Monty KD6CAE's rants

The Past Few Months

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Sun, 31 Jul 2022 20:28:17 GMT

Hello Everyone,
Yep, it’s that geeky thing Monty again, with one final update of what’s been happening with me over the past few months. Don’t worry, not only, will this be my last entry for a while, but I’ll explain later on in this entry, why I’ve been so eager to write in my journal this weekend. At the end of my previous Live Journal entry I released last night, I mentioned how in March, I spent a ton of time on the phone with Social Security, getting everything fixed so I would get direct deposits from them at the beginning of each month, rather than having a payee give me my money, since my payee died back in February. Well, after a lot of waiting and multiple phone calls because of disconnects during some of them, all of the paperwork and redirecting of funds was approved, and beginning in April, I started receiving my money once again, finally able to pay my bills on my own, and you bet I paid Celeste back for all of the help she provided me through the use of her Capital One credit card over the previous 2 months. I even made sure to hardly use the Capital One card over the month of April, to show I cared about not wanting to constantly max it out, and keep it mostly paid off. I don’t think I mentioned in the 2 previous entries I released over the weekend, that I subscribed to Audible back in 2021, when I learned you could listen to books on your Amazon device. I had quite a few credits built up by this time, so in April, I bought several books with my audible credits, including buying a bundle of 3 credits, so I could take advantage of this sale they have from time to time, where you can get 2 books with 1 credit. Some of the books I’ve added to my Audible library, include the Harry Potter series, The Meaning of Mariah Carey, by Mariah Carey, The Answer is, Reflections of my Life, by Alex Trebek, Look at it This Way, by Sammy Sweet Spirit, and a book talking about the early days of phone hacking called, Breaking the Phone, which I still have yet to read at the time I’m writing up this post. That’s just a few of the books in my audible library at this time, and there’s no doubt, I’ll add more in the future when I get more credits, and eventually, I plan to change from a monthly subscription, to an annual subscription, so I can have 12 credits at once, adding a bunch of books to my library simultaneously. Other than adding Audible books to my library in April, I did hear briefly from Robert’s son Julian, that there would be a celebration of life ceremony, basically a funeral for Robert, held up in Regmand, Oregon, on July 29, 2022. Back in April, I had all intensions of attending this event, but as I catch you guys up on things, you’ll soon learn why such plans, fell through. As for other stuff I did in April of this year, I mostly relaxed at my sister’s, talked to Celeste on the phone, and enjoyed the many Internet radio shows I enjoy on a weekly basis, one of which, is a show hosted by my friend, Melissa Roe, from Palm Desert, California called, The 80’s Dimension. It airs on Saturdays from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM Pacific on Genesis Radio, and it’s basically, 3 hours, of 80’s tunes. She also asks 2 trivia questions in a segment called, Too Quick Trivia, and presents a little fact about something from the 1980’s in a little segment called, The Mid Day Munch. And during commercial breaks, she plays old commercials from the 1980’s, as well as promos for other shows on the station. It’s an awesome show, and I make sure to catch it every week, along with The Jess Mess on HKC Radio, and other shows I like to listen to. Other than that, April was mostly a quiet month, as the weather continued to warm up, allowing for another year of adventures to occur very soon.

Before I could start traveling again though, you might recall in my previous post, that my Verizon phone got slightly broken, as a result of being damaged by Violent Violet. Ever since she threw it across her apartment, I’ve been having issues with the earpiece on that phone, mainly the audio coming out of the earpiece, being very low, and difficult to hear. It’s one thing when I’m in a quiet environment, but pretty much, impossible to hear if I’m in a noisy environment, such as being on a bus or a train for example, and while I have no problem hearing through speaker phone on the device, there are times when traveling, when you don’t want the whole world hearing your business over speaker phone. Therefore, it was high time, I look into upgrading my phone. I tried to do this back in November of 2021, only to learn that the model of phone I wanted, wasn’t available. I always go for the bigger model of phone, so I knew I wanted the iPhone 13 Pro Max, which would give me 512 gigs of space. In early May, I headed to the Valley Plaza Mall in Bakersfield, California, where I went to the Verizon store, and paid off the remaining balance on my 11 Pro Max. I was then going to upgrade, only to learn the Verizon store doesn’t keep the higher models in their store. I don’t understand why they don’t, but luckily, there’s an Apple Store at the mall, so I went there, in hopes to find the phone I wanted. Good news, they had the phone I wanted, bad news, we tried for nearly an hour to get it activated, and kept running into problems. Looking back on it later, I do believe it was a case of there not being a sim card already inside the phone, but I digress. In the end, the only way to solve this problem, was to buy the phone outright, as I could not leave the Apple store with the phone in my hand, until it was either, activated, or paid for. While in the past, I’ve done the payment plan and paid over the course of 2 years or less with each phone bill, and in some cases, I’d trade in my old phone for the new one, I still traded in the old phone, but this time, once again, getting help from Celeste, who very nicely helped me pay for this, for the first time ever, I bought my iPhone 13 Pro Max outright, which amazingly, brought my future Verizon bills, way down. At one time, I had multiple lines on my Verizon phone, as Dora use to be on my plan, for those of you who forgot, Dora is Robert’s daughter who lives up in Oregon, but she left my plan back in the spring of 2019. And while this brought down the cost by 100 dollars, because I was always paying on a phone, I would have anywhere from 120 dollars, to 180 dollars due every month. However, thanks to paying for the iPhone 13 Pro Max outright at purchase, my future Verizon bills have been around 80 dollars, the cheapest I’ve been paying for Verizon since I first got them back in April of 2013. I do not regret making this purchase one bit, and again, I thank Celeste for all of her help. This also fixed my earpiece issue with the phone, as I’m having no problem hearing phone calls and other things on the device, whether I use the earpiece, or speaker to listen, so thankfully, that problem has been solved, and I know from here on out, to not let anybody touch my stuff if they’re extremely angry with me for any reason. As for the rest of the month of May, since I had to help Celeste pay back her card, this left me mostly broke, so I took the rest of the month to relax, deciding not to go anywhere until June. Oh I would go somewhere alright, and that adventure, would be an interesting one, for sure.

Ever since the summer of 2021, I’ve been wanting to take another trip out to Los Vegas, Nevada, to be reminded of the awesome times I spent there back in 2013, 2014, and early 2015, but funds didn’t allow for this trip to happen, after spending time in Richmond, Virginia, El Paso, Texas, and the time spent in multiple places within the state of Arizona. So I made sure to cross Vegas off of my bucket list this summer. In mid June, I headed to Vegas, where I would stay at the Strat Sky Tower, Hotel, and Casino. You might recall my talking in this journal back in 2015, of the adventures I had going up to the top of the tower, but that’s all I did at this location back then. This time, I was going to stay at the hotel, as guests get a discount when going up to the tower, only having to pay 10 dollars, rather than over 30 dollars to head up to the tower, and your ticket is good for the entire day. Sadly, I could only stay for one night, as rooms were booked after that, but I figured that would at least give me a day to enjoy the tower to play radio, and hear the Los Vegas airport very clearly from up there, as if it’s right next door. I did get to go up to the tower, only it was so windy that day, that I nearly blew away, and they even had to close the outside deck because it was so windy. I did get to eat at a restaurant they have on the 108th. floor of the building called, 108 Eats, and they have one of the best, meatball sandwiches imaginable! I think it’s even better than the meatball marinara footlong at Subway, though I would have to get a side by side comparison before making my final prediction. Regardless, this sandwich has been my main go to whenever I ate at 108 Eats at the top of the tower. In the hotel portion of the building, there is a McDonald’s, which I ate at multiple times, and in some cases, I’d get it to go and take it back to my room. The rooms are quite comfortable, though some of the staff at the facility is very inexperienced with helping blind people, and one person behind the counter was rude to me when all I was doing, was trying to ask for directions. Security though, is very nice, in particular, the security people working for the Sky Pod tower, and where wifi is concerned, it’s quite weak in the rooms, but works extremely well in the hotel lobby and on the second level of the building, where the bar and restaurants like McDonald’s are located. All-in-all, I had a good time at the Strat, I only wish it had been longer. I would get another opportunity to stay there again in July, but first, the more interesting part of my Nevada adventure, was soon to come.

Back in December of 2021, I got an account on the Inner Visions Radio Network’s Teamtalk server, where I met one of their users up there, by the name of Amy Green. I grew curious about meeting her, when she started talking about places in Southern California, that most people don’t know about, unless they’ve lived there before, for example, she use to live in Hemmit, where my mother use to live. I learned when talking to her, that she now lived in Pahrump, Nevada, which is only an hour away from Vegas. I did lose contact with her for a time because she was offline in the early spring, but we reconnected in May, and made arrangements for me to go visit her. We also exchanged phone numbers at that time, so Teamtalk wouldn’t be our only means of communication. She, along with her cousin Tristia, who she’s living with, came and picked me up in Vegas after I checked out of my room, which I was able to do via a website sent to me by text. We went to Pahrump, where I would spend the next month, as I dealt with how crazy things were over there. Now I knew at this point, they had several dogs, 7 of them at the time of my visit, and I thought that was how crazy things would get, especially when one of the dogs managed to get into Amy’s room, and find my shoes beneath the bed, sneakin them off to another room. Luckily, my shoes were found, and after that, we put them up high in the closet, where no dog could get to them. However, I would soon learn, that was only part of the craziness going on over there. To put it in a nutshell, try losing your job, having no money coming in, having to rely on being a dasher for Doordash as your only source of income, and on top of struggling to pay rent, depleting other members of the household’s money to pay the bills, you’re so behind on the cell phone bill, the service gets shut off, and with the way electricity works in the area, you basically get, prepaid electricity, giving you so many hours of electricity before it’s cut off and more money needs to be paid. That’s pretty much, Tristia’s situation in a nutshell, and I felt bad for everybody over there. Luckily the mobile phones are in Amy’s name, but even that bill got so far behind, that I had to ask Celeste to help me out. She happily agreed, even though it meant sacrificing the entirety of her Capital One card, but at least it gave them phone service again, since Tristia depends on having a working phone when working for Doordash, as well as needing to hear from other places where she’s trying to find a new job.

On a more positive note, Amy is very sweet, and we generally, had a good time together, eating Sonic most nights for dinner, sometimes even ordering from there twice in one day, to satisfy Amy’s cravings for popcorn chicken, which I finally tried, as it was very good, and this lemonade slush they have with Nerds candy inside, that she can’t get enough of! She’s one of the few people I’ve met who doesn’t like soda, and will do whatever it takes, to avoid drinking soda, she hates it so much. She’s also a huge bookworm, constantly listening to books on one of those old, NLS players. We listened to several books while I stayed there, including a sad book called, Old Yeller. Amy’s also a huge Disney fan, and whenever the opportunity arised for us to have access to the television in the living room, where her XBox is hooked up, we would watch movies on Disney+, and I finally saw several Disney movies, I didn’t see until now. I found I enjoyed Tarzan, Hercules, and the animated 1991 release of Beauty and the Beast. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get into Mary Poppins though, and Celeste is waiting to make me watch it in full as a punishment, one of these days when such punishments needs to be issued to me lol. It was also on this trip, when I finally learned, that the song, If We Hold On, Together, by Diana Ross, came from The Land Before Time, and Somewhere Out There, by Linda Ronstat and James Ingram, came from the movie, An American Tale. While Amy taught me a lot, I learned a lot about her, that leaves me in tears. Basically, she has no support from her family, and like me, her parents have passed away. If I could, I’d find a way to get her out of that environment, if I just, had a place for her to go where she’d be accepted and well cared for. Sadly, that has yet to become a reality, and for now, all I, or anybody else can do, is be a supportive listening ear, and hope for the best.

As a result of running out of funds, I stayed at Amy’s place until pay day in July, and even stayed there while Amy attended an adult camp she enjoys almost every year, up at Camp Bloomfield in California. During the weekend she was away, I was hoping to get to know Tristia better, only she was mostly busy with Doordash orders around Vegas, and because she drives a car from 2003 that’s prone to breaking down a lot, she has repairs to make on that car to deal with on top of everything else going on in her life. She also has a daughter, Deseray, who to put it simply, is one of the rudest, and most laziest 12-year-olds, I’ve ever met. Though Tristia is a firm believer that everybody, no matter their abilities and background, all have equal skill level that’s equal to her. Obviouslly, this isn’t true by a long shot, but try telling Tristia that. She was so convinced that everybody is able to take care of themselves, that while Amy was at camp, before she went off to do more door dashing in Vegas, she handed me 3 cans of food, one of chilly and 2 of soup, figuring I’d figure out the rest, despite I had never opened a can in my entire life, let alone, explored their kitchen so I knew where stuff was. To make a long story short, when I managed to break off the pull tab on the chilly can, I had to get on with Aira to help me find a fork in their kitchen, and aid me in getting the can open enough so I could eat the chilly, which was at least at room temperature, thanks to Amy’s room being quite warm. While this was no where as awful as the experience I had at Violent Violet’s, I will admit, I did find how she treated me, and other members of the household, a bit, strange, and part of me, couldn’t wait to get out of there.

I did stay through the fourth of July, where Amy and I attended a local fireworks show with Amy’s relatives. Granted, it took us 3 times to get a ride to the event, but luckily, her cousin Matthew, who works at Death Valley, was our ride. The fireworks show at the park, was incredible! 30 minutes of fireworks put to the beat of music provided on 103.3 FM, a country station in the area, the show was amazing! I’m glad we got to go to the event, even if it took tooth and nail to allow us to attend. I even have the event recorded and in the WhatsApp chat log I have ongoing with my former roommate Celeste, should I wish to relive the event at any time in the future. I would stay there for another week after that, before Tristia would drive me back to Vegas, where I got to stay at the Strat for 3 nights this time. Luckily, my second time of staying at the Strat in mid July, went over better than the one night I stayed in June. I did get to go up to the top of the tower, both, during the day, and at night, and luckily, it wasn’t windy this time around, though it was hot during the day, over 100 degrees, and this did cause my phone to overheat and shut down. At both visits to the tower on this trip though, before my phone overheated at the daytime attempt, and during the nighttime attempt, I did get some pictures taken of the view of Vegas down below, with the help of Aira, and I’ve posted the pictures to my Facebook, should friends of mine on Facebook who run across my blog, wish to take a look at the pictures. I also got to have another delicious meatball sandwich at 108 Eats while visiting the Strat Sky Pod Tower that day as well. I was going to attempt eating at the fancier of the restaurants, The Top of the World, on the 106th. floor, but not only were they only open for dinner, but I took a look at the menu with an Aira agent, and the prices, were ridiculous! 185 dollars for a steak? Um, no thank you! And I was already getting low on funds to begin with. So low in fact, that I basically had just enough money to make it back to my sister’s place in Bakersfield on the Amtrak bus, which yes, my trip to and from Vegas this time, was on Amtrak, but because there are no train tracks in Vegas, this is one destination you can go to on Amtrak, and no train is required to complete the journey. I returned to Misty’s on Thursday, July 14, 2022, and promptly crashed in the memory foam room upon arriving, I was so exhausted from my trip.

Since returning to Misty’s in mid July, I’ve mostly been relaxing, though hardly unpacked my stuff, in hopes to travel again very soon. I’ve also reunited with one of my sighted friends, Britney, who’s another piece of work. I met her back in 2014, and back then, she had a car, we’d go places together, and she even drove me to Langcaster one time. However, since then, her life has fallen apart to the point, where she currently doesn’t have a car, a driver’s license, or even a place to sleep. Misty’s love seat has been her bed since I returned from Nevada, and I’m only waiting until the time is right, to leave town, and cut her off. I don’t mind helping people, but I’m very disappointed over the downfall I’ve seen since we initially met in 2014. I’m basically having to make sure she doesn’t get way out of line and steal anything during the hours she’s staying at Misty’s, hince, why I’m hardly around between the hours of 10:00 PM and 10:00 AM Pacific as of late, only having time to myself and to talk to friends other than Britney, when she’s away during the day. There are other things wrong with her, but that’s the extent of what I want to mention about her in my blog at this time.

On top of the Britney situation that has recently developed, as technically, she came around right before I left for Nevada in June, only she’s not comfortable communicating with Misty directly, she wants me to be involved, so she’d message me on Facebook while I was at Amy’s, but aside from that situation, you might recall how I was suppose to attend Robert’s funeral on July 29, 2022. Sadly, that trip fell through, not only because I had no funds to get there, but nobody to take me up there either. Even Robert’s daughter Maribelle, wanted to go, and she was originally, suppose to go up to Oregon from Palmdale, California with her sister Stephanie and their mom, Monica, only Stephanie and Monica left for Oregon, 2 days sooner than they originally planned to leave, abandoning Maribelle all-together. Had I had more money, I would have taken an Uber to Palmdale, grabbed up Maribelle, and together, we’d take a train up to Oregon, but when you’re not even contacted until 6:30 AM on July 28, 2022, with barely a day to get up there, you’re a bit too late, to make any last minute plans. So sadly, we both missed out on the event, and Robert’s daughter Emily didn’t go by choice, staying behind to take care of her new baby, who was born only 9 months ago. Normally, when I’m this down and depressed about things, I sleep an extra lot, as if I’m extremely sick, but this time around, after taking a look at my blog, and noticing I hadn’t written in it in over 2 years, I decided to keep busy this weekend, by updating everybody on what I’ve been up to over the last 2 years and 4 months. I also noticed later on during the day on July 28, 2022, that I no longer had a cable with the portable battery pack I bought while in Reno back in 2020. Not sure what happened to it, I ordered some new micro USB to USB A cables from Wal-Mart, and they should arrive on August 4, 2022 at my sister’s, and I’ll either, get them when they arrive, or when I’m next back at the location. As for what happened to the original cable that came with the portable battery pack, Celeste reminded me later on, that I use to use that cable to power the raspberry pie I bought from Robert in 2020, but finding I wasn’t using it anymore once I left Pittsfield, when I visited Reno in the fall of 2021, I gave the raspberry pie back to Robert, and it still had the cable with it, forgetting the cable originally went to my portable battery pack for charging my phone. Whoops, shame on me for using cables in a multi-purpose situation, and forgetting about it later on. Despite having to miss the funeral though, I did get another pleasant surprise on the morning of July 29, 2022.

So you may recall in my earlier entry, I spoke of getting a Chime account, which is an online bank. Amy, my friend from Pahrump, only has Chime, and her benefits are deposited into there, and while I was visiting her, I saw that they were deposited early, at least 3 business days earlier than the normally scheduled arrival date of the funds. Intrigued by this, I switched my Social Security funds to be deposited into my Chime account, through changing settings on my SSA online account, which I set up back in March when ditching Robert as my payee. Online changes take 2 months to be applied, don’t ask me why this is, while a phone call changes them the next month, but I made the changes in June, allowing the change to take effect in August. Normally, I would receive my money on August 3, but thanks to a weekend being in there, I got my money, 5 calendar days early, on august 29, 2022! I was super excited to receive this money, allowing me to make a payment back to Celeste’s Capital One card to say thank you for letting me borrow it to help pay back the overdue phone bill on Amy’s T-Mobile account, amongst other things during my trip, and I got bills paid early for a change. I’m hoping come August 1, to go on more adventures, which will begin with a couple of nights at the Motel Six down the street from my sister’s to help me collect my thoughts and figure everything out, followed by trips to visit my friend, Matthew Barnhill in Utah, and my friend Rose, in Denver, Colorado, both of which, have fiber Internet, which you all know, I’m eagerly excited to play with. Anyway, I think I’ve caught you all up with everything I needed to update you all on at this time. Can’t believe July is almost over, and here’s hoping the rest of 2022, is a good year, and not as crazy as it’s been up to this point. Whatever happens though, I’m sure I’ll eventually, be back in here to tell you all about it, and hopefully, it won’t take me over 2 years from now, to post another update. If you made it this far, I thank you for reading, you all be good, and we’ll talk again, someday.

Life After Pittsfield

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Sun, 31 Jul 2022 05:22:23 GMT

Hello Everyone,
It’s me, that geeky person Monty again, ready to bring you another long update of what I’ve been up to, as I said I would get you all caught up this weekend, to close out July of 2022. As I type this journal entry, I’m listening to one of my favorite Internet radio shows called, Mayhem After Dark, with host, DJ Music Man, AKA Duyahn from Kansas City, Missouri, and right now, he’s playing one of my favorite songs, and only songs I like by this artist, You’re the One, by Jennifer Holiday. Sadly, this is one song to my knowledge, that is only available via a Youtube download. You can’t hear it on any streaming platform, and the original album it was released on back in the 1980’s, went out of print years ago. Thus, it’s a lovely treat to be tuned into this show on The Q Online, and getting to hear this track. Anyway, I digress. I’m not here to talk about what I’m listening to, though the current music when you look at the entry post clicking on the subject line at the top, will tell you such things, but you are all curious what I’ve been up to, since I left Pittsfield, Massachusetts, as a result of my former roommate Celeste, having to move out of her apartment so the building could be renovated. Well, when I left on that fateful afternoon of Friday, March 26, 2021, I headed to Richmond, Virginia, a place I’ve only been trying to get to since 2015, but sadly, had to cancel that trip at the last minute as a result of an expired state ID, and no way to get it renewed before heading off on my trip. It may have taken me 6 years, and sadly, I’ll never get to meet Toonhead, because he passed away in late October of 2017, but at least I’d get to meet the other people he lived with, or most of them anyway. On this trip, I met Sweet Stephanie, Tammy, Stephanie’s new partner, James, and briefly met Bryce, who while he hard lined to their beautiful fiber Internet connection by running an Ethernet cable up to his room, he barely made appearances, keeping mostly to himself.

