Rusty's Blog

There are some things that one should never buy in bulk for your home. DVD movies, Fresh Produce, Gasoline at peak prices, etc.

And for an individual living alone, there are a few other things that it doesn’t make a lot of sense to buy in bulk. Meat, flour, fabric (probably more on this later) and so on.

On the other hand, there are a few things that when you get down to it, really do make sense to buy in bulk when you see you’re about ready to need more.

There are a couple of questions when deciding if it makes sense to buy something in bulk.

1. Am I going to be buying more of this?
2. Frequently?
3. Is it available in bulk?
4. Does it spoil?
5. Will it spoil within the expected lifetime of my purchase if I buy it in bulk?
6. Would it be seriously inconvenient to ‘run out to get more if I were to run out?’

I’ve been known to print off stories and e-mails to read away from my computer. Printer paper generally does not spoil, though some of the cheaper varieties yellow over time. Now I don’t go through enough to order it by the pallet. At least not yet, but I’ve seen that having a couple of reams of paper around has been handy at times.

Also a case of paper (12 reams if I recall) tends to cost significantly less (often by more than half) that of buying individual reams of the same variety of paper. So when I’m down to a couple of reams of paper in the apartment, I’ll go over to the local Office Depot, Staples, or Office Max, and pick up a case of paper.

As a point of distinguishment, some people think they are buying in bulk, when they are not. If I am picking up potato salad for the picnic for the apartment complex, I’m going to buy a rather large volume of potato salad. Probably in the range of a couple of gallons. For me on my own, that would be a ‘bulk’ purchase. However if I know that there are going to be 40 people at the picnic, I may even be buying ‘light’ for that number of people.

Likewise if I am working on a project to make a costume for 20 people, I might buy a couple of bolts of fabric, rather than the 2 yards I might purchase to make one edition of the costume.

In both cases however the difference is that I have an immediate non-recurring need for what I am buying. I very well might get a significantly discounted price in both cases, but it’s still not buying in ‘bulk,’ it’s buying in ‘volume.’

There are other things that it makes sense to buy in bulk. Have children? Getting ready for school? Office supply stores, and major discount stores tend to have ‘back to school’ sales going on now. Was there anything you remember having to go out and purchase in March that it might have been less expensive to pick up in July? Yea, I think we’ve all been doing that at times. A box of penciles right now might cost less than half of what you may end up paying a couple of months from now. It’s almost a given that you’re going to need notebooks, and having a few spares lying around is rarely a bad idea. Now is also the time to pick up some of those ‘odities’ that you’re not sure you are going to need later on, but, who knows. Colored pencils? Composition notebooks? pencile sharpeners, rulers, a couple extra binders. Eventually you will find a use for them, even if a week from now your kid(s) up and split on you to go surfing for the rest of their lives. And with the exception of ink possibly drying out, or pencil erasers getting hard, for the most part everything will be good for the next year or two.

For that matter, most paper products have occasions when they are a really good value, even if it’s not quite a ‘bulk’ purchase. As an example, Christmas wrap is not exactly going to turn bad between January and December. The week after Christmas, pretty much every discount store out thee is trying to unload whatever stock they have left. Get some packages of rolls. You’ll end up finding a use for it. But even that is not a ‘bulk’ purchase.

Three things are almost a given as a good value when purchased in bulk. Paper Towels. Toilet Paper, and Laundry Detergent. The one problem you might have with the first two is that they do take up a fair amount of space in whatever you are using for storage. Some others that are marginally a good value are garbage bags, anti-static sheets (or softener solution) for the laundry, and a variety of canned goods.  Just remember to cycle through the canned goods. Buying a year’s worth of canned food, and letting it sit for 5 years, isn’t going to do either you or the canned goods any good.

An observation when it comes to buying ‘in bulk’ things like canned goods. Talk to your grocer and explain your plan, and ask if he can offer any discounts for larger volume purchases. If you are willing to take care of opening boxes of canned food yourself, he may be more willing to give you a better price than if he has to pay someone to stock, face, and clean up the shelf. Also if you are willing to set up a weekly or monthly schedule for replenishing and enhancing your stock, he may be willing to give you an even better deal. You may even be able to work with a good neighbor or two to improve on this. You each go out and buy a case of canned soups, and when you get home, break up the case evenly amoungst you. If you each buy different varieties, you go from having a case of tomato soup, to a few cans each of perhaps tomato soup, chicken noodle, vegitable beef, and split pea. You go from having a case of canned corn to canned corn, green beans, mixed vegtables, and carrots. A case of dill pickles becomes dill, sweet, kosher, and ripe olives. A case of chilie becomes chilie, beef stew, New England Clam Chowder, and Boston Clam Chowder. A case of tomato sauce becomes tomator sause, tomato paste, mushrooms, and spagetti. You get the picture.

Regardless of whether you do that, or start with a 2 month mix this month, then star adding variety of your own next week, you’l very likely find that knowing that you have something ready to quickly prepair at home is likely to make concerns over what’s available significantly less. I’ve even extended this a bit, and keep a small store of canned and shelf stable food at work so I don’t need to be concerned about heading to a store for something to eat at 2 in the morning. And if you have a couple of months worth of food on the shelf, you’re les likely to be concerned about what will you eat this week.

As I say, look at what you need and use. If you go through it quickly, and it’s somewhat inconvienent to pick up at a moment’s notice, plan around that, and see if it’s available in bulk. It may even help your budget.

