As I stated in my previous entry, I am currently studying to get my first Amateur Radio license. In studying for this exam, I’ve also learned a lot more about radio in general. Anyway, I was reading more about Part15 devices. That’s the FCC rules for “unlicensed radio transmissions” like your wireless router, your cordless phone, garage door openers, toy walkie talkies, RC cars, etc. Without getting too far into this, basically there are restrictions on how powerful these devices can be, and you aren’t allowed to cause interference. Basically, what that means is that, if you’re talking on your cordless phone, and the phone is faulty, and it causes interference to a nearby amateur, commercial, or military radio station, you have to stop using it until it is fixed. Look on the bottom of your wireless router, and you’ll see that written on a sticker or something.

Now, here’s the part where I screwed up: how this applies to my wifi setup. There are restrictions on Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP). EIRP takes into account the power of the transmitter (the router and/or the amplifier) the loss from the coax cable, and the gain from the antenna.
EIRP = POWER – LOSS + GAIN

If you’ve ever looked at wifi antennas, they tell you what the gain is, measured in dBi. If you have less than 6 dBi, you have a “low gain” antenna. 6 dBi or more, you have a “high gain” antenna. Assuming you’re setting up a wifi access point, if you have a “low gain”, you have to have an EIRP less than 1 watt; if you have a “high gain”, you have to have an EIRP less than 4 watts. The rules are different if you have a directional antenna just connecting two devices, and I won’t go into that; we’re talking about access points.

If I had gone through with my plan of connecting my amplifier to my antenna, I would have been connecting 1 watt power to a 15 dBi antenna. Assuming a 25% signal loss, my EIRP would have been 23 watts! The math comes out to… I can send no more than 125 mW to a 15 dBi antenna, which my router can come pretty close to without any amplifier at all.

Breaking the Part15 rules can result in the FCC confiscating your equipment, and/or you could be fined. Can you be caught? Of course, especially if there’s an Amateur Radio operator in your area that might turn you in.

My new plan is to connect my router directly to my antenna, resulting in EIRP just less than 4 watts for my outdoor wireless. Another router inside my house will be connected to the amplifier, which also results in EIRP just less than 4 watts for my indoor wireless.

For reference, I used this calculator to calculate my EIRP: http://www.csgnetwork.com/antennaecalc.html

Julie has finished her last term of law school as of last week. She seems to have taken a temporary interest in knitting and cross-stitching. I say temporary because she’ll be starting Barbri classes in a couple weeks. Once those start, it will probably be like her first year all over again until her bar exam, which is July 24 and 25 in Tampa. Her graduation is Friday. I’m taking a day off work for it, as we have six parents coming in to see it. One thing I really don’t understand is why UF doesn’t consider a Juris Doctor degree to be a doctorate, since UF has them dressed in masters degree caps rather than doctors’ caps. I would find that rather insulting, but Julie doesn’t seem to care that much either way.

Next month is Jenny’s (Julie’s sister) high school graduation in North Carolina. Julie and I are taking a train to go see it. Taking a plane would be way too expensive, and driving would divert too much of Julie’s attention from studying (since she’ll be in the middle of Barbri class at the time). I wonder how it will be to ride a train. The total cost round trip is just under $300 for the two of us.

I guess I should talk about some more depressing stuff. A couple months ago, I gave it my shot at being a dog person. I fostered a three month old puppy for about three weeks. The intent was to eventually adopt, but things didn’t work out that way. The ultimate downfall was that our cats kept fighting with the dog (not so much the other way around). I think that it is going to be a lot of trouble to ever have another pet with our two cats. They do well with each other, for the most part, but they absolutely hate other animals. At first they just feared the dog, but eventually Darwin came out and started testing his boundaries with the dog. Next thing I know, the cats were ganging up and raiding the dog when she was just trying to sleep. I can also say that trying to take care of a puppy was a big mistake. My opinion of it now is that there really is no good reason to adopt a puppy as opposed to an adult dog. The puppy had digestion issues (which was expensive), and always needed to be the center of attention (even when I was trying to work). I got pretty burnt out quickly. I felt really lousy about what happened, but I haven’t really been thinking about it in a while. Reading around the Internet, there are a ton of ubber self-righteous dog lovers who like to give people crap about a failed adoption, but I can guarantee everyone that I punished myself enough already.

