I found a really
neat OLD
remedy during the course of a 2-week toothache:
OIL of CLOVES
I vaguely
remember-ed it from some-where, and got some from my friendly Healthfood
Store.
WORKED LIKE A
MILLION BUCKS!!!
OK... for about 3
hours of so... but the tooth felt like an exposed nerve... and the Oil
really
SHUT IT DOWN!!!
They recommended
using a cotton swab or toothpick... I tried the latter, and didn't like
it. I simply put about a drop on my finger, and rubbed it in on one side
of the tooth-especially along the gum line. I then got another drop and
did the same thing on the other side. Absolute relief for three to four
hours-even if you drink water or cola. About 1/2 the time, if I ate
something I had to reapply it.
SOME
CAUTIONS:
Use it
SPARINGLY-it's very strong!!!
Don't
worry about putting more on, or reapplying. in this kind of minuscule
quantities, it's OK.
Do
worry about put-ting too much on at once... it'll burn your lip and
tongue. I managed to burn mine several times at first, but I don't mean
it LITERALLY-rather, it just feels like it briefly.
It will make you
sali-vate... SPIT IT OUT-DO NOT SWALLOW!! It isn't a poison-but it'll
burn your throat if you do manage to get it down there. (The voice of
expe-rience again.)
I hope I am not
sounding overcau-tious. It is easy to apply, and it is simply a spice
that deadens-briefly- nerves.
Chris pitches to live
batting after
14 months
of rehab! This was the
Berry Varsity in a couple of
Intersquad games. In two different games, there was 1 hit, and one walk for
the equivalent of 4 innings. Bottom line: only the one hit, and the next
batter then hit into a double play. (Remember: to pitch at all, you first
have to warm up... meaning that there were already 20 or 30 pitches each
game, before he took the mound.) The coach was pleased, and so are we. Chris
felt pretty good too. He faced several of the team's best hitters, and kept
them off base. So... if all continues to go well, he should see plenty of
innings this coming Spring Season (starting FEB 4th!!!)
Rusty graduated with the Spring
class at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville in June of 2002. He
finally graduated officially the 3rd week
in AUG 2002, when he actually received his diploma. This was true of
approximately 25% of the 3500 or so people graduating with him. (They don't
hold "Summer" ceremonies-so if you're within 12 hours, you get to walk
through the ceremony with the Spring class.) He is an
English major, with a focus in Technical
Communications and a minor in Journalism.
His last year at UT, he worked two jobs, keeping the website for
Rocky Top
Books; and
The Daily Beacon writing job. See his 'bio'
in my
Family page. He has returned home while
while job-hunting.
You can see Rusty's website complete with
resume' portfolio at:
Rusty is employed!!!
Instead of website design which we expected, he
decided what he wanted to do was write (this is the son with the Major in
English and Minor in Journalism. He starts TUES JAN 28th, 2003; working as a
staff writer for Neighbor Newspapers.
He will be filling in at the Dekalb Neighbor
for a week or two (they lost 2 writers last week) and then will move to The
Northside Neighbor based in Sandy Springs. He
should be doing 3 of his own, and 3 assignments once he gets to Northside.
What he'll do for Dekalb, we'll just have to wait and see.
I have sent my R-390
to China!!! I traded it for a Chinese (Army) Type 77 HF Receiver. Note I
mean my R-390-NON-A... NOT my Chuck Rippel-rebuilt R-390-A. What an
interesting adventure this has been.
I had seen emails
soliciting R-390s for a couple of years... and finally decided to take the
plunge with my R-390. It was only possible because the R-390 is a
modular-plug-in receiver. If you take enough of 'em out, you can just get it
through the weight restriction of 44 lbs / 20 kg. There is a girth
restriction of 72 inches. That means that the height, plus the width plus
the depth of the box must not exceed 72 inches (~183 cm). That leaves ~ an
inch (2.5cm) all around the R-390. Not very much!!! ...and oh yes: Chinese
regulations state NO WOOD.
