With Proper Training…

My stereo system’s receiver has been on slow, steady fall for a couple years now and I’m at the point where I just want to replace the stupid thing. It is emitting this incredibly annoying hum/buzz sound that annoys me to no end. At first I thought that it may be due to a poor speaker connection, but the damn noise comes through on headphones as well.

Being the great American that I am, I know that the best solution to this problem is to buy a new one. I’d try opening the thing up and finding some loose wire to solder, but my soldering skills are what I like to call “terrible”. This is also the reason why I had to resort to buying a new CD player instead of just trying to fix the loose RCA connections on my old unit. I still have that CD player though in case I get ambitious and decide to join a soldering guild.

This Is What I Hate
While reviewing the details of this Yamaha receiver, I came across the following tidbit:

Then there’s the six-channel DVD-Audio/SACD-ready inputs mentioned above. Due to anti-piracy measures, DVD-Audio and SACD players perform their own digital-to-analog conversion, passing high-resolution analog signals on to your amplifier. (And analog, after all, is what your amp feeds your speakers.)

I don’t care if “analog…is what your amp feeds your speakers”, as a consumer paying money to hardware manufacturers as well as record labels I should have access to my music in its original state. Let’s say technology is developed that no longer requires your receivers (or anti-piracy CD player) to convert a signal to analog prior to it heading into your speakers then what will the rationalization given to consumers be to accept this?

The use of hardware to implement anti-piracy measures also forces all record labels to subject their customers to these measures. Even if a label was to have a strong fair use ideology, it would not matter because their disc would also go through this same conversion process. And besides, I paid for the damn player and the damn disc so give me the quality I paid for!

But Anyway…
This sort of thing is a big part of the reason why I’m not a big supporter of buying music online either. It’s just a little too creepy that there are all these little bits in a song saying that you can’t copy it to this computer or to a disc a certain number of times. I have to admit though, that I just bought some songs off of iTunes; it’s too hard to resist the catchiness of Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” or Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love”. I’ve been tempted by the latter several times in the past and just had to give in tonight.

I think the real lesson here though is that by attempting to be a music aficionado and buying vinyl as much as possible I am managing to avoid all these issues. Plus I already bought an SACD player so I’m screwed anyway. If you have any recommendations for a good stereo receiver/amp, forward them on to me.

Before I start this post, I think I should share that I just burped up some beef. Definitely not the best smelling burp.

Because Thursdays are for being awesome Yaeka, Amy, Doug, Pete (Amy’s brother), Paul (Amy’s other brother), and I headed out to the Tamarind Tree in Seattle’s International District for some good Vietnamese eats. I had never had Vietnamese food so I was kind of nervous about the whole deal, but luckily the last time Amy ate here, she had spotted the perfect dish that Doug and I could share, “Seven Courses of Beef”.

Rarely do I have a meal designated as being multi-course, but seven whole courses of beef?! That’s just insane and totally awesome! So what variations of beef are included in this seven course meal? Well there was beef salad, grilled beef, fatty beef, beef la-lot, steamed beef, beef and rice soup, and a sort of beef fondue thing. While it may seem that all this beef could easily weigh you down, there were plenty of vegetables, noodles, and mint in the mix that kept things light and refreshing. Also, I think if you took all the beef and mushed it into a big ball it really wouldn’t amount to a ton of beef, remember this is split between two people.

The course that proved to be the beefiest was by far the steamed beef. Unfortunately, this also was one of my least favorite courses as well. Steamed beef is just weird, it’s got kind of a weird soft texture to it that just doesn’t seem right. My favorites were the beef la-lot, beef salad, and beef and rice soup. So what does someone pay for a seven course beef dinner for two? Only $18.95!

If this post made no sense or you are dying for more information, Seattlest has their own review of the Seven Courses of Beef and Buffoonery also covers an experience at the restaurant.

Well if you’re reading this, than you have obviously found the new official location of my personal blog. I’m still working things out so if you notice any broken links, images, etc. please let me know by e-mailing me.

Posting will resume shortly.