The odds

There is a significant non-zero chance that my work laptop is going to be accidentally dropped into a bathtub or the toilet before it is life-cycled next August. With every [un]docking turning into an exercise in willing the video driver to not BSOD I’m just about ready to hasten its demise.

This crap doesn’t happen with my MacBook running linux. Just sayin’.

Calling CQ

Calling CQ is still a weird thing for me. I mostly just spin the dial and hope to find someone else calling CQ; or even better someone calling CQ DX or CQ Contest. These are great because it’s a narrow set of conversational topics. You get an RST, you give an RST, you exchange QTH and probably a handle and maybe compare equipment. Then you move on.

For an introvert like me, this is tops because I get to make a contact and send off a QSL card (and hopefully get one back) without having to stumble through an open-ended conversation.

I’ve called CQ myself twice since the HF rig went on the air at the beginning of September. The first call resulted in a nice QSO with a ham in central Pennsylvania. A bit generic, but nice. And I was so frazzled at the end of that I dropped the frequency.

Tonight I called CQ and ended up making contact with KB1TUR in Northwest Maine. It was a great QSO where we talked about home and micro brews as well as the standard ham topics. At 11 minutes, that is by far my longest QSO. Unfortunately the band started shifting and we started losing each other in the noise.

At any rate it seems there is a standing offer to boil up some lobsters in Maine if I manage to find myself in the area with a trunk full of homebrew. So I have that going for me. Which is nice.

The real question—and one that wasn’t asked during the QSO—who has the better mustache?

A mustache to rival mine?
A mustache to rival mine?

Next great idea

From the list of things to do when I win the lottery:

#59 Pimp an office chair with hydraulics, chrome-reverse caster wheels, and Rat Fink era eight-ball shifter + lever for controlling seat height. Factory options

  • Sound system preloaded with Santana’s Low Rider
  • Composting toilet seat
  • Neon “batin!” sign

Cross posted under reasons I should never win the lottery, #59.

Silver linings

For lunch I chose the bad Chinese food vendor over the bad pasta vendor. My internals are beginning to convince the brain that this was a bad idea. There are hours until I can deal with this regally. [read: upon my proper throne]

On the plus side, I received a “Get out of grizzly bear free” card in my cookie. Today’s fortune:

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.

“Hey, Mrs. Bear, I wasn’t trying to get between you and your cubs or your honeycombs or your dumpster, or whatever seems to upset you so much. I’m just trying to understand you, man.”

Does not have upper management written all over him

I hate interviews. Not to brag, but I think I’m a pretty good interviewee–at least based on interview::hire percentages. Still, uncomfortable occasions.

But, fffuuuuhhhhhhhh…being the interviewer is orders of magnitude worse. My people battery is completely drained and it’s barely the afternoon.

Nag nag nag nag nag

The smart watch is a pretty cool thing to have around. Except it’s like the biggest nag on the planet. This probably says more about me than it does the technology though.

  1. The default proposed “activity” goal of 10,000 points per day is just not happening. I’m thinking that if this was a smart ring and sat on one of my typing fingers I’d have this knocked out before lunch. But it sits on my wrist and so my watch thinks I’m a fat, lazy bastard. Which I am. So there is that.
  2. Alerts! For the who-knows-how-many-timeth today it has let me know that the Maple Leafs and Islanders play tonight. [Hush, the Islanders are my dirty secret–don’t tell the Canucks.] It’s just picking up what’s on Google Now from my phone and regurgitating that back to me. I could fix that by swiping that card but I like having that card there. Intermittently during the games I can check my phone and get scores in one place. So I don’t want to swipe that yet. Besides, if I swipe that it’ll just tell me that Vancouver is playing Dallas tonight…which is a game I’m more interested in any way. I could swipe that one too but then there’s whatever else Google Now thinks I need to know now. But, still, I don’t need to know this every [sync period that seems to be about 20 minutes]. So, watch, do a little tracking of state and run that alert like a marquee at least. Can we try that?

But the rest of it? Great fun. Sometimes I purposely lose my phone just so I can hit the “Find Phone” button and then do just that. Calling and texting people Dick Tracy style is pretty fun. Managing Spotify from my wrist is fun. I always know the time (weird, huh?) but also the current weather and temperature. And wearing a watch is a cool thing that I think I forgot about when my last watch battery died and I just ditched it for the phone instead of replacing the battery.

So that’s my review of the Toq after having lived with it for a few weeks. Thanks again, baby! You treat me too well.

Good DX

Was able to make two international contacts this evening and they couldn’t have been more different.

First was a gentleman in Brasil who runs a veritable QSO factory. When he taps you on the head it’s call sign, name, and signal report. If he’s feeling particularly generous he’ll give you his nickname. Dude makes at least 60 contacts an hour.

Then I’m tooling around the 40 meter band and hear one of the most enthusiastic voices nattering on to some gentleman in mixed Italian and English about a QRP <—> QRP QSO they made a while back. From the sounds of it, they managed to talk at 100 milliwatts between Italy and Wisconsin…and let’s just all agree to agree that this is an impressive feat without my need to natter on as to why this is so.

So they wrap it up and it takes me about two more QSOs he’s making with folks on the East Coast before I figure out his call sign. I got through on my very first attempt and we chatted for several minutes. I only wish I knew Italian other than how to order a loaf of penis (thanks, Elizabeth, for that instructional story). Not to worry, I didn’t try that one out on him. Still it was the funnest DX QSO I’ve made in the short time I’ve been on the air.

So tomorrow it’s off to the USPS to send a couple of cards out via airmail. Super excited to get my reply card from Stagno Lombardo. The card from Eusebio should prove nearly as exciting.