Hillsboro/St. Louis and Finding an Apartment in Dubuque
Yes, I know I've fallen off the update wagon once again since it's been over two weeks since I updated. Not that anyone's been holding their breath waiting for me to update, but I'm guessing there's at least one person who wishes I'd update more often.
The trip to Hillsboro, IL/St. Louis with Jeff and Meri was pretty fun, though there were some annoyances. The funnest part of the trip for me was meeting one of the hams in Hillsboro, a friend of Jeff's family who was also a jewelery and watch repairman, and who still repairs clocks as a hobby. He had a ham on his radio from Germany, so I somewhat made my first international contact thanks to that. The most unexpected part was Meri taking over the game of Mario Kart DS that we were playing at the hospital Jeff was at for his checkup and actually wanting to finish it. We had actually not set a limit on how many tracks we would play, and to my surprise she wanted to keep on playing until we got through them all, even to the point of taking the DS with her while she went with Jeff and his parents to get his checkups (I had to stay behind since there wasn't enough room for all five of us in the exam rooms). We held out until they got too far for the DSs' wireless signal to remain strong enough for a connection. Then, the next day, we did it again at Jeff's parents' house and went through all 32 tracks. The most disappointing part of the trip was going to the Cardinals game on that Friday, which was the reason why we stayed until Saturday morning instead of leaving on Friday like we originally planned. I'd wanted to go to a Cardinals game after we'd toured Busch Stadium since I wanted to see the place in action. We got standing-room-only tickets since they were the only ones left and the game was against the Minnesota Twins. There were two things that made this disappointing. The first was that the Cardinals lost, and probably wouldn't have if the pitcher hadn't walked two batters in the first inning, both of whom would go on to score. The second was that Jeff is pretty weak physically, partially due to having had cancer, but also because he doesn't get much physical exercise, not even walking, and when he's not at work he sits at home and watches TV. So he had to sit down quite a bit and the only place we could do that was near the bar, which meant we couldn't see the game, at least not directly (they had LCD TVs, but come on, we were right inside the stadium and the action was a mere 400 feet away). Overall I enjoyed my trip, though, and I really liked how Jeff's parents treated me, even giving me my own guest room to sleep in that was somewhat isolated from the rest of the house and complete with its own bathroom.
Other than that there hasn't been much going on. In fact I'm starting to feel like somewhat of a bum since I've been out of work for so long and I see my friends having to go to work a lot. Granted, I have a job lined up and it's only a matter of time before I start it, but it still seems like it's a ways off. I know I probably should be looking for an apartment in Dubuque, and I did try looking in the online version of the Telegraph-Herald, but the listings didn't show up, only links to add them to a user's wish list. Anyone have any tips on finding a place in a city outside your own?
As far as computing goes, my biggest project lately was to subnet my network. In layman's terms, this means I split my network. You know that subnet mask you need to put in to your router/network card configuration? Well, turns out you can use it to split a network, say, 192.168.1.0, into several subnetworks, or subnets. In my case I split it into four by using a subnet mask of 255.255.255.192 (giving a CIDR or 192.168.1.0/26) instead of 255.255.255.0 (or 192.168.1.0/24). This means that 192.168.1.0 is a network, but has a broadcast address of 192.168.1.63 instead of 192.168.1.255, and there's a second network at 192.168.1.64 with a broadcast address of 192.168.1.127, and so on. The reason I did this was so that I could separate the Wii from my PCs logically as far as the network goes, as well as plan for a future subnet dedicated to wireless users. It also makes firewalling these groups easier, as I can do it on an entire subnet rather than on individual IP addresses. Plus I wanted to learn about subnetworking, and what better network to learn it on than my own?
On the subject of amateur radio, in addition to the aforementioned visit in Hillsboro, I found that 70 cm (420 to 450 MHz in the U.S.) is a fairly active band in St. Louis, even more than 2 m (144-148 MHz), which surprised me though it may have been because I was checking 70 cm more since I have a better radio for that band. I was also at the local ham club's field day on the last Saturday in June. I didn't make any contacts, but I did log for someone else who did, which was somewhat of a task itself since we were outside and it was windy. We only made domestic contacts, but considering we were running on battery power it was still fun. I also acquired my first HF rig from a ham named John. It's actually a hybrid vacuum tube/transistor radio, with the tubes used in the amplifier stage. I have yet to try it out as I need to make an antenna for it. John gave me some antenna wire and an insulator, but I haven't decided whether I'm going to make it for HF or for 2 m for the radio that Jay gave me quite some time ago. Speaking of dipoles, I got to see tuning one in action after the Buchanan County Amateur Radio Club meeting last Thursday (Buchanan county is the county directly east of Black Hawk county, the one I'm in). Seeing it made me want to make my own dipole as well as get out the old one I used to receive FM broadcast stations, and it actually outperformed the Terk tower antenna I was using. I also was on the N0CF repeater on Monday. I need to get on there more often, as it's more fun talking to people in Des Moines via the repeater link than it is trying to reach anyone locally since few if any people listen on the local repeaters.
That's all for now. I'll be on a fishing trip with my dad (and only my dad, at least until maybe later in the week) until Friday or Saturday, barring inclement weather. We'll be staying in a cabin with electricity, though, so I'm considering bringing my laptop and if there's wireless access I'll take advantage of it. Otherwise I'll talk to you all when I get back. I'll also be in Winnipeg from the 23rd to the 29th. I'll update before then, but I thought I'd mention it in case I don't.
