Speakers

Pyle PL63BL 6.5-Inch 360-Watt 3-Way Speakers (Pair)

Before I get started on building my dream car, let's see if we can make a minor repair to my truck. It came with a semi-fancy audio system from the factory, meaning 4 regular speakers and a couple of tweeters. A few years ago I let younger son borrow it and when they came back the speakers were blown. Sure, it could have been age and normal wear and tear, but when there is a teenage boy involved, well, you figure it out.

The blown speakers make the radio pretty much unlistenable, and since I'm still driving across town a couple of times a week, not having any tunes was kind of a bummer. The trip to Miami and my Thunderbird fantasy finally pushed me over the edge and I decided to do something about it.

I could have taken it to an audio shop, but it probably would have cost a minimum of a couple of hundred bucks, and being easily suggestible I probably would have opted for the upgrade which would have been another hunert bucks. But I'm in cheapskate mode and I'm trying to fix things around the house, so let's see if we do this our own self.

The easiest solution would have been to buy the original speakers. That way they would bolt right in and the electrical connectors would plug right it in and the whole installation would be easy-peasy. But OEM speakers are a little hard to find (maybe they have them in stock and maybe this listing was posted 15 years ago and nobody has bothered to update it since) and a little expensive (like $50 each). Okay, we'll buy generic speakers and suffer the hassles that every kid who ever upgraded the speakers in his car suffered.

I finally got started on this project this afternoon and it was fraught with all the pain-in-the-neck hassles that I expected. I started with the drivers door and the first thing is to pull off the inner door panel. There are five screws, three Philips head and two Torx. Pull those out and now you can lift the panel and pull it loose from the door. Except not really because of all the wires and the door handle latch. The door handle (in the inner door panel) connects to the latch (in the door) through a steel rod about an an eighth of an inch in diameter (1/8"). The rod has a right angle bend on the end that goes through a hole in the end of the door handle lever. It is held in place by a clever little plastic clip. All you need to do is unclip this clip from the rod and the rod will come free. Dang, it's a tough little clip, but with some forceful finger action I persuade it to let go and our last mechanical connection comes free.

Now all we have are the wires, and there is more than one. I can't remember how many exactly, but they are all these modern plastic connectors with a latch that you press to release before you can pull them apart. That all went fine until I got to the power window / door lock connector, which has like a dozen wires. Cannot see how this one comes apart. Google provides a clue: remove the switch from the door panel first. At the top of the switch there is a little metal spring clip (this in on the inside of the door panel). Using a screwdriver I was able to push it down which allowed me to pull the switch from the panel. At first I thought it was one of those nasty spring jaws where you push the switch into the panel and the spring clip is like the inward facing teeth on a shark: they grab hold and let you go farther in, but you cannot pull back. But actually it's not. It's part of the switch, not the door panel. Pushing the switch into the panel causes the spring clip to compress, but once the switch is in place it pops up, locking the switch into position.

Now we have the door lock switch hanging loose and we can get a good look at the connector, and there, on the door panel side, where we couldn't see it before, is the locking tab! I use a medium size set of Channel-lock pliers to squeeze the release tab, grip the connector and pull it loose from the switch. We finally have the panel free of the door. Glory Hallelujah!

When I take door panel off, a sound insulating pad falls off on the floor. That is going to have to be glued back in place. Do I have a suitable glue? I root around and finally find a can of contact cement that I used on a kitchen table project 25 years ago. It is still at least semi-liquid, so it might work, if it doesn't eat the door panel. I put a dab on the panel and on the pad. We shall see.

Anyway, we are finally where we can think about replacing the speaker. It looks simple enough, there are three big Philips head screws holding it to the door but taking them out does nothing. The speaker is still firmly mounted to the door. Using my pocket knife and a screwdriver, I pry it loose. More screwdriver work and I pry the speaker loose from the plastic spacer that holds it half an inch from the door. Everything is sealed: the spacer is sealed to the door, the speaker is sealed to the spacer, the grill is sealed to the speaker, and there is some kind of cushion that seals the grill to the door panel. Geez, they sure went to a lot of trouble to seal all this up. Is it worthwhile or necessary? Somebody sure thought so. Maybe we should try to replicate all this sealing.

Meanwhile there is the electrical connector. The factory speakers have a factory connector that mates with a connector on the wiring harness. My economy speakers don't have this. Splices will have to made. Perhaps I can salvage the connectors from the original speakers, that way I can make up a pigtail that will plug into the existing wiring harness, which means I won't have to be soldering stuff while sitting on the floor in the garage. Getting the connector loose from the speaker is not too tough since the speaker is shot and we can pull the cone back so we can access the lock tab that holds the connector in place. Desolder the wires and the connector is free.

Now all I need to do is:

• make up a pigtail,
• glue the pad to the door
• glue the spacer and the grill to the speaker. Probably ought to screw the speaker to the spacer.
• screw our glorious speaker assemble to the door, and
• mount the door panel.

Then I get to repeat for the other door. And the back seat speakers. Happy Father's Day.

Speakers, Part 2

Driver's door complete, passenger door was much quicker and easier. Imagine that, once you have figured out what needs to be done, doing it again is a piece of cake. Only thing is I forgot to write down how the speaker wires are connected. If they both end up being connected the same way, then they should be in phase. If not, they will be out of phase. I wonder if I will be able to tell? Another thing: the locking tab on the speaker connector has to be pulled up, not pushed down like all the other connectors.

Now I look at the speakers in the back and, shit, this looks like a huge pain in the ass. There are no screws in evidence, except for the seat belt bolts. Google turns up Club Cab Rear Speaker Install, that gives me a couple of clues, like just pull on the back panel above the rear seat backrest and it will come off. It takes some forceful tugging, but it does indeed come loose. That gives us access to two (2!) Philips head screws that hold the side panel on. The screws come out but the panel is still firmly installed. More forceful tugging separates it from the truck. 

