Cats

Events Special and Otherwise

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Yesterday we, the club I belong to, held a special event to mark the anniversary of the birth of Marie Doro, a local who was a very well known actress in the early 1900s. She was very famous on stage and in silent films and was the first American actor invited to appear before the British royalty!. She was born here in Duncannon PA and is buried here, though she lived the majority of her life elsewhere. In a perfect world, running a Special Event would be simple. Since when has this world been perfect? There is quite a process involved starting with getting the club interested in hosting the event to announcing the event and getting the announcement published in QST magazine and on QRZ.com to painstaking work designing the certificate to securing a venue to hold the event to procuring equipment to enticing people to operate the radios and bring food, chairs, tables and other odds and ends. anyway, we did it. I even made a batch of chili which was a big hit. I even brought one of my mascot owls, Tootsie to supervise. He approved of the radio activity.

Not so long ago in a galaxy next door ….

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Today the weather turned out nice. It started out rainy but then turned sunny. I was able to beat Satan’s Putting Green into submission and we planted some gourd seeds in the hopes of obscuring part of the yard in vines for most of the Summer.

A funny thing happened this past Saturday. My wonderful wyfe has been wanting an all black kitten for ages. I finally found her one. After doing some schedule juggling we arranged to meet up with the nice lady who had such a kitten and she brought us a choice of 2 10 week old all black male kittens. Of course we took both of them. Meet Dipper and Kalamazoo:

Trust me, they are a lot cuter in person.

I have also come to the realization that I really do live out in the sticks. Here is my proof:

So until we meet again, happy snails and Namaste!

Beware the Ideals of March

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Here it is again, the middle of March. We went for a bit of a ride but the animals were not cooperating. It is currently 2 C outside with the winds between 10 and 26 KPH so I think the ruminants are huddled in the treeline wrapped up in squirrels and robins for warmth. Typical March weather in the Northeast.It is okay, it gives me an excuse for idleness on my day off. I can sit here drinking coffee and listening to folks on the ham radio bands. The stove is running well and keeping it nice and warm in here. I am trying to work a special event station celebrating National PI Day but not having luck so far. They are located in NJ but are right now on 20M which is a bit long to reach here. Hopefully they will QSY to 40M sooner or later. My cats are behaving which translates out to they are asleep. Overall a good day. I have an appointment tomorrow at the ophthalmologist so that I can be informed that my retinopathy has progressed and my cataracts are a bit bigger. It is a yearly ritual; almost pagan in nature. I think I will relapse into a semi-vegatative state for now and lose myself in the comforting white noise of 40M.

Namaste, kidlets.

At Least My Kitties Love Me!

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Of course the title has nothing to do with the subject. I hope everyone is well though that is a hope based in futility as if everyone is well then there is no basis of comparison, now is there?

I had some fun this past Sunday. I belong to an online Morse Code radio club called FISTS which sponsors a quarterly contest. In February, May, August and November, they hold 2 two hour contests. Since they are short duration contests they are called Sprints. The goal is to contact as many other stations as you can within the 2 hour time frame. There are 3 entry catagories: high power, low power and group. I was working low power (5 watts). I was able to make several contacts and was lucky enough to contact 8 different states. Each state gives a multiplier which ups the score. All in all I scored a very decent score for working a single band and a low power station. I am looking forward to the Spring Sprint in May.

More information can be found at fistsna.org and information on ham radio can be found at arrl.org. Information about the Perry County Amateur Radio Club and the special event station we will be running can be found at https://perrycountyarc.org/event/celebrating-marie-doro/ and also at https://www.qrz.com/db/KC3TKC

It is a coffee and radio kinda day

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Wow! I am sitting here yawning and it is only 1623 est. Even copious amounts of coffee don’t seem to help. It is -2 C outside … the kind of day you want to sit inside and do inside things. I was on the radio for a bit, chatting with a few folks after i did my due diligence on my exorcise bike. My wyfe joined me and we spent the time killing things on the video game. It is a great way to distract yourself when you are exorcising. Now I am sitting here contemplating my next course of inaction. My kittehs are all snoozing in the warmth of the stove so I can’t interact with them. My wyfe is cocooning. Well I guess I will have to get back on the radio and see if I can scare up any more people to bother. I am getting a lot better with the cootie key which is a lot easier on my arm. I think it was a good purchase.

Well enough for now. Namaste y’all

A Dark and Stormy Night

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Well, as much as a cliche as it is, it IS a dark and stormy night. I am sitting here in the living room watching my livestock. The cats are laying in various strategic positions, soaking up the heat from the stove. My fish are swimming around as fish tend to do and my hermit crabs are wandering their tank and chirping at each other.

Got a bunch of stuff done today. Went to a local farmers market and got some chocolates for my mother-in-law. She has a sore leg due to falling over a cat. We also went to lunch and then went to a grocery store to do shopping for us and to pick up a few things for my MIL. After we got home I did some riding on my stationary bike while playing a video game. It distracts me from the fact that I am actually exercising and gives my wyfe and I some interactive time. When I got done with that I, with the help of my ever patient wyfe, changed the water in the fish tanks. The majority of our fish are, like our cats, rescues. A lot of them were slated to be food for other fish or were supposed to be bait. I have gold fish (feeders that are over 2 years old), rosy reds which are a type of minnow used as feeders and fathead minnows which are used as bait. I also have cory cats, plecos, a female betta and a otto cat. No, not all in the same tank lol.

