February Snow, and the Return of Socks the Cat!

Socks the Cat, looking a little bigger than he did last Summer.

The weather here lately has been the standard 40F/4C and clouds / rain. "Forty degrees and rain" -- our usual Seattle winter weather. It's dull weather, and the combination of rain and cold is the thing I hate the most about weather here.

A couple weeks ago, however, we got a surprise -- two days of SNOW!

My back yard turned into a Winter wonderland.

Looking down a side street -- elsewhere in my blog, I have sunrise pictures taken from this angle. This time, it was snow. Winter had finally arrived. Then, two days later -- it was gone.

This past winter hasn't been all that much like a winter -- I could almost count the number of frozen mornings using the fingers on both of my hands. When I was young, frozen mud puddles and frosty mornings were more common. This winter we've had maybe 15 of them -- if that. Night time temperatures have been cold, though -- most nights being as cold as 32-35 degrees F (0-3C). A couple nights were in the 20's. But most nights since late January it's been 40 degrees and rain.

The snow was unusual, and it also was refreshing. It was a light snow, and we got maybe 3-4 inches of it in places (it was thicker in the wind-blown drifts). It lasted two days before the rains returned and the snow all melted.

I took a few photos of it with both of my cameras (my Fuji AX655 and my Nikon L32).

A bigger pic of Sock the Cat, by my hedge. I talked to him, and he just looked at me.

After I called out to Socks, and shook a bowl full of cat food to attract his attention, he walked off on his way.

I also took a photo of Socks the Cat! Socks the Cat is a neighborhood cat who wanders all over the neighborhood. I don't know what his real name is, but I call him Socks, because he's a black cat with white chest, and white paws that look like white socks.

Last Summer I saw him on my front porch, and I've also seen him two blocks away in both directions. I have no idea who owns him. I saw him last summer a couple times, including once when he was eating my cat's food on my front porch. 

Then I didn't see him for a few months. I was worried about him -- we do have coyotes in the area, and sometimes they raid our neighborhood and kill cats.

Socks right before he left my porch. Cat food just wasn't enough to get him to come closer.

The morning of the snow a week and a half ago, I was sleeping in. I awoke to the sound of a cat crying out front, and it didn't sound like any of my own cats. In fact, I thought I heard a cat crying right outside my front door. I looked out my bedroom window, and there he was: Socks the Cat, wanting to come in!

I grabbed my camera and went down to my front door and opened it, and Socks ran off to the hedge that borders my driveway. He stopped, and looked at me. I called out to him, and still -- he just looked at me.

I got a couple photos of him, and put some fresh cat food out for him -- shaking the dish to get his attention -- but he never came up to eat any of it. Then he left.

I have no idea where he went. He probably went home -- wherever that is.

Socks the Cat this past Summer, July 2020. As you can see, he was a bit smaller. I think he was a grown kitten or young adult cat in this pic. When I talk to him, he looks at me, but then takes off. He's a very independent-minded cat.

The snow was a welcome change here from the usual grey skies, 40F temperatures, and rain. I didn't ride my bike out in the snow as I have done in past snowstorms, as I didn't feel like getting cold and wet. Last time I rode my bike in the snow, a couple years ago, my bike's wheels became solid with snow, and it took a while to clear it all off. I went for a walk, though, and took a few pictures, some of which I am posting here.

My outdoor Christmas ornaments, which I still have yet to take down and pack away.

The two to three inches of snow on the bushes and trees made the world a wonderful looking place.

It was 25-26 degrees F (minus 5C) the day of the snow. But because it wasn't raining, it didn't feel all that cold.

The Cedar River with snow -- a pleasant Winterscape.

The bulkhead of the old Highway Bridge, built in 1950 and now used for the local Trail.

A few other people were out on the Trail, enjoying the snow day off work.

