Category Archives: Flashback

Oh yeah, I wanted to mention…

by srhuston

Silence Is Golden

Even in the quietest moments, I wish I knew what I had to do.

–Supertramp, “Even In The Quietest Moments”

Been quiet here, but less because I fell out of favor for writing things and more because I have nothing to write. Still waiting on the replacement mixer I mentioned previously, but for slightly different reasons – I got the RMA paperwork and sent the bad one off to them, it took a week to get there (I literally could have carried it, by hand, the 16 miles from my house to their warehouse faster than FedEx who sat on it for four days 40 miles away from both of us for… reasons) and then instead of shipping me a replacement I got a gift card for that amount. Wondering why I moused over to their site to see the model listed as “Temporarily Out Of Stock” which is their tag for something that is going to take so long to get more – if they do – that they won’t backorder it. So a couple times a day I hit refresh on that page hoping for something to change, and meanwhile deal with the crunchiness of the old mixer.

Other than that there hasn’t been much going on. Some issues with carpal tunnel flaring up a little (fortunately the same right wrist as before so the old brace went back on today) which appears to be affecting a flexor tendon the most. At the same time, the PsA flare in my left hand subsided a little, so I’m still down to one useful hand but at least it’s not zero. Haven’t done anything radio-related still, and every time I think about it or start to there’s something else, besides I don’t want to get into debugging any possible problems with the setup until the mixer is replaced. And no other projects in the shack to get into at the moment either. On gaming, I’m still working through the postgame items in San Andreas for 100% completion, but after watching my eldest playing Pokemon Sword I got hooked (Pokemon were kinda becoming a thing as I was just a little too old for it, so I never got into it). So I’ve been playing that game and enjoying it. But none of that is really “post worthy” so there’s been nothing to write here. Maybe all of it combined is worthwhile though. Anyway, cat tax below.

Hobbes, my orange and white single-brain-cell creature, trying to make biscuits on a blanket and forgetting what to do with his back feet.

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by srhuston

Come And See The Show

Welcome back my friends, to the show that never ends
We’re so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside.

–Emerson, Lake & Palmer, “Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression – Part 2”

If I’m going to get back into the swing of things, I should just dive in I suppose. So, what’s going on? Well, I last was updating things in 2021, and things back then were pretty okay. The pandemic was winding down and things were “returning to normal”, yet my job was still remote at the time for various reasons. I had started to feel some stiffness in my hands now and then, but hadn’t thought much about it. Around the last post I made I was starting to have some trouble with a bad tooth, but hadn’t made plans for doing anything about it yet because it was only mildly troublesome. If you’ve ever seen Deadpool, there’s a line in the movie that fit quite nicely for me at that time.

Here’s the thing. Life is an endless series of trainwrecks with only brief commercial-like breaks of happiness. This had been the ultimate commercial break. Which meant it was time to return to our regularly scheduled programming.

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by srhuston

Gone So Soon?

So yeah, I came back with a vengeance and then disappeared for a month again. It’s been a busy month though, lots of stuff happened. As I mentioned before, the kids and I have been running a D&D campaign with Foundry VTT in the Lost Mine of Phandelver, also helped by content and tools from dndbeyond.com. I haven’t done much on the radio, mostly because my tuner has been in MFJ‘s hands since April 1st and I haven’t received even a “we’ll look at it next week” message even though I’ve sent messages to them and been told those messages were “forwarded on to the atu repair technician.” Not filling me with warm fuzzies lemme tell ya. I also went through my paid time off at work and realized I had a lot of days that I was going to lose if I didn’t use them, so I went through my calendar and scheduled a bunch of days to take off under various categories (sick time, personal time, and vacation time) so that I wouldn’t lose a day. This means I’ve had some random Fridays and Mondays off, plus one week of having off Thursday through Monday (which nicely coincided with a camping trip with the scout troop) and one which now has me off Thursday through Tuesday (in part because I’m having a tooth extracted on Monday, which is the end of another saga of issues I’ve dealt with for a few months now and finally had enough and getting it taken care of, in part because my lovely wife of 20 years had enough of my crap and made a phone call). So at this moment, I’m sitting on the back porch in the light of a Tiki Torch with the Electric Light Orchestra asking “Do Ya” over the Echo Tap (and now Yes telling me they’ve seen all good people turn their heads each day, so satisfied, they’re on their way), an empty glass of whiskey, and the Chromebook typing away a recap of what’s been going on lately while the sun dips below the horizon and the stars come out to play. I may not have extravagant vacations planned, but these moments are worth enjoying.

