Herculodge

Amazon Selling Invicta Subaqua Limited for $152.79 and Free Shipping

 

Decent price for this 50mm Invicta Subaqua Limited 0777. 

Manly Beach Wear Requires the Right Radio and Watch

 

 

Call it dumb luck, but my beach vacation timing this year couldn't have been better!  I vacationed last week at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina; NORTH Myrtle Beach to be exact.  In the weeks leading up to my vacation, temperatures were at or over 100 degrees----uncomfortable even by ocean front standards. 

During my vacation week, we enjoyed temps in the mid to high 80s, beautiful, comfortable water and only one day and one night of rain.  This week?  Hurricane Irene has them clearing the beach and sending tourists packing.

Of course, I was thinking of Herculodge while I was away.  Pictured here, my essential beach/Summer vacation gear----radio and watch.  I went with my "custom" Nixon El Dorado black watch face fitted with a Modena orange silicon band.  Orange goes well with beach wear and accentuates a tan!  I also packed my well worn Sangean ATS-808 AM-FM-SW radio and enjoyed some fine listening.  I found that the shortwave signals were more numerous and stronger at Myrtle Beach than at my home near Washington, DC.  But I have to admit, my radio was tuned to AM 900 WNMB (W North Myrtle Beach) for most of the vacation.  It's a great oldies station that is also available on the web.  Yes, they played a few of the tired, overplayed oldies we're all sick of.  But they also played a large catalog of great late 60s/early 70s hit music that has been in mothballs all these years----more obscure music that was a hit at one time but largely forgotten since.  The memories came flooding back (no pun intended considering the hurricane).

Right now, I'm gearing up for a tough overnight and we'll likely be contending with lots of rain and high winds----hopefully the storm will move east and we won't suffer massive power outages and property damage.  My Radio Shack SAME (Specific Area Message Encoding) weather radios are at hand to help get me through it all.

 Angelo

 

 

Nice Looking Vintage Panasonic RC-1000 Clock Radio on eBay

 

Thanks, Paul:

Nice looking vintage clock radio
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Panasonic-RC-1000-Vintage-Clock-Radio-Soft-Touch-/170686341257

Rage and Frustration Define My Fitness Quest

 

At 49 years of age I have little to show for all my training. Six days a week, I do an hour of high-rep military workouts combined with power yoga. Sundays I run with my buddy for an hour in deep sand at Redondo Beach. Yet a month ago my weight was approaching 240 and my gut was getting thick. My waistline (the flattering photo above conceals the unsightly belly) was an affront to my pride and mocked all my hard training.

Fueled by rage, I quit eating my wife’s baked desserts and similar foods and over a month I got my weight a tad south of 230, a step in the right direction.

It’s amazing the amount of anxiety and energy and obsession that was invested in this weight-loss. It seems disproportionate to the amount of benefits I received.

Another source of discouragement is this: A few days ago, I cheated just a little bit: a spicy cheeseburger one day, 2 slices of pizza the next, some Thai food the next day, and some Indian food the following day, not really bad food but more caloric than my protein salads, and my weight is currently a little north of 230. I gained a little less than 2 pounds. That is very discouraging and makes me think about the inevitable rage of my fitness quest.

I’m full of rage over a growing waistline, punishment for eating a few good foods, that mocks my hard training. But I’m also full of rage over the enormous effort to get my weight down, which seems an exercise in futility. I mean the salads with some kind of protein mixed in, tuna, eggs, tofu, or whatever, is a form of punishment and even without eating sweets if I eat something more caloric like a little pizza, Thai or Indian food, my body gains a few pounds and essentially tells me to go screw myself.

So eating what I want fills me with rage as my weight creeps up to unacceptable levels, but not eating what I want fills me with rage because the diet is so punitive. Frustrated by this dilemma, I'm tempted to say the hell with it all and surrender to the Gluttony God but if I do that I'll go down a slippery slope to nihilism, a very dark place I can't afford to go to, especially as the father of 18-month twins. 

Rage and frustration seem to be the inevitable condition of my existence. I’m convinced I’m not alone, that in fact millions of people feel the way I do.

That felt good. I feel like I just vented my issues at a Weight Watchers meeting and I didn’t have to pay anything. 

 

Manly Watch Deal of the Day: Invicta Russian Diver for $69.99 and Free Shipping

 

Excellent price on this huge, 52mm Invicta Russian Diver. 

I'm Done Buying Leather Band Watches

 
I've got 6 leather band watches. They are all very nice like my Invicta Force in black. But I'm finished collecting any watch with a leather band, which is too bad because I've always liked the Chotovelli models. But I'm too OCD for leather, dealing with it getting sweaty and smelly.

Leather seems too problematic. Owning two dozen watches, I can abstain from wearing leather on hot days or any events dealing with physical exertion. But 6 are enough. No more leather. 

Manly Watch Pick of the Day: Gunmetal Invicta Ocean Reef for $159 Plus Shipping

 

With a 46mm bezel, this is not an oversized watch but the Invicta Ocean Reef's open bezel and thick bracelet make this a substantial timepiece. The price is excellent. I see it on eBay for $300 all the time. 

