Weeknotes: Week 20, 2023
⛔️ The ongoing “back to office” conversation continues to bewilder me. The most frustrating part of it is that the panicked suits driving it can’t even be honest about their true motivations. Come on.
🍽️ My dishwasher debacle continues. It’s been FOUR months since I first opened a case with Costco about our non-functioning KitchenAid dishwasher. The appliance “repair” people have been here five times, the last three with Whirlpool “experts” on the phone. Still no worky. WTF. I’m starting to lose my patience.
🛜 I switched from WSJT-X to JTDX for FT4/FT8 this week. Moving the existing logs was easy and I was happy to find that it works seamlessly with my logging software! For some mysterious reason it only supports two-character “directional CQ” so it doesn’t work too well for POTA/SOTA/IOTA/VOTA operation. Despite that, I’m very pleased with it so far.
🏁 I started paying attention to my Volunteers on the Air (VOTA) points. I managed to crack the top 300 in Ohio (!) over the weekend—a modest accomplishment. 😄 Speaking of volunteering, I got my Volunteer Examiner (VE) accreditation reinstated after years of inactivity, so now my QSOs are worth 5 points instead of 2.
📻 I’m still nostalgic for the days of shortwave listening, even though there’s very little to hear these days. But John Figliozzi, author of The Worldwide Listening Guide, argues very convincingly that analog over-the-air broadcast technology is just one of several “platforms” that deliver modern “radio” content. The book picks up where the old WRTH guides left off, and provides a lot of great info that is well organized and (mostly) timely. The 10th edition was published in 2022, and an annual (perhaps digital-only) update would be nice.
😎 I attended the Dayton Hamvention on Friday, and the weather was absolutely beautiful. Sunny skies and warm temps made walking around the Greene County Fairgrounds in Xenia a sheer delight. (Great way to spend a day off from work, btw.) I didn’t make any big purchases, but I did manage to bag some supplies I needed for the shack. Shout out to the good folks at Mastrant, The SignMan of Baton Rouge, and Cable X-perts.
Now Summary
Here are the things that were new on my NOW page this week:
Cheers!