A Geek Grows Up

First off, let me say wow. Two posts in the same week. Now down to business.

Last night was what I thought would be an awesome event. I hit level 60 on my main, because I decided to give my dk a chance to gain some rested XP. I was so happy to get the chance of an epic mount. I had assumed that training for riding would be 50-75 gold, so the 90 I currently have would have covered it. I also have the recruit a friend mount, so I wasn’t in a hurry to buy a new mount.

Anyways, first off after hitting 60, I try to equip my mount. No dice. So I head off to Brill to hit the riding trainer, but I’m not exalted with the Undercity, so I head off to Silvermoon City (being as I’m a Blood Elf). After searching for the training, I finally find him and discover it’s going to cost me 500 gold to learn the higher riding skill.

At that moment, I truly understand why people buy gold. I used to think that the people who bought gold were greedy people who didn’t want to pay their dues and were really cheating themselves out of alot of the content the game had to offer.

What I think really sucks about this is that I have two options. Either forge forward with the game, which allows me to earn XP and wait until I have 500 gold to spend. Or start doing things like SM, where I don’t earn XP but can make some ok gold.

As was alot of people, I was at my local Game Stop on Wed. Nov 12th, waiting for the midnight (on Thurs. Nov 13th) launch of the new World Of Warcraft expansion “Wrath of the Lich King”. This is my thus far review.

First off, as with most Game Stops, the store was tiny. When I got there at about 11:30 pm, there were about 20-30 people in line. I lined up and listened to some WoW nerds discuss the lore, while a TV blasted WoW trailers continuously. By go time, there were another 20-30 people behind me waiting.

After I got my copy, I rushed home to install. Once I got it installed, I took a quick zeppelin trip to Northrend on with my main. After that, I had to get some sleep to be at work very early the next morning. I that spent the day at work reading the WoW blogs, FAQ’s, and other information. Mostly I wanted to know about creating a Death Knight. Originally I was under the impression that I would have to sacrifice my level 59 Blood Elf Priest.

This was surprising and disappointing at the same time. From a lore and RP standpoint, it would have been cool for a back story to take an existing character and and convert them to a death knight. I was disappointed when I discovered that I would have to create a completely new character. This allows me to now have two somewhat high level characters that I can swap between in order to get the most from my rested XP. The only problem I have with creating a new character is that when you choose a profession, you are starting out at 1. I choose Inscription and Herbalism as my professions. It sucks to have to wander around the lowbie areas to gather herbs to get my Herbalism up.

I have to give Blizzard props for starting every death knight out with a full set of green plate armor. And doing the start area quests replaces most of that with blue armor.

Once you get out of the death knight starter area, you end up in your racial capital. You have to find the leader as your race. The problem is that you are only neutral with your racial faction. So you have to endure the cat calls and getting fruit thrown at you until you speak with your racial leader and gain enough repetition to no longer be neutral.

Since creating my death knight, I have only logged into my former main character long enough to go to the Undercity to so she can start to gain rested XP. I’m very very impressed with playing my death knight character, and quite enjoy the experience.

If you have not upgraded to the new WoW expansion, I would suggest you try it. It’s a blast and gives new life to the game.

I know it’s been months since I’ve updated, but I’ve been super busy.

First off I managed to get the intake manifold replaced on the Grand Marquis, and it appears to run well. I still need to get the tie rods replaced. While the Grand Marquis was down, I picked up a beater. It’s a 1993 Olds Cutlass Ciera. The body’s rough, but with less than 100,000 miles on it and a strong engine/transmission I expect it to run for quite some time.

I really enjoy the car, as it’s nice to have a car that’s paid off that you can do things too. Also, having 0 resale value helps. The ashtray was destroyed when I got it, so I used the wiring for the cig lighter plug to wire up a dual power outlet. I then used the wiring for the ashtray light as a signal wire for a set of driving lights. The ashtray light is wired to a switch that goes to a relay. The when the relay is active, it pulls sends juice hot off the battery to the lights. This allows the lights to be a bit brighter and I don’t have to run full power through my driving light switch.

Future plans with the car is to install a 400 watt inverter (that I picked up awhile back) under the dash and mount a laptop stand in the cabin. I’ve got a USB GPS setup, so then I can track my driving. Plus if I tether my blackberry to the laptop, I can have internet in the car. How cool is that? Anyways, here’s a link to the photo gallery of the Ciera (The Bluesmobile).

Also, as anyone who knows me, already knows. On Oct. 5th, 2008, James Daniel & Emma Catherine were born. This is one of the main reasons I’ve been so busy the past few months. At this point, everyone is healthy and happy. The one caveat is that James suffered his first (and worst) cold of his life this last weekend. He’s been a little soldier and is starting to feel better.