I’m going to have to dig out the manual for my camera this week. I ran into a situation where what I thought should happen, wasn’t happening. Specifically I was trying to take a picture of some clouds yesterday, and the camera refused to actually take a picture. Two observations I have on the situation, it was raining lightly, and the auto-focus was apparently focusing on the raindrops rather than the clouds, and there was a blinking hexagon in the dashboard of the viewfinder. Odd as it may seem, a blinking dashboard doesn’t mean all that much to me, so I’ll have to pull out the manual, and see if it means something to the manufacturer.

Kind of wish I had grabbed the camera between taking out each of the dogs, though I don’t think I would have been able to take a picture at that time. Not because of the light, but because of the dog on the other end of a lead making it difficult to hold a camera still, and what not.

It may be that I have to switch to my manual focus lense for those sotrs of pictures though. We’ll see.

I think that comment ranks right up there with ‘He must have a big dick’ or ‘He must have a really deep bank account.’

First of all a word of explanation. The title comment was voiced to me by a friend, some time back, who was going through a divorce, and had recently found out that her now, or soon to be, ex was already living with his next partner.

If you think this is ‘your’ statement, or you know who made the statement, I personally would appreciate it if you did not speak up and announce that. To tell the truth, it’s actually a statement that needs to be corrected along the way, and if you remember saying that, or something like that while you were angry about losing someone, I’m hoping you get more out of the rest of this than angry with me for repeating the statement.

On average, guys tend to present themselves as pretty shallow. I include myself in that statement. We have our ‘tastes’ in what we like about potential partners, and in general are not too ashamed to say so. My personal preference is for healthy tits on a thin (fit) body. Beyond that some guys prefer specific leg shapes, hip sizes, waists, muscle tone, hair, eyes, etc. All generally physical characteristics.

While I do have those preferences, I have to admit that in the long term, those prefernces are pretty limited compared to the rest of what I am looking for in a long term partner. The big problem is that most of what I am looking for in a woman is a lot harder for a guy to specify than physical characteristics are. For example, I’m interested in someone who has a healthy (in my eyes) sex drive, but who’s also interested in enough of the same things I am interested in (science fiction, dogs, photography, science, technology) that we can talk about most of those things, and that she has enough other interests that I can learn from as well as being currious about things that I am interested in that I can teach her as well. Trying to ‘define’ that is not something that I would expect guys to be good at, so even I accept that what we can explain we are interested in about various women, is pretty shallow.

And we’re even more shallow in putting down people. If a guy we don’t know very well is on the arm of one or more women that our shallow interest is paying attention to, our ‘put down’ of the woman is that either he’s got to have a big dick that she’s interested in, or that she’s a gold digger and is after what must be a deep pocketbook.

The reality is that every person out there is a very complex collection of characteristics, both physically, and mentally.  Most guys, even most of the shallow ones, realize that women are looking for more than great sex or money from the guys they are with. At some level women are looking for a guy who can keep their interest in a number of areas, and provide some level of excitement to stay focused on, and share. A big dick isn’t going to do that for most women. Neither is being ‘rich.’ As part of a whole package of other things, they may be great accessories, but it’s a fairly rare woman who’s primary focus on a guy is something that shallow. And she may be a ‘10′ beauty wise, but if that’s the main focus of what a woman is looking for, I certainly am not interested in her.

And that’s the crux of the matter. The reality of a guy saying that a woman is interested in some guy for some shallow interest is almost always him telling himself that she so shallow that no matter how beautiful she is, he should take no interest in her. I.e. he’s justifying not paying attention to her, or women he thinks are like her.

Likewise suggesting that the new love interest of a guy is a some woman with bigger tits, is almost always a technique to tell yourself that the guy you spent the last several months, years or decades in love with, isn’t worth the attention that you had been paying to him.

And if you go back and think about it, you may realize that you were labeling him as being ’shallow’ even though your love for him in the past was anything but shallow.

One of the reasons I’ve wated a while before writing this is that the process of giving yourself reasons to think ‘less’ of a former partner is an important part of moving on.

For most of the past year, one of my neighbors has been refering to her ex as ‘The Asshole.’ I don’t know him, and will reserve judgement, but my suspicion is that there’s something else going on in the situation. Part of the problem is that part of what they were doing as a married couple is something they are still doing with each other since their separation or divorce. They are still involved in a business relationship, so they have to interact with each other as part of that business, which is leaving her feeling pretty raw and not letting her emotions heel properly. It’s only been in the past month that I have heard her start to referr to him as ‘the Ex.’ Which I think is a positive sign.

The real problem with referring to an ex in a demeaning way is that you are telling the people about you that you are stuck in a fairly childish point in your recovery from that relationship. A guy that may be interested in a woman who discovers she is acting that way could either encourage the response, and hope that she is going to ‘rebound’ into his arms (unlikely but I suppose it’s possible, I just think it’s not a good way to build a lasting relationship) or he can set asside his interest, maintain a friendly relationship with her, and wait for her to grow out of the event. Of course that tends to leave live rolling on around you, and you should be staying involved with other people.

Yes the shallow part of me thinks that the specific woman is pretty hot looking. Additionally I happen to like a lot of the interests she has. But I think it’s not going to go beyond the friendship.