At least one big fat Torx screw that holds the front seat belt needs to be removed. I used a socket that I bought a zillion years ago when I did the brakes on my 1989 Chevy Celebrity. I knew I needed a big one, but I didn't know which size so I bought four. The one I needed now was still in it's shrink wrap packaging. I had never needed it before.

Once the panel is off you are home free, so to speak. The speaker is revealed and it's fairly straight forward to replace it. The hole is just slight smaller than the speaker, so if you center it, the holes for the mounting screws will intersect the speaker hole, so I offset it just a tad, maybe an eighth of an inch, and I only used 3 of the 4 screw holes. The screw hole at the bottom edge of the speaker missed the sheet metal completely, but the edge of the speaker caught the edge of the hole, so it's mounted good and solid, though not mathematically perfect. I sealed the speakers to the body with some old silicon bathroom caulk I had lying around. It shouldn't make any difference, Dodge didn't make much effort to seal off these speakers.

Putting the side panels back was a colossal pain. There are a bunch of places that need to be engaged. Some of them just slide together, but some will only go together if you hold your mouth right, and that takes some doing. But I eventually got all the little hooks and whatnot engaged and got the panels back in. Only problem was the plastic pushpin on upper rear of the drivers side panel. That one did not want to go. Get it all lined up and push and it folds over. I eventually lost it down one of the holes in the body and decided to just leave it. Now that everything is done there doesn't seem to be any difference between the drivers side, which is missing a pin, and the passenger side, which isn't.

Curious thing is I was only able to work on this project for about an hour at a time before I was tired out and needed a break. The work wasn't that hard, not like breaking rocks in the hot sun. I think it was because I was using muscles I normally don't use, and contorting myself into positions I don't get into.

Sound of Money, Part 2

DKnight MagicBox II Bluetooth 4.0 Portable Wireless Speaker
TechPicks has a video review where he demonstrates the buttons.
That's also where I got the photo. 

Younger son tells me about this miniature loudspeaker. Sounds like it might be just what I need, but geez, it's sure got a lot of stuff I don't need, and me, being all curmudgeon-like, I don't wanna hafta pay for a buncha stuff I don't want or need, like buttons and Bluetooth and batteries. On the other hand it's really small, not very expensive (it's only a fraction of the price of the Amazon Echo that I was talking about earlier), and ain't that the way of the world anyway?
    Products that are mass produced for the masses include as many do-dads as they can so they will appeal to as many people as possible. I mean look at cars. Most cars only carry a single person, but cars come with four seats and four doors. I would venture to say that 90% of the miles driven are done with only a single person aboard. So why are most cars four passenger? Because the incremental cost of adding 3 more seats is tiny compared to the cost of the basic car. Add five percent to the cost of building the car and you've covered another 9% of the market. That's me making a big fat guess.
    The other part of the economics is volume. The number of people like me who want a featureless speaker probably numbers in the thousands. The number of people who want a speaker to work with their smart-phone likely numbers in the millions. If you are going to build a speaker, who are you going to build it for? So I benefit from what other people want.
    Anyway, I'm reading up on this speaker on Amazon and I was struck by some of the comments:

• It comes with a 'Bass Pad' that 'holds the speaker in place so you can rock out without your speaker leaping over the edge.'
• I like that the volume buttons are separate from the skip buttons because then I don't have to remember whether I need to do a long press or a short one for the function I want.
• It's heavy duty and rugged for using it inside or out. Except in water. Don't let it swim.
• ... unlike the Magicbox I it does not talk to you in a weird computer voice when you connect your device, just a nice simple beep.
• Invest in the second one. It's only $7 more. That's almost an hour of work at a minimum wage job for a much better speaker.

The world is full of strange and wonderful people. I've summarized the important parts of the Amazon page here.
    After spending all this time reading about this thing I think I gonna hafta buy one. Besides, that's the only way to find out if I can play tunes over the USB connection.

Sound of Silence

I found this video on WIMP.COM. I figured out pretty quickly that the loudspeaker must be vibrating in sync with the camera. Digital camera's are much faster than film cameras, which is why you can see the individual drops of water, rather than just a blur (same reason that in digital pictures of prop driven aircraft 
the propellers appear to be stopped, whereas in pictures taken with film cameras, the propellers appear as a blur).

But if the speaker is vibrating (it must be, he even turns up the volume!) why can't we see that, and more importantly, why can't we hear it? We can hear the water running, why can't we hear the loudspeaker? So I poked around a bit until I found this explanation:

. . . the camera is shooting at 25 frames per second, which is exactly the same rate that the tube carrying the water is being vibrated by the speaker. 

25 cycles per second is the rate for the camera AND the loudspeaker. 20 cycles per second is the lower limit of hearing for most people. I'm not sure YouTube will even transmit a frequency that low, and even if it did, I am not sure my speakers could produce it. If it was turned down low, you might not even notice it if you were in the same room.

We can't see the speaker vibrating for the same reason that the water droplets appear to be standing still: the camera is shooting frames at the same rate as the speaker is vibrating, so each time the camera takes a pic, the speaker is in exactly the same position as it was the last time.

If you changed the frequency of the sound (or the camera) just slightly, the speaker would appear to move slowly in and out, and the water droplets would appear to be falling, or even rising back up.

Resistance Is Futile

Marshall Amp & homemade speaker cabinet

Younger son swapped his Fender amp for a Marshall, but he only got the head (the amplifier part), not the body (the speakers), so he took the money he got from selling his textbooks back to the bookstore (sneaky devil) and bought a sheet of plywood and a couple of Jensen speakers, and then I assisted him in putting together a speaker cabinet. If I am standing there watching him and telling him what to do, he does pretty well, but left alone with his friends he starts racing ahead and taking shortcuts, which compromises the quality of the construction. You can see how the speaker holes are not perfectly round. However, it works, and according to my son, it works well, much better than the old amp.