I took a total of 3 Amtrak trains to get there, with a transfer in Albany, New York, and another one at Pen Station in New York City, arriving in Richmond the following morning. For the first 2 weeks of my stay, I would be at a Motel Six just a few miles from where the crew lived, affectionately called on Swarm, The Loony Bin. Because of busy work schedules, I wouldn’t meet them for a week, at the beginning of Easter weekend of 2021. I mostly relaxed and enjoyed some peace and quiet to myself, ordering out via Doordash and Uber Eats for meals, and on the afternoon of Good Friday, we joined up for a late lunch, early dinner at Longhorn Steak House. I forget what I had to eat, as it’s been too long, but I do remember enjoying what I ate, and everybody was quite nice. Over the next week, I would travel by Uber or Lyft each day to the Loony Bin, mostly spending time with Tammy, as she was the main one of the household who wasn’t working, having time to keep up with the shopping, preparing meals, and hanging out. I accompanied her on trips to Wal-Mart, had several meals while at the Loony Bin, and one morning, she came to my motel room, and we ordered breakfast from iHop. By my final week of the trip, the gang felt comfortable enough with me to allow me to stay with them, and I slept in Tammy’s room with her. Sadly, because I didn’t have a laptop at this point, I could only enjoy the fiber connection on my phone, but I did manage to pull over 250 gigs of content on to my phone off one of my servers in a matter of hours, proving that fiber Internet, is truly awesome! I believe I got symmetrical speeds of 500 megabytes up and down, which was beautiful! Keep in mind, I’m not hard lined, otherwise, I know my speeds would have greatly increased. Other than trying to use Tammy’s desktop computer, which was even slower than my former roommate Celeste’s computer, aside from that frustrating grumble that made me not want to touch that thing after one time of trying to use it, I had a wonderful time. All of the food Tammy made, sometimes with Sweet Stephanie’s help was delicious, and I’m sorry I couldn’t stay there longer. I really wanted to move into The Looney Bin, but 4 people was their limit, so at the end of my final week, with what little funds I had remaining at this point in the trip, I saw to making my journey back across the country, traveling by Amtrak train, from Richmond, Virginia, to Bakersfield, California, where I’d spend some time with my sister. Before heading back though, I did get to upgrade my T-Mobile phone from an iPhone 8+, to an iPhone 12 Pro Max, and I gave one of my old phones to Sweet Stephanie to use as a mini television she could carry around with her in her pocket, actually, I do believe she bought it from me for 50 bucks, while one of my other phones, was traded in to get the upgrade on my T-Mobile phone, leaving me with only one phone not in use at the moment, though the phone I returned to Bakersfield with that wasn’t in use, I would give to my sister later on during the year.

By the time I made it back to Bakersfield, it was late April. Within this time, my former roommate had found a new apartment, and she would be moving into her new place in mid to late May. She also looked into getting on Section 8, which would allow her to have reduced rent. Pleased to see what progress she was making towards finding a new place to live, I settled down at Misty’s, taking it easy and enjoying some well-deserved relaxation, as I saw the Internet radio station, TBRN, come to a close at the end of April, and a new Internet radio station, Genesis Radio, launch on the first day of May. Now you should know, I kind of knew a little bit about Genesis Radio, as the people living at The Looney Bin, are behind that station, and talk of the launch was greatly talked about while I was visiting them. I even got to check out Sweet Stephanie’s Amazon Echo Studio, which is Amazon’s equivalent to a Google Home Max, and it definitely produces some incredible sound! If I had more space, I’d look into getting one. Hmmm, maybe that can be the next Amazon device I buy for my former roommate Celeste, once her old mini stereo and external CD burner bite the dust, time will tell. So for the first part of May, I enjoyed some down time at Misty’s, though it would have been more pleasant, had one of my teeth not started hurting. Don’t ask me what caused the tooth pain, but at one point while at Misty’s during this time, one Saturday night while she was away visiting one of her local friends, the pain was so intense, I actually called, 911, and had parametics take a look at me, even though I wasn’t sure if there was anything they could do, because dentists don’t work at hospitals. They did check my vitals, and other than my tooth pain, I was perfectly healthy otherwise. All I could do at this point, was keep taking Tylenol, and try not to chew on the side that was hurting, and sleep whenever possible. Eventually, the day came for my former roommate Celeste to get the keys to her new apartment, and it was around this time, I’d be heading off, on my next adventure.

You might recall in my last entry talking about what I did in 2020 and early 2021, I briefly mentioned someone named, Sammy Sweet Spirit. Wanting to meet her in person, I took another Amtrak train up to Freemont, California, where she lived, and spent the weekend, hanging out with Sammy, along with her friend Morgan, who I had met a long time ago, so this would be my second time seeing Morgan, and the 3 of us, hung out at Morgan’s boyfriend’s place, and to put it simply, it was like being in an ACB convention exhibit hall through the decades. He had all kinds of retro blind tech to play with, including such gadgets as a Braille light, and a Franklin learning master talking dictionary! Remember those? Well, if you’re blind or visually impaired, and grew up in the 90’s, you might. We had dinner at a wings place, and enjoyed one another’s company. I had an awesome time that weekend, and amazingly, once I left for my trip, my tooth pain, disappeared. Not sure why or how that happened, but I’m just grateful my tooth didn’t ruin my enjoyment on this adventure. At the end of the weekend, I headed back to Sacramento, where I was hoping to meet Mariah Long, the host of the TBRN Weakest Link game I had played back on Thanksgiving weekend of 2020, only she didn’t contact me post my arrival at the Motel Six, so plans to meet her, fell through. However, I did meet up with someone I didn’t expect to meet up with, one of my sighted friends, Danielle, or Danni for short, who I had forgotten even lived in the Sacramento area, until she contacted me post my arrival, offering to pick me up at the train station. She and I went to one of her favorite barbecue places for lunch, and it was so filling, I couldn’t finish my food, and ended up with enough leftovers to feed me the remaining 2 days I stayed in the area. Danni is also a stand up comedian, and I got to attend one of her shows at a local bar and restaurant in the area. She did amazing, and you can check out her comedy bits on Youtube if you wish. As a result of running low on funds though, it was time for me to head back to Bakersfield, where I’d spend some more time with my sister Misty, until I got my money in early June, ready to head off on more adventures.

On June 9, 2021, I would get on another Amtrak train, and make my way to El Paso, Texas, where I would meet Jess, the host of The Jess Mess, and Wes Derby, who has several Internet radio shows, Wes’s Musical Meltdown, and Metal Militia Monday to name a couple. Little did I know how this trip would really, turn out. I also never spoke of how train travel worked during this time. During the pandemic, most, if not all, train lines on Amtrak, ran every other day, and for long hull trains, the dining car was off limits, being known as the sleeper lounge, only available to passengers in the sleeping car. On one of my trips, I believe it was The South West Chief heading towards California when I took it in the fall of 2020, it was not only, super quiet in the car where I was riding, but the conductor on that part of the journey, would sing the state song as we’d pass through a new state. That’s by far, the only time I can ever recall, being entertained on the train in that manner. The train I took to Texas though, while it didn’t have singing conductors, it was a new line for me, as I took the Texas Eagle to get to El Paso, Texas. It was roughly a 9 hour trip from California, and when I arrived in El Paso, I got off to find a burrito lady, as in, a lady who literally, sold burritos on the platform. She even has her own checkin on Swarm, which was pretty fascinating. Sadly though, checking in was all I did, as the line was too long, and I had all of my luggage with me. So instead, I looked into getting an Uber to my motel, and my uber driver was quite the tour guide, telling me about everything we were passing. I quickly learned I was so close to the Mexican border, that my T-Mobile phone was able to roam on Mexican carriers, and I had no problem picking up radio stations across the border, both, on the FM dial, and on the ham radio spectrum. I couldn’t understand much of it, with a lot of it being in Spanish, but it was cool to listen to. My Uber driver on the way to the motel from the train station, even pointed out the foot bridge where I’d cross into Mexico, with hopes to attempt a border crossing while visiting. Unfortunately, while I enjoyed checking out what the radio had to offer, that’s what I’d spend the bulk of my time doing over that long weekend in El Paso, Texas. I wouldn’t even meet Wes and Jess until the original final day of my visit. Sure, so one of their cats got loose, and Wes didn’t feel well after having some epileptic issues shortly after I arrived, but it was a bit, disappointing that I didn’t get to visit them at their place, at all, as they’re another couple who had fiber Internet in their area I was hoping to play with. I did finally have dinner with them the following Tuesday, which caused me to have to extend my trip by an extra 2 days, as there was no way I’d be able to eat and make a bus to Phoenix, Arizona, which was the next stop on my list. We had dinner at Texas Road House, and while my burger was okay, it wasn’t cooked to my satisfaction, and even my body agreed with that statement, as to put it simply, I spent my final full day in El Paso, either in bed, or emptying liquid back end into the toilet, missing out on any opportunity to attempt crossing the Mexican border at the El Paso Mexican border crossing. Overall, while I generally, enjoy my trips, I felt this trip to El Paso, Texas, was very much, a waste of time, and feel it could have been improved greatly, especially in the department of how little I saw Wes and Jess on the entire trip. Sadly, since I took this trip, they’ve moved to Arizona, leaving me with no reason to visit El Paso, Texas again, unless I simply want to return there, just to buy a burrito from the burrito lady at the train platform, and attempt crossing the Mexican border. At the moment I’m writing up this entry though, such a trip is way down on my bucket list at the moment. After being in El Paso for literally, a week at this point, it would be time for me to spend from mid June, to mid July, in the state of Arizona, and I left bright and early on Thursday, June 17, 2021 for that leg of my summer adventure.

I headed to Phoenix, Arizona, where I would spend some time with my now former friend, Vanessa, who would soon become known, as Violent Violet. I may have spoken of the time she came to visit me in Bakersfield back in 2016, and I went to pick her up at the bus station at 4:30 in the morning in an early entry, I forget now if I did, but if I did, it’s the same Vanessa we’re talking about here. She met me at the bus station, and we took Para Transit back to her apartment in northern Phoenix. While visiting, I enjoyed some of her home cooked meals, took a trip to the grocery store to stock up on stuff, walking in 118 degree weather, and let’s say, walking in temperatures you’d expect to have in the bathtub minus the water, is quite exhausting! I believe I chugged down a gallon of water post returning, I was so thirsty from that trip. Another cool thing I did while visiting Vanessa, was getting to listen to a nearby Del Taco drive through on my radio, which I was surprised to find this, as finding drive throughs listenable on my ham radio these days is nearly impossible, due to everything going digital. This would be the last fun thing I’d do, before my trip to see Vanessa, would take an unexpected turn.

We ate dinner the following Tuesday post my arrival, and I headed back to Vanessa’s room to relax, when she called me out to talk to her. Turns out she had spoken with her roommate, who was in a mental hospital at the time, and it was if, she snapped! She yelled at me about eating and drinking her food and drinks, even though in the beginning, she had no problem with me having her food, and she complained about how little I bathed. I tried to defend myself, telling her I didn’t want to dirty her towels, as apparently they had issues getting laundry done, but she wouldn’t listen. She even tried to spray me with water, barely missing my power strip, and she threw my Verizon phone across the room, which caused the earpiece to not work as well after that. She also threw my shoes across the living room, as she threw me out of her bedroom, and later on, I had to get on with Aira to help track them down. I also, reluctantly took a bath, but even that was unpleasant, because for starters, she rushed my bath, only giving me 15 minutes in the bathroom, and because she didn’t put a towel down on the floor for me to step out on to, I got the floor all wet, and she proceeded to yell at me for getting the floor wet. I came close to leaving that night, I was so angered and disgusted by her behavior, not to mention, scared for my safety, but wasn’t sure if I could get an Uber that late at night, and since she did leave and thought to put an air mattress out for me to sleep on in the living room, I did stay one final night, confiding in my former roommate Celeste, and my friend, Nick from Santabarbra, in hopes to get their support, both, financially if necessary, and just, as friends who’d listen and understand what had recently developed. Trust me when I say, I’d take Celeste’s temper any day over how I was treated by who I now call, Violent Violet. Celeste’s temper is a gentle breeze on a sunny day to put it lightly in comparison to how Violent Violet behaved. She was so bad, I left early the next morning, heading in an Uber to my next destination, visiting my friend John, over in Apatchi Junction, Arizona, and I even had Celeste on the phone with me as I left, to ensure she saw I got safely out of there, and ironically, it rained on the morning of my departure from Violet’s place. Luckily, one of her neighbors helped me find my ride, and I left that apartment complex, never to return there ever again. I also blocked Violent Violet on all platforms, never to speak to her again. I’m sorry, but that’s no way to treat your guest, ever! Luckily, the next leg of my journey, would be 100 times better by a long shot.

I arrived at John’s trailer in Apatchi Junction, and had a lovely time with him, and his wife, Amy. I had delicious home cooked meals, from pizza to sandwiches, and each Sunday I was there, we had chicken. He’s a ham, and has a room dedicated to his radios you enter into as you come into the trailer, and not only, did I get to play with one of the oldest base units in existance, but I got to use that base unit to make contacts on Field Day later on in June of that year. It was also on that weekend, I taught my former roommate how to record Internet radio shows using the wget command on my many servers, and amazingly, she caught on quickly, and had this down to a science a month later! Not bad for someone who’s never played with command line before this time. As for my time at John’s, it was the complete opposite from my time at Violent Violet’s. Calm, peaceful, and loads of fun. I slept in the living room, where he did have a desktop computer, which was hooked up to his Amazon Echo, and the speaker won’t work if the computer is shut down. The coolest thing I did while in Apatchi Junction though, wouldn’t occur until July 10, 2021, when we’d head to Mesa, Arizona, to attend the annual Ham Radio club party, at this cool place called, Organ Stop Pizza. It’s a pizza place that’s home to the oldest theater organ in existence, and this organ, can make sounds you won’t hear on any regular old church organ. It can sound like a train, and pretty much, any instrument you desire! The place was huge with quite the echo, making it difficult to record the organ, with how noisy the party was, but the organ sounded beautiful, and John gave me a copy of the DVD documentary you can purchase at their gift shop on DVD, which talks about the organ, its history, etc. so what I wasn’t able to learn while at the restaurant, I learned when checking out the documentary later on. I should also point out that in mid June, around the time I went to visit Violent Violet, Celeste brought Flashback Friday back to 98.6 The Mix, and would continue the show for 56 straight weeks after that, and at Thanksgiving weekend in 2021, she did feature the Organ Stop Pizza documentary on her show, should you wish to get in touch with her, and request that particular show archive. Oh yeah, and you all know how much I love pizza, and no doubt, the pizza at Organ Stop Pizza, was delicious too. Post the party, I caught a baseball game, with an incredible score, as John had the sports package on Serious XM, allowing us to enjoy games every night I was visiting. I had a blast, and I was sorry to see this trip end, but he’s definitely somebody I’ll go back to visit again someday, when the opportunity allows me to do so.

Originally, the ACB Convention was suppose to be held at the Sharriton, Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona in the summer of 2021, but sadly, ended up being a virtual convention because there were still limitations placed on crowd gatherings as the pandemic, slowly phased out. You all know how much I hated the pandemic, so to ease my sanity, I just had to go stay at the hotel where I would have been, had the convention been in person that year, and on Monday, July 12, 2021, I did just that. Sadly, I did accidentally leave behind one of my radio chargers at John’s, but he mailed it to my sister’s, and I’d receive it by the end of the month. He also gave me his old Moshi talking alarm clock, only I managed to lose the clock while on that trip, only having the power cord in the end, and to this day, it’s a mystery as to how I managed to lose that thing. I did make it to the Sharriton though, and it was so secure, you needed your room key to get on to the elevator, and you couldn’t go past the floor where your room was located. Sadly, while I did get an upper floor room, I was too far away to clearly hear the Del Taco drive through on my radio at this location, but just getting to relax and enjoy a late night burger at the hotel bar and restaurant one night for dinner, allowed me to unwind from the crazy adventures I had, before getting on another Greyhound bus, to head back to Bakersfield, where I would spend the remainder of July and all of August, relaxing at my sister’s. As for that time, nothing too eventful happened then, other than getting a Doordash order from Wendy’s, completely incorrect in late August, but if you thought my adventures for the year were done, not quite yet, there’s more to come in September, and in a way, you wouldn’t expect.

Normally, when I go on adventures, I’m the one going to visit people, but this was a case, where one of my friends, would be coming to visit me. Well okay, so my buddy Shane from Ohio, was going to visit friends in Sacramento, California, but he was unable to stay with them over the first week of his trip, and his flight was already booked. So Shane asked if I could come up to Sacramento to hang out with him for a few days. I agreed under the condition that we split the cost of the room, and it was on the way to Reno, Nevada, where I planned on going to visit my long time buddy Robert, so I didn’t mind at all. I headed up to Sacramento in mid September, and we hung out for a few days, playing radio and listening to the Sacramento airport, and I got to be a guest on his weekly radio show, The ShaneOTrain, which aired on Worlds Awakening Radio at that time. I was even nice enough to take his headphones to him in my first, rount trip Uber when he forgot it when he left to go see his friend he originally went there to visit, and one day during our time together, I did get to meet his friend Ashley, when the 3 of us went to have breakfast at Denny’s. It was a quiet, relaxing trip, but I was just glad to get to see Shane again, since I hadn’t seen him since my visit to Ohio back in the fall of 2019. After staying a couple of days post his departure from the motel to go see Ashley, I headed up to Reno, Nevada on the California Zeffer to see Robert, and later on, I’d be glad I made this trip, even more than I was when I initially took it last year. While visiting Robert, we did go to a couple of local mountains, though he was quite busy with work, so sadly, we didn’t get as much time to hang out this time. He did acquire the entire series of the TV series, Emergency on DVD, so we worked on ripping it and placing it up on one of my servers where I have DVD images stored. He even downloaded some DVD’s to his collection that I was surprised he was even interested in getting, Sabrina the Teenage Witch was the most surprising one he grabbed, as I had no idea until that trip, he even liked that show. My time in Reno lasted until mid October, at which time, I headed back to Bakersfield, California, where I once again, settled down at Misty’s, ready to relax and get through the winter months.

I can pretty much, sum up the remainder of 2021 in one paragraph, as by this time in the year, the adventures were done, and life became pretty uneventful. During the month of November, I did play with Backpack Studio, as it had recently developed the ability to stream to Icecast servers, and both, my former roommate Celeste and I, both played with this app quite a bit. As for Thanksgiving, I celebrated it by myself, while Misty went to visit one of her local friends, and I ordered myself McDonald’s via Doordash and relaxed, while listening to Thanksgiving day programming on the reborn HKC Radio, which launched in late July, shortly after I returned to my sister’s from Phoenix. In December, I spoke with Celeste early on the morning of her birthday, while we caught this mini series that was a game show revolving around Harry Potter trivia, and I bought a couple of gifts which I mailed to Celeste for a combined, Birthday Christmas gift, those being, an 8 terabyte USB external hard drive, and the complete series of Punky Brewster on DVD, which she’d get around to watching shortly after the holidays, and enjoyed very much! She has yet to use the hard drive at the time of writing up this entry, but it won’t be too much longer before she needs to use it, as she is starting to run out of space on one of her main external hard drives that’s connected to her desktop. My Christmas day was quiet and uneventful, but I did awaken to a surprise, as Celeste got me a 200 dollar Doordash gift balance, which I was able to apply, and while I used most of it in late December of 2021, and early January of 2022, the new year would bring, several unpleasant, and unexpected, surprises.

I did watch the ball drop on New Year’s Eve, and got to do it twice, thanks to dropping into one of Celeste’s speakers, and enjoying it with her out East, before I caught it again with my sister out West. We got money early in January, thanks to the holiday effecting pay day, but roughly 10 days into the month, I learned that Kira’s husband, Matthew, wasn’t doing well, being in the hospital with COVID19. While praying he’d get better, I heard from my buddy Shane once again, who now expressed interest in coming to visit me, as the place he was moving into out in Ohio, wasn’t ready yet, and he had no other place to go, so he asked if he could come visit me in Bakersfield. I was low on funds, so I agreed that as long as he paid for the room, I’d join him. We spent 21 days together at the Motel Six down the street from my sister’s, and back in August of 2021, I referred my former roommate Celeste to Capital One, allowing me to get a 100 dollar referral bonus, which I received, thanks to her being approved. She graciously helped me pay for meals while Shane and I were together, and eventually, I helped her pay back the card, once I had money again, which would take even longer than normal, for reasons I’ll get to later. Unfortunately, my time with Shane, didn’t go as well as I had hoped. He got sick over his first weekend in Bakersfield, and during this time, Kira’s husband Matthew, sadly passed away from complications of COVID19, or as Kira put it on Facebook, “Matthew got his wings.” It was so sad, how he passed away, only in his mid 30’s, leaving behind his wife, a step daughter, and 2 biological daughters, 3 daughters in total, all quite young, ages 2, 5, and 15 respectively. On top of this news, it was around this time, I received another bit of shocking news, that my buddy Robert up in Reno, Nevada, was also in the hospital, suffering from complications of COVID. I was even more shocked to hear this, as he was quite healthy up to this point, and I spoke to him not long after the start of January, and he was doing fine. Then, I caught whatever Shane had, feeling sick and miserable my first full week visiting him at the motel, staying in bed, and learned the hard way that orange juice, needs to be refridgerated, which wouldn’t be a problem, only our motel room, didn’t have one.