As I write this, my Sangean PR-D5 radio is playing WBAP, Fort Worth, Texas -- a well known 50KW station on 820 khz, which is usually blocked by a local station on the same frequency (KGNW, a religious station), which is off the air for maintenance tonight. It's interesting to hear a station from Texas, something that's not exactly common here in the Seattle area. MW DX otherwise has been mediocre here at this location, with nothing spectacular even when I use a loop antenna as a booster for any of my radios.

Here's hoping that all of my readers, both here in the US and other places, are safe and healthy. About one third of my readers are from other parts of the world -- recent check-ins are people from Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Finland, Slovakia, Austria, Czech Republic, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Portugal, Spain, Egypt, the Emirates, and Bangladesh. I have some readers from Germany, Canada, the UK, Russia, France, Turkey, Indonesia, and Australia as well. It's always great to have readers overseas.

Peace to all,

C.C. 2-28-2021

RIP Fry's Electronics -- The Sad Demise of an Electronics & Radio Retailer

Numerous times in my blog posts I've talked about Fry's Electronics -- after all, several of the radios I write about here in my blog were purchased at Fry's. 

I bought my Sangean PR-D5 there in 2014 -- and I've written maybe three blog posts about that radio alone. I bought my Sony ICF-38 there (featured in maybe three or four blog posts), and I bought my Grundig G2 there (I'm still working on a blog post about that radio).

The few cars that pulled into the Fry's lot earlier tonight were people who weren't aware that the store had already been shuttered permanently.

I also bought my Sangean PR-D18 and PR-D14 there. I got my Eton AN200 loop there when my Radio Shack AM loop went south on me in early 2020. I bought my Sangean HDR-16 AM-FM-HD radio there in March of 2020. I bought music CD's and some movie DVD's there; I bought blank CDRs, printer ink-jet cartridges; a printer and scanner for my old computer; USB memory sticks; cell phone chargers, and numerous other electronic devices and accessories there over the years, including various radio parts.

Going to Fry's was always an adventure of sorts -- there were always plenty of shoppers there, and it was a lively place.

But as of yesterday, Fry's Electronics is no more. The chain is shutting up shop. All remaining stores are closed permanently.

It's a sad day for the radio hobby, and it's a sad day for people who enjoyed shopping there. And, not the least -- it is a sad day for those who worked at Fry's.

Fry's had its only store in Washington state located in the city where I live. I think it opened up in 2001 or 2002. Previously, the property had been a vacant parking lot for Boeing workers, and when Boeing tore down half of their factory buildings in North Renton in the 1990's, the lot was empty -- only used once a summer for the traveling Cirque Du Soleil. Then, after 2001 or so, Fry's arrived.

I was working at a radio broadcast service company at the time, and in the afternoon the computer guys always were looking over the Fry's full-color flyers that came with every Friday newspaper. 

Fry's always had bargains every week, as they not only were a high-volume retailer, they were very competitive. The computer and IT guys always were talking about the great prices that Fry's had -- and if you were into computers and other electronics, Fry's had everything.

The tech guys would point at the latest hard drive or video camera, or marvel at the price of the latest desktop computer in the flyer. "Wow, look at that!" was something I heard more than once.

In 2005 or 2011, this parking lot would have been packed with cars. Earlier tonight, there was nothing but emptiness. I took this pic with my once frozen but now revived Fuji AX655 snapshot camera.

Fry's had motherboards, hard drives, laptop and tablet computers, peripherals and cables, TV's and TV accessories, video games, all sorts of cameras, CB's, stereo and audio equipment, and even washers and dryers. 

When you walked inside Fry's back in 2005 or 2012 there would be tons of shoppers. The parking lot was usually filled with cars. The store had a checkout counter that seemed to be a mile long, manned by 10-15 people. You had to wait in line for the next checkout stand to open. A light over a checkout stand would flash, and the guy or girl who tended the checkout line would point you to the next open cashier.

Fry's employed a lot of people. My rough guess is the Fry's in Renton probably employed a couple hundred at least.

The first night after Fry's closing: there wasn't even anyone at the store to pick up the morning newspaper.

