Jeez, enough with the rain already

[altivo]

It has been raining more or less continuously since last night. Sometimes just light sprinkling, other times a deluge. Gary drained a half inch from the rain gauge this morning, there was another 5/8 inch at sunset, and it hasn't quit raining since then. Supposed to rain all day tomorrow and probably into Saturday. Of course, if all this were to be snow, we'd have more than a foot. Hmm...

Maybe just as well we called off that trip to Ohio. Tentatively reset for second full weekend of November. I'll have to miss a guild meeting, but that's OK. If we go then, we get to visit the Ft. Wayne hamfest, giving me a chance to sit for my long-delayed extra class exam. I have the week before that off work, ostensibly to work on the NaNoWriMo but should also give me time to brush up on the exam questions. After 27 years as a licensed amateur radio operator, I really should finish off the exam cycle and get the highest available level. Most folks were held back by the 20 wpm morse code test, but that has been abolished. I actually was able to pass the code test, but distaste for the pointless grilling about satellite operation modes and memorized frequency tables was what kept me out of the exam room. The added privileges, though there are some, are of little value to me, and I have no interest in changing my station call sign. The extra class does add a little more credibility to your status as a radio op, I suppose.

Since I'm not going to Ohio, the day off I scheduled for tomorrow will not be taken up on the road. That means I get to either squander it on nothing or do something useful, or maybe a mix of the two. UPS say they will deliver some weaving tools I ordered tomorrow, so I should probably clean up the weaving room and make room to try them out. On the other hoof, I just started reading Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood and it's off to a good start, so I could just sit inside where it's dry and read. Hmm. Hard decision.

The sound of the rain is not unpleasant, except that it brings back the worry about hay. I think it unlikely that there will be any more hay made this year. The forecast calls for rain every day well into next week, and temperatures are dropping so that hay cut now will probably not cure properly. We can still get more hay from storage, fortunately, but the excess rain makes the approach to the barns soft and treacherous for a heavy-loaded vehicle or trailer. That means probably we will have to wait to take delivery until the ground freezes. The first delivery that we got is enough to last until New Year. We'll need at least two more that size or three smaller ones to make it into next year's hay season.

Comments

[aerofox.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, the Ft Wayne hamfest is where I got my General ticket. The VE asked me if I wanted to take the Extra exam. He knew I didn't study for it, but said it would give me an idea whats in it.

I declined, but so wish I went ahead and took it. I could have gotten lucky!

Looks as if that rain is knocking at my doorstep...

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Maybe we should both take the exam. It's only $14 for the experience (plus a photocopy of your license.)

I've called in the latest ARRL extra class exam book from another library so I can take a look, at least. You certainly would pass the actual electronics stuff more easily than I would. Back in 2001 I was getting much better than passing scores every time I took one of those random "trial" exams online.

Besides, I've always wanted to take a VE exam, and never have. It's got to be worth the $14 just to look at the guy's face when he asks to see my calculator and I hand him a slide rule, no?

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

You'd get either surprise or admiration, I'd expect. Some VEs do know how to use and appreciate a slipstick.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, I imagine the older ones do. But now that so many licensees and even VEs are a lot younger than I am, the odds on surprise or even puzzlement (as in "What's this thing?") are going up. You're probably just barely old enough to have actually seen them while you were in school. I used mine all through college. But someone even 35 years old is young enough not to remember the slide rule at all. They vanished almost overnight.

My father used one daily, an oversized rule that he carried in his briefcase.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Just barely remembered as it was still sort of echoing down through history. I recall in 1979 one of my Christmas presents was a new TI-30 (somewhat short-lived 9V battery [still, far better battery life than the six or eight AA cells taken by an earlier somewhat brick-like calculator my father had from the very early 1970s that had +-*/% and square root - when used it was usually plugged in], LED display, and that quirk of being able to turn it on and off by pressing key combinations that did not include the ON or OFF key) calculator the name "Electronic Slide Rule" puzzled me. I had seen, though not used, a couple slide rules and this was nothing like those.

Sometime in the 1980s LCD and pure solar came in and one high school teacher would turn off the lights and make student grumble as the window light wasn't sufficient to power the pure-solar models. My LED burner kept right on going, of course. One day he announced that there would be a quiz the next day and no calculators would be allowed. Some joker asked (it might even have been me, I no longer remember) "What about slide rules?" and he replied that slide rules would be fine, suggesting that nobody would have them or know how to use them if they did. The next day 1/4 to 1/3 the class did have them, and we did know how to use them - though many of use learned that skill quite literally overnight.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. And that's OK, sort of. Depending on the kind of calculations that were needed, at least, I'd say that in order to use the slide rule, you need a better understanding of the math than you need if you are just punching digits into a calculator. Particularly where roots and exponents are involved and you use the double log scales. ;p

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

I think you're a rain horse, can you send it over here? It seemed to work last time :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Nothing to send now. It seems to have stopped, finally. Maybe it's already on the way?

We have had an extremely wet year here, but I don't think it's my doing.