The output connections from the amplifier are the same as for the inputs: quarter inch phone jacks. We were originally just going to use a guitar cord to connect the speakers, but then I realized there is some actual power in the output, and the skinny wires in a guitar cord would not carry the load. I had some speaker wire that was pretty hefty, so we used it instead.

I got to thinking about this later and started wondering just how much current we were dealing with, so I did a little calculating. The speakers are rated at 50 watts each and have an Resistance of 8 ohms each. They are connected in parallel, so the resistance of the pair should be 4 ohms and the total power capacity should be 100 Watts. So how much electricity is flowing in these speaker wires? We start with a couple of basic formulas:

Watts = Volts x Amps

Volts = Amps x Resistance

Put 100 Watts in the first formula,
and then solve for Amps gives us:               Amps = 100 / Volts.
Substituting that and Resistance = 4
into the second formula gives us:                 Volts = (100 / Volts) x 4
Rearranging and combining terms to
make it pretty gives us:                               V = 400 / V
Multiplying both sides by V gives us:          V^2 = 400
Take the square root of both sides
and we end up with:                                   V = 20
So we have 20 Volts and 100 Watts.
Put those back in the first formula
(Watts = Volts x Amps) and we have:      100 = 20 x Amps
Divide both sides by 20 and we have:           5 = Amps

So we are using 20 Volts of electricity to push 5 Amps of current through the circuit to deliver 100 Watts of Power. This is not enough current to run a toaster or a microwave, but it is enough to run five 100 Watt light bulbs, so the guitar cord, which only needs to carry a signal, which has almost no power, would have been a poor choice to use to connect the speakers.

Update October 2016 replace missing picture.

The Sound of Money

Amazon Echo

Okay, I'm gonna try a couple of things and see if this blog can generate any money. I've signed up with Amazon's affiliate marketing and Blogger's Adsense, so you might start seeing some obvious ads in the sidebar and some secret ads embedded in my blog posts. I'm not expecting much, maybe I'll get a free book once in a while. We'll see how it goes.

Meanwhile back at the ranch I'm looking for a new speaker for my computer. I'm not using my Chromebook anymore, which had built in speakers. I had some Creative Speakers that worked pretty well, but the power connector was weak and ever time I kicked the bass box I would get a bunch of static, or the power plug would just plain disconnect. Now I've got a pair of $8 Logitech speakers and while they work okay, I suspect I could do better.

I don't want a pair of stereo speakers. I don't want a bunch of wires. The creative setup has three boxes and three wires. I want one box and one wire. We can't do that unless we go wireless. Radio's are like that: one box, one wire, and the signal comes in over the airwaves. There are computer speakers like that, but they all seem to use Bluetooth. While the computer I am using has a Bluetooth radio, I'm not sure that Linux knows how to use it, or maybe I just haven't bothered to figure out how to turn it on. Besides, I'm categorically opposed to using Bluetooth. It sounds like an expensive buzzword to sell  useless gadgets to people with more money than sense.

Fluance SXHTB+ Surround Sound Single Speaker SXSS
This is a Hi-Fi speaker. It does not contain an amplifier, so it won't work with your computer. Looks cool though.

Okay, no Bluetooth, at least not this week, so I'm gonna need two wires. I found one that looked okay until I realized it was just a speaker, no amplifier. I still haven't found one that fit's the bill.

This morning I'm signing up with Amazon and I'm trying to figure out how this affiliate marketing program works, and I need a product to try this out with and looky here, Amazon Echo. A single speaker with one wire! Kind of expensive, and I don't know about all this chit chat, and I don't know if I can control it from my keyboard, but it is kind of cool, and it is a heck of lot cheaper than a smart phone. But it's an Amazon product, so let's see it I can link to it.

Modern Life

A Quantum Mythology by Gavin Smith

I'm reading A Quantum Mythology by Gavin Smith, a book I picked up when we went to Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. We spent a day wandering around outside the hotel / casino. We stopped in a couple shops along the way but ended up at Fashion Show Las Vegas, a massive shopping complex about a mile south of the hotel. Sweetie went off to go shopping at Nordstrom's or some such while I looked around for a bookstore and, lo and behold, I found one - R. D. Talley. A small storefront, one woman at a desk, some freestanding bookshelves and some against the wall. I don't think there were more than a thousand books on display, or maybe two thousand. This was a little suspect, could this be one of those religious bookstores? Or worse yet, a front for a cult? No, it was none of that. Somebody had put together quite a selection of books. In ten minutes I had seen half a dozen books that might interest me. I go to Powell's now and again, but I can spend hours in there and come out with one book that might be worth reading. Anyway, the person who selected the books was the woman at the desk, and no, she is not R. D. Talley.

almost monday - can't slow down (official video)
almost monday

Anyway, I'm sitting outside in the sun, trying to make headway in the book and listening to an album by Almost Monday (seems they are going to be at the Crystal Ballroom this December, but the only seats available are 'obscured'. Or standing on the floor.) and I have to engage my Bluetooth speaker. 

I have the speaker sitting next to my computer display and facing the window, looking out into the backyard. When I am inside, the speaker gets the audio signal from the computer via an old fashioned stereo cable. When I want to listen to music outside, I switch the speaker to Bluetooth, open up the window and dial up YouTube Music on my Samsung (Android) smartphone.

Normally it works very well, but today for some reason, probably because I was already irritated with the toaster, I ham handed it and it got confused which necessitated cycling the power, which means I had to remember where the switch was and that one needs to hold the button down for like three seconds in order to turn it off. And now we are heading off down the 'how much worse everything is now' and 'why can't they put real switches on things anymore?' and goddamn commies.

