Hang in there, it gets better

I am so worried about Alex. I pray that the Angels watch over him and give him strength to get through the next few years. It gets better. In fact it gets a lot better. Even if I don't live long enough to see him, he should know that I love him and his brother very much, and want him to live a long, happy life. Don't ever give up.

A beautiful woman will find him, and I hope they have many kids. I have a few things from my dad that I hope to end up with my grand kids.

Life is such a wonderful gift, even with all the crap it can bring. Hang in there

Like my dad used to say "Don't let the bastards grind you down".

College and your 20's will rock. Keep plugging away.

Rebirth of the Cool

One of the most fun jobs I ever had was working at Speakerlab in it's glory days. This was the late 70's, which coincided with some of the best music ever recorded.

Since I am pretty restricted in what I do because of the cancer tumor in my spine, I finally got out my old stereo equipment, and unboxed the 600 or so Vinyl LP albums. I have been lugging these around since college. Most are in the garage, but I bring in favorites.

I dug through all the albums, and could not find "Kind of Blue" by Miles Davis, one of my favorites. I went online intending to buy a used record, and I found a new "audiophile" pressing that was released Feb 2010. It turns out that a lot of new releases are released on vinyl at the same time as a CD. In fact, Vinyl sales are increasing about 30% a year, while CD's are decreasing almost as much. (Amazon sold out, but it is still available here)

I can't say how much listening to a LP rocks over CD's or downloads. The mere act of putting a record on the turntable and "listening to music" is entirely different than listening to a crappy itunes download.

People don't "listen" to music much anymore. They put it on as background, or listen to headphones while jogging, etc., but when was the last time you got together with friends and put a piece of music on and just listened to it like you would watch a movie?

Itunes downloads are the sonic equivalent to a transistor AM radio, while the LP retains all the warmth and image of the original recording. (Imaging is when you play the music, and the speakers disappear. If you close your eyes, you can picture the sound-scape of the musicians.

CD's are quieter, but not as pleasant to listen to. I also have a flac digital version of "Kind of Blue", and can hear big differences. Not in the high end as you would expect, but in the bass. The CD/FLAC versions are much tighter. So much so that it sounds artificial. Remember, Miles recordings were all on analog tape. I wouldn't listen to the digital, except that it has an alternate take of "Flamenco Sketches", which I really like.
My minimalistic HiFi.

8 watt per channel tube amplifier kit power amp kit that I build to relieve boredom. It's driven by a phono pre-amp which is needed to raise the output of a phono cartridge high enough to drive an amp. Unfortunately, most stereo receivers don't have a phono input anymore, so you need to use a stand alone phono preamp with most newer stereo's. I am not using a preamp (where tone controls, balance etc would be) since the phono preamp's output is high enough to drive the tube power amp to full output.

I built a Hafler DH-220 power amp somewhere around 1980.

I still use it a lot. It sounded great then, and still does. These can be found for about $200 on ebay. A year ago, they were around $400-$500. Next to the amp is the 6" powered subwoofer I use to pick up the stuff the Rodgers can't reproduce. (50Hz and below)

Thorens TD145 MkII turntable, and Rodgers LS3/5A speakers.

Like most vintage HiFi, this stuff is worth more now than when new. The turntables sell for $300-$400 on ebay when you can find one, and the Speakers go from $1600 to $2000. Just knowing what the Rodgers speakers are gets you into a "secret handshake club". The current Thorens TD350, which is essentially the same is almost $4000! Wow!

Rodgers LS3/5A speaker.


Thorens TD145 Mk II


My favorite phono cartridge. Goldring G900SE.

I have a half dozen cartridges, and always go back to this one. Like all vintage stuff, they sell for a lot more than new. Typically, these go for about $350. I tried to get a new stylus (needle) for my Shure V15 type III, and they are $350 for just the needle alone!

