Category: Uncategorized

Well, I will no longer be using Facebook. I logged in on my desktop for the last time today. It’s all ready been deleted off my phone, along with Instagram.

Parler is glitchy, I’ve been using it more frequently this year, and I guess it’s the only option. It is on a temporary hiatus as they build their own servers up this week, but it will do.

I’m also in the process of setting up a private social media server base on Wordpress, for friends and family. It’s a bit tricky, and I don’t have the time to dedicate to it, right now, but I’m hoping it will be up and running great next month. (Assuming the Second Coming still hasn’t happened before then.)

So, from now on, the best place to find my active online presence is right here.

Today is the fourth day that the United States Postal Service is refusing to deliver mail to my mailbox. Any mail. No tracks at all in the snow, not even to the neighbors mailboxes.

It’s also the second day that I have no running water. Again. In the past, it’s been a lack of electricity that turns the heaters off causing the pipes to freeze. A 14-1/5 hour power outage and circuit breakers popping to be particular. This time, all circuit breakers are on, and all heaters (two pipe heaters on the pipes, one magnetic oil-pan heater on the bottom of the brand-new pressure tank, and a 750 watt utility heater) are on. The pump-house is very warm, well* above freezing and all pipes below the pump-house are buried 5 feet deep, so I’ve been told.

It’s the… I don’t even know how many days I have been keeping the second chicken waterer in the house and switching it out with the one in the coop. I do know, that last year I did not have that problem. I never had frozen water in the chicken waterer last year, not a single time.

I also keep a utility heater in the laundry room. Because of that, and the fact that this winter I have more laying hens, I keep the eggs in there. ALL the eggs froze yesterday. Two dozen eggs in mashed paper egg boxes froze, right above the utility heater.

I took preventative measures this fall to avoid every single problem I’m having. Not one of them prevented any of the problems I wanted to avoid. Not a single one.

*Pun intended.

All my life I wanted to have a radio base station. The Dukes of Hazard county had their CB’s and remember Alf? The character who was the family’s father had a base station.

Fast forward to adulthood and I was envisioning a base station in my camper, and handhelds for my hikes. Sitting at camp one day with my dad, I told him my plans, but he wasn’t interested. In fact related a story about radio from the late 70’s when CB was the rage. He had hopped on the band wagon and then received a phone call from my grandpa to tell him he was going to call him on the radio later. That was a total turn-off for my dad, how idiotic was it to call someone on the phone to tell him he was going to call him on the radio?

Roughly 14 years later, I was surprised to hear my dad tell me that he was getting into ham radio. In fact, he was a technician class operator, and he was asking me if I would be interested in it. He explained to me that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was pushing members to become amateur radio operators for emergency purposes and that’s the reason he was now interested in it.

Well, I purchased a Baofeng handheld transceiver on June 27 of last year and have been monitoring the Malad link of the Intermountain Intertie ever since. It’s actually down right now, and has been for going on 3 months now, at least I think it is since I haven’t heard a peep from it since the beginning of December.

Originally, I was dead set against getting a call sign, since I’m a natural born American citizen and cannot be legally or lawfully compelled to license or register myself or my property. I took several months to study the United Stated code (U.S.C.) and the code of federal regulations (C.F.R.) concerning amateur radio. What I found would probably shock and maybe anger all amateur radio operators. I won’t go into any detail about that at this time, as it suffices me to say that I decided to go ahead and get a call sign.

I made the decision to get my call sign about 1 week before Thanksgiving 2014 and purchased the 3 American Radio Relay League (A.R.R.L.) training manuals along with their “Operating Manual”. They arrived the first week of December and I put all my normal activities on hold while I dedicated two full months to study for the three exams.

My study method was three fold: The first thing I did was record me reading the question pool and correct answers; I would listen to that first thing every day and while I was working; And finally, I used the manuals exactly as they were intended. It’s a miracle that I wasn’t dreaming about the exams, or the study material. 😀

I did get really stressed out as the exam date got closer and I purchased Gordon West’s amateur extra CD course. It arrived about a week or two before the exam date. It was fun to listen too, but since it was designed to go with his own textbook, which I did not get, I don’t think it really helped me. I ended up sending them to my dad who is going for his extra class status this week.

The exam session was 50 miles away, and I didn’t want the hassle of returning later so not only did I take all three exams when the day came, I took enough money for 2 make-up exam. I was prepared to fail at least one exam and thought it would be the general class exam. That was unnecessary as I passed all three exams first and only try. 😀

And, now that I am an amateur radio operator, I need to move out of my house because the owner of the house I rent does not want me to put up an antenna. 🙁 I was hoping to spend this month building a high frequency (HF) transceiver, but now I’m sorting through possessions and packing and throwing things out, and looking for a now place to live, which I haven’t found yet.

