Something to be Thankful For: That Time a Local Band Taught Me About Fear

Back in my tween years in the early 80s, my listening habits straddled the New Wave Pop sound with Rock. If the music you listen to when you're growing up sticks with you throughout your life, then my life was infused with Soft Cell and Duran Duran, Asia and The Police, AC/DC and Yes.

Oh, and a little local band called The Raisins.

The Raisins had been around for several years by the beginning of the 80s and had built a fanatical local following. They'd played dozens of venues throughout the region, and were always a good bet to get a packed house.

If you'd have told someone today that corporate

rock station WEBN and PBS TV affiliate WCET

would join forces to create live shows in the early

80s, they wouldn't have believed you. But here's the proof.

I was a bit young to be allowed into the bars to see bands play, so The Raisins skated under my radar for a long while. But when I started hearing a song called Fear is Never Boring on the radio, I immediately fell in love.

Now, before you click on the music video below, you have to realize something: the video's quality is very homemade: something you'd see out of a bunch of guys throwing a "music video" together after having had a few beers. The "homage" to Jason's hockey mask (not sure where they got the thing they used), Jaws, people dressed as undertakers, the POV of a slasher movie, and the band "playing" their instruments are some of the finest amateur hour stuff. Throw in the 80s era movie projector you'd find at a local school, toss in the band's hair and short shorts, and you get the idea that this isn't something you should take at all seriously.

As for the song, it's got everything --and I do mean everything-- that identifies it as early 80s Power Pop: backward lyrics*, a nice groove, a good guitar solo, and song lyrics that have sexual innuendos/references you'd never have believed would have come out of socially conservative Cincinnati. One of the band members, Bob Nyswonger, mentioned that this song was used for a while at Cincinnati Reds baseball games, until the Reds management actually listened to the lyrics and yanked it from being played over the sound system.

Fear is Never Boring became a bit regional hit, and I thought it meant that they were big nationally (because I heard it on the radio all the time!), but the breaks never came their way. A couple of years after this song, the band broke up. Rob Fetters, the songwriter of Fear is Never Boring, took the song with him to his later bands, The Bears and psychodots**, so the song never truly went away from the area. All of the band members themselves kept busy in the local music scene, but they did reunite in 2024 for some sold out shows at the Woodward Theater downtown.

So I'm thankful for The Raisins and their quirky take on fear.

***

Oh, and I'm also thankful that the FCC finally issued my amateur radio license yesterday. One thing about those licenses is that they're public, so you can go to the FCC's database search engine and plug in my callsign to get my real name and address. That's actually a requirement that I have an active email address (and a physical address) on file that I can be reached at, or the FCC can yank my license. Ergo, you're going to have to trust me that I have an official callsign, because I'm not mentioning it here.

The FCC stopped providing paper licenses a long
time ago; I downloaded a PDF instead that I can print
out and keep in my records.

That being said, I was amused at what the callsign gods provided to me. You'd think I was a member of a federal agency or something. (And no, it's not the FBI. It wouldn't surprise me if callsigns with those letters in them are banned.)

*You can actually find someone had reversed the video so you can hear the backward lyrics. What was said at the start of the song was "My whole life flashed before I crashed".

**Yes, 'psychodots' has a lower case name. That's by design.

Meme Monday: Thanksgiving Memes for 2025

This Thursday is Thanksgiving in the US (Canada's Thanksgiving is in October), so I figured I'd put a few memes out there for this holiday.

Ha. I don't think I'll have to do this this year.
From Someecards.

20 years ago this wouldn't have worked.
Weird how things have changed. From Pinterest.

I laughed. From Play What You Want.

Oh great. A turkey version of Tiamat.
From Reddit.

Well, yeah. That's the idea. Of course, I have
been dragged into work on Thanksgiving,
so I appreciate this. From Thunder Dungeon.

This would NOT go well at my mom's house.
From Bell of Lost Souls.

Codas and Retrospectives

Every so often, the YouTube algorithm pops up something that I really love.

This time, it's the kinda-sorta Beatles song, Now and Then.

