Lots of PHP code, lots of graphics to make.   Two weeks to 01/01!

In the last couple of years, there has been interest in my old video projects, such as "Behind The Static 2" and "Unbuilt Roads of Long Island".   In January, I responded by creating the "Ryan Grabow Network: Volume 1" Video CD (I'll get a DVD burner someday, I promise) and now Volume 2 is available.

Here is the current list of publicly available VCDs, available for the cost of burning and shipping:

Ryan Grabow Network: Volume 1 (Video CD)
California Trip (High School)
Goldilocks & the 3 Bears (High School)
Behind the Static (High School)
Joe's Trashbin & others (College)
Magibag - commercial (College)
Unbuilt Roads of Long Island (College)
Traffic: Speed Bumps and Stop Signs (College)
Video Stuff: Episodes 1-6 (egrabow.com)

Ryan Grabow Network: Volume 2 (Super Video CD)
Sliders Compilation (College)
Truman Scene (College)

Behind The Static 2 (Video CD)
10-minute Senior Project version (College)
20-minute: Longer, Creepier, Uncut (egrabow.com)

DX Files: Patchogue, NY (Video CD)
30-minutes of DX clips
Local stations, equipment, stats
Behind the Static

Eventually, an MP3-CD for Randomize aNd Customize will be available.

Thousands of episodes, starting with Wendy's in Patchogue on March 1, 1999.   Now with my career looking up and the financial crunch easing, I think I can safely bid customer service good riddance!

Continuing with the TV-series analogy, let's review this epic era of my working life:

Season 1 (3/1999 - 7/2000): Crew at Wendy's.  First real job.  Would you like to Biggie Size that?  What do you mean no?  Yeah, same to your mother! (ahhh.. New York)
Used to allowance, my near-minimum-wage salary seemed like opened floodgates into my savings account.   This job was within lengthy walking distance of my house, and I bought my first car with the money.   With the mission accomplished, I quit after High School graduation and got some ankle surgery.   After a few weeks of recovery I would pass my driving test and get a better job before starting college.

Season 2 (8/2000 - 7/2002): Crew at Wendy's.  This is getting old.
Having failed my driving test at first, I returned to Wendy's to keep money in my wallet during my first days of college... after all, I had to gas up for a 36-mile commute!  The summer after I got my license, my next escape attempt began.  In June 2001, I got a job handling membership renewals at WLIW, the local PBS station, but it wasn't production-related or heavy enough on hours to replace Wendy's.   The department I worked in was shut down and I landed a holiday position at the WIZ, it was also easy on hours and didn't last either.

Season 3 (7/2002 - 5/2004): Shift Supervisor at Wendy's.  If I can't leave, I'll get promoted instead.
I eventually decided that I could be a college student still working at Wendy's... as long as I was a "manager" there.   More paperwork, less dealing with the public (except that I had to answer the phone and deal with the irates).  The ensuing raise got me far enough above minimum wage that $$$ stayed in my wallet.  Of course, I wasn't paying back loans yet.

Season 4 (5/2004 - 7/2005): Shift Supervisor at Wendy's.  This is getting old.
This season seemed to be mostly reruns from season 3, most of the audience stopped watching (I could tell because I was braindead during work hours).
Now that I had a Bachelor's Degree and was paying back $500 a month for it... it was time to kiss the public goodbye and get a career job.   It didn't happen.
Sure, I started making money at Love 96, working at station appearances (huge crowds of people hungry for free stuff), but that didn't replace Wendy's, either, nor did it result in a steady job at the station.

Mid-Break Clip Show (8/2005): Telemarketing.   'nuff said.
WBBH/WZVN came in only a week later, my first job with NO public interaction or sales... what a difference!

Season 5 (7/2006 - 11/2006): Extra income at Office Depot.
Yep.  Back to customer service... I didn't think I'd stay long.   Black Friday 2006 ensured this job would go out with a bang... the very last customer-service-work-day in a very long line.

Sure, junk happens and I may find myself fake-smiling at customers again, but the odds of it seem low right now.  Naturally, web design calls for a degree of customer service, too.... but a totally different kind of customer service... that doesn't kill brain cells and require me to get up at 7am.

The end of Job #7 is right on the horizon.  Job #6... Waterman Broadcasting... is closing the income/expense gap on its own with a little help from overtime (OK, very little help from overtime right now... but A-Team starts in January!).   I'm eager to return to the good 'ol 5am sleep sked, since that's quality internet/MySpace/Google/EG/Wiki time.   19 days and counting!