After all that I got on the radio for a bit. I am trying to perfect my skills with a sideswiper (also called a cootie) key. It is quite a change from a straight key but I am getting there. Most people are patient. There was one whose callsign will not be mentioned that was put out with me because my keying was not perfect and his computer couldn’t decode it. I guess listening and decoding in his head was too onerous a task. lol Well I am going to finish my coffee and enjoy the warmth. A lot can be learned from kittehs.

TTFN and namaste 🙂

E-mail and Whine

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It is amazing how much we depend on e-mail. When it doesn’t work, it can get very stressful. My ISP (which I will not name) either changed its name to fool people into thinking it was something new or got bought out by another company. I thought my old ISP was horrible for customer service and I didn’t think it could get any worse. Boy, was I mistaken. The new company is beyond reprehensible when it comes to customer service. First off, if you call them, they make it almost impossible to speak with a human. If, on some offhand chance, you do reach a human they tell you to access their webpage for troubleshooting “tips”. You can also chat with a bot which will ask you irrelevant questions. I was finally able to get my emails. The human I spoke with did not seem to comprehend that since the server migration I have received the same e-mail 47 times. I deleted 47 copies of the same bloody email. Oh well

Enough of that. It is a nice balmy 2C outside and inside is is 25C. I am enjoying the heat from my pellet stove as are my cats. This past week there were 2 special event stations commemorating the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I was able to work both stations. Radio conditions have been good, and I have been working a lot of CW contacts. Now it is time to put my feets up, relax and drink a very good ale. TTFN

Coffee, kitties and CW

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Yup, a nice Autumn day. It is 18C outside and overcast. A good afternoon to sit here sending CQs to the world. I started out on 10M on the frequency of 28.050MHz and worked a station in Arizona. I changed to the 12M band on 24.910. Nothing. That is the way it goes. I sought a lower frequency to work. I went to 18.085MHz to try my luck. The 17M band can be a good on at times, lots of DX or West Coast. I did have a ham tell me he could hear my signal down in Alabama very strongly. I am also seeing spots on the RBN and other spotting pages. Things may be looking up as I go down in frequency. I worked a station in Colorado. Not too shabby. I refilled my coffee and gave vittles to the livestock (my fish, my hermit krabs and my kitties). Sent out another series of calls on 18.085 MHz. Then I worked a ham from Texas who I had last worked back in 2007. Tempus fugit. Went to my old standby band, 40M. I can always find someone to work on 40M. Sent a series of calls on 7.113MHz. It is in the old Novice portion of 40 but I often find people on here. Of course when I am the FIST Sprints I tend to hang around on 7.059 to 7.062 if I am not on 20M. I am glad they started the Sprints back up and I hope they become popular again.

Well it has been an interesting couple of hours but I am going to take a break from radioing. I think I will design my next batch of been.

Namaste, kidlets

There’s a cat chewing on my arm!

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Bet that got your attention. 🙂 I am sitting by the window watching a beautiful day go by. My cats are nearby including Mayhem, my little sweet girl who was chewing on me a minute ago. My big motional sports cat, Marley, is laying down by my feet and taking up a shitload of floor space. Basically I am chilling. I just finished 3 days in a row at work and only have tonight off before I have to work another 2 days. It is no biggie. I am used to it. I also have to look at my work sched and figure out when to schedule a dentist appointment, a doctor appointment and a routine blood draw. Lots of fun. I also have to consider when I am next going to brew some beer. That is not a chore, it is fun. I have some kveik yeast in my fridge (Lutra strain) and I will make a starter before I brew. In a few minutes I am going to go upstairs and ride my exorcise bike while killing stuff on my PS4. It is a way of distracting myself from the fact that I am exorcising. Tonight I will get on my radio for a few. I will try to make some SKCC and FISTS contacts. What are those? Well SKCC is Straight Key Century Club and FISTS is the international Morse Code Preservation Society, both fun groups to belong to. I will include links to their web pages below. Here is a link to a page which tells me what propagation conditions are like on the ham bands: https://hamradiofornontechies.com/current-ham-radio-conditions/

It explains very nicely what the numbers mean. SKCC page is: https://www.skccgroup.com which describes the group and FISTS is: https://fistsna.org

Well enough for now. I am going to pet Mayhem and let her chew on me before I go exorcise.

Namaste y’all

The Power Is Yours

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I had the opportunity to do some troubleshooting the other day. I was operating my HF radio on 10.111 MHz and suddenly it turned off. It came right back on and I continued. A short while later it turned off and stayed off. Hmmm … A small table light stayed on (plugged into the same power bar as my power supply) so I knew the issue had to be either the power supply or my radio. I turned on my VHF radio and it came on. I did observe one of my cats in the general vicinity of the back of my desk where my wiring is. I turned the power supply off and looked around the back where the radios attach. Sure enough, the positive wire from my HF rig was disconnected. It turned out that the spade connector had come off after being interacted with by one of my catz (bad crimping on my part). I crimped on a new connector and attached it to the power supply. When I turned everything on, the HF radio powered up and has had no further issues. Problem solved. Why am I sharing this? Maybe to illustrate the point that it is always best to check the simple solutions before you dig yourself in to much deeper territory. If I had started with the radio as the issue, I would have spent several hours testing and finding nothing. Instead I looked at the simple things first and fixed the problem in just a few minutes.

Namaste, Y’all