BrainOut!
The mumblings of a Christian autistic husband, dad, IT guy and amateur radio operator - Will Brokenbourgh / AF7EC
Current Status
Yes Georgia, Will's still alive. ;-) I doubt anyone out there in internetland really follows my blog for heart-warming tales..."The Feel-Good Blog of the Century" this is not. I mostly blog about tech stuff, but Jesus is the only reason I exist at all.
I was diagnosed recently, officially and 'not off the record' with being on the autism spectrum. There's no cure. Crud. (I already knew that, just being weird) I guess the biggest struggle, which goes against my beliefs, is that I'm struggling with little fits of bitterness. I'm not necessarily bitter that I'm autistic, but finding I'm bitter toward circumstances and some people in my past that treated me poorly because of my undiagnosed autism. Not just during childhood, but also during my two failed marriages. Folks in my past accused me of a lot of stuff, but most of this was due to my autism. Oh well. I forgive them all, and God bless each one!
My little guy's second birthday is rolling around, and he's as sharp as a tack. I just pray that if he also is on the autism spectrum, that I have a lot of patience and deal with incorrect behavior from that angle. I think it's been said that autistic people can't stand to be around other autistic people, though I don't know first-hand if that's true or not.
Operating-system-wise, I've been flailing around like a psychotic swordfish on steroids. I really liked Debian, but since Wheezy has come close to being released (and afterward), certain GUI tasks are just unbearably slow. I don't know if it's a problem with Debian's patches for X, GTK2, Cairo or what, but it's mind-numblingly slow. At least it was. I tried Debian just the other day, and it wasn't nearly as slow, but Nouveau left a bunch of artifacts on the screen, forcing me to use the proprietary Nvidia driver. Then I tried using Fritzing (direct from their site), only to have it complain about the wrong glib or something. I then tried the version of Fritzing in Debian's repos, but it's broken out of the box "Problem with swapping, cannot modify component values" or some such nonsense. I ran into other problems with Debian this last time, so [FAIL].
I did get super-close to getting FreeBSD running smoothly as my everyday OS, but I kept having problems with stuttering/glitching audio and then the audio server would die until I rebooted. Come on, y'all, this is 2013, audio issues like this were more fitting for an OS back in 1998 or so. Sheesh.
So, I'm back on Arch Linux. It's the least of the evils...sorta. I don't like being so 'bleeding edge'. Sure, I could avoid updating, but if you don't update for a while, you could totally end up with a broken system due to all of the changes the Arch devs force on users. I understand (most of) the changes, but it doesn't make it any funner.
The Heathkit HW-101 SSB Transceiver I was blessed with - vintage 1970 or 1971
Some folks like to restore old furniture, old cars or even old houses. While it was not my intention, it looks like I'm on my way to restoring the old Heathkit HW-101 SSB Transceiver pictured above. I have a Technician amateur license, so there are only little spits of the amateur radio bands I can operate on below 50 MHz. Still, growing tired of being ignored on 2 meters and 70 cm (repeaters and simplex), I've wanted an HF receiver that I can listen to so I can copy CW (continuous-wave - Morse code). I want to upgrade to at least General soon so I can start having real QSOs, not with the local 2-meter repeater's identifier. :-P
We saw this transceiver at a local thrift shop, and got it for $25! It didn't come with the power supply, so if anyone wants to part with their Heathkit PS-23 or HP-23, hit me up. :-D Once I get the power suppply and restore some of the weaker components (such as the old-style can capacitors), I will be able to copy all the CW I want! :-D
Well, that's what's been going on since my last post in January (ugh, lazy Will, LAZY!!). I pray that every visitor to my blog comes to have a CLOSE and PERSONAL relationship with Jesus! Not some religious stuff, but a real relationship! And those who know him already? I pray that you press in even closer. In Jesus' name, amen.