I can't say I've ever been diagnosed as having attention deficit disorder, but I do have a short attention span. Novelty seeking behavior, which the internet affords seemingly limitless rewards.

The Monarch RE-760 arrived and it cleaned up very nicely. Love the way it looks. I'll take a pic one of these days.

It works, but it's pretty deaf on the low end of the AM (or MW for "medium wave" for the radio geeks) band. I've got my eye on another one. If I'm successful, I'll pull the chassis out of one and see if I can restore its hearing.

Goodwill's online auction site is another rabbit hole. I've got two little nonsense radios inbound. One is one of those hand-cranked "emergency" radios. The other is an old general purpose, large portable with AM, FM and weather band coverage, which, frankly, I didn't need. Reasonable price though, comparing it to eBay.

Typing random search terms into Goodwill's site can provide endless hours of entertainment. I missed an opportunity to get a Tivoli Model One for about $50 last night; because one thing led to another ("Ohh! What's that???"), and I forgot about it because I didn't set up a reminder.

Snipers exist on Goodwill. The interface isn't as responsive as ebay, so it's tricky to time it well. And for some reason, most of their auctions end after my bedtime. So I slept on the Model One. It went for $36, which seems like a great price, but that can be deceptive with Goodwill. You always have to estimate the shipping cost before you bid. It varies widely. That particular store was reasonable, so the radio would have cost, with shipping and "handling," about $50, which I think was reasonable for that specimen. The finish on the cabinet was near perfect for a radio that was about 18 years old. There's a nearly identical one on eBay listed for $50, with $15 shipping, with a scratched up top. It's a local seller, so I might be able to arrange local pickup. We'll see.

There was a $45 Model One on eBay with $15 shipping, also in very good shape. Listing said it accepted offers. Seller had zero feedback and no other items listed. I submitted an offer for $40, and the item was taken down.

The cause of my distraction was part of an Elegoo robot car kit. I didn't know what that was, so I had to do some "research." It's an incomplete kit, but it includes the cpu. A newer version, complete, is $55.00 an Amazon, so once you factor in shipping on it, as a "spares" purchase, it's not a remarkable deal.

But I did end up buying a new one on Amazon. Why? I don't know.

I spent some time studying the manuals of my two Sangean HD radios. I have the tiny portable HDR-14 and a table top HDR-18. The smaller one has memory for 20 preset stations, while the HDR-18 only has 10. The 18 is much easier to program than the 14. It wasn't clear from either manual if you could store individual HD channels for a given station. It turns out you can. It can take several seconds for the digital channel to decode though, so give it some time.

I mostly use the digital channels with the local public radio station, WJCT. They offer three digital channels, one of which is the Electro Lounge, which I like to listen to.

The RF-2200 went off to be re-capped on Wednesday, should arrive at the service today, I'll check the tracking on that. Good communication with the guy who's going to do the work, so I'm optimistic.

Inside Saul Hall (our house) isn't a very friendly radio environment. There's a lot of electronic noise from the LED lighting, and the roof decking has an aluminum foil backing to help lower the temperature in the attic. It does better as a faraday cage than an IR barrier, in my opinion. But Mitzi's recently completed screened addition, with comfortably upholstered chairs, has made a nice space to play around with radios outside. Antennas will remain a challenge due to HOA rules and penetrations, but it's better than being inside the house.

Mitzi told me that a member of the women's club that she serves with on a committee is an amateur radio operator. That surprised me a bit. If so, and if she's active, it may facilitate making arrangements for taking a license exam. We'll see.

I've been keeping up with mailing a card to mom every day. I need to start paying attention to which photos I've sent her. I don't keep individual files of every card, just replace the image in the same file for a given card size. Feels pretty good getting some use out of these expensive photo printers I've had for many years.

In other news, I'm reading Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich , by Harald Jähner and Shaun Whiteside. It's less sensational than Savage Continent, which I stopped reading about halfway through, but equally depressing.

There must be a whole area of academic study on the matter of "truth and reconciliation," for lack of a better term. How human beings come to terms with their inhumanity to one another, even if those terms are largely unsatisfactory. We have our colonial past, killing and displacing indigenous people, and slavery, which we seem largely incapable of confronting. The Balkans, Rwanda, Cambodia, South Africa, Armenia, the list goes on.

It feels like the general response by those responsible is to ignore it, bury it, suppress it.

Perhaps thereby, inevitably, to repeat it.

"Never again?"

Germany, publicly at least, appears to be the exception. But I'm not sure how genuine it is.

A post for another day I think.

I'll close on that happy note, and go take a walk. I think I'll need pants. It's a little chilly this morning.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 06:31 Saturday, 11 March 2023