by srhuston

Feeling Like the Little Dutch Boy

Did a round of patching on systems over the last couple days. Hopefully that’ll stem the tide for a little bit at least. Looking forward to checking out the apt/yum repository features of Fedora and being able to have machines auto-update themselves at predetermined times. That would be very nice, something I’ve wanted for the last couple years but now I don’t have to write it myself.

Spent some time up at the club shack this past weekend, and started writing the shack manual. So far I’ve got some basics in there, but just want to expand on it a bit. For example, there’s a bunch of antennas there that I’m not even sure what they’re for, and some that I’m not sure if they work. There’s enough people involved with everything though, I should have no problem getting all the information I need.

Making this a short one, partially because I don’t have much on my mind, and partially so I can get started with the LDAP stuff I’ve been pushing aside for so long — seems like something else always comes up that requires immediate attention.

by srhuston

Sax and Violins

Gotta love the Talking Heads.

I was rudely awakened this morning by the trash truck, who showed up at the ungodly hour of 9am. Would’ve been okay if we hadn’t slept with the windows open last night, so it was quite loud in the bedroom. Oh well. Got showered and dressed just in time for Stephanie to come back from her morning errands, so I hung out with her for lunch and then headed up to the club shack. Nice having a key now, I don’t have to rely on someone else being there, and I don’t feel like an idiot if I just want to scan around and listen a bit.

Heard a few stations on HF, don’t remember which bands now. Most interesting was just before I left when I heard a station from Bermuda, on 6 meters! Hey, I’m thinking, I can respond to this one, I’m licensed for anything above 50MHz. Only problem is, I don’t know which antenna (if any) we have that can be used on that band. Oh well, there will be more I guess. Didn’t hear anyone on 2 meters sideband, though perhaps nighttime is better for that. Since I’m new to all of this, I have a bit to learn, and so far my exposure has been to 2m FM work on repeaters and some simplex, that’s about it.

Tomorrow I’ll probably head up there a little earlier, and might spray myself down with tick repellant and mow the lawn there. If I can get a good chunk of it done, and we can keep it down, it may keep some of the ticks away too. I hate those damned things.

Also chatted with Gary and Gerry at different times on the local repeaters; Gerry called me out of the blue on his way home, since he’d heard I would be at the club station. I talked with him (N2GJ) and his wife (N2ATJ) for awhile until they got home. That was a neat experience, to have someone that I’ve not actually talked to on the air call me unexpectedly.

When talking with Gary, he asked if I could do something for the club, namely as I learn about the station equipment and such if I could document it so they could have a “station manual”, something to give people new to the shack so that they know what is what, and basics of how to use it. Examples would be things as simple as which power supplies do what, which antennas go where and such. Sounds like something I can do, so tomorrow I’m taking the laptop up there with me so I can make notes and type things up as I go. After playing a bit with the 2m/440 rig there, I’m also going to make a “Memory Index” so that people know which memory channels are what, and where they are. I didn’t even know that a couple of the repeaters I wanted to use were programmed in. Ideally I could make a list of repeaters (over time) that can be heard and reached by that rig, including bearings to point the beams for best reception. Yes, one should use a vertical antenna for repeater operations, but if all you’ve got is a horizontal beam you might as well point it in the right direction.

I guess that’s all for now. Downloading OpenOffice for the Mac in the background, and waiting for John and Aimee to show up (John sent an IM about a half hour ago that they were just leaving, so they should be here in 10-30 minutes depending on traffic).

Posted in Ham /
by srhuston

God, Sometimes You Just Don’t Come Through

So sue me, Tori Amos just came on the playlist on the Mac :>

Well, it’s a Friday. That’s one good thing about today. So far it’s about the only good thing, I think. Just really run down lately, and I’ve been getting a good amount of sleep too so I’m not sure what is causing it. Oh well, maybe I’ll catch up this weekend and start getting up earlier again. I kinda like that, especially in the summertime, since it means I get home with plenty of daylight to do whatever I want.

