plowjockey

I don't know where the USF monies go but it certainly isn't here.

I suspect the likes of AT&T and Google get the lion's share and then through sleight of hand it somehow funds build outs of fiber in large metro areas. If it weren't for the local independent telcos scratching and clawing for a few crumbs, there wouldn't be any FTH in rural areas.

A few years back .gov allocated considerable funds for expanding, presumably, FTH in "rural" areas. The state I live in did the same. So far in the AT&T monopoly, not an inch of fiber has been plowed that I can see. Most of the funds have probably been laundered back to the politicians and the status quo remains.

A new WISP has been putting up sites over the past several months in parts of the AT&T service area with no other terrestrial service available. This, even in the age of Star Link. I doubt they would be doing so unless they had a pretty good idea that no FTH will be available for five to ten years or at least long enough to amortize their investment.

Like most taxes levied on We The People, the USF is a PR stunt intended to buy votes.

Nice memory. That book was included with the Coco2 I bought in late '83. Part of the lack of fun I had was not having a dedicated TV to use with it--I had to share with the siblings--and it was a black and white console. Still I learned a lot but should've done more. Oh well, I gave the whole works away in the mid '90s and it's probably in a landfill in NW Oklahoma.

I've been familiar with the Sperry logo for about 50 years, but only because dad had bought a New Holland combine in late 1969 that sported the Sperry New Holland logo. It wasn't until more recent times that I learned the company was a conglomerate engaged in diversification but primarily known for large computers.

New Holland went through a few iterations until being purchased by the Fiat group. It is a part of CNH with its sister company of Case IH.

Trivial examples of Gtk+ apps seem to be legion but to find a decent tutorial that works its way through a moderately complex and usable app seem to be scarce. In particular I haven't found a decent example of using the GTKBuilder class and complete documentation of the XML properties seems almost nonexistent.

Aside from that, instead of writing a GNOME app in C, isn't Vala or GJS the preferred language now?

Much different than the self study route I chose back in the early '80s. 41 years ago next month I worked up enough courage to call one of the local radio amateurs and scheduling the Novice license exam with him which he was glad to do. Of course, I had some trepidation as I didn't want to inconvenience him but I quickly got over that as most hams are more than willing to assist the newcomer.

The way new hams enter and interact with the rest of the amateur radio world has changed dramatically over that time span. It saddens me a bit each time I read that someone received the "get off my lawn" impression from their first contacts in the hobby. Hopefully such instances are rare and the result of miscommunication/misunderstanding rather than ill intent from either party.

That is kind of what I thought, that the local stores had various titles hanging on the wall but since none of it interested me at the time I ignored it and so it's not seared into my memory.

Many of my older fellow radio amateurs will disagree, but Wayne Green is truly missed these days. Reading his editorials from 73 Amateur Radio Today decades later show that he had an insight into events and people that rankled many, particularly during his first run of owning 73 until his magazine company was lost in his divorce settlement. Those hams are still embittered to this day which shows just how effective his writing was in trying to get his readers to use their critical thinking skills and thus how many hated the idea that they do so.

I don't know if the readers of Byte or 80 Micro had similar reactions to Wayne's editorials. Computer hobbyists and radio amateurs have two different levels of passion. At the time (1980) amateur radio had over seven decades of tradition behind it while personal computing was less than a decade old. Wayne saw that the landscape of amateur radio was changing dramatically in the early '70s, something many of his contemporaries wished to deny. He advocated for FCC rules changes, many of which came too little too late, and changes to ARRL (American Radio Relay League--the US national amateur radio operators association) that to this day have been ignored. In retrospect his perspectives have mostly been proven correct, at least in regard to those two entities and the amateur radio hobby as a whole.

Wayne enjoyed writing and enjoyed learning something new and sharing that with others while trying to make a living at it. The titles of magazines that he started are a testament to that drive.

Did the restrictions on third party software and such apply to franchise stores? I know that the local franchise stores in this rural area carried electronics from other manufacturers but don't recall anything about software or peripherals despite having a Coco 2 from late '83 through the summer of '89 as my only computer.

Despite there being an RS store in the county seat town of this county and in every adjoining county, most of my Coco support came from other amateur radio operators as that was my primary interest. I did buy a genuine RS disk drive and printer for the Coco along the way. While it came with 16k of RAM, a contact via amateur radio led me to purchase the chips to upgrade it 64k which worked!

There was a lot of chatter about the Model 4 but the price and an awareness from amateur radio publications of the rise of "IBM PC compatibles" kept me from going that route. Even if I had known of 80 Micro at the time, I doubt I would have subscribed.

Ironically, the first PC clone--a collection of disparate parts, really--I bought was from another amateur radio operator who worked at the local Radio Shack at the time in 1989.

