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Finished assembling this,pretty comfy color

Actually I'm now basically 100% on track to become a first-time homeowner in the fall as long as I keep maintaining some semblance of financial discipline. It has been a very long road to this point but the end goal is finally in sight.

it was good, and we kept brent away from the biscuits.

It might be a small victory, but I used some money from a work bonus to pay off the remainder of the loan balance due on my WRX today. I now own her free and clear. I am happy.

When in Rome, you have that Roman nonsense. When in the South, you have fried chicken. And sausage/cheese/pickles And some tamales (the leftovers, at least) Did I mention chicken? Oh, yeah, and we had a side of chicken. One must have fries... and chicken. Notice the bread at the bottom of all the chicken? If you're wondering if it tastes like chicken, it does. (It also soaks up all the grease, and as I was discussing with someone when I had this place at a catered event, pulling the soaked toast out afterwards and making chicken-soaked croutons sounds amazing.) Zoe as the protector of the sides And the gratuitous parting shot. Not pictured: a slacker Had a blast. I, too, am sad we didn't get a pic of Dan, especially after he left at 5am today to meet us, but his memory shall keep him going til the next time. I also think this is the furthest out I've had a dinner planned in years. **BRENT**

I can't wait till they allegedly offer 4k.

Bourbon ice cream

Good to have choices for college especially when they want to give you money! My kids had a choice, University of Florida. They could choose to go or not. It worked out. Roasted my first two 1/4 pound batches. We will see how they turned out tomorrow. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Me too. And before that, she used to work at a local pre-hipster record store called Newbury Comics. I remember her from those days in Boston.....

Awesome food and company, Brent! Good call!

Moderators please inform the foreigner that sexual innuendos are my department.

20th Sonoma International Film Festival, Or something Stretch might sport? You decide.

Got back from upstate NY, an adventure to visit Clarkson University for Admitted Students' Day (today/Saturday). Due to the weather, we left Thursday instead of Friday. Tough ride, save for a nice pic Karen got on the Lake Champlain Ferry; long, couldn't find a good place to stop for dinner, and ended up getting to the hotel just past 10pm. Andrew got into a class Friday, and spent a bit of time on campus. It turns out he is not as impressed these days. A big part of that is due to Wheaton College in MA jumping very high on his list, after a student-hosted night and also attending a class there. It set a pretty high standard to meet. Combine that with the snow, odd eating schedules causing general grumpiness in all of us, and a dead car battery that had to be jumped. We got to the event this morning, looked at the agenda....and decide to leave and get home. So Andrew has made his choice of Wheaton, and we all think it's a great one. Great combination of Tech and Liberal Arts, and an incredibly welcoming and diverse set of students and faculty. Along with Clarkson, Wheaton also gave fantastic merit money. And it's not a 6-plus-fucking-hour ride.

There is just something bad ass about a fast wagon, especially one that's a stick car. I could do without the red mirrors and the symbol across the side as I prefer understated shock the hell out of the guy in the Corvette at the light factor HS

The upper mid of Utopia is the exact reason why I went with Stax 009. Though, I can not deny that Utopia is a great headphones as it has many things that was done right on it. Essentially it can be plugged into anything and play unlike Stax 009 which needs a proper energizer :). It is hard to see other dynamic headphones that can achieve what Utopia can out of portable devices. I literally meant it, I can just plug it in an IPad and have it sound wonderful, and ofcourse except the quality of an IPad DAC and output is shitty...lol...Utopia is wonderful with WM1Z, a combination that can be taken on the go and to many places....then when talking about amping and DAC chain the Utopia it would scale up (being desktop and stationary), but I rather stick with Stax 009 stationary system i have no regret moving up to 009+ carbon, trully an amazing feasts. Possibly looking into T2 as I have heard that T2 is the Ultimate end for Stax

Oh shit, I didn't even know it was out, will purchase forthwith...

Cheers to that!

Yup, all of the (good things) above. Most people don't realize this forum doesn't follow "normal" forum rules, hence the reminders to read the welcome message. You can have a great time, just remember as a newer person here, don't get a hair up the arse when we get one up ours. We've established our curmudgeon-ness over many moons.

That is great news, TMoney! Best of luck on the home. They'll keep you up at night at times (my house is pretty old so it's a fair amount of work), but home ownership is a great thing. Well worth the effort and expense in my case. HS

^The new Pallbearer is fucking fantastic. Listened earlier. Now - Antoine Dufour - Back and Forth. Love this guy, favorite acoustic player save Michael Hedges. Seeing him and Andy Mckee play together was a real live concert highlight for me. Edit - listen to the electronic versions on disc 2 as well... this is just great.

