With a huge "temporary AG" suffixed for all my radio listeners...

When I tried to find out details about the ham radio exams scheduled this past July in Farmington, New Mexico, it turned out the exams had been rescheduled and that my inquiry was actually too late, as the new exam date had been the weekend previous.

So now that I'm down in the Houston area (and seeing as how, just two days ago, I ran across one of the notebooks I had prepared to study for the General class exam), I took a moment to hit the Internet and found out that the next exam session was—gulp!—this morning. Moreover, the location was at the Gilruth Center, which is a NASA recreational facility that's open to the general public and only a few minutes from the house.

There are times to take things slow and times to press on. With an assignment breathing down my neck and only a day or so to study, common sense told me that I should settle down to work, schedule some time to study the material, and wait for the next exam date in early October. On the other hand, between having passed several web-based "practice exams" this past July and wanting to rid myself of a driven feeling—which has dominated my waking moments, lately—of having to do this now and having to do that later, of being unable to take the time to even look at roses (much less smell them), my gut told me to spend a couple of hours cramming the questions and answers and see what would come of taking the test this morning.

The license exams are made up of questions from a fairly sizeable (but finite) pool of multiple-choice questions that are updated every few years. Some number of these questions can be answered with a little bit of knowledge and common sense; others cannot be answered without a detailed knowledge of FCC regs (and hence, must be memorized). As for the rest, well... it helps to know a little bit about radio and electronics.

I will admit to having read all the questions and answers last night. It took a while. Afterward, I took two practice exams and passed them both.

In the end, the existence of a question pool turns the exam process into a kind of civilized initiation ritual, several orders of magnitude removed from having to run between two rows of young men armed with clubs. In any event, this morning, after I turned my answer sheet in, I noted the examiner made only three marks with his highlighter. Answering 32 of 35 questions correctly is comfortably a passing grade, so I am now a General class radio operator.

That said, back to work!

Cheers...

Ain't it always the case?

The past couple of months have been pretty good to me, billings-wise, and you'd think I'd have become used to it by now, but it seems that whenever things seem to start going well, some form of contrariness begins to counteract the trend. This afternoon, for example, Galina broke down in the Ford while driving down to Houston, and while I was greatly relieved to hear her voice and that she was okay, it would appear, based on her description, that our green '98 Windstar has reached the end of the trail.

So, I've just spent the better part of the past few hours arranging for roadside assistance and researching ways to economically rent a vehicle that she can transfer the Ford's content into and bring it to Seabrook. I am also very nearly a nervous wreck. I've been trying to rekindle my work momentum (with about 2,700 words left), but it's not working. I'm sure I'll be able to finish the job tomorrow, but it's anyone's call as to whether the editor can finish his part and still make a first-thing Monday delivery.

Part of the problem has to do with the rather turgid style of the text—very bureaucratic and almost legalistic in its repetitions. The job represents a good payday, but there have been rather wordy sentences that have taken me the better part of 15 minutes to grok.

I'll put in another couple of hours and see where that gets me.

Cheers...