Google Ortofon. They sell cartridges from $35 to $6500! (and they are doing well!) I would like to try the 2M Red. It's "only" $100

The last thing that one needs (and this is a "must have"), is a DAC (Digital to Analog Converter). Computer sound cards just plain suck. No matter the quality of the digital record, playback using a soundcard will be FM quality at best. I currently use a Nuforce uDAC 48kHz, 16-bit DAC. ($100). A 24bit DAC will cost around $500 ish

Anyone with an ipod should try this experiment. Find a track you are familiar with that you own both as a digital file on your ipod, and as a CD. Plug the ipod into the HiFi (stereo) and listen. Now try the CD. I am assuming you have a reasonably good Stereo system. The differences will be huge.

CD's are 44 kHz/16 bit recordings. The best available digital recordings are 96 kHz/24 bit. Several classical labels are re-releasing recordings in this 24bit FLAC format. This is significantly better than CD quality and was available for a while as DVD-A (audio) disks. Stores did not want to stock them, since audiophiles are a small market. You need the equipment, but the quality is the best.

Memorial Services for Rozie

Who ever reads this, please let as many know as you can. Rozie touched so many.
Rosalind Pinney Rambus memorial services

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Memorial Services @ 12:00 & 8:00pm

'Registered Nurse'- Employee of 33 Years with

Northridge Hospital Medical Center

Northridge, CA

FAMILY SERVICES

Friday February 18, 2010

The services are currently scheduled for Friday as follows:

Viewing will be at Halley Olsen Murphy Mortuary

44802 North Date Ave

9:00 am - 11:00 am

(661) 942-1139

Services to Follow

Joshua Memorial Cemetary

12:00 or 1:00 pm (to be confirmed)

808 East Lancaster Blvd.

Lancaster, CA 93535

Lancaster Church

4020 E. Lancaster Blvd

Lancaster, CA 93535

Rosalind Pinney Rambus 11-29-1956 to 2-11-2010

Roz was not supposed to go before me. In my selfishness, I counted on her to be by my side at the end. I hope my boys learn of her death, and her mom does the christian thing, and lets them come to her funeral.

I count myself fortunate to have had her as a part of my life all these years.


I met Roz around 1980, a few days before I went back to Washington State University to make up all the incomplete I took when I dropped out. I had left school nearly 10 years earlier when my sister Margaret was killed in a snow play accident.



We met at a club in the Valley (Balboa and Roscoe). She was dancing, and everyone's eyes were on her. Boy, did she look beautiful on the dance floor, and boy could she dance. It is a real pity that she stopped. It was one of the few ways she could really express herself. She was, by far, the most beautiful woman there. Sometimes you can just look at someone, and just know.



I went up to her and asked her to dance. It did not go over too well with the guy she was with, but she ended up leaving with me. Before she did though, we went to my car, where she basically grilled me about everything. She learned more about me in that time than most people ever learn. later, I took her to a 24 hour restaurant in Reseda, and we talked most of the night.



The next day, I met her at the hospital where she worked, and the first thing she did was ask me for my drivers license. She took it and photocopied it and gave the copy to her head nurse, and said "good,now you can come home with me".

We had a wonderful week or so together, and then I drove to Pullman WA for the semester. We did not really stay in touch while I was at WSU, but as soon as I got back, I called her and we started dating.



We were married on her parents anniversary, 11-26-1983. The marriage lasted about a year. I wish I could have lived up to her expectations. The road not taken always seems to be better in retrospect.



Roz and I differed in life philosophies which is what made living together difficult. She lived in black and white, while I am all about shades of gray. I just could not feel strongly about some of the things she felt strongly about, and she had a difficult time with my lack of concern for some things she believed strongly in.




Our marriage ended, but our feelings for each other never did. We became lifelong friends and confidants. She could talk to me about her life, and I could talk about mine. We each knew that the advice we received from each other was from the heart, and with the others best interest in mind. For me, it was great to have a woman to talk to about other women. A woman's perspective can be enlightening compared guys.



These photos are of how I will always remember her. She aged very little over the years, until the last when the personal drama in her life took a toll.

She always loved the "Wizard of Oz". She was my little scarecrow. I will miss her most of all.

My rant on "anthropomorphic" Global Warming religion

"You can lead a person to knowledge, but can't make them think" My own paraphrasing of an old adage. or, None so blind as those that will not see.

