Have you heard the saying “if it wasn’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have any”? That was was it today or this week for that matter.
July 4th – I got notice that my job or at least my services are no longer needed. Finding something else is difficult at best during these times.
I wrote about yesterdays trivial problems.
Today – started out ok but in my request yesterday for needed info to apply for a new position has gone un-answered. Where I “used to work” we have a great HR group. They don’t respond to much of anything. Next I headed off to put a check in the bank and take the recycle cardboard to the recycle center. I should have gone to the bank first but dumbed out and hit the recycle first. In the process of getting the boxes out and leaving the door open I lost some papers – one was the check I needed to put in the bank… duh! that was dumb. No excuse for not having put it in a bit better spot but when I left I just stacked it up on my note folder and put it in the seat next to me. We put a stop on the check and they will issue another one but that will cost us the stop order. Now as the day wears on I am catching up on some other things and find that my APRS digi has not been heard for 17 days? what is up with that – I have been out to the shop and it appeared to be working fine? In testing it has noise and is receiving packets fine… but won’t transmit? A little deeper in the analysis it appears that the TNC is locked – unplug the speaker wire and the tnc appears to operate normally. Turn the radio off and it appears ok and when I turn the radio on the TNC cycles like it should – hits one transmit and then receive locks out with no noise input… unplug the speaker wire and it drops back ok…? So the Transmitter is out for sure and the speaker lead is grounding or coming off ground or something like that but it locks up the TNC as though it was hearing signal all the time so no transmit possible. Oh boy that hurts. I went to check my VX8R in the jeep and it was locked up in receive but it was just noise but it was sure hot. I turned it off, let it cool, got the squelch set back up a little and it all seems to work fine… Hopefully I didn’t damage it in the process but it appears to be working including the APRS part.
Like I said, if it wasn’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have any luck these days… I am looking for a short streak of good luck any time now… maybe I should go get a lottery ticket and hope all my luck comes in on that one? I know silly thought, I haven’t won anything on a lottery ticket, or any thing for that matter, in so long I forgot what winning felt like.
One thing did happen today that was a bit funny and sure wish I had the camera. I took wife to hospital to get some liquid intestine stuff for a scan tomorrow… While I was waiting outside the hospital admin and the City Animal control guy came out poking around in the bushes in front… I saw something move under them but at first couldn’t figure out what it was. Maybe a cat? But then why would they be so worried about a cat? Then they flushed it out of the talk grass and it scampered across the lawn to the next door. It was what appeared to be a Prairie Dog?
He looked a bit like this guy:
I won’t swear to it and for sure this is outside their normal range but it sure looked like it.
Although, with some thought and study it could have been a wayward Guinea Pig that only had brown color with a black tail… but I didn’t think G-pigs had tails? and this one sure did? Again, sure needed a picture… When we left they had not caught it yet.
So that was my day – bad to worse to funny but not funny enough. – WD0AJG