Learning for the whole family

Because of our common interests, my buddy and fellow Mexico fan, Mark Bullick has recommended that I read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (DFRE) by Edward Gibbon.  I think I mentioned earlier that he gave me a bunch of other history books that have enjoyed very much, the lasts being the Albigensian Crusades.  My problem is that I just have too many irons in the fire so I have not had much time to do any reading.  So, when my commute time increased from twenty minutes to thirty minutes, I decided to do something about it.  I found a place on the internet that had recorded the first two volumes of DFRE and put it on the internet for public download.  I have started downloading Volume 1 from there and listening to it during my commute.  The name of the site is LibriVox and it holds a ton of public domain audio books.  I want to listen to more of them when I finish DFRE.  Thanks Mark!

Secondly, I have been looking at the book we got to study for the General Radio Operators License.  It might be possible to study that book and get the license, but it would be a pretty ugly study without first getting some theory of operation.  I talked with my buddies, Brett and Jim at work.  Both of the recommended that we first get or HAM General Class license.  So we revised our plan a little.  Brett suggested that we put a radio kit together and study a book on radio theory at the same time.  After that, we can get a book that is specifically for getting ready to take the General Class license.  At any rate, I bought a Norcal 40a radio kit and the book that goes with it titled The Electronics of Radio.  Brett says that it is a college level radio theory class.  The comments on the book at Amazon say that it is “somewhat less math-intensive” than other books of this nature.  I think we can handle it.  If he had his way, Christian would build the whole thing, but Kelly and I are going to get our hand in on the soldering, too.  More fun stuff to build!!!