A Laptop for...

I am a amateur radio operator or ham as many people say. First step is to admit you have a problem? Well, I do spend a lot of time on the radio. Not so much in the way of talking, but listening. I listen to all sorts of crap out there. I like to see what country is booming in to the US and what type of traffic it is. Voice is cool and fun, but digital or data mode is really cool. Most of my time is spent watching the waterfall on FLDIGI. This program performs on all bands in many different data modes. Best of all it is free.
Let's get on to my thoughts on laptops. I have used laptops by Dell, Toshiba, IBM/Lenovo, HP. Had all them for a few years at a whack. Used for all sorts of tasks, serial port comm, network tasks like email, and swatting hornets and the like. The most reliable laptop I have used for work and personal tasks has been the IBM T41/T61 series. Batteries are hit & miss. But, I have had good luck with the batteries for the IBM series of laptops. I comb e-bay looking for these and there is a lot of them out there in good operational shape. They are not fancy machines at all. But, they work and last. They may not survive a gravity check, but they are a work horse. I bump up the RAM if there is only 1Gb and load Linux Xubuntu on it.
While I am on the topic check out Compaq dc7900 SFF desktops or dc7800 SFF desktops. These can be awesome machines for radio. Runs Linux and is reliable and tough as well. Bump the RAM to max and you have a machine that will play video or music and let you get into your radio hobby. Efficient power consumption and a small footprint that does not eat up a lot of real estate around the desk.  I have built the PC's with the 600w power supplies, 4Gb of RAM, and ASUS mother board made with surround sound in the giant server case. It was fun to do and learn how to build a PC.
So, you may say Ok, but what do these handy dandy computers cost? A used one with no OS can be had for less than 100$. Hard drives can be had at a reasonable price, same with RAM. Linux is free. You end up with a machine that is hard to beat.
Just my thoughts. Everyone has their opinions and I am sharing mine with the equipment that works for me. If you are looking, just some ideas that won't break the bank.


Enjoy, 

A Way to Store Food...

Many ways exist to safely store food stuffs for future or emergency use. Folks can purchase dehydrated food in buckets that are meals, there are MRE's, any number of combinations are out there in the market place. The price also reflects the quantity, but not always the quality.
Uncle Sam recommends that Americans have at least three days of reserve food and water on hand.

Starting off with food storage. One will need food grade storage buckets. A lot of folks sell them, but this place has the best prices as they are a manufacturer; freckleface.com. These five gallon pails will store plenty of beans, lentils, white rice, salt, pepper, sugar, and whatever else your heart desires.
I am not going into how to store the food. The internet has plenty of resources on how to store food. I am just putting up a link to the folks who had the best deal for me when I needed the buckets.

The Gamma lids are awesome and will not break you hands while opening them. A great find and worth sharing.

** Update 8 Feb 13
Here is a link(s) to some handy ideas for storing the food; Modern Survival Blog.com, Backdoor Survival.com. Plenty of other resources out there, these are just a couple I have visit from time to time.

Enjoy,

To Learn Something New...

I have decided to try and learn something new; Emergency Medical Technician Basic (EMT-B). So far so good. My class meets two nights a week for three hours. The instructor(s) include one paramedic and a few intermediate EMT's. All of the instructors are very knowledgeable concerning the subject matter.
One particular area of interest is the FEMA training courses available to the general public free of charge. These courses can be taken by anyone and provide introduction(s) to several different topics in regards to disasters. A test can also be taken upon completion of the course. If a passing grade is received a certificate of completion is e-mailed to the users.

Check out the courses here: FEMA Independent Study

Why are these courses useful? Well, you can help your community to prepare for emergencies as well as the arrival of resources to implement recovery. These courses all provide some insight as to what is expected in government response and how the organization is built to respond. If a community decides to handle the recovery without external help than these course will provide basic knowledge of what should be done.

What is unfortunate is that whenever the government gets involved the recovery effort is prolonged and drawn out. This was witnessed locally.

So, maybe folks should complete these courses on their own and be ready to help their communities and keep the inept government out.


Enjoy,