Tonight I watched a Time-Life lat night informercial for a classic country collection.  Admittedly, I loved a lot of it.  There was Left Frizzell, Webb Pierce, George Jones, and much else to love.   I know, I know.  Late-night infomercials are tacky and generally in poor taste.  But I kinda...

I came across an article on planned obsolescence today.  It got me to thinking abou products that don't adhere to that business philosophy.  What products do you own that will never go bad or are designed to last for a very long time?   One that I have is a Swing-Away can opener.  Excellent...

I gave in last night.  It was about 38° F and I turned on the heater, which is a gas unit in the hallway.  AC is central but heat isn't.   Birdie (the cat) has a nice bed on a chair with a couple blankets, but I've kept her out of the bedroom since I don't want hair all over the comforter...

Sorry this is a couple of days late - I intended to start this the day after Thanksgiving.   For those not familiar, Head-Fi has a tradition of exchanging a CD with another member for the holidays   If you would like to participate in the exchange, please post in this thread and let us...

I upgraded to iOS 5 a few days ago and am experiencing lag in the text editor.  I type a bit and it takes a second or so for the keystrokes to appear.   When I hit return a couple of times for a new line, the new line often appears  elow the text window and I have to manually scroll down to...

Tonight, I lost an EL34. Aged over 2,000 hours, he died of natural causes while doing what he loved best, making music. He is survived by three brothers who are now contemplating an early retirement to the spare tube box. However, we should celebrate the life of this tube, not mourn his...

I know they're not good for you, but I've been hitting up the local 24 hour donut shop a couple times a week. (Sure wish we had a Tim Horton's here.) Tonight, I picked up a maple old fashioned and a chocolate devilsfood cake. What do you like?

First, I am not going to single anyone out. I don't want to see anyone singled out here, too. I came across a thread where someone asked for advice and then threw in the towel because it was "too complicated," he didn't understand it and, though not explicitly stated, implied that he could not...

We have some wonderful threads about cooking and food. So let's have one about the gear! I've been getting by with some cheap pots and pans, as well as an inexpensive set of knives. I'm making do with an average (though decent) gas range, too. I had been thinking about upgrading to better...

I stumbled across this quiz today: http://pewresearch.org/millennials/quiz/ My score is 23, somewhere between the Baby Boomers and Generation X. Thought it would make for some interesting discussion. What's your score? What do you think of the quiz?

Most skepticism is reactive - we respond against miraculous claims and debunk. Let's turn this around. What tools and methods do you use to determine whether a claim is true? What is is your skeptic's toolbox to evaluate a claim? What is your starting point for debunking nonsense? One of my...

Lately, I've noticed people playing music on their cellphones while at restaurants and bars. They'll place their cellphone on the table and play their music. This has happened at decent restaurants, with table service. I find this remarkably rude. I've been severely tempted to dump a glass of...

R.E.M. officially disbanded today. I realize that the band probably isn't that important to the younger members here, but R.E.M. ushered in alternative rock and turned out nine excellent albums in a row. Aside from the Beach Boys, I don't think any American rock act has been so prolific and...

We've had a lot of fun discussing favorite foods, so what do you refuse to eat? I've never developed a taste for pickles. They've never appealed, though I will eat cucumbers and other pickled items. Tomatoes are also a bit strange with me. I won't eat a raw one or slices. But when chopped or...

http://smilepanic.com/what-people-in-1910-thought-the-year-2000-would-be-like I came across this today and thought everyone would especially enjoy the first illustration. :) What's surprising is how much is somewhat accurate. Seems that someone envisioned FaceTime about 100 years ago. Though...

One street in town has eight or nine open-air restaurants where the seatin and cooking are done outside. They're only open in the evenings, so I decided to go try one tonight. We're getting a little heat lightning and it might rain, so it seemed like fun to have dinner outside to see the light...

The local public radio station broadcasts "Music of the Masters" with Peter Van DeGraaf every night. Great show, great host, and I tune in almost every night. He spent a bit of time playing music from J.S. Bach's prodigy. I've loved J.S. for years, but have never explored the other Bachs...

I usually hit "new posts" and then page through everything. Today, it only seems to work for the first two pages, then takes me back to page one. It happened a couple times and I had this strange feeling that I had seen everything before. :D Also, the feature usually pulls a few threads from...

I ran across these new Monoprice headphones today.  Haven't seen them mentioned here yet (I'll remove this thread if they have) so I thought I'd put them up for discussion.       Specifications Model Number MEP-839 Driver Unit 50 mm Impedance 40 ohms Sensitivity...

NPR Books is running a poll for the top-100 science-fiction/fantasy books (no registration required) and you get to vote for your top ten.  There are lots of readers and sci-fi/fantasy fans here, so vote and post your lists!  And feel free to comment on what was left off the list or what...

I thought Sound Science would enjoy these new DakiOm speakers.  Apparently, they're taking $60 Sony Sony SS-B3000 speakers, adding some sort of black box (I can't make any sense from the description) and then screwing a bunch of dowels inside the speaker.  Look:     Oh yeah, they now...

A pregnant stray showed up and I wasn't able to catch her in time. Now there are three kittens, born just a couple days ago. I haven't been able to get a good look yet (they're under a car) but it looks like two gray tabbies and a possible gray/white or peach calico. So, is anyone interested...

I realized today that I'm closing in on 250k miles driving manual transmission cars. Got to thinking about my lifetime total miles, which is probably close to 400k miles. I've been licensed since 1988. So how many miles have you put on the road? Feel free to talk about favorite road trips and...

I'm a confirmed beer drinker, but I sometimes like a mixed drink. My staple is the grayhound. Though I sometimes go for a martini, Manhattan or a gimlet. What do you like?

There's a fire ant mound in the empty lot next to my place. I take a "live and let live" approach to most everything, but not these little demons. I snuggle with kittens and spoil children. A few times now, they've climbed my legs while performing necessary cat petting and they all bit me at the...