Author: DOuG pRATt

Dog Rat’s Soap Box

That’s what I was listening to then, so lemme see… what about the comic books was I reading? Oh, this one was a very big deal for me. Spectacular Spider-Man #1, a new magazine format comic, on sale April 9. Costing as much as three regular comics (minus a penny), with Spidey in black & white? Sure, why not!

The Spectacular Spider-Man #1, 1968

Marvel was finally free of its oppressive 10-year distribution deal with competitor DC, setting the stage for the big DC implosion that year. Editor Stan Lee was expanding the Marvel lineup like crazy with new titles, while publisher Martin Goodman was working a deal to sell the company, and screwing people in the process.

Fabulous Flo Steinberg didn’t get a well-deserved raise, so she quit. Jack Kirby didn’t get a promised contract and Stan gave the new Silver Surfer book to John Buscema, putting the wheels in motion for Jack’s departure two years later.

https://seanhowe.tumblr.com/post/177947385267/martin-goodman-sells-marvel-comics-to-perfect-film

A/C Action Required

Did I mention the porch air conditioner died at the end of last summer? Well, it did. This was how it looked the day it was installed in October, 2007.

The thing about a thru-wall A/C is, it has to either be left in place or replaced. Otherwise, the wall has to be closed up. As Trustee of my late parents’ estate, I had the long dead thru-wall swamp cooler in the garage at their house in greater Phoenix removed, and the wall repaired. Cost? $600. A job like that would cost significantly more in greater Boston!

Before in AZ

After in AZ

Thursday and Friday we could get a taste of Arizona heat here, with weather in the mid-80’s. A replacement A/C for the porch should be here on Wednesday.

LG LT0816CER Thru-Wall 115V Air Conditioner

https://www.homedepot.com/p/LG-Electronics-8-000-BTU-115-Volt-Through-the-Wall-Air-Conditioner-LT0816CER-Cools-320-Sq-Ft-with-ENERGY-STAR-and-Remote-LT0816CER/206795936

The Wealthy Land of Lichtenstein

Michael Cavna at The Washington Post reviews WHAAM! BLAM! Roy Lichtenstein and the Art of Appropriation.

Now, long after Lichtenstein’s death in 1997, the U.S. Postal Service is issuing a stamp set to commemorate his birth centennial; its release will be celebrated April 24 in a ceremony at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2023/04/05/roy-lichtenstein-documentary/

I didn’t know the USPS is issuing stamps this month in Lichtenstein’s honor. The timing of the documentary’s release couldn’t be better.

Happiness Is…

Happiness is accomplishing a known goal. That’s a Scientology definition, a tidbit I picked up the summer in college when living on Cape Cod. The Falmouth public library had a large collection of Scientology books. No, I’m not a Scientologist.

That happened to be the Jaws movie summer. Seeing it in Falmouth was funny, because people who were extras in the movie, and their relatives, were in the audience. They weren’t shy about letting everybody know when they, or someone they knew, appeared on the screen.

But I digress. The happiness context here is this. Just as I brought this installation of WordPress back from near death, and got my Sony 300-disc CD changer working again, last weekend I worked on my Logitech Media Server network until it had been returned to full functionality. The solution was to get the Squeezebox Radios off their native WiFi implementations by using Ethernet-to-WiFi adapters.

It’s been suggested to me the radios were dropping off the network because of interference from a WiFi 6 signal somewhere within range. Even if that’s what happened, there’s no explanation why the adapters don’t have the problem. Also it was suspiciously coincidental with changes that I noticed had been made to the mysqueezebox cloud service that required an update to the LMS software running in the house.

Anyway, I’m happy now that everything is working again. There’s an Android app for controlling the network players that I started using this morning. Why hadn’t I looked for it before? Because I tried one a long time ago on the first generation of the Roku streaming player, and it was terrible. I assumed they would all be awful, but I sure was wrong about that. Squeezer is an excellent app, and it’s free.

Next up? Seeing if I can put LMS on the Raspberry Pi 3 that tastewar gave me.