Or something.

I am the master of the meaningless non sequitur, if that's not a tautology.

Obliquely, opaquely, I am referencing my lack of productivity here.

It was a busy week. We had guests Friday and Saturday, the place needed to be straightened up, taxes prepared and I have a new hobby/passion/obsession - old transistor radios.

I more or less declared RSS bankruptcy this evening, skimming through more than a couple hundred posts, starring a few in what I expect will be a vain hope of revisiting.

Apologies to one and all who missed the marmot.

So, some updates:

Spoke to mom this morning. She's received three of seven cards I've sent so far. She reported that I didn't have her correct address, despite the fact that I've been shipping radios and little grab-sticks and the like to that address since she moved there. Correction made. Hopefully the rest will find their way to her. Judging by her smile, I think she likes them.

There's a blog post I meant to revisit and link to about how Gen-Z doesn't know how to print. Forget Gen-Z, I've forgotten how to print. I used a different card size for one card, which required a new envelope. That consumed more than an hour of one morning; and entailed a robust degree of salty sailor-talk. I finally got it to work, but I have no idea how I did it and I'm not certain I can replicate it again.

I need to take a more deliberative, investigatory approach to solving these little dilemmas, and make clear notes.

Figure the odds.

Somehow I stumbled into the radio thing again. Cameras, computers, calculators, and radios. Oy. I have a couple of transistor radios from the 60s to the 70s on hand. First was a Panasonic Panapet 70, the "ball and chain radio." Got a blue one for Christmas as a teen. They're ridiculously expensive for what they are today, because there's no price for boomer nostalgia. I bought a white one that looked pretty nasty. Fortunately, it cleaned up pretty well. Still works about as good as I recall it did when it was new.

I have a really bad looking yellow one on the way, with a cracked bottom. Some guy here in Florida was selling the bottom half of a red one. Problem solved.

My most exciting acquisition is a Hitachi TH-841. Mine is in slightly better physical condition than the one in the link. No chips, but a small crack I can fix, though it was advertised with no cracks. I also paid significantly more than that etsy one, mostly because I'm a dumbass. But I'm learning.

It has cleaned up quite well, and it works fine. It's six inches long and three and half high, so it doesn't take much space on a shelf where it looks quite cool. These radios have a much larger ferrite loop medium wave antenna than a more conventional "portrait" handheld. Not always the case, so it pays to check.

I've got a much larger radio, the Panasonic RF-2200 inbound. I will play around with it a bit before I decide whether to send it off for refurbishment. Jay Allen knows more about radios than I do. I can clean, but I don't think I can align. There's a guy who offers a service on ebay, specifically for this radio, so I may go that route. We'll see.

Finally, there's a Monarch RE-760 on the way. Delayed, apparently, by UPS. Probably get here tomorrow. I like the style, but what especially attracted me was the brand name, Monarch. I get kind of a Godzilla vibe with this radio. Might display it with one of these, which I have, because of course I do.

If there's any good news to report, it's that I've successfully talked myself out of buying five, new to me, contemporary multi-band radios in the last several days. None of them offer anything I can't already do with the six I already have, which are some very good ones, to say nothing of the six or seven I gave to my son and his boys.

Anyway, I expect "this too shall pass." But for now, it's an amusing diversion.

Originally posted at Nice Marmot 19:36 Sunday, 5 March 2023