Being heavily involved in the local amateur radio community has resulted in some interesting adventures, but one for the memory books took place on an otherwise unassuming Tuesday in September. For the past few years I’ve been tangentially involved with the University of Victoria’s amateur radio club – helping out with projects and the administration of the lab’s network. I’ve become a reasonably well known fixture in the lab and so it was not a huge surprise when I was invited to help out with an antenna install on the director’s property on Sidney Island. Sidney Island is an 8.6 Continue Reading
Review of the Unihertz Atom XL
It was after I nearly dropped my phone during an early morning walk while trying to juggle an umbrella and operate my cell phone one-handed that I came to a conclusion – my phone was too damn big! Back in ye ‘olden times (around 2007) I purchased my first cell phone which was a flip phone. At the time small was in, the smaller your cellphone was the cooler it was and the devices fit in a pocket with ease. Not long after, Apple would shake up the phone industry when they released the first iPhone with a 3.5″ touchscreen. Continue Reading
A Trip to Coronation
As I sit on a plane to Vancouver, over 24 hours after my original scheduled departure, with at least four more hours of buses and ferries ahead of me, I find myself contemplating the past 6 days of ridiculousness and how I managed to get here. But, before we get to the day of travel hell, let’s start at the beginning – with a small town of just under 900 people named Coronation. I found myself the owner of a small, 2800 sq ft plot of land in Eastern Alberta. My plan for the property was to set it up Continue Reading
Do I Own this? The Property Purchase from Hell
It all started as an impulse buy. My buddy and business partner Blair had overheard me fantasizing with another buddy about buying a rural property and setting up a sick-ass remote HAM radio site. Blair then took it upon himself to search for some suitable properties, I guess it was a slow day at the office. After a few hours and what seemed like a thousand descriptions of basically the same thing my ears perked up when I heard “this one already comes with Satellite Dishes.” I wandered over to his desk – my curiosity was piqued. Sure enough the Continue Reading
Guns, Grub and a Satellite Ground Station – My trip to Alberta
I am sitting in a restaurant surrounded by co-workers. A server comes comes by with a skewer of beef and looks at me; As I ponder whether I trying to fit more delicious meat into my already full stomach was a good idea, one of my co-workers nodes ‘yup’ and another slice is loaded onto my plate. This was my first evening of a week in Calgary. Things had been a bit challenging of late at work. The company was growing from a small operation to a medium-sized business and was experiencing all the associated growing pains that go along Continue Reading
A Chaotic Trip Around the World
It was a Thursday morning and I found myself eating breakfast on a ferry while enjoying some of the best scenery of BC’s West Coast. It was leg one of what would be a many leg journey around Western Canada and across Western Europe, all in the space of just over a week. The whole thing started on a Saturday afternoon when my buddy Sean (you may remember him from such quality stories as “adventures with servers in the middle of the night”) messaged me trying to convince me to join him on an upcoming trip to Toronto. As it Continue Reading
The mystery box of Swan Lake
It was a slow, lazy summer afternoon in the Summer of 2022. I was shooting the shit with a couple buddies as we tried to decide what to do with the rest of our afternoon when one of them proposed an expedition to an elusive mystery box in Swan Lake. Without a better idea we agreed, and our journey to the longstanding mystery began! So, what is a “mystery box?” First, a bit of background on the area itself. Swan Lake is a 23 acre urban lake in the heart of the District of Saanich. The lake makes up part Continue Reading
Two dishes, one scrap yard and no pole
It all started with a Reddit post. A buddy of mine sent me a message linking to a thread where someone was looking for a 1+ meter satellite dish to build what sounded like a laser cannon. While I’m not into death rays, I do enjoy vacuuming up satellite signals, and I was in the market for a new dish to replace my aging mesh dish which had seen better days. And so it was that on a Tuesday afternoon I found myself exchanging messages with two C-Band dish owners eager to part ways with their possession. I know from Continue Reading
Accidentally Solving Robocalls
My phone rings, I glance at it and contemplate answering. It rings a second time and I reach for the handset, then, just as suddenly as it began the ringing stopped and I was left in peace. I smiled to myself and continued what I was doing. No robocalls today! Bringing my phone into the Matrix Those of you who are regular followers of this blog will know that I have fully embraced Matrix as my chat platform of choice. While Matrix is a fantastic standalone product that offers exceptional features like federation, end-to-end encryption and the ability to self-host; Continue Reading
Fun with FAXes
In my years of working in IT and technology I’ve never heard of anyone who considered dealing with FAXes “fun.” Most of the time my fellow sysadmins react to FAX tickets with either terror because they’re too young to have experienced the technology, or with absolute disgust as they remember the old-days of troubleshooting with buttsets, tone generators and termination blocks. Nevertheless, one day when digging through a box of old electronics I found a USB FAX modem, and decided to see if I could resurrect this old technology get it working in a modern environment. So what is a Continue Reading