Printers out of toner, people asking about problems they apparently emailed me awhile ago and I have no recollection of them, nobody on the air on my way in this morning, no more Dr. Pepper so I’m drinking root beer which isn’t caffeinated, and I just want to go outside and play. Steph has a lot of work to catch up on this weekend, so Dave and I are probably going to head to the club shack and … well, I dont’ know what. But we’ll do something. Hell even if I spend the time just scanning around the HF bands and listening, it’ll be fun. And more interesting than sitting in front of a TV could ever hope to be. John and Aimee are coming over tomorrow night for dinner, and then Chuck and Ellen on Sunday night, but other than that I think the only plan is for Stephanie to get her work done, and me to stay the hell out of the way while she does it :>

I upgraded iTunes yesterday, and I like the “Party Shuffle” feature. I can now go through the random list of songs it’s picked out to play, and decide if I really want to hear them or not instead of spending time pressing “skip” when something I’m not in the mood for comes on. Speaking of which, I’m in the mood to indulge one of my bad habits. So I guess that’ll be all for now.

by srhuston

I’m Soooo Tired, I Haven’t Slept a Wink

Ahh, but my mind is always on the brink. At least that’s what I’m told.

So let’s see, what’s new in the world today [steps in front of large screen ala Dennis Miller]. I drove to the state EOC Monday evening, after finally finding the right entrance to the State Police HQ I made my way into the building. Watched Dennis (K2DCD), Glenn (N2RPM) and Bob (N2HX) run the various nets for the state, which connect the counties of NJ to the state EOC. Kinda neat, I’ve never been in a EMP shielded room before :>

Chatted with a few folks on my way in too, like Jenn (KC2MEI), Mark (N2KIV), Glenn, Bob, and Gary (K2GW). And if Jenn reads this and I should be spelling it with one ‘n’, let me know. Chatted with Glenn on the way home as well. The rest of the day was mostly uneventful.

Yesterday, we had to shutdown the beowulf cluster so the new air conditioner could be finished. See, when someone measured it for the room, they … well, must’ve been smoking something, because the plenum for the top was about 12″ too tall for the ceiling. So they had to make up a new plenum to bolt on to the top of the unit, and in the mean time we had a full sheet of plywood bolted up there on top of some struts, to keep the drop ceiling tiles from flying up into the air. Only nobody had planned the shutdown with us (you know, only the people who have to RUN the silly computers that are being kept cool by that air conditioner). Apparently last week someone came in and at one point said, “So it’s okay to turn this off now?” *sigh* That went pretty smooth, I had the cluster set to shut itself off at 10:00 and by 10:30 when they were ready to kill the A/C it was already quite chilly in the room. Once finished I powered everything on again and it’s been working like a champ. At some point I’ll have to get down there and adjust the vents on the unit now, to make sure the air is going in the directions I want it to go. But even without adjustment, it’s still keeping the room quite cool, which is good enough for me. Much better than the system we had up until a month ago, which mainly relied on a few fans, a wing and no hope of even a prayer.

Last night was the county ARES/RACES net, and it was quite short. I asked about any drills that might go on, and the answer was that there aren’t really any in the area, nor in the state. A little disappointing, but if it’s not deemed necessary I guess I don’t mind. A while after the net, Kip (KB2EGI) sent an email to the list with some information, including message passing “practice nets” that go on, the fact that they’d like to start one for the county, and that some of the municipalities also have RACES equipment in their own local EOCs that is largely untested because of a lack of operators. I mailed him back tonight about how I could hit anything between Princeton and Ewing, and apparently nobody has volunteered for Ewing yet. So I might be heading down the street for the next net (or some other predetermined time) to make sure the hardware is operational. Works for me, I could just about walk to the building from home.

Tonight was the DVRA club net, and I think it ran much smoother than last time (no offence to the previous net control station, but I prefer a “round-table” type net than a straight directed net where every station hands off to net control when they’re done — the latter tend to, in my opinion, not be as friendly for general conversation and chatter). Mick (W2YNO), Furman (N3OBY/MM), Gary, Pam (W1PAM) and Jill (K2JIL) were there, with Dave (KC2LCF) running the show. We passed it around a little, and it ended up being just Dave and I. Since we live so close together, we hopped off the repeater and picked a simplex frequency that was open and chatted for awhile after the net was officially closed, mostly about radios and possible plans to get together at the club station this weekend (Stephanie has a lot of work to get done for her classes, so I’ll be doing the nice thing and staying the hell out of her way :> ) All in all, the club net is, I think, a great idea for people to get together and just BS about whatever’s going on. Keeping it restricted to topics related to just the club is a good way to run out of topics, if you ask me, so just having it be a place for members and prospective members to jump in and talk about whatever seems like a good thing to do.