Elear Utopia Had the Utopia for a few days on RME ADI-2 Pro. Both headphones share the same Focal house sound with upper mid scoop and in headphone terms slight treble hype. Elear is in a good price bracket, but Utopia sits 2 grand too high imho. Stock Utopia had too little bass for my tastes with overall brighter tuning, technicalities wise it's better than Elear. The upper mid scoop on both cans keep them from reaching greatness, because many instruments end up sounding wrong. What's interesting the scoop isn't annoying. Overall Utopia might be just about the only flagship dynamic headphone without crucial drawbacks. Like the HD800 for example. As it is it's overpriced unless the looks give you a mad boner, which would be understandable. Elear is priced better and sits a bit below HD800. It has a more user friendly tuning, but soundstage is way smaller. Choose your poison between bass and soundstage. Uncalibrated I'd prolly go for the Elear.

Finally getting around to it.

That's awesome!

I'm so looking forward to going back to a Comcast monopoly. Not.

Can spell, punctuate, construct a reasonable argument and appreciates Staxen -- I hope he sticks around. Everyone gets hit in the face with a shovel at first, JRU. It's a necessary recalibration from the other place.

Believe me, buying a home is only the starting goal.

Got to listen to both the Utopia and Elear while I was in SF last week. Unfortunately I was under the weather and was listening to these headphones through totally unfamiliar upstream gears in a somewhat noisy setting, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, take this impression with a large grain of salt. Both headphones are very well made and comfortable to wear. They are definitely on the heavier side but not quite as bad as the Audeze's. The bulkiness of the cable that many complaint about actually did not bother me that much. I do wish they have come with balanced connection option though. To establish somewhat of a baseline, I also listened to the store's Audeze LCD 2. I am familiar with the sound of Senn HD650, Audeze LCD 2, Stax 007 and 009 (both later versions). To my ears the Elear's sound reminds me of the LCD 2 while the Utopia reminds me of the 009. They (Utoipa and Elear) have different sound signature - similar to what I think of the 007 and 009. I don't necessarily think of the Utopia as the upgrade from the Elear. The Utopia has better resolution and is more neutral yet brighter sounding to me. I do like the Utopia better overall but not sure I can justify the $3000 difference in price. Compare to other $1000 headphones I know of, the Elear is a very strong contender. Now if the Utopia is a $2500 USD headphone then we'll really be talking... Just my 2 cents worth...

Newbury Comics! I still listen to 'Til Tuesday. The new album is quite ... specific. Good (of course) but just really focused on telling a certain story in a certain mode.

Aimee Mann -- Mental Illness

*cough* UHD HDR *cough*

Interlopers be banned!

It gets way better as it progresses.

Bastards!

In anticipation of Ken Burn's Vietnam series this fall, I decided to give "Vietnam: A Television History" a watch. Over the past few weeks of watching VaTH it is hard to not think constantly on how tragic all this episode of our history was, especially given what we know now. A couple of things in particular really stood out to me. War is hell. The images and video speak loudly and clearly. How pointless stopping the "spread of communism" was. After billions of dollars, tens of thousands of American soldiers dead, and more than a million Vietnamese dead, what was accomplished? A total strategic defeat in the region. Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos would all fall to communist forces in 1975. While that fact matters a great deal to the citizens of those countries, it sure doesn't seem to have had much of an effect on either the Cold War as a whole or on US interests in general in the 40+ years since. Ideas like "containment" and the "domino theory" have not held up well to historical scrutiny. The faith of Americans in our government was irreparably harmed. The government doesn't seem to have ever been able to communicate the reasons the war was being fought outside of "stop communism and protect democracy." The cooking up of the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the dishonesty from the government in general and LBJ in particular are black marks on what should have been one of the great presidencies of the 20th century. Blaming "the media," "the elites," "the students," and "the city dwellers" while at the same time saying that the "silent-majority" of ordinary Americans support something is a good way to tell that there is bullshit afoot. It is scary how similar the soundbites of some of these politicians and military leaders sound to our present day situation. The inability to commit to any kind of end-game scenario outside of a cease-fire/stalemate and the lack of a strong ally worth supporting put the US Military in a very bad spot. The leaders and governments we backed/propped-up sure seemed incompetent, corrupt, sadistic, or all three combined. It is not hard to see why the populace of the region was sympathetic to the communists and the insurgents when you see what was going on in Saigon. Not invading North Vietnam or more aggressively going after the Ho-Chin-Minh trail made "victory" damn near impossible against a smart and determined foe who was always in it for the long game. Nixon might be a real shitty human being, but he and Kissinger's "peace with honor" plan probably should have been the strategy from the beginning. At least to me, Kissinger looks very prescient here. Other than not getting involved in the conflict in the first place "peace with honor" sure seems to have been the best reasonable outcome. The real story of the Vietnam War and Indochina conflict won't be told until we hear China's side of the story. While the cold war and US/USSR conflict is and has always been in the historical forefront, interesting developments were going on during this time period that put China on the track to be the dominant power in the east and eclipse Russia. Anyways, enough ranting out of me for one day. Feel free to disagree with anything I've said. I am no expert or historian and the above is just my reactions to the content in the documentary. I am looking forward to what Ken Burns' doc has to say roughly 30 years after VaTH. While Burns has the benefit of 30 additional years of scholarship on the topic, he won't be able to interview many of the prominent interviewees in VaTH that no longer with us. 5/5. Obviously.

