Saturday night it wasn’t too cold out so we went for a quick walk and I’m lucky that Maggie & Brandon tag along often. It’s something that I really enjoy which is made all the better when they come with.
It’s not easy to all squeeze into the photo when trying to take a selfie with my phone but I think it worked out pretty well. 🙂 With no clouds it was really nice to see the stars again and I counted at least 3 shooting stars and they saw a bunch too.
Definitely living my best life possible.
So last month I posted about picking up and programming a Motorola XTS2500 which went well so I decided to push my luck and bought a Motorola XTS3000. It’s in excellent condition but programming it is a lot more complicated as it requires a different cable and a 32 bit OS environment to use the software. I ordered the right cable and when it arrived I fired up VirtualBox, installed Windows XP and woo I’m able to program this radio too!
The Motorola radios are heavy but I really love how durable they are especially compared Baofengs and the other cheap Chinese radios that have flooded the market. Programmed it with the same channels and settings as my XTS2500s so now I have relatively secure comms for, well whatever heads my way. 😉
This is so much fun I might pick up a few more just for kicks and get a bay station charger because it looks so cool!
So today Maggie and I celebrate our 19th anniversary and my god where does the time go! She’s the best wife & partner one could ask for and I always feel lucky to have Maggie in my life. Thank you for everything and I look forward to what the future brings!
I’m not typically a doom and gloom guy on my blog but I have to say I have a pretty bad feeling about 2024. There are so many conflicts & potential conflicts that could flare up around the world, I get why aliens don’t visit us. Our political leaders act like children on the world stage and it’s maddening that they wall want war.
Sigh, I weep when I think of all the lives lost needlessly so far and those that may lose their lives in the stupid fights that may pop up. Also do not buy the narrative that one side is the bad guy and “our side” is good, it’s much more complicated than that and what’s occurring didn’t happen in a vacuum.
With that said as an individual in Canada, I have absolutely no ability to sway things so I’m just going to do my best to try and make sure my family is as insulated from any shocks that may come. I hope I’m wrong and that this year turns out to be peaceful so we’ll see what’s in store.
Wishing you the very best for 2024!
I’ve always liked radios & communications gear and back in my airsoft days after jumping from radio to radio, I finally settled on a Motorola XTS 2500 Model 3. It worked great and I absolutely loved how durable it is, being a klutz not breaking when I fall on it is a big deal. 😉 Anyway recently I picked up another, this time the model 2 without the keypad but meh good enough. I like the fact it has digital output and ADP encryption (my original is a military version with AES 256 but my new one is from a Washington state police dept) so people can’t snoop on my messages, easily anyway.
The Motorola ASTRO 25 CPS software is not easy to use, I guess that shouldn’t be a surprise and it took me about half a day’s tinkering to get everything working properly but yeah now these two are good! Due to different firmware and hardware options, I couldn’t simply clone one radio to the other so I had to compare settings and there are so many, it can make your eyes gloss over. I still have some Baofeng radios, used those when I was still a Scout leader and while I’m not really active, or need radios for anything I still want to get a few more. Just in case right… 😉
Brandon was a bit bummed out that his hike tomorrow was cancelled so I took him to walk around Darlington provincial park for a walk this morning. It’s a nice park and while we were walking the trails, in the distance we could hear shotguns go off. It’s waterfowl season and hunters can hunt in a small area of the park. Didn’t bother either of us obviously we’re use to guns and what they sound like, just a nice distraction from the droning highway off to the North.
With the heavy rain yesterday, the park was clear of people which was nice. The paths were a bit muddy but both Brandon and I know rain is just another form of weather and can be enjoyable. Didn’t rain too hard while we were out but it wouldn’t have mattered as we were dressed for the weather.
It’s the little things like going for a walk with my boy in nature that I love, it may have looked gloomy outside but it was all sunshine and rainbows for me. 🙂
Today I turn 44 years old and when I reflect on how things have gone in my life, I know I’m damn lucky. I have a wonderful partner in Maggie, an amazing son with Brandon and yeah life is great! 🙂
As a species we fight over the stupidest things, no wonder aliens don’t visit us. While I find the clips coming out from the Hamas attack, Israel retaliation & footage from the ongoing Ukrainian war, it makes me so sad to see the needless killing. What is this all for really, all the fighting does is harden all sides in the conflict making peace less likely. As much as some may dislike politics, it’s a necessary evil to help solve our problems and only when we talk and address the root causes of the problems in our world will we move forward and make things better.
Sorry for the lack of posts, just haven’t been motivated to blog recently. Hopefully that’ll change and I’ll try and do better at posting a bit more often but just wanted to mention that things are well on my side. 🙂
I meant to post an update earlier this week, we returned from Punta Cana on Monday but I was suffering from food poisoning and now I’ve tested positive for COVID. Great, I’ll post some pictures and shit on the weekend hopefully when I’m feeling better.
