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Fricken VOTED. It's raining bad metaphors here in scenic western MA. I live in a geographically large (by Masshole standards) but sparsely populated town. In spite of that, everyone and their inbred uncle was on their way to the polling station. I ended up parking half a mile away and trudging my (old, fat, out of shape) ass there and back to vote. I came home soaked and in need of a change of clothes. Taxachusetts isn't even a battleground state. Unless there's a Yankees fan around.

Electrostatic headphones and speakers have the least distortion when they have a constant charge on the diaphragm. This was established at least as far back as PJ Walker who designed the original Quad electrostatic speaker. The "rationale" for having a "large" capacitor in the bias supply, e.g. 1 uf or more, is to smooth out any residual AC so the diaphragm charge and voltage remain constant. However, once the diaphragm is charged, the amount of current needed to maintain the charge is minuscule, so that in fact even a "small" capacitor (Stax uses 0.1 uf) is more than sufficient. This is illustrated by the fact that if you use an old Stax converter box, which contains a step-up transformer and bias supply but no active electronics, charge up the headphones and then disconnect the bias supply from AC, the headphones will continue to play for some time. The large value safety resistor used by Stax (about 5 megohms) between the last bias capacitor and the diaphragm ensure that any current traveling to the diaphragm is very low so the diaphragm cannot get zapped. Companies like iFi and Woo that don't follow these design parameters either don't understand or ignore these facts. iFi Audio's use of a high voltage battery to "power" the bias supply is, IMHO, an expensive solution in search of a non-existent problem.

Henry Rollins was the frontman for the hardcore punk band Black Flag. He's also a solo musician, spoken word performer and author (and actor and and and...) He's got what one would term an ...intense personality.

As an illustration, when I was young and innocent I once decided to discharge a power supply capacitor by putting a screwdriver across its terminals. The resulting spark produced a 2mm divot in the blade. A plastic diaphragm is a bit more delicate than a tool steel screwdriver blade. To quote somebody or other: "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

Moved my gator over to the glycine.

Soviets had nailed this look back in the forties.

I gotta try more Rye's. Flipping among Rittenhouse, Pikesville, and Lot 40 rye, that Rittenhouse a damn good deal and at healthy 100 proof too!

I don't even want to know what they're going to charge for that.

I switched my mountain bike from clips to standard petals after my last cash. I was doing a climb and my when about half way through the down stroke on the foot towards the outside of the trail.. my chain snapped. Trail was about 3ft wide myself attached to the bike went tumbling down the slope only about 10ft before getting thankful stuck in a bush. Much happier and consistently less server when I crash now, but the mountain bike is a week day thing and it's the weekend so 300xc it is.