Yes, it's the last of the pieces that Yoko Ono had found on a cassette that John Lennon had been recording prior to his murder. The other two songs were in better condition and could easily be filled out by the three remaining Beatles at the time into released songs, but this last one proved to be beyond the reach of the technology of the mid-90s. Apparently George Harrison also thought the song was rubbish when they were working on it in the mid-90s; whether it was the low quality recording or the song itself was up for interpretation. Still, with new tech brought to Paul and Ringo by Peter Jackson, they were able to get a usable extraction of John's voice and finish the song.

It's by no means the best Beatles song out there, but at this stage in my life I find it wistful, a longing for people in the past that you had a friendship with and are no longer around. In its own way, it's a perfect coda for the band.

The music video for Now and Then does highlight the irreverent and funny personalities of the band, which reminded me a lot of something my Questing Buddy and I were chatting about earlier this past evening. 

We were talking about our experience raiding in TBC Classic, and before that our Vanilla Classic experiences. Her journey ended up being much better this time around on the Anniversary servers, because her guild doesn't take themselves entirely seriously. They do want to raid well, and they do push themselves, but that's more on the individual members to basically have their stuff ready to go rather than some Raid Lead wielding a clue stick to get everybody on the page*. What I highlighted was the espirit de corps of the Mage team, and how we were all a tight knit bunch and truly enjoyed each other's company. Raike would talk about her music playlists for the raid, Zwak would crack his sarcastic Dad jokes, and Haldol would somehow make it to the raid despite keeping a crazy work schedule. Raike and I would create fake music lyrics to commemorate our Mage Misadventures, and Iceboom would talk about his watercolor painting and encourage me to give it a try.** We all kept track of who died, egged each other on if they had a chance of ripping threat from the tank, and we'd talk about the most inane topics that we could come up with. Given that the three Mages ahead of me were three of the best Mages on the server, I didn't mind that I was in fourth place on the overall DPS meters. What mattered to me was the amount of sheer, unadulterated fun we were all having, and that's something I do truly miss.

I don't think that sort of connection will ever come again in an MMO for me, because it was my first time truly being part of a progression raid team and the stars aligned to provide me the best possible time in a multiplayer game. Like John sings in Now and Then, I do miss you, old friends.

*Or, as in the case of the franken guild I left, having weekly "performance reviews" of your parsing that they instituted in Wrath Classic.

**If you're reading this, Iceboom, I still have to buy some paints and get to work. Your biggest piece of advice, to keep painting no matter how lousy it looks, is advice that I've taken to heart on all sorts of endeavors.

False Positives

There are times when I really really dislike bots and web crawlers.

This is what I discovered when I looked at the results for the past week on Blogger:

Observed on November 20, 2025.

As you can see, the number of people who actually read my last post is around 29, which is on the low end but it hovers typically between 20-50 views. I'm used to that.

But look at the numbers for the site as a whole, and things are a wee bit out of whack.

Almost all of that I can attribute that to bots and crawlers, as it gives the false impression that people are swarming all over the blog. If they were, I'd expect to see more comments this past week than I have.

This stuff comes in waves, so we're in yet another wave that'll likely end around Black Friday. 

EtA: The number of views were originally 22, but by the time I got to a screencap they were 29. Corrected in the post.

A Bit of Humble-ish Pie

Did I say something about no paid boosts yet?

Well, this dropped later in the day yesterday....

This was captured 11/19/2025.

And yes, there's a paid boost involved because of course there is:

This was captured on 11/19/2025.

The Outland Epic Pack --including the Boost and 30 days game time-- is $80 US, while the Outland Heroic Pack* is $40 US. Back in 2021, the paid boost to L58 was $40 US, and most of the commentary in the Blizz Forums centered on the "value for the money" for the two packs. More than one person thought you had to buy a pack to even play TBC Classic on the Anniversary servers, so they didn't read the post thoroughly. One person did request the "/spit" emote be restored to the game, indicating that they were not happy with these boosts existing at all.

Captured on 11/19/2025.

However, almost nobody mentioned the real issue here: the bots.

I sincerely doubt that the bot brigades will care about throwing $80 at Microsoft to have a legion of L58 boosts for farming Outland. They're just a higher class of locust, I suppose.

