As some of my friends know, I enjoy building antennas in my free time (whenever that occurs) for my Amateur Radio hobby (which keeps me from being bored during my free time).

A while back I built a 2m Copper “Super-J-Pole” antenna which I attached to my chimney and use on a daily basis. Then a friend of mine (AD6IL) was kind enough to supply me with a 2m square loop for horizontal work which I attached at the bottom of the J-pole (for lack of a better place at the time). AD6IL and I were debating how much of a problem it would be to have them so close together and I figured I’d give it a try and see how much they interacted. If nothing else I’d learn from it. After putting them both up they both performed adequately though I was pretty sure I could detect a performance difference in the J-pole after adding the square loop to its base.

Recently another friend (K9RTY) loaned me his antenna analyser and I measured the performance of both antennas as they were mounted together and then moved the square loop to the opposite corner of the chimney and remeasured them both again. The following 4 graphs show the results of these tests.

For those without much background in antenna theory the goal here is to achieve a SWR of 1 (impossible), which is shown in red and is reflected in the left-hand Y-axis. The reactance should ideally be 0 and the impedance and resistance should be 50 ohms (in this case at least) and are all reflected numerically in the right-hand Y-axis. No antenna is perfect, however, but the goal is to shoot for getting as close as possible to ideal near the frequency where you want to use the antenna. In my case, the desired center frequency of the J-pole is at 147.000MHz and the desired center frequency of the square loop is at 144.200MHz.

2m Super-J Pole Graphs

These two graphs show the measurements taken on the Super J-Pole before and after the separation.

2m Square Loop Graphs

These two graphs show the measurements taken on the 2m Square Loop before and after the separation.

Conclusions

It is, of course, a no-duh that antennas affect each other when placed in proximity to each other. But these graphs show this interaction clearly in a real-world scenario.

For the J-Pole, the SWR (the poor-mans antenna measurement figure) has definitely dropped to a better range in general. The reactance has also improved, which means the antenna is closer to resonance which is the ultimate goal of any antenna (especially for transmitting). The square loop shows similar (even slighter bigger) improvements.

On the Air

Hooking them up to a radio and talking with friends (WB6ISO at ~20mi away and K6ERF at ~40mi away) I was told that my signals were definitely improved by an S-unit or two since the previous conversations. Of course, on-air measurements rely on constantly changing propegation conditions and thus require many more data points for a valid comparison but in this case they’re backed up by graphs that likely indicate the small sampling of on-the-air measurements were likely accurate.

A while ago we cancelled our Davis Enterprise subscription. Not because it’s not a good paper (it is) or becuase it’s biased (it is) but because we didn’t read it ehough to justify the energy costs of producing and recycling it.

But I would like to continue to read their content electronically where I could (hopefully) search for what I wanted to read more easily and with a greener conscious. Logging into their website I found it’s against the rules for online-only accounts to live in the city of Davis’ zip codes (95616, 95617, 95618, 95695, 95776). That’s right: if you live in Davis or Woodland you have to kill trees to read the enterprise even if you don’t want to. And here I thought we were a progressive city.

And one more silly: the three month subscription for the electronic edition costs more than the paper+electronic edition. Riddle me the logic on that one, toad town.

I should preface this article by stating that just like I’m not a lawyer or a doctor, I’m also not an economist. In fact I’ve never had even a single class on the subject. But sometimes I think the best ideas frequently come from those without knowledge of a subject that willing to ignore the rules they know nothing about. For that reason this article should be worth its weight in gold.

I’ve thought for a long time, like most have, that the U.S. tax system is way too complex and frequently unfair. It’s done nothing but grow in complexity as special interests have pushed in their supplemental taxes or cuts.

I have a proposal. One the would change the system from a complex burden to a simple process leaving you sleeping peaceful on April 14th.

Goals

First off, when embarking on the goal to change the world, you must clearly define what it is you want to accomplish. In a philosophy class in college I learned that we give up rights (like vengeance and keeping all the monetary rewards we reap) to the government in exchange for protection, services, etc. Thus, I understand that we must pay the government something or else we wouldn’t have one. And I do depend on them for at least some things. No, no… aside from lines to wait in at the DMV.