by srhuston

Knee Deep in the Hoopla

Don’t you remember?

–Starship, “We Built This City”

Haven’t done much radio stuff in the last week or so, except for finally getting on the air with the group of locals I hear on 146.52 – one of them was demoing FT8 for another on 10m, and I replied. When he said on 2m, “man this guy is loud” I finally found my comfortable opening to key up and say, “I should be, I live two blocks away from you.” Laughs were had and I found a group who was quite welcoming to my presence, we all chatted for an hour or so before turning into pumpkins.

The other big thing I did was bit the bullet on a virtual table top license for Foundry, and started setting up the campaign I ran with the kids before using the Lost Mine of Phandelver module from the D&D starter set. Already I’m more comfortable with some of the things I’ll need to do as a DM, and the only reason we haven’t started playing yet is because there’s some areas I want to pre-stage before the kids might decide to go that way instead of towards the main storyline. Of course I could fix that by asking them if they’re sure that’s how they want to go, and if they say yes then I close the window and say “then you’ll have to wait until I finish setting it up, now get ready for bed.” 😀

by srhuston

You Can Tune A Piano

I mentioned elsewhere about problems I had with my antenna tuner. While nobody asked, I figured it’s good writing practice to sit down and tell the story. Also, then it’s preserved for hysterical reasons. There’s also the fact that this stems from buying a new house and setting up everything in the ham shack all over again, which is a story that might deserve to be told, but at least right now that’ll be for another day.

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by srhuston

Getting There, and What’s Up

I’m starting to get there with the site layout. Adjusted some things, I think I broke some things too, but it doesn’t look half bad. Except the black text in the top bar, I don’t think I like that. Maybe I’ll play with other themes and see if I find one I like soon. Meanwhile, back to the topic of “why are you reviving this”, some information on ideas I’ve got and whatnot. Strap in kids, it’s gonna get bumpy.

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by srhuston

Photos Are Coming! (And Other Stuffs)

Last night I started going through the myriad of photos and videos that have collected on my computer in the last… I’m not even sure how long.  Captioning, organizing, and getting ready to turn them loose via iPhoto2Gallery to get them all uploaded.  So hopefully I’ll have a new post here with links to all of it in the next week or so.  Yes, I said that before when I upgraded the laptop to 10.5, but I had other things to work on and didn’t get to it then.  Sosumi 😛

David is doing well.  He just started pulling himself up from just about laying down to a seated position, and he pretty much stays seated on his own (occasionally topples, but who doesn’t?)  He’s been standing as long as you support him, and smiling and laughing at a lot of things.  Occasionally you get him in the right mood, and you can keep a laugh going until he just about runs out of air :>  The other night he was sitting on the floor, and I laying next to him on my side; he grabbed my jeans and just about pulled himself up to standing, probably would’ve succeeded if the blanket he was standing on wasn’t slippery and his feet went out from under him.  Guess it’s getting near time to lower the mattress in his crib now too.

