poltr1 | Recent Entries

Today I was helping a friend with posting signs and pricing items for a garage sale. As a way of saying thank you, he had me pick out an item. I picked out a Montgomery Ward portable multi-band radio, which picks up AM, FM, shortwave, CB, and a few other bands I wasn't familiar with. (The radio labeled them MB, AIR, PB1, and PB2.) I got home, cleaned the exterior with a baby wipe, sprayed compressed air on the innards, and the radio works quite well. I wish I had a spray that could eliminate corrosion on electronics parts -- WD-40 won't do -- so I can eliminate the static when I switch bands or turn the dial or move the antenna around.

After cleaning up the radio, I went online to look at the radio frequency spectrum chart, and looked at the bands in question. MB (Marine Band?) has from 1.6-4.5 MHz, i.e. high-end AM to lower-end shortwave. The shortwave band goes from 4.5-12 MHz, encompassing the time signals at 5 and 10 MHz. PB1 goes from 30-50 MHz, which convers land and mobile radio. The AIR (Aircraft) band goes from 108-137 MHz, i.e. aeronautical transmissions. PB2 goes from 146-175 MHz, which covers more land and mobile radio, as well as the weather radio frequencies and the audio for TV channel 7.

I am now wondering if the radios that can pick up the audio from the VHF band -- TV channels 2-13 -- will be rendered obsolete when TV broadcasting goes digital early next year. My radio doesn't have a TV band, so as far as I know, I'm not affected.

I wonder if it's too late for me to get into amateur radio. I could be my own DJ, playing electronica, space music, and filk for the entire world.

Current Music: WWV time signal

Had an interview with a solutions provider in Blue Ash today. The drive there was uneventful. The interview went well. After the interview, I went to Micro Center in Sharonville to try and pick up a 320 Gb EIDE drive. I have an empty hard drive enclosure that takes an EIDE drive. But alas, they were out of them, and I don't think there's a SATA-to-EIDE adapter that would fit. Then I went to Red Robin in West Chester for an early supper or late lunch.

As soon as I left the restaurant (around 4:30 pm), the trouble began. I got on to I-75 northbound, which was backed up. I called up ARTIMIS, which told me there was an accident up ahead; it was north of route 129 and the highway was closed at that point. It took me about an hour to move from Union Center Blvd. to Tylersville Rd, where I exited the highway. Tylersville was backed up, but not as bad as I-75. I wanted to take US 42 into Lebanon, but that intersection was also backed up with detoured traffic. I stopped at the Culver's near the WLW tower in Mason, used the restroom, and had some frozen custard. I got back on Tylersville and headed eastbound toward I-71, passing by Kings Island in the process. I didn't get home until 7 PM.

[Updated 26-Aug 01:05] There was no TV news coverage of the crash, but this brief article sums it up.

I hate sitting still in traffic. I think of the gas I and everyone else around me is wasting as we essentially idle. I'd rather be moving, which is why I often end up on these convoluted detours which take longer than staying in the traffic jam. I don't know the extent of the accident -- and I probably won't until the 11 o'clock news -- but it must have been serious if the highway was closed. The section of highway in question is currently being widedned from 3 lanes to 4, so it's a construction zone. My guess -- and I hope I'm wrong on this -- is someone failed to slow down to the posted speed limit and hit one of the workers. Don't people realize that haste is the number one cause of accidents? I want to have a bumper sticker with the words "What's your hurry?" on the back of my car. Meanwhile, an entire community of commuters are inconvenienced. I'm just glad I didn't have to pick up M today.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Supertramp, "Take The Long Way Home"

While going through Box 62, I found a few message threads which dealt with my voracious appetite for netnews, aka the Usenet. I read a lot of rec.* groups in college, and probably to my detrement. I even got into trouble with the system administrators because I'd either send batches of news articles to a person who was temporarily off the net, or I'd receive news articles from someone whose site didn't cut them off, thus running up our site's phone bills. (The way Usenet worked in the 1980s is that the machines would call each other and send both the mail messages and news articles in a store-and-forward fashion.)

