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Couple things.....my LinkedIn transformation is as complete as I think I'll get. Added a pronoun (Red Lectroid) and updated my profile pic. Next up: met three school friends, all Jewish women, one of whom I hadn't seen in 40 years! An awesome time catching up, and spending time with them all. The woman I hadn't seen in 40 years gave me 3 things from her scrapbook: my Bar-Mitzvah invitation, the Party Invitation, and my Thank You note to her. All about 48+ years old! It was incredible! She and her husband live in Southern Maine, not far from my condo up there. So we'll definitely get together! I am fucking LOVING retirement!

Forgot to post last night, grabbed dinner after meetings in Mississippi concluded. Turns out the south knows how to do chicken and waffles.

A very exciting Sunday in Hell. No spoilers this time! Apropos of Roubaix, I put some 40mm slicks on to try out. I am very interested to see how they feel.

Son Andrew and I saw my favorite band The Chameleons again, his third time with me. This ranks as one of their best shows for me....incredible passion and energy throughout! First opening band was my second time seeing them, Lovina Falls. Lots of great music, and got a couple nice pics: one with Reg Smithies of The Chameleons; he doesn't pose for pics that much and when he does, he points his finger at his picture partner. I got to do the same. And Valerie Forgione from Lovina Falls took a nice pic with me as well.

Up at the Maine condo this weekend, a cloudy & cold day turned into a stunner of a beautiful one! Went into Kennebunkport and next to no one was there. Had a great walk around, bought some arty shit, and stayed for dinner. Have always enjoyed Alisson's Restaurant for better-than-pub dining, tonight sat at the bar and had a Lagavulin 16 and my favorite of theirs, the Lobster Bisque Lobster Roll. Worth the $, along with a brief chat with a couple folks at the bar.

bœuf

A few updates. Bought the above Obscura, but returned. Really loved the idea, but less robust than I like (Magrette Regattare being my only automatic reference). Also photography related, Increment Labs is releasing their first watch in a couple weeks with a light meter built in. That’s interesting, though the design is not. Take a look Casio lovers - https://www.increment-labs.com . Hope it succeeds. My Obscura refund money needed to go somewhere (besides the obvious savings), so being an Ohio native and a veteran, Lum-tec Watch Combat Field X5 Titanium 24H incoming. Even bought from a reseller near where I used to bike in high school. Apple Watch holds on the other wrist.

The bike is looking SWEET! I got out for a nice 27mi windy rip around town this afternoon. Felt good to be back outside again before I have to travel for a few days and be away from the bike.

Bruce Hornsby and the Noisemakers https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1JkAjH5G-ZSPHcsxV6QDItb0Nh_Wb-L3f?usp=sharing

There's a guy I follow on Flickr who has a Fuji X-E3 mirrorless body. He adapts a variety of old manual lenses to it, which is how he caught my attention. He's got a taste for old and custom tube gear and has a whole album of space heaters and funny wooden boxes.

Middle Eastern wars just sounded ... better in the 80s.

^^ Because it's a goddamn brilliant camera. I got to shoot with a D4S at work for a bit but have too much Sony stuff at this point to ever practically think about another system. Speaking of Sony, the A7V's 30fps is goddamn bonkers. Sounds like a Gatling gun but allows for capturing some pretty great shots even in mediocre hands. Edit - yes, that's Andrew with the glasses running the 800m today.

My kayak instructor from Chile is playing as “Granny’s Mason Jar” tonight. Good bluegrass.

Thanks guys, Looks like I have some QA work to do... cheers. Edit: I have looked into it a bit further and it is confusing. Since this is a ticketed event, it is not really set up that easily to give a donation only. There's not a lot of options in the setup, but here is at least a simplified process going forward. https://givebutter.com/WalkforBelonging2026/michaels-walking-team I think we can choose our wording on the page and the donation links a lot better going forward as well. Thanks again all for your help.. -- cheers.

Speaking of wars… Massive Attack & Tom Waits - Boots on the Ground https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/apr/16/massive-attack-boots-on-the-ground-ft-tom-waits-review-first-single-in-a-decade-is-a-dark-hymn-for-our-times

I took my daughter to see Jean-Michel Jarre maybe 12 years ago in Birmingham (UK). I got us tickets in the middle of the front row. Now I've seen Jarre before, so I warned Liz of a spectacular entry. Sure enough, fan of light and then a fist comes through it. Once it really starts, Liz says "wow - he's cute"; so I told her that he was 7 years older than me - and he'd had a bit of work done to keep the cuteness factor. It was, it has to be said, a totally awsome Jarre experience. Ancient synths, laser harp - the full beans.

