AO-51 – what an experience

I thought I would work an amateur radio satellite, but I was reading about AO-51 and how it was workable with an HT on FM, before that, you needed packet or SSB and equipment I didn’t have. After reading up on AO-51, I decided to try and work it.

First attempt, 8:20PM EST 03/30/2005
From the deck behind my house: I tuned my scanner to 435.300, snapped on my 2m/440 whip and listened closely through my headphones w/ the squelch off. Its too bad I only had the stock 2m rubber duck on my HTX-202, I tried to make contact using 145.920 ctcss 67hz, but I didn’t seem to be getting through and heard nothing.

Second Attempt 9:59PM EST 03/30/2005
From my front steps: I again listened closely to 435.300 without hearing a thing. I called a few times on 145.920 but couldn’t hear myself or anyone else. Then, it happened, no, nobody heard me, probably because of my rubber duck, but I heard part of a QSO, man, that was cool. Just hearing those faint FM signals in what is probably one of the worst receivers I could have picked for the job (RS Pro-60 scanner). When it seemed like there was a break, I called again, to no avail. I didn’t hear much, but one I think I got one callsign, K4FRB or something like it. It was a very faint signal. I looked up in qrz, but no e-mail addresses listed.

I might be hooked! I really need to make an antenna for this, it would be very cool for N3PAQ to be heard operating through a satellite!

73’s
N3PAQ

I’m using software from 1989

I’m putting together a packet radio station and recently bought a TNC from an eBay auction. I before I left the feedback, I wanted to make sure the thing wasn’t DOA, so I hooked it up to the PC to see if it was alive and it was.

Check out the release date for the MFJ-1278 data controller

MFJ ENTERPRISES INC
MODEL NO. MFJ-1278
MULTIMODE DATA CONTROLLER
AX.25 Level 2 Version 2.0
Release 3.3 11/08/89 - 32K RAM Multilevel
Checksum $E7

I still need a cable and a power supply. The only question is, what radio do I want to hook it up to, the HT or the mobile rig. It will make a difference both in the power supply that I need and the cable. There is also a firmware update, release 3.7 that I could get for $24.95, but I’m not sure I need it, at least not yet, I’m still learning the basics of packet radio.

Ebaying for some $

My Ebay Auctions, ending in about 7 days:
http://search.ebay.com/_W0QQsassZjosephdurnal

I have been bitten by the ham radio bug again and wish to purchase a decent HF transceiver so I have decided to sell off some things that I no longer have a use for. I will be sorry to see some of it go, especially the Xtant 3300c car stereo amplifier, but I haven’t used it in several years and doubt I’ll be spending a lot of money on car audio anytime soon to put it to use. Also for sale, a bunch of old computer components and some other mobile electronics, there is even an old ham radio that I never put to use. It’s a 2 meter handheld, and I already have one so, the other must go.

Pictures Missing

It seems that my personal web space url changed, now, all the pictures on my blog don't show up. Should be fixed in a few days.

I Remembered My Lunch Today

For some, remembering to take their lunch to work is second nature, for me, however, it is a monumental accomplishment. My wife makes the best dinners, and I often want to bring them to work for lunch, but there is a problem. More often than not, I forget to even make the lunch, adding to that is that once the lunch is made, I often forget it in the morning. Since I seem to always forget, I get discouraged from actually preparing the lunch in the first place. Even sometimes, when I remember to bring the lunch to work, I forget to eat it. That won’t be the case today; I have a nice container of crab soup in the refrigerator that I’ve been looking forward to all day. Amy made it for me last night and I actually remembered to grab it on the way out this morning.

Washington’s Birthday (Presidents Day)

Working on a Federal government contract has its benefits, as in being off on Federal holidays. Having no real plans for the day, I decided sometime this morning to take Alex on a little trip down to DC. I wasn’t sure of the weather, so, it may have ended up being a trip on the Metro to Union Station and back, but it was looking rather nice out, so I decided to stop at the Farragut North station on the way home and take the half mile walk to the White House with Alex, it is Presidents Day after all.

I snapped a few pictures, starting with Alex on the Metro:

Alex liked riding on the Metro Trains, on the trip down, he fell asleep, but all the excitement of trains at Union Station and a little coke, sure did wake him up.

Alex in front of the White House:

Alex's legs were getting a little tired by the time we got to the White House, he wanted to sit for a little bit. He wanted to get the squirrels that were inside the White House fence, I had to tell him to get down off the fence.

And Alex in front of a truck he really liked:

If you know Alex, he enjoyed being photographed in front of that truck a lot more than the one in front of the White House. The truck was part of a construction crew working on Pennsylvania Ave in front of the White House.

