Internal Mono(b)log

*Four Jobs You Have Had In Your Life*

– Dickie Dee Ice Cream Vendor
– Programmer
– Freelance Sports/News Photographer
– CTO

*Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over*

– 5th Element
– Shogun (if I ever get it back from Nurse Debbie)
– Contact Juggling Vol 2
– Snatch

*Four TV Shows You Love to Watch*

– CSI
– Six Feet Under
– Weeds
– most anything on Sci-Fi channel (with a few noteable exceptions)

*Four places you have lived*

– Dunnville, ON
– Kingston, NY
– Toronto, ON
– Zephyr, ON

*Four Places You Have Been On Vacation*

– Turks and Caicos
– Cuba
– Roatan, Honduras
– Margarita Island, Venezuela

*Four Websites You Visit Daily*

– Om Message Board
– Tribe
– ContactJuggling.org
– eham.net

*Four Of Your Favorite Foods*

– Roti from Bacchus Roti
– Pizza
– Wings
– Stuff Kim cooks me

*Four Places You Would Rather be Right Now*

– Somewhere warm and sunny near the ocean
– Somewhere warm and sunny in the ocean
– Somewhere warm and sunny under the ocean
– Turkey for the Eclipse

*Four favourite books*

– I almost never read fiction. Current non-fiction reading materials include:
– ITIL best practices
– AARL Handbook 2005, and
– the RAC Study Guide for the Basic Ham Radio Qualification Exam. _Yes, I’m a geek and proud of it._

4 People to tag:

– everyone I know that blogs has already been tagged

I don’t get it.

I didn’t understand when GWBush got re-elected south of the Boarder. I don’t understand the Canadian electorate bringing in a Concervative government w. a Liberal official opposition.

We, the people of the country called Canada, just wasted $300M on an election to return things to almost the status quoe. We’d best launch an investigation into this scandal and waste some more money. _sheesh!!!_

I guess the good news is that when Canada becomes the 51st state I’ll be able to work in the US without getting a work visa.

Have you ever flushed a toilet in an office or restaurant that sounded like and flushed like it was jet propelled? My new office has them, and being the curious person that I am I had to find out how this worked.

Seems these toilets use a product called a [flushmate](www.flushmate.com). It looks like a pretty neat piece of equipment designed to boost your long-drop’s performance. With the reno’s that Kim and I have been doing and in the vein of concerving water, I think that the 1GPF (1 gallon per flush) model from one of the many vendors is in our immediate future 🙂

After all, a man is King of his house and the King’s thone *needs* to be jet assisted!

Recently, I’ve been working at learning Morse Code (frequently abbreviated “cw”). I found a very cool piece of software for OSX called [MorseManiaOSX](http://www.blackcatsystems.com/software/morsemania.html). I’d been going along learning to hear code, but the interface for entering code was via a mouse button. For those of you who have never tried morse code, let me tell you, a mouse button is not a good vehicle for quick and well timed dits and dahs.

So, not to be thwarted by this, I decided to cannibalize an old USB mouse and create a USB CW interface. My radio uses a 1/4″ stereo headphone jack to attach the key to the radio, so interfacing should be simple (and it was). Disassemble the sacrificial mouse, find the switch that operates button 1 and the contacts on that switch that close when the switch is pressed. Solder on the leads from a cable attached to a female 1/4″ headphone jack and you’re in business. Rather than use a project box, I decided to drill a hole for the new cable and reuse the mouse housing to hold the circuit board.

Here are some pics:

The mouse pc board with the wires for the headphone jack soldered on.

The project back in the mouse housing.