Wanna learn? Get a school of your own.

Back in 1995 while I was still in grad school, I discovered that the best way to learn all the different aspects of the computing world was to just jump right in . I already had a full time job as a network adminfor the university’s College of Education, but I was finding that all networking positions were inevitably jobs that were focused on fixing things that were broken rather than building something new. Every so often we would install a new server or router but I felt like I would rather build new things as opposed to maintain existing ones. I decided to start the transition to programmer/developer but it would not be until many years later that I would recognize the value of spending time in a wide variety of computer roles.

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Satellite alignment has ‘peaked’ my interest

(and to you Mensa members who have commented about my wording, I did indeed mean ‘peaked’ and not ‘piqued’…… its a pun about satellite signal strength levels, hence the quotes)

I’ve got DirecTV and I use one of those AU-9 satellite dishes that drives my HR20 DVR player. This brings the beauty of Dallas Maverick’s basketball and Dallas Cowboy’s football right into my home. Except when all I see is ‘searching for signal’, which is what I found off and on during the last week.

I decided to manually fix this issue rather than waiting for a repair guy to come over and fix it. With winds and weather, I figured that this would not be the last time I would have an issue with what I suspected was a simple dish alignment. So I purchased an AcuTrac III meter to make the job easier. At over $200, the meter is not cheap. However, I figured it would be a worthwhile investment to learn to do all of this myself.

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Halloween Videos

These are the videos we made during our Halloween “Fright Night”. (Sorry for the poor quality – they were all shot at night. I tried to lighten them up a bit, which made them a little grainy but easier to watch) Continue reading →