coreyshields.com

So a couple of weeks back I griped about the Pacers signing a deal with Fox Sports Midwest so exclusive that I was unable to buy the season from the NBA directly.

I looked for today's Indycar race on ABC, only to find that it wasn't there. Sure enough, Indycar has signed with the Versus network for 12 races this season, leaving ABC with 5.. Last year ABC carried a majority of them (if I am remembering correctly).

*sigh* At least the Colts will still be on broadcast TV this year, all but one game. I'm sure it is only a matter of time.

And yes, I realize I could break down and get cable or satellite and have Fox Sports and Versus.. At this point I'm happier saving a hundred dollars a month.

-C

PS - Good to see you back in Indycar, Dario Franchitti.. even if I don't get to see you. Congrats on the win.

Find something that a person enjoys and they can turn it into a sport. These days we even consider card games as a sport, one that others can watch on TV even.. There are niche sports for just about everything. One of my coworkers here is in to locksport (competitions involving lockpicking). Who would have thought?

The sport that I am into is one that few have heard of... radiosport. It is an amateur radio activity whose base concept is pretty simple: make as many contacts as you can on a set of frequencies within a given set of time. Give it a scoring structure and compete. Within the amateur radio community it is commonly known as "contesting".

There are many different contests with different rules in play and usually you can find some kind of contest every weekend of the year. However, there are about half a dozen through the year that are active enough where I'd want to take time away from the family and participate.

To give an example, a contest may run for a set period of 12 hours, where everyone starts and stops at the same time. Any contacts made outside of this set time do not count for points. Each contact is a point on your score, and each new geographical area (state, country) is a multiplier to your score. Some contests are geared towards working domestic states and provinces, while some contests are dedicated to only working countries outside of the US and Canada. Let's say in a domestic contest I make 100 contacts in 35 different states. My total score would be 3500. Since contacts benefit points for both ends of the exchange, it is in everyone's best interest to make them, so they are quick, brief, and made to count. When you hear someone on the air from a state that you haven't contacted yet it becomes urgent to contact that station so you get an extra multiplier. You get the hint.

Contesters compete against other contesters, against friends, as well as against themselves (beating previous year scores). In larger contests, you can work in a team where multiple people work on different frequencies at the same time, making different contacts simultaneously. Software is written that works across a network of logging computers to keep track of your logs together, prevent duplicate contacts, and give you a running tally of your score and any "unique" areas that may help your multiplier score. Some would say that "its kind of a big deal".

The contests can be dedicated to certain frequencies and vary across the whole spectrum of radio capabilities, but for most contests they operate on HF (High Frequency) radio signals. HF signals propagate in the atmosphere and through the ground, allowing them to travel short distances or around the world. But there is a catch: propagation is a very dynamic beast. Some frequencies work well in the day time when the atmosphere is ionized by the sun's rays, while some frequencies work better at night when that ionization is absent. Sun spots and flares can change the game drastically, for better or for worse. We haven't seen much of that this past year in the solar minimum we are in but hopefully that will change in the coming year and the Sun will become a bit more active. There is a bit of skill involved in getting radio waves to and from a given point. In the last contest I worked (an international contest), we capitalized on the change from day to night to send our signals along the "grayline". The grayline is that line between night and day, and can sometimes carry radio signals along with it from point A to B better than aiming a straight line from those 2 points. In this instance, we used the grayline to pick up a whole handful of contacts from Japan while the sun was just rising for them. Below is what this line looks like on a map.

You have varying station capabilities as well. Radios can run at different power, you can add signal amplification, and different types of antennas will propagate in different ways. No 2 stations that contact each other are going to have the exact same setup. Some antennas are omnidirectional while some can be aimed in a direction (see the image above of the antenna we have at the Indiana University club). My home antennas are made from some wire I picked up at Lowes, while other stations spend hundreds on an antenna. These all play a part in your capabilities, and give you something to improve on over time. Think of it as an athlete building on his game through practice.

