Fedora 8 - Finally

I did finally get Fedora to successfully download last weekend. The second attempt was the charm. It took about 20 hours... but it made it.

Fedora 8 download - failed again

Simply put: This sucks!

Fedora 8 Download Issues

I have been trying to download the Fedora
8 DVD iso image for almost a week. The first couple of times I was downloading
directly from the Fedora
project website. The download would get to 2.4g and then fail. It is supposed
to about 3.18g. I have a moderately slow Internet connection (512/256) so this takes
almost a day every time that it fails.

So then I decided that I was going to try to download it at work across the big pipes.
(Since I am working on a Linux project at work this seemed like an OK use
of company bandwidth.) I am typically only in the office one day a week. I was pretty
busy on Tuesday and forget to start this until about 4pm. The first couple of mirrors that
I tried were only give me +/- 1mb of connectivity so this was still a multi hour event.
I did not have that much time left in my day so I canceled the download.



I am now trying this again from home on my day off. (Burning up PTO time over the
holidays.) I am going to try this via FTP from the U
of MN mirror since it is my closest site.

So in another 16-20 hours from now maybe we will see if the download works.

My intent is to work through the process of creating a scripted/automated install
process for a Red Hat based install
and a Debian based install of Linux.
I have built several of these for Windows Server based platform in the past. We have
a project at work with Linux we are going to explore doing the same thing. I will
not be doing the hands on for this project, but I will still have an engineering/architecture
overview to this.




-Frankly I would like to know the know the nuts & bolts of the scripted process
so I am going to work on this at home.  :-)

Wrestling Practice

Tonight was wrestling practice #2 for Ben. (White & Blue)

Fall House Cleaning

Over the weekend I hauled off four older PCs and three 17" monitors.

I have been reducing the amount of computers in our home. With the newer computers
in the 1.5ghz and faster range it you just don't need too many machines anymore. A
couple of laptops does most of what we need + a file server + a VM host server. The
dual core machines really make an impact.

I suspect that we will getting rid of a couple more machines in the
next six months or so.

Doorknob Capacitors

My first batch of doorknob caps arrived today from the Ukraine.  I will using
them for various antenna tuning projects. This particular batch are 100pF. I have
several more batches coming from the Ukraine and China. I won several eBay auctions. 
By the time that I am done the collection will average about $1-$2 each in values
from ~30pF to 500pF.

Meteor Scatter QSO

Tonight I worked Jim W6OUU. DN25sn is a new grid and Idaho is a new state for me on
6m from my new QTH. That is a path of about 1021 miles via FSK441 on 50.255 MHz. It
was about a 12 minute exchange... but there were solid pings every interval.

The changing of the oil

Life is a little complex here. We live in the middle of no-where central Minnesota
(by choice.)  When we moved here I was still working in the Twin Cities metro
and commuting in everyday. Given the long commute we bought a nice little Saturn for
going back and forth to work.



We own a used Tahoe for pulling our camper and/or hauling my tractor and supplies.

We own a Dodge Caravan for hauling the kids & groceries around.

We own the Saturn. (I now only drive into the metro about once a week.)

This means that I change a lot of oil around here between the vehicles, the tractor,
the lawn mower, the snow blower, and the generator. (Scary isn't it.) This afternoon
I changed the oil in street legal vehicals. That is 16 quarts of oil and three filters.

Tomorrow... I need to drop of the oil and filters at the recycling place in Litchfield.

Meteor Scatter

I was working on the station integration last night. I decided to test out some of
the VHF portions of my system and to try to work some meteor scatter. I worked
a bunch of partials pretty easily as there were a LOT of rocks. I was hearing 1-2
pings a minute for a while.



I ended up working a pseudo random with Doug VE5UF. He noticed that I was trying to
work someone else and jumped in at the end of the session. We worked the contact in
about 4-5 minutes. This was my first meteor scatter contact at the new QTH.



2007-12-15 06:05 UTC VE5UF DO61ov FSK441 50.257mhz... about 763 miles.



I had partials with New Mexico, South Carolina,  Utah, and heard Texas. That
was fun way to spend part of an evening while working on projects in my shack.

Model of the 160m Shunt

Here are a couple of screen captures of my 56' tower + C4S beam + Shunt for the
160m antenna.