Categories
Ham Radio running

Went out for a run

[Today’s run: watson road: 3.24 miles]

I told the work folks that I’m probably out until Monday. I may change that idea tomorrow in order to save a bit of paid time off. I’m not sure.

I was up and had my shower this morning in time to get in on the start-of-the-day Teams meeting. But doing all of that kind of wore me out. So I decided to tell them to give me another day.

Then I saw in an email that my little task I’m supposed to work on had been marked as “blocked” not because of me being gone but because some of the requirements need to be revisited. So they’re not waiting on me anyway. If I did jump back in I might have to rustle up something to work on.

I think I probably will just take the rest of the week off (one more day).


We are doing well on the Covid front. Mrs and I both took a 2nd covid test. Her’s was positive and mine apparently not. I’m actually feeling quite a bit better. I still get a bit tired and I have a tickle/cough that comes on at times. Otherwise I’m doing OK. Today as the day went along I got stronger.


I think I had written about my radio station server replacement project that I’ve been smulrfing along in an unfocused way. The last few days I decided I could push that across the finish line. And today just before 5 pm I switched the playback feed from the old server to the new one. So we are now running off of the new hardware and the newer version software.

I have a few scripts and bits that need adjustment. Probably the most immediate one is that “now-and-next” script that I had set up not very long ago which gives our icecast streaming listeners the title of the work currently being read. I broke that. So I will work on that either tomorrow or over the weekend. (It’s all done with python.) [On the over-the-air side that text that some car radios get which shows artist/title comes through something called RDS which is encoded and hidden in the FM radio signal. That requires a hardware device and we don’t have one.]

Also I have some tools for digesting new audio books into our library which will need a visit on the new server to make sure they work.

I’m excited to have that change-over completed. That had been a very drawn-out process.


I had another minor win this morning. Our dryer has been running very inefficiently. It seems like it has been like that since we moved back from Iowa and getting worse over time. Today I checked out the dryer vent, which in our house exits through the roof. It has a little cap on it and it had some 1/2 inch hardware cloth in there to keep the birds out, or something. Anyway I was looking from ground level and it sure looked funny. Turned out it was all a big wad of dryer lint and almost no air was able to come out. So I took the hat/cap off and took out the hardware cloth and the accumulated lint as one hunk. I put the cap back on. Now it has much freer flow.

It used to just vent into the garage. I’m the guy who ran the pipe up into the attic and out the roof. I’m not sure if that is the best way to do it but it had been working ok (?) for probably 10 years. I probably should get up in the attic; up there I have a bit of nearly horizontal pipe in the scheme of things which probably has accumulated some lint… Thinking about it now, it probably ought to go over to the eave and dump out along the side of the house instead of going up through the roof.

While I was up there I noticed the roof is going to need some attention sooner rather than later.


So, I had a good day. We relaxed and we watched some TV. I worked on the radio station stuff off and on.

And then in the evening I decided I wanted to have a run, so I did that. By the time I was coming back it was full-on dark. I had my cell phone light, mostly to show any cars I was there. Running at night is kind of fun.

I wasn’t particularly fast, but I am a few pounds lighter. And I had more energy than I expected, better than my post-blood-donation situation usually is. I was a bit surprised. I had some coughing when I finished (because I did a bit of a sprint at the end). It was fun.