In any case, when it comes to how we talk about other people in our lives, we tell other people something about ourselves as well. If we try to say that we are not interested in this person, or that person for a reason that on the face of it is pretty shallow, we’re disclosing how shallow we are as well. That’s not all bad. At times I think we need to be shallow. It gives us markers we can use as starting points for directing our other interests as well. The odds of my finding a thin woman with big tits who fits all the rest of my interests are a lot more ‘reasonable’ than if I were to be concerned about race, height, hair color, family wealth, and so on, and still have her be interested in the things that are harder for me to define. For some friends, the only concern they have about a prospective partner is that they have a compatible faith. But it’s absolutely critical that that match for them. My shallow interests are really more of an ‘interest’ builder than a ‘must have.’ I’m far more likely to be interested in a woman that fits those two aspects than someone who fits neither. Yet at the same time, I can decide that this aspect is not as important to me as how well we get along talking. And so on.

OK, this is getting somewhat long winded. If the message seems to be aimed at you, remember that I find a lot of myself in a similar situation, and this is at least in part designed to help me as well.

It’s Friday. Have a great weekend.

If you ask most guys, doing the laundry is a colossal waste of time.

Now I’m not saying we don’t want the laundry done. We almost all appreciate having clean clothes, bedding, etc. etc. Honest we do. We also recognize that from an economics perspective, that doing laundry is almost always cheeper than, say for example, buying new clothes. That’s not the complaint.

The complaint is the time element. From the moment we ’sort’ our laundry, to the moment we put the last clean item we’ve folded out of the dryer, everything we do has to take second shrift to getting the laundry done. Obviously there is a little bit of exaggeration, just not much.

I’m presuming for most people that you have a limited amount of spece to dedicate to dirty and clean cloths. If you think you don’t, it’s probably time to think again. At the very least, recognize that there are chemical processes involving body fluids, (sweat and others) that will negatively impact the wearabile lifetime of your clothing, even more than the abrasion and dirt you pick up from the environment you work in. With some exceptions. Cable pullers and related jobs almost come with a clothing replacement budget.

If you wear a dress shirt on a warm day, and don’t get it laundered in the next 48 to 96 hours, you should expect that sweat stains, ring around the collar, and the odd food or beverage spill will leave a permanent mark on your shirt.

Stop at a pet store, or even Spencers some day, and pick up a hand held blacklight. Before you throw the next pair of jeans or slacks into the washer, find a reasonably dark area, and use that blacklight to illuminate the front.

As I say, we fully redognize that having clean clothing is to our advantage.

So why is this an issue for guys? On the assumption that you don’t sort your laundry into separate piles as you prepare for bed, from the moment you start sorting out your laundry, you have committed to getting the laundry done. My own process is to sort into piles such as ‘Jeans and Trousers’ ‘t-shirts’ ‘other shirts’ ’socks and underwear’ ’sweaters and sweat-shirts’ ‘towels’ ‘linnens’ and a ‘miscelanious’ pile that catches a few other odds and ends. That’s 8 piles. And depending on how long it’s taken to get there, I may be aggregating some piles, I might put the t-shirts in with the ‘other shirts’ or the ‘miscelanious’ in with ’socks and underwear’ for example. So we get down to 6, or occasionally 4 or 5 piles that each become a ‘load’ of laundry. If you have access to your own laundry facilities and don’t need to budget specifically for coin-op machines, you might also break up some piles by color. If you’r really pressed for time, you might just stuff everything into a duffle bag and wash it all at once if it works as a single load.

So you’ve got loads of laundry to dump into the washer. For whatever reason, you get to the washing machine, and throw in a load of laundry, with the soap, and possibly bleach or softener if that’s part of your routine. Start the machine, and.

OK, perhaps you planned this far ahead, and have something to do. Maybe you grabbed a book to read or study. Perhaps you have a magazine handy. Who knows. But the one thing you know is that shortly after the wash cycle is done, you’re going to have to move those clothes into the dryer, and get the next load of washing into the washer. The worst part is that a washer takes betwen 20 and 30 min to cycle through a load. So forget about going back upstairs and watching a movie. You won’t have time. If you have edited the comercials out of a 30 min episode of something, that might work out well, but often enough finding that show, and doing that editing is going to tie up about the amount of time that the comercials took in the first place.

So you chewed up 30 min, and head back to the laundry room. You move that first load of laundry into the dryer, throw in a softener sheet (unless you started with a load of linnen or towels…) and start the dry cycle. You throw the next load of laundry into the washer, and start that cycling. Now what?

Well, the washer is still going to take between 20 and 30 min to finish the cycle, and you may have eaten up 3 min filling the washer and getting it going, but that’s not going to affect what you do now quite as much. That’s because the limiting factor this time is the dryer. You did remember to check the lint screen right? With a clean lint screen, and a fairly light load, the dryer might take 30 min to dry the load of clothing. But if your household involves dogs, cats, other sheading animals, etc. that load is very likely going to add lint to the screen. And unless you are laundering daily, you are probably going to have gotten more than a ‘light load’ in the dryer. So time goes up. Figure on between 45 min and an hour. Hmm… perhaps enough time to get the carpet vacumed. Probably should have used that 20 min wash cycle to pick up a bit first though. Well, that’s OK, perhaps we can get the living room done.

Something to keep in mind here is that the first load in the dryer is likely to be the longest time you have available to do anything else. I wouldn’t advise heading out on a grocery run though. Whatever you choose to do, remember that as soon as the dryer load is done, you want to get those clothes out of the dryer and folded. Otherwise the time they spend setting in the dryer, cooling will introduce wrinkles that you probably don’t want.

