My Sick And Twisted Downward Spiral Into The Cult Of Ham Radio…i.e. Linux

These things start out so innocently, don’t they? You see a little Cee Bee radio at a truck stop one day. What harm can something like that do? A little four watt AM radio with a mag mount antenna on the roof, and power coming from the cigarette lighter. You listen to truckers talking about the road conditions, which “four wheelers” are acting the ack jasses, and what the accident up ahead looks like. You chime in once in a while with the ubiquitous “can I get a radio check?” hoping to start a conversation. Occasionally someone responds. But before you know it, you left the radio on the dash too long frying in the sun, or you under-powered it with a faulty cigarette lighter one too many times, or the antenna just doesn’t work right, or who knows? Well certainly not you, because, what the heck do you know about radio? You just bought a toy at a truck stop one day…

Fast forward four years…You are sitting slumped over a TV tray holding the world’s cheapest computer (the previously $60 Evolve III Maestro). You have already recklessly changed its operating system to Linux. No partition. No virtual machine. No running it off of a usb stick. Nope. A full installation of Linux Mint. Despite the fact you have never touched a Linux machine in your life. Slightly rocking, with eyes wide open, commands are being thrown with wild abandon into the terminal. Why won’t the damn Arduino Nano work? WHY WON’T THE DAMN ARDUINO NANO WORK? Because not only did the CB radio lead to ham radio…technician, general, extra class all within the first year…it made you learn about microcontrollers. And darnit it, you couldn’t resist could you? That first Uno. Who knew a few lines of code and that little bitty LED would just start blinking? Who knew? (hint, everyone). But not you! You had never heard of Arduino before. Hours and hours of bingeing on instructional videos showing how to connect this light sensor, or that motion detector, and that infrared device, or that servo motor. You still believed you were in control, didn’t you?

What about the Logic course? Oh that’s right, that Logic course… Remember those weekends you could have been hiking, but instead you were hallucinating 1s and 0s non-stop? Just one more 74xx chip, and you would be all set right? Riiiiggghhht….

Do you want to even talk about tonight? Do you? Do you want to fess up? Oh don’t think we don’t know about how you spent the parade…sitting and turning a five hour online Linux terminal commands course into an all-day affair. This one. Following every command like a brainwashed disciple. sudo mkdir cd echo touch. As if you were speaking in tongue…

But tonight. Twitching and fidgeting a bit, mumbling to yourself, trying not to blink as your eyes — glued to the screen — dry out. You just had to get that Arduino Nano to work with the cheapo Linux computer, didn’t you? You weren’t going to stop. You didn’t care who noticed, sitting there with your TV tray, your breadboard, your Nano. And the cheapo computer. Where is the device manager on Linux? How can you tell if the computer is recognizing the port. lsusb. lsblk.Try again. lsusb. Unplug the device. lsusb. Add the board. Try the /dev/ttyUSB0…USB1? Try the “old bootlegger”? Reinstall the Arduino IDE? Unplug the nano. Plug it back in. Unplug the nano. Plug it back in. Unplug the nano. Shut down the IDE. Plug it back in. How much time did you take doing this over and over and over again?! Blink, the famous Arduino LED light blinking code, would not upload… But then… dmesg. And finally, you got that euphoria you were looking for, didn’t you? The dmesg command clearly showed that the nano was plugged into /dev/ttyUSB4. Four, four, 4, for? It’s in ttyUSB4? Who would have guessed that? Relief poured through your veins and your body visibly relaxed. A few clicks on the Arduino IDE board set-up window, and, well, that little effin LED was all blinkety blinky blink now wasn’t it? Are you proud of yourself?! Are you proud of yourself!? (yes).

The moral of the story kids is that ham radio ruins lives. Now let me get back to thinking about how I am going to turn the Arduino Nano into a programmable logic controller. Or at least a simulator. You see, its too late for me. I am ensnared by this world of radios, electronics, and now even computers in a way that I would have laughed in your face for suggesting that possibility not all that many years ago. You best go flip on the tube for a few hours of mindless cartoons, or scroll through the endless posts of your favorite social media. Because this world of unhindered possibility that I am now hopelessly trapped in is downright scary.

Dah Dah Dah Dit Dit – Dah Dah Dah Dit Dit

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