So, what are the goals of a good tax system then?

1. The government needs money. Unfortunately, from us.
2. Collection should be fair.
3. Collection shouldn’t be complex.

That’s it. That’s all that is needed. An important part about my proposed change must be understood though: I’m only setting out to change the complexity. Yes, I’d love to balance the budget and change how things are spent and how much we pay as well but that’s out of scope. This time at least. You have to make one change at a time to ensure yourself that the success or failure was the result of just that change. So, for now, the net income of the government must remain the same before and after I rewrite the tax code.

The Proposal

My solution to the complexity mess is simple and straight forward: completely get rid of income tax. Goodbye. No more 1040 forms. No more April 14th all-nighters. No more file folders of fading or thermically-blackened receipts. Think of all the time you’ve just saved!

But obviously we need to replace the government’s garnishment of our wages with some other income source. That, in my opinion, should entirely be based on sales taxes. All forms of government would get a chunk of the sales tax percentage (just like states and counties already do). Now, I won’t lie to you: it’s gonna be high! But your income will be higher too.

The sales tax should be flat. Adding odd burdens from taxing things at different rates isn’t a good way to reduce complexity. So we won’t.

What gets taxed?

To be a fair system, everything should be taxed except the essentials of living: food, shelter and clothing.

Food from a store should still remain untaxed. It’s a basic necessity of life and people that are struggling and can afford little else are the least taxed, which is the point of the tax brackets we have today. To keep complexity low, though, lets not reinstitute that whole snack-tax thing. Food is food; from caviare to potatoes.

Services need to be taxed too (all of them since anything else is unfair). E.G. car washes, repairs, lawyers, dentists, … A good percentage of business is not product related.

But to obtain a shelter which is not taxed in our fair system we should exclude housing rental services from taxation. Home purchases would remain affected by sales tax though.

I’ve battled with the notion of taxing clothing. The winning side of my breain decided that it’s best to leave clothing purchases being taxed. The cost of clothing deviates wildly and cheap clothing (thus with low taxes) is not hard to find so I don’t believe it would be unfair to the immensely poor.

The Gains

The goal of this was to reduce complexity in the system and in your life. I think you’ll agree this would succeed. The biggest gain is simply time. As my wise co-worker often advises me: “Time is our most valuable asset”. She’s right. Most services are built on this model: paying for someone else to do your task will save you the time required to do that job (be it fixing a leak, walking the dog, cooking, or mowing the lawn).

The Losses

People often worry about job losses associated with major changes. What will all the IRS employees do when the complexity loss eliminates their jobs?

They’re already trained accountants specializing in taxes, so the solution is to leave them in an area they understand. Some staff will still need to review and, yes, perform audits of sales tax revenue. But the rest of them should be involved in helping businesses convert to a sales tax based system and after it is running smoothly they can still offer free advice and accounting services. Imagine the IRS being helpful before you run into problems rather than afterwards.

Yes, we could also shrink the government taxation overhead, but remember my proposal is only here to change the collection process and not quantities or budgets.

Everyone Wins

Think about it. It saves frustration, paperwork, and most importantly: your time. How much productivity could you add to your life with the amount of time you spend doing taxes every year?

Who’s with me?

So tonight (mostly joking) I asked my kids: “So… are you going to make dinner tonight or should I?”

The answer I got was somewhat unexpected: “Seriously? Can we?”

“Err…. Um…. Sure. But it has to be a meal of healthy choices.”

Your Kids Will Be Tested In Life

So you might as well make it on your terms. In this case, the test was not dangerous (well, I had to eat it too and I have to say I was a bit nervous). So the questions were: can they make the right choices? Do they know the requirements of a healthy meal in the first place? Sure, we’ve tried to instil an understanding of protein, carbohydrates, fruits, vegetables, etc. But the real bottom-of-the-line-question: did they hear it?

It was better to find out tonight than years from now. Then when they ignore the advice sometime later in college you can hope they’ll pick it back up again a few years later.