First week on the job

The first week on the job went pretty well. On Tuesday I was able to help solve a major problem with a connection from our Microsoft Exchange system to another agencies Novel GroupWise system that is being migrated to our servers. Anyway, I’m not very familiar with GroupWise, so my troubleshooting probably took longer than it should have, that and the fact that it was my second day on the job. It turned out that a directory on the Novel server was missing, this happened to be the directory where the Exchange GroupWise connector dropped the messages.

Another problem at work is an extremely slow Exchange server, which happens to be the main mailbox server for the department. While it will eventually be replaced with some newer systems, that won’t be for a few months. Several times a day users will receive the “Outlook is Requesting Data” pop up box. Where I used to work, if that happened, it was a major issue. At the DOT, it has been going on so long that people are really starting to complain about it. I started really working on the issue on Friday, but couldn’t get very far, one of the main performance counters that I would look for in this situation, is disabled, the physical disk performance object. The problem does seem to be in the disk sub system, but I can’t say for sure without the counters. Added to that, the system is geoclustered, something that I’d never do for a mission critical system, but I guess I’m stuck with it. One of the links to the disks in the other building is down, this could be causing a problem with the synchronous mirroring and making the disks run slow, thus making the Exchange server slow.

The biggest change about my job is the commute; I’m back on the MARC train that makes the trip two hours door to door, compared to my old commute of about an hour in the car. It will work out in the end to cost me a little less, and, in the morning I get an extra hour or so of sleep on the way, but I’m sure it will get to me after a while. I’m glad I got the three weeks vacation, taking that time off will sure be nice.

First Ebay Sale

I had a Microsoft Xbox that didn’t work right; it wouldn’t read the discs properly. I was looking into fixing it but it was going to cost $50 for a new DVD drive, and then my time or money to get it put in with no guarantee it would work. Amy bought me Knights of the Old Republic for my birthday and I really wanted to play it so I went out and bought a new Xbox. The question was, what to do with the old Xbox, so, I looked on Ebay, and saw Broken Xboxes going for anywhere from $50 to $75 or more. I put up a ten day auction for my broken Xbox and it sold for $91 with $10 shipping. I couldn’t believe it, I had set a buy it now price of $75, and it surpassed even that. Now, I have to ship the thing, it will probably have to wait until Saturday since I just started a new job and don’t have access to a post office.

First Day at New Job

Today is my first day at my new job. I’m on another federal government contract down in Washington DC. It has been a fairly unproductive day, as you might expect for one’s first day on the job. Most importantly, I don’t have admin rights on my computer yet. Its driving me a little crazy because it forces me to use IE instead of FireFox. I also can’t install any messengers, not even MSN. I can, however, access my blog, so I figured I would write this update.

Not unexpected, but still, rather disappointing, is the quality of the PC I was issued. It is a Gateway E Series, 2.4ghz with 512 megabytes of memory and a 17” CRT. The real problem for me is the CRT, it is a little on the small side, and doesn’t support resolutions above 1024x768. That is going to take some getting used to when working on those design diagrams, my last job I had two flat panel monitors running 1024x768 each, and at home, my two flat panels run 1600x1200 each.

The commute wasn’t so bad, I found that I can still fall asleep on the train in the morning. I’ll probably be bored out of my mind on the way home though. I should be catching the 5:10pm train that should put me home around 6:30 or so. I’ll have to see, it has been a while since I’ve taken the train in and out of DC.

Firefox Configuration

A co-worker sent me this in e-mail. Talk about helpful, about:config sure will save the manual modification of the .js files.

Run Firefox? Have broadband? Here's Speed Tips

Here's something for broadband people that will really speed up
Firefox:

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return.
Scroll down and look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining
network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests
Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30.
This means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives. If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!

New Game : Madden NFL 2005

I started playing a new game on the Xbox recently, Madden NFL 2005. I didn’t think I’d get into it as much as I have. I bought it because it was only $20, but I’ve gotten hooked, especially since starting the franchise game as the Ravens. I was 2-2 in preseason, but so far, I’m 9-0 in the regular season. Even though some of the games have been too close for my liking, I’m hoping to go perfect, at least perfect in the AFC North. I whipped up on the Jets 65 to 14 in my last game. I’m ranked #1 in everything but rushing. Most of the defenses the CPU controls are really good at defending the run, or ate least I’m no good. Early on, play action would confuse me more than it would the CPU defense, but now I’ve got it figured out. Anyway, I’m really enjoying this game.

What Alex Says

tunaepyrgna: Alex says that I need to talk to you about baby making cause he wants baby toys.
CryptoJoe2600: LOL
tunaepyrgna: Actually his exact words were "Mommy, baby making. Talk to Joe. Want baby toys."