Since we remodeled the house two years ago, half the light switches are now fancy. I've experimented with dimmers before, but I never found a situation where I was using one on a regular basis. Either the light is on or off. If it's too much, or too little, get a different light. Now it's a crap shoot what's going to happen when I hit a switch.

So now I'm thinking about electronic switches versus old time mechanical switches with real metal contacts. I went looking for a video mechanical contacts. I didn't find anything great, but I found these three short videos.

The Hidden Flaws of Relays | Contact Bounce & Arcing Explained
Engineeringness

Relay Contact Bounce — You Won’t Believe the Rattle! 😲📈
Uncle Duncan's Electronics Shack

Circuit breaker arcing in slow-mo! - shorts - slowmotion
Kishlay Patel

Like I said: So now I'm thinking about electronic switches versus old time mechanical switches with real metal contacts. When you open a mechanical switch, there is liable to be some arcing between the contacts, and amount of arcing depends on the voltage. Household voltages don't need much air to insulate them, only a fraction of a millimeter if it's clean air. When you close the switch, the contacts are liable to bounce. It may not be much, maybe a ten-thousandth of an inch, but they will separate and there will be some arcing. This is were you get the electromagnetic noise that interferes with the radio - you turn off a light or switch on the A/C compressor and you are going to hear it, like a pop on you AM radio, no matter what station you are tuned to. What I want to see is a high speed video of contacts bouncing and the corresponding noise in the electromagnetic spectrum, all in one video.

The Brave Little Toaster (1987) - VHS
Brian Emerick

The Brave Little Toaster

Evil screws and my solution

Meanwhile, the toaster. I bought it a three years ago from Amazon for $25 and it's been a great little toaster until the latch quit working. It's an electromagnetic latch, not a mechanical one, so no mechanical components to wear out. I rattled it around in case there were some crumbs blocking the magnet, but no luck. I found that I could keep it down by wedging a sharpening steel between the lever and the microwave shelf just above it. Set the microwave timer for two minutes thirty seconds and I have toast. Not the most elegant solution, so I put it on the workbench with intention of opening it up and seeing if I could remedy the problem. I look at the bottom and I see ten little screws apparently holding the plastic base to the sheet metal shell. Cool, it's put together with screws, they didn't weld it shut or use some invisbile snap fasteners. Screws I can deal with, until I look at the heads and realize I need a screwdriver with triangular bit to turn them. 

34pcs Security Bit Set

I ain't got one of those, but wait! Iowa Man gave me a pack-of-bits for dealing with security screws, surely there is a triangular bit in there. Unfortunately, that pack-of-bits is with my new Makita Drill and the drill is at older son's place. So I had to wait a week until he and I could get together and I could get the drill. That happened Saturday. Today got the notion to look at the toaster and what do you know? No triangular bit in the pack of security screw bits. Bah, double bah and humbug. What else have we got? I ended up using a small plastic screwdriver that likely came with some household do-dad and a small jeweler's screwdriver. The two together would just fit in the slot and I could turn the screw. I had to use a pair of pliers to turn them, some were very tight. Righteous pain in the tush. Got it open, didn't find anything that might be causing the problem, put it back together using Phillips head screws I found in my bin of sheet metal / wood screws. At first I found a nice set of black Torx screws that looked to be perfect for the job, they would not tighten up. I had to go up at least one full size, maybe two to get screws that would tighten up. And now it seems to be working.

P. S. When I started writing this I thought I bought the toaster a year ago for $7. Me memory is getting sloppy.

P. P. S. The book has at least three plot lines, some out of this world science fiction, some extreme magic and il y a beaucoup de violence. Probably going to take me a while.

Investigating a Loudspeaker Problem

X-acto Razor Saw

I cut the front panel off of my computer speaker, fairly successfully I might say. There was a groove running around the circumference of the speaker box and I was able to make my cut using this groove as a guide. I used an old razor saw (possibly X-acto, probably some off brand) that I've had lying around for a zillion years. At one time I aspired to build models of cars and airplanes and rockets and such, but I never got a round toit. I still have the tools I acquired back then, so I pulled it out. 

4" Vise Grips

I think I have a red plastic X-acto handle somewhere, but right close at hand I had a small pair of Vise Grip pliers and they worked just fine as a handle.

Bose Companion 2 Series III Multimedia Speakers

My kids got me these Bose speakers a couple of years ago for my birthday a couple of years ago and they worked fine right up until a couple of week ago when they didn't. The best feature is that they have a volume knob. YouTube and Linux both have on-screen volume controls, but they are kind of problematic. If either one is turned up all the way, then the other one does not provide fine enough control. Maybe if have exceptional mouse skills you might be able to get what you want, but I don't have the patience to fool with them. However, I can handle a rotary knob just fine.

You can pop off the speaker grill and take out the four screws holding in the speaker, and that allows you to see that there is a circuit board inside, but you can't really get to it, hence the saw. And yes, I checked that the power supply (the wall-wart) was delivering power. These speakers should not have quit. Now that I have board out maybe I will be able to locate the problem.

Now all I have to do is find my VOM.

Friday Forum

As part of my program to change my stripes, I went to the City Club's lunch at the Governor Hotel yesterday. I talked briefly with an older man before the lunch. He told me he comes to these things when there is a good speaker, and he expected today's speaker to be one. The speaker was M. Lee Pelton, the President of Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. He is black, which makes him the third black person I have seen in Oregon. Okay, I exaggerate a bit, but I would not be surprised if blacks (or African-Americans, if you prefer. "Blacks" has fewer letters, making it easier to type.) were the smallest non-white racial group in Oregon. Mexicans, Vietnamese and Koreans we have in plenty. But I hardly ever see any blacks.