I used to go to Fry's a lot. Like I mentioned earlier, I bought a few radios there, and when I got into the radio repair hobby in 2011 and 2012, I bought a lot of resistors, capacitors, and similar parts at Fry's.

The Great Recession seemed to have little effect on Fry's, as their prices were so good. And they had the bulk merchandise to back up those low prices -- they apparently had deals with Chinese manufacturers and the major electronics firms based in China, Taiwan, and similar Asian places. In one article I read about the store, they had their own dedicated containers shipped over from Asia.

You'd walk into the store and there would be bins chock full of small items like battery packs, USB drives and phone chargers, at dirt cheap prices -- it was a way to get you into the store, purchasing things.

The internet, along with the corona pandemic, brought another large retailer down.

For a few years -- from about 2015-2019, I hadn't gone into Fry's. I wasn't buying any more radios, and I had stopped trying to fix old radios, being that I hadn't had much luck fixing them, so I lost interest in that hobby. I also didn't have a lot of money to spend on electronics during those years.

When I finally re-discovered Fry's in July of 2019, and went inside the store, I was in for a bit of a shock. The store wasn't so bustling. There were less shoppers, and less people working there. Some of the shelves were a bit spare of product. I bought a radio -- my Sangean PR-D18, a handy little digital AM-FM I use in my car. 

Then I didn't return until March 2020. By then, Fry's looked like a ghost town. The radio shelves were spare, with just a few models available. The parts racks still had plenty of parts, but there were some areas of the parts department that weren't well stocked. The TV and video corner of the store -- instead of having lots of movies playing, and audio booming from the audio room, and lots of customers looking over the merchandise -- was amazingly silent, with a dearth of high-caliber video and audio equipment for sale. 

Fry's during better times -- July 2019. I took this pic and the next few pics with my cell phone camera.

In July 2019, the Shortwave radio section still had some product. I bought the AN200 loop antenna seen in the upper center of the picture.

The Sangean radio section still had a lot of product in July 2019, too.

There were only a few Sangeans remaining at Fry's in March 2020, when I bought my last radio there.

In March 2020 were also many bare shelves at Fry's. Very sad.

March 2020: a once bustling computer section, now mostly spare of product.

This time, in March 2020, computer corner of the store was almost devoid of laptops, tablets, and desktops. The computer parts desk wasn't busy as it used to be earlier in the decade.

And there weren't many people working at the store, either. Instead of 10-15 checkout people, there were only one or two. The rest of the checkout stands looked like they hadn't been manned in weeks. The floor help at the store were hard to find, because there weren't many people manning the floor. The espresso bar -- located in the middle of the store -- was closed.

The trade war with China, combined with the growth in online retail, had both taken their toll on Fry's. Now, with the corona shutdowns looming, it didn't look bright.

It was then that I purchased a couple radios (my HDR-16 and PR-D14) because the prices were good, and -- well -- just because. I had a feeling the store might not last through the corona pandemic. I wanted to buy my last radios there, and hope for the best for the store, being that it was a big radio retailer with people still working there, and it was a convenient place to get electronics. The last radio I got there was my PR-D14 (which I wrote about a couple months ago in this blog), which I bought a day or two before the corona shutdowns.

THE END COMES FOR A ONCE BURGEONING RETAILER

I read earlier today that Fry's were closing, and drove down to see if the store was still open. I arrived to an empty lot -- the only cars were the few would-be customers that drove up not knowing that the store had already been shuttered for good. There was a small sign posted on each door notifying people that the store was permanently closed, thanking them for their business over the past 36 years (Fry's opened up in California in 1984).

The local news says the building will be torn down and the lot will be filled with a few blocks of  apartments.

Is this a picture of the future of brick and mortar retail -- permanently shuttered doors and empty parking lots? Hopefully not.

As I drove away earlier tonight from Fry's, after taking a few photos of the shuttered building and the empty lot, I felt a severe twinge of depression. There is something wrong with a world where all shopping is done online, and there aren't any retail stores manned with people and stocked with goods for customers to buy. 

