2006 02 27 Meeting Notes

2006 02 27 IMARS MEETING NOTES

Please visit the IMARS web site at http://www.imarsflorida.com/ where Joey N9LQ has put a lot of effort into making this one of the best club sites in the area. Show him you appreciate his effort by visiting the site. Contribute your BIO and whatever else you have of interest.

SEE THE PHOTOS OF TODAYS MEETING AT THE FOLLOWING LINK:

Link starts here => http://www.photoworks.com/share/shareLanding.jsp?shareCode=A6ABB32C04E&cb=PW <== Link ends here

We had 20 present at today's meeting at the DeBary EOC. Thank you all for coming out to show Jean and Walt Maxwell (W2DU) how much we appreciate their devotion to each other and to the IMARS group. They seldom miss a meeting while they are in the area. Today they provided two cakes. One was sugar free (for we fat folks ;-) and the other was full sugar for the more healthy troops.

We missed Barbara KD4RAV who, thankfully, is on the mend, and Frank KK4RW. Barbara is at home but Frank is still in the hospital (Rm 133 at Fish Memorial.) We hope they will both be back in the pink soon and back with us on a Monday morning.

We were very happy to see Grant N3CJJ back again and Clarence KD4SQT showed up for the first time at our new venue, thanks to Don KC4UUM who brought him part way.

We had a lively discussion on various topics and then Tom KB2JZX made a presentation about his great new Garmin GPS. Unfortunately I didn't get the model number but the little box speaks to you in a loud clear voice, unlike many of the synthesized voices I've heard. It would be a great thing to have. We should all be so lucky as to have a son-in-law (son?) with deep pockets ;-)

Don't miss next week. Russ W4ZIP has promised to bring his new ICOM 7000 HF/VHF transceiver in and give us a demonstration of this beautiful little rice box. It should be very informative.

Hank N4TJO will talk the following week about Einstein's Theory of Relatively. Hank has been taking a course and so should be “relatively” sharp on the subject. (sorry ;-)

Keith Mattison SØCIAL brought some tickets for a pancake breakfast at the First United Methodist Church. The tickets are only $4 each for the breakfast which will be on March 11^th so plan to pick some up at the meeting on the 7^th.

We didn't sing but wished Carlos WA4ZKV Happy Birthday and remembered Wally KE4LIV who wasn't present but was not forgotten.

Our 'Donut Fund' stood at $400.74 not counting the contributions we received today.

I forgot to mention the 'HOEDOWN IN DEBARY” for which I had a brochure. There will be a celebration at the DeBary House on 29 April from 6 until 11 p.m. Mark your calendar, bring a chair, listen to some music and have a little food. Support the city that has provided us a place to meet.

We discussed the new digital television coming in three years. Here are some additional items, there are many if you GOOGLE the subject.

[SOURCE: Reuters]

http://www.benton.org/index.php?q=node/952
The House of Representatives on Monday approved legislation to complete the country's transition to new, higher-quality digital television by February 17, 2009. Under a deal negotiated by Republicans in the Senate and House, a .5 billion fund would be created to help some consumers buy converter boxes so existing analog television signals do not go dark when the transition is finished...

See House vote on S. 1932 (passed 212-206) at:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll670.xml

REPUBLICAN SENATORS PUSH THEIR DTV BILL
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Five Senate Republicans, four on the Senate Commerce Committee, have written committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) to urge him to stick with that committee's version of the DTV transition bill when he conferences with the House Commerce Committee leadership on a reconciled bill. Due to Senate rules preventing legislating on appropriations bills, the Senate version is a stripped-down bill that deals only with the setting of a hard date and the setting up of a funding mechanism to pay for digital converter boxes for viewers with analog sets that would otherwise not work after the transition. Sens George Allen (R-VA), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Gordon Smith (R-OR) and Norm Coleman (R-MN) don't want the bill that returns from conference to include "extraneous" DTV-related provisions, including one that would allow cable to convert its signal from HDTV to standard DTV or digital to analog. "Complicated policy issues such as these merit extensive review in committee. We urge you to oppose additional digital television provisions beyond the hard date," they wrote.

And at http://www.komando.com see a discussion of another new wrinkle called SED in her free weekly newsletter.

KILLER TIP--THE WEEKLY QUESTION SENT IN FROM PEOPLE LIKE YOU!

Q. Do you have any opinions regarding a new flat panel television called SED being introduced by Canon/Toshiba? It apparently has a picture three times as good as any current HD product on the

market. Know anything about it? When might it be available? (see Kim's answer in the newsletter.)

Here is the lowdown on the technical aspects. A 2004 article but quite informative and interesting:

http://www.hdtvexpert.com/pages/answers.htm Many links at the end for further reading if you are interested.

SEE YA MONDAY

73

Jerry KØJH

(for Keith)

DIDIDIDAHDIDAH

Reincarnation

REINCARNATION
Anonymous

What is reincarnation?,
a cowboy asked his friend.
His friend replied,
why, that's what happens
when life comes to an end.

They wash your neck and comb your hair,
and clean your fingernails,
Then put you in a padded box,
free of life's travails

The box and you goes into a hole,
that they've dug into the ground.
Reincarnation starts when you're planted
beneath that mound.

The box melts down,
just like the clods, with you inside,
You've just started on
your transformation ride.

Well pretty soon some rain
is going to fall upon the ground,
Till one day, on your lonely grave,
a little flower is found.

Well say a horse should come along
and graze upon that flower.
What once was you now has become
a vegetated dower.

Then this little flower
that the horse ate up,
along with all his other feed
Goes to make bone and fat and muscle
essential to the steed.