His engagement was obviously planned to coincide with President Barrack's inauguration. His speech was well done, though I think he might have been reading it. But his casual remarks before the speech, and his responses to questions afterward were riddled with "uh"s and "um"s.

I don't know if other people notice this sort of thing, or not. I was in Toastmasters for a year and during my first speech I was shocked to hear that I had uttered a plethora of "um"s. My second speech was much better in that respect. All it took for me was to be made aware of it.

If I go back to another City Club function, perhaps I should wear a coat and tie. I caught a couple of strange looks from people there, though now that I think about it, it might have been my hair. I had walked two miles in freezing weather with a knit cap on my head and we all know what those can do for your hair style. There were no mirrors in evidence, at least to Mr. Oblivious, and I did not think to look for one.

On the other hand, I may not be going back to City Club for another reason. Friday's speech was very nice, but it seemed rather vague and empty. It was more of a congratulatory speech: look how far we have come, look what we have achieved, but press onward, we still have a long way to go. I guess maybe I was expecting something more dynamic, but maybe that's not what the City Club is about. I am thinking that perhaps the Club is more about cooperation between disparate groups, and that is something that is very hard to achieve even in the best circumstances. You certainly don't need some rabble rouser yelling "charge".

What did you say?

Samsung Galaxy J7 Crown

My son showed me how the volume control on my smart phone works today. I'd never bothered about the volume before, it always just worked. But today my phone is sitting in the dash and it's making this funny noise. Why's it making that noise? Because it's vibrating, it's vibrating because someone is calling you. Why isn't it ringing? Because you turned the volume down. I didn't turn the volume down! Yes, you did. You see this long button on the side? You press one end and it turns the volume up, press the other end and it turns the volume down. Well, sure, that's what you told me, but what's that got to do with the ringer? [frown] You mean the volume control controls the ring volume as well? Well, that's dumb. The volume control should be for music (which is irrelevant for me because I don't use my phone to listen to music because I don't have headphones and the USB link to my car stereo doesn't work). [continuous low level grumbling and cursing ending with this post]. Yes, this paragraph is a condensed version of a conversation. You can assign the speaking roles as you see fit.

OK, fine, the volume bar controls the ringer volume as well as other volumes. I wonder if it controls the telephone volume as well, and does the phone keep separate volume levels for the phone for hold-it-to-your ear mode and speaker mode (which I use the heck out of), or does it only have a rule to convert from one to the other and so when you change the volume in one mode, it changes the volume in the other mode as well? It might do that in a really old cell phone, but I bet they keep the levels independent.

I really like speaker mode. I get someone on the phone who wants to talk for longer than 30 seconds and my hand starts to cramp up if I have to hold it to my ear. Speaker phone works and it works well. Clear enough for me. And if my wife is with me she can hear the whole conversation so I don't have replay the whole thing from memory.

The speech-to-text function is also really nice. I'm not going to use that itty-bitty keyboard if I can help it, and I'm not going to leave voice messages. If you don't answer, I'll send you a text. I'll record the text using the speech-to-text function. Likewise, I haven't enabled my voice mail. We still have voice mail on our land line, which is actually a cell phone, but it still works with our cordless phones. I wonder how long we've had them. Better not guess, might jinx myself. Reminds me that plastics and electronics are constantly improving in strength and reliability.

My Tracfone cut me off in the middle of a call last week and then wouldn't let me make any other calls. Checked my account online (using my computer, which has a FULL SIZE keyboard) and found I had run out of minutes. Bought some time with my credit card and 30 seconds later my phone was back in business. That was pretty phenomenal.

Emotion

When I get tired I get cranky, and I must have been tired today because I sure was cranky. Doing the laundry, the washing machine seems like it's done, there's no water flowing and it's not spinning, let's open it up and get the laundry out, but we can't, the door is still locked. The fancy little digital display says it still has two minutes to run. WTF is it doing? It's turning the drum slowly. Why? Stupid machine. If I hadn't happened to walk in there at just that moment it wouldn't have been a problem, but I did, and I'm tired, so WTF are you doing you stupid machine? It finally finishes and beeps, so I open the door. Then the accursed POS beeps at me again. What kind of ignorant savages programmed this thing? Someone should cram one of these beepers in their ear.

I go to McDonald's to pick up a couple of sandwiches for dinner. It's dinner time and the drive up queue is full. This McDonald's is fancy, they have two (2!) speaker boxes for taking orders. I have been here before when they were operating smoothly and they will take orders at both boxes and never seem to get confused. Today is not one of those days. I pull up to the speaker box and it tells me to order at the next speaker box. Okay fine, not a problem. But then it tells me again. FU, you annoying POS, I heard you the first time.

Eventually I get to the goody window, but instead of handing me my bag of goodies, the large woman asks me to pull around front and park and they'll bring my order out to me. Well, sheet, but okay, that's what I get for ordering something with 'artisan' in the name. It's okay for five minutes, but when we get to ten I've had enough and stomp inside to find out what's going on. The small woman in charge tells me they are waiting for the chicken to come up. whatever the $%^ that means. Screw that, gimme my money back, which she does. I go to Wendy's and buy hamburgers. If they had warned me that it was going to take an hour when I ordered, that would have been one thing, but they didn't.

Some emotions are easy to identify. Cranky, cheerful, content, happy are pretty obvious. But stress can distort your emotional state without making itself known. My wife broke her wrist last week when she tripped over a stationary kindergärtner and fell. It didn't seem too bad. She went to the ER where they took some X-rays and and wrapped her arm up with a temporary cast. But then we go see the bone doctor and now it looks like surgery might be in order. It's not a big deal, they make two inch long incision, line up the broken bit of bone, slip in a little metal splint, screw it down and sew up the incision. Surgery was Thursday afternoon. I didn't sleep well Wednesday night, I got maybe a couple of hours. Surgery went well and last night I slept pretty well. Today I am still very tired and as a result I find even the littlest things immensely irritating, as you may have noticed.

