Saturday, March 16, 2013, 1:14 p.m. — I made it a point last night to watch “Last Man 
Standing” for Amateur Radio’s debut on the show. I don’t know how popular the show is, but it is funny; I’ve only seen it a time or two, but like Tim Allen’s other shows, it does a nice job of poking fun at some of the realities of being a parent.
Allen’s daughter on the show has lost access to her laptop and smartphone until she finishes a history term paper. In her search for “lappy toppy” (the same term my daughter uses for her laptop, ironically), she finds Allen’s ham shack in the basement. The best quip from the show was the daughter’s summary of ham radio: “It’s like Twitter but you don’t have to type!”
As you might expect, ham radio’s own naysayers were critical of the episode; the daughter had no license, gave no callsign (but DID turn on the amplifier next to the radio, hi!). Its sad that our own folks are that critical of a ham radio portrayal that isn’t technical enough or appears to violate FCC rules. It’s a damn sitcom, guys!
One reason I don’t regularly watch “Last Man Standing” is that it airs in the same Friday night time slot as a political affairs program on our state educational TV channel … and I have been watching this program every week faithfully since 1989. There will be more ham radio-related storylines, so I may have to catch the rebroadcast of my political affairs show over the weekend.
SHACK PC COMPLETELY SCREW-EY. I consider myself computer literate and pretty handy when it comes to troubleshooting computer problems. But so far, I am stumped at what has happened to my shack PC. This is the PC I use for logging and digital modes (and goofing around online when I’m at the operating position).
For starters, the PC “hangs” when it boots. It does boot, but there’s now a substantial period in the process where the PC just sits there like it is locked-up. It eventually will continue the boot process, but there’s a 3 to 5 minute delay that didn’t exist before. This is a symptom that has to be related to my other issues.
The other issue is the PC’s networking settings. The PC is not picking up the network settings automatically like it should. After it boots, the network settings are simply blank; no submask, no assigned IP, nothing. I thought perhaps the network adapter was bad, so I tried one of those neat little USB wireless adapters (I used it on this PC before I laid the Cat 5 network cable to hardwire it into the network). The adapter shows up as working; it says it connects to my router just fine. But there’s zero through-put. The computer doesn’t pick up the IP, subnet mask, or other network settings via the wireless adapter either — though the adapter is working and says it connects. Clearly the issue is in the networking on the computer.
I tried to restore the PC to an earlier state, but most of those failed for unknown reasons. I’m going to have to do a little research to see what I can find out. I’m thinking a virus is affecting it since the only other thing that I’ve done is to update the OS with Win update. Hmmmm.
Wish me luck!
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