If you haven’t seen it…

Go rent the movie: TRON

If you HAVE seen it…

go HERE and await your destiny. You will NOT be disappointed.

We choose to go to the moon….

Want to watch the Apollo 11 mission on a minute-by-minute basis? Or would you like to relive the experience?

http://wechoosethemoon.org/

This website was created to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the mission with an interactive “official re-launch” at 8:02am ET on Thursday, July 16th 2009.

Enjoy!

Blackberry week 1

Well, this week has been fun. The end of the week is here and the phone is still working.

I’ve had no problems with voice (thanks to the Airave) and no problems with data. The only real issue with the phone has been the signal bar, and my lack of experience with the device itself.

The signal indicator likes to fluctuate around from full signal to nothing, and between 1x (basic voice) and 1xEV (full 3g speed). After doing some research at www.crackberry.com, I’ve found out that my phone, a 8330, is actually an 8330m…an upgraded model with slightly different circuitry than what’s been sold over the past year. With this change, came a new operating system… 4.5.0.131

Another carrier’s model has version 138, and I tried it. It made the signal much more steady, but I had something against running a different OS that is neither stock, nor tested by others. There is a Hybrid OS in the works at Crackberry, but 54 pages of text made me decide against trying it as there are 4 carriers and 2 versions of difference that I have to contend with.

The connection changes between 1xEV are due to Sprint’s network. They say that voice and data cannot be done simultaneously as AT&T does with the iPhone (from what folks have told me), therfore the phone is constantly checking data, then checking voice, checking data, checking voice, and so on. It’s kind of backwards though considering that it’s a Blackberry…a data device that should have access all the time. lol Sprint has said that they are working to improve the way data and voice work to allow both, but there isn’t a time-line on when they will change it.

Other than these issues, I’ve had no problems at all. I’ve downloaded programs, games, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and they all work great. It’s nice when I’m browsing the web and I get a Tweet and Facebook message. I’ve got a Star Trek communicator sound that notifies me, and teh screen shows a red star on the icon of the notifying application.

For missed calls, messages (SMS and MMS) and e-mail, the star shows on a general Messaging icon that has everything under one “hood”. I open the app and there is a list of each item: an envelope for e-mail, an italicized envelope for texts, and a little phone for missed calls.

As a Blackberry exclusive, they include the Blackberry Messenger. Think of it as an IM client for Blackberry-only communication. Each blackberry has a unique PIN number. When someone gives you this number, you put it in here and you can contact them at any time (with delivery and read notification.) It works just like AIM or Yahoo. Any messages also show in the Messaging icon, but as a smiley that includes the entire conversation.

It’s really a unique device, and after being with mine for less than a week, I think I will have one from now on…it really is addicting. Now I know why Obama didn’t want to let his go. LOL

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On the other front…I haven’t been able to sleep very well.

Right now, it’s 2am and I’m not even sleepy. I took Tylenol PM. It usually takes about an hour for it to start affecting me, so I should be ready for bed by the time I’m done here.

I’ve started to realize that without a job, Life sucks. lol For the past 11 years (23 including school), my days have been spend either at school, or working. My time has been worth something. But now, nothing.

I have spent the past few weeks putting in job applications, sending correspondence to the VA, doing chores around the house, and playing with the blackberry. Up until now, I’ve spent my days trying to keep myself occupied. But at night, that is when my mind has been free to wander. And wander it has…

I’ve thought about my future. The future of my family. Where will we be in 1 year? 5 years? 10 years? What will happen if the VA shafts me as the military had? What if I keep getting rejected for jobs? I know that I have a skill-set that is useful for military contractors and/or the government. The problem I run into is this:

I have 11 years experience as an aviation electrician. I can’t get a low-paying job because the potential employer thinks I’ll run away. I’m over-qualified to them. I can’t get a job doing what I did in the military, because I don’t have a degree. I’m stuck between a rock, and a hard place. On one hand they are afraid to hire me even though they want me, and on the other hand I’m not qualified.

Right now I have an accepted application as a “Helper/Support-Trainee” at Tinker AFB. They haven’t done interviews yet for any of the accepted, so we are all waiting for them to call. This is an entry-level job that can place me anywhere as a full-time employee where they will train me in the job they select for me…just like a brand-new military recruit. They could also place me in a position that is suited to my qualifications too, so I’m hoping for that.

I was contacted by a company in Greenville, TX this week. Once that I found at the career fair a couple of weeks ago. They have me set for an interview on Monday, and are assisting my financial needs to get me there for it. They sound interested, and after my research in the company and the area down there, I’m actually optimistic. The company does research/development for new military and civilian avionics systems, and that is what I am looking for.

