Tonight I watched nite 2 of the RNC. Before the end I was wishing I had recorded it, as many of the speeches were rivoting. I then recorded Ben Carson which was awesome. All talks from then to the end were fantastic. Many real life stories, very inspiring, the most inspiring evening of TV in ages.

Enough is enough. If Biden isn’t gonna go on his own accord, a Congressional investigation of his cognitive impairment must be started right away. We don’t have anyone running our country right now! That can’t be a good thing. The First Lady is looking out for him, or is it elder abuse? 😩

Our cicadas our thriving. Today there were many dozens of them all over the large leaves of plants in our front garden and now they are also all over the vertical branches of an ornamental tree in that garden. They were also flying all around the top parts of the tree. They seem to like our garden!

Cicadas in the Midwest

The cicadas have arrived here in the Midwest in the last few days. We have a small garden at the front our house. They have gathered all over the top of the plants in that area. My wife gathered a sandwich bag full of them & had them with her dinner.

From tonight's Scripting News:

Something the HTTPS evangelists must not understand: there’s substantial breakage when you convert an HTTP site to HTTPS. Every image in every page breaks. Broken images make a statement, they’re like broken windows, they say no one gives a F about this site. Well I care about the archive of scripting.com, I hope people understand that. I have been creating a record here since 1994. It’ll be 30 years in October.# Instead of trying to blackmail me into breaking my archive, Google should be helping to preserve it. And not just mine, the entire early web. We poured our hearts and hopes into this, and massive amounts of time, without which Google would not exist. # I know Google doesn’t have a heart and it isn’t a living thing, but it’s bad PR to make that so freaking obvious. # I think that perhaps Google is already run by the machines. Maybe it was the first such company. # To remind you of what Google’s idea of the ancient web is, I put a broken image next to this post. #

Unending Travel

Long term strategy: Get all debt paid off in full. Then master the skill of making ham radio CW contacts. Meanwhile accumulate the list of countries that will let an American live in their country with no Visa (often for 1 year). Once all that is in place, we will be able to constantly travel, with no Visa required, always using QRP CW as a communication medium.

Is anyone here using a Freewrite device, such as an Alpha, a Traveler, or a Smart Typewriter? I’d be very interested in your thoughts about your device!

Thanks,

Ron

Alamy images of egrets in Thailand

Yesterday we took a 9.5 hr train ride from Bangkok all the way north to Lampang. About 1/3 of that trip passes through huge fields of rice, a major crop for Thailand. As you pass through slowly, you eventually begin to notice the striking white of the egrets against the bright green of the crops. Search for Alamy images of the egrets to see a huge variety of them.

Our EVA Air flight to Taipei had a 95 mins cartoon from Japan:

New Dimension! Crayon Shinchan

My wife has been watching funny cartoons about the boy, Shinchan, for many yrs. Now he has supernatural powers, saving the world with them. Lots of uproarious laughter from me! A MUST SEE!

I think our train might be electric. Rides pretty smooth.

One woman is traveling with her six kids, age 2.5 mos to 11 yrs old. She very calm and her kids are too. She works on ambulances, so I guess she is trained not to get rattled.

Ron, HS0ZMD

TX5S is active on 10m now to contact the world from Clipperton Island on CW, a big DXpedition. Included in the team is Andreas, past Prez of my Palo Alto ham radio club. Good luck & gud DX! Ron, HS0ZMD

We will taking the train to Lampang in the North of Thailand today. I hope to get my ham station on the air from there, HS0ZMD. 73, Ron

I’m posting live from Thailand now for the next month. We are in our hotel in Bangkok right now. It is 4:35 am here now, middle of the night. Cheers, Ron

Oh, bother. National Winnie the Pooh Day is 18 January and I learned about it on 19 January!

Pooh reminds us:

“You’re braver than you believe and stronger and smarter than you think.”

Fun to watch the Packers demolish the Cowboys!!! The first NFL game I ever saw in person was Staubach coming from behind to beat the Niners in the NFC championship game at Kezar Stadium. Ever since I have always loved to see the Cowboys lose.

1/10/82 was the Catch & Montana was on his way.

It’s been three days since I got my Shingles vaccination shot and the soreness is now gone from my arm. I even took a pain killer before bed for the first two nights. But I didn’t feel the need for that tonight. But of course now I’m wide awake at 2:45 am.😊

Happy New Year
I noticed it had arrived when the fireworks started all around us, loud & persistent. After quite a while the neighbor’s dog had had enough and he started barking, loud and long. It reseded into the background; then I realized both the fireworks and the dog had stopped, at 12:30.

I have a verrry sore right arm from the shingles vaccination I got around 5:30 pm tonight. But I’m glad I did it. I had a good friend that had shingles and it was a LOT of pain for many days. I much prefer one night of pain in my arm to all she went through. I will get a 2nd shot in two months.

The Niners won their opener against the Steelers, 30-7. Clearly no sophomore slump for Purdy, and the entire team did a great job, especially Aiyuk & McCaffrey. The offense moved at will and the defense stopped nearly everything, far exceeding their 2.5 pt advantage at the start of the game.

I saw the Super Blue Moon last night, 30 Aug 2023, 11:10 to 11:30 pm, totally clear sky, 60 deg F. My astronomer brother told me it is not really blue and no different, except for being bigger than usual. But it sure did look BLUE to me.