TBrennan

Man, I'd hate to have to lose half my arm.

Meagain We use these gizmos, you can buy them on Amazon.

"Good lord, I'm looking outside my office window and it's snowing." Could be worse, Texians used to look out their window and see Comanches out for hair. You're lucky.

Hell Jim, I was at Disco Demolition. ;-)

Weedburner.

Kaiser----Yeah, we used to drink quarts when we were kids, hanging on the corner of Madison and Central on the West Side. I used to go into a tavern on Madison called the Irish-American Club and get served when I was 16. The guys in there were from the west of Ireland; Mayo, Sligo and Galway and since old Tim my grandpa was from Kiltimagh I was OK. My cousin Francie almost got his head knocked off in there because he was from Armagh in the northeast. Oh, Francie was a character; smart as a whip and good lookin' as the Devil and a constant skirt chaser. Went to Cubs and Sox games and hung with the other gamblers betting on balls and strikes, he wasn't in the USA six months and he could handicap every sport.

Flannel you're living proof that all Cubs fans aren't yuppie poofters. God bless ya. Say how about this Cubs fan?

An eye for an eye.......

"Saying that crap like Bud or Miller (which cannot even be sold as beer in germany) are beers for "regular guys" is an insult to all us "regular guys."" If you were a regular guy you'd call yourself Jimmy instead of James. And yes, the California Wine Country, that hotbed of regular guyism. In any event by trying to define what is "real" beer and what isn't and by extolling hard to find and exotic wares you act exactly the kind of beer snob I described. Funny too that most of the German, Polish and Bohemian immigrants I've known in Chicago drank regular American beer, I've spent many hours in dark taverns drinking with such folks. How about the throngs of German, Bohemian and Polish immigrants out there in the Wine Country? Zimne Piwo signs seen often out there? Of course a guy can drink green bottle beer and be a regular guy, if one just takes it for granted and goes about his drinking business without bum-rapping the taste of others. I know a couple of Local 1 Boilermakers, South Side Irish guys with impeccable working-class pedigrees who drink Heinikens and Becks. But they can also kick back and enjoy a Bud at a White Sox game.

Whole Foods has some pretty good beans, my wife buys them and grinds, we take a run over to Louisville once in awhile to get the stuff. I think some Starbucks is good and Dunkin Donuts coffee is VERY good. I like plain old Maxwell House too, good coffee. That Sanseo stuff you make in their machines is good, there are other pods you can use in the machines too and DIY pod deals that you fill with your own coffee, use and then clean and reuse.

Well at least the guy used Klipsch parts unlike the many Klipsch fans around here who mod their Klipsches into JBLs and Altecs and God knows what else with Klipsch badges. No doubt the guy likes the speakers, you fellas ought'a know Berenek's Law by now. Besides, it probably has more extended highs than a Khorn and one can reasonably argue that with it's tractrix midrange horn it might have midrange one would prefer. And like I said, at least it's a KLIPSCH midrange horn and driver isn't it?

"I don't want to turn into that 12 pack a night belly bustin' buzz kind of guy" Yeah, nuthin' worse than a pantry drinker. I drank beer at work for it's cold thirst quenching and at night to chase VO when I got drunk. And I never drank at night except to get drunk so I didn't drink that often. I remember old Lugan Wally, guy drank a case of Miller Light every day, at least half at work.

I like Guiness cut with Old Style to make a half-and-half, had my first one with Johhny Gilmartin at the 6500 Club, an Irish joint on the South Side. Zimne Piwo y'all.

Yeah, golf on TV is great, almost as good as baseball. Both sports are well suited to television because the action is concentrated, or gets concentrated, on single people or small groups. Like baseball where things generally happen consecutively unlike football where things are happening all over the place at the same time.

All this weird beer, hardly any regular guys who just want to knock back a few "cold ones" or have a chaser with a shot of VO. All this bullshit started with vain, self-important Baby Boomers who can't even enjoy a simple working man's brew without turning it into an opprotunity to show how different and refined, how much better than the common herd, they are. People who wear bluejeans and chambray faux work shirts to office jobs. But don't forget the tie, without the tie someone might think you need to wear jeans and a chambray shirt to work for their practical function. Gotta keep that little distinction, that subtle remeinder that one is actually still one of the "right" people.

"Certainly much more action." More people running around anyway, no doubt of that. " The concensus is that Soccer is much more demanding physically and much rougher on the body with all the fast direction changes, tackles, and no protection." Digging ditches by hand is much more physically demanding and rougher on the body than soccer. Maybe I'll go out and watch some laborers go at it, gotta be at least as interesting as watching soccer. Probably more interesting to do too. I'm sorry, maybe it's because I'm an old-timer but to me soccer will always be a game for DPs or snotty suburban climber types, neither a group I feel a bond with.

VERY good speakers. Were made by Bob Stephens who along with Hilliard and Lansing is one of the great Southern California Horn Gods. Stephens worked for Hilliard on the Shearer Horn project at MGM in the 1930s and later started his own company. Comparable quality and construction to Altec and JBL. I was outbid on ebay for a pair of Stephens bullet horn tweeters, I wouldn't go higher than $300, they went for about $600. Early Khorns used a 15" Stephens woofer, yes. Dig these old Stephens that created a frenzy on ebay

"Horns produce a knocking sound as you approach the horn's resonate frequency." Do you mean the driver itself running out of excursion and the diaphragm clacking against the phase plug?

Old Style

Once I heard PWK give a talk at the Hi-Fi Hutch and he talked about a fella who'd hung Khorns upside-down from his ceiling, he said it was fine, a good idea. The horse's mouth.

According to Bruce Edgar (who knows more about tractrix horns than anybody since Voight) tractrix horns must be crossed higher than their rating, for instance he uses 350hz horns for a 500hz crossover. To quote Bruce "the problem is that the tractrix horn response just does not extend to the flare point-----the 300hz horn that I make turns on around 400hz" So if using tractrix horns this most be taken into account, maybe the maker of the horn in question has, I don't know. I used to use 550hz Edgar saladbowls and Bruce advised that I cross then at 700hz or so.

"They play fast and loose with history I suspect" Very fast, the first season covered eight years, from Caesar capturing Alesia and Vercingetorix in 52 BCE to Caesar's muder in 44 BCE. But they get much of the essential characteristics of the historical characters----Caesar's energy, risk taking and calculated generosity, Octavian's intelligence, cunning and self awareness, Cicero's fence-sitting, Antony's animal magnetism. I think Octavian is the most interesting character and very well written. It helps that in reality he was the most interesting and IMO the greatest Roman up to that time, perhaps the greatest of all time (I give very high marks to Vespasian and Trajan). Vercingetorix was younger than shown and was probably short haired and clean shaven, a mustache at most. And no wings or horns on his helmet, Gallic helmets of the time were very plain and functional, picture a German WW II helmet but with cheekguards. But I suppose the show wanted the Celts to look "barbaric". Still, the show does very well.

New season starts tonight. I see the series ending with Pullo pulling Vorenus out of the water. Whadda you guys think?

Coytee-----It's the way drivers in Ohio bunch up, this seems to be caused by the fascistic speed enforcement policies of the state cops. Illinois is flatter than Ohio but a drive from Chicago to Cairo goes by pretty good because in Illinois you can ROLL. Same with Indiana, you can roll there too.

WPM----You know the joke with the punchline ----"Me? You're the guy with the dirty pictures" ;-) You're a good sport. What kind of car?