[artur9]

...

Two things I just can't bring myself to do, listen to bad audio equipment, and drink old, bad coffee. ...

I use one of these.

My sister-in-law's coffee maker. Is this grounds (ha!) for divorce from that side of the family?!

 

[GumbyDammit223]

We are a disposable society. There was a time when I made a living with employees repairing computer monitors, and my son and I made big bucks repairing television tuners but no more. Occasionally I see people repairing cell phones and I have repaired many high end audio devices and right now audio receivers from the 70’s are big but you need a buyer. Electronics changes quickly and costs go down or devices become obsolete.

Very true! In fact, I just pitched a 17 year old Bose speaker system I had connected to my computer because the pin from one of the RCA connectors for the speaker cable broke off inside the receptacle and I ended up just pushing it farther into the box. When I pulled the back plate off to see what would be involved in replacing that connector, I see that the circuit board is completely epoxied to the heatsink it was mounted to, with RTV around everything else. I understand immobilizing things because of vibration since the enclosure housed the subwoofer too, but that was ridiculous. I didn't want to spend the time Dremeling out the board from the epoxy and causing more damage in doing so. So, I ended up buying a new set of studio monitors and driving them with the pre-outs from my Jotunheim 2!

 

[artur9]

... I don’t really care what others do to their beans (freeze, vacuum whatever) but I can’t stand when somebody tries to tell me their beliefs are gospel ...

Amen!

I have this coffee canister that is just about perfect, we got in Hawaii. It has a gasket-sealed push down "piston" and a lid. Keeps the ground coffee very fresh by protecting it from the atmosphere (oxygen).

 

[Paladin79]

Were it not for the fact I already have too much junk, er, equipment to know what to do with, I'd gladly drive from MT to GA to relieve you of that burden!

I would try to help except for lack of space. I have a local guy who hauls away a lot of my non-used electronics for free. He deals in a lot of scrap metal so on his last visit I donated things like a half inch drill and other corded tools with metal cases as well as a couple old oscilloscopes etc.

 

[artur9]

Where was the driveway? But Fuertes would be about that size, and their skin is smoother than that of the Hass. But there are many varietals, butnot that many commercially farmed.

Guayabote, PR, iirc. Been years.

After seeing those, I always think the avocados here on the continental U.S. are so .... puny ... (puny avocados, Hulk smash make guacamole!)

 

[GumbyDammit223]

I would try to help except for lack of space. I have a local guy who hauls away a lot of my non-used electronics for free. He deals in a lot of scrap metal so on his last visit I donated things like a half inch drill and other corded tools with metal cases as well as a couple old oscilloscopes etc.

We have an e-waste bin at work for things like burned up circuit boards, dead computers, etc. and one day I noticed a trigger generator sitting in it with the note "Doesn't Work" stuck to it. This particular model, made by another company in town here, would cost around $5k new. I called up a friend who worked there and asked what their repair charge would be to fix it. It was something like a flat $350. I brought it over to them to fix and now I have an excellent and fully functional trigger generator for my lab. My win!

 

[Paladin79]

Very true! In fact, I just pitched a 17 year old Bose speaker system I had connected to my computer because the pin from one of the RCA connectors for the speaker cable broke off inside the receptacle and I ended up just pushing it farther into the box. When I pulled the back plate off to see what would be involved in replacing that connector, I see that the circuit board is completely epoxied to the heatsink it was mounted to, with RTV around everything else. I understand immobilizing things because of vibration since the enclosure housed the subwoofer too, but that was ridiculous. I didn't want to spend the time Dremeling out the board from the epoxy and causing more damage in doing so. So, I ended up buying a new set of studio monitors and driving them with the pre-outs from my Jotunheim 2!

I get bored easily so I like to try new things, right now I discover new woodworking projects but for a while I designed and built tube amplifiers, made knives, built mini radial speakers, and other such projects. I was also curious about how to conceal tubes for blind listening tests. @bcowen and Jason were recipients of that experiment till I designed four identical amps made for that purpose. Naturally I helped people with cables but that is simple stuff unless you are doing an eight wire headphone cable braid, then a little thought is required.

 

[AstronomerXI]

We have an e-waste bin at work for things like burned up circuit boards, dead computers, etc. and one day I noticed a trigger generator sitting in it with the note "Doesn't Work" stuck to it. This particular model, made by another company in town here, would cost around $5k new. I called up a friend who worked there and asked what their repair charge would be to fix it. It was something like a flat $350. I brought it over to them to fix and now I have an excellent and fully functional trigger generator for my lab. My win!

