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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!

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.

You're an amazing person, Todd. Cheers! EDIT: And that was before I saw the other post. I'm at a loss for words. Thank you so much, Todd and everyone.

Yesterday: Installed (functional) matching tie backs. Fixed hissing / pinprick leak in valve that caused rise from set point to edge of overflow by replacing entire valve assembly after replacing and lubricating just the washer valve failed to improve the situation. Now stays silently at set point. Today: Then: For the house. Replaced With one of For the 'fridge. I think I may deserve a Usual after all that.

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.

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.

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.

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.

^^ 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.

Felt Mountain by Goldfrapp (2000) https://open.qobuz.com/album/u1lencfygsq0e Example: Some frapp for taco Tuesday.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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…

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.

Rush - Permanent Waves

I just really love this song so much. I was actually working on translating it to guitar, back when I played.

Mushroom medley and leek pizza

da7d922377ae419daf8fbcdf319722ac_d3cdd07b32.mp4 Pioneer stack and 🍑

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

Saw that on a Hannah short this morning.

No reference, just vibes.

🦃 🌶️ 🤖 🥒 🍆

Turkey Chilli with AI extra veggies PDF please? Turkey_Chili_Pierre_Franey_Customized.pdf

Rainy Day Brunch

Classical Guitarist Reacts to Rick Beato Reacts to Angine de Poitrine

But that's not what the previous owners installed. Besides. https://nmwd.com/your-water/water-quality/

You know...there is whole house reverse osmosis...

One of my oldest Facesbook friends is Matrix Synth. He started out as a user and is now a "page." He mostly posts ads for synth gear on sites like Reverb and the 'Bay. In spite of not being in the market for any synth gear (ever, sadly) I enjoy keeping tabs on his posts. Today he linked to this listing for a virtual analogue widget that is completely unfamiliar to me. Apparently the unit runs damn near 3000 GBP new. It's "virtual analogue" so purists won't like it. I'm not quite so snobbish. What's surprising to me is that I've never heard of this brand of synthesizers before. In any case, this has been your moment of synth porn.

This one is complex. Hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa dead at 67. The guy coined the term "hip hop." Calling him a pioneer is an understatement. The problem is that he was a child molester and got away with it for decades. There is at least one alleged murder involved in the coverup of his crimes. I can't say RIP in this case.

Haters will saw it Photomeowshopped.

No worries at all! I had found your original comment funny too, but this is even better! BTW, forgot to mention that I even put "John" as my....nickname? And no one asked me about that as well! (For those that haven't seen the movie, the aliens, both good and evil/male and female) are all named John or some variant)

Congrats!

Alec's International Relations professor dug this up as the last time they had any good musical protests at SMU (not exactly UC Berkeley being in Texas and all) over a stupid war. Pity we have one.

"Fly me to the moon..." https://www.twitch.tv/nasa Direct on Twitch. getting pretty big.

Peak of mid-80s South African new romanticism. I realize that's quite specific.

Just because I like the song...

Lot of hate for these guys back in the day as grunge pretenders, but I enjoyed the throwback.

Crawfish ettouffee

Post dental work AI Fish Chowder