XBOX HDTV

I’ve been a little lazy about posting lately, I wanted to put up some pictures from my birthday but I didn’t get around to it.

Yesterday, I found out that I wasn’t running my XBOX in the highest resolution. On Saturday, Brian pointed out that he didn’t think that the game looked any different, even though Amy had given me the HDTV component video connectors. I was playing Knights of the Old Republic last night and I died and realized I hadn’t saved in a while. Recalling my conversation with Brian, I decided to go look for some settings. Sure enough, the only mode enabled for the XBOX was 480I. I added all other modes, 480P, 720P, & 1080I; I also set it up for a16x9 screen. Boy was I missing out, the game looks twice as good with the new settings. I didn’t play much more, I’m trying to limit may video game playing time.

Alex’s Aquarium Trip

Alex was had a busy day on Saturday, for some reason in the afternoon he couldn’t stop talking about sharks. I asked him if he wanted to see some sharks and he said yes, so, on the spur of the moment, I took him to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. It was just Alex and me, since we don’t get to spend too much time together just the two of us. We walked around for a while, saw lots of fish and other things. One of the last things to see was the sharks, and boy did Alex like them. The funny thing is, he was afraid of them at the same time, I guess it is to be expected. When seeing one up close he exclaimed, “Sharks got teeth!”

We ended up spending more time drive to Baltimore and back than we did actually touring the aquarium, but that is ok. Once we got home we went right back out to eat at Arby’s.

Big SMTP Banner

While troubleshooting a mail problem with sending mail from my company to another organization, a coworker of mine found the strangest SMTP banner I’ve ever seen. The names have been changed to protect the RFC violators.

220-mail.xxxx.org ESMTP XXX-ITD Mail Server; Fri, 07 Jan 2005 15:45:29 -0500
220-****************************************
220-* Secure Mail Server *
220-* *
220-* All connections are logged! *
220-* This server employs anti-virus and anti-spam technology *
220-****************************************
220-ATTENTION! Access / Consent Notice.
220-This Organization (XXX) computer system is monitored.
220-This computer system, including all related equipment (includes internet access)
220-are provided only for authorized XXX use. XXX computer systems are monitored
.
220-To ensure their use is authorized, for management of the system, to facilitate
220-protection against unauthorized access, and to verify security procedures,
220-survivability, and operational security. During monitoring, information maybe
220-examined, recorded, copied, and used for authorized purposes.
220-All information, including personal information, placed on or sent over
220-this system may be monitored. Use of this XXX computer system, authorized or
220-unauthorized, constitutes consent to monitoring. Unauthorized use of this XXX
220-computer system may subject you to criminal prosecution. Evidence of unauthorized
220-use collected during monitoring may be used for administrative, criminal, or
220-other adverse action.
220 IF YOU DO NOT CONCUR WITH THE ABOVE NOTICE, LOG OFF NOW / DO NOT LOG IN.

In contrast, this is what a normal SMTP banner looks like

220 IGR-IMC-01.redmond.corp.microsoft.com Fri, 7 Jan 2005 12:46:41 -0800

Needless to say, I think that the mail delivery problem we are experiencing will be due to the extra large banner.

Alex’s Cute Knock Knock Joke

Alex: Knock Knock.
Amy: Who’s there?
Alex: Me.
Amy: Me who?
Alex: Alex.

National Sales Tax

I thought of an interesting problem, technically, two problems that would have to be solved before the federal income tax system could be replaced with a national sales tax. I’m not necessarily for or against a national sales tax, but many people think it is a good idea

First, one could avoid a lot of taxation by buying items on credit before the national sales tax is implemented. That purchase would remain untaxed as would the income used to pay the debt. This could end up being a big problem because people are likely to make many large purchases, everything from cars, boats, and planes, to hot tubs and big screen TV’s. I know that would be the first thing that I would think of, buy that new car before the sales tax hits. But then again, the government knows how to get its money and might devise a way to hit remaining credit balances with the tax when it goes into effect.

Secondly, and a bigger problem if you ask me, people could be taxed twice on their hard earned income. Any money in the bank when the national sales tax goes into effect was taxed when it was earned, and will be taxed again when it is spent. Imagine getting that $1000 bonus, say, $600 after taxes in December, but when you spend it in January, you are hit with an extra 17% or so tax, basically making your $1000 bonus worth about $500. This would be even worse for those who have been saving for retirement all their life, all while being taxed (yes, 401K’s are taxed on withdraw, but not all retirement savings are that way, such as CDs ROTH IRAs, good old savings accounts), suddenly at retirement, everything costs 17% more due to the tax. They will have to work out some sort of tax refund system when you are spending money that has already been taxed as income.

