paulmccord.net

PAUL L. MCCORD JR. | K5GLH – OKLAHOMA CITY

paulmccord.net - PAUL L. MCCORD JR. | K5GLH – OKLAHOMA CITY

Monthly Archives: November 2008

Sooners at Number Two

What a weekend!  As a student of the University of Oklahoma I have a vested interest in our football team.  As most people know this week the Big 12 South was in a three way tie between Texas, Texas Tech, and Oklahoma.  The Big 12 rules are set up that who ever has the highest Bowl Championship Series (BCS) rankings would advance to the Big 12 championship game in Kansas City.  Last week Texas was leading the BCS rankings by eight thousands of a point.  After the Sooners beat the OSU Cowboys last night, that was all that was needed to increase the BCS points to pass the Texas Longhorns.  Many people have a hard time accepting this because in October the Longhorns beat the Sooners 45-35.  This was the Sooners only loss for the year.  A couple weeks later the Longhorns were beat by the Texas Tech Red Raiders 39-33.  A couple weeks after that the Sooners beat the Red Raiders 65-21.  There are many people that say Texas beat Oklahoma head to head so they should be ahead.  Using that logic, Texas Tech should be higher rated than Texas.

The Sooners are better than Texas in almost every statistic for the 2008 season.  The head to head argument does not carry a lot of weight because anyone with a brain knows that on any given day, someone can play poorly.  That one game is not a true measurement of how good they are.  You can say the same thing about the Longhorns.  There is no way to make a true measurement of who is best in college football.  Who is to say how good a team is compared to another if they never play each other.  A few years ago the Sooners played a game against the Boise State team and lost on national TV.  Boise State is not even included in all these measurements.  I am proud for our team and I wish them the best but we will never know who is “REALLY” the best.  Many times you see an NFL team play against another team and then lose.  Later in the season they play the same team and win.

It is my opinion that only through duplication will you ever be able to get a true and accurate measurement of who is best in college.  This can only occur with a playoff situation.  This will never happen because the school year is not long enough.  Many people forget that college is for academics and football is just extra.  Many people think that college football is not professional in the true definition.  In fact they get into trouble if they even attempt to pay the players.  To me the biggest tragedy is the fact that my Sooner football team makes millions of dollars and zero of it goes toward education.  Semester after semester they increase tuition and get zero cents of the millions of dollars made by the football program.  Our football coach makes more than $6 million a  year.

Okay, okay I am done whining.  Way to go Sooners.

Happy Thanksgiving

This weekend we went to my father in law’s house in Checotah, Oklahoma for Thanksgiving.  With the exception of two people engaging in a small political argument it was a pretty good time.  There were many family relatives that showed and for the most part, everyone enjoyed themselves.  This morning my wife and I defied logic and went to buy a few items for Christmas.  This was the first time in our 19 year marriage that we have done this.  Now that I have done this, I can tell you that it is a mistake as I found out that we were sold the wrong item.  We were rushed through and I did not get a good feeling from the beginning.  I was half way home before I noticed this.  I am hoping that they will make things good without too much trouble.  Honestly I hate going to a store and having a sales representative hovering over me.  If I need help, then I will seek them out.  Then we went out to breakfast as a family and had a good time.

I am so tired of school work and I am ready for this to be over.  I just turned on the television and heard about an attack in Mumbai, India.  Apparently this has been going on for a couple of days.  Let’s hope and pray those people are doing okay.  I usually do not watch the national news because it is design to incite anger among their viewers.    If you think I am just making this up, just watch them.  The theme is usually black against white, rich against poor, old against young, big business against the workers, Republican against Democrat, and a whole host of political correctness that I will not mention. For that reason, I choose not to partake in their games.

It has been a bad week at work so I have not felt like posting for a few days.  Jack, I did receive your message and I agree with you.  Thanks for the input.

Blessed Family

Sunday Having Fun

Sunday loves cooking and I must say that my huge belly is a reflection of that.  She has this large dinner planned this evening and the eggs above were just the first thing she prepared.  She is such a blessing as she does so much for our family.  Yesterday my sister inlaw and her daughter came over for a nice visit.  I took a few pictures and below is a picture of my niece Kaylie.  She is so cute and fun to be around.

Kaylie

Also last night I watched the University of Oklahoma (OU) Sooners play the number two rated Texas Tech University.  Although OU has a long standing winning streak when playing in their stadium, I do not think anyone expected the decisive win the Sooners performed with a 65 to 21 final score.  I was amazed myself with the margin of victory.  I decided to take this weekend off from doing school work so I could relieve some stress.