So you get the first load out of the dryer into a basket to go to folding, the second load into the dryer, and the next load into the washer. 45 min to do something, right? Well, sort of. You checked the lint screen again, Right? OK, no matter what, you are going to want to use some of the 45 min here to take care of this load of dry clothes, while they are still warm. Unless you’ve gone to an all permanent press wardrobe, you will probably want to sort through the shirts and trousers for those that could use ironing, and set those aside. Oh, this first load was all socks and shorts? Well, start the sorting and folding. My own process is to separate the socks from the shorts, fold the shorts, then break out the socks into pairs, or if there are a bunch of ‘common’ socks, say a 6 pack of white tube-socks, or something, get those into a pile to be folded from quickly. Up to you.

Hmmm… how long did that take? What you didn’t think to check what time you started the dryer? Well, let’s presume it took about 20 min. Perhaps we take the piles of socks and shorts, and put them away. That may save time later.

Might be time for a can of pop and a quick sandwitch though. Yeah, that works.

OK, the second load in the dryer is done, so we cycle through that. T-shirts this time. (Bane of my laundry time to tell the truth. ) Oddly enough, I’ve found that t-shirts take longer to sort out, and fold than just about anything else in the laundry. Well, ironing those dress shirts that need it can take longer, but I’ve gotten away from that as much as possible. In any case the second load out of the drier seems to take at least as long as the fourth load in the washer takes to wash. So by the time I’m done with this load, I can tell that I’ve got about 20 to 30 min to do something with.

Hmm… a quick bathroom break, and check the help wanted section of the local Craig’s List to see if anyone is offering to do laundry for a fee. Drat, no one. Quick review of the e-mail in-box while I’m on the computer, dump the spam, quick pass through the lists, nothing immediately interesting. Hmm, a couple of messages that need a response, mark them as un-read so that I remember to do that later on.

Next load. Jeans and stuff out of the dryer, towels and bedding in, No dryer sheet this time, Lint tray clean. No change left in the bottom of the washing machine, dryer on ‘hot’ for the linnens and towels, quick fold of the jeans. Everything gets put away except the linnens and towels drying. Probably take them about 35 min, and I was able to consolidate things to just the 4 loads, so nothing sitting in the washer.

You know, it’s a toss for what to do this time. Perhaps write up a blog entry. After all, I’m going to need more time for the e-mail than just a quick ‘got it, thanks!’ message. And that could easily take an hour or more. Someone else in the building is likely to need the washer and dryer. What? it’s 9:00 PM? Already? Shesh, where did the time go. I could have gotten something else done in those 5 hours. Drat.

I know, I’ll blog on why guys hate doing the laundry so much…

It was warm yesterday, and to tell the truth there are a lot of interesting looing movies out at the moment. I’ll admit that there are a lot of people who will calaim that there hasn’t been a ‘good’ movie out in a while. Oddly enough I’ve seen several good movies this year. At least movies I think were pretty good. In the past two months I have seen Iron Man, Indian Jones, The incredible Hulk. Friday I went out and saw Wanted. Yesterday (Sunday) I saw Hellboy II: The Golden Army, The Dark Knight, and Hancock. Either today, or possibly tomorrow, I’m planning on seeing WALL-E.

No, I won’t be doing ‘rating’ reviews, or try to tell you about plot, or special effects. And no, there will be no spoilers here. (If I see comments that include spoilers, the will be deleted.) I very much enjoyed each of the the movies, for a variety of reasons, some in common.

Imagine a superhearo that can’t remmember who he is, how he got his powers, and really doesn’t care if people like him. See Hancock. Considering the history of films that Will Smith has been working in, I think Hancock is probably one of the movies that won’t be talked about as much, but will probably help his career more than perhaps Independence Day did.

If you haven’t seen Iron Man, I would suggest it as a movie to see with fans of the Iron Man comic book. Are there differences between the comic book history, and the movie history? Yes. That said, I think it was very well done.

The Incredible Hulk, Indiana Jones and Hellboy II are all movies that I think would work well for dates. Guys, you will like them, lot’s of action. Your dates will like the personal interactions between the characters.

Wanted is an interesting variation on the hero theme. Personally I think there are holes in the plot you could drive a Death Star through, with clearance, for a couple of stars, but that doesn’t change the fact that I did enjoy the movie, and would recommend it to people who’ve been with each other long enough to know what each other’s tastes are in action and drama. It’s not a good first date movie. Which doesn’t mean it’s not a good movie. I particularly liked the ending, if not some of the bit’s leading up to the ending. I don’t think this is a spoiler, but it is a technical issue that puts the major hole in the story as far as I’m concerned. The weaver’s have been using binary coding to read ‘names’ from flaws in the weaving paterns of textiles. OK, that part I’m OK with. However the coding used in the movie is ASCII, which was developed in the 1960’s. (Actually it appears to be 8-bit ascii which would be an even later development.) Yet ostensibly the Weavers have been reading this for about a thousand years. The excuse could be made that the Jakard Loom was involved, but even that does not go back far enough.

If you’re reading this, and have not seen The Dark Knight, and it’s showing within a 20 mile radius of where you live, then this blog is a waste of your time. That movie is a better use of that time. As with a few other critique’s, there are potentially better uses of your time yet. Personally I think that Iron man was a better movie, but then I went to see it twice.

