oldmako

Old Fashioned In an empty rocks glass place: one sugar cube (or half a tsp) one or two maraschino cherry(s) one half slice of an orange 3-6 shakes of bitters depending on taste splash of club soda Using a muddler, smash the fruit and allow it to mingle with the soda, sugar and bitters. Pack the glass with ice, and then fill to the brim with bourbon. Stir lightly and enjoy throuroughly.

The reefer in my basement is really responding well to the new bulbs. Or is it the worm castings and bone meal? Or is it The Who blasting through my Fortes??

At St Maarten, there is a rather large rock (a mountain) right off the other end of the runway. The runway itself is also very short. Coming in over the water is about the only way to land there unless one is in a very small plane. Only then can the runway can be used from the other direction. It's a hoot to fly into but you really need to get it right the first time. Great beaches on St Maarten! Pass me a Carib please!

Metal doors are a PITA to paint unless (as previously mentioned) you don't mind the brush strokes. If you decide to wail on that mother your own self, I'd recommend a 6 inch foam roller. They make them with differing pore density. You'll want one that's fairly fine. Schlep on down to your local paint shop...or Homie D's if you don't have a dedicated paint store and axe 'em what they recommend. I just painted my GFs front door black, and every little blob shows. Looks great from the driveway though!

UFB or TBS. Hopefully the former. This smells a bit like that MAC thread last week. And I thought I was the CL king!

I'm in the same boat. I just turn the vol on the laptop to about 80-90% and live with it. I'm running an old Pioneer 9100 at about 85 watts and it's blowing the grills off my CF3's at about one half volume. I assume that you opened the sound manager up and tweaked all the levels?? Not to be an ***....sorry if you did. I find that the volumes are close enough that I don't notice any signif difference.

I have a version of 'back in the ussr' by them....it's just as bizarre.

Lots of work, but you can end up with a really nice finish if you take your time. Best of luck with it.

While I certainly feel for the poor worker bees at CC, may the the principles of the corp rot in hell.

There are many things which you can use and each will have it's benefits and drawbacks. I like to use plain old Tung Oil. You can buy a pint for about 8 bucks or so. It is a large component of Polyurethane. I apply multiple THIN coats using a clean, lint free rag. Use plenty of light so you can see the sheen from the application. During the application I like to shine a lamp across it at an acute angle so I can see the coverage. I apply it as thin as I can and rub it with the grain to just barely cover the piece. One thin coat like this will dry in just a few minutes and you can then reapply a second coat. Depending on the piece and desired sheen, just keep adding thin coats. Take care to keep it thin and you won't see marks from the application. Today I applied two thin coats of boiled linseed oil to my Fortes, and my amp and tuner. The amp and tuner will get a few thin coats of Tung oil in a week or so. The Fortes probably won't depending on how they look. One big benefit of Tung oil is that it forms a protective coating over the wood which the Linseed oil alone will not do. It will take some time and 10-20 thin coats depending on how much gloss you want. But, once you get the hang of the app it goes very quickly. Especially as it begins to build up on the wood. Years ago I made a cherry coffee table and used this technique to finish it. It still looks great, and if it ever needs a touch up, it's an easy and consistent finish.

Three gals get together for Ladies night out. The next day they are eating lunch together. The brunetts says, "I was SO drunk last night, that I got lost on the way home and ran my car into a ditch and passed out! The red head says "that's nothing, I was so drunk I coudn't even FIND my car! The blond says "that's nothing, when I got home I blew chunks! The first two look at one another and one says, "that doesn't sound too bad to me..." Then the blond replied, "you don't understand, Chunks is my dog!"

Dusty rides into town on his old horse and ties it up at the saloon. He's been out on the range for six weeks and is exhausted, sore and filthy. So is his horse. The sherriff is walking by and says "Howdy Dusty" Dusty replies that he's tired, needs a drink, a bath and a bed. Just before he enters the saloon he carefully lifts his horses tail and plants his lips squarely on the horses ***. The sherriff is dumbstruck. "Whoa Dusty! Why did you just do that??" Dusty replies, "Sheriff, I got me some powerful chapped lips" and turns to walk into the saloon. "Does THAT help your lips? asks the Sherriff. Dusty looks slowly at the Sheriff and says, "No, but it keeps me from lickin em!"