It's not just the corona pandemic that has done this to us: it's the trend for everything to be purchased via phone or computer screen, and it makes the entire experience -- although convenient -- very impersonal.

And then you have the lost jobs. It used to be a pleasant experience to interact with the checkout people at Fry's while buying the latest electronic gizmo, CD, or even a few packs of batteries. Being able to engage in some light conversation while buying stuff adds something to everyday life. It makes us more human. Now our lives are more and more impersonal. It's no wonder that increasing numbers of people don't know how to engage with each other on a civil basis anymore. 

Shopping used to be a pastime. When I was a kid, we'd sometimes go to the nearest mall, to shop for things, or just people watch. It was a social activity, and it was a good time. Most men don't love shopping, it's true. But there is something to be said for the social interaction one gets going into an actual store and talking to a real person -- like a clerk -- with your purchase in your hands when you buy it. Those days are leaving us.

Of course, none of this is going to change. More and more stores like Fry's will probably be shuttered due to the pandemic, and even afterwards. I think we're in for a few rough economic years ahead, and brick-and-mortar may suffer for it. But that's all for another blog post, perhaps.

To any of you who may have worked at a Fry's, I hope for the best for you all. I've been unemployed before. It's not fun, nor is it easy. God speed to you.

I took this pic of my last purchases at Fry's, my PR-D14 radio and some USB drives. It was March 25th, 2020, right before the corona shutdowns started.

For right now, I'm going to switch on my PR-D5 radio I bought at Fry's in 2014, DXed with, listened to every night while fiction writing, almost wrecked and then fixed, wrote a few blog posts about, and had fun listening to during the 2017 Solar Eclipse.

I got it at Fry's, and even though Fry's is no more, a little bit of the store is still in my life.

Hope this article finds all my readers safe and healthy, especially in this pandemic.

Peace.

C.C. February 25th, 2021.

My FUJI AX655 16 Megapixel Snapshot Camera Fixed Itself

My FUJI AX655 COMES BACK TO LIFE after five years of sitting, frozen with the lens open. Now it works again -- the lens, as one can see, is tucked normally back inside the camera! 

Automatic Camera Healing exists!

THE RETURN OF MY FUJI FINEPIX AX655, 16 MEGAPIXEL CAMERA!!!!

Last night, after writing my last blog post, I was cleaning up my desk here.

I noticed my old, black Fuji AX655 16 Megapixel snapshot camera sitting under some envelopes, headphones, and other bric-a-brac. The Fuji was my first digital snapshot camera that took good pictures, and it DID actually take really good pictures. My earliest blog posts here, from early 2015, are full of pics taken by the Fuji. I had bought the camera some time in late 2013 or early 2014.

My custom back then was to take an early morning, or late afternoon bike ride, and take my trusty Fuji AX655 with me, and take pics of whatever caught my fancy. I would then post some on this blog, or my Flickr (which still exists -- it can be seen here:   Chris C. | Flickr

(The pics I took with my Fuji Camera start about three pages in, with the Seattle Skyline photos taken from Alki Point).

Unfortunately, when I took my Fuji out on a bike ride with nearly spent batteries, some time in mid-2015 or so, it froze up on me. This apparently can happen with this model of Fuji camera, and some other digital snapshot cameras of the early 2010s. If one looks at various websites of the era, you'll see people asking how to unfreeze their camera -- which is what happened to my camera.

What would happen, is that the batteries would get too low, and instead of shutting down, the camera simply freezes, and no amount of gentle prying, cajoling, blowing of canned air, etc. will get it to operate.

I know. I tried. I even took the case apart, to see if anything could be done. No dice.

My FUJI AX655 with the lens frozen open. I think I took this pic with my Nikon, probably in Fall of 2015. In this pic the camera has no batteries in it anymore. the lens is open, and immobile.