As a result of me drinking spoiled orange juice from McDonald’s, I got quite sick in the middle of that week. I had pretty much, every symptom known to man. Coughing, chills, fatigue, soar throat, vomiting from the orange juice that didn’t agree with me, liquid back end, and I was basically, falling apart. I came close to having to go to the hospital, but thankfully, I started feeling slightly better the next day, and was finally able to hold stuff down, even in small quantities, which helped. Unfortunately, I was in no condition to keep my promise to Celeste and participate live on her Flashback Friday show, airing on the anniversary of Challenger, Friday, January 28, 2022, so she was thankful I had done that space show on the private server the previous year, and she took a clip of me from that show to air on Flashback Friday, which I approved of her doing, given the current circumstances at the time. Shane continued to do his radio show on at least 2 of the weeks he was there, though that first week, I lay there quietly, pretty much, out of it, I felt so miserable. I didn’t start to feel fully back to myself until the second full week of our time together, and while we were suppose to go to our friend Trina’s birthday party, as I did get to have lunch with her at Red Robbin back in early May of 2021, sadly, I didn’t get to see her in late January, early February, thanks to Shane not feeling well that day. So we scrubbed that trip, and most of his visit to Bakersfield, was quiet, uneventful, and nothing special, other than sleeping, eating out via Doordash orders to our motel room, which was freezing at points because the heater was broken, and no fridge or microwave, so leftovers ended up luke warm, along with the sodas he bought post arriving in Bakersfield. It wasn’t until the last full day of his visit, when things would reach the highlight of the overall time spent together.

We went to Best Buy, after I had talked about how much I missed having a computer, as shortly before Shane arrived, with no warning what so ever, my Shadow, stopped working. Whether it was via the IOS app, or the computer program, which my former roommate Celeste had access to on my old laptop, we’d go to launch the shadow, and nothing would happen. Of course, I was already unhappy with them when I removed storage from it back in May of 2021, thinking I could get it back, only for it to not be available, but now, the shadow wouldn’t boot at all! I canceled it that month, and to my pleasant surprise, while at Best Buy, Shane took me to look at laptops and hard drives, and I managed to get a new laptop, a Dell machine, with a 512 internal ssd, and along with it, I got an 8 terabyte Western Digital USB external hard drive. I was over the moon with what Shane got for me, I never expected him to be this generous, ever! He even helped me get it all set up post returning to the motel room on our final night there, at least going so far as to get NVDA installed on it so I could use it comfortably, and I’d spend the second half of February, continuing to set it up, post returning to Misty’s, as he left the next day out of Bakersfield airport, to go visit friends out in Texas. I wanted to stay a little bit longer, but we learned upon checking out, that the maximum number of days a guest could stay at one time at this particular Motel Six, was 21 days, and we had sadly, reached our limit. So I saw Shane off, and headed back to Misty’s, where things would continue to get interesting.

You might recall how I mentioned earlier, it would be a while, before I could help Celeste pay her credit card back. This is because, on pay day in February, I didn’t get my money, which would be sent to me by my buddy Robert, who had been my payee since 2003. He was obviously, still in the hospital at this point, but sadly, not much longer. Super Bowl Sunday came around, and all I remember at this point, was the Rams won the game, coming back big time, in the fourth quarter. Shortly after the game concluded though, I received the devastating news from his son Julian, that Robert, had sadly, passed away, on Sunday, February 13, 2022, just moments after the Super Bowl Game ended, and only 8 days after his 50th. birthday on February 5. He was hooked up to ventalaters, and just like with Matthew, his kidneys started to fail. At a point, they thought he might come through, but sadly, he declined, with no return. On Valentine’s Day, Julian figured out how to get my money to me, and I saw to making payments to stuff that was overdue, and saw to paying a little bit back to Celeste’s Capital One card, though my sister had the nerve to go and tell Celeste of Robert’s passing before I was ready to tell her. We did talk about it though, as she called me on February 15, as soon as she found out, and the rest of that month, was kind of uneventful, as I grieved the loss of my long time friend of nearly 30 years, and saw to setting up my new laptop, and putting stuff on my new hard drive, via several Backblaze restores. I also started playing with another backup service called, iDrive, which fails in comparison to Backblaze, but I’m getting it free for a year, before I have to either cancel, or start paying 80 dollars for the service. To this day, I’m still not pleased with IDrive, and there’s no doubt, come next year when I cancel the service, I’ll be back in here to rant about it, if improvements haven’t made me change my mind by then.

We’re now up to the month of March, when I’d turn 42, or everything in the universe, Celeste would order Liberty Pizza delivery on my special day to celebrate, and it would reach 1 year since I was last in Pittsfield. Pay day also came and went, with me receiving no money, and Julian no longer had access to Robert’s bank accounts. So not only, did Celeste gratefully help me pay my bills in March, and I decided to sign up for Chime, this online bank that would allow me to receive direct deposits early, after being recommended by my friend, Joe Quin, and I in turn, referred Celeste to Chime, but I spent much of March, trying to get a hold of Social Security, in hopes to finally become my own payee, so I could get my money directly from Social Security, and not through a third party payee. Even Julian when I briefly spoke to him on Valentine’s Day recommended I look into this. It took several calls and waiting on hold, but I finally got the process started, and in April, I got my money. To this day, I still haven’t seen March’s money, a long, complicated story I don’t wish to get into here, but I think this would be a good spot to see to wrapping up this entry, as Mayhem After Dark will soon be over, and I’m starting to grow tired. I’d like to head off to bed, but rest assured, I’ll be back sometime tomorrow, with another entry, catching you all up on what I’ve been up to, since April of this year. If you made it this far, I thank you for reading, and I’ll be back with another update in this blog, someday.

A Long Overdue Update and Testing Email Post Settings

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Sat, 30 Jul 2022 03:03:59 GMT

Hello Everyone,
Yep, it’s that geeky thing known as Monty, here with a long, overdue update, as I test something I never thought to mess with in the over 18 years I’ve had my Live Journal account. Before getting into the main update I wish to post, I’ll just say for starters, that I’m using my phone to do this, and between having trouble finding a post to journal button or link when looking at the website in Safari, and the Live Journal app hardly being accessible with Voiceover, I can log in and get the process started with posting a Live Journal entry in the app, but all I’m able to do, is type the subject of the entry, and attempt to add a photo, which means giving the app permission to access my iPhone’s camera and my photos, which I don’t keep a lot of those on my phone to begin with, I couldn’t find a way to type up an entry. I even attempted to turn screen recognition on and off, and this didn’t make any difference. Remembering something my former roommate Celeste told me a while back, and I’ll get to why she’s now my former roommate later on in this post, she told me how back when she had a Live Journal, she was able to post via email. Not wishing to boot up my laptop, in fact, I can’t boot up my laptop right now because for one, I’m not at home right now, secondly, it’s packed away in my backpack, and three, I’m sitting at Louie’s Burgers in Bakersfield, California writing up this entry in between bites of burger and fries, both, my own French fries and my sisters fries, and believe me, it’s not easy typing on my phone with greasy fingers, and a bit too noisy in here to try to dictate my entry, well, I’ve set up the ability to post to my journal via email, to see how this feature works.

So now that I got the geeky formalities out of the way, time to move on, to the meat and potatoes, or as I like to call it, the burger and fries of this entry. After all, a burger is made of meat, and fries are made with potatoes, and in my opinion, burgers and fries sound 10 times better than just saying, plain old, meat and potatoes, so yeah, you can tell I’m enjoying my dinner at Louies, need I say more? However, the last time I posted in this thing, I was still living in Pittsfield, Massachusetts with my buddy Celeste, and we were in the beginning of the COVID19 pandemic, unable to go anywhere, or do much of anything. In fact, I last posted in this journal, 2 years, 4 months, and 5 days ago, back on March 24, 2020. It is now, July 29, 2022, as I write this, and because I have a lot to update you on, I’m going to do this in separate entries, finishing off what all went down in the remainder of 2020 with me into early 2021, at least getting you up to the point where my roommate arrangement with Celeste ended, and then, I’ll cover the rest of 2021 and early 2022 in a separate entry, and possibly from March of 2022 up to now in a third entry, time will tell. All I know, is that I see this taking up the entire weekend, so prepare for a lot of journal, AKA blog updating from me, since it’s been quite a few minutes since I last wrote in this thing.

So to pretty much, sum it up in a nutshell, COVID19 ruled supreme throughout the remainder of 2020, much to my dismay. In April of that year, I enjoyed checking out the coverage of Apollo 13 in Real Time on the apolloinrealtime.org website, and Easter Sunday was spent entirely at Celeste’s apartment. Her mom and brother brought by shopping bags of Easter goodies for both of us, me getting a huge box of rice crispy treats, and Celeste getting lots of chocolate Easter candy, something I don’t much care for, mainly because I’m not a fan of chocolate. I believe we ate food in the freezer for dinner that night, and it was certainly one of the quietest Easters for my roommate, as she’s use to spending that day with her family, and going to church. Come the month of May, I was so fed up by the Corona virus, that I do believe I posted a video to my Youtube channel, ranting about the state of things at that time, feel free to scroll through my Youtube channel and check it out for yourself, it should be pretty easy to find, as I haven’t posted too many videos since then. Come June, Celeste left the apartment for the first time in over 3 months for a dentist appointment, I tried Hot Harry’s Fresh Burritos for the first time, a local Mexican place in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and not only, did we receive more tortilla chips than either one of us could eat in a single sitting, but Celeste learned the hard way to remember to turn off Do Not Disturb on her phone before placing a Doordash order. Hope she doesn’t mind me mentioning that here, but apologies if I’ve publicly embarrassed her, in the end though, we got our food, thanks to going downstairs to wait for it. We also did a show on our private streaming server, Private Server 102, where we played every Corona Virus parody that had come out at the time, and other than some microphone issues that kept creeping up throughout the show, I, along with my roommate Celeste, who was at the controls, and a good friend of ours from Santabarbra, California, Nick, called into my buddy Celeste’s Google voice number, AKA her request line for Internet radio shows, where the 3 of us, had some good ranting and discussion of the state of things at the time.

As expected, nothing was going on during the summer months, no Fourth of July parade, no local Third Thursday event. In fact, we did that broadcast on the third Thursday in June of 2020 to prove our point. On July 4, 2020, instead of a parade, Pittsfield Public Television, aired a very nice, retrospective of the parade, looking back at the history of the parade, and checking out memorable floats and other parade things from over the years. I was fascinated to learn that the Pittsfield Fourth of July parade had been going on since 1860, and that people would come from out of town to watch this parade. The rest of that day was quiet, and uneventful, with hardly any traffic coming down our street, and no barbecue of any kind at Celeste’s parent’s house for us to enjoy. It was also in July, when I completed 30 episodes of Monty’s Grab Bag over on 98.6 The Mix, and by this time, I had enough of public Internet radio broadcasting, so decided to quit for good, so I could relax and enjoy the rest of my summer. Celeste, on the other hand, continued her Flashback Friday show every week on 98.6 The Mix, and this would continue for a good while. We also paid off our phones we had with Sprint at the time, making them ours, and reducing how much we owed on our bill each month. Doing this, made me realize, I had paid off my Verizon phone, which was still an iPhone 8+ at the time. I was use to using a phone with no home button, thanks to my 10S Max I had through Sprint, so come August of 2020, I took the plunge, and upgraded my Verizon phone to the 11 Pro Max. To be sure we didn’t miss receiving the phone, on the day of its arrival, Celeste and I waited outside her apartment building all day long, and between the friendly staff at Peter’s Cut Above, the haircut place below our apartment, we had chairs to sit on and drinks from Liberty Pizza to keep us cool, and while we ended up badly sunburned in the end, the wait was worth it. By sometime after 3 in the afternoon, I had the phone in my hand, and spent the remainder of that Tuesday in early to mid August, getting the phone all set up and ready to use.

While the rest of August remained uneventful, I was getting pretty tired of having to wear masks, having nothing to do, and constantly hearing my least favorite phrase of 2020, “Social distancing.” Heck, writing that just now, made me cringe, if that’s saying anything. Well, I wanted to prove that we could still go places during this pandemic God damn it, and I had a chance to prove myself, come September. I even left Pittsfield, Massachusetts for my big adventure of the year, on one of the most daring days of all, September 11, 2020, 19 years to the day of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001. After helping Celeste prerecord a special of Flashback Friday commemorating the 9-11 event to air that evening on Flashback Friday, as it was on a Friday that year, I got on an Amtrak train that afternoon, leaving Pittsfield, and heading across the country, to visit people out west, as I dearly missed my family and friends out that way. My first stop, was spending a week or so over in Palmdale, where one of my friends treated me to Carl’s Junior at 3 in the morning. That was my first bit of knowledge even realizing it was open that late at night. I enjoyed my Western Bacon Burger in her car, and had a good time, hanging out and visiting with friends in the area. After a few days of hanging out there, I took an Uber to Bakersfield, where I’d spend the remainder of September visiting my sister Misty, who you all may recall from an earlier entry I did post back in 2020, I left her back in September of 2019, with Celeste’s help, as a result of her getting me into some financial trouble. Thankfully, she was on her best behavior while I was visiting, and I do believe I only had one card with me on this trip, and I could lock up the card when necessary, just in case. We of course, enjoyed pizza from Hungry Howies, and burgers at Louies, and I did see my friend Candis, along with her old, 2000 Ford Explorer, that did have trouble starting up a couple of times while there, but it was worth visiting the area, as Bakersfield is still beautiful at that time of year, with temperatures still averaging in the 80’s and 90’s, while back in Pittsfield, their days of seeing the 80’s, were fast disappearing. Come early October, my long time buddy Robert, drove from Reno, Nevada, to Bakersfield, California, to pick me up from Misty’s. We spent the night at a local Howard Johnson’s motel to allow Robert to rest since he drove that entire day, and the following day, we headed back to Reno, stopping at a couple of places on the way to get a bite to eat, and I went into a technology store on the way, that was very much, deserted of anything, people shopping there included. Definitely showed how much the pandemic had a negative effect on local stores in the area.

We made it up to Reno by the end of that Saturday in early October, and I would spend the bulk of October of 2020 in Reno, Nevada, hanging out with Robert, his sons, Eugene and Julian, and his daughter Destiny, who lives in a trailer near them in the same trailer park. We went to several mountains while I was there to play radio, and it was on that trip, when I bought a portable battery pack for charging my phone, along with the DG77 radio I had been wanting, to be able to mess with DMR servers. Thanks to the help and recommendations of Robert, I was able to get these items off of Amazon and had them in time to take back across the country with me. Meanwhile, back in Pittsfield, since Prime Day hit in October of that year, Celeste took advantage of the deals being offered on Amazon, and bought me a really nice power strip I had my eye on, that had 12 outlets and 4 USB ports, and sadly, she took a break from doing Flashback Friday over on 98.6 The Mix, due to some disagreements that arose during that time with other staff members at the station. She was also really enjoying using my laptop, which I left behind, in order to travel light, and liked how much faster it ran than her desktop, which was slowing down after running for 3 years, proving mechanical drives slow down over time, while solid state drives, which is what my laptop had, work at their top performance, until the end of time. Celeste loved it so much, and had more than enough money in her savings account at the time, that she decided to buy the laptop from me, to which I agreed, and in turn, this gave me money to get back to Pittsfield, since I was running low on funds towards the end of the month, and winter was right around the corner. On the final weekend of October, I got on to the California Zeffer, another Amtrak train line, to head from Reno, Nevada, all the way to Chicago, before switching to the Lake Shore Limited Amtrak line, to finish my return journey. The coolest part of this trip, was getting to go through a tunnel called the Moffit tunnel, which leads into Denver, Colorado, that’s 9,000 feet above sea level, and it’s quite long and dark in there, not to mention, we’re going over a mountain path, that everybody on the train is advised to stay in their current car while passing through the tunnel. When we arrived in Denver though, I was going to step off the train for a few minutes to stretch my legs, since it was a crew change stop, but when I learned it was 10 degrees outside and snowing, in late October no doubt, I decided to stay on bored the train, and not go anywhere. Can you say, “bur?” At least where I was going, it was still in the 40’s in Pittsfield, Massachusetts at this time of year, and no snow in the area yet, so that was a relief.

I did have a layover in Chicago, about 6 hours or so, and then, caught my train later on that day, which got me to Pittsfield on the following Tuesday. When Celeste picked me up from the train, we had Liberty Pizza for dinner, and I do believe we ordered McDonald’s for breakfast the next morning via Doordash. The rest of October was pretty, uneventful, as even Halloween was quiet that year, thanks to the pandemic. However, the first week of November, would prove to be interesting, no doubt.

With it being a Presidential election year, and yes, my roommate Celeste did get to vote early, as this was offered during the pandemic, she voted before I even returned from my trip, we were all waiting in anticipation to see if Donald Trump would get reelected, or if Joe Biden, would become our next president. Nothing was figured out by the end of the day on election day in early November, and on the same night, we lost heat. I snuggled up beneath my blanket, not thinking much of it. While the heat on those old, clanging radiator heaters returned the next day, I couldn’t help but notice I was still feeling chilly. Thinking a bath might help, I went to take one, and for the first time I can remember, I got out of the bath before Celeste came to check on me, because I still was feeling cold in the warm bath, telling me I wasn’t feeling very good at all. I went back to bed, and other than coming out to eat some small meals over the next 3 days, I basically, stayed in bed, trying to fight whatever illness had plagued me at the time. Celeste would drop into my Amazon Echo Dot to check on me, and it was all I could do was moan miserably to let her know I was alive, but not feeling well at all. A bottle of water stayed by my bed, and I took a lot of Tylenol to help me feel better. It was also the week Celeste’s talking oral thermometer died, prompting her to order a new one. By the time it came in the mail though, not only, was I starting to feel better, but on Saturday at the end of the week, we finally, had the results of the election! To my pleasant surprise, Joe Biden, was our next President! I was obviously feeling better, as I jumped out of bed excitedly and came out into the living room to give Celeste the news, who was taking a nap on the futon at the time.

She and I had a bit of a bet going on. If Trump got reelected, we were going to order McDonald’s for dinner, since he was a huge fan of Mcdonald’s, and I’m sure still is, at the time I’m writing up this post, and if Biden got elected, we’d order Taco Bell for dinner. Well, since Joe Biden won, we ordered our usual staples from Taco Bell, for me, being, 2 steak quesadillas and 2 or 3 Doritos Locos tacos with nothing but meat and cheese in them, and we filled up on our dinner, while listening to Joe Biden speak to the nation on television for the first time as our new President. And while I was starting to feel better, and excited to receive this news, the following day was a huge let down, when Alex Trebek, the long-time host of Jeopardy, sadly, passed away from complications of Pancriatic Cancer. Seeing he held on for as long as he did though, was pretty amazing, not to mention, he continued to host Jeopardy up to 2 weeks before his death, and had enough tapings of the show to continue hosting for the rest of the year, post his passing. It was kind of earie watching his final episode in early January of 2021, knowing he had been dead for a couple of months at this point.

Later on in November, Celeste and I did have a lovely Thanksgiving, this year, in 2020, being on Thanksgiving day itself, and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade had several prerecorded performances, as well as those in attendance, wearing masks, as a result of everything going on. I was just happy they were able to have a parade at all. We went to Celeste’s parents house later on that day to enjoy the usual Thanksgiving dinner they provide, and other than a bit of a debate I got into between her parents, brother, and a friend of his, Britney, from upstate New York who was visiting, who Celeste got an opportunity to meat while I was away earlier in the year, despite a bit of a debate over how safe we should be during the pandemic, we actually had a lovely dinner overall. Celeste and I took home leftovers to have the next day, and this did include another pumpkin pie all to myself, and unlike in years past, where it was anywhere from 12 to 35 degrees on Thanksgiving in the area, I do believe it only got down to 50 degrees on Thanksgiving day in 2020, making it the warmest Thanksgiving day by far out in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, which was quite nice. The following day, I got to participate in a virtual Weakest Link game on the Internet radio station, TBRN, where contestants played via Teamtalk, and their good friend, Mariah Long, was the host. Sadly, I didn’t make it to the end, but I did make it about halfway, before getting a question wrong, and I had a lot of fun participating. I hope to get to do that again someday, as The Weakest Link is one of my favorite game shows, and getting to be a contestant on it, even if it’s not the official show, but one put on by an Internet radio station, is good enough for me. I do have it archived, and can go back and enjoy it, whenever I wish.

So now, we’re up to December. I said goodbye to Sprint at the beginning of this month, no longer interested in having the phone or the service, thanks to Sprint merging with T-Mobile, and while on my trip earlier in the year, I played with this ESim service called, google Fy, which, while neat and all, as you pay a base price of only $20.00 per month, it uses T-Mobile’s network, and there’s no roaming available on the service, so if you’re outside coverage areas, you won’t have service at all. Plus, I wanted to save some money on Celeste’s Sprint bill, so had my service canceled at the beginning of the month, putting me back down to 2 phones and 2 carriers, once again. As for Celeste though, it was quite a busy month for her, as her birthday falls that month. Amazingly, she did get to have a birthday celebration, which included myself, her long-time friend Krystal, and of course, the birthday girl and her family. We got pizza from another local pizza place called Arizona pizza, and instead of going to see a movie at a theater this time, the entire party was held at Celeste’s parents house, and we watched the Disney Pixar film, Onward, on Disney+. It was very good, and Celeste even received it on DVD a few days later at a rescheduled family party, that had to be pushed back for reasons I forget why now. On the original scheduled date though, she walked down to one of her favorite restaurants to pick up lunch for herself called, Flavours of Malaysia, which was sadly, hit hard by the pandemic, and closing down at the end of the year. The restaurant even use to be available on Doordash, but this all went down in early to mid October while I was still away, prompting Celeste to go pick up lunch for herself, since it was in walking distance of her apartment, and almost getting run over by a car in the process. Luckily, she didn’t get hurt, but still, what a scary experience for her to go through at the time. At least the final trip there in December wasn’t a disaster, and she enjoyed her last, bitter sweet lunch from the restaurant, while I had a burger and fries from Liberty Pizza I do believe, or was that the time she went to Flavours and Burger King to pick up lunch for the both of us. I can’t remember now, but either way, our lunches were lovely regardless. On the day of her family party, since I celebrated with Celeste with her friends, and we even celebrated on her actual birthday, Monday, December 14, 2020, by ordering a late lunch from Panera Bread via Doordash, I stayed behind at the apartment and relaxed, while enjoying the final Digital Domain show of the year on TBRN.

