dgardner
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2004
- Posts
- 375
- Likes
- 10
Tonight I'm sitting here for the third night of transistor beta measuring 1000 parts and matching them... And it occurred to me that I truly need to have my head examined. Yes, another innocent hobby gone overboard. I must confess that my hobbies are all obessive and run serially through time.
Some past obessive hobbies and frightening facts:
1) Car audio - started with a simple head unit upgrade in my first car and didn't stop until three cars later when I had a 1300 watt rig wired with welding cables for power, custom doors, McIntosh electronics and a/d/s/ speakers. Frighteningly, I selected the last car based on how accomodating the doors were for large speakers and how big the stock alternator was. All other car features were just "details".
2) Crosscut Saw Restoration - started with the simple dissatisfaction that "collecting drift wood" to make the campfire "took too long" and the "fire went out before the beer was gone". Didn't stop until drift wood collecting turned into small log collecting, which turned into outright lumbering over the coarse of three or four vacation seasons. First came hachets, then pruning saws, then axes, then vintage two man crosscut saws, then felling saws, then competition bucking rigs. Along the way I needed to learn the lost art of big crosscut saw sharpening. Didn't end until I had bought and restored several saws, learn the history of sharpening, bought vintage sharpening tools, and spend a couple of hundred hours hand filing teeth like a competitive lumber jack. Frighteningly, I still have a 4oz spice jar filled to the top with iron filings from the first few restorations, as a lasting symbol of "tenacity".
3) Atlantic Giant Pumpkin Growing - started with a simple 40 pound pumpkin from the backyard garden one year and didn't stop until until I negotiated the use of farmland, grew several pumpkins over 500 pounds, created a worldwide grower discussion forum, flew to Canada for a world class seed swap (kin to breading race horses), and met Howard Dill - the father of Giant Pumkpin growing... My 15 minutes of fame came when I was interviewed surrounding the novel idea to post worldwide pumpkin weigh-in results live on the internet, prior to newspapers and tv stations scooping the results. Even negotiated with local city officials to have the municipal leaf vacuum truck dump over 100 cubic yards of leaves on my pumpkin plot one fall, to created enough compost for the massive plants.
4) Head-fi - started with a simple lack of satisfaction after I bought pair of Senn HD-570's and hooked them up to my portable disc player a year ago. "Its not lound enough... now what?" Didn't (hasn't) stopped after I built a CMOY, hand-etched Dynalo, dynahi, dynamite, M3, Millet Hybrid, blah-blah-blah... Even created another PCB for the dynalo and ended up selling about 200 bare boards. I'm not even heated up yet! Bought a DAC-1, HD-650's, thinking about K-1000s, eyeing Meridian gear... God only know what's next.
5) Other similar hobbies to talk about some other time....
So the morale of the story is "matching transistors 1000 at a time" is like "making compost 100 cubic yards at a time". - at some point... All obsessive hobbies eventually blend together...
Some past obessive hobbies and frightening facts:
1) Car audio - started with a simple head unit upgrade in my first car and didn't stop until three cars later when I had a 1300 watt rig wired with welding cables for power, custom doors, McIntosh electronics and a/d/s/ speakers. Frighteningly, I selected the last car based on how accomodating the doors were for large speakers and how big the stock alternator was. All other car features were just "details".
2) Crosscut Saw Restoration - started with the simple dissatisfaction that "collecting drift wood" to make the campfire "took too long" and the "fire went out before the beer was gone". Didn't stop until drift wood collecting turned into small log collecting, which turned into outright lumbering over the coarse of three or four vacation seasons. First came hachets, then pruning saws, then axes, then vintage two man crosscut saws, then felling saws, then competition bucking rigs. Along the way I needed to learn the lost art of big crosscut saw sharpening. Didn't end until I had bought and restored several saws, learn the history of sharpening, bought vintage sharpening tools, and spend a couple of hundred hours hand filing teeth like a competitive lumber jack. Frighteningly, I still have a 4oz spice jar filled to the top with iron filings from the first few restorations, as a lasting symbol of "tenacity".
3) Atlantic Giant Pumpkin Growing - started with a simple 40 pound pumpkin from the backyard garden one year and didn't stop until until I negotiated the use of farmland, grew several pumpkins over 500 pounds, created a worldwide grower discussion forum, flew to Canada for a world class seed swap (kin to breading race horses), and met Howard Dill - the father of Giant Pumkpin growing... My 15 minutes of fame came when I was interviewed surrounding the novel idea to post worldwide pumpkin weigh-in results live on the internet, prior to newspapers and tv stations scooping the results. Even negotiated with local city officials to have the municipal leaf vacuum truck dump over 100 cubic yards of leaves on my pumpkin plot one fall, to created enough compost for the massive plants.
4) Head-fi - started with a simple lack of satisfaction after I bought pair of Senn HD-570's and hooked them up to my portable disc player a year ago. "Its not lound enough... now what?" Didn't (hasn't) stopped after I built a CMOY, hand-etched Dynalo, dynahi, dynamite, M3, Millet Hybrid, blah-blah-blah... Even created another PCB for the dynalo and ended up selling about 200 bare boards. I'm not even heated up yet! Bought a DAC-1, HD-650's, thinking about K-1000s, eyeing Meridian gear... God only know what's next.
5) Other similar hobbies to talk about some other time....
So the morale of the story is "matching transistors 1000 at a time" is like "making compost 100 cubic yards at a time". - at some point... All obsessive hobbies eventually blend together...
