m sane at all

–Styx, “Too Much Time on My Hands”

Yep, it’s been a while, and I’ll have to get back into things again. But I’ve had some pretty major issues with my hands; the left was just a standard arthritic flare, while the right, well we’re not entirely sure what’s wrong with it. Symptoms are similar to “trigger finger” though it’s not causing my finger to curl up or anything, more like it felt like the tendon on the right index where it runs past my thumb was injured and if I moved the wrong way, or too much, it would hurt anywhere from a sharp pain (felt like it was tearing) to a dull and heavy ache like it was bruised and battered. So I’ve been doing what I can to alleviate pressures – folded up the right armrest on the chair so I don’t lean my elbow on it, which I often do when I’m reading things or deep in thought; switched to using a mouse with the left hand (and then back to the trackpad) so my right isn’t doing as much repetitive motions, especially on the scrolling; and wear a brace on the right hand to prevent me from moving that finger as much as well as a reminder to not do anything stupid with it.

Of course that all makes typing difficult, so I’ve tried to do as little as I can. Sometimes it’s hunt and peck with a couple fingers, and other times I take the brace off and blaze through something just to get it done, then sit back and do much less for a while. I’ve tried speech to text, but I find that my brain doesn’t filter things making it to the mouth in the same way it does to the fingers, so it doesn’t come out right and I want to edit it “live” which never works. Trying to go back and edit later isn’t going to work for me either, so I’ve just about given up on dictation for now. Maybe I’ll try again a few more times and see if I can get it right, because it could be quite useful – moreso for things like this where it’s really what I’m thinking, as opposed to work where I’d be trying to dictate shell commands, and that’s bound to be a failure.

Still playing AC: Shadows as well, and enjoying it a lot. I’ll talk more about it some other time I think, because it deserves its own space, but that’s been taking up a lot of my time when I’m not working. Feels good to have a game I can sink into again, it’s been a while and the last couple I’ve dove into were replays of things I played before; while they were fun, obviously, it wasn’t quite the same thing since I’d already seen things. Though it was nice when my eldest was playing along as well since we got to share in those moments, Shadows is having that same effect since we’re both playing it (and respecting each other’s pace so neither of us is talking much about story missions or outcomes, especially since while I have a lot more time in it than he does, he has done different missions than I have so we’ve seen different things).

Last thing I want to touch on, which is probably a “buried lede” here, is a thought that keeps coming up. I’ve got all this equipment here, and knowledge of how to do things with it, and part of me keeps wanting to do some kind of podcast. I think I have two problems really, one is that I don’t know what the topic(s) would be because I don’t want to limit myself to one particular thing, and one is that I don’t think I want to do it alone but would have a better time doing it with someone else. I have an idea to solve the first part, which would make the podcast more of an open format, but don’t know what to do about the second part yet. Do I try to pair up with someone specifically? Do I just do a kind of “guest” thing and get various people to join me, either all the time or until I find a rhythm with someone and stick with them? I wasn’t sure about the time commitment to it either, and figured it would end up being a very ad-hoc “released as time permits” kind of thing until Stephanie gave me a really good idea about that too. So now I’ve got even more things to think about.. and talking would certainly be easier than typing right about now.

Speaking of which, I need to get to bed, and rest this hand again. Felt good to put something down though, so thanks for reading this far. Drop a comment somewhere and say hi – I recommend Bluesky anyway since it’s a nice place to be, and you can comment there and have it show up here without even trying so it’s a neat system.

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Yet Another Quick Thought

Hands have been needing a rest from typing, so I haven’t been. Plus I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed Shadows since it came out. But reading a couple things today has me thinking, I really should generate new GPG keys since the ones I have are many years old and probably out of date in terms of security practices (even though I trust none of them have been compromised).

by srhuston

Another Quick Thought

Haven’t been around much for two reasons; one, Assassin’s Creed Shadows released on Thursday, and two, I’m trying not to use my hands for typing/computer work because they hurt and I need a break. So you get a break from my typing because I don’t like how speech to text formats things because I don’t speak the way I write. That is all.

