BurnsFamily Blog

The new antenna got installed just in time — Julie will be the acting “Net Control” operator for Campbell’s and Santa Clara County’s nets next week. We’ll be operating from our home, so it will be important that people all over Santa Clara county can hear her signal loud and clear — and for her to be able to pick them up too.

On Sunday I participated in this event. Not riding a bike, mind you, but supporting the folks who DID ride their bikes. It looked like an awesome ride, and the number of “event participants” was eclipsed by the number of folks out riding the same hills just for the fun of it.  One section of [...]

We seem to be very lax at posting to our blog lately. This post is about yet another volunteer event. We do in fact do things other than volunteer, but apparently they are not exciting enough to post about.
We starting volunteering to be emergency communicators for the Cupertino Fireworks show last year. It was a [...]

Last weekend was the March of Dimes “Walk for Babies”. We haven’t heard how many walkers and runners participated this year but I would guess it was ~ 1,500-2,000. They walked either a 1-mile route (”the family route”) or a 6-mile loop.
Julie and I volunteered for this event. This gave us an opportunity to [...]

Yesterday, several cities in the Bay Area got a taste of what it was like before everyone everyone had a phone in their pocket. Someone intentionally cut several fiber lines in the Bay area cutting off 911 calls, land lines, cell phones, internet, ATMs and credit card machines.
Everyone always asks Bill and I why we [...]

L.A. had a 5.4 (moderate) earthquake around Noon today. To folks who aren’t familiar with earthquakes, you can certainly feel one of those but modern-built structures typically are unaffected. The Richter scale is logarithmic, so a 4.0 is 1/10th the energy of a 5.0, for example. The USGS says that the Bay Area is overdue [...]

The San Jose R.A.C.E.S. team asked for volunteers, as part of the Santa Clara County Mutual Aid Communicators (MAC) program, to assist the Lance Armstrong LiveSTRONG 2008 bike race this past week.
Our job was to ride along with the SAG vans to communicate their status, important events, and overall “eyes and ears” to race [...]

Last night Julie and I were driving home North on 101 from Santa Cruz and noticed a huge plume of smoke near Gilroy. I know what you’re saying, did it smell like sauteed garlic? No, in fact it didn’t — the fire was near Gilroy, not in it. The fire is in the [...]