“Here’s a story for you that befits an aging audiophile. Some months ago, I was looking for a used 1/4-track reel-to-reel recorder, and though it wasn’t a prime requirement, the capability of handling big (10 1/2″) reels was just one criterion. That narrowed the field quite considerably, and after looking at a number of Akai, Otari, ReVox, Tandberg, TEAC and other recorders available, I finally found what I was looking for at a decent price, and more important, close enough geographically for pickup. This latter consideration is important when dealing with these large, heavy recorders, because they are very expensive to ship, that cost often exceeding the actual selling price, especially from US or overseas locations.”

“Cloud Computing - It’s like entrusting your candy to the babysitter, or your booze to the handyman. You’ll look up and find your cloud gone. It’s inevitable. I put my trust in USB drives (I have a 250-Gig), SDHC (XC?) cards (great for recording music these days), DVD-Rs, and now Blu-ray-Rs.”

“I guess other people worry about identity theft. I worry about identity DENIAL!”

“And the fact is, there is, as far as my extensive experience has shown, no true universal remote in existence. They all, like the rest of us humans, have obvious flaws and blind spots.”