When not to email

I have to remind myself that there are two times of the day when I should never read my email or do anything else that requires me to think or interact with other people.

One is when I first get up in the morning.  I find that I am worthless before breakfast.  This morning I got up, got a bowl out of the cupboard, and started to pour a nice bowlful of dog food for myself.  I realized what I was doing before I'd put much into the bowl, but it clearly illustrates the problem.

The other time is just before going to bed.  By late evening I am tired and very, very grumpy.  Beware ye who would ask a favor of me.  "Who the hell does he think he is?  What can I do about that at 11PM?"  The fact that the request was sent at 2 in the afternoon escapes me.  I fire off an angry response, only to regret it immediately after clicking the SEND button.  Then I lie awake for hours, stewing over the stupid request, and regretting my hasty response.

There are two solutions, of course.  One is to never, never, ever read email before going to bed.  I can't count the number of times I have read something just before going to bed that annoyed me so that I couldn't sleep, even though I knew that the email was really of no importance.

The other solution, and more important, is to never respond to any email without letting it "sit" for a while.  If it was really urgent, the person sending it would probably have called me on the telephone.

I actually have a signature in my email client that says:

Please be advised that I try very hard to read my email twice a day, at 11 AM and again about 4 PM.  That's not always possible, so please realize that I'll get to your message as soon as I can.  Thanks for your patience.

The problem is that I forget about that simple solution.

OEC AUXCOMM course

This past weekend (1/2 June 2013), I took the Office of Emergency Communications (OEC - part of Homeland Security) AUXCOMM course  at the Raleigh Emergency Operations Center. It was an excellent course.  It was well taught and a lot of good information was passed out. I would recommend the course to any amateur radio operator with an interest in assisting during emergency situations.

It was pointed out during this course that the Amateur in amateur radio means that a person does it for the love of it and not to be compensated in any way. "Doing it" is its' own compensation.  But it is also important to realize that amateur shouldn't mean un-professional.

The instructors stressed that we should leave our amateur radio organizations/positions/awards/badges/hats/t-shirts/etc. at the door when we report for an AUXCOMM assignment.  We become Auxiliary Communications personnel who have some special skills and knowledge which is appreciated by the emergency responders, but is not of any interest to them beyond how we perform the jobs they assign to us. In other words, do our assigned tasks, and don't try to impress the people for whom we are working with our knowledge about radios, etc.  That makes a lot of sense to me.  If you are very knowledgeable, it should be obvious by how you perform your assigned duties.

I've always found some of discussions among hams to be very tiring.  Flaunting equipment capabilities/hour of net participation/awards won/digital modes used/size of antenna/power supply model number/___________ (fill in the blank) seems to me to be similar to bumping chests or elk or moose or ram horn locking.  The same thing occurs among computer users - computer model number/size of hard drive/size of RAM/CPU speed/monitor size/______ (fill in the blanks). And the most insufferable of all is the amateur radio computer user.  It's ok to tell me if I ask, but not gratuitously.

Sorry.  I got off track there. But those are the kinds of things we do to try to impress the unenlightened with our prowess.  And those are the kinds of things that keep us out of EOCs and other emergency situations.

It occurred to me that I enjoyed this course more than the COML course I took last November, probably because it was pointed at amateur radio operators, and the jargon used was more understandable than that spoken by emergency people. Not being immersed in the emergency responder environment caused me during the COML course to have to think about "what did he just say?" That detracted from the course for me because I missed important points. But that's why we take these courses - so that when we are in the environment, we won't be in a total fog. This past weekend's course was a good "bridge" between the two environments.

A photo of the class is at http://goo.gl/Zhd7D or http://auxcomm.us/main/2013/06/oec-auxcomm-training-class-held-at-n-c-state-eoc-2/

The final note in the course was: "Train as you operate, operate as you train"

A walk in the woods, ticks, and some antenna thoughts.

For the last few days while we've been at our temporary residence, I've been walking with Sam after lunch.  We didn't walk yesterday, but did about 1.47 miles Monday.  Today we walked 1.42 miles.  It was pretty hot, and Sam got overheated, so I had to carry him for at least a quarter-mile.