My early years as an airman were spent working in a cage on new and innovative systems for C-130s, and MH-53s. It was mainly for the new satellite communication systems, but I also worked on normal communication and navigation units as well. I spent 2 weeks in Las Vegas for the testing of a glass-cockpit and satellite upgrade, and was also involved in the upgrade of the satellite system on the 53. the latter was supposed to be a 1 week ordeal, but problems arose in the first week and they called me in during the second week. I volunteered to do the troubleshooting of the system, and after 1 day I found the problem (with the help of my coworkers experience of course). I resolved it, made a checklist for it and explained it to the civilian company that owned the system. They pretty much let me have my way in repairing it and writing the checklist. After the fix was verified, we took the resolution to the base commander and he signed my application to have it installed in the entire MH-53 fleet. I got the Commander’s COin and an Achievement Medal for that one. I loved that job.

OK…I made it sound like I was the only one that could fix this thing, but honestly if it weren’t for my coworkers and my civilian counterparts, the problem would probably still be an issue. They all gave me a lot of latitude, and I owe it to my boss for trusting me to get the job done. I’m glad he did. He gave me a chance, and I wasn’t going to let him down. He knew my experience, but he knew what I was capable of.

Because of Jerry Smith, I was a more confident airman…a better team-worker…a better person. That week I learned that I was capable of anything.

Now, I sit here, typing this blog wondering what I will be doing next. Sweeping floors, passing out hamburgers, or just being a dead-end blue-collar worker doing the same job for days on end for the next 30 years. I could be doing these things, but I have higher standards for myself.

It is correct that beggars can’t be choosers, but I’m not begging yet, and I’m still choosing. I choose to get the job I want, and choose to enjoy it. It’s just a matter of time until I find that job, that employer, who is willing to trust me and give me a chance to not let them down.

Happy 4th of July!!!

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” -Declaration of Independance

It’s the 4th of July, the anniversary of the United States’ independence from Britain. In light of this, I’d like to provide 2 links for you.

http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html

These links are short reads, and worth the reminder of where our freedoms have come from.

Enjoy the rest of this wonderful year!

The VA

After almost 7 months of waiting…I’ve got my VA disability rating! Ummm…20%. That’s it. They had 10% for my shoulder (although I can’t do manual labor anymore because of it) and 10% for my knee (although I can’t do major walking/standing anymore). They completely disregarded my hand numbness because there wasn’t anything in my military record about it. Let’s see…I have a good hand, have shoulder surgery, then my hand goes numb. That pretty much links the numbness to my shoulder surgery.

I contacted a VA lawyer already, and they said that it looks like a good case. I sent them a copy of all my paperwork and should hear something back in a few days. Until then, We’ll just have to deal with being shafted by the VA…like every other Vet.

I don’t really consider myself a vet though. Yes, I was in the military for 11 years, but compared to these guys from Vietnam or World War 2…We’re nothing. They died for our freedom, I just supported the planes that fly.

THEY are the HEROES…

The 4th of July is this weekend, and because of them and all those soldiers in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Bosnia, and all over the world that did, or DO put their lives on the line for our freedom…

THANK  YOU!!!

The search begins…

I’ve been a user of Mac for a while, and with the dashboard, there are some really nifty widgets. One in specific is a program called Sol. It tells you the sunrise, sunset and twilight times and has a little graphic. I love it!

I’ve found that most of these widgets are basic html or java files that do their own calculations…just like Windows Vista gadgets.

What I’m looking for, is a way to convert the program from a mac widget, to a sidebar gadget, or find a program that works similar. The original owner has provided the source code on his website, and if I were to convert it, I would definitely reference his work as the original.

If anyone knows how to decompile this stuff and convert it to work as a gadget, please let me know!

Awesome series….

Considering that the NASA LRO/LCROSS has been slungshot around the moon for yet another moon mission, I’ve decided to watch one of my old HBO series…From the Earth to the Moon.

It is Directed by Michael Grossman, with Tom Hanks as a narrator.

This series tells the story of the NASA moon program. From the first spaceflight by Alan Shephard in the Mercury program, to the final man on the moon, Eugene Cernan, during Apollo 17.

If you are interested in spaceflight, SciFi, or the upcoming moon missions of the next decade, you should give it consideration. It’s a wonderful series, and tells a lot of the backstory, issues, problems, and resolutions to many of the missions.

This is how that happened!

Well, yesterday I finished the Twilight Saga…all 4 books…5 including the unfinished draft. I’ve also seen the movie twice. Wow…

It does seem a bit like a romance, but there was enough action so that I was DEEPLY interested in the story. Needless to say, I was impressed with Stephanie Meyer’s writing style. Not quite Anne Rice, but definitely impressive…so much that I was more interested in this story than the Harry Potter story.