The night before last, we watched our Oklahoma City Thunder lose to the  New Orleans Hornets with a score of 125 – 80.  It was announced yesterday that coach P.J. Carlesimo had been released after our team had lost 10 straight games and 12 out of 13 games.  I wish him well and hate to see someone lose their job over the performance of the players but I realize that is how the game works.

This past week at work, I spent nearly three full days watching some of our maintenance people and a contractor do a new maintenance task on one of our airplanes.  The upcoming week we have a three day work week and then going to see my father in-law for Thanksgiving.  This should be an enjoyable time though I sure wish both of my sons could be with us.  This upcoming week should be a nice break.  Sorry for not posting very often lately but life has been so busy.  I will try to keep this up to date more in the future.  Thanks for stopping by.

Restrictions at Work

Air Force Restriction

As many of you may know I have posted about how the government does everything the hard way.  Everything we do is usually impacted by a new rule or policy that makes our jobs harder.  Over the last two days at work we have received this message or some rendition of it on our computers.  This is basically telling us that we cannot use any removable media on our computers at work any more.  This is going to virtually shut our office down in the short term.  My office produces Power Point presentations daily.  We take engineering photographs to display issues that are coming up.  With this new policy we cannot unload our work related photographs or reports.  Sometimes we deal with Excel spreadsheets that are so large that the government email will not allow it to go through.  This leaves us with our memory stick to move files from one computer to another.  We do this every day many times a day.

Although they did not post the reason for this policy, it is quite clear why they did this.  It is my opinion that their reasoning is two fold and that is to prevent the spread of virus’ to government computers.  The other reason is to keep people from taking restricted information outside of the government.  I took this screen shot this morning because I was just amazed at these ridiculous blanket policies.  We have the capability to scan these forms of removable media to check for virus and worms.  There is technology that is available that can encrypt this media that must be authenticated by our government common access cards (CAC).  This really should not amaze me at all because this is typical of the government to create these blanket policies to cripple everyone to punish a couple.  Instead of dealing with the trouble makers they shut everyone down from doing their assigned duties.

To give you an idea of the waste that goes on in the government.  If a person works in maintenance they are required to get their technical manuals or Technical Orders (TO) online.  They must print them out each time they want to work on a piece of equipment.  These printouts are only good for one day so they must be shredded and then reprinted the next day.  This means that litterally thousands of sheets of paper are printed and shreded every day at my work.  This is mandated by law.  If a person is caught using a printout from yesterday then they are subject to disciplinary actions.  This is typical for the government and keeps most people worked up over it all the time.  I am curious how this new policy of no removable media is going to play out as I have already heard that our colenel was even complaining about it and if it is true, he has every reason.

There is not a day that goes by that almost everyone in our office is required to create an electronic report of some kind.  These reports or presentations are almost always presented in a conference room on an overhead projector via PowerPoint or some other software.  I am curious how this will work out since no one will be able to get their files from their computers to the conference room.  One might think that we could just email it to ourselves on the other computer.  That is virtually impossible since to set up our Outlook Exchange server requires administrative privilages.  We would have to call the IT help desk for each person that wants to do a presentation on every computer.  Web base email is out of the question because they have blocked access to all web mail accounts including Cox.net or SBCglobal.  No Yahoo, No Google, No Hotmail.  No social networking sites.  They have even blocked access to even use CD-R’s.  To the average citizen this may seem a little over kill but the the government worker this is an average day.  You can add to this frustration that I received a delinquent travel voucher notice this afternoon for a temporary duty (TDY) that I took three weeks ago.  By law we are required to submit our travel voucher within five working days of return.  Our second level supervisor just signed it yesterday even though I submitted it the day I returned.  I fulfilled my duties immediately and my second level supervisor sits on it for weeks and then I get a delinquent notice.  This is typical of an average day.  I think I have beat a dead horse long enough.  I just had to share this information to get it off my chest. :)

UPDATE: 21 Nov 2008

Thanks to KC5FM for pointing out the US-CERT web site’s warning about a malicious code being spread through USB Flash drives.  I certainly hope that a fix is discovered soon as work has really been hampered.  You can read the article here…

http://www.us-cert.gov/current/index.html#malicious_code_spreading_through_usb

ooVoo

Wow! This weekend I was watching This Week in Tech (TWiT) online and they were talking about a communications program called ooVoo and I had never heard of it. As usual, I had to find out about this program. To be honest I was not expecting much as there are so many programs like this out there. I installed it on two of our computers so I could call each other. I was pretty amazed at the ability to call more than one person at a time with video. I could not believe how clear the video and audio was. The amazing thing was when I later connected three people and set the video quality to high while streaming an HD podcast on my wife’s computer. Another person in our conversation also connected his computer up to the same HD podcast ensuring his bandwidth was being taxed.

