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Had the day off so went on a little adventure in the fire-scarred forests of Brookdale & Boulder Creek, CA - a spontaneous house hunt. Mad photoshop skillz there realtor. Like those photos plus general aging and a tornado or two. Did have a nice omelet in Boulder, hung out with two donkeys, and tried on some glasses.

Rosa Chihiro Yamanaka 2020 https://album.link/i/1517727137 Example: Unknown artist to me. I thought it was maybe classical, until I heard the first note. Oh jazz, oh look it is Blue Note. Next time take a little look before you leap Mikey. Or maybe not, I might not get to listen to some things otherwise. Anyway, a good recording of some standards and originals.

sushi supper

Everyone's favorite high pitched, hyperactive Canadian tech dropper got his filthy mitts on a CalDigit TS4 dock: He appears to be quite taken with it. The speed and power is indeed impressive, but I'm not taken with two headphone jacks (both TRS and TRRS) instead of TS3+'s optical output. Due to supply chain woes, the TS4 is a might difficult to find for sale at a reasonable price.

I enjoyed my two years there (mid-1965 through mid-1967).

I just went through Boulder Creek last week on a trip to a sawmill at the top of Empire Grade, which is next door to a Lockheed Martin Space Systems facility. Fire scarred is an understatement but the sawmill is in an amazing spot.

Not a chance.

My nickel: 1. The new timberlines do look very nice. I've thought about adding an induction side burner to my Ironwood 885 and still may some day but for now I'm lazy. 2. I don't think the 780 would be enough. I routinely use a lot of my 885 just cooking for small groups and when smoking bacon the real estate is very helpful. 3. One concern with the Timerblines, they may be too well insulated for their own good for warm weather cooking. You need some inefficiency to cause the grill to use fuel and produce, well, fire/smoke. The Ironwood is only partially insulted and still is pretty stingy on fuel during the summer months. I'd at least way for a few reviews and see how some actual cooks do on these rigs. 4. I love my Ironwood 885. Would I also like a stick burner? Yes. How about a kamado-style charcoal rig? Absolutely. But today I got up at 7, fired up the Traeger while I got Andrew ready for basketball camp, threw on a small pork shoulder and went to the office. I checked temps while I worked for a few hours, picked up the kids and came home. I actually looked in on things and they were still cruising nicely so I wrapped the butt, and left it. My parents arrived a few hours later, I checked on things via my phone, saw the pork wasn't coming up to temp fast enough so I bumped the cook up 25 degrees without leaving my chair. Just an hour later my phone let me know that the pork had reached temp and I went and took it off. That's pretty damn convenient and the food produced is easily as good or better than most BBQ I can buy locally. I'm sure there's better out there, but I'm also sure I'd have to drive an hour or more to find it. 5. Coming from an actual stick burner you might need to temper expectations a little. The flavor will be different. Whether you think it's better or worse is impossible to predict but the fires are radically different between the two types of smokers and the food produced will at least be a little different, but unlikely to be radically different.

Happy belated!

Only thing I have to add is that I got to play around with a Contura once. Most beautiful camera I ever saw. https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/just-bought-my-“grail”-camera-contura-stereo-camera.170807/

The new Timberlines look like money. Induction side burners and modular everything. The XL is the biggest and most expensive grill they make -- and therefore the one you should buy. https://www.traeger.com/pellet-grills/timberline-xl

Thanks everyone. I went out for a nice dinner

There is no generic or universal enclosure as such. I recommend having a look at modushop, the pesante dissipante range could be the ticket. But you’ll need to tap heatsinks and drill holes for the panels. Modushop customise as well, so you could have everything done there from your drawings. eBay is another good source for enclosures. Front Panel Express is a great company for getting drilling of your panels done, you need to work with their proprietary software which is downloadable and fairly easy to use. Unfortunately none of this is cheap...