OK, a better se tof critique items might be what I plan to buy, rent, and in what format. Since I own a PS3, that means I have an Blue Ray player. As a result, I have additional choices to make now. Do I buy the movie or rent it, and if I buy, or rent, do I get the standard definition or blue ray edition. In a moment I’ll get to what will make that decision moot.

Movies I expect to buy. Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Wanted and The Dark Knight. I may buy Hancock and Hell Boy. If I have a reason to show the movie for someone, I may rent Indiana Jones.

For one reason I want to buy Wanted in Blue Ray. I tend to suspect that down sampling the video for dvd is going to make carching the binary coding samples difficult to read. I’m not talking about trying to read the fabric, not even with blue ray will you be able to do that, but to read what has been collected, and verify that there wasn’t a ‘creative’ artist involved might be interesting. And yes everyone will think that I bought it to see Angelina Jolie. Whatever.

Iron Man on Blue Ray sounds enticing. I’ve heard of some interesting effects in the heads up display that I’m interested in checking out. Everything else on standard definition DVD works for me.

What would make the decision between SD and BD moot? Selling the content at the same price. At that point, I would just buy BD editions. But that’s me, and you may have different views.

Time to get ready to go see WALL-E though.

I have posted photos from both Field Day 2008, and CONvergence 2008. I did not post all o fmy CONvergence photos. If you are aware that I took your picture, and want to see it posted, Please let me know. I also took down a few photos that just didn’t turn out well.

For both, I have limited the posted image size to 1500 pixels in the larger dimension. If you are looking for a higher quality image, I do shoot 6 m raw in pentax format, and can provide either full sized jpeg images, or the raw image if you are interested in manipulating that for a different effect.

My Picasaweb album is http://picasaweb.google.com/rusty0101 and these are the latest two albums in the gallary. Comments here, or in the album are acceptable. If you are in a specific image, and do not want it on the album, I can take it down, please let me know.

Thanks everyone

I’ll get to that in a bit.

If you’ve been reading my blog lately, or at least most of the recent blog entries anyway, it might come to your attention that I’ve been talking about a few things all related to my being involved in the Science Fiction convention CONvergence. I suppose you might even be thinking to yourself ‘doesn’t he do anything that isn’t related to that stupid convention?’

While it’s not Completely unrelated, I do tie things together through a variety of connections you may also note, this blog entry really isn’t about CONvergence. In fact that should be the last mention here.

Hi! My name is kc0vcu, and I’m a ham. Well, ok, it’s not really my name, but it is my call sign. It is ‘randomly assigned’ as it were, though I could get a vanity sign that might be more ‘custom’ to my interests. “I said we won’t go there, so don’t go off on that tangent on your own either.) There are limits to what a call sign may look like. At the moment in the US, a call sign begins with one or two letters, begining A, K, or W, a number from 0 through 9, followed by 1 to 3 letters. In ‘randomly’ assigned call signs, the number reflects the region that your request came from when you initially received your call sign. Minnesota is in ’section 10′ thus a 0 in the digit’s location.

There are reasons to select certain characters and character conbinations in a call sign. You might ask for k5e if you are a CW fanatic, as it would be very short. Or if you are really fanatic about being a ‘ham’ you might ask for somehting like aa1ham. If you are Mike, and are married to a Juliet, and you spend a lot of time on single sideband where you may be using a lot of phonetics, you might ask for WJ2M and use ‘wedded’ in place of ‘whisky’. (people do all sorts of phonetic substitutions, I’ve been known to say that vcu stands for very cold user rather than victor charly uniform which is the correct phonetic for vcu.

What havign a call sign means though is that (in the us) the federal govornment recognizes me as a geek. Well, more specifically a radio geek, but along with that comes other geeky experiences. No, I was not on the ‘AV team’ in high school, though I was in Band and held a perfect record on the Chess team. (I lost every game I ever played.) But there wa sno doubt from fairly early on that I would be playing with technology in lots of different, and (to me) interesting ways. I’ve played with CB’s, the various UHF and VHF licence free, and fixed rate licence radio systems, computers, home theater stuff, and so on for most of my life. But there is not a lot of stuff out there that compares with Amateur radio when it comes to trying different things.

If you want, you can do nothing more than chat with friends on handheld radios without ever using a repeater. Or you can set up a station in your house to talk with people in over a hundred countries using voice, code, rtty, psk, or lots of other technologies. You can chat from your computer, without ever owning or touching a ham radio, and the only people you talk to are using ham radio equipment. You can send pictures, TV, support emergency data and voice communications, and bounce signals off the moon if you want.

A whole lot of this gets done every day, and just about every weekend on the calendar, there’s one ‘contest’ or another going on. Contests are usually quick 6 hour to 2 day events where you compete with other operators to see who can earn the most ‘points’ in that period. Depending on the contest there are different ‘multipliers’ ranging from prefix combinations (the one or two letters in front of the number in a call sign, as well as the number) through states, zones, ‘grids,’ countries, and even ‘modes.’ (A CW contact is almost always worth twice a voice contact.)