Since October 1st, I've been monitoring shortwave numbers stations again. OK, I haven't heard the E5 "CynthIA", just her Cuban sister (V2) on two daily schedules.

Don't know what numbers stations are?  Click here
Think I'm crazy for listening to them? I know I am but what are you?

Ahhh... fall. Leaves falling, temperatures cooling... (oh yeah, this is Florida). Well, it's still that special time of year where I take the existing look of EGrabow.com, think "Man, I thought that looked good???", and proceed to totally re-write the laws of EG-Physics. EG2007 will inherit a lot of design from versions 6 and 6.5. Unfortunately, implementation of 6.5 was soon followed by fourth job (1= FT Waterman Broadcasting / 2= Office Depot / 3= Volunteer @ Church's media dept. / 4= Build websites & fix computers).   My idea of "free time" in August was checking my mail and (maybe) sleeping, there weren't enough scraps left to smooth out certain problems with 6.5's flash NAVbar or to update the TIS regularly.   Much of that time has returned at this point, and I look forward to restoring my 5am sleep schedule in December when Job #2 disappears into my personal history book.

Regardless of how much I'm getting to use version 6.5, some aspects of it are here to stay.  Here's 2007's early drawing board:

Flash   Not all it's cracked up to be? We'll see about that.

Flash NAVigation was introduced at the beginning of this year and expanded in July.  While I'm happy with it in many ways so far, Flash is turning out to be a pain to learn and implement.  HTML, VB and (especially) PHP had learning curves, complete with frustration, and I expected nothing less from Actionscript.  Unfortunately, my progress has been limited trying to get code into the animations and making it do what I want.  I see great, functional animations on websites all the time... obviously, I should be able to get over this brick wall.  I ordered a book on Actionscript, since the book I already have doesn't go very far into it.  My success with coding Flash will determine how much or little of it I'll use next year.   JavaScript, anyone?

FreeFolder.net  EG's cash cow?

This is what Office Depot will give way to... except I don't have to get up at 7am to build websites.  Now that "freefolder.net" actually goes to EG's FreeFolder Page, advertising will be much easier... I'm not sure what I was smoking two years ago when I bought the name through Verio, since they apparently didn't offer URL forwarding.

EG remains a personal site, but FreeFolder will be the business side of it.  The page will include information on my services, screenshots of existing and previous websites, and contact information.

PHP & MySQL everywhere   Maniacal laughter here

It worked for the Audio/Video Component Archive, it'll work for everything else.  The biggest difference users will notice in the dynamic webpages will be the URLs: egrabow.com/dx/ will be egrabow.com/ram.php?src=DxRadio (though you'll still be able to simply type in egrabow.com/dx/).  Another advantage will be alternative viewing options, such as the ability to read black text on a white BG (and easy on the graphics) if you're too lame to appreciate my wicked-cool design ;-P

25 Years of Ryan G   Quarter century??? Don't I feel old!

A year-long feature resembling the "a look back" section in the back of some magazine (like the defunct "Video Magazine")

With the second job bringing free time into a fresh (albeit short-lived) drought, I came to take another look at my long term goals. I've decided to scale back my on-again-off-again ambitious programming goals.
 

• Wake Up! Pro has proven itself useful to myself and others. I recieve considerable feedback on WUP and it is the most unique of my programs. I'm keeping plans for v2.5, 2.8, and 3.x alive, only Linux version 2.2 is being dropped. I've decided to hold off on Linux completely, despite my agreement with it's idealogy, because it seems I can't get the OS to work the way I want.
   
• TermTable will be dropped. MS Outlook and ////////////////// already have powerful scheduling tools.
   
• BreadMeter will still be supported, although no new versions are planned.
   
• KeyPrint will still be supported for now. CipherDin, which was to bring KeyPrint's functions to TermTable's schedules, has been dropped.

I'd like to shift my attention to website features, such as the reborn Audio/Video Component Archive, and to DXing... among other things.

Until last week, my bank account was in agony... I had to put even food on the credit card to avoid bouncing checks.   How ironic it is that now I have the $$$ to pay my bills on time, but not the 5 minutes it takes to send the checks!   Spare time hasn't been this low since I was a FT college student with FT and PT jobs, president of one campus organization, a member of another, and trying to maintain membership in third.

Office Depot hours are being cut back with it's store-remodeling-30-hours-per-week grace period coming to an end.    Next month will see some free time coming back.   Ultimately, FreeFolder.net will provide to necessary income to get me back in front of this computer for more than 20 minutes a week.   Later.

