The Good and the Bad

 The good news here is that I had my first performance review with my present employer.  I knew I was doing well, but I didn't know that it was that well.  I think I know what it was that got me that rating.

When I reported to work there, I realized that I had an opportunity.  I am working local and I am working in manned spaceflight development (again).  This time I'm doing it locally and I'm doing it for a company that has an excellent reputation.  I figured I had best figure out how to keep this opportunity going, and I came up with something.

I decided that two things were going to happen each day at work.  One, I would give them a reason to make them glad that they hired me.  Two, I would go to bed each night a little bit less ignorant than I was when I got up that morning.

The second is easier than the first, as that the opportunity to become less ignorant is always there in front of you each day, meaning that you don't have to go out and look for it, though on some days you might have to.  The first, well that's something that you do have to go out and look for, though there will be the day every now and then that hands you that opportunity.  

If today's review is any indication, there is evidence that doing these two things daily is a big help.  I probably ought to add a third thing to that list of daily goals, and I intend to think about that some over the approaching weekend.

Now for the bad.

I'm going to open up about the election.

I don't think this one was on the up and up.  I cannot believe that someone who stayed closeted in a basement the way that Biden did could be capable of winning.  He wasn't the early on favorite of Organized Media.  Over 70 million people out there think he doesn't have all his marbles.  Telling off Cornpop and bragging about how children love rubbing your hairy legs isn't Presidential.  And then he picks a running mate who was first to drop out of the primaries.

And I'm supposed to buy this result?  There are lots of articles about ballot harvesting, dead people voting, fraud, irregularities........yes it's natural for these to arise from the losing side, but why doesn't the winning side ask for an investigation here?  If Russian collusion can be investigated, then why can't this election?

There are the legal challenges, and I have no problem with them.  Al Gore opened up that bottle and let the genie out and it shouldn't be a surprise that getting that genie back in that bottle is a whole other matter.  As to the merits of those challenges, I can't answer that.  I'm not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV.  

The whole thing stinks, and I'm wondering if I should continue being a voter.  

It goes back to something Joe Stalin once said.

It doesn't matter who votes.  What matters is who counts the votes.

One more thought.

The question isn't whether or not Joe Biden will be in office come the end of January 20th.  

The question is whether or not he will be in office come the end of July 20th.

Traveling the World by Radio (but a Computer is Involved)

 As I am typing this, I am listening to Radio Argentina.  If I were down there I would have a radio tuned to 570 kHz to do this.  Radio is still involved, except that I am listening via an internet connection to a remote receiver somewhere near Buenos Aires.  The link to the connection is:

http://lu4eec.ddns.net:8073/

Once I connected, I was able to tune the radio to the frequency I desired, and I've spent this evening tuning around, like I did last night.  Last night I learned that the David Lee Roth song "Just a Gigolo" was big down there at one time as that I heard a station play it.  When I tuned to 570, I discovered Radio Argentina, and I am finding the music from them (and from Radio Rivadavia) to be interesting to listen to.  Radio Rivadavia went heavily into the Argentine tangos, as has some other stations down there.  

Had this been a few decades ago, I'd be doing this the hard way:  a good shortwave receiver, a good antenna, and hoping for good propagation.  I have heard Radio Argentina via the shortwave before (and they were beaming an English broadcast to North America), and they were proudly playing their tangos.  I knew that other shortwave listeners were getting Radio Rivadavia, and they (along with me) were tuning the "tropical bands" to search for them as well as the Colombian and Venezuelan stations.

And here we are, years later, and the world is even closer to our fingertips.  I could connect to some (most?) of these Argentine stations by using the net itself without the remote receiver.  I've listened to the Falkland Islands this way.  I might tune the remote receiver to see how well their signal is making it to the remote receiver.  

So why am I doing this?

In one way, it's an extension of a hobby that I have had for many years.  If I wasn't trying to make contact with someone in a different continent, I was listening to signals from different continents.  The listening aspect of it would tell me what propagation was doing, but there was something else that was happening:  I was learning about the world.  I was becoming informed of world events.  

There's another reason.  If I'm tuning in to Argentina, then I'm being relaxed.  I can read books to relax and I do, but I like to vary what I do for relaxation.  Later on I'm going to disconnect from that remote receiver and I'm going to go upstairs and continue my re-read of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  And after that, maybe I'll pickup a real radio and see if I can get that one station in Gallup, New Mexico, which mixes country & western with Navajo music.  

Is this like going out to try a different kind of food?  Like going out for Peruvian, or Indian, or Polish food?  I think it is.  I suffer from the theory that if one widens the variety of what they expose themselves to, or tries different things, then it can be good for your mental health......but up to a certain point.

Not all of what's out there is good for you.  If you go out in the wild and harvest some mushrooms, you are risking a fatal mistake.  If you fill yourself with listening to hate speech of any kind or you spend too much time reading about how wrong the world is, odds are it ain't doing you very much in the way of good.

All of that said......I find the tuning in of distant radio stations, either via my own radio here in Tucson or using a remote receiver in Buenos Aires to be an enjoyable experience.  

That is my simple pleasure for this evening.  It's also taking my mind off of current events, which I don't feel very much like discussing right now.