Posts

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Tech “support” can be SO annoying.

So yesterday, for the second day in a row, our Cox internet connection goes away.   Poof…   the network is still there, but there’s no DHCP server responding, so the router is off line, for all practical purposes.   Connected the incoming cable to the Linux box and I can see traffic with tcpdump; mostly ARP requests from other systems.   I reset the interface for DHCP and could see my own DHCP requests going out, but nothing coming back from Cox.

So, time to call and let them know they’ve screwed the pooch again.   Tech support droid wants me to reboot my Linux machine to pick up a new IP address…   this despite the fact that he knows absolutely nothing about Linux, specifically that the networking actually works, and can be restarted without rebooting the box.   Sigh.   Why do they hire these morons, and then KEEP them stupid and completely in the dark?   God only knows.

Apparently they lost their DHCP server, or it had some severe screwup, since we now have a new IP address for the first time since we connected here in 2001.

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Did some reloading

Of course, the first step in reloading ammunition is making empties.   I did that yesterday by shooting a hundred rounds of .40 S&W at the Bullet Hole.   🙂   Since the recipe I was trying worked out pretty well, I went ahead and loaded a couple hundred this morning.   6.2 grains of Unique over a CCI small pistol primer, with 155 grain Berry’s plated flat nose bullets.   I did get my freebie box of 180 grain Hornady XTP hollow points, so I’ll try those on my next trip too. Continue reading “Did some reloading”

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Is it Spring yet?

I keep waiting for things to warm up. It’s even cold (relatively) in North Carolina; when I went out to get some late dinner last night, I had to break the windshield wipers on the rental car loose. There was actual ice on the windshield; it was 30 or 31 degrees outside.

I’m more than ready to melt off the ice & snow, clean up the yard again, roll out the bike, tune up the air rifle for rabbit season and welcome the warmer weather. I believe our back yard may have become an actual glacier, so that may take a while to slide off into the fjord.

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Consistency is the key.

I travel to Charlotte, NC fairly regularly. One thing that has been pretty consistent is the fact that it seems to rain almost every time I go there. This has not gone unnoticed; there was talk of bringing me back on consecutive weeks last summer when there was a drought killing off lawns down here.

Yesterday morning I was on a conference call and mentioned that I was leaving shortly to fly down to Charlotte.   One of my teammates there said, “Good, we need the rain”.   The weather was fine last night – but this morning, as I was walking from my car to the building… it started raining.

Consistency, that’s the key.

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Learning to checker

I’ve started learning to checker stocks.   I hadn’t given it much thought before, but in the process of doing the rebuild on the Remington I decided to re-cut the factory checkering.   I started out using a single line checkering tool, and have a couple of new cutting heads on the way.   The biggest challenge, really, is keeping the lines straight.   When I can keep the lines from getting off kilter, the results are really, really nice.

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What a difference a day makes!

Wow. Yesterday it was 50 or above, snow melting, got the antenna feedpoint re-connected and actually grilled hamburgers on the gas grill outside! Pete took the dog out to the dog park, which was followed by a bath since he (Buddy, not Pete) came home looking like one giant mudball. What a nice day. Of course we had a small pond forming in the back yard, the joy of living at the bottom of a hill.

Now it’s 10 or below, the pond is now a glacier of solid ice, and it’s snowing. Wind is blowing like mad, it’s just cold as hell.

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The antenna work race

Well, the race is on!  This is supposed to be our last day of decent weather before we have another week or two of cold & snow.   I’ve got some work to do to get my antenna functional again.   I had a very temporary lashup with a balun soldered (more or less) on the end of the coax, but without any weather protection.   The rain & snow hit a few days sooner than I expected, so right now that balun is in the middle of a block of ice and the wires are disconnected.   I have to get it thawed out, the coax patched to the antenna, and the whole mess sealed up against moisture this afternoon or it’s another few weeks of no radio!

It’s a little frustrating to have a nice “new”(er) rig sitting here and not be able to use it.   I think I had less than 6 contacts for all of 2007…   I’d like to do better this year!