I hope I've given you an idea that there is a bit of skill and experience involved in such a "sport". It is not just picking up a radio and talking. If you want a high score you have to know your stuff and build a well operating radio station. Some people build entire antenna farms devoted to operating in these contests, spending tens of thousands and pulling in a dozen team members to run a contest. Personally, I like to operate contests at home to see how well I've made my antennas, and I like to operate contests from the IU club (K9IU) for the strong capabilities of that station and the teamwork involved. There is always the thrill of the hunt when a contest comes around. How active will the airwaves be? Will the sun help us out or hinder us? It is a lot like sport fishing, and everyone is out there fishing for each other.

Interested? Find an amateur radio club near you via this link, or drop me a line. One of the most popular contest-like activities is Field Day, where contacts are made from temporary stations built outdoors all across the country (see pic above, one of the many stations we had set up in Karst Farm Park here in Bloomington). This happens the fourth full weekend in July, and most clubs welcome visitors to this event to see how things run. Visit this link for more info on Field Day, or check out the photo gallery from our participation in field day last year. I'll post some more links below.

(and no.. morse code is NOT required)

Cheers,
-Corey (KB9JHU)

http://www.radio-sport.net/ ham radio contest news

http://www.indiana.edu/~k9iu/?q=node/10 K9IU - Indiana University amateur radio club contest scores

http://www.hornucopia.com/contestcal/ Upcoming contest calendar

http://www.chrisellerphotography.com/ Chris Eller took the first picture in this post of the K9IU HF and 2m antennas.

(I have written a lot of blog posts that end up living as unpublished drafts, I won't let this be one of them)

We're not the biggest Pacers fans in the world, but we have enjoyed our share of games. Nicole even shed a tear when Reggie Miller stepped off the court for the last time in 2005 (though she won't admit that, and kudos to Larry Brown for taking that extra time out to give Reggie his moment). One thing I was looking forward to in coming back to Indiana is catching more of the Pacers games.

To give a bit of background for those of you who don't follow, the Pacers were playing some of the best ball and were set for a good playoff run in the 2005 season. There was a brawl during a game in Detroit that should have been avoided but led to a bunch of suspensions and subsequently a loss of momentum with the team. They lost in the playoffs, and have been trying to get back on their feet ever since. Understandably between the souring reputation and the poor standings, the Pacers fan base has dwindled. (shame on you fair weather fans!)

Fast forward to today, there is a fresh new team with a lot of potential for the coming years. They are focusing a lot on rebuilding the pride and passion that the team once held. This is a good thing. Start with a clean slate and build up.

I went to the home opener against the Celtics this season with my old college roommate Greg. The mood in the stands was totally different than the way it was when I had last seen them in 2005 before we left Indiana. Fans weren't wearing team shirts, did not seem excited, and there were too many empty seats. We won that game (a pleasant surprise) but it was obvious there is work to do moving forward.

I also went to the game against the Spurs on Friday night. It seemed there was a louder Spurs crowd than Pacers crowd. This trend has got to be reversed. We lost that game (as I expected) but we did see a pretty good comeback rally in the 4th quarter that had me on my feet quite a bit. For such a young team this was a promising sign.

To help things along, here are some of my unsolicited, opinionated thoughts for the pacers:

Viewership

I was excited to be back in Indiana to catch the Pacers on the air from WTTV (channel 4). Come to find out, they have not aired games in a couple of years. I can understand a loss of revenue here between the declining fan base and what I would assume is fewer commercial offers from Conseco. I can accept this. The Pacers had also signed an exclusive agreement with Fox Sports Midwest to carry the games. I am not in the position to get cable or satellite to catch the games. I did, however, look into the NBA League Pass online. I seriously considered the $80 subscription for the season. I signed up for the free trial only to find that all of the Pacers games were blacked out for me. What? Why pay for a service from the NBA directly when you can't see the games you want? I still get promotional emails from them, to which I always reply that I will happily sign up when I can watch the games I want.