Christmas was just around the corner, and on Saturday, December 19, 2020, Celeste put on a 12 hour Christmas show over on Private Server 102, featuring the best content in our Christmas music collection, which was so good, I stayed up all night to listen to that, followed by checking out the weekend of Christmas programming on stations like Treehouse Radio and MushroomFM, who are both notorious for having Christmas countdowns every year around the holidays. Later that week, Christmas day arrived, after I enjoyed what I could on the terrestrial radio the day before, only to be disappointed because WTBR ended Christmas music at midnight on Christmas day, thankfully, the celebration the next day would very much make up for it. Celeste was quite surprised by my gift, a Fourth Generation Amazon Echo smart speaker, and even more surprised that her parents got her the blue Yetti studio USB desktop microphone she had her eye on for a while, and I was pleasantly surprised by my gifts, including, the movie, White House Down on DVD, along with the complete series of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine. Unlike Star Trek, The Next Generation from the previous year, I got all seasons and disc the first go around. All we had to do, was clean up the final disc from season 6, which got some sticky stuff on it, making it difficult to play and to rip, but thankfully, Celeste went to town on that disc, cleaning it up with Windex, and in the end, the disc ripped, and played, beautifully after that. I forgot to mention earlier in the post, how back in July, I checked out the exhibit hall at the virtual ACB convention, where Celeste and I both signed up for NFB Newsline, and we also ordered several items off of Amazon, including some stuff Celeste needed badly, like lightning to headphone jack cables for her phone, a backup charger for her Apple Watch, and a new wireless headset, and we both ordered several movies, like Frozen II, Wonder Park, and The Wizard of Oz to name a few, but I also ordered movies like, Frequency, Space Camp, and Top Gun, to add to the DVD collection. Back to Christmas though, we had a lovely time, complete with Christmas dinner at the end, and despite it being a crummy year, the holidays were celebrated, no differently where Celeste’s family was concerned, in years past.

Then came New Years, and I can say, both, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day of 2021, were for the most part, quiet ones, spent at home at our apartment, with the exception of a moment on the morning of New Year’s Eve for Celeste. She was suppose to spend the day with her nephew and parents, only her dad awoke that morning, not feeling well, canceling the event, and because her mom didn’t call until Celeste was all ready to walk out the door, canceling the event, she was so upset by this, she pretty much, lost it. We both had to calm down from her fit of anger, as even I’ve had events canceled at the last minute before, and never blew up in a fit of anger like she did over them. It made me question if I even wanted to be her roommate anymore if stuff like this was going to set her off so easily, but in the end, we calmed down, and had a lovely dinner from Liberty Pizza, having ginger ales with dinner in the end, because they were out of Pepsi at the restaurant. We watched the ball drop on TV that day, and to start the new year, Celeste got an account on this phone entertainment system called, Live Wire, after seeing me play with it towards the end of the year, when my buddy Joe Quen from Monroe, Louisiana, got to become admin of the audio book area, putting audio books on to the system. Celeste was intrigued by the system, so signed up for an account, which took her a couple of tries, but got it all figured out on the second try. I also played a lot with something else I signed up for in early September of 2020 before taking my trip called, Shadow, which is this virtual Windows machine, you can access from anywhere. They have a program for the PC, as well as an app for the phone, allowing you to have an accessible Windows machine, which is pretty cool, not only because you can access it from anywhere, but it’s run out of a data center, in my case, in California, and thus, giving you incredible speeds on the Internet. Excellent for uploading and downloading data to the machine, and other than it shutting down after 15 minutes of inactivity, if you have a bluetooth keyboard to use with your phone, it works wonderfully! Or at least, it did, more on that in a future entry. In the meantime though, I’d be pleased to have it at all, and I’ll be getting to the reason behind that later on in this post.

So now, it’s 2021. Six days in to the year, people storm in to the Capital Building in Washington D.C. as the final votes for the cabinet are being counted up. That was a crazy day in itself, as the building was damaged, and all of Congress had to take cover and get to somewhere safe. Trump nearly got impeached, as an impeachment trial was issued, only for that to go nowhere, because another 2 weeks later, he’d leave the White House for the final time, and Joe Biden would become the official President of The United States. On Anaugoration day, Celeste and I had McDonald’s for breakfast as we watched Trump leave, and we had Taco Bell for lunch, while Biden gave his anaugoration speech and we enjoyed the ceremony on TV. We were full and mostly passed out by the time the small parade came through as Biden headed from Capital Hill to The White House, but it was nice, getting to watch it together, and for once, live, and not pretaped, since I was out on the East coast watching this event as it unfolded.

We’re now up to February, and to kick off the month, as in early January, Celeste canceled her old Private Server, which she called, Private Server 101, now that we had Private Server 102 for nearly a year at this point, she did a songs to make you cry show, and I definitely, teared up during that show. To begin February though, I got on to Private Server 102, and did a show commemorating the disasters of Challenger, and Columbia, being the space nerd I am, I had to do something to commemorate these events, and my friend, Sammy Sweet Spirit, who I met on TBRN’s Teamtalk Server in late October, early November when she started broadcasting her show over there, Look at it This Way, even joined me on Teamtalk for the show at a point. I played a lot of space themed music, as well as news clips from both events, and discussed my thoughts of both disasters, and if anybody wants to check out the archive, just ask Celeste or myself, we still have it in our massive ongoing growing archives collection. Celeste would also be grateful I did that show, for another reason, which wouldn’t come until another year later. As for the rest of February, Celeste got CBS All Access, which would become Paramount+ in March, when she learned Nickelodeon shows were now on the platform, and I enjoyed basketball games with my NBA League Pass subscription I bought back in December of 2020, as well as NHL Center Ice, which I also bought when it became available, both through Spectrum, enjoying basketball and hockey games throughout the season. I should also point out that back in 2020, we only got half a baseball season, thanks to the pandemic, and all sporting events had no crowds at them, which was quite weird, hearing fake crowd noise along with the games. We did watch the Super Bowl in 2021 and enjoyed Liberty Pizza, though I forgot who played, and it was a snore fest by the third quarter, that we tuned out and fell asleep, missing the end of the game, and somebody streaking on to the field. In late February, I was introduced to a new chatting platform called, Clubhouse, and I referred my friend and roommate Celeste to the platform. I also ordered a Pay-Per-View event for the very first time in the middle of the night, with the help of Aira helping me do it with Celeste’s television, checking out a Jeff Foxworthy event, which was really cool. At least it only raised that month’s bill by $5.00, so no big deal there. We both continued to enjoy Live Wire and Clubhouse for the remainder of February and early March, but roughly 9 days into the month of March of 2021, an event in Celeste’s life would occur, that would change things as we knew it, forever.

Thankfully, COVID19 wasn’t what changed things, but on the afternoon of Tuesday, March 9, 2021, we’re eating a late breakfast, when we hear a knock at the door. Now you should know, we haven’t heard a knock at the door in several months, maybe even more than a year at this point, with the ongoing pandemic, as we’d always head downstairs to get groceries delivered by Celeste’s mom, or meal deliveries from Doordash, as well as packages from Amazon, etc. Celeste opens the door on this afternoon of March 9, 2021, to find the sheriff of the Pittsfield Police Department standing there. He hands her a note, explaining she’ll have to vacate her apartment at the end of April. We were both shocked by this, and we quickly figured out it wasn’t just Celeste being summoned with this notice, as we heard him knock on the doors at the other apartments in the hallway to deliver the same letter to the other tenants. Celeste did a bit more digging into the situation, and turns out, with how old her building is, it was in bad need of rennovations, that to protect everybody’s safety and well-being, they were being asked to leave and find a new place to live. In the end, Celeste wouldn’t move until mid to late May of 2021, but between having her first schedule to walk through apartments canceled by her mom, because she thought the outside stairs on the units made them look, unsafe to live in, something I’ll never understand why she had such a problem with this, and the fact that Celeste was struggling to find a new place to live, and for whatever reason beyond my relm of understanding, Celeste’s parents are against her having male friends of her’s, stay at their house for an overnight or longer, I felt it best, to end my roommate arrangement with Celeste at this point, and start my annual travels for the year, a bit sooner than I ordinarily would have done so at the time. I did stay through my 41st. birthday, where we had one final meal from Liberty Pizza together, and I think Celeste gave me an iTunes gift card, but on the afternoon of Friday, March 26, 2021, with all of my bags all packed up, minus the laptop I sold to her back in October of 2020, grateful to have the Shadow at this point, I left Pittsfield, Massachusetts for the final time at the time I’m writing up this post, and headed off on an Amtrak train, to my first adventure of the year.

Seeing I’ve caught you guys up on a year post when I last wrote in this journal, and I’m quite full from my dinner at Louies, not to mention, tired from the walk back to Misty’s, where I took a brief break to get back there and finish writing this from what I affectionately call, the memory foam room, since she has a memory foam mattress on her bed, I think it’s time for me to get this posted, and think about taking a nap, if not, going to sleep all together for the night, since I have a lot of Internet radio programming to enjoy on several stations tomorrow that I like to listen to on my Saturday. I’ll do my best to post more entries throughout the rest of the weekend, catching you guys up on the rest of what’s been happening with me since I last wrote in this thing, but for now, you all take care, and I’ll write in this thing again, someday.

Corona Virus Update

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 16:59:35 GMT

Here's another Corona Virus update for all of you guys. I promise, I'll do my best to stay calmer this time around, but it's actually starting to feel real to me now. On top of the fact that the entire states of New York and New Jersey are on lockdown, over 10,000 cases of COVID19 have broken out, in New York City alone! That's just, insane! On top of that, the 2020 Summer Olympics have been officially post poned to take place in the year 2021, and the thing that really hit home for me, was learning this morning post awakening, that the Valley Plazza Mall in Bakersfield, California, has officially closed as of Tuesday, March 24, 2020. I knew it was only a matter of time, before this day came, as the mall isn't an assential service that needs to be open right now while we all do our best to remain isolated and stop the spread of this virus, but the fact that I have a lot of memories of shopping at that mall with my sister, and spending hours in the Apple Store there, just knowing that it's closed indefinitely at this time, is something I'm still trying to wrap my head around at the moment. the mall out where I'm living now, that being, Berkshire Mall, in Lanesborough, Massachusetts, closed down last year in April, for reasons unrelated to COVID19, but perhaps that was a sign of things to come? We didn't know that at that time, but who knows. Target and Regal Cinema Berkshire Mall 10 remained open post the closing of the mall, but I'm pretty certain even those two places are now closed as a result of COVID19, I don't even have to look. I just hope this whole thing passes soon, not just because there are things I want to go do when the weather warms up, but simply, for the future of this country! Business and organizations are going to suffer financially, and it's just, awful! Pretty much, everything I can think of has been stopped as a result of the virus, at the moment, I'm just waiting for all service on Amtrak to come to a screaching holt, and for both, the national NFB and ACB Conventions to be canceled for the summer of 2020, being post poned until the summer of 2021. Everything's going to take me a year longer to complete, and it's just, crazy that we're having to go through this at all! Please, if you're reading this, please, do us all a favor. Stay home, stay isolated, and do your part, in stopping the spread of COVID19. If you don't, our futures of socialization, going to gatherings, attending school, and pretty much, anything you can think of, will be at stake, and forever changed, and who knows who's next on the list to catch this virus. I still have yet to know anybody directly who has been infected with COVID19, but it's only a matter of time, before the wrelm of possibilities, won't be far fetched, and I only hope and pray, that nobody I know, catches this virus. And if you do catch it, I pray you get the medical help you need. I've seen so many reports of people being turned away, simply because they don't have health insurance. It's crazy, and ridiculous that while our country claims to have the best health care possible, when I read posts like that, about how poorly people are being treated, when it's clear they have Corona Virus symptoms, I shake my head, shrug my shoulders, and wonder just how wonderful our health care system, really is. I already hate going to the doctors just for an annual physical, and only go to the doctors when I'm in severe pain, or I'm in a position, where I'm going to need their help to live normally again, such as, being in too much pain to walk for example, and I can give that example as I was in that position once, a long time ago, but I hope and pray that I don't end up a victim of this virus. That's why I'm doing my best, to do my part, by staying indoors, and remaining isolated, until this Corona Virus pandemic, is under control and things start operating like normal again. And well, I believe that's all I have to say for now. Rest assured, this isn't the last you've heard from me, but I hope in another month or two, I'll be able to look back at these posts and say, "Thank goodness that COVID19, is now screwed."

A Quiet, 40th. Birthday Weekend

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 16:27:12 GMT

For starters, I can't believe that I'm old! Yes people, I'm now 40! Can you believe it? I still can't believe it, and I'm the one who's 40. So anyway, how did I end up celebrating this milestone? With the current circumstances of COVID19 going on right now, I'm rather surprised at that, a lovely celebration I ended up having, despite having to stay indoors and isolated. The celebrating over the weekend anyway, as my roommate and I did order out via DoorDash back last Tuesday, for fear of nothing being open by the weekend, and I already talked about that in a prior entry, so won't repeat that here, but as for the actual weekend of my birthday, the fun started late on Friday night. My roommate Celeste did a special show on 98.6 The Mix, the Internet radio station where she broadcasts, where she dedicated that week's edition of Flashback Friday, the program she does, to my birthday. Looking back at requests I submitted through her request page when she broadcasted at The Q Online, she found nearly every request I sent in, between November of 2018 and August of 2019, and played them in chronological order, as much so as she could remember. She even included seasonal requests, like Christmas songs that I either requested during the 2018 holiday season or during the month of July in 2019, when she did Christmas in July on The Grab Bag, which I thought was cool, since I'm one anyway, to play Christmas music, all year round, whether it's Christmas or not. The show wasn't restricted to just those requests I sent in eons ago. I was able to send in requests during the program, and other listeners submitted requests as well. She also did the usual segments where her echo dot participated, and this show was an interesting one, because she demonstrated the ability to create, edit, and remove custom routines you set up in the Alexa app, and even showed off a new routine she created while on air. I had sent in so many requests, that on top of those requests, as well as new stuff that came in, voice breaks, etc. the show ended up lasting a total of 9 hours in length! Celeste and I were tired when it was all said and done, as even I couldn't fall asleep, the music was so good, but we both had a blast, and we'll always have the archive to look back on in years to come. I'm even listening to it via Winamp while I type up this entry, if that's saying anything right there. And if you yourself would like to check out the archive, while it's available on Celeste's podcast page at the time I'm posting this entry, it won't be up there forever due to space limitations at that location, so if it's months or years down the road by the time you read this, if you're interested in having a copy of this archive, please just ask me for it, and I will be happy to share it with you.

While she was on the air, shortly before 4:37 AM Eastern on Saturday, March 21, 2020, which would have been the exact time I was born, as I was born at 1:37 AM Pacific Daylight Time on March 21, 1980, she bought me my birthday present. An iTunes e-gift card for $40.00! As she explained in the little note in the body of the email message, "Here's a dollar for every year you've been alive. Happy Birthday!" I've since added the gift card to my iTunes gift balance, giving me plenty of money to purchase movies and stuff in digital format, as I already had a bunch of money in there, thanks to her Valentine's Day gift of a $200.00 iTunes gift card she purchased for me back in February of this year. After she got off the air shortly before 8:00 AM in the morning, we had some breakfast before passing out. I had some doughnut holes, 2 cherry poptarts, some of my can of pizza flavored Pringles, and some grape juice to drink. Afterwards, we both took a nap, awakening in the afternoon, where I had a snack of a bowl of Froot Loops and a glass of water. Still feeling sleepy, plus it was quite cold that day, as the heater wasn't working, I curled back up in bed, doing another one of my favorite hobbies, that being, sleeping of course, only awakening a couple of times to take care of something on my laptop. I should also point out when I awoke on the afternoon of my birthday to have a snack, I was awakened to a really cool wake up call on the echo dot that lives in the bedroom slash studio. Celeste and I have custom made wake up routines set up on Alexa, and Celeste did a really cool one for waking me up on my birthday. Apparently, I was the captain of Apollo 18, and Lady C was at Mission Control in Houston, giving me the official wake up call that is really given to the actual astronauts out in space, including the local news from earth, and some music, as well as a lovely birthday message. I loved it so much, that I had Celeste help me make a recording of the wake up call to be preserved in our private conversation on WhatsApp, to have forever. Anyway, while I spent the majority of my actual birthday, either listening to Celeste's special radio show for me, or sleeping, I really had some fun the following day.

On Sunday morning, when I realized that Celeste had been passed out for over 12 hours, I had it be my turn to wake her up, with one of my custom made wake up routines for her. I was inspired by a parody of one of my favorite Billy Joel songs that had recently been turned into a parody concerning the Corona Virus, to wake her up to the original by Billy Joel that the parody was based off of, with amessage instructing her to go make us food. She didn't waste any time making us food, she prepared what we would have had for dinner on my actual birthday, had we not slept for so long. I had 2 corndogs, a bowl of barbecue potato chips, and a Coke to drink, while she also had a Coke to drink, along with some strawberries dipped in melted chocolate, and some beef taquitos, originally planning to dip them in cheese sauce, only she took one bite of the cheese sauce, dumping it out because the jar had been in the back of the fridge for over 6 months, making it not taste so good. I'm not a sauce person anyway, but hopefully she learned her lesson, and at least she didn't suffer from food poisoning as a result of that little incident. After the belated dinner, I was in the mood to watch one of my favorite movies of all-times, Apollo 13. However, Celeste hadn't seen it before, and really wanted to watch it in descriptive, which at this time, the only version we've been able to find of that movie with audio description included was on iTunes, so Celeste rented her first movie on iTunes, only costing her a total of $3.99. I tried to get the file to play on her desktop, but no matter what I did, I couldn't get it to play, so in the end, she hooked up her iPhone XR to her desktop computer speakers, and streamed the movie, post getting the descriptive track turned on in the settings for TV under the Settings app on her phone. She enjoyed it very much, and even I got a lot out of the movie that I had missed the other times I had seen it, as that was my first time watching it with descriptive. Some confusion was cleared up for me in terms of what happened in the car on the way to the launch sight, and I better understood what was written on a note that was written in the film, thanks to having the audio description. Celeste even commented how it was nice having audio description when Apollo 13 launched, as it was very visual during that part, so I could see how somebody who's not as familiar with space travel who can't see the screen, might get confused and lost without having the audio description there to help them follow that portion of the movie. It was fun, and I'm glad we got to watch that together.

After the movie ended, I was starting to get hungry, and on Friday, both, Celeste and myself received text messages stating that Liberty Pizza was open for carry out and delivery, to call them directly to place an order. Craving some pizza, I did just that, and they answered. I ordered a medium pepperoni pizza, an order of curly fries, and 2 twenty ounce bottles of Pepsi to drink. Because this was my belated Birthday dinner, my roommate and best friend Celeste not only went down and picked it up, but she paid for it too, which I thought was sweet. Even her mom has been very understanding in this difficult time. She offered to have us come over for a birthday celebration at her house, but understood when Celeste explained to her that I wanted to stay home and isolated, decreasing my chances of catching the Corona Virus, and Celeste's mom even offered to pay for our dinner. We had enough money on us at the time to pay for it, so to keep her safe, as she's of the age with the highest fatality rate when it comes to catching this disease, Celeste and her mom worked it out to have her mom pay her back later on when things calm down, and any type of birthday celebration I'm going to do with her entire family, has also been post poned until things calm down as well. Anyway, our dinner from Liberty Pizza was delicious, and I couldn't have asked for a better ending to a quiet birthday weekend. I then passed out early that evening, not awakening until Monday morning, and as I sit here, remaining in isolation, I can at least look back on my birthday weekend, with a smile on my face. Thank you Celeste for making it so special, in tough times like this, she knows how to make me smile, and for that, I'm grateful. Now I hope and pray that if we continue to remain isolated, I can be around to turn 41 next year, but perhaps Celeste and I will be able to go out and do something special outside our tiny mansion next year on my special day. Only time will tell, but for now, I'll be glad I made it to age 40, and continue doing what I've always done, with that being, living my life, one day at a time.

Corona Virus, Corona Virus, Corona Virus All Day Long

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 20:18:36 GMT

Corona virus, Corona virus, Corona virus all day long.
The world has a virus, tell everybody so long.
We're screwed!
We're screwed!
Virus virus virus. Blah blah blah.
Virus, virus, virus, virus, virus oh yeah.

Okay, I was quoting and doing a bit of a parody of an old dectalk song that my buddy Patrick from New York wrote years ago, but let's face it, the Corona Virus, is going to destroy us all! Okay, so let me explain. If you made it through my long entry I recently posted concerning what I've been up to since I last wrote in this thing since May of 2017, you may have noticed I was sounding uncertain of events in the current year, like would I ever get to visit friends in Virginia, or ever see a baseball game again, even just the World Series on TV. Well, at the moment, things are looking pretty grim. It all started back in late December of 2019, early January of this year, when an outbreak of a disease known as the Corona Virus, or COVID19, broke out in China. Apparently, it's transmitted by animals, and now that it's in humans, nobody knows how to stop it. The disease then spread to Italy, and it's now spread across the entire world, and it's currently baring down on us in the United States, and even up to the north of us in Canada. However, the scary thing about this virus, is because it's only in humans for the first time, doctors aren't sure how to cure it, and the incubation period for this virus is 2 weeks, which means, you'll have it for that long and not know you have it, as it takes 2 weeks for symptoms to appear.

