Blue Hills Hike

Date: 12/14/2008
Time: 11:30 AM local
Location: Blue Hills Milton Massachusetts
Wx: Sunny, Wind up to 15 MPH, 45 Degrees F
Radios: Dual Band HT, and MTX9000

Notes: The plan was to Hike the Blue Hills today. These plans were cancelled when we got to the entrance (Wampatuck Road) the road was closed. There was a sheet of ice on the road near the gate. Scary. Seems the the Blue Hills was affected by the ice storms from last week. We when back home and did a nice walk around Black Creek in Quincy, MA.

It was fun to observe a duck showing off in front of his Friends. He was walking on the ice. On the radio I could hear fellow hams chatting about how great the new Waltham 900 Mhz repeater is working. I noticed a very large improvement. Kudos to the folks who did the work on the repeater.

Marijuana is extremely unhealthy

Massachusetts 2008 Ballot Question 2 ("AN ACT ESTABLISHING A SENSIBLE STATE MARIJUANA POLICY") passed.

Please consider your health before you make a choice to try this drug. The same local laws ban use of trans fat in restaurants. This is to protect you.

Please let me try to protect you by advising you to stay away from drugs.

Here is a link on the effects of Marijuana:
WebMd

Names of People converting to Mixed Case and Roman Numbers Using Regex

Our web app takes data from an order entry system. In this data the person's full name is in all upper case letters in one field.

Ex. DOE III, JOHN D For John D Doe the Third

We have a method that converts the all upper case letters to a mixed case.
We found a bug in our logic in respects to the handling of roman numbers inside the name suffix.

Our logic would output the following:

Doe Iii, John D

To fix this it was proposed to use a series of string.replace() method to fix the name suffix after it was set to mixed case. Please see Figure 1

Figure 1:
...
strName = strFormattedName.ToString();


//Handle Roman numerals up to X

strName = " " + strName + " ";

strName = strName.Replace(" Ii ", " II ");

strName = strName.Replace(" Iii ", " III ");

strName = strName.Replace(" Iv ", " IV ");

strName = strName.Replace(" Vi ", " VI ");

strName = strName.Replace(" Vii ", " VII ");

strName = strName.Replace(" Viii ", " VIII ");

strName = strName.Replace(" Ix ", " IX ");

strName = strName.Trim();



return strName;

}

I felt that was wasteful. We were sending the token that contained the suffix to the mix case method, placed the whole name back together and then sending the whole name through the above method (Figure 1) to undo the mix case to the suffix. Also wasteful was the series of 7 string replacement calls.

I thought it would be better to use a regular expression to check to see if a token contained a roman number generation suffix. If a token did contain a roman number, then we could not send it to the mix case method. This code is more efficient and cleaner.

Figure 2 contains a method that checks a string for roman numbers 2 though 4. The downside to this is I have yet to figure out the difference between the name Vi and the roman number 6. If I think of something cool, I will update this post.



Figure 2:

private bool isSuffix(string inName)
{
bool ret = false;
try
{
string sPattern = @"^\W?(II|III|IV)\W?$";
if (Regex.IsMatch(inName, sPattern))
ret = true;
}
catch //todo: add error ex handle
{
}
return ret;
}

According to boston.com:
New parents John Jennifer Davis got a ticket for driving in the breakdown lane.


The Article


Great call taken by the Mass State Police to issue ticket.

John Davis was risking their lives and the lives of others driving in the breakdown lane. Next time call an ambulance.

Massachusetts State Parks

Wompautuck is where my heart is
  Myles Standish has my soul
    Blue Hills on my mind

Why Hate Cellular Phones 1

Hearing what the other party is saying is difficult.

Please see the following diagram:

lights on the water

lights on the water
who are you
do you know my thoughts?
does she?
or does she know?
so clear to see lights on the water
what are they?
same as my thoughts for her
lights on the water so far
far away like she is.
she said she loved me.
the water is cold.
the lights confuse me.

