Mattes's Musings by KC2GIK

As a designer of several sites I have to admit one of my worst mistakes was just jumping in without any plan. I first got on the web one night during the summer when I didn't have an idea what I was doing. The word "index pages" didn't mean a thing to me, neither did I understand the difference between the HTM and HTML file extentions. It was a police scanner site and that was it. I should have understoo that to make things orginized you need to put things in directories. duh! And everything was on one page there wasn't any rhyme or reason to it. There it was and it didn't even occur to me to separate the pages or how everything looked jumbled together. The main thing was it, I Justin had a website. Over the years I have learned well some what. Take the Tripod site. A few years ago Tripod "accidentally" deleted me website, hey it's free s o it happens. So I panicked and instead of waiting to see if it came back up, I immediately moved to Geocciti...

Alright I wrote two radio entries now it's time to go the my other hobby, license plates. Am I a Rennisance Man or what? One of the links o=n this site goes to the Automobile License Plate Collector's Association which I have been a proud member (even though inactive for a brief two year period) for eleven years. If you take into account I joined when I was 16 and didn't know anyone else in the aclub when I joined, it 's another one of the little facts abou t myself I proudly tell people. Last year ALPCA celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in Providence Rhode Island, man did I beg my folks to go! It also happened to be over their wedding anniversary so I took them and one of my brothers out with us since he was in nearby Connecticut. The details lwill remain sealed since in old J M fashion there was a little screw up Anyway I did it all, manned a post at the souvenior desk, donated a few plates to the auction, and picked up a few amazing plates to add to the collecti...

Well we just survived some wicked weather tonight, I have to write something about it. The winds kicked up abot 5pm and the rain soon after! It came in and out of town faster than a speeding bullet! Something out of the movies I swear y dinner was cut short because I wanted to spend the time at the command post listening in to the action. You know I never understood the need for more than one scanner until tonight. I have one just sscanner all the fire channels which came in real handy. You always hear folks say keep the emergenc y channels afew key presses away, tonight that advice finally paid off tonight. The damage on Glen Road was completely unreal, tree limbs were all over the place. I even saw a huge limb on a car truly amazing. Now the advice about not going to a scene is true, you should NEVER GO TO AN EMERGENCY SCENES but you can drive past! I know the owners of the car and all I can say is thank God\ nobody was in the car. Over all the storm went through pretty quickly ...

Alright a little family history for this post!! We have been going up to m y grandparents' townhouse in upstate NY for 22 year. It's something we'll do until whenever my grandfather decides to sell it. I mean he's not going up there any more because of problems I won't get into. Although surfice to say he nd my grandmother are at the age where travelling is a big deal,. Going up there has meant different things to me throughout my life. When we where younger my brother's and I looked forward to going to Great Escape, an amusement park! Over the years we have had some good times up there. One of the highlights was a few years ago when Chris and some of his friends took me up there. I mean it was the first time we went there withoout the folks. Oh man I could write pages on t hat, but I won't! Alrigh t this is the kicker of this trip, my uncle Chuck and I bought a bottle of Jack Daniels. It's not like we haven't had a drink before but something ab...

A quote from a mailing list poster, "I have not received any RailScan group messages since 6-22 and I waswondering if anyone else is receiving messages? Perhaps there is just a problemwithmy account?Any help would be greatly appreciated." Alright why in the world do people do this? Hint if you didn't do anything to stop getting e-mail chances are ipeople just do not have anything to say. It just bothers me when people start these discussions and it then goes way off topic because someone questions wether he or she is STILL ON THE LIST. The general idea of these mailing lists is to discuss a hobbby and to highlight news related to the hobby. Now I am just as guilty as the next person when occasional "off-topic post" but I have faith in the moderators to keep me and everyone else in line. Perhaps I would have reacted differently of the person guilty of posting an note like that if he added something related to railscanning at the end, but he didn't. The sad...

Alright that might sound gross but let me explain. For those non hams out there basically Field Day happens every last weekend in June where ham clubs across the nation try to make as many c ontacts as possible. This yearly activity has been around a lot longer than I have and it gets me on the air. Right now my entire ham station is in the crapper, it will be there for awhile. Anyway like almost everything else in this world, the computer enhances everything 100 times over. There are all kinds of "modes" meaning different ways to transmit, there's plain old voice contacts, then there's CW (Morse Code for all you non-hams) you can even do Amateur TV stations on the ham bands. Getting back to the computer, PSK-31 (Phase Shift Key) is among the new digital mediums we are utilizing. Think of it as online chatting but using radiowaves instead of internet. I roped in contacts from a half a dozen states, even KK5K out of Alabama. Yes folks you never know who or what you...

Please read this first: http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/warningyourcleverlittleblogcouldgetyoufired I am not saying I'm the autority on blogging because I have only been doing it for a few weeks. However I have written in public forums and have been exposed to every kinds of reaction to my writing known to man. People questioning wether I wrote something is probablly the worst feedback someone could get. So I take my writing, wether it be an article, a letter or even a quick e-mail very seriously. This is coming from someone who puts a greater value on the written word over the spoke one! It's easier to deny something you say, you can write it off as an emotional reaction. When you write something you can't take it back, that's it! People try to do it all the time, I have tried a few times. It never works because folks on the recieving end assume that if you put in the effort to sit down and compose a note, you mean ever word. Atleast I do, sometimes I throw a few t...