JobFind '06 ended yesterday at a local Office Depot.   While I can't say I'm looking forward to the combined hours (14 hours a day!), being able to chip away at my credit card balance with rockets rather than BB shells will be a good moment.   Once the credit card is back in order (3 months???), I can have a savings account for the first time since 2003.   I also plan to start tithing at church.

For the moment, I have to put off editing "Celebration Under the Silverdome" on Mondays.   EG updates (and pretty much everything else) move to Tuesday nights.

From the beginning, the Audio/Video Component Archive has been a hit.   The archive was built with trend-tracking in mind (like how much the price of CD players has fallen since 1983, for example) at the model-by-model level.   The most popular use of it, apparently, is looking up info for current eBay auction items.   Users occasionally toss me some info that's not already up.

Originally a handful of HTML pages, then Excel spreadsheets... the AVCA is switching to a flexible MySQL database.   The archive has been in-and-out of "hibernation" for 5 years, now it's out of it for good... but now it needs more than a facelift.   I'm working now to add newer models, pushing past the original 1996/1997-line cutoff still evident on the old JVC, Yamaha, Panasonic, Pioneer, and even Sony* pages.   *Sony info is being imported right now, that "old" page may not be there in a few days.

I hope to have the updated info (including pictures) up in a few months.

24 years of Ryan G!
Happy Birthday to Me!

(<- me eating free at Iguana Mia... Yummy!)

I'm trying not to steer the ship into the iceberg, here.   Of course, any die hard EG fans out there (pause to hear crickets... you hear someone in the audience cough) ... ahem... ANY DIE HARD EG FANS OUT THERE (huge applause) thank you thank you... know that I've been trying to unite my software under the TermTable program, a scheduling application designed for recurring tasks.   When I began pursuing it, I looked for existing programs and actually didn't find anything with good recurring-task functionality.   Last month, I forgot how, I discovered that Microsoft Outlook has what I was looking for all along.   This didn't trip me up too much, since it's not a free, open-source program, but then I started running into other programs that can schedule recurring tasks well, also.

I don't think I'll scrap TermTable, but I may need to step back and take a fresh approach to it.   The program will need unique features, besides eventually syncing up with Wake Up! Pro, BreadMeter, and CipherDin.   Stay Tuned.

After 11 months in Fort Myers, FL, this new location is continuing its rampage on Patchogue's statistics... old Es targets have been caught via Tropo, and today's KYW and WTKR catches braught us to the flip-side of the equation... old NY Tropo becomes new FL E-skip! WCBS, a former local, was logged tentatively last year.

April 3rd's WNPL catch came close to one of Patchogue's records, but until today they've all remained intact. But today, "Shortest E-Skip catch" fell to Fort Myers, with WETP clocking in at only 681 miles (Patchogue's record was WBBM at 763 mi.).

Finally, today was the first to have old Es targets logged as new Es targets: WETP 2*, KOET 3, WSIL 3, KDTN 2*, WKRN 2*, and WCIA 3* (* = tentative for one or both QTHes). I'm looking forward to more e-skip, the season just started!

DX Page - Fort Myers Logs - 1500mile map

The ionosphere has broken it's silence and sent me some "DX" from "TX" (eer.. "Texas", not "Transmitter").  KIII and KCWX have become the latest loggings (~1,000 mi.), with KIII's distinctive "3" logo representing the shortest Es at this QTH so far.   Everything went spanish-language after those two stations, so the path probably shifted south to Mexico.   Had something IDed, or held a decent signal, Mexico may have become country #4.

The logs and the map have been updated, and may this be the start of an intense Es season!

This week I confronted a bill that I can't pay on time.   Uh Oh.   Most of us have been in this situation before, most of us would rather not be.   After looking through three months of my financial history, I determined that Waterman payed the bills just fine and keeps gas in the Supra well enough, but my paycheck stalls out at the food store (*caugh* Taco Bell *caugh*), and I haven't even paid for new hardware, car repairs, or "insurance doesn't cover this" doctor visits!

Sigh, time for a PT job... overtime would cover it, and was slowing down the process a lot until a couple of months ago.   Naturally, I'd prefer to build more websites.  So, any work?  Looks like I'll find out soon.   Failing that, there's always Global Prospects :-P

Need a website, or just some compu-related work done?   Contact Me.

Exactly 10 years ago tonight and 1,100 miles from where I'm sitting now... I was blown out of my mind.

