VPD – Very productive day

I learned today that having a whole day to myself can be productive.

I got out of bed around 7am which is early for me on Saturday. Kathy had to work today so I had most of the day to myself to get things done and to goof off.

Yesterday I went and got the camper and got new tires put on it. (I’m sure the tires on it were from the 80′s sometime) Today was the day to get the camper ready to go for a campout we are doing next weekend in the local area. I got the battery off from it and put it on the charger and put up the TV antenna to see if I can get that to work right with the new 22” flat Screen HD TV we will have in there (roughing it huh?). I didn’t have much luck with the antenna but I did find the problem. I went to radio shack and get some new coax and will re-wire the thing on Sunday.

I also got the lawn mowed put down more seed (in more of the blank spots) and watered the lawn and the plants.

I then took to working inside. On my trip to radio shack (What a mess that place was!) I picked up a set of cheap PC Speakers for my Ubuntu machine. I have this ubuntu machine as sort of a server in the house. I use it as a print server and I also use it as an Xastir APRS iGate. What’s that you say? APRS is Automatic Position Reporting System. It’s something we use in ham radio where some of us have a GPS hooked to a radio and the APRS software or firmware transmits our position every 2 min. or so. and an iGate is a fixed station hooked to the internet so that your position reports can be seen online (see APRS.fi or “track me” at the top of this page). My iGate runs 24/7 and any APRS station within radio shot are retransmitted both on RF and to the internet. The speakers are for a feature in Xastir (the software I use for the igate) which reads out the callsign of the station and how far they are from you when one comes into range. It’s real geeky but it is interesting to “hear” who’s driving though.

It also lets me know when someone has downloaded and configured iAPRS (an iphone app). The developer of the app decided that the default location would be 100 yards up the road from my house. So whenever someone signs on for the first time, they show up here. Now my ubuntu machine will call out the callsigns from all over the world as they sign on to iAPRS for the first time.