[clue-talk] How do CLUEbies vote?

[Nate Duehr]

David L. Willson wrote:
> Nate, Michael, David, Brian, Kevin, Sean, Collins, Dan, and all you
> lurkers,
> 
> I don't know about you all, but I'm ready for a break from our
> discussion.  Maybe in a few days or weeks I'll post some thoughts on big
> churches and tiny seeds of faith, but for now, I'm dry and worn out.  I
> want to offer some sort of closing thought, something for you
> deep-thinkers to walk away with.

Don't worry, you already did... in your willingness to be open and 
honest about how you feel on the topic.

Too many people avoid difficult topics today, for whatever reasons:
- Political "correctness" (nothing correct about not communicating)
- Fear of rejection
- Disappointing experiences with flame-fests (for us Internet junkies)
- Disappointing experiences with things in "real" life (me... 
churches... you know... you read it...)
- Etc.

I too, enjoy a good old-fashioned "wrassle" with words and thoughts.  It 
makes us all more alert and probably better people for it.

You mentioned that you told your son you were having a discussion online 
with folks, or a "debate"... that's good.  He'll remember that his dad 
valued the interchange of ideas and thoughts with others, long after 
you're gone.

"An unexamined life is not worth living."
   --  Socrates

Real-life in the form of broken equipment is intruding on my "Internet 
debate/fun time" here too... broken radios on top of a big mountain... 
our ham radio club's radio system is ill, and since I'm the crazy dummy 
who volunteered to be the club president for the time being, I guess 
I'll be working on organizing a repair crew (even if that ends up just 
being little ol' me) and getting my buns up there to fix it, so a couple 
hundred of my "closest friends" can continue to use and enjoy it.  Thus, 
I'll probably be "quiet" for a while now.  At least it's not snowing 
(much) up there yet.  :-)

I've been vigorously and intensely involved in a number of online lists 
and discussions lately -- which is interesting.  I haven't been doing 
that for a while.   Guess there's a season for everything.

Everything from this list, where we had the political debate going, to 
technical lists where we're all discussing the interesting new digital 
radio technologies that are coming out for Amateur Radio operators.

Radios that can do "stuff" we're used to in "Internet-land" are now on 
the market that allow for instantaneous Internet routing of voice audio 
from one end of the country to the other, automatically finding the 
station (person) you're looking for, so you can talk to them.

Very wide area (still relatively slow, but covering an amazing swatch of 
ground, if you put the main site up high) digital data/IP networks... 
stuff like that.

It's fascinating, and unfortunately -- expensive.  So there's not much 
activity here in Colorado yet.  The coasts are getting some, and 
ironically -- Alabama -- is turning out to be the hotbed of Amateur 
Radio digital voice activity???  Yeah, I find that odd, and yet 
interesting at the same time, too.

Since I was heavily involved in the early systems to link ANALOG radios 
to the Internet, this fully-digital end-to-end thing has me very interested!

And the network I've been involved with for years now...

http://www.irlp.net/

And the newer system...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-STAR

Announcements this week that Australia is "joining the fun" just add to 
my curiosity.  A digital end-to-end call on a world-wide network that 
acts similar to the cellular network, but is "open" enough that the 
end-users can pass whatever data they like through it, while also 
handling point to point and point to multipoint voice traffic, is like a 
breath of fresh air for Amateur Radio... it'll be interesting to see 
what develops.

http://www.dstarusers.org/

I'd link to the manufacturer's website, but the doofuses let their 
domain name expire, and it's pulling up a NetSol parking page for the 
moment.  Sigh...

The gateway software is running on Linux, worldwide.  Of course.  ;-) 
The engineers at the radio company (Icom) kinda screwed some things up, 
like most companies do when they first put things out, like only 
"certifying" it with old Fedora versions, etc... and there aren't a 
whole lot of Linux-savvy Ham Radio system admins, but there's a few... 
and they're hacking where they can (some of the stuff is distributed as 
binaries, of course... we all know how this mixture of commercial 
products and Linux always starts...)

Toys...

And mixing radios and the Internet is WAY cool...

This radio: http://radio.tentec.com/Amateur/Transceivers/TT588 has an 
Ethernet port on the back.

I've talked with guys who were sitting on the beach, sipping a Coke, 
with their laptop on WiFi, with a headset on, controlling and talking 
through their TenTec radio at home, hundreds of miles away.

Cool stuff.

http://www.hello-radio.com/ - For those needing an introduction to 
Amateur Radio.

Nate