Another other notable item that I've seen out and about is that the Hardcore servers will not progress into TBC Classic, as per this YouTube video by WillE:

However, the biggest change aside from the $80 paid boost is that the TBC raids will all be in their post-nerf settings. I presume that's because they want everybody to blitz through TBC Classic in one year, and the difficulty of some of the raids were simply too much to be able to pull that off. Still, Karazhan especially turned into a cakewalk by the end of TBC Classic back in 2022, because we frequently had very few toons (yes, they were alts) more well geared than my Shaman back then, and she was (at best) partially Tier 5 geared.

This doesn't entirely shock me, but I figured they'd wait until the next Phase's raids became available before they nerfed the lower Tiers of raids. Silly me, I suppose.

WillE highlighted some other things, such as Guild Banks being available at launch instead of when they were first released into WoW back in the day, and that the UI changes found in Retail will make their way to the Anniversary servers. There's also that Dual Spec and the Dungeon Finder will appear in Classic Era as well, so butter my butt and call me a biscuit. 

At this rate, we'll be seeing the WoW Token on Classic Era sooner than I'd have thought.

*Minus both boost and game time.

Well Well Well...

I go and work at the car dealer's repair shop for the day, and I come back to find this in my mailbox:

On November 18, 2025.

I clicked on the link, and discovered that yes, the pre-patch is going to drop in January:

Found here on Blizzard's website.
November 18, 2025.

So, they're not going to hit the anniversary date of the TBC launch, but close enough for government work.

The Classic Era team will be allowing transfers to Classic Era realms from November 25th 2025 through January 12 2026. At present, no paid boosts are observed, but we'll see. 

I guess that means I've got until mid-January to finish getting my four toons to L60.

Meme Monday: Amateur Radio Memes

Well, since the cat is out of the bag, I figured I might as well use this Meme Monday for amateur radio. 

The hardest part of this Meme Monday was selecting memes that weren't too obscure. Believe me, I could have done much worse...

Well, kinda. CB Radio enforcement is notoriously
lax, so there are people out there with kilowatt
broadcasts going on. From Reddit.

This was entitled "Old Wives' Tale", and
I have to agree. Kind of like a similar one about
gamers. From QRZ.com.

This is actually a bit more accurate than that second one.
From Reddit.

Isn't this JUST like one for video games?
From QRZ.com.

I'm afraid it's too late for me, Sgt. Friday.
I work in IT. From Reddit. (And the show Dragnet.)

Uh, yeah. Kinda. Okay, maybe I did.
From imgflip.

Highs in the 50s Today

Given that the past couple of weeks have been pretty eventful (see my previous posts this week), I'm kind of happy keeping the pace I have been:

As Linna gets more powerful chestpieces, her
protective area continues to shrink. Hence I put
on a blue shirt to at least make her look like a Knight
in blue and silver. The status as of November 13, 2025.

I'm finally getting some gear on Linna replaced that she's been wearing since The Deadmines. Yes, that's right. The freaking Deadmines. 

Or, as I like to call it, my dice rolls SUCK.

That notwithstanding, I've been keeping up steady progress given that I've only been on for an average of an hour a night. Two levels per week ain't that bad. I kind of expect to be hitting L60 on these toons around Christmas, which is perfect. Why? because I won't have to worry about doing any gearing up or anything, because I expect the prepatch for TBC on the Anniversary realms to hit in January, and TBC Classic to arrive in February. 

Not too shabby, really.

People Watching

Sometimes, I like to wander around MMOs and people watch. 

Not in the same way that people like to show off their gear and/or mounts, but just to see people out there and what they're doing.

It's not strictly limited to WoW, but other MMOs can be a bit of a challenge to stay somewhere and just watch the crowd.

Take Guild Wars 2, for instance. 

Divinity's Reach is just so large that people there are really spread out, even where the bank is. So, when I want to see a bit of a crowd I go to somewhere smaller (relatively speaking), Lion's Arch. 

Not that big of a crowd, but definitely some
interesting people. Especially the one twice my height.

There was a crowd here, but by the time I figured
out how to hide the UI for a screencap, they'd left.