However, my point goes beyond this.. People are ditching cable and satellite left and right in this economy and fewer people will have FSM anyway. If you want to rebuild your fan base, make it EASY for them to watch the team. Get back on the air with WTTV4 and blanket the central Indiana market with the games.

Tickets

In the past few weeks, tickets for the Pacers have been dirt cheap, and in some cases literally given away. I have found awesome deals in travelzoo discount tickets, twitter giveaways, and a donatos giveaway deal where I got 2 tickets in the LOWER LEVEL for the cost of ticketmaster fees ($5) for this Wednesday's game against the Raptors. There have been club level seat deals for $20 each, and I grabbed balcony tickets for the whole family at $5/ea (plus fees). Nicole and Trevor missed the game with Trevor getting sick at the last minute, but Tristen had an absolute blast! We have a future fan there, and I would have had a hard time justifying tickets for the kids at the original cost of balcony seats.

These deals are great.. Now, it is the end of the season, ticket sales are doing about as poorly as the team is, and I'm sure there is a bit of politics involved in trying to bring people downtown while the Pacers and Colts argue for funding from the Capitol Improvement Board. When next season comes around these deals need to continue. Drop the ticket prices to bring more people in. These are hard times for wallets and hard times for the team. Make it possible for fans to attend.

Team

I haven't followed many games (see the first point above) but from what I have seen, everything looks good for the coming years. We've gotten rid of the bad apples. We have a number of players with very promising talents. This is all being done right. The team looks to be in repair, but the fan base needs the same kind of fixing. If you don't fix the two points above there won't be much point to fixing the team.

So?

Sadly, the Pacers fan base is in dire straits. I've passed links for ticket deals (and free tickets) around the office, and it turns in to a joke. I'm sure the sentiment would be different if we had the top team in the league, but we don't. As I have pointed out, to be a fan of this team is an expensive thing, between TV subscriptions and tickets. Make it cheap for the fans, and you'll get more of them through the thick and thin.

Yes, long time no blog.. Amidst microblogging and Facebook I haven't had much to say here, but that isn't to say I have given up.. On the contrary, I have about 5 draft blog posts that will probably never see publication. Be it too personal or too ranting, I'll get through it and decide it just isn't right.

In the past few years, a new trend has started amongst people who like the tinker, make things, and void the warranty on personal belongings by tearing them apart and modifying them. OReilly publishing caught on to this and created Make Magazine. I remember when this was launched at OSCON long ago, it was met with great fanfare. Make Magazine is a quarterly that features people making things, and how to do it yourself. From this spun a series of events they call Maker Faire where people can show off what they have done. It is like a mix between a science fair and craft show, with a dash of Burning Man thrown in.

Now, they have taken the next step..

That's right, Make Television. They have had video podcasts for quite some time which I have been a big fan of, but the podcast and quarterly magazines still seem to feed an underground crowd. The television series is designed to reach anyone and everyone. They will air on PBS stations across the country this year (some of them have already started airing). Click here to find where and when at your location. Yet, the really cool thing is that the shows themselves carry a Creative Commons license. This means that you are free to copy and share by any means (with some of the creator's rights reserved). You will find every episode (3 so far) on BitTorrent (click here), and they put it there themselves, legally! Not familiar with BitTorrent? You can find it on iTunes. Don't have iTunes? I recommend downloading Miro and watching it on there. (you will find a whole lot of other great, free, video content on Miro as well! Ditch your cable bill!)

Our culture needs more of this mentality, more tinkering. The Make series helps us all to learn how things work, and by learning how things work we can all come up with newer and better gizmos. When the day comes that my kids want to dive into an alarm clock to see what is inside making the numbers, I will be right there with them eagerly holding a screwdriver!

Tune in, download it, check it out, and tell your friends! The more popular this TV series becomes, the longer it will last!

-C

From 2008

(Tristen and I at the Indy Zoo)

We were all at the mall last week.. Nicole was getting her hair fixed, and I was walking around with Tristen and Trevor doing anything to kill the time. Thinking of making the most of our window shopping opportunity, I striked up a conversation with Tristen:

"Christmas is coming up.. What do you think we should get for mommy?"