Why do you guys have remotes. Can't you just tell Alexa to do everything? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Just built my mini GRLV supplies. The Negative came up just fine and works perfectly The positive supply is giving me some issues and I'll need to debug it. Here's some pictures... This pic shows a board I made for the Blue Hawaii that has the +5V, Digital Controller (ATMega328P) and Digital attenuator board along with the GR7/9xx regulators. I'll mount them once the positive supply is working.

Nick is a dick

Used Malwarebytes to remove 376 threats from a neighbors laptop after she became concerned that "Nick" wasn't really from Microsoft support ...

Nate, do any of the Yamaha AVR's meet your requirements? I ended up with this http://usa.yamaha.com/products/audio-visual/av-receivers-amps/tsr/tsr-7810/ at This price https://slickdeals.net/f/9477303-yamaha-tsr-7810-rx-v781-7-2-channel-atmos-4k-uhd-hdr-atmos-dts-x-wifi-bluetooth-home-theater-receiver-costco-com-449-99-fs as i needed/wanted * 4K HDR (HDCP 2.2 / HDMI 2.1 ) * pre outs for the AVI 2.1 Active speakers / SVS subwoofer Other's in the range may meet your requirements. Threads on avsform.com dissect the models / feature sets (and what is common) A friend who recently went 4K, uses the TV the input source (including the built in apps), and then the TV's optical out into a (sonos) soundbar for audio output, So his wife only has one remote (the TV remote) to deal with. Reduces box count as well. Only the Built in apps (Amazon / Netflix / YouTube) , the UHD/HDR Blu Ray player and the Nvidia shield are 4K / UHD / HDR Latest amazon fire is 4K but only HDMI 1.4 so no HDR , but their app is now on the Nvidia shield. Apple TV still only HD currently, Nvidia shield Android TV / Live TV app allows use of the HDPrime and cable card, which is handy and also why i have an 8 port Gigabit hub in the AV cabinet. I noticed occasional Audio dropouts from the Amazon App on the TV over Toslink during The Grand Tour UHD / HDR - but the Nvidia Shield over HDMI doesn't seem to suffer from this. Never got around to trying the ARC / HDMI 2 connection . Plenty of options, plenty of connections, plenty of fragmentation in terns of content / sources. Even after setting everything up to use a harmony hub so it can all be controlled by 1 remote with physical buttons ( no unlocking device + finding app etc), it's still non trivial to navigate around to answer the question "i'd like to watch something good" Interesting that it seems we'll need to use computer/machine vision and AI to unify all these disparate interfaces so our other halves don't get frustrated when "I just want to watch TV, how hard can it be?" http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/15/14620510/caavo-tv-streaming-box-machine-vision-ai-gamechanger EDIT: for illustration This Is replaced by this (Other than voice search / commands which is occasionally useful, YMMV)

I'm also curious to hear if there are any good receiver recommendations. Some time this year I'll hopefully be picking one up. Minimum requirements are 4k video and 7.1, multi-room audio. Current leading candidate is the Marantz 6011 that Shelly also mentioned but it wouldn't hurt my feelings to spend less than $1400 on just the receiver for the new HT.

Not up to the Head-Case level but did a test drive of a maxed out 2017 Subaru Impreza 5-door limited. Will probably be the replacement for our Outback in a few months.

Oh, also a recipe from each.

Enjoyable concept for foodies. The author/photographer asks the worlds most famous chefs the same six questions and then photographs them and their food. 1. What would be your last meal on earth? 2. What would be the setting for the meal? 3. What would you drink with your meal? 4. Would there be music? 5. Who would be your dining companions? 6. Who would prepare the meal?

The 007 may be more accurate to you but that is certainly not the case for others. Trying to make everybody understand that you are right and everybody else is wrong is a losing proposition. There are just too many subjective factors in the way our ears and brains process information.