Mega necro here. Last sumemr I bought an unlocked Android tablet. Today I taught myself how to use Morphe to patch the YouTube and Reddit apps for android. It involved a lot of jumping through hoops that were unfamiliar to me. It took me four tries, but managed to get both working. This means I now have native (or if you prefer, "native") apps for both platforms that support ad blocking. If I'm not mistaken, the YT app now has integrated SponsorBlock support, which is quite something.

Record store day!

Probably should be at RSD, but getting nostalgic another direction with America's Greatest Hits. Full album:

His 'n' Hers Indian ice creams

Keeping it classy in the ATL.

On you tube, full set. We were bang in the middle of the front row of a crammed 10000 seat venue. From there the whole experience was immersive.

Another Maphra - source. Elizabeth's take. I have said it before, God bless female Metal singers.

A Matter of Time: The Final Hour by Laufey (2026) https://open.qobuz.com/album/flacllvcjozx0 Example: It is not easy to pick an example: Part jazz, part musical, part pop. 19 tracks and just over an hour. It is pretty album, with lots of arrangements by Spencer Stewart. Big production album. Listening deep there is like 40+ tracks per song (probably a lot more).

Ex Skylark gathering nibbles.

One board, channel, completed. ZF setup was successfully. SS setup didn’t fall out well. It turned out that I’ve connected the feedback wrong with terrible current draw an 8.4V offset at output. After correction, easily done, offset came down to fluctuating 30-40 mV and BIAS acted all right, but not good enough to be used as an amplifier. Now, I feel I’m done with this project and end it with, IMO, a satisfactory Zero Feedback dynamic amplifier. Perhaps I’ll try to get the SS mode working in some future. Main problem is my eyes and enough steady hands to solder SMD and… lack of competence. I just copy others designs. Thank you Kevin. I have some PCB to much for own use. If interested to try this – ping me. Boards are right and left channels, one version is ZF two layers and the other FF/SS version (SS probably nor working) is four layers. Both versions have issues so they will be for free. A nice contribution to Doctors Without Borders will be appreciated.

I kind of despise this guy and his opinions. He’s so happy of meeting himself…

Highs and lows.....sorry if TL;DR The highs: I love my neighborhood, and the people within. I maintain a website for the "Bunco Babes" here, a group of women who would get together monthly to socialize, play bunco...and drink. Since Karen passed, much of the organizing has dropped off. But the OG's of the babes invited me to a get-together; little did I know if was partially to thank me for the web site and congratulate my retirement. Pics below. A low with a little bit of high: we have a local "Buy Nothing" FB group, for free things. I have refurbed and donated computers perhaps a dozen times now. Gave two laptops away this weekend, one to a gent who has been out of work for almost 4 years because he was in an accident where a Mack truck blew a red light and slammed into him. He is now in somewhat constant discomfort or pain, and can't do much physically; insurance fights every step of the way. He even gets PTSD driving long trips.... Yet still, he does a lot of nice small things for others, and we shared our stories about that. Oh, yes: we had one FB friend in common, a wonderful woman with whom I used to work. She passed away from cancer and pneumonia complications recently; it turns out this is her distant cousin, and he didn't even know of her passing. The lower low: another laptop I gave to a woman who has an autistic son (two other kids too, one of whom has pretty high functioning autism). I volunteered to bring the laptop and a full docking station with monitor setup I had over. This amazing woman and her husband spend almost 24x7 watching her youngest, as he has non-verbal autism and also has a potentially deadly condition where his digestive tract will get blocked. Constant monitoring and care, advocating for him at hospital and doctor visits, etc. Hugs and tears resulted. They don't even have a place right now to set up the full monitor, so I told her I will come and help when they do find the space. You can see the strain, yet the strength all at once. Humans are such amazing creatures. But the two situations above point out how much the system works against so many, though!

Travelin McCourys Young Guns tour https://archive.org/details/travelinmccourys2026-04-09_202604 The Young Guns were a group of kids from 16 to 7 1/2. They were fantastic players who drove from all over the southeast to play last night, they'd never met each other before sound check.

