HiWire

Marvin Gaye – Let's Get It On (I tried to find Mobile Fidelity's version of What's Going On but it's out of print and going for relatively high prices. The Japanese SHM-SACD is also out of print and barely available but it is SACD-only rather than a hybrid disc like the Mo-Fi)

My post-punk exploration is paying off... Jefferson Starship's "Jane" popped up randomly (nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition): Exegesis here: https://www.gq.com/story/wet-hot-american-summer-jane-jefferson-starship-great

Yes, I'm reading them in order. Bond's struggles are more human in the books – he deals with physical injuries, exhaustion, fear and depression (particularly in You Only Live Twice, after his wife is murdered by Blofeld). According to the Wikipedia entry, The Spy Who Loved Me was badly received by most critics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spy_Who_Loved_Me_(novel) I've always enjoyed the Bond novels as escapist fantasy and they'll probably remain in print for a long time.

I gather it was an unsuccessful experiment... James Bond doesn't show up for a long time and the action was perfunctory. Fleming wasn't a particularly nuanced writer – nobody thought he was a literary genius at the time, but his books were huge bestsellers nonetheless. The writing style seems antique at this point and I think it was already old-fashioned in his day, but my most recent epiphany about Fleming's James Bond books is that many of them were written like romance novels for men. It seems strange in retrospect that it took me so long to figure this out, but that is probably because the films put so much emphasis on action and special effects while the novels get inside James Bond's head. There are lots of funny/eccentric things in the Bond novels like Bond admitting how much he enjoys breakfast or arguing about why he preferred to carry a "lady's gun" (according to Major Boothroyd, aka Q). Ian Fleming and James Bond love eggs: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2724480/007-s-greatest-weakness-Not-girls-martinis-boiled-egg-On-50th-anniversary-Ian-Fleming-s-death-one-thing-never-knew-James-Bond.html

This is a real oddball in the James Bond canon. The story is told from a woman's point of view... the plot of the book is completely unrelated to the movie screenplay with the same name.

Adam and the Ants – Kings of the Wild Frontier

Finished playing Shadowrun Returns (all of it – Dead Man's Switch, Dragonfall, Hong Kong, and some user-generated campaigns) and loved it... However... I started playing Divinity: Original Sin (from the same Steam sale) again and it is incredible. At the time, I was trying to decide between it and Pillars of Eternity, but this game makes PoE look like Pac-Man. Gorgeous and funny... the voice actors are obviously having a ridiculously good time.

Happy Birthday!

Thanks, guys!

Listening to my Shuffle now... it's the tiny one with a big sound. Not looking forward to replacing it – the out of warranty fee and battery service end up costing more than its original price.

I'll miss having the option of an inexpensive iPod... my 3G 4GB iPod Shuffle is serving me well, but sales have probably fallen off a cliff in recent years.

Television – Marquee Moon

Simple is best. I've got old gear anyway, so I won't put myself up as a guinea pig if it's unnecessary. Every new standard has taken a while to implement correctly and consistently, whether it was USB, FireWire, Bluetooth, etc.

Yes, I'll probably start with an adapter if I have to hook up to USB Type-C. I think it will be a few years before this stuff becomes standard, and there aren't any new functions at the moment.

I've been thinking about getting a new MacBook and I realized that Apple has changed all the ports. Everything is Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1 and the headphone jack lost its optical output with the 2016 models: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7818763?start=0&tstart=0 Have you guys done any research on DACs with Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1? I think everyone is going to be using USB Type-A to Type-C adapters until manufacturers release new products. Yes, I realize that there isn't an immediate benefit to using Type-C connections for audio. It looks like an opportunity to sell stuff all over again.

Roxette – Look Sharp!

Various Artists – Ninja Cuts: flexistentialism

No price on the SRM-T8000 yet at Munich: http://www.hifiplus.com/articles/munich-high-end-2017-headphones-personal-audio/?page=2

Good call. I'm buying a few new Macs at work and the 8GB limit of the MacBook Air is starting to look like a deal-killer. The 12" MacBook needs full Thunderbolt 3 speed instead of USB 3.0 in the next revision. Everything else inside is roughly comparable to the bigger MacBooks, otherwise.

Here's a question: are the Thunderbolt 3 ports running at full speed on both sides of the 2017 13" MacBook Pros? https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT207256 The non-Touch Bar 13" MacBook Pro (MacBook Escape) seems to be a decent middle ground: http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/06/10/review-apples-new-kaby-lake-13-macbook-pro-without-touch-bar-unexpectedly-speedy-vs-2016-model

Schneider Electric says SLA batteries last about 3-5 years: http://blog.schneider-electric.com/it-management/2014/08/28/recommendations-prolonging-life-ups-battery/ That matches my experience with my APC and CyberPower UPS at work. People claim that APC is overly-conservative in their battery ratings (some of their UPS units will stop working until you get a new battery, based on the installation date of the current battery), so you might be able to get a longer life out of an SLA in your Liebert, as long as you can keep the batteries near their optimum temperature (77°F). You did the smart thing... if the replacement you ordered works properly, you can budget for more of them. If the other batteries are showing the right voltage and they can take a charge, you can leave them for now.

Gravenhurst – The Ghost In Daylight

Good question – the version I downloaded (HitmanPro 3.7 x64) gave me an option to run the program as a one-shot deal or as a perpetual scanner. I chose the one-shot option and it seems to be completely gone from my system. The only thing it left was the scan log I saved on my desktop. I didn't realize it was a Sophos product, either. The screenshot on the MalwareTips site shows the SurfRight name, which Wikipedia says Sophos acquired in 2015. Maybe they realized the original product was too much like malware itself – they'll probably lose the questionable name as they incorporate the technology into their other products.

Testing almost every free anti-virus/malware app wasn't exactly my plan for the weekend – it definitely woke me from a state of complacence. I've seen friends, family, and co-workers suffer though this kind of stuff and I'm glad the damage wasn't much worse. There's no way I would have thought an app called HitmanPro would be legit Running all the security software also seemed to uncover various little creepy-crawlies that crept into my system and data over the years... some of my files go back to the 1990s.