Quick Thoughts

First, I’m trying the “Aside” format on here. I’m not sure what that means or how it’ll look, but.. well there it is. There’s also the “Status” format, which I assume is also good for a quick thing, maybe I’ll try that sometime soon too. Anyway, my thought: some time ago, I walked away from a community where it felt like suddenly a bunch of people jumped down my throat without showing that compassion they supposedly say people lack. Then someone, who hadn’t ever posted anything in that group since they joined months before, decided this was their opportunity to make their first ever post, and basically call me a petulant child. It took a lot of restraint when I saw that not to call them out for breaking Wheaton’s Law and telling them to eat a Bag ‘o Dicks. Around the same time, I stopped coming onto Facebook nearly as often as I used to, and tried to call on the meditation practices I started with and whenever I reached for a FB tab, instead think about what it is I’m trying to accomplish and if this is the right way to do it. And ya know what? I still see the same things from people when I do check in a couple times a day, and I feel like I have more time during the day since I’m not spending it going to various social media platforms just to see “what’s new I can consume?” I still need to find better channels for some things, but … this feels like an upgrade.

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by srhuston

Yo, Watch The Beat!

I’m on your case, I’m in your face
Kick you and your father back in place

–Anthrax, “I’m The Man”

When I bought my Kenwood TS-590SG and brought it home, I realized quickly that an add-on for it was something I wanted to get – the temperature compensating crystal oscillator or TCXO model SO-3. It wasn’t terribly expensive, but brings the accuracy of the radio up considerably, and since I found that it was a bit off when checking incoming signals I figured it was a worthwhile investment. I installed it back then and adjusted it accordingly, and didn’t think much of it since. But recently I went looking at something and wondered if my frequency was a little off, and so I checked the easiest way I know how. With Science!

Near Fort Collins, CO, is a radio station that many of us use and most don’t know about. It’s the home of WWV, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) station that transmits frequency standards at 2.5, 5, 10, 15, and 20MHz. What does that mean? At each of those frequencies are very accurate AM transmitters. AM radio works by transmitting a signal called the carrier at the primary frequency, at this case those listed above. It then transmits “sidebands”, or bits to the upper and lower side of that carrier, that hold audio data. In this case, that audio data is the time. If you’d ever heard a recording that says, “At the tone, one hour, twenty-four minutes, coordinated universal time…. *BEEP*” then you’ve heard WWV. If you’d like to hear it, you can call and listen – (303) 499-7111 is there for you 24 hours a day for all your time needs! You can call the station in Hawaii (WWVH) as well, but they say the same time, only the voice in Hawaii is female. That makes it easier to tell which station you hear depending on the voice announcing the time, and yes I have heard WWVH from here on occasion which is really neat.

One benefit of these standards being put out there is if you need to adjust a radio receiver, and it is capable of picking up one of the standards, you can easily do so. That is what I did with my radio; first, I tuned it to 20MHz AM and picked up WWV’s signal. I then moved the radio to CW mode, which is what you use for receiving Morse code. Morse is sent as an on-off switching of a continuous wave, which is the same as the carrier in an AM signal. By switching to CW mode on 20MHz, I was now hearing a constant tone from my radio as it received the carrier signal and sent the audio of that signal to the speaker as if it was a CW signal. In order to hear such a signal, the radio shifts it to a “sidetone” frequency which you can choose in the menu depending on your listening taste. The default is usually 800Hz, and that’s where mine is. So that means, if I’m receiving a signal at 20MHz, with my radio tuned properly, the audio coming out of the speaker should be 800Hz exactly. I fed that audio into Audacity and ran a spectrum analysis on it, and it told me the received signal had a peak at 806Hz. That is decidedly not 800Hz, meaning my radio’s internal oscillator was definitely off.

Tonight after work I figured I had enough time to mess with things and set out to see how difficult this was going to be. To start I tried shifting my radio onto its side, and found all the cables had enough slack that this wasn’t a problem (one serial cable wanted to come off, but I wouldn’t need it for the duration of this test, so that was OK with me). Next I took the screws off the bottom half of the case so I could remove it, and put them aside. Removing the case I was able to see where the TCXO adjustment hole is. I then realized this would be a lot easier with a real-time spectrum analysis, and while I could have rigged up my oscilloscope to read the headphone output and assume the primary frequency shown would be the one I’m looking for, I knew I had a spectrum analysis program on the computer before it just wasn’t working when I tried it. I redownloaded it and this version worked OK, so I kept it running with the line pinned at 800Hz to see how far off I was and turned things on. Once I found a screwdriver that was the right size to fit in the adjustment hole – and plastic, since it’s a capacitor you’re adjusting and you really don’t want to change its capacitance by introducing metal nearby – I was able to start making changes to try to get things lined up. At one point I thought I had it, but went to get just a little bit closer, and then spent the next 10 minutes trying to get back to even what was close enough because it was far off. Finally, I had something that said I was centered on 800Hz.

