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In other words, it's summer time...... For me, I've found that I'm much more likely to work on the A/V part of my hobbies during the summer. I'm not completely certain why that is; maybe I feel like I need more time than is normally available during the school year. Although you could probably say that about all my hobbies (Photography, computers, and audio). Anyway, recently I found myself reevaluating the A/V system. Yes; there was that little episode with the new TV, but that wasn't really about the system.
Let me start by discussing my current rig and what my plans have been all along. Years ago, I had always planned on my "ultimate" system to be based on Rotel equipment. More on that later. However, a few years ago, when I finally got around to moving on from my temporary system that came about due to our move to the Dallas area, I went with practical versus, what I really wanted. So, a receiver by Integra for about $150 was the order of the day. Not that these things are bad by any stretch of the imagination, they just aren't as transparent and musical as higher order equipment. So, in the back of my mind all these years of enjoying the my bargain Integra gear, I constantly had something else in the back of my mind......
About a week ago, while doing one of my periodic searches on eBay for a special deal, I found one! There was an ad for a pair of Rotel RB-956ax amps for what was really a reasonable price (about $300). Unfortunately, one of the amps had a channel that was "out". So, one had 6 channels of 40 watts each, while one had 5 functioning channels. On this particular model, the 3 channel pairs can be bridged into 3 channels giving 90 watts each which is perfect for my system for the 3 rear speakers. As it turns out, the seller sold the good amp to someone and ended up only have the bad one that he wanted to get rid of badly, so I negotiated with him to sell it for $125 shipped to me from Pennsylvania.
If you've never tried to ship high end equipment, especially amps with their high-current power supplies (read heavy), you'll know that the shipping alone probably accounted for close to $30. Above, you can see the inside build of a Rotel amp of similar power. As you can see; these things are heavy duty! The MSRP for it was $500......in 1995 dollars.
So, now I have one amp, at a power level suitable for rear channels...at least in my system anyway. Where am I going with this?
That's a Rotel RSP-1098, Pre-Amp/Processor (otherwise, known as a Pre-Pro). In 2004, it was arguably the most advanced unit of it's kind for any price. Of course, it's $3000 was a deterrent to my ownership of it at that time! Last year, my friend Pat who's still in the A/V business gave me his that had developed an issue on it's digital processing board. All the analog functions work fine, just not the digital processing. Therefore, as soon as I make enough money this summer, this thing is going to get fixed!
You can see from the back of this thing, it has more than enough facilities to take over as the center of my A/V system!
What else do I want/need to do? Obviously, I need at least 3 more channels of amplification. Very likely I'll target the Rotel RB-976 which is the 60 watt per channel sister of the RB-956, and when bridged, it gives $150 into 3 channels, or I can bi-amp the front 3 speakers instead. There are of course other amps out there, so I'll obviously be looking for the best deal. Anything else?
Yeah, a few things. I'd like to upgrade my CD transport from the clearly "mid-fi" Integra 6 Disk changer to possibly the Rotel RCD-1070 or 1072 and a RTC-950ax.
What is that, you ask? It's a Pre-Amp/Tuner of course! Why in the world would I need a Pre-Amp/Tuner!?! Here's the deal. The RSP-1098 has neither a tuner (which I still use regularly), nor does it have a Phono-Stage needed for my turntable. With this neat little component, I can have both needed pieces in one! Oh yeah, I'm going to need to get that one channel fixed on the RB-956 as well.
It's going to be a busy summer!
On November 10th of 2001, Apple introduce the 1st generation iPod, commonly called the "scroll wheel" model. It was $399 for the 5Gb model, and $499 for the 10Gb version! Even at that, it was pretty obvious that this device was going to be a world beater. If you didn't covet one, you're probably either delusional or simply lying! Everyone wanted one, despite the ridiculous price...... However, by 2004, with the arrival of the 4th generation model price at $299 for a 20Gb, and $399 for the 40Gb model, the word "competition" in the marketplace was almost a joke. In those sizes, these devices put the concept of putting an entire collection of CDs onto one device was within reach. This became the killer concept for me, and I began to truly contemplate acquiring one of these. A year later, when the smaller (30Gb) of the 5th generation iPods were out at $299, I pulled the trigger and a nice black one became my wife's Christmas present.