I’m not sure if I should be talking about this or not, but since Julie and I moved into this apartment in Gainesville, we’ve had problems with (what I believe to be) fruit flies every summer. They tend to disappear when things get a little cooler. Anyway, we had them last year, and it was horrible, and they have been coming back this month. We tried to many things last year: traps, cleaning, trying to find “the source”, as everyone on the Internet calls it. Problem is, we’ve never been about to find “the source”. Neither of us have ever had problems with fruit flies until we moved here, and we’re not trashy people. I have a hunch, and I’m trying it out now. I think our kitchen sink itself might be “the source”. So I’m trying to flush it out with Drano a few times to see if that is where they are breeding. I hope I can get control over them. I hate them and want them to die!

I’m working on getting my first FCC Amateur Radio license. Nick got his earlier this year and seemed to be trying to get me into it also. Julie also seemed to be encouraging me to look into it. Anyway, right now, I’m studying to get the Technician level license, which is kind of the entry, lowest level, easiest-to-get-deal. I’ll be taking an exam the first Saturday of June. If I pass, I’ll be issued a license and call sign. At first, I wasn’t really sure about it, but the more I study, the more interesting it seems. I am particularly interested in playing around with digital modes, and maybe see what I could do in amateur radio astronomy. I’m thinking after I get the Technician license, I might start studying for the General license, but I might need to take a class to prepare for that. I posted some links about Amateur Radio that I have found useful in preparing.

Things seem to be going well in regard to the Home Project. There are lots of pictures in my Gallery, and that’s mostly how I’ve kept things up-to-date for it. I also recently put together a new Gallery for videos. My mom has been taking pictures. It sounds like the week after Julie’s graduation will be when we have to go to Pensacola to wire my house with intercom and ethernet, etc. I’m not sure all the details yet of when and how long, but I do know that I’ll need to be quick about the wiring process. If you’re at all interested in the building of my new house, you can register on this website, and I’ll give you privileges to see the Home Project page.

The first Saturday, I saw two of my twin first-cousins, Garett and Darick, along with their mother and Garett’s fiancée and their son. All my family and the 7 children were there too. I barely remembered Garett and Darick, since I was a very young child the last time I saw them, but they definitely look like relatives.

Sunday consisted of having David and Stephanie over to play cards, playing with Andrew, and making funny faces at Bailey.

I didn’t take any vacation for the week, so I had to set up a work space in the kitchen on the week days to work. It definitely wasn’t as comfortable as my nice office chair, but it all worked out. However, I can say that AT&T DSL is absolutely horrible. On Monday (I think), Julie and I had a sushi lunch with Elizabeth.

On Tuesday (I think), I signed a new revised contract for my property and house.

Wednesday, I tried to return an extra pair of shoes that Kohl’s mistakenly sent Julie. They would not take them back though, so Julie got two pair of shows for the on-sale price of one.

On Thursday, I met with a title specialist and officially got the deed to my land. I had to sign a note that stated there was a pre-existing fence located on my land survey.

On Friday, I attempted to find this fence. I learned that my property is a huge jungle filled with monstrous bugs and fire ant mountains. I did not, however, find any fence. Friday night, I think we played cards again.

Saturday, I took my dad to go pick up with truck from repair, then we went into my property to find that fence again. Julie actually found it; she almost tripped over it. Turned out, it is very old and dilapidated. All that we really found was old, rusted out cable running a few inches off the ground with what looks like rotten wood around it. Julie described it as look like the Cable that went to the Looking Glass on Lost. Saturday night, we had a first started and roasted hot dogs (or fake hot dogs for Julie and I), marshmallows, and smores with Robert and his wife. Unfortunately, it had been about six years since I last saw them. I’m trying to re-establish some old friendships that were neglected while I was in graduate school and when I moved away.

We took a number of pictures of the house construction while we were in town. I posted them in the photo gallery. I was a little disappointed to see that my outdoor office (officially called the “Workshop”) was much closer to the house than I thought was agreed to, but I guess that’s a minor issue.

Why was the change made?

