Point Lookout
Musings from the hillside

Yesterday and today, Jordan and I drove 57 miles up to Dixon and back to see if he’s going to be a famous and titled earthdog. And it hasn’t happened yet.

Both days we entered “introduction to Quarry” which is part of the puzzle. Introduction to the idea of going down into a tunnel, dark and dirt-floored is the other puzzle involved. It’s a real change in activity for a happy spoiled lap dog. He gets his long walks and his walks on the deer trails of the hill but this is real different.
Well, the first day, he refused to go anywhere near the entrance of the tunnel. He had a nice walk about the fenced-in ring and that was about it. He obviously had NO INTEREST in the rats and never went near the judge. Today, the judge opened the end of the tunnel where the well-protected rat cage sits and we dropped Jordan down to where he was supposed to go and “work” the rats (bark, scratch, chew on the bars, or otherwise be a pest to the rats). He kept looking up and tried to get positioned to jump out but I had hime held in pretty well.

So he backed up.

He backed up five feet to the turn in the tunnel. He made the turn and backed up another five feet to the mouth of the tunnel that he’d refused to enter. Then he shook himself and trotted happily over to see what we were doing.

The judge took the rat box/cage out and showed Jordan the hated rats … who were largely bored. He sniffed politely and demonstrated a complete lack of interest in them and/or their welfare.

This was an improvement mind you.

Anyway, we had two lovely days in perfect weather. It’s not always like that in Dixon the end of October and they do this rain, shine, or snow. You won’t find nicer people and more distaste for politics and competition (there is none, you either qualify or you don’t .. no competiton among dogs and/or people).

It was worth being ring steward today to see three women in fancy dresses come from the usual dog-show rings and kneel in the dirt trying to get their fancy show-dogs to go in the tunnel. Zero for three but bless them for trying.

Well, Pacificon was a real launch-pad for Icom’s D-Star here in the Bay Area. Tim Barrett, co-founder of K6MDD, the Mount Diablo Digital repeater system, spoke twice to packed rooms. HRO sold a boatload of D-Star radios. There was a D-Star love-in on the air yesterday and today.

There will be around 20 new operators in the Bay area. Most of them are experienced operators and will come up to speed quickly. D-Star may get heavier use than our mostly dead FM repeaters. It would be an improvement, if you like what these people tend to talk about.

It’s all good. D-Star is a product of the Japanese government working with one hardware vendor. The details of the protocol are not easy to get and parts of the system are still shrouded in mystery. Icom has just gotten initial backbone linking gear and isn’t really sure what they have yet. Icom America is already talking about the possibility that the US will need to develop its own backbone technology because the 10GHz microwave gear Japan chose is pretty expensive and not very easy to install and use.

This is what you get when you let the Japanese Amateur Radio League (a department of the Japanese governments communications department unlike our non-governmental organization here in the US) and a vendor design something for “the amateurs”. They went off into a dark room and designed something without input from other markets, particularly the US or Europe where things are really different than Japan. Now they’re pushing a rope uphill in the countries where real product volumes would come from. And they needed advice. As good as D-Star is, it could have been a ton better.

Maybe we need to pick up a couple of Matt Ettus’s Universal Software Radio Peripheral kits and start designing our own. It wouldn’t take half as long and we could probably get prototypes running all over the states in short order … in our copious spare time.

Most of the day was spent on the book. It was a day that saw the delivery of the first piece to the editors. It was a day that saw two versions of the first part of Chapter One get drafted; like a 6,000 word kind of day with a dozen graphics and listings.

Met the new Bernese Mountain Dog puppy in the extended family. Adam’s a little over eight weeks old and 23 pounds already. He’s already almost twice as heavy as Jordan!

It was a nice bright day, if cool. We did the usual walk but otherwise stayed close to home.

Well, Pacificon is over. The vendors were happy. We had good attendance though maybe not as good as last year. Filled the one-day license class and had over 30 pass. All is well.

If only everything were so simple. I don’t mind the work and when things go smoothly like that, it’s a good thing. Three days of busy busy and all kinds of little gremlins.