OT: Share your hobbies beyond being an audiophile

[AudioDoctor]

Track days, Flying, and Sailing.  Also, I try to think up ways to make more money to pay for all these. things.  Does drinking Coffee count?

 

Edit:  I forgot to add yelling at the TV during political talk shows on Sunday Mornings.

[Ryan Berry]

Mark, that is some excellent craftsmanship.  I recently became intrigued with woodworking and I am putting together my workshop now.  I'll let you know when I manage to figure out how to make a joint square!

 

For myself, I enjoy cooking and playing various instruments (not at the same time), and bagpiping is a special passion for me.  I sometimes wonder how long I'll be able to still hear, however!

[wgscott]

On 1/19/2018 at 3:54 PM, sandyk said:

Bill

 Where do you find the time for all these diverse interests ? I am assuming here that some of them  are climate related as well.

Do your dogs run along with you when keeping fit on your bicycle ?

 

Yeah, I definitely can't keep up.  That was why I had to get rid of the reef tank 5 years ago.  Biking I can combine with commuting.  The dogs are lazy and just hang around the house.  I would be afraid to have them on-road, and they aren't allowed off-leash in the State parks I trail-ride in.

[Kimo]

On 1/19/2018 at 1:34 PM, wgscott said:

We have two golden retrievers.  I kind of hesitate to call that a hobby, but it does consume a fair amount of time and money, so in that sense probably it qualifies.

 

 

 

Quote

.....

 

 I am up to 3 rescue Newfys, which probably makes me just as crazy as the guy looking for 3K speaker cables to get that last bit out of the system.  So, yes Hobby, plus.

[The Computer Audiophile]

Three rescued Chichihuas, two rescued cats, and as of yesterday a cat living in our garage (Being fed dry food, wet food, and chicken).

 

One Chihuahua with only 7 teeth has a teeth cleaning coming up next week. There goes another $2,000. Just think of the HiFi fuse I could have purchased :~)

 

Other than pets, another hobby of mine is analog photography. I love shooting medium format 6x6 Hasselblad. 

[wgscott]

We've got 3 rescued cats, although I think we might be down two 2 now.

 

Our younger dog developed about 9 extra teeth, which we had to have surgically removed by a specialist.  That was about $2K.  $2K just for a cleaning seems a bit high.

 

But none of this even remotely compares in ongoing expense and time-consumption to the consequence of that 18 second act that resulted in replicating my own genome... thrice.

[semente]

9 minutes ago, wgscott said:

But none of this even remotely compares in ongoing expense and time-consumption to the consequence of that 18 second act that resulted in replicating my own genome... thrice.

 

[Ralf11]

On 1/19/2018 at 4:48 PM, AudioDoctor said:

Track days, Flying, and Sailing.  Also, I try to think up ways to make more money to pay for all these. things.  Does drinking Coffee count?

 

Edit:  I forgot to add yelling at the TV during political talk shows on Sunday Mornings.

 

making hot dish??

[The Computer Audiophile]

21 minutes ago, wgscott said:

$2K just for a cleaning seems a bit high.

Agree, but we just have to take her to the University of MN animal hospital and have specialists on hand due to previous near dog-death experiences.

[wgscott]

Having spent $5K or more unsuccessfully once, trying to prevent such an experience, I understand.

 

And then there is the foxtail extraction fee, for like $500 per snort.

[Ralf11]

My current Golden got a terrible bacterial infection a year ago.  Apparently, the moron who gave him a dog bath/trim was rough with the clippers, cutting him and when went he went thru a shallow mud puddle on a hike, his foot picked up the bacteria.

Nothing in the GI tract, only in blood samples.

 

The expense was the least of my worries.

[AudioDoctor]

2 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

 

making hot dish??

 

That's womens work...

[Ralf11]

ice fishing?

 

eating hot dish?

[AudioDoctor]

38 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

ice fishing?

 

eating hot dish?

 

Think MN accent...  You know, I used to go ice fishing up der north with Sven and Olie till that one year Olie fell through the ice because he been drinking too much bud you know.  Now I think it's safer to just go to the Friday night fish fry at the VFW.

 

[Ralf11]

fish fry ?

watch that lye!

[AudioDoctor]

55 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

fish fry ?

watch that lye!

 

You're thinking of lutefisk.  Battered and fried Walleye is about the best food on earth!

 

[PeterSt]

OK, talking about $ now ...

My second hobby is cooking. Maybe it is my first and audio is second because both are applied exclusively at the same time. That is convenient (and maybe the reason that I see so many having cooking as the other hobby ?).

Me and my wife both share the hobby of cooking (/baking). But now the crux : more money goes into the cooking hobby than into audio. And this is not because the audio hobby stopped developing. Can you imagine ?

[Superdad]

7 hours ago, wgscott said:

But none of this even remotely compares in ongoing expense and time-consumption to the consequence of that 18 second act that resulted in replicating my own genome... thrice.

 

18 seconds?  Gee Bill...  

 

But no doubt our three progeny put a serious dent in hobby, free time, and retirement budgets. Maybe one of them will take care of us when we are truly old.

