Charles W. Moore

Quarterly Update :)

Ok ok, I am a bad boy.  I never update my blog.  However, in my defense I (weZ) have been pretty busy this winter.  Somewhere after New Years day we blasted off the frozen upper North en-route to Rock Hill, SC to see my aging aunt, the last surviving aunt, and arrived the same day we left.  The entire trip was in brilliant sunshine but very cold for the whole trip.  In fact, the night after our arrival, it was 9°F in SC!  We had a good visit and got to visit the twins building for the first time.  Too soon we had to leave for FL.

We arrived in FL after another good days travel and started the unpacking job – which was done in great disarray up North – and setting up for the time allotted for us here in St. Petersburg.  We did not forget to bring too much but that which was forgotten was sorely missed.  At the time of this writing we have found the missing video camera but seem to have lost the Kodak still of SAM’s. The ham radio is up and running and we have contacted W9LKI many times and found a great IRLP site run by W3RX (node 8676).  We spent the first weeks cleaning up the backyard of all the thorny bushes, hibiscus and other vining junk and it now looks good again but M says it looks bare.  The pool is in great shape but needs a bottom repair and sealed at the upper level to reduce water leaks.

Our first big event of this season was Hamcation in Orlando.  This is the 2nd biggest ham radio event in USA.  We took the camper over and parked next to W9LKI on cement for Friday and Saturday nights. NOTE TO SELF – next year plan on being there on Wednesday so as to get next to a power pole down by the lake (in this case we would stay W, Th, Fri nights and go home on Saturday). The weather was lousy and rained the whole time except Sunday morning and lots of vendors left.  I bought a green laser pen for use on the boat to light up the channel markers (a bad idea as it almost blinds you with the reflection) and bridges.  The pen sort of works but is much more dramatic when you point it at a star – it is like a guiding light to the heavens.  Also bought some mic clips so I can finally hang the mic instead of laying it down.

I was invited to help Kim deliver his boat from Ft. Lauterdale down to Marathon Key and then on thru Florida Bay and, finally, up the coast to Clearwater Muni Marina.  Along the way we were 3 days in Marathon with boat electronic issues, one night at Boca Grande and finally the last night in Gulfport Muni Marina. The whole trip was filled with surprises, tension and and storms of various magnitudes. The trip can be broken down into three pases and each will be discussed below as three paragraphs.  I want to thank Darrell for his introduction to Kim, the Captain, because without that, I would never have known about the trip nor been invited to join.  The whole process took 7 days and this was three days longer than expected.  The number one lesson learned was to enforce the shift schedule: the macho dudes of this trip thought they could do with out sleep and things go ugly before they got better.  The number two lesson was to install line cutters because there are hundreds of thousands of crab pots on the path we took.  The third lesson was to not absolutely believe the chart plotter for depths.  With these in mind we will go into the voyage of the Nanita, a 45′ Hunter of 2006 vintage.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2014

I am beginning to suspect that I have entirely too much to do to maintain several blogs & I even added another just to try out Tumblr.

This summer I cleaned out the catchall building attached on the backside of the house.  This building was intended to be my new technical area and is about 8’x25′ x9′ high.  It pretty much sat all summer and into the Fall waiting for the leaves to come off the trees.  Eventually all this happened and I had three windows installed and then started on the wiring.  Well. as the project took on a life of its own the project was expanded to include a wood burning stove and insulation and a whole new electrical distribution panel.  Now the project awaits the distribution panel that will not be installed until Spring as I am not working in the cold any more.  Besides I need a real electrical guy to do the conduit and punch a hole in the wall for the conduit.  The very last circuit in my 200 amp box will be used to supply the new sub-panel.

While we were just sitting around this early Fall we cut up the Ash trees we had to fell because they were leaning towards the lower building.  Cut & split this resulted in close to three cords of wood and this now sits on the upper driveway where I thought it would sell fast but it did not.  I seems that there is a very, very large supply of Ash wood available on the market ( since all the Ash trees have succumbed to the Emerald Ash Borer.  I have another 5 trees to be felled but will do this as time permits next year.  The new 22 Ton wood splitter worked quite well and easily split 99% of the wood.  The remainder were knots in the main trunk and split with difficulty.  Unfortunately, the Oak tree top I cut 2 years ago had sufficiently rotted so that the wood was worthless.  So much for procrastination.