Shazam! Now that is usefull info. Yes, I listen to 89.5 and 90.3 ninety-nine percent of the time so I will hack and whack accordingly. Upstairs I can cheat and stream off the innernets but that's not an option downstairs. Thanks, I will buy both a dipole and some ears. One of the two is bound to solve this.

All great replies, many thanks. I too remember the days of running it out the window and up the chimney but my present domo has no such acoutrement. Hence my delimna. I was just wondering if there were any 'new' ideas regarding antennae. I had seen a Terk on ebay but I know nothing about it. The 3 receivers upstairs all have fairly good reception using my low-tech speaker wire trick, but the main mosheen in the downstairs has limp recep and that's the main one I want to improve. I'll look at Terk again and buy elcheapo rabbit ears for the pioneer TX9100 downstairs. BTW, the cheap Sony HT receiver in my daughters room SUCKS at pulling in anything. Fortunately I only parted with 40 of my hard earned greenbacks during it's acquisition. Conversely, my vintage Sansui is amazing. It's a sweet old unit. Jazz, Scotch and a Casa Magna tonight. Not too shabby!

Might I suggest that you widen your horizons a bit? There is a ton of great music that isn't necessarily rock, but leans that way. By flirting with other genres and stuff that never makes the radio you can find some great new (to you) music. Amazon was suggested earlier and I completely agree. Much as iTunes allows you to sample so does Amazon. Try Pandora.com. Enter a band that you like and as soon as they play a song you know by heart skip it, or shelve it for 30 days. (these are options available to you) Listen for what you DON'T know as opposed to what you do. When you hear something you like, sample the rest of the CD on either iTunes or Amazon. If you love it, buy it. In two hours on Pandora I often by several CDs. Set up several "stations" and go with the flow. If something blows you away make IT a station and see what that leads to. It's free, and it's great. I'm buying stuff I have never heard of and my musical tastes have always been quite varied as compared to those of my friends for example. One downfall is that amount of repetition which Pandora introduces once it figures out what YOU like. I zap songs with the 30 day restriction the second time I hear them. Keeps it fresh and new. If it's not Rap, horrible mainstream CMT style country, or Celtic Women chances are I'll listen to it. Little Feat, Snooky Pryor, Chris Smither, Scott Hamilton, Johnny Lang, Ry Cooder, Count Basie, Dick Hyman, Jimie Vaughn, WA Mozart, Dinah Washington, NRBQ, Glenn Miller, Keb Mo, Ibrahim Ferrer, Ruben Gonazalez, Hayes Carll, ......................................etc etc

Gents, what are some recommendations for a decent FM antenna? I am currently stringing my domo with various lengths of speaker wire, extension cord, chicken wire, aluminum foil covered coat hangers, etc in an attempt to better myself.....er, better my reception. I have 5 units going in 5 differnt locations, so I need 5 of something. Sources would be nifty as well. And lastly since you are all gear heads, how difficult would it be to replace the recently shagged out signal strength meter on my Pioneer tx 9100?? Or is a replacement made of unobtanium?? Thanks for the help, tutelage and flames if necessary.

Another Craigslist score.... This morning I got a very nice Sansui G5700 for $60. Nuttin wrong so far! I think it was an 80 watt unit at birth. It will live in my daughters room.

IMO, these days FM pretty much sucks. I listen to either NPR or classical most of the time. When I want to listen to rock, blues or something bizarre I just stream a station or Pandora into my amp. There are some great college town stations out there, and some specialty shows on certain stations, but most of what they play the rest of the time I don't care for. I am sick of DJs who think we tune in to listen to THEM. Bring back Bob and the original 102.3 WHFS from Bethesda and I'll listen again....hell I'd PAY for that station. Much of old 70s rock was great, but I really need some variety in my life. There were some great bands who put out 10 albums but only 3 songs ever get played....(ie, Steely Dan)...drives me crazy. Have you ever heard Bottisatva (sp??) on the radio? I don't believe I ever have. But Rikki don't lose that frickin' number??? over and over and over! Steve Miller made recorded music way before his mediocre Fly like an Eagle stuff.....ever heard any of it on FM? Not likely. As Greg Allman said, "Rap.....is short for crap".

