It was a shame saying goodbye to the fam, but it sounds like there’s a fair bit of travel in the upcoming months betwixt our various locales. Looking forward to seeing Dad and hopefully Aunt Lisa this weekend!

• 

• 

After I landed I caught public transit, ostensibly as it’s better for the environment but also to offset the cost of a guilty-pleasure impulse buy. When I got home though, I realized my efforts to save the environment that night were more than negated by two problems: when I left back in late December, (a) I’d forgotten to turn off my heater system, and (b) my garage lights had been left on. Whups.

After I settled back in I was able to survive for a whole week without any shopping by subsisting on left-over potatoes+stuffing+turkey from a dinner I hosted the evening before I left for Utah. Eventually had to venture out for some variety. I’m branching out in the things I cook alongside steak, as inspired by Mom.

• 

Been really enjoying my new hobby collecting vinyl records. Not terribly proud of how much I’ve spent on it thus far, but it’s quite spartan compared to what anyone spends who’s truly serious about the craft.

• 

One fun quirk of this setup is I now have three separate and non-interacting sound systems: the network of Alexa devices, the TV soundbar + subwoofer, and now this. Of the three this is the nicest sounding, but it would be nice eventually to consolidate.

What follows is a picture essay of three problems with this setup and how I solved them with coat hangers.

First up, I needed a place to put the amplifier, preferably out-of-the-way when not in use. Luckily they make really small ones, so I didn’t need a big honkin’ thing like what we have in the living room driving the speakers. Of course, audiophile purists will always prefer the larger boxes, since the smaller tech uses.. *gasp* transistors. At this point I doubt my ears are sensitive enough to really notice a difference, so I’ll take the smaller form factor and be happy about it. It’s not like it’s encoding the audio digitally or anything either.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Next up, cable management. When sitting on my couch I can see right back to the wall behind the shelves, and the power+audio+ground cables running from the turntable were falling straight down where they were clearly visible. Couldn’t have that.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Finally, the shelves are quite a bit deeper than is needed to hold a record sleeve. This means that it’s hard to maintain uniform Z-axis alignment between all the records when removing or inserting them from the stack.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Tada.

The weeks since have consisted of catching up on Attack on Titan & Foundation, punctuated by the odd movie night. Had a big gang over to my place to watch On the Basis of Sex, and been congregating at a friend’s place in Seattle for weekly Harry Potter movie nights, which just wrapped up last Sunday. Their apartment has a cat, which I’ve gotten friendly with.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

I headed to the dentist last week with high hopes. Last visit had been largely positive. “Work a bit on your flossing” was the take-home message, which I figured they’re contractually obligated to give, so whatever. This time though, they really gave my mouth a punishing cleaning. Had to actually numb my gums, they were going so hard. “You have a cavity that needs filling, and we recommend flossing after every meal. And just because we can, you’re grinding your teeth so we’re gonna have you come back next week to be fitted for a dental Night Guard.”

What’s interesting is, I can definitely taste the difference of going throughout the day having flossed after eating. No more particulates slowly shedding flavor I guess.

Saturday morning I decided to head to the temple. It was as foggy a day as I’d ever seen.

• 

Afterwards I headed to a high-end audio showroom in Bellevue. What I was hoping for was a way to A/B test some of their high-end equipment, for example to see if I could even appreciate the difference between an MM and an MC stylus (the latter regularly runs several thousands more than the former), or between a solid state and tube preamp. But no such luck – they had a number of setups all prepped, featuring incredibly high-end doodads, but not a way to really test the effects of any one of them in isolation.

To illustrate the kind of hardware that’s firmly in the realm of only the most dedicated audiophiles:

• 

This is a pair of hybrid solid-state / tube amplifiers, one per channel. Vacuum tubes handle the higher frequencies, while bass is handled by solid-state. The pair of them together cost $35,000. I’m sure it sounds lovely.

I think purveyors of high-end audio devices would not be terribly enthusiastic about the idea of A/B studies. A common refrain I hear is that past a certain dollar value, 90+% of the stuff is snake oil. Would you like to spend $4500 for a 3-meter HDMI cable? $7800 for a 2-meter power cable? And if you did spring for it, the last thing you’d want is to participate in a double-blind study to see if you can actually hear a difference.

(An organization did in fact run a double-blind test on “Super-Audio CDs” and found that participants could detect the “better” audio source no better than if they were blindly guessing. Go figure.)

Anyways. That evening I headed back to the temple to do baptisms with a YSA ward that had come in from over an hour out of town and who’d posted on our local ward’s Facebook page seeing if anyone in the area was interested in joining in. So it was a two-fer. And while the daylight burned away the fog, it was back with a vengeance that evening.

• 

• 

This morning I slept in past when I’d normally need to leave for my regular ward, so decided to swing by my old Sammamish Valley YSA ward, which meets later and much closer. In fact, almost right after I previously transitioned out of the ward, they moved from Redmond to a chapel just down the road from my place; such irony. It was gratifying to have so many folks recognize me and say they missed having me around and that I should come by more often.

I brought my civvies to the church building so I could change and head right out to this fish ladder I’d heard about, 45 minutes north. They call the area Granite Falls, and I can tell why.

• 

• 

• 

This evening I rocked out to this number I grabbed from a D.I. in Sandy:

I especially love the insert, which espouses all the reasons why vinyl is the best format ever. One gem: “They Allow Selectivity Of Songs And Tracks. With records it’s easy to pick out the songs you want to play, or to play again a particular song or side. All you have to do is lift the tone arm and place it where you want it. You can’t do this as easily with anything but a phonograph record.”

Till next time!