Ben’s Blog

I realize I’m a little late with this, but I wanted to put my thoughts on the debate out here.

I thought that McCain won the debate. I know that I’m biased in his favor, but I feel like I can be impartial when I have to. Apparently I’m wrong on one or the other. Most polls show that Obama won the debate. I felt that McCain held his own in the “financial” portion of the debate and clearly won the foreign policy portion of the debate.

I was particularly thrilled when McCain mentioned cutting ethanol subsidies. I had never heard him mention his position on that particular issue before. Do some research. Ethanol subsidies are stupid on several levels. He’s also right about nuclear energy. If we want to get off foreign oil, nuclear power plants are a no-brainer. Is it a perfect solution? No, but the technology is ready today and it’s far and away better than any other options we have.

I liked all the talk about cutting government spending. Both candidates claim they want to do it. Admittedly, neither party has been responsible when it comes to spending our (not to mention my children’s and grandchildren’s) tax dollars. However, I believe McCain when he says he wants to cut spending. Obama wants to provide health care for everyone, and there’s no way you can cut spending and do that.

Speaking of health care, I don’t want the government in charge of my health care, as Obama proposes. The government (and bureaucracies in general) get wrong way more than they get right, and I don’t want them messing with my health care. Fix social security and get back with me.

I liked the hard line that both candidates took on Russia. Obama agreed with McCain for the most part, but McCain seemed to know much more about the region and the situation. At times it seemed like McCain was schooling Obama and the audience in foreign policy. I know I learned some things, and I expect Obama did too.

A big deal was made of the fact that McCain got some of the details wrong in his story about Eisenhower. Ike’s second letter said nothing about resigning. It took responsibility for the failure of D-Day. Big deal.

I did think that McCain’s suggestion of freezing spending with the exception of veteran’s affairs, defense, and entitlement was stupid. It was obviously an off-the-cuff comment, and Obama rightfully pointed out that it was stupid.

It’ll be interesting to see how Palin does in the Vice-Presidential debate Thursday night. Some of her interviews haven’t looked so great recently.

Ole Miss beat No. 4 Florida 31-30 on Saturday. It was a combination of a bad day from Florida, some opportunistic plays by Ole Miss, a blocked extra point in the fourth quarter, and a little luck. Surprisingly, we’ve beaten Florida three out of the last four times we’ve played them, including the last two games in Florida. I doubt our recent record against any other SEC opponent is that good, possibly excepting Vanderbilt.

Our upset of Florida and some of the other games that took place this weekend force me to reevaluate my predictions for the rest of the year. We are currently 3-2, 3 wins from being bowl eligible. Louisiana-Monroe should be a “gimme,” so we only need to beat two of South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, and Mississippi State.

I’m going to go ahead and count Alabama and LSU as loses. Yes, upsets happen, as we can see, but they are unlikely. South Carolina is very beatable. Arkansas continues to have a horrible year (52-10 loss to Texas), so we should beat them. While Auburn is winning for the most part, they haven’t been too impressive. An upset against them is looking less unlikely. Mississippi State is a wild card just like most years.

We could have a 7-5 year by beating 3 of South Carolina, Arkansas, Auburn, and Mississippi State, and that doesn’t look as unlikely as it did a few weeks ago. Is 7-5 optimistic? Yes. Could it happen. Absolutely. This week’s game against South Carolina will tell us a lot.

This year’s SEC West champ will almost certainly be LSU or Alabama. In addition to each other, LSU has Florida and Georgia remaining, while Alabama has Auburn.

With the upset of USC, Geogia, and Florida this weekend, the top 25 looks a lot different. Oklahoma is now No. 1, despite the fact the only ranked team they’ve played is no longer ranked. They still have to play Texas (No. 5) and Texas Tech (No. 7). Alabama and LSU are two and three, respectively.

The first BCS rankings (boo) will be out in three weeks.

Luke and I went up to the special event station last night. Our primary purpose was to help my friend from Belmont, Randy, KE5RXN, make contact with us. He had been trying all week with no luck.

When we arrived they had a nice pileup going on 20 meters. I called Randy and told him what frequency we were on. He could hear all the stations calling us, but couldn’t hear us. That most likely meant he was in our skip zone. Later, after the 20m band died, we moved to the 40m band. I called Randy again, but he still couldn’t hear us. We never got a chance to try the 80 meter band, but I expect it would have worked, as the size of the skip zone decreases with frequency. While I was there they made contact with a station on Martha’s Vineyard, and a station near Aspen, Colorado, operating with less than five watts, among others.

Today I operated the special event station during the late afternoon. When I arrived things were slow, so I switched over to 80m and Randy and I made contact without a problem. Things remained slow the remainder of my shift. My signal was getting out just fine, as the station I talked to in Manitoba, Canada, could hear me well. Maybe most everyone was still at work?

As I mentioned the other day, Oxford is hosting the first 2008 Presidential Debate. Luke and I went to campus on Monday to take some pictures around the Ford Center, where the debate will take place. The pictures should give you a decent idea of the work that went into hosting the debate.  Here they are. Read the captions for more information about each picture.

The pictures aren’t that great for two reasons. First of all, I used my Fuji point and shoot instead of my Canon SLR. I did this primarily because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle Luke and the SLR on the walk to the Ford Center. Also, I was a little concerned the security guys might flip out if I pulled out the SLR. As it turns out, that fear was completely unfounded. There were only a couple of rent-a-cops around the Ford Center, and I saw other people with SLRs. Also, Luke wasn’t real thrilled about being strapped into his stroller. Now that he can walk he likes a little more freedom.

