Monday, March 31, 2014

Marathon Results

Well, I hit my silver goal by running a marathon in less than 4 hours. That puts me in the top 25% for my age group at the Knoxville Marathon. (The winner finished in under 2.4 hours.) I'll take it - especially since it was a huge improvement over 2012. And I ran the whole way without having to stop to walk at all.

I started out too fast and as a result I struggled the last few miles. It was hard to slow down when I was being passed by so many people - most of which I strongly suspect were running the half. I saw several friends along the way. I even ran with one for about two miles which was a nice break/distraction. I made a new friend around mile 18 and ran with him until about mile 23. He needed me to help slow him down and maintain his pace. I needed him to pull me a long. He left me around mile 23 when I started to fade and he started to push.

I really did just have to grind it out from 23 on. I kept playing mind games...

- just a 5k left
- just 2 miles
- 1 mile
- up this hill, down this hill, and up a hill to finish
- doing the math assuming a 10 min pace (that's a nice round number for someone who is not functioning mentally at full capacity) to see what my time would be when I finished

After I stopped, I felt okay except for my shoulder. It was really hurting. I must have tensed it up because of the cool weather. Some heat, food, shower, ibuprofen, and laying down for a couple of hours and I was good as new. I only have a little soreness in one quad.

A couple of notes..

Many of the spectators near the end of the race are liars. Even at mile 25, they kept telling me that I was "looking good." I'm quite certain that was not true.

There were the usual signs along the course. This one, held by my daughter, was my favorite. She's a rascal, but I only have myself to blame.





Baofeng Tech Bluetooth Adapter

You need your own Bluetooth headset, but if you want to go wireless, you can try the Baofeng Tech Bluetooth Adapter for your Baofeng, Wouxun, or Kenwood radios for $85.





Via Hans

Baofeng UV-5R Undressed

Some good shots of the disassembly of a UV-5R.



Via reddit

Friday, March 28, 2014

Winning 2048

Back to the job search for me since I beat the 2048 game.




Ed's Soup

Ed's doing it all at Import Communications... handhelds, mobiles, an HF QRP rig, accessories, soup, etc. Wait a second. Soup? Sure enough.

Ed's Soup

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Marathon

I'll be running 26.2 miles on Sunday with about 7,000 runners who are doing the Knoxville Marathon, Half, or 5k. My personal goals are:

3:50 - Gold
4:00 - Silver
4:07 - Bronze

Even my "bronze" time puts me at a minute per mile faster than my first marathon. That's a lot faster, but to put this in perspective, I would need to finish in 3:15 to qualify for the Boston Marathon.

Nagoya NA-701 and NA-771 Antenna Changes

BuyTwoWayRadios.com points out some changes to the new versions of the NA-701 and NA-771 antennas. This might be a useful link if you are worried about fakes and want to compare old and new. Also, they mention the change addresses the cosmetic gap problem.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Beat the Blerch

A destination race... Beat the Blerch 10k/Half/Full Marathon in September that includes "large quantities of birthday cake at every aid station, in addition to Nutella and magical grape beverages."

Friday, March 21, 2014

The Real Yellow Multimeters

As a follow-up to my yellow multimeter post, Fluke is donating $30K worth of their multimeters to Sparkfun to replace the ones stopped in customs. Talk about turning bad PR into something good. Well played.

Baofeng Comparison Chart

I can't recall if I've seen this before, but a pointer in the comments has it back to the top. The image is from the BaofengTech website.


Chromebook Deal

Lifehacker says this $149.99 (free ship) re-furb Acer C720 is a steal of a deal if you are in the market for a Chromebook. Obviously being a Chromebook, it would push me toward Google Drive.

SnoozeIt

Speaking of task managers... So many tasks revolve around e-mail, I like to use it as a virtual task manager. I've used Tasks and Appointments in Outlook, but they made it awkward to get back to the original message that generated the activity. I wanted to use the original message in order to maintain the history.

I've used Boomerang (for Outlook) and like it, except there was no quick option to have a message reappear in three days - critical for the Friday to Monday period.

TechHit has released SnoozeIt which is a similar tool. I already use TwInbox - which is their plugin to get tweets in my Outlook. I might have to check it out.

An update... before I got this posted, I saw KK Cool Tools recommending Boomerang for Gmail. What really caught my attention was this:
"You also — and this is a sweet add-on — get to choose whether you want the message to Boomerang as a function of whether your email receives a reply, is not clicked, is not opened, or regardless. So if you you choose to only Boomerang in 1 week if there is no reply because you want to make sure your email is attended to, and then the recipient replies in 2 days, your email will not come back to you in 1 week."
Cool indeed.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Coffee DRM

It's inkjet/toner cartridges all over again... Green Mountain to add DRM to prevent you from making a bad cup of coffee with their Keurig machines.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Yellow Multimeters

Customs says yellow multimeters infringe on Fluke's trademark, so they won't be allowed in the US. So does this mean we can only have a handful of companies that make multimeters? Fluke's are yellow. Sears sells some red ones. Who gets blue? Green?