On June 11, 1996, during prime time, I remember, WESH 02 became my first ever e-skip catch.   This event is covered in my "How I Started DXing" article (DX Page) if you'd like to read up.   The screenshot on the left, BTW, is from 5/4/00 (although I saw WESH from Patchogue, NY frequently... that was the only time I thought to tape it!).

This is the first year I'm celebrating Ionosphere Day.   I had tropo catches from 1995 but my recordkeeping was poor then, but when I noticed that my epic WESH reception was coming up on 10 years, I knew where my DXing holiday should go!   Ionosphere Day (June 11) joins EG Day (January 1) and Asphalt Day (October 23) as days when I celebrate DXing, web mastering, and driving.

The scheduling application and main app of "TermTable Suite 2006" has been taken off the board for "stuff I'm gonna release in June."   I've gotten a good deal of work done with it, but public release is still a long way off.   I've lost the mood for programming, for now.   Hey, there's been a lot of progress with the other programs since August, I guess I'm due for a breather.

I was planning to stop and attend to other projects after releasing 1.0 and the Suite 2006 CD, anyway.   The plan is to start again in September and release the next generation of programs: TermTable 2.0, Wake Up! Pro 2.5, BreadMeter 2.0, and CipherDin 2.0 by Spring '07.   This may still happen.   At any rate, I'm not dropping the name "TermTable Suite 2006" just yet... there's still enough 2006 left to get fresh inspiration.

In the meantime, I will be working on belowzerorepairs.com, freefolder.net, and this website... among other projects (I'm just busting with 'em ;-)

June 21st... yeah, right.   I'm already feelin' like summer.   Heat, DX, and (almost) rain every day.   Okay, maybe summer doesn't have the pizzazz it once had when I was out of class and could chill out for three months, but it remains my favorite season.   Now all I need is for my roommate to turn down the AC, I love heat!

To commemorate my return to the DXing scene, I've redesigned the maps for their 2006 update.   Several improvements have been made to increase legibility, navigate, and allow logos from outside the continental U.S. (Puerto Rico has already been added).   Offsets are now included on the maps and there are printable versions in addition to the normal "on-screen" ones.

Channels 2 and 3 are done, 4-6 should be done within a couple of weeks.   7 will follow sometime this season and Latin American logos will be added.

The reasons I created "Video Stuff" (originally approached as a weekly/bi-weekly production) aren't in place anymore.   This would explain why the last ep. was almost a year ago!

Nevertheless, I decided to close out the series with style.   In VS #6 ("Maybe Next Time"), I said that I may have to move to Florida due to a snail-paced job search.   Now that I'm in Florida and things couldn't be better... it's only appropriate that the series end on a happy note!!!

Projects come and projects go, this won't be the last video on EG.   Heck, the "Stuff Page" doesn't even exist anymore!   When the next big video-related thing hits here, you know where to look... EG Home! (this page)

Watch Video Stuff #7 (linked file is no longer available)
(918 KB download)

Following a little peer-pressure, I started my own MySpace page (www.myspace.com/egrabow).   In my opinion, top-level-domain tops myspace page anyday, but I'm giving this a shot.   In the spirit of "EG2", I've dubbed this EGs "Satellite Page" (EG-SP for short), though I'm not sure if I'll use it in the same way.   For the moment, the content up on it is swiped from this page.

Since the move, I've predicted that the 2006 DX season would be my most active in six years.   Well, I think that this year has already claimed that title... by early March!   Granted, premieres (first time catches with positive IDs) come easy right after a 1,100 mile move, but Florida is delivering them faster than I would have expected in another New York climate.   In fact, the DX season hasn't even started yet... DX is typically dead up there, yet I'm already checking for trops and E-Skip regularly (this is Florida DX now!).

