I have started a new blog. Check out www.retrovideogameszone.blogspot.com for info.

OH YEAH!!!!!!

Retron 3 baby! http://hyperkin.com/index.php/retro-system-retron3.html/

Nintendo

OK, so I purchased an old school Nintendo about 2 months ago at a garage sale. I have already amassed about 100 games for it and I have been playing the crap out of it. I have discovered that the games that I thought were really hard back in the day are now very easy. I plan on reviewing games here. Saty tuned for more.

Pirate Radio movie review

OK, so Piper and I (and Andrew) saw Pirate Radio last night. Overall a good movie with some humor thrown in. The movie was based on a true story of a pirate radio station in 1966 that was playing rock and roll music in the north sea off the coast of the UK. The movie focused mainly on an 18 year old male character who was looking for his real dad and trying to lose his virginity. It didn't really cover a lot of the radio aspect though. If you going into the movie looking for a technical side of radio or even an operational side, forget it. They do show the wire antenna on the mast of the ship several times during the movie. They also refer to the 203 meter band several times where they are transmitting. Like I said overall good movie but not really that much about radio.

Jason Style Chili

OK, so Jamie shot a deer and got like 40 pounds of ground venison. What better to make than my famous (locally) deer chili. I made it about 6-8 months ago and forgot the recipe. This time I used a recipe online and heavily modified it to my liking. I made up a batch the other night and it was awesome! I am going to make up a batch today. This time I wrote down the ingredients and directions for future use. Some of the ingredients are a bit odd but trust me, this chili is the best! Steer clear if you are a vegetarian though as it has 4 pounds of meat in it. :) Here it is in its full glory:

Jason Style Chili

Ingredients:

- 3 Pounds of ground meat – Venison is best! (If not using venison use 2 pounds of hamburger and 1 pound of ground pork)

- 1 pound of bacon – Smoked is best

- ¼ cup of honey

- 1 can chili beans in mild sauce

- 1 can dark red kidney beans

- 2 cans of stewed tomatoes 14.5 oz

- 4 cloves of garlic finely chopped

- 1 Vidalia onion finely chopped

- 1 Lime

- 1 teaspoon of Angostura bitters

- 1 cup of water

- 1 bottle or can of 12oz beer (I use Labatt Blue)

- ¼ cup of olive oil (you can use vegetable oil also)

- 3 tablespoons of chili powder

- 6 beef bouillon cubes (or 2 tablespoons of instant beef bouillion. Cubes are better)

- 2 tablespoons of cumin, ground

- 2 teaspoons of paprika

- 2 teaspoons of oregano leaves

- ½ teaspoon of coriander, ground

- 1 teaspoon unsweetened cocoa

- 1 teaspoon of hot sauce(this will not make the chili hot, trust me)

- 1 teaspoon of cornmeal

- 1 teaspoon of flour

- 1 teaspoon of warn water

Directions

Step 1 – Cook the bacon. Personally I like to fry bacon because I like my bacon kind of soft, not real crispy. To stick to the recipe, fry the bacon and drain the grease. If you really want it crispy then bake it in the oven.

Step 2 – Peel and finely chop the onion and the garlic cloves.

Step 3 – Brown the 3 pounds of ground meat. Halfway through the browning process, add your onion and the garlic. If you are using venison then you shouldn’t have to drain the grease because there normally isn’t any. If you are using hamburger / pork then drain.

Step 4 – Get your large pot out (not the doobie kind). I use 5 ½ quart / 5.2 Liters. This size works good.

Step 5 – Take the bacon and tear it up (not eat it, unless you took out the wrong pot). You can usually rip a piece of bacon into 4 or 5 one inch pieces.

Step 6 – Put the bacon, ground meat / onion garlic mix into the pot.

Step 7 – Add the beer (no tasting!), water, honey, both cans of beans (do not drain the juice from the cans of beans), olive oil, honey, bitters, both cans of stewed tomatoes (also do not drain), chili powder, bouillon, cumin, paprika, oregano leaves, coriander, unsweetened cocoa, juice from one lime, and hot sauce.

Step 8 – Stir everything together really well (colorful huh?).

Step 9 – Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer, covered for 2 hours. (Stir well every 15 minutes or so).

