Greetings from upstate NY - have owned the same Dual 500 the past 4 decades...

Joined
Nov 15, 2021
Messages
482
Location
near Liverpool, NY
Tagline
Lifelong student / listening = bliss
#42
Hello VSAT88, thanks for sharing your positive feedback - nice to meet ya!

I had a similar reaction the first time I heard the word meritocracy. Unfortunately, it's not a word commonly uttered in the mainstream media -- especially in the fashionable 'victim du jour' echo chambers like The View, Meet The Press, 60 Minutes, NBC News, The Tonight Show, etc. (Q: Is it me, or is it becoming harder & harder to find discourse for us contemplative types?)

As a matter of fact, I think I first heard it on an overnight radio show last summer, and in the context of the rest of the conversation it piqued my curiosity - I actually got up & scribbled it down on the bedside notepad so that I could look it up the next day. (Goes off & googles a bit) Yup, the person I was listening to was Bill Cunningham. In my area he's only on once a week on Sundays from 10pm-midnight. (A bit more googling...) Cool, actually found the podcast where he used it! He reminds me of the folks who raised me and the mentors that helped me to get where I wanted to go. (Not a bad thing.) Not everyone's cup of tea, but it's something interesting to play in the background while practicing your high-reliability soldering techniques...

**** (Optional Reading) ***

Before leaving this philosophical rabbit hole... Q: Ever find yourself seemingly irritated (for no real reason at all) by everything in your environment? You see, awhile ago I stopped & took inventory of myself...and discovered my mind uncharacteristically in a profound disquiet. And the more I overheard what was on the telly, the worse it became. For example, not that long ago I was busy gonkulating on something while the telly was babbling away to itself in the background. All of sudden, woke words like equity were hitting me on the head like a frying pan being wielded by Foghorn Leghorn himself!

OH NO...The View came on, and the all-knowing cackle fest is now s*cking my will to live!

The primitive urge for mental self-preservation kicked in, and I sprang immediately into action, running into tables, papers scattering in a frantic search for the remote. Eureka, here it is...and OFF! The only good thing about this? I now have a new mechanical analogy for Transient Response - I literally couldn't turn off the TV too fast! :0)

Fix #1: Using the concept of feedforward error correction (ie: characterizing a circuit's errors so that an exact countermeasure can be included in the signal path the first time through) I simply incorporated a new rule -- now when it gets to 'that time', the telly gets shut OFF by default.
Ahhhh, now all morning long I get to be a smooth gonkulator. Not nearly as cranky as I used to be too. (!)

Fix #2: Reflecting on all this, the solution became crystal clear.

In order to savor the retirement I promised myself, I must return to the ways of my childhood. Way more music, much less telly! Got to get my Indiana Jones mojo on!

Cheers --
 
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Joined
Nov 15, 2021
Messages
482
Location
near Liverpool, NY
Tagline
Lifelong student / listening = bliss
#47
The oilfield is one of the purest meritocracies there are, can't do er, can't stay...and ye who does best does first..
Amen, brother.

Q: Ever notice that folks that spend all day stacking virtual beach balls for a living...and at the end of the day literally can't see where they've been...
are so disenfranchised about everything? (You know, the subscribers to the "I'm not happy until you're not happy" philosophy? ;0)

Kudos - sounds like you somehow managed to avoid that special kind of monotonous misery.

Me too! From an early age pushing dishes through a big Hobart...to pushing a 2-stroke Lawnboy for hours at a stretch...to rebuilding carbs and afterwards pushing the Sun 1115 2-gas sniffer probe up the tailpipe...to pushing parts into stationary & flying computers.

Hmmm...looking back, I guess I was just a pusher. But it wasn't my fault, I was a victim, manipulated by the evil music industry. My gateway drug? The first record I ever bought -- I converted one of my first El Chico's paychecks into an E Pluribus Funk album! And it just snowballed from there...

Speak Truth To Power!

Sincerely,

Snowflake

***

Seriously, didn't matter if it was a tall stack of squeaky clean dishes, acres of cut lawn, the seductive moan of a Quadrajet with the secondaries wide open during the test drive...a 9-track tape drive reading/writing data at 125 IPS...and the best gig of all, working with a team of fellow airmen to turn a repair-resisting Hangar Queen into this. I was always able to look back at the end of the day & see where I've been. What can I say -- we've both been blessed by living in a country where you had the freedom to bite off as much as you could chew! If you want it bad enuf, you can have it!

Meritocracy? Just another way to say 'Murica!

Happy pumping!
 
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Joined
Nov 15, 2021
Messages
482
Location
near Liverpool, NY
Tagline
Lifelong student / listening = bliss
#51
Looks like Luke AFB..
Color me simple...but those full-AB takeoffs just never get old!

...and strangely enuf, the follow-on eye candy elicits an almost exact same response from yours truly as the full-AB takeoffs. (?)

Boy howdy, I must have something miswired in my backplane from the factory. :0)

Errata: Replied to the wrong poster. Fixed downstream. Comments above are still good to go. :0)

Cheers -
 
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Joined
Nov 15, 2021
Messages
482
Location
near Liverpool, NY
Tagline
Lifelong student / listening = bliss
#54
Welcome to Phoenix - here's a Nav babe for your viewing pleasure. Glad to have you aboard.

View attachment 57104 View attachment 57105
Hey Nav, thanks for sharing your forum's Seal(s) of Approval -- I am chuffed!

My folks said that if someone shares something nice with you, then you should reciprocate. Here's a little something from a Jeff Beck live concert that both sounds great & makes the point that music is nearly always surrounded by the better things in life.

Again, nice to meet you, and be sure to tell your companions safe travels...
 

NavLinear

Veteran and General Yakker
Joined
Apr 12, 2012
Messages
6,022
Location
SoCal
#57
She does have a beautiful smile...
I knew you'd like it.
Hey Nav, thanks for sharing your forum's Seal(s) of Approval -- I am chuffed!

My folks said that if someone shares something nice with you, then you should reciprocate. Here's a little something from a Jeff Beck live concert that both sounds great & makes the point that music is nearly always surrounded by the better things in life.

Again, nice to meet you, and be sure to tell your companions safe travels...
Good to meet you too. I like Jeff Beck's music - thanks for sharing this clip. I had not seen it before.
She does have a killer smile tho...
 

VSAT88

Veteran and General Yakker
Joined
Sep 7, 2017
Messages
1,798
Location
Phenix City Alabama
Tagline
Like my BlueTooth ?
#60
Yeah, I came in under the radar. Never got a NAV welcome. Don't get me wrong, I ain't complaining. Been here long enough to see many of NAV's postings and I damn sure like em.
 
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