Last week, without any warning, Facebook disabled the fan page of FB Purity and the personal Facebook account of its developer. FB Purity is a browser extension that alters the way Facebook appears, including filtering out the annoying and irrelevant messages and spam in the news feed. Without access to Facebook, the developer of FB Purity will have a difficult time updating this extension.

After these actions, I have decided to begin to disassociate myself from Facebook and focus primarily on this website as an online presence.

I previously logged in using Facebook. How do I login now?

The way “Login With Facebook” worked was by generating a username on this website when you authenticated with Facebook. In other words, when you first clicked the “Login With Facebook’ button, an account was created for you, and you can still access this account.

If you would like to login, click the Lost your password? link. Enter the email address associated with your Facebook account. You should then receive an email containing your username and a link to change your password.

If you do not know the email address associated with your Facebook account, or you would like to change your username, you can contact me.

I’m concerned about security. How do you ensure my login information is secure?

Since logging in with Facebook is no longer an option. I have added https to this website. When you log in, the information passed over the Internet is encrypted and cannot be intercepted. My website now has a valid certificate, which means it was signed by a trusted authority.

Passwords are stored on my database in an encrypted format. Even if the database were somehow hacked, it would not readable. By the way, I am also unable to see your passwords; I can only change them.

How do I make an avatar?

Use gravatar.com, and associate the same email address for gravatar as you do this website.

I can’t figure this out! I need help!

Well, contact me already :)

Let’s start with my endorsement for president. With Romney firmly winning Florida yesterday, it is a pretty safe bet that the two-party choice is between Obama and Romney. It all seems very similar to the Bush vs. Kerry race to me. Romney even looks like Kerry in a strange way. Well, anyway, if you’re like me, you probably don’t think there will be any noticeable difference between a second Obama term and a Romney term. They would both continue the Plutarchy, expand government’s intrusion in our lives, and start more wars against insignificant threats. Now that the Florida GOP primary is over, I can go back to being registered No Party Affiliation.

Anyway, there’s clearly only one choice for me on November 6th. However, he won’t be on the ballot, but you can write him in.

That’s right. I am endorsing Mickey Mouse for president in 2012. He ran in 2008 (see his website), and I’m hoping he’ll give it another go this year. By writing in Mickey Mouse, I am fulfilling my right to vote, and I can satisfy my conscience by voting for someone who isn’t going to say things during his election campaign and do the exact opposite once in the white house. (How could he? Mr. Mouse has no opinions.)

The house

Okay, now onto much more important things: Talking about my home project. On January 19-22, Julie and I traveled to Pensacola in order to get some things situated with the house plans. We are now under contract and have picked out all the little details of the house (colors, styles, etc). I created an album in the gallery that is pretty small right now, but it has the flooring samples we picked out and a picture of the land. I’m still confused and unsure what is going on with the financing (there are some things that need to be cleaned up in the contract to satisfy the bank), but I’ve been told not to worry about that.

As an aside, I got to see my family and my good friend Heather just before we left. I will look forward to seeing everyone more when I’m around more.

You can follow what’s going on with my home project by viewing the home-project page. Please use these instructions for getting access.

I got the actual drawing yesterday for the house from the architect. It is slightly different from what’s listed on the home-project page, and I’ll get around to updating that later, I suppose. The actual house plan has been named “JULIE” by the developer.

http://www.apple.com/mobileme/transition.html

Anyway, one of the features that is in MobileMe but isn’t in iCloud is iWeb publish, which allows subscribers to publish websites either using iWeb or other means to the web. Julie’s dad was using this feature. Since I can host unlimited websites with my Dreamhost account, he and I transitioned his iWeb sites to my hosting. All he had to do was pay for a domain name renewal for the domain registration transfer.

You can continue publishing iWeb sites to MobileMe through June 30, 2012, even after moving to iCloud. With iWeb you can easily move a site published to MobileMe to another web hosting service and you should do so before that date.

