I’ll second this

December 14, 2012

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Dinner, and a downtown stroll

December 8, 2012

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I have some wonderful friends.  Last night three of them drove down from Fresno (well, only one of them actually drove, the other two just rode along) to pick me up for a dinner date here in Visalia.  We went to Fugazzi’s, one of Visalia’s favorite bistro style restaurants.  (It was packed!)

I tend to eat in places like Quiznos and Subway, so I seldom have occasion to dine at a fancier establishment.  Fugazzi’s is comfortable, you don’t have to dress up, but nobody was in shorts and flip-flops.  I did see a couple of tshirts with blue jeans, but most of us were dressed nicely.  Black seemed to be the choice of the evening, with many men in black shirts and pants, and the women in black dresses.  (Some of those men looked really hot in black!)

I ordered the salmon, and this is what they brought me:

dinner_flower

I don’t recall getting a flower in my food before.  Pretty, though, isn’t it?

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And a fourth! Perhaps the most spiritual of all!

December 7, 2012

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My third ordination

December 7, 2012

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The actual certificate will be here in a week or two.  This makes the third ordination I’ve received.  The first was as a High Priest in The Temple of Earth, the second is a Minister in the Universal Life Church, and now as a Minister in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  It would appear my spiritualism knows no bounds!  If you need a non-traditional minister or High Priest for some ceremony, let me know.  I work cheap.  😉

 

Eviction done, but will he stay away?

December 6, 2012

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SheriffBadgeGenericThe Deputies from the civil division were here today, and served the final eviction.  They arrived about 3:30pm, and by 4pm he was out the door and down the street.  I fully expected to see him back before very long, and sure enough, by 6:15pm there he was.

It appears he went to the nearest store and bought some beer, because he was very much more drunk when he came back than when he left.  He tried for a good ten minutes to get his key to work in the lock, but that wasn’t happening, since I changed the lock immediately after he left.  He plopped down in a chair on the porch and just sat there.  I had told him as soon as he started messing with the lock that I had called the police, but that didn’t seem to impress upon him at all.

The Visalia Police arrived within a few minutes of my call, and were confronted with a drunk, uncooperative mess.

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Watching a balloon launch using HAM radio

December 2, 2012

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High altitude balloon w HAM radio. K6RPT-12

High altitude balloon with HAM radio. K6RPT-12

The last balloon this group launched ended up in Tunisia!  This one was launched just before 7pm, Pacific Time, on Sunday December 2, 2012.  As I post this blog, it’s already at 36,500′ and moving east from the launch point south of San Jose, California.  The HAM radio gear in the payload is sending telemetry, including altitude, latitude and longitude, direction, speed, and other data relevant to the flight.  You can watch this one by simply returning to this page and hitting ‘refresh’ or ‘reload’ to see the latest picture from my website.  (Or you can watch it directly from my website, KC6YRU.NET)

You can spot the balloon on the map, it’s callsign is K6RPT-12, and it has a red circle around it.

The data is being transmitted from the balloon using a format called APRS, received by relay stations along it’s flight path, rebroadcast by those stations, then fed into the Internet by gateway radio stations.  I get the information from that internet feed, and using a program called UI-View32, display the location on mapping images from Precision Mapping Streets and Traveler.

HAM Radio is so much more than morse code, or grumpy old men sitting around talking about their hernias or their views on politics!  Someday, I’ll write a blog about my live television broadcasts on HAM radio!

UPDATE: My mapping software won’t follow the balloon now that it’s left the US. Watch here.

Something else I learned recently

December 2, 2012

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xmas_ornamentI was roaming around the Internet recently, looking for information on Christmas trees for a potential blog post, when I ran across something I was totally not expecting.

According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, “The use of evergreen trees, wreaths, and garlands to symbolize eternal life was a custom of the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, and Hebrews. Tree worship was common among the pagan Europeans and survived their conversion to Christianity in the Scandinavian customs of decorating the house and barn with evergreens at the New Year to scare away the devil and of setting up a tree for the birds during Christmastime.”

