Maybe baby I like the old interface, but maybe baby I like the new. Once I get a feel for the deal, I might like the new real. Can ya kneel? Zeal!
Once upon a midnight dreary
My glass of vodka was watered and weary
Not sure how I like it, but it’s a hustle. But if there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alone there. It’s just a spring clean for the May Queen.
One in a vermillion I weft a crane vain reign. Doo dad? Doo dee dee doo. Capsaisin? Prednisone!
In vela quay, oh yay, no way.
Dim dim kah-lotz. Dimmin zimm stimm kalotz znotz. Oh fotz.
Last year I built an Over-The-Air TV antenna system for my mother who wanted to cut the cable. Worked fairly well when I installed it, and I marked it up as the best over-designed antenna system I’ve ever installed.
Lately, she’s reported that some of her channels have disappeared. Been racking my brain to think of the cause. Figured it was the antenna being just below the roof line, and that I’d need to attach an extension pole, or that the lightning arrestor has failed, or wind/wildlife misaligned the UHF yagi.
Then it dawned on me tonight at the hardware store: I have a 4-way splitter in the system, but only 2 TVs. Each pair on a splitter reduces the input signal by 3.5dB, typically, and as this has 4 legs, the signal has an overall insertion loss of -7dB. If you consider each -3dB change is a halving of the signal, I’ve basically built a system where each of the 2 televisions is getting 25% of the antenna signal, even though the other 2 terminals (unterminated) are not in use.
WTF, mister.
I grabbed a 2-way splitter and I’ll try it soon. Hmph.
I feel like I should be ashamed that I didn’t think about insertion loss being directly proportional to the number of output ports on a splitter, but really, it’s all part of the learning.
Radio is hard.
I can’t quantify it. Can’t rank it. Only feel it. “Babylon 5” is a good series, one of my favorites. Ran for 5 seasons as dreamed by writer/director J. Michael Straczynski. It took the usual production arc of a long-running science fiction series: shaky 1st season with weak funding, threadbare production quality, but earnest storytelling, through a contract renewal with grander scales and bigger stories, culminating in a shaky final season where the producers didn’t know if they’d be canceled.
Thankfully, they were funded all the way through 5 seasons.
Season 1: earnest and hopeful
Season 2: new air, new enemies, new drama
Season 3: drama escalates, greatest battles to come
Season 4: long-running struggles wrap up too quickly, fearing cancellation
Season 5: littered with tail-ends of threads and arcs too long to complete in their own time
JMS and team did an amazing job considering the time, budget, and technology of the 90’s. What throws me to this day are the long-play story threads. JMS knew that if he had enough time, he could hint at something in S1 and bring it to fruition in S3 and make it a critical plot point. That’s gamesmanship.
But the last 3 episodes of season 5. Goddamn. They knew the show was ending. It was the natural way. Unlike most shows, the production team knew they had no designs to go beyond 5 seasons. The. End. And damn, did they tie the ribbon on it, and then in one forceful pull on the ribbon, completely rip it out of you. I felt that. Endings on TV don’t feel final, but this was final. You felt it. TV characters come back. But here, there was no way to come back. You felt it.
Always strategizing.
The final walk down the Zocalo had every touch and taste of every dead mall documentary I’ve seen. A shadow of the Shadow War. The voices, the fingerprints, the detritus and kipple. The darkened hallways. Finality. Fatality. Unstoppable encroaching of time. And that’s it. Threads wrap up.
I felt it.
Sometimes you find the funniest things in the most unexpected of places. Here’s a log from my session with the Winlink node operated by KE7XO at 14103.5 KHz:
*** Connected to Winlink RMS: KE7XO @ 2019/01/26 17:51:23 USB Dial: 14103.500 at 2019/01/26 17:51:23 *** Station Bearing: 297, Range: 1751 km *** Hola, Bienvenido a mi adult daycare, massage parlor & saloon *** [WL2K-5.0-B2FWIHJM$] ;PQ: 66666054 CMS> ;FW: KG5RHR [RMS Express-1.5.18.0-B2FHM$] ;PR: 36558916 ; KE7XO DE KG5RHR (EM10DH) FF FQ *** --- End of session at 2019/01/26 17:53:32 --- *** Messages sent: 0. Total bytes sent: 0, Time: 02:08, bytes/minute: 0 *** Messages Received: 0. Total bytes received: 0, Total session time: 02:08, bytes/minute: 0 *** Disconnected from Winlink RMS: KE7XO @ 2019/01/26 17:53:53 *** Session: 2.2 min; Avg Thruput: 0 Bytes/min; 1 Min Peak Thruput: 253 Bytes/min
I dunno, but this guy sounds like a system administrator. We’re liable to put anything into a config file. Adult daycare!
