[CQ-Contest] Pre-emptive QSLing - was:Contesters and LOTW

[Steve Harrison]

WARNING: This reply has only peripheral on-topic content; so delete now if
you're only interested in contest-talk  ;o))))))))))))))

At 03:39 PM 8/10/2007 -0500, K0RC wrote:
.......
>Steve "Dinosaur" K0XP
>
>- - - - REPLY FOLLOWS - - - -
>
>
>So Steve, I take it you still watch Black & White television,

I don't even watch TV. In fact, if I were single (the wife watches TV all
day), I would only have cable because the cable company doesn't sell I-net
service separately. I watch TV while on bizness trips only because I can
rarely set up my radio in the motel room  ;o((((((((   But in fact, I take
along the radio, especially when I drive, to operate mobile such as the NS
mini-contests  8-)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

And this time around, in fact, my little, ole TS-130S actually worked FW0MO
and ZL4PW on 40m CW while I was driving on I-91 in Vermont; how's that for
"keeping up with the DXpeditions"?  8-))))))))))))))))))  40m CW DXCC from
a "new" vehicle only takes a few months, usually.

>... use a rotary dial telephone

I hardly ever use a phone, either. But at a matter of fact, we don't even
own a cell phone. My kids have had cells, at one time or another, but
usually can't afford to keep the account alive moren a cupla months. Then
another provider will show up a few months later with still another
"special discount" deal for a few months, and they'll again have a cell....
for a few months. I don't even know how to turn one on, and don't want to
know. I can't hear on them anyway.

>... and will be throwing the harness on the old donkey to ride into town 

In point of fact, my latest vehicle is an '88 and only because it happened
to be available really cheap at the time. Otherwise, I would have looked
for and bought something more like a '78. My daily driver is a '79 Elky. My
son drives our '83 Malibu wagon from Connecticut to Virginia Tech and back.
My #2 son has an '87 Stang but he bought that only cause he found it really
cheap and happened to have the cash; otherwise, he was looking for an Elky
like mine. BTW, until its rear frame rotted, my #1 son used to drive our
'84 Elky to VT.

So yeah, I "saddle up" the ole "broken-down donkeys" and ride them to town
alla time  ;o)))))))))  What I REALLY like is while filling up at the gas
station, some floozy blonde with a hairdo that looks like Marge Simpson's,
who just pulled up in an Escalade or beemer SUV or even a (gasp!!! the
horrors!!!) a Suburban or something, will loudly sniff and make some
disparaging comment about her perception of the gas mileage that my donkeys
get. Once I mention they typically average over 20 mpg around town (with a
V8, yet) and the oldest, my '79 Elky, has done 30 mpg on the highway at 70
mph, she usually coldly ignores me and my eyesore thereafter
8-)))))))))))))))))))))))))

Similarly, my latest radio is my TS-680S which is, what, mid-'80s
vintage??? Not to say I DON'T want a later radio, just that I'm now getting
real concerned about the fact that, on one of the yahooey radio repair
forums, at least once a day, someone pops up asking where to find uPs or
DDS chips or displays for later radios all the way up to TS-950s that have
inexplicably died and have to be sent out for repair, instead of being
repairable right on your own bench with parts found in your own parts
drawers. I'm inclined to wait to get something very much newer until K3s
are available, used, at less than a mortgage payment  ;o(((((((((((

>... to get some ice for the icebox ?  :-)

That little trip, we can do without; we have a nice old, cold refridgerator
with an automatic ice maker but when it dies, the wife wants one of those
new-fangled ones with the ice and cold water spigots on the front door
;o((((((((((

OTOH, the "modern" oven/stove and microwave that came with this house are
of 1999-2001 vintage; and BOTH already have problems, the oven with its
microprocessor-controller which will cost me over $300 to replace. The
microwave's timer no longer works and that will run me some $125 to
replace, if I ever get around to it. The oven will get fixed before long
mainly because the dang thang won't shut off completely; it remains at
around 100 degrees all the time. That's just plain dangerous and if I were
rich or a lawyer, I'd sue the manufacturer.

>Personally I am against "plain text" anything. COLOR and fonts transmit 
>context and meaning within messages.

Too frequently, they draw too much attention from the CONTENT of posts. I
read a post for its content, not because it's colorful and has "beautiful"
font.

>'Change' is difficult for the majority of people (including me).

Especially when there's no obvious reason for change, and certainly when
there's no real incentive other than to "keep up with the Joneses"; and I
give not a whit for the Joneses around here.

>But can you believe there are folks out there still using DOS computers for 
>contesting? [That ought to fire up some remarks!]

Yes, indeed. And if I had my say, I'd still be running Winders 3.1. I lost
a LOT of engineering software when 95 came along, simply because it was all
free or affordable but porting them to Winders took so much time and energy
from the original authors that they had to charge. I've never been able to
afford really good software other than one particular PC board
design/layout program that I bought for my consulting bizness. I now run
one of the later beta versions of XP and have never had any trouble
whatsoever with it. So far, I've been smart enough not to visit
potentially-dangerous web sites and like another guy said, thanks to my
plain-text e-mailer that doesn't display potentially-dangerous html posts,
have never knowingly had a worm/virus/trojan sneak in through an e-mail.
Yes, I've made several mistakes through the years and have been infected
with several things but nothing that I've not been able to clean up real
quickly with free software.

>I am resisting the new Vista operating system.

My #1 son has been a beta tester for uShaft since '95, before he was even
in high school. He's been one of their "Expert Zone" consultants since
around 2001. And most recently, while working in Redmond during last and
this summer, he's been working on small parts of V*sta. So earlier this
year, when complaints began surfacing hereabouts about how N1MM wasn't
always running right on V*sta, I would occasionally forward some of those
posts to him for comment. Within a week, he stopped replying and now, won't
even talk to me about V*sta. At one time, he wanted to install V*sta on
everybody's machine here at home but since we all now have stable and
comfortable platforms, he was unable to overcome our objections to having
to cope with the unknown.

My last employer didn't even switch from 98 to XP until 2003, out of
concern for the stability of XP. And sure nuff, when they finally did
update everybody and also, BTW, forced us all to use IE instead of
Netscape, many of us found out machines crashing several times a week. IE
would crash on my machine at least twice a day; I'd never had NS crash, and
have had FF lock up on me only 2 or 3 times since I began using it back in
2001. So much for the reliability of uShaft software......

>That said... the thing that DOES drive me nuts are the insistent, flashing 
>ads on the QRZ.COM website and those crazy triple 'dancing' people, geckos, 
>or aliens life forms on the mortgage ads! ...there otta be a law about
this...

That's just bizness ;o(((((((((((  Apparently, enough people actually click
on one or more of those links that the advisers actually pay the site owner
enough to keep the site running.

I rember reading several articles that studies have shown that some of
those flashy ads can actually affect some people mentally by triggering
seizures somewhat like epilepsy ;o(((((((  I just ignore those ads but the
ones I can't easily ignore are the ones that cause real slowdown in
scrolling an article on dailynews.yahoo.com . Yahooey doesn't even like the
fact that I'm using Firefox on their web site; yet, when I last used IE 7
from work on dailynews, it acted just as slow if not more so and some fonts
and stuff didn't show up right. And that was with the default IE 7
settings; go figger. The only problem I've had using FF on dailynew.yahooey
is sometimes, a particular video clip won't fire up properly, and
occasional really slow loading of a page (which usually happened using IE 6
or 7 at work, too).

Steve, K0XP