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Was thinking about you, Todd, and your nephew as I spend a few minutes out in the driveway tonight tinkering with the camera. I'm pretty shite at. lunar photography, but still had fun for 10 minutes until I couldn't feel my hands.

I think to understand that we'd first have to declare war. Right now we have a president (and military frankly) performing unsanctioned and unauthorized (and from all I can tell unprovoked) military actions. It's mind boggling.

Buldak with cheese (which I made)

Actually yesterday, not today. I got up early on my 4 day holiday weekend, and decided to get my laundry done early. So loaded up the laundry and Maki and headed to the laundromat in Fairfax. Got it done and headed back home to Nicasio. Halfway home, on Nicasio Valley Rd. saw flashing lights.... Had to turn back and go the long way around. On Lucas Valley Rd. I had to stop briefly for an overturned car. Luckily no more blockages, and got home to discover that I still had power. Could have been much worse.

Late picture, and a little burnt, but it was delicious.

I don't do new year resolutions. However, I now have one for 2026. Eat more Korean food.

Philippine Airlines inflight safety videos

Hey - at least we are number one in the search results --- over the actual manufactures site.-- Need to work on their SEO as well.

I think you mean New Texas.

The United States is going to be “very strongly involved” in Venezuela’s oil industry after the operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, President Donald Trump told Fox News on Saturday. He said: We have the greatest oil companies in the world, the biggest, the greatest, and we’re going to be very much involved in it. https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-explosions-venezuela-maduro-latest-news-updates-live The stolen oil… NYT

Just caught up on the Might Nein animated show and am now watching Fallout

My heart almost broke. So glad for that last bit.

I think it was a combo effect. I thought I cleaned the drip tray and dump trough after my last brisket, but probably not good enough. The belly was good and fatty, so there may have been more juice than previous runs. And there seemed to be more dust in the pellet bag when I was filling the hopper. So this may have led to it throwing more sparks than normal with the blower. I have sifted pellets previously to reduce dust, not this time. So - I will clean more thoroughly, sift my pellets, and buy less fatty belly (the last one will not happen). On a positive note. After cleaning, I ran it up to 500F and back down, no issues, then smoked a lovely slab of salmon (not pictured). It worked like a charm. So the my thoughts on it just being cosmetic seems to hold out for now. I will pick up some high temp paint to give the open metal a coat. Also as a side note, since I setup fiber internets I didn't put the grill on my network yet. The app would have told me if it got to cold, or in this case too hot. So adding the grill to the network is another task.

Shit, Mikey. I've read a few stories about grease fires but that's pretty extreme. Do you think it was just from the belly or was there some built up grease from the grill/smoker not draining properly or something? Regardless of root cause, that sucks.

I have not watched the new animated series yet, but I did watch the original 550+ hour campaign 2 of Critical Role. I have been re-watching the original Campaign 1 (on Episode 42). If they kept the spirit and pace of The Legend of Vox Machina, I look forward to the Mighty Nein series.

Two more ST episodes to go. It's full of holes (pun intended) and the actors look ridiculously old for teens but the final season is a fun ride.

I'm pretty sure I just used the Lite-On LTST-C170CKT LEDs and the 402R resistors.

I don't think we need to declare war. I think if the world perceives the US as committing an act of war against a country, then we're at war. And the world will definitely perceive this as an act of war. Yay, we elected a total villain for president. Well done, MAGAts.

Any guess who we’re going to invade next? From a week ago: https://www.theguardian.com/law/ng-interactive/2025/dec/25/how-donald-trump-killed-international-law

Roughly based on the schematic Kevin provided (Based on the version with the extra 1N4007 diode), I did an SMD layout of the circlotron PSU. Yes, it looks familiar. The layout was adapted from the GRHV SMD board and modified for this application. The board size is 51 mm × 31 mm. The KSC5026 was replaced with STN0214, using a large copper pad underneath for heat dissipation. The 10 Ω / 5 W resistor can also be substituted with 4.7 Ω, which is generally easier to source. Don`t know if the two stn0214s can be replaced by PBHV2160.