People pretty much scurry from place to place in most MMOs, with a few just hanging out. Doesn't matter if it's GW2 or even Elder Scrolls Online: people are going to chill and do their thing.

Such as visiting the bank.

Or crafting.

Classic WoW may have more people in the central watering holes, such as Stormwind on the Anniversary servers...

I didn't bother hiding the friendly toon names.

But for my money the place that I find most bizarrely fascinating is on Retail WoW. Specifically, Goldshire in Moon Guard.

It may not be quite as busy as SW as seen above...

But that's because the party is inside.

In a very real sense, the inside of The Lion's Pride reminds me a LOT of Atlanta's DragonCon SFF convention. The saying "If you not getting laid at DragonCon you're not trying" is a very real one.

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2024.

Still, Goldshire on the Moon Guard server is the sort of place where you just kind of run on through rather than stop to gawk at the sights, lest you actually get hit on for some ERP action. And believe me, there's plenty of WTF stuff going on to gawk at. Here's just a few things I saw the past couple of days when I buzzed back and forth between Northshire and Stormwind:

Tons of dead bodies, just lying there.

Then whatever the hell this is.

And WTF is THIS??

By comparison, the few people I saw in Stormwind were relatively normal. Like stumbling in on some legendary questline ending (or something like that):

And then there's the holy-crap-are-THEY-oversized people:

I only came up to her waist.

And on this one I was thigh high.

There's got to be some sort of buff/potion/spell that does this, and I was quickly inspecting the toon on top to see what sort of buff she might have on when I realized she was looking at me, so I quickly ended THAT and just ran onward. Now, I know that you can tweak the game to make yourself absurdly large for brief periods, such as using Spellsteal against the Winterspring Furbolgs to steal the Winterfall Firewater buff, because I've done that before:

Here's Neve after playing around with the Furbolgs.

The thing is, that buff is very temporary, on the order of a few minutes, so that doesn't last long. Whatever those two toons were up to was not that.

Anyway, there were a few "normal" looking toons in Retail Stormwind, but nowhere close to the crowd in Goldshire:

I ought to get onto LOTRO and see how Bree is doing these days. It used to be busy, no matter the time of day.

A Little Something to Do, Part 2

(Here's a link for Part 1.)

In early September, I went hunting on the American Radio Relay League's website for amateur radio classes. The ARRL is the largest US amateur radio umbrella organization. They advocate for amateur radio to the FCC (and Congress), they encourage amateur radio contests and classwork, and they have their own series of publications for and about amateur radio. (Like my study book from Part 1.) The ARRL does have their detractors, and holy crap are those people vocal about it, but the ARRL is also the best voice that amateur radio has in the US.

Maybe it's because my mind works the same way as the webmasters who designed the ARRL's website, I quickly found a free (!) class available beginning in September and lasting through October. I quickly emailed the contact person, who confirmed that yes, they still have openings and I could just show up at the bright early time of 9 AM on Saturday morning at the Red Cross building here in Cincinnati. 

If you ever wondered whether ham radio
and MMO hobbies are similar... Yes, they are.
From imgflip and SP3POW.

The night before that first class I tossed and turned in bed, finally getting to sleep after 1 AM.  It had been at least 24 years since I last had an in-person class*, and I wasn't sure what to expect. Would I be the oldest person there? Would there be a crowd? What sort of people would the students be? The instructors? Would I have issues even getting inside the building?

The answer to that last question, thankfully, was no. There were two people monitoring the front door and I didn't get harangued any more than necessary, once I explained I was there for the ham radio class. I followed their directions to the correct room, and I discovered that much to my surprise I was one of the youngest people in the class.

From memeguy.

There were seven people in the class (myself included), and three instructors. I soon learned that the instructors viewed the class as something closer to providing guidance while we learned the material for the entry level license, the Technician Class. They admitted that we really didn't need them to learn the material, as the ARRL books were fine for learning the material, but they were there to provide some hands-on learning about amateur radio as well as answer questions. I could see that despite the class being free that some people would drop the class after realizing that they could just study by themselves and take the test --and to be fair, one did**-- but once I got over the initial disconnect between my expectations and the reality I warmed up to the class.