In addition to all this was that we were running the Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) streaming audio on our Linux computer. With all this going on simultaneously we maintained a three way conversation for more than an hour with out a single choppy moment in the video and audio. It was pretty impressive and I am convinced this will be a keeper. The audio quality was every bit as good as Skype and that is saying something. This ooVoo also had chat and file sending capability built in. I have decided that I will keep this program though I am sure it will be hard to get people to try it. There have been so many instant messaging programs available that it is difficult to get people to try out new programs. I even had a difficult time trying to get people to try Skype and you know how good that is. The laptop has a camera built in while my desktop has a Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000 that cost me $39.99 at Best Buy.

I heard on TWiT that the ooVoo logo is supposed to represent two sets of eyes connected by the “V” representing video. It is a cute way to symbolize the video communications. If you have not tried this program lately you would be surprised at the quality of service and it is free. You have nothing to lose when the program is free. If you do not like it you can always open the Windows control panel and run the Add/Remove programs function. I know I am always anxious to try new things but I can get tell you that this is an amazing program. Give it a try.

A Facebook Message I Received

I recently received a message on Facebook that was clearly cut and pasted from somewhere else.  I have received this from others over the past few years and  At the bottom it gives authority to paste it in an email or web site so I took the liberty of doing so.  I am not certain on the validity of where it originated but the main point is worthy of sharing…

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important?  I don’t know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise’s wife.
Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are.  If this is what it means to be no longer young. It’s not so bad.

Next confession:
I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’ t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are: Christmas trees.  It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, “Merry Christmas” to me. I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a crèche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.  I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution, and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.  Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too.
But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.  In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it’s not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking.  Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her “How could God let something like this Happen?” (regarding Katrina)  Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, “I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.

And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?”  In light of recent events…terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.  Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about and we said OK.  Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with “WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.” Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell.  Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.  Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.  Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing?
Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.  You may point your friends to this message or highlight it, cut and paste it to your site or e-mail.

Fit For Life

Sunday

As some of you may know the Air Force has this Fit for Life, Fit to Fight campaign.  This past Saturday we went out to the base and participated in a 5K run/walk.  Sunday was the only one that was actively signed up but Kevin and I went with her.  We often fail to get enough exercise in our daily life, especially with both of us working in an office environment.  Sunday’s office actively recruited people for this event while my organization never even heard of it though we are just down the hall.  Anyway, Sunday as usual is an inspiration to anyone she comes in contact with and she inspired Kevin and I to participate as well.  I was very glad I did once it was over.  Saturday morning was very chilly in the mid 40′s but that made it perfect as we were sweating pretty heavily by the time we were done.  Special thanks to Sunday for inspiring our family to get off our backsides and do something :) .

Position Defined

As I browse through many social networking sites, I find myself taken back to 1992 when I was stationed at RAF Bentwaters in England. It was during this time when the presidential election had occurred and Mr. Bill Clinton had won.  I must tell you that I am both socially and fiscally conservative meaning that I support policies that are both socially and economically conservative.  As I have stated many times in the past, my measuring stick on what is right and wrong is the Bible.  In fact I use the King James Bible as my source.  During the 1992 presidential election I saw some traits about Bill Clinton that really bothered me.  I saw him as both a social and fiscal liberal.  It was his first act in office that confirmed my suspicion when he removed the restriction on the government paying for abortion at military facilities.  He instituted the “Don’t ask, Don’t tell” policy in the military relating to homosexuality in the military.  This policy was a compromise though he wanted open homosexuality in the military.

These were just a few examples of my distrust of the man.  My opposition to him was more socially than economic.  Again, I thought he was catering to the extreme left in this country and forcing policies on the country that were not welcome except in the most liberal areas of our country.  I spent eight years being angry at Bill Clinton.  I genuinely hated him for his stand on issues.  Many Christian friends of mine would point out to me that we are to pray for our leaders and not bad mouth them as I was doing.  This only made me more angry that my own group was piling on me or so I thought.  It was not until later after he left office that I realized they were right.  I was so angry and full of discontent with his leadership and hostility to everything I believed that I could not even be rational.  They were right in that I was wrong to hate him.