Tristen: (thinks...) "I know! Flowers!"

I don't know what kind of response I was expecting from a 4 year old, its not like he was going to suggest a new blouse. So I continued to see how far this would go:

"What kind of flowers?"

Tristen: "Purple petunias, they are mommy's favorite!"

(and all these years I've been buying ROSES. the kid is showing me up!)

"Well, flowers like that might be hard to find at Christmas time. What else could we get her?"

Tristen: "I could give her a hug!"

"Good idea! She would love that.. Anything else?"

Tristen: "Let me think.." (which he does, for a few minutes) "I know! a CAKE!"

At this point I realize that Christmas for Nicole is going to be comprised of standard birthday fare. We went on talking about what present mommy would like to have based on what she she likes to do every day, which pulled out answers like "laundry", "dishes", and "vacuuming", all things that I'm sure Nicole would whole heartedly agree she does for fun. hehe

.. I think we might just have to go with the flowers, hug, and cake.

We have AT&T for our land line and our mobile service. When we got the landline we asked for the cheapest package there was. The only option I asked to have added was $3.50 per month to UNLIST me from the phone book (talk about another ripoff rant that I'll spare you for now). Total comes to around $25. We have it setup to auto-debit our account. I get an email every month when the bill comes in (electronically).

Today I just happened to look at that email in detail. $46.10... WTF?

I logged in to view the details to the bill to find this:

I have 2 "services" from companies I neither know or authorized to provide me services. I asked Nicole, she hasn't authorized anything either. We have no clue what they are, except that further in the bill the latter charge is explained as some voicemail service. What? we have an answering machine, don't want to pay for voicemail. Never have we requested that.

Quick tangent: Now, mind you, when I made a change to our cellular plan (2 phones) in-person at the AT&T store a few months back I was asked if I wanted roadside assistance and some other add-on for both phones. I declined, but in the next month they had been added totaling $30 additional per month. I called AT&T cellular and the first person to talk to me took away those services and credited my account with extra for my troubles. I was unhappy that it happened but satisfied with the result. End of tangent.

I called AT&T today expecting a similar conversation and satisfaction. The tier 1 customer rep explained that the telephone numbers on my bill (you can see them in the image) were the numbers I needed to call to dispute those charges and services with those third-party companies. I disagreed, AT&T is my provider, and they are the company billing me, the company I am paying directly, it should be on them to help me through this. No, it was left to me. I asked for my account to be flagged to prevent further services from being added. She said that wasn't possible. I flipped out, and she sent me to a tier 2 customer rep. Her name was Cant (as best as I could figure. I tried to repeat it and get her to spell it but she was silent). Again she reiterated that I had to call the companies directly. I explained that I wanted a BASIC telephone service with no frills that PREVENTS any future UNSOLICITED, UNAUTHORIZED add-on services. She said she would be "mailing me paperwork to fill out and send back in". What?! Why is this process made difficult?

So tonight I call the two companies. The first in that list had no idea where my account was signed up from other than it was "online". They credited and cancelled the service. Oh, and I asked what it was I was signed up for since there was nothing in the bill to indicate what it was.. It was a third party voicemail service. Great, I had 2 of them and an answering machine. I'll never miss a call. Funny, but for having 2 "voicemail" services, none of our calls ever went to their voicemail.. And its not the answering machine catching the calls first, we used the answering machine as a test to know when our power came back on while we left town to seek electricity last month. When the answering machine was off, the phone just rang and rang.. Never went to "their" voicemail.

After digging further, the second one has been on our bill since March. This is my fault for not digging through my bills more closely and I take responsibility for that (but I find AT&T still at fault for allowing this to happen without my approval!). I find out from this company that my service was signed up for through "theuseful.com" by a "Mary Jane McGruder" using an email address of maryjane7102003@yahoo.com. This time I asked her what the process was for signing up. She said that through some survey on the website the service was offered and there would have been an acceptance checkbox with a submission. I asked "Is there anything to verify that the person holds that telephone account?". Her response "The process is just how I explained it, Sir."