The Happy Meal

I wasn’t allowed into the kitchen while the meal was being prepared. About a half-an-hour in (which was right about our normal dinner time) I was asked if I would authorize the use of cookie cutters. My first sign that maybe our little whispers of health had not been heard. It took another half an hour before I was allowed to come to the table.

The results would take a lot of words to describe, so I’ll use pictures instead:

Cheese, Apples and Ghrams

Peanut Butter Animal Shapes

Buttered Animal Shaped Bread

Apples, Celery, and Carrots

I think they passed! They had representations of pretty much everything important. Now, mind you I don’t know how old the celery was that they found (but I ate it anyway). And they had actually gotten the single, very-small, carrot from the garden. I am hoping it was washed well. All said and done, my kids get an A+ for effort, an A+ for presentation and an A+ for content.

Dinner Conversation

“What did you cut up the fruit and vegetables with?”

“A knife”

“errr…. a sharp knife?”

“No, a normal one” (pointing to a butter knife).

“You cut up a raw carrot and celery with a butter knife???” (they were thin slices!)

“Yep”

Grade Change: A++ for effort!

I can’t believe I didn’t take a picture of the bowl of “left over bread pieces” though. Picture it in your mind: take a piece of bread, cut an animal-shape out of it using a cookie cutter… What do you do with the rest? Put it in a bowl of course!

I find it funny that so many people have been upset by President Obama having been given the Nobel Peace Prize. Somehow, everyone (myself included) seem to miss one vital point: he didn’t ask for it. There he was, simply sleeping the night away (probably with nightmares because of all the trials he’s undergoing) and it was handed to him. Regardless of whether or not we think he deserved it (as I have talked about before), we have to remember that he wasn’t campaigning for it and has simply been doing his job.

Michael Moore (yes that one), wrote an excellent article on the subject on why he deserves it.: Get Off Obama’s Back: Second Thoughts From Michael Moore. An important paragraph (if you don’t want to read the whole thing):

And my favorite single sentence from it:

That’s exactly what I was trying to refer to in my previous post. Imagine how difficult it would be to turn the world’s general attitude from a very negative and pessimistic one to a positive attitude full of hope and nearly-world-wide belief that a common good might just be achievable Now imagine trying to do that in the time span of an election. I’m not sure this has EVER happened so quickly before.

Don’t get me wrong, his work is far from over. It’s certainly not time to start slacking. But he’s already achieved a task you couldn’t possibly wish on anyone. Somehow I don’t think he’s the type of person to start just kicking back and enjoying the ride.

I’ve been up for an hour, pondering the first bit of news I read for the day: President Obama has been given the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. I’m now sitting and waiting for his speech on the subject and pondering my opinion on the subject.

The oddity of the prize comes from the fact that he’s not even a full year into his first term. In fact, he had to be nominated by February at which point he had only been in his post for a little over a month. He has certainly worked very hard during that 9 months and has a huge amount on his plate, both internally and externally to the U.S. Has he done enough to warrant an award yet? I’m left with many questions and few answers. I’m really only going to be documenting my questions here, since I’m neither a politics nor a Nobel prize expert.

The one thing I realized as the election was coming to a head in November 2008 was that Mr. Obama had the attention of the world in the way that hasn’t happened in a long time. Probably since the time frame of Mikhail Gorbachev’s work. He has a huge level of world-wide attention. Not just any-old attention, but positive attention.

I’ll pause now, because he’s started speaking and I’m going to listen…
(It was a good speech, but not one of his best. That being said, it was far better than I could have done after only being awake for a few hours after being told he won the prize!)

Before the election, as I was saying, I was watching TV one day and whatever I was watching was showing clips of people around the world saying how excited they were at the prospect of Mr. Obama being the next President of the United States. Coming from a point in history where there was practically world-wide disdain for recent United States actions, this was a huge change in viewpoint.

Think about it. Think about what the U.S. popularity was in October of last year compared to October of this year. Now, of course, the Peace Prize isn’t given because of how the world looks at the U.S. But it is given to people that can have a profound effect toward world harmony. I do think he has achieved that by just “being him” and winning the election.