I had tried both then with the 3 oz board there was not much difference the onboard regs were a bit better. The big difference was to attach the transistor's heatsink to the box to drive the heat out. It may depend on what box you use that from the group by was good for this. I wrote about it then The little amp is at my bed sometimes I forget to switch it off. There was not problem with it for about five years(?).

I had tried both then with the 3 oz board there was not much difference the onboard regs were a bit better. The big difference was to attach the transistor's heatsink to the box to drive the heat out. It may depend on what box you use that from the group by was good for this. I wrote about it then

Definitely 47uf. I put .47uf there by mistake when I built it; took days to figure out what I'd done wrong :).

I endorse this message. https://www.maangchi.com/recipe/buldak

I don't know that there is much difference between them, and since I've never been successful mounting the QFN packages, I don't know about any heat difference, but I would think the regulator contribution to this is swamped by the 32 PZTAs. If I could have mounted these successfully, that is the way I would have gone. After building 4 of these, wishlist for changes/additions to the board would be: Addition of Kevin's balanced protector circuit, with a manual mute switch. Implementation of a delay circuit (5 seconds) for power application to the board to allow for the Meanwell bricks to come up at the same time. I determined that this was the source of the large DC offset I was seeing on the SE output when the amp is fired up. #1 above could take care of this if you made sure to mute the output for a couple of seconds while it is powering up. These things do run hot. I have one of the ones I built for another user back for repair after it was left on with something on top of it. Amb notes on his forum when replying to a user who used his regs in a piece of Bryston equipment that they don't like heat very well. Since the LDO reg is really the only thing on his boards, this must mean that those reg chips don't like heat much. The GB boards were done using 3oz copper, making them about as good of a heatsink as you are going to get from a PCB (and a huge pain to work with).

board updated with extra diode. in the stax mafia google shares

We skipped the BEPs this year as the luck thing hasn't worked for the last few. Went with a whole einkorn wheat flatbread with onions, shallots, anaheim peppers, gouda, cheddar, parmigiano, and herbs.

Dining on good luck black eyed peas and collard greens.

Today NASA hosted a chat session with my nephew. We got to catch up with him, talk about things he's doing, etc. He took us on a bit of a tour and we got to see his view from ISS. And....fancy that....the world really IS round! 🤣 'Twas very very cool! Pics are screen captures, and video quality was so-so. But wow.....

It turns out Discogs has a YouTube channel:

you should see some of the chinese cfa3 ripoffs for around $1600. one in particular is fairly decent, the rest are trash. just wait till the chinese start selling the D&G clones. running with multiple >1kv power supplies. what could possibly go wrong.

I know how that is tice.. on my land. The other night: bigger than it looks {3' diameter}. My trailer back left. Two nights later. Just outside my front door... {about 120'+} taking out a chunk of my neighbor's fence. Last night at about 1:30 am, a 100' tree on the other neighbor's property came crashing down. Lucky it didn't hit anything, But about 10° difference from where it fell and it could have easily taken out my truck. let's just say I'm not going to park it anywhere close to that area anymore. On a positive note, I do have a tree guy coming on Monday and for a pile of cash, he is going to take out six trees on my property alone plus two more on the neighbor's. It does not mean that I will sleep more soundly when it's windy at night. but it will reduce the danger of major impact by a small percentage.

It's all about stealing oil. The USA stealing Venezuelan oil.

^

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/jan/03/caracas-explosions-venezuela-maduro-latest-news-updates-live

So I wanted some new year pork belly... Loaded up the grilla with three chunks. At about 9pm last night they were hovering around 180 degrees. I was going to give it another hour and give it a check. Well I had walked out to a grease fire happening. Pulled the pork (what was left of it) and put out the small fire. Some cosmetic damage: and three pork briquettes. The middle one might have some salvable pork on the inside. I will deal with that later. I need to clean everything up because I have a slab of salmon to smoke up. Happy New Year! 🥳

RIP Greg Biffle - and family.... RIP Mr. La Biff.