Alternatively, it is identified with the “tree of paradise” of medieval mystery plays that were given on 24 December, the commemoration and name day of Adam and Eve in various countries. In such plays, a tree decorated with apples (to represent the forbidden fruit) and wafers (to represent the Eucharist and redemption) was used as a setting for the play. Like the Christmas crib, the Paradise tree was later placed in homes. The apples were replaced by round objects such as shiny red balls.

I hadn’t heard of the wreaths and garlands histories before, but what really caught my eye was the hanging of apples on the branches of the Christmas tree.

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I didn’t get the fashion gene…

December 2, 2012

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December 1, 2012

December 1, 2012

I’ve never been sure about this whole suit-jacket-jacket-over-just-a-tee-shirt thing, it always seemed a bit… well, incomplete, I suppose.  Most everyone I’ve seen doing it, however, has looked fine, so I thought I’d give it a try.  It seems to work, for a picture anyway.  I’m still not sure about wearing one with blue jeans, although, again, everyone I’ve seen out and about that way looks good (that may have more to do with them looking fine no matter what, than it does with anything they happen to be wearing at any particular moment. I’m looking at you, Ted).

I’m a bit annoyed with the Gay Gods for sending me down with incomplete DNA.  No fashion gene, no decorating gene, no dancing gene….  I feel a bit like a rainbow flag with several colors missing!

BTW, the red marks on my neck don’t indicate anything more than my electric razor irritates sometimes, and I had just shaved.  And for some reason, I get two spots on my chin when using digital cameras to take pictures.  From my Kodak camera, to the iPhone, splotches show up in the strangest places, and are generally not visible to the naked eye.  I’m not sure where all that gray is coming from that shows up in my hair in these pictures.  It doesn’t seem to be there in my mirror!

The things I didn’t know

December 1, 2012

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howtosurviveaplague_aidsribbonOn Friday, November 30, I attended a special showing of the documentary “How to survive a plague”, shown in Fresno.  Using archival video, the film showcases the efforts of ACT UP and TAG during the early years in the battle against AIDS.

I think what amazes me the most is how much of this battle I was oblivious to, even though I was a young adult at the time.  I recognized some of the media coverage of events from having seen it on television while it was happening, but I was unaware, even as recently as Thursday last, that most of the impetuous that drove research was due to pressure imposed by these groups.

Presented in a chronological progression, the challenges faced by those infected, as the community struggled to deal with this mysterious new killer, are laid out for the viewer.  The continuing dismissal by those in power of the victims of this illness, the slow movement in funding and research as the death toll climbed, and the clear impression given by many that those infected with HIV simply got what they deserved, are all things of which I was aware.

What I didn’t know, and now completely changes my outlook on a history that I lived through, is how the protests and actions of ACT UP and TAG were instrumental in forcing government and the pharmaceutical industry to respond.  It becomes clear that thousands, hundreds of thousands, or perhaps even millions more would have died without the concerted efforts of a relatively few people, many of whom were also suffering from AIDS.

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9-1-1 Dispatchers hanging up on new A&E show, “Panic 9-1-1”

November 30, 2012

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panic-911From A&E’s community message board for their new “reality” show “Panic 911“:

A&E’s new thriller series “Panic 9-1-1” takes 911 calls to a whole new level never seen or heard before on television. Unlike emergency shows of the past, viewers will live inside the calls and experience every harrowing and terrifying moment along with the caller. Every second is real.
One part thriller and one part true-crime show, “Panic 9-1-1” features the real, urgent, unrehearsed, 911 call audio in real-time between emergency dispatchers and frantic callers as life and death situations unfold around them. Each call is a race against time where the dispatcher is the caller’s only lifeline, gathering critical information from the caller to give to first responders. When literally every second counts, getting the right details is crucial. Who lives and who dies remains a mystery until the very end.

In the real world of 9-1-1 dispatching, the verdict is in: this show sucks.

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