A screenshot of the "iSpectrum" program showing an audio signal being analyzed with a spectrum analyzer, having a narrow bandwidth and central peak at 800Hz

Not content to trust this program, which admittedly was last released 13 years ago, I also tried with the spectrum analysis plugin in Audacity and got a similar result.

Screenshot of the audio editing program Audacity showing a short recorded clip being analyzed with the built-in spectrum analyzer. That window shows a peak at 800Hz as well (with some interesting side lobes I may want to explore some day).

Now I was happy with things, that’s two tools that agree I’m dead on. Powered things off, closed it all up, set it all back where it belongs.. and then I tested again after that and found it was off by about 2Hz again. I think I’m gonna say it’s probably good enough. And maybe after it “warms up” a little it’ll be right again, since I had left it on for a while before making the adjustment in the first place (I had to find an appropriate alignment screwdriver first). I apologize for not taking some photos of the process itself and the inside of the radio, but by the time I was done it was just about dinner time and I wanted to close things up and not leave it open propped up on my desk. Alan Wolke (W2AEW) did a video on installing and adjusting this module on a slightly older model Kenwood, and it’s basically the exact same as on mine, so if you really must know you can watch this. I could have used the same method Alan used, which is what is noted in the manual, by listening to the sidetone warble when the two audio signals mix, but I figured this way would be more accurate than my ears and more fun.

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by srhuston

Situation No Win

I can’t go on, so I give in
Gotta get myself right outta here

–Big Audio Dynamite, “Rush”
Image of my mixer with all the cables plugged in and channels labeled, finally where it belongs again.

Finally, everything is where it belongs. As mentioned previously, I had received a mixer for Christmas but found a problem with it and swapped it for another. That one had a problem too, and then I got a different one completely. That one had a problem, and I realized those problems weren’t a problem at all if I did things a little differently, but then it had another problem. It was returned for another, and then I waited. And waited. And waited. After about a month I asked the vendor if they could tell me anything about availability, and they said they could not, but offered to change my gift card (which they created while waiting for the restocking) into a normal refund to my original payment method. I agreed with that and thanked them for their help, and then made the order with another vendor that had them in stock. And that one arrived last week. After work I unpacked everything and made quick work of getting things connected yet again – a bit easier of a task since I had everything noted down in Joplin for where things will go and all the appropriate settings – and after testing as I went I even made up the new labels for all the channels and got everything squared away. At last!

Last night after everyone went to bed, I started fiddling a little. One thing I was unsure of is the audio levels from the mixer into the mic input of the radios. I do have a roughly 40dB T-pad in line there that should be making the audio level decent, but I was afraid that it might be too hot now that I am connecting it differently. On the old mixer, I used the Aux Send 2 (post-fader) rail to feed the T-pad and my microphone switch input, which meant anything was mixed down to mono to head there. But on the first mixer I tried to put here, Aux Send 2 was now used as an input to the effects processor. I could still use it if I wanted to, but that meant if I wanted any effects I would have to choose which to use it for at the moment, and if I wanted any effects to go into the radio (no idea why I’d want to, but it’s a possible option) I wouldn’t be able to. So I thought, why not use the main mix output? Well, by default it’s stereo, so truthfully I should use something to mix that down to mono. But then again, what would possibly come out of all this that would be stereo? Well, the only thing that is likely to be stereo in the mixer at any time is music, and I won’t be playing music into the radios, so that’s not an issue. Anything else I can or should be able to mix down to mono as it comes in. So, I simply and arbitrarily chose the left channel to feed the pad and the radios.