But is that enough? Is it enough to just “be someone” with such extreme charisma that he should win a prize? Why this year? Certainly, he would have a longer track record to consider and judge. Or is now the right time in order to help him achieve even greater good by attracting even more world-wide attention. Should the peace prize be awarded as a flag to rally under?

I don’t have answers, but as the day goes on and I’ve had more time to think about it, I at least understand the reasons behind the decision more. And if I was going to award someone a prize for achieving world wide recognition as a positive person to rally, it would certainly be to him. he’s long since did that even before taking to office.

We all get mind-blocks from time to time. Sometimes it’s just from sleep deprivation where we can’t think any longer. Sometimes it’s from a lack of creativity (e.g. “writers block”). Sometimes it’s from simple lack of will to do something tedious (“procrastinator’s block”).

But with children (and admittedly some adults) there is also the “Stubborn Block”. This block occurs frequently with homework and house-hold chores. This one takes hours out of your child’s life because they simply because they’d rather be doing something else. The problem, though, is that with a child who is rebelling against the very notion of doing something you want “simply because” there is no logic that will prevail. Statements like “if you would just buckle down and do it it would only take 10 minutes” has no effect and the stubborn block will instead result in a 70 minute ordeal to get the 10 minute task done.

I have no solution to this one. I surely wish I did. I simply don’t know how to function when logic stops having any effect at all. When a “stubbon block” appears within the confines of my house, I end up in a “frustration block”.

My children teach me things on a regular basis.  They don’t realize it most of the time, as most of life’s little lessons you can only learn by being caught in the moment.  Sometimes I learn things because I have to relearn things, like tonight when I had to recall the statistical definitions of median and mode. Every time I learn something from them it’s always a treat and frequently a surprise.

The other night, as I was tucking our daughter in bed, the two of us came upon a discovery.  Above her bed (which is a lofted bed and close to the ceiling) she has glow-in-the-dark stars.  When you turn out the light they glow, of course (hence the name).  Their effect is amplified, though, by the fact that you’re left amazingly blind right after the light is turned out and they’re the only things that you can see (assuming the room is dark enough of course).  In this environment is where we made our scientific discovery. (And no, that picture on the right is not of a glow in the dark star that we’re talking about. It’s a glow in the dark ball but it just looks cooler than a little dot on a wall would have looked and I just like the picture).

Right after the light was turned off, my daughter and I decided to reach out and touch the stars.  What we found was we couldn’t.  Or at least we couldn’t without multiple attempts.  When you can’t see your fingers (because your eyes adjust so slowly to darkness) and the only thing you can see in the star you’re trying to touch, it turns out that your brain just isn’t sure exactly where in space your finger is.  The end result is that you’ll likely miss the star and your finger won’t land right on it.  In fact, you’re sense of where-is-my-finger is so bad you’ll likely get it wrong multiple times in a row (at least until your finger passes between the star and your eyes and gives you a clue). It’s an amazingly frustrating and simultaneously fascinating experiment to try.

Somewhere there is a research paper, or better yet, a school science project waiting to be written on this subject.  Probably involving a large number of study participants randomly poking stars in a dark room and seeing how many times it takes them to really touch the stars.  And somewhere, of course, in the results will be an interesting bunch of statistical data.  Probably involving median and modes.

I expect a mad rush on glow in the dark stars because of this article. It’s an experiment you should definitely try. Preferably with kids, as they’ll make it much more entertaining.

Imagine it. You have a cell phone but get no bill.

Imagine it. You’re in the middle of nowhere Nevada and you get notified of incoming email from your sister three miles ahead, further into nowhere. (She wants to stop for a picnic).

The day is coming

Your mobile phone (or whatever we’ll call it then) will communicate through any local network it can find from the many in range. And it’ll be able to pick the best one without you even realizing it. (Just like cell phones now pick the best cell tower to communicate through).

In the nearish future bandwidth will be so pervasive it’ll be free or close to it. The number of network access spots is already exploding to the point you can find a connection today just about anywhere but the middle of nowhere.