In other news, the renovations in my building at work have begun.  The library is now gutted, and there’s a few rooms elsewhere that have been stripped clean in preparation.  This summer’s going to be “fun” – probably a week or two of frantic running around, then quite a bit of time twiddling thumbs, and 2-3 spurts of constant work over a weekend to move things around in the server room since there’s some work being done there (finally, after 7 years, we might actually come out of this with a usable and well-designed space).

by srhuston

Less Wisdom

It’s been a while since I posted something, probably because this is the first time in a while that I’ve not only had interesting stuff to share, but actually time to sit down and share it. Most interesting is that I finally broke down and went to a dentist – and then an oral surgeon – about my teeth. I’ve had issues with them for a while, and have put it off entirely too long. Since the dentist I found is very nice (and very good), when I explained that I knew I’d done wrong things but wanted to make it better, he instead of berating me for what I did wrong sat down with me and outlined a course of action to a healthier mouth again. I was quite happy with this! First thing on the list was to get the wisdom teeth pulled, and one other molar that was pretty much shot. So that happened this past Friday, and I’ve been in and out of drug-induced hallucinogenic states since then. Today is actually the first day I didn’t wake up and take a Vicodin right away, which is good. But I’m still not quite on solid food yet, a big part of that may be less of a physical issue keeping me from it and more my own mind saying I’m not ready yet, even if my mouth is.

Also picked up a couple new toys over the weekend. Lowes was having some sales, and most importantly their deal of zero interest and zero payments for a year, if you bought something this weekend. So I researched and found that one of the lawn vacuum/chipper/shredder units they had was the one that I wanted, and we went and got it. Man does that thing work nice! Since last year I ended up doing a lot of extra work to get rid of the leaves, I’m looking forward to it this year. Plus the brush pile next to the house will be going away too, since I can chip up all the branches there and get rid of them. And last, we picked up a shed to put the vacuum, and the mower and other yard power tools into. This way they’re not taking up precious space in the garage, and need to be moved out of the way all the time. Since we had a perfect “dead spot” where I could put it – next to the walkway beside the house where the trash cans were sitting – it doesn’t even take up any space in the yard that we would’ve used differently. And it looks nice!

Last thing. I setup a web-based IRC system, which you can see here. IRC is like the predecessor of all instant messaging and chat programs, and yet is still in fairly wide use today in some circles. Now you can just go to this site to see how it works and connect to the IRC server that I run. Enjoy!

[At some point, I’ll probably come back and throw a lot of links in this post. Right now, I’m just tired, and wanted to get the words out.] [Edit 2007/09/06 – Hey, there’s a few links.]

by srhuston

Oh Well

Then I go and post nothing in May either.  Oh well, been busy lately.  Still haven’t had time to get the APRS antenna mounted, but now I’ve got a ladder sitting in the garage (on loan from my father) which I can use to get high enough on the house to mount it.  Think I’m just a 3/8″ hole saw away from finishing that project up, and having full use of the charcoal grill again without first having to turn off the APRS radio and move the magmount.  Speaking of the garage, I picked up some shelves on Friday evening and put them together in there, and got all the stuff that was littering the floor onto them.  Between that and some organization kits from there, all the yard tools are hung up nicely on the walls now, and I even made a spot for the lawn chairs so I’m not tripping over them either (nor are they falling over if I bump into them slightly).  Finally, for the first time in.. 5 years?.. I got all my tools organized and put away into the toolbox.  When we moved from Mays Landing to West Deptford, I never bothered to do it since they hadn’t moved around too much.  But when we moved to Ewing, they definitely got jostled and I just didn’t bother at all since I rarely used any of them.  Kinda hard to work on a car in a parking lot when your tools are on the second floor, and I didn’t have stuff around the house to fix either.  Now there’s a place for just about everything, and the shelves that were already in the garage are almost cleaned off.  Maybe tonight or one other night this week I’ll vacuum the junk off of them, and then I can start pulling them out to put down the second shelving unit we purchased as a workbench (instead of stacking the two halves on top of each other, they also suggest putting the units side by side as a workbench).  I’ll have to measure things out, the wood currently used as a top for the old shelves might make a good workbench top for the new ones so it’s sturdy and consistent across the two units.  After that, the pegboard on the back wall will probably come down, and either go back up with spacers or get replaced, as well as expanded.  Then a lot of the hand-type tools that are in the toolbox currently will go on there, and I’ll have more room without needing another toolbox yet.