We had been told since 24 weeks, that they were both boys. So imagine our shock, when Emma (who came out first) didn’t have the necessary hardware. At that point we were scrambling for a name. We had discussed the name of Emma Catherine before we thought it was two boys and threw that out. Originally her name was going to be Andrew Robert.

After the initial shock wore off, we realized that we had like 0 little girl clothing and accessories. Luckily everyone was very generous, and we quickly had almost as much little girl clothing as little boy clothing.

If you would like to get direct updates, I have created a site exclusively for the twins called ‘Fox Twins‘. There you can find a blog devoted to them and a photo gallery where all of their pictures can be found.

This weekend was one of the social events of the Amateur Radio calendar, called “Field Day“. I went with Ron and attended TMRA’s field day event. We were setup at Walcott House in Maumee, Ohio. Great fun was had by all.

I personally remember the group operated on:

• 2 Meter Satalite
• 6 Meter
• 10 Meter
• 20 Meter
• 40 Meter
• Army MARS just below 80 Meters
• 80 Meter
• 160 Meter

I had a blast, but it was a long weekend. I got off work on Friday night at 11pm, came home finished helping Carrie pack up and we left. We got to Toledo, Ohio about 1:30am, and I didn’t get to sleep until about 2am. I was back up at 7am to be out to the field day site to help start setting up and attend the local ARES meeting at 9am.

After the meeting ended, we finished setting up in hopes for hitting the ground running at 2pm (when field day offically started). About 12:30pm, it started torrential raining. We had to scramble to get everything covered and out of the rain. While we were lucky that the rain let up about 20 minutes before the start of Field Day, everything was a soggy mess for most of the weekend.

I had setup to work 160 Meters with Ron, so the first few hours were kind of dead for us because 160 is considered a “night band”, meaning that it’s only really usable during the night time hours. This wasn’t a bad thing, because it allowed me to break out the new camcorder that Carrie & I bought and shoot a bunch of footage. The plan is for Ron & myself to cut together a 5-10 minute promotional video of Field Day.

As darkness started to settle in, alot of people left the site. This left only those of that intended to work most of the night on the radio’s. Ron & I discovered that due to the storms eariler in the day, that 160 was not very good. We only managed 4 contacts during the course of the night. We ended up knocking off about 1:20am on Sunday morning and taking about a 2 hour nap. When we got back up, not much had changed and we were still unable to work the band. About 4am we went headed out to get afew hours of sleep before going back to pack up after daybreak.

We were back on site about 7:30am to tear down our station and to find out about the contact totals. After we got our stoff tore down and packed up. We went back to his house and I caught afew more hours of sleep.

Field Day was fun, and Ron & I are already starting to discuss how we are going to do Field Day next year.

Until Then,
73
Tim w8gtf

As I’m sure most people are aware, a comedic hero of mine passed away this week. While alot has been said about it, most of it kind, but some unkind. I would like to take a moment for my own tribute.

George Carlin was (atleast IMHO) a great man, and a very funny man. I saw him live last year, and while I was unimpressed with the venue and he had just done an HBO special (so he was working on a brand new routine), it was still good. It didn’t matter if you liked him or not, the man did a great deal for 1st amendment freedom. I saw an interview with Jim Gaffigan once where he said that Carlin and Prior were vulgar in the 70’s so that he had the right not to be.

The first time I saw Carlin was on the Tonight Show as a kid. He did a part of the ‘A Place for my Stuff’ bit. Growing up, my mother had a video tape that she would tape bits from standup comedians when they would appear on network late night shows. Then when we got HBO at home, she would tape the stand up specials. That’s where I got my great love of standup. One of my favorites was Carlin’s 7th HBO special ‘Doin’ it Again‘. My mother had recorded that special and I must have seen it a million times. To this day I have that special on VHS & DVD.

George Carlin also uttered one of my favorite phrases and what is somewhat of a personal mantra for me “Fuck em if they can’t take a joke”. I had thought he coined the phrase, but a quick google search doesn’t appear to support that theory.

I will miss the humor of George Carlin, and will be glad to say that I was able to see him live atleast once.

Normally when somebody like this dies I ask to take a moment of silence to pray for the person and wish them God’s Speed. But knowing how Carlin felt about religion and his sense of humor, I’ll just say. “Fuck you, you old skinny-assed honky bastard. Save me a spot in hell.”

The past few weeks have been a drag. Lots of personal crap and some issues with my 99 Grand Marquis. Looks like the ever popular plastic intake manifold is cracked and leaking coolant into the #4 plug well. What makes it more fun is that the other 7 plug wells are getting oil in them from bad valve cover gaskets. And if that wasn’t enough fun, my outter tie rods are shot and the rest of the steering parts are “worn”. $3600 to have a stealership fix all of it.

