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Newly minted ham

The Atlanta Hamfest today was pretty cool. A pretty decent number of people, and lots of radio related gear up for sale. So many gadgets. I’ve always wanted an oscilloscope to play with, and there were lots of them up for sale.

Sat in on Connie’s forum on the social side of ham radio, which went pretty well. Some pretty good discussion and participation from the people that attended.

After that it was ham licensing exam time. I managed to pass the General exam so now I am a licensed ham radio guy (once it goes through the FCC). I took the Extra exam because I could, but didn’t really expect to pass it since I went into it pretty much cold and with no prep. I figured I was prepared enough to get General, and that’s what I ended up with so I’m pretty pleased with that.

Connie took this picture of me with my CSCE (Certificate of Successful Completion of Exam) showing that I passed the General test.

Now to see if some of my ham radio friends will let me hang out with them and see how it works. Will probably find out sometime next week what my call sign is. If there are enough examiners at Southeast Linuxfest next weekend, I’ll try to do the Extra exam there (and hopefully be more prepared for it).

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Adventures in Coffeeland

I have never really been much of a coffee drinker. Cafeteria coffee got me through exam week all-nighters and thesis writing during undergrad and grad school, but aside from that, drinking coffee was just a very rare thing I did when other primary caffeine sources were unavailable (or too much work to obtain).

Lately, driven mainly by late nights staying up trying to write papers, the easy availability of freshly roasted coffee beans (as in still-warm-from-roasting fresh), a recent introduction to the Aeropress and my usual curiosity, I’ve taken to experimenting with coffee the same way I experiment with new food recipes.

Having a couple of coffee shops within walking distance of the house hasn’t helped either.

I’m still pretty much a coffee noob. For the most part, there really aren’t a whole lot of differences between different beans or roasts at this point. Depending on how long this current coffee fixation lasts, that will probably change.

The latest thing I’ve been playing with is iced coffee, and the Aeropress makes it super easy to do. Following the coffee:water proportions used in the CoffeeGeek guide produced a pretty decent cup. Add chocolate milk and it’s a cup full of yum. Perfect for those hot days.

I also experimented with a small batch of cold brewed coffee yesterday. It was about 60 g of a fairly dark roast coffee to 250 mL water that I used for my first batch. Put it into a jar, stirred it a few times and let it sit for about 12 hours. Ended up with a pretty potent brew that had me buzzing for most of the morning, but wasn’t too bad. A little bit of bitterness from the dark roast, but not horrible.

Now I’m out of coffee beans and need to restock before I can experiment some more.

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Asus Transformer Prime GPS Extension Kit

In response to numerous complaints about the lousy (non-existent) GPS performance on the Transformer Prime, Asus had these GPS Extension Kits (or GPS dongles as most people call them) made and sent out to registered owners.
A month after I registered for mine, it finally arrived. It uses the dock connector and latches on pretty securely. Looks a little odd, but I don’t think it’s overly intrusive. In any case, it proved to be pretty effective at improving GPS performance. I don’t know if it completely replaces the existing GPS antenna or just augments it.

Without the GPS dongle, my Transformer Prime might find a couple of GPS satellites, but would never lock on to any of them, even when I was out in the open.

With the GPS dongle, it only took a few seconds to find a bunch of satellites and get a GPS lock.

Turning wifi off decreased the position accuracy a couple of meters, from 8m to 10m, but still pretty reasonable. Probably would be better if I wasn’t sitting in the shadow of my house at the time.

Haven’t used it long enough to know how much impact there will be on battery life but I’m sure I’ll find out over the next few days.

Since it attaches to the dock connector, it obviously can’t be used with the keyboard dock and needs to be removed to plug in for charging. I consider these pretty minor inconveniences since I don’t have the keyboard dock yet. Not really sure how much I’ll even need to use the GPS on my Prime, but if it’s there it might as well be usable.

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Failed platelet donation

I suppose it had to happen at least once. For the first time in my long history of donating blood and platelets, a donation failed. The return needle just wasn’t getting into the vein for whatever reason. Not a good thing, because you want the blood going back into the vein and not into the arm, which is painful.

After a few attempts to reposition the needle and to find another vein to use (apparently all my other veins are pretty deep and the other easily accessible ones are too small), they decided more messing around would cause more damage than it was worth.

Not sure what the problem was, but I suspect I just didn’t hydrate enough after the run I went on just before going to donate.

Will give it another go next month.

The bruise on my left arm is going to attract some attention I think.

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Charleston Eats: The return of Steak-Out

When I first started working at MUSC, deliveries from a place called Steak-Out were pretty common. I’d see someone making a delivery almost daily to some place in the hospital. Seemed pretty popular.

And then it stopped. Don’t recall when it happened, but one day the deliveries just stopped and their location on Savannah Highway (near Andolini’s) went dark. That little building served as home to a few different businesses over the intervening years, including a BBQ joint and a little catering/take-out operation.

Now it appears they’re back, and (I think) in the same building. After a friend mentioned it was there, I drove by to look. Couldn’t tell if it was actually open yet, and the website doesn’t list it as a location so it may not be officially open (or just hasn’t made it to the website yet).

Maybe the Steak-Out delivery guy will become a fixture at MUSC again.