J-Poles

Categories: Ham Radio
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Published on: September 11, 2010

I don’t think I will fully understand anntennas. A friend gave me a J-Pole for 2 meter ham band, does very well only 1.2 SWR on, it. for fun I tried to do a 70cm transmition on it. I figured I would do it for less then a second thinking that the SWR would be ultra high (mind you the main element is about a meter and a half long and the reflecting element is about 50 centimeters long) well I had an inline SWR meter installed, the nedle that is use to show the SWR did not move much, not even hitting 1.1 to 1 on 70cm.

What a day

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Published on: August 29, 2010

Today I was a bit busy.  After church I did not get home till late since they were doing construction on 66 (I have to go up to Alexandria for church as there are, to my knowledge any good confessional/liturgical churches in SoMD)  So I decided on the way home to stop for some food (after that drive, DC belt way, for those of you that know, even on Sunday afternoon it is backed up)  I get home at 2, do some reading/studying on Java (will be taking the SCJP in the next month, or so I plan. just have to pick the day)  After that I start trying to resurrect my Linux box.  It has 2 drives on it, one I really don’t care about as it was just the OS and stuff like that, the other drive I cared about as it is my old /home directory, and would you not know the one drive that has problems is the one I cared about (because of data)  I am still hopeful I can pull my old home dir off of it.  While letting the Linux install do its I played around a bit on ham radio, a few of us down here talked about have a standard simplex freq to work with (if you are ever in SoMD tune to 145.660) and got a call from a friend of mine so we spent some time Rag Chewing a bit.

Also I am making plans on how to get my Quad Core box going as a Linux box with out killing the vista partition, I have come up with the idea, that I have a spare sata drive that I am not using, 250Gb is more then Linux really needs I can keep the 1Tb drive windows, boot into linux, get VMPlayer and boot windows under Linux.  While letting the Linux install do its

Still wondered how I found any time to get a bit of tin whistle playing in today, but I did.

But that is for another day as I am going to hit the hay now as I am totally spent on energy.

New Blog Setup

Categories: Blog Stuff, Web Site
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Published on: August 4, 2010

As you might have noticed I have redone, my blog.  I have also kept my old posts, to do that, I had to first go to WP 2.0 get a script to import my bblog posts (comments and categories) migrate them to WP 2.0, then after that I removed the files for WP 2.0 and put WP 3.0 in.  some of the posts got miss dated, I might fix those over the course of time, but I really did not want to keep using a blog software that was not being updated, I was getting fearful that some one would use the fact I was using a old blog software to hack my site, and put up things I did not want.  I really wish that bblog still was being developed but they stopped developing it around 2005, so time to move on, I have a lot of work to do to configure this new setup to the way I want it to look.  I have first started with a generic theme, I will slowly update it as the week goes by, I hope to finish by Sunday.

Why did I want to keep all my old posts, well because it is kind of a history of things as I have seen it over the last 6 years, and that could be of some random interest to random people out there, and I do not wish to hide what I have said in the past.

Pictures from a hike I did on Friday

Categories: Play
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Published on: August 2, 2010

http://photos.mikeoconnor.net/thumbnails.php?album=56 pictures from a hike I did with some friends up at the Laural Highlands (or down depending where you are coming from)

Cleaned up some files on my web space

Categories: Web Site
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Published on: August 2, 2010

Well I decided to clean up some files on my domain, that are not being used anymore, along with some databases for things that have been removed from my web site a while back, I had a lot of legacy stuff there. But now it is clean, for me to do more stuff to it.

PVGP 2010

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Published on: July 26, 2010

On the weekend of the 24 and 25 of July I helped out in the PVGP again as a ham radio operator. I have a few pictures you can see them at http://photos.mikeoconnor.net/thumbnails.php?album=55 (also for the record I did not take these pictures, one of the flag operators took them for me, I am having trouble remembering his name I will have to look it up and I will post it once I remember his name.)

