Updated April 2026 As some of you might know, I am a licensed amateur radio operator. My FCC-assigned call sign is kc5tfz, which is also the custom license tag on my Nissan Juke. I have several friends who are licensed “ham” radio operators. Almost universally, we use our amateur radio privileges less and less. I…
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Over the past several months, I’ve made a point to ghost (meaning to erase the internet and communications footprint) certain people from my life. Some of these people get ghosted because they live in an us-vs-them paradigm, especially politically. Other people I’ve ghosted were rude to me and my work. Still others are gone because…
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Readers probably know now that tornadoes struck across Oklahoma Saturday night into Sunday morning. I listened to non-stop amateur radio and public safety communications, and when tornado warnings were issued for my location, I brought Hawken, my Irish wolfhound, inside, and sheltered in the center of the house with him and my Chihuahua, Summer. Those…
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Updated December 2022 to include a note about the movie Die Hard. Often when watching movies, I will simultaneously look up the background of them on Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB), or, if the film has guns, the Internet Movie Firearms Data Base (IMFDB). I did so recently when I was rewatching the 1995’s excellent…
Continue reading →I did some man-caving in the garage tonight. After walking the dogs and taking trash to the curb, I set out to see if an old 23-channel citizen’s band (CB) radio was working. When I discovered it was not, I decided, quite organically, to take it apart. Part of me says I was scavenging for…
Continue reading →Decades ago I was a member of the Ada Amateur Radio Club, listed as Ada ARC. I let my membership lapse about 20 years ago during a time when the club fell into neglect. Yesterday I was listening to a local amateur radio repeater, one I use and monitor all the time, and heard several…
Continue reading →In a household clean-out that seems never-ending, today I reached down under a 14-hole cubby cabinet in the sewing room to find a plastic cube bin that appeared to contain something technological. After carefully vacuuming the spiders and other sketchy-looking stuff from it, I started pulling things out. Included were… A Sony FM/casette Walkman A…
Continue reading →Most of the people I’ve known over the years have had the habit of having a television on from the moment they get up or the moment they get home from work. My wife always does, but when asked why, she only ever said, “It’s background noise.” I find the chatter of television utterly distracting…
Continue reading →Owners of the venerable Radio Shack HTX-202 VHF handheld amateur radio know, if they have owned the radio long enough, that it will eventually give them the dreaded Er-1 error when they turn it on. This means that it is time again to replace the memory retention battery inside the radio. As aggravating as it…
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