Chocolate Pie

We were at my mother’s house yesterday for an early dinner and for desert, my stepfather had made some chocolate pie. Chocolate pie is basically just thick chocolate pudding in a gram cracker crust. Alex just loved it, before even tasting it, just the words chocolate pie made his eyes light up, and he repeated, “chocolate pie”. I thought it was pretty tasty too.

World's Worst Disasters

Dec. 28, 1908 — A magnitude-7.2 earthquake kills 123,000 people in the Messina-Reggio Calabria area of eastern Sicily and southernmost Italy.

Jan. 13, 1915 — An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5 leaves 29,980 dead in Avezzano, Italy.

Dec. 16, 1920 — Gansu, China is hit with an earthquake reaching magnitude 8.6 that kills 200,000 people.

Sept. 1, 1923 — An temblor of 8.3 magnitude in Japan destroys one-third of Tokyo and most of Yokohama. More than 140,000 are killed.

May 22, 1927 — An earthquake reaching 7.9 magnitude hits near Xining, China and kills approximately 200,000.

Dec. 25, 1932 — Approximately 70,000 people are killed after an earthquake reaching 7.6 magnitude hits the Gansu region in China.

May 30, 1935 — A magnitude 7.5 temblor strikes Quetta, Pakistan, killing more than 30,000 people.

Jan. 24, 1939 — An earthquake of 8.3 magnitude in Chile kills roughly 28,000 people.

Dec. 27, 1939 — More than 32,000 die in the Erzincan province in eastern Turkey during a 7.9-magnitude quake.

Oct. 5, 1948 — An earthquake of 7.3 magnitude in Turkmenistan kills over 110,000 people.

Aug. 15, 1950 — Up to 30,000 are estimated to have been killed in an earthquake of 8.6 magnitude in Assam, India.

May 31, 1970 — An earthquake reaching a magnitude of 7.9 in Peru leaves over 60,000 dead.

Nov. 13, 1970 — A cyclone in the Ganges Delta of Bangladesh kills at least 300,000 people.

Feb. 4, 1976 — A series of earthquakes reaching a magnitude of 7.5 in Guatemala leave over 23,000 dead.

July 28, 1976 — The worst earthquake to hit China in 20th century with an estimated magnitude at between 7.8 and 8.2 leaves more than 240,000 dead in Tangshan.

Sept. 16, 1978 — An earthquake of 7.7 magnitude in Tabas, Iran kills 25,000 people.

Nov. 14-16, 1985 — Volcanic eruption of Nevada del Ruiz near Bogota, Colombia, kills approximately 25,000 people.

Dec. 7, 1988 — A 6.9-magnitude earthquake in Armenia kills nearly 25,000.

June 21, 1990 — An earthquake of 7.7 magnitude in northwest Iran destroys cities and villages in Caspian Sea area and kills at least 50,000 people.

Sept. 30, 1993 — As many as 10,000 are killed from an earthquake of 6.0 magnitude that struck the state of Maharashtra in India.

Aug. 17, 1999 — More than 17,000 are killed as a magnitude-7.4 quake hits western Turkey.

Dec. 26, 2003 — More than 26,000 killed after an earthquake of 6.5 magnitude strikes the ancient historic city of Bam in southeast Iran.

Dec. 26, 2004 — A 9.0 earthquake off the western coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island launches tsunami waves that slam shorelines in Asia and Africa, killing more than 135,000 people.

Iraq War Costs Fighter Jet

A sign that the war in Iraq has gone too far, the pentagon is planning cuts to the F/A-22 Raptor fighter jet program. There is no doubt that at about $256.8 million each, the F/A-22 is the most expensive fighter jet ever; there is also no doubt that it will put the United States Air Force twenty years ahead of the rest of the world in fighter jet technology. Initial estimates are for the program to potentially be scaled back to 160 aircraft from current program production of 277. Oddly enough, the pentagon actually admitted that the cost of the war in Iraq was a factor in cutting this program.

While it is easy to get caught up in defending the United States from terrorism, history has shown that major conflicts will continue to erupt between traditional enemies and even pit old allies against each other. The fighter to be replaced by the F/A-22 is the F-15, a fighter designed in the 1960’s that hasn’t seen a major update since the mid 1980’s. While the F-15 is a proven fighter, I’d much rather see US airspace protected by technology that has matured in the twenty-first century. Fighters like the Russian MiG-35 (in development) and the European EF-2000, are designed to be better than the F-15 in every way, and with the numbers that the EF-2000 are being produced, I don’t think that cutting the F/A-22 program is in the best interests of national security.