Rev. Matthew Harrison First Presidential Address

Categories: Church
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Published on: July 13, 2010

GREAT most excelant news out of the synod today

Categories: Church
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Published on: July 13, 2010

Matthew Harrison defeated the old pres of the synod, maybe we can get the synod to go back to it’s confessional roots.


This is truly a gift from God

With the attempt of the old president attempt at a power grab, this is just poetic justice. This just might be the start of the path back down the right road, after all the years that the so called “church growth” movement hurting the church with their heretical ways and “teachings”.

Pics from back on Field day of this year

Categories: Ham Radio
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Published on: July 11, 2010

http://photos.mikeoconnor.net/thumbnails.php?album=54 enjoy.

Needed a new Battery for my HT radio

Categories: Geekdom, Ham Radio
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Published on: July 8, 2010

Well I needed a new Battery for my VX-5. I went into a Batteries+ plus store and find that they are now $104, to much if you ask me. So I decided to be cheap…

I built a new Battery see the pics below

As you can see from the radio display it is getting 13 Volts, this should do nicely, now I just have to rig up a holster to hold both the radio and battery, and a way to be 100% sure that the power cord does not come out.

Well to truth it really is not a battery as the radio is concerned but a portable charger.

Got my verizon DSL up and cancled comcast

Categories: Technology
Comments: 4 Comments
Published on: April 20, 2010

Finally I am off of comcast. When I called in to cancel the comcast account talk about hostal, the person tried to tell me I did not know anything about computers and my setup was all wrong and I was causing my own problem. At that point I got angry and told him 1) I know what I am doing tell him I am not an idiot when it comes to computers, listing that I am a programmer and have a BS in CS 2) their own technicians saw my setup and said nothing about it.
I am just glad to have canceled the service (both internet and TV)

The speed results, not the fastest but if it stays stable it will be better.

Just 6 more days

Categories: Technology
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Published on: April 14, 2010

6 more days and my Verizon DSL will be up and I will be able to cancel comcast. I hope they get it up faster then by the 20th, I got the modem today, I just have to hold till they turn things on.

Well I will be ditching comcast

Categories: Technology
Comments: 3 Comments
Published on: April 12, 2010

As I type this post I am on hold with verizon, I am going to dump comcast and get DSL. Why am I dumping comcast, well I am tired of horrible connectivity to no connectivity. it is every day from 6pm to 8pm. I finally had it today when I called in for the second time today about the outage. Guys solution was to send another guy out to try to fix it, at that point I said don’t bother I am calling another ISP and hung up. I am getting tired of it. Some of my friends on line call comcast comcrap and I can see why.

Just some music I have played recently

Categories: Irish Tin Whistle
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Published on: March 30, 2010

Just some music I have played recently, hope you all enjoy it, I know I am not the greatest player but still it is some nice music and I enjoy playing it.




Comcast (aka comcrap) in SoMD sucks

Categories: Technology
Comments: 1 Comment
Published on: March 28, 2010

For the last 2 weeks I have had the most unstable internet connection, if it was not for the fact that comcrap had a monopoly here I would drop them so fast, but there is on other option, no fios, no other real high speed options, if fios ever comes to Indian Head MD I will be canceling comcrap so fast. I am a very dissatisfied costumer.


For anyone that reads this in MD I urge you if you have the choice go with any one (ANY ONE) else you will thank me when you have a stable connection.

List of bad connections

Wed Mar 17 6pm to 7pm no internet
Thu Mar 18 6:45pm to 8pm no internet
Sat Mar 20 6:08pm to 7:30pm no internet
mon Mar 22 8:38pm to 8:50pm no internet
sat Mar 27 5:00pm to 8:50pm unstable internet DCing every 5 minutes
sat Mar 27 8:30pm to 9:18pm no internet
sat Mar 27 9:18pm to 12am unstable internet DCing every 5 minutes
sat Mar 27 12am to who knows (I went to bed at this point) No internet

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