Month: April 2025

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Quote Of The Day

"If I am forced to live in a world full of villains, I expect the villains to at least not be this wilfully ignorant and proud of their lack of intelligence." ~ Nikita Gill

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In My Happy Place

A new toy.

Did I need it? No. Not by a long shot. Did I want it the moment I knew of its existence? Absolutely.

Back in the day (i.e. the 00's) when I was heavily into MD, I had several pieces of gear, among them a Sony MXD-D40 combo CD/MD deck. It facilitated high-speed dubbing from CD to MD and would even properly transfer track marks and CD text (if it was present) as part of the process. I've had that model now on my eBay watchlist for the past few months since it would allow me to consolodate equipment, but it seems the only ones that showed up  were Japanese units and therefore 100V. Yeah, I could buy a step-town transformer to plug it into, but when we start doing that shit I start questioning if my hobby has turned into an addiction. Granted, there are worse things to be addicted to, but I didn't want to cross that line since it seems I'm already straddling it. They were also outrageously priced.

After getting my Tascam MD-350 minidisc deck back in January and being so impressed with the engineering and build quality, I started wondering if Tascam had also produced a combo unit. Of course they did. Several different iterations, actually. Tascam is the professional arm of Teac, one of the biggest and most respected hi-fi equipment manufacturers of the last fifty years—and a name all of us cassette-obsessed boys in the 70s turned to.

The latest model of their combo deck was the MD-CD1 MkIII, available from 2011-2017. A cursory eBay search reported several offerings—again all 100V Japanese units. But I knew they'd also produced this for the US/Canadian market from pictures I'd seen online, so was just a matter of time and practicing a little patience (something I am not good at) before one showed up. To be honest, several US units had appeared over the past couple months, but being originally sold as professional equipment (much like the legendary Technics SL1200Mk2 turntables), they all looked like they'd been ridden hard and put away wet.

No thanks. I can wait. It was, after all, a want and not a need…

Patience paid off. One appeared on eBay a week ago. Supposedly a one-owner,  fully functional, 120V unit. Except for a tiny scratch on the top panel at the rear, it looked mint. The seller was offering a very reasonable price. I countered with an offer about $40 less, and he came back with a $20 discount (essentially covering shipping). I slapped the BUY IT NOW button and it arrived today.

Since my mantra for this shit is now "one in, one out," after I'm sure this is actually working properly, I'll put my year-old standalone Yamaha CD player up for bid. Based on what they've been selling for, I should easily recoup what I paid for the Tascam, with money even left over. (I'm also going to sell several of my portable CD players since they're all but gathering dust on the shelf these days.)

So what do I think of it? Well, for starters, I wish I'd known of this model back when I stumbled back into this hobby. It would've saved me a lot of money. For the very short time I've spent with it, I have to say it's also one complicated beast. If there's one major difference between Tascam and Sony gear, it's gotta be ease of use. Sony decks function intuitively; a complete novice could figure out how use one of their recorders without cracking the owner's manual. Tascam? Not so much. Even common functions like splitting, combining, or moving tracks on the Tascam is not as stupidly simple as it is on a Sony deck. (Or maybe I'm just old and used to doing things one way and when presented with something different I go into brain-lock.) I'm not complaining; learning new shit is vital to creating new neural links in an aging brain!

The MD-CDMkIII does everything, but accessing the settings often involves digging several layers deep in the menus. (The owner also supplied the original printed manual, which has been invaluable.) I just dubbed Eurythmics' Revenge, both at regular and  then again at high speed to verify everything was working, and it's perfect. I suspect this deck never saw the inside of a studio and truly was a single-owner unit, used exclusively in a home setup. And as an added surprise, the seller even threw in about a dozen new, still-shrinkwrapped minidisc blanks—something he didn't even mention in the auction. Sometimes the Universe still smiles upon you.

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We Just Caught Up

The photo is so ordinary, it's shocking.

A woman in a long dress stands beside her car—not at a gas pump, but in her own garage. She's not cranking a stubborn engine. She's not smelling like petrol.

She's plugging it in.Because in 1912, electric cars weren't the future.

They were already here.

The Golden Age of EVs (That You Never Heard About)

At the turn of the century, electric cars dominated the roads. They were quiet.They didn't spew smoke.

They didn't require hand-cranking like gas cars (which was dangerous—broken arms were common).

Women loved them. Cities preferred them. Even Thomas Edison swore they were the next big thing.

So… what happened?

The Three Death Blows to Electric Cars

Texas Struck Oil (A Lot of It). Gas became dirt cheap overnight. Meanwhile, electricity was still a luxury in rural areas.

Henry Ford's Assembly Line

The Model T rolled out in 1908 for half the price of an electric car. Suddenly, gas was affordable—and EVs were "rich people toys."

The Road Trip Boom

America fell in love with long-distance driving. Electric cars? They maxed out at 40 miles per charge. By 1935, electric cars were gone.

The Irony? We Just Caught Up to 1912.

Today's EVs boast:

    • "No emissions!" (Like 1912.)
    • "No noise pollution!" (Like 1912.)
    • "Convenient home charging!" (Like 1912.)

We didn't invent the future. We rediscovered it.

Final Thought

That woman in the garage? She was a century ahead of her time. And we spent 100 years pretending gas was progress.

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Banned From Reddit

And so it begins.

Oh well.

I responded to a Reddit post this morning asking what should be done about Felon 45's insider trading and manipulation of the stock market.

My response was, "Bring back the guillotines and drag that orange daughterfucker and his entire administration out of the White House."

Apparently someone was triggered. I received a 3-day ban from the entire site for "inciting violence."

I had a premium (ad-free) subscription that was good for another eight months, but I said fuck it, and wrote it all off. I canceled the recurring subscription and then deleted my account completely. This was my last connection to social media—save for a nearly-inactive Instagram account that I still have only to bring you guys those horrible Star Trek jokes.

Fuck 'em.

And on the subject of putting my money where my mouth is (or cutting off my nose to spite my face, depending on your viewpoint), I realized the other day I still had some money left on my Starbucks Gold Card. (I've been a member since 2010 or thereabouts.) Since I've given up supporting that union-busting multi-millionaire CEO, I'll be damned if I was going to let him keep drawing whatever pittance of interest the company gets from holding my remaining balance. I ordered a coffee this morning and then left a $5 tip, leaving only a few cents on the card. (I would've zeroed it out completely if that had been an option, but sadly it wasn't.)

So fuck Brian Nicol too.

And you know what? After being away from Starbucks going on six weeks now, I won't say that Starbucks coffee isn't bad insomuch as it's just uninspiring—especially after having a month-long diet of much better java from local businesses.