Little Emergency Lights

For almost 20 years, I’ve been a ham radio operator. As such, I’ve kept an emergency radio station set up in my house, just in case there’s a power outage or emergency situation. Emergency radio stations need an antenna, radio, and source of power (I use batteries).

However, it is tough to operate if you don’t have some method of lighting. There’s usually a lot of writing when you operate on the radio, especially when working in emergency operations. For years, I’d used a battery operated Coleman lantern that has a barrel connector for DC power. I made a cable that runs from Anderson Powerpoles to the right connector, allowing me to run power from the same (larger) batteries that power everything else.

Then, one day, I was walking through Ikea. In the lighting section, I found the LED disc lights that were meant to mount underneath cabinets. They plugged into a wall socket, through a box that had 6 DC outputs (1 per light). It didn’t take long to determine that the output voltage from the box was 12VDC (in fact, the specs listed the voltage). I discarded the AC power supply, chopped off the connectors on the light’s wire, and added Powerpoles. Then, it was as simple as plugging them into the Powerpoles that come out of my battery connection. This small hack provides me with lights that work the same way when the power is on as they do when the power is off. And, they’re made to look polished, mounting right under the top of the hutch on my radio desk.

These lights were a pretty good find.

Not a Good Time To Blog

I wrote this 5 weeks ago. I was on an airplane from Oakland to Seattle, returning from visiting my father:

It has been some time since I’ve last written a blog entry. I’ve been attempting to keep every blog post free of negative news. In doing so, I may have skipped over over the happiest event of the past year, my brother’s wedding.
Don’t get me wrong: the wedding was wonderful. My brother lives on the other side of the country, while his bride lives in another country. As such, while they’ve been traveling to see each other, I hadn’t yet gotten the opportunity to meet the bride and her three sons. I was incredibly happy to finally meet them and to see how happy that they are together with my brother. The wedding was beautiful. It was held on a beach at sunset, followed by a reception filled with tradition and song. This was going to be a great subject to blog about.
But… The night before the wedding, my father-in-law passed away after a long battle with cancer. As soon as we got home, we were planning to attend his memorial service. Kelley went to Boise first, with Sunny and I to follow. The memorial went well, a small ceremony with his friends done in the way that he had wanted. There was also a very nice moment, where my daughter, who is at an age where she often puts her needs above all others, walked over to my mother-in-law, said some nice words and have her a big hug.
This was on December 10th. On December 11th, I flew home. I remember the date because it is the fourth anniversary of the passing of a good friend of mine. My blogging is an inspiration that I draw from the memory of this friend. He was a socially astute person, a talent that he later followed into a career in social media. I always wished that I could be more like him in this respect. And so… I began to blog more regularly. I keep telling myself that someday I will blog about him. And, each time that December 11th rolls around, I tell myself that I’m not ready yet.
December passed rapidly. January was filled with work obligations. Just as those obligations were coming to a close, I learned that my father is gravely ill. And so I tell myself it is not a good time to blog.
But therein lies the problem. If I keep postponing blogging until all of the bad times disappear, I may never blog again,and consequently, miss blogging about the good stuff in between. Moreover, I may not recognize the good that is interspersed in all days, because I’d be constantly comparing it to the bad in order to determine if it is time to start blogging again.
That is untenable. It’s time to blog.

The Great Divide

From The Daily Post, today’s topic was “The Great Divide,” asking “When reading for fun, do you usually choose fiction or non-fiction? Do you have an idea why you prefer one over the other?“

I read when I prefer to read. Sometimes, I read fiction. Other times, I read non-fiction. There are so many other ways to get information and entertainment, like websites, videos, and audio means (that are not audio books). Mostly, I read on the ferry, where the internet connection is spotty and I’m left to myself for 30-40 minutes at a time.

When I read fiction, it has to be for fun. If you’re not having fun reading it, why bother? It’s fiction; and without entertainment value, it would not have much value at all.

That being said, I’m not sure that it’s for fun. Often I read nonfiction, but it’s because I want to learn how to do something that’s fun, such as, building antenna’s or writing software for a fun project. However, it’s the activity that it supports that’s fun, not the reading itself. While I do enjoy learning from books, it’s the application of the learned materials that provides the real fun.

I also read differently when I read fiction and non-fiction. When I read fiction, I read start to finish. If you don’t, you lose context and miss important content. You might gloss over something really funny or crucial to the story line if you didn’t read the passage that set it up.

Non-fiction is different. It’s OK not to understand the antenna tuner’s circuit ins-and-outs when you’re building a dipole antenna. You can pick the portion of the ARRL handbook that deals with that specific solution. You don’t divert your attention to the chapter on tuning the antenna down to the band that you want.

I enjoy reading both, but I think only fiction is the fun reading. Non-fiction is just a means to an end, even if the end is fun. 🙂