A flyin' Friday

Busy day, very little time, so a quick post before the weekend.

Got into the station several hours late (by previous arrangement) — Hannah left for Biloxi Mississippi this morning with a group of 30 from our church, so Laurie and I were there to see their bus off. I imagine they're somewhere around southern Pennsylvania or northern Virginia by now. They're spending a week doing disaster relief in areas devastated by Katrina, and the weather is already getting them in the mood: it's actually going to be hotter here in central NY than in Mississippi for the next few days.

Just as I got my office door unlocked, my boss presented me with a box and two thick books: the RF training course. He had asked several months ago if I would be interested, and I said definitely. I work mostly on studio systems design, with component-level equipment design and software thrown in — so becoming more rounded technically is something I've wanted to do. On closer examination, it turns out that this course takes the form of building my own amateur transmitter / receiver, which is mine to keep in exchange for doing the work to get at least a general class amateur license. It's amusing in a way: I've been designing systems to transmit high definition video, pumping out over nineteen million bits of data every second... and now I need to learn how to transmit morse code at five words per minute. But I'm looking forward to it.

My sandwich is done and I'm hearing some hollering down the hall, so I better stop and check it out.

Happy weekend!