But the packing store
guy is a friend, and though he groaned a lot, he really came
through for me! He first built a double-walled cardboard box around the
unit. Then he built double-thick top and bottom pieces that left about 5
inches (~13 cm). Taping the top and bottom pieces made for a very secure
package-or rather, a package as
secure as it could be with these restraints. It was easy to pick
up-considering its weight.
So now, on to the
post office. I had several packages, and had to make more than one trip from
the car. Hoisting the big box onto the postal counter, and telling them it
was for the Peoples' Republic of
China got some *** very ***
raised eyebrows!!! I had been told there were two important points about the
Customs form: 1) the total value had to be no
more than 90 yuan (~$85); and, 2) the
description of the item(s) My friend suggested was: "old
radio for collector". I followed this... but added: "(1955)".
I didn't want some potential thief anywhere throughout the passage to think
it might have been an Atwater-Kent!!!
CHOICES: I could have-in
exchange for the R-390-either a "NOS (New-Old-Stock)/ NIB (New-In-Box) w/
spares" Type 222 tube receiver; or a similarly
NOS/NIB Type 77 solid-state receiver. My friend
has both for trades. I gave this a lot of thought. I had photos of both
receivers (see below). I was leaning towards the Type
77. If there were any tubes in the Type 222
that didn't have European/American pin-for-pin equivalents, and something
failed, once the "spares" were gone, you were just plain out-of-luck. On the
other hand, you can manage to replace
*** any *** transistor. The
final decision was made by my friend in China. I asked him which he thought
was the better receiver, and he said that-although it was
uglier-the
Type 77 was much better. Well... that did it
for me.
So... my R-390 is on its way to
China... and my Type 77 HF Receiver is on its
way to me. I expect it sometime between the 1st and the 15th of August 2002.
Below are thumbnails of both the Type 222, and
the Type 77...and a hand drawing my friend did
for me to interpret the Chinese characters on the front panel (the numbers
are standard Arabic.)
First
the Type 222 (that I didn't get):
Now the Type
77:
NOTE:
The R-390 got to my friend in China without a
hitch. I am working on getting a couple of 120VAC/220VAC autotransformers
paralled to power the unit, since AC power is easier than providing both
+12VDC and - 6VDC.
See the receiver's webpage from time-to-time for photos and progress
reports.
IBM Deskstar drive destroys WIN
2000 Pro OS
The Problem...
Back in September
2001, I experienced a complete system failure on this PC. According to my
software tools, the partition on 2 physical and 3 virtual were gone. I tried
all my tricks; then resorted to a
Data Recovery tool from dtidata at:
http://www.dtidata.com . This
resulted in about a
75-85%
recovery, including our EXCEL
Income Tax files for the past 10 years! And,
no, they weren't backed up. (I used to use tape drives to back up
regularly... but since the advent of all the big drives, it just hasn't
seemed feasible. (It is on a CD-now.)
1st
Recovery...
Anyway, I couldn't
find the problem at first, and-after recovering that
~75%
and quickly burning a CD with the taxes, and the old
outlook.pst-
I quickly tried to contact the several ebay purchases and free
parts/schematics I had obligations for. Got several of 'em.
Didn't print them however.
BIG MISTAKE. Both drives
checked good using WIN 2000 Pro's tools (primarily the old 'reliable':
CHKDISK.) I bought a new
ASUS motherboard, thinking that it was a chip-level failure.
Round 2...
So much for "the old
reliable"!!! Shortly (2-3 days) after contacting the majority of my
'ebays' and friends, the real culprit
reared its head, and did it again-only this time the recovery was limited to
things on the 2nd physical drive. The 1st one had been the problem all
along-so all the emails I had done-including
those in this interim period-and
anything else on virtual drives C and D were
lost forever. All that physical drive (the almost new [JUNE
2000] IBM Deskstar was
gone, period, and would only click-not
read.)
The net of all this
was about 50-60% recovery-with some things
lost forever. By then,
I had been gone from email and such for about a week... which stretched into
three weeks (!!!) while I tried everything I knew to try and get
WIN 2000 Pro to work with that new motherboard.