OneNote

So Microsoft is releasing a free version of OneNote. I'm still on my search for the perfect organizational tool. Lately, I've been using ToDoist for tasks and have dabbled with Evernote. I've still not settled on storage (Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive) either.

Anyone a OneNote fan?

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Wig Factory Getting Updates

The Sunsphere will be getting updates to its observation deck.

Wig factory reference info here.


Software substitution

Bill Gates talks about the future of jobs and how technology may reduce the number of jobs for people with only a basic skill set. He calls it "software substitution."
"When people say we should raise the minimum wage. I worry about what that does to job creation ... potentially damping demand in the part of the labor spectrum that I’m most worried about."
Raising the minimum wage will simply accelerate the payback period for buying that robot or automated software tool. Image trying to lower the minimum wage in the future to make hiring people more attractive coupled with any amount of inflation - good luck unringing that bell.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Programming Note

Posting may be even more sporadic than usual (if that is possible). It is spring break here and "daddy day care" will be operating all week. Priorities.

Wouxun KG-UV8D: Manual

BuyTwoWayRadios posted the manual for the Wouxun KG-UV8D on their site. Look under "Resources" for the download link.

Apologies, but I've not looked at it yet. If you spot anything interesting in the manual, please drop me an e-mail or post a comment below.

Double Boston for Charity

I was patting myself on the back for the improvement in my running. Anything I have done pales in comparison to this... A Knoxville runner is going to do a Double Boston Marathon. He's going to begin at the finish and run to the start. Then he will complete the marathon with everyone else going from start to finish. That's 52.4 miles. And he's doing it to raise money for some people that were injured in the bombing last year. The couple has connections to Knoxville. Wow.

Friday, March 14, 2014

Bad Dog, Bad Dog

Whatcha gonna do when the SWAT comes for you? They need to add the Benny Hill music to this video. (Like the bike video.)



Video via Ace

Marketing

So I've been doing a little consulting to keep me a float, I'd like to grow the business. Maybe a movie would help.

Facebook South

A post in my Facebook feed that almost certainly had to be from the South.
"Please say a prayer for my Daddy today. He is having spinal cord surgery this morning at 10ish to fuse C5 & C6 in his neck. He should get the feeling back in his right arm after this surgery. After all, he needs to feel his shooting finger!"
Daddy - check. Prayers - check. Guns - check.

Thursday, March 13, 2014

Google Drive-ing Down Prices

Good news!

google We've lowered the cost of our @googledrive monthly storage plans, so you can save more goo.gl/cpO91W pic.twitter.com/cGswUBzqi7




Hot DC

This is what happens when the HVAC fails in your data center and no one sees the alerts from the environmental monitoring system. It hit 118 degrees. Luckily, a server shut itself down; prompting a call from the plant so that someone could figure out what was happening. I've never seen tiles curl up like that. C'est la vie. (And we all have our trials and tribulations.)



Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Wireless Router

The Lifehacker Hive Mind says the ASUS RT-AC66U is better than the ASUS RT-N66U that I have. I used to say it was silly* to chase ever faster WiFi speeds because your internet connection is the bottleneck. That's no longer true for me. I switched to xfinity to get rid of some chronic service issues with my other provider. I didn't save any money by switching, but I get many new features (iPad DVR control), a phone, and 100 Mbps. Woo hoo!

* Unless you are doing lots of big file transfers on your LAN.

Wouxun KG-UV920P-A: Review in April QST

In short, the reviewer (KN4AQ) finds many of the problems that people who are familiar with the unit have already discovered. I actually think he is pretty fair and, in fact, generous in some areas. For example, he suggests that the radio might be right for those who like the price and don't mind some of the "rough" spots. I'm sure this will generate any number of suggestions for better alternatives of both new and used rigs.

I'd like them to take a look at the KG-UV950P and report on those findings.

BFDX BF-TD501 Review

 Ben reviews the BFDX BF-TD501 DMR HT.

Social Media (Redux)

I posted this originally in 2012. I came across it when I was looking at some of my past posts about running. It made me laugh, so I'm re-using the content. Apologies in advance to my long time readers - both of you.
Inspiration here.

Running

I'm a better runner than I was two years ago. I've run a lot more miles and I've been doing work-outs besides just running. I'm also a smarter runner.

When I was training for the marathon in 2012, my longest training run was 20 miles. My fastest mile was the first mile and the difference between the fastest and slowest mile was more than 3.5 minutes. (I tossed out one data point that would have made it even worse, but I was probably stuck at a cross walk.)

This year, I've completed one 20 mile run so far. On average, it was about 40 secs faster per mile than the similar run in 2012. What really strikes me (and this is where the smarter comes in), was that my pace varied only by 15 seconds from fastest to slowest. There were two exceptions, but they were the last two miles where I intentionally sped up to see what I had left in the tank.

So in 2012, I got slower as I went and was half-dead when I finished. This year, I maintained my speed until I decided to speed up and I could have run further.

I'm optimistic about my potential for a good result at the Knoxville Marathon in a few weeks.