I realize now, the reason for my attraction to this story…vampiric romance. The fear of death, the desire for love. Just like in the Vampire Chronicals from Anne Rice, the desire for love/companionship, and the need to quench the thirst are the main components. But this one was different. It was good.

If you plan to try the Saga out, I recommend waiting to watch the movie until after you’ve read the first book. The movie did feel rushed, but after you read the book you’ll appreciate the movie more, and you’ll understand why they had to rush it…way too much story to fit into a 2-hour movie.

How did this happen?

OK…so the wife and I went to bed early last night. I was waiting on storms to arrive, and she was reading. Out of curiosity, I decided to peek over her shoulder and start reading. I was hooked.

It was the 5th book in the Twilight series…or rather, its draft.

The draft was supposed to be a book, but someone leaked the unedited draft to the internet. In response to this the author, Stephanie Meyer, decided to go ahead and put it on her website, therefore we were reading it…legally.

I must stay, I haven’t even considered reading this series, but from because this book is basically the first book, but from a different person’s perspective, I was into it for some reason.

Needless to say, I am now reading the entire series. My wife had already bought all of the books, so I figured why not.

I’m not normally a reader. I prefer movies to books. But when a book makes it to movie form, I generally watch the movie to get the basic characters and storyline, then read the books to get the entire story. I did it with the Harry Potter series and was not disappointed.

I’m hoping that this series turns out just as well…for a guy who reads. :)

A new WHAT?!

PLAYONLINUX UPDATE: OK…well, I had a prior post concerning “PlayOnLinux” that didn’t go too well. A few more of the programs that I tried, did start the installation process, however they didn’t work too well. I knew that I should have checked them on winehq.com I keep forgetting that WINE is the process translating the programs, not this new one. lol

Well…the triplebooting of Ubuntu, Vista and W7 is working pretty good. I’ve noticed that 7 is using the same registry keys as Vista, or something else is going on. I’ve got programs installed under Vista, and when I play them (browsing to the correct location and executing them) they run just fine. Faster, in fact, than in Vista. How is this possible? Supposedly, reviewers of the new OS say that they streamlines the statup/shutdown procedure, but the core is built from Vista (hence the version 6.5) But then again, my Vista has had programs installed and removed many times. Oh well. The programs start and stop faster, but they run just as they did in Vista.

One thing that some folks may not understand….
Even though 7 is a new OS, and many folks still have a bad tast in the mouth from all the initial Vista problems, it is still built from Vista. If your PC runs like crap with Vista now, it may still run like crap on 7. The drivers are the same, therefore the hardware issues are the same. They made have made minor code changes to let it be more forgiving of hardware, but if you refuse to upgrade your hardware, you’ll still have problems with 7.

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/rant <on>

OK…so I’m in a retail store the other day, and I hear a customer asking for a new “digital antenna”. Wow…can people not understand the way TV works? Wow… The person came in a few days prior to buy a converter box because of the transition (which is today by the way). No big deal. plenty of folks have bought one. Anyway, they are asking for a digital antenna because their smart-ass geeky teenage neighbor told them it was needed, so here they are. The employee explained to them that it is not necessary as their existing antenna will work (they have an external roof type). They then went on how their neighbor was smarter than the employee and they wanted a “digital antenna”. I had to intercede.

Out of the blue, I gently asked the customer if he needed help (yes, I work there too.) He asked, I answered:

“Sir, there is no special digital antenna that is used for the new broadcasts. What we do have, is an antenna amplifier that will strengthen the broadcast signal that your existing antenna is already picking up, and allow the converter box’s receiver to properly decode the signal.”

He then goes into asking my how I got my information. Well…I am a HAM radio operator, I worked with digital and analog electronics for the military for 11 years, and electronics is one of my hobbies. He pretty much shut up at that point, and then decided to learn more about the technology, which I was GLAD to tell.

/rant <off>

The thing that most folks of his…(demographic, era, age, whatever) seem to misunderstand, is that the frequency of the new broadcasts is damn-near identical to the old ones. However, instead of having 1 frequency per channel, they can put two or 3…all digitally transposed on top of one another and easy for the box to separate.  This changes nothing in respect to the antenna…

The antenna shouldn’t be thought of as a separate device, but rather as an extension of the receiver. The receiver is what receives the signals, IT is what decodes the signals, not the antenna. All the antenna does is pass the signals TO the receiver.

Yes, the antenna is important; without one the receiver won’t have anything to decode, but the only thing about the antenna that is important is the tuning of which signals it will pass.

