bresna

I bet that was a good one! Their prices have spiked dramatically these past few years so I haven't bought one in a while. I have been drinking their second label Cab lately, Bella Union, and I think it's just about as good.

I have found that with computers, it's fairly easy to learn by simply clicking around everywhere. If you have Windows 10, click the start menu and run every single entry listed there. Just see what everything does. After you do this, go back to things that sounded interesting and click around in them. For Windows settings areas, like wireless settings and things like that, there are layers and layers of settings so go as deep as you can. When you get to applications like Word, Excel & Powerpoint, there are libraries of books on how to use these apps' tools. You may never learn all their tricks, but you should click around in there enough to do what yo have to do. Excel is a very powerful data handler app. You can pretty much look at numbers up, down & sideways and display it anyway you want. People make long careers being proficient in Excel, so don't be worried if you're not an expert there.

I always wear a watch. I keep looking for the time at my naked wrist on the occasions when I forget. Recently, I restored my Dad's Rolex and I've been wearing it for the past 6 months. I've always wanted one. My mom was clearing out her stuff in preparation for the move into a retirement facility and she found it gave it to me because she knew I always liked it. It never ran right the whole time my dad owned it so I brought it to a Rolex dealer and they quoted me an outrageous repair cost. It turns out that when my mother brought it to a local jeweler several years ago to try and get it working, the sleazy jeweler (now out of business) swapped out the face & wristband. The reason it never worked right was because somehow, the case managed to get dented so it was no longer waterproof. It was my dad's watch so I paid the crazy money to get it going again. It's beautiful and I'm glad I did it. I miss that old guy. BTW - Rolex tells me that it was a good thing I brought it in when I did (Feb of this year) because starting in June of this year, they no longer repair any watch that's returned with counterfeit parts on it. They send it back as non-repairable. So if you have an old Rolex that's had any parts swapped out and they're not genuine Rolex parts, you're going to have to get it repaired by a local repair shop using more counterfeit parts as Rolex has also stopped selling OEM parts to non-Rolex repair shops. It looks like this:

Pretty typical. The snake oil usually follows closely.

Jeez... probably very thick. Why the hell would anyone want 180 gram 45's?

With the new tax law, it's really just not worth trying declare any of your donations for tax purposes. They are not a 1 for 1 reduction in your gross. You would need to have a whole lot of other deductions for them to mean anything in the end. And I would never donate anything to Goodwill. When they stop making their managers rich at the expense of the workers on their sales floors, I'll donate stuff to them. Donating to Goodwill is like dumping money into the pockets of the 1%.

I think the DCC gold CD of VH1 sounds great. If you choose to believe him, Hoffman supposedly found some old master that had never been used for the DCC LP & CD and I think it shows. BTW - this one picture seems to have everyone worried. I don't know, to me, he just looks a little pudgy. I think many of us are going to end up looking a little like this.

Bull Moose has those too but in the same slots, they have unauthorized versions of many sessions. For instance, they have the recent BN 80th anniversary edition LP of Herbie Hancock's "Takin' Off" for $23.97. It's cut from the master tapes by Kevin Gray at Cohearant Audio and cut at Pallas in Germany. It sounds pretty good too. Standing just behind it in the 'H' section is another copy of Herbie Hancock's "Takin' Off" LP with the original cover art from the Wax Love label for $19.97. Hey it's $4 cheaper. Get that one, right? Wax Love did not get a license from Universal so you have no idea what source is used but what the heck, it saves you $4, so that's all that matters. As I said, in the not too distant past, these records were much harder to find. You almost always had to go mail order because most reputable dealers wouldn't even carry these things. No so today.

I was in Portsmouth NH yesterday and stopped into the Bull Moose Music store there. I was pretty disappointed by what I saw. The new vinyl section was filled with legit-looking bootlegs, either European gray goods or outright boots of unlicensed live recordings. The CD section was only a little better. It wasn't that long ago that they never would have had these in their store. I guess when it's all you can stock, you stock it?

I ordered a signed copy. I already have a signed copy of "Presenting Michael Weiss" or I would've chosen that option.

See if this comes up as stealing bandwidth.

I picked up a bag of Jelly Belly Candy Corn the other day. Made in the good ol' USA. Tasted mighty fine.

I usually shut off motion effects because they make live football games nauseating. The motion blur when anyone runs down the field just looks wrong. Not live at all. However, having said that, I do know what Jim is talking about with some older shot-to-video stuff looking better with digital processing. I wonder if it's actually edge enhancement that Jim is seeing rather than motion-smoothing though.

Noisy records almost always sound better after a wet clean. I always felt that no matter how much you vacuum or dry it, there's still some fluid in the grooves because if you let it dry over many hours, it'll be noisy again. As I said, I heard muted high frequencies when I used to wet wipe my records. I didn't hear it as much when I went dry. FWIW, I think the Ortofon 2M Black's nude Shibata stylus, seems to playback most records much quieter than any other stylus I've owned in the past. I think it might go down into the grooves better and somehow avoids shallower scratches. I've played back some ugly-looking records with great success avoiding visible scratches.

I used to wet wipe all my records before playing them but I find that I like the sound better when I just dry wipe it with my old trusty Discwasher. If there are any stuck on chunks, I find my finger works fine (sacrilege!!). BTW - don't buy the new Discwasher. It's basically covered in cheap fuzzy corduroy, nothing like what was used in the past.