Jamie at Home is all about how to make great food that you can grow in your own garden during all four seasons. Reading through it has REALLY made me wish I had a garden to grow various vegetables in. This is yet another reason why I would like a bit of land in a future home. There’s a recipe for squash soup that I really want to try, maybe it will take shape in the next few days…

First off, I understand that it takes a lot of money to run a national campaign. It’s nothing new, and it’s been happening for many years. Clearly though, the cost of a national campaign today is much higher than that of some of the early campaigns in our country. And I would argue (though I have no hard numbers to back this claim up) that it is MUCH higher than the cost of inflation over the past 200 or even 100 years. I arrive at this conclusion based on the number of media adds which wouldn’t have existed before.

A quick glance at some numbers from the website opensecrets.org gives me a rough idea of how much money has been spent by all of the presidential candidates currently making national campaign runs. The total: ~$700 million. This of course doesn’t include all of the congressional races which also regularly run into the millions of dollars for a campaign.

Now, a quick what-if scenario for you. What if this money (which in the case of at least one of the candidates has been raised completely from private sources - no matching dollars from the government’s campaign financing fund) was put towards researching a cure for juvenile diabetes, or cancer, or leukemia & lymphoma. Or what if it was divided equally among all of the house of representatives (~$1.6 million for each of the 435 voting members, and the sole non-voting member representing the District of Columbia), with the goal of use for social programs like helping fund soup kitchens, or job retraining programs for those who have lost jobs.

What could be done, if every person who donated $5 to a campaign (which they’ll never see again) decided to donate that $5 to a charity of their choice? What social ailments that our country is seeing could be cleaned up, and prevented in the future. Maybe this next statement is a little pie-in-the-sky, but what if all of us just helped each other? Not rely on campaign promises, not rely on federally funded social programs, not wait for someone else to fix things for us. Clearly it doesn’t take much for the $5 contributions of many to add up to a large sum of money which could be used to help the country.

Regardless of your political affiliation (and I hope I managed to keep my political bias mostly hidden in this post), please consider helping out those in need this year. If you contributed to a political party, or if you didn’t, please contribute to the organizations in your community who are trying to help out those less fortunate than you are: be it a church organization, a soup kitchen, a homeless shelter, or all of the above. And think for a minute what could be changed if all of the people who are helping out with this year’s presidential campaigns exerted half of the effort to help out their community.

What do you want to see achieved? Please, leave your comments! If there’s an organization you work with, let me know! Or if there’s an idea that you would like to see get more traction, write it here! Maybe this can be the spark to connect people who have the same passion for helping people!

Now, back to my homework….

So I started looking at the USB 2.0 spec about power requirements. As it turns out, externally powered hubs are required to supply 500 mA to all ports. It is also recommended that the hub draw its power from the bus, to allow continued operation in the absence of the external power source. What is not specified is if the hub is required to deliver power to the ports when it is not receiving power from the bus. If the device does power the ports when the bus-supplied power is absent (e.g. - when the computer is off), then it should work as a charging station for USB-connected devices.

The downside to this is that I’m pretty sure the boxes of these hubs aren’t going to advertise whether or not they deliver power to the ports when the bus power is removed, which means trial-and-error. I am going to guess that the cheaper hubs probably wouldn’t go to the trouble to handle switching power to the ports based on the availability of the bus power. So hopefully my trial-and-error won’t cost me too much.

Now I just need to decide what I want this station to look like, and how I’m going to flush-mount access to the unused ports. Maybe the hub also needs to be easily disassembled

I really like running - especially in the mornings. Well, other than almost getting run off the road that one time…and that was even in a wide shoulder to run in (there was no problem when I was ACTUALLY sharing the road with the vehicles and running on the white line). And I kinda like the new diet: not having to worry as much about the quantity of the food I intake, but more about the quality of the food. So really I’m getting to eat more good food - and an occasional trip to the fast-food establishment of my choosing is just fine!

If you have any tips on moving up the distance on the running, post them!

3.00 mi in 33:45

Now for a shower and sleep…though not at the same time. I think that’s called drowning…don’t wanna do that…

Out of a possible 100 points, I got 55…guess I’m not as big of a nerd as I thought! Leave your scores in the comments!

Take the Computer Nerd Test

Running for me is somehow strangely relaxing. I don’t really know how to explain it, but I enjoy it. Just under 5-weeks until the Cheetah run, and I’m thinking about adjusting my personal goal…but I haven’t really done any running outside yet. So I’m gonna hold off on that one

Additionally, there were several boxes of hardwood flooring and tile on the floor. These I’m sure were form the immediately previous owner, who was a home builder (though I’d never buy a home from him again based on the experience I had with the negotiation process with him, and the subsequent signing). These are now stored in the wall - that’s right, IN the wall. Well, kinda anyway. One wall of my garage is exposed studs, and all but one of the boxes is shallower than the studs. So the perfect solution: put then in the wall, and a 2×4 across the front to make sure they don’t fall out! The tile was just super-heavy, and is now in a location out of the way!

After a little sweeping, setting up some new, USE ABLE, shelving, and organizing several things I intend to keep in the garage, I now have a garage which is almost they way I want it. I need to run some power to the walls as the only outlet is on the ceiling for the garage door opener which is just silly. But most importantly, I now have space for something else in the garage. (and a few others - I ran out of words…all in no particular order

Well, luckily there are a bunch of us who are looking to bring the world of HAM into the 21st century. I just ran across Ham Twits, a list of HAMs on twitter. Granted, not a pushing of the technology, but certainly a group of individuals who are merging modern technology trends with a beloved hobby (and they’re listed alphabetically by last name, so KC8APF, you can make the top of the list!).

I’ve been trying to think up something that might make my HAM hobby have a wider acceptance in the general community. Something that has a some ‘Wow’ factor with it. Simply put, kids are so used to long-distance communication, and most of them don’t even care to think about how the connection happens to impress them with satellite communications (though moon-bounce can be kinda cool still). If you have any ideas for something that has some wow-ness, leave a comment!