A pic I took with my Nikon, of my Fuji with the case removed. No amount of canned air would free up the lens. :-( Instead, the camera had to sit for a few years until IT FIXED ITSELF.

A photo I had taken with my Fuji AX655, showing its capabilities in taking good pictures. It took awesome night and sunset shots. With a fresh set of batteries, Fuji AX655's are great cameras, and take great pictures VERY easily. They literally are 'point and click' cameras!

In a way, it sort of hurt seeing it frozen with the lens open. My camera was like a friend to me -- I had fun taking pics on bike rides and posting them on my Flickr, and on this blog.

So for the past five years my poor Fuji camera was nothing more than an artifact -- a fancy looking SD card reader (the only function that still worked).

Here is a lesson for anyone who has one of these little marvels:

If you have a Fuji AX655 snapshot camera from the early to mid 2010's, be aware: ALWAYS USE FRESH BATTERIES!!!

If you make sure you always have good or fresh batteries in them, these Fuji Cameras will serve you well. They are easy to use, and take great pictures.

Anyway, when my Fuji froze up I got another camera, my Nikon Coolpix L32, which also takes excellent pictures (once you use the SCENE settings, which causes the camera to adjust to the right light settings). In my article on how to take great pics with a Nikon L32 (you can see it here: Interrock Nation: NIKON COOLPIX L32 -- how to get decent pictures from one ) I talk about both cameras in detail.

In that blog post in November 2015, I also mentioned what happened with my poor Fuji. At that time, and since then, my Fuji camera's been little more than an SD card reader, or paperweight.

FIRE IT UP, AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS

So last night, while cleaning up my desk, I saw it sitting there, lens still stuck open, and a thought came to me: why not see if it will fire up now?

What could it hurt?

I put in some batteries, press the power button -- and BINGO! The lens starts working! 

The LCD screen shows activity! When I turned it off, the lens -- instead of remaining stuck in the open position -- it tucked itself back into the camera like it is supposed to do.

I turned it on again. The lens opens, like it's supposed to. The LCD screen shows what the lens sees, and it's in focus. It tells me there's no SD card in the camera, and has me set the date, which is 2014, so I leave it there.

It took five years of sitting for the CAMERA TO FIX ITSELF.

I'll hand this to the Fuji company -- any camera that will fix itself after five years of sitting is an OK product by me.

Apparently there was some issue in the microprocessor that needed a complete re-set. Or something.

Right now, I'm not complaining. Seeing the lens operate was like seeing an old friend come back to life.

Anyway, I was surprised to see the camera OPERATING NORMALLY AGAIN.

Very happy, actually.

I will see if it takes pictures later this week when I get an SD card for it. Fingers are crossed.

If it doesn't work, I will write about that also. But the lens opens and shuts, and the LCD readout sees what the lens is seeing, so who knows?

THE NEXT EVENING: THE CAMERA WORKS, AND EVEN TAKES PICTURES!

It is now Monday evening, and I just got an SD card for my Fuji. I put it in the camera, and a fresh set of AA batteries. I took two pics of my Sangean PR-D5 radio, and then loaded them into my computer.

Here they are -- proof of Automatic Camera Healing:

Photo taken with Fuji AX655, with flash (I forgot how to turn the flash off).

My Sangean PR-D5 radio (tuned to KVRI 1600, a Punjabi / Sikh prayer music station near the Canadian border), with no flash (I figured out how to switch off the flash -- the menu on these Fuji Cameras is actually very easy to use). I used an LED headlamp to illuminate the pic. As you can see, my old, froze-up FUJI AX655 is now working again!

WHY DID IT FIX ITSELF?

My takeaway and guess is that there is a SOFTWARE GLITCH in these cameras that locks them up when you have the camera operating and battery juice gets too low. The microprocessor simply doesn't know what to do. It freezes. Maybe it's like a computer bug -- after all, there is a small microprocessor in every digital snapshot camera that makes it work.

The several years of sitting drained the microprocessor to the extent that it made a complete re-set.

