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Rode 20 miles with a fair amount of climbing in the heat today and felt like I had done something. But then I watched the 150th Milano - Torino race that was a bit longer with more climbing. Oh well. HBO Max and Peacock have way more cycling during the classics season than was available here before and I watch lots of it.

Happy Birthday Al!, Last year's prompts, this years images, plus a bonus image incorporating your recent car troubles!

Funny you should mention that. We finally did the surrender of the vehicle and got our check -- even though the "transfer agent" didn't have the check at first. Apparently it was sent before our prior appointment date and the agent went and found it after completely pissing me off telling us there was no check in her paperwork. Anyway, thanks for all the good wishes everyone!

I’m starting to get sucked in to watching the professional races. Yes, they are on in the middle of the night, but the replays work just fine. The strategy is interesting and the knucklehead-ism (as Chris Horner would say) is amusing. The racing is quite a bit more exciting than the early F1 season. Milan-Sanremo should be fun this weekend.

Outstanding Baja Fish Tacos 🐠 🌮 🌮 At http://www.mayanbeachclub.com/

There's a persistent internet rumor that Benjamin Netanyahu died on March 9th (Biggie Smalls is not happy to share the date.) The theory is that Bibi was killed or injured in an Iranian air strike. Supposedly he's missed some key cabinet meetings. Also, there's a (in my jaded opinion, extremely flimsy) theory that one of Bibi's kids was observing Shiva ...by not posting on social media for seven days. The Israeli government has released three videos of Bibi since then, and all have been "debunked" on the internet as AI generated, enhanced, manipulated, etc. In the first video, Bibi appears to have six fingers on one hand for a moment. In the second, he's in a coffee shop. In that one he actually counts to five in Hebrew on each of his hands and takes a sip of some mocha latte whatever. There are a lot of theories about the coffee video: The cafe in question is not currently open because of the attacks on Tel Aviv. The original footage was shot in 2024 (some say 2020) for a different propaganda effort. The third video is him and the huckster himself Ambassador Mike Huckabee. It's clearly a scripted bit, where ol' Huck meets Bibi in a hallway, they have a stilted and awkward conversation about Israel's assassination list, shake hands and talk about the number of fingers they have. There are a number of weird digital artifacts in the video, but it all seems pretty real to me. An AI generated video wouldn't seem stiff and forced in the same way (it'd be unreal in a completely different one.) I did go on a bit of a deep drive, which even lead me to Xitter for a bit. Wading through the legion of Nazi posts, I found some pretty funny remixes. (There may not embed correctly.) https://fxtwitter.com/abdulhyefahad/status/2034006657722982435 https://fxtwitter.com/drvijaysrinivas/status/2033988906576974124 https://fxtwitter.com/JaiNDoC_RL/status/2034032032813040007

Have the greatest of Birthdays buddy!

Happy birthday, Al! Love you tons!!!!

A very Happy Birthday to you, Al.

Very Happy Birthday!!!

Cheers Al - Happy Birthday. Our Bearded Defender.

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday, DOTU! May all your car troubles give you the day off!

Happy Birthday, Al! Have a great one.

Happy Birthday, Al!

Lunch meatloaf

Happy Birthday, Al!!! Have a great day.

Hope it's a very merry McBirthday.

Happy Birthday Al!

Hey - have a truly great one!

Happy Birthday, DOTU(R)! (party favour noise)

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday, youngster.

Happy Birthday Al!

Happy Birthday!

Sweet Italian sausage and leek Detroit pizza

In other news from China, here we have the fake SR-X1: I've known about these for a while and I finally bought a set as they are so cheap... and very, very rough. They didn't arrive with any earpads but the knockoff leather X1 pads you can find in Asia do work nicely. They are clearly not a 1:1 clone and that headband is something really special in terms of being pure and utter garboleum but it was stupid cheap to add it to them. Housing is 3D printed and quite badly done but look at that cable... to make the 3D print soft and pliable it looks like an absolute mess. Same on this end but the actual plug is nice quality. Nothing wrong with those pins and the spacing seems just fine. Better look at the actual cable used, it is pretty stiff and unwieldy but at least it is 6 parallel cores so the capacitance shouldn't be too bad. It's too short though at 1.5M or so and who knows what the voltage rating is on that thing. I did order a couple of extra ones (and some extra housings too) so I'll zap it with some high voltage and see how it holds up. Anything that can't withstand 1kV AC over an extended time isn't really suitable for this role. Better shot if the actual plug, nothing wrong with those pins and it even has the cutout relief for the bias pin which I always skip on my own plugs. The driver face and the electrodes are etched aluminum or stainless steel. Not sure which as I haven't taken them apart yet. This headband was clearly an afterthought and that metal bends if you look at the wrong way but it does function... kinda. Here we can see the assembly "quality"... or very much lack there of. The housing does not fit correctly together and you might ask... why was this printed in white and the painted? Well I paid extra for the paint... but whey when there are excellent black filaments. Dunno and why not resin print this? Done right and that is superior to injection molding. More of this ace paintjob and the headphones falling apart but nice gold pins there as well. As for how they sound... well sound is produced but something is very wrong inside those drivers. They are far more inefficient than a stock unit and there is audible distortion... quite a bit of it actually. It gets worse and worse as you push the volume to normal levels for me so I'll have to take them apart and see if the drivers are misaligned. They are balanced between the channels though and at low level listening... these are not the worst ever. Now all of this is pretty terrible but clearly a work in progress and not done by some estat fanatics as one would suspect. The drivers don't really work (well they do produce some sound) and the quality is downright atrocious but funny enough, that crap cable does have strain reliefs on both ends which the aftermarket Stax cables do not have. Needless to say, best to stay away from crap too...

Molcajete "Zapata"

Steve loves to smile for pictures

This amp is already costing us money ...but it's not what you think. People are buying entry level STAX headphones, thinking they've got a hot new affordable amp to use them with. Then it turns out to be a piece of garbage and we get a returned headphone to deal with. My recommendation would be to look for a used STAX amp in a similar price range. They work great for many decades.

RIP Chuck.

Motörhead guitarist Phil Campbell dies aged 64. Wizzo was Motorhead's longest serving guitarist. While nothing tops the band's classic power trio era, the Campbell years were often very fruitful. Especially with Mikkey Dee on drums.