Anyway, I’m not sure if I do, but if I have any other friends or family (i.e. I actually know you) that use MobileMe iWeb publishing, I can probably help you out if you have or are willing to get a domain name. The only cost involved was some time and a $9.95 domain name renewal for the domain registration transfer… some credit would be nice, but not required, I suppose. Of course, please don’t have an expectation of excessive support (e.g. I’m not going to write your website for you). Hit me up…

Hope I’m not opening the flood gates here…

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/dec/12/david-brooks/david-brooks-says-newt-gingrich-once-proposed-putt/

That’s enough politics for the time being; although I meant this to be more about Astronomy. People don’t seem to understand the impact of light pollution, and it is something I will touch more on in this blog in the near future.

Now before I begin, I want you to consider a few facts:

1. About half of Americans pay absolutely nothing in federal income taxes. [source]
2. One in six Americans receive some form of government assistance. [source]
3. 25% of my income went to federal taxes this year (note: I include Social Security and Medicare in that amount, since I will never see any of that money either). This does not include any state taxes. If I lived in a state other than Florida, the percentage would probably be much higher.
4. Who carries cash anyway?

Conclusion: I already give plenty to charity.

Don’t get me wrong, I am glad I am in a position that I have to pay taxes, and I don’t envy those one-in-six people. I guess I don’t really have any point, but as an aside, I just have a real problem with charities.

Most people don’t seem to know or understand how big of a scam big charities are in this country anyway. You can visit guidestar.org and check out the tax returns of some of these well known charities.

For example, in 2008, the Terri Schiavo Foundation received $91,000 in contributions. $59,000 of which went to salaries. [source]
In 2009, Susan G. Komen received $128,000,000 in contributions. $22,000,000 of which went to salaries. [source]
In 2009, Mothers Against Drunk Driving received $34,000,000 in contributions. $21,000,000 went to salaries. [source]

Guess people have different definitions of charity than I do.

The point is, some charities are better than others, but for the most part, charities are just big business. I guess if it makes you feel better to pay into the huge salaries of CEOs, you can give to them (the CEO of Komen makes $450,000 per year, placing her very comfortably in the top 1% of income earners). Just please don’t expect me to, and don’t expect me to feel bad when I hold on to my own money to improve the lives of myself and my family.

Officially speaking, my job title is unfortunately named “SQA Engineer”. As many other professionals in information technology, my title does not accurately describe what I do. My job title would be more accurate if it were “Test Automation Engineer”; however, even that title may be inadequate. When people think of the title “SQA Engineer” (that is to say “Software Quality Assurance” Engineer), they think of someone who does just that: ensures the quality of software. Someone with the title “SQA Engineer” frequently writes and execute tests on a given piece of developed or partially-developed software. When you think of “SQA Engineer”, you typically do not think of someone who has computer programming skills. “Test Automation Engineer”, on the other hand, typically refers to someone who takes already-written test cases and automates them. That is to say, one or many people have been manually clicking through an application to ensure it isn’t broken; the automation guy typically uses record-and-play tools to automate that manual process. A “Test Automation Engineer” may have little or no programming skills at all.

I say “unfortunately named ‘SQA Engineer’” because, as I say, it does not properly describe what I do or the type of experience I am getting. It does not describe who I am, and I worry that it may lump me into a specific subfield, and future prospective employers won’t consider me for other types of jobs based on their assumptions about my experiences. I want to spell out exactly what I do here.

I do spend the vast majority of my day programming

The first and most important thing I’d like to spell out clearly is that I spend the majority of my work day writing code. Not spaghetti code in some product-specific funky-script, but well-documented object-oriented code in actual high-level programming languages. Although I do have record-and-play tools to use at my discretion, other than learning how to use these tools, I have never used them in actual practice. I write and maintain tens of thousands of lines of code that tie together multiple automation tools into an all-in-one automation framework that can operate across multiple applications and platforms. The majority of this code is written in Java; it also includes a amounts of Perl, C, C++, and C# code. I’ve even written some Objective-C code and done some web programming.

I maintain a framework that uses a number of tools and libraries

As I said, most of my code is written in Java. The framework I use primarily runs inside Eclipse and/or IBM Rational Functional Tester, but not exclusively. The majority of the framework is not coupled with RFT and instead uses pure Java and external JARs. I tie in other automation tools that better suit automation of other platforms, such as .NET and mobile devices. The framework also makes use of .NET Framework UI Automation. DLLs are written in MS Visual Studio and utilized within the framework. In additional to automation tools, I also use pure C and C++ to automate using windows.h. Mind you, all these tools and libraries are tied into the same framework which I maintain.