Windows is Wonderful, Part 9486

Creative Speakers

1) I have no sound. I have had no sound for a day. I finally started looking into the problem about an hour ago, and I still have no sound.

About a week ago I thought I would install Google Desktop because of its' supposedly super ability to find things on the hard disk. Running Windows searches takes time, and I thought maybe this would help. I won't find out whether it will help of not, I did not get to try it out enough to find out before I decided to remove it. It definitely slowed my computer way down. And with this sound problem, I decided to pull it.

Computer started working faster, but still no sound. Go into the Windows troubleshooting section. "Speak into the microphone" it says. I don't have a mike. Next step. Speak into the mike and it will echo the sound through the speakers. What kind of stupidity is this? Just make a noise, any noise, but it won't do that, you must have a mike.

Somewhere in my reptilian brain I remember that the sound cable had come loose once before. I get a flashlight and crawl under my desk and look. Sound cable is fine. But wait, the green LED on the desktop speaker is out. What's up with that? Back under the desk. The power cable to the subwoofer is loose. Not a real solid connect. It just slides in, no click or snap involved. Plug it in, the LED comes on and we have sound!

But why didn't I notice the LED being out before? It is really bright now. Well, it's really bright when you are looking straight on at it, but turn the speaker a little bit and it dims to the point that it just blends into the background. The way things get shoved around on my desk, it's a miracle I can even see the front panel of the control speaker.

2) I don't know who is at fault for this next problem. Videos are clogging the internet. The videos I want to see all suffer from hiccups. The videos I don't care about play smoothly. I have watched all my preferred videos before. They should already be on my computer, they should not have to be downloaded again. Or is it that they are on my computer, and playing videos from the disk causes hiccups, but playing direct from the internet works smoothly?

Update December 2016 replaced missing picture.

Sunday

Concrete Blonde - Dance Along The Edge
Johanne Blanco

I need some better loud speakers. Mostly I listen to music at a low volume, not loud enough to get excited, but every once in a while a tune comes on (like this one) and I feel compelled to turn up the volume, and the little Bluetooth speaker I've got just doesn't cut it. I have some better speakers but they quit working and I am still nursing the idea that I can figure out what's wrong with them and fix it. More likely I will poke around a bit and decide it's beyond my capabilities / not worth the effort, but I still feel compelled to at least look into the problem. I did cut the speaker boxes open after all.

I also need better speakers for my bike rides. I've been riding my daughter's Peloton exercise bike. What a racket. Near as I can tell some people like listening to recordings of people talking to them while they are riding. WTF? I don't, but then I'm an alien. There are a selection of videos of riding through various scenic locations that are accompanied by music and they aren't too bad, but I've been through all of them and have no desire to watch them again. And the music they play is just garbage. Maybe if you are young and stupid you might like it, but then again I'm the alien, so I think it's crap.

So today I hooked up my laptop and pulled up a YouTube video that was decent enough, but the music was crap, so I muted the volume, open a second tab and loaded one my YouTube playlists and that kept me entertained.

I've been trying to figure out what is wrong with our Dyson vacuum cleaner. The roller brush wasn't spinning. It was totally clogged and when I cleaned it out I discovered the bearing on one end was shot, so I ordered a new brush. Put that in, but it's not spinning. Check the power, nothing. So I take the switch apart. That was a mistake. What a freaking nightmare. Dyson vacuums are pretty clever, lightweight, make good use of high strength plastic and fancy injection molding, but this switch is just insane. It;s like is was designed by a demented demon. All it needs to do is turn on the power to the two motors, but there are a umpteen parts and it has to be assembled blind. It's just frigging nuts. Hopefully I'll be able to give a full report on just how fucked up this contraption is, but right now I'm just trying to get the roller brush to spin, and it's not.

It looks like there might be a break in the cable that runs from the switch to the brush, but why would it break? It's just a cable, well protected. More exploratory surgery tomorrow.

I was supposed to be working on the vacuum today, but there's only so much bullshit I can tolerate, so I spent the day reading Dark Voyage by Alan Furst. Quite the adventure. Got a largish post going on that, it should show up here soon.

New Tires & Battery

Friday I got an email from TireRack saying my tires had been delivered to H-M Motorsports. Cool. Friday goes by and no phone call. That's okay, I'm busy. Monday morning I give H-M a call, and, wait a minute, let me check, um, we have two tires with your name on them. Not cool. Call TireRack, put on hold, thank modern life I have a speaker phone. I don't know why, but it doesn't seem nearly as obnoxious to listen to endless whatever-you-get-when-you-are-on-hold if it is coming over a speaker phone. If I have to use a handset it drives me batty. Whatever. Two minutes go by and the woman who answers the phone knows my name! No miracle, right? Everybody and their mother has caller ID now, right? Well except for the phone company and the internet company. The two outfits who you would think would be up on technology don't seem to be able to find . . . , never mind, we won't go there, it's not nice to pick on the handicapped.

Anyway, the nice lady at TireRack figured out what the problem was and dispatched a electonic ass boot to get things corrected in less time than it took me to tell you about it. Later that afternoon I got a call from H-M, they have the tires and they would be happy to put them on tomorrow morning. Got the tires mounted no sweat. Noticed a little later that a couple of tires had much bigger wheel weights than the old ones. Two tires got by with little weights, but two got big honking weights. Weird.

This morning my wife calls from downtown Portland and her car, the car with brand new tires mind you, is dead. No lights, no indicators, no motor, no nothin'. What's gone wrong? Car is five years old - Voila! The battery has died. Stuff a double handful of tools in my bag, head over to Batteries Plus in Beaverton (my new favorite store), pick up a new Ray-O-Vac battery, and head downtown. (When did Ray-O-Vac get into the car battery business? I always liked the name, I don't know why they couldn't compete with the likes of Everyready and Duracell.)