As I re-read these messages from John and Gretchen, our system administrators, threatening to take away my Usenet access, I felt anger, and then sadness. What I didn't know at the time -- or even admit to -- was that I was addicted to Usenet. I even referred to myself as "The Usenet Junkie". My OCD, hoarder syndrome, and addctive personality aspects ganged up on me. But now that I'm aware of these aspects in my life, I can no longer cry victim. If I was in their position, would I have done the same thing? Perhaps, but I wouldn't have been as punitive.

I kept reading netnews until graduation. Then I had to quit cold turkey, since I no longer had access. That wasn't easy.

I guess I had Internet addiction before it was fashionable, or even recognized as a legitimate addiction.

Now I look back on my college days and think what an idiot I was back then. If I could have spent less time reading the rec.* groups, and maybe some more time reading the comp.* groups, I probably would have had a better grade point average than what I earned. I haven't gone back to Usenet, now known as Google Groups. There's so much information out there on Usenet that it's impossible to keep up. I wish I would have learned that lesson 20 years ago.

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Tangerine Dream, "Tangram Set 1"

I found another box of 20-year-old printouts in the storage unit. It was mostly mail I received from 1984-86 on the Unix systems at college.

It reminded me of the good times and the bad times; the good people and not-so-good people I knew.

Going through things goes much faster when I tell myself I don't need to keep any of it. But I still wanted to go through it in case there are "gems" I want to keep, like the line-printer printout of Spock holding a model of the Enterprise. Or the light-bulb joke involving the members of the original Enterprise.

This box has been marked "Go Thru" fore a few years. I'm glad I'm finally tackling it. This should have been done a long time ago.

Current Mood: accomplished

I've been watching the Olympics on NBC this past week. I've been somewhat satisfied with their coverage, but not overly impressed. ABC Sports still holds the gold standard, in my opinion. I realize that TV is a numbers game, and they're trying to deliver the maximum amount of viewers for their coverage.

( If I were in charge of programming, what would I be doing differently? )

Who else has been watching? What are your opinions of the coverage? Is the coverage different in other countries?

Current Mood: curious
Current Music: The Psychedelic Furs, "President Gas"

It's rare for me to spend a Saturday night in the summertime home alone. But I did.

Last night, I worked on an old Gateway computer, trying to fix it up for someone in one of the clubs I'm in. (AFAIK, he doesn't know he's receiving it.) I installed Windows 98 First Edition on it (which is what I was given), along with some device drivers I downloaded from gateway.com. This afternoon, I finished installing Adobe Reader 5 and OpenOffice 1.1.5 on it. (I happened to have a copy of Adobe Reader 5 on an old downloads DVD. Adobe apparently doesn't offer previous versions of Adobe Reader for unsupported systems.) In the process, I came across oldversion.com, a repository of older versions of freely-downloadable software. Their slogan: "Because newer isn't always better."

I'm also freecycling my first laptop, an NCR 3180, with its docking station. It's going to a computer engineer who's going to fix it up for his children. Several other people wanted it for school, but they probably don't realize (or care) how old and decrepit it is. No built-in CD-ROM, no USB port, the battery doesn't hold a charge, and the most recent OS it can run is Windows 95 B. It's probably good for text processing only, via Edit or Notepad.

Now that two of my outstanding computer projects have been completed, there's not a lot I want to get done. There's the decluttering, but I don't feel like doing that tonight. Saturday nights are for socializing.

And so I spent my evening watching the Olympics, and falling asleep before Michael Phelps swam his way towards Olympic history.

Current Mood: bored

Fri 8/8: Was mostly a recharge day as I spent most of it in bed. I don't know why, but I was just tired. Watched the second half of the opening ceremonies for the Olympics. Wow.

Sat 8/9: Went to Philip's BASEFILK party at Bass Lake. The guest list: Ann, Juanita,

jinny_e and son, Pat,

infobits, and

ladysoapmaker and kids. I introduced

athenawindsong to the filk community, who felt welcomed there. We also played a few hands of Fluxx.

athenawindsong and I left around 7:30pm to attend the annual Skinner party. Skinner and Yvonne are friends of mine who host an anniversary party of sorts. Lots of interesting guests, good conversation, and yummy food.