^ Great pick up. Regretting not hitting RSD, but from a thrift store visit a month ago - Frantic Percussion (in stereo-stereo). This works for Saturday afternoon house cleaning. Full album:

Finished the right channel today. Feedback as suggested by Justin. Bias servo as suggested by Kevin. Red smoke – Super Symmetrical mode. Green smoke – Zero Feedback mode.

For some reason using Firefox, even lowering the security restrictions, the “continue” button wouldn’t activate. Switched to Chrome, then it run smoothly. Now they’re stealing my data

SOME of us were able to figure that out already.....! 🤣 j/k, thanks Mikey!

Saw it was your BDay on my mobile, and thought I'd post when I get home....looks like we all forgot! Hope it was a great day, and wish you many many more! BTW: one of my (humorous) pet peeves are people who wish "Happy Belated Birthday." The BIRTHDAY wasn't late, your wish was!! 🤣

Thanks Al, I will take a second look at the site settings. I know that a lot of things are built in by Givebutter, but there maybe some options. Sorry for the issues and many thanks again for the generous support. - cheers.

It worked this morning and I'm in, although I can't tell if it credited to you or just your team. Last night the main page loaded fine but as soon as I clicked on something and went back I only got errors when clicking buttons. My initial back and forth was due to confusion related to the buttons. I first clicked "Fundraise" next to your photo thinking that would be the donation page but that is for becoming a fundraiser and participating in the walk I guess. Then, I clicked "I support reentry efforts" and saw a screen about buying tickets. I failed to see the little line at the bottom of that page saying to click there if you just want to donate. After those two attempts, I only got errors. Probably too late but it would seem far clearer for the main page to have one button reading Buy Tickets and another reading Donate Now to Support Reentry Efforts or something.

Happy non-non-AI birthday wish

Thank you guys! Maybe your information will help me with the problem I've with my CFA3smd in SS mode. Removed feeback resistors from board and wired 50K xicons (at red arrows) from outputs to after 5K resistors at inputs. Now steady bias and zero offset. So far so good. But it's still on the kitchen table.

That's My Story: John Lee Hooker Sings The Blues by John Lee Hooker (1960) https://open.qobuz.com/album/tkvkntyv6760o Example: A worthy remaster - little hot on the mic now and then, but a really good recording.

great work ! glad my post helps and yes total length of feedback loop will affect DC offset from my past experience with my own split board attempt , looks like having some oscillation ?

Reworking my CFA3 for ZF/SS switching. Inspired by ang728's hat board, I designed a split-board version. It works fine with ZF but has issues with SS: R channel: 0.2V offset, fluctuating ±0.1V. L channel: <30mV offset, fluctuating ±0.1V. Bias: Stable. Tried those solutions from previous posts but unsuccessful to solve any issues: -Removed hat board; use original jumpers for ZF/SS. -Added 680pF between B-C of output transistors. -Removed C9, C10 (20pF). -Replaced all PZTA56/06. -Swapped THAT340 / K389-J109 / K170-J74. Changing R171, R211, R272, R322 from 300R(silkscreen) to 600R(schematic) fixed the 0.2V offset, but both channels still fluctuate. Suspecting trace interference, I directly wired the jumpers to SS mode. The fluctuation is gone. So I redesign the hat board. SS resistors(R44, R49) sit on hat boards. SS jumpers and SS resistors are removed from cfp3smt2splitpre. My final result to get stable and low DC offet will be: -Using the hat board -R171, R211, R272, R322 = 600R. -Remove C3, C7, C9, C10 (600pF & 20pF) Thanks ang728, his posts helped me a lot.

da7d922377ae419daf8fbcdf319722ac_d3cdd07b32.mp4 Pioneer stack and 🍑

Let's see how deep we can go into Chinese lens recreations. After success with several Light Lens Lab models, and reading/watching too many reviews on this, just ordered the even cheaper Mandler (named after Walter Mandler, the Leica and IMAX lens designer) 35mm F2 “7 elements” based on the Leica Summicron 35mm Type IV (KOB). We'll see.

A reminder that I need to listen to that album again. Early 1980's vibes are always appreciated.

Thank you, Todd. This last post of yours helped me to recover some faith in the human race, which I’ve been losing for a few years now.