New Post on BASIC Blog

 Some time ago, I started a ministry to homeless people called BASIC.

BASIC Stands for "Believing And Serving In Christ". I started a blog over there that I used to propagate our prayer list, and to provide updates to the ministry's supporters. I would also post theological posts over there, including sermons and lessons I've done other places. now I'm in the middle of a series on the topic of Salvation.

it will be a multi part series, here's the first post:

https://basicorlando.blogspot.com/2023/03/brothers-what-shall-we-do-salvation.html

go and check it out, tell your friends.

So My Best Friend and I did a Thing....

...we started our own PODCAST!

The Gravy and the Great Pumpkin, together again...

I'm pumped.

The name of the Podcast is "Turn the Light On".

We talk Faith, Jesus, Church, Evil Chickens, Logic, current Events, and we poke fun at ourselves and our culture.

Find and Follow us on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Turn-the-LIGHT-On-110646410672536/

Please subscribe!

Anchor:

https://anchor.fm/turn-the-light-on

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/5AY2cGtLcTRpwuT3MRrCh6

Stitcher:

https://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=559368&refid=stpr

Google Podcasts:

https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8yZDU2MTU2Yy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw

Apple iTunes:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/turn-the-light-on/id1525392943

#lightwins

John 1:5

Randomly Yours

Life is funny you know.
Several things are going on right now.
Happy New Year!
Here's a brief run down:

I got new Glasses

• I got some new eyes!
• We just got done with some great Christmas shenanigans. Earlier this year, we decided to surprise my parents at Christmas eve service. I wanted to make my Momma cry at Church, and we did! Only my Grandma, and one of my cousins knew. The kids had a great time, and it was good to see my Brother, my Sister, and their children. 
• I'm planning something very interesting for Church, it's called Project VOLTAGE. More about that on the BASIC blog later on.
• I'm always watching birds, check out  The Birding Biker for the latest news on that front.

The Bike has been Refurbished

• By the end of February, I'm going to have my old radio shack empty. Then, it will be torn down, and replaced with something newer, weatherproof, and air conditioned. Until then, most radio projects are on hold.



New Tubes, New Shack, New fun!

• We've got some awesome family plans for this summer, I can't wait to share what were up to next!

I hope your new year sees you happy, healthy, and wise!

May News, Plans for the Summer

Here's a report on what's going on in my often scattered brain:
I'm learning to calm my soul: Thanks to Psalm 131. It's a short and deep scripture.

My eldest child turned 12 over the weekend, one year from now, I'll officially be an Old Man, ie, father of a teenager!

Old dogs can learn new tricks, I've learned a lot about using regular expressions in Oracle, and have a detailed post coming about that.

On the Ham radio front, I'm considering downsizing my shack significantly. The girls are more interested in birds than radios, and I'm ok with this. Keep your eyes posted for some items for sale to fund my binocular/spotting scope/camera needs.
There will be good deals to be had!

politics: Always always always remember: Poly: More than one. Tick: blood sucking disease bearing parasite.Don't let them rule you, instead trust in the rule of Christ.I'll have some more interesting thoughts about the role of Christ and the government later.

Bromeliads are amazing, and the T. simulata growing in the backyard named "Choo-choo cha-cha" is doing especially well! I'm this close to being done with an update on that.

Much of life is lived in a boomerang fashion, being that while it doesn't repeat itself, it does rhyme. Currently, I'm reading some of my old college textbooks, and gaining insight into scripture I don't think I could have possibly had when I was 19 or 20. It's amazing how some things improve with age!

Speaking of age, I turn 40 in October, you have been warned.

Over the summer I plan to go birding a lot. By a lot, I mean at least once a week. Doing anything regular is a crazy thing to accomplish. The eyes need to see green things, the heart needs to soar with our avian friends, and the brain needs to be occupied with sorting out the deeper connections humanity has on this planet.

little things in place x become big things in place y.

Final Countdown

Que Europe!