Because of the variety of things that Hams do with radios, it is often confusing to people as to what exactly do hams do. Partly to address this, partly to have another contest, and partly to show that hams can do all of this from locations other than ‘home’ or the ‘club station,’ various organizations hold ham ‘Field Days.’ The ARRL, or American Radio Relay League, holds one on the last full weekend in June. Different clubs and people handle Field Day differently. Some set up a tent on the local high spot, and send up antenna’s using baloons, antenna towers, slingshots into trees, etc. Some go to places where they can eliminate nearly all of the near by city noises. Some set up air conditioned trailers or RV’s. Some work with local communities to demonstrate that they can support them in a time of crisis.

The club I currently consider myself to belong to, has an agreement with one of the local cities parks and recreation departments to setup in, and work from a park building that the city uses at other times during the year, but which they have been so pleased with the visibility it gives them that they practically beg us every year to come back and set up there again.

The basic process is that at about 8:00 am on Saturday the Hams show up at the field day site. They are not allowed to pre-position or start set up of any equipment prior to that. Over the next 5 hours they get to set up everything they are going to use over the weekend. (Minor exception being any special picnic materials brought in on Sunday.) at 1:00 pm on Saturday a 24 hour contest happens on 160, 80, 40, 20, 15, 10 and 6 meters. You can even make contacts via satellite in 2 meter and 70cm bands.  As an operator you want to contact as many people in each of those bands as you can, without re-contacting anyone in the same band on the same mode twice. So if aa1ham contacts me on 20 meters voice, I can contact him on 20 meters CW, but not on voice again on 20 meters. Or I can try to contact him on 40 meters, and so on.

The various bands operate with better and worse results depending on a number of factors, including local noise from the area around you, either environmental or man made, through the number of sun-spots on the face of the sun. (It’s actually a lot more important than most non-hams think.) At the moment, time of day has more effect on radio reception than anything else, but that changes from year to year as well.

In any case, I get off work at about 8:00 am on Saturday morning, so after making a quick stop at my apartment to pick up some hardware, and take care of my dogs, I headed out to the field day site, and helped with setup. We ran into a few problems, mostly contest related, but we also had come hardware problems that are being worked on as well. And a few problems with getting things set up antenna wise.

Some of the problems plagued us the entire event, others got solved early on. Because of one problem, we ran into issues with using specific hardware on specific bands. I tend to suspect this problem will get solved, as it is not something that I think we want to experience again. Amoung other things it prevented us from using perfectly capable hardware at times when it would have been the best tool for the job.

For me though, setting up was about the extend to what I was prepared to do for the day. I had come off a 12 hour shift, and about 5 hours of setup pretty much took the rest of me out of the picture for the day. I went home, and got some sleep. I went back out to the site to start a contest shift from 7 to 9 am. I wouldn’t say that my contribution was particularly fantastic, but I did make contacts, and had a good time as well. There are people who practically live for the contest, and won’t be satisfied unless the team or they themselves are at the top of the rankings. I have to admit that I’m not one of those people. Probably why I never won a game of chess in the chess club I suppose. That said, I hope that what I contributed was something that was not provided equally well elsewhere. I don’t know though.

All in all, I had a good time. after my shift, I made a run back to the appartment to take care of my pups, then back out to the field day site to help with tear-down. I missed the picnic food, but I’m OK with that.

Oh, the title? Besides being the name of the weekend event, where along with the contest we attempt to show local public safety and others what we are capable of, Field Days was the name of a sales event at Marshall Fields. And yes, at least where I live, the Marshall Fields stores in my area were all bought by, and became Macy’s department stores.

It’s a crazy world some times.

Ran into some issues with the permalink by date and title, so for now it’s back to being the default, inscrutiable permalink. Sorry for those looking for that last bit of sanity, I’ll work on that later. What? You say that’s the least of your worries at the moment? Noted. I’ll get to it when I have time, and we’ll see what happens.

I had a laptop that decided that a shower was not in it’s best interests. Specifically it does not start up properly now. OK, it does not start up now. forget properly.

The situation of the computer’s demise is that I was at a concom meeting, and was doing some work off in a corner while other people were working on a separate project near where I had initially set up. Along the way someone tipped over a pitcher of water, and some splashed onto a laptop I had brought with me.

Now before anyone starts wondering if I chewed out the people who had done the spilling, I didn’t actually see the event, so I honestly don’t know who would be at fault. Additionally I specifically purchased the hardware with the understanding that should it fail, disapear, or otherwise, I would not lose what I would consider a significant investment. The computer itself is less than my renter’s insurance deductable, and I wouldn’t spend that much to get it fixed.

That said, I poped the hard drive out of the computer, as well as one of the 2 1 Gig sodimm modules, and purchased a Lenovo 3000 laptop for $400. Poped the drive and memory into the laptop, and It booted right up. The only thing I had to change was to tell the sound system that it was running on a Lenovo laptop. Everything else ran without a problem.

You say that’s not possible? Windows can’t handle that many simultanious changes to the underlying platform, there’s a new processor, video card, network mac addresses, sound card, etc. and if you change all that at once, Windows complains that you’ve copied the system to a separate computer, and you have to go through getting the system re-licenced, etc.

Yeap, that you would. And For those of you who are comfortable with doing that, great. Have a good time. I’ll go right on using a system that actually works, even when you change every aspect of the underlying hardware. I could have made a ghost copy of the partitions on the hard drive, and install that on a different interface typed hard drive.

That’s the beauty of Linux. In my case Ubuntu, but I understand this works with a few other distributions as well.

As I noted some time back, I have a motorcycle that I get to ride from time to time.

Part of the intent was to make that both for pleasure and to help save on gas going to and from work.