The trip to Hillsboro, IL/St. Louis with Jeff and Meri was pretty fun, though there were some annoyances. The funnest part of the trip for me was meeting one of the hams in Hillsboro, a friend of Jeff's family who was also a jewelery and watch repairman, and who still repairs clocks as a hobby. He had a ham on his radio from Germany, so I somewhat made my first international contact thanks to that. The most unexpected part was Meri taking over the game of Mario Kart DS that we were playing at the hospital Jeff was at for his checkup and actually wanting to finish it. We had actually not set a limit on how many tracks we would play, and to my surprise she wanted to keep on playing until we got through them all, even to the point of taking the DS with her while she went with Jeff and his parents to get his checkups (I had to stay behind since there wasn't enough room for all five of us in the exam rooms). We held out until they got too far for the DSs' wireless signal to remain strong enough for a connection. Then, the next day, we did it again at Jeff's parents' house and went through all 32 tracks. The most disappointing part of the trip was going to the Cardinals game on that Friday, which was the reason why we stayed until Saturday morning instead of leaving on Friday like we originally planned. I'd wanted to go to a Cardinals game after we'd toured Busch Stadium since I wanted to see the place in action. We got standing-room-only tickets since they were the only ones left and the game was against the Minnesota Twins. There were two things that made this disappointing. The first was that the Cardinals lost, and probably wouldn't have if the pitcher hadn't walked two batters in the first inning, both of whom would go on to score. The second was that Jeff is pretty weak physically, partially due to having had cancer, but also because he doesn't get much physical exercise, not even walking, and when he's not at work he sits at home and watches TV. So he had to sit down quite a bit and the only place we could do that was near the bar, which meant we couldn't see the game, at least not directly (they had LCD TVs, but come on, we were right inside the stadium and the action was a mere 400 feet away). Overall I enjoyed my trip, though, and I really liked how Jeff's parents treated me, even giving me my own guest room to sleep in that was somewhat isolated from the rest of the house and complete with its own bathroom.
Other than that there hasn't been much going on. In fact I'm starting to feel like somewhat of a bum since I've been out of work for so long and I see my friends having to go to work a lot. Granted, I have a job lined up and it's only a matter of time before I start it, but it still seems like it's a ways off. I know I probably should be looking for an apartment in Dubuque, and I did try looking in the online version of the Telegraph-Herald, but the listings didn't show up, only links to add them to a user's wish list. Anyone have any tips on finding a place in a city outside your own?
As far as computing goes, my biggest project lately was to subnet my network. In layman's terms, this means I split my network. You know that subnet mask you need to put in to your router/network card configuration? Well, turns out you can use it to split a network, say, 192.168.1.0, into several subnetworks, or subnets. In my case I split it into four by using a subnet mask of 255.255.255.192 (giving a CIDR or 192.168.1.0/26) instead of 255.255.255.0 (or 192.168.1.0/24). This means that 192.168.1.0 is a network, but has a broadcast address of 192.168.1.63 instead of 192.168.1.255, and there's a second network at 192.168.1.64 with a broadcast address of 192.168.1.127, and so on. The reason I did this was so that I could separate the Wii from my PCs logically as far as the network goes, as well as plan for a future subnet dedicated to wireless users. It also makes firewalling these groups easier, as I can do it on an entire subnet rather than on individual IP addresses. Plus I wanted to learn about subnetworking, and what better network to learn it on than my own?
On the subject of amateur radio, in addition to the aforementioned visit in Hillsboro, I found that 70 cm (420 to 450 MHz in the U.S.) is a fairly active band in St. Louis, even more than 2 m (144-148 MHz), which surprised me though it may have been because I was checking 70 cm more since I have a better radio for that band. I was also at the local ham club's field day on the last Saturday in June. I didn't make any contacts, but I did log for someone else who did, which was somewhat of a task itself since we were outside and it was windy. We only made domestic contacts, but considering we were running on battery power it was still fun. I also acquired my first HF rig from a ham named John. It's actually a hybrid vacuum tube/transistor radio, with the tubes used in the amplifier stage. I have yet to try it out as I need to make an antenna for it. John gave me some antenna wire and an insulator, but I haven't decided whether I'm going to make it for HF or for 2 m for the radio that Jay gave me quite some time ago. Speaking of dipoles, I got to see tuning one in action after the Buchanan County Amateur Radio Club meeting last Thursday (Buchanan county is the county directly east of Black Hawk county, the one I'm in). Seeing it made me want to make my own dipole as well as get out the old one I used to receive FM broadcast stations, and it actually outperformed the Terk tower antenna I was using. I also was on the N0CF repeater on Monday. I need to get on there more often, as it's more fun talking to people in Des Moines via the repeater link than it is trying to reach anyone locally since few if any people listen on the local repeaters.
That's all for now. I'll be on a fishing trip with my dad (and only my dad, at least until maybe later in the week) until Friday or Saturday, barring inclement weather. We'll be staying in a cabin with electricity, though, so I'm considering bringing my laptop and if there's wireless access I'll take advantage of it. Otherwise I'll talk to you all when I get back. I'll also be in Winnipeg from the 23rd to the 29th. I'll update before then, but I thought I'd mention it in case I don't.