THE F5 IS RUNNING

pics to follow... when I have a minute.

its been a long time...

Because some people (in this house) are so well-behaved at updating their blogs, I figured I should revisit mine.

So, what HAVE I been up to?

I spent last weekend winterizing the homestead. We had an energy auditor come in and take some fancy IR images. You could actually see our electrical junction boxes in the attic, so that's where I started. I spent more than 3 hours in a tiny crawlspace sprayfoaming every junction box in the attic. I was so sore that I couldn't stand up straight the rest of the day. I did some rerouting of our cold air intake, and then we went out to eat.

We love this neighborhood joint, cafe' maude. They have jazz on saturdays, so we gave a call and asked for a reservation. They said that they didn't need to take our names down, "We'll take care of you". We get there... and they tell us its a 45 minute wait. We just turned around and walked. Might be awhile before we go back. We ended up at the Blackbird. No live jazz, but the jambalaya was damn good.

In coffee news. I've returned to sweet marias for the bulk of my purchases. I was pretty disappointed by some of the offerings that were cupped in the high 80s, low 90s on the gcbc. That and their prices are not really that much of a deal. It's really been taken over my commercial interests. About the only guy I'd buy from anymore is hanannon, and he hasn't had anything lately. I will say that the doto terrazu that I got last year was phenomenal. Anyhow, for the same amount of money I can buy from SM's.

In stereo news:

My decca went in to soundsmiths for the el cheapo retip. The first week of June. They won't even email as to when I can expect it back. Not really that impressed with their service thus far. We'll see how it plays when it comes back.

I was given an Ortofon RS 212. Yeah. Given. Anyhow, I sent the gent a pair of nice output trannies from a sony R2R that he'll put to use. The RS 212 had some bearing issues, and the wiring was spotty. I ponied up for j7s audioorigami service, and just got it back. Hopefully I can get that mounted soon. I thought I had a tonearm cable lying about, but forgot that I had sold it. Guess I'll be needing one of those....

The headshell mounting is going to come in handy, since I purchased a large portion of the cartridges from J. Gordon Holt estate. Three Deccas, including a brandspanking new London Decca Gold (export version). It's mounted on the AR XB for now, and it's magic. The soundstage and dynamics are second to none. The Lyra is packed up and for sale. The AT 15Sa is mounted on the SP 10, until that arm sells. I need to make some changes, and having the ability to switch sources is mandatory.

The Proac 2.5 clones have been playing music for a couple of months. They were a little constricted at first, but after playing with the stuffing and a week or so of moving them around in the room and kaboom. Sounding VERY nice. The juice is being provided by an audiosector gainclone.

well, that's all for now. hopefully I can keep this up

Behmor coffee roaster.

photo taken with the macbook built in. not really sure where the blue/red lighting is coming from

Stereo circa March 2009 part I

Pass Pearl, in an old vacuum sensor case. I would put this phono pre up against any. It truly is an absolute monster.

Pearl boards. 40mF of capacitance per channel. (Yes, the "m" stands for milli)

Toroid, rectifier, and first 10mF of capacitance. RARRR!

7 watts of class D power from sure electronics. This board really shines with fullrange drivers. Crazy bargain.

part II

Close up of the SP 10. Rega 250 tonearm, with pete riggle vtaf. Running an AT 440 MLa on this bad boy. The plinth is something my friend Scott and I knocked up last Saturday am.

SPIKES!1! and a cord mess.

A London Decca cart. This came on a random turntable I acquired. Thank you Patrick for the ID. It wouldn't track when I mounted it. I took a look at it under the scope and saw that the tie back loop had come off the stylus. I gently nudged the stylus under the noose. Hopefully it plays next time I try it.

Zerodust and Carbon brush. Two accessories I wouldn't live without.

A brief moment in stereo time, March 2009 part III

Conrad Johnson Sonographe SG-3. The 1" delrin platter and nice bearing make this an awesome suspended turntable.

Thorens TD 160 with Mayware Formula IV arm. Arm is actually disconnected in this picture.

A good view of my mess

Iso-stress conditions under an elliptical tip

Fall postview.

