The Useful Duck!

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Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Random

Random thoughts.
Strange weather patterns. This makes me nervous. My wife's school in on a two hour delay because of snow. We live in western Oregon... What will this mean for the summer weather? How will I do enough planting the point when it stops raining and the time to make a drill payment? What will happen with hay cutting this year?
I am strangely over-tired. Sometimes I wish I were re-tired. I stayed up late listening to the Linda Ronstadt collection I found at Goodwill a couple months ago and trying to find missing invoices for tax purposes.
My lovely wife has put me on some sort of natural health improvement program. Large pills in the morning make me queasy and so she went to a huge effort to find me beneficial minerals and vitamins in liquid form.  The evening formula is supposed to make me sleep better.
I have no idea if it works or not.
I am also supposed to stop drinking coffee. Perhaps I will switch to tea.
In other news I bought a Dynaco AF-6 tuner on eBay. This was one of those "whoops" moments. Instead of bidding $16 I bid $61.00. They make it really hard to put in an accidental bid but if you are in a hurry and hit return several times you can seriously screw things up.
I usually use jBidwatcher, which is a sniping program. It automatically bids for you in the last 30 seconds of the auction.
I was just putting in $16 as the Tuner was at $8 with several days left. If I really would have been serious I would have used jBidwatcher to "snipe" it at the last minute.
It arrived in the mail yesterday. It was supposed to have been for parts or repair but when I hooked it up I was able to pull in stations. The tuning knob is a little sticky. I suspect the little thread that runs around inside to run the needle and the tuning is slipping.
The AM antenna needs some fooling around with to make it work so there is a bit of a loose connection.
The Dynatune feature is pretty cool. When you turn it on it locks on a station. It turns on slowly and you have to have the tuner centered on the station or it may lock on an adjacent station.
But there is one big problem.
FM radio is fine for random listening but there really is not selection of stations. AM is worse. This tuner has a switch for wide/narrow/medium tuning in AM so you should be able to tune stations in pretty well. But, what stations are you going to listen to? The old country station is gone. I'm not a big talk show fan as of late. NPR gets a little old.
You can't rapidly change stations like you do in the tractor.
The FM jazz station is gone.
The oldies rock station is gone. Everything else is on tape which repeats way too often.
I've actually been listening to KGON. They play the same five songs they have always played....
The 21st century is a wasteland. A million choices but only the most mediocre is heard. Sounds like the Republican presidential primary...
Have a nice day!

7 comments:

  1. What! No KMHD? An AF-7 just sold on ePay for $64.00. Maybe that was the model that actually would pick up jazz.

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  2. That was me. I went back and looked and I bid $64 instead of $46. There does not appear to be any such thing a Dynco AF-7 and it said it needed repair so I thought I'd put a high bid in when it was nearing the end with few bids. Plus the guy said he would make me a better deal on shipping. This is of course a stupid way to bid on ePay.
    There were probably crazed Dynaco collectors thinking they were getting a once in a life time buy on a rare model.
    KMHD does not come in inside the metal shop building.
    I am switching to a Pioneer receiver that my brother has stashed in the barn. Getting rid of the Reel-to-reel, keeping the 8-track. Thinking about doing some recording.

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    Replies
    1. However, the other guy bit it up to $63.41, so there is a market out there of at least one other crazed Dynaco nut.

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    2. Don't rub it in...What was I thinking!

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  3. Old radios, not surprisingly I have accumulated a few of them over the years. Right back to old wooden case, battery powered types that are no more than antiques now. Too bad some of those old radios couldn't tune in some of the same music and programming that was popular when they were new.

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  4. Ralph, now that would be a good trick. Sometimes I wish the tractor I was driving was new. As I wish I travel back in time to the day when the item was new.
    I could live without the internet but I think the getting up at 4 a.m. would be a little tiresome.

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  5. Especially without coffee. I'd find it tough to farm then or now and stay off that wagon. Tea Is supposed to be more subtle. Zen of the Lazy Farmer.

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