Step 10 – Get a bowl (again not that kind) and stir in the warm water, cornmeal and flour.

Step 11 – Stir the mixture into the chili and cook covered for an additional 20 minutes (stirring once).

Step 12 – Enjoy! If made right, this will be a great chili that everyone can enjoy. It will be somewhat sweet and somewhat spicy, but not hot. I like to add hot sauce and shredded cheese to mine!

Update - I am still alive

OK, I haven't posted in a loooong time. I am still alive for all who care. I am sitting here at 2:42 PM on a Sunday sipping a pear vodka martini (it is very good). Anyways, a few things have changed in my life. I got a promotion at work. I have been promoted to the assistant manager and work in the office 99 percent of the time now. I do a little of everything around the office. Medical billing, customer service, accounts receivable, network admin, webmaster, and all around computer geek guy to name a few. I guess I saw it coming since I was pulled off the road from doing deliveries in late March and was instrumental in implementing our new billing system. I also helped with the conversion process from unix to windows sql database platform (groan). Anyway, that is boring stuff. We got a new vehicle, 2009 Jeep Compass and traded in the 2001 Blazer (cash for clunkers). I am also the manager of Andrews fall peewee baseball team. We held a practice yesterday and these kids are awesome. 6, 7, and 8 year olds that are all super interested in baseball and are really good. They were automatically shifting for left handed hitters and everything! It is a lot of fun. There are 7 games total for the year. Anyway, that pretty much sums it up. Jamie is going into the 8th grade and Andrew going into 1st. I have been really busy at work and so has Piper. She got her CNA license and has been working crazy hours. We are all good and the future is looking up!

? and the Mysterians

The original

...and


The 1998 version! :-)

Andrew's talent show

Beers and cheers to uncle Chuck aka Chiggins

I didn't know you too well.. but you were a decent person in my eyes. Cheers.

You were a giving man. Thanks for the memories.

Now that the election is over...

LOL!!! WTF?!?!?

WTF?



LOL!!!

Vote!!!!!

Look what Piper found!!!

Get out and VOTE!

I have never had Participation Lager. :)

See?

Dear Supporter,

We're coming down to the final stretch of the campaign. Each day leading up to November 4th plays a critical role in securing a Victory for our team of reformers. And I'll get straight to my point - if we're going to win we need your immediate support.

Will you join the McCain-Palin Victory 2008 team today during these critical final days?

The Obama-Biden Democrats and their liberal, allied interest groups are spending more than $1 billion to defeat our ticket in critical races across the country. They're flooding the airwaves and stuffing mailboxes with misleading information, and in some cases flat out lies about us.

The truth is that far-left groups in this country will do anything to help the Obama-Biden Democrats win the White House and maintain their majorities in Congress. And last week, we found out they're going even further to win.

The left-wing activist group, ACORN, is now under investigation for voter registration fraud in a number of battleground states. ACORN's political action committee has endorsed Barack Obama and Senator Obama himself has said, "I have been fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career." The Obama Campaign even paid more than $800,000 to an ACORN affiliate for "get out the vote activity." And now we find out that ACORN is suspected of voter registration fraud.

But, the Obama-Biden Democrats would rather sweep these facts under the rug and use their mainstream media allies to bury this story. But we can't let that happen. We can't allow leftist groups like ACORN to steal this election.

That's why McCain-Palin Victory 2008 has set out to ensure a fair election and I'm asking you to join us today. Will you follow this link immediately to give $25, $50, $100, $250, $500, $1,000 or more to our effort?

McCain-Palin Victory 2008 helps fund our get-out-the-vote efforts in states across the country. We're working day and night to ensure this election is fair and we're working to elect the ticket that has a record of reform leadership.