This is the only explanation I have for this apparent miracle.

So -- if you have a FUJI AX655 -- or similar, early 2010's digital snapshot camera, and it froze up on you -- and you still have it, try firing it up. If you have one of these little marvels and it happens to freeze up on you, take the batteries out, set it in a drawer, and wait a few months.

An admittedly blurry pic of my Fuji Camera's LCD screen. As you can see, there is a battery meter, circled in the lower right of the screen. It has THREE BARS. My suggestion, is if you have a Fuji AX655, change the batteries when it hits TWO BARS, and definitely change the batteries if it get down to ONE BAR. I do not remember how low the camera was when it froze on me. I think it was showing ONE BAR, and it still froze up. So, TWO BARS is probably the limit!

And if you have a Fuji like mine, and it is working, my guess is that every time the BATTERY METER goes down to TWO BARS -- replace the AA's. If it hits one bar -- turn the camera off! Load fresh batteries!

Perhaps always having a spare set of AA's in your pocket is a good idea with these cameras.

After all, my FUJI worked great for over a year until the freeze-up happened. I know that with any of my digital cameras -- except the two I know will automatically shut down when batteries are low (my Nikon L32 and my old, thrift store Canon A520) -- I intend to replace batteries frequently. 

I also have an older Samsung S630 that works, but I haven't used much. I got it at a thrift store in 2019 for $7.99. It takes two AA's. I have no idea if it freezes up when batteries are low, but I'm not taking that chance.

Either way, it's nice when an older piece of electronics comes back to life. I took a lot of photos with my Fuji. I hope to take some more, now that she is working again.

My Flickr again, if anyone wants to see the pics I took with my Fuji (some of the photos there were taken with my Canon, too, I think):

Chris C. | Flickr 

The pics I took with my Fuji AX655 start about three pages in (there are 9 pages of photos). The first set you can see that I took with the Fuji Camera is the pics of the Seattle Skyline from Alki Beach, taken in May, 2015. And many, if not most, of the earlier pics were taken with the Fuji, too.

Here are a couple shots I pulled off my Flickr, as I was looking back in time, to 2012-2014.:

A pic I took of a local beaver's pond, October 2014, just before Halloween.

A pic of me in my Halloween costume, 2014. There are a lot of Halloween pics in my Flickr, early on.

A pic of my cat on Halloween, I'm not sure which year. The date stamp says Fuji, and 2012. But it might have been 2013 or even 2014. It took a few photos for me to get the date stamp set. I think I got the camera in October of 2013. In fact, the first pic I took with it was of my GE Superadio, which is the top pic in my blog post on Superadios, which can be found here:

Interrock Nation: Boosting the antenna circuit of a GE SUPERADIO 1 & 2

Here is the first pic I took with the Fuji camera, actually (the radio, by the way, still works):

Here are two other, more scenic photos, which I took with the Fuji Camera that same day in October. As you can tell, it can take good pictures. The cameras are worth rejuvenating if you have one that froze:

The October countryside just north of Enumclaw, Washington.

Another view of the same area -- farmland near Krain, Washington -- a small place in South King County.

These photos above are on my post on 'Beautiful South King County', a blog post about my area of Washington State. The link is here:

Interrock Nation: Beautiful South King County

And so we finish another post on the wonderful world of electronics. Periodically, I receive comments concerning strange things that happen with radios and the like. A lot of the issues may be physically oriented, i.e. switches that get dirty and go bad, but as we've seen over a few of my blog posts on radios, some issues are with the firmware that runs the device. My Sangean PR-D5 needs to be re-set from time to time because the power button lags. My DX-375 radio needed to be re-set once (I forget what the reason was). And now my Fuji Camera needed to have the microprocessor completely drain of life before it decided to operate the camera lens again.

Such is life. :-)

Until next blog post, I wish all of you well. Stay safe. Peace.

