Hole-n-Wall » 2014 » September

Discovered something really interesting/important yesterday. Holding on to Apple's iPad/iPhone is really tough without having them inside a case. I finally got to play with a iPhone 6+ last night and managed to drop it twice in the store. It wasn't the larger size, since I had the same problem with the iPhone 6. I think the problem is the rounded edges, there isn't enough surface area on them

September 27th, 2014 kennyr

I discovered I have the same problem with my iPad-mini. My wife's new cat (kitten) decided to start eating my iPad-mini and managed to chew completely through one of the buttons on the Otterbox case protecting it two days ago. I actually had the Otterbox before the iPad arrived, so I have really never used the iPad without the case.

So over the last two days, I've been using the iPad with no case and I discovered I hate it! I can not hold on to the iPad mini, it just slips out of my hands. This is the exact same problem I had with the new iPhones. I haven't ever really used my iPhone 5 without a case, so I don't know if the straight sides have the same problem. But I'm guessing it isn't as bad.

Well I love the bigger screen and I don't mind the size to much. It will take some getting use to it, but I like it. The big problem, it kept slipping out of my hand. I actually dropped it twice! Again, I never use my current iPhone without a case, so it must just be something

Posted in GooglePlus | Comments Off on Discovered something really interesting/important yesterday. Holding on to Apple's iPad/iPhone is really tough without having them inside a case. I finally got to play with a iPhone 6+ last night and managed to drop it twice in the store. It wasn't the larger size, since I had the same problem with the iPhone 6. I think the problem is the rounded edges, there isn't enough surface area on them

Problem with latest iPhone 6 and 6+…..

September 27th, 2014 kennyr

Discovered something really interesting/important yesterday. Holding on to Apple’s iPad/iPhone is really tough without having them inside a case. I finally got to play with a iPhone 6+ last night and managed to drop it twice in the store. It wasn’t the larger size, since I had the same problem with the iPhone 6. I think the problem is the rounded edges, there isn’t enough surface area on them

I discovered I have the same problem with my iPad-mini. My wife’s new cat (kitten) decided to start eating my iPad-mini and managed to chew completely through one of the buttons on the Otterbox case protecting it two days ago. I actually had the Otterbox before the iPad arrived, so I have really never used the iPad without the case.

So over the last two days, I’ve been using the iPad with no case and I discovered I hate it! I can not hold on to the iPad mini, it just slips out of my hands. This is the exact same problem I had with the new iPhones. I haven’t ever really used my iPhone 5 without a case, so I don’t know if the straight sides have the same problem. But I’m guessing it isn’t as bad.

Well I love the bigger screen and I don’t mind the size to much. It will take some getting use to it, but I like it. The big problem, it kept slipping out of my hand. I actually dropped it twice! Again, I never use my current iPhone without a case, so it must just be something

Posted in iOS | Comments Off on Problem with latest iPhone 6 and 6+…..

Discovered something really interesting/important yesterday

September 27th, 2014

Holding on to Apple's iPad/iPhone is really tough without having them inside a case. I finally got to play with a iPhone 6+ last night and managed to drop it twice in the store. It wasn't the larger size, since I had the same problem with the iPhone 6. I think the problem is the rounded edges, there isn't enough surface area on them.

I discovered I have the same problem with my iPad-mini. My wife's new cat (kitten) decided to start eating my iPad-mini and managed to chew completely through one of the buttons on the Otterbox case protecting it two days ago. I actually had the Otterbox before the iPad arrived, so I have really never used the iPad without the case.

So over the last two days, I've been using the iPad with no case and I discovered I hate it! I can not hold on to the iPad mini, it just slips out of my hands. This is the exact same problem I had with the new iPhones. I haven't ever really used my iPhone 5 without a case, so I don't know if the straight sides have the same problem. But I'm guessing it isn't as bad.

