Leaving No Stone Unrolled

Taking a cue from the Beatles in maximizing the enjoyment of, and taking money from, their fans, the Rolling Stones in Mono set is being re-released on LP in colored vinyl.

The original LP box set is out of print and selling for much more than the $450 list price for “In Mono In Color.” So anybody who has been thinking of getting the first set can buy this one instead. My copy of the Stones in Mono is purely digital, in 96/24 FLAC format, which seems to be no longer available as a download purchase.

This Stones track is a curiosity, and not because the subject is supposedly LSD. To me it sounds very much like something the Kinks would have done.

P.S. Does $450 sound like a lot of money for a 16-LP box set? A typical discounted price for an album in 1976 was $5.99. Adjusted for inflation that would be about $30 today. For sixteen records that comes to $480.

The Aft of Stern

This old paycheck from radio station WCCC in Hartford, Connecticut is LOL for me. I was working at a station 25 miles north of WCCC, and Howard Stern’s take home pay was exactly the same as mine!

According to Stern’s autobiography, he realized he wouldn’t make it working as a regular DJ. I had the same self-evaluation, which was why I moved to news. Stern quit WCCC that month, April 1980, when he was denied a $25/week raise. I quit for exactly the same reason, but decided to leave radio and move on to other things.

BTW, $110/week in 4/80 is equivalent to $400 today — $2.75/hour net then, $10/hour now. Except I was working 60-72 hours/week as a reporter and newscaster. You see the problem.

The Party of False Equivalencies

A comparison between the newly-discovered classified documents from Biden’s time as VP, with Trump’s classified documents from his time at POTUS.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-classified-documents-trump-side-by-side-fb2c4ebccdbdbb9039c1c5e227b1da53

The two aren’t comparable but, okay, let Republicans insist there’s a double standard, and drop the docs as a basis for prosecuting Trump. Doing that will free Special Council Jack Smith to concentrate on what matters most — Trump’s attempted coup.

Wait, there’s more!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-aides-find-second-batch-classified-documents-new-location-rcna65371

The Justice Department can either stop looking into Trump’s document handling, or it can open an investigation into Biden’s document handling.

Even more! Classified documents were found in Biden’s garage! He’s stupidly handed a free ball to the Republicans, and they’re going to run with it.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/12/politics/joe-biden-classified-documents-counsels-office/index.html

I already considered Biden too old to run for re-election. In my opinion he’s been doing a good job, but he already has a low approval rating, and now his credibility is shot. The Democrats need to find another candidate for 2024, and not VP Harris, who’s been a lot of nothing.

Tech Tidbits

A some point, back when Windows XP was the standard system, it became standard practice that to fix a problem on one PC, a second PC was needed for research. Technology was becoming ubiquitous. XP was introduced in October, 2001. At that same time, work on remodeling my kitchen was wrapping up.

Thanks to tastewar lending me his toolkit, I had wired two of the bedrooms with Ethernet jacks. The way the basement is arranged made that an easy project. Installing Ethernet in the kitchen? Not so easy. There had been some trouble with the electrician the general contractor was using, so I dropped the idea.

Not too many years later my concern about kitchen connectivity disappeared when Wi-Fi replaced the need for Ethernet. These days in the kitchen I use a Fire HD 10 tablet, which has an excellent screen. Amazon has occasionally put it on sale for half price, $75.

Those headphones hanging on the book holder are the Sony MDR-W08. I bought two pairs in 2011 for $15. The MDR-W08 has a large following, but I can understand why Sony discontinued it. The market has, regrettably in my opinion, moved away from wired headphones for portable use. For that matter, portable headphones have fallen out of favor compared to earbuds.

https://us.community.sony.com/s/question/0D50B00004IKvxTSAT/why-discontinue-the-mdrw08l-headphones

A hardcore fan of Sony’s gone-but-not-forgotten product had this to say recently.

https://mrmarc.com/the-venerable-sony-mdr-w08-headphones/

On the subject of headphones, in my post about WION a couple of days ago, I mentioned that as a radio DJ I used my AKG K-140’s (that I no longer have). I had a LOL moment when spotting a pair of AKG K-140’s in the WION broadcast studio.