Thursday, 31st August, 2023

Wow I’ve only added six entries this month.

Wrote a blog post on my radio blog the other night, was about 11pm by the time I finished. I re-read it the next morning and realised how terribly written it was. I threw it into ChatGPT and asked it to fix the grammar. Was lovely after that, pretty much copied what it provided exactly. I did like how it turned some of my negative statements into positive ones. e.g. instead of me saying “don’t do this”, it was more like “do this instead”. I quite liked that.

Thursday, 24th August, 2023

I’ve been debating about pausing this blog, and instead writing on my new radio one in a more daily note style. It does lead me back into the quandary of Blog posts vs. waffling on semi-aimlessly. Perhaps at this stage a regular reader might point out that these two things are, in fact, the same!

Right now the blog is more “major” stuff, although I did write a more chatty post this evening, like I built X or first time doing Y. I kind of thing it would be interesting to do smaller details like, went on 40m this evening and spoke to OM for 20 minutes about X & Y. Almost more for myself than anyone else. But I worry it’ll pollute the blog and turn it into a mess. Why does this matter? I don’t know, some imaginary reader might not like it…but I’ll never know.

He’s a nice neat room, please admire it. But don’t open any cupboards.

Somewhat related was that I was thinking about adding more to my radio logs than just callsign and location etc. (in fact all I do is add callsign and frequency and the computer /internet does everything else automatically) but actually record what we talked about or some interesting fact about them that I learnt, or even just how I perceived them. This is perhaps too personal to put on a blog? Or maybe just do highlights.

I suppose it all comes back to what am I trying to achieve?

Now that’s a hard question.

Another reason is that I don’t really have time to do more than one blog, or I don’t want to spend the time of more than one blog as then I’ll never actually do anything else! Maybe I just keep the daily here and it can be more radio, and then keep the other blog for more useful(?) texts for others. I don’t know. Same issue different topic.

Wife got the FBI letter thing today, finally, which is good. HR let her start work when the term started pending sending it in when it arrived. So now she is all sorted. Seems to be enjoying it, or at least not hating it! I think because she’s a teacher at the local senior school, everyone in the area is going to know us. I think that’s great. I’ll probably never speak to anyone…I only talk to randoms 1000s of miles away 😅…but it’s nice for us to be part of the community.

Now that she’s at work, I’m keen to find excuses to work at home occasionally! Drop the kids at school, come back, do a bit of work, do a bit of whatever, but enjoy the peace and quiet.

Actually, I think I’ll keep this blog as is. Even though I am spending all my time on radio, I do think about other things and want to write them down, and maybe one day I’ll figure out how to turn this blog into a book or something for myself to re-read in years to come. The continuity of a long standing blog, seeing the multiple years folder structure is rewarding in itself. Yes, I still want to use tinderbox but that’s never going to happen.

Wednesday, 23rd August, 2023

Time flies! Been very busy with school holidays and trips and then getting ready for back to school. Plus wife has gone back to work. Been trying to add to my radio blog too.

Tuesday, 15th August, 2023

Oh I’ve made another blog…about radio…do I really need more blogs? It’s Wordpress, and to remind myself of why I should use Wordpress, I made a blog post on it from my phone. Why is that a big deal? Well because it was better than wasting my time looking at Reddit on my phone. I can write to this site on my phone too, and even have an Apple Shortcut to manage the git repo actions for me. However, adding a photo from my phone to my blog…now that’s where the Wordpress app (on server and phone) shines. So even though I don’t like having multiple blogs, I’m going to keep it because I hope it makes me write more things.

I still need to add the standard About, etc. pages, and pick a theme. Just using the stock 2023 WP theme and it’s fine but meh.

Spending ages with my satellite setup - got it working and made contacts and had good long chats with people on it, which was the reason for making it. Plus the fun of making it. Still a few odds and ends to sort out but hopefully nearly there.

Wife is starting a new job as a teacher next week. Been >10 years since she last worked. HR is a pain and the FBI are a pain. Yes, FBI. She needs a criminal record check from US as we lived there, and like all US processes it’s paper only and archaic. She has to send ink finger prints to them. It takes forever and they’ve rejected two submissions already (which we had the police here take her fingerprints and we started this 2 months ago). Think she’s convinced HR to let her start whilst the 3rd application is in the mail…although if that gets rejected I’m not sure what happens. I think if you’re a US citizen it is an easier process, although still have to submit fingerprints via the Post Office. Given every time we entered the country we had our fingerprints taken along with our passports and visas scanned, you’d think we could provide her name, SSN, DoB, passport number etc. and they could run a check…that’s how it happens in the UK.

Everything seems okay but there was a while (during our trip away no less) where it seemed like she might not be starting with the new term or might have the offer taken away. Plus we lost her AirPods that day…since been found and being posted back to us.

Makes my satellite technical issues seem irrelevant. Spoiler…they are.

Tuesday, 8th August, 2023

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Micheal, the author, also likes film photography and we shared some of our favourite images and talked about cameras. We both haven’t taken any film photos in ages due to film prices but also that we’re both spending all our free time on radio related things!

He does a lot better of blogging all his projects compared to me though.

Monday, 7th August, 2023

It’s been a busy week, lots of people visiting, and back to work. Showed my sister the radio and we (I, whilst she listened) had a contact with a nice guy, Ron, in Poland.

Busy but I don’t know what I’ve done.

Wednesday, 2nd August, 2023

Well my morse training has completed stopped since getting back home. Not surprising really. I should try and do some at lunch time at work if nothing else.