Dusty Chalk

My dad once told me a story: an obscure computer stopped working, so they called in a specialist. The guy came in, looked around for a long time, pulled out stethoscopes, took off panels, put probes in, but hadn't done anything yet. After an hour of this or so, he took all his diagnostic equipment off, put the panels back on, put his black bag back together, put the computer back together, then went over to it, and kicked it. It started right up. The people were overjoyed, "send us the bill". He nodded silently and left. A couple days later, the bill showed up, for $10,000. "What?!?" "You said send you a bill, I sent you my bill." "Uh, could you at least itemize the bill?" "Sure." A couple days later, a second bill came: Kicking the computer -- $30. Knowing where to kick the computer, $9,970. I don't think Mikhail is off wildly spending those tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, I suspect he's using it to get by, wastes too much time doing R&D when he should be doing QC and warranty work, and buying gilt electroplating and obscure tubes. I doubt he could return the money, but I bet he has enough that, were he to put his nose to the grindstone and fix and deliver all the amps, he probably could. The question is whether or not his nose is going anywhere near the grindstone.

No, he is ultra banned. It's not like a double-negative, it's uber-special-super-secret-handshake banned. It's okay, I'm with the banned.

...with apologies to Soul Coughing.

So Friday night is downtown? So we should probably stop telling humanflyz to go to the Shady Grove metro stop, huh? Look like Dupont Circle is the closest metro stop.

No, his stance on transactions that stem from head-fi have always been to help as best he can, but not to get legally involved. (To oversimplify -- he can correct me if he wants.) That's what this amounts to, essentially. And as Nate said, that's not to say that he doesn't have any pull, and it would be good of him to give Mikhail a call, and..."Yo, WTF?", but he certainly does not need to, as KG said.

(shudders)

So did you or did you not build the identical circuit? Sounds like you just contradicted yourself there.

Since when is this Jude's problem? He's not the fucking head-fi police, he just runs the site.

I've heard quite a few people happy with their Zana Deux's, though I haven't heard one myself. If you have the dosh, though, go for the uber-Millet. One man's 'bright' is another man's 'detailed'.

To explain: bums in Hawaii have a special place in my analogy universe -- they're fat. Think about that -- fat bums -- how does someone who has to beg for money and/or food get fat? You could do worse than be a bum in Hawaii. I used to run in the middle of the night. I'd take everything out of my pockets except for my hotel key, which was one of those generic swipe cards. I'd run 'away' until I scared myself into actually believing that I'd fake amnesia and become a bum there, then I'd turn around and run back. Some of those runs were really long.

So banned.

If you wanted to be more subtle about it, you could just offer him a ride on your bike.

Entropy build-up?

Artist: depeche Mode Album: Construction Time Again Song: "Shame" Lyric:

Green tea sampler #1 Green tea sampler #2 Large ingenuiTea loose tea maker (w/almost free pitcher and more green tea sampler) Margaritas?

No, because then it indicates that grawk does not have casino access.

Unholy carp, that may be the cheapest Chord product evar!!!1!

Or maybe we could just change the usernames to orange if they have casino access? Or something?

When it's working, it sounds pretty fucking good.

Monkeykong.

There are even bums in Hawaii going, "7.11 oz.? Why bother..."

Bluetooth, huh? Now that's innovative. I wonder if you can zap it files from your iPhone and it will play them?

Well, I'm a big SP apologist, but even I won't go against the grain and say that there isn't something wrong going on, business-wise. He needs to drop everything (figuratively), and start fixing things and filling orders, starting with the oldest ones first. I actually understand (though do not approve) of the false promises -- I've done the same thing myself. If you make a promise to meet a deadline out loud to someone else, you're more likely to make it then if you just set yourself an internal deadline. Of course, once you start breaking them, the others start being easier to break as well, that's when you fall down the downward spiral that appears to be happening with SP. I really hope he repairs his business before he goes completely under.