Part of it was seeing the equipment up close and personal, which to a gearhead like me I found fascinating, but I think another part of it was that the instructors were uniformly upbeat about our chances of passing the exam. As long as you study, take practice tests online, and keep up with it, they said numerous times, you'll pass.

***

While the ARRL had its own practice test website, and I did take those practice tests while I studied, I spent a lot more time on hamstudy.org:

This place became my friend.
This is as of November 8, 2025.

I could take tests and study by being quizzed on all of the exam questions to my heart's content. That's one nice thing about the Amateur Radio license exams in the US: all of the questions are taken from pools of 400 (Technician), 450 (General), and 622 (Amateur Extra) questions for each license class, respectively. Since those are already known, you could theoretically study for the test by simply memorizing the questions. Of course, that doesn't really teach you anything other than how to pass the exam, but it could be done.

When I started taking the practice tests for the Technician exam, I realized I had my work cut out for me. I had to get 74% of the questions correct on the exam, so that meant 26 out of 35 for the Tech license, and I wasn't even hitting that. For somebody who'd prided himself on being at least somewhat savvy with radio and electrical circuitry over the years, that was tough to accept. If I were serious about this, I realized I was going to have to buckle down and really study.

That's mint tea, no caffeine. I wanted to
sleep when I was done studying for the night,
you know.

I not only studied at night, when I'd typically get on WoW Classic and play for a bit, but also whenever I had a break at work. And for the astute among you, you likely notice that there were not only Technician Class license books as part of my study regimen above, but also General Class books. Because I can't simply do one thing at a time, I suppose.

When I started down this amateur radio classwork, I'd set a lofty goal for myself: to not only get the Tech license, but the General too. While the Tech licenses primarily focus on VHF and UHF frequencies, when most people think of "ham radio" (myself inclued) they think of people operating on the shortwave bands. Those bands, known as High Frequency (HF) in radio nomenclature, are between 3 Mhz and 30 MHz. The Tech license gets you access to the entire 10 Meter band (28.0 MHz to 29.7 MHz in the US), but if you want to talk to people using speech on the rest of the HF amateur radio bands you need a General Class license. Given my longtime interest in shortwave radio, it made sense that I'd want to do that. And, of course, my own arrogance led me to believe that I could do that easily.

Uh, nope. 

That practice result above was pretty much normal for me. This was but one of the times when I discovered I not only didn't remember a lot of things --the mathematics, in particular-- there were a lot of items I never had to deal with as a shortwave listener that I would encounter as a ham radio operator, such as concepts behind transmitters.

About the only good thing I did when I started taking the class was to NOT tell anyone that I wanted to pass both the Tech and General classes; I was putting enough pressure on myself as it was without being an asshole and waving a flag around yelling "LOOK AT ME!!! I'M AWESOME!!!!" I've had enough humble pie served to me over the years that I wasn't going to do that at all. 

By mid-October, I was passing practice tests for the Technician Class exams with regularity, so I shifted my focus to the General Class test. I had about 2-3 weeks before the license exam of November 1st, so it was very much crunch time. 

The stress I was putting myself under was
kind of like this. From Real Genius and makeagif.

At that point, I stopped trying to understand all of the material and focused instead on simply passing the test.

The last week before the exam, I admitted to the instructors that I was aiming to pass both Technician and General class licenses. The instructors were very encouraging, saying that I knew the material, so I just had to relax and take the exams. They also mentioned another little thing: when I take the Tech exam and pass (the exam costs $15 per attempt), I get a free attempt at the next higher license exam. So theoretically, I would only have to pay $15 to take both exams if I passed both on the first try.

Then one of the instructors dropped the bomb.

"You should take the Extra Class exam too."

"I haven't even looked at those questions yet," I admitted, while my mind was screaming "FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!" at me.

"Yes, but it's free, and it gives you an understanding of what it'd take to pass that exam."

I couldn't really say "no" to a free attempt, but I didn't want that to distract me from my immediate goals. Still, that "could I do it?" lingered in the back of my head all week.

***

Exam day dawned bright and sunny. The exam itself was at 9 AM, but I was already up at 5:30 AM. Yeah, I'm one of those people who don't sleep well the night before an exam, no matter what it is.

