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Binging....along with a shot of Jameson (last night).....

I saw the Pogues a couple of times, one where Shane was relatively sober and one when he was hammered. I'll never forget the visual of Spider Stacy smoking and playing the tin whistle, with smoke pouring out of the pipe as he played. RIP to a true legend

RIP Shane....had a chance to see the Pogues, but got sick and had to miss them....was very bummed.....somewhere I have a VHS video of them live, need to find that. And I hadn't realized he was born on Christmas day.... And RIP to Henry Kissinger....an amazing figure in politics....

Happy 21st birthday to my daughter Zoë! I know I've known a lot of you since she was around 2-3 years old, and somehow she made it through to adulthood. Here she is at her birthday dinner with her future MIL, having her first legal drink! (And one of the very few she's ever had.) I'm really proud of her, and she had a good day. Her past two birthdays have been bad (tested positive for COVID in 2021 during her fall break an hour before she was leaving for the airport to fly home, and her now fiancee (Michael, above) had just driven home to CO, so she wound up in AZ all alone on her first birthday away from home. Today? Today started a new trend in her having good ones. ❤️

Happy belated birthday, Zoe. You've got one of my favorite names, ever.

There's More to This Controversial Painting Than You Think (American Gothic):

Happy birthday!

Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton: Knives Don't Have Your Back

Happy Birthday, Zoë! It's great to see you smiling so much.

Good news, two more KGSTs now live and play music. PSUs are set to 400V, so there's plenty of ventilation. I did have one channel with some hum, which turned out to be the tubes. Not sure if it was a bad tube or if the legs just needs some cleaning. Either way I swapped in some RCA 6S4As which worked like a charm.

Cheers to Zoe!! -- Happy Birthdays -- good thing you are not getting any older.

HBD, Z!

Happy Bday, young lady! And congratulations, Brent. Awesome job.

Thanks MLA and Kevin for your help. I got the player up and running yesterday first using the variac to slowly ramp-up. Later tested it without the variac and, fingers crossed, it's working fine so far. The device in question is a Marantz SA-1 SACD/CD player which uses linear power supply based on what I can see in the service manual. To expand on a long story made short, it powered up but was unresponsive when I first took it out of the box. After consulting with the service manual I dissembled the unit and found a blown fuse inside. Instead of the factory spec'ed 1A/250V slow-blow fuse, whoever last serviced the unit put in a fast-blow 2A/250V fuse. Which likely explains why it's blown upon turn-on. I replaced it with a proper slow-blow 1A/250V fuse. This is when I posted my question thinking I should play it safe given the age of the unit and suspecting why the last person serviced it put in an out-of-spec fuse. By the way, this thing is beautifully built like a tank and getting to the fuses take some work. A few photos from the web and of the exact unit. It's wonderful sounding especially with the SACD.

Happy Birthday Zoe, and MANY more great ones!

Marty Krofft was married to a Playboy playmate? RIP to the baller. I watched Pufnstuf, Bugaloos and Sigmund but I was really into Land of the Lost the most. Those slow moving Sleestacks were very scary!

Something like this: Both 285.6 x 116.8 mm

Happy Birthday! Now when is your Dad going to grow up?