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It may be the local telco monopoly.. but damn that’s nice to see. I’ll post more tomorrow probably – much catching up to do. Right now, much sleeping to do.
We’re about mid-way through the process of moving I guess. Movers are coming on Thursday, and they’ll get the furniture and remaining boxes that we haven’t moved ourselves. Electronics and such we’re moving as we get the chance, and as we can get to them with everything else that is piled up around them :>
The shack is now painted (pictures will be forthcoming). Stephanie picked out the color based on the fact that it’s red, which is my favorite. Once I looked at the paint chip, I cracked up – “Radiant Red”. Perfect for a ham shack, what with all the radiation possibilities. The office is also painted, and the trim there done. Tomorrow we just need to finish painting the shack doors, and then they can be re-hung – in the mean time, the carpet can be vacuumed and shampooed, and the shack will be completely finished. Then the stuff that was in the shack, which got moved to the office temporarily, can be moved back (as well as the stuff that is supposed to be in the office), so the office carpet can be vacuumed and shampooed. That’ll be two rooms completed. We also got the downstairs hallway ceiling painted, and the master bedroom primed. All in all, a fairly productive day – when you consider we didn’t leave the apartment to go over there until around 15:00. Today (Tuesday) will be a longer day, since my parents are meeting me at the apartment around 10 to pick up a couple bookshelves, and we’ll take them to the house. Then it’s back to painting I’d imagine. Dad and I will probably work on some of the yard work, since neither of us are that good with a paint brush (I’m half-decent with a roller though). Not sure what else we’ll get into, since a lot of the “hardware” type work that we’re better at doing depends on the painting being done first, so I guess we’ll see.
And since my kitty is sitting here so cute, a picture for all to enjoy. Solaris waiting patiently for his turn on the lap:
Stephanie stopped by the house, for the first time since the flooding in our area started, and everything is fine. Little bit of standing water in a couple of the drains around the basement, but nothing really wet at all. Most excellent. Power and water are working fine too.
Speaking of the floods, I spent most of yesterday at the Mercer County Emergency Operations Center (EOC). We weren’t really needed for anything, but were there to make sure it was known that we’re ready should something go wrong, and I did help with a few communications events here and there – fixing one of the police band radios, and locating a few EMTs on their way down from another county to make sure they knew where to go for staging. Was strange to have a mic in front of me, and not use my call sign, but instead things like “Strike team Juliet, Mercer EOC”. Might go back there tonight for another shift, depending on how Stephanie feels – if she’s still working at the house, I’ll go to the house, otherwise I’ll probably head back to the EOC.
Well, I mentioned about buying lights and installing them. When we installed the second light Sunday night and plugged it in, it winked for a second and went out. After a little fiddling, it worked again. After David and Jen left, I went downstairs at one point and it wasn’t working again. I fiddled with it more, but couldn’t get it working, so I decided to take it down and send it back as defective. Stephanie graciously offered to do the exchange for me (which is good, because she’s more forceful than I am about those sorts of things, and it was a headache since we bought the light with a coupon). Tonight, I unpack the new light.. and realized it’s dented to all hell. I’d have to hammer it out just to get a bulb to fit in there. So back I went again to Lowes, light in tow. This time it was no problem to exchange it (different store than where Stephanie went in the afternoon). Opened one box on the floor, and it was dented, so I put that one back on the shelf and grabbed another box. This box looked just fine all over, so I didn’t bother opening it. Got home, hung the light, put the bulbs in it, plugged it in.. and the same problem as before.
Now I’m ticked. This is the third light that I’ve had problems with. So, on a whim, I take one of the tubes out of it, put that on the shelf, grab a new tube and put that one in. Same problem still. Take the other tube in the light, put that on the shelf next to the first tube I removed, and put that first tube in the light. Hey, look at that, it works just fine now. Turns out the whole problem with even the first light was just that one of the tubes was defective (or at least finicky, it seems to work if it hangs one way but not the other). *sigh*
At least the end result was good, that I have plenty of light in the basement now. Going to wire in one or two more fixtures, and move all the lights over to a new circuit (might have made sense to do that first, but wiring up some of the lights was simple to accomplish and wouldn’t overload the existing circuit anyway). And it was good to know that I could get a bit of work done, even with running out to Lowes and back (which took probably an hour), after leaving work at a respectable hour. Now if I only got *to* work at a respectable hour.. we’ll see what happens tomorrow. Er, today. Damnit it’s late again.
Okay, so it’s not Sunday morning. Deal with it.
Spent entirely too much money at Lowes yesterday, but we got a lot of things needed – molding for three rooms, wire, electrical supplies and a couple tools, curtain rods, fire extinguishers, smoke detectors… didn’t plan on doing any of the work once we got home, because my father came down to help with it all but had to leave around 6. We got back to the house at 6 :P Not sure where the time went – some to the fact that we didn’t get an early start, and I guess the rest to the fact that we were in Lowes for so long.
