Well, it seems like I've run into a bit of bad luck. My home computer booted up yesterday morning showing the infamous "blue screen." Not good now when I'm trying to get my blog going continuously and my website better with adding more content to it. Hopefully Sunday afternoon I will be able to get the computer going again with a little help from my friend Rob, KD5FJF. He has the necessary software to make things right. Until Sunday at least I can't access anything.
Eventually I will either get the current computer upgraded (necessary) or buy a new computer (possible). What I will likely do is do both. The current computer, once I get everything done to it that it needs, will be the ham computer most likely. The other computer will be my everyday computer for which everything else will go on it. But I haven't ruled out the possibility that I could get special add-ons for the current one by maybe adding an external hard drive (160 GB at least) and an external DVD/CD +/- rewriteable drive. I will also eventually purchase the West Mountain Radio RigBlaster Pro for it and buy some computer stereo speakers for it also. Trust me, on this cabinet I have about 6 or 7 USB ports built in, and I have a total of 7 slots for adding whatever cards I want! So the sky is truly the limit with the original computer, and I really can't fathom getting rid of it for any reason. It needs to have extra memory added and the OS upgraded to Windows XP, which I will do for sure. Between now and December I should know what I will eventually do for sure, and it should be some kind of combination of all I've mentioned in this paragraph.
Meanwhile, I have ordered the DC cord for my Yaesu FT-8800R from AES and am having it shipped by USPS Priority Express. My guess is that it will arrive either Saturday or Monday, and then I get to begin my personal croosband repeater experiments! I'm ready to play, and as I have said before I am ready to experiment and do things that not many other people (if anyone at all) are doing around in my neck of the woods.
I also realize that I haven't been on 2m simplex lately, for I've had a lot to do this week. Starting this evening after work I plan to be back on 146.520 and I will likely keep it there. I have been on the local repeaters only to talk with my best friend Randy, KA5IIA, of Magnolia as he drives back and forth between there and Temple. His area got hit hard by Hurricane Ike, but he's told me that it was miuch worse in the Houston/Galveston area. After seeing a lot of video and a lot of pictures I have to agree with him.
The Texas QSO Party is the weekend of Sept 27-28. I hope to be on the air for that event, if anything to see how my portable setup does. Possible plans for that weekend include throwing a wire antenna out the south window of the apartment and use it as a sloper and see what it does. Anything I can do to add to my score with the limited setup will help. I should be in the category of TX Single Op Phone, but I won't rule out a Mixed entry since I may use some CW also.
Finally, I will be on vacation next week. I have not had any time off for serious R&R in a long time (over a year) and I plan to enjoy myself. Most likely I will be playing with the ham and scanner gear, and maybe a little philately as well. So I may not be on the blog quite as much as I have lately, and that will depend on when I get my immediate computer problems solved. I'll be around on the air however, so you can catch me there on HF or on simplex around here locally in Central Texas.
Stay tuned...
WR1TX
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