Since I got the bike though, other than a couple of attempts at improving my skills, pretty much all of my riding has been of the “I need to get there, and I’m here” variety. It has been and can be a fun way of doing just that, but at that point it’s mostly a utility, not an activity of it’s own right worth doing.

3 weeks ago we had our last pre-con concom meeting. If you haven’t been following my blog, or some of my other writings, that may be a bit confusing to you, but it’s not critically important. Suffice it to say that the past couple of months have been filled with a lot of my time being used to get things done for the convention, and not all that much time used for my own entertainment. The ‘important’ thing related to the meeting was the ‘ice breaker’ question, and my response. The Question was going to be “What are you going to do ‘next weekend?’” and they realized that most of us would be tied up with final preparations for the convention, so they re-phrased it to “What are you going to do the weekend after the convention?”

Several people reported that they would be sleeping in for the first time in a while. Or working on other conventions, or a few other ‘common’ themes. A few were going to see some movies that hadn’t arrived in theaters yet, or which they didn’t have time to get to yet.

My response was ‘Weather permitting, I’m going to be on a highway some place, out of the city, riding my bike.” I did get a bit of applause, especially from a couple of friends who suddenly realized that that was something they wanted to do as well.

One of the thing’s I have learned over time, is that there are two important elements to getting things done. The first is actually ‘doing’ what you want to get done. Well, perhaps that’s more the obvious element. What’s not quite as ‘obvious’, but I think is even more important is defining what it is you’re going to do. I could have said I was going to improve my home theater. Which I did do, but would have been rather mundane. Instead I elected to define a ‘get away from it all’ event that fit with what I had intended to do with other things in my life. Ride and see more than the road to and from work.

Circumstances did work to throw some sand in the gears. As I was riding to the convention one of the days, I lost the end of one of the zippers that attaches a sleve to the body of the jacket. The slide worked to temporarily re-fasten the zipper, but pretty much every time I put on the jacket the zipper would come undone again, so that jacket is going to become part of my costume supply I think. In any case I did not have reliable body protection suddennly. So on Monday I pulled up Motorcycle Superstore’s website, and found an affordable jacket that was right for the conditions I expect over the next couple of months to weeks, and ordered it for next day delivery.

Amazon has spoiled me when it comes to ‘next day delivery. Next day delivery means I get it ‘the next day.’ Not quite the case with Motorcycle Superstore. Yes the do ship it ‘Next Day,’ but that doesn’t mean you’ll get it ‘tomorrow.’ It means you’ll get it the day after they ’ship it.’ My experience is that the ’ship it’ anywhere from 2 to 4 days later. In the case of my jacket, I ordered it on Monday, and the jacket was shipped Thursday. Considering that I work from 8:00 pm to 8:00 am Wed., Thur., Fri., this week, you can envision what sort of a problem this generates. It’s a little tough to be ‘up’ at 12:35 (or whenever) when UPS shows up at the appartment complex door to deliver a package. Yes they will deliver it to the office, but depending on when they actually deliver to the office, who receives it, and what time I wake up, that may mean I get the package that day, or the following Monday.

In the case of the jacket, I was actually able to run down the UPS delivery guy at the next appartment building when he was going to deliver another package there.

Thus I have the new jacket. Of course I fail to transfer a few of the things from the pockets of the old jacket, into the new jacket, but that’s a quick walk back to the appartment to collect it before I hit the road today.

A while back, one of my friends pointed out that a friend of hers had been having stability problems with a bike, and it turned out that the problem was that the tire presure on that bike was too low. An immediate flag went up that I need to be checking the tire presure. Not a problem I start off thinking, I’ve got several tire gages about. Of course that’s only useful when the tire gages in question are available when you go to ride the bike. The one in the car? Not so useful. Likewise the one on the compressor that’s burried under 200 lb of stuff in storage. So this week I also picked up a digital tire gage to ride on the keychain for the bike. ($19 at Target in the automotive section.) It’s also handy to know what the tire presure is supposed to be. This is dependent on the tire, not necessarily the bike, but the bike’s owners manual is a good place to start looking, especially when you don’t see any recommended pressure listed on the sidewalls of the tires.

So I check over the bike, get it started, finish suiting up, and locking up the garage, ride over to the gas station, and top off the tank, and the receipt says it’s 2:19 pm. Since I don’t want to spend the entire day staring into the sun, I decide to head west. By the time the sun get’s to be a problem, it should be time for me to start heading home anyway.

An observation on the mesh jackets. If you like to ride in a t-shirt because you get to feel the wind on your skin, you’re going to love the way the wind goes through a mesh jacket. Remember to keep yourself hydrated.

‘West’ means a couple of different routes for me. I can head down to Highway 7, and head west there. That takes me along the south side of Lake Minnetonka, and I’ll probably ride that route one of these days, but I chose not to today. It can also mean riding on Highway 55, which is mostly where I ended up riding today, but wasn’t the choice I had started off on.

West also means memories of summers gone by. My grandpa and grandma (grandparents on my mom’s side.) had a trailer and a cabin on Big Stone Lake on the border of Minnesota and South Dakota. Next year I hope to make a ride out to Clinton, with a visit to Big Stone Lake, to visit their graves. I haven’t decided on a date for that yet, but I’m currently thinking late July, or even late August. I’ll work it around my other activities.

Why that’s interesting though is that Highway 12 is the most direct route there. So for me Highway 12, more than other routes, means ‘West.”