Sing along, I guess.


Here's what I've done recently:

• Communion Meditation, April 24, 2016 at Highlands Church of Christ
• Studied bromeliads in my backyard.
• Took the kids birding, Had a blast.
• Almost done with a semester of College. (It's finals week!)

Here's what's coming up:

• Starting a new job
• Continuing the series on Skeleton Sleeve Dipoles 
• More ham radio! 
• Planning more college classes

To borrow some lyrics, I'm "optimistically discontent" over what the next month will hold, if only we can all hang on that long.

Blooming Sequence Prediction UPDATE: Prediction Accurate!

So the third bloom on the T. simulata in my backyard has completely dried out, and there are no more blooms showing for now. I have a prediction to make, though. I believe I know where the next bloom will emerge from. Now that I've seen three, I believe that the next bloom will emerge from the bract opposite of and above the previous bloom. In other words, they bloom in a zig-zag pattern. I've been reading a lot of technical documents about plants, and T. simulata in particular, so I'm sure there's a technical name for this action, I haven't deciphered it yet. Below are some pictures of the area where I believe the next bloom will emerge, and some pups that the plant has. I'm keeping this short because I bet there's going to be a fourth bloom in the morning, and I want to spend more time talking about  that!

detail of the end of the spike

 Right in front of the 2nd blossom to bloom (blossom that's dead and hanging on the right side of the picture.)

Little Tiny thing in the middle is a pup

 Tiny Tiny pup in the middle.

Another detail shot

This picture gives the appearance that the bud may already be on its way! It seems to be open just ever so slightly on the right.

big pup

Big pup! Still has some growing to do.


******UPDATE******
So I saw the barest smidgen of the tip of a purple blossom on the bract I had predicted the next bloom would emerge from!

About 1mm of bloom showing!

To Do Lists and Task Priorities

Things for me to do:

1. Update everyone on what's going on in my life, I'm busy
2. Finish out the Two articles I have written about antennas
3. Update LOTW to include my final entries from last year, and the QSOs I've had so far this year.
4. Clean out the Ham Shack, and demo it
5. Update my BASIC blog with a few Communion meditations

Update on What's Going On!

Short story: I've been working and going to college full time. Slightly longer story: I've been at Publix now 10 years. Last year I interviewed twice for jobs related to programming. Both were entry level jobs, and I was turned down for both. I believe that my lack of Computer Science degree was the main culprit for why I didn't get the jobs. To help alleviate that, I enrolled in and started taking classes at Florida Polytechnic University. Shortly after my classes began, I was given another interview, this time on my team. I landed the job! They are letting me start the job after the semester ends at the end of April. This has been a long time coming. I'll be a support programmer. I'll be on call, get woken up at Oh Dark:30, but mostly I'll be on dayshift, and I'll have weekends off. It should be great! I also get a raise.
Being back in school has been good for me so far. I'm learning a lot, calculus is fun again, I get to use a bunch of neat stuff, and I've even been given MS Office! Only bad part is that I'm always busy with school work. No real time to do radio, get outside, learn the programming languages I want to learn, etc. I'm busy. Very busy. I often wonder if I'm too busy. So far the answer is "not yet", and that's good. Somethings about being so busy have been a bonus. For instance: My oldest daughter is learning HTML because I have to learn it, and I showed her how it makes web pages work. She's getting a kick out of it. It's nice to discover that we could have this thing in common.
I'll say more soon, namely in my next blog about antennas. All this hard math I'm taking in school should be somewhat useful for building antennas, or at least that's my hope.

Testing, Gettin' My Shots, 50 QSOs.

Back to school!
I've already started taking tests, although the test I'm taking right now is a medical one. So far, so good. I also had to get a DTaP vaccine. I impressed the Dr by having all my old shot records. That's my Momma's doin' ya'll. She knows paperwork!

I'm nervous at the prospect of going back to school. I hope the classes I need are still available when my medical paperwork clears with the school. I'll be a full time student again, and it scares me a little. Calculus with analytical geometry here we come!

