Another Word for Nerd

At least, half of them. I’m hoping another box with the remaining 85 books shows up on Monday.

I think I’m set for at least a couple months when it comes to reading trashy male action/adventure novels.

On Friday, I won this auction: “Executioner w/Mack Bolan by Don Pendelton - 154 issues”

Of course, now I need to find a cheap way to build some paperback-only bookshelves.

A recent discussion brought back to mind one of my favorite hobbies through the years - reading trashy “male testosterone action/adventure” novels like the Mack Bolan “The Executioner” book series.

I had a good collection of the first 25 books in the series back in the late 80s and early 90s, and would pick them up whenever I found them at flea markets and used book stores. When I lived in Austin from 1996 to 2004, I got my “fix” from a neat little used-paperbacks-only book store on Burnet Road called Book Exchange. I think I still have a lot of trade-in credit left on file there from when I cleaned out my garage one weekend…

Now that I’m in Houston I’ve been unable to find any neat little “hole in the wall” used book stores that carry tons of paperbacks and the “male adventure novels” I look for. Half Price Books is good for sci-fi and everything else. They carry plenty of romance novels (the Mack Bolan series is published by a division of Harlequin) but none of the actual Bolan series or spinoffs.

So far it looks like my only option is to rebuild my collection via eBay, but if anybody that sees this knows of good hole-in-the-wall used book stores in Houston, please let me know via email or comments - and if you’ve got a box of Mack Bolan books in the back of a closet, get in touch.

I finally got most of my knife collection together for a picture.

I still want a Gerber Mark II, but they’re too expensive now since they’re no longer made.

Update: My ebay purchase of a Commander I Mark I variant finally arrived, and it’s in perfect mint condition - original box, and it still “smells new”, like leather and ozone.

Now I just need to find a Mark II or a Command II (single-edged version of the Mark II, made for cities or states where double-edged blades are illegal).

I recently bought a Via PC2500E motherboard in order to build a low-power replacement for my current backup / rsnapshot system, a 2.5-year-old Dell SC420.

Got all the parts in, assembled the system tonight, and went to boot Solaris Express Community Edition; the latest release being Nevada B83a. I got the ISO image downloaded, burned a DVD, and booted the system.

For some reason, it boots straight into a grub prompt, and not into the installer or even a boot menu.

Oh well; now I have to spend another three hours downloading the latest Solaris Express Developer Edition, which is Nevada B79b. Hopefully it will work properly on the Via board.

I really don’t want to have to run FreeBSD 7; it’s ZFS support is still a little unreliable.

I now have a matched pair of 500G Hitachi SATA disks (in stripped Sun Unipack enclosures) as my external disk and Time Machine backup disk, to avoid a repeat of a couple weeks ago.

As for radio stuff, a week after I bought the FRG-100 from a friend, another friend said “Hey, I have a Kenwood TS-430S here that you can have for cost of shipping.” DOH! Anyway, $80 in shipping fees later, I now have this setup for when I pass my General upgrade exam:

Left to right: AT-250 automatic antenna tuner, TS-430S transceiver, PS-430 power supply.

I’ll eventually have to send it off for minor repair of a known problem and a tuneup, but that will only cost me $200. For a grand total of around $300, this is a VERY NICE rig that still runs around $600 with the extra components on eBay.

Now I have to figure out how I’m going to get a decent antenna up in the limited space I have available.

I finally gave up on eBay and purchased a Yaesu FRG-100 from a friend on a payment plan.

I’m in the market for a used solid-state HF (shortwave) receiver, a proper “tabletop” model, but unfortunately Houston doesn’t seem to have much of a local amateur radio “scene” that I can find.

The last time I hooked up my 2-meter transceiver, I heard ONE active repeater in the area, and that was after about half an hour of searching. As for any kind of local “swap meet” or forsale/wanted list, none seem to exist. There are some clubs down around NASA, but that’s a way from here. There’s Houston Amateur Radio Supply, but they’re a half-hour drive away and don’t have anything used for under $300.

I’ve tried eBay, but keep getting outbid by a dollar or two at the last minute for the last three auctions that I have bid on. One for an Icom 720A, one for an Icom R-70, and one for a Radio Shack DX-300.

Anybody reading this have (or know of) a solid-state HF/shortwave receiver sitting in someone’s closet that needs a new home? I have a budget of $150.

(I’m trying to rebuild my “ham shack” in the process of upgrading to a General-class amateur radio license from my current Technician-class)

I recently came across a 4-volume set of the Popular Mechanics Illustrated Home Handyman Encyclopedia & Guide (from 1961) in the bargain bin at a local used book store. Of course, I grabbed them - for less than $5 total!

The ~4000 pages of projects are amazing - it’s basically your grandparents’ equivalent of today’s MAKE Magazine; with a lot of projects that wouldn’t be printed today due to liability concerns.

They’ve got everything from planning/building/remodeling a house, woodworking, metalworking, making your own boat/go-cart/children’s playground equipment, indoor shooting ranges, to radio repair, electronics, photography, gardening, farming, and equipment to make handling your farm animals easier.

Over the past four days I’ve taken pictures of the title pages and illustrations for the most interesting articles, and put them up on Flickr. I’ve also contacted Popular Mechanics to see about getting permission to break out the scanner and make proper PDFs of the best stuff.

The Flickr collections page, with one set for each volume, is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbill/collections/72157603639900790/

JANUARY 14th UPDATE: I’ve received permission from Popular Mechanics to make PDFs of the articles and put them online! That’s coming soon.

I took some pictures of my “Every Day Carry” stuff.