The new high speed internet microwave to the lower building has worked out very well as has the CCTV down there.  Next year may see an expansion of the CCTV system if I can find some reasonably priced Pelco or similar units that are being replaced.

With Christmas fast approaching I wrote the Christmas Letter 2013 that was primarily disseminated via my website link.  The few who do not use Facebook or have high speed internet will get letters but this will be limited to about 10 people. In the past my distribution list was approaching 200 people but with age and aging relationship in business it has been shrinking to maybe 50.  A lot of the emails are bouncing and it is getting harder and harder to arrange the time to refresh the lists.  I am hoping Facebook and LinkedIn will pick up many of those whose emails are no longer valid.  With my track record I will probably not update this blog until the new years so with that I wish you a Merry Christmas & Happy New Year.

A week of Fall weather – all

What a marvelous week we have had.  Pure sun, warm days, cool nights and light breezes.  Since the last post the Ash tree that died, giving up its last breath this summer, was cut down professionally due to proximity to other buildings and the asphalt road I did not want to get broken.  With the tree down, I concentrated on cutting it up into 16″ – 18″ sections and then splitting it into nice size chunks for the fireplace or stove.  I purchased a splitter from Tractor Supply, something I have wanted for many decades, and it made relatively short work of all that wood.  Fortunately for me, the very sharp ram moves slowly so my hands and fingers were saved many times during the course of learning how to use the machine.  I enjoy the physical workout and within a half hour am sweating rather profusely and continuously while keeping the heart rate within the target zone. Now the time is coming to sell it-all 2.5 cords of it.  Some people say I should get about $60 per face cord and I need it to pay down the $$$$ I spent to buy it in the first place.

SAM and I had fun yesterday after church.  We went to a Pleasant Lake church for their Harvest Auction.  We had a good noon time dinner and a lot of fun bidding on “stuff” and paying way too much for it.  This church has a big insurance payment coming due and the funds earned yesterday may help to pay for it.  Anyway, a lot of the original Moore clan attended so that was fun too.  Everyone was laughing and having fun.  After the auction end, SAM & I went over to Ann’s house and Eric invited us to pick grapes off of Dorothy’s old grape arbor.  We got two buckets full and SAM spent the remainder of the afternoon and evening making grape jelly.  The smells that filled the house reminded me of when I was young and my Mom made grape jelly: a thousand memories came flooding in.  SAM brought down a pice of bread with grape jelly on it and it was good!

I was listening to my IRLP node last night.  Reflectors 9100, 9200, 9668 and 9050 were may targets but I stopped by 9257 to listen to the Red Cross Net so that was informative.  The IRLP makes ham radio worthwhile and a good too in an emergency – if internet is still up.  Survivability of the internet in a big storm or other catastrophe is doubtful however. REMEMBER: I’ve suffered a great many catastrophes in my life. Most of them never happened.

But Be Prepared!

Frost: We received a pass this time

It was supposed to frost last night so we picked the garden clean and SAM labored until the wee hours taking care of the bounty.  However, this morning it was 42°F and the sun was shining and we received a pass on Mr. Frost.  Great – well, it was great today with lots of sun and perfect tempertures. I spent most of the day down at the building doing little projects and then some time up at the future “technical room” adjusting door plates so that the doors would shut properly and latch n lock.  Not too sure what we will do with this room but it is much cleaner than it was 3 weeks ago so that in itself is a good thing.  As part of the connectivity process I installed a 5GHz link between my office area and the building down by the lake.  Now I have a 300Mbps link connecting to two areas and as part of the install I put a Wireless N Access Point down below too.  I had an old CCTV device I have had for years so I connected that up also.  Now I can watch my kayaks and other stuff grow dusty real time:)

I have had time to do this because the job with Zipspider soon turned from a fun thing to a not so fun thing and it became almost a full time job. This in itself was OK but in addition I was spending too much time working alone or just waiting for them to call with some work so, in the end, it did not work out.  Therefore, I just returned the freshly washed polo’s and hat and just bowed out.  The one shot job  of wiring cat6 cable in a doctors office also is coming to an end.  I must admit I like doing this type of work so maybe I can find some more to do in future months.  This job was a combination of remodeling existing offices and also adding new cable to new offices.

