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At least this year I finally gave in to the temptation that I've had now for several years to premium price my Saturdays. You really only have 3 Saturdays per season because it's hard to get companies to shift their parties back to the last Saturday in November. So this year I've been able to book multiple hour Saturday events with the two biggest law firms on Island and a really big event hosted by the Ritz Carlton, all for USD 400 per hour. Up until last year, I was still treating Saturdays like any other day and booking my time at KYD 150 (which is about USD 195), plus they were smaller events that didn't give me any particular exposure either. It's not so much about the money (although more is always good), but about "stepping up the game" and changing up the mix of events that I do such that it will be more to my liking. My favorite events are still the big grade school assemblies (think 300-500 screaming kids) and also the home visits, especially the big happy extended family gatherings. That's where my heart is at, not so much for the public events where long lines form for pictures, or the corporate events where there is a commercial aspect to it. But if I'm going to do the corporate events (less interesting to me), I might as well charge them a premium price on weekends (my billing rate for Friday nights and all day on Sundays is also up this year, but not as high as Saturdays). This then allows me to do more charitable events and deeply discounted family events (for people who don't have good jobs, but still love their kids), but I'm no longer willing to schedule any such events during the weekends. Just tonight, I told a friend, "On a Tuesday night, it will cost you either $50 or a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. On a Saturday afternoon, it will cost you $400. Professional Santas aren't cheap, and cheap Santas aren't professional."

I thought it would be fun to document the insane amount of work it will take to turn the Single Power ES-2 into something useful. Now Kevin had done quite a bit of work for me such as fitted new teflon tube sockets and teflon Stax sockets but that still leaves a lot of shit to do. Here is what it looked like when I got it: The wooden front for the amp section was cracked so Kevin threw it out. The weight of just the empty chassis was pushing 24kg so my first decision was to ditch the PSU and do it internally. First up do the back panel: Here is the reason why I don't add RCA's to my amps... Now for the front panel. Mikhail had plenty of very useless holes there for various functions that never worked. This makes things tricky but the front needs to have four 50K pots to adjust the offset of each output tube, two 5K pots with two test points for each to adjust the front end balance. One quad pot as well as a rotary power switch to hide some of those extra holes... Now comes the fun part of cramming power supplies into the chassis...

Spent some time at the REI sale. Some really good deals there. $105 off the Baltoro 75. Ended up getting the Big Agnes Fly Creek UL2 with the footprint for around $260 out the door plus a bunch of winter gym/running clothes.

I though Santa could warp the space-time continuum. Seems reasonable to me, assuming the sleigh is involved.

A search for "retarded" does bring up your post...

If you were really Santa you would figure out a way to do it. Your just an actor! A fraud even. Have you no shame?

My Mjölnir Audio BHSE has landed and first impression: Audio heaven! Thank you Birgir.

I think you should go to a urologist Wayne. The density of your nether regions is approaching that of your femur.

They do 1411kpbs? But it's FLAC. What is going on here? 30 day trial was for people who signed up early for info(VIP access). 7 day is the standard trial. I got a 404 error when I signed up so my 30 day was "used." I messaged them and they got me set back up within half a day (it was late at night on a launch weekend.) FWIW, I used Spotify for background music too. With Tidal, I have been actually listening to stuff while at work. I got a good 5.5-6 hours in today after a last minute mandatory OT day. I was even complimented on mymusical stylings by my neighbor (I have Grados at work), so we would up talking music for a few hours (and working a little too.) **BRENT**

Thanks all, Got me a HAP-S1B and very happy with it. Heavy little buggar though. Les

Cohiba Lanceros

Thanks to an ickStream beta that's gone live, I can now get Tidal as an input to the squeezebox ecosystem. So now listening to gapless, lossless, synced multi-room new album goodness, streamed from the cloud, controlled by iPeng, because: technology!

Knockando found again -- yay..

Fucking earworms, now I have, "It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas!" stuck in my head...

Girl Talk – Feed the Animals

I just got yelled at for about 15 minutes by a woman from Digicel (Jamaican-based phone company) for not being able to accommodate her 11th hour request for a 3-6pm Santa event on a freaking Saturday (December 13th). This, after she cancelled a booking that they had previously made for the prior Saturday from 12-2pm with nothing more than a "Sorry, but we're not doing a Santa event this year" email. (As in, fuck you, we're not really sorry, we're just canceling.) So now it's my fucking job to be able to read her mind 10 months in advance and reserve one of the most prime spots on my entire calendar, which was actually booked on February 12th for $400 per hour. She actually wants me to call that company and cancel their event and rebook it for her company for $175 per hour because that's what is in her budget and what she considers to be "a fair price." I was patient with her and offered every conceivable solution that I could in terms of my availability (mostly evening hours during the week at this point). But no, she wants me for her event at her rate, and expects me to fuck myself with my other clients. I'd actually have to cancel that event and shift around another event to do as she's demanded (not requested). All of this because, apparently (in her view), I should allow them to pick their date and time (and rate) because they rudely cancelled on me about 2 weeks ago with no indication whatsoever that they might be considering hosting another event at a different location, date, and time. She kept saying, "But we already made a reservation!" as if it represents a coupon of some sort that then allows them to order me around any which way they choose to. What an idiot. Plus, they made me give away those shitty little miniature candy canes last year because they were too cheap to do anything better. In the meantime, I've rebooked my time for their cancelled event on the 6th, so she's not getting that time either!

Dam shame to see a ALPS RK50 put out to pasture.

Watching "Rush" and thinking of our HC F1 crew.

Well HAP-S1. You decide the color. Still love this video... http://youtu.be/24U_mt7V62U