Sun 8/10: M didn't go to UU services with me. Afterward, I picked her up. We went to Adventure Golf, but left quickly after she saw a yellowjacket. We then went to the Dayton Mall to walk around and play. We then went back to my house for computer games. We had dinner at McDonalds and went shopping at Target before dropping her back home with R.

Current Music: The Olympics on NBC

In the past couple of weeks, I've seen a TV ad for a website called finallyfast.com. It advertises a free computer scanning service which is supposed to enhance one's PC's performance.

Naturally, I'm somewhat skeptical of the claims, remembering that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (TANSTAAFL). I'm also leery of any online service or program going through my PC and reporting its findings back to whoever is at the other end. ( But I thought I'd check them out. )

Current Mood: skeptical
Current Music: The Thompson Twins, "Into The Gap"

Earlier this week, Forbes magazine had a list of 10 cities that, in their estimation, were dying. The list includes my home town of Buffalo, New York, and my current city of residence: Dayton, Ohio. Their rankings were based on population decline, unemployment, and annualized GDP growth.

I'd have to agree with Forbes. The local GM plant in Moraine is scheduled to close in two years, and last week, they announced that they were getting rid of all 2nd shift workers. Tech Town, a high-tech business incubator project just east of downtown Dayton, hasn't visibly progressed beyond the initial groundbreaking.

Dayton is the home to NCR (once known as National Cash Register), their spin-off Teradata, Lexis-Nexis, Reynolds and Reynolds, their spin-off Workflow One, Standard Register, and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, to name a few of the major IT players in town. Despite the rich history of innovation here, it's tough to get a job in the area. That's one of the reasons why I'm considering relocating to either Cincinnati or Columbus.

Today's shout-outs: Happy belated birthday

zencuppa!

Current Mood: hurm.
Current Music: Dar Williams, "Mortal City"

Every so often, while channel surfing, I occasionally come across one of a small handful of people that I have no desire to listen to. I'll either press the mute button while saying "Shut up!" or hurriedly switch the channel while saying "Get off my TV!"

( Right now, the list is rather short: Pat Robertson, Bill O'Reilly, and Nancy Grace. )

Current Mood: snarky
Current Music: The Vapors, "Turning Japanese"

This afternoon, I pulled another box of computer prinouts out of the storage unit to go through. It contained posts from rec.arts.comics from 1987. I didn't have time to read through every post, so I quickly went through the printouts and put them in a carbdoard tote for recycling. After the box was done (about an hour later), I then drove to the local recycle dumpster and dumped them.

It's no longer worth my time to sift through printouts looking for a few articles I want to save. Every few years, I'd be repeating the process -- culling the ones I want to save and pitching the rest -- and I'd never be finished.

The reason I was hanging onto these posts is that a bunch of them had discussion on the Watchmen comic book series, as that was the time the series came out. Would people really be interested in 20-year-old Usenet posts? I once thought so, but now, I'm thinking "Probably not." Especially if they're not already in electronic format. These would take too long to scan and error-correct.

Thanks and a tip of the hat to

autographedcat, who steered me towards ljArchive, a Windows-based tool which enables LJ users to download an entire archive of one's own LJ (including comments) and search through it.

With the help of this tool, I found my original list of 25 things I'd miss if I left Dayton. The list is somewhat obsolete as the local Ritter's and the Thirsty Dog are now closed. (I believe there are still Thirsty Dog brewpubs in the Cleveland/Akron area, and supposedly, their brews are bottled and available in finer beer stores.)

Current Music: Timbuk 3, "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades"

Somewhere in my LJ, I made a post about 25 things I'd miss if I ever left Dayton. I can't seem to find it. So I'll have to start another list.

These are the times I really wish LJ had a feature which enabled people to search their own journals. (I have the spider-killer on so Google has no knowledge or record of these pages.)

( And now, the list.... )

...how I feel about yesterday's shooting at a Knoxville, TN UU church. I'm saddened, shocked, and angered, to say the least.

Part of me wants vengeance, to put the man accused of the shooting before a firing squad. Or worse, do it in such a way to maximize his pain and agony.

Another part of me says he deserves justice, no matter how heinous his crime.

And another part of me wonders if the same could happen at my congregation. I believe we already have safeguards in place, but I should double-check.