Here is a post that I made on realclimate (a pro AGW website). It was "moderated out". I was told that they stack the deck against skeptics, and now I know that to be true.

****
Matthew Orme says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
19 February 2010 at 9:51 PM

Start with this. CO2 is the building block for life. If we eliminated it, life (carbon based) would cease to exist.

Here is a simple truth. Climate models predicting AGW can/could not predict the past. (ie., plug in all the data, and get a “prediction” that matches what actually happened (warming in the 40’s, cooling in the 70’s, warming in the 80/90’s and nothing in the late 90’s to today (per Phil Jones, argue with him if you disagree).

BTW, the models do not include insolation as a variable. And we do not understand the role of clouds. Do they trap heat, or reflect sunlight? You have an opinion I am sure, but the science is uncertain.

If the models cannot explain what actually occurred, how can we rely on them to predict the future?

What does any credible scientist do when observations do not fit a theory? Throw out the theory. that’s the basis of science. Propose a theory, collect data, see if the data fits the theory, if not scrap the theory and come up with one where the data actually fits the model.

I became a skeptic the moment I saw the hockey stick graph. I have a degree in geology (an actually relevant science). I studied in the early 70’s and later in the 90’s. We studied the MWP, and LIA (remember CO2 is the basis for limestones etc). When those climate changes were “erased”, I knew that something was afoot. Geologists as a whole do not support a causal link between CO2 and Temp. The record actually shows that CO2 follows temp, with a lag of 800-1000 years. In 1000-1200 AD, there were vineyards in Northern England, and farming in Greenland.

It’s all about the money, not the human condition. IPCC predicts 130,000 additional deaths due to warming with a doubling of CO2. (feel free to correct my recollection if incorrect). However, taking the dirtiest/cheapest coal fired power plants, and building enough of them to provide electricity so that people that burn wood/dung indoors could cook with electricity would save 1.5 MILLION lives a year. That’s just from cooking, not all the other life shortening things that are due to lack of cheap energy. A simple cost/benefits analysis says that you do not invest trillions do do essentially nothing.

To quote a scientist, “lack of cheap energy makes for short brutal lives”
****


Freeman Dyson, physicist and member of the Institute for Advanced Study said, "The climate-studies people who work with models always tend to overestimate their models... They come to believe models are real and forget they are only models."^[56] "My objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have."^[57]

There is absolutely no evidence that CO2 drives temperature. When you take this assumption out of the picture, everything else falls apart. When you put incorrect assumptions into a computer model, you get false predictions.

Anyone with an open mind should watch the BBC special "The Great Global Warming Swindle" email me and I will be glad to lend you my copy. I watched an inconvenient truth, you should watch the counter argument. Here is a reprint of an article from the San Francisco Examiner (a republican hot bed if ever there was one) that summarizes the documentary http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1945

Global temperature has declined since 1998. Meanwhile, atmospheric carbon dioxide has gone in the other direction, increasing 15–20%. (see link below)

Has anyone noticed that the last couple winters have been particularly cold? Of course The Holy Church of Global Warming says that cold winters are evidence of Global warming. Nice isn't it. If it gets warmer, global warming. If it gets colder, global warming.

At no time during our planet's history have increases in CO2 preceded an increase in temp. In fact the following chart shows that compared to former geologic times, our present atmosphere, like the Late Carboniferous atmosphere, is CO2- impoverished! In the last 600 million years of Earth's history only the Carboniferous Period and our present age, the Quaternary Period, have witnessed CO2 levels less than 400 ppm. Click for a clearer image. (Black line = CO2, Blue line = Temp.)

This subject has now become a religion. Religions refuse to listen to anything that does not conform with the persons beliefs. Science differs because it constantly tests a hypothesis. Mann's "hockey stick" graph has now proven to be a fraud btw.

When the prophet Al Gore put up the CO2/Temp graph in his movie, he failed to tell viewers that CO2 lagged temperature by 800 to 1000 years. Paleoclimatologists believe that this is because it takes this long for the oceans to warm up/cool down. When the oceans warm up, they release gasses including CO2, and when the cool, they absorb gasses. This is why there is so much marine life in cold water.