I spent eight years being angry when it was unnecessary.  This was followed up by the presidency of George W. Bush.  I voted for him twice and I must admit that I have been disappointed by him.  My disappointment is for just the opposite reasons the media dislikes him.  My problem with him is that he is not conservative enough.  I was involved in electing the Republican revolution in 1994 when they promised many conservative agendas.  They promised the “contract with America” with several policies they intended to pass in the first 100 days of Republican controlled Congress.  The media came after them with full force.  They called the agenda the “contract ON America” and successfully intimidated the Republican Senators and Representatives.  They went after the then Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich labeling him as a right wing extremist.  Since many in our country listen to the news media and actually believe they are neutral and have no agendas this tactic worked.

Despite having control of both houses of Congress, the Republicans were useless.  They cowered to the media fearing they too would be attacked.  What the Republicans failed to see was that whatever they do, it will always be painted as right wing extremism by the media.  They have taken the road of appeasement as opposed to getting anything conservative done.  With each election our Republican leaders have failed to deliver on promises to their conservative constituents.  They have promised the world and delivered nothing.  Their appeasement has worked in keeping their jobs though many in the conservative movement have reached the end of our trust of them.

John McCain was chief among these Republicans that turned on us while being a Senator.  Time after time he voted on key issues with the Democrats.  The media gave him the name “Maverick” and he wore it like a badge of honor.  I truly believe that to this day John McCain still fails to see where he went wrong.  He was elected, and reelected over and over again and turned his back on his constituents.  John McCain has earned the title RINO which stands for Republican in name only by many conservatives.  As time went on conservatives were left with no one to vote for.  There are many like myself that are tired of voting for the lesser of the two evils.  I have reached the point that I will not vote for someone just so the other candidate will not win.  I think it was time for our side to lose big so they will be reminded that they do have a constituency that they owe.  They will either back their constituency or not be reelected.

Along comes the 2008 election where Barack Obama wins the election.  I have mixed feelings with him.  There are many problems that I have with him and one of them is his mixed signals when it comes to his profession of Christianity.  He claims Christianity but then back peddles when asked to clarify that he is born again or even believes Jesus’ statement  that he is the way, the truth, and the life and that there is no way to get to God except through him.  Another is the unwavering support for his preacher Mr. Wright that is clearly racist and preaches racism in his own church.  Many times Mr. Obama claimed that he went to this church for 20 years and never had a problem.  Only when the heat was applied during the campaign when several unflattering videos of Mr. Wright appeared on Youtube did Obama retract that support.  It is my belief that this retraction was not genuine and Barack Obama does have the same racist beliefs as Mr. Wright.  It is hard for me to imagine going to a church that preached this message for more than 20 years and continuing to go if a person did not believe it.

Putting all this aside and taking the advice of my Christian friends who earlier told me to pray for our leaders I would like to say that I am willing to give Barack Obama a chance.  I am actually happy that we can say we have our first black presidents though I have extremely powerful reservation on his stand on issues.  I refuse to spend the next eight years being angry like I did in 1992.  I really believe God is in control and that Barack Obama can possibly be a good president with our prayers.  I am tired of playing all the political games.  I am tired of all the divisiveness and hate.  I choose to be happy and I encourage those conservative friends around me to do the same.  God is bigger than the situation and to deny that is denying his ability to reign.  After all, if you think about it, if John McCain would have won, you would have more of the same lip service while turning his back on us.  This election would have been another disappointment with John McCain in office as well.

This reminds me of a Veggy Tales episode that I saw when my kids were young.  Veggy Tales is a Christian cartoon where talking vegetables often told a moral story illustration God’s love and power.  There was an episode where one of the characters was scared of the “boogey man”.  The group sang a song “God is bigger than the boogey man”.  After all these years that kids show has stuck with me.  I am actually singing it inside :) .  The message of that song was so simple and is still true to this day.  I am not calling Barack Obama the boogey man by any means.  I do not see him as a bad man but rather a man with differing moral views than I have.  Nevertheless I believe with God in control, he can be a good leader.  I fully expect a lot of heat over my stand and that is fine with me.   I think having faith in God is way more important than being angry and ruining my family life.  The Bible said in Hebrews 11:6…

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

Do you believe it?  I do!

Happy Veterans Day

I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank the veterans of the United States military on this day.  Our country as diverse as it is shares the freedoms that many countries do not have.  The freedoms that we take for granted are often non existent some other countries.  We owe a debt of gratitude to our veterans who fought for our country.  Many of these veterans never saw any hostility but that does not remove the gratitude for them because we know at any time those that were in the military could have been called upon at any time.    What ever the motivation, the end result was the same and that is a retention of our rights that we enjoy today.