In the past I've pulled lease-return laptops and servers out of the recycle bin and dropped in some spare memory and they booted just fine. An SSD and 16Gb RAM later for the laptops, and spare harvested memory and drives for the server, and there's a perfectly working i7 laptop or multi-purpose server. One laptop is still running my HomeSense server, another is my general-purpose laptop for when I need one. I keep my new work laptop for strictly work purposes.

Far too many things are disposed of prematurely. The culture of replacing things when something fails is extremely wasteful, but the drive for recurring revenue, quarterly profits and "shareholder value/executive bonuses" are major drivers of this culture of waste, including the design of newer appliances and electronics that are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to repair.

 

[Paladin79]

We have an e-waste bin at work for things like burned up circuit boards, dead computers, etc. and one day I noticed a trigger generator sitting in it with the note "Doesn't Work" stuck to it. This particular model, made by another company in town here, would cost around $5k new. I called up a friend who worked there and asked what their repair charge would be to fix it. It was something like a flat $350. I brought it over to them to fix and now I have an excellent and fully functional trigger generator for my lab. My win!

Those are the types of things I tend to remember. I traded bottles of bourbon for new speakers including Klipsch, Martin Logan and Paradigm. ( I bought the entire liquor stock of a bar that went out of business for $5 per bottle) broke even and had 109 bottles left. Sometimes you just have to be in the right place at the right time and know the right people. I sold a lot of the speakers and put that money aside in my electronics fund, plus other monies from my labor to help buy my current audio system. I only have some labor invested and I am constantly working on things anyway.

 

[GumbyDammit223]

*snip*

Far too many things are disposed of prematurely. The culture of replacing things when something fails is extremely wasteful, but the drive for recurring revenue, quarterly profits and "shareholder value/executive bonuses" are major drivers of this culture of waste, including the design of newer appliances and electronics that are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to repair.

This! The building I work in was built specifically for us back in 2017 and in the break room are two refrigerators - one made by Whirlpool and one by Samsung. Within three years, the icemaker quit working in the Samsung. We had it repaired and within 6 months it quit working again and hasn't been fixed. I know, FirstWorld problems, but still, design flaw or designed intentionally?

 

[RCBinTN]

Good to see you back on Head-Fi, @KoshNaranek ... it's been a while.

 

[Paladin79]

This! The building I work in was built specifically for us back in 2017 and in the break room are two refrigerators - one made by Whirlpool and one by Samsung. Within three years, the icemaker quit working in the Samsung. We had it repaired and within 6 months it quit working again and hasn't been fixed. I know, FirstWorld problems, but still, design flaw or designed intentionally?

My son gave us a new side by side Samsung and after warranty period the water dispenser still freezes up every month or so, after five repair trips. We have a washer and dryer I bought at an auction 30 years ago and other than minor repairs they still function to this day. Friends have been fortunate to get 5 years out of modern versions.

 

[Ripper2860]

We have an e-waste bin at work for things like burned up circuit boards, dead computers, etc. and one day I noticed a trigger generator sitting in it with the note "Doesn't Work" stuck to it. This particular model, made by another company in town here, would cost around $5k new. I called up a friend who worked there and asked what their repair charge would be to fix it. It was something like a flat $350. I brought it over to them to fix and now I have an excellent and fully functional trigger generator for my lab. My win!

Do you work for a government defense contractor?

 

[theveterans]

Amen!

I have this coffee canister that is just about perfect, we got in Hawaii. It has a gasket-sealed push down "piston" and a lid. Keeps the ground coffee very fresh by protecting it from the atmosphere (oxygen).

Nice! I’ll have a very nice tasting experiment to truly see whether I can even detect a difference in taste between coffee in the original bag against the vacuum canister. My canister already arrived but my new Sey Geisha coffee that I ordered for this test won’t be ready until 3 weeks of resting. So I’ll probably tell you guys back after a month or so to see whether this thing truly makes a difference or not

Breakfast of the day: egg drop soup with Nespresso Aeroccino frother and my crappy latte art haha

 

[mystaiced]

This! The building I work in was built specifically for us back in 2017 and in the break room are two refrigerators - one made by Whirlpool and one by Samsung. Within three years, the icemaker quit working in the Samsung. We had it repaired and within 6 months it quit working again and hasn't been fixed. I know, FirstWorld problems, but still, design flaw or designed intentionally?

The design flaw is that it's samsung. They should stick to what they know and it's not refrigerators. My wife had an issue with one that would need to be thawed out monthly. Then looking at how it was designed I vowed to never purchase a Samsung fridge ever again.