Dude, you are harshing my QSO

HAM Radio Transmissions can be disrupted by the most unlikely of sources.... http://t.co/9wPDYzyeP4
— Hamcity (@Hamcity) June 5, 2014

Xiegu X108: Another Pic

Looks like an instagram pic... I just noticed the translated tags read "Military" and "DIY Radio Category." Not sure what the "Military" tag should be or is about.

Printer Device

"Hey, grab that TPS report off the printer device," said no one ever.

From Craig Zacker's "Exam Ref MCSA 70-410: Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012 R2" book*:

NOTE PRINTING NOMENCLATURE
“Printer” and “print device” are the most commonly misused terms in the Windows printing vocabulary. Obviously, many sources use “printer” to refer to the printing hardware. However, in Windows, printer and print device are not equivalent. For example, you can add a printer to a Windows Server 2012 computer without a physical print device being present. The computer can then host the printer, print server, and printer driver. These three components enable the computer to process the print jobs and store them in a print queue until the print device is available.

I'm not criticizing Craig here at all. I think Microsoft missed the boat with their word choice. Let's take a common usage and avoid it all costs!

And on the topic of printers, I've seen it time and again when someone goes into "Devices and Printers" to make a change to their printer settings. Right-click and you get these options:

Naturally, everyone goes to the bottom of the list and selects "Properties" - only to be disappointed when they get this.

Cancel. Right-click and remember to click "Printer Properties". Ah, there is something useful.

* And, for those of you keeping score at home. I've started studying for my MCSA/MCSE.

Xiegu X108

Looks like the X108 to match the rendering.

Company Names

There is something to be said for having a company name that is not tied to a specific brand. With the change of Baofeng to Pofung, it would be better (at least in my mind) to be something like BuyTwoWayRadios.com instead of BaofengTech. You've got all your eggs in one brand basket.

I think we saw another example of this with Wouxun.us and Import Communications when the relationship developed problems.

Chipper

A wooden motorcycle at the Museum of Appalachia. Pretty amazing work.

Brick O'Lore After Dark II

Three women friends, one in a casual relationship, one engaged to be married and one a long-time wife, met for drinks after work. The conversation eventually drifted towards how best to spice up their sex lives. After much discussion, they decided to surprise their men by engaging in some S&M role playing.

The following week they met up again to compare notes.
Sipping her drink, the single girl leered and said, 'Last Friday at the end of the work day I went to my boyfriend's office wearing a leather coat. When all the other people had left, I slipped out of it and all I had on was a leather bodice, black stockings and stiletto heels. He was so aroused that we made mad passionate love on his desk right then and there!'

The engaged woman giggled and said, 'That's pretty much my story! When my fiancé got home last Friday, he found me waiting for him in a black mask, leather bodice, black hose and stiletto pumps. He was so turned on that we not only had sex all night, he wants to move up our wedding date!'

The married woman put her glass down and said, 'I did a lot of planning. I made arrangements for the kids to stay over at Grandma's. I took a long scented-oil bath and then put on my best perfume. I slipped into a tight leather bodice, a black garter belt, black stockings and six-inch stilettos. I finished it off with a black mask. When my husband got home from work, he grabbed a beer and the remote, sat down and yelled, 'Hey Batman what's for dinner?"

With Friends Like Me

So a former co-worker was asked to document a system after a problem occurred that resulted in a couple of hours of downtime. From his description, it sounded more like a communications issue than a true technical issue. And this system is massive when you include all the moving parts - database, communication servers, web servers, client-server apps, PLCs, HIDs, printers, scanners, etc. Everything sits on top of an IP network, of course, with a Microsoft Active Directory infrastructure, so toss in potential problems with the Cisco hardware, DHCP, AD logins, etc. Even if they froze the environment, it would take years to document every component and potential problem. So given that he was asked by a seagull manager to document this behemoth*, he was a little frustrated I think.

I tried to help out by endorsing him for the "Software Documentation" skill on LinkedIn.



* I do think there are parts of this system that could use better documentation. I also believe in good postmortems, so you can avoid or minimize problems in the future. However, in this situation, I think the criticism of the manager's request is appropriate given the nature of the problem and the environment they are in.

Magic

Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic... teleportation.

Tiny 2M Receiver

So several people (both on my post and the reddit thread) suggested looking at the Alinco radios for a tiny receiver option - specifically the DJC7.  That thing is extremely thin and has many more features than what I was talking about.

I also found this old thread on AR-15.com

But I want something even smaller - along the lines of this size would be great (see picture below). That's $13.99 for a "High Quality mp3 player 1.8" LCD screen 100% 8GB slim 4th player with FM radio video play games free shipping wholesale." I don't think volumes would be such that you would get down to that price, but I wonder how hard it would be to replace the chip (87MHz -108MHz) with one that would receive the amateur 2M frequencies. I'd like to have it for running as I've said before. I can think of a few other uses. For example, if you want to allow people without a license to easily listen without loaning them a transceiver - particularly for monitoring at an event - this might fit the bill.