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)

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.

My newest 80, Hordesbane, is now questing in Hyjal and is moving nicely through the XP. He was almost 81 before he left Northrend and is now half-way to 82. I’m really looking forward to going through Uldum before too long after going down to Deepholm. I can’t wait to sink my teeth into some of these new raids and Our group will probably venture back into Northrend at some point to get the Kingslayer title for some of my compatriots who still require it. 

My Night Elf Druid, Exalar, has already been through the  Hyjal area, having completed each and every quest that was available.  He has begun to delve into Deepholm with is very cool looking.  After Deepholm we should be moving into Uldum, which is supposed to have an Egypt flavor to it.  Really looking forward to it.  I think I’ve said that more than once now.

Anyway, I found a mirror to the Zeror level progression map I mentioned before and you can find it at http://mitarn.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/levelflow.jpg.  Check it out.

After several harrowing weeks, I completed the CompTIA Security+ track and am now certified. The concepts and knowledge is something I’ve had for some time, but the actual terminology and practical application of those concepts was lacking. I didn’t particularly care for the learning path as there was a lot of things to cover with much reading each week. Each segment had several chapters to read and practice quizes, lab and virtual machine work, and video segments to watch. Nothing in particular struck me as poor, but after doing the stuff day in and day out for 5+ weeks was killing me. I am not a fast ready so the endless stream of chapters to read were considerably painful to complete. But it is all over now and I am permanently Security+ certified. It will go nicely with my CompTIA A+ cert which I have held since 1999.