I am here to let everyone know that my family and I, while traveling back from Illinois, were pushed off the Interstate by a Semi and now my car will be out of commission for close to a month. Everyone in the car came through the event healthy and the car will survive it seems. I am very happy with the performance of my 2006 Nissan xTerra and am eagerly awaiting its repair.
I feeling a little bit like a child in a candy store. My Radio has shipped from the warehouse and I expect it to arrive (per UPS) on Monday next week. I have to say Gigaparts is doing well so far and now all I have to do is wait. I don’t like waiting.
I was going to write more stuff, but it is after midnight here and I’m tired. Y’all are just gonna have to wait.
I attended a class to become a licensed HAM operator (Technician) primarily to be able to work the radios in our EOC. We will be using them to build/join a HAM radio net used by all the local EOCs for Communications when phone service is interrupted. Since phone service is not the most reliable means of communications during an emergency situation, HAM was a good choice with access to the hardware and easy licensing processes. I wanted to have a HAM license for quite some time, but never took the time to go deeper. Well, I am licensed now (KF5MTE) and my first radio has been ordered.
On that note, I chose for my first radio the Yaesu FT-60R dual-band (2m & 70cm) due to the popularity of both bands in my area as well as Satellite uplink/downlink freqs are 140s/440s split. It would be nice to reach them and be able to talk AND listen. Anyway, the radio is a handheld (5w) and has a lot of decent reviews spread out over many years of service. I think it will serve me well starting off.
I purchased the radio (FT-60R), a desktop quick charger (VAC-370), and a Diamond High Gain SMA Antenna (SRH77CA) with a +6 db gain. The whole setup ran me $256.90 through Gigaparts.com with free shipping. The free shipping, I believe, is for orders over a certain total, which apparently my order qualified for. I hope to receive my radio on or before next Thursday so I can have it before our trip to Chicago.
I came across another HAM operator in the Fort Worth area, surprisingly very close to where I live. He runs a blog called showmeblog.com. I find it interesting, but I would expect that most people may not. It would have to be in the eye of the beholder. He has been very friendly and we may just have to have a Mark 1 eyeball soon to say hi.
Well, I need to do some actual work now, so this is me signing off, KF5MTE (KF5-Mighty)
We have arrived at the hotel Rio and checked into our room. Its a bit off the beaten path, but a lot of things are happening here. I will get into that more later when I’m not spending $73 on a dinner for two.
Took some power drops and the server is offline for awhile. the map has some corruption, but it can be fixed. It will take some time and please be patient.
It appears the map is completely intact for the moment, so once we get the server running again, we will be able to pick up where we left off. Give me a day folks and we should have this underway again.
Linux appears to hate me, the server is not coming back anytime soon. I will work on it tonight and hopefully get a full install back. Checking the map files to see if they are intact. Please don’t go.
After a strange issue cropped up, the minecraft server is currently down and is being worked on. I am doing this through the command line and may take some time to complete. I will post here when this is complete and the server is back up and running. Sorry for the downtime, hope to have it back shortly.
Update: The Avalanche Minecraft Server has been online for awhile now and, with the recent updates that allows SMP (Survival Multiplayer) nether functionality, we have established a few nether portals for easy access to and from remote portions of the map. We are very close to establishing a second build site away from the snowy area we are currently shacked up in.
During the update, it appears that the main spawn point moved to a more remote section of the map. We have built a protected tunnel to allow new players to move from the spawn to the primary building spot without having to worry about creepers and other assorted creatures. We are planning to do some video in the near future to showcase our work on the current server. We are running version 1.6.6 which is, as of this writing, the latest server/client out there.
After several months of testing, Notch has pushed Minecraft, one of the most addicting games in recent memory, from the Alpha stage into beta with the promise of more rapid releases of content into the already massively popular game. The game has become very successful with only word-of-mouth referrals and a few plugs in popular trade magazines such as PC Gamer.
If you haven’t heard of Minecraft yet, then you must’ve been living (and gaming) under a rock as news of this game has spread like a genetically engineered bio-weapon. With a unique feel and style of gameplay, Minecraft is sure to have a long life of popularity within the community. Check it out at www.minecraft.net and see what the rest of the world knows that you don’t.