[firedog]

Dogs

Coffee

Baking/ice cream making. 

 

For the first 2 I spend amounts of money similar to that of hi-fi/music: amounts that all "normal" people think are crazy. My coffee rig and other equipment is a coffee parallel to high-end audio.  A serious ice cream maker, too (internal compressor/cooler) but not at the crazy level money wise. The ice cream is good enough that I feel no need to buy commercial - it's as good as good bought ice cream, and much cheaper. 

 

Baking I actually do less of now, because I eat too much of the results and gain weight. I do it mostly for other people.

Although I must say in the past few months I've developed a pretty good home made bagel. Can't get proper fresh ones where I live (round bread with a hole in the middle isn't a bagel), so I started making them myself. 

 

I think with my recent investments in audio and a  high end coffee setup I'm past the big spending stage. I've pretty much got the max I can imagine affording or convince myself is necessary. 

 

I've sworn I won't  take up any more hobbies - can't afford it.  I have standing orders to shoot myself if I do. 

[Teresa]

I played guitar from age 12 until about 5 years ago when I lost interest. I blame my dementia. I actually started with the mandolin at about age 4 or 5. When I was in first grade I got mad at my mom and put my mandolin in my case and said I was running away from home to live with my aunt.  My mandolin was the only thing I took with me. I walked around the block and ended up back home as I was not allowed to cross the street by myself. (:-)

 

I have owned electric, steel string acoustic, and nylon string classical guitars. I was in a rock band as a teenager and at that time I had a Fender Telecaster guitar and Fender twin-reverb tube amp. I have also owned and played a banjo, harmonica, and kalimba. I used to play both the guitar and banjo parts of Dueling Banjos when people came to visit.

 

I used to write poetry, I used to write record reviews. Dementia have ended both of those as well.

 

Hobbies I still enjoy besides listening to music, include TV shows and movies, mostly science fiction and comedy. My Blu-ray / DVD movie and TV collection is actually larger than my music collection. I binge watch my favorite TV shows, such as Star Trek the original series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Fringe, Firefly, Sliders, Heroes, Supergirl, Once Upon a Time and others. I am thinking of getting Star Trek: Voyager, however it is not on Blu-ray yet and may never be.

 

Nowadays I don't do much besides letting other people entertain me.

[Bob Stern]

On 1/18/2018 at 10:52 PM, mordante said:

I just bought my first BMW ever. My 3rd car in my life. I will pick it up 05 February 2018. Any tips.

 

New or used?  Either you're relatively young or you keep cars a long time.  If the latter, join the BMWCCA and then email Mike Miller to request his "old school" maintenance schedule.  BMW only cares if the car survives thru the warranty period, so their recommended maintenance is inadequate for the long term.

[PeterSt]

4 hours ago, Teresa said:

I played guitar from age 12 until about 5 years ago when I lost interest.

 

I completely forgot that I also have the hobby of playing synthesizers/keyboards. Only two weeks ago I finished the repairing of the left hand one you see here :

 

In the back there's a third one which I built myself at the age of 25. These are build up like a computer (with main bus and all) and the 30 or so PCBs comprise the whole machine. The soldering/build took me a year. So that in itself is a hobby too. Or was.

Maybe you recognize them from ABBA.

A few years back I bought the latest Korg synth but it compares as digital (the Korg) to analogue (these). Still these are digital just the same; their programming is infinite.

Back in the days I would decent to the basement at say 8pm and made noise up to midnight in a row. Day in day out. I felt like Klaus Schulze.

[realhifi]

10 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

You're thinking of lutefisk.  Battered and fried Walleye is about the best food on earth!

 

+1 

[PeterSt]

7 hours ago, firedog said:

My coffee rig and other equipment is a coffee parallel to high-end audio.

 

Hey firedog, would you happen to know something which is really superb but does NOT grind the beans itself ? What we're actually looking for is a machine which can control the brewing temperature, the brewing speed and in the end the warm-keeping temperature. It fails on the latter because all what we can find keeps warm in a thermos, which I find even more terrible than too hot (implying bitterness). Anyway, something of which I can a. control the quality of brewing and b. the keeping sufficiently warm and not too hot.

 

All what makes coffee instantly I somehow don't like.

 

7 hours ago, firedog said:

A serious ice cream maker, too (internal compressor/cooler) but not at the crazy level money wise.

 

I think we have one (at $1400 or so) but we had to promise ourselves to use it only on Sundays. Creativity with it is endless. The most crucial is the speed (say make ice cream in 20 minutes if needed).

[rando]

All others have taken a backseat to subletting the basement of porta-potties/Biff's/outhouses/loo's to Philadelphia fans.

 

Yes, that was a repurposed Ole and Sven joke @AudioDoctor

 

15 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

Hey firedog, would you happen to know something which is really superb but does NOT grind the beans itself ?

 

What sort of heretic practices do they use over there?  If your grinder doesn't take up as much time and expense as the actual machine you might as well Nespresso.  Producing a uniform correctly sized and shaped grind is what makes good coffee!!!!!  

 

P.S.  Make sure he doesn't recommend something with a basket too much larger than your intake requires.