I picked up some other hitchhikers along the way.  I found three tiny ticks on my legs.  One was large enough to feel it walking on my leg.  The other two were just tiny black spots, hardly larger than kiwi fruit seeds. I quickly took a shower.  I hope the Front Line flea and tick meds work on Sam.  I hate those things.

I measured the distance walked with a GPS device.  I had ordered a FitBit One  WIRELESS ACTIVITY & SLEEP TRACKER but didn't have it when we walked.  In fact, it arrived just before we got back to the apartment.  The UPS truck was just pulling away, and there was an Amazon box waiting outside our door.

So now we'll keep even closer tabs on our personal statistics.

In the meantime, I am investigating using a magnetic loop antenna to try to get on the radio while we are here.  The primary difficulty here is that the frequencies that we use for MARS require very large antennas - usually a long wire.  The "beam" antennas that many people associate with hams won't work for the frequencies we use for our MARS frequencies; at least not any one that the average person can afford.  I have not checked to see if there are antenna restriction in this apartment complex, and have decided that there probably are restrictions.

I've used a mag loop at home, but that one was too small to use on the MARS frequencies.  However, it  was/is a very effective antenna at the frequencies for which it was designed.  But it's too small for the lower frequencies generally used for MARS.

My workshop

Obviously I've been neglecting this blog.  It's been THREE YEARS since the last entry.  I'll try to make more entries, but don't expect me to do anything to catch up with all the stuff that's happened since my last entry.

When the previous entries were made, my garage was my workshop, and I was doing a lot of my woodworking at AB Tech (Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College).  That gave me access to lots of wonderful power tools, but it meant a 60 mile round trip to the college, and I could only work on their schedule, usually certain evenings.

I've wanted to have a "real" workshop for years.  I built a small workshop under the back porch when we lived in Glen Burnie, MD, in the late 70's, early 80's.  But then I got posted to England for five years, then here to Western North Carolina.  Other things, such as the death of my wife, and my subsequent remarriage, and two more moves got in the way of building a shop.

Finally, Linda and I decided that I should build a shop.  I figured out how to shoe-horn a 16 X 20 two-story building into a corner of our hilly lot, and cleared the spot.  Then it sat for several years waiting for me to put up the building.

The building was erected in the winter of 2010-2011, but it's not finished yet.  It's got air conditioning and insulation, but I haven't finished the inside walls.  A lot of stuff has been moved in, and I am occasionally doing work in there, but not the way I want to.  It seems that life continues to get in the way.

Have we found an apartment?

We returned home from Durham this afternoon.  Linda's resting from the 4-hour trip and I'm catching up on email, etc.

We looked at several apartments in the Durham area yesterday, and decided that we liked the Colonial Village at Deerfield.  The apartments are a bit old, but the setting, next to Duke Forest, is really pretty.  The apartments are within 3 miles of the Duke Hospital, a real benefit.  Linda's doctor has made it very clear that she will have a better chance if we are a lot closer than we are now.

We were shown a one bedroom apartment yesterday afternoon.  It was a bit small, but I really liked that it was on a cul-de-sac with the forest behind it, and a copse of bamboo in front.  But, it was pretty cramped.  Add the dog into the mix and include my junk collection (no, not ALL of it), and it would be really cramped.

This morning, as we were getting ready to leave the area, and had just stopped for gas, I got a telephone call.  A two bedroom unit on the ground floor had become available.  Were we interested? Yes!  So we drove back to the apartment complex.  We couldn't see the apartment in question, as it was not "ready." But they had another one that was empty that we could look at.  Unfortunately, it was on the third floor.  Linda can hardly step up one step.  Three floors was beyond her.  So I looked at it, and told her about it afterwards.  I think it will do, although it doesn't have as nice a setting as the smaller one did.  Here's a picture of the floor plan.

MARS is going to be difficult.  I've already had to ask my Deputy to cover for me for the Region Four net next Saturday morning.  I think we may be in the middle of moving then.