The basement hasn’t had much done lately, though the oil tank is on end and ready to be cut up into pieces – both to get it up out of the basement and for easy disposal.  Quite a bit of stuff has collected down near the work bench though, and I really need to get down there soon and clean things up so there’s room to work again.  Stephanie wants me to make some benches to go in the dormers upstairs – one cedar lined, and one regular – and I’ve also got to fix up a couple of the dining room chairs.  Need to grab a couple large clamps for those, and though people have offered to loan them to me, I’ll want them around anyway, so I might as well buy them :>

Finally, in one of our last trips to Lowes, I realized that copper has come down in price considerably.  I think I paid around $79 for 250′ of 14/2 wire, and $119 for 12/2.  Now 14/2 was around $49, and 12/2 was $79.  A 10′ length of 1/2″ pipe was $10 and change, and the best part was a 1000′ spool of CAT5 cable for $80.  The last of that list came home with me, so once the NJ tax return comes through I’m going to pick up the patch panel, switch and the last of the stuff needed to do the home network and new phone wiring so I can get started on that.  Since the office (2 drops) and shack are the most “important” ones, followed by the living room, I can probably do all of that in one weekend, maybe even one day.  The two upstairs drops will likely be the hardest, but they’re also the least important, so whenever they eventually happen is good enough.  Probably not until we rip the rooms apart to insulate them.

by srhuston

Flashback

Since it’s been a few days since the last post, a quick re-cap of what’s gone on since then.  We fired up the new gas grill, and cooked a rotisserie chicken on it the other night.  As Stephanie said, “I’ll never again pick up one at the store if I can cook it at home just as easily (and it’s even better tasting).”  We love it.  Well, Stephanie loves it.  I still like my charcoal and hardwoods :>

We got office furniture, and got it assembled.  I like my new desk – now I need a nice comfy chair to put there.  But I need a nice comfy chair for the shack too, so I’ll be in need of a couple chairs.  Got blinds hung in the master bedroom, and Stephanie got the room painted (just a few touch ups here and there to do).  Soon we can move in the dressers and have a fully functional bedroom again.  I’m most concerned about moving the bed back against the wall; twice now I’ve lost pillows overboard since there’s no headboard either.

Haven’t done anything with the antenna at home yet, still waiting on Leon to have free time enough to swing by and drop it off.  But he’s been pretty busy lately, and I also haven’t bugged him about it – when he’s got the time, I’ll worry about it.  Not going to be a pest.

As for why it’s been a little while since posting, my web provider (Dreamhost) has had one problem after another for just about the whole weekend.  File servers crashing, network switches melting.. they’ve had a rough few days.  So I’ve had some trouble getting on here to post things (and anyone who might be reading this has had trouble getting on to read it too).  I’m also having some issues with DNS – apparently, since my home computer was formerly the authoritative name server for two domains, its A record has been (or is being) cached by some of the root nameservers.  So although I changed its IP with Dreamhost’s DNS editor, and it propagated out just fine for a couple days, it’s now being overridden by other root servers.  Hopefully that’ll either sort itself out after the second domain is transferred, or Dreamhost can help me sort it out with the roots.  In the mean time, I’m starting to learn my home IP address, ’cause anything I want to do to connect there I need to use it.

Last, but not least, I’ve been away from Second Life for quite a while now.  I hop on now and then and try to spend a few minutes catching up with things that have happened, but I’ve found it difficult to get on after work like I used to (and while at work, I’ve actually had work to do).  A lot of things have changed with the university where I work there, and a couple friends of mine have left the university due to some of those changes.  I hope to see them around somewhere, even if they come and hang out in the lounge (formerly the lobby) like how I met them.  But I guess time will tell – as well will it tell if I can even get back in there and back to what I was doing, or if I too will have to depart the university and just visit on occasion.