There is, however, a bandwidth crunch coming. Many are concerned about it. There will be a point where you will watch all your “TV” (or whatever we call it) only over internet based sources, because it’ll be cheaper and easier to produce shows and infinitely more flexible to you. This, however, worries the network current carriers because of bandwidth concerns. But that too will pass as technology for delivering data continues to improve. And since video is the most bandwidth intensive service that’ll we’ll likely need for awhile, once the bandwidth problems of delivering lots of video are past there is little else on the horizon to worry about (until we get to the point of needing to ship around 3-D holograms).

Combine bandwidth with access

Eventually we will reach a point where access and bandwidth are everywhere and free or virtually free. there won’t be a reason to leave the fate of our communication in the hands of the few companies that are providing such poor service today.

The upcoming bandwidth availability will be a significant change in the way we live with information, as it will always be nearby.

Imagine getting into the car and it asking you “where are you heading to today?”. We already have cars that respond with a map when you say “longs”. But what we don’t have (and isn’t that far away) is a car that responds “please remember that Longs was bought out by CVS and its name has changed. Also, although the store is open, you should be aware that the pharmacy is closed. Do you still wish to go?” I wish I had that feature the other day…

Combine online inventory and pricing with instantly updating maps and when you ask your car to take you to buy a good quality socket wrench set, it’ll tell you which streets to turn on, what brand choices are “good quality” these days, what the prices will be when you get there and what isles they’re in for the store it has selected for you that carries them.

Or imagine chatting with your friend over a half-double-decaffeinated-half-calf with a twist about an old friend and wondering what they’re up to and suddenly having your phone pipe up with “Charlie is currently living in L.A. And is working as the senior manager of “Tomorrow Land” in Disneyland. How cool and creepy would that be?

Like any revolution, it’s hard to predict what “the other side” will look like. The shift to the internet meant suddenly having access at home to a wealth of information. But soon, with spreading access ability, we’ll get to the point where it will feel odd not to have access.

Imagine never not having information at your instant beck and call.

So, previously I got depressed about SMS conversations with AT&T. I was then consoled and warned at the same time by my friend that I was not alone. And after his advice, and some other random advice from google results I decided to try the magic “stop” word. It is supposed to work when “no” doesn’t. So, when the next message came around:

AT&T from #4436:
AT&T Free Tip: Get weather, movie or restaurant tips from Google
on your phnoe. Text HELP to 466453 to get started.
To end Tips send no to 4436

Ah ha! I got you now silly AT&T. I now know your magic key word!!!

me:
Stop

And then I waited. I’ve never waited so long for a text message. I felt like I was in high school again. Ok, not really.

AT&T from #4436:
You have Opted out of AT&T Tips messages.
Please do not REPLY to this message.

Victory! I stood up, danced around my office and laughed at the ceiling while beating my chest with my fists. Ok, not really either.

But I was happy. Finally an end!

And then…

And then…

5 days later:

AT&T from #1111301000:
AT&T Free Tip: You can check your
voice plan minutes used & sms
messages sent with My Account.
Click Go to try.  To end Tips no
to 4436

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Now, I don’t know if you caught it. Go back, look at that last message and catch the difference. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Done?

You didn’t cheat did you?

Good. You spotted it (I’m giving you the credit here): it’s from a different number. It’s no longer from 4436, it’s now from 1111301000. Now, lets do some quick math. 10 digit number, with 10 possible digits (1-9) in each spot. I actually think that first number is a 1 meaning country code one (+1 is how they write it in the rest of the world; that same “rest of the world” that uses metric and other standardized conventions). So, lets assume that there are only 9 numbers they can vary. That’s 10^9th possible combinations.

Or: 1,000,000,000 (1 billion to save you from counting zeros)

Now, assuming I can send 200 free text messages in a month under my plan (they say their messages are free. They never once say that sending back “no” or “stop” is free), then it would take me….

1000000000/200 = 5,000,000 months to cancel them all with “stop”
which is:
5,000,000/12 = 416,666 years!

Yes! I can actually calculate the days until freedom! (152,187,500 days)

And yes, I included leap years. Because I’m just that much of a geek.