There were 3 post acquiring citizenship action items (in no particular order) https://risccmke.org/en/after-naturalization/ * Inform the SSA of your new citizenship status. Done. Surprised that USCIS and SSA don't do this automatically, joined up government and all that, but was done in under 5 minutes once my check in number was called. Maybe it's another check and balance? * Register to Vote. Done. Can be done online here in CA. Straightforward. No overt signs of voter suppression. Found the idea of having to chose a political party strange. https://my.lwv.org/california/article/how-choose-political-party-when-registering-vote Given that voting is supposed to be a secret ballot, And that the "Father of the country", George Washington foresaw problems with them. https://www.mountvernon.org/george-washington/the-first-president/political-parties/ Time to read his farewell address. Maybe I could take the approach of an ex-work-colleague, who, while being a gay San Francisco liberal democrat, registered as a Republican, so he could see what they ("the enemy") were up to. Thus he could vote for the most unelectable candidate in the primaries, and would share the contents of their talking points , or campaign contribution begging letters that they mailed to him, with us. That was enlightening. * Apply for a passport. One of the unintended consequences of becoming a citizen is that we are "trapped" in the country, until we have a Passport in our hands. With a green card we could re-enter the country, but we had to hand that back in. So no Passport, no legal re-entry. We have to apply in person at a Post Office for a new passport, and then wait 8-11 weeks (or 5-7 weeks if expedited) based on the current State Department processing times. No immediate passport appointments locally because: reasons (COVID?) But we did manage to find an appointment next week in Sonoma (Boyes Hot Springs!) as the earliest accessible appointment - so a day in wine country, shame! In the meantime I guess we are "stuck" with Hawaii as our deferred travel vacation choice for now.

Born in pain - no semiconductors on the market- but case is here ! Introduction my portable estat with necessary modifications

Thanks to the great work from @Mirko and advice from @kevin gilmore we just finished retrofitting the GS-X MK2's power supply with a custom made GRLV. I haven't had the time to really sit down and listen to it but first impressions that the amp is quite a bit smoother and more detailed now. 😃

Lessening the amount of S&P rub on the brisket always reminds me of the first time I used the secret Brisket Fairy ™ recipe. I could only get a dinky little flat at the local market but I used to entire amount meant for 8 or 10lb briskets that Naaman is used to. It had about a quarter inch of crust and intense salt and pepper flavor. We ate it anyway but it did make your heart race a bit. 😝

The sound: it’s spectacular! Compared to a Stax SRM-007tii with 60’s Mazda Brimar 6CG7’s or 50’s RCA long black plates with D getters, the sound is far more relaxed, analog, detailed, expansive, dynamic and musically involving. I can’t wait to get some NOS EL34’s in here. The Berkeley Reference DAC shows off the Megatron’s speed and transparency; the DAC and Megatron are both detail monsters. The Megatron is a far more capable amp when connected to the Berkeley Reference DAC than a current low-noise, low-distortion reference amp, such as the Topping A90, which I also have. The balanced inputs: dead quiet - perfect with the Wireworld Platinum 8 series XLR interconnects. The voltage gain: I can’t imagine needing any more gain than I’m getting with the 1958 Holland D foil getter E180CC’s (thanks to the community for the tip on these) and the 1948 RCA 5751 triple mica black plates. I will say that this amp takes a solid hour to warm up, however. Temperature: just touched 126F on the exterior of the right transformer case after a couple of hours - the internal temperature was typically within a couple of degrees when previously measured, likely due to the machined vents around the tubes. SMALL UPDATE: Kevin suggested some whisper fans to deal with the heat buildup; this is an excellent idea. Hum: there is none whatsoever, there is only dead silence, irrespective of where the pot is positioned - it’s absolutely impossible to tell whether the Megatron is on, when powered from a current-gen PS Audio regenerator set to 120V. Definitely T2 level stuff! I CANNOT THANK KEVIN ENOUGH

posted for the owner who will comment much further. (for some reason he cannot publish high res pictures)