That is exactly what I did though and I’m amazed at what I accomplished. I literally made it from my bed to the Museum’s door in about an hour and that includes taking a shower and getting dressed! That has to be a record for me. I have to say that the trains were pretty good to me which helped. Still, one hour from bed to work!

There was a small price to pay, I had to get coffee in the staff cafe’. It’s… How shall I put this? Let me just say that I buy/make fancy coffee at home so, in my opinion, the staff cafe’ coffee tends to be wanting in the flavor dept. Nevertheless, it fueled this post and most of my productivity this morning so I’m good. At the end of the day, caffeine is still caffeine.

Ps. I was originally gonna write a post about how I started chewing gum before I finished my coffee and had to spit the gum out when I realized my error. That little circumstance reminded me of these things.

Thankfully, my shopping handicap is not much of a problem because my expense to income ratio has a fair amount of wiggle room which brings me to my point. I’ve set a goal for myself to save a predetermined amount of money by the end of the year. I sorta arbitrarily picked a number and when I figured out how much I’d have to set aside each month, well it turned out to be rather aggressive. Ooops.

What does this mean? I’m committed to my goal, arbitrary or not, so that means I have to suck it up. Yeah, goodbye Mr. Instant Gratification, hello Mr. Budget. Can I just say, Mr. Budget is a LOT less fun. He won’t let me buy any shiny new toys! So no new Kindle, no new iPod Touch (rumored to be announced),  and no iPad for me. And that’s just the stuff on the short list, I’m sure I could come up with others. Insert frowny face.

I guess it’s not all bad. I’ll have a nice chunk of change at the end of the year to show for my shopping abstinence and perhaps I’ll learn a thing or two about self-control. More likely, I’ll welcome back Mr. Instant Gratification with an open wallet.

So now I had this tin but I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do with it. I knew there were lots of different hacks you could do with an Altoids tin so I turned to Google for some ideas. One of the first ones that I came across was a DIY headphone amp that fit inside the tin. I was vaguely familiar with headphone amps because I had considered buying one in the past but the cost was a bit more expensive than my curiosity warranted. So a DIY one seemed like a good idea.

I should explain what a headphone amp does before continuing with my story. Ideally, a headphone amp does two things. One, it allows you to use full size headphones, that have higher power requirements, with portable electronics such as an iPod or a portable CD player. And two, it makes those headphones and pretty much any headphones, even tiny earphones, sound a whole lot better. The sound is just much more expansive and has depth similar to how a good home stereo makes music sound better.

I’ve been really happy with my new home stereo setup so it seemed a natural extension to also improve my portable music experience. So after discovering I could build one relatively cheaply in an Altoids tin, I was hooked. And then began the research. After lots of reading and Google searches, I discovered that the cMoyBB is pretty much the tops when it comes to DIY headphone amps and the creator has a really nice site that details the parts and method of how to build one.

The problem was that even if I built it myself, it was still a bit more expensive than I wanted to spend since I wasn’t sure how much difference it would make in my headphone/iPod performance so I looked around the internet some more. eBay came to the rescue because the cMoyBB is based on an earlier amp design by Chu Moy called the CMoy. There were lots of prebuilt versions of this amp available on eBay for less than I would have had to spend to build the cMoyBB myself so I picked one out and bought it.

The amp arrived yesterday and I finally got to see what all the fuss about headphone amps was about. As usual, everyone else was right and my doubt was wrong. A headphone amp definitely, definitely improves the sound of your portable music. I’ve got several different portable music sources (iPod, CD Walkman, Macbook) and lots of different headphones and earphones and let me tell you, they all sound better when connected through a headphone amp, like a whole lot better. It’s like trying to compare a concert hall to a tin can, you can’t.

Now that I know how good an amp works, I may still go ahead and build my own just for the experience. I need a new electronics project and soldering up my own amp would fit the bill nicely. Plus there’s still the issue of that Altoids tin that needs a project.

That subject seemed out of place in an investment book and so it was. Upon a closer look, my nerd brain had merely misread the correct heading which was “Introduction to the Millennium Edition“. I guess I’ll have to look elsewhere for an introduction to the Millennium Falcon.

The original movie blew me away when it came out. This trailer for the new film gave me a nerdgasm.

I guess I could post a brief summary of my weekend. E and I ran some errands on Saturday then went to a lawn party in the evening. Sunday I mowed the yard and attempted to tune up the push mower (it’s idling rough) but it was exhibiting resistentialism so I failed. I think I”m gonna have to rebuild the carburetor on it which I was hoping to avoid. I still might be able to get away with properly gapping the spark plug but I doubt it’ll work.

Sunday was not a good day for working on things because it wasn’t just the lawn mower that was being obstinate. I also attempted to teach myself how to sweat copper pipe and that didn’t go very well either. I had a general idea of how to do it but it’s trickier than it looks. I practiced with a couple of straight couplings and some scrap pipe but  I only managed 3 out of 4 watertight connections. A 75% success rate is not very good in my book not to mention that the welds which were successful were ugly as hell. I need to review some YouTube videos on how to do it and practice some more. I guess.

That’s it for now, hopefully I’ll come up with some more blog ideas or it’s gonna be a slow week around thenextstopwillbe.com.

This video isn’t as good as The Muppets version of Bohemian Rhapsody but it’s still pretty funny.  I think I used to own the 7″ 45  for the song.

The standard cruiser sits at the top of the respectability ladder.

Photo by timetrax23

This small single passenger vehicle is a little lower down.

Photo by Hinnosaar

And the lowly scooter is at the bottom.

Photo by Seth W

This post is in no way meant to show that I have disrespect for the individual officers themselves but just as their uniforms command respect, their vehicles also confer a certain status to them. At least in the eyes of us proletariat.

Harpo’s song came out in 1966, the Stones covered it in 1972, and ZZ Top released La Grange in 1973. I think it’s safe to say that ZZ Top was certainly influenced by if not outright stole that riff. However, I’m sure with more research I might be able to discover that Slim Harpo appropriated it from somebody else as well. Such is the nature of music.

This discovery does not diminish my appreciation for ZZ Top, aka “the home team”. I’ve always been a fan and will continue to be so. As a matter of fact, I think I need to own Tres Hombres on CD or maybe even album. Hello eBay!

The links below will allow you to hear for yourself.

Shake Your Hips by Slim Harpo

Shake Your Hips by The Rolling Stones

La Grange by ZZ Top

Sometimes “No Parking” just doesn’t get the message across so the NYC Department of Transportation has to pull out the big guns.