Back in 1973 I was a long haul truck driver and I got idea that I wanted to get an Amateur Radio License, but not knowing any hams and never being in one place long enough to attend classes I did it on my own. I began by learning the code from some audio tapes, then i would dit dah away reciting road signs in code as I drove along. Finally I aquired a ham radio receiver and began copying off the air but i couldn't make heads or tails of it. I continued copying off the air for nearly a year and I could stay with the high speed code but I just could not grasp what was being said. Finally I was sitting at home a few days and a friend had been attending ham radio classes so she invited me to sit in on one with her. I went to the class and sat in on their 5 word per minute code practice. At the end of about ten minutes the instructor asked why i had not written anything, did i not copy anything? I said, at that pace, are you crazy, sure i copied it then i wrote out what was said. We talked a few minutes and i informed the instructor that i had been copying off the air but it didnt make sense to me. He said come on in the radio room and lets see your problem so I sat down to a rig and tuned the upper end of the 40meter band and began copying. After about ten minutes everybody in the room was laughing at me. I had copied a 40 word per minute transmission with 100% accuracy. My problem was that no one had ever taught me the telegraphers shorthand..Hi HI For those unfamiliar with CW (Continuous Wave commonly called radio morse code) a typical transmission would look like the following: KA1DAO DE KC8UXZ RR GE OM ES TNX FER CUL UR RST 599 599 NAME HR DICK DICK QTH MASS MASS WX CLDY ES RAIN BK TO U K Translated- KAIDAO (station being called) DE (called by) KC8UXZ (Station calling) RR means message follows) GE OM (Good Evening Old Man) ES (AND) TNX FER CUL (Thanks for call) UR RST(Radio signal report-Readibility scaled 1-5 /Signal Strength scaled 1-9 & Tone scaled 1-9) NAME HR DICK (Senders name is Dick -repeated) QTH (My location is) Mass (Nassachusetts -repeated) WX-CLDY & Rain (Weather report cloudy & rain) BK TO U(Back to you) K (end of transmission) Needless to say, i got my first Novice Ticket (Amateur Radio License -Novice level) that night. In those days a Novice license was only valid for one year and was restricted to CW only, Max 75watts output and Crystal Controlled Transmitters). Twenty one days before my Novice Ticket expired the FCC approved renewing a novice license and they approved a novice to have a tunable transmitter as well as receiver. I was so content with brass pounding that I kept my Novice ticket for nearly ten years before upgrading to General Class.

Are there any instructions in your camera user manual? A charger marked "Back" and "Front" seems unusual to me. All my chargers are marked "+" and "-" matching the polarity markings on the battery. But WAIT. What kind of battery do you have? Is it a L-ion (Lithium ion) tpye perchance shaped to fit only your camera? Also known as a propertiary battery. Perhaps the part of the battery that faces forward as installed in the camera is called front, and the part facing to the back is labeled "Back". This is only a guess. It is best that you don't guess but look up the instructions in the camera manual or the charger manual. If these instructions are missing, you could contact your camera dealer to get this clarified. Another approach is to go on-line and search for the manufacturer's web site of your equipment. Good chargers check for reversed polarity and will not supply current if it senses a reversed battery. However, this assumes that the battery to be charged is not totally dead but has enough charge that can be detected by the polarity sensing circuit. Pushing current in the forward direction of a depleted NiCad cell will cause it to short and then it can never be charged again.

Ahh. Back to school. With only one of four left in HS, Back-to-School is dwindling. It is so much simpler now. There is only one child in one sport. And only one to track along on their school work. We will have time to deal with our overdue HOUZZ projects now that summer R&R is over. So let me weigh in on the controversial mamby-pamby comment. Hate to see name calling. It's negative and unnecessary. As for patience with the new traffic patterns, this is to the parents who take their children to their bus stops and feel compelled to chat with the bus driver. Please DON'T. It is really inconsiderate. The bus drivers are at work. They don't have time for social hour. It may brighten your day to "brighten their day" but it is not the time nor the place to "make a difference in the bus drivers' lives". I have been part of huge lines where the same parents do it daily. All the cars that are stuck behind the bus (and lawfully NOT passing the school bus) actually have somewhere to go. They sure do. Maybe it is an appointment. Or maybe, just maybe, they are trying to get to their job. Keep that in mind. Fortunately it is a small number of parents who want to chat it up. Unfortunately it has a big impact.

Bill, really nice dendrobium there. I feel truly the laziest person on this thread. I just bring them in! I don't have too many succulents, cacti , hoya or citrus so I guess it is a bit different. It is too early to think of the great move indoors around these parts luckily and I am bummed y'all have to start doing it already. I had a bad experience spraying soap on a nicely blooming dipladenia vine that I sprayed throughly and moved indoors. It promptly died on me. I guess I may have been a little too enthusiastic. I do have some outbreaks of aphids or an occasional thrips infestation(only on a dipladenia I have now had for almost 3 years, it took me a while to figure out it were thrips that were largely preventing blooms). Soap appears to do little for aphids. Eventually it bayer 3 in 1 or just live with it. I am lucky to not have too many mite issues, currently they just bleach the leaves on a nobile orchid. I bring in several jasmines, chrysanthemums, an avocado, some peppers and chillies, mint, pentas, snapdragons, verbena, penstemons, rozanne (perhaps I should leave the last two outdoors), kalanchoe, thanksgiving cactii, butterfly pea and my favorite purslane (they are excellent workhorses and overwinter nicely and even bloom most of the time. I have kept my orchids indoors except miltoniposis (which like it too cool for summer indoors) after some diastrous losses to bacterial and fungal infections this and previous summers.