Autumn Begins: Another Random Post
Blog and Journal Hobbies Roleplay and Fantasy
This is a general post, mostly for my own benefit, in order to help plan my projects in the months to come, and also touch on various topics I have been meaning to write about, but perhaps haven't had time to formulate a whole post on.
Photos
I have been meaning to post photos on a regular basis on here. Sadly I really haven't had much time lately to sit down and go through my photo album. In fact my desktop computer is currently torn apart as I work on recovering some of my older hard drives.
On that note, I now have the ability to recover most lost data from hard drives (SCSI, IDE, or SATA), so long as the issue wasn't involving physical damage. I may offer this as a service on Craigslist soon to bring in some extra cash.
Back on track however, I am afraid that the photos I am looking for from 2006, are in fact on a hard drive that I have since reformatted and reused, making recovery difficult. On top of that, the drive I believe it might be, I used as my new photo storage drive, and therefore I will have to filter through all my newer photos in order to maybe find a few old photos hidden in null spaces on the drive.
This is a major long-term project. The issue I am running into now is that I will have to purchase some brand new drives in order to export recovered photos to when I do find some.
Printer
I purchased a network laser printer a while back and it had some issues. I have since narrowed it down to some cold solder joints on the formatter board. I have a replacement board to plop in there, and I hope to recondition the board with the problems once I remove it. This shouldn't be too hard, but it has been put on the back burner.
Ham Radio
I can't believe I am going into year 3 at the house, and still haven't installed a long wire for HF or any sort of external antenna for my ham gear. I have basically everything I would need for such a setup, save for a ground rod or two.
My HF Antenna will run from my office, through LMR-400 coaxial cable, out the rear of the house. It will then go through a lightning protection terminal and a balun and out to a long wire in the back yard. It will bridge between the garage and the house on pre-existing cable anchors. Alongside it I plan on running a fiber optic cable for another project.
In the garage, I plan on installing a small dual band antenna off of the upper front wall, along the roof line. That will be fed in to my electronics lab area.
The VHF / UHF side of my FT857D which will be in my office, will be routed downstairs, and then out the North wall. It will meet with a lightning protection terminal, and then up to the roofline where it will connect to my nice dual band base station antenna.
Currently I have no plans to utilize my 4 bay VHF or UHF commercial folded di-pole antennas, however there are long-term plans which may utilize them. I also have a 450MHz yagi and a 800MHz omni which I would like to attach to an antenna farm sometime in the future, but at the moment those are not top priority.
ONTRR / RWL N Scale
My model railroad project has been on hold for over a year now. While this was one of the major factors in purchasing my home, it seems to have taken a back seat to bills and the realities of life. This winter however, I do hope to begin building the framework for the model railroad room. A 30 foot wall must be constructed, and the rest of the room needs to be drywalled and finished before construction on the model railway may commence. Dry wall is actually kinda expensive, and I likely will not be able to get anywhere close to finishing the room before this time next year. But I can rough in wiring and digitally work on my layout plan in Trainz.
Possible Freelance Paint Scheme
The idea was to originally model the Ontario Northland. This is why I set up ontrr.com in order to follow the progress of the model railroad build. But with the Ontario Government being so fucked up lately, and wanting to divest the Ontario Northland, and the drama surrounding that, I decided that maybe it might be better to freelance a similar railroad.
I have been loosely working on a story for the new freelance railroad, and it is based on my wolf character and a connection between him and the railroad. But that is another story, literally.
Garage Improvements
This brings me to the work which needs to be done to the Garage to support said improvements. A new electrical panel is a must. Some of the existing wiring can be reused, however much of the conduit upstairs would be in the way of drywall. The lower part of the garage also needs some lighting improvements. Some of the lights stay on all the time. This is good in some aspects because I do need to go into the garage at night to head to work. But it would be better if there was a motion sensing light which would shut off when I am not there. There also needs to be better lighting for working on vehicles and projects.
Getting Internet access is also an issue out there, and this is where the fiber optic lines come into play. I plan on using multi-mode fiber to get my wired network out there.
Shockers
The Shockers is a loosely formed ham radio club, based on a theme founded by Grinthock, caesium and myself. Mike, VE3XLS, and a few others were also loosely involved. The group started off more as a goon squad of younger rebellious ham radio nerds, but then everyone kind of went their own way. I suppose I was the first person to kinda leave, but such is life.
However, since I have been living in Western New York, I have found a few friends who are also interested in electronics like I am. Last year the train room got turned into a hack lab of sorts, and we began tinkering with making pedals and noise circuits for use in musical or sound production. Therefore part of the train room will remain as a sort of hack lab, with a bench for electronics, an oscillioscope and multimeter, and a few other gadgets. We have a lot of parts which we have combined into a mass of resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors and IC's.
One major task which I do hope to accomplish this winter will be to sort much of the more common components into small bins. The rest can remain in unsorted bins.
Lights!
I have been doing fairly well selling and rebuilding light bars, and emergency vehicle lighting systems. I do wish to start an LLC for this purpose, however I have been putting it off based on a lack of general funds in order to do so. I also need to work on the website which I actually took completely offline a while back. The storefront was messy and difficult to navigate.
For anyone who is interested, I am selling new LED Mini bars in either Amber or Blue for $150, and LED dash lights in Blue (or any color) for $60. These lights are bright, and not of the poor quality that the typical cheaper chinese lights are on eBay. While these lights are made in China, they are generally pretty good. I did find an issue with the old style of mini lightbar that they sold which is no longer being sold. The replacement for it uses modules which will work a lot better, so I am confident that there will no longer be any issues with them. I plan on rebranding these lights when I form my LLC.
RP Muse
My roleplaying forum at forum.roadwolf.ca has not really progressed in a while. Velvet Shadowheart, Luna and a few others do wish to continue roleplaying. I do as well, but I haven't had a muse for a while. Usually my muse is gained from chasing some tail, so to speak. Finding a girl who offers a challenge. While I have spoken to several girls over the past year, few I have had ongoing conversations with. Most seem to fall by the wayside, which I suspect is because I am married and they don't want to waste their time. But I find that I too have also grown picky. Perhaps more picky than I should be considering my own value.
I have tried to form a closer personal relationship with Vel, as she does intrigue me, but it seems that she is only interested in being close to me in an RP sense. Note that the RP on the forum isn't sexual in nature, and is usually based on a wild nature type setting in which each participant plays a creature. There is a focus on realism and it is expected that one should be familiar with the creature they are playing in order to naturally react in a similar manner to various situations.
I do enjoy RP and I kind of miss it, but with all of the above topics to worry about, plus paying normal bills and the mortgage, it really is tough to drift off and let my mind wander these days. I do need a good distraction.