Computer Problems this Morning

This morning it was cold 32° exactly freezing in my ham shack. The computer was not plugged in because I had the electricity off for the night, so I guess the cold made the battery where it would not power up the computer. This put a damper on my hamming because I didn’t have a way to log my contacts or have a way to look up things on the Internet. I didn’t realize to what extent the computer had become a part of my hamming until I didn’t have it anymore. It’s not like the old days when I would just get to my rig and turn it on and scribbled down on a piece of paper what I heard and make my log with a pen. This seems primitive now, but it was sure a lot of fun back in those days. I did manage to work a special event net this morning, which was the Treasure Coasters net’s 50th anniversary. They were having two hour net net session this morning (7153 KHz), so I checked into it, and I can get a special QSL card for that. I know DX is still good and propagation is really going well with all the sunspots available. I have gotten very lax working dx in the last few days because of laziness. However, I will get back into it. I have now worked 228 countries (entities) and have them confirmed was the ARRL. I have about 25 more QSL cards to submit to the ARRL to be counted so I have about 260 countries confirmed and not that is all with a dipole antenna (inverted vee). All of that was done with 100 Watts, so I don’t think you always have to have a kilowatt to work except on the bands such as 160 m and 80 m. On those bands I would like to have an amplifier because it is very hard to get to signal out there on these low frequencies. A good antenna doesn’t hurt either. I’m still interested in whisper (WSPR) and still trying to get my rig to work with the software that I downloaded yesterday. I haven’t made a contact (QSO) on WSPR yet, but I’m still trying and I will learn it. At that is the fun of all the recently developed things in the new learning process that you go through as you are maturing in your hamming. Lots of exciting things in the ham world and those things keep me going although old age is taken a toll on me physically it has not dampened my spirit as a ham radio operator. Hope y’all have a wonderful and blessed day where you are 73 good luck and lots of DX. Best wishes from Beautiful Downtown Coffee Springs.