Mountain Radioing

After reading about the plans for the first annual Appalachian Trail Golden Packet Event here two weeks ago, Rem O Donnelley, K6BBQ, informed me about hams who regularly operate QRP from the Appalachian Trail. Rem mentioned that Ron Polityka, WB3AAL, has made more than 1000 QRP contacts from the Trail and has recently started his second thousand quest. You can download and listen to an interview with Ron on the Internet Archive.

Meanwhile, the Eastern PA QRP Club sponsors the Appalachian Trail Award to promote hiking on the Appalachian Trail with a QRP transceiver. Their Award Web page lists the rules for the award, as well as a bunch of useful links related to operating and hiking the Trail (be sure to read the "how to identify a dangerous snake" link if you plan on operating or hiking this or any other trail).

Googling is Not Rocket Science

A lot of people felt my pain last week about having to deal with people who are afraid to use Google. Some of my sympathizers sent me an excellent link that may help to mitigate the problem: Let Me Google That For You.

Blogging is Not Rocket Science

I just abandoned my WordPress blog and started a new blog on Blogger.

I am not a rocket scientist and it seems that you need to be one in order to use WordPress, whereas you don't have to be one to use Blogger. I exaggerate, but I did find that WordPress got in my way when all I wanted to do was write (Blogger does not get in my way when I want to write).

The last straw for me regarding WordPress was when it would no longer publish my posts. There was no error message or other indication of what was wrong; I'd click on the Publish button and WordPress acted as it normally would, but go look at my blog and the new posting was not there.

I am sure there is a way to fix the problem, but I don't know how and I don't want to waste any more time learning the hows and whys of WordPress. Life is too short!

WordPress may be better than Blogger, but Blogger is more than adequate for my purposes.

Until next time, keep on surfin'!

Editor's note: To communicate with Grumpy (aka Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU), don't ask him stuff you can Google yourself, but send him e-mail or add comments to his blog. By the way, every installment of Surfin' is indexed here, so go look it up.

Stan Horzepa, WA1LOU
Contributing Editor