Winter decided to visit, and never left...

Here it is, 17 Feb 08, and it was a mix of freezing rain, sleet, and snow that shut down the city buses, the malls, and pretty much all commerce. We broke the all-time snowfall record during the last storm, so the novelty has pretty much worn out by the time this stuff started falling this morning.

Bernie wanted to go out and play, so I humored him.



Since I had the camera out and about, here's one of my maple trees covered in ice:





Note the robin's nest:



Otherwise, not a very productive day. Maybe the roads will be better tomorrow - I noticed that the snowplows are finally making their way around town.

The new album's out...

Using the rules posted here:

http://www.squeakywheelseeksgrease.com/blog/2008/01/12/meme/

I've created a new band, album title, and album cover.

Behold, Buffalo National River's debut album, New York Traffic Lights:




Mosrite guitar solo on Track #2 by your's truly.

What's a FUDD?

A Truism by any other name still rings crystal clear. This one, in particular, shines brightly as it illuminates the creature known as The FUDD. Jim Zumbo figured out really quickly how it pertained to him, and got himself a big serving of humble pie for his troubles. Fellow FUDD David Petzal has yet to be visited by the clue bird, and spouts his particular brand of ignorance to this day, even dodging his own documented history regarding his 1994 endorsement of the original Assault Weapons Ban. One can hope that will be remedied soon, and I have no problems reminding him and his ilk of the color of their stripes in the meantime.

Now, what's the heck's a FUDD?

A FUDD is somebody who has no problem giving you a ration of crap for the inline-ignition muzzleloader that you bought for deer season, while extolling the virtues of his own "primitive" flintlock or caplock. Of course, the primitive concept only goes so far, because chances are he's driving to the deer woods from home vs. riding a horse or walking there on foot. Not only that, but he's probably using Pyrodex vs. real Holy Black. The only thing primitive about these guys and their beloved smokepoles is their Triassic attitudes towards other sportsmen and gun owners in general. You want "primitive", Hero? Jump out of a tree onto the back of the deer, stabbing it with a sharp pointy stick. Then I'll give you props for primitive. Otherwise, STFU.

By way of further explanation, I give you this:

"FUDDs come in many [other] forms, as well. The original idea was indeed from the character of Elmer Fudd, with his cartoon hunting guns.

There's FUDDs who will declare that anything beyond their chosen year is okay to be banned. This varies from the 19th century to the 1960's...that anything beyond blackpowder isn't needed up to anything beyond their 1960's Marlin isn't needed. Whatever they think won't affect them.

There's FUDDs who think all semiauto rifles are killing machines and ought to be banned. They tend to shut up when you ask them if that includes the Garand, which is indeed semiauto and far more "lethal" than 5.56 AR! Surviving a COM hit with a 5.56x45 is possible. Surviving a COM hit with a 30-06 would be incredibly lucky.

There's FUDDS who want anything scary-looking banned...forgetting that their scoped hunting rifle is a SNIPER RIFLE on the nooz.

There are FUDDs who want all military calibers banned, even. As long as it doesn't affect their old thutty-thutty.

And, of course, there's FUDDS who even look down on other guns of their chosen sort. You see, you're supposed to show up at the clay range with a $25,000 engraved shotgun signed by Pietro Beretta himself. If you arrive with your plastic-stocked 870 with a rail on it, well, you must be up to No Good, and that sort ought to be banned, too.

The one constant is that they're all more damaging to gun rights than the antis are. Because they're willing to pretend to be gun-rights sorts, and then they throw everyone under the bus."

There you have it.

Ooh, they're upset!

Looks like the folks at Fatman Audio in the UK are miffed about my HCT HMS-100 system:

Warning for all our customers

It has come to our attention that in certain countries a copy of the Fatman iTube and iTube with speakers has appeared. It is important to note that these sub-standard copies are not in anyway connected with the Fatman brand and as such, if they are purchased, we and our various distributors across the world will not support them.

Furthermore, to our knowledge, none of these copy products are approved by Apple Corporation under their Made For iPod programme and as such use unauthorised 30-pin connectors from a non-Apple approved source.

Although it is flattering that such products have appeared as a consequence of the Fatman brand’s success across the world, it is also misleading and confusing for our growing customer and fan-base and this, in our opinion, is unacceptable.

Put simply, if the product doesn’t have a Fatman logo on it, if it doesn’t come in Fatman packaging and if it doesn’t come from a dealer of one our authorised distributors in each country listed on this website, our advice is to not touch it.

Of course it's unacceptable to them - they're charging several hundred bucks for a silly-assed silkscreen of a fat dude, when the rest of us are getting the same damned system sans logo, most likely from the same supplier to the Brits (you really think they can make 'em themselves without cheap Chinese/Korean labor), and sending them a subtle reminder that they're just a smidgen overpriced.

"Copy" my arse. Ya know what? Let Fatman UK open up their amplifier cover and show us where it's really made. Friggin' crybabies, they got beat at their own game, and have nobody to blame but themselves.

Darned Linksys WRT-54G router!

OK, in all fairness, running 6 computers through one Linksys WRT-54G router probably wasn't the best idea. It ties our Charter cable modem to the home network, but from there it goes a bunch of different directions, all with varying demands on the connection. Let's see...