A large tent set up for the journalists covering the debate just east of the Ford Center.

I plan on going back up there in the next few days with my SLR. Hopefully they won’t move anything around until I have a chance to take more pictures. With a tripod and a little time, one could take some really nice pictures around twilight. They have some very interesting lighting on the exterior of the building after dark.

Earlier in the week, the was some concern over whether or not the debate would actually be held. The latest news I’ve heard is that the debate will definitely take place, but possibly without McCain. Early this evening one of the Memphis stations was reporting the McCain “advance team” had done a walk through of the Ford Center. Also, it was being reported that both parties had reached an understanding on the financial bailout. However, it turns out that’s not the case, so it’ll definitely be interesting to see if McCain shows up. If he doesn’t, a one man debate will be interesting as well.

A lot of Oxfordians, myself included, will be upset if the debate doesn’t proceed as planned, with two candidates.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a few days, but we now have 3G in Oxford (and by “we” I mean AT&T subscribers). What is 3G? Basically it means that I can now get data to my iPhone about five times faster. I haven’t been able to test that out yet, but that’s what they say.

Cassie’s doctor told me a few months ago that he had heard we would be getting 3G because of the debate. According to this article from the Clarion Ledger, we were moved to the top of the list because of the debate.  Jackson, Vicksburg, and some suburbs of Memphis are the only other cities in Mississippi with 3G through AT&T.

Yesterday I helped some other members of UMARC and Anderson Communications install a new 70cm repeater on top of Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi here in Oxford. We put the repeater hardware in the rack, ran the coax (LMR600), and installed the antenna on the roof. It’s now up and running. The output frequency is 444.350 MHz with a split of 5MHz+ and a tone of 107.2 Hz.

The new repeater will supplement our existing 2m repeater on 147.33 MHz. The club also recently installed an APRS digipeater on top of Bishop Hall on campus.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any 70cm capable transceivers currently. I can listen on my scanner, but that’s it. Hopefully I can remedy that by the end of the year.

Anderson Communications' "tower jocks" carry the antenna to the top of the tower.

Continue reading for more photos of the antenna install and a propogation map.

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This weekend Ole Miss lost to Vanderbilt, the perennial whipping boy of the SEC, at home no less. We did it in style too, with six turnovers. It’s hard to beat a good junior high team when you hand them six turnovers.

Looking at the rest of the schedule, we’re going to be doing good to get a six win season, which would make us bowl eligible. Assuming a win over Louisiana-Monroe and losses to Florida, Alabama, Auburn, and LSU, that leaves only the South Carolina, Arkansas, and Mississippi State games in question. Winning all three of those games would make us 6-6. We should win all three of those games, but we should have beaten Vanderbilt too.

Beating us put Vanderbilt at no. 21 in the Associated Press poll. That’s the first time in 24 years that Vanderbilt has been in the top 25. Currently the SEC has 3 teams in the top 5, 4 teams in the top 10, and 5 in the top 15. Not too shabby.

It looks like the SEC will come down to Georgia, Florida, and LSU. They are ranked 3, 4, and 5, respectively, in the AP Top 25. They will all play each other in the next month. It should be fun to watch. Auburn has a chance to climb back into the mix depending on what happens.

It’s become public knowledge that the SEC is the toughest football conference in the country. The New York Times (of all places) has an article about why the current national championship system doesn’t give the SEC a fair shake.

The University of Mississippi Amateur Radio Club (UMARC), of which I am a member, is having a special event station this week to commemorate the Presidential debate being held on campus Friday. The special event station runs yesterday through Friday. All contacts get a QSL card, no SASE required. You can get more information here.

I operated some this morning, and will operate again Friday afternoon from 3-5pm. This morning I made contacts with stations in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Cuba, among others, primarily on the 20m band.

Unfortunately I don’t have an HF radio yet, so I can’t make contact with them myself.

Over the weekend I noticed that gas in Belmont had dropped to $3.49. Gas at Wal-Mart in Pontotoc (our usual cheap gas stop) had dropped to $3.34. That’s a fair amount cheaper than their pre-Ike prices, so I assumed the post-Ike gas crunch was over. Wrong.

The first hint was that gas in Oxford was still $3.79 at most stations. Then I started hearing talk of gas shortages in other states on talk radio. Apparently that’s the case in Atlanta. (The comments on that article are amusing on several levels.)

It’s strange that the situations are so different within the southeastern US. I’m not sure how to explain it. Refining capacity is still not back up to speed, but you would think that’d cause shortages all over, not just in localized areas.

Oil prices jumped up $16.37 a barrel today, so I expect prices will rise all over.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Last week was busy and short. We had to come home Thursday afternoon for my brother’s rehearsal dinner. His wedding was yesterday. I’ll post some photos as soon as I get around to processing them.

Last weekend Liam made his first trip to Belmont (our hometown). He did great, despite the fact he was awake the entire time, which is a little out of character for him.

Luke had his first swimming lesson at the Turner Center on campus last Tuesday. He was a little timid at first, but he really enjoyed it. They just splashed around to get used to the water. He was supposed to have another lesson Thursday, but we had to miss it to make it to Brandon’s rehearsal dinner on time. I’m interested to see what they do this time. Both Luke and I are looking forward to it. I’ll try to get some pictures at some point.

The presidential debate is in Oxford Friday night. Several streets near campus are shut down. Luke and I are going for a walk near the Ford Center this afternoon, and I’m going to see if I can take some pictures. It’s quite an impressive set up. Hopefully I don’t get tackled by the Secret Service.