From Facebook.

I was supposed to arrive by 8:45, because the exam coordinators wanted to get started right at 9, but when I did I discovered that the instructors were already there, rooting us on. One of the class members had taken her exam earlier so she didn't need to show up, but she came to cheer us on as well. Those small things meant a lot, because I was really nervous. I should be fine, I told myself, as long as I don't get the exactly wrong question for each part of the exam. In each section, there's one question that gave me trouble, but what were the odds that I'd get them all in one randomly selected exam?

You can guess what happened.

When I started, I looked over the exam and immediately thought, "Holy shit." It was a nightmare come to life.

It had that smile on its face, too.
From theprchiro via Cheezburger.

I took a few deep breaths and calmed myself down. "It's only $15," I thought to myself. "I can take it again if I flunk."

Then I started slowly, working on the questions I knew. I answered all of those questions, then started working on all of the ones that I hadn't seen very much or I had trouble with. After that, I was down to a couple of questions that I just guessed at, and then spent another 5-10 minutes just making sure I didn't do anything stupid like selecting the answers in the wrong row***. I then had to wait another 5 minutes for my turn getting my test graded.

I passed.

That was a huge weight off of my shoulders. I took a deep breath and inquired about taking the General test. In short order I was back at my seat with a new set of questions to work on, and this time I relaxed a bit. The hard part was over, and now it was time to just go for it.

For some reason I found these questions easier, even though I knew I was going to get more wrong than the Technician exam. I'm not sure why, but my suspicion is that the pressure I was putting myself under was gone, so I found it easier to not dither and simply select answers. I finished, turned in my exam, and soon learned I passed the General exam as well.

"Do you want to try for the Extra?" one of the volunteer exam coordinators asked.

"Sure, let's do this!" I replied with an enthusiasm I didn't feel.

I sat down with the highest level exam, looked at the first question, and I knew the answer. "Hey," I thought. "I can do this."

Then I got to the second question.

"Uh.... Nope."

Yeah, this. From 9GAG.

Oh, that last exam was brutal. Positively brutal. I knew almost by the 3rd or 4th question that I wasn't going to pass this exam. Hell, I wasn't even going to get 50%. Of the 50 questions on the Extra exam, I answered about 15-20 for certain, and took a stab at 3-6 more, then I just selected "A" for all the rest. There was no penalty for just guessing, so why not?

"So," another of the exam coordinators asked as I turned in my sheet, "how'd you think you did?"

"You know how you're in college and you're in a seminar, listening to professors talk about their research and you have absolutely no fucking idea what they're talking about? It was like that."

They all laughed.

Yes, this Mr. Bean skit was going through
my head while I was taking the Extra exam.
From Pinterest (and Mr. Bean, obviously).

It turns out that while I did fail, I got 20 questions correct. They told me I did a great job for going in blind on that Extra exam, and now I had something to shoot for.

Once I filled out some forms, I went out into the waiting area where everybody else was hanging around to see how I did. "Passed the General, and bombed the Extra," I replied.

I got congratulations from the rest of the students and the instructors, and once I'd signed a few extra documents we all left the building.

I'd like to say that my journey was just beginning, but the reality is that it's kind of on hold right now due to the government shutdown. The FCC won't process the paperwork until the government reopens --meaning I can't transmit on my own equipment until my license appears in the FCC database-- so I've got time to relax a bit and try to figure out what starter radio to purchase before I dive in. Still, four of us in the class have gotten to know each other fairly well, and we even met last Saturday for lunch. The club that sponsored the class and the exam was very welcoming, and I think I'm going to join that club and see how things go. 

So now you know what I've been up to for the past couple of months.

*System Admin class for HP-UX. While I knew UNIX since I coded on Silicon Graphics workstations back in the 90s, the sysadmin side of things was new to me, so I was sent off to a couple weeks' worth of classwork.

**Two dropped, but one of them had to drop because work kept them from attending regularly. The other simply stopped coming.

***Yes, I've done that before.

A Little Something to Do, Part 1

Last year, I began pondering what I was going to do when I retired.