To make matters worse, the media isn't helping, claiming everybody is going to die from this disease, and to help decrease the spread of this virus, everybody has been required to stay home, and gatherings of 10 or more people are not allowed. There's no sports of any kind on TV right now, nor are there any games going on that people can attend in person. The NBA, NHL, and other sporting teams that still have a couple of months to go have all ended their seasons early, and the Kentucky Derby has been canceled, as well as the Eurovision music competition. MLB has delayed their season's start date to mid May, and musicians have canceled concerts and tours. Broadway is dark, Disney Land and Disney World are closed, and no restaurant is allowed to seat people, only takeout and delivery is allowed. Bars are closed, as well as movie theaters, malls, and practically any place where crowds gather, and schools, some of them extended their spring breaks for a couple of weeks, while schools in the states of Kansas and California, are shutting down for the remainder of the school year, not reopening until next fall. Everybody has been advised to do the most cringeworthy phrase known to man, "Social distancing." Girr piss, I hate that phrase with a passion! And while this is all happening, I still hear traffic on the street out my window, and I went grocery shopping the other day, where the store was so packed, you'd think it was Christmas Eve or the day before Thanksgiving or something! And forget about going to Canada, the Canadian border has been closed to people from outside the country who aren't citizens, wishing to visit there.

Now, I understand why all of this lockdown and social distancing is happening, but I don't understand how it's going to slow down the spread of the virus. I mean, people already have it. It only takes one person going to the store, and unless they live by themselves, they could transmit it to their roommates and other family members, without even knowing it for a couple of weeks! Yeah sure, even if we wash our hands as instructed, and avoid hand shakes, the darn virus isn't even transmitted through the skin, one must cough on another to transmit it. And if we're suppose to be decreasing the crowds, then we should close grocery stores too, as surely that crowd I saw there the other day, was way more than 100 people, let alone 10. One of the stores in my area has given an hour dedicated for senior citizens to do their shopping, since they're one of the groups most severely effected by this virus, with a higher fatality rate, but again, what are the odds that somebody doesn't have this virus already?

How are kids going to do with 6 months of summer vacation? Sure, they might enjoy it, until next school year, when they're having trouble keeping up in class. What about kids who live in abusive homes, who can't get away to school where they felt safe? And the homeless, they have no place to go. With businesses closed, those people are going to lose money, even in the sports industry, nobody is getting paid. And then there are friends of mine who work for the IRS, who are still having to go to work, despite working in crowded buildings, nor are their jobs assential to stopping the spread of Corona virus. The only people who should be working right now, are the medical people at hospitals, the Police, Fire Department, and anybody who's going to make sure we're kept safe out of this virus's harm's way, assuming such a thing is possible.

There's no church, no nothing! And I've received so many emails from Uber, Spectrum, my electricity provider of Eversource, and other such things claiming that our services won't be disrupted, but that they're taking precautions as a result of the concerns over this virus. Hello people, we're not concerned over this virus, we're fearing it! We're so afraid it's going to kill us all, that we're stopping practically everything under the sun, as if practically nothing exists anymore. Sure, we have plenty of things to keep us entertained on the Internet, and there's things like Facetime and Teamtalk to talk to our friends, but my roommate is unable to get takeout from her favorite restaurant, Flavours of Malaysia, and Liberty Pizza, which can barely seat 6 people comfortably in the restaurant, and where most people opt to get their orders delivered or do carry out, has closed as well! Just, Girr piss! I hate this!

And while at this moment, I'm fine with the lockdown, because it's still very much winter where I am at the moment, only in the mid 30's to mid 40's today temperature wise, what's going to happen in a couple of months when the weather warms up? Will there be a baseball season? I have friends in Canada I want to visit, will I even get to go, or attempt going to visit them, even if I get in via help from my roommate, who has a passport? See previous entry and you'll better understand why I phrase it like that. And what about local events in Pittsfield? Will Third Thursday happen? Will there be a 4th. of July parade? And will there be concerts at Tanglewood? I'm worried that my summer is going to be ruined before it even has a chance to start, all because we're fearing a virus that has killed less than 10% of the total population in this entire country.

I did hear recently that China is finally getting things under control, and they're slowly getting back to normal, but even that took roughly 3 months to reach. Will it take us that long to get back to normal? I certainly hope by May, I'll see hope that my summer won't be as blah and boring as my winter was, but you bet, if there's no hope by then, I'll be back with another rant, possibly much uglier than what I'm posting here, but yeah, it's awful!

Due to all of these closings, my roommate and I celebrated my 40th. birthday early by treating ourselves to lunch from DoorDash on Tuesday, my roommate settled for something from Panera Bread since Flavours was closed, while I opted for lunch from McDonalds, getting a 20 piece chicken nuggets, a large French fry, a large Coke, and an apple pie for dessert, and boy, you bet I made sure to enjoy every last bite of that meal, because I'm pretty sure that's the last meal I'll be eating out, for a very long time. Luckily, we stocked up on over 2 weeks of groceries, so we're good there, but even the stores have been running out of stuff. Just yesterday, Celeste's mom found us a 12 pack of toilet paper, after not seeing toilet paper on the shelves for over a week!

And if this virus is so contageous and deadly, how come nobody I know has the virus yet? I'm hoping nobody I know does catch this virus, but how long will that be? In some respect, I'd like for somebody I know to catch it, just so I can really get a good idea what this virus entails, how severely ill they get, and how long it takes to get over the virus, or are they stuck with it forever. And I'm really really hoping, that come summer time, I'll be able to watch sports again, I'll be able to travel again, and just, be able to live life, without being reduced to what I have at home. Not that I don't have plenty to keep me entertained at home, I have most of the streaming platforms, as well as everything Spectrum has to offer, including the movie channels. I have plenty of music to listen to, and Internet radio shows aren't going anywhere. However, I can't get my Liberty Pizza, and I want my pizza and one of their good burgers and fries from down stairs dang it!

Yeah, can't you see I'm piss about this Corona virus thing? Well, I am, and I just want this stupid virus, to go the Hell away!

Anyway, that's all I'm going to say for now. Assuming I don't end up catching the Corona virus and end up dying from it, I'll come back to post another entry, someday. For now, as much as you may hate it, wash your hands and stay home, so we can hopefully, stop the spread of this virus, and I can watch baseball and go on adventures again.

A Long, Overdue Update

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:29:12 GMT

Wow! Has it really, been that long? I'll give you the short version of that answer and say, yes, it has! I was recently looking back at my journal, not only amazed that this platform still exists, but the fact that I haven't written anything in here since May of 2017, is something! I have nothing but time on my hands, and the reasoning behind that, I'll talk about in more detail in a separate entry, as that's something I want to rant about on its own, but for now, let's take a trip back in time, and catch you up, in the best way I know, of what's happened with me since I last wrote in this thing. For starters, that issue I last wrote about in here, concerning T-Mobile, has long since been fixed, but don't ask me how it got fixed, or when it happened, because that was nearly three years ago, it's fixed now, and that's all that matters. As for what happened to me throughout the remainder of 2017, let's see... During the summer, I attended my second ACB convention in Reno, Nevada, but my fifth ACB convention overall. Once again, I stayed at The Nugget Hotel, one of my favorite hotels in this country, and had a really good time. Later on in 2017, exactly one year to the date of when I traveled in October of 2016, I took another trip to San Diego, where I visited my brother, and took another trip to the Mexican border. Looking back at my LJ entries, I see I never wrote about either one of those adventures in here, so I'll briefly explain both of them in a nutshell. One of those trips, I went with my brother and his girlfriend to a wedding they were attending. I have videos of this on my Facebook, but to put it simply, we made it there for the reception, and I learned just how loud my niece could scream, as she was barely a year old at this event. We crossed back over into the U.S. shortly after 1 in the morning, since the place we had hoped to stay overnight fell through, but it was a fun evening spent in another country regardless. My other trip to Mexico was my one and only solo trip to date, because nobody was available to accompany me on the adventure. I took the Blue Line on the San Diego Trolly, to the Tijuana entrence. It was interesting because they have announcements in both, English and Spanish as you approach the border, to let citizens of both nations, know that they're getting close. I got off there, and stopped off at the McDonalds that's just 10 feet from the border. After getting a bite of a 10 piece chicken nuggets, medium fries, and a large Coke, I dared to do the impossible, as I didn't have a passport at the time, and still don't to this day. I walked up to the Mexican border, and went through. Of course, I did get a long lecture from the officer there, but he let me through, and I had a good time. I ate in Mexico at their Carls Junior, and still have the Mexican pesos that I got back in exchange for paying for my meal with a ten dollar bill, since I didn't have an opportunity to go purchase Mexican currency, since I wasn't sure if I was going to make it into the country or not, and on my trip back into the U.S. they let me bypass the line entirely, and I made it home to see one of the last World Series games that season. The end of 2017 was mostly uneventful, other than the shocking sad passings of 2 friends of mine. The first, being Toonhead, who died of cardiac arrest on 10/29/17. I was talking to one of his roommates shortly after his death, and wasn't sure what to think for a while. It was pretty sad what happened to him, especially since I came close to getting to meet him back in 2015, but sadly, had to cancel my trip due to an expired ID. If that wasn't enough, roughly a month later, on 11/17/17, we lost another member of the blind community who was also very much a geek like myself, Rich Cavalaro, who died of complications of Pneumonia. I wasn't nearly as torn up about this death as I was over toonhead, but a good buddy of mine from Long Island, New York was quite crushed by his passing, as they had been good friends for many years, and I remember hearing him on a few of his radio shows. Even freakier? Both, Rich and Toonhead died in Richmand, Virginia, which tells me if I ever make it there, I'd better be careful, and make sure I don't end up needing to be admitted to the hospital in that city. As for everything else, again, nothing all that eventful to wrap up 2017, other than having the one Thanksgiving dinner I'll ever have outside. I spent it with my friend Michelle and her army of 50 people in Palmdale, on what had to be the warmest Thanksgiving day to date, with the weather a bomby 82 degrees outside! I'm not kidding! It was indeed, that warm that day, and getting to eat Thanksgiving dinner outside, is something, I'll never forget, as we usually only experience temperatures reaching a high of 60 at that time of year. Christmas was another quiet one at my sister's in Bakersfield, as I flipped through the radio dial on my Chinese radio, checking out what stations were playing Christmas music, and then, comes 2018.

So another year starts, and I hope to get to Florida early on. Sadly, the timing wasn't good for the friends I hoped to visit down there, so had to push that trip back. I did get to attend my second air show in March of that year, and in July, I went to Reno again, but not for a convention, rather, to visit my friend who had moved there from Oregan sometime prior. We spent two weeks together, and had a blast. I then returned back to Bakersfield to my sister's, where things would start to get, let's simply put it, interesting. I guess it was on August 10, 2018, when I was up early in the morning, and saw that one of my friends on Twitter was doing a radio show, so decided to listen and talk to them on Teamtalk. Little did I know it would be this friend, who would change my life forever, but more on that later. A couple of days later, I needed some help taking a picture of my photo ID to get something approved online, and had no way of doing it. My sister was out of town for the weekend, so reached out on Twitter for any advice. It was this particular friend who referred me to Aira, which to put it simply, is Be My Eyes on steroids, and I got my own plan, which would remain intact for the next 6 months. This friend and I started talking over Facetime, WhatsApp, and even shared a Dropbox folder, where she sent me every show archive, both of her own Internet radio shows, and other shows she had collected over the years, totaling 255 gigs in size! Like, wow! I've never seen such a large collection of Internet radio archives, in my entire life! However, while this was all fun and games, I was still itching to go visit friends in Florida. I got in touch with them again, and it looked like September was going to work out. Little did I know that this could turn into a huge transitional point in my life.

While in 2009, I flew to Florida, this time, I decided to take Amtrak to make the trip, riding the Southwest Chief on the first leg of the journey, getting me from Bakersfield, California to Chicago, Illinois, and then, changing trains in Chicago, where I'd head to Washington D.C. and then, change again, to complete the final leg of the journey to Florida. Once in Florida, I took a bus to my final destination, and it was quite the trip! I had fun checking out signal coverage on Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile, which I had both carriers at this time, on iPhone 8+'s, and I now better see why Verizon is my main carrier. Even in some of the weakest spots on my cross country trip, Verizon worked better than T-Mobile, proving how reliable their network is. The only downside about the trip would have to be, due to delays, I missed my connection in D.C. having to wait there for 6 hours. Had I known that was going to happen ahead of time, I could have arranged to at the very least, go do a bit of sight seeing in our nation's capital, but oh well. Hopefully, that's something I'll get to do eventually, now that I'm more or less, permanently on the East coast, but again, that will all depend, and again, that's coming in a separate post. So I get to Florida, and visit 2 friends, over a 6 week period. My first week there was spent with my friend Vicky, and her husband Ricky. It was here, I got to play with Amazon Alexa devices. Now, I had seen one at a house my brother was rennovating, but because it wasn't his, I didn't really get to play with it. At Vicky's though, I got to play with this one, and it was really cool! One of the coolest things I remember doing with it, was playing a game called Eighties Letters, where you have to name artists that were popular in the 1980's, and you can't name off anything that Alexa has already said. It is fun, but it made me realize just how little I know my artists, as much as I love music from that time period. I introduced my friend who referred me to Aira to this game, and she absolutely loved it! So much so, that she would be buying her first Amazon Echo device at the end of the year, shortly after Christmas. Aside from playing with Alexa devices, I took my first boat ride, which Vicky even got to steer the boat part of the time, and despite being totally blind, she didn't do a half bad job, if I'm still alive to tell the tail today, and I also attended a gathering put on by her church. If that wasn't enough fun, I spent the next 5 weeks with my friend Kira, who had moved to Florida earlier that year, along with her fiance and 2 daughters. I always have fun with Kira, as she's so sweet, but I'd have to say my highlight of this portion of the trip, was getting to go to the beach. Unlike in California, where the ocean water is freezing, the ocean in Florida is warm, feeling like bath water as it hit my bare feet. I was sorry we didn't get to stay at the beach longer, as I could have enjoyed that all day! We also witnessed a scinario where the power went out, but only on one half of the street, based on observations we discovered while driving around, and discovering that while we had no power at Kira's place, people across the street, had perfect working electricity. However, my time in Florida would soon come to an end, come mid October, as I'd head north, to New York, and then, to Massachusetts.

So we'll start, with the trip to New York. My buddy Patrick lives there with his girlfriend and her family, so I flew to New York JFK International Airport on the morning of Friday, October 19, 2018, though not without having to take a detour to get to the airport because of an accident that caused the bridge in Tampa, Florida to collapse. Thankfully, I made it just minutes before my flight departed, just barely making it in time. While in flight, I played with my radios, seeing what I could pick up from 30,000 feet in the air. I know, I know, they advise against such activity, but obviously, I made it to my final destination, and we didn't crash, or else, I wouldn't be here right now, telling you all about it. Boy was I in for a surprise when I got to New York City though. For starters, while it was in the 80's in Florida when I left, it was 40 degrees cooler in New York when I arrived, making me glad I was wearing jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and brought my jacket, because it was quite chilly! The second thing I noticed, was how big the terminal I came into at JFK was. It was huge! Put it this way, it took me a good 20 minutes to get from my gate, to the other end of the terminal! Now that's something! If the ACB ever wants to hold their convention in New York City, I'm not kidding, there'd be enough room to host it in JFK International Airport, it's that big. Feeling hungry, I did grab me a bite to eat, consisting of a burger, and took my first cab in New York to Patrick's girlfriend's office on Long Island. I had a little bit of trouble communicating with the cab driver at first, but he did get me there, and after that, I'd spend the next 5 days, in the city, that never sleeps.

Sadly though, I didn't get to do any sight seeing, because the people I was staying with, didn't have time to do such things, but I did have fun, geeking out with Patrick, playing with his equipment, and getting to be a guest on his weekly radio show, Things and Stuff, where I guess the question of the day was, "What does the cough button do?" If interested, I do have the archive, if anybody's interested in listening to it. I also only got to spend 5 days there, because of other stuff going on that was kind of personal, so won't get into that here, since it had to do with the family I was staying with. I was hoping to go visit my friend on Long Island, the one who had lost a good friend a year earlier, mentioned earlier in this post, but he got sick, so had to scrub that mission all-together. Hopefully, I'll eventually get to visit him on Long Island, but at the moment, that has yet, to be determined. Getting out of New York City was interesting, after I learndd of the history my friend's family witnessed, from seeing the Twin towers collapse from their window back on 9/11/01, to having a plane crash 2 blocks away from their house, in November of that year, I then saw to leaving bright and early on the morning of Wednesday, October 24, 2018, where I took a cab, followed by 2 fairies, followed by an Uber from 34th. Street to Pen Station, and then, an Amtrak train to Newhaven, Connecticut, where I transferred to another train, that took me to Springfield, Massachusetts, where I had a layover of 3 hours, allowing me to get a bite to eat at Subway, until I took my final leg of the journey on the Lakeshore Limited to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where at that time, I was only going to spend a week-and-a-half with my friend who lives out in these parts. This was the same friend who referred me to Aira. She use to have a journal on this platform, known by the name of celrock, only that journal was deleted back in 2014, so for the remainder of this entry, I'll refer to her by her real name, Celeste, which I'm sure she won't mind.

When I found out I'd be coming to visit as early as 10/24/18, she went out to the store the day before I arrived, and stocked up on food I'd like to eat. We had a great time together, as she not only helped me get the archives I had received from her organized on my laptop, yep, the same laptop I talked about in here back in April of 2017, which, I should mention, it still works as good today as it did the day it came out of the box. Anyway, she helped me get those archives organized on my laptop, which then went up to OneDrive, the account I have through my old college, as well as giving me her entire music collection, as well as the tools for broadcasting again, such as Station Playlist Studio, and the associated JAWS scripts for making it accessible. I got to be on one of her radio shows, as at that time, she broadcasted on Friday mornings on The Q Online, which, I didn't realize was still around after all of these years. We watched the 2018 World Series together, which featured The Dodgers and Redsox, and included the longest game in World Series history, totaling 7-and-a-half hours and 18 innings, not ending until after 3:00 AM on Saturday morning, and I have digital copies of several movies of her's on DVD, including all 7 Harry Potter movies, and the complete TV series of Full House in iso format. I also met her parents and her nephew, who live locally in town, her parents living only 3 miles away in an upper part of town, while Celeste lives in downtown Pittsfield, just a couple of blocks away from the transportation center, where local bus service, and services on Greyhound, Peter Pan, which is a more state wide bus service like Greyhound, and Amtrak come through. I attended one of her nephew's swimming lessons, and got to see how Aira Live works, as she had an agent describe the lesson to her, while I listened to the feed through my Aira app, without having to use up any minutes, which was really cool! Then, at Halloween, I accompanied Celeste to her family's place, where we passed out candy to the trick or treaters, and stayed to have a bite of chilly for dinner. Then, on the same day I was a guest on her Internet radio show, back on 11/2/18, I also attended a concert her father was playing flute in at the Colonial theater, a local theater where live performances take place. The concert was awesome, featuring both, The Eagle's Big Band and The Eagle's Concert Band, and if interested in checking out that concert, I recorded it in 2 parts and put it up on my youtube channel. We then went out to dinner at Patrick's Pub afterwards, and no, it's not owned by my friend in New York, but despite that, the food was very good. I know Celeste had some kind of salmon dish, I'm pretty sure I had a burger or something. Also while visiting her, I got to eat pizza from Liberty Pizza, which is literally, downstairs from her apartment building, on the corner of the block where she lives.

However, while I thought I'd be off on my next adventure come early November of 2018, Mother Nature had other plans. We got bad weather on the day I was suppose to leave, and due to other circumstances beyond my control at the time, I got my first taste of seeing just how generous, Celeste really is. She let me stay with her for as long as I wanted, and so, that's what I did. We celebrated Thanksgiving, her birthday in December, Christmas, New Years, Valentine's Day of 2019, and my 39th. birthday together. To sum up all of these events in a nutshell, let's see... I experienced my coldest Thanksgiving to date, with it being 12 degrees outside, and liking everything at the dinner other than a couple of the appetizers and salad, getting an entire pumpkin pie to myself because nobody else was interested in it. At her birthday, I met her local girlfriends, Krystal and Kerry, and we went to see Wreck-It Ralph II, Ralph Breaks the Internet, followed by pizza for dinner at this place called Vivaldi's Pizza Ria. At Christmas, I introduced Celeste to my tradition of listening to Christmas music on terrestrial radio, checking out what this area had to offer. That year, I settled on WTBR, 87.9 FM, a station run out of one of the local high schools around here, and on Christmas day, I received a USB headset from Celeste that had been recommended to me by another Internet radio buddy earlier that month, and her parents gave me a winter coat, hat and gloves, as well as an iTunes gift card. I was also introduced to Little Debbie's Christmas tree cakes, liking the vinilla ones of course, not being able to get enough of them, while Celeste likes the chocolate ones, and we celebrated New Years, by watching Rockin' New Years Eve and ordering out from Liberty Pizza. Our Valentine's Day was quiet, though I did have my fair share of conversation hearts, and to celebrate my 39th. birthday in March, I awoke to a baseball game on TV, being played in all places, Japan! Celeste's mom then took us out to lunch at another pizza place they like called Arizona Pizza, where I got a pizza and some fries. We were then suppose to go see a movie I had been wanting to see called Wonder Park, but sadly, the movie theater and associated mall where it was located, was closed down due to water damage. Little did I know, that my trip to that mall back in December to see Ralph Breaks the Internet, would be my last trip to that mall, before it closed down for good, as it did close down for good, with the exceptions of Target and the movie theater remaining open, the rest of it closed in April of 2019, and hasn't opened up since, remaining closed indefinitely. Also during my extended stay in Pittsfield, I left my own Aira plan in February of that year, and started sharing minutes with Celeste, saw to getting the highest package that Spectrum has to offer, getting Celeste all of the movie channels, and the highest Internet they were offering at the time, as well as adding a third mobile carrier to the 2 I already had, getting on her Sprint plan, with an iPhone 10SMax. She also introduced me to one of her favorite TV shows, The Loud House on Nickelodeon, while I introduced her to a great tool for backing up your files online called Backblaze, adding her to my account, and while staying there and for the couple of weeks post returning out west, I brought my radio show, Monty's Grab Bag back to the Internet radio tubes, broadcasting on The Q Online on Saturday afternoons from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM Eastern. I did 18 episodes while in Pittsfield, and my final 2 episodes in Bakersfield, but quit after that, due to lack of listener interaction, and a lack of teamwork from the staff at the station. Internet radio is nothing like it was back in the days when I use to broadcast at ACB Radio Interactive, but that's a rant I'll save for another day. I did receive a $15.00 iTunes gift card from Celeste for my 39th. birthday, and a month prior to that, after checking out Celeste's Amazon Echo that she bought with money from her uncle after Christmas, and seeing that you could call both, telephones and other people with Amazon devices on it, as well as drop in on people who gave you permission to do so, acting kind of like the old, auto answer feature with Skype, I decided I'd get my own Amazon Echo device. At the time, Celeste had the Amazon Echo 2nd. Generation in her living room, so I got me the Amazon Echo Dot, 3rd. Generation, and put it into the bedroom where I was sleeping at the time, that being, Celeste's bedroom, since she only has one bedroom at her apartment. While things went pretty well for a while, other than her ancient radiator heaters not always working, being thankful for blankets to bury under on days when it got wicked cold, such as the coldest day to date that year, reaching a low of -11 degrees outside, back on Martin Luther King Day in January of 2019, and experiencing water logged carpet in the bedroom, family drama started to break out in late March shortly after my birthday. Without getting into too much detail, let's just say, that I didn't wish to make the situation worse by remaining present. Luckily, the weather was starting to slightly warm up come April, averaging in the 50's, so on 4/12/19, I packed my bags and headed back west, taking a combination of the Lakeshore Limited and Southwest Chief on Amtrak, from Massachusetts, back to California, at that time, not ever planning to return to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, ever again, little did I know how much that would change later on that year.

