Got a note from my great nephew in Iowa City that it will be -25 there, eek. Meanwhile here it will be 40C and 44C in some parts of Melbourne today.
Then, ‘cooler’ at 24, 30 and up to 43 on Tuesday, we’d like to swap with Iowa City for the next few days.
Many people and animals will suffer heatstroke including, I suspect, players and the crowd at the Australian Open tennis. I still remember how Jim Courier ran out of the stadium after his victory at the Open and jumped into the nearby Yarra River to cool down: not a wise move as it was rather dirty.
$375 later, we have a new pressure switch assembly (2 switch units on a piece of thick sheet metal) and the furnace seems to be running great again! I really like the HVAC company we have been using. It’s just a 2-man shop, but they are somehow able to respond to trouble calls very quickly.
IMHO, the best, most difficult PC car racing simulation (not ‘game’) was Sierra’s “Grand Prix Legends” from, I think, 1998. Based on the 1967 Formula One season, it has powerful, brutal, twitchy and unforgiving car physics models and circuits which replicate some of the most dangerous tracks ever, such as Spa and the Nurburgring.
No slick tyres, wings or safety systems etc but you can tweak the physics by adjusting gear ratios and suspension. Despite years of using it, I still haven’t become proficient enough to try that; after many attempts I managed to drive the Nurburgring without going into the scenery.
Graphics and cars can be upgraded through any number of user mods and it can be persuaded to work with Windows 7, 10 and 11.
I’m really digging Gran Turismo 7 on the PS5 I just upgraded to. VR is SO fucking awesome. I really don’t see why people use monitors, VR puts you in the car… simply incredible.
For us in SW Ohio, snow is scheduled to start ~Saturday evening and keep going until maybe Monday morning. Snow totals somewhere between 9-12". After watching the below vid, looks like rain will come in before the snow starts. It was well below freezing today, and will be this weekend. So that will probably put a small layer of ice down for the snow to sit on. Then temps going to keep dropping for us into the week so no melting for a while.
Sounds like south might be in for some historic ice buildup.
Not much to see here, just an old guy puttering in his basement. I’ve recently hit the end on a couple items. First is a rebuild of some gutted Dayton B452’s I got pretty cheap. They still weren’t worth it. I added a 5/8” baffle, 830855’s, some mysterious 8 ohm ribbons acquired on eBay years ago, ND105PR’s and a buyout terminal cup/XO. Expectations were not high, but I was pleasantly surprised. I’ve had PC speakers that were a lot worse.
I also gutted a old center channel, since I’ve abandoned 5.1. I used Bagby’s Dreydel design for the RS150s-8/27TBFC/G combo and found no need to tweak. The baffles are actually a soft gray color we used in our kitchen, though they appear almost white in the photo. These will need to find a home soon.
The Rolex 24 at Daytona is starting in 10 minutes! Even though I’m a drag racer I love the sports cars and prototypes doing the very difficult endurance racing!
A journey that started in 2013 when a strong storm downed a large oak is now nearly complete. I had the trunk sliced into slabs and for the next decade they sat stickered in a stack, waiting for their moment. With the help of a friend, the stack was moved in preparation for the demo and construction of our new house. We selected the best four slabs and moved them to his shop while the house was being constructed. In the summer of 2024, a makeshift kiln was built to cook the slabs to remove pests. I cut them down to 8 ft and had them leveled. Fast forward to this past fall when I was picking up some rack shelving on marketplace and got to talking with the seller about the slabs and how I was hoping to make a table top. They offered to help me out and today it picked it up! It’s only been sealed and he suggested it acclimate for several months before I put a finish on it. It’s a neat piece that carries a lot of sentiment.
