Time to prove I’m still alive

I may not have the stage presence of Angus Young, but I continue to hang in there.

This is going to be sort of a catch up. I’ve done and seen a few things that might interest some of you. It also explains where the dickens I’ve been, and will be, for a while.

This might sound teenagerish of me, but the biggest thing I have done recently is take my entire family (minus the GrandThings) to see AC/DC in Charlotte, NC. This was the family Christmas present. Of course, it would have been a bit better if the idiots running Ticketmaster *spit* would allow you to buy, ah, may six tickets rather than four. I understand they’re trying to discourage scalpers, but some of us have an immediate family larger than four.

The show was tremendous. I really don’t know how these guys do this, in the heat we had (started in the low 90s and wound up in the upper 80s), and at their age. If I tried to do what they did, I’d die on the stage. And they rocked the house. The first note of “Back in Black” turned Bank of America Stadium into the nosiest concert venue I’ve ever experienced. 118.5 db as measured by the app on my phone. It was glorious and worth that bit of my hearing I may have sacrificed.

Interestingly enough, the concert also allowed me to prove the theory that migraines can be caused by over-stimulation of the brain. By the third song I had to put my shades on because the new LED lights that everyone uses are simply too bright. They also happened to be aimed right at me–every one of them. lol I also had to use my earplugs (Yes, we all had them) on some of the lessor favorite songs to give my ears and brain a rest. For me, it didn’t detract from the experience enough to bother me. I more than got my money’s worth. It was particularly fun to see Mrs. Freeholder doing a little headbanging of her own. In the 40 years I’ve know this woman I have never seen that.

While I’m on the subject of social gatherings, Mrs. Freeholder and I are attending “a thing” this evening in EvenBittierBurg. They’re doing a series of events to raise funds for the local schools, and since this was the system she taught in, we’re going. There is music, food trucks, beer and wine and dancing. Lots of dancing if her patience and my back hold up.

Yeah, the back. Since late winter, I’ve been fighting with my left hip and ankle. Ankle turned out to be mostly tendonitis, which has responded nicely to a whopping shot of steroids. The hip turned out to be “not the hip”. It’s my old nemesis, a pinched sciatic nerve on the left side. Well, it’s mostly a pinched nerve. There’s arthritis in there too. My chiropractors have kept the nerve part in check for 25ish years, but it may finally be escaping them. Current medical treatment is physical therapy and 100 mg of Celebrex daily. Can’t tell either are really helping the back, but it’s only been a week. I can tell you that a lot of the other aches have left, however. I’ve been on Celebrex before and that stuff is a miracle of modern medicine. If this doesn’t work, the next step will be steroid shots, placed with the aid of ultrasound. If that doesn’t work, we get to discuss surgery, which I really don’t want. At least that option is a ways off just yet.

The heat has been a misery here for the last three or so weeks. 90s upon 90s, day after day. We have gotten one break into the upper 80s for a couple of days when we got some much-needed rain. Son’s HVAC unit died on him at 2 AM. He lives in a nice apartment community, and their maintenance guys are on call 24/7. Poor dude had it working by 6 AM. I wonder if he got overtime or was just able to leave before the real heat of the day hit.

With the heat has come ants and field mice. I think I’ve killed off the current rodent intruders, and thanks to our previous experience with them, the losses in the pantry were minimal.

Preparedness Tip: Own plenty of mouse and rat traps. Use whatever they’ve gotten into for bait.

The ants are harder. We’ve had the big black ones, which are a pain but relatively easy to squash and disposed of, since they come in small lots. The one that are killing us are the tiny little ones my parents called “piss ants”. I hate these things. You can’t make a door tight enough to keep them out. I have no idea where they’re coming from, because when I close off an opening, they suddenly turn up somewhere else. We’re having to kill them by hand, and it isn’t really working. Poisoning them is problematic inside, and I can’t find them outside. Thoughts welcome.

I’ve again been working on bringing more Linux into my life. This time it’s Zorin Linux. I picked up on this variant of Ubuntu from a YouTube video. I tried the live version on my ham radio computer and it found all of the unusual hardware that machine has or is connected to. One reformat and install later, the OS was on and again found everything. The fun has been the various ham radio software I use. I’m primarily a digital modes enthusiast so WSJT-X was first. That was trouble. It had all kind of issues finding the sound card input and outputs. I and others spent hours trying to figure this out. The solution one of the members of a club I’m affiliated with, who had experienced this problem himself and knew the fix. That fix is WSJT-X Improved, a fork of the original. It found everything right off the bat and has some nifty new features as well.

Then it was logging software, used for keeping track of your contacts. I’ve long used N3FJP’s Amateur Contact Log and liked it. It’s simple, does everything you need, and it works without a lot of fuss. Unfortunately, he doesn’t do a Linux version. I tried running it under WINE and got it to mostly work. It just couldn’t find my radio. I tried everything I could think of and even consulted with an AI. Even the AI finally reached a dead end. I finally gave up and went with one of the more popular Linux logging programs, CQRLOG. This took a while to get configured as well. I spent hours on this as well, but at least this time the AI was able to get me configured after a couple of detours. The detours were nothing worse than some tech support I’ve worked with before, and at least it doesn’t have a near-impenetrable accent.

As far as the function of the logging program, at this point I’m just not a fan. It’s not bad, but the configuration is a bitch. I’ve got it working mostly the way I want, but some things are simply impossible–the software doesn’t support it. I’m also concerned that there hasn’t been a new version since 2021, which is forever in computer time. I’m going to keep looking around, but for now it works. Again, thoughts welcome.

When the body cooperates, and sometimes when it doesn’t, yardwork has been a thing. The spring rains kept me from it for the most part, and now I’m behind. Way behind. I’ve also got a neighbor’s yard to do as he had a knee replacement and isn’t able to do it himself for a while. However, his recovery is going well, and he ought to be handling it himself in a couple of months.

I’d like to get back to writing for the blog more often, but my problem is both time and a lack of things I really want to talk about. I’m pretty well tired of the political shenanigans both at home and abroad. I still keep up with it, but how often do I feel like writing yet another “something is going to hell in a handbasket” post–and how often do y’all want to read them? Guns have really gotten to be nothing more than another tool for me, and one range report sounds a lot like all the others. Do you want to hear about me working around the house? EJR does that far better than I can anyway. The GrandThings might be interesting, and I’ll consider more of that. It could also be that this thing is just slowly winding down to a natural conclusion. We’ll see.

At any rate, keep your eyes open and your butt down. Too many things out there are worrisome. We live in Interesting Times.