Taken from Syntopicon Vol 1

The notions of honor and fame are sometimes used as if their meanings were interchangeable, and sometimes as if each had a distinct connotation.

Well, yeah. I would never have thought that they two were in any way directly related. It seems more often that famous people are dishonorable and honorable people are rarely well know outside of a relatively small circle.

The authors who see no difference between a man’s honor and his fame are opposed on fundamental issues of morality to those who think the standards of honor are independent of the causes of fame. This opposition will usually extend to psychological issues concerning human motivation and to political issues concerning power and justice. It entails contrary views of the role of rewards and punishments in the life of the individual and of society.

When I was a kid, we used to play board games in school on rainy days. I wasn’t yet a chubby kid; that would come later but I had a touch of asthma, didn’t run very fast and had awkward gait. On the rainy days, I was equal to the other kids. I was good at little kid trivia, shoots and ladders, and other games of that sort for 7 year olds. On those days, I was an equal to my peers. After school I went back to being the lonely poor kid and on sunny days I was the kid who didn’t get picked to play games. Rainy days left and indelible mark on me; I’ll never get over it. I love them. I love the darkness of them. I love the coolness in the summer and terrifying thunderclaps in the middle of the night. When everyone else feels gloomy and sad; I am at peace.

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

I found this on KB6NU’s blog (http://kb6nu.com/shackbox/) and it looks like it might be an interesting Ubuntu derivative to check out.

http://shackbox.net/

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.