The issue would then be, is the audio level OK? Audio checks are very subjective – you’re not only depending on your transmission, but the other person’s reception, and their perception of it all. I don’t like that kind of variability, I’d prefer something a little more … scientific. Or at least subject to my own opinion! So first I went to websdr.org to find a device somewhere that would hear my signal. Neat thing about websdr locations, you can usually record a short bit and have it sent to you, so not only can you hear what it sounds like live, you can play it back and compare it. So I found one that heard me, made a couple recordings at a couple different microphone gain levels, and downloaded them to my computer. Only… they sounded pretty much the same. I noticed, however, that the automatic level control (ALC) meter on the radio was bouncing quite a bit at one gain level, and didn’t move at all at the other. ALC is used when the audio signal going into the mixer in the radio is too high and needs to be attenuated a little so it doesn’t overdrive later stages. If you’re running digital modes, you don’t want that meter to move at all – if it is, you’re overdriving things and since those signals are steady you can and should turn the input to the radio down until the meter doesn’t move or else it might distort things. But for voice, you want it to be there a little bit, because it means you’re driving with enough power to fully load the radio’s later stages. Turn the audio down a little, and maybe some of your voice won’t be loud enough to fully drive power output; turn it up too high, and you’ll saturate things and start clipping and creating bad audio.

To solve this, I loaded a webpage that lets me generate a constant tone. 400Hz works fine for this purpose, and I sent it to a different output of the computer and therefore input to the mixer. I could then adjust it so that the level coming into the mixer would be just around 0dB, as “normal audio” should be going into it. Next, turn the radio’s power down as low as possible since I don’t need to really transmit anything over the air for this test (a dummy load would be better, but I don’t have one and would have to swap cables around to use it anyway – limiting test transmissions to as short as possible, and as low a power as possible, is also good practice). Finally, hit the button to adjust mic gain and key up the radio. Now as I adjust the setting, I can see what the ALC meter is doing, and since the audio going into it is steady it’s easy to tell if I’m on track with my adjustment or not. I set it so that it got a little less than 30% of deflection, meaning with a 0dB audio signal it would be just a little too high for the mixer stage in the radio and need to be attenuated a little. Now, turn off the audio tone and try it with voice, and huzzah! I could see the ALC moving while I talked, but didn’t see it hitting more than about 60% meaning there’s still room to attenuate if I get loud, but I’m fully driving the radio’s amplifier with the most audio I can. That’s a lot more scientific than “how’s my audio sound?”!

Last, I wanted to do something similar for the Yaesu VHF/UHF radio. Unfortunately it doesn’t have an ALC meter to look at, but I can very easily listen to its output. I pulled out an audio cable and adapter and plugged my handheld into the mixing board, then routed that audio to a different input on the computer. Fired up Audacity and told it to record on that input only when there’s a signal present, then turned the FTM-100 down to low power and made a few tests. Plain FM, low mic gain and normal mic gain. Then C4FM, normal and low. Listened back, and normal gain not only was louder and easier to hear, but it didn’t sound distorted at all. I probably should have tried high, and then tried it with the stock mic as well.. maybe that’ll be an experiment for another time.

So, everything is finally done. New mixer is in place and working extremely well – I’m happy to have real mute buttons, and two extra rails (one new and one newly opened up). I’m using three of the four stereo inputs already, but don’t really have a plan for the fourth yet though I’ve had an idea or two for the future. I’ve got four mono inputs available as well for things I might want to do. It’s every bit as versatile as the old setup, and quite a bit more. And let’s be honest… it looks freaking awesome.

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by srhuston

After Midnight

Not much going on lately; left hand’s been arthritic, right hand’s still suffering from tendonitis. Was a crappy work week with some events going on that took away from what I needed to get done, so while I worked a full week I don’t feel like I was productive. I have been playing with the Altair quite a bit, just tonight I found a disk image with Rogue on it. Figured out after I tried to boot it that it needs a Z80 CPU, but then it didn’t want to work right anyway. Not sure if it doesn’t like the VT100 output or what, but I was really hoping to get Rogue, Hack, or something like it running on there. I know I did see one of them on the PiDP so that’s an option too. Otherwise, torn between looking for something new to get into and waiting for Thursday when Assassin’s Creed Shadows is released. Maybe I should make some on-air contacts again, been a while since I’ve done that.. or actually call CQ and make some voice contacts, though that’s easier to do when people aren’t going to hear me in the house (or wake up from me talking).

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