Finally problem solved

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So on my MD-380 I had put the New England code plug on it. But I noted nothing in RI was included – no zone, no repeaters nothing.

So put in a bunch of repeaters – except years of experience bit me in the ass. You see I had known for example that 449.225 here in RI used to have a CTCSS code of 67.0 – not anymore. It changed. I was wondering why I could hear conversations on the repeater but could never trip the repeater myself. Wrong CTCSS. Teach me to check the online repeater directory next time.

That’s been solved so now the Quahog Net aka N1JBC Net is active on my MD-380 and one of the nodes on the KA1RCI net – one in West Greenwich, RI which is roughly 25 miles from here. I get perfect coverage from that baby here in Providence – so on 5W PEP on 70cm band I can hit a repeater 25 miles away from where I am.

But then I shouldn’t be surprised – one place I lived I was on the fourth story of the building and I could easily hit the Boston based repeater some 45 miles away.

MeOnTheRadio

Dinner this evening: Chicken and Broccoli over rice.

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So usually you marinate the meat in soy sauce, then there’s garlic, ginger, broccoli, red bell pepper etc.

I didn’t have the red bell pepper. So what I did was marinate chopped up chicken in soy sauce for about 40 minutes. Cooked some brown rice at the same time.

Once that was done I put down some avocado oil and cooked the chicken. Then removed and put down some chopped garlic and chopped ginger. Then in goes the broccoli along with about 1.5 cups water. Cover and steam – I like broccoli a little crunchy – go at 5 minutes and test until you’re happy.  Then a shake or two of red pepper flakes. Re add the cooked chicken and then the usual mix is soy sauce, oyster sauce, corn starch and chicken stock. I varied it – soy sauce, corn starch, chicken stock and white wine.

Put that in the hot pan and let it thicken and let the broccoli cook a bit more.

It was awesome. I’ll keep this one in mind for the future.

Mario Kart – It’s addicting

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So as I’ve mentioned in a past post I run Steam, VNES and Project64 on my Windows 10 machine. And I had listed all the games I had installed.

So been binge driving in Mario Kart – great fun. As you can see from the images you have more control on the 50cc side than the 100cc or 150cc sides.

First the top 3 players are ranked 2-1-3:
MK-Placing

Now the sprinkled stars:
MK-Sprinkles

Now on first play I scored Bronze. Just the way the cookie crumbles I guess:
MK-Bronze

But with subsequent play – I finally took the gold cup.

MK-Gold-Cup

The best method  – mash down the D key – on the keypad i think that’s the A button and avoid the bananas and solid blocks.

Next I’ll try the next up levels beyond mushroom cup. Those introduce more obstacle avoidance.

Made a real Paella tonight

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So I had to try. It’s this recipe:

The only difference I couldn’t get frozen peas – had to use canned. I drained them off and mixed them in. Again no photos – we were hungry. But it turned out spectacularly. This time I used low sodium chicken stock, and real Arborio rice. Plus this time around I had julienne red bell pepper.

The process is to saute the shrimp shells and then add the stock and simmer for 20 minutes.

Strain out the shells and set the stock aside. Heat an oven to 375F to 400F – your oven may vary.

Slice up your favorite sausage  – I used the hot sausage from Trader Joe’s but all you need is two links sliced up. Heat some olive oil in a large pan and cook the sausage in that oil. Then add some chopped onion, let that soften for about three minutes and then garlic and finally the Arborio rice. Get it well coated with that flavorful oil. Then in goes the reserved stock. Layer the shrimp over the top and lay out the julienne peppers and into that hot oven for 20 minutes. In my case it was fully cooked when it came out and the shrimp wasn’t tough – it was tasty.

And the thing about this dish, I did not add any salt whatsoever. But it was flavorful – I got the spiciness from the sausage, the sweetness of the shrimp and the pepper. It was awesome. You should give it a try.

Did my first EOC Staffing for Emergency Management

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So this morning I did a couple hours at the Emergency Operations Center alternate over the police/fire/commissioner HQ. It was interesting first I hadn’t realized how many cameras were all over the city.

Second there were fire, police, PEMA, and three amateur radio people there.

Devil of a time getting a Kenwood TS-2000 to change it’s tuning increment so we could  monitor the fire departments frequencies. Apparently it needs the MARS mods to work properly.

 

 

Gaming on a PC

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So I have three gaming apps installed on my PC:

  1. Steam – in it I have Bioshock and Bioshock II as well as Fallout IV.
  2. JNES – lots of games.
    1. Castlevania
    2. Castlevania II
    3. Donkey Kong Jr.
    4. Elevator Action
    5. Legend of Zelda
    6. Legend of Zelda II
    7. Marble Madness
    8. Monopoly
    9. PacMan
    10. Qbert
    11. RC Pro Am
    12. RC Pro Am II
    13. Super Mario Brothers
    14. Super Mario Brothers II
    15. Super Mario Brothers III
    16. Xevious
  3. Project64
    1. Mario Kart

 

So as you can see I do love my classic gaming. What turned me on to all this is when I worked for a certain company – we were ordered to use a Raspberry Pi III and load on all the games – hundreds from Nintendo, Sega etc. Hooked a couple controllers to it and people played.

Well my co-worker turned me on to Steam and Bioshock. The JNES I found and Project64 too.

As to where I got the ROM paks for the Nintendo consoles – the web has all of them.