But of course some is consumed
that he can't use,
and so it passes through.
And there it lies upon the ground,
this thing that once was you.

Well, say I should wander by
and gaze upon the ground,
And wonder and ponder
at this object that I've found.
Well this sort of makes me think
of reincarnation, of life and death and such,
And I'm right away thinkin. . .
damn, you haven't really changed that much.

.-.-.

2006 02 05 Meeting Notes

Meeting Notes 2006 02 06

Please visit our web page, Joey 8-toes N9LQ does a great job keeping it updated.
http://www.imarsflorida.com
PLEASE BE ALERT FOR CLUB MEETING ANNOUNCEMENTS IN ALL PAPERS

Hello all,

Our first meeting in the new meeting place went very well. We had 14 in attendance, as many as we usually had at the Fire Station so most had no problem finding the place.

Alan Williamson, the DeBary Volunteer Coordinator, was most welcoming and we all felt comfortable in the EOC.

Bud NØIA has set up a station in the EOC and we all had a chance to look that over. We will get more involved with that program in the future I'm sure.

We were very happy to see Grant Everly, N3CJJ, at the meeting. It's been a long time since we saw Grant and hope he enjoyed the meeting and will come back every Monday.

Hank N4JTO brought a trailer load of goodies and invited everyone to take whatever they wanted. Hank called me earlier in the week. He said he had a lot of stuff in his garage that he wanted to get rid of but hated to just throw it away. I got to thinking about that. I gave a lot of stuff away before moving down here from Virginia Beach. In spite of that I've got a big pile again. I remembered something I had heard on the Clark Howard show. I went looking for it and decided I could make an interesting presentation for the club. It took a few hours to put together some slides and talked for about 20 minutes (wasn't it?) about the FreeCycle movement (like ReCycle except FREE, get it?) I was surprised to learn that all of the local cities have a FreeCycle group except Orange City. Give em a try, their purpose is noble and it solves the problem of getting rid of something without adding it to the landfill. Here are the links:

http://www.freecycle.org/
DeBary: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/debaryfreecycle/
DeLand: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DelandFLFreecycle/ Deltona: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/deltonafreecycle/
Geneva: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GenevaFreecycle/
Sanford: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SanfordFlFreecycle/
Seminole County: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SeminoleCountyFreecycle/

Russ W4ZIP presented us with the letter to Fire Station 34 he had composed. He even designed an IMARS letterhead that was very nice. He made the same mistake I did the first time I sent our meeting notice to all the newspapers, he reversed the numbers and called it Fire Station 43. Yesterday I received the corrected letter. Russ gave me the title Chairman. I guess that's good, we needed SOME title for purposes of the letter. I signed it in behalf of the club and got it in the mail today. I posted a copy of the letter along with pictures that Russ took of our first meeting. Here is the link to the photo album:

THE LINK STARTS HERE => http://www.photoworks.com/share/shareLanding.jsp?shareCode=A7058D1C027&cb=PW <= LINK ENDS HERE - IF YOU CAN'T CLICK ON THIS LINK THEN PLEASE CUT AND PASTE IT INTO THE ADDRESS LINE OF YOUR WEB BROWSER.

If anyone would like to prepare a presentation, either with PowerPoint or just a group of slides that can be shown using the Windows XP Slide and Fax Viewer, as I did with this FreeCycle presentation, please let me know. I'll bring the projector to the meeting and we will hook it up to your notebook computer. If you don't have a notebook computer but can burn a CD or put your presentation on a Jump/Thumb Drive, I'll bring my notebook too. Having this projector available opens up all sorts of possibilities for the members to create interesting presentations using what they have available or can get off of the internet as I did with this presentation. PLEASE THINK OF SOMETHING YOU CAN DO TO MAKE THE NEXT MEETING INTERESTING. The story of your life, some fiction, both ;-)

I just got the following from Bud NØIA:

Hi, Jerry-

I'll miss the Old Fart's Meeting Monday Feb 13th. We were just notified today that Dillon has been called to active duty at the Guide Dog place and must be there before noon Monday. Because of Hamcation this weekend - we can't take him until Monday AM!

The good news is that we'll get to play with his nine new puppies for a while - and take some pictures - maybe a video! I'll have those to share the following week.

My best to all.

73,

bud N0IA (His phone numbers which I will not publish here.)

Last but not least, I have to thank my XYL for sending the cookies. She was baking cookies on Sunday night. I swear I didn't say a word, she said “Why don't you take these to the meeting tomorrow!” Of course I took her up on the offer immediately. I knew that if I didn't I'd end up eating them ALL myself. Lord knows I don't need them. I think there were 4 left when I got home, I DID eat all of those.

I'm looking for a near recitation about reincarnation that I'll read if I can find it, be warned. Think of something to preempt THAT ;-)

73 / 88

Jerry KØJH

P.S. Somebody asked me how I get the slant zero in my call Ø. Hold the ALT key and press 0216 on the NUMBER PAD (with a notebook you have to hold the CTRL, ALT and SHIFT key all at once because there is no number pad.) You can also get cents ¢, umlauts Ä etc. You can do the same in Word by choosing INSERT > SYMBOL then selecting the symbol you want, but it's a lot easier using the ALT key and remembering the ASCII code for the symbol you want.)

SORRY ABOUT THE EXTRA UNDERLINING, THE 'U' OPTION HAS DISAPPEARED FROM THIS BLOG EDITOR. I'VE ALREADY LOST IT ALL ONCE AND AM AFRAID TO MESS WITH IT ANY MORE.