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What the Hell Am I Even Doing Here?

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  My dad died in December of 2019.  Way to start on a down note, amiright? December of 2019 and January of 2020 were a crazy time in the world. We were just starting to hear about this thing called COVID-19, and trying to figure out how it was going to impact our world and our lives. We set up a wake for Dad for the first week of March of 2020. We arranged food, a location, and invited a bunch of people. And on the morning of the wake, we got a call from a dear friend asking us to cancel, because the first cases had been detected in our county (and the wake would have been a pretty broad cross-section of the elderly folks in the community, include a whole bunch of teachers and school employees). We canceled.  Because our extended family was already on the way, we opted to give them the option of coming to our house for a very small gathering where we could talk about and remember Dad. As part of that, my brother and I prepared brief remarks. Mine was, I am quite sure, poi...
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Ray-ban Meta Wayfarer Review

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[Non-RX MSRP $316 in shiny black with green lenses, I paid … substantially more for prescription in shiny black.] [ Tl;dr: I’m genuinely surprised by how much I like these. Are they great, audiophile-grade headphones? Nope. But that’s not their use case, and not what they’re designed for. For what they’re designed for, they’re surprisingly excellent.] Scores: Cost-agnostic: 8 out of 10 Denalis (for their use case) Cost-sensitive: 6 out of 10 Denalis (for their use case) Intro. Years ago, I made a lot of fun of one of my friends for wanting the original Bose headphone sunglasses . I didn’t see the point of combining the two products; I had long been committed to Oakley for glasses, sunglasses, and prescription sunglasses, and while I owned and enjoyed a number of pairs of Bose headphones, I didn’t understand why someone would want to tie themselves to a combined product. Fast forward to this year, where I found myself with some FSA funds that I needed to use, and in a world where I ba...
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Phil's Top 10 Albums of 2024

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  This was a strange year in music for me. I actually didn’t listen to that much “new” music in 2024, having spent a lot of time going back to older artists that I loved. It was also a year where a few of my favorites were the result of going to live shows with friends, even for artists that wouldn’t normally get a lot of my attention. That’s pretty cool too. So, what did I miss? “Love Heart Cheat Code” by Haitus Kaiyote. I saw this group this summer in Carnation at the invitation of Robin Giese, and holy hell are they phenomenal live. This is a fascinating album with everything from seriously funky jazz-inflected bops like “Everything is Beautiful” to meme-y delights like “BMO is Beautiful” (featuring the voice actress from “Adventure Time”) and “Long Cat” (with it’s charming chorus of “He is the longest cat in the world”). If you like jazz, funk, internet culture, or phenomenal bass playing, check this out. “No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin” by Meshell Ndegecocello. Mes...
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Hifi 101: Practical Applications

This is a companion to my post the other day about my philosophy for building a stereo system , aka hi fi rack. I’ve broken it into tiers ranging from $500 to around $3,000. You can certainly spend way more than that on a stereo, but if you’re going to invest that kind of money you really, really ought to test the components out for yourself to see if they work for YOUR taste. $3k is also about where I feel like you start hitting the point of substantial diminishing returns. The system I recommend at $3k is basically the system that I used for a long time, and the only reason I upgraded it was that I got a really good deal on a very high-end amplifier that I’d been coveting for a while. Honestly, I’m not sure it’s much better than the recommended Peachtree, and it definitely doesn’t play as nicely with my turntable. Similarly, my turntable is a substantial price upgrade from the recommended U-Turn, but I think I might actually like U-Turn’s house sound more and at some point I may swa...
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