October, yay.
A presidential election between a geriatric, a nutcake, an inspirational story, and a rail commuter.
Adrian spent four nerve racking days weaning while C caught some Nevada sun. She came back for the worst of it though. He's doing much better, getting and staying asleep. He's also getting adept at taking records out of their sleeves. I've asked C to try and get some of the nice record storage boxes from our brother in law. They'll get packed up and put away until I get my very own hifi room. I'll most likely be packing up the turntable as well. That means it'll be strictly digital around here. Hopefully I can get a decent optical dac to go with this mac. At least it seems to play music without crashing.

speaking of mac crash. i initiated my third hardrive in this lemon. thank steve, you're advertising scheme has tricked me into a computer that's worse than any pc i've ever owed. i'm a mac. thursday is backup day.

ps. mac users should be using silverkeeper. great program, and has saved my lemon flavored tush.

TEETH/diarrhea/WEENING

so, as my first twice in one day blog, i'm going to just say that today has been pretty tough.

a-drain is going through a rough patch here, and the wife and i are at our wits end. she's got him sleeping in her beco carrier right now, but he wakes up if she stops walking. he's got extremely light (like the walls of an apartments) diarrhea, his eye teeth coming in, and we've been doing the weening thing for the past week.

yeah. it's been a long day. probably going to be a long night as well.

coffee of the sunday

type: guatamala finca la florencia 100% bourbon.
roast: fluidized bed 80 s after first crack. (city +)
brew: french press

and?

Dry Fragrance: A little on the mild side, subtle flowers? 4.0
Wet Aroma: Smells like good coffee 3.9
Brightness/Acidity: ZING! 9.1
Flavor Depth: Tons of spice. Is that mint? 9.0
Body/Movement: A little on the thin side. 2.8
Finish/Aftertaste: A happy goodbye. 9.1
+50
-------
87.9

sweetmarias.com score: 87.3

by popular demand: the mess

So, this is where the magic happens. I just mentioned last week that I love coffee. As I write this I'm enjoying a Honduras Organic Maracala -Cocosam Coop via the aeropress that I got as a present. The aeropress makes a great (and strong) cup of coffee. The Honduran is decent... certainly not the best I've ever had, it's far too light and bright. The fluidized bed roaster certainly doesn't help, even at darker roasts it seems to attach a lightness to most coffees.

The roaster is a freshroast plus 8:

From coffee

Which sets nestled in by the la pavoni grinder:

From coffee

(I'm working on getting a baratza. No need for anything more than that as I don't really do espresso)

These two machines comprise the 'lower level', as we rise in elevation we see the nesco and the frech press. This is the french press I keep at home. I also have a bodum 'kenya' that I keep at work with the aeropress:

From coffee

As we pan out we see the giant mess that is my coffee corner.

From coffee

A brief rundown here:
The table itself is made from a randomly extra cabinet door that was behind our fridge. The legs were purchased for $5 each from retro petes in St. Paul. The shade was sewn by my wife. It's a cute take on 1950's life. My favorite is the child in the backseat asking "are we there yet". It reminds me so much of adrian. The little white plastic thing next to the grinder is my scale. 75g batches, oh yeah. The small canning jars are a great way to keep the coffee from excess oxygen after roasting.
The mess is mine. I'm not much for wiping up any stray grounds, and when they get wet they seem to magically stain the table.

Coffee

Thus far I've blogged about my job, my family, and my obsession with audio equipment. I haven't really talked about coffee. Why would I talk about coffee? I might mention the closet and drawers full of unroasted green coffee... probably in the neighborhood of 60 lbs. I might also mention that the coffee area in our kitchen is a mess of chaff and grounds, with the homemade table it rests on a mosaic of brown stains.

Instead I'll focus on how amazing it is to wake up and press a button on my grinder, producing scents that makes folgers smell like poop (cus it is). I brew my fresh ground coffee in the newco ocs system (stainless), and drink from the marimekko (keisanrinkruunu) cups my wife gave to me for our (twas our second) anniversary.

I can close my eyes, and while Adrian eats his cheerios, I live in a magical land were bright floral flavors and lingering apple aftertastes are the stuff of realty.

Todays drink: La Manita Tarrazu, distributed by No Quarter Coffee to the GCBC.

this afternoon I'll be enjoying a Honduran courtesy of Sweet Marias.

Do you understand? No matter what else is going on, at least the coffee can be good.

In the lab.

Another night in the lab. It's strange trying to balance fatherhood and graduate school. I see quite a few women that seem to do ok, but I only know (personally) one other male who managed it. I wish I was home, helping with the chores, playing with Adrian, and chatting with my wife... but I'm not. I feel like I'm disappointing C & A by not being there, but I'm also expected to be here.

Anyhow, today's mood would be conflicted.

