Running Bear's December 2025 Coffee Shop

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Hi again! Now 43F going to ~48

Mountain Dew - favorite shirt, haven't seen one in a few years now...

MtAndDewMe.jpg


Have been playing with those Leviton motion detector wall switches. Found one of the things, but when got ready to install the other, no place to be found. No biggie, check Amazon - whoa... 3 times the price of when I bought a few years ago. Prompted a search with flashlight to see/behind stuff. Yup, found it. The things even work with an overhead fan running and turn off when prescribed.

L8r
 
Well, I made it to Menard's this afternoon and found the HO UFO M&M set. It is really cute, but it is $80! It would make a fantastic HO TTrak module and if it goes on sale, I might get it. Lunch was excellent, at Chili's, great hamburgers and super service. Hopefully we have broken the jinx we had so far on this trip.
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John - I never heard of Yuengling until my two SIL's brought some back with them from home. One's from Pittsburgh and the other one is from outside Philadelphia. I like it also, one of the few domestic beers that I like. It wasn't available in Texas until 2021, but once I heard of it earlier, I used to stop in Shreveport LA and pick up a few cases on my return trip from our annual Gulf Shores vacation. I would get a case or two for each of them and a couple of cases for me. I guess that I was bootlegging!
 


The little A with the circle around it started flashing in my wife's car. Looked it up and the interweb said that it could be the starting battery being weak and the system didn't think it was a good idea to do the start stop BS. So, I took my meter out and took a look. I forgot that lead acid batteries sit at 12.6 and charge at ~14.4, so I thought the battery was weak. We spent the morning looking around for a new battery and couldn't find the size we needed. So, I took a look around and was about to throw my LIPO4 charger on it (14.6v), but then realized that 12.6 was actually good, so I went back outside and measured the battery again. Yep, 12.6.

So I took the caps off and found that the cells were a little low. I have deionized water so I topped the cells off. Told the wife that she needed to call the Suzuki dealer for them to check the system out. Funny thing is that they did recommend replacing the battery during her last maintenance visit. So, may just do that anyway.
 
Kusojiji said:
Funny thing is that they did recommend replacing the battery during her last maintenance visit.
Click to expand...
Is it an AGM battery or the old style?

What Is an AGM Battery? AGM vs Standard Batteries | Interstate Batteries

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Age is a fair indicator of when to replace the battery. 3-5 years max for AMG usually closer to 4 for premium batteries.
 
Well, howdy there internet beer guzzlers,

It's troy again.

Not sure what's on the schedule for today besides grocery run and laundry.

Might glue down some more foam today.

In other news, I've been digging into the Cheap Audio Man Hifi channel on youtube. If you're a gear head, or wannabe gear head for home wifi, he's got a lot of "whatever happened to..." type videos. His older vids (like 2+ more years ago are rather rough in style and delivery, but the last couple of years are good).

The old urge to get the biggest and baddest hifi system from my college days, keeps giving way to the best sound. Because, let's be real, I'm not going to listen above 70 db in my basement cave. Maybe 75 db if its a real rocker!

But, lets be real again... I've got tinnitus issues. that masks a lot of the highs coming out of the gear.

I've already got a Denon AVR-S570BT 5.2 home theatre surround receiver. It's got an entry level DAC. I might be able to tell the difference if I upgraded the receiver, but I don't want to spend the dollars to get diminishing returns I can't hear past my own biological inputs.

So now I'm looking for a decent CD player. Again, high end isn't going to do much more than a mid-point with my current receiver. I'm debating on getting a 6-disk changer, or a better, but still mid-point, single disk CD player. Hmmmm....

Then I have to go rebuild my CD collection.

That brings me to my subwolfer... you might recall it started making a loud hummmmmmmm when not even connected to an audio source. I believe y'll said it was the transformer. I should pull that and get a new one.

However, most of the rock and Jazz I listen to, don't drop low enough to need a sub.

Since I've got a 5.2 surround receiver, I've flipped it into enhanced Stereo mode for my non-movie listening, and turned off the sub connection. This set up lets me use my decent center (Klipsch RC3) that is more center than my RB-15s need. But it picks up a lot of the lows that the top of the sub would handle.

Yeah, I know my speakers are mismatched. I had RF3s 10 years ago, but sold them so I didn't have to move them to LA then back again. I do miss those. You can't get Cherry finish on the RF3s any longer. And the guy I sold them to was going to paint them black. GAH!

Still not sure what CD player to get.... Hmmmm... Maybe more Cheap Audio Man vids will help.
 
troyphoto said:
In other news, I've been digging into the Cheap Audio Man Hifi channel on youtube. If you're a gear head, or wannabe gear head for home wifi, he's got a lot of "whatever happened to..." type videos. His older vids (like 2+ more years ago are rather rough in style and delivery, but the last couple of years are good).
The old urge to get the biggest and baddest hifi system from my college days, keeps giving way to the best sound. Because, let's be real, I'm not going to listen above 70 db in my basement cave. Maybe 75 db if its a real rocker!
Then I have to go rebuild my CD collection.
That brings me to my subwolfer... you might recall it started making a loud hummmmmmmm when not even connected to an audio source. I believe y'll said it was the transformer. I should pull that and get a new one.
However, most of the rock and Jazz I listen to, don't drop low enough to need a sub.
Still not sure what CD player to get.... Hmmmm... Maybe more Cheap Audio Man vids will help.
Click to expand...
Skylabs Audio is another good one on YouTube. I recommend Paradigm speakers (the ones made in Canada). They are not cheap but are outstanding speakers and going cheap with speakers is a MAJOR mistake (ask me how I know). Forget a center channel unless 90% of your watching/listening is movies and always use a subwoofer (RSL has great bang for the buck). Sony makes some very good CD players
My advice is worth just what you paid for it (NO REFUNDS!). 😄
 
Kusojiji said:
The little A with the circle around it started flashing in my wife's car. Looked it up and the interweb said that it could be the starting battery being weak and the system didn't think it was a good idea to do the start stop BS. So, I took my meter out and took a look. I forgot that lead acid batteries sit at 12.6 and charge at ~14.4, so I thought the battery was weak. We spent the morning looking around for a new battery and couldn't find the size we needed. So, I took a look around and was about to throw my LIPO4 charger on it (14.6v), but then realized that 12.6 was actually good, so I went back outside and measured the battery again. Yep, 12.6.

So I took the caps off and found that the cells were a little low. I have deionized water so I topped the cells off. Told the wife that she needed to call the Suzuki dealer for them to check the system out. Funny thing is that they did recommend replacing the battery during her last maintenance visit. So, may just do that anyway.
Click to expand...
Get the battery load tested. I say this because you can have 12 V in a battery per your meter, but your cold cranking amps can be very low.
 


I just checked out the Skylabs Audio channel. I think I used to watch him before. What I noticed is that if you go back about a year, about half of his videos were members only. That may have been the reason why I deleted his channel. I wonder if he learned his lesson since he no longer does that.
 
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