I’ve priced out the parts I really need to get the car going down the road (intake manifold, valve cover gaskets, plugs, wires, coils, and outter tie rods) at alittle north of $800. And I still need to find help do the work or pay somebody to do it. Then the damned thing will need an alignment when it’s done. I’m probably looking at close to $1500 to get somebody to do the work that I can’t do.

Needless to say that’s had me down for the last few weeks. But today finally started looking up. I started pricing beaters for under a grand to drive while I save up to have a mechanic actually fix my car rather than bodging it back together myself.

Carrie ran across a Craigs List posting for Toledo, Oh for an 88 Jeep. It looks promising and her father is going to scout it for me. But the best part is as I was searching forums for that make of Jeep to see what the common issues were. A guy mentioned he was selling a 96 Jeep for not much more. I may run out and look at it on Saturday.

Either way, as long as it runs decent, I’m gold. It’ll be kinda cool to have a ride that’s paid off that I can modify. I’m looking forward to mounting my ham radio’s into it, adding some extra lighting, and painting it. I’ve got Carrie conned into letting me paint it olive drab green. Needless to say, I’m excited when I have new projects.

Also, I ordered a new computer about a week or so back. I’ve been checking the status page daily. It wasn’t supposed to ship until tomorrow, but it shipped today. Plus that moved the deliver date from between the 2nd & the 4th to the 31st. Freaking Awesome.

Carrie’s father also asked me to help him during his club’s field day. He’s the band captain for 160 meters. So I get to be on the crew to help operate during field day. Double Freaking Awesome.

Things are super great right now, but they are finally looking up. It’s possible I could have a new (to me) Jeep by this weekend. Plus this weekend, I hope to build an electrolysis tank for rust removal of iron & steel items I find while metal detecting.

This weekend was a blast. In addition to the yard sale goodness yesterday morning. Last night we went to a Columbus Clippers game. We had gotten tickets and being as Carrie & I either one had never been to a game. We figured this would be fun. Not to mention this is the last season they will be in Cooper Stadium. It was a good game, and I really enjoyed it.

We also got up this morning (after sleeping in), and grabbed a late breakfast. Afterwards, Carrie & I decided it was too nice of a day to not spend it outside. We ended up visiting 3 cemeteries so I could photograph them for Midwest Lost. The cemeteries were Brown Pet Cemetery, Primitive Baptist Cemetery, and Silent Hill Cemetery.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable weekend.

As you read in my last post, 2 weeks ago I went metal detecting with my girlfriend’s father. Last weekend, I picked up my very own metal detector and hope to start doing alot more detecting. I had planned on going out this weekend, but the weather prevented me from doing so.

I did manage to go to some garage sales with Carrie today. The highlight was finding an intact TI-99/4A with about 8 cartages, several cassette tapes with programs on them, the cables, 2 game controllers, and possibly other goodies (I haven’t had a chance to sort through all the stuff yet).

This is really cool because my first computer was a TI-99 (not sure of the specific model, but it looked slightly different that the TI-99/4A). I can’t wait to hook this up. The thing is so old skool, that it uses a color TV for a monitor.

This post will be cross posted between my personal blog and the Midwest Lost blog.

This last weekend, I went out with Ron (Carrie’s father) to go metal detecting. The event was put on by dfxonly.com metal detecting club, and was held at Camp Tuscazoar in North East Ohio.

This was my first adventure in metal detecting, although I had always wanted to try it. I have to say I greatly enjoyed it and cannot wait to be able to go out again. I met a lot of great guys (and ladies), and had a lot of fun. The stuff the group found was awesome. Personally, I found some old rifle shell casings (there were a lot of these just laying on the surface, as the camp had been used by the US military at some point for training), a silver plated spoon, this really neat twisted tent spike that I suspect may be wrought iron, and a 1944 Walking Liberty silver half dollar. I would have been very very happy with the other things I found. The Walking Liberty was just icing on the cake. Ofcourse I would have been equally happy with any coinage. Be it a wheat back penny, a buffalo nickel, or really anything. Being my first coin, I’m very very excited.

I’ve spoken with Ron, and we are discussing other sites to visit and explore. We are starting to discuss other places we can go and we may go out next weekend for afew hours.

In other news, I created a new website. You can glean from it whatever you’d like.

I finally broke down and built my own HF antenna. It’s basically 2 Slinky’s, some PVC plumbing fittings, and some various hardware bits. It’s a plumbing “T” with 16 gauge speaker wire running up through, that is connected to a slinky on each end. The antenna is fed by 450 ohm “ladder line”. I’ve got it connected through my antenna tuner and managed to get an SWR of 1.2.

This antenna is more or less a prototype. I plan on making a another version that is weather resistant. Differences will be painting/coating the Slinky’s so they don’t rust, and using nuts, bolts, and hardware that are stainless steel.