My first entry

Welcome to Random Contact, the blog of Douglas D. Lee. I will post here information, thoughts and ideas on a variety of subjects that interest me. Two of my biggest interests are weather and ham radio.

The title came from a title I thought up for a column I wrote for a while in the Tulsa Amateur Radio Club's newsletter. The editor decided not to use that title, but made up one that sounded more like I was writing a series of opinion pieces. My intent, then as now, was to present more than opinions. I will present opinions here, but sometimes I will just present information.

First some background info about me.
I was born in Wichita KS, and have lived most of my life in northeast Creek County, to the southwest of Tulsa OK. Currently I live in Kiefer, a small but growing town southeast of the county seat, Sapulpa. I also work at home providing installation support for people that have bought student versions of Autodesk software. Autodesk makes the leading computer drafting program, AutoCAD, as well as a popular animation program, 3D Studio Max.

The company I work for is Star Training Institute. Their main business right now is workshops about AutoCAD and other software. They used to have regular classes in drafting, computer animation, and computer systems. I went through those classes to learn drafting. About a month after finishing those classes, they hired me to do drafting and 3D modeling on a contract basis. My drafting experience covers various areas, but most has been mechanical parts or overhead cranes. My car died a couple of years ago, and I couldn't always get rides in to work when I was needed, so I was out of work for about a year. Six months ago, Star set me up to work at home because they needed an extra person to help with the support calls. I've been saving up to get another vehicle and get back into drafting.

Ten years ago, I became a storm spotter and a ham radio operator. I spotted for Creek County Emergency Management from 1997 to 2000. Since then, I have spotted from home or work, and reported directly to the National Weather Service Forecast Office in Tulsa by ham radio.

My interest in weather led me into ham radio. Beyond storm spotting, I also enjoy public service and emergency communications, antenna building, and hidden-transmitter hunting (foxhunting). Just before my car died, I was involved in the ham radio response in the Tulsa area to Hurricane Katrina. I spent one week recruitng and scheduling HF operators to run the station at the Red Cross center in Tulsa. Then I spent two days recruiting and scheduling hams to provide communications at Camp Gruber, a National Guard training base near Muskogee that became a shelter for evacuees. This exerience led to my first published article as a writer. It appeared in the March 2006 issue of QST, the magazine of the American Radio Relay League.

I guess that's enough for now. Further posts will range from the personal to the intellectual, from the political to the spiritual.