CarlSeibert

Saw this in a bar... Soo, is the irony intentional, or....? (Best I can tell, is a quote from a TV show I don't watch. But not much comes up when you Google it. So it's not an official meme, if there is such a thing. ) Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk

I like Stephensen when he stays in a century that I've breathed in. The critics weren't kind to Reamde, and yeah, could have tighter, but I actually loved it. Sent from my AQT80 using Tapatalk

That's sad. Low class. We can't even mange to have polite bigots nowadays.

Happy Birthday!!!

Happy Birthday Gene!!!

Happy Birthday Bryan!!!

Happy birthday Dinny! In wherever thread

Happy day after birthday!!!

Happy Birthday John!!!

The trend sounds like is going in the right direction. That's good. But the whole painful, frustrating situation blows. Hang in there!

Thanks guys!! Bonnie and Jane threw a super 60s themed party at the Buddha. It was a great birthday.

Another one! It's a great day for birthdays. Happy Birthday!!!

Hsppy Birthday!!!! (Belatedly)

My brother-in-law had the Shures at that price point for a while. (SE 215 I think) and they sounded pretty good. Shure-ish nice midrange.

Hmmm. Built in streaming and a probably decent DAC at a reasonable price. Maybe I won't have to resort to Squeezeplay in a raspberry pi after all. (The Touches survived the lightning strike, BTW, so not an immediate concern. The music server wasn't so lucky. But the hard drive is ok. So, with any luck, I'll be able to slap the drive in a new junky old box and music will flow again. )

So my lightning-blown-up burglar alarm turned out to be just one lightning-blown-up reed switch. Wooot! I've known for about forever that my 30 year old alarm panel was a bird's nest of chaos. Never quite got around to making a project of making sense of it. Coming face to face with the prospect of having to swap it out for modern one made me realize it was time to open it up and straighten things out. Label stuff snd whatnot. And I found...... Feast your eyes on this! Yes, those are wires "connected" by twisting them together and dangling them (in a metal enclosure). The bird's nest-i-ness is what holds it all together. Apparently it's thing. There must have been a memo that we all missed. The feathery bits are 30 years of dust collected on string reinforcing filaments that were just left dangling when they were put in. There must have been a terrible crimp-on connector shortage in the eighties, too. I started the afternoon by very carefully replacing all the twist and dangle connections with Scotchlocks so I could pull the bird's nest apart to see what goes where without it falling to pieces. I did Scotchlocks so I can tell those connections apart from the B-splices later. I'm pretty sure one day I'll need to figure out WHY the twist and dangles were put there in the first place. (At some point, the alarm perimeter was contracted to exclude the garage. I assume that most of the weirdness was to bypass sensors on the garage doors and window. But that doesn't explain ALL of the strange connections.) There's no practical way to dress all the cables properly, some being too short snd some being too long, but at least now stuff that goes together is zip-tied together and everything is labeled and there are crimp-ons at the ends of the wires. And a little less dust.

Allegedly, coyote urine at the premier of your yard will scare away raccoons. We never flit to test it out, because it will also scare away your own pets. Which would be bad. It's available pretty reasonably online.

Did more post lightning strike fix up. Actually more of pulling out frIed electronics and pouring them in a pile. Got internet wiring again. After six calls to India, four days, two different technicians, and twelve hours wasted waiting for appointments ATT had no real intention of keeping. When they finally got here, both techs were great. Both were mortified about how ATT treats its customers. I felt bad for them. It sounds like the newspaper business. A downward spiral.

That Cosmo looks pretty nice. I have Pilot in PVD that's one of my favorites.

I have a Bellroy that I like a lot. Leather, pretty standard affair, but quite thin and well made. http://bellroy.com/wallets?filter=everyday

I've been getting update phone calls from the road rager's insurance company. It seems she has been dodging their calls. They caught her once at work, they said. From then on, she won't pick up. Somehow I'm not shocked. She's probably also on the lamb from the Highway Patrolman. So more nonsense happens, then there will be some sort of trigger event and forty hours later (yes, forty. WTF) they will send out an adjustor or something to pay my claim. The most recent caller was very concerned that I might not be happy about the delay. (OK, not actually. They're really concerned that I might decide to be injured. I get that.) I told her I wasn't going to die of a scratched bumper cover. Frankly, the longer it takes, the more the nasty old person stews about it. I kind of like that. Cautionary tale: Remember the safety switch failing on my A/C and flooding the carpet? It freakin happened again! That's where I've been the last few days. I have now replaced the switch, built a sump/tray affair under the unit, equipped same with a water alarm, pulled up the carpet in the hallway, removed and replaced the pad, treated everything with mold inhibiter and re-laid the carpet. All during the most humid week imaginable. Much of the time has been spent on hands and knees while wearing a respirator. I was going to make some sort of joke about how it was probably the least fun you could have on your hands and knees wearing a respirator until I realized that circumstances that could require such a thing could only range from awful to really awful. In that light - not so bad. So treat your air conditioner like it was in a position to do terrible things to you. The water alarms were only sixty bucks for a pack of five, by the way. I wish I had known THAT sooner!

Does anybody have any experience with any particular ear protector ear muff thingie for babies? A friend of mine is expecting twin girls. He's the house photographer for an NHL team. Thus, there is a trip to a hockey game in the kids' futures. I assume this would be for your basic making a fuss over the cute babies thing, since I can't really see why infant girls would want to see a hockey game, even with a good team, which the Panthers haven't been lately.

Got rammed by a road rager in a traffic jam on the freeway. Nastiest person I have met in forever. She was like something Hollywood would have whipped up for a grade-B movie character "vile old lady". Broken cigarette dangling from her invective-spewing mouth the whole time. She bolted, of course. The Highway Patrolman said that since it took him and hour and a half to show up, he couldn't make hit and run charges stick, but that he would pay her a visit to personally deliver the ticket he could write for her. Only scratches to the rear bumper cover of my Smart. We'll see how much the Mercedes body shop charges her insurance. :-)

Your wife has seriously good taste in watches, too.

Dealing with the second plumbing issue in as many weeks. This time, I found white powder pouring out of rhe kitchen cabinet. Freaked. Cleaned it up before the cats could get to it. Turns out a box of dishwasher soap burst because it was wet. And drops of water were forming on the inside cabinet wall. Like in a cheap horror movie. Without any plausible source. And THAT turned out to be a fine crack in my under sink water filter which was emitting a very, very fine mist. So fine, I couldn't see it in the beam of a flashlight. It was then coalescing on the wall. Had there not been a droplet on the bottom of the filter, I never wouldn't have figured it out. I would have called an exorcist. Sheeesh A couple of weeks ago, the safety float switch on my a/c didn't activate, making a big ass puddle on the carpet. What next? In getting worried about that python in the toilet thing.