Of course selecting a route, and actually being able to make use of that route are two completely different things. In Minnesota, we have a saying about roads, that I suspect is far from unique, “Minneota has two seasons, Winter, and Road Construction.” This year just happens to be pretty hard on Highway 12. I figured it was a bad sign when I hit the entrance ramp for Highway 12 at Carlson Parkway, and there was a traffic Jam. Remember it’s about 2:30 pm on a Sunday, and this is a route leading out of the city. The higway itself is down to one lane in each direction, and pretty much every 60 mph speed limit sign has been boarded over and 45 mph signs are all over the place. As I was getting close to Delano the signs saying “Road Closed” in Delano, suggested that taking the detour for highway 12 was in order. I selected the ‘truck’ detour, on the presupposition that it would be reasonably well monitored.

Oddly enough, the Truck Detour took me to highway 55. And as I’m riding along on 55, generally experiencing no indication of road construction, I decided Let’s just go with it. and instead of following the detour back to higway 12, stayed on 55.

There’s a lot of beautiful scenery on 55. And for some reason, once you get beyond Buffalo, there’s enough of a supply of bugs flying over the highway that I’m glad I was wearing a helmet with a face shield.

As I was rolling along, and passing through Maple Lake, I spot a DQ, and think “You know, when I get out a couple of hours, that wouldn’t be a bad stop if I can find one.” Back at the gas station, I had picked up a liter of Diet Mt. Dew, on the off chance that I found a rest stop or something that caught my eye (I know that there is one on 12 that I want to visit) but figured that a DQ would work at least as well. About an hour and 45 min out I spot a sign for an A&W, some 33 miles away in Paynesville, and decide that’s just about the right distance for my first rest stop. And an A&W would be an acceptable fallback for DQ. (Yes Abby, I know you don’t necessarily agree, I’m of the same feeling regarding Kwik Trip as I once worked at Quick Stop. Long story.)

In any case I roll on, and as I’m rolling into Paynesville, MN, I see a DQ. So I start making my turns for it, see that across the Highway is the A&W, and continue on to DQ. I picked up a couple of cheese dogs and a French Vanila Frozen Latte (large) and head over to a table. While I’m there, a couple show up on a pair of touring bikes, and as I’ve finished up my dogs and am enjoying the Frozen Latte, a guy and his son (Trevor?) roll in as well, and join me at the table. We get to talking about bikes, riding, permits, where we’ve come from and are going. That kind of stuff. The receipt says it was 4:34.

I had pulled out my laminated map, and had tentatively selected taking 23 to Saint Cloud, then crossing the river and jumping on 10 down to 169, which I would take home. But with all my routes, It was something to think about, and I would see where the road took me. After bidding adieu and safe riding, I got to rolling again, and took 23 east. About 15 miles out of Paynesville, it switched from 2 lane highway to 4 lane divided, with varying speed limits from 45, on up to 65 mph. While that’s an ‘easy’ ride, it get’s somewhat boring after a while. I ended up getting to Saint Cloud, and after getting too close to the intersection to change lanes, realized that 23 was turning, and I wasn’t. So I went with the new direction, and ended up back on the west side of Interstate 94, in Agusta, MN, on a county highway. I stopped at a BP, made a pit stop, and picked up a couple of peppered beef sticks, and got back on the road. The BP receipt says 6:06 PM.

This highway almost immediately turned into “Loose Gravel.” No, not a gravel road, but a paved highway that they first layed down a coating of oil, then overlayed that with Gravel. Because that is a thin layer, but enough to cover the oil (OK, thin tar that does hold down the gravel it is in contact with) not all of the gravel is held down securely by the oil. About 5 miles into this, they layed down a layer of tar on top of the gravel to more completely secure the gravel, but it’s still fairly fresh, and from time to time the bike kicks up a stone or two, and throws it against the wheel fairing.

Eventually even that goes away, and I’m back on a fully set pavement road, so I can get back to a less tense riding style. A couple of miles later I’m back to Highway 55 in South Haven. Today seems to be focused mostly on highway 55 I guess, so I take that back home. About the time I get out of Maple Lake, I decide that it would probably be a good idea to stop at the Cenex. One of the problems I had been having is that the sun glasses clip ons for my glasses have caused my glasses to go down my nose a few times. So I was hoping to find a eyeglass retention strap to attach across the ends of my bows, and around the back of my head. No such luck, but noting the muscle aches I picked up a travel pack (4 caplets) of Motrin. I have a feeling I’m going to be a bit sore tomorrow. I paid cash, but the ATM receipt suggest it was 6:53 PM.

The ride from Cenex to home was mostly uneventful. Strangely enough, a little over half the lights I encountered along the route back turned red before I (or a lot of other traffic ahead of me) got to them. I am somewhat used to the experience, as I get that often enough going to and from work, but after riding for 160 miles or so, most of it without any lights, it was somewhat aggravating.

The clock in the apartment says it was 8:03 PM when I sat down at the computer. Just about 6 hours after I decided it was time to go for a ride. A somewhat laborious map tracing in google earth suggests that I rode about 185 miles today. Considering a ride to and from work, or the convention hotel takes a 20 mile chunk of travel, it’s only partial compensation for all the ‘utility’ riding I’ve done so far. But it’s a start. Who knows, maybe I’ll hit New Ulm next week.

Ride safe, have fun.

~Rusty