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Yes, that is very nice work Birgir!

This. For a northerner who has lived in the south, driving on ice just ain't happening, no matter how much experience you have. Well, experience does help, but not that much Without plows/salt trucks, the just ain't happening phrase does come to mind, and that is after driving thru a snowstorm here when they were running low/out of salt. Stay safe!

Hmm, problems with lead-free ball grid array (BGA) devices? Hope you are lucky and this isn't it. RoHS should be repealed IMHO as I think it causes more landfill clutter (from people pitching failed devices) and the lead in electronics devices isn't nearly as much of a problem as they seemed to think at the time.

Happy Birthday Jeff! Hope you have a great one!

^ Glad to hear it Dan! Agreed. This one is the suckiest winter I can recall since moving to Chicago in the late '80s.

^ Yeah, ice sucks. Stay safe guys. We got maybe 4" so far, made the drive into work really slow. Had to jump my son's car to move it last night (needs a battery), and a cop gave him a ticket yesterday for it being parked in the cul de sac for days. Put the car in the driveway last night, had to jump it this morning and put it back out on the street. Will replace the battery tonight. Love how he waits for the best days for these things

That rack from amazon didn't look too bad particularly for the price posty...

^ Replace the battery? We were just at the Apple store yesterday looking at MBPs for our younger son. The guy that was waiting on us told us that the Retina display models could not be upgraded (RAM or SSD). After doing some reading online (Macbook Pro: Taking the Pro out of the equation), I'm having doubts about wanting to buy one of these. Didn't help that the sales guy kept saying that these were "solid state machines". I didn't realize they ever built any with tubes. Found a different sales guy. Apple is starting to look more like B&O in the audio world to me... Did look at the Mac Pro, and it is cool. The 2nd sales guy highlighted and launched every application that was installed on it in under 30 seconds... pretty cool. We did buy a Mac Mini (4Gb/1T 2.4G i7) from the refurb store on Friday night to replace my G5 PowerMac.

Happy Birthday!

Just watched the 1st 2 episodes of this and it seems pretty good so far. Stars Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as a pair of Louisiana detectives trying to solve a serial killer case.

Happy Birthday Mike! Any FFF in your near future?

^ Curious. Had you heard back from lil knight before you sent the money? Or did you just send it...

Conductor Claudio Abbado, 80, passed away yesterday. I believe my favorite Mahler 2 recording was by him, with the CSO, from the late '80s. Sometimes I think the CSO made a mistake hiring Barenboim instead of Abbado, but I suppose Barenboim left some good influences also. RIP

I was planning on using the mini as a workstation, but I suppose I could also let it run this as its not like I have many systems on the network. One of the mini's I was looking at is a 2011 server on local CL here.

Would you guys trust the OWC SSDs? Getting them to maintain backups can be a problem. The only reason it happens now is the one external is up in my younger son's room and is always connected. On another note, I am considering replacing my aging PowerMac G5 with a mini. If I put the PM upstairs and connected to the router, could I use this as sort of a backup server? I'll probably replace the Linksys router with an Apple Airport Extreme as well. The PM would be connected to the router via Ethernet as its airport card is limited to 802.1g.

Macbook Pro upgrades: My son has a Macbook Pro 5.5, 2009 model, with the stock 2G RAM (2 x 1G DIMMs), 160G HD. We'd like to do some upgrades (RAM and HD) in preparation for putting OSX 10.9 on it. For RAM, figured I'd use Crucial, and get either a 4G DIMM (for 5G), or get the 8G kit. I assume since they sell single DIMMs that these are not in a paired slot arrangement. 8G is the max for this machine. HD: They want to keep the superdrive. I know most of you like SSDs, but since they will be paying for the upgrades, not sure if they can swing that or not. And since it is still a relatively infant tech.,reliability is a concern. We do have at least 2 externals, 1 of which they have been using for Time Machine for this computer. We were thinking something in the 500G to 1T range, though with the externals, if a more reasonably priced SSD in the 240G+ range were recommended, they could deal with that. I see Hybrid SSHDs coming out, and priced pretty reasonably. Any experience with those? Thanks for the recommendations!

Happy Birthday Grahame!

There was some speculation that some of the fake J109/K389s that tested as bipolar parts might have been these... I'd agree that making fakes in this packaging would not be economically feasible, unless the faker was looking to lose money.

Now Marc Also, are you testing this with the input(s) shorted to ground? Leaving the input floating will cause the output to drift a lt. Otherwise, you have some problems in the amp it would seem.

If it were mine, I would get it so that DC offset is in the 1-2mV range WITHOUT the opamp in. Yours is much too high at 100mV. Are you using all 4 (or is it 8 for balanced?) pots? 620 or 680 ohm resistors in parallel with the pots?

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday John!

^ Bingo. That is also why I think people who make statements about a power cable, et. al. making a "world" of difference might notice more difference from a piece of equipment with a proper power supply and run thru a bog standard AC cord. A tight grip on the plug blades should only be a good thing, though not sure you would hear anything unless you are trying too hard. As for outlets, the ones that used to be considered good for readily available (i.e., home improvement store or hardware store) were the Pass and Seymour 5262s. Of course that was before the Oyaides and whatever nonsense came on the market. There's always the bargains here as well...

I also believe it is technically illegal to put 20A receptacles on a 15A circuit... if that is what you did.

^ since there are more than 1 of them, I would think the goal would be to build all 24 in one day; 364 days vacation. What's not to like?