What a good start to the week. Tonight I joined the SWIARC (Southwest Iowa Amateur Radio Club) 146.94 KØUSA net — and for the first time since I got my license, I actually keyed up and made contact with real people on the other end. There is a particular kind of nervousness to that first transmission, the one where you finally stop listening and start talking, and I am happy to report the sky did not fall.
I made contact with a few folks over the course of the night: WA0JYD, KX0U, N3PAY, and K0ZOD. We had a nice little ragchew that wandered, as these things do, across a whole map of topics: Hams Over IP, VoxDMR, QSO One, America’s Kansas City Wide, GroundWire, moving traffic, the weather, and a dozen other odds and ends. It is a good reminder that amateur radio is really two hobbies stacked on top of each other — the radios and the digital plumbing behind them, and the people you meet while fiddling with both.
At one point I got to help Norm (WA0JYD) figure out how to delete the cookies for a specific site in Firefox — a small thing, but exactly the kind of over-the-air neighborliness that makes a net feel like a front porch. This was the first time I had genuinely talked with anyone on the air, so I came away grinning. I plan on attending the SWIARC meeting this weekend to keep the momentum going.
A new parish
On the home front, we think we have found our parish here in Omaha: St. Peter’s Catholic Church. It has the reverent, sacred feel we were hoping for, and after a cross-country move it is a real comfort to feel like we have found our spiritual home so quickly. As a Knight of Columbus, I cannot wait to get plugged in and start serving the community again. There is a men’s Bible study that meets every Saturday morning at 6:15, so I will be sure to roll out of bed early and join the conversation — the early hour feels like a small, fitting tithe.
Chocolate and comics
We have been watching a lot of Willy Wonka lately, which means I am now nursing a serious hankerin’ and will need to track down a good local chocolatier before it gets the better of me. Suggestions welcome.
We also picked up a few comic books at Legend Comics & Coffee — an Eisner Award–winning shop over on Maple Street that is, delightfully, half comics and half coffee. The prize of the haul was Superman: Father of Tomorrow #1, an Elseworlds premise where Jor-El, not baby Kal-El, is the one who survives Krypton and lands in the Kents’ field. I think this is going to be a very good run. We grabbed a few others too, but to be honest none of them made much of an impression.
Questing with my girls
My oldest daughter and I have been playing MMORPGs together, which has quietly become one of my favorite parts of the week. Right now we are splitting our time across World of Warcraft and RuneScape — and tonight she rolled her very first Lord of the Rings Online character, Sprinkleth the Elf. Watching a five-year-old sound out quest text and decide, with great seriousness, which starter bow to equip is its own kind of joy. If you are curious, her character sheet lives right alongside mine on my LOTRO page.
That is all I have got for now. Maybe next time I will have some proper stories to share from my adventures in digital radio. 73 for now.