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And...it's done. We'll, the concrete part. Steve and I need to build a wall, put in doors and a window, get a little electrical done, and then start making sawdust again. This time with a serious dust collection system and air filter in place.

A friend of mine paid me in Costa Rican coffee. They're pretty delicious:

Some people are panic dancers, but thankfully I'm a panic freezer.

At least they don't have more guns than people.

You know, that makes me really glad to live in the UK - there are no animals that can kill you (unless you have an allergy to a sting). We have one poisonous snake - the adder - which is rare (I've only ever seen two), and the bite is no worse than a bee sting. And it is totally non aggressive. We have three stinging insects. The wasp, the hornet (wasp on steroids), and the bee. And one stinging plant - the nettle. And you can even eat that. Blanching kills the stings, and you can eat it as a salad leaf, or make it into soup. But the US pales into insignificance with poisonous things as compared with Australia, where our daughter lives. The working assumption is that any insect or snake is out to kill you, and many things in the sea too. The worst thing seems to be the Sydney Funnelweb spider. Not only is it venomous in the extreme, huge and ugly, it is also aggressive. If it takes a dislike to you the darned thing can jump 18 inches with fangs bared. Google it. Of course some things just try to eat you outright. Like saltwater crocs or great white sharks.

Retirement is like a permanent vacation. Albeit mostly a staycation. “Up North” for a week of leaf peeping, hiking and discovery. Nicest cabin I have ever stayed in.

I'm terrified of mountain lions, but pumas and cougars don't bother me.

^^Nice ride! Daylight and daytime temps are beginning to conspire against longer road rides around here (not to mention kids' sports) so I made the most of the hour of free time that I had yesterday before dusk.

I really have no fear of bugs, rodents, snakes or the other creepy crawlies that many fear. However, that clock tells me that it's time to get the fuck out!

Ha! My car experience is a little different; one dropped into my lap at highway speeds, when I dropped my sun visor.

Well they're baaaak! Almost stepped on this little buddy while cleaning up the back yard for tomorrow's guests. Baby rattlesnakes are far more dangerous than adults.

Yuge cougar fan.

Had a nice 2.5 hour local ride. Also broke 4000mi on the odometer.

My daughter surprised one in her armpit while she slept. So she got a nasty bite when she grabbed it in surprise. Her husband is an arborist (it is his company) https://www.gibbontrees.com/ . He was surprisingly unfazed by this, and reckoned he probably brought it home somewhere in his work clothes. So she ended up with the classic two-fang puncture in her armpit. She felt a bit sick was all, and a few ibuprofen was all that was needed. They live in Newcastle NSW. Mind you he found one in his UTE cab one morning, and even he did not want one along for the ride. So he ejected it with a leafblower.

The fun part about Australia is that the poisonous critters aren't even the most scary. The huntsman spider is a huge but generally chill dude/dame that will normally just eat other crawling bugs. But if you surprise or deliberately annoy that thing, the fucker will chase you across the room and out of the house. It won't kill you with venom, but that bite hurts. And the way they hide..... You don't want to know the places I've found huntsman spiders. The classic example is 'clock spider'.....

Current RIAA figures are out (link below). This is of course USA figures, but the headline is that vinyl record sales doubled in the first half of the year, with revenues now over 11% of paid for streaming. https://www.riaa.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Mid-Year-2021-RIAA-Music-Revenue-Report.pdf

That's my guess of the model Reks is referring to. I'm thinking about getting one for my office.

Chilling up in Maine.....

I assume it is Jude running said HF youtube channel and then yeah... clueless as the day is long that one. They are hard to drive so something like a modified T1S would work but... it depends on the volume levels. The modded Stax amps work well a low to medium volume but push them and they start to struggle.

Just heard a long segment on the Today current affairs radio 4 programme (in the UK), about the ESA BepiColumbo mission to Mercury. It has just done its first flyby of Mercury - the first of 6 before it gets captured into orbit in 2025. My interest in this, is that I was overall project manager for one of the 12 instruments on board - the Mercury Imaging X-Ray Spectrometer. That uses X-Rays from the sun, the reflected X-Ray light from Mercury having the spectrum of the elements on the surface of the planet - so how much iron, silicon etc, with a 10km resolution. It was launched in October 2018 After shakedown to make sure everything worked after launch, it then did a maneuver past the earth to send it on its way to the inner planets. Since then it has done two Venus flybys and yesterday the first Mercury one. So why go to Mercury? First because it is a rocky planet that has never had an atmosphere, so to learn about how the earth might have formed, Mercury is a good place to learn. Also it is the second densest planet in the solar system - very close to the Earth's density. In addition it has a magnetic field (no-one knows why), and ice at the poles (which is weird given how close it is to the sun). US interest in Ariane 5, is that the James Webb Space Telescope will be launched on one of those, imminently.

Good luck, have fun!

Where is our review sample? Could sound nice (for $3500), but no Whammy bar?