While most folks were watching the Super Bowl we went to Powder Ridge to play in the
snow. Cristy & Jacob went skiing (no pictures.) Ben, Joe, and I went tubing.
It is kind of hard to take pictures going down the hill on a tube when it is
dark. I was surprised that I even got these with the little camera.
Here are a couple of pictures that Cristy took of Ben and Joe wrestling in the Annandale
meet back in January.
I have not posted many nontechnical photos this winter. I took this train
photo back in December 2008 some time but had not gotten around to posting it.
This is the BNSF rail line that runs parallel to MN State Highway 12 in Dassel.
I have been holding out hope that I was going to get some cool winter pictures of
the trains going through deep snow out in rural Minnesota. So far this winter that
has not been reality for me... yet. We are heading into what is typically the
snowiest part of our winter season. --Fingers Crossed!
A couple of pictures from the Jan 2009 meeting of the 4H Lego Robotics group
in Litchfield.
They have two sets of Lego Mindstorms and one NXT kit.
Some pictures from the Jan 10th 2009 Meeting.
I have some more pictures beyond these but this is a pretty long posting already.
It was a fun meeting with a lot of show and tell and pass around items.
Link to our club's website:
http://www.mnqrp.org/
Link to some of the topics and items that were shared:
http://cbjohn.com/aa0zz/index.html
http://www.kangaus.com/
http://www.qrpkits.com/files/MiniSolderPot.pdf
http://www.ohr.com/wattmeter.htm
http://www.norcalqrp.org/nc2n2xx.htm
Another January VHF contest has come and gone.
Wow... conditions were bad. It was a struggle to work beyond the metro ring. It seemed
like there were quite a few less stations on the air then I would expect.
It was a nice to work a contest where I did not need to build anything for the station
nor make any repairs. I turned everything on 2 hours before the event began.
I have to be honest and say that I did not play very hard. It was a pretty slow event
so I had CNN on in the office and I was messing around on the other computers as well.
I let the voice keyer running pretty actively on the run radio/band while listening
on the second rig.
Hopefully the for the next contest I will have the K2 integrated into the station.
I am also looking at adding a SDR rig to drive the high bands.
My goal was 10,000 points but there were not enough stations on air, band openings,
or high band qso's to make that happen.
Grids Worked on 144MHz
Here is rant to my team at work today about school closings:
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It is a little cold in Minnesota today so they decide to start canceling school in
many of the various school districts.
I am fairly young… but “back in my day” they would NOT close schools unless the building
burnt down or the snow drifts were taller than the plow trucks/tractors. I was taught
as a child that we here in Minnesota are hearty folk that enjoy and embrace our winter
season. (Wow…. I do sound like a grumpy old man.)
So what is the big deal with -27F air temp and a wind child of -41? (Ok that
is from the next town 10 miles west of me.) My home weather station went “off scale”
when the temp exceeded -30 at 7:30am in my rural Meeker County location.
It appears that monsters 1, 2, and 3 (also known as Jacob[10], Ben[8], and Joe[6])
will be home with dad today. I will be WFH with the monsters at other end of the house
as I have a full day booked with conference calls.
----------------
So one of my peers on the east coast responded with this:
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So the moral of the story... it warmer at the South Pole in the summer than it is
in the winter in Minnesota.
My ISP did some tower work last Friday to resolve some of the performance and outage
issues that my area has been experiencing.
For some reason things are sluggish this AM even though the speed test looks ok.
Here is a better photo of what the sheer pin looks like.
I was not sure why my new 50" snow blower as pushing more snow than it was blowing
yesterday. As it turns out the two sheer pins let go. The only thing moving
snow was the second stage auger.
I had some spares so it was not a big deal to fix it in my heated garage. I think
that I will stop by the hardware store today and pick up some spares. --It is supposed
to snow again tonight.