Our team of reformers is ready to lead. We're ready to tackle issues affecting your family. But we'll get never get there without your support. Will you join our team in the final stretch before Election Day? With your help, I know we'll ensure this election is conducted in a fair manner. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Governor Sarah Palin

Weird Old Ham Radio Videos

Cider Mill - ahhh nutz

We (Piper, the boys, and I) went to Yates Cider Mill yesterday http://www.yatescidermill.com/cider-mill.php . It is in Rochester Hills or Shelby Twp. or something like that. We took the camera but we forgot the memory card for it. Too bad we forgot it because there was some interesting things we saw. The first thing was a giant pair of testicles hanging from someones pickup truck trailer hitch. Jamie said "whats hanging from that guys truck?" and I replied "Looks like a big sack". Always great to have a giant pair of nuts hanging from your truck at a family event. Here is where you can buy them and what they look like http://www.thatsnutz.com/truck-nuts-c-65.html

When we went inside there was a sign on the door that said something along the lines of: If you don't want to be filmed then don't come inside. We thought it was kinda odd until we got inside and noticed they were filming some type of commercial footage or something. I got filmed paying for the cider and donuts. Maybe I will be in a commercial? :)

After we got our Cider & donuts we went for a walk about a mile down a path that was next to the Clinton River. At the end of the path there was a river with stagnant water. Not quite the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. As we were walking back, Piper said "whats that seed pod"? Well, it was this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datura_stramonium We should have ate the seeds, it would have made the path more interesting. :) We also saw some weird plants growing that looked like bamboo but had the same texture as a green onion. We couldn't figure out if they were Cat tails or reeds or what?

We had a good time and stopped at Buddy's Pizza on the way back. I haven't had it for about 15 years and it was better than I remember it. We got the meat special with mushrooms and Antipasto salad.. Yummy!!!!

On the way back, Piper spotted the Girls Gone Wild bus merging off I-75 on to M-59 West... here is what it looks like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRrr97mGipo

A very interesting family? day.

Yesssss.. We are not all fat geeks.. and hot chicks play too!!!

Check it out.. :)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26947992/


I don't feel so bad now..

Weirdest song lyrics ever

The Mars Volta - Televators from the Deloused In The Comatorium album.

	The Mars Volta - Televators
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Lyrics:
Just as he hit
The ground
They lowered a tow that
Stuck in his neck to the gills
Fragments of sobriquets
riddle me this
three half eaten corneas
who hit the aureole
Stalk the ground
Stalk the ground
You should have seen
The curse that flew right by you
Page of concrete
Stained walks crutch in hobbled sway
Auto-da-fé
A capillary hint of red
Only this manupod
Crescent in shape has escaped
The house half the way
Fell empty with teeth
That split both his lips
Mark these words
One day this chalk outline will circle this city
Was he robbed of the asphalt that cushioned his face
A room colored charlatan
Hid in a safe
Stalk the ground
Stalk the ground
You should have seen
The curse that flew right by you
Page of concrete
Stain walks crutch in hobbled sway
Auto-da-fé
A capillary hint of red
Only this manupod
Crescent in shape has escaped

Pull the pins
Save your grace
Mark these words
On his grave
[x3]

You should have seen
The curse that flew right by you
Page of concrete
Stain walks crutch in hobbled sway
Auto-da-fé
A capillary hint of red
Everyone knows the last toes are
Always the coldest to go

My Ham Radio Logging Setup

OK, so most of my blog readers are people that come here that I make contact with on the radio. They look up my call sign on www.qrz.com and see the link to come here. This is a breakdown of my logging setup here. Computer is a old Pentium 2 - 400MHZ with 384MB RAM and a 20GB HD. Not much of a computer by today's standards but enough to log my contacts and soon serve as the digital nerve center for all my digital mode transmission including but not limited to RTTY (Radio teletype). The digital stuff is coming in a few months... check out www.tigertronics.com Signal Link USB... OH YEAH! OK, back on track here. The logging software I use is Amateur Contact Log 3.0 from Scott - N3FJP. I highly recommend it. Check out all his software (I own it all) at www.n3fjp.com Great program, the best for the the money. This log program does it all and is simple to use. Every other log program I have tried has way to small print to read and way to complicated to mess with. Scott has it right with this one. A lot of people use his software worldwide and I can see why. Anyway, so that's the program I prefer. I also subscribe to qrz.com's XML data service which links with the log program to look up all the details instantaneously (such as state, county, grid square, blah blah blah) for $29 a year. The cost of the $29 for a year subscription far outweighs going through and manually putting in all the details. You can download the data from the FCC and convert it yourself, but it will not contain grid squares and counties, or data from different countries. The nice thing about the log is that it has a feature to automatically interface with LOTW (Logbook of the World) www.arrl.org/lotw Logbook of the world is great because every contact confirmed there is equal to using a paper QSL card. Old school operators don't usually like LOTW because it is difficult to install and they think it is the same as EQSL which in my opinion is garbage and means nothing. I have about a 10 percent QSL rate with LOTW and I am currently working on my basic WAS (Worked All States) through LOTW only. So there you have it. That's my logging setup here. Either you are asleep by now, or you found this informative.