But, shortly after he left, David (N0YMV) and his wife Jen came over, and as I was showing David what I got for basement lighting, he somehow managed to talk me into starting the project. “Well, this one should be easy, all I have to do is convert the light fixture to an outlet…” And then that one was done. Well, what’s next? See if I can get this other old light to work. Nope, doesn’t want to. Okay, so we’ll take that one down. Good, all I need now is a box and I can put up another outlet, and the other shop light. Oh wait, when I rewire this over here, I’ll have a box left over. So why don’t we do that…
Before I knew it, I had most of the lights that I want to come on with the switch at the top of the stairs wired to do so. Only a couple fixtures left to do really. So many thanks to David for helping out – even though I had not planned on putting him to work, just showing off the basement stuff, he somehow managed to talk me into doing it. Works for me :>
Worked on the house for a few hours, and traced out a lot of the circuits that either weren’t labeled, or I found later were labeled incorrectly or just not fully (ie, one marked “Sump Pump” which branches off to who-knows-where before that). Figured out how I’m going to attack the basement lights so they’re all on one circuit, and all switched by the switch at the top of the stairs already instead of walking around to turn them all on. Wrapped all that up around 2300, and headed to the club shack.
Once there, I had a look around – man, did some people do some serious cleaning up there! There’s room for three stations comfortably, and a fourth could fit in there too. Had one on 80m phone, one was on 40m CW and one on 20m PSK31. Shortly after I arrived, Dan K2QM got up and offered me the 40m station, so I moved it over to the SSB portion of the band and went to town. I didn’t figure out how many contacts I got, but at around 0455 I had wrapped up the 100th contact on 40 phone. I’d figured I’d stop when I got there, or 5am, whichever came first – and I was happy the 100 contacts came first :> Lots of fun this year, unlike last year when I ended up sitting around with nothing to do a lot of the time. Figures, we have less stations operating now than last year, but nobody was waiting around for me to get off the air this time so it’s not like I kept someone from operating.
Oh well.. off to sleep, and then back to the house in the afternoon to hopefully get started on (and finish up some of) the wiring.
Today’s plan is to rewire the basement lights so that 1) They all come on with the switch at the top of the stairs, and 2) There’s more of them. Getting a later start on things this weekend, because we both slept in until 11:30 (which felt damn good to do) but I’m confident that I can get everything together, and probably start on the work today and finish it tomorrow. Using flourescent “shop lights” so it won’t be a big deal to wire them up, and since I already know that two lights in the basement turn on with that switch it should be fairly simple to wire up everything else off of them.
Might even take the time to trace out the remaining breakers in the house, and see where things go. But that could be a while to do, unless I find the circuit tracer at Sears that I want (Home DePoe and Lowes both don’t have it in the store, though the former lists one I want on their website).
Well, ran the lawnmower and string trimmer for the first time yesterday evening. Did all of the front yard, and it came out nice. Only problem was I didn’t have time to do the back, but since that’s behind a fence and people can’t see it I was less concerned. At least nobody will complain about the front looking bad :> Mower works very well, and the trimmer does too once it gets started. My only issue today is that my hands hurt from holding the handle, and the arms are a little sore. Hey, maybe I’ll finally lose some weight doing yardwork…
In other news, ARRL Field Day is this weekend, and our plan was to setup in Mercer County Park. Unfortunately, the weather may not cooperate – currently calling for an 80% chance of rain and thunderstorms all weekend, with a total rainfall between 3 and 6 inches. So we’re going to setup at the club shack, and run a smaller Field Day operation there. Also planning on setting up at the Mercer County Emergency Operations Center (EOC), and I’m trying to get in touch with N2HX about opening up the State EOC for a little bit too. So if you’ve got a shortwave radio, tune around 20m (14MHz) and give a listen for Whiskey Two Zulu Quebec, Whiskey Two Mike Echo Romeo, and maybe November Juliet Two Echo Mike (though the latter two will probably only be on 80m, 3.5-4MHz)
Last, but not least, something I read on the ARRL website today made me smile. Seems the FCC is looking to make a few changes post-Katrina, and the outlook is good for hams. Would be nice if they made it “official” to do what many of us do already (setup stations at shelters, Red Cross locations, EOCs at local and state level) especially if they offer to foot the bill for some of the equipment. Most of it has to come out of local budgets, and places just don’t budget for it – so I guess another good possibility is if they require the served agencies budget for it. At least then we might not have to scrounge to get parts for an old radio, because nobody wants to buy a replacement.
I found this a little while ago, after years of searching… still want it on DVD though.
Feast your eyes on this… absolutely amazing.
Oh, in other news, I’m not so sure what I think about this theme now.. have to see if I can edit the text for links, ’cause I realized today they are kinda hard to see in there. Just about the same color as the other text. We’ll see what happens.