Is that it!?! How you came to acquire an iPod? No, that's just the beginning, so bear with me. At the time of the arrival of that one lone bastion of Apple-ness at our house, I was not only happily entrenched with Minidiscs, but had and had gone through any number of personal listening devices, many of which sounded better than that iPod......any iPod! Then why are we even discussing this device? Well....at the risk of sounding all philosophical about this; it isn't all about the absolute sound quality. What is this coming from a vinyl record listener!?! First of all, I'm a big believer in using the right tool for the job, meaning that when on the go, I LOVE being able to tote my entire collection of music. And don't let anyone fool you; a car is no place to judge absolution reproduction capabilities. Secondly; I love devices that can do more than one thing! In this case, the capacious storage of 30, 40 and especially 80Gb leaves plenty for random storage such as dumping digital photos while away from home on a trip. The was verified in spades when we took our Alaska cruise and Taiwan/Hong Kong trip where I used my music player (80Gb iPod) as the backup photo file storage. It's been so useful I now have 2 portable external hard drives that sit in a drawer, unused.
....But that's still NOT what this post is about. It's really about how pervasive these things have become in our life! Let me start by going ahead and admitting that we now have 7 of these things!!! Ok, 2 are ones that I've picked up for basically nothing in attempts to repair a broken 3rd inherited from a family member, but still: 7! And that's not the half of it. Most of you are aware that there is a huge industry devoted to making all manner of accessories for these things, right?
Let me start by saying that; NO, we do not own the more ludicrous of them such as the above, which by the way is listed in an article of the 10 most useless iPod accessories.
But we do own both the Logitech MM32 and the very highly rated MM50 speaker docks above. Actually we have 2 of the MM50s. There's a black one in our office and a white one in my classroom. I bought the first one for just under $50 refurbished off of eBay and my father-in-law liked it so much, he got one too. Two months ago I picked the white one off of eBay for $15 and it matches our second 5th generation iPod perfectly that was found on Craigs List for about $80 years ago. It lives at school. The MM32 was an after Christmas Walmart clearance that I got for $12 which I use as computer speakers at school. I can't even tell you how many times it has save mine and other teacher's bacon over the years!
One of my favorites though is the Griffin TuneDock. About a year or so ago, these begin to appear on eBay as "new/unopened" stock at anywhere between $10 and $20 in bunches. So I bought two (one is still in the closet). One is connected to my main A/V system and essentially allows me to use the iPods as giant jukeboxes. They even output a GUI for navigating the menu system. I'm eventually going to attach the other one to the secondary system that powers the outside speakers, which will give me separate sound capabilities.
Then there's this.....the iCruze by Monster. A couple of months ago, I was in California, for my Mom's 90th birthday. In all my brother's cars, were these things. So I asked what it was: the answer was the iCruze that allows an iPod to integrate with the factory radio. It makes the audio system think that there's a CD Changer connected and allows for the onboard controls to access it. Pretty slick! My brother said he thought he had another one stashed somewhere (of course) and he'd send it to me if he could find it. A few weeks later, a box showed up..... So before we go on our long car oriented vacation this summer, guess what's going to get installed in the Honda!
Last year a pink 5th generation 16Gb Nano came to live with us. My daughter was most pleased to have it and has an iHome alarm clock/dock speaker that it live on which functions as her computer speakers as well.
Is there more? You bet! I've got those broken iPods that I'd like to fix up, a 3rd generation and a 4G. No so I can have more of them, but just so they work. Is there room for even more? Well.....maybe, if one of those interesting U2 versions happens to fall into my lap; I don't think I'd throw it out!!!
By now, most of you have figured out that I'm given to Clint Eastwood quotes. To me, this image is the one that I'll always have in my head as the quintessential Eastwood look! I'd also like to image that it's the look on my face (minus the little cigar of course) when my latest foray into Craig's List went slightly awry.
I've been plotting over the course of the last few months (ever since I finished the bedroom HTPC aka "Viking") to shuffle my TV situation. That was the tipping point of dissatisfaction with my various displays. First of all, my main (living room) A/V system TV only did something like 1366 x 768 which, as you can see, isn't up to HD standard, plus the bedroom TV turned out to be somewhat less than that. Something in the 800 x 600 range....which is pretty pathetic by today's standards, and absolutely horrific if you are trying to watch anything HD through the internet. So, after selling off a bunch of stuff, fixing various people's computers and such, I had somewhere between $300 and $400 extra. How, I've been keeping an eye on a 42" Sony at Costco which barely fit in the opening in my cabinet, but it's $500 or so. One evening last weekend, I was scanning the local Craig's List ads when I came across an ad for a six month old 40" Sony LCD about 30 minutes away. They wanted $300. I offered $250. They took it. We met at a neighboring town, made the transaction, and that was that!
