Isabel enjoys the first snow of the season. "Makes crunching sound!"

Sea of green... sea of green... sea of green...

Isabel is currently insisting that her full name is Gagak Annawannakasi. Updates as they become available.

Reading one more book before naptime.

As regular readers know, last September I had the government, in the form of the FCC, officially certify me as a dork by licensing me as an amateur radio operator. There are three classes of ham radio license, each with its own exam: Technician, General, and the vaunted Extra Class. When I got my license in September, I took the Technician and General exams on the same day, along with the Morse code test that was required for General Class at the time (you kids today!).

This left only one exam to take in order to qualify for the highest level of social unacceptability: Amateur Extra Class. With its 600-page study guide, 801-question pool, trigonometry I hadn’t seen since the 8th grade, and analysis of circuits featuring field-effect transistors and op amps, this was an intimidating exam. But let’s face it: chicks dig Extra Class hams. So I cracked some books.

And I learned some things. I learned that the percentage of maximum voltage representing black in a slow-scan television signal is 70%, which I am very confident I will never need to know again. I learned that the painful feeling in my brainpan that I had previously only experienced when trying to say “we’re going to miss you” in Arabic (literally “you are going to make us miss you”) can be replicated by working through the following question:

In polar coordinates, what is the impedance of a network comprised of a 100-picofarad capacitor in parallel with a 4,000-ohm resistor at 500 kHz?

While waiting for my exam paperwork to come back, I learned from one of my fellow examinees that that there’s a Coast Guard Reserve. Who knew? And finally, I learned that chicks don’t really dig Extra Class hams. Apparently it’s a myth. But by then it was too late. I took and passed my Extra exam this weekend. In fact, I kicked its ass.

I can now apply for a prestigious 4-digit callsign. Sadly, N3RD is taken.

I'd buy a car from him.

Isabel thought Bobby might be lonely when he does tummy time. See if you can pick out the real baby from this lineup.