I got into L.A. Union Station at around 7:30 AM Pacific time on the morning of Monday, April 15, 2019, and then got on to Metro Link, where I headed up to Palmdale to visit some friends for a couple of days, before heading back to Bakersfield, where I'd spend the next nearly 5 months at my sister's. Before leaving Pittsfield, Celeste did sell me her old iPad Air which she was no longer using, so I gave it to my sister as a nice surprise, and she enjoyed it, very much! Sadly though, while I had escaped the family drama Celeste was going through, I faced other problems of my own, which are pretty personal, so won't go into detail about them here, but it did impact my summer in a negative way. Despite this though, Celeste and I continued to remain friends, talking most days on this chat line I discovered in mid May that pays you if you build up enough minutes in your room. Over the course of the summer months, while I didn't get to attend Field Day in 2019, I did treat myself to Taco Bell that night, trying out a new food delivery service for the first time called DoorDash. It took a little bit for my order to be delivered, but I received it warm, with no errors, so highly recommend you give this service a try if you haven't already. I was so pleased, that I even referred Celeste to the service, and while it would take her 4 months to finally order from them, it did result in my eventually, ordering my cheapest order from McDonalds ever, only costing me a total of 98 cents! Like, woe! Without my credit, I don't believe an order from McDonalds has been that cheap since the 1960's! Other things I did over the summer, was continue to listen to various Internet radio shows I like to listen to throughout the week, as well as Celeste's radio show on Friday mornings, as well as a new one she did on Saturdays for a while called The Grab Bag, taking the place of the show I did, where she incorperated the use of the Amazon Echo devices, as she got a good deal from Amazon, allowing her to get her very own Amazon Echo Dot 3rd. Generation to put in place of my dot in the bedroom slash studio after I left. On Independence Day, I listened to the 4th. of July parade in Pittsfield, MA through the Internet streaming feed of WTBR, as well as experienced an earthquake that day, that had its center in Richcrest, California, but could be felt in Bakersfield, just enough to notice it. Nothing like what happened the following day, shaking so much, that the aftershock freaked my sister out tramendously, and while Celeste was gone celebrating Independence Day with her family in the evening, with the ability to drop in on her Amazon device in the living room, I asked her to leave the television on, and using the Spectrum app remotely on my phone, I was able to watch a baseball game on the upper 700 channels, as I had ordered Extra Innings before I left to go back west in April, not realizing at the time I'd be leaving so soon. Thank goodness she gave me this option, because you can't watch those channels in the app, and local games in the coverage area are blacked out, so in her case, she couldn't watch Redsox games. Again, another rant I'll go on some other time, assuming I ever get to see another baseball game again, something that will be discussed in the post to follow this one. As for other things I did, in mid July, I got to listen to the mission control to astronauts feed in real time of Apollo 11, just as it was 50 years ago. Celeste even listened to it with me, and even streamed it from her computer speakers tuned into it on the Apollo 11 in Real Time site or on Youtube via telephone to the little chat room we had at the time, which was really neet when I was banished to my sister's bedroom for much of the time, not having to be in her way, using my laptop at her dining room table to listen. Only thing I'm a bit girr pissed about, is sleeping through Lunar Orbit Day on the third full day in space, fourth day of the 9 day mission, but I made up for it later on, when listening to a podcast, which I'll talk about later on in this entry. Despite my boring summer, checking out Apollo 11 in real time, and getting to hear Neal Armstrong and Buzz Aldron walk on the moon, just as it happened, 50 years ago, lifted the space nerd spirits in me, and I turned Celeste on to space a little bit, as shortly after that, I introduced her to one of my favorite documentaries to date, Moon Shot, which is available on Youtube if interested. I use to own it on video cassette, if that tells you how old it is, but to put it simply, it covers the entire space program, from its start, all the way through the Apollo missions, and talks in great detail what was involved in those missions, and getting NASA started. Come August, I went to the Plazza Valley Mall in Bakersfield, on the most crowded day to date, because it was the day before school started. I think I even posted a short recording on my Youtube channel with my Sprint phone of the stereo effect of how crowded that mall sounded, being in the Apple Store at the time, and my god, you could barely hear me speak in that recording it was so crowded. Just go check it out for yourself and you'll see what I mean. Later on that month, I took a trip to visit my friend in Reno, Nevada, though that trip ended up lasting shorter than I had ever expected, and it almost didn't happen at all, when I missed my first connecting train from Sacramento, California, to Reno, Nevada. I was able to catch another train a couple of hours later, but my trip only lasted 36 hours in total. While that was a bit disappointing, I did get to stay at The Nugget, and eat at Rosie's Cafe, so not all is doom and gloom, though it sure would reach that peak not longer after returning to Bakersfield.

While I was away in Reno, my sister did get Internet at her place through Spectrum, which I thought was awesome, no longer having to rely on hotspot, which I had been doing up to this point, and out of the 3 carriers I had at the time, at my sister's place, Verizon Wireless works the best, with Sprint coming in second, and T-Mobile coming in third, only working well at nighttime. Yeah, pretty blah for a geek like myself, but I'd soon be leaving that place for good. Come September, shortly after Labor Day, my sister did some things that, while she's done them before, she reached an all-time low in her acts, so much so, that I truly saw just how generous Celeste was. She didn't have to do this, but she quickly saw to getting me out of that situation, when nobody else would help me out, desperately wanting me to come back to her neck of the woods. Eventually, I did get out of there, once I had my new debit card, as I had recently changed banks because I was displeased with the accessibility of the IOS app for the bank I was currently using, and was still waiting for my debit card to come in the mail. As soon as it arrived though, I packed my bags, never to return to my sister's place, ever again. One of my local friends took me down to the train station, where I caught the bus, which got rerouted to Barsto, because the bus to L.A. was delayed. I then arrived in Barsto, with just enough time to grab me a bite to eat at McDonalds, before getting on board the Southwest Chief once again, to take that long hull journey to Chicago. However, I decided to take a detour, stopping off in Ohio to visit some friends on the way. Turns out in the end, this was a good thing, since Celeste had some stuff going on at the time, including grieving over the loss of a long-time friend of her's, so in the end, it all worked out for the best. I got to Cleveland, taking an Uber over from the train station to the bus station, and then taking Greyhound to Ackrin, where I visited my friend Shane through the weekend. At his place, I added him to my Backblaze, as well as checked out Google Home devices for the first time. While they can't do nearly as much as the Amazon Alexa devices, and because I was stationed in the living room, I didn't have nearly as much freedom to play with them, the Google Home Max, which is this huge speaker, produces some of the best sound I've ever heard! Someday, if I ever get a bigger place, I'd so like to get myself a Google Home Max, just to be able to listen to music on such awesome speakers. I also ordered my largest order from McDonalds, consisting of a Big Mac, a 10 piece chicken nuggets, a large fry, and 2 apple pies, along with a large Coke to drink, being in disbelief I finished that entire order. The following day, Shane and the person in his crew who is their designated driver, drove me down to Youngstown, Ohio, where I visited another friend of mine, Jo for the next week-and-a-half. It was fun, but between her being busy with school, her on campus job, and taking care of her 2-year-old daughter, I didn't get nearly as much downtime to hang out with her as I had hoped. I did get to enjoy some pizza from Little Ceasers, as well as trying this restaurant in her area called Oh Charlies, which was awesome, so the trip wasn't a total loss. Come early October, when I had my money for the month, I saw to finishing my journey, getting to where I'd hibernate for another winter, but first, I had to have my biggest adventure to date. Oh, but before I go, I'll let you know that in the places where I was stationed in Ohio, once again, Verizon Wireless rules supreme in best coverage, while Sprint and T-Mobile were, okay. There, now that the geek inside me is done talking, time to get back to my big adventure coming up, as I saw to leaving Ohio and heading to Massachusetts.

So on the afternoon of Thursday, October 3, 2019, I saw to getting my Uber to leave Youngstown via Greyhound to get to Cleveland, where I'd catch Amtrak the next morning, taking the Lakeshore Limited line to Pittsfield, Massachusetts. In the end though, my Uber driver offered to drive me to Cleveland, when she saw there was hardly anybody at the bus station. So I took her up on her offer, despite it being an 87 mile trip, and I made sure to tip her well at the end of the journey, giving her a $21.00 tip, as GPS is pretty messed up in Cleveland. The train station is listed as being in the middle of the highway, a very dangerous place to be let off by public transportation. Luckily, my driver went out of her way to get a hold of the police, and get me to a safe spot before heading back to Youngstown, hince, why I gave her such a large tip, and following this adventure, I sat all night long, on what ended up being the deserted steps of Cleveland, with hardly anybody passing by, being unsure where I was. Celeste did talk to me on the phone for a time, until I noticed a train coming in, but it was further away from me, and my battery started getting low. She did have her radio show to do the following morning, so let her go so she could get some sleep, and saw to contacting the police, who eventually found me, which wasn't easy, since there was a fence separating me from the public, really making me feel, well, deserted. The police officer escorted me over to where I needed to wait, and I caught my 5:50 AM train out of Cleveland, arriving in Pittsfield shortly after 4 in the afternoon. I had never been so relieved to make it on to the train, and then to my final destination in my entire life. Post arriving in Pittsfield, I headed to Liberty Pizza, where I had Celeste come and meet me, and we ate dinner together. We then spent the next week, quietly relaxing together, while I finished off some chips she had on hand, as well as corndogs and taquitos in her freezer, because she had headed to the store before she knew I was coming, so graciously understood the lack of food this time around. Come the following weekend though, she did have to go to the store, and it was at that time, that I reunited with her mom again at least. I visited for another 2 weeks, before heading to Springfield, Massachusetts to visit a friend of mine who is attending school over there.

While in Springfield, I visited my friend at her college and ate lunch there, and then, stayed at the Red Roof Inn, as well as went shopping at the Holioke Mall, visiting both, the Apple Store and Best Buy, being disappointed it was so late in the month, that there was hardly any money to buy anything. Thankfully though, because the mall wasn't nearly as crowded, like it was the day I went back in August in Bakersfield, I was able to get help from the security guards, and had fun playing in the Apple store, getting to check out an Apple TV, and finding out that you could get a 10 terabyte external hard drive at Best Buy for only $130.00! Unfortunately, I still don't have either one of those items, but maybe someday, at the very least, the 10 terabyte drive, as 2 of them would be just perfect, for getting my ripped Blue Rays and DVD's moved on to, freeing up space on my 4 terabyte drive, which is nearly full. I also liked that one could ride the local buses in the area for free, so long as you were blind or visually impaired, and had proof of this, like a white cane in my case. While Springfield was fun, due to the fact that my friend was very busy with school, I made a difficult decision, but one worth making, if I wanted to live in peace and feel safe. I went back to Pittsfield, and decided to make a permanent move there, living with Celeste, in hopes that no family drama would unfold again.

To my pleasant surprise, Celeste was thrilled to have me move in with her, and once I explained myself to her family, they've been much nicer to me since I returned. As for the ancient heating system, other than one leak we had in late January, which did get fixed in February, but because the maintanence person forgot to open up the valve, cutting off heat to the bedroom, for the most part, we've had good luck with the heat working in at least one room of the apartment throughout the winter, and weather wise, it's been a much milder winter, with the record low so far, only reaching to 1 degree, and a record high of 64 in late January, for one day, which even surprised Celeste, who's been living in Pittsfield since 1993. As for the various holidays that have come and gone since I've been back, Halloween was kind of ruined because of a bad rain and wind storm that delayed Trick or Treat by 2 days, causing Celeste to decide to not go, and I skipped the concert at the Colonial theater, because I didn't feel well that evening, but Celeste went and had a wonderful time. I did attend the Eagle's Band Christmas concert both, in 2018 and in 2019 in early December, and both of them are available on my Youtube channel if you wish to check them out. Thanksgiving was also quiet, only watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thanksgiving Day of 2019, because it was easier for Celeste's family to have dinner the following day on Black Friday, because over the summer, her nephew moved out of town, only being able to come the day after. No big deal, the food was just as good, and her folks remembered what I didn't like from the year before, so I only consumed what I did like, and got another pumpkin pie to myself a second year in a row. Also, the temperature was only 35 degrees opposed to the 12 degrees I witnessed the previous year, which was a huge help. I did get to enjoy more Christmas tree cakes during the holiday season, and Celeste's birthday in December was a similar celebration to the previous year, only this time, her brother and nephew also attended the movie with us, which this time, we went to see Frozen II. Come Christmas, I went to the celebration again, after enjoying Christmas music on the radio, though sadly, I had to listen on a different station this time, because WTBR stopped playing Christmas music at midnight on Christmas day, and the station I found, kept looping their playlist, causing me to hear several songs repeatedly throughout the night and early morning, ending my benge listen sometime in the afternoon before heading to Celeste's parents place. As for presents, Celeste received quite a few things, with the biggest surprise of them all being, an Apple Watch, series 5! While she enjoys it, as much as I'm a fan of Apple products, because I'm not a big fan of watches, this is one product I don't see me getting in the foreseeable future, but I'm glad Celeste enjoys it. As for me, I received both, the complete TV series of Knight Rider on DVD, as well as the complete series of Star Trek, the Next Generation on DVD, which took until the end of January to receive a complete copy, because discs were missing and duplicated the first two copies. My initial copy had 2 copies of seasons 4, 5, and 6, with seasons 1, 2, and 3 missing, while the first replacement, had two copies of seasons 1, 2, and 3, with seasons 4, 5, and 6 missing, and in both cases, I did receive a copy of season 7 in both sets. Third time's the charm though, as all 7 seasons were there, and I have both series ripped to my friend's external hard drives, which combined, have more space than mine has at the moment. Celeste also got a copy of the complete TV series of Home Improvement on DVD as a combined birthday slash Christmas present from one of her cousins, which was quite the surprise, since we couldn't find it anywhere, and, it came in this really cute tool box, which we've since emptied, and are now using it to store accessories for our computers and phones for the time being. To ring in the 2020 new year, I watched Rockin' New Years Eve again, and we split a Hawaiian pizza from Liberty Pizza, and Celeste filled in for a DJ on the Internet radio station we've been a part of since 11/20/19 for me, and 12/13/19 for her. She left The Q Online in mid October, after being disatisfied with management over there, and I believe I was silently let go after not doing anything over there for 6 months, so we both ventured over to 98.6 The Mix, where I now do Monty's Grab Bag on Wednesday afternoons from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM Eastern, and Celeste does Flashback Friday on Friday evenings from 11:00 PM to 2:00 AM Eastern, or until she runs out of playlist, whichever one happens first lol. Then, come Valentine's Day, I got to enjoy more conversation hearts during the months of January and February, and we were invited over to Celeste's parents place, after we treated ourselves to lunch from Flavours of Malaysia and Subway via DoorDash earlier that afternoon. At Celeste's parents place, we enjoyed dinner from McDonalds, and I received a Braille valentine from her mom, as well as 2 packages of conversation hearts, allowing me to enjoy them literally, to the very end of February.

Since I've returned to Pittsfield, I've been enjoying listening to the Pittsfield Fire Department, and even recorded a couple of fire alarm events when it went off in our building, I continue to enjoy excellent coverage on all 3 of my phone carriers, and still have the highest package that Spectrum offers, which went up by a couple hundred megs since I last had it back last winter and early spring. I also left Digital Ocean, where I use to have a server, and am now on Linnode, where I'm running both, an Icecast server, as well as a Teamtalk server. And oh yeah, my friend Celeste has picked up the daily mint tradition that my sister did when I lived with her, giving me one Winter Green Life Saver mint per day, at very random times and in very creative ways I might add. Oh yeah, and earlier this year, I checked out a podcast called, 9 Days in July, which discusses in great detail, stuff that went on during the Apollo 11 mission, as well as giving biographical information of all of the people involved, as well as what lead them to being a part of the Apollo 11 mission in the first place, and what happened to them afterwards. This podcast sparked a roller coaster of emotions, looking at each day of the mission, and if you're a space nerd like myself, or at the very least, find the history of our first men on the moon fascinating, then I highly recommend you check out this podcast, which I know is for sure, available on Apple Podcast, and it wouldn't surprise me if it's available on other podcasting platforms. All-in-all, other than what I'll be discussing in my next entry to follow, life is pretty good at the moment, even this year's Super Bowl was better than Super Bowl 53, where the Patriots creamed the sleeping Rams on the field. And as for the 2019 World Series game, no extra long game like the year before, but of what I caught of it, the games weren't half bad, good thing too, since who knows if there will be a world series game in 2020, again, more to come about that in a future post. As for the radio thing, as in the Internet radio thing, Celeste has completed a total of 14 consecutive shows, while I've done 16 shows, and over at 98.6 The Mix, I'm getting a lot more listener interaction than I ever got at The Q, not only from Celeste, but with a new online friend of ours from Illinois, as well as a friend we made over the summer who lives in Santabarbra, California, he's been quite a loyal friend to the both of us since we all started talking back in April of last year, and if I should ever get back out west again, I hope to go meet him in person. I've also been enjoying a new streaming service called Disney+, where I benge watched all of Hannah Montana, and Smart Guy, and Celeste introduced me to a few more movies that some of them, are on the Disney+ platform, while others, are exclusively on her video cassette collection, those being, Smart House, Life Size, and a few Christmas movies, including The Ultimate Christmas Present, which is available on Disney+. We also watched all 3 Santa Clause movies to wrap up the Christmas season, and other than that, I can't think of much else to say. I'm sure I've forgotten things, after all, I did have nearly 3 years to catch you guys up on, but if you follow me on Twitter, or are friends with me on Facebook, or if we chat via WhatsApp, and you check out my streams on Dabel, along with this here post, you should know everything about me at that point. That's probably why I don't update as much in this journal anymore, because I have so many social media platforms to choose from, that I tend to go for the more popular ones, but I can't abandon this platform entirely, after all, it's still around, so might as well use it. Anyway, thanks for reading, and hope you're having a nice day.

Annoying T-mobile iPhone issue with some apps

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Tue, 09 May 2017 12:09:03 GMT

The issue I'm about to discuss is one that I first discovered a few months ago, and the issue was fixed in iOS 10.3, however the problem has fully returned in 10.3.1, which at the time of this writing is the most current version of iOS for the iPhone.
Basically the problem is that on a T-Mobile iPhone, certain apps absolutely refuse to work when connected to the cellular data network, even though the phone is set to allow all apps to use cellular data. The apps load just fine, but when they try to do anything requiring network access, it's as if it's not even on the network, when the phone clearly is on the cellular data network as evidenced by the fact that other apps work with no issues!
Most notably, one of the apps experiencing this annoying issue is called iTeamtalk, a high quality voice chat app. It refuses to connect to any teamtalk server when on Cell data. However, this is not the only app I use that's experiencing this problem. I've discovered at least 3 apps that will not work via T-Mobile cell data. In all cases, the apps act as though they are totally offline and will not connect to anything. For example, the Magic Jack app, an app that allows one to make calls to telephones, will not connect to the magic jack server, and thus cannot register itself to allow the user to place a phone call.
Transmit is another app that won't work via T-Mobile data connection. Transmit is a file transfer client that supports FTP and SFTP file transfers. When trying to connect to any server, be it an FTP or SFTP server, transmit immediately throws an error stating connection timed out or server hung up. It's as though it's not even trying to connect at all. Even stranger still, another app that can do file transfer via SFTP and FTP among others, is file browser, and that app can connect to anything I tell it to when on T-Mobile cellular data without issue! And as if that wasn't strange enough, it gets even weirder! If I enable personal hotspot on my T-Mobile Device, then connect to my T-Mobile hotspot with my Verizon iPhone 7 plus, which has the exact same apps on it, I can use all the apps such as transmit and iTeamtalk via the T-Mobile hotspot with no issues whatsoever! I can also use these apps when directly connected to Verizon's cell data network without any issues of any kind. I want to know what's causing these 3 apps, and possibly more, to simply not work if being used directly on a T-Mobile iPhone on the T-Mobile data network? It makes no sense at all. Why do these apps not work, but others work without problem? When I use cell data, I expect every app I have to not have an issue using cellular data!
This is quite an annoying issue, and since I cannot diagnose the problem any further, I'm unsure if the blame is with T-Mobile or apple. I do know that I'm not the only user experiencing issues with apps refusing to connect to the internet when on T-Mobile data directly! At least 2 other friends of mine in totally different areas of the country are experiencing the same issues as me, and the only common factor is T-Mobile. I'd be curious to know what other apps may not work via T-Mobile directly. The fact that the issue was briefly fixed, then broke again is rather curious as well. Anyone that has thoughts or comments on this I would welcome them.

loving new computer

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Sun, 16 Apr 2017 21:55:00 GMT

For the first time in about a year, I've once again got a computer, after selling my old mac last year around this time to a family member. This new computer I got from Costco, and it's quite a nice laptop. It's a Lenovo Y520 series laptop with an incredible 16GB of ram, and it has 2 drives, a 2TB storage drive, and a 256GB SSD which of course is where the operating system and programs live. With the extra storage of 2TB separate from the main operating system drive, I'm able to if necessary, format and reload the operating system, and not lose data files at all! Pretty sweet. Of course these days, I've got plenty of places to store stuff off site as well. These storage options include, 1TB of storage at both Dropbox and Onedrive, 100GB at Google, and unlimited storage, currently totaling 1.7TB and counting at Amazon. Plus for temp storage, I've got some virtual servers with about 60GB total capacity as well. Yeah I should be good for a while. So yeah this laptop is awesome so far. And oh yes I bought it here in Oregon where I'm visiting friends, so the price I saw would be the price paid, no sales tax to worry about, yay.