C.C. -- February 9th, 2021

Rainy February, and the short lifetime of LED Lights

Puget Sound from Beach Drive, Seattle -- photo taken some time in January.

As I write this, it's not raining out, surprisingly. There's been a bit of a break in the drizzle. It's about 4-5C out -- 40 degrees and rain. It's what we generally get here in Seattle in the Winter.

I recall about five or six years ago it was 68-70 degrees F on February 14th -- Valentine's Day. The sun was shining brightly. It was very strange, but pleasant. So far, this Winter, since early November, it's been the usual drizzle and varying degrees of 'cold' -- some days and nights being more moderate.

Right now I am in the middle of various projects: trying to do some Spring cleaning, and seeking a second job to compliment my main one. MW DXing (long distance listening to the MW radio band) has been more or less mediocre -- i.e., it's the same 200-300 stations on any given night. Even my 'star' radios (Sangean PR-D5, GE Superadio, Panasonic RF-B45, Realistic DX-398) bring up the same 200-300 stations -- the usual culprits, as I call them.

I'm glad they're all still on the air, of course, but I haven't heard anything new in probably a year. But that's OK.

In other 'news', I' shall be taking down my last (and only) string of Christmas lights tonight, as I generally take them off the hawthorn tree in early February. I leave them up from November to February to lighten up the dreary, grey, cold atmosphere. 

A couple nights ago I noticed that the middle string of LED lights no longer works. Thddddt.

It's frustrating, and leads me to the main point of this article: products that are supposed to be an improvement over the old technology, but really aren't, and on top of that, they cost more.

I.e. LED Christmas lights.

My hawthorn tree, with this last year's Christmas lights, before I took them down. You'll notice the dark area in the middle? That's a string of "lasts forever, never burns out, saves electricity" LED lights that didn't last forever, and burned out, after just a couple months being lit. Being burned out, I guess they are indeed saving me some electricity. Oh -- I almost forgot -- they cost twice as much as twinkly lights I used to get in the 2000's, that lasted just as long.

PAY MORE, AND GET LESS

In the old days, maybe 15 years ago or so, most Christmas lights you got in a store here were 'twinklies', or what they call 'fairy lights' in the UK and Oz. The stores were crammed with them any time after Halloween, and the prices were maybe $2-$3 a box of 100 of them. Now, these 'twinklies' sometimes didn't last longer than one or two Christmas seasons. Even the strings that said "One Goes Out, The Rest Stay On" would burn out. One went out, they all went out. So much for truth in labelling.

Then, about five years ago, LED Christmas lights became more and more common, and although their prices slowly dropped, they still cost about twice the amount that the old style 'twinklies' costed This last December, there weren't that many boxes of LED lights on the shelves, and the average price was closer to $5 than the $2-$3 the 'twinklies' would cost in the 2000s and 2010s.

But LEDs are supposed to never burn out! It's improved technology! They will save electricity, and last for years!

Nope. Sorry. It doesn't work that way.

The string I had on my hawthorn tree in Christmas 2019 was inoperable when I took them out of the storage box November 2020. They just refused to light up. My 'forever' LED light string instantly became a decorative looking, green extension cord.

So I bought a couple new strings -- about $5 each. One still is lit, as you can see from the photo. The other one is burnt out. 

It's frustrating when prices go up and quality goes down, or otherwise doesn't improve. Overall, a lot of new tech actually is an improvement over older tech, but in the back of my mind there is this voice saying: why the f___ can't they make a string of Christmas lights that lasts longer than a couple of months?

My 1989 Realistic DX-440, which I got in August of 1989 and -- thank God -- it still works like new. Every now and then I have to exercise the tuner knob, as the little contacts inside can get oxidised. I also wired back-to-back diodes between the negative battery terminal and the whip antenna to protect the RF amp FET transistor from static electricity shocks. For MW DXing, I use a loop, as I live in a low signals area. You can see the Eton AN200 loop behind the radio. The radio is tuned to KVRI 1600, a Punjabi music station about 200 km north of here. A ranchero music station from Utah also sometimes is heard behind KVRI, as well as an Oregon Public Radio station coming up from Eugene (KOPB).