Gore, by the way, owns a cap/trade brokerage house and stands to make a bundle. The Wall Street Journal summed it up by saying that Cap and Trade was a giant revenue generating machine exceeding income taxes, in the guise of saving the planet. No wonder the Dems are salivating over it. Read the article showing that it won't work here
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124587942001349765.html

In simple terms, CO2 rises because the temperature warms, not the other way around.

Guess how warm the planet was 1000 years ago. It was in the middle of the Medieval Warming Period. There were vineyards in northern England, and the Vikings were farming in Greenland. This was followed by the Little Ice Age, which caused the vikings to abandon Greenland, and life for Europeans was miserable. Look at the paintings during the period. The Thames river froze, as did the Delaware River (look at the painting of Washington crossing the Delaware). Neither of these rivers freeze today. Depending on who you believe, the Little Ice Age ended around 1900 (some put it as late as 1950). Guess what happens to the planet at the end of an Ice Age. It warms up (duh).

IPCC discounts both these as products of the Northern Hemisphere only, yet they are tracked in the Antarctic Ice cores (where the 1000 to 800 year CO2/temp lag is recorded). this is a perfect example of cognative dissonance. (Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind's made up)

One must also ask why water vapor is ignored by global warming alarmists. Water vapor constitutes 95% of the green house gas in the atmosphere, while CO2 makes up 3.6%.

Role of Atmospheric Greenhouse Gases
(man-made and natural) as a % of Relative
Contribution to the "Greenhouse Effect"

Based on concentrations (ppb) adjusted for heat retention characteristics	Percent of Total	Percent of Total --adjusted for water vapor
Water vapor	-----	95.000%
Carbon Dioxide (CO2)	72.369%	3.618%
Methane (CH4)	7.100%	0.360%
Nitrous oxide (N2O)	19.000%	0.950%
CFC's (and other misc. gases)	1.432%	0.072%
Total	100.000%	100.000%

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. If you get a fall evening and the sky is clear, heat will escape, the temperature will drop and you get frost. If there's cloud cover, the heat is trapped by water vapour as a greenhouse gas and the temperature stays warm. If you go to In Salah in southern Algeria, they recorded at noon 52°C. By midnight, it's -3.6°C. That’s a 56°C drop in temperature in 12 hours. It's caused because there is very little water vapour in the atmosphere and is a demonstration of water vapour as the most important greenhouse gas (source: Interview with Tim Ball). see this article http://www.skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm

"During the 20th century, the earth warmed 0.6 degree Celsius (1 degree Fahrenheit), but that warming has been wiped out in a single year with a drop of 0.63 degree C. (1.13 F.) in 2007. A single year does not constitute a trend reversal, but the magnitude of that temperature drop — equal to 100 years of warming — is noteworthy. Of course, it can also be argued that a mere 0.6 degree warming in a century is so tiny it should never have been considered a cause for alarm in the first place. But then how could the idea of global warming be sold to the public? In any case, global cooling has been evident for more than a single year. Global temperature has declined since 1998. Meanwhile, atmospheric carbon dioxide has gone in the other direction, increasing 15–20%. This divergence casts doubt on the validity of the greenhouse hypothesis, but that hasn't discouraged the global warming advocates. They have long been ignoring far greater evidence that the basic assumption of greenhouse warming from increases in carbon dioxide is false." http://ilovecarbondioxide.com/2009/04/termites-emit-ten-times-more-co2-than.html

Now take a look at insolation. The chart below shows the sun's output over time. Notice how well it tracks historical temperatures, and what the relative output is today. This graph speaks for itself.