1. Vonage VOIP Motorola box
2. Both home security cameras transmit via the VPON ethernet video box
3. Two computers run WarCrack online during waking hours
4. Two computers (mine and Mrs. G-98) run Pandora Radio nearly constantly
5. One computer (mine) plays Battlefield 1942 online
6. One home business machine moves large Adobe PDF files to and from clients
7. My wife does the VPN telecommuting bit between home and her office
8. My Dell Inspiron 6000 notebook web-browses via the wireless connection
9. A Linksys WMA11B media adapter streams MP3s to the living room stereo
10. A duo of Adaptec SnapServer 1100s with upgraded hard drives play network data server for all in the house

So, yeah, there are a few packets moving here and there. A little D-Link DI-102 broadband accelerator between the router and cable modem keeps the phone voice quality and game latency pretty much in check, and at times the little "traffic" light in the DI-102 lets me know it's working hard to keep things streamlined. However, every now and again, I was getting dropped connectivity - even though the cable modem lights were displaying nominal function.

At first, I figured it was Charter doing an IP address re-allocation, so I simply rebooted the cable modem and all the other components of the laundry room comm rack. That fixed it, for a while. Still, I had to do the reset between 1-3 times a week. Digging a little deeper via the process of elimination, I discovered it was the router that was dropping offline, not the cable modem.

It turns out that the Linksys WRT-54G v5.0 router has an absolute minimum of internal memory, and the router caches a great number of connection types for up to 5 days at a time. Once that cache fills, everything comes to a screeching halt. Were I not running all sorts of stuff through it, it would probably do just fine - but I'm not. Because I have one of the later versions, it doesn't do well with the aftermarket DD-WRT firmware, so I've come up with another way to flush the cache and keep performance optimized until I can come up with a better solution:



It's a digital audio timer, and it simply powers off the router at 5:00 AM every morning, then powers it up again at 5:01 AM, one minute later. Voila'! The little Blackout Buster UPS powers everything there, so that the clock doesn't lose time save for really long outages.

So far, it's been working just fine. I am keeping an eye open for one of the older, large-memory WRT-54G models so I can run DD-WRT Linux and have it reboot/flush via script or menu option. In the meantime, necessity is the mother of invention!

Those mini-ICBM rounds in the pics?

I've had more than a few people ask me what kind of rifle takes those 535gr beauties I blogged about earlier.

An 1874 Sharps Business Rifle replica, of course.



That's a 32" octagon barrel, double set triggers, Creedmoor rear sight, globe front sight, black walnut and color case-hardening galore. I must confess that my centerfire smokeless rifles have been quite neglected in their safes since I got the Sharps.

Older is better, revisited.

As some of my closer friends know, I'm a big fan of decent audio equipment. More often than not, I'll turn off the 42" Hitachi plasma HDTV and put on some Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin. I don't profess to have golden ears - not even close. But I do know when something sounds downright wonderful inside my brainpan via my eardrums. Pratt & Whitney's TF-33 engine may have made a nifty little notch in my hearing response over a couple thousand hours' worth of jet flying time, but I still love good audio.

In my living room, I have a $1,300 JoLida 502A pentode integrated audio amp, being driven directly by the CD/DVD player. It sends the signal directly to the ESS/Heil speakers, no equalizer, tone controls, nothing. Just a straight shot, very clean and minimalistic.

For a long time, in my office/spare bedroom I was using an older Nikko NR-750 receiver to pipe my MP3 collection to a pair of floor-standing speakers. That was all well and good, but it never had the warm sound of my big JoLida. I agonized over getting another JoLida, building a compact tube amp, or finding a cheap one elsewhere.

Cheap tube amps are few and far between, particularly those worth a tinker's damn. So I started designing and breadboarding a small tube amp that would drive an iPod or computer's sound output into a decent set of desktop or bookshelf speakers (think along the lines of the venerable Radio Shack Minimus-7 and Minimus-77 series). I had the prototype nearly completely assembled when I saw an ad in my VA Canteen catalog which made my eyes pop out. There was a smallish, hybrid tube amp and docking station for the iPod, along with a small set of 2-way speakers! The price was equally eye-popping, and they sell for between $500-$700, depending on who's distributing them.

So, being curious, I dug a wee bit, and found out the system was made by HCT Electronics of Korea. From there it goes to different distributors, who put their own silkscreen logos on them, then add several hundreds of dollars to the price tag.

I found mine for all of $195.00, having a simple HCT label and nothing else. Without further ado, I give you the HCT HMS-100 Vacuum Tube Amplifier Speaker System with Dock and Remote:



And to bring it into a vintage frame of reference, a gratuitous B&W photo:



Now, to be perfectly honest, this is a hybrid tube amp, meaning it has a vacuum tube pre-amp stage, and a standard silicon transistor output stage hidden inside the chassis. That's why there are only two tubes in the front and one transformer - they're little 12AX7/12AT7 style tubes to boost the signal prior to going to the MOSFET final output transistors. The tall tube in the rear is a reproduction of the old tuning eye visual indicator, and serves only as a power or level meter, dancing with the signal.

Being a hybrid, it sports a nice 15 watts/channel, but has considerably more warmth and smoothness with the tube pre-amp stage than a comparable solid-state amp. It is still quite simplistic and elegant, having only a power switch, input selector toggle, and volume control. That's it! No tone or balance controls, no bass boost, nothing extra.

How does it sound? Quite nice, actually. I had to let the tubes burn in for a week or so before they settled down, but it's definitely a kick in the pants now. 15w/channel is more than enough to drive the included speakers, and actually drive my floor standing towers comfortably, too.

This will make a great Christmas present for the hard-to-shop-for guy or gal who enjoys audio and a minimalistic touch. I'm ordering a couple more for this Christmas, myself. I've got family members who will love it.