The semi-official retirement age for my generation is 67*, when you can get your full benefits from Social Security, so I've got approximately 11 years left. It's a decently far enough way away, but not far away enough for me to be wondering what I'm going to do when I hang it up.

Obviously, the first thing I'd do is... not much, really. I already work from home --so I don't have a commute to deal with-- but I am on call 24x7, so... Okay, my work is pretty much integrated into my life. Even when I have a day off, I still check work email and occasionally take care of things because Murphy's Law is a real bitch. If I'm not doing that... Well, it'll take some getting used to, but I'm sure I'll survive. 

When my dad took early retirement at age 55, he wasn't sure what he was going to do either. And he annoyed my mom to no end when he was simply there all the time, inserting himself into how she had been running things for decades. So he eventually decided to volunteer as a "second job". He became a chaplain for one of the local hospitals, which he did until he died. I have absolutely no interest in anything vaguely resembling religion**, so that specific path isn't one for me, but that did give me an idea.

Well, that and Hurricane Helene last year.

Originally by Jabin Botsford via Getty Images
and The Washington Post. Found on grist.org.

When the remnants of Hurricane Helene smashed through the Appalachian Mountains in the Carolinas last year, almost all forms of communications were lost. Cell towers destroyed, power lines torn apart, you name it. The one form of communication that filled in the gap until power and telecommunications were restored was that of amateur radio operators. 

"Huh," I mused. It had been a long time since I thought of ham radio seriously***, at least longer than I'd been playing WoW, so that should give you an idea as to the time frame I'm talking about. I've known the occasional ham, and I encountered them when I worked at Radio Shack or (obviously) when I went up to the Dayton Hamvention, but my last trip to that convention was in 2006. But now, watching the news reports about Helene and how ham radio provided a vital link to areas that had no communications or power for a couple of weeks or more, I realized that was something I could do.

I have a history of tinkering with electronics and radio. In addition to my posts on the subject (this one included), when I was a kid I had my share of electronics kits from Radio Shack. 

The later ones had a numeric LED, but
this was the model I had. From Hackaday.

This was my first kit. (No, not the real thing,
but a picture of the model.) Yes, it did work, but I had
to hook up the wire to a water pipe to hear
anything. From Radiomuseum.org.

If I was interested in radio and electronics, and I knew some hams, why didn't I become a radio amateur back in the day? Well... There were a few reasons. In no particular order:

• There was a Morse code requirement. It used to be that you had to learn Morse code to get an amateur radio license, and the more advanced you went the greater the proficiency you had to demonstrate (in terms of words per minute). In 1991, the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC) dropped the Morse code requirement for the Technician license, which was a common entry level license. In 2007, the FCC did away the Morse code requirement for all amateur radio licenses in the US. That doesn't mean that Morse code isn't used, it's actually more popular than ever, but the people who use it are those who want to learn it, rather than they have to learn it.
  
  Still, that there was a requirement meant that I'd have to learn it, and I knew it'd be a bit of a pain. The older I got, the more that Morse code requirement looked like a problem.
  
  
• The hams themselves. Like any activity, you have those who are welcoming and those who are gatekeepers. Those who are nice and those who are assholes. Both the good and bad thing about going to a major amateur radio convention like the Dayton Hamvention is that you get to see a lot of hams in action in as much the same way as you can go to a comic con or gaming con and see the best and the worst of your community. What I saw of some of the amateur radio community was really off putting. 
  
  I now know that's not that great of a surprise --I'm a gamer after all, and we do tend to have certain elements of our community that people like to pretend don't exist-- but it still surprised me that a hobby that at its heart was about communicating with others you'd find people who had real issues with basic human interaction. And no, I'm not talking about people on the spectrum, but people who thought it a badge of honor to not use basic hygiene or be racist/sexist toward others. It's not a high bar to cross, but some of the ham community seemed to have issues with not being a dick toward certain people.
  