Several projects I'm interested in have gone to Discourse. I don't mind the Web interface but the infantile notifications I receive and the nonsense the application sticks into a thread are annoying at best and add nothing to the usefulness of the forum. It otherwise detracts from what should be technical discussions.

Another annoyance are projects that choose to autolock threads in Discourse. On a technical forum such actions are unwarranted as there are times when an investigation can take months and remembering to add a nonsense post to keep a thread from autolocking doesn't always happen. So, a collection of disjoined threads result and even with links to the prior thread(s) the flow of investigation is greatly disrupted. SMH

I am just the opposite. I started using Git not long after it gained traction outside of the kernel project. Of course, it was primarily geared toward working in the terminal then. Some years later I had switched to Emacs and gave Magit a whirl. Even after going through quite a bit of its copious documentation, I just never felt comfortable with it. I guess I don't like being that far removed from the actual goings on with the repository.

I've since switched to Vim and happily use git at the terminal prompt. I doubt that will ever change as the interactive interface of various Git commands has improved.

I also heard "Mississippi's Finest Junk" as well. To be fair, I found the MFJ items I had to be able to the job. It was never best of breed but was always serviceable.

The first MFJ product I bought was a 941-C Versa Tuner circa 1984 or so. A few years later I tried to load my 80m dipole as a Marconi antenna with 100 Watts. With only about 35 feet of vertical feedline that didn't work so well. In the process the torroid transformers overheated and melted the PVC forms the transformers were housed in. A few years later I ordered replacements from MFJ and these had a larger torroid, Teflon insulated wire, and sandwiched between phenolic wafers for mounting. I sold it a few years later after procuring a second hand 949-D tuner.

I also had a 986 Differential Tee tuner for a number of years that I replaced with a Palstar AT1500DT differential tee tuner. I routinely had to pull the 986 out and clean and lubricate it. I've had the Palstar about 15 years and have yet to open it up. The Palstar was priced about 50% higher than the MFJ but the quality is an order of magnitude better. With the Palstar I only cried once, as the saying goes.

It didn't take long to get acquainted with them as the company would send a complimentary catalog to new licensees and to those who upgraded their license class. At least that was the case years back.

Mostly digital. For an extra $25 per anum one can still get the print QST mailed as it always was but for the regular membership dues QST is digital only. However, the membership dues also include digital access to National Contest Journal, QEX, and On The Air. Perhaps it was at my suggestion along with others but ARRL has enabled PDF downloads of all content via the digital provider. These PDFs are fully text searchable and much smaller than a "print to PDF" version that was a collection of graphical images for each page.

As is half of any of the retailers' catalogs.

I'd like to see DXE acquire the Hy-Gain and Ameritron lines if possible.

I've not followed this closely to know if Martin wanted to sell everything as a single unit or had entertained offers for the individual brands he's acquired over the years. Hopefully if it was the former he'll now consider the latter.

"Best regards"

As I understand it, '73' comes from the landline Morse/news wire reporting tradition.

Actually, comparing the price to the quality/functionality, MFJ stuff is usually priced at a premium versus the kit or one-man-shop devices that they copied. Pricing also seldom changed in response to lower demand (thinking of the venerable MFJ-1270 TNC as interest in packet radio fell off in the late '90s and early '00s). Then there is the case where MFJ bought the rights to Coastal Chip works TNC-X and TNC-Pi and the prices went up significantly. MFJ has been a one-stop-shop for a lot of ham radio gadgets and accessories but were seldom the best value on the market as the pricing reflected their "No Matter What" warranty.

Other than an older Ameritron amplifier, which may predate the MFJ acquisition, I see nothing with the MFJ logo looking around my "shack". I moved on from MFJ many years ago and sought better alternatives. Some years ago I bought a Rig Expert AA230-ZOOM analyzer that is far more capable, stable, and compact than any of the MFJ analyzers I had used prior. I also have a NanoVNA that I use for 70cm that is beyond the range of the AA230-ZOOM. Other items in the shack are better built and better performing than their MFJ counterparts such as a West Mountain Radio DC power strip and Palstar and LDG tuners.

I am concerned about the fate of Ameritron and Hy-Gain. These two product lines have a strong history that pre-dates their acquisition by MFJ and it would be a shame to see them disappear from the ham radio marketplace.

Better than Hughsnet which was the only option for a long time other than cellular.

$90/month for 25/2.5 Mbps here. I honestly never thought we'd see that kind of speed. In late 2015 it went from 512 kbps to 10/1 Mbps on a new system. Four years later (2019) they upgraded it to the present speed with no increase in price. It's all wireless and since we're in AT&T telco territory there is no chance of them doing anything (the phone lines have been in the ground since the late '70s), so this independent telco built out as a WISP almost 20 years ago. They're looking at doing their own FTTH in this area.