JB, Many thanks for the link. I will do some bidness wid dem. I used to buy stuff on iTunes, but now my first choice is Amazon. I'd like to purchase the actual disc when possible and I've gotten some great deals on lightly used CDs. I have a fair amount of music on an external hard drive. Anything I add to that will come from whoever can provide the highest qaulity download at a reasonable price, and these folks look far superior to Apple.

If you run into Furio tell him it's still not safe here.

I used radio shack stuff because that's all I had on hand. I am sure that there's probably a mo' betta' product, but I wanted to get started. The first can is called "precision electronics cleaner" and seems to little more than denatured alcohol inder pressure. The label indicates that it's Isohexane, Diflouroethane, Ethanol and electronic cleaner.....I dunno. It worked well on the majority of the pots and switches. Virtually every single knob/switch crackled and scratched when moved. Hopefully it will last and did no damage while cleaning. The volume was another issue as it had a mechanical scratch the you could feel in your hand when rotating. After hosing that mother for a while I switched and used a RS cleaner/lubricant. After a few hundred twists it is now smooth as silk. Just like new and everything is silent. I now have a desire for two more amps (or receivers) and will continue to look for decent old school units. However I reamain open to suggestion and cooercion.

There's new junk, and there's old junk. Seems to me the key is knowing how to filter it all out. For those (of you) with deep pockets this is easier. For those of us who live in a van down by the river, it's a bit trickier. Since I picked up my first pair of K's, I have been scouring the innernets and webz reading like a mofo in an attempt to find a reasonably priced decent quality receiver / amp which will do these speakers justice. It's interesting to see how much some of the higher end SS gear from the late 70s and early 80s goes for. Just yesterday a Marantz 7 tube pre amp sold for over $4300.00 on ebay. But every day relatively low powered (Marantz, Pioneer, Kenwood, HK, Sansui) receivers sell for under 200 bucks. Apples and oranges yes, OK, apples and watermelons! I have learned a great deal from this site and many thanks for all your opinions. As for me, I like the old stuff and it tends to be more aligned with my wallet. I hate messing around with a multi-function display for 20 minutes as I try to make a trivial adjustment to bass/treble etc. I'd much rather grab one knob and give it a twist. This becomes more important when messing with downloaded music files as the quality of the recordings is all over the map. The thing that I really do miss however, is the remote! I ended up with an old Pioneer SA9100 amp and just bought a matching Pioneer TX9100 tuner. The whole package was less than 200 bucks, looks totally cool with the nice oiled walnut case. The amp had several noisy pots which I was able to clean and restore to perfect with two cans of miracle jizz. Not likely that I'd be able to do that with my ugly black sony HT receiver. Sure it's not tube and it's not McIntosh, but it sounds pretty sweet to me. As I get my learn on I may find that I want something different. In the meantime, I'll keep looking for the next one. I sure like the look of the old Phase Linear stuff........it goes quite cheap. Is there a reason for this?

If you can get it, try WRNR in Md. 103.something. I slouch them off the innernets since I am so far away. If you were aorund DC in the late 70's and early 80s you may remember the original HFS in Bethesda and not the crap which it morphed into after Jake Einstein sold it. Excellent tunes. Outside of a college town, I have yet to hear an FM station which stayed so far away from playlists and payola. Enjoy the speaks. Simplicity is pretty cool too.

Aside from my two (very cheap) Klipsch purchases this year I am tightening my belt as much as I can. My job is very shaky and I fear if this continues I'll be "living in a van down by the river!"

Perhaps I really do need to go to the Betty Ford Clinic! I stopped in at duty free in San Juan today and picked up the following... 2 bottles of Bombay Sapphire at $14.00 each (It's almost summer and time for Gin&Tonics). Cointreau at $16.00 (It's almost summer and time for Margueritas). Drambuie at $28. (I was out). That booze in Virginia would have cost me over twice what I paid in PR. Off to make a rusty nail....and to celebrate my savings. I think some classical guitar or Django might sound good right about now. I go back next week and I'm thinking bourbon. (After all, it's almost summer and time for Mint Juleps. BTW, no deals on cigars).