  
• The money factor. Let's be honest here for a moment: while radio might not seem like a hobby that you can easily spend a ton of money on, unlike the amount of cash an audiophile spends on stereo equipment, the amount of money just getting a halfway decent starting amateur radio setup for the HF bands can easily reach over $1000. Gaming PCs? Cars? Woodworking? Yeah, they're all potentially expensive hobbies too, just like amateur radio, but when you're starting out that initial cost can be a barrier to entry when you don't have a lot of money. Well, there is the used market, but like anything else, you'd better be careful and do your due diligence. To me, the VHF and UHF bands weren't "real" ham radio, so I never really thought about them much.****
  
  
  

  

  The ICOM IC-7300, currently $1099
  at Ham Radio Outlet (as of November 6, 2025).
  It's actually $300 off the regular price with coupon.
  Picture from ICOM America.

So yeah, amateur radio as a hobby wasn't really on my radar. Until suddenly here it was.

***

Once I reconsidered amateur radio as a hobby, the next step was to start doing some research. And for me, that meant diving into various parts of the internet. I didn't want to go to books or official websites, but rather I wanted to hear/read from actual hams what they thought of the state of the hobby. I realized that just like any other hobby, it was important to understand the context behind people's opinions, so I made sure to take my time and not rush things. Over time, people will reveal their biases, even if they weren't intending to share them. That meant reviewing several months' worth of data; while it sounds laborious, in reality I found it quite fascinating. 

Okay, I laughed. From Reddit.

Some people had axes to grind (that's the internet in a nutshell), and "others" were basically AI created slop (again, welcome to 2025's internet), but I did find quite a few hams whose input was really valuable. I won't go into specifics, but let's just say that in general I discovered that amateur radio is thriving right now. A few hams were grousing about the lack of Morse code requirements, which to their mind kept the riff-raff out ("the CB radio people" is what they meant), but others countered that by pointing out that shenanigans have been going on some of the amateur radio bands long before the Morse code requirement was dropped.

But there were hams who loved their hobby, were articulate and wanted to help people, and were very encouraging in their enthusiasm for ham radio. It was at that point that I made a decision to go ahead and buy this:

Yep, the same book I posted about a while back.

Basically, you could study the license manual for the entry level Amateur Radio class (the Technician Class), take the test, and become a ham once your license shows up in the FCC database. 

Sounds simple, right?

I cracked open that book, started reading, and...

That's what it felt like.
Thanks, XKCD!

Yeah, I'd been away from electronics and electrical theory for far too long.

There had just been so much that I'd forgotten that it daunted me. I pressed on and kept reading, but I realized that my brain was pulling random stuff out of my memory without any real understanding of where it came from. And then I just as quickly discovered that I was misremembering things, which is not good when you have to pass an exam in order to gain your license. 

So what did I do? I put the book aside for a while. Both work and car repairs wreaked havoc on my finances for a few months, so absolutely nothing was going to happen over the Summer. But late August I began to get a bit antsy; maybe I was approaching this all wrong. I needed to exercise my brain, but I also needed some structure.

I needed a class.

*It used to be 65 years old, but it was changed about 10-15 years ago beginning with Gen X. Yay us. But seriously, the "official" age is just a number, because the age you begin taking out Social Security can be several years before to a few years after that "official" age. If someone begins taking SS early, they get less of a stipend per month, but you get access to it early. If you wait until after your official age, you can get a larger monthly stipend. Hey, a few extra thousand dollars per month is a good chunk of change for waiting until 69 instead of 63.

**Yes, yes, I know; I've said it before. I'm not religious at all, while the rest of my family is very religious. I'm not planning on changing, especially since I started down my path when I rebelled against said religiosity. The Satanic Panic and the televangelist scandals of the 1980s provided the initial push, and it's been gathering steam ever since. To paraphrase someone, I might not mind Jesus or others; it's their fan club I have issues with.

***There's a couple of stories as to why amateur radio operators are called "hams". The most common one is that "ham" was a derivative of the derisive term "ham-fisted" by professional telegraph and then radio broadcasters. Rather than shying away from the term, amateur radio operators instead embraced the name in the 1920s and it stuck ever since. So no, it has nothing to do with cooking a ham or anything like that. I use "ham" and "amateur" interchangeably, and most hams do as well.

****And that was me being blind to what amateur radio was about. VHF and UHF ham bands are often more active than the bands in the shortwave spectrum, and the cost of entry there is much cheaper as well. Again, that's me being a bit of an idiot and missing that aspect of the community.