Time passes... and passes... and passes...
The bottom line...
After a lengthy call
to ASUS (they denied anything was wrong-but
could not tell me a thing to do to correct it) I finally took the whole unit
to my motherboard dealer, and it promptly allowed WIN
98 to install. Ergo, the built-in RAID
on the replacement ASUS was the cause of 3
weeks of agony-trying various PIO & UDMA parameters in an effort to get
WIN 2000 Pro to install. I swapped the ASUS for
an ABIT, and the system was up and running
within the hour. It wasn't cheap, but the new system is really neat: a 1.4
GHz AMD K7 Thunderbird; 768 MB of 133 MHz RAM; ~ 106 GB of ATA-100 HDD;
NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS w/32MB video RAM; and a PC Power & Cooling 350W PS.
There is a Chinese
curse: "May you live in interesting times!"
Well... things got a little
too interesting with
all this!
A delightful P.S.
Although I knew the
warranty was 5 years, I didn't have my receipt for the Deskstar. Because of
that, I poked around about checking to see if there was
ANYTHING to be done-warranty-wise. I
finally checked the other day. Just typed
WWW.IBM.COMand then 3 or 4 stages to warranties or something like that. They asked ONLY
for my model number and
serial number-both right there on the hard drive's label. There was
some information to enter (obvious stuff like my name and address-and what
checks I had performed in determining the drive was bad) but
nothing about date purchased, or from
whom. In no time at all an RMA number was
supplied, and packing instructions and an address were provided. (No
'peanuts' and no bubblewrap-only high-density foam.) A new drive will take
approximately 2 weeks after they receive the drive.
What's a Grid Dip Meter
(or: GDO)???
What's a Grid Dip Meter?
Check my GDO Collection page for photos and short write-ups of what I
believe is one of the better collections anywhere of this useful electronic
instrument!
In 2001,
I finally went up to K4ODL's mountain-top QTH. He lives on 20 wooded acres
near Jasper, GA, at an altitude of ~ 2000ft! There has been so much work to
improve his house and the surrounding area, that Randy hasn't had as much
time for antennas as he would like. Also, living on a mountain-top has its
disadvantages. Many of the trees up there are bent from the high winds he is
often exposed to. Many wire antennas regularly come down from limbs and
trees falling on them! I took a few photos, and they may be seen at:
I got a
call recently about my
Argonaut II
that I had sold to a friend several years ago. I don't sell much, preferring
to pick carefully, and hang onto-and use-my equipment. This particular deal
was one I have always regretted... so when I got the call that he had
decided to part with it, I was thrilled. I loved that rig a lot, and it has
always been-to me-the best QRP rig period. I think the K2 has a better
receiver, but otherwise, the Argonaut II remains my favorite-or a partner
with my K2. Whatever... 1st/2nd place/etc. I am
reallylooking forward to putting it back on the air!
I'm not REAL sure
just where I heard of
Carlos
Mayer's Printing in Argentina; but I went to his website,
and went through his samples; and decided he was THE
guy to do the color-photo QSL I have had in mind for years! I cannot
recommend Carlos highly enough-but I don't have to: his QSL samples are like
a travelogue of Argentina. Go look at them, and if 1st class QSLs are what
you are looking for, you'll know he can do them for you.
I then
Express-Mail'ed the two negatives (yes: USPS has
International Express mail-uses the very same Express mail form, and costs
about $20 for 2-3 day delivery) and the next thing you know, he emailed the
low-rez sample I'm displaying here. I took both pictures years ago-and they
remain two of the best macros I ever took. Note the bee's red tongue!
Click on the QSL thumbnail for a full-size-but still
low resolution-version.
I have the
honour of being invited for membership in the Argentine
CW Activity Group: GACW. They are a
very active group of mostly Argentine hams interested in furthering the CW
mode and doing DX-Peditions to the many Argentine possessions and
territories. Their webpage may be found at
GACW. A very nice bunch of guys too.
My
membership NR is 482.
Take a look at a terrific ELECTRONICS
website someone told me about-it's really interesting:
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