Happy birthday to Adrian

So what if I'm posting this a couple of days late? On Sunday Adrian turned one. The poor little guy was looking around with his furrowed brow trying to figure out why everyone was singing and clapping. He then promptly forgot about all that and proceeded to rub chocolate frosting (no transfats or corn syrup, go mom!) all over himself.

He got some neat new toys, some clothes, and a new jogging stroller. Or was the jogging stroller a hint for me? Regardless, it was a really good day.

back and forth of July

So, not really much to say here. C and A have been gone most of the day, and I got to take three wonderful trips to the southdale mall to get my mac fixed. Srsly, I've never had a computer that looked so good. I've also never had a computer that was so slow, crashed, and died so often. At least there are no viruses... only bad logic boards, trackpads that fail, and an OS that doesn't recognize bad RAM.

may showers bring june flowers?

I really wanted to post yesterday, but the day just got away from me. Adrian and I went to the park in the morning. We did the swing and the slide, but that got boring quick. Probably moreso for dad than for A, but regardless we made our way to a grassy knoll.

A was playing with a stick, and I picked one up and tapped his stick. He burst out laughing and started playing swords. Its the third time this weekend that I've seen him use a tool. The first was when he picked up his sippy cup, and started drinking by himself. It shocked both Cindy and I, as we're used to holding a glass for him to drink out of. We got a video of it, but I won't post it out of laziness.

The second tool usage was when he was playing with this strange dino toy. It's got a button that is really hard to push, but when you push it down it makes weird "dinosaur" type noises. His little fingers just aren't strong enough. I showed him that if you hit it with another toy that it would make the sound. He immediately picked up a toy and started banging it against the button. My son is officially smarter than a caveman!

Oh yeah, he started walking last week too.

pass

So, I passed. I'm exhausted with three months of writing and a month of solid studying. It would've been easier if I had just laid down and let them kick me.

The night before the day

So yeah. I've spent the last month holed up in an office overlooking what may be the ugliest building on the University of Minnesota campus (yes, that would be the civil engineering building). I get in around 9 am and have been staying until 8:30 at night. It would be lying if I said I spent ALL that time working, but I feel like I've done everything to prepare for tomorrow.

Tomorrow. My "prelimenary" oral exam. If I pass, I become a Ph.D. candidate. If I fail I could retake the exam in a few months, but most likely I'll just get my MS and a job. I'm way past the part where I care if pass or fail, just knowing that I've done everything I can up to this point.

No matter what happens, I'll be spending Tuesday with Adrian. I'm starting to think he doesn't know who I am anymore.

I'll try and update sometime soon as to the result.

Oh yeah... Summer is here and there are some serious stereo projects in development. Up next is rewiring my pass pearl, followed shortly by the assembly of an aleph mini.

Also in the works: new speakers (Adam, I promise I'll get in touch next week), and a headphone system for the office. I'm looking forward to good sounds in 08.

Written prelim

I've gotten the grades from two of my committee members. Both passed me. I made some pretty egregious mistakes, mostly due to my poor communication skills (at least that's what my wife tells me).

When describing Matthiessen's rule, I said that the deviatory components came from the resistivity due to interaction of the dislocations and the phonons, and that for low dislocation densities, and moderate temperatures that electrons and phonons don't interact. I'm sure that 99% of people reading this (including anyone in my family) has no idea what I just said, but I'll let you know that the last five words are patently false. I felt like a moron, but I really meant to say that the electron-phonon and electron-dislocation components do not interact. It's not a fine distinction, its the difference between a good assumption in most cases and being wrong. Anyhow, I still passed and thats something.

Strangely, my last post was titled "this process is hell", very similar to "the thousand thicknesses of hell" used to describe the Exum ridge route by Glenn Exum. I didn't find this out until after, but as I'm planning to make this climb in August looks like I've scheduled two trips to hell in one calendar year.

I leave you with this:

"this process is hell"

I turned in my written preliminary exam for my Ph. D. candidacy on Tuesday. My oral exam is postponed due to things beyond my control, but it looks like its only going to be pushed back 10 days.

That gives me 10 more days to recover from the 85 page written. This process is hell.

Friday night: being a parent

Watching my son play with his Habas chew toy. It's not quite what I imagined when I found out I was gonna be a dad, but it' magical in it's own way.

Earlier, he and I danced while listening to Oscar Peterson "plays". It was a nice break from this week, which has been full of "work stress." I've got a major project due date coming up, and I'm trying to tie up a lot of loose ends. Hopefully it wraps up nicely!