I work closely with other groups

The typical “Test Automation Engineer” just receives specific tests from a manual tester and automates them. This is not my primary purpose. In fact, I have frequently been the only tester on entire applications working only with developers. This means that I myself have had to become familiar with the application, develop my own test cases, manually test, and write automation. However, for the most part, my purpose is to write the framework, which provides easy to use methods for anyone to write and execute their own automation, without programming or automation knowledge. It might be me, a QA person, a developer, a business analyst, or even offshore groups. The point is that my time is best spent writing code and being creative, while someone else can actually write the steps used in the automation. I teach these people how to use the tools I write and assist them when needed.

I do create GUIs

The person who actually schedules and runs the applications (sometimes me, but usually someone else) receives an graphical user interface from me, so that they can select what automation they want to run, when, and where.

I have also written mobile launchers that allow me to start automation right from my mobile phone over 3G.

I write distributed systems and maintain computer labs

Where does the automation actually run? Usually not on my clients’ machines. I set up and maintain physical and/or virtual computer labs that automation runs on (think disk cloning). I use tools such as VirtualBox and VMWare to build these computers, and I maintain physical boxes. The clients’ machine running the GUI and the machine(s) running the automation are all tied together with distributed programming, usually written in Java RMI.

I generate reports and live feedback

I have heard it said that “automation does test anything unless you create checkpoints”. This statement is not true in the framework. Every single possible action in the framework has some sort of PASS, WARN, INFO, or FAIL conditions. No checkpoints are necessary, but can be added if they are wanted. I do not use the reporting tools included in the automation tools. Instead, I program my own reporting system. The reporting system provides feedback on every single action performed during automation. If something did not pass, it may explain why and provides a screen-shot or even a video capture of exactly what happened. This information is provided to the user in different ways, depending on the desires of my clients. The most common way is email/web. My automation framework generates email reports and also uploads web reports and attachments to web servers that we also maintain. I also provide live feedback to the client while the automation is running, in the form of RMI test prints, VNC views, and even feedback sent to mobile phones. The client can stop or check what the machine is doing right from the GUI, without having to log into the automation machine itself.

I do work with database systems

I frequently write SQL queries into my automation for data verification and environment cleaning purposes. A number of different database systems have been used, depending on the application.

I do lots of research

I like to stay versed on the technologies I may have to test. This means I do reading and tutorials on technologies I may use in the future (Flex, HTML5, mobile operating systems, etc). I like to know about these technologies, not just what I need to know to automate them.

I don’t just automate for testing

Most of the automation I have written has been for testing purposes, but not solely. I have also written automation for other purposes. For example, I have written automation to pull thousands of documents from a web server that we had no direct access to. Automation is not just for testing, after all.

I don’t just sit around after work, and this isn’t the first job I’ve ever had

Of course, I do want to point out that even though this is my first full-time job, before this, I was in school for six years getting a bachelors and masters degree. I didn’t go to school to learn to be a tester, and in fact, I never did any sort of application testing while I was in school. I jumped into testing and was writing automation code within a week. In graduate school, I was hacking kernel code, writing my own programming languages and compilers, writing distributed and parallel code, and exercising process schedulers. So, I’d like to say that “SQA Engineer” in no way summarizes my skills and experience as a Computer Scientist.

I also spent four years as a part-time computer support specialist. I was building computer labs, maintaining computers, consulting and advising, setting up peripherals, building networks, removing malware… on and on.

I use Linux, MacOSX, and Windows frequently (and I’ve used other operating systems, as well). I have maintained a personal website, and designed and created websites for some other organizations for over 10 years. I am fluent in web programming (LAMP); I use PHP, Perl, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS, HTML with ease. And I am fluent in a long list of FOSS applications.

I may even have some skills outside Computer Science. I have a good knowledge of Mathematics and Statistics. I am well versed in the latest goings-on in the Medical Informatics field. I am also an Amateur Astronomer, and I hopefully have some knowledge there. Lastly, I am a musician, although unfortunately a bit out of practice currently (but stay tuned).

So in summary, “SQA Engineer” isn’t who I am. It’s just what’s listed on my paystubs.