My plans for the hobby is to make my own radios and antennas and collecting QSL cards. I have no interests in the least bit of emergency communications.

My first radio build is going to be the Minima and after that, my goal is to build everything in the book Crystal Sets to Sideband. The author of Crystal Sets to Sideband, Frank W. Harris, KØIYE, recommends buying an A.R.R.L. handbook from the 1980s. I found a 1986 version on eBay, and purchased it. I love it. I cannot wait to get started making some of the devices in it, like the antenna analyzer and other testing equipment.

Had this wild idea to learn international morse cose about two months ago and found ‘The Ham Whisperer. At first, I thought I liked it. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it past the third lesson.

I had to give up on the him for learning. I just cannot tell the dit from the dahs and associate them with letters. But one thing he said at the beginning has stuck with me. He claims that memorizing morse code is like memorizing a song. I thought, ‘well if that’s true, why aren’t you teaching like a song?’
Then yesterday, someone posted an old military training course for morse code that emphasized the rhythm of international morse code: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNfiWmuqvGo&index=1&list=PLV_ZgDDShz2VB_h-GpHg4LbSfW4wCR7Xb

If that video were long enough to cover the whole code, I could easily learn morse code. It’s very entertain and well produced. After that, someone posted a link to Phil Kawa’s music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_qQZ92onhU&index=2&list=PLV_ZgDDShz2VB_h-GpHg4LbSfW4wCR7Xb

Now, I’m pretty sure I’ll be learning the cod, once I pass these exams this coming Saturday.

Good riddance to an old favorite.

I absolutely LOVED the first three seasons of Community, back then the writing was awesome and the acting superior to anything on television and the show starred Chevy Chase.  Then came season four; What a disgrace, writing just plain sucked and cast tensions shined through the scenes.

With the departure of Chevy Chase, I lost all interest in season five of the show. After-all, Alison Brie is cute and sexy and all, but she can’t carry that particular ensemble show. I don’t know, maybe it would have been at least mediocre if Donald Glover had not left also.

Some people, on a whim, will fix… French Toast for dinner. On a whim last week, I decided to fix a full out turkey meal, like the kind found on Thanksgiving day, for dinner sometime this week.

I bought the turkey last week and checked every day (after the first few, of course) to see if it was thawed. I rummaged through my collection of EveryDay With Rachael Rae magazines for my favorite turkey day recipes, November 2011. I had fixed the Kiss-of-lemon Roast Turkey (p. 127) a few years ago, and it was a big hit that Thanksgiving (It was me and my sister), along with the Classic Bread Stuffing With Sausage (p. 133), the Ruby Port Cranberry Jelly (which I personally did not like), and the Buttery Mashed Potatoes (p. 147). I fix those potatoes often. And it was those exact items I was craving!

Now, the first time I try a recipe, I follow it exact, if I like, I use it unchanged, if I don’t like it, I’ll note suggestions for next time.So there is a great deal of leeway when I make a meal. This time round, I could not find my zester, which was no big deal as last time I didn’t think the turkey had enough lemon flavor, this time, I had five lemons on hand. I have two left over, and I think it was the perfect amount of lemon flavor.

since I didn’t like the cranberry jelly last time, I stuck with the simplest recipe, which called for one cup of sugar and one cup of water and three cups of fresh cranberries. Yummy. I like it, but next time, I think I’ll add a few things to make seem a bit more complicated and unique.

The stuffing is my favorite! I’ll never change that. It is, in itself, a great anytime meal. I love it and will never change it intentionally. This time though, I made the mistake of not halving the ingredients. I didn’t even notice till after the sourdough bread was prepared and the sausage was all fried up. I kept looking at the recipe and saying really, “two large onions?”, it was when I was chopping those onion that I remembered, “oh yeah, last time I halved the recipe ahead of time…” Ooops.

The only change I make to the potatoes is, when I’m just fixing for me, I simply omit the cream, and don’t spend too much time mashing.

I did bake three loaves of bread the night before also, I was too tired by the time I cooked them, that I just thought, “screw it, I’m not going to let them rise any more”, and went ahead and baked them so I could go to bed. They turned out great, just not high of course. It was a new recipe, and next time I try it, I’ll ignore their destructions and follow my own tried and true and quick instructions, just with it’s ingredients.

Here are some pictures:

Doh! The pictures are on my phone because the battery for the camera was dead, and I don’t have a memory card for the phone because why would I ever use a telephone to take pictures?!!!

Well, here’s the Facebook picture I took after the battery charged while I was carving the turkey.