Along the lines of radios, I’m thinking one of two things for getting a station in the apartment. One is to get the antenna and power supply that I’ll need anyway, and then pick up a quick disconnect mount for the radio in the truck which I could then bring inside with me to use here. The other, a suggestion from Dave, is to just pick up an el-cheapo 2m rig since that’s most of what I’ll want to be able to do for now. I kinda like this idea, because I don’t have to move the radio from the truck every time I want to use it in the house, and .. well, he’s right, I’m not licensed on HF yet, so why worry about getting something that can receive it and all? 2m is where I’d want to talk most of the time, so if I get something that can handle that I’d be set for awhile. Plus, a 2m rig should be pretty cheap, compared to a dual band or more radio when I’d probably not use the other bands much anyway.

Oh well, just opened some windows and put a fan in the kitchen, apparently whatever Steph’s baking has a lot of sugar in it, and some got on the floor of the oven. No wonder my eyesight was getting foggy, it was the room. Oops :> Now that I’ve finished typing this, I see that Hump Day is over. Time to roll down the calendar and head towards the weekend. Sounds good to me, I don’t remember when the last time was that I had a chance to really relax and have some fun.

by srhuston

Jeff Bridges said it best…

“Elementry physics, a beam of energy can always be diverted. Are we there yet mommy?” –Flynn, from the movie “Tron”

That’s about how I feel right now. Turns out the March of Dimes walk I was supposed to do communications for wasn’t on Saturday, it was on Sunday. So I woke up at the ass-crack of dawn on Saturday for nothing. After driving over there, not finding anyone, calling Kip on the radio a few times and hearing nothing, and then coming home, I was now awake enough (and it was around 8am) that there was no way I’d be able to go back to sleep and get the rest I didn’t get overnight. So I hung out in the apartment a little bit, and then heard Dan calling Paul on the repeater. After Paul didn’t answer, he called me. Turns out he was on his way to the club shack to climb the tower and get the rotator off the one mast, and Paul was supposed to meet him there. I talked with Steph for a bit, figured out our plans for the day, and then headed over there to join them. Good thing I did, since Paul never showed up (we didn’t hear from him to find out what happened). Got the rotator down, and then I headed home, and Steph and I went down to South Jersey to return the scale she bought. After a little driving around behind the store, we ended up in the pines, and by this point I was in a bit of a bad mood. Tired, cranky, and just alltogether not feeling very sociable. Stephanie talked me into staying in the pines for a bit and doing some four wheeling, and I did. And I started to feel better. Funny how that place can just turn my mood around.

After hitting a couple trails, and getting back out to the highway, we came home and had dinner. I went to bed a little after 22:00 since now I knew I had to get up early, and had already nixed a lot of sleep I could’ve had Friday night.

Sunday I woke up and went to the park again. This time there were people around too :> I hung out and helped Gary and Gerry setup a portable HF station idea they’d had, and it worked very well. Then I got assigned to a location on the walk, Checkpoint 3. It was kinda neat, for one thing talking simplex with everyone, and being in a completely directed net (Even if I could see the other person from my location, I had to communicate with them through net control, not directly to them). My only problem came around the same time the walkers starting coming through my area (which was the last checkpoint on the walk), and that is the fact that there were no bathrooms near this checkpoint. I heard someone at CP1 say they were packing up, so I called control and asked if someone might come over to relieve me for a few minutes. CP1 called in and said he could do it, and then control gave the go-ahead. A rather painful 5 minutes later and Joe showed up, and even let me borrow his truck so I could get there faster (not bad for someone I’ve never met before). After the trip out and back, Joe and I manned CP3 until there were no walkers left, and then we headed back to control. Helped pack up there, and then stood around for I’d say an hour chatting, about 7 of us in a circle. It was nice, in some cases to put a face to the name, and to meet some people that I hadn’t heard on the air before then.

