Thursday Mid-Week Update (One Day Late)
This week’s been a mix of small victories and minor defeats. I attempted a repair on one of my radios, something I’ve done countless times before without a hitch, but this time, I failed. It’s frustrating, but failures are successes in their own ways sometimes. This one taught me that I need to take the same pride and patience in doing stuff for myself as I do when helping others. It’s easy to get caught up in the “I should already know how to do this” mindset, but even the things we think we’ve mastered have ways of humbling us.
On the brighter side, I did have a small win fixing a nice old signal generator. Cracked open the lid (neatly unscrewed and organized, of course), and after some poking around, I found the problem—a fuse that had shattered from being dropped a few times too many. Quick swap, and it was back up and running like nothing ever happened. Always satisfying when a repair turns out to be that simple.
Meanwhile, the 3D printer has been running business as usual. Though, at this rate, I’ll probably need to replace the nozzle soon. It’s holding up, but I can tell it’s getting to that point where prints start losing their crispness. Not a big deal, just another maintenance task to add to the list.
This weekend, I’m teaching at the Ham Cram again. For those unfamiliar, it’s a crash course where people can get their ham radio license in three days. It’s always interesting seeing who shows up—some people have been into radio for years but never got licensed, while others walk in knowing nothing and leave with a callsign. The best part is explaining concepts like voltage and resistance, knowing that I probably teach them better in a weekend than my physics teacher will over an entire term.
Speaking of school, I’ve been doing my best to stay out of all the classroom leadership nonsense, but somehow, I got convinced to run for a small role I didn’t even want. So, while the other candidates were giving their carefully planned two-minute speeches, I got up, said something that lasted maybe five seconds, and sat back down. And that was that. No regrets.
Now, for the regularly scheduled weekly appreciation paragraph—just kidding. But seriously, she’s awesome. I like her, a lot. But hey, that’s not exactly breaking news at this point. It’s not like she goes out of her way to say some grand, inspiring thing, half the time, she barely even says anything directly. But she has this way of making me rethink things, nudging my brain just enough that I end up figuring things out myself. Which, admittedly, is kind of impressive. Also, this is a massive tangent from what I was originally going to say, but given that this entire blog is just whatever comes to mind at any given moment, I think it’s more than acceptable here.
Other than that, not much to report. Still surprisingly busy, still waiting for the next big project to come along and demand all my attention. But for now, just taking things as they come (insert michael scott gif).
Until next time, 73.
Daniel