No, I did not get held up or anything like that ... in a manner of speaking, anyway! As any Craig's List veteran would do, I agreed to a meet in a public place in broad daylight. The only issue was that since this is a complex electronic device, I couldn't test it ......in the parking lot of a convenience store! So, I figuratively held my breath till I got it home, got the TV out of the bedroom, moved the living room TV to the bedroom, connected it all up, cleaned up all the TVs, put the "new" one in place, connected it......and fired it up .....to be greeted by a ....black screen..... I got the green "power" LED, but no picture! I tried a variety of things, but still "no joy"!
If I'd of had those people there with me; this is what it figuratively would have looked like! Fortunately, I don't have a pistol, or a cool looking zarape' either. For the next several days, I contemplated the problem in silence. I finally even told my wife about it, and she felt so bad for me that she said I should go to Costco and buy the new one. But of course, that's not how Frugal Propellarheads roll. One afternoon, I pulled it out and turned it on and gave it a few strategic whacks on the sides and various places on the bad until I was rewarded with a picture (for a little while), which confirmed my suspicion that the people didn't intend to sell me a bad TV, just one with a loose connector. In the meantime, I had emailed them about the problem and they had even replied, but none after that first one. So, finally on Sunday afternoon, I got out my tools, opened up the back (many, many screws), pulled ALL the connectors and reconnected them. Sure enough, it worked, and has continued to do so ever since.
Is there a moral to this story? Some Frugal Propellerhead lesson to be learned? You bet! You aren't going to win every time. However, if you are prepared and willing to do what's necessary, things mostly come out OK, the vast majority of the time. Do I think those people are "bad" and tried to pawn off a broken product? No, not really. I'd bet that it was in fact working OK for them, but when it came down to it and had a problem, they didn't want to take a hit to stand behind it. After all, it's not their "business", just something they didn't need any more. Once the money was handed over, the risk was mine. If you aren't willing to deal with that, then do your shopping at Best Buy.
The last few posts that have been camera-heavy have really gotten me thinking about my photographic past. For many men (mostly) of my age, we grew up dreaming/lusting after camera equipment. It's just simply part of our history and psyche that we will probably never be able to separate from our lives. Although we're commonly able to acquire that coveted camera and a few lenses, but they were often compromises. It didn't matter whether you were a Canon guy (like I was), or a Nikon guy or whatever. The lenses from the manufacturers were simply too expensive since they were generally designed for professionals and to be sold in a different world where things were expected to last a lifetime. So, as I've said before, we teenagers would often look at the fabulous color brochures or go down to the "camera shop" and hang around.
The object of our desires were often not just some particular focal length that we thought we wanted, but some combination of that, and what we wanted our camera to look like. Here's a good example: a Nikon F3 with the full motor drive, 250 Exposure Bulk-Film back and that really impressive looking 55mm Nikkor f1.2 Nok. that you could darned near shoot things in the dark with.....never mind that you didn't have the slightest idea what you were going to shoot "in the dark" in the first place! It looked COOL!!! Of course, nobody we knew owned one since they only sold to National Geographic photographers and NASA.
So, we bought the 50mm f1.4 lens for several hundred hard-earned dollars instead, because we couldn't be seen with a measly f1.8 that most any "family guy" bought with his camera still in the "ever-ready" case with that included narrow vinyl strap attached. As part of this little fantasy that we all played, there were certain lenses that we all wanted, but probably never bought. I've already talked about the 500mm mirrors, so lets look at the others.
You might be asking yourself; "what's so impressive about this little thing"? I'm starting here, because I just bought it. It's actually a lens that I once owned....kind-of. It's the 70-150mm/f3.8 out of the regular Vivitar line of the mid/late 70's. I know; it's not even a Series 1; what gives? This lens was VERY compact and pretty darned sharp. It was made by Kino of Series 1 fame, and so compact that it takes a 52mm filter, which is the same as the Nikkor main line of lenses, PLUS it could be had with a "matched 2X doubler", making it a 140-300mm, 35mm or a 210-450mm "APS-C" equivalent. Back in 1977 as a Junior in high school, I chose this lens to go along with the Canon AE-1 to replace our "long-in-the-tooth" Mamiya-Sekor camera. It was a nice lens that fit the compact AE-1 well as our budget. Although the school owned it, I carried it a lot, that is until I bought my A-1 with lenses. I've always had a fondness for this lens and last week, I bought it for.......$10, complete with the doubler on eBay. It will be nice to play with adapted to the GF-1 as well as the Nikon D300.
Since I'm on the topic of Vivitar, let's look at the Series 1 lenses that I really wanted at that time. From top to bottom, they are: 70-210mm/f3.5 Zoom, 35-85mm/f2.8 Varifocal, 28mm/f1.9 Wide, and 90mm/f2.5 Macro w/Doubler. These lenses need no introduction to photographers alive at that time. They were simply the fastest, and most innovative of their type, some of which even the top OEM firms such as Nikon/Canon didn't produce......and their cost were commiserate with this status. In my APS-C digital world, the one that I really want is the 28mm. It'd basically be a fast normal on the D300.