I read much on zsh, but I seem to be too invested in Bash to change. Is there are good migration guide for someone with a moderately complex ~./bashrc and a lot of aliases in ~/.bash_aliases?

I seem to recall doing an Arch installation a couple of years back and the zsh instance was well done but none of that setup was installed on the system even with zsh installed. I suppose I could have copied it from the installation media but didn't think about that at the time.

Apparently the Corgi on this place didn't get the memo! Generally he just stops and does his thing whatever direction he's going and wherever he happens to be. No, he's not obedience trained or any such thing.

They are very curious. As they can't just pick something up to examine it, they do the next thing which is to sniff it and then taste it. At that point it's on a one way trip down the gullet!

Other times they try to eat things they shouldn't like "hedge apples" which are the "fruit" of Osage Orange, a.k.a. hedge trees. These apples will start falling to the ground during late summer and early fall and for whatever reason cattle like to eat them. After they lay for a while they get mushy and there is usually no problem but early on they're hard and can get lodged on the way down or on the way back up when they chew their cud. Usually it takes a stiff hose to clear the blockage and after a day or so things are fine.

I probably didn't state that all that well. If I had really wanted one I'm sure I would have been provided one. It's equally quite possible that since they had to be obtained from a veterinarian that it never occurred to me to ask for one.

OTOH, I did destroy a couple of old radios to get the speaker magnets. If I could go back in time I'd grab those old radios before I'd have a chance to destroy them. Back then they were just that--old radios--with no value and certainly not worth fixing. Sigh...

I wonder if this occurs more with small animal vets--"pet vets"?

I know of a number of large animal vets that retired and enjoyed many years of retirement. Perhaps being in the large animal practice where decisions are made on economics and not emotions helps them survive. Those vets also did small animals but it was probably more of a sideline for them.

I admit that I've never noticed that. They seem to lay whatever direction seems comfortable. In winter time the will lay east-west to catch the most warmth and will often roll on their side to really catch some rays.

While we had vets put magnets down cows over the years, my parents were too frugal to let me have one!

There are two primary ways steel gets into the feed supply. A silage chopper can pick it up and cut it into fine bits or a hay baler picks up a stray end of wire and running large bales into a tub grinder to more easily mix feed stocks into a total mixed ration will chop the stray wire (and other parts) into moderately short bits.

Many feed wagons have strong magnets under the discharge chute and grinder/mixers (used to grind grain and supplements) have likewise strong magnets just before the material enters the hammer mill. Despite that some bits will slip by due to the volume of material passing over the magnets as it comes out of the feed wagon.

We do have the vets administer magnets to the heifers we keep at around 9 months of age. One has to watch to be sure they don't work them back up and spit them out! A couple of years ago we had some that did that.

Symptoms of hardware is usually a cow "off feed" meaning she is not coming to the bunk to eat with the rest but usually stands apart and in acute cases will become hunched back. A veterinarian can usually diagnose it with a stethoscope as I think the breathing becomes labored in more acute cases.

Thanks for the memory jog. There is fiber optic running along the line from Marysville to Beatrice so that may have been a consideration for railbanking the line.

I recall this being very contentious when the rail banking act was enacted back in the '80s. At that time the right of way that became the Katy Trail in Missouri was in dispute but the adjacent land owners lost.

More recently and closer to home, Union Pacific abandoned part of its Valley Subdivision from Lincoln,NE to Marysville, KS and successfully railbanked the entire route. Adjacent landowners fought it to no avail. Today the trail has three segments--Lincoln to Beatrice, NE, Beatrice to the Kansas/Nebraska state line, and from the state line to Marysville, KS.

As I understand, railbanking is a way for railroads to abandon a route while protecting the right of way for possible future railroad use. In the mean time the trails make use of the right of way and maintain it.

There were a number of regular season games on Thursday night carried exclusively by Amazon Prime. I watched them through my Roku devices and the quality was not great but then there can be up to three TVs streaming through their respective Roku devices at once here and our download bandwidth is limited to 25Mbps.

The one playoff game that was carried exclusively via Peacock was the wildcard game between the Dolphins and Chiefs. I also watched it through the Roku devices and I thought the picture quality was fine, better than Amazon Prime had been.

Would I have ponied up $5.99 if it weren't the Chiefs as they're the local team? I don't know. Perhaps next year I'll have to make that decision if they carry another playoff game that has teams I don't care that much about.

Many years ago attending the first company technical seminar that one was taped to the door.

Sometime in the late '80s the local daily began carrying the Far Side and the very first one had Popeye on the witness stand saying, "I yam what I yam."