Here is the crux of all this: To even speak to an AT&T customer service rep about my account, I have to verify my phone number, name, and social security number. I had to do it with each tier of customer service today. However, to add a billable third-party service, someone just has to click a check box on a third-party website. There is no vetting process, no authorization required. The NAME on the account doesn't even have to match!! If you know my phone number, you can sign me up for a billable third party voicemail scam (and I'm sure a couple of you would like to do that, too! hehe).

So where am I at now? Well, both companies cancelled the "services" and agreed to full refunds without question. I imagine otherwise they could face some pretty hefty lawsuits, not having any chain of real authorization for the charges from the party responsible. But, I'm not looking to get money back, I'm looking for a service that will prevent this from happening, without the hassle that AT&T is giving me.

Enter Vonage (Vonage is telephone service via your broadband internet connection). I've looked into them before but they never offered service in the areas I needed it. They now offer number porting and service here, so I'm all over it (meaning we get to transfer our current phone number to the new service)! As soon as I'm done with this post I'll be unpacking the Vonage router I picked up on the way home from work (I'm actually waiting on a referral from a friend so he can get a bonus.. hasn't shown up in my inbox yet). For the exact same cost as our "basic service" (without the added riders) we get unlimited long distance and all of the features. Nicole has been begging for long distance service for quite some time now thanks to AT&T's craptastic cellular coverage out here, so she is already happy with this idea. I'm not making a pitch for them here because I haven't experienced their service yet but the people I have spoken to so far really like it.

So there is light at the end of this tunnel.. I'm quite livid over the whole ordeal though. How can this be legal? No other industry or business that I can think of gets away with this. Someone is making bank off of slipping these charges in to people unknowingly. I fell for one for 9 months.

The point I hope to make (sorry it is so long of a post) is this: CHECK YOUR PHONE BILL CLOSELY! and question the charges! And, if AT&T bullies you around about it, well, you have other options out there.

If you're in Indiana you have until October 6th (just 5 more days) to register to vote in order to cast your ballot for this election. Other states are different (I found this list here after a quick google). Everyone should vote regardless of your views and where you live, which way you expect your state to go, etc..

End of my little political plug..

Spam on my blog site had gotten pretty bad in the last month. Drupal's spam module wasn't enough to keep it out, and spammers have gotten smart enough to figure out how to do math on the comment forms.

Enter Mollom, which just released to the public not too long ago. Mollom is a third-party blog/website spam filter. This means when someone posts a comment, your site contacts Mollom with that comment for its approval or rejection. Now, they are not the first group to come up with a service like this and won't be the last. The reason I picked up on it is because I've known Dries Buytaert and got to work with him a bit while at the OSL (he is one of the Mollom founders, also the founder of Drupal which I use for this site). So you can say my choice was due to personal trust, not because of any specific feature one over another.

My site is on the very low-end scale of comments. By that I mean that I get maybe one legit comment a week, moreso when I actually post stuff ;) After one week with Mollom I've already noticed a big difference. I haven't seen a single spam slip through, and legit comments are making it fine. In the administration panel you can see a report of spam and ham:

Mollom offers plugins for Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla, and Radiant, along with API libraries for most of the popular web languages. Their service is a freemium model, offering free coverage for up to 100 legitimate posts a day (unlimited spam rejections). For more than that you can purchase a subscription. I think this is very generous compared to other freemium models out there in the web2.0 sphere these days, and is plenty enough for most blog and community sites. If you're in need of better spam handling for your site, give them a shot. (I'm not paid to say this, I'm just happy with the service and since it is new I feel there needs to be a bit of review)

Been a long time since I've shared some kid pics. Well, we went to the Indianapolis Zoo on labor day, and the thought of a holiday rush had not crossed my mind until we were already on the road. Surprisingly it was not as busy as I expected, and we had a really great time.

