CatCow’s Computer Dungeon

It was bad enough when it all started. Box cutters? I still don’t think they could have hijacked a plane with JUST box cutters. But whatever. Knives? OK, they are actually semi-dangerous. Miniature scissors? Come on, I can’t do much damage with a Leatherman Micra. Fingernail clippers? Now it’s getting insane. Shoe inspections and no liquids? WHERE ARE THE RIOTS, PEOPLE! And now to continue with our informational series on deadly objects that no one realized…

http://www.natch.net/stuff/TSA/

Yep, this is one of the strangest news headlines I’ve seen in a while.

Groom Dies in Collision with Cow

http://www.koin.com/Global/story.asp?S=6750108

(more…)

Yes, I’ve dumped drupal. It’s time to try out WordPress for a while. I like how it works on GeeksRUs’s site, so now we see if it works here.

So I’m adding some old stuff in, I guess it doesn’t make sense to be posting stories about being buried in snow in the middle of July… Or fire stories from 4 years ago… But I’m too lazy to edit the timestamp right now.

I got an iPhone! The 8GB model. I can’t believe I spent $600 on a phone. Goodbye, Verizon. Goodbye, Treo 650. I arrived at the Washington Square Mall Apple Store at 6:50am Friday morning. I was number 20 in line. Steve had arrived a bit earlier and was further up in line. The person at the front of the line had arrived at 10:30pm the previous night!

The iPhone was released at 6pm. I arrived just before 7pm. That’s a long time to sit around doing nothing! Especially since I had left the headphones for my iPod at home, and the mall wouldn’t let us plug our laptops in(tripping hazard). My MacBook Pro died after about 3 hours of use. Steve had managed to arrange delivery of a fresh battery after several hours, so he was online all day.

We were in the first group let into the store at 6pm, and being in a hurry that turned into a mess later, I was back out pretty fast with my iPhone. At 6:09pm I was pulling out of the mall parking lot.

After I got home I plugged in the iPhone and started the activation process. I recieved an email telling me that my Verizon service would be terminated within 24 hours, and that the activation process was pretty much dead in the water until the number was ported over. That would have been around 6:58pm, at 12:13am I recieved an email stating that the phone was activated, and a half hour later another notification that the number porting was complete and my iPhone could now send and receive calls. I haven’t been able to put the thing down since.

This is simply the best phone I have ever had. In typical Apple fashion, the user interface is simply amazing. Everything is easy. Well, except maybe figuring out how to share my EVDO connection over wifi from the laptop. EDGE data can be a bit slow. The pinching in/out to zoom is incredible. Flicking to scroll is addictive. I find myself cursing at my MacBook Pro for not behaving the same way with its trackpad.

So, when does the next version with 3G and GPS come out?

Here I am, climbing my way to the Great Divide on Wolf Creek Pass. Lucky me - the weather is good, and the load is light. And I aint haulin no chickens!

Remember that huge snow storm that buried Denver? It trapped me in Albuquerque for a few days.

Parked on a street in ABQ waiting for I-40 to re-open.

A Swift truck stuck in the median on I-40 east of ABQ.

A street in Denver on 12/22

From the scenic viewpoint coming down Cabbage.

I took this picture with my Samsung camera phone as I was driving westbound on Interstate 30 in Arkansas. I forget the mile marker, I was still a ways out from Texarkana. Traffic was backed up for miles going east. A small car had crossed the median and hit the semi head on. There was nothing left of the car, the biggest piece I saw was a 2 foot long chunk of the rear fender.

I built this to use my Flightcom headset with my FT-817, it will also work with the 857 and 897. The 857 is a little annoying due to the headphone jack being on the back of the radio and the mic jack being under the control head.

Very simple design, I used Cat 5 networking cable to go to the mic jack, and some Radio Shack shielded audio cable for the headphone side. The .206″ mic jack for the headset can be expensive, I got mine at a surplus store a few years ago. There are two switches, one is a momentary pushbutton and the other is a toggle.

These are the relevant pins on the microphone jack from the 817/857/897
Pin 3: +5v
Pin 4: ground
Pin 5: Mic Audio
Pin 6: PTT
Pin 7: PTT Ground
The +5v line powers the microphone element, pins 4 and 5 are the audio being returned to the radio. The two switches go between pins 6 and 7 for PTT.

At the time, I was only interested in doing this as cheap and fast as possible. This was the simplest circuit I could find. The screen capture below is from this site.