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The greatest letter ever written. What a rollercoaster ride.

Played tourist in SF this afternoon, Where I encountered ... https://en-us.sennheiser.com/sf Sennheiser's only store in North America (?) Knowledgeable staff, and the usual suspects The new stuff isn't too shabby.

First Thanksgiving course created by chef Peter, Beef Wellington ala Gordon Ramsay

I just got back in touch with my inner 500mm mirror lens. I've had a 500mm f/8 Reflex Nikkor since, basically, forever. For years, well decades, it rode around in my trunk. Eventually - like twenty, twenty-five years ago - the old mirror lens was supplanted by more "practical" long lenses, like a 400mm 3.5, and a 300mm 2.8, then a 500mm 4, 400mm 2.8, and a 600mm 4 when I needed it. You get the idea. The old mirror lens eventually moved from my trunk to the back of my camera cabinet at home. Which I am now trying to civilize. I'm selling old and stupid stuff, putting things in order, getting stuff repaired - the kind of thing you do every ten years or so, whether it's needed or not. And I pulled out the old mirror lens. So I marched outside to the creek with it and sat on the bank and photographed whatever happened by for five minutes and six seconds (according to the Exif data) And this thing is just so damned cool! It used to be that you had about three choices for exposure level for any given film speed (1/500th, 1/1000th, and 1/2000th. Well, and 1/250 most of the time.) Neutral density filters made the lens unfocusable. On a modern digital camera, you've got two more shutter speeds and four more instantly changeable ISOs. The lens fits in a bag, weighs nothing, and is hand holdable to an easy-ish 1/250th. Close focus is very reasonable. It's sharp and contrasty. Not 400 2.8 sharp, but 300 4.5 ED IF sharp, easily. It's "practical" all of a sudden! And now with everybody all about bokeh, those annular highlights are the bee's knees. I checked on eBay. You can grab these things for less than $300 (for the newer series no less) Mr ibis here was shot at 1/250th, handheld, at ISO 400. I don't know if anybody else will find this intriguing, but I'm all (re)excited.

Some of the best food I have had since visiting Veracruz, Oaxaca and Puebla about 30 years ago. robalo Callo de Hacha and lastly, instead of dessert a tasting of four different Moles

Yay, found the problem. Tomorrow will be listening day!

Winter Mode: ACTIVE Between snapping a 3/8 to 1/2 drive adapter and finding a nearly-stripped lug nut it wasn't the smoothest transition but it got done. Test drive went fine and tires roll smooth so I'll chalk it up as a win. Damage lug will be replaced tomorrow. Also converted the tractor to winter duty which went pleasantly well. Now, if it'll just consistently start for the next 5 months that'd be great.

Lookie what I found. Thanks for the recommendation Mikey.

Maura didn't finish all of her braised short ribs last night so I preserved some of the fries that came with my burger. Breakfast was good.

PEI mussels Braised crispy chicken

A somewhat of a Franken-Pass.

Hole in the wall, SF Chinatown fare

One can always hope... springs eternal and all that. The WES is a particular clusterfuck though as it didn't work on so many levels. It's a collection of 4 mono phase amps really so you need the super noisy phase splitter to the circuit for it to work with RCA inputs and then we have the inductor output loads which simply don't work. Add to that a really, really crappy power supply and all the usual Woo audio safety concerns. So back in the day, for those that are unfamiliar, there was some discussion that they were just doing the best they can or some such BS so I said...can I do better? I set some rules, same power supply voltages, same tubes naturally (though not the rectifiers as they are just stupid) and as similar a parts count and general topology as possible. So output caps like in the original, inter stage caps etc. Throw it all in a spare box and here it is: The massive tower was just something I had and as you can see... it is pretty much empty: The chassis was reused from a dac project our resident "circular hole cutter tech" did so extra holes galore and then it was powder coated to look nice. That's why it has only XLR loop outputs on the back. So here is the money shot... Sooooo...this is a small DC supply to run the heaters of the tubes and my SSPS (simple stacked PS) feeding +300/+600 plus bias to the amp. The amp it self is a combination of a modified SRX front end with a new grounded cathode output stage. That pic is from the first testing so there were some changes done later on but it worked well enough and about 1/4th the size of a WES...

Well, mostly into custom speakers these days with Mivera Audio Icepower 1200AS2 Amp. Occasionally Stax SR009/007. 7K2speakers by drjlo1, on Flickr 0124180848b by drjlo1, on Flickr

Nice! I ate a lot of horrible crap in Vegas, as one does. Did have a superb Tomahawk ribeye at Jean-Georges Steakhouse -- one of the best pieces of meat I can remember, and I've seen a few. Experience slightly tarnished by the 500% markups on the wine list. Stuck to cocktails.

Giving Sophie a “Taste of Marin” Brunch send off, so She had Which was a perfect opportunity to add Millionaires Bacon ( to share) Joanne & I shared Dungeness Hash / Pacifica Salad Yum!

Doing a much milder version of winterization on the Audi today. Wheels showed up this morning and entirely unwinter-like 265 45 ZR 20 Continental Extreme Contacts go on this afternoon. Should be good enough for this area. I also wish I had a garage that was as clean as Nate’s. Winterizzzzed. The best thing is, since I happened to change my appointment from tomorrow to this afternoon, I got 20% off because of Black Friday.

Went kayaking at Silver Springs today. Great day for wildlife viewing. Tons of water birds, basking turtles and alligators and most importantly our first manatees. Now relaxing with a wee dram (see imbibing thread for more details).

Cheers to Mrs K. May her hate consume and shrivel her. Galaxy Quest Coleslaw Brisket Sweetcorn Cornbread Debris fries

Went from AT&T DSL to Sonic fiber in SF. The 5G wifi from Sonic was about 90-100mbps. This is the ethernet connection speed. Seems better.

Wow. It cost me less than $500 to build mine.