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Nice of the deer to pose for the shot. And I have my Mt. Tam. View back /s

Exactly right. My own little slice of heaven. It has honestly been a really good post so far.

12lb American Wagyu Shoulder. SnP only. 12 hours @225. Good smoke. she'll eat.

Even as a 10 year old, I thought this was great.

for scale None of those chairs are in the sweet spot. But I did find a room for Ric.

Since I just got these, might be time to talk about possibly the rarest stuff Stax ever made. Let me introduce the SRM-Monitor Mk2 and the SR-Lambda Pro New: I've only seen a couple of these for sale over the years so very rare indeed. The headphones are basically the modern version of the Lambda Pro's but not the Spirit/Pro Classic, made later than that. The SRM-Monitor has been called the Mk2 but the changes are mostly to the chassis. Inside there is still a SRM-1 Mk2 and the ED-1 but with different parts. They are all Pro bias only and notice the extra output on the back. The volume knob is also similar to the SRM-T1S/W knob and not the SRM-1 Mk2 unit found of the original Monitors. I have no idea when these were made but I've heard late 90's and for special customers which wanted to replace their older Lambda Pro sets and SRM-Monitors. With these here the Lambda collection is almost complete...

The Turkeys took an interest in proceedings.

Have a TICEtastic birthday Steve! Cheers!

What a coincidence -- someone on Facebook asked where we first heard Kate Bush -- several of us answered the same: her appearance on SNL -- you say 'transfixed', I said 'mesmerizing':

Time to watch my favorite Robert Duvall movie, "The Great Santini." RIP to one of the greats. Need to fit in "To Kill a Mockingbird" too.

You have to have multiple "bucha" drinks on a "woke" desk. Are those turkeys of the "Jive" variety?

I just want to thank everyone who's contributed so far. I haven't posted an update yet because I've been overwhelmed. Thank you all, so so much!

Old, but never gets old.

On a trip last weekend up the north shore of Lake Superior with my girlfriend and a wolf crossed the highway between Grand Marais and Grand Portage. My girlfriend rolled down the window and snapped a picture. I lived in the Northland most of my life but never thought I'd see one in the wild like this.

Just checking in on Tim .... yup, he can still play.

Okay one more - dude's shorts kill me.

Nigella's Slow Roasted Garlic and Lemon Chicken

Clifford Brown, Trumpeter Whose Brief Life Left a Lasting Mark He was one of the most talked-about jazz musicians in the 1950s. After he died in a car accident at 25, his influence grew. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/obituaries/clifford-brown-overlooked.html?unlocked_article_code=1.MVA.U-8R.KeqzVnsWHn7_&smid=nytcore-ios-share (gift article)

Extra Veggie Turkey Chilli (Cooked after dark, to avoid repercussions)

Made my morning a little bit better...

I just picked up an outin nano espresso maker and fino grinder. Total cost under $300. Battery powered, and comparable in size to an aero press and hand grinder. makes pretty darn good espresso from my beans. Good crema, good body.

So sorry Peter, I know how much you've loved them. You can take some comfort in knowing you gave them a life they never would have known otherwise.

Thought this was worth a re-listen, given the movie release:

