My Dad Is the Reason I Love the Internet

“No, no. You go like this,” my dad said as he demonstrated how to properly close a telescoping radio antenna.

“You start at the bottom and gently pull straight down. Once the sleeve is all the way down, you move up to the next section of the antenna and do the same thing … and so on and so forth.”

Everything I have learned about electronics and my curiosity for everything technological I credit to my dad.

Before the Internet, cell phones and digital surround sound, my dad was “early adopting” and “pioneering” at as quick of a rate as his generation’s scientists could muster.

You see, my dad was a ham. No, not a goofy prankster, but rather an amateur radio operator, or “ham” as operators are still known today.

He was just 13-years old when he earned his novice amateur radio license. It wasn’t long before he worked his way up the ranks to be able to talk to entirely different countries through the analog form of communication.

I assume his passion for amateur radio growing up was much like my passion for computers and gadgets.

As a military family, we moved to several different houses. Whenever it came time to look at a house to move into, one of my dad’s concerns was always “Where will the amateur radio antenna be mounted in this place?”

In Sacramento, CA my dad had what was called a Yagi antenna. It was a huge monstrosity of a thing that dwarfed our modest three bedroom – ahem, actually four bedroom – home (dad took one of the bedrooms as his own radio shack and made my two sisters share a room – a decision that still to this day during family gatherings is not left to die by my adult sisters).

When we moved to Fairfax, VA he mounted a single pole antenna in-between several tall trees that were in the front of our house.

We moved three times in Fairfax.

In the second house – just two blocks down the street – he ran a long wire that made what is called a dipole antenna. Picture a piece of cable split into a “Y” shape and then mounted up in the canopy of a forest; At least it was hidden this time.

In the third Fairfax home, (this time my parents purchased the house since they got tired of the Air Force telling them it would only be another 18 months till we PCS’d somewhere new) dad decided to mount a pole to the garage and attach a long piece of cable to it. I think that cable must have stretched 70 or 80 feet into the forest behind our house. Like the home before, this was a dipole antenna.

In the final Fairfax home (not really a home per se, but more of a temporary place for my parents to lay their head down while their dream home was built three hours away) or should I say, apartment, there were no antennas to speak of. I know my mom was relieved by this.

What does all of this talk about antennas have to do with me? It simply points out that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

As I said before, I believe I get all of my technology interests from my father. As a perfect example, I currently run four Blogs and three Web sites. Did I mention I have switched cell phone carriers every year for the last three years (and sometimes twice in a year), just because one of the carriers had a cooler phone or better data rate plan?

As I said, the apple doesn’t fall that far from the tree.