An Exercise in Focus, Writing, and Gratitude

In 321 days I’ll turn 60. One of those arbitrary, round-number birthdays (though a friend often argues our “real” birthday’s are 280 days earlier). Nine years ago I did a “what I believe” post on my 50th, and I kind of expect to do the same again.

Between then and now I want to model one of the people I admire – Seth Godin. Seth posts something on his blog every day, and I’ve recently learned that he often doesn’t know what it is he’s about to write until he sits down to write it.

This appeals to me personally for a few reasons:

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This was never the goal….

This was never the goal, but when it became clear that it was within reach, it became a “stretch goal”. I wanted to be able to say I’d lost 70lbs. 256 to 186. Over a quarter of my max body weight. It’s interesting – there have been several stops along the way on this journey. … Read more

Lucky 13

As I do each year about this time, in honor of the anniversary of Ask Leo!, it’s time to share the weird, the odd, and the sometimes funny questions that I get. However this year I have a dilemma! So few to share? Traffic’s steady (Ask Leo! gets ~1,000,000 visitors each month), and there’s no … Read more

Today’s Amazement and Wonder

As you may or may not know, my parents were immigrants, arriving first in Canada after leaving The Netherlands, and then settling here in the United States just a few years later. With all relatives nearly 5,000 miles to the east, communication consisted primarily of hand-written letters that took anywhere from a week to ten … Read more

Dagmar Spring Update

It’s been awhile since I posted an update on Dagmar’s chemotherapy, so … No news is very good news. Dagmar finished her chemotherapy a couple of weeks ago and all is well. As I was telling our regular vet just the other day, aside from the original discovery, and one trip to the ER, and … Read more

The Important Opportunity Missed in “Disrupt Aging”

Disrupt Aging: A Bold New Path to Living Your Best Life at Every Age by Jo Ann Jenkins Before I step into my concerns I want to be very clear about something: this is an excellent book. The concept of what it means to “age” is rapidly changing. To quote the book: Today most of us … Read more

Dagmar Update

Since the last post was all about Dagmar’s ER visit, I didn’t want to leave that as the most recent post here on my blog. Short version: chemotherapy continues, but she’s doing really well. Ever since the events that lead up to the ER visit (and the errors made by the vet there), we’ve been … Read more

Dagmar at the ER vet….

(Originally posted on Facebook, moved here for easier access for friends not on Facebook….) Dagmar’s at the emergency vet [Thursday], and may be there for a day or so. (Update: she’s home! See updates below.) After Monday’s chemotherapy she started to take a somewhat expected dive yesterday morning, refusing food. (Never a good sign in … Read more

Life is Suffering

The first of the four noble truths, as articulated by The Buddha, depending on how you translate it, is simply this: Life is suffering. In recent months it seems that in an above-average number of my circle of friends and acquaintances there has been an above-average amount of what can only be termed suffering. From … Read more

One Dozen Down

Has it really been 12 years since I started Ask Leo!? Holy… well, holy something. (I’ve found that someone will get offended at whatever I put there. Sigh.) Anyhoo… as is my tradition here are some of the odd, strange and off-the-wall questions I’ve received over the course of the last year. All in their unedited … Read more

Making Windows 8 Work for Radios

Ever since Windows 8 came out life has not been simple for folks programming radios. The problems were many:

  • The Windows 8 tiled interface bothers a lot of people.
  • Drivers for USB programming cables wouldn’t work in Windows 8.
  • Programming software for some radios wouldn’t recognize Windows 8 as a supported operating system.

At least, those are the problems I’ve encountered and heard of.

As of today I have them all solved for my little corner of amateur radio and more.

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The 80% Solution

Earlier this year I stumbled into a very serendipitous series of news reports. And I spent a few minutes visiting a new web site. And I made a new friend.

More importantly I made a decision.

As a result, I have become my own 80/20 rule.

Vague enough? OK, here’s what happened.

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Lucky Eleven

It’s that time of year again where I celebrate the anniversary of Ask Leo! by sharing some of the off-the-wall questions that I’ve received over the course of the year.

This year the number seems smaller than usual. Not sure if we’re holding our weirdness to a higher standard, or if the number of oddball requests is decreasing.

Nonetheless, exactly as submitted, with the answer I’d love to give, this years WTH (What The Heck? – or something like that) questions.

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Portable Pole Version 3

Pole version 1 was a feeble affair attempting to use plastic conduit. Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.

I’ve written about version 2, and was quite pleased with how it turned out. It remains a viable solution for many situations. It’s also a proper subset of version 3.

Version 3 adds two new pieces of hardware for a more stable, and further reaching solution.

Portable Pole Kit
(Click for larger image.)

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Portable Pole

One of the lessons learned from our group’s activities at the Oso mudslide was that sometimes it would be very, very, VERY handy to be able to get an antenna up in the air – say an additional 20 to 30 feet – to get over nearby obstacles and otherwise get a better and clearer signal – both in and out.

As a result, I now have a portable (loosely defined) pole/mast that in theory could get up to 40 feet high.

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APRS – I wanna be heard!

At an event last year I was one of a handful of amateur radio operators who used a smartphone application (APRSDriod in my case) to report my position to the operation control center via APRS (Automated Packet Reporting System, often erroneously yet somewhat more accurately referred to as Automated Position Reporting System). Other than draining the battery if unplugged, the smartphone aps actually do a pretty good job of mimicking an APRS radio.

As long as there’s cellular coverage, that is.

And that’s, indeed, where portions of that exercise stumbled. As it turns out relatively large areas of the routes we were covering were cellular dead-zones, depending on the carrier. As a result our position often wasn’t being updated in anything close to a timely fashion. While I was safely and calmly riding around in my vehicle, my understanding is that chaos and frustration resulted back at net control.

I resolved not to contribute to that problem this year and set out to assemble a “real” APRS radio.

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Puppy Kiss

The various photo-sharing sites I use don’t support animated GIF files, but this was too cute not to share: More from our visit to the breeder here.

The Purse

The address on the driver’s license made it pretty clear: the home of the woman pictured no longer existed.

I’d volunteered to spend a day at the Oso slide area working on what was called “property reunification” – essentially bagging and tagging items that the search and rescue crews had recovered and identified as potentially valuable in the hopes their owners – or surviving family members – would be able to identify and claim their belongings. Even though no radio work was involved, having been previously vetted when I joined my emergency communications group allowed me to volunteer to work at the site.

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