In the late 1950s, when I was entering early adolescence, I became an amateur radio operator. It was like joining a very large audio-visual club whose geekiness was on steroids. Along with knowledge of electronics and Morse code, being a total techno-weirdo was an absolute pre-requisite. The world back then seemed to be a much larger place, and communicating with foreign countries via the short-wave spectrum was a challenging and random proposition. So it was fun and exciting to communicate by code or voice with hams in remote parts of the planet. At least at first. Unfortunately, the conversations were […]