With my days free again, I started to clean up the “technical room” and mess around with computers fixing them up and then putting them under a bench for future applications.  Now, I am working on cloning my laptop from a 320GB HD to a 500GB.  The drive is a few years old and I am afraid of a crash so I will clone a new drive and use that while keeping the old one as a fallback in the event of crashes.  I am almost out of space on the old drive anyway so this will help. I may even have enough space to put all the pictures on the laptop.

My old smartphone was getting a bit long-in-the-tooth so I gave in and did an upgrade to a Razor Maxx which has helped in making phone calls.  It is a waaaay better phone than the old one.  The apps work faster and I can even make a phone call now!

Jessica is now in remote Panama doing her Peace Corps Volunteer tasks and we have not heard from here for several weeks.  She did try to call using a cell but the connection kept dropping so she eventually gave up without us saying any words at all – it was just connect and drop.  We really missed not being able to talk with her.  In the military at least you can get reliable communications fairly often – bummer for us.

A moment of weakness

I wrote this in a moment of weakness and was about to post to Facebook as a response to :

Quote=

“I walked down the street in Barcelona and suddenly discovered a
> terrible truth – Europe died in Auschwitz … We killed six million
> Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned
> a culture, thought, creativity, talent. We destroyed the chosen
> people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people
> who changed the world.

=end quote.

Nope – not going to do it.  I deleted my part totally.  Good night friends.

Reflection, new job and 4H Fair

I worked my rear off yesterday on the new, part time technical job with ZipSpider.com here in Angola. My ever growing desire for an IRLP Node, ham radio purchases and other technical pursuits has given me pause to reflect on my ability to pay! Therefore, I am doing work in an area I love, while generating revenue to pay for my radio vices, but still retaining vestiges of the fully retired freedom I have become accustomed. Ok, really it is M-W-F with hours depending on workload which are related directly to demand for the ZipSpider Wireless High Speed Internet installations. Couple that with the fact that I am not working alone and it becomes a thing of beauty.

I slept the night in deep slumber and arose at 0830 for my usual breakfast. I enjoyed this meal while booting up computers and then reading email and looking at the weather. After that it was a quick shave and get dressed in Sunday clothes and head to the 4H Fair in Steuben County.

We arrived just at the appointed time, at 1100 hrs, and SAM & I worked the 4H Fair booth until 1400 hrs. Our morning was great and we got to meet quite a few kids as they passed through. Later, Mike McClelland passed through and we spent some quality time talking about various subjects of local importance. Finally, after what seemed a relatively short time our replacements arrived and we chatted for a bit and departed for another appointment in Angola.

The remarkable thing about the Angola appointment was that the gentleman we were talking with had been in Panama just the previous winter. We discussed in depth the country and the fact that our own Jess was there on assignment as a Peace Corps Volunteer. This turned into a long but fruitful discussion of Panama and we enjoyed it immensely. What a good end of the day – not quite. I had to come home and finish the job of disassembling the tractor connectors and cleaning them with old fashion tuner cleaner and then reassembling them. By that time SAM was down ing the garden gleaning some more goodies like tomatoes, greens and more beans plus a few peppers.

Now, as I watch the sun pass from the high trees down by the lake and the dusk is approaching, I am reflecting on my waning years and what I will do with left to me. I like life, always have, and as a saved soul do not fear the future too much but retain hope for that one last meaningful challenge that keeps the juices flowing, helps others and lets me stand straight.

Cherries & the Cherry Tree

Son Marc is here from the Lone Star State with family. So good to have him here. Went over to sister Ann’s house and focused on the gigantic Cherry Tree and all those red berries (or is it fruit). After picking for about an hour of the three of us – grandpa, son, grandson – we had about a half of a 5 gallon bucket full. The good people upstairs are now pitting these little bad boys for our future enjoyment. Sister skimmed off a 6 cup batch for her famous Cherry Pie and disappeared butwill be heard from again when the bounty is cooked and pie’d. Tomorrow is the 4th of July. Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, of the United States of America. This is something of which we are extremely proud and celebrate by the picking of the Cherries in our small town.

Several members of the family are absent from our personal get together. Children and Grandchildren are on foreign soil in service to our country and trying to make a difference to humanity. We are proud of them and their selfless service to the nation in which we were raised and pledge our allegiance. Thank you all.

