Just thought you should know…

I have a thing for hand drawn traces.

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This is on a Shure M267 mixer. I’ve seen at least three different variations on this same mixer. The one I’ve got at home contains only one transformer, at the output. This one contains five.

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Who wired this nutty thing? Me?

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“Vactrol” style lighted photocell in optical limiter circuit. The audio envelope is detected, amplified, passed through a slow filter and applied as a bias voltage to adjust the light brightness. The photocell half of the device is used as a variable attenuator to back the volume down as needed to prevent clipping.

These devices are also commonly used in DJ mixers.

Jimmy Jib Junk

Oh gee I wonder why your pan and tilt motors were losing torque?

(And I wonder who applied that much grease in there? Holy goobers.)

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💦🎺 Spunk Trumpet 🎺💦

That’s the before…

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And the after.

The motor is a Swiss made Maxon and has lots of life left in it, I just carefully de-melted-rubbered and degreased the pulley awaiting a new belt.

Sometimes high tech problems have low tech solutions.

Does the shit run red or blue?

(Working title I’ll probably never bother changing)rainbowtoilet

Florida was just called for Trump. The Hillary Clinton campaign had stated they don’t *need* Florida to win, but that makes the results even more uncertain since Florida has a big heaping slug of electoral votes.

The future of the US economy even rides on this shitshow of an episode of election theatre.

If Trump wins, it will be a massive blow to… pretty much everything. If Clinton wins, it’s hard to say what will change. Sure, she’ll be the first female president, but it’s hard to say if we’ll notice anything else.

I probably don’t get to go home tonight (or will it be tomorrow?) until we know who we have as a president. Now, one interesting thing I noticed— I went over into our breakroom where the television there is tuned to another station, the local ABC affiliate. (It’s usually just left there so some of our employees can watch daytime soaps on there). They were speaking on there about the results of some very interesting polls – not as to who someone would choose as president, but rather, whether or not they hold any confidence in their current system of government.

The results were pretty much a resounding NO.

I don't even know anymore
I don’t even know anymore

Oops, I guess not everyone likes oligarchy, unless they’re on the rich side of the wall. (Sorry, Drumpf, I will never forgive you for your desire to wall off Mexico.)

In the end— does it even matter who is elected president? No matter what, we will still wake up tomorrow in a system of oligarchy. Both houses of Congress will be dominated by the GOP. The sun will still rise, but at least we didn’t lose our ability to catch it on solar panels. (Florida Amendment 1 crashed and burned, good riddance.) The tolls will keep rising, well, exponentially faster.

Speaking of which, Miami-Dade voters re-elected Carlos Gimenez. Uhh, enjoy that, guys.

Medical marijuana was approved in Florida. We’re going to need it. Actually, at this point, we need to go ahead and approve recreational because we REALLY need that. If we grow it domestically that will probably be our one remaining reliable industry. 😉

At this point I think it’s not worth worrying over who gets the presidency as much as how we’re going to deal with the Republican House and Senate. The GOP has historically been associated more with rule by the corporation, not by the people. They were opposed to, and responsible for watering down, the Affordable Healthcare Act.

I made the mistake of turning on a ham radio earlier today and … regretted this within minutes. I decided to suffer through the pain and listen anyway. The usual concerns came up – “they’re gonna take away our guns!”, “lazy people on welfare are destroying everything”… I get the feeling these voices will change very soon upon a harsh reality check as the world’s economies start to… “adjust” more heavily and the BEAUTIFUL new plans for privatized infrastructure optimized to serve the rich start to kick in.

To summarize my predictions:

If Hillary wins:

  • Very few changes and PAINFUL bickering between the Executive branch and the houses of Congress due to partisan conflict
  • Slow but gradual economic growth as the American consumer and financial market regain some confidence

If either win:

  • Gradual loss of individual freedoms and personal wealth among working class and low income citizens as the fucking wankstain oligarchy continues to become more oppressive and finds new ways through rent-seeking measures to squeeze citizens harder and harder. It’s hard to say whether the public support could be gathered to stop this process but I could see it being possible via extremely large, coordinated campaigns for public transparency and input into government.

If Trump wins:

  • EXTRMELY RAPID, unstoppable destruction of individual freedom and personal wealth among the working class. Rapid removal of the middle class and widening of income inequality. Basically, at this point, anything that’s profitable to your bank goes, and you can go fuck yourselves.
  • Sudden creation of, and/or involvement in international conflicts.
  • HEY AT LEAST YOU GET TO KEEP YOUR GUNS. For now. Shitpouch.

 

This session of angry posting shall terminate now as the boss is behind the rack next to me.

Curious Crowdsourcing

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Is my place page of "A Beautiful Place Out In The Country" under the "Nightlife" category going to get bumped for this tower? I hope not.

Facebook just surprised me with a new feature. Seems they’re trying to promote crowdsource editing of their business/location database, but… Doing it all weird….

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Not very location aware. I’ve never even been in this city. It seems to give me a mix of questions about 20% places I’ve been, 80% …. I’ve never even been near those cities.

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How is this judging the accuracy?

Also, as for my profile picture —-
This look suits me way too well.

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Waaaay too well.

Just saying. Yarrr.

Transmitting from the Troll Bowl

You know you’re doomed to be an RF person forever when you look at this…

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… And just keep thinking “damn that’s cute”.

That’s a Troll auto tracking antenna system for broadcast microwave from a helicopter.

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Swapped this corroded yackage out. So far, so good.

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Hey News Desk, can you hear me now? Good.

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Whose AM DA is this again? North of US 41, just west of 137 Ave...

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I could never do this stuff regularly and am really hoping this project’s done. For a good long time. The Jet A fumes make me feel sick after a while of working around the bird or after being in the air a while. It’s not motion sickness; I literally just don’t get that… it’s the fumes. Yeeech. The weird part is when turbulence rocks the craft, it makes me feel better for a bit??

Can’t explain that one. Dammit I’m a broadcast engineer, not a doctor.

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Good day, sir.