I have had several people ask me if I accept donations for the work I am doing on Acidfree. I guess I could say no, but that wouldn't be very gratious, now would it. Besides, my wife, Lauren, would probably appreciate the nice dinner date that your donations would finance. I figure that is only fair — Acidfree takes me away from her — so you can ensure that she allows me to continue to work on Acidfree by giving a small amount to me to encourage her with flowers and fine dining. So click on the logo below and make a contribution.

Acidfree is meant to a simple, yet full featured photo album for Drupal. It was designed from the ground up as a node type for Drupal, so it is very well integrated into the Drupal architecture. It is much simpler than Gallery to set up and use, but most definitely has fewer features. And it will never have as many features. If you want more features, by all means use Gallery. But if you want a simple, easy to use, full featured photo album, this is the place for you.

Acidfree includes support for various image types (and it is easy to add more) and for basic video types (think short clips from your digital camera).

MauOS is a fairly simple little operating system that I started to design with two goals in mind. I wanted to learn a little more about C++ programming and I wanted to learn some of the nitty-gritty details of the Intel x86 architecture. It barely boots and depending on which branch you choose, it may support timer interrupts or multiple threads, but for some reason, not both. Development goes in spurts as I find time. I will often spend a lot of time on it to fix a bug or add a feature only to quit for months after that. But someday, it will take over the world.

Last year, I noticed that the ceiling over our kitchen sink was cracked and a little bit soggy. After some house math, we figured out that the leak was directly below the faucet/drain end of the tub in the kid's bathroom. A quick look through some of the reviews of plumbers in our area from a google search found Kennedy Plumbing. I gave them a call and they sent a man out. He was fast and professional. He replaced the shoe or cracked strainer or something. I don't recall exactly, and even if I did, I am not that intimately familiar with the anatomy of a tub to carry on a conversation about such things. Something was cracked and very broken and he replaced it. The soggy section of ceiling dried up, but still had a little bit of a cracked area in the texture which has been bothering me ever since. But obviously not that much, since I never got around to fixing it.

Yesterday morning, that shower was used for the first time in at least a year. The kids still take baths. I heard a drip, drip, drip in the kitchen and was surprised to see it coming from the ceiling. Grrrrr. I made a quick call to Kennedy Plumbing to have them come out to check to see if the first guy screwed up. It turned out that after an hour of trying to diagnose the problem, he finally found it. When the tub faucet runs, it doesn't leak, but when the shower starts, it drips lots. He took the faucet assembly apart to find a disintegrated O-ring. Ooops. So the first guy did right, and the second guy did too. The only problem is that now, enough water had leaked into our ceiling that I really did have to fix it. The plumber was kind enough to saw out a very rough hole to help him diagnose the problem. Now I get to fix it. Ho hum. I really hate dry-wall work. Maybe it will get done before next year. :)

After much debate, research and saving of greenbacks, I finally went out and bought my first ham radio. I chose the Icom 92AD. It didn't take me much to see that the Icom handheld radios were a lot higher quality than the Yaesu radios. They also cost a bit more. The one I chose was one of the more expensive ones (surprise, surprise), but it should do all the things I want it to do. It is a dual-band radio that also has a digital voice/D-STAR capability built in. I am not sure how much I will use the digital voice part, but D-STAR also allows for data to be transmitted along with the digital voice packets. I think that KK7DS's D-RATS stuff is really a great idea. Plus, Dan's a bit of a Linux geek like myself, so I feel good supporting him.

The radio as a handheld doesn't really have a long range, but it will be great for the ARES and CERT activities that I would like to participate in. There is also a local LDS net that I can participate in as well. So it is a great start to get my radio feet wet.

Like I mentioned in my last ham post, I was not entirely happy with my call sign. I applied for a 'vanity' call sign, NV2M, and my request was granted six days ago. I think it is really nice that the FCC allows you to choose your call sign. They did periodically through amateur radio history, but now it is even easier than ever. You log into the FCC website, list your top 25 choices in order of preference, pay them thirteen dollars and wait for 21 days. There are several websites that maintain lists of call signs that are available so you can find one that suits you. Thirteen dollars is not very vain, especially for a ten-year license.

Now take a look at vanity license plates. Fifty-five dollars for a vanity license plate is vain. And you have to pay that each time you renew your registration. But here in Oregon, they have special amateur radio plates you can get for your car that display your call sign. The best part about this is that they are only five dollars. This is the kind of vanity that I can afford.

So it all comes down to the dollar. How vain are you? And Me? About five bucks. I think I am too practical and too much of a tightwad to be really vain.

I have been meaning to get my ham operators license for some time now. I never really knew what was involved in the process so I always let it slip out of my mind after a very short time. I knew that there was a "test" of some sort involved. And that you had to pay to take the test. Not wanting to pay for a test I might fail and not knowing where to turn to pass, I gave up. Until about 3 weeks ago. Then I heard about a ham class that was being offered locally. I actually heard about it through two channels: my church has been pushing to get people to have ham licenses for emergency preparedness, as has Beaverton CERT (Community Emergency Response Team). So when I heard about it this time, I signed up. The flier for the class had a link to Ham Elmer where you could download a PDF that told you the basics about getting a license.

After reading this booklet and absorbing the info like a sponge, I felt pretty confident. I started to read about ham stuff in my spare time. I learned about HF/VHF/UHF propagation and about RF safety. I found some practice tests online and started to take them. I found that I could ace the Technician test nearly every time. So I think to myself, this was pretty easy, maybe I should shoot for General. See, by now, I realized that there are three levels of licenses, each with increased privileges. I already had my sights set on Amateur Extra, but was not sure how long it would take me to get there. A few years, perhaps.

The first time I took the online General level test, I only failed by one question. It was a 35 question test, like the Technician test, only the questions were a little harder. That really got my hopes up. So I studied up some more on the questions I missed so I could understand what they were talking about. At this time, I recognized a lot of the words and phrases, but was still dredging the depths of my brain to pull of any shred of knowledge about radios and electronics I learned in college. As I read about radio wave propagation, FCC part 97, and the ham culture in general, I began to get slightly better scores. I think on the fourth try, I finally started passing the General tests regularly. I still had a week until the ham course. I was notified that they would be testing all levels and that if you pass one level, they automatically offer you the next level. Hmmmm....

I have been pining after a larger fish tank ever since we got Nicole a fish tank for her birthday. I have enjoyed having the fish in the house more than I would have ever expected. I have never really been a pet person, but I think I have found the kind of pet that I can get along with. They don't take much time, they are fun to watch, and I get a great amount of satisfaction out of making sure I don't kill them. Even though it happens now and then. But I am getting better at this fish thing. I used my birthday as an excuse to buy a bigger tank and a stand.

I feel a lot of pressure from all those Acidfree users who are just dying to have Acidfree-6.x released. But that is not the reason I am working on it. I am working on it because 1) I feel a sense of responsibility to do it, and 2) I like working on Acidfree. So I do have a start on the work. When I say start, I mean pre-alpha; not even finished enough to commit to the Drupal CVS repository. I have made commits that I am willing to share with the not-so-faint of heart.

I was so happy to learn that the 2.6.26 kernel had a free as in speech alternative to the madwifi Atheros driver, ath5k. I have not been so happy that it has been crashing my machine periodically. Since diagnosis of a hung machine without a serial console that is running X is nigh on impossible, I had no choice but to fold and go back to madwifi. However, since then, I have moved on to 2.6.27, which has some changes to two wireless APIs, causing the madwifi driver to fail to build. I wanted to leave my desk with its hard-wired connection but didn't want my machine to hang again.