These articles from Benchmark are great. Insightful and written in a way that even I can understand.
The article on distortion was particularly worth reading. It pointed out that piano can be a great way to listen for distortion and timbre. I’ve been doing just that and learning just how deficient some of my recent EQ tunings are 
I’m disappointed I missed this rich and informative topic. I must have been asleep at the wheel. I love the Stephen Stills-Peter Tork Monkees trivia. 
I love it when I am wasting time and find something great.
http://toastytech.com/guis/uirant.html
The author has opinions… I’m typing this on my iPad. I’m sure that Apple Spellcheck would correct him.
The really sad thing about this link…the basic mentality is consistent with our State Office staff. If there’s an illogical, inconsistent, system hogging process, they think they’ve just developed a better mouse trap, and now we’re forced to use it.
It’s seen everywhere. I found the link when I was looking for info about Microsoft Bob. That led to the writer’s comments on Windows 8, in which he thought that MS might not have considered the page I pointed to as sarcasm, and used it in their design.
Even though it’s clearly dated, I particularly like the part about help files on error message boxes that link to the identical text on the error message box… .
I also suggest to him regarding “save as” dialog boxes:
Save without vowels? Y N (Saves space - svs spc)
Save without consonants? Y N (removes excess information - eoe ee ioaio)
Is that the same as “Translate to Welsh”?
Man, another 90s music rock star died/commited suicide. RIP Mr Firestarter.
I wish I had seen them live in their time.
Was just reading about this…sad.
Listened to The Fat of the Land this morning in memorial.
As did I as well as Voodoo People
Going into today, I had a perfect sweet 16 entry on the 3 brackets I played. Not perfect getting there, but had all 16 teams lined up.
I claim no credit, I found a cheap quantitative analysis site run by nerds, and paid a small fee to use the picks they ran based on my input parameters. Being short, chubby, and un-athletic in general, I was usually picked last in high school gym class for basketball. I succumb to peer pressure to play some brackets.
That said, I’m #2 out of 189 in a charity tournament now, and I think the Jewish Refugees from Atlantis are getting excited about a possible donation.
Oh yeah, even though I’m not an athlete, you mess with me in table tennis at your peril.
I was so busy I forgot to put in a bracket in my friend’s pool. I won a pool of 400+ entries about a decade ago. Won over $1500 for a $10 buy-in. 
My alma mater lost yesterday to UNC. Sad.
Today I picked up a new radio … got it updated, loaded my frequency/service lists …
First thing I hear when I fire it up and start listening … this nastiness.
No Bueno! My sister n law has to drive through that area on her way home. I passed along the news.
It’s getting warm outside, and in about 2½ months, I’ll be at a summer regional meeting, 3 or 4 days of up for 8 AM meetings and afternoons off at the beach in Ocean City, Maryland. Jolly work fun is the idea. Bonding. Spouses and children. The good part is afternoons off, and it’s actually at the place I usually stay when I go to OC on vacation.
So I have a few weeks to practice my OTHER hobby, flying stunt kites. I usually fly two line kites, including a “Dream On” designed by Dodd Gross, who taught me how to fly. Below is a video of the kite flown by someone who is a better flier than I am. Although I do fly at an intermediate level.
HOWEVER, I found my only quad line kite which has been missing for about a decade. I think I’d like to practice a bit with that. Different flying technique. Had to order new lines, they are still missing.
The second video is a newer but very similar model of quad line flying.
The Dream On Twin Line Kite
And the Revolution 1.5 Quad Line Kite
I am not sure if this is off-topic or not but I can’t think of anythink specific it is relevant to (except buying things 
)…
I was wondering what you guys feel about the change of name from Massdrop to Drop?
In case anyone hasn’t received the email, it basically says that they have changed their name to better reflect the brand they have become rather than the group buy site the started out as.
Do you agree that they have become an actual brand or do you see them more as a “in colaboration with” kind of thing?
I think the “creatives” there ran out of things to do … and have started running amok!
The new site design is more of a problem than the branding change, though. And I blame that at least as much on their “web devs” (to be fair, everything wrong with the internet that I can’t pin directly on social media or advertisers , I blame on “web devs”*).
*Not to be confused with developers that happen to work on web-centric projects. If you don’t know the difference, you might be a “web dev”!
I have only really looked at their new site from a mobile device and I must agree that it did not impress me. You now have to log in to browse, not just see the price, which means I will certainly not browse as much (nor will many people I know).
They must have also lost their browsing histories from their old site as I have only ever looked at audio equipment while logged in and under “based on your previous interests” it didn’t show a single audio item!
A step backwards into brand confusion and ambiguity. I wouldn’t be surprised if they return to the old name before long.
“I just dropped a…” isn’t a great connotation…