Watching someone's fish for them, all is well but,

there was an event.
i opened the cover to one tank and the whole cover fell into the tank light included. I was thinking this is NOT GOOD! As the light flickered out underwater. i thought i better act quickly or the fish are going to get electrocuted. I did not want to get killed either, so i unplugged EVERYTHING and proceeded to remove the light from the tank. The whole time the fish did not seem to care at all.

The cover is back on, minus the light. The light is drying in another room. I think they have ground fault wiring in that house, so that's what saved the fish from getting into fried fish.

A-Team Blog Six

Murdock: No, No BA! There is such a thing as a Blog!
BA: Shut up fool! Stop making up words! Or I'll Blog your head! (BA makes fist)

A-Team Blog Five

While on the 36 hour drive to the new client, BA did a lot of thinking. He misses his mom, and hopes that no one ever messes with her, cause if they did, they would gonna have to pay. It was a long drive, but BA did not mind, because it meant he would not be in a plane. Much better to have that fool Murdock sleeping in the back, than have him flying a plane, that crazy fool.

A-Team Blog Four

BA has been confused these past few days. He keeps having these black outs, and wakes up on or near a plane. He's dreaming now, but he's talking in is sleep... "i' gonna kill these fools"

A-Team Blog Three

It's important to keep the AK-47s and other weapons cleaned and oiled. You see, each member of the team takes turns in this duty. All the weapons are taken apart, cleaned, oiled and put back together. If a weapon jams the person who last maintained the weapons is punished. There has not been a jam in several years.

A-Team Blog Two

Well BA was still mad at that man that shot out his van window and tire. If Murdock kept telling bad jokes to that man, there would be no more van left. BA was also thinking that he let that guy off too easy by only shooting out the guys bar and gun rack. Bullets cost money too, and this like of work does not bring in too much money these days.

A-Team Blog One

BA and the guys get called in to help a guy out. Turns out the bad guy is a mob, and crazy.
He's like, He's going to learn how to breathe under water, and i am going to give the other guys lessons in cement. Now a few weeks ago BA remembered seeing a big bill board for squirt soda in LA!

And Face was thinking about the last two clients in Tarzania, CA and what a wonder full radio network they had. Base was a Kenwood HF Radio, and the units were CB and Motorola radios. Somehow everyone was able to hear hear other even with the power being off on the Kenwood.

ceMental: The cide series out on CD now

Available here at: cide

It's a soundtrack for your electronic nightmares

Fall

Fall is most enjoyable. Alas for some reason it still triggers depression. Or is it from this will be the last week in our apartment? We have been here for more than 5 years. Will the friends that we never made be missed? Or just the memories of us together here be missed? On Memories today while napping I realized the memories of family and friends that are still alive are no different than the memories of family and friends that have passed on. That way no one dies. Even as all of the cells in your body are replaced, somehow your memories still survive.

noise floor

Can't wait to get out of this Apartment. Noise floor on HF just went from s3-s5 to s9+! Can't even hear wwv on 10 MHz.

Super Antennas MP1

HRO sold me this antenna when I told them i planned to use an antenna inside my apartment for HF. I think they had intended my mounting it out a window or something.

Still being brand new to HF, I would like to tell you somethings that i learned.

HF right now, with no sunspot activity, with the MP1 indoors; I am getting poor results.

When using the MPI indoors, do not use the Collar Position Info chart. This chart helps you position the collar for the band you want to work. This is good guide only if you have the MPI in a optimal location.

Inside an apartment is not the best location. With limited room for the counterpoise wires and other factors, affecting my SWR: setting the collar position was the last step in getting a good SWR. With my situation my best SWR for the band I want, never matched the Info Chart.

With this antenna indoors:
I have worked voice all over the states on 6m when there are E openings,
30 meter CW, and 20 Meter Phone.

This antenna does tune 40 meters - 10 meters indoors.

Lucky I will be moving into a home soon, and will have more antenna options. Many more options.

73
jay / ab1ii

Soundtracks

ceMental, music for movies.

http://myspace.com/cemental

http://eonmusic.com/cemental