What better (and more coincidental) to start the season than four new stations on each of four nights!
Tr 23 WLTV Miami, FL 110 01/01/06 1/1/06|00:25(p9)
Tr 25 WPBF West Palm Beach, FL 99 01/01/06 1/1/06|00:25(p10), 3/4/06|02:00
Tr 29 WFLX West Palm Beach, FL 101 01/01/06 1/1/06|00:25(p11), 3/3/06|00:30
Tr 34 WTVX West Palm Beach, FL 99 01/01/06 1/1/06|00:25(p12), 3/4/06|02:00
Tr 44 WTOG Tampa, FL 90 02/28/06 2/28/06|21:30(p17), 3/4/06|02:00
Tr 50 WFTT Tampa, FL 91 02/28/06 2/28/06|21:30(p15), 3/4/06|02:00(t)
Tr 62 WVEA Tampa, FL 90 02/28/06 2/28/06|21:30(p16), 3/4/06|02:00(t)
Tr 66 WXPX Bradenton, FL 59 02/28/06 2/28/06|23:59(p18), 3/4/06|02:00(t)
Tr 07 WSVN Miami, FL 111 03/03/06 3/3/06|00:30(p19), 3/4/06|02:00
Tr 12 WPEC West Palm Beach, FL 103 03/03/06 3/3/06|00:30(p20), 3/4/06|02:00
Tr 17 WLRN Miami, FL 111 03/03/06 3/3/06|02:00(p22), 3/4/06|02:00(t)
Tr 39 WBZL Miami, FL 110 03/03/06 3/3/06|00:30(p21), 3/4/06|02:00
Tr 02 WPBT Miami, FL 111 03/04/06 3/4/06|02:00(p23)
Tr 04 WFOR Miami, FL 110 03/04/06 3/4/06|02:00(p24)
Tr 38 WTTA Tampa, FL 91 03/04/06 2/28/06|21:30(t), 3/4/06|02:00(p25)
Tr 51 WSCV Miami, FL 111 03/04/06 3/4/06|02:00(p26)

Aiding me in my quest for TV-band domination is my new antenna: an old antenna on top of a 10' PVC pipe.   This is a simple first step which will doubtless lead me to a new yagi and telescoping (still PVC) mast.   It's times like this I'm glad my balcony isn't screened in.   So far I've logged almost all of the full-power stations in Tampa and West Palm Beach, with Miami catching up.   I expect Orlando sometime in the next several weeks, and points well beyond as the season continues to unfold.  In preparation, I've designed a new 1500-mile map, which is up here.   And here's a link to the DX Page.   73s

When the Stuff Page premiered on EG in February 2004, one of my first entries announced that I finally bought a cell phone.   This past November, I (involuntarily) re-joined the no-cell-phone club, but decided to keep my old New York number alive since I was just starting to give out my new landline number here in Florida.   My two-year contract is now up and the phone number will be no more... not that anyone has called it in two months!   On top of that... Verizon Wireless started charging me an extra $3 a month when I asked them to prevent outgoing calls (in case some dishonest person found the phone and started running up the bill), I'm not sure why it costs the company extra money to stop a phone from using minutes, it should actually save it money... what'd they do, change a variable from "True" to "False" in one record in their massive database?   How much server space did that take up?   Far, farrrrrrrrrrrrr less than all the voicemail space I haven't touched, that $3 charge was bogus.

I've spent the past few weeks getting program #3 ready for launch.   Version BETA 12 is replacing Buxx LE on my own computer ("Buxx" was the original name for the program).   I'm now adding the finishing touches, shaking out the bugs, and writing the manual.   Hopefully, the first public release will be next week, two weeks at the latest.   BreadMeter version 1.0 will be the third of four programs in TermTable Suite 2006.   Wake Up! Pro will be updated to version 2.1 and TermTable 1.0 will be written in the next two months (this project will resume after a few smaller projects are done).

The money management part of TermTable was made available for download on Saturday.   BreadMeter is simple money management software designed to help individuals keep track of the $$$ in their wallets, accounts, and so on.   You can keep track of account balances, how much money you spend a year on pizza, monthly payments, etc…   If you liked Wake Up! Pro and KeyPrint, maybe you can cram another Ryan G program on your hard drive!   Wake Up! Pro 2.1 and TermTable 1.0 will be released within the next few months, completing TermTable Suite 2006 (maniacal laughter)!

I intend to make this a very active year.   I've almost cleaned up the messes from 2004/2005 and now want to make up the time.

First things first... EG2006 isn't done yet.   I've begun using Flash for navigation, and that top menu needs to be souped up (doesn't it look like it was designed to have more features?), a similar NAVbar will also be placed on EG Main (where the top bar doesn't appear).   Besides Flash, I will also be transitioning to Dreamweaver (finally!!) and expand my efforts to use clean HTML on my pages.  I'm also planning to launch FreeFolder.net in June.   The Audio/Video Component Archive will become a MySQL database with PHP pages, where users can enter information about vintage (?) electronics.   Wake Up! Pro will enjoy a version 2.1 release, but not before BreadMeter 1.0 and likely not before TermTable 1.0 (after these, work will stop until fall).   Finally, in spite of my non-yagi antenna, this should be my most active DX year since 2000.   I may even break all of Patchogue's old records!