Another lens/focal length that I really wanted was the 85mm. It originally started with our high school photography instructor/icon Milton Adams using the Nikkor version for his "normal". He really like his look "tight" and up-close. Probably has to do with his being paid as a photo-journalist. Which also explains the 500mm mirror as well. I loved the look of his pictures with this lens and I never forgot it. Later in the years that was building my Pentax system, I really wanted the SMC-M, 85mm/f2.0 that they produced, but just never could justify the expense.
The modern (for APS-C) equivalent would be the Cosina produced Voigtlander 58mm/f1.4 Nokton which translates to roughly 87mm lens. It that it on my D300? No, wish it was! With it's modern Nikon mount with communicates with the digital Nikons, I'd love to have it, but until then, I'll have to stick with my chip-converted 50mm/f1.4 Nikkor.
Then there's the more obscure of my interests: "pancase" lenses, the Russian Tair 300mm on the "Fotosniper" and the rare Minolta Rokkor 300mm mirror lens mounted on an Olympus 4/3rds camera via an adapter. I've talk about these types before (and will probably do a post on "pancakes" some time), so I'm not going to talk about them much here.
Last, but not least today, is this oddity. While looking for images of lenses I ran across this and it stirred some odd corners of my memory. It's the Nikon FB-5 case, designed to hold a body with several lens ready to go since they were actually held in place by a Nikon mount! Virtually every camera company had them and were supposed to be a case for "professionals", although that intended audience virtually never used them and they generally only sold to well-heeled customers. The design was too bulky and the obvious intent as well as branding made them thief magnets. They are rarely if ever seen, but I've always wanted one. No surprise there!
As much as I love technology and would happily hold on to my random "stuff" till they pry it from my cold fingers, I periodically have to do a clean-out. Now, this isn't the strategic "sell-off" that I've discussed which occur so that I can upgrade. Now there is a bit of that going on here since I have a few projects/targets I'd like to get done. But in reality, I just need to get rid of stuff! Since we don't live in one of our famous American "Mc-Mansions", I just don't have room, plus there are a few items that are in a time-sensitive situation. A good example are minidiscs which are in a "out-of-production" timeframe right now and a little bit of a collectors period, but not yet in the "worthless" part of their life cycle. So, now was a good time to sell. Although I had a number which sold in the $5 range, several were $10-15 and a Pink Floyd double album sold for over $90! This made the whole group of 24 end up going for $250+. Of course that meant that I was going to be selling off both of my decks, all 3 of the portables AND the 45 recordable disks. All-in-all, that made my virtually never used Minidsic rig create about $600. Sure, I'm kind of sad to see it go, but "good grief", that's a chunk of change for something that just sits and gathers dust.
The miracle that is eBay (as frustrating as it is to use sometimes) isn't as appreciated as it should be. I often use it as a barometer to tell what things are selling for (whether it's selling at all), what should be gotten rid of, and what I should be paying for something. I also use it as a research tool things such as finding part numbers, which parts work with what, and what is going to be available. Recently, less than an hour on eBay told me that it wasn't going to be worthwhile to replace a cracked LCD, so we sold the old machine for about $50 and bought a better one for about $125! The treasure-trove of information is without hours, borders, or currency barriers. It is often entertaining for me as well. I know; it's really geeky!
Beyond the minidiscs, I used the virtual garage sale to get rid of computer carcasses of machine that are leftover after I finish, and they will often bring close to $50 for a completely non-working laptop. This often allows me to do work for friends for "free". I don't charge them for finding a "new" working machine and transfer their data to it and they leave me their old dead machine that I'll eventually sell to recoup the time I've spent on their behalf. Yes, I know it's cheap labor, but these are often friends and family members.
Another area that I've used eBay successfully is with photography equipment. It allows me to find parts, etc. cheaply so I can experiment. I wanted to try out "Strobist" techniques and was able to find a Sunpak 422D shoe flash for cheap. Years later, after loading up with Nikon flashes, I sold the old one for nearly as much as it originally cost me to buy. The principal here is that it was something I wanted to try, but couldn't spend a lot of money on. As I became better at it, and found some good deals on more sophisticated equipment, I could sell off what I was previously using back into the same system that I had acquired it from in the first place. If you are careful in your shopping in the first place, you can in fact, often resell at a profit. Another example was my Tokina 80-400 lens. I bought it a few years ago when I was getting into auto-focus photography and wanted a super-telephoto in Nikon mount that didn't cost an "arm and a leg". It was in the low $300s when I bought it. I used it for 3+ years; found that I used other lenses far more often, sold it on eBay for almost $360. Can I take a vacation on the difference....NO. But tell me of something else that you can buy, use for quite some time and sell for more than you paid for it!?! And the fact is, that the person who bought it will have gotten a very decent lens and experience virtually the same effect when they get done with it. $360 was a good deal for it.
