I've just come from taking my amateur radio licensing exam, and I am proud to say that I'm now a Technician class operator with HF privileges! (This means that I took the basic exam and the 5-word-per-minute Morse code test, and am therefore licensed to operate in voice or Morse code on a number of different frequencies, plus a few other bands in Morse and the 10-meter band in Morse, voice or digital.)

Since it didn't cost anything extra, they talked me into also taking the General class exam, which I had not prepared for at all and thus did not pass -- I needed a 26 out of 35 and only got 18, but hey, that's better than random chance. I'll probably spend a bit of my copious free time over the summer taking practice tests at QRZ.com and see about taking the General and maybe the Extra class exams at the end of the summer. At that point I'll be able to contact people all over the world, should I happen to want to.

This comes right on the heels of a conversation yesterday with my Head Minion, in which I related to him my horribly geeky idea about what I could do with voice-recognition software, microphones, and the wiring in my house. HM doesn't know much about electronics, but is willing to learn, and I've been thinking it's about time to get back into playing around with circuitry again anyway. Funny how things come together like that.

Now I will go home, see if Alicia wants to go out for tea, and figure out what the hell I did with my soldering iron.