***WARNING!!! ELECTRICAL THEORY AHEAD!!!***

A basic antenna is a wire. The length of that wire is the key. A long wire will receive low frequencies, a small wire, high ones. FM radio: the frequency in the middle of the band is 98MHz…and the wavelength is just over 10 feet. AM radio has an average frequency of a much lower 1117kHz and a wavelength of 880 feet!! MUCH longer! An antenna of those sizes will pass those frequencies through to the receiver with very little loss. Obviously we don’t have 10 foot antennas on our cars, instead we have one that is 2.5 feet…1/4 of the wavelength. Multiples of 2 usually work well for frequencies. 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, etc. They become less effective as you go shorter, but they work better than nothing at all. If the size is not on one of these multiples, it doesn’t get rejected, just attenuated and lost as wasted energy. You can have multiple sizes on one antenna too…like the ones on a roof antenna. That allows multiple frequencies to be tuned, but it also does a special thing…it amplifies signals coming from one direction! Well…not really, but it does pay much more attention to the signals coming from one direction…a passive amplification. That means that the receiver can have more signal to decode. But what signals get passed along? All of them.

Every signal in the world. Digital, analog, Wifi, Bluetooth, space transmissions, aviation conversation, cellular phones… every frequency, every modulation of signal. EVERYTHING! Any device that has transmitted a signal. That signal goes through space/air and is picked up by the antenna. The AM frequency from a state away. The FM signal from the city TV station. Your neighbor’s Wifi. Your cell phone. They are all being picked up by your TV antenna.  If they happen to be near or on one of the tuned frequencies, they aren’t attenuated and your receiver receives them.

Then IT…the receiver…filters out the ones it doesn’t want and decodes the signal. If it is an AM signal, it processes it as AM. FM, FM. Digital? It sends the signal to a processor to be decoded, translated, then sends that information to your TV or radio. BAM…now your watching 24, or Lost.

So what happens if your neighbors Wifi breaks and starts transmitting on your TV frequency? Are you going to start seeing his net traffic on your TV?  HA HA no. The converter box will only decode the special signal that it was designed to receive. Wifi uses a different protocol of ones and zeros to transmit it’s data, and your converter box isn’t designed to process those.

However if the new, unwanted signal is stronger than the one you want, you’ll lose your picture, or music. This used to be a problem with AM radio, and still is on AM radio and CB radio. Amplitude Modulation.

Ever notice the HUM of an AM radio station? That’s the sound of the 60Hz AC power running along the power lines…bleeding onto the surrounding frequencies. Yes, its a long way from 60kHz to 1MHz, but if the power is unclean, as it usually was back in those days, the power wires act like a giant antenna, sending that 60Hz signal onto all kinds of frequencies. The style of modulation, amplitude modulation, takes the information and amplifies the signal stronger and weaker to change the power of the signal, based on what is being input. A person talking, music…it all modulates the power of the carrier frequency (the tuned frequency of the radio), and you get your NPR. If something creates a noise, or any signal at all on that frequency, your hear it. A tick, static from lightning, etc.

FM, or frequency modulation, doesn’t change the strength, but the frequency instead. It changes the carrier wave by increasing its frequency very slightly up and down. The louder the music or speech, the more the frequency changes…but the power doesn’t. This feature of FM pretty much got rid of any lightning static and the AC hum from power lines, and even today is a fairly strong way of transmitting information. You can still hear a slight lightning tick if a bolt strikes near because the lightning signal is so powerful, but it takes a LOT to lose the signal or bleed over it. The only time I’ve heard bad static or interference is when you have 2 FM radio stations very close together on the radio. You have to be at the right spot where you’re losing one, and getting the new one. Even at the end of the transmitted range, you might get static because the receiver is receiving a signal so weak that it has a hard time decoding it, but you can still hear or see the signal.

Digital is something brand new and something that has a lot of room to grow. Instead of changing the carrier’s strength or frequency, it transmits in a modulation called PM…pulse modulation. This is an on and off switching of the power (similar to AM), but it’s in a digital format. More of an instant on and instant off, in a special sequence that only a converter box or digital-tuner TV can receive. If lightning strikes right outside your house it won’t change the picture (if it doesnt cause power to go out, or blow up the TV). The converter box sees the new signal and ignores it because it doesn’t fit the sequence of data. Done. Nice touch eh? Plus, since it is a digital format, you get the picture as it is meant to be seen…exactly as it is transmitted. The only problem, as many folks are finding our now, is that it’s all or nothing. There is no static to see through because the data can’t be decoded…like a dropped cell phone call, or the cutting in and out of a cell conversation when you’re in the dead-zone with no bars. All or nothing. That’s why the amplifiers are so popular, and why most of the new antennas have one built in.

Your existing antenna will work fine because it ALSO receives the new signals and passes them on to your new TV or converter box. You just might need to buy a DTV amplifier. That’s all.

OK…Sorry about the theory, but it was necessary for me to vent, and if you learned something, cool! If you do wish to read more, feel free to search the web on AM, FM and PM modulations. If you can leave a comment and I’ll fill in.