Refenestration Daily.
I already have a tube-based CD changer that I listen to at work, but tubes are intriguing me in general. I think this post from the Home Theater Forum captures the tube essense:
Last night while listening to a Tony Bennett SACD through my tube rig, I heard him light up a cigarette and set the lighter on a stool between vocal phrases.
It dont get any cooler than that.
Mike
Pleasantly, while most other shows are in reruns, Junkyard Wars has brand new epsidoes! Unfortunately, I see that they also did a little host flip-flop since the last season: Robert Llewellyn is out, and Tyler “I’m not Canadian” Harcott is in. Robert Llewellyn had a certain British charm and wit, but Tyler Harcott is a bit of a goof. He tries to play down his Canadian background, though it is amusing when an occasional “aboot” slips out.
Nonetheless, Junkyard Wars is still one of the best shows on TV. And, I especially look forward to tomorrow’s episode, as The Geeks are from my brother’s fraternity at MIT. I’ll be rooting for them as they compete in the Sand Yacht challenge!
Bonus link: Check out The Geeks’ FAQ on Junkyard Wars — it's quite enlightening, especially the bit about hours-remaining.
Via MetaFilter, PwC will be renaming itself as Monday. That’s right, “Monday”. And, this e-mail apparently made the rounds at Monday, on Monday:
Admin: Good Morning, this is Monday.
Client: No, actually its Tuesday.
Admin: Yes sir, but you've reached Monday.
Client: What are you talking about?
Admin: You've called Monday sir.
Client: I realize I called yesterday, but today is Tuesday.
Admin: Today is Tuesday, but you've reached Monday.
Client: What?
Admin: Who can I connect you with?
Client: I need to talk to a partner in PwC.
Admin: There are only partners in Monday at this location.
Client: They don't work the rest of the week?
Admin: They work all week, sir. But they're all in Monday.
Client: But I want to talk to a PwC partner today, not Monday.
Admin: You can't talk to a PwC partner here. You'll have to talk to a partner in Monday.
Client: I can't wait til Monday!!
It looks like Yahoo is revamping its homepage. You can even see the new design for yourself at their beta page. But, then again, who uses Yahoo anymore? (Link via MetaFilter)
The other day, at Sam’s Club, I stopped by the juice-and-fruit-based-snacks aisle just to take a look around. I spied some of those milk and cereal bars. I wouldn't want to eat them for breakfast, as they have far too little protein, but I figured that they might work well as snack-alternative to Rice Krispie bars, from time to time. And, compared with Rice Krispie bars, they were fairly similar: about 3g fat and around 100 Calories.
I almost put them into my shopping basket, but then I noticed that they were a General Mills product — and I boycott General Mills products. I’ll explain.
Early last year, Pillsbury sent cease-and-desist letters to Universities and companies as large as Sun Microsystems ordering engineers to stop holding what the company considers illegal “bake-offs.”:
[It’s] not as if the engineers are huddling together around the oven trading stolen recipes — in techie lingo, a “bake-off” is a get-together in which software programmers test their creations against network protocols to see if they will work correctly. Or, as one site put it, these are “events where engineers get together to test their implementations against each other.” No matter: The geeks are infringing on Pillsbury’s “bake-off trademark,” the letters argued. They're causing confusion, sullying the term, trashing the down-home originality that inspired Pillsbury to trademark the phrase back in 1949. [...]
Certainly, Pillsbury was not losing any revenue from a someone’s programming session. And, sending cease-and-desist letters was a rotton thing to do. So, right then-and-there, I decided to boycott Pillsbury. It didn’t seem tough, at first, but it was more extensive than I first realized: General Mills owns Pillsbury, and General Mills also owns many other companies. So, that meant no Yoplait/Columbo, no Cheerios or Lucky Charms, no Better Crocker or Bisquick, and no Green Giant or Old El Paso. But, you know what? I’m sticking with it, and it's not as hard as you might think.
At any rate, I ended up buying some Kellogg’s Nutri-Grain Yogurt bars instead. I don’t expect them to be as healthy as regular yogurt, but they’d only replacing Rice Krispie bars, anyhow.