Rev. Jesse Jackson, a civil rights icon, dies at 84. I met him in 1999 or so by being at the wrong place at the right time. I worked for Amherst College in the Media Center in the late 90s. It was a lousy job that paid terribly. I never saw $10 an hour, and my boss had to keep my hours under 20 a week or the college would be forced to give me benefits. That meant I'd have to take entire weeks off but also get called in last minute because I was needed. At that time, Jesse Jackon's star had ridden pretty high and he hadn't yet been rocked by any scandals. He was giving a talk at Amherst College. The largest auditorium space they had (outside of the goddamn gymnasium, which was an echoey nightmare) was Johnson Chapel. I was tasked with getting the sound running, but I wasn't allowed to wire up the speaker with a lavalier mic. Filthy peasants like me weren't supposed to get near the important people. Joke was on them, because Jesse wanted a conventional podium mic. Long and not super interesting story short, I was late getting to one of the locations. I arrived huffing and puffing. There was extra security on campus because Jesse Jackson was a big deal but the cops were still pretty chill (this was pre-9/11 and the age of paranoia). The town police had no idea who I was of course, the College ones knew me. I told one of them "I'm here to do sound, where are they?" He said "they're in the The Octagon, doing a press conference." I jogged over there and went in the front door. The press conference was in what had been the Octagon's library. One part of the downstairs was home to "The Afro-American Department" (the sign had not changed since the 70s) but it was too small even for a press conference. The library was upstair and the steps to are spiral (octagonal) and very creaky. I knew if I went up them, even slowly, I'd make such a racket everyone would be staring at me as I entered. So I stood there and waited. Next thing I knew there was a very tall black man, standing over me with his hand out. I hurriedly shook it and "uuh nice to meet you Mr. Jackson." The entire press gaggle and all the various dignitaries followed him down. Once the scrum had cleared, I went over to Johnson Chapel and found my boss and his (full time) assistant working. He gave me the look of death. I quickly told him the above story and he was sufficiently amused that he didn't admonish me for being late. There was a group from Poland that was video taping the talk. They had one guy who spoke English. He asked me for an audio tap from our sound board. I said "Yeah, not problem. It's mic output only however." He said "I had better get our sound engineer." The engineer spoke no English, but I pointed at the output that said "mic" and he nodded. The English speaking Pole said to my boss "the universal language of sound engineers."

"Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!" Thank you for that reminder!

The man just wanted to find a good beach to surf. Something with a good break. RIP, Col. Killgore.

I love that movie and True Grit (1969) has one of my all-time favorite exchanges

RIP Consigliere

Someone told me D3a is a good tube, Did this in LTspice… Modified Megatron – one less capacitor in signal path and no feedback. Works in LTspice. That's always something.

I've seen a bunch of her videos, but I've never heard her sing

Some quick googling suggests that if you contact Niche, they'll sell you a motor that six months or so ago would only run you ~$70+ import fees (~$50 at the time). Might be worth a shot? If you decide to move on, let me know. I'd like to have a go at fixing it.

... keep that Constitution handy...

https://x.com/Fremond_/status/2022292369748508794?s=20https://x.com/Fremond_/status/2022292369748508794?s=20https://x.com/Fremond_/status/2022292369748508794?s=20

Extra Veggie Turkey Chilli 🥒 🫑 🦃 🌶️

Merci. French-adjacent persons?

A quick chicken dish to avoid eating out. Turned out pretty good.

Putting this here, because I live under the delusion that I will some day get through the "Check out this music (fuck VEVO)" thread. As I mentioned elsewhere, a DJ I knew for over 25 years died recently. Periodically, he'd send me a link to a remix he thought I might like. I used Faecesbook's "see friendship" and found a few of them yesterday. Maneater needs no introduction. It's a summation of early 80s synth pop to a T. It's infectious, over the top and will be stuck in your head for days. It's not an easy song to remix properly and do anything original. Certainly there are a legion of remixes out there, most significantly faster than the original's ~90 BPM. Flying White Dots went in the opposite direction, stripping out most of the original and making sparing use of sparse elements while dubbing the absolute fuck out of things. I have sneaked this remix into more than a couple downtempo sets over the years. On the other end of the energy spectrum, The Reflex Stems turn Lennon's diss track against McCartney (that is as much autobiographical as it is about Paul) into a nearly 10 minute epic. In spite of its length, there isn't too much wasted space here. The Reflex wisely left enough time before John's vocals come in to make it easy to work this remix into more conventional downtempo. For me, this is a great "late into the set" track. Both remixes exemplify Matt's ear for quality. I played both of them (unmixed) over my main sound system last night as a tribute.

Five coasters and an outboard cup holder? It seems like you plan to have many drinks simultaneously while working at that desk. 😳

Simple dish. Potatoes with onion and bacon.

Beef stew. Basically the same as my pot roast, with a few small differences. No shallots, but leaks instead. And 1/2 cup of brandy in the sauce. Delicious!

Only a couple of Frenchpersons would even try this, let alone pull it off.

They are very different headphones and the ES-2a easily beats in terms of price but I'd lean more towards the 009D in terms of raw performance. The 009D is really growing on me and what amazes me is how Stax can release crap like the X9000 and the 007S and then this... Both the X9000 and 007S are headphones I'd never listen to for fun while I've been logging a lot of hours on the 009D.