Anyone join me in a virtual toast? My glass has an old Scotch in it. We'll raise and clink glasses, and echo Kirk's toast.. all those years ago.. 1984, wasn't it?

To Absent Friends.

Body found, no fingers and cell phone missing.

I know you're probably going for Funny (which it is!) but sadly chopping fingers off to fool biometrics has been done before.

Problem with using the machete technique on the iPhone is that it requires a live body.

Starting to? Been going on for a while, for me. But it isn't the computers nor the internet which are rotting away it's the companies behind it all -- and the Governments which the companies run!

How to get out of this mess? I fear the only way is to go off the grid as much as possible.

Or a global revolution, and not the it's-morning-in-america-hold-hands-sing-kumbaya good-hearted revolution, I'm talking pitchforks, torches and worse, far worse.

It's gotten to where I just don't read the news much anymore, and i think the last time i purposely turned my tuner to CNN was the 2008 elections.

Now, everytime I go in the break room and CNN is on, I immediately flip it to Science or History. Maybe someone will learn something useful or interesting from How it's Made while they get their coffee.

..When I hear this, what my brain sends back to me is "We just struck a deal with Apple and Google to let them have our way into your phones whenever we want."

I ran through a lot of gear. Some mid-fi (Pioneer SX650, 640, some technics), some more upper-fi (Sansui C-2000 pre, SAE Two power amp) and a few other things from Carver, Marantz, Kenwood.

All of them, when mated to conventional speakers such as JBL L100s, Infinity Kappa 7s, and Infinity RS6000 -- all of them sounded just OK, but lacked the transparency, impact and dynamics of what Klipsch delivers. I had heard much, much better at friend's houses, and OK wasn't good enough for me. I thought their horn / tubes systems were old-fashioned -- boy howdy was I wrong.

The catch is that Klipsch (and Altec, and JBL, and any decent horn, really) will truly show you what your gear can do, or can't do. And I gotta tell ya, after all was said and done, all that stuff I mentioned before just didn't make the cut. So I kept the speakers, sold most of the rest, and found power that works -- and that power came at a surprisingly affordable cost, from makes I didn't expect.

And for what its worth, I don't know if TI's PurePath is considered "Class-D" but what it is, is a DAC with enough power to drive speakers directly. It's as sweet as class-A. Maybe even better. As clean as an RCA Type 45. With so much headroom that you'll never run out of steam.

I practice the art of Guerrilla Hi-Fi:

1. No shame in buying used gear.
2. Some speaker/amp combos are almost unbeatable, and easily arrived at if one discards "conventional wisdom" and groupthink.
3. Build / fix your own.
4. The solid-state era of the 60's through the 90's sssssucked, for the most part, as far as "affordable" went. Tubes was the way to go, broadly speaking, until --
5. Since 2000, "digital" amplification really did bring great sound to the masses. That was the promise of Tocatta, which was bought by TI, which got us the PurePath amplifier. Which is a joy to the ears and gets on famously with horn speakers

So neener-neener, auidiophools with unlimited budgets and no ear -- with Guerrilla Hi-Fi, amazing sound is there for the taking, and for not much dosh. But it does take some brains and independent thinking.

Sometime around 2007 I stopped giving a damn about "TV" -- the crap that comes out of broadcast. At that point I turned mainly to dvd / bd for things I wanted to watch that are not on broadcast or cable.

So what's left of my TV viewing? Maybe 30 minutes a day on weekdays.

These are the only things I really go out of my way to DVR / watch:

1. Amazing world of Gumball
2. American Dad, Family Guy, Robot Chicken
3. Top Gear UK
4. El Chavo (comfort food, if you will - grew up with it, i'm a native spanish speaker.)
5. F1... but maybe not anymore, not since they went all awwww treehugger green limp-wristed bullshit on us.

The rest is bluray and dvd. Mainly feature films and anime. And due to work demands, really only watch on weekends. As mentioend before my "TV time" is like 30 minutes on weekdays.. if that.

So the question really is.. "Why haven't I cut the cord yet?" Because I"m too goddamned lazy to put something together for streaming / ripping / etc. Just don't give a fuck anymore.

..but I feel a twinge of nostalgia on hearing this. I cobbled more than a few hi-fi experiments using parts sourced from rat shack in the 80's.

Still have an Archer SWR meter. And a Micronta multimeter I strongly suspect is a Fluke in a different dress.

Oh well. Fare the well, Rat Shack.. you failed at adapting to a world without buggy whips.

On the one hand, it is a majestic airplane, with a good ride, and enough room in it to do whatever you want with it. Flying White House, Flying Pentagon, both been done forever. NEACP (Kneecap, or "Gordo") is another favorite 747 of mine.

On the other hand, the 747 was the airplane that killed Pan Am, and therefore I resent it a bit. True, Trippe went completely bonkers and bought too many too soon -- Pan Am would've been better served by updating its extensive fleet of 707 instead -- but the 747 was more airplane than the world needed then.. and maybe even now. 747 was Pan Am jumping the shark.

And that brings me to the point of this post: While the 747 in Air Force One colors is really nice, no airplane wears that paintjob better than the 707 did. Especially with the check in the tail, which the 747 lacks.

The new one better have a polished underbelly and a blue and silver check in the tail, just like the original Loewy design for Air Force One when it was a 707.

I can't think of a better airplane than the 747 for Air Force One. a 777 doesn't have the cubic footage, the 787 is even smaller. And a civilianized C5 would just be wrong, just plane wrong. As for Airbus, Air France 447 and the one that crashed during the Paris Air Show have left me with a bit of disdain for their particular style of fly-by-wire. I don't think Boeing's take on FBW is as demented. I'd rather fly in a beat-up smokey Super 80 than in any Airbus.

"Mr. President, we must not allow a mineshaft gap!"

But I really like what Mini, Jag and some others (lambo?) are doing -- they replicate the *pop* you sometimes got out of hi-strung carburetted cars when you let up on the gas. This pop was made by a bit of unburnt gas going into the pipes when the throttle plates would snap shut.

The modern version just randomly squirts a bit of gas into the exhaust to make the pop artificially when you let up the gas. And I'm totally cool with this. In my mini it's selectable by sport mode. I love this feature. It reminds me of old sports cars.

Mine's a polite little pop or two. The F-Type jag sounds like a machinegun, and the Aventador I heard the other day had so many pops on upshift that it could've been confused with an mg-42.

All artificial, but not piped in through the stereo. A joy to hear in a garage or a tunnel.

Digital pianos do this too -- they replicate (or for lesser pianos, sample) artifacts of real pianos. Because people found out that a perfectly tuned piano with no mechanical noises is boring.

Have you?

Do it. Now. Don't give robocallers / wildly inaccurate collection agencies an inch.

Whores will gladly accept money from anyone -- especially staid old companies looking for one last fling before The Inevitable comes and claims them.

Didn't the English have a room in London where *every*single*wire* coming into the country went through? Weren't they reading each and every cablegram coming in and going out?

That was in WWI.

Yes, technology advances make it exponentially easier now, but don't for a second think that en-masse wiretapping is a new thing enabled by the Interwebz.