I bought a used one for $100 recently and still await its shipment from Canada. 

Radio Pet Peeve List Up to 37

 

 

 

1. Radios that have lots of gizmos but the producers put a sad little ferrite AM antenna inside it as a sort of afterthought.
2. Radios with so much AM and/or FM drift you have to connect a big ugly external antenna to them.
3. Why doesn’t Sangean put the wonderful 200mm ferrite AM antenna in all of its radios, such as their WR-11?
4. Why do brand new Tivoli Songbooks cost upwards of $200 on Amazon but are less than $100 on eBay? Is Tivoli trying to price itself out of the market?
5. FM wire antennas. I wish the telescopic antenna was a standard feature on all radios.
6. Even worse than wire antennas, radios that use their AC cord for their FM antenna like the old Bose radio I used to have.
7. Why did Sangean stick such mediocre speakers on their otherwise very good PR-D5 model?
8. You pick up a medium-size radio and it feels suspiciously light in your hands. You pick up a similar sized vintage Panasonic or Sony and it weights three times as much. This is telling you something, not good, about the lighter radio.
9. Radios with LCD lights so bright that they could illuminate an airport.
10. Radios with remote control but no other interface for controlling the radio.
11. HD radio because it requires messy external wires, antennas, and STILL gets lousy AM at night and in rainy conditions.
12. Being teased for several months by an appealing radio like the Redsun 3100, hearing about its “imminent production” on various message boards and then discovering it’s nothing but vaporware.
13. Headphone jack in the back of the radio.
14. Weird volume setting that fades every time you turn the station and then restores to original setting after a few seconds like on the Sangean CL-100. 
15. Speaker so bass heavy that you get distortion even at low volumes like on the Sangean K-200. 
16.  One of my pet peeves is medium to large sized radios without separate bass and treble controls. The Sangean PR-D5 and LB-100 are good examples, but there are many others (Gary).
17. Lack of a stereo/mono switch on a radio capable of receiving stereo FM. Radios are more sensitive when receiving mono FM than they are receiving stereo FM. Two examples of radios with this flaw are the CCRadio-2 and the Grundig Sat 800 (Gary).
18. I'll add one - radios that run on "C" batteries when they would run just fine on smaller "AA" batteries (Brandon).
19.  the scarcity of stereo in both portable and table top radios. Even when the speakers are of only moderate quality, the sound of music on FM is tremendously improved by stereo capability. Just compare the Sangean Sonido to the PR-D5 (Tim).
20. My peeve is the general dearth of quality radio program production. The BBC World Service sets the gold standard. Balanced exposition on a seemingly endless variety of subjects. NPR/PRI do some good work but their perspective is much more narrow (Keith, citing more of an overall radio crisis than a peeve but who am I to exclude this radio "peeve"?).
21.  Peeve: Itty bitty teeny weeny little miniscule diminutive buttons, especially when marked with tinier print! (Thanks, Bill)
22.  Radios with whip antennas that don't tilt and swivel (thanks, Gary).
23.  Radios that display the time rather than the frequency when listening to a station. I think the CCRadio-2 does this. Either show both the clock and the frequency, or let the user set whatever default is preferred (thanks, Gary).
24. Why did they put a detented tuning knob on the Sangean ATS-909? It doesn't enable you to quickly go through the bands. 
25. Why can't you get rid of that annoying beep every time you do something? The ATS-505 lets you turn it off without mods. 
26. Why is the Grundig G6 memory system too easy to overwrite? 
27. Why did Tecsun make the stand on the PL-660 so flimsy
28. Why did Tecsun make the antenna on the PL-660 so loose and floppy? (Thanks, Jules, for 24-28)
29. Radios where you can't turn off the lights. Many have a back light on/off switch but in most cases the lights still come on when you tune it or do something else even if the light is set off. That's fine but also have a real off setting. (The Tecsun PL-660 is one of the few that has a real off setting as well as a smart off setting. Why can't other radios do this too?) In the good ole days radios did not have lights at all. One radio I have even has a light on the power adapter that plugs into the wall. 
30.  power adapters that get hot. 
31.  tinny sound. The whole purpose is to listen to it. 
32. insufficient tactile feedback so you can't use it in the dark with having it light up. 
33. radios which lose your presets when you change the batteries. 
34. hideous blue background screens on internet radios 
35. internet radios with no ethernet connection. 
36. only available in black. I never take my radios to a funeral. 
37. expensive add-ons (overpriced case, AC adapter, etc.) (thanks to A.Black for 29-37)

 

 

 

Old Navy Goes for Fun Over Grammar Because Grammar Is Such a Downer

 

Ed has apprised us of this Gawker report about Old Navy keeping correct grammar off its shirts since they know that correct grammar can be such a drag. 

Her Only Posts on Facebook Are Gifts She Wants People to Buy Her

 

 

I know of a woman who shall remain nameless who only uses Facebook to post gift requests to her friends. "This gold necklace looks really nice. I'd love to get one for my birthday." Then there's a link to the necklace. I wonder how many Facebook friends she'll have a year from now.