A lot has changed since the last time I was there (many many years ago). They have added a little roller coaster that Tristen absolutely loved, proving he really is my son. Then of course there is the train which we were all able to go on:

From 2008

From 2008

The boys loved the aquarium portion which has always been my favorite part of the zoo as well. I think they miss the Oregon Coast Aquarium and the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, 2 of the best in the country that we lived close to out west.

From 2008

We finished up the day at the Dolphin show. By this time Trevor was getting tired and the last thing he wanted to do was sit still in the bleachers, which resulted in his binky flying through the air just moments after this picture was taken:

From 2008

As for that dolphin show, it was a LOT better the way I remembered it back in the day. The show that we saw had the dolphins do a couple of jumps and spend a majority of the time splashing the people sitting up front in the "splash zone". There was a story playing along with the show about protecting the environment and what we can all do, and had nothing to do with the dolphins at all. Tell a bit of the story, watch the dolphins jump, then tell a bit more of the story. It was obviously a case where they knew they would have a captive audience to try and convince that we should all switch to CFL lightbulbs. I'm all for that, but I want to hear about the dolphins.

Some of us ended the day a little too tired to eat..

From 2008

Since I'm in an opinionated and vocal mood today...

Our household is a "house divided". I have a deep dislike of Wal-Mart stemming from numerous cases where I was left as a dissatisfied customer. They are not in the customer service business and as a tradeoff the prices are lower. I can accept that as their way of business, and once in a while I forget that only to find myself reminded when I go back. My wife, on the other hand, prefers the low prices and can stand the mad rush of people (I get cart rage easily when people cut me off).. Being back in Bloomington, our wal-mart is on the other side of town from us so with gas the way it is right now its just the same for me to pay an extra dollar for my everyday stuff closeby at Target than to drive far to save a bit here and there. And I find their customer service to be a bit better.

With that disclaimer out of the way, something that has bugged me even more lately is the excess of leftover wal-mart buildings that seem to be littering the country as the company builds their new Super Wal-Mart stores, leaving the original Wal-Mart shells behind to a property owner who hopes for a new buyer in a tough real estate market and tougher retail times.

I just got back from a quick trip to Bedford, just 40 miles away from home. On our way we passed 2 of these shells with "for sale" banners on the side. Similarly we took an 8 hour drive to Iowa a couple of months back and I noticed many of these in the small towns we passed through in Illinois. I noticed one while in New York on the way to visit IBM. All of them vacant. All of them easily identified as a former Wal-Mart, with a bigger store likely around the corner.

I know of one that has been repurposed, the original Terre Haute Wal-Mart building is in use as a Hobby Lobby.

I think this begs for some kind of discussion:

• Why are the properties not being picked up? Overpriced? Low value? Lack of retail demand?
• What can you do with such a shell, anyway? Very few retail stores are big enough to fill that space and not already have space of their own (though there is quite a demand for Hobby Lobby as witnessed by Nicole's crochet skills)
• Why not expand from the space that is already in use somehow? Build vertically if the land is not available next door. Or even split up your offerings to a smaller store nearby rather than packing everything up and moving to a bigger store. I know, single-site convenience and all.

At the end of the day its easy to say "so what, what does it matter?" Well, you end up with a building that goes unused for years... Which doesn't hurt anyone, really.. And at worst it is just an eyesore. So, if the value and market are such that the buildings are not desired, I'd love to see Wal-Mart set up a foundation and work with city councils to turn them into community centers or something where the space can be used and you can help your soiled reputation. They would make a great YMCA annex and in some cases another location for such physical activity that would be a more convenient location. The buildings are already configured as a storefront, so donate them to the Goodwill. The space could be well used by a community college or alternative school, or even a church. I guess if the demand were great enough then this would already be happening, but I see places like these building new buildings just down the block from the empty shells so it tells me that the price isn't right. And they continue to sit unused..

Maybe this isn't even worth thinking about. Maybe its just me. I'd like to hear your opinion on it.