Current Mood: mixed

Now comes the fun part: loading stuff into boxes for easy transport. I tend to have everything spread out and/or stacked in piles. I'm visually oriented, so I like to be able to see what I have. This, of course, leads to the appearance of having things cluttered. Hopefully when I box everything together, it would appear less cluttered.

But I gotta go through the stuff. Most of the clutter is paperwork. That takes time, unless I blitzkrieg my way through the piles. Tonight I found a pile of pizza coupons and coupon books from early 2007. Into the recycle bucket it all went, one piece at a time.

Oh, and I did see Part 1 of "The Stolen Earth", the series 4 finale for "Doctor Who". As I said in a comment to another LJ-friend who was blown away by the episode, "Excuse me while I pick up my jawbone from the floor." Part 2 is next week.

Shout-outs: Happy birthday

agraywitch!

Current Music: Living In A Box, "Living In A Box"

Went to Columbus today to fill out my starting paperwork for $EMPLOYER. I still don't have an official start date, as the manager at $NEW_CLIENT is on vacation this week. I'm guessing I start either next week or the week after. A tentative date was listed; if it changes, they'll write in the new date and I'll initial it.

I also had to take the pee test, which I did after filling out the paperwork.

( Then I went looking at apartments, went shopping at Micro Center, and had lunch. )

Yesterday, I took a Graco Pack & Play and an Arm's Reach cosleeper to the local Once Upon A Child. I stopped over today and found that they had passed (i.e. declined to buy) both items. The Pack & Play has a small hole in the mesh, and the cosleeper is just too worn to be considered "gently used".
I tried to take some baby clothes there last year, but they passed on them too, for cat hair.

There's another consignment store nearby, but they won't accept items unless they're in pristine mint condition.

Why is it so hard to get rid of baby items? What should I do next? I could try donating them and taking the tax writeoff, but I'd rather have the cash. And I'm not in a good location for a yard sale.

Current Mood: aggravated

After several hours of flipping channels over several days, it's true: 90% of television programs are crap. No wonder I watch so much sports on TV. That and the Weather Channel.

Most sitcoms leave me unimpressed, and the rest of the network fare is just plain boring. And infomercials? Oh please.

The worst times for programming are in the afternoon and late evening/early morning.

I realize that TV execs view their medium as commercials with a program around them. But if you want me to watch the program, make it interesting for me.

Current Music: 2News

Fri 7/18: Didn't do much. Cooked up some bratwurst and sausage on the grill for lunch. Skipped Dark Knight because I didn't want to shell out $10 for a movie. Got a phone call with some great news: a job offer.

Sat 7/19: Didn't do much, although I probably should have. Skipped the Dayton Air Show, since I didn't want to shell out money for a ticket and stand outside in the hot humid air. Had steak and eggs at the Waffle House. Went to bd's Mongolian Grilll for dinner, using my free birthday meal coupon.

Sun 7/20: Brought M to church with me for some UU churchy goodness, as one of my LJ-friends calls it. Went to Hardee's for lunch and then to Splash Moraine for the afternoon. The evening was capped with a dinner at Sake Japanese Steak House with friends from the Bismarck -- Jack, Suzanne, Kevin, Lisa, Rebecca, Rick, Dennis, and Eric.

Today I go the the local U-Haul store to get some boxes and label tape.

All of Jack and Suzanne's stuff has been moved out of their old house and into their new house a few blocks away. Now I can rest my body for a few days. And think about the amount of stuff I'd have to move when it comes time to move out of the condo. At least most of it's in boxes.

Current Music: The Weather Channel

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Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

(A Virtual Tavern)

Recent Entries

I got a new radio.....

I hate it when traffic arteries get clogged....

Confessions of an early Internet addict......

Box 62....

My thoughts on NBC's Olympic coverage.....

Another Saturday night, and I ain't got nobody....

TW-3 for August 8-10, 2008......

Anyone else see the ad for finallyfast.com?

Is Dayton a dying city? Forbes says yes.

"Get off my TV!"

Box 75.....

Found it!

What I'll miss about Dayton...

Words cannot express.....

Boxing Days....

Pre-Employment stuff taken care of....

Getting rid of baby stuff isn't easy.....

Sturgeon's Law as applied to television....

TW-3 for July 18-20, 2008.....

It's done.