I took a nice hour-long nap yesterday afternoon at one point, and ended up staying up until 00:00 to watch a show on Comedy Central. Oh well, so much for getting up early on Monday, time to set the alarm for 9 again so I can get some sleep. Now I’m just about ready to head in; doesn’t look like much happened over the weekend, just a few people whose accounts were closed and now they’re noticing that they can’t login. That could be interesting.

by srhuston

That’s more like it

Heh, been 10 days since a post. Guess I’m back to normal :>

So, what happened. Well, we had the break-in as mentioned, and I got it cleaned up pretty much by Monday night. Stayed home on Tuesday, and ended up taking Friday as well since with the interviews we’ve been doing I hadn’t had a chance to catch up on sleep yet.

Last weekend, on Saturday I met up with Dan Marlow (K2QM) at the club station and we diagnosed a problem with the antenna rotator on one of the towers. Seems the sweeping arm on the potentiometer which should send a signal back to the indicator (so you know where the antenna’s pointing without going outside with a compass) isn’t contacting the resistor. Okay, so we need to take the rotator down and crack it open. After a little demonstration of HF (15 meters, chatted with folks in Israel, Russia and Italy) we headed out. Sunday I met Dan at the station again, and he climbed the tower to get some measurements and such. We devised a plate we can use to hold the mast in place while we take the rotator out of the tower, and discussed some options. Seems he knows of someone who refurbishes these things, and will send out a refurbished unit to us (only one trip up the tower, swap it out and be done!) and then we send our unit back to him. Might be a better idea to do anyway, so that 1) there’s less trips up there required, 2) We have a working unit faster, and 3) We don’t fix ours, put it back up and two weeks later find something else wrong with it.

Tuesday found me limping Stephanie’s car up to my folks place to do a brake job. Should’ve only been a 4-6 hour operation, including breaks and goofing off, but turned instead into an 8 hour ordeal which was mostly spent trying to get the damned rotors off the hubs. They’d rusted and siezed onto the hub, and I ended up using liberal amounts of WD40 and a gear puller (!) to get them off, when everyone I consulted agreed that “once the caliper is out of the way, them things oughta just slide right off the hub.” Riiiight.

On Wednesday we had our first (at least in recent history) DVRA club net, which went well. Only a few stations checked in, and I’m not too sure about the idea. It’s a great idea to get people on the repeater, but I have a feeling that a “directed net” isn’t the way to go to foster any kind of ragchew. Maybe it’s just because I’ve listened to the PepperNet so much (which is done “in the round”) so I’m more used to that kind of thing, but I see a directed net as more useful for traffic handling, emergency communications, etc… not quite so much for “So, what’d you do today?” Perhaps I’ll bring that up either at the next net, or meeting (or on the email list).

This Saturday is the March of Dimes walk in Mercer County Park, I’ll be one of the operators there. Kinda sucks that I have to be there by 0730, but I’ll get to sleep in on Sunday all I want just about (plus our evening plans for Saturday got cancelled, so I can always nap in the afternoon – You’re never too old for a midday nap :> ). Sunday my in-laws are coming up for dinner, I don’t remember now what we’re having. Just that my bid went in for BBQ ribs :>

Monday will be the state ARES/RACES net, and this time I’m probably going to head to the NJ State EOC (located at the state police HQ on the other side of town from me). I figure once I’ve checked each of the various EOCs in the area, then either I can float between them every month or pick one and stick there, depending on how things go. So next month will be the Red Cross right in Princeton (meaning I stay at work late instead of going home before the net). Then Tuesday night is the county ARES/RACES net on the local repeater, which I can throw my callsign in on the HT from out front, unless I want to say more than hello.

Good enough for now I guess. Waiting for a RAID to rebuild, and looking around for what else I can get into on a Friday afternoon.

by srhuston

Worst. Monday. Evar.

Got in to work yesterday, and thought a couple things looked a little off. After a little digging, someone had broken in with a stolen password from offiste, and was still in the process of making a mess.

After yanking the network cable out of the firewall, and powering off the machines that looked like they’d been compromised, I then spent the rest of the day cleaning it up. Namely booting the machines off a CD, checking binaries and removing signs of the intrusion, saving copies of stuff off to another disk for later analysis, all that junk. Finally got to bed around 0230 this morning.