Get there, open the hood and something is ticking away. It sounds exactly like a time bomb from a movie. What the heck? I open the fuse comparment and locate the offending relay and pull it out. Now the big red ECM module (why does a car have an Electronic Counter Measures module?) starts making clackety noises. I'm starting to worry now. I pull it out and finally we have silence. So what's going on? Have I got some kind of inscrutable electrical malfunction? All this stress is making me hungry. I decide I need a coffee and some breakfast. I find The Sultan cafe nearby. They have a nice selection of standard breakfast pastries. I have a Danish. In a Turkish cafe.

The Sultan Cafe at Quimby & 18th
The sun kind of spoiled the picture. Bad sun.

Refreshed, I realize all the clicking and clacking may just be a side effect of the dead battery and decide to go ahead and replace it. All it takes one 10 mm wrench. Same size wrench for the battery terminals and the battery hold down bolts. Only odd thing is that the battery is wrapped in some kind of blanket. I cannot imagine what purpose it would serve. No matter, new battery fixes all problems, we are good to go.

Now to deliver the car to my wife. She is taking a class at 23rd & Vaughn. 23-something-er-other. I am expecting to see a school, or a school administration building, along with a parking lot with a hundred cars. Nothing there. The North side of Vaughn is industrial establishments and the freeway. The South side is trendy little stores and peoples homes. Where could she be hiding? I drive around for at least an hour, exploring all the by-ways and back streets in the area. It's not bad, I don't have any place I have to be, and there is lot's of cool stuff around here, so I don't mind, but after awhile it's starting to bug me.

Finally I pull into a Kobos coffee store and ask the people there if they have any ideas. One guy suggests the Holiday Inn next door. Could it be? I walk over, walk through the lobby and open the door to the first conference room I come to and there she is!

Why didn't I think of this? I saw the Holiday Inn, but some reason I just blocked it out of my mind. Teachers wouldn't be having a class in a Holiday Inn, that just smacks of extravagance, something school administrators are loath be connected with.

So it all worked out OK.

Here's some pics of some of interesting stuff I saw while I was wandering around.

Sculpture put up by Esco, one of the big industrial establishments North of Vaughn

Royal Enfield Motorcycles For Sale

St. Patricks Church. It's a little odd. There is a symbol on the tower that looks like a US Bank emblem of some sort.

The Peculiarium, housed in a fine family building. There is a similar sized building in Grand Rapids with our family name on it, built by my grandfather.

Conway Trucking World Headquarters
They have a big presence here.

I also ran across a place called Sniff. It's a dog hotel. Very fancy. I took one pic, but it didn't come out.

Talking Heads

I do not watch the news, and I definitely do not listen to speeches on TV. I cannot stand it. They go so slow, and say so little. Business meetings are tedious and are to be avoided if at all possible. Actually any kind of group meeting is usually very tedious. I have attended classes with a dynamic speaker that I enjoyed, but the speaker has to be really good. Most such events border on torture for me.

I mute the TV during ads, and the DVR is my best friend. It allows me to fast forward over the ads. I often will put my car in park when sitting at a long traffic light. I will even turn off the engine when sitting in the local fast food drive thru queue.

Some people leave their TV on all the time, they will even leave it on when they sleep. What I notice at traffic lights is that many people will continue to creep up even though nothing has changed between them and the light except perhaps some creeping forward by other cars. I have not noticed anyone else putting their car in park (you would notice the back up lights flash momentarily when they shift through park, and the brake lights would go out).

I do not quite understand this. I enjoy meeting with small groups of people where there is some give and take, and I like to think I am a good listener. Perhaps I am just not that interested in what everyone has to say. My interests are limited (though I am sometimes overwhelmed) and if the topic under discussion does not fall within an area of interest, I will be bored.

Silbatone Acoustics

Introduced in 1929, the Western Electric 16A horn is a product of the early days of talking motion pictures. The 16A was intended as a compact solution for a horn speaker system to be mounted behind the movie screen hanging on chains. At 400 pounds and almost 3m. wide, the idea "compact" is relative.

Sound systems for movie theaters, that's what we're talking about here. Silbatone Acoustics makes high end audio gear for "serious music listeners". They draw their inspiration from the Western Electric sound systems installed in movie theaters, back before the accountants got into the act. Most of the pictures on their website give no sense of scale. The speaker in the picture above is ten feet wide (including the weird "ears" sticking out on either side). That's a bookcase on the right side of the picture.
    To drive big speakers you need big amplifiers. Here's a stack of Western Electric Model 46 Amplifiers:

Via Scott. Who else?

Ron Paul Versus The Speaker

In 1979, when I was headed to DC for my first full term in Congress, I bought a car to keep there. It was a 1979 Chevrolet Chevette. But this compact 4-door soon proved to be controversial. Tip O’Neill, the powerful House speaker, was advocating gasoline rationing for the rest of us, while he was chauffeured around in a Lincoln, all at taxpayer expense. And no waiting in gasoline lines for him, nor paying for it: he had his own pump in the House garage. 

Inspired by Dustbury.

Bon Mots

Chevron Hillsboro

1) It's 5PM and my better half decides she needs fuel in her get-around-town machine, so I takes it to Chevron. They may charge a little more, like a dime per gallon, but they don't have the horrendous lines you find a Fred Meyers or Costco, so it's worth it to me, just to avoid the annoyance of playing monkey-move-up*. I always hated that game (baseball for elementary school kids). I think I may have been a little hyper-active. Anyway, the Chevron station is usually pretty empty, maybe just one or two other cars there, but today it's busy, not full, but busy. Soze I pull in and remark to the pump dude that it's 'happy hour at the feed pump'. When he's done he offers me a receipt and accept, telling him, 'I want the boss to know how much I love her'.  17 gallons at $5 a gallon comes to $85. Who loves ya baby?