DDOS attacks, why bother?

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Sun, 03 Jan 2016 15:29:56 GMT

Welcome to 2016 everyone. Recently, over the past week or so, since at least Christmas 2015, VPS hosting provider Linode has been suffering from long duration distributed denial of service attacks on it's entire network, and I don't mean just 1 datacenter either! These attacks seem to be targeting linode as a whole, with attacks occuring in just about every one of their datacenters. Now in most cases, when a distributed denial of service attack or DDOS attack occurs, it's targeted at a given website or group of related sites. That's bad enough, but now we've got multiple attacks targeting an entire company itself it would seem. This company is a hosting provider, and as such, they host a wide variety of content. Everything from web sites, to VOIP phone systems, to streaming audio and internet radio stations, to databases, and just about anything else you can think of are hosted at Linode's various datacenters. With such a wide variety of stuff hosted, what the hell would cause someone or a group of people to launch a DDOS against an entire provider like that? Clearly it's deliberately targeted at Linode and everything it does, since pretty much all of their geographically diverse locations have been targeted multiple times throughout this ongoing event. I don't currently have anything hosted at Linode, but I know people that do, and I feel bad for them, as they can only wait this out and hope it'll clear up soon. When I did have stuff hosted with Linode, they were a good provider with very good network connectivity and speed, so again I'm mystified as to why whoever or whatever wants to cause this DDOS against an entire provider. What did they do to them? And just how exactly do you prevent attacks like this from effecting other VPS hosting providers or any internet provider for that matter? I hope everything calms down soon, and hopefully we may find out why this attack was initiated to begin with.

An iCloud mail mystery

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 09:35:14 GMT

This is an issue I've had I think ever since iCloud was released some 4 years ago now, but as I'm no closer than I was then to solving it, I'll put it out here on my blog, and see if others may have ideas. Part of a user's iCloud storage is used for their iCloud email account, should they wish to make use of it. I do use my iCloud email account, though not all that often. Currently, when I check to see how much storage various things in iCloud are taking up, most make sense, except for mail. Let me explain. My iPhone backup currently takes up about 609 megabytes of space, which sounds about right, since I do have several voice memos, and various other audio apps that I keep data backed up in iCloud. Plus, I believe iCloud keeps the most recent 2 backups I think it is, so all that data added up would come out to the figure I mentioned above. The mail portion of my iCloud storage though makes no sense whatsoever. At the moment, my iCloud mail contains a total of 4 messages, 3 of which are normal simple plain text emails, that should only be a few kilobytes each. The 4th message does have 2 .xml files attached to it, as well as a plain text description of what the attachment of the message contains. The attachments in all total around 50KB in size. I'd estimate that all my iCloud mail combined should take up maybe 100-300KB total, when you factor in header information, along with the message overhead for the attachments. There's no way for me to see the exact size of the individual messages themselves to be sure, so I'm just estimating based on the message contents. So, if my total iCloud email size is let's say 300 kilobytes, then why does it say that mail is taking up 10.7 megabytes of my iCloud storage! Yes you read that right, with nothing at all in my junk or trash folders, or my sent folder, the 4 messages I have stored in iCloud which are quite small themselves, are somehow taking up a crazy 10.7MB of my space! A while back, I tried to dig into this issue, back when my iCloud settings showed that my mail portion of storage was using an insane 147MB of space. I primarily use my iCloud account on my phone, but when I cleared out all messages from there with no noticeable change, I brought up mail on my mac, and cleared out stuff from there and that did seem to help, as my mail was then only using a few kilobytes of space. I also discovered that notes that you create with the notes app are actually stored in the mail portion of your iCloud storage. This may be different now with iOS9, though I haven't yet tested to be sure of that. Anyway, with no mail at all in iCloud, and with the only thing taking up the mail portion of my storage being my notes from my notes app, the size of mail storage used looked right, at about 90 kilobytes or so. I then sent myself a simple test plain text email, which even with header information and all should be just a few kilobytes in size, and after receiving the message, I was shocked when I looked at how much iCloud mail was taking up, and it had jumped from 90KB, to over 5 MB! Remember that I had not sent myself any attachments whatsoever. I'd literally sent just 1 message with a subject of testing and body of "this is a test message." There's no way in hell that message alone, even with header information and such, would've been 5 megabytes by itself! That message couldn't've traveled through so many mail servers, so as to make the header info of the message 4 or 5 megabytes! I did then send myself a message with an attachment of around 1.5 megabytes, and the storage used after receiving that message jumped up to over 10MB. The message itself again including all headers should have been less than 5MB. I still have no explanation as to why mail storage space is so way off the mark. And as I said, at this very moment, I have 1 message that contains 2 small attachments, and 3 other plain text emails, and my mail storage should not even be close to 5 megabytes, let alone the 10.7 megabytes that it's showing right now! Does anyone have any idea what on Earth is going on with this? I'm not running out of storage or anything, I'm just curious why mail storage seems to store more data then should be there, and what that data could be. It'd be like me withdrawing $60 at an ATM, only to discover my account showing I withdrew $120, even though I know for a fact I've got 60! Strange stuff, and if anyone has ideas, I'll take them.

Can blind users upload multiple items to archive.org anymore?

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Sun, 27 Sep 2015 11:50:48 GMT

Hi everyone. Today I'd like to upload a couple of collections of audio recordings to the internet archive. Years ago, I did this somewhat regularly, and those recordings of mine are still archived for all to enjoy. Back in 2011, and before, when I'd upload to archive.org, which is the home of the internet archive, the process for uploading was quite simple. You basically would tell the site you wanted to upload some files, you'd then be assigned an FTP server to connect to and upload your files, then you'd return to the archive.org site to finish editing and making your items available. This process was easy and perfect for a blind computer user using a screen reader to get the job done, as I obviously would be doing. However sometime in 2011 or 2012, the internet archive did away with their FTP upload option entirely, in favor of their in browser upload option. This in browser upload option uses flash, and near as I can tell, it's totally inaccessible to screen reader users! They have a non-flash alternative as they call it, but that option gives you no progress on your upload, nor does it allow for multiple item uploads, such as what I would be uploading 100 percent of the time. One collection I want to upload are my recordings from the American Council of the blind convention in 2014, which I attended. This collection has 61 items in it. When the FTP option was around, as it was in 2011 when I last uploaded to the archive, it would've been no problem uploading all 61 items at once, as I'd just connect to the FTP server I was assigned, upload all items at once, then finish editing the description and title and such on the site, and all was good. However now, the task of simply uploading my items to archive.org seems all but impossible! If I try with the flash method, I get an unlabeled button, which I assume is an upload button, but pressing enter or space on it does nothing, and nothing is ever uploaded. I'm very disappointed in the internet archive for doing away with the FTP method of uploading content, especially when it seems like their are no options to allow a screen reader user to upload content to the site now! The FTP method worked, and worked well, why totally get rid of it! And I'm sure not going to upload 61 separate times to the site, that just seems crazy. So my question is, is their any way at all for a totally blind user using a screen reader such as Jaws or NVDA, to upload multiple files to the internet archive at all? I like the internet archive, since it allows me to preserve recordings I've made over the years, while at the same time making them available for anyone to enjoy. I'd like to be able to upload content to the archive again, but I need a good reliable way to upload multiple items at once, as I did many times in the past with the FTP option. Is this possible at all? I sure hope so. The process of uploading content to any web site, should never be inaccessible! Any ideas or comments on how I can get my content up to archive.org, I'd appreciate them!

T-mobile does have a hard 4 hour single call duration limit

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Thu, 11 Jun 2015 19:38:53 GMT

After doing numerous tests with my T-Mobile service since obtaining it back at the beginning of May 2015, and doing a little research, it seems T-Mobile's network as a whole does have a single call duration limit of 240 minutes or 4 hours. In other words, if you are on a call, no matter if it's T-Mobile to T-Mobile or not, the call will always drop around 240 minutes into it, and you or them will need to call back. If using wifi calling, the duration is 4 hours exactly, but I've found if using the cellular network, the maximum call duration is slightly less than 4 hours, usually between 3 hours 51 minutes and 3 hours 55 minutes. Most users I'm sure will never hit this limit on a single call, but for those times where you may want or need to have a long chat by phone, such as when I was trying to troubleshoot a friend's server issue a few night's ago, it's good to know what the limit for a single phone call on a provider is, since it's never documented. I've done tests on Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and magicjack, and can report the following results. T-Mobile as stated above has a maximum single call duration of around 4 hours, MagicJack has a maximum call duration of 1.5 hours or 90 minutes, and both Verizon and AT&T are truly unlimited, as I've had phone calls up to 9 hours, 10 minutes on Verizon and over 7 hours on AT&T. I also have google voice, and so far, I've had a 3 hour 5 minute long telephone call via Google voice, but I need to do more tests to see what the limit of GV is, if any for a single call. I do wish providers if they choose to have a limit per call, would document this limit somewhere, rather than making users wonder why their calls drop after a given amount of time. After all, they do advertise unlimited voice minutes, so they should in my view state there are maximum per single call duration limits. One nice thing about the VOIP provider call Centric, is that you have a single call duration limit, but it can be configured on a per user basis. So mine I think is currently set for 1 hour, but I can adjust that whenever I please all the way up to a max of 8 hours. And, there are other providers, such as vitelity, that are unlimited. As I learn more provider call duration limits, I'll update everyone.

Update on my Verizon Wireless call duration issue

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Fri, 24 Apr 2015 05:04:23 GMT

OK, since I last reported on my strange issue on Verizon Wireless, where my calls drop at random intervals between about 2 hours 15 minutes and 2 hours 45 minutes, I've run a couple more tests, with very interesting results. Over the last couple nights, I've placed 2 long duration calls to the allstar ham radio network I mentioned in my last post. Both calls were placed after 10 PM PDT. And, get this, both of those calls were able to go well beyond the 3 hour mark, with the first call lasting 3 hours, 16 minutes, before I myself terminated the call, and the second call making it all the way to 5 hours, 4 minutes, before I again terminated the call myself! After the first successful late night test call that lasted 3 hours 16 minutes, I later that day called the exact same place, but this time during the morning, around 8:05 AM, and the call dropped at 2 hours, 14 minutes if I recall correctly. So in other words it seems in my tests so far, if making a call late at night, like after 10 PM, I have no issues making it to, and even exceeding the 3 hour mark, but if a call is placed anywhere during the day, calls will drop randomly between 2 hours 15 minutes, and 2 hours 45 minutes in duration. As I said previously, this is not a signal issue, as I have full solid signal at all times. I still want to run a test with a fellow Verizon Wireless customer during the day to see if a call to or from them will drop as calls to anywhere else do during the day. More updates as I can provide them.

Odd issues with long calls on Verizon Wireless with iPhone 6

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Wed, 22 Apr 2015 04:54:58 GMT

I noticed something very odd and a bit unusual when chatting with my sister this weekend. After chatting with no issues for over 2 and a half hours, the call dropped without warning. I originally thought it was on her end, that maybe her phone provider has a maximum call duration limit. I was further convinced this was likely the case when it happened a second time, but this time after just 2 hours and 23 minutes of talk time. I thought it was odd that my calls to or from my sister were dropping at random times between 2 hours 15 minutes, and 2 hours 45 minutes, no real pattern to it. For those who may not be aware, some phone providers, particularly VOIP providers such as magicJack or vonage, do have set limits on how long any one single telephone call can be. Some are quite reasonable, while others are rather short. But usually, if a provider has a limit, the call will drop every time at the exact limit, once that limit is reached. In the case of my sister and I however, the call was dropping at seemingly random points, all after 2 hours 15 minutes. To find out for sure if it was my sister's end or not, I decided to test it out myself by calling my backup phone, and keeping the call connected either until the 3 hour mark, or until the call dropped by itself, whichever happened first. The call between my Verizon phone and my secondary AT&T phone dropped after 2 hours 43 minutes. This proved that this was not at all on my sister's end. The next test I wanted to do is to find out if calls I make to other places also drop randomly after 2 hours, 15 minutes or so. So I dialed in to a ham radio link network called allstar, which has telephone access, and connected to a busy node with lots of activity on it. I listened to this until the call dropped by itself after just 2 hours 15 minutes. Later, I called the same system, and the call dropped after 2 hours 42 minutes. Another call to my sister, and that call dropped after 2 hours, 34 minutes.
All of the previously mentioned phone calls were done here at my home location. I figured maybe it was something odd with the local Verizon Wireless cell site perhaps. So to test that theory, today, when I was on the campus of my local community college, located about 2.5 miles or so from home, I dialed into the allstar network again, and the call this time lasted just 2 hours, 18 minutes before dropping by itself as all the other calls had done. But it gets a little stranger still. I just minutes ago looked at my most recent call log on the Verizon Wireless web site, and the call I made this morning to the Allstar network, which my phone says lasted 2 hours 18 minutes, or 138 minutes, shows as lasting 164 minutes, or 2 hours, 44 minutes on the Verizon Web site! Even if I take into account that the first 60 seconds of any call will be 1 minute as far as billing is concerned, the call this morning should've lasted no more than 139 minutes, possibly 140 at the absolute most, yet Verizon's log is saying that call lasted 164 minutes! Just how is that possible? That's a 24 minute difference! My phone just dropped the call, as it'd done with all the others, at the 2 hour, 18 minute point, not the 2 hour 43 or 44 minute point! So this is a very strange and odd issue that I'd like to determine what it's cause is. The next test I want to perform, if I can find a volunteer to help me with this experiment, is to call another Verizon Wireless customer and see if I can make the call last beyond the maximum 2 hours, 45 minutes or so that I seem to be able to achieve right now when calling anywhere else. I should point out here that this call drop issue is not at all signal related, as I've got full signal, no less than 4 bars, during all telephone calls. I'm using a brand new Verizon iPhone 6, that isn't even a month old yet. If calls to a fellow Verizon Wireless user also drop and random intervals between 2 hrs, 15 minutes, and 2 hrs, 45 minutes, then I then somehow need to figure out if it's something odd with my phone, though I'm not yet sure how I'll test that. I'll try and update as I do more experimentation on this odd issue. Thoughts and comments most welcome.

AT&T doesn't provide a way for goPhone users to see data usage... Why?

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Thu, 02 Apr 2015 03:29:19 GMT

My iPhone 5, which I've had since March 2013 continues to work well, and in the near future, I do plan to sell it, as I've now upgraded my primary Verizon phone to an iPhone 6, and it's working great. Since my 5 is no longer my primary device, I decided that I'd throw an AT&T goPhone sim into it and play around with having a secondary carrier that's prepaid for a bit. The nerd in me loves to compare carriers coverage when I'm able to. The plan that I chose at least for this month, is the $45/month goPhone plan, which gives you unlimited talk, text, and even data believe it or not. But here's the catch. With the data, you get up to 1.5 gigabytes of data bandwidth at speeds up to 4G or possibly LTE speeds. I say possibly LTE, because my iPhone 5 is old enough, it does not support AT&T LTE bands that newer devices will support. I've proven this in a previous experiment a while back. So you get up to 1.5GB of data at 4G/LTE speeds, and anything beyond the 1.5 gigabytes, your speed is reduced to 128kbps until your next renewal, or until you purchase an add-on data package. However you may wish to do it. This is all fine and good, but there is absolutely no way that I can see to see how much data AT&T think's you've used at all! Sure I can reset data usage on the iPhone, but I like to check the actual carrier data usage info, and all other carriers, provide users with this information, but AT&T at least with it's current goPhone plans does not appear to provide data usage information to it's users! If you want to know how much data you've consumed on AT&T's end, you have to actually call customer service! How boring. If they can see it, why can't the user? Just so very odd, and it makes no sense at all to withhold this information from it's users.

Thoughts on Microsoft's oneDrive cloud storage option

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 22:33:33 GMT

There are many choices when it comes to having access to your data almost anywhere you are. From drop box and google drive, to Microsoft's oneDrive, it seems storing stuff in the cloud is quite the thing to do these days, with plenty of storage options to choose from, and some cloud storage providers offering, or will soon offer, unlimited storage.
Today though I want to discuss Microsoft's oneDrive cloud storage option. I recently began playing with oneDrive after I got word that my local college campus now had access to office 365, which gives you access to a very nice 1TB of online oneDrive storage! After signing up with my college account, I decided to also get myself a personal account as well, for when I'm no longer able to access the college account due to no longer being a student there. The interfaces for the 2 accounts are somewhat different, as the college account is a oneDrive for business account, and my personal account, well it's a regular personal account. With both accounts, my goal, as it would be with any storage provider, would be to upload my various files and data from anywhere. So I've been focusing strictly on uploading files via a web browser. This way if I need to upload a file to my oneDrive that's not on my computer, I can do so from whichever computer I may be using at the time.
The first thing I noticed, is that uploading files to oneDrive with a web browser seems to take longer than I'd expect when using a good uplink to the internet such as my campus network. Uploading files of a few megabytes in size seem to upload OK, but when uploading larger files, such as a file that's 590MB in size, it took quite a while, even though I was on a connection that I know can achieve 40 to 60 megabits upload. Though an actual speed progress bar isn't provided, it felt as though I was only uploading a just a couple megabits per second or so. Sometimes, when trying to upload files, the upload would seem to start OK, but then it would appear to stop with an error, even though the upload wasn't even done yet! I have a collection of larger operating system .iso images that I wanted to upload into my oneDrive account. These files are between 2 and 3.5GB or so in size. I have yet to get one of these files up to either of my oneDrive accounts. Every time I start the upload, it goes for a while, and then just stops for no apparent reason! I've tried uploading from my campus network, as well as from my much much slower home internet connection. I don't know if there's a limit to the size of file I can upload with a web browser, but I'm sure not having luck getting a 3 gigabyte file up to my oneDrive account! I no doubt have the storage. With the personal account, you get 15GB to start out with, but I was able to double that by grabbing the oneDrive app for my iPhone, and having it back up my camera roll to oneDrive. So with 30GB of total space, and over 26GB of that still remaining, there's no reason that I can think of why I can't get my larger 3GB files up to my account. The largest file I've successfully gotten up to my oneDrive account so far is 590MB. I'm also noticing some accessibility issues with the oneDrive iPhone app, mainly often when I try and select a file to open in another app using the built in voiceover screen reader, the app seems to want to select a file other than the one I'm sure I'm selecting! Just yesterday, I tried using my google drive file to upload a 2.8GB zip file, and it uploaded there with no problem. So far, it seems my favorite cloud storage options are dropbox, then googleDrive. But I'd like to see oneDrive work better than it seems to currently, especially since I think you can use it with windows 8.1, and surely you'll be able to make use of it with Windows 10, coming later this year. If anyone has had luck uploading larger file to oneDrive, I'd love to know how you did it. I've tried with multiple web browsers, with no luck thus far.

Why does some home internet have to be crappy?

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 04:37:18 GMT

As I prepare to start what should be my final semester of school tomorrow, I had to do a little discussion about crappy internet, or at least what I consider crappy internet. You see, the place I'm currently staying at, which I was able to secure just in time to prepare for classes, is at a friend's place that's an apartment complex here in Lancaster. This itself isn't a bad thing at all. The person I'm staying with has internet, but it's not through any of the providers which usually serve this town. My original plan was that if I didn't like the internet offering that's already here, I could just bring in my own internet connection, and in my case that would've been via Time Warner Cable (TWC), as I really wanted to try out their 200 megabit down, 20 megabit upload internet package they now offer in this area. I was all set to do that, until I found out that this complex I guess only allows services via DirecTV, and there is no TWC connectivity anywhere in this complex! So we have TV through DirecTV, which is a satellite provider, and internet through something I've never heard of called Consolidated smart solutions LLC. I'm not even sure how I'm getting physical connectivity, whether it's via wireless or DSL, but I'm thinking wireless, since I know it's part of the deal with direcTV in this complex. The speeds on this internet connection are around 6 megabits per second download, and just 1 megabit per second upload, and that's it! With me doing periodic large file uploads and backups, I'd like to have at least 5 megabits up nowadays, and with me soon replacing a failed 2TB hard drive, I'm going to need to download around 300GB of data from a temporary place I'm storing the old data at. At 6mbps, that's going to take well over 4 days, and uploading that data back to my online backup service so it's safely backed up again, is going to take weeks at 1mbps! If I was going to have an exclusive deal with an apartment complex or the like, I'd make sure the internet was good and fast, at least 25 or 50mbps down, and no less than 5 megabits up, and I'd likely have options for folks to get faster packages if they needed or wanted it. But even crazier than all that, is that in this area, my cellular service through Verizon Wireless, is rock solid, with great full signal levels! And, tests done on my Verizon connection show me able to achieve download speeds of between 21 and 30 megabits per second, and upload of between 14 and 15 megabits per second! Now of course mobile internet speeds are quite variable by nature, but I think something's wrong, when I can achieve better internet in this area on my phone than I can on the apartment internet connection! Of course I'd love to use my phone for doing the large data transfers when I need to do them, but of course I can't do this, because of the data cap I have, and no matter what my cap is, if I were to initiate these transfers via my phone's connectivity, I'd go well over my cap, by many many times, resulting in a bill that would require Bill Gates to come pay it for me!
This is not how I ever imagined internet connectivity options would be. I think if a provider serves an area, it should serve all of said area, and no one should be able to say no you can't serve this complex or anything like that. Because of this, I do believe I currently have no options for true high speed internet other than my phone where I'm at. If only there were a database of places one could go to get true high speed upstream and downstream access to the internet, that would be great. This is 2015, not 2004, true high speed of at least 20mbps should be the norm these days, and really we should have symmetrical internet access, but that will never happen at the consumer level on a wide scale. I'm amazed we ever made it out of the dial-up era, considering no provider seems to want to improve network connectivity anymore. Verizon FIOS, which I had hope for when it was first deployed that I'd get to have my own FIOS connectivity one day, is pretty much done, with no further deployments going on, heck I never even see promos for FIOS anymore! I can't believe a company would want to just stop deploying a technology that has awesome potential now, just as it did then! I know several people that are lucky enough to have FIOS, and I'd love to have it myself, as my friends that have it, usually get rock solid symmetrical speeds that blow away what I can get here. But alas, I guess I'm stuck with my always on dial-up connection, lol. At least I'll get periodic access to the campus network which in most places on campus is 100 meg symmetrical, provided I can get Ethernet access to it. The wireless is a little strange, but that's a discussion for another time.

