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Since my last post was so popular, here are a couple replacement WP’s that I made myself from schematics for a classic Heathkit HW101 transceiver.

First of all, the entire wallpaper is here:

On the right-hand side, there are these cool line-art cad drawing with Geeko in the middle. The problem is that these aren’t just just random lines nor are they circuits boards or anything like that. These are architectural blueprints. There are 5 full bathroom and a small piece of a 6th. There’s also a couple of conference rooms.

My proof:

Recently I imported posts from my old Ham Radio/Tech blog: ki4gmx.wordpress.com. They are ancient, but they are important to me to keep. I am slowly going through some of the posts and updating links. If you see two links in a row with one of them struckthrough, the that one is the old link. The new one, which probably points to the original on archive.org, is next to it.

Let’s start with some price comparisons.

* Not including s/h ** based on %50 of cover price which seems to be common for used bookstores.

I’m a big fan of ebooks.  I have been ever since I first found Project Gutenberg about a decade ago.  I quickly fell in love with Google Books when they started providing scanned copies of out of copyright books a few years ago.  I’ve owned a couple of ereaders.  I currently have a Nook and an no-name lcd Android tablet with all of the latest Nook, Kindle, etc apps on it.  My problem is that I want to buy more ebooks but they are cost prohibitive.

First the Cylons had it, now this blog has it too.

Resurrection in progress.

KI4GMX Jason

On October 17th, I was laid off from what was supposed to be a long term contract at IBM after having previously laid off at another job at a certain ailing mortgage company.  Job hunting as been really tough and the only thing that has looked really good so far is sales job at Tiger Direct.

What’s holding me back, besides the terrible economy, is the fact that I may have 8 years of experience working at a help desk, but I don’t have a single technical certification to “prove” what I know.  Sadly, too many hiring decisions are made by folks who can’t tell a cd-rom drive from a cup holder, and technical certifications are the only things they have to tell them if you know what you’re talking about.  Personally, I find the dependence on technical certifications to be silly at best, but those are the rules that we have to live by.

I was watching Sanctuary on the Scifi Channel and noticed that in one room were a couple of older model Yaesu rigs, some kind of SWR meter that I couldn’t identify, and a green cube Heathkit SWR meter.

An Introduction to GnuPG for Windows

What is it? GnuPG or “GPG” is a free and open source cryptography software package based on the PGP “Pretty Good Privacy” software system. GPG 1.0 was released in 1999 and steady development has continued since then. Unlike many software packages that you have to wait for new versions to become available, GPG is an open source application. That means that developers are constantly working on this software and new updates are produced regularly and free of charge. This software will not simply become abandoned by a single developer after a few years because people are always welcome to download the source code, make improvements, and keep the project alive. GPG is also interoperable with dozens of operating systems from all versions of Windows 95 and up, Linux, Unix variants including Sun Microsystems Solaris operating system and Apple’s OSX operating system.

I picked up Bawls G33K B33R at our unfriendly neighborhood Tiger Direct yesterday, and I have to say that I was pleasently surprised.  G33K B33R is not the worst root beer out there.  I would say that it is not quite as fulfilling as A&W from the tap with lots of head, but it is much better than the root beer from Jones Soda or even Barq’s.  I enojeyed it except for the price at $2/bottle and the fact that I have to go across town to find a bottle.  Definately worth a try if you’re not a penny pincher like me and you enjoy a cold root beer.

t’s no secret that one of my hobbies is ham radio.  I’ve got a few projects lying around that I would like to see working.  Today while looking for information on refurbishing a Heathkit SB-101 transceiver, I found a website called Heathstuff with lots of useful information related to Heathkit radios.  The link is here:  http://www.kiyoinc.com/heathstuff.html

Sadly, the pages have not been updated since February 2004.  The owner, AH6GI, has a lot of good information here, and I hope it helps you out.