2) The answer to one of today's word puzzles was trice, as in 'in a trice', which diligent daughter had never heard. I haven't heard it in a long time, but I instantly recalled the meaning, which is like immediately or in a moment or something. In any case, it isn't the same as thrice which means three times.

DOSS SoundBox $30

3) Bought a new Bluetooth speaker so we could listen to tunes out on the patio. It works fine, sounds better than the laptop. It doesn't have a volume knob, but it has this touch ring on top for adjusting the volume which is almost as good. Can't really tell how much I have changed it, you have to rely on what you hear from the speakers. It also issues very annoying beeps sometimes. I haven't quite figured out what that's all about. Maybe I've reached the maximum setting? Has a mini-stereo jack so I can connect to my desktop when I go inside. It's Bluetooth so out on the patio I can use my smart phone to supply the tunes. 

Okay, that's all fine and well, but I disconnect it from the desktop computer, switch to Bluetooth mode and stick in my pocket. It's not very big and my pockets are big enough. I mix up a boiler maker** and head out to the patio and I hear music coming from the speaker in my pocket. Well, that's cool, but where's it coming from? I don't have any apps running on my phone. Well, it's Bluetooth, maybe it's picking somebody else's Bluetooth broadcast. Now, all the tunes sound like my kind of tunes, which kind of points back to me as being the source. So what's going on here? Who knows, but that first tune, Hypnotize, that's so familiar I feel like I should know it, but I can't name it, so I ask Google and I use the voice recognition thing (the microphone icon) to ask, and as soon I tap the icon the music stops? Waaah? Well, evidently the tunes are coming from my phone. Effing computers, sneaking around behind my back doing all kinds of things I never authorized. Who knows what else they are doing? Plotting world domination, no doubt.

Fleetwood Mac hypnotized
vickie burns

Since I have been mostly playing Youtube playlists compiled from my blog, I thought maybe I had posted this tune once before, but if I did, I neglected to include the title. Blogger's search function couldn't find it.

* Google has apparently never heard of monkey-move-up. Basically, it lets you play with fewer players. After a player has his time at the plate, everybody playing on the field moves up one position. I think the pitcher, or maybe the catcher, becomes the next batter, and whoever is out moves to the outfield.

** boiler maker - one shot of bourbon in a glass of beer

Get a Move On

Get a Move On
Mr Scruff

This tune just came over the ether and I said Man! haven't heard that tune in a long time. Why has it been so long? Was it part of some previous musical environment that somehow didn't manage to follow me around? I mean it was all digital, I have, I dunno, maybe a hundred CD's but I don't think I have played a single one in years. Well, okay, there was a time when I was playing the same tune over and over again while I was doing a few minutes of exercise, probably going up and down the stairs. But I was just playing whatever was already loaded, which I believe was an album by America, possibly Ventura Highway. 

1967 Buick LeSabre dashboard

At some point I went over to digital. I had those cheap computer speakers which were probably not very good, but for somebody raised on single 6 x 9 speakers mounted under the steel dashboard and playing through a steel grill, they were just fine, as long you didn't need a lot of volume.

Not too long ago I splurged on a Blue Tooth speaker and it does very well for me. One of these days I might look for something better, though how can you tell until you hear it? I went looking for loud speakers once when I lived in Austin. There was a store not too far from me that had a large selection of loudspeakers, all hooked up, in a separate room, for you to listen to as you desired. Acoustic suspension speakers were all the rage then, but they all sounded a little dull, not crisp and clear like the giant V2 speakers that didn't use acoustic suspension. They wanted $600 back then which was not undoable, but it was a big chunk of change so I did not buy them.

Just went looking for the post about the Blue Tooth speaker and I was surprised how many posts I have made about speakers. I ain't even an audiophile.

Remember, remember the sixth of Janember,

V for Vendetta

Stolen entire from Monday Evening

Insurrection by Marcel

A couple of days late, but still within the Heptad of the Insurrection

What if the insurrection* had succeeded? Maybe a security guard held a door open for a minute, and a mob of bloody-handed insurrectionists just walked in unarmed, laughing and taking selfies, claiming without evidence that there was corruption in Chicago and Joe Biden was a senile doofus. If our gallant Congress ran away, that would have left that one guy in the Indian suit as Speaker of the House, and as Speaker he could have called it for Trump.

Recall how things were in the Before Time: President Trump said mean things on Twitter, a lot! and good people wanted to de-fund the police. If the insurrection had succeeded, the wise and steady hand of President Biden would not now be guiding us, and a number of consequences would follow.

Trump would have caused inflation.

Trump, ignoring the generals, would have allowed the withdrawal from Afghanistan to degenerate into a costly, deadly, failure that brought the Taliban to power.

From malice or incompetence Trump would have forced Covid hospitalizations to a record high. Since Trump's vaccine would have worrying side-effects and be only marginally effective, the teachers' union would be out on strike.

Instead of a ground-breaking news-making wonder, the James Webb Space Telescope would be unable to keep the roads open, as Trump's global warming snowed shut the interstate from Virginia to Pakistan.

If the insurrection had succeeded, the unrest in Krhazagirzistria would be Trunp's fault, and good people would be in the streets chanting to de-fund the police.

That's how things might be today if the FBI hadn't stopped the insurrection, so

Always remember the sixth of Janember,
face-paint and selfies and, what?
I see no reason why insurrection
should ever be forgot!

*The heinous DESPICABLY violent Terrorist Attack on our Most Prized National Institutions,** threatening our very DEMOCRACY in a way unprecedented in our nation's HISTORY!! It's been in the news lately.

**Congress and NPR

Bonus new word - heptad - a group of seven. I suppose in the back of my mind, I knew it, but I don't think I have ever used it.