Our country has people of differing opinions to the point of hostility.  There are many in our own country that cannot muster the energy to say a nice word about our military.  As contemtable as that is to me, I say this…You owe gratutude to our military for giving you the right to dissent.  Our military is an all volunteer force and no one is compelled to join but somehow our military always ranks among the top in the world.  Some of these people join for the opportunity to serve our country, while some join to gain a college education.  Some go as a last resort during hard economic times.  Whatever the reason a person joins we know that it was voluntary and no one forced them to join.  The rights and freedoms that we Americans enjoy are directly related to the veterans that live next door to you.  Again, I would like to express my thanks to those that joined the military for what ever reason.  You have ensured our safety, our freedoms, and our rights and I am grateful.

Thank you,

Paul

Veterans Day Eve

This morning I woke up around 7:00 AM and it was raining with a strong and cold South wind and I thought I was going to cry ;-D.  It is not often that I get to see rain when I am off work and I am loving it.  I decided to take off today so I could have a four day weekend since tomorrow (Tuesday) is Veterans Day.  I have five and half days of use or lose leave that I have to burn  up before January 3rd so this makes a good time to take off.  Sunday has to burn some leave too so she took off also.   Wow!  I just heard some thunder outside.  To me that is the equivalence of angels singing because after all, I just love rain.  I really should be doing some homework but I have been slow to get motivated this weekend.  I only have one more semester after this one and I will be finished and then I will have some weekends to do things again.

My dad just had cataract surgery done on both his eyes in the past couple weeks and he is very pleased with the results.  This morning he has an appointment with the doctor to follow up after the surgery.  I am glad he had it done since his vision was getting pretty bad.  He says that he can see without glasses.

It looks like Firefox has finally captured 20% of the browser market.  I really like Firefox though I really wish it was more automated to install Windows Media Player plugin.  I love the ability to customize the browser with all the plugins like mail retrieval, social networking, and photography.  Virtually anything you would like to do can be done with this browser.  I really love it when new web based toys are invented.

I am doing research to find a new 3G phone or third generation phone that can be used on a GSM system. I have been a T-Mobile customer since they were Voicestream back in 2000. They have been very good to me. Now that they have the broadband speeds, I want to get a new phone that has faster Internet and a full QWERTY keyboard. I know it will be sort of expensive but I like being able to have the Internet with me when I travel. The sad thing is that most of the phones that I find are not available in the United States. Having a good camera phone that can post directly to Flickr is real hand when you are out on the street witnessing a crime or something. I like to take my camera places with me so I do not miss anything but it is not convenient where I work. My office is in a very large bay with many cubicles in pods. I really do not feel comfortable leaving an expensive camera in that environment. The Google G1 phone is looking very attractive as an option.

I know most of you are thinking that I am crazy for wanting to be connected all the time. That is who I am, I mean after all I became a ham radio operator for a reason. I think it is wonderful being able to keep in touch even when I am on the road. I can just send a Twitter message and it shows up on the website so you can keep people up to date where ever you are. Unlike many people, I am not concerned about privacy. As long as I am not posting my social security number, I am not worried about anything else. Your address and pictures of your house are already on the Internet whether you realize it or not. I can look at the front of virtually anyone’s house using Google Maps/Street View. For those of you not aware of this, Google hired a company to drive up and down every street with a pole on the top of the vehicle with six cameras on it.

Courtesy Davis Voice.com

You can zoom right up on your front door. I actually think this is exciting technology and do not worry about privacy at all. If you use Google Earth you can zoom up even closer. Now Microsoft has Virtual Earth and Yahoo has Yahoo Maps.

I know I have spent a considerable amount of time chastising the Google worshipers but I must say I am becoming a convert. I have been amazed with the integration of Gmail, with GTalk, Google Documents, Google Calendar, and the contacts. With the prospect of getting a G1 phone, the possibilities of syncing my Gmail contacts and calendar with the phone sounds pretty exciting. I am still in my anti-Apple mood though :) . To use an Iphone would mean that I would have to switch to AT&T. I really do not want to do that if I can get out of that. Secondly Apple products are way over priced and I cannot support them in their gouging efforts. Oh well… I will get away from my Apple bashing :) . I just received a Skype message from Larry, KD5MAF telling me there is a 40 meter net about to come on 7290 KHz that he wants me to join. I better send this post in so I can check in on the net. If you are a ham radio operator, join us.