Financial Crisis!

I just received this email from Ron Paul...

Dear Friends:

The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.

We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market's attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.

Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I'd only be repeating what I've been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.

Still, at least a few observations are necessary.

The president assures us that his administration "is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets." Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?

We are told that "low interest rates" led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.

Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or "wildcat capitalism" (as if we actually have a pure free market!).

Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: "Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk."

Doesn't that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn't that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn't the federal government shown that the "many" who "believed they were guaranteed by the federal government" were in fact correct?

Then come the scare tactics. If we don't give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary "the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet." Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.

It's the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.

The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.

F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks' manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:

Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.

To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end... It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.

The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.

The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?

Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a "rescue plan"? I guess "bailout" wasn't sitting too well with the American people.

The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you're supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.

I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.

H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.

In liberty,

Ron Paul

3000 contacts and rising

Well, I just made my 3000th radio contact. That is just since I started logging. I have 3044 to be exact in my log. 43 States and 37 countries confirmed electronically through LOTW (Logbook of the World) www.arrl.org/lotw Yes Alaska counts as a separate country and state. Here are the countries, states and callsigns worked below.

Alabama	KF4GRA
Alaska	AL2V
Arizona	K7L
Arkansas	W5VAN
California	K6DEX
Colorado	W0RIC
Connecticut	W1AW
Delaware	N8NA
Florida	K4PPK
Georgia	WA4TII
Hawaii	KH6LC
Idaho	NX7TT
Illinois	K9CT
Indiana	N9YK
Iowa	W0EWD
Kansas	W0BH
Kentucky	KB4AMA
Louisiana	W5WMU
Maine	KV1J
Maryland	W2CDO
Massachusetts	W1PLM
Michigan	K8BB
Minnesota	K0TG
Mississippi	KD5JHE
Missouri	W0MA
New Hampshire	N1IW
New Jersey	K2SQS
New Mexico	N2IC
New York	N2SQW
North Carolina	K0HWY
Ohio	W8OSP
Oklahoma	W5IF
Oregon	N6TW
Pennsylvania	KB3JGU
South Carolina	NN4F
Tennessee	KA4WTB
Texas	KD5LNO
Utah	KG7C
Vermont	N1LDT
Virginia	N3AO
Washington	W7DX
West Virginia	AJ1M
Wisconsin	KC9ECI

ALASKA	AL2V
ANTIGUA & BARBUDA	V26B
ARUBA	P40A
BAHAMAS	C6ANM
BARBADOS	8P5A
BONAIRE,CURACAO (NETH ANTILLES)	PJ4/PA3CNX
CANADA	VE3CX
CANARY ISLAND	EA8/DL3FCG
COSTA RICA	TI50DX
CZECH REPUBLIC	OK1CF
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC	HI3T
ENGLAND	M3SDE
EUROPEAN RUSSIA	RX3AGD
FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY	DL2MWB
FRANCE	F5KEE
FRENCH GUIANA	FY5KE
GALAPAGOS ISLANDS	HC8N
GRENADA	J37K
HAITI	HH4/AF4Z
HAWAII	KH6LC
ICELAND	TF3Y
ISLE OF MAN	MD0CCE
ITALY	IR4X
LUXEMBOURG	LX7I
MADEIRA ISLANDS	CT3FQ
MARTINIQUE	TO5A
MEXICO	XE2WWW
MOROCCO	CN3A
NICARAGUA	HT2N
NORTHERN IRELAND	MI0LLL
PUERTO RICO	WP3ME
SAINT KITTS & NEVIS	V47KP
SLOVENIA	S52OW
SPAIN	EC1CT
TURKS & CAICOS ISLANDS	VP5DX
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA	K2SQS
WALES	GW4BLE