Lower Building & Jess

Time is flying and so is the summer. We helped move out of Chicago and brought her car home where it sits in the driveway. Soon we will do the remainder of unpacking it and then move out to the hangar we arranged to have it stored in. A couple of days ago she sent a quick email saying she arrived ok in her country of deployment and was going out to meet others in her group. We do not expect to hear too much from her until things settle down and the areas whe will be working in are defined. Good for Jessica and we are proud of he.

As for myself, I have been working in the lower building cleaning, arranging and removing detritus from 20 years of being on the road and not having enough time to spend on such things. I have proceeded through layer 1 and then 2 and finally 3, where I am right now. It is much nicer now. We had lots of space until we put the camper back into the building. However, it is rather neat and tidy now so we can get around ok but when the tow dolly comes back we may lose some of the tidiness. I hope we get back into kayaking again but until that time the 4 kayaks are just occupying space on a trailer that could be use for storing even more “stuff”. I bought a drill press, which was a huge mistake, and when I got it home I found the spindle return spring was broken: Do not buy anything from Orland as they are the worst about lying. All my allowance for a while is shot on this item but it was only $40 and that is less than 10 gallons of gas so – phhhhht. Click the picture for a closer view 🙂

Sam has dedicated the summer to the garden and experimenting with stuff that I can no longer eat. However, she seems happy doing it so that is a bonus. I only tilled up a 20×20 patch but hope to triple that by late Fall. Ha, next summer it may not be so fun for us with a triple garden and all the stuff coming in we have to find a place for. I like frozen not canned so that might mean a new freezer too. Still it is a move back to the sell-sufficiency I so desperately sought in the late 70’s and early 80’s: Mother Earth News was my guide and, in some ways still is, for I used to read that material until I went to sleep in the chair near the old wood stove on the farm. Maybe even the old wood stove will come back thanks to the Emerald Ash Borer that has killed a bunch of trees on my property and hundreds of thousands elsewhere: I imagine I’ll get 10 cords out wood out of these. Now where do I put the wood stove to warm these old bones?

Up-The-Tree

OK, so I awoke this AM a bit late-ish and ate the usual dish and wondered what I was going to do today. It did not take too long to decide that I was going to climb the tree just to the East of the house and cut off the high limb that was slapping the tower in the wind. I dressed in the climbing gear, went down to the building and got the tall ladder. After a few mis-tries I installed the ladder so I could climb the tree to the highest I could get with the limbs all in the wrong position. Anyway, I got up to the high limb that was slapping the tower in the wind and started cutting with the bow saw. Soon the limb dropped straight into another limb and lodged there pretty tight. I headed down the tree, cutting off a few dead branches, and finally arrived at the base of the ladder. After moving the ladder to a floating branch I grabbed the lodged branch (about 2.5″ diameter) and gave a tug and scrambled down the ladder just as it hit the ground with a thud. All is good that ends well we say around here.

It really did not end at this point as SAM came out and we started trimming trees and all sorts of things related to that. The time flew and the next time I looked at the cell phone it was 12:00 noon and I called a halt for lunch. Today lunch was a bit hit-or-miss but I was well fed in the end and decided to take a nap before Karon’s Hair Cut appointment at 1400 hrs. The nap became a sleep and when I awoke it was 1410 and I had a 25 minute drive to Karon’s. Oh oh, so I called her and she told me I was late. Anyway, I did get a haircut and it was a real good one. When I got back home SAM said I looked real good!

Friday the 17th

I awoke this AM with some energy and guts. First think I did was drill a 1/4″ hole in the wall, inside to outside, and it was in the wrong spot – of course – so I drilled one in the correct spot. Then I got out the 1.75″ hole saw and drilled a bigger hole on the inside and it was OK. Next, I went outside in PJ’s and drilled a 1.75″ hole using the pilot hole and it too was OK. Finally, I inserted a 7″ long 1 1/4″ PVC pipe through the whole and capped both ends so it was captivated without too much movement. (Now I was almost done except for the RTV to seal everything).

Time for breakfast —- Ok, after breakfast, I drilled a couple of more holes and holesawed them to the 1.75″ OD and inserted PVC plus captivators. Later came the RTV and now I am finished and ready for the LMR400 run from the antenna to the radio inside. With that I can talk to Auburn, Angola, Lagrange and other repeaters. Yea!

Now, I await dinner and kudos for a job well done. Remember – making an antenna is easy but the new cabling, through wall penetrations and the connectorization is much more difficult. Remember that when you dream of APRS, Echolink and IRLP all of you HAMS out there.