In the end, it was a pain in the neck, but well worth the time and effort to do in terms of financial payback. Plus it has cleared up space for future endeavors. Am I finished? Not even close......I've got all manner of stuff ranging from original a James Bond movie poster to computer stuff and even vinyl records that still need to go! I'll bet you do too.
As of today, I'm two weeks away from the Advance Placement national exam for my 10th Graders, and one week away from the State assessment for my 9th Graders. Everyone is stressed out, grouchy and the students are tired! What can you do to relieve the stress? As a Frugpal Propellerhead, I can make plans. Yes, I did indeed sign up to teach summer school this year so the break is two more weeks away than it would be otherwise, but hey; they are paying me roughly $1000 for those two weeks!
So, I'm in need of stress relief. And for me, there's no better stress relief than planning things to do this summer.To start with, I'm in the process of planning our first true "big kid" vacation. What does that mean? It's where the activity that is planned isn't "hampered" majorly due to the age of the children. Josh will be 10 and Katie will be 7 this year so I'm not terribly worried about the length of the car ride or whether they are physically capable of doing some particular activity. So yeah: Seaworld is finally off of the "short list"! In fact, I'm leaning toward what I've come to think of as the "Lan Sun Chen New Mexico/Colorado Swing". When I was a kid, my dad loved to drive up into Northern New Mexico, and Southern Colorado. That's figuratively speaking of course since, first my brother, then I did virtually always did the driving! Nevertheless I learned to love the rugged desert landscape and the Anasazi ruins.... Didn't have a choice, that's where my dad was going to take us, or his friends who came to visit! In fact, it's so integrated to the "Lore of Chen", that Carlsbad Caverns was where my wife and I had our first real date! So, I'm kind of thinking going to the caverns, then up to some of the ruins around the Four Corners area, Mesa Verde, then taking either the Durango, Siverton train or the Royal Gorge train, coming out at Colorado Springs, then down to Amarillo before heading home. For those who haven't driven all over that part of the country, that's a LOT of driving.
So, there are many plans that have to be made associated with this vacation. First, I actually need to decide for sure where we are going, and when we are going there. Then of course there's the whole accommodations/reservations and other kinds of 'tions that have to do with the pleasures of vacation planning. I'll definitely need to make sure that the "Family Truckster" is in good shape. But I'm not here to write about all that. There are LOTS of Frugal Propellerheadish things to do as well.
First being that I'm going to have to decide what to do about my daughters tablet. Yes; my victorious find of "refurbished" Dell Streak 7 tablets has turned into a mini-disaster! You guys remember my son's tablet dying from the sad and fatal "Dell Connector" disease. We now have my daughter's tablet which has succombed to the same fate. So, I have to figure out what to do; replace it (with a different kind), don't worry about it and let her use mine or momma's. I don't know!?! Have I said lately that I hate Dell!
Then I have to deal with the in-car entertainment issue. In today's world of personal electronics, we all take a wide variety of devices everywhere with us; ipods, ipads/tablets, Nintendos, computers, etc. And with the long hours of driving anticipated between destinations such as Carlsbad, New Mexico to Farmington, New Mexico, we'll definitely be using the portable DVD player. However, this would also entail such other needs as drinks and snacks. All-In-All, this make the inside of a Honda Civic (of course we're taking that instead of the gas-sucking SUV. Not difficult to understand 45+ MPG vs. 20 MPG) look like my daughter's long-suffering closet. I'm thinking that it's going to involve some sort of wood-working project to build a bit of a backseat console to hold everything.
Then there's the need to organize all my photographic needs. We've previously dicussed the fact that modern (digital) photography usually includes a computer, so there is that as well. Now that I have a "street photography" rig as well in the Panasonic GF-1, that'll clearly include both camera systems, and attendant lenses, flashes, tripods/monopods, and last but not least....which bags to take! I'm beginning to feel like some 19th century Englishman going on Safari! Would someone please send along some porters....which is what I'm starting to feel like, just thinking about it.
As a related (kind-of) "aside"; did you know that's China's participation in WWI consisted of 500,000 "Porters" sent to aid in the Allied Efforts!?!