Well I love the bigger screen and I don't mind the size to much. It will take some getting use to it, but I like it. The big problem, it kept slipping out of my hand. I actually dropped it twice! Again, I never use my current iPhone without a case, so it must just be something

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Posted in iOS | 2 Comments »

Look what I found…

September 25th, 2014 kennyr

I picked up a used Alinco DR-135 several months ago. I had decided to replace the DR-235 on the 9600 baud digi with a 2m radio. I have had good luck with the single band Alinco’s and making them work on 9600, so I asked a friend who hits all the hamfests in the PNW to keep an eye out. This summer he came across one, got the guy to drop the price $25 and bought it for me. (Note: I was on the phone with Lynn at the time and had already told him to pay the man his asking price. But paying the asking price goes against Lynn’s moral code or something)

Anyhow, fast forward to a couple week ago and I finally tried hooking it up. Everything seem to work on the radio, I was able to get into a couple local repeaters and people told me my signal sounded fine. So I hooked up the radio to the PK96 and proceeded to make sure it was decoding packets before attempting to set the deviation. This is where everything went off the rails. Nothing I did would make the TNC decode anything, I could hear the packets and I knew the radio was configured correctly, but no go. I finally broke down and put a scope on the output and discovered the reason the TNC wasn’t decoding anything was pretty simple. There was nothing there to decode.

At this point I’m scratching my head and set the whole mess aside for a week. I would come into my office, look at it and move on to something else. Then I got bored during a meeting at work, pulled down the manual for the radio and decided to double check I wasn’t missing something stupid. That is when I remembered something. These radios have an optional internal TNC you can buy, a EJ-41u.
I sent an e-mail to Lynn, asking if he remembered the guy mentioning the radio having the optional TNC. Lynn said he didn’t remember the guy mentioning it and would have been surprised if it had one, since he could have asked for more money.

And that brings us up to this evening. I got a wild hair and decided to pull the radio apart and just look. Four screws and the bottom came off the radio and there was the EJ-41u and the source of my problems. I had decided to remove the tnc, if I found one installed. The manual states that the KISS mode is ‘not supported’ and I pretty much only want to run in KISS mode now. So out came the problem TNC and I put the radio back together. I hooked it up and wow! I can decode packets now. I’ll check the deviation this weekend and hopefully finish making the replacement 9600 digipeater work. I just wish I could figure out the magic sauce for getting ax25 installed on linux boxes. I have done it three times now and each time requires poking at it for a couple days. I’ve tried to re-create exactly what I did to finally make it work, but every time requires poking.

Posted in Ham Radio | Comments Off on Look what I found…

New Fence….

September 24th, 2014 kennyr

I realized something when catching up on Kelly’s blog this week. I have slipped into the mode of throwing up stuff on Facebook because it is easy and nothing comes back here. I need to figure out how to post stuff in both places, I have that working with Twitter and G+. (At least it was working once upon a time)

So last winter we had several big wind storms. After one particular wind storm, we woke up to a large noise and the next morning we discovered half of our fence was no longer standing. As with all my fence problems, I knew it was coming, but I couldn’t motive the neighbor into replacing it, until it fell over. (Why people?) Actually in looking at that picture, it might have been taken after I pulled the far back panel down, I think there were only two fence posts that gave out.

So I ended up replacing the back section of fence right away, I was quickly tired of the neighbors dog using our backyard as a toilet. I even manage to get the neighbors to pay for half of it. (After all, I did all the work) I also decided that there had to be a way to remove the old fence posts which were set in concrete. Trying to go around them didn’t work so well.

So about a month ago, I started removing the rest of the fence. It was in pretty sad shape and the pickets came down with about a days worth of work. The following day I tried removing the old fence posts using this jig I built and a farm jack. The idea is you drill two holes in the post, attach the jib with six inch bolts and then ‘jack’ the post and concrete plug out of the hole. I had to remove nine posts, three came out like I expected and the remaining six had issues. On three of them, the post came right out of the concrete and I was left with a perfect 4×4 hole. The post on the remaining three disintegrated above the concrete plug. In the end we had to dig out the concrete plugs. This should teach me to replace the fence before the posts are completely gone.

So over the coarse of the next four weeks, I rebuilt the fence. This time around my neighbor actually helped quite a bit. He dug out four of the posts and he ended up hanging about 2/3 of the pickets. I did all the concrete and framing work. Last weekend I finally finished the gate and little stub fence that is on my side. I noticed he still hasn’t started on the gate for his side, but there isn’t much I can do about that. I also have to go get the fancy caps for the fence posts and cut them all down to the same height.