It's been a while, but time to rant about apple a bit

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 05:17:33 GMT

Well I didn't realize I hadn't written on my blog in over 2 years, until tonight. As I think I've said before I'm still very much around, mostly on social media, twitter as well as facebook and audioboom, and every now and then youtube. But I come here to do rants mainly, and tonight I have another one, this time having to due with apple and the long standing bugs relating to its voiceover screen reader on the iPhone that just don't seem to ever get fixed.
One specific bug that really annoys me is when trying to manage storage within iCloud using my iPhone 5. Whenever you go to manage storage, and click on the device who's storage you want to manage, (in my case I only have my iPhone 5), after clicking on the device, voiceover will cause the settings app to totally crash for some unknown reason, preventing me from actually fully seeing the apps and their storage amounts within my iCloud account. I've verified that it is voiceover causing the crash to occur. I've done this by turning off voiceover when going into the area where the list of apps for my device is listed, and the settings app never crashes, yet the moment I activate voiceover, the settings app crashes pretty much every time! Surely I'm not the only blind user experiencing this issue? This has been an issue for I don't even know how long, at least since iOS 8 has been around, and I think before that possibly. My question is what the hell would make the fact that voiceover is active cause the settings app to totally crash? Another random bug which annoys me is when I'm composing a message say using the messages app, and voiceover just out of nowhere crashes and restarts! Thank god it restarts after a crash, but what the hell would make it randomly crash in the first place? I mean all I'm doing is typing! And finally, here's a bug that I believe effects each and every blind person using voiceover on the iOS device. Try going to settings, iCloud, storage, change storage plan. Notice that the prices for each plan read with no issues with voiceover, however the actual storage amounts you get with each plan do not read at aall! This issue started back when iOS 8 was initially released, when apple introduced newer storage options with the introduction of iCloud drive. All a totally blind person can see is prices, but they have no clue what the storage amounts they would be paying for would be! So I happen to know that for $0.99, I get 20GB, but someone sighted had to tell me this, I mean for all I knew I could pay $9.99 and only get 20 megabytes! Of course this wouldn't be the case, but you get the point. This is a very serious bug, and how could it be around for 5 months, and still not be resolved? And what if apple changes their storage options? As of now, blind users, who have to use voiceover, won't be able to even know of the changes! I realize that blind people make up a very small percentage of apple's total user base, but there's more than just 5 or 10 of us, and these bugs should be looked into! I still love my apple products for the most part, but it seems accessibility might be starting to become an afterthought. Very sad, and I really hope I'm wrong. I use to enjoy apple products quite alot, even testing iOS betas such as iOS6 and 7, but now main production releases such as the current iOS 8.1.3 have bugs that should by now be resolved I'd think. Maybe stuff is just getting too complex, I don't know, but I can't understand why voiceover will not read the actual iCloud storage amounts in the list of storage plans, when it reads prices on that screen just fine. So crazy, and I hope accessibility bugs will in fact still get looked at.

Technet subscription update

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 21:45:11 GMT

It seems with technet orders, it may be best to place them by phone now. After trying several times to get the order to go through online and not succeeding, I tried placing the order by phone. It takes 2 to 3 business days for the order to process still, but at least I finally have access to the subscription for which I paid. I'm not sure why orders are not processed instantly after you place the order with Microsoft, especially since my expiration date for my subscription is February 12, 2014, which corresponds to one year after the date I first tried to place my technet order. However the order wasn't active until today February 15, so I am actually getting slightly less than a 1 year subscription. And there's no telling when my subscription will actually expire, because when I last had technet back in 2010, the subscription for that actually expired a whole week earlier then the date shown on my technet subscription info page. All I can say is my subscription should expire sometime in February 2014. After the experience I had this time when trying to obtain a technet subscription, I'm having second thoughts about whether or not I want to compliment my technet subscription with an MSDN operating systems subscription. We shall see in the near future what I decide to do.

Does microsoft not want me to order a technet subscription?

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:59:25 GMT

I'm not happy with Microsoft at this point. Yesterday, February 12, 2013, I decided to order a technet professional subscription. I placed the order yesterday afternoon, and got the confirmation email. However at this point my card was not charged. It took over 20 hours before I heard from microsoft, and when I did it was them calling me to tell me they flagged my order for random review, as part of a screening process to help reduce fraud. OK fine. I had two options. One was, that they charge my card right away, but it'd take 5-7 days before I'd have access to what I ordered. Since I wanted instant access, as I should get instant access when ordering something electronically, I opted for the second option, which was that they cancel the order, and then I re-place the order with the same info. That should work well I thought. So the order was cancelled, and I tried to place the order again. As soon as I placed the order, I got the following error.
1072 - We apologize for the inconvenience, but your credit card cannot be authorized for this purchase. Credit card issuers will sometimes decline legitimate transactions if they look suspicious or are outside of your normal spending pattern. This helps protect you from fraudulent use of your card. You should contact your card issuer to assure them that the charges are legitimate and then retry the order again.
I did just as the error suggested, and contacted my card issuer, and they told me that the charge did go through, and I verified this fact. Even still, I tried two more times to place my order with Microsoft, and each time, I kept getting that 1072 error. Yet the charges were processed and currently show as pending. Since I made a few attempts, there are currently over $1,100 in pending charges on my card from Microsoft, yet Microsoft isn't letting my order go through! What is going on here! The card is being charged, and other purchases from other companies are working fine, but microsoft will not process this order now! What can I do here? I don't ever recall it being this hard to order anything, ever! I've tried posting to the technet forums, and hope somehow I can contact Microsoft and get my order processed. I sure as hell am not trying a 4th time to get it to go through, because clearly it won't, and I want to know why, because funds are there, and this should not be happening!

When will movie and TV studios finally adapt to new technology?

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 08:12:29 GMT

Hi everyone, and welcome to 2013. Isn't it nice that the world didn't end last month, lol. Well today I'd like to discuss something that a friend of mine and I were chatting about via facebook last night. Why is it that the movie and TV studios don't offer each and every movie and TV show produced in the last 50 years via on demand streaming? For that matter, why don't they even allow said content to even be purchased in digital download form?
Many titles are still not even available on DVD, let alone streaming! During the era of the VCR, the movie industry tried to kill it off, yet it ended up becoming a huge money maker for them, and there was a time when you could find through various catalogs and the like, just about anything from your favorite movie, to that awesome documentary you saw last month on TV on VHS video.
However now, it's very hit and miss what you can find for purchase when it comes to digital download or on demand streaming through services like netflix or hulu.
If these companies truly want to make money, as they always claim they lose money when folks get content via less authorized means, why are they so unwilling to offer their entire catalog in digital form? Nowadays, in my view, much of the movies and TV shows that are put out there, aren't at all very good, with only a few exceptions. But movies and shows of the 1980's and 1990's, were made to actually entertain. Such classics as speed, home alone, short circuit, Honey I shrunk the kids, apollo 13, Independence day, and other movies of that era were actually good and very much worth watching more than just once.
And don't forget the TV shows of the era, everything from Full house, to Bay watch, to Knight Rider, to name only a few examples. I want to see options to purchase as a digital download, as well as a way to stream on demand if that's your prefered way to get content, every single movie and TV show in recent memory, from today's shows, all the way back to stuff from the 1950's, so noone is left out.
Though it took forever for the music companies to realize that they can still make money offering music via digital download, they eventually did it. You can download music you like from sources like iTunes, and you can stream music on demand through services like Rhapsody, Spotify, and others.
Yet the movie and TV content providers seem to be hell bent on not adapting methods of obtaining their content to cheaper, easier methods like digital download or on demand streaming via services like netflix.
Oh sure some content is available yes, but the vast majority is not, and that doesn't seem right to me. With today's technology and services, I should be able to search for a title, and download it or stream it as I wish, no questions asked. I'm not even talking about obtaining it via currently illegal methods, I'm talking about getting the providers to put their catalog of shows, both current and past, on all streaming services and download stores like iTunes and Amazon.
What exactly is the point of being so controlling that you keep content customers want to have from them when it comes to new technology? Is the act of not giving the customer what they want somehow making you money? I and many others would gladly pay for a subscription to something like netflix or purchase content via iTunes for example, which would give the content company more money, but they first need to actually make the stuff available to us in the first place.
Here's an opinion my friend and I both share on this issue, and he says it way better than I can.
For the most part Hollywood has been producing nothing but crap the past 12-15 years, and they are so stuck on remakes and reboots and making sure every movie has 3 or 4 or 6 sequels. Then they don't want to share their crap via streaming.
It's because the movie industry--like the rest of corporate america--is all about making as much money as they can. You'd think they would sell the streaming rights to older stuff at a lower rate than newer, but that's obviously not the case. You and I know what it used to be like back in the 90s, how good tv and movies were back then. How good music was back then. Then we hit the turn of the century and it all goes downhill, fast. Sure there are some great movies made since then and great TV shows, and great music. But not like the good ol' days of 15-20 years ago. It's all about the dumbing-down of our society. Get us to watch stupid TV shows and stupid movies and listen to stupid music, cut our education, and what do you get? Stupid people. Stupid people don't realize they're stupid, and are much easier to control, which keeps them from realizing what's really going on and who really runs our country--the corporations, which we collectively call Wall Street. Wall Street is behind all of this. They are the true puppet masters of our government. Just look at who keeps screwing us around, and who has the most to gain. The corporations. The rich. They're making us stupid by feeding us mindless entertainment--the internet included--which makes us too stupid to know what's going on and therefore too stupid to revolt and remove them from power. Look at the Occupy Wall Street movement in the news last year. Hundreds of people tried, and they were blocked every way possible. 3 corporations own 90% of all the news media in this country, so they can control what they report on and tell us what they want us to hear. When the Nazis told their citizens what they wanted them to hear, we called it Propaganda. In the US we call it news.

Remember how the original Napster allowed users to find music they wanted, even out of print stuff, since fellow users were making it all available to others since the record industry wouldn't do it? Is someone gonna have to set up something like that just for video, so that it can grow in popularity, then get shut down by the MPAA because a service is being offered that gives people the content they want, in a way they want it? That's how Napster ended up, and as we all know, after much bickering, the record industry finally now make their music available both via streaming services and via digital download.
My final thought on this, is what about content that is impossible to find anywhere? Why not make made for TV movies available for download and streaming as well, even if they only aired once. I'll give you a good example of this. In 1996, CBS I think it was, aired a movie called "Special report, journey to mars, a made for TV movie about a first ever manned landing on Mars. It was done in the form of live news coverage of the event. All goes well, until crew members start getting sick, and other oddities start happening. I recorded this movie when it aired, but no longer have the tape I recorded it on. However I want to see this movie again, because I've forgotten much of it, but I recall that I liked it. I've been searching for this movie for years, yet to this day, the only thing I can find on this movie anywhere is a very brief IMDB entry on it. I've never found clips of it, and I've certainly have never found the full movie anywhere on the internet. It's as though I was the only person in the country who watched it!
Where is that movie now? Did it just air one time and then it was thrown away? If so that's very sad, because I'd gladly purchase that movie so I can remember what it was all about. I've written all of this to say to the content providers, don't be afraid to offer your content via digital download and streaming. You can and will make money if you make your entire catalog of stuff available. Just give it a chance, you may just be surprised.

Microsoft's Volume activation management tool VAMT being odd!

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 08:25:02 GMT

Welcome to December everyone. Well I'm encountering an issue I've never ever seen before. I normally use the VAMT tool from microsoft to keep track of my windows 7 product keys, and until this evening, I've never had any issues with it. However, earlier, I tried to input a newly retrieved product key for windows 7 professional. This key was freshly retrieved from dreamspark, the program I have access to through my school which allows me to retrieve software for educational use. I actually retrieved 2 separate keys, one for windows 7 32 bit, and 1 for 64 bit windows 7. Neither of these keys will get accepted by any version of the volume activation management tool that I have. I tried with both VAMT 2.0 and the current version VAMT 3.0. I don't want to use the keys I retrieved unless I can verify with VAMT or some other way, that the keys are valid. Since the keys were gotten directly from the dreamspark web store, there's no reason they should not be, but the fact that VAMT refuses to recognize either of them, when I've never had any issues with any other product keys I've had over the years that VAMT supports, is a bit of a concern to me. So I wonder what's going on here?

Wanting to Obtain windows 7 volume license keys

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 23:54:03 GMT

For most people, when they purchase a new PC, it comes with windows pre-installed, and they don't usually care what kind of product key they have or how many activations it allows for. However, folks like me, are interested in this sort of thing. Retail product keys for windows products such as windows 7 are most common and fairly easy to purchase from any number of places. The trouble with retail product keys, is there is no way to keep track of how many activations the keys have on them. Microsoft's license agreement states that only 1 key may be used per computer. This would mean that each key should only be able to be activated once. However what happens if you modify hardware enough to cause windows to need to be activated again, as sometimes may happen? Obviously you aren't going to buy a second copy of windows just because you changed your hardware on your PC, and Microsoft no doubt realizes this, and so allows for a limitted number of activations per key. What that limitted number is however, noone knows, since microsoft doesn't allow for any way for owners of retail licenses to check this information. Folks lucky enough to have volume licenses though can check this information whenever they wish. Businesses and organizations can purchase what are known as volume licenses, and if a key known as a multiple activation key is what the business purchased, then it has a set number of activations for the product key they purchased. So for example, if an organization has 20 computers, then their multiple activation key (MAK) will have 20 activations available on it. So in other words, one MAK can be installed on all 20 of the organizations computers. If I was in charge of this organizations tech department, I'd much rather use 1 key on 20 machines then have to have 20 keys 1 per computer, as would be the case if I used retail keys. If I however only install the 20 user MAK key on 12 of the organizations 20 machines, I can use a tool Microsoft provides called volume activation management tool, and add the key to it, then query microsoft, and it will tell me that I have 8 activations remaining on that key. I can then do more windows activations on other computers at a later time, knowing I have the 8 activations available.
This is not possible with retail keys at all. And this is why I'd love to obtain volume MAK keys for windows 7 professional while I still can, if there's any way I can. Windows 8 is being made available to everyone in just a week, and though I've been playing with it for some time now, I'm not so impressed with it that I'd tell my friends to ditch windows 7. Windows 7 is quite solid and stable, but once windows 8 is publicly released next week, it'll no doubt become harder to purchase windows 7 in any form, retail or volume I'd expect.
I do have a tiny bit of experience with volume MAK license keys for windows 7. As a student at my local area college, we do get access to Microsoft's dream spark program, formerly known as MSDNAA, which gives student's and teachers access to a variety of microsoft software. Much of it is retail licenses, but at least in the case of windows 7, each account holder is given access to 1 copy of windows 7 professional who's product key is a MAK product key with 5 activations available on it. Strangely however, the multiple activation key for windows server 2008R2 that I get with dream spark, only allows for just 1 activation! I'm not quite sure why the key doesn't have at least 2 activations on it, but that's how it goes. Back when I had technet back in 2010 the keys I got for server 2008R2 allowed for an incredible 500 activations. Since I have yet to use even one of these, I will probably use my technet key to activate server 2008R2 next semester when I take a server 2008R2 admin class, rather than the key I got from dream spark, since I get just 1 activation on the dream spark key, and my technet key gives me 500, way way more than I'll ever need.
I've never had volume licenses for windows 7 professional other than the 1 from dream spark, because my access to technet was retail and I was not authorized to get volume license products except server products. There is a level of technet subscription that allows for volume license products, but I have no clue how to get that. As I said I'd be interested in purchasing even a single volume license for windows 7 professional so that in case my computer needs re-installation, or a friend needs to re-install windows, I can help them do it, knowing that I have activations available, not needing to wonder if activation will work or not. If anyone knows how I can legally obtain a volume license for windows 7 professional, I would be interested to know. I would want a license for not more than 10 computers. If there's a way I can purchase a technet subscription or MSDN even, that allows for volume license products to be retrieved, that'd work to.

Is a microsoft technet subscription still worth having?

Monty Icenogle KD6CAE — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 12:49:27 GMT

Hi all. Today I want to discuss microsoft Technet and whether it's still worth having, given changes that microsoft has made to the program in recent times. Back in June of 2010, I purchased a technet subscription from microsoft for $199 plus tax. This was called technet standard. This level of technet subscription had just been released, and offered pretty much every variety of desktop product from windows to office and more. You didn't get access to things like windows 7 enterprise, but that was OK, my main interest was in checking out the latest version of office and windows 7 for home use. When I first heard about technet a while before I purchased my subscription, there was hardly any difference between the then $349 technet subscription, which was the only one you could get, and the much more expensive MSDN subscriptions that microsoft offered for developers. The differences were mainly in the license terms, and at the time, in fact technet seemed like the better deal, giving you way more for way less. It was almost as though microsoft wanted to sucker you into a technet subscription. You'll see what I mean a bit later. At the time, both MSDN and technet allowed you to retrieve 10 product keys per product, which seemed perfectly reasonable, since the idea is that you as an IT professional would want to test microsoft software on more than one hardware configuration. So knowing this info, and knowing that microsoft had just released technet standard, I gladly purchased my subscription on June 14, 2010. All was fine until around September 15 or so, just 3 months later. At that time, I logged into my technet product keys area to retrieve a key, only to discover that I no longer could retrieve any additional keys for the product, despite me only having retrieved just 2 of what should've been 10 keys! Without warning, the number of keys that could be obtained per product was cut by 80 percent from 10 to just 2! This happened without warning. Now keep in mind, I had always assumed based on what I had read, that one product key could be activated on one computer at a time, so if I wanted to say test windows 7 on 3 computers, I would need 3 of my 10 product keys for that product. I was fine with this logic. But when I saw that products had been reduced to just 2 keys, myself and alot of other subscribers were furious and we flocked to the technet forums for some answers. It was there that I discovered in fact, that each key could be activated more than once, though noone could say for sure just how many times each individual license key could be activated for a product.
This brings up another point. Retail keys for microsoft products, which are most common for windows and office products, do not have a way to check to see how many activations remain for that key, or even how many have been used. On the other hand, if you have a volume license key, for example if you are a business, or have a technet subscription which offers volume license keys, you can see how many activations you have remaining by using a tool from microsoft called the volume activation management tool or VAMT. If you put a retail key into this tool though, for activations remaining, it always will say unavailable. With many users having multiple devices that they may wish to test on, it'd be nice to know how many activations we are entitled to per key. All microsoft will ever say is 1 key per device is allowed, but clearly even retail keys have more than 1 activation allowed for a key, so why not give retail key holders the same info you do for your volume license holders?
Even though I'm only an individual, I have lately wondered what I could do to legally obtain a volume license for windows 7 professional. I have access to Dreamspark, formerly known as MSDNAA thanks to my college, and through that, the windows 7 key I get is a volume license for windows 7 professional. It is a 5 activation MAK or multiple activation key. So at least when I install and activate that key, I know how many I started with, and can check and verify how many activations I have left. But my retail copy of windows 7 home premium? I can't do that! And speaking of home premium, let's go back to technet now. Just this past July, microsoft made even more crazy changes to technet, which I only found out about recently when reading an article about windows 8. Basically as I understand it, they've taken away all consumer editions of products from the technet lineup. This means, that if you want to get windows 7 starter, home basic, or home premium, for example, you ain't gonna be doing that anymore! Want windows XP home to see if that old computer you have still has life? Forget about getting that via technet. So now the only way to get the complete lineup of consumer and business level products from microsoft, is to get an MSDN subscription, the basic operating system one costs I believe around $700! And I have no clue what the product key limits are on technet or MSDN anymore. To me it doesn't seem like technet has any value to it anymore, despite microsoft claiming these changes are being made to maintain the value of the subscription! If microsoft never wanted consumer products in the technet lineup, why were they ever offered? If microsoft never wanted technet users to have access to 10 keys, why didn't they just give them 2 from the start? Many users, myself included, expected 10 keys, then without warning, our keys were pulled from us. and now that products are even being taken away from technet, is there still value in a technet subscription? I'd be particularly interested to hear from technet subscribers. What makes a technet subscription worth having still? And I still would love to know how I can obtain a 5 or 10 user volume license of windows 7 professional legally, so I can install that on my devices, and know exactly how many activations I have left. Thoughts and comments most welcome on this.