Monday, March 10, 2014

D-Star for Less

Hans has posted a letter from Jerry Wanger of Connect Systems, Inc. saying that they might be interested in building a sub-$200 D-Star radio.

Functionally Illerate

I understand that these people might not be experts in technology, but you would think they might bother to have a basic understanding of things that are in common use - like e-mail.

Via Slashdot

146.52 Sticker

I'm going to get one of these 146.52 stickers to go with my 26.2 sticker.

Hams will wonder why I won't respond and runners will think I am much tougher than I am.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Wouxun KG-UV8D: Flyer

BuyTwoWayRadios.com has a new post about the KG-UV8D confirming the $139.99 price, displaying a flyer/mini-spec sheet, along with this update about the versions:
"While a 220 MHz version of this radio will eventually be available, it will not be available at launch. The 2m/70cm version is the only one that will be available at launch."

Friday, March 7, 2014

F1 Help

Looks like someone didn't install all the latest updates.

Wouxun KG-UV8D: Pricing

The Wouxun KG-UV8D will be available soon and BuyTwoWayRadios.com will be taking pre-orders on Tuesday. They will be selling them for $139.99. Woot!

Wireless Laser Printer

I've never been much of a fan of inkjet printers. My favorite was probably the HP DeskJet 500 from back in the day. (If I remember correctly I used that printer with my IBM PCjr.) I rarely need something printed in color and if I do, it is probably a photo that I'm better off sending to Wal-green's to be printed.

However, I do like inexpensive laser printers. I think I picked up my Brother HL-2170W 23ppm Laser Printer with Wireless and Wired Network Interfaces for about $99. (You have to catch it at the right time as I see the price is $145 today.) Until recently, it had been the recommended printer at the Wirecutter. They have a new favorite - the Samsung SL-M2825DW/XAC Wireless Monochrome Printer at $107.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

True Detective

I've been watching True Detective on HBO. My wife snapped this picture on the greenway near our house. It looks like the Yellow King is lurking.


Subaru Fun

Digital Radio Yahoo Group

David (K7DB) shared this with me and I'm passing along the information for those who might be interested:
NEW FORUM FOR DIGITAL RADIO 
I read on Feb. 21 that the owner of the digitalradio Yahoo group decided to end the group. 
In my judgment there is benefit coming from the existence of a forum where digital radio enthusiasts can exchange information and help each other. I have therefore created the Yahoo group DigitalRadio2 to serve as such a forum, and I invite you to join. 
Group link: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/digitalradio2/info

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Quick Score

Underwear

My five year-old was asking me if I had any fun underwear when I was a kid. She's got princess, My Little Pony, and Hello Kitty underwear. I told her about my Underoos. I think I had the Flash and maybe Batman. Soon after that conversation, I came across these:


Bench in a Box

For people who don't have a lot of room for a proper bench.

Via Lifehacker

Wouxun KG-UV8D

BuyTwoWayRadios has a post about the Wouxun KG-UV8D:
"Billed as an upgrade version of the popular KG-UV6D, the new KG-UV8D will have some significant feature additions and improvements. One of the most exciting new features of this transceiver is duplex cross-band repeat operation, a standard feature on Wouxon's popular base/mobile radios (the KG-UV920P-A and KG-UV950P), but is a first on their handheld models. According to Wouxon, the KG-UV8D will also work in duplex, providing the ability to transmit on one band and receive on another simultaneously. 
One feature that really stands out is the display. The KG-UV8D will sport a large, color LCD display that is more than double the size of its predecessor. The screen alone looks impressive, encompassing nearly half the front face of this handheld."
They say it should arrive in mid April.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

The Internet of Everything

I love slideshows like this Business Insider presentation showing the state of the internet union.

I wasn't surprised by anything in particular as I've seen the trends at home (thermostats, locks, etc.) and at work. For example, we were installing a new manufacturing line and made our usual assumptions about how many network ports would be required. Unbeknownst to us, the engineers had bought new versions of devices (like scanners) that were all IP based. In the past, these devices would have been connected to the PLC. It more than doubled the number of Ethernet connections we saw on a line that size.

Monday, March 3, 2014

Upgrade Cycle

Speaking of iPhones...

So my wife's car is almost 10 years old and my car is about 9. Does this mean we will need to start upgrading every two years?

Cost of an iPhone

In the US, $707. In Brazil, about $1,200.

My company looked at doing business in Brazil. I learned about several complexities on the accounting side. I suspect these "complexities" explain the extra $500.

Life Expectancy and Healthcare Spending

jeffweiner Problem with U.S. health care costs summarized in one chart via @conradhackett lnkd.in/bE-nXKc
Sat, Mar 01 20:41:53 from LinkedIn
retweeted by msuster


Very interesting... I'm not quite sure what to make of it, but the US does not appear to be making a reasonable return on its investment in healthcare.

Puxing PX-UV973: Buddy's Tips And Hints For Eyes-Free Operation

bbrannan The first draft of the Puxing PX-UV973 Guide For Eyes-Free Operation is available. bit.ly/1fSn8ZU #hamradio

Note: The link is a direct download of the RTF file.