Needless to say, I’m not at work right now. Just woke up a little while ago, and am watching the storms go by. Kinda neat weather, I love big rain/thunderstorms.

by srhuston

…but does it go to 11?

It’s late, I’m tired, the apartment stinks of homemade pickles, and I’m about to go to bed. Okay, *I* think it stinks anyway 😛

Stopped by Gary’s house, and we checked the radio. Highest SWR was 1.6:1, not bad at all. Perfect? No, but not worth my time to tune it right now. I’m not going for weak-signal or DX work on this, mostly hitting repeaters and the occasional simplex chat.

Ahh well, time to indulge one of my bad habits and go to bed.

Posted in Ham /
by srhuston

Are You Feeling Okay?

Yes, three days in a row. I must be ill.

Woke up this morning and did my normal website scan, and when I looked up my callsign to see if the vanity call I applied for had gone through, I found that my callsign was cancelled. Slight panic. Then I see that the other application attached to it was passed. Oh, okay, that’s much better. So my callsign is now the much easier to remember W2SRH. At least easy for me. Well, it’ll be easy once I remember that I’m not KC2MSJ anymore. Now it’s just a matter of talking to the people who already know me by the other call, and them hearing the new one attached to my name, before I stop confusing people other than myself :>

Let’s see, what else is new… Well, Steph found out that because she only has 3 credits left for her MAT degree, they automatically denied her financial aid for the summer session. Argh! There’s nothing left that she needs to take, and the way they work out the semesters it would be impossible for her to have had 5 credits left for this summer. The good news is that she found a Spanish class that’s available, and might be able to take that to bring the credits up to where fin. aid will be happy, and it will give her a refresher on the language since it’s been awhile since she spoke it often. Ahh, college bureaucracy, I’d almost forgotten how asinine it was.

Waiting to hear from Gary to see if I can swing by and use his SWR meter on the mobile rig this afternoon. Another guy had mailed me and was going to swing by yesterday morning to let me borrow his, but I was in meetings all morning and missed him. If it comes down to it I can always wait until the club meeting next week, and just ask someone to bring their meter with them. Hell, it’s light enough out late enough that I’ll still be able to check everything out, and maybe even fix it if there’s a major problem, at 1900. As long as it’s raining, can’t be working on the antenna while it’s nice weather.

Oh, one last thing. Heard this strange noise as I was driving in, and when I got to work I checked the antenna (sounded like it was bouncing off of trees or something). Turns out that the part that has the set screws to hold the antenna onto the NMO base is loose. So I’ll have to whip out the toolbox at some point today to secure that a bit better. Not a terrible deal, but again makes me glad I haven’t cranked the power up to 11 yet.

by srhuston

How’s This?

Wow, two days in the same week (in a row, no less), and I’m writing stuff in here. Guess I’m not quite cut out for the whole atmosphere that is… well, that word that I can’t stand which has weaseled its way into modern vernacular beginning as a contraction of the words ‘web’ and ‘log’. No, don’t say it. You’ll sound just as stupid as everyone else does when they say it.

Anywho, I’ve got to start doing something about my eating habits. When I started here, I was accustomed to eating 2-3 meals a day. But now that I wasn’t hoofing it across a campus anymore and spent 90% of my time in a chair, I ballooned quite nicely. Finally broke 200, which on my frame isn’t quite good. Then last summer, I worked my way down to eating one meal a day, sometimes just a snack (not much of an appetite with the stress I had) and I dropped a lot of the weight back off. Was it a healthy thing to do? No, but the end result was good even though that wasn’t exactly what I was aiming toward. Now, I’m still around one meal a day (though it’s usually a big one, my wife sure can cook :> ) but this week I’ve been coming in early – for me – and man am I hungry around 1200-1300.

Common sense would say that I should go eat something. Problem is I’m too lazy to go by myself, and only like to eat alone if I’m truly alone, not in a cafeteria with a boatload of people while I sit at a table for one. Perhaps I should get back into bringing a lunch with me, though I also like the idea of not taking one and then not feeling guilty about leaving 30-60 minutes “early” since I didn’t take an hour long break.

Of course, I hear crack is quite the appetite suppressant too…