Shitposting since 2005
My first love as a teenager was classical music. While my parents encouraged this, their library of recordings was limited. Fortunately, at the time Phoenix was blessed with a fantastic ratio station that expanded my horizons considerably.
This is one of those pieces, and this particular rendition is so seared into my brain that—some forty years later—I can still recall every note and intonation.
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Although not really that silly. It’s more akin to visualizing a memory, however imperfect the finished result may be.
Circa 1991 or 1992, waiting at the Van Ness station for an outgoing train to take me to Church Street. I remember grooving to Sade (most likely Promise or Stronger Than Pride) and the music was really moving me, prompting me dancing my ass up and down the platform while waiting.
I didn’t care what people thought.
It was quite liberating.
The image is almost period-accurate. The iconic Apple silhouette this was modeled on didn’t come into being until 2001, and those headphones…well, Sennheiser didn’t start making the HD600s until ’98 and I didn’t get my first pair until this year, but the period-accurate predecessor looks similar enough that no one would probably notice from this photo.
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Memories of the Main Library at the University of Arizona.
Why are university libraries so sexually charged anyways?
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Sony D-7. This was the model of my very first Discman, bought new in 1985. That particular one is long gone, but when I started getting back into this hobby a couple years ago I rwas keen to get another. Unfortunately most of the offerings on eBay were either prohibitively expensive or looked like they were ridden hard and…well, you know the rest of the phrase. This one came up about a month ago and the seller indicated it had “new batteries in the battery case.” (The D-7 doesn’t have “batteries” in the traditional sense. Think of its battery pack like what you’d see inside a laptop these days.) Even if the BP-200 pack was shot, the rest of it was in such great condition I figured I’d take a chance and would send it off to Kaosun like I did with my D-15 some time ago if it actually needed the mods. I put down the maximum bid I was willing to part with, and waited for the auction to run its course. Imagine my surprise when I won the auction for far less than my maximum!
It arrived yesterday. It really is in pristine condition. Everything works, and while I haven’t run the battery down to see how long it lasts yet*, it does work off the battery pack just fine. It’s not a Kaosun repair; there’s no charging LED on the battery case, but it seems to be just as good.
Yeah, like all pre-GForce players of the era, you just have to breathe on it and it will skip, but that goes with the territory. The fact that it sounds amazing more than makes up for it, and it can drive my Sennheisers louder than what I can tolerate—something that can’t be said for the examples of the later Sony players with the digital amplifiers I have. The mechanism is much quieter than either my D-10 or D-15, two other players of the same era—which is kind of surprising.
So yeah, I’m squealing like a schoolgirl meeting the Beatles in 1964 at the moment…
*EDIT: It lasts long enough to get through 4 CDs before needing to be plugged in to recharge.
*EDIT (10/29): Out of curiosity (and no cats killed in the making of this post) since publishing it initially, I popped the cover on the battery pack. Inside were 4-AAA cells wired in parallel with appropriate ancillary circuitry for the circumstances. I might’ve been somewhat offended if I had not read about using just this method, albeit with the flat gumstick battery design.
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Hmm… “Daddy.” This guy’s young enough to be my grandson if I ever had one.
(Blame it on the 35 year old living inside me.)
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October 27 is recognized as a special day to honor deceased pets during the Día de los Muertos celebrations as a time to remember and celebrate the beloved animals who have touched our lives.
(Sorry I’m late. I thought I hit Publish yesterday, but I discovered it was still sitting in Drafts.)
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Welcome to The Sodom and Gomorrah Show!
One of my all-time favorites. I went out today after PT in search of a couple Laura Branigan CDs albums I had in iTunes but not in physical format. Yeah, I could’ve cut corners and ordered directly from Discogs, but why not support a local business if I can?
My first stop was BookOff. I was certain they’d have them, but alas, not a single Branigan CD was to be found. It was there I noticed Fundamental. I was reasonably certain I already had this in my collection considering how much I liked it, but I still double-checked my database to make sure before plopping down seven bucks at the counter.*
Anyhow, my next stop after leaving BookOff was Zia Records. Twenty years ago it never failed me, but It’s been so long since I was there I wasn’t even sure it was still in business.
It is. And business was booming. (This was one aisle that was not packed with shoppers.)
Again, no Laura Branigan. WTF? Granted, I didn’t search any of the numerous bargain bins as I wanted to get home, but there was nothing in the regular racks.
It turns out my timing was impeccable. Within a few minutes after returning home, DHL arrived to drop off a package from Quebec, the other item in the photo above.
“What?” you may ask, “Another CD player?!” Yes, Virginia. Another Discman. I found this in an eBay auction three weeks ago. I put in a reasonable bid—no more than I was willing to pay if the bidding heated up—never expecting to win.
I’m starting to think I should buy a lottery ticket because yet again, I won the auction.
It took weeks to get from Fermont to the international border, but once it passed customs, it arrived here overnight.
Now I hate to have two “Wow” posts in two days, but I have no other word for this. The D-7 was the very first Discman I ever owned, and this one isabsolutely flawless. No scratches, no missing pieces, no corrosion on the chrome bits…it makes me wonder if it was sitting in a hermetically sealed box, unused, for the last 40 years. The seller indicated that “the batteries in BP-200 battery pack have been replaced,” indicating the unit has received service, because it requires some very specialized skills to swap out the original cells with modern replacements, and it’s behaving like it was given a complete going over.
So how does it sound? Perfect, as I expected. Yeah, like the other players from the 80s that I own, you look at it wrong and it skips, but that’s to be expected since there was no anti-skip technology at the time. And unlike the other models I have from the era, the mechanism on this D-7 is absolutely silent. Kudos to whoever serviced this thing.
*Well fuck. It turns out I did already had it. The reason it didn’t show up in the database was that I inadvertently searched for “Fundamental ” (with an errant space at the end of the name) and not “Fundamental” (no space).
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What am I working on? Click on image.
Yes, I used GPT to generate these images, but they were taken from personal photographs.
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One of the most traumatic scenes in cinematic history. Maybe only rivaled by Spock’s death in Wrath of Khan. (Yes, I’m a nerd.)
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937 square feet on the ground floor and 667 on the second floor for a total of 1604 total square feet. It’s a decent size house, yet it still seems compact. I like the metal roof and the stucco exterior. The only downside I see at first glance is there’s no dedicated dining space; just a small table in the kitchen, and I’m not sure what you could do about that without increasing the overall footprint of the house. The other thing I might do is lose the bedroom directly above the Living Room and give that space a 2-story high ceiling.
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Until we meet again…
*I always thought Kim Cattrall was a much better Saavik than Robin Curtis.
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