November tends to be a productive month for me ham radio wise. So far, I have 50 QSOs in the book. If I'm going to catch up to having an average of 1 per day, I'm behind, but seeing as how that I get on the radio in 20min - 1 hour snatches, I'd say I'm doing ok. I had 7 QSOs last night (including at least one new country!), and even got spotted on dx summit! If I had a better CW filter, I'd have more QSOs, I know I heard some DL stations, and a few others way down in the noise. Narrow filters and some headfones would have cleared that problem right up! When school starts, the ham radio stops, so I've got to get some contacts. I've got the next antenna post about the Skeleton sleeve dipole almost finished.
Soon it will be up!

PS,
never put your eggs on the same plate as a where you keep a one year old's eggs, she'll eat them all and just look cute.

Learning, Loving, Laboring

I really want to talk about what I've been learning. It's hard right now, because I'm sure it would take a good solid hour to type everything I'm thinking all out. It's coming. I've been learning about enumerables in C# and .net, and some things are boggling my mind. I have however gained a new understanding of the beauty and readability curly braces lend to properly developed code. There's an important lesson in this chapter, I don't want it to escape, I'll comeback to this thought later...

Right now, I'm up late because I got home from work, ate a snack, and got to work telling my wife I love her in a way that makes sense to her. At least I'm trying to do that. I want to speak my love into my actions every day. It's not always comfortable, but it is often rewarding.

There's aspects of my job I love, and others I don't love. I try to adapt every shift to what's demanded of me, and to learn some tidbit that will make my job easier. What I learned tonight: If someone is determined to do as little work as possible, they're not checking to see if they make mistakes.
We'll see how that goes Monday.

I'm going to bed.

Just When Somethings Start Going Right....

Other things start going better, and the first thing you were working on starts getting put off.

I've got about half a post written for the W3EDP antenna. Usually I get an article done sometime during the month of May about the W3EDP, but I don't think it will be ready by tomorrow. Tomorrow is my wedding anniversary, so I think blogging will be low on the priority list of things to do. I'll get it done during June, before Field Day, because hey, the W3EDP would make an awesome last minute field day antenna for someone out there, and they'll need to know how to make it, and how other people have used them. I have, however, been fairly radio-active recently, last week, I had two days of QSOs, and I had 7 total QSOs, this week I haven't been as active, but that's because something has been consuming all my time.

I've been studying C# like mad, preparing for an interview to be held this Thursday. As of right now, I'm in virgin territory in my book, covering things I didn't get to when I first picked this up back in February. If I win this job, I'll have most evenings and weekends off. I'll be salaried, but hopefully making more money than I am now.

We shall see.

Other news:
Everyone in my family has been sick in May, and Murphy's law is in full effect. I'm kind of sick of May as a result. I've got two kids with strep, one with stomach troubles, and the baby had a cold. My wife had some issues, and is battling a head thing, as am I. Even the family vehicle has been sick, we blew a tire out and it will need to be replaced. Fortunately, it was one that was due to be replaced anyway.
The house next door, where I took the pictures of the Tillandsias got renovated. The poor house needed it, and the new owners worked hard on it. One negative though, is that the limbs that grew most of the T. setacea were removed. Because it is the least common bromeliad on my street, it made me sad. However, there are other colonies on the street, and I'm sure it will be fine.

With school winding down, sickness, and new job opportunities, May has been an interesting time. June could be even more interesting.

I'll make sure to keep both eyes open.

Keeping the QSO Rate Up

My twin ham radio resolutions for this year have been:
1. to average 1 QSO a day
2. to operate twice a week.
So far, I'm doing decent, I'm down 3 QSOs right now, but that's because I had a couple of days when I only had time to make one QSO.
Goal 2 has been pretty easy to keep
Other things I'm exploring in the world of Radio:
Microwave transmissions.
CW.
So far, I've only made CW QSOs. Use the code or loose it!