Some older tech is still good: My 1996 Panasonic RF-B45 radio still works, while the 1996 computer sitting to the left of me -- a massive, metal encased desktop that was top of the line tech in the late 1990's -- is dead, and has been since 2006. It is nothing more than a massive paperweight. There is another dead, metal encased desktop computer in back of it that probably dates from 2000. It is also a paperweight. I was going to fix them up. But I found out that I didn't have the computer skills, nor the extra money to waste on fixing them. So there they sit, taking up space -- until the day I junk them.

Meanwhile, my old MW DX radios still work, and work, and work, and work. And they date from anywhere between 1968 and 1998. My DX440, which I fire up now and then to keep it working, I got in August of 1989. It still works fine. I can't say that for any computer built in 1989, unless it's a Commodore 64 -- but good luck being able to actually USE that Commodore 64.

GET AN SDR, THEY SAY....

Periodically in the Radio DX hobby I see guys on Radio hobby forums telling others to "Get an SDR!! Join the 21st Century!" They think SDRs are the way to go.

The problem is not just cost, but the fact that computers simply do not age well.

Today's high tech SDRs probably won't even work in ten years. But my 1982 GE Superadio 1 still works as well as it did the day I bought it, and -- barring disasters, as Superadios are built like tanks -- it will probably still work in 2040, when current SDRs will be in some electronics trash pile somewhere.

My first ever transistor SW-AM-FM radio, a Penncrest, a Christmas gift when I was a little kid. I first heard Radio Australia on this radio -- with the antenna clipped to a 60 foot wire. I heard Supernaut (the Oz band) and first heard AC/DC on this radio. The radio still fortunately works. I turn it on once a month or so to ensure the electrolytic caps keep a charge.

I'll be mulling this all over when I take down the lights outside. My little hawthorn tree will look spare and bare until it starts leafing out. It will bloom in Spring, and then get berries for next Fall.

Then I'll have to buy some more Christmas lights to put on it next November. I'm sure they'll be LEDs, and they probably will cost even more than they did last November.

It's the cycle of life, I guess. The alternative is to put up no lights at all, which probably is a viable option. I also have ornaments on the tree, as can be seen in the pic. They, fortunately, last much much longer than the lights do. :-)

With that, I'm going to end this article, and post it as soon as I add the pic I took earlier of the hawthorn tree with 'burn 'em forever' LED lights missing in the middle.

The 'famous' Renton icon, the Whistle Stop's upside down Christmas tree, which they put up every year, even during the pandemic year, when it was probably needed to be seen the most, to cheer people up.

In December I took a drive around a few of the neighborhoods in the area. This was one of the nicer decorated houses. A lot of houses had no decorations, when compared to 'normal' years, probably because of the corona pandemic.

I am working on a couple more articles on radios that will appear next month, as well as a fairly large article on slide guitar for those muso's out there who may be interested in learning the ins and outs of playing slide.

I've also been re-setting my trusty Ibby Gio GRX-40 up for Open G and slide, after a long process of different tunings and set-ups (D Standard, to Drop C, to Open F, to finally Open G). In the end, I decided to go with the tuning and set-up I have on all of my other electric guitars. The guitar is happier, and I am happier. 

Eventually you return to what you know, and work with, the best.

GREETINGS ALL OVER THE WORLD

I've noticed that about half of my readers are in other parts of the world: Germany, Canada, the UK, Australia, Austria, Spain, Russia, Indonesia, India, Romania, Finland, France, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Greece, Egypt and Turkey. Last month there were also readers in Japan, Sweden, Czechia, Italy, and Taiwan.

I hope that each and every one of you everywhere is doing well, and staying safe from this current coronavirus pandemic. The human race survived earlier pandemics. We shall overcome this one as well.

Until later, my friends, Peace.

C.C. February 8th, 2021.