People just love catastrophic reasons for change. As a geologist who studied paleontology, I never believed in the asteroid dinosaur killer either. There is just no evidence that all the dinosaurs just dropped dead one Tuesday afternoon. I believe that they died as a result of the planet calming down, which slowly cut atmospheric oxygen by half. During the dinosaurs reign, volcanic activity was extremely high, spewing out lots of CO2. This caused a major growth in plant life, who converted the CO2 into O2. Atmospheric oxygen was double what it is today. Dinosaurs do not have diaphragms like mammals, but breath like birds. It takes a lot of O2 to run an engine the size of a Seismosaurus, and essentially, they suffocated (slowly over time as the fossil record shows) Mammals can survive with much less O2, since they can easily breath in more air.

I'm tired of writing. more later.

Test 2 from G1

Pix

Test email from G1

317 W Blaine, Seattle WA, 1976

Here are some photos of the gang at 317. The house is at the top of Queen Anne Hill in Seattle. It's surrounded by everything. After college, I moved in with some college friends. John Streeter, David Baker (deceased unfortunately), Dana Woodward, Brooks Burford, Bill Spaulding, and a few others. It is where I lived for the first year or 2 when I was working at Speakerlab. I finished a room for myself in the basement.

I checked out the street view on Google maps, and it looks exactly the same today as it did then.

We all drank nothing but Olympia beer since John's step father worked at the brewery in Tumwater, and saved up the bottles. We cashed in a years collection in order to buy a keg. We threw an end of the 1976 summer party, just before John Streeter left to go to Loyola Law School in LA.

We measured the success of parties by how many people "slept it off". In the morning, there were 18 people crashed all over the house.



John Streeter, Matthew Orme, Brooks Burford


John Streeter, Matthew Orme





Ray Sundstrom, who took most of the photos


John Streeter, Matthew Orme


John Streeter, William Spaulding


Brooks Burford, Matthew Orme, John Streeter


Brooks Burford, Matthew Orme, John Streeter



The Usual Suspects


My Second 1964 MGB in British Racing Green. You can barely see my first one in the Delta Tau Delta Fraternity parking lot around 1972. There is lots of room even for a tall guy like me. I wish I could buy another one today. Note that these are both MK1 (the first) versions of the MGB. Chrome Bumpers, a 3 main bearing engine, Smith Electrics, 2 x 6V batteries in series with a positive ground, wire wheels, twin SU side draft carbs, generators instead of alternators, etc. A great car, easy to work on and a lot of fun to drive. I could pull the head, get it ground, and replaced with the car running again in a day. Both cars I had were early 1964 models. Today I would look for a 1964 1/2 to 1966 model, the engine was upgraded to 5 main bearings. Anything before 1974 when pollution/safety standards mucked up the car and the chrome bumpers were replaced with ugly rubber ones. Here is a guy restoring a 1973. http://www.my73mgb.com/index.htm
wikipedia

More of the crew.






Empties loaded in the pick up to take to the recyclers.

Delt days at WSU

Here is what Steve Tytler, Class of '78, says about the Washington State University Epsilon Gamma chapter of Delta Tau Delta about the "Golden Age" of the 1970's. "It was called the "Golden Age because it was a time when WSU authorities literally let the students run wild on campus! There was NO attempt to enforce laws against underage drinking. We actually had kegs of beer on the front lawn of the Delt house -- right across the street from the WSU President's house -- and nobody cared! It was a great time to be in college."

I am trying to find more pix of WSU, but these are all I could find at the moment.

My boys, Michael and Alex are "legacies" and can join any chapter of Delta Tau Delta they want, if the Greek way appeals to them.

Photos courtesy of http://www.wsudelts.com/Don_Grazzini_76.html


An attempt to Study.


What every frat guy needs, a well stocked bar


My high school Sweetheart Barbara Long. The gal by which all others in my life were measured. I'm sure that she made the costumes for the Fraternity costume party. I still have some of the ties she made. Now a grade school teacher in Klamath falls Oregon, with grown kids and grand kids I think. The worst thing that happened to me was chasing her away. Probably best for her though. She wanted the white picket fence, and I wanted adventure. It would be really nice to see her again while I am still around.


My friend Bruce Eliott. We had a bar in the house called the Slipper Inn. Quarter beers for anyone in the house.


the keg

Shi-Shi Beach (Point of the Arches) before becoming part of the Olympic National Park