n_maher

Thanks for the opinions, guys. I need to look at the respective lists of artists and start a trial or two. I'm with you Jeff, where I just want stuff to work and not be fiddly. I've got enough of that in my life.

I'll likely give a trial a shot as soon as I can get the basics of the front end setup. My home office has been thrown into chaos as a result of full time WFH and I was unprepared for the acceleration.

Let's see if name dropping drags him to this thread, otherwise I'll hunt down New Guy on the interwebs and see what's what.

The DAC question is largely (completely) solved with the Ayre QB-9, which i'm in the process of trying to see if I want to upgrade to Twenty status. If I make that kind of investment (~$1500) I can't imagine replacing it pretty much ever. I'll have a look at the Best Buy website to see if that's enough of a savings to justify, or whether or not I just need to accept parking a laptop permanently on the desktop to serve as the "bridge". I admit that I never really have bothered to look at subscription services like Tidal, but at $1k for a front end like the Mac Mini would cover a lot of months (looks like $20 for high-res subscription).

Sorry for your loss, Brent, and thanks for giving ZoeBelle a great home.

^^^^^ Very nice!

Outstanding Al and Steve, if you have any interest in making a little label or tag to go on the under side of the table to commemorate the project I have some cherry in the shop and the laser and/or CNC router in the garage. Maybe not for this project, but any time you want, just drop a message. Which reminds me, I've still got a package to send your way Al...

The Aged & Ore glasses have become my go-tos. They are perfect for smaller cocktails and neat sipping. I really enjoy the perfectly sized ice balls too.

Finished work early enough to hit the local trails. They are riding nice but we've gotten a lot of rain lately so they're a bit sloppy in parts.

I'd wager that @spritzer has measure the bias voltage, or that Gilmore has.

Lily still loves cooking shows and recently has been bugging me to have a cake-off with her. It was my turn this weekend to make my cake for judging. She helped me in preparation for making her cake next weekend. It's a chocolate cake with dark chocolate frost and chocolate ganache and raspberry filling between each of the three layers of cake, topped with more frost and ganache. It was fun to make, I'll report back with how. it tastes later. Maybe not professional grade, but at least the flour that I buy at the grocery store is going to good use. I rode 30 miles to prepare for the fact that this cake is allegedly nearly 1000cal/slice. EDIT - not sure I ever posted a "complete" picture of the kitchen, if not, this gives you a good idea of what it looks like now.

I made some progress on improving the cup I'm getting from the Levercraft. I went with a slightly finer grind and a little longer extraction in the french press and the results were good. This was with the Mexican bean, which I preferred to begin with. I'll run through the a few more of those beans before I try the same approach with the Burundi and see how it goes. I admit to not having a whole lot of interest in the subtleties of making coffee, I very much like to just grind, brew, consume (repeat as needed) without much/any fiddling.

I've tried both French press and espresso. The FP has been ok to good, dialing in brew times, but the lighter roast as an espresso has not produced good results. Maybe I need to adjust grind significantly but the extraction was thin and didn't have very good flavor. This likely has a lot to do with me being a darker roast guy in general and preferring strong coffee more than anything else.

I received tracking for my order last week. I have to be honest, I'm not overwhelmed by the Levercraft coffee so far. I'm sure that's largely a personal preference issue.

Looks sweet! Nice work.

Yeah, I think the computer is the right solution it then comes down to hating to pay the ridiculous asking price for a Mac Mini. I guess I'll have to start watching refurb outlets for stuff like this. Todd, really appreciate the input and the offer of a loan. Let me look into the Aries first along with a few computer options before we go down that road.

It seems like I've been trying to do this for years and WFH may finally force the issue enough into the forefront that I do something. So, what I'm basically looking for is a stand-alone music server, with onboard storage capacity, decent library management tools, and a reliably updated GUI. I'm not against the obvious Mac Mini choice as I have external DAC options that make that doable, but would be interested in hearing folks other thoughts on this. Budget is not unlimited and the Brooklyn solutions of the world need not apply. I've looked and can't really find anything that gets me very excited.

Rainy Sunday = Green Chili and cast-iron-skillet-corn bread.

Yeah, sorry, no way I'm paying $24 for 8oz of coffee. This order was already more than 2x what Old Bisbee charges and while it's good, I'm just not that sophisticated. @HemiSam - I would characterize the roast as pretty light, certainly considerably lighter than OBR does their beans - which I don't have an issue with. And seriously, I was holding off on the espresso machine until Breville came out with the Bambino. It's tiny and in my humble opinion, does a superb job. No kidding, it hardly takes up more room than a large roll of paper towels. And I've stared to mix French press brews back into my routine especially if I'm trying a new coffee for the first time. I see precious little, if any, need to go to a cafe for coffee these days. Not that any of them are open currently.

These arrived yesterday. Trying the Burundi now, which is quite good.

Grilled pizza tonight, complete with homemade dough. COVID home living has got to be good for something.

This.

^^ My guess is that to get to the Yemeni he's got to clear some of what he already has listed. It's spendy but I'll try to slide an order this guy's way, Dan. I'm nervous what the shipping is going to be for glass bottles of coffee beans. EDIT - in case anyone is curious, it's about $8 to ship 2 bottles (1lb).

RIP Kenny Cause every hand's a winner, And every hand's a loser, And the best that you can hope for Is to die in your sleep.