Low price on Amazon for the Grundig S750.
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December 25, 2013
December 24, 2013
High Praise for the Hand-Made Citizen Signature Series
This Watch Zone UK article compares the Citizen Signature Series to watches that cost several thousand dollars. I like the Citizen Grand Touring, the Citizen BL1259 shown here, and the BL1250. A lot of watch for the money, it appears.
December 23, 2013
It's Tough to Know When It's Time to Let Go: We'll Miss You, Gretchen
My wife Carrie (my girlfriend at the time) adopted Gretchen, an abused and neglected dog (pure Finnish Spitz), from Rover Rescue on March 15, 2002. Her estimated age was 4. Part of her right ear had been bitten off, probably from her days of living on the streets. Her owner, whoever he or she was, had Gretchen's vocal cords surgically removed.
Before we adopted Gretchen, the Rover Rescue founder Cathy Rubin, informed us that Gretchen had several homes the previous six months or so but was always returned because Gretchen was too timid; you'd approach her and she'd squat and pee and just tremble in the corner of the house.
Cathy Rubin seemed relieved when Carrie and I accepted the challenge. Gretchen did the same with me until about a month as I returned from work, the beautiful dog jumped, wagged her tail, and ran toward me. We were bonded now.
Gretchen was always a nervous, anxious dog who didn't play with toys or other dogs. Her favorite thing to do was lie on the bed with me while watching TV and during sleep time.
By the time she was 13 or so, she was having too many accidents and she could no longer sleep on the bed with us. I still pet her under my desk where she'd lounge on a plush dog bed, but I could tell she wasn't as happy.
Having twins in 2010 was another force that took away my attention from her but I always made sure to give her lots of love.
Her health went south a month ago. I could have had her hospitalized, but she would have been miserable without me, locked in a hospital cage and the end game appeared to be prolonging her life for another miserable few months, so yesterday when Gretchen was crying and too lethargic to move two vets came to my house and we made the toughest decision of our life.
I pet Gretchen during the first shot and she made her happy "talking" sound as she fell asleep. One of the vets asked me if I wanted to be present during the second shot, and I said no thanks.
Ten minutes later Gretchen was gone. She was about 16.
As I write this, my feet are under my computer desk where Gretchen spent most of her time. There is a huge emptiness and sadness in my heart.
My daughter Natalie loved Gretchen and loves animals and some time down the road we may get another dog but that won't be for a long time.
Gretchen, my family and I love and miss you more than words can say.
December 21, 2013
December 20, 2013
Watch Addict’s Lexicon
- Watch Rotation Anxiety: You have a dozen or so watches all screaming for wrist time, but you have to choose one based on mood, clothing, occasion, work, play, etc. You tell yourself how lucky you are to have such an amazing collection but you find yourself in despair over trying to choose and after ten or so watch switches you feel compelled to walk to your book shelf and pick up your well-worn copy of Barry Schwarz's The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less.
- Love-Neglect Syndrome: You've been neglecting one of your favorites for too long. How can this be? Three months have passed since you've worn your Seiko Golgo, the "grail" you said you just had to have. It's time to give it some "love." You pull it out of the box and almost pet it as if it were a neglected puppy and you wonder if you're wearing the watch because of love or guilt. You begin to wonder if your watch hobby is a source of joy or toxicity or both.
- Kindling the Fire Syndrome: Jonny, a reader of this blog, explained to me, correctly, that you can will yourself to like a watch by wearing it. The watch fuses with your brain synapses and you bond with it. Not wearing a watch can have the opposite effect. Your affections for it will atrophy. To experience a watch you spent your good money on, you must discpline yourself to wear it even if you don't feel compelled to do so. Otherwise, you risk selling it and then seeing someone wearing it on TV and saying, "My God, what an incredible watch! Why did I ever sell it!" Upon which you re-buy the damn thing.
- Watch Affair: Your buying watches behind your wife's back because you don't want her to scold you for spending so much damn money all the time. You receive the box but don't open it until she's gone. If she asks you what's in the box, you shrug as if it's something inconsequential.
- Bling Relapse: You started your watch obsession with oversized, cheap fashion watches that belong on the wrists of nefarious characters slithering down the Las Vegas strip. As your education of the watch world becomes more advanced, your tastes change for classier, functional, "real" watches, such as lume tool divers. But these classier watches don't get as much attention as your Las Vegas timepieces and wanting to regain those old glory days you find yourself buying those watches that you had sworn were a curse and an embarrassment to your existence.
- Lumiholic: Quite simply, you are obssessed with professional-grade luminosity on the hands and indices of your dial and have a seething contempt for low-lume and non-lume watches, which strike you as utterly fraudulent.
- Watch Overload: You're buying so many watches and receiving so many in the mail in the same time period that your brain is overloaded and you can't even absorb the watch's aesthetic qualities. You can't tell if you like these newly acquired timepieces of if they bore you. The fact is your frosted brain has become numbed from buying and looking at too many watches.
- Holy Grail Syndrome: You find a grail and convince yourself that this grail will cure you of your sickness but find that one grail is replaced by another and another and another. Feelings of helplessness, shame, and self-loathing are common.
- Climbing the Ladder: Your tastes in watches become more and more refined so that $300 watches are replaced by $700 watches, which are replaced by $1,200 watches and then you reach a point in which you are convinced that it is only watches that cost $5,000 or more which will satisfy your watch rapacity.
- Watch Perception Freakout: There's a watch in your collection that you've neglected. It no longer "sings on your wrist," but you're innocently watching television and see an actor wearing "your watch," the one you've neglected the last six months. The perception of this watch on an actor on the TV set is radically different than the experience of you wearing the same watch and this causes you to take the watch out of its box and look at it with newfound wonder.
- Purging to Binge: Your collection has topped fifty and instead of wallowing in the glory of your lavish collection, you feel dyspeptic and trending toward crapulence. This bloated feeling can only be alleviated by purging your collection, going through the arduous process of selling the bulk of your watches on eBay or Watch Recon. As your collection goes down to a manageable ten, your coveting three more watches and realize trying to stave off your watch collection is like trying to cut off a head from the multi-headed Lernaean Hydra. In fact, you've been purging your collection to justify buying even more expensive watches. You wonder if there are meetings for diseased people like yourself, havens of emotional support as people of your ilk gather to share such tales of woe and despair.
Pulled the Trigger on a Seiko Sawtooth SHC063
The Seiko Sawtooth on rubber strap has been showing up here and there for $259. Its fanboys claim its Seiko's best lume watch. That has me intrigued. My big question: Should I upgrade the rubber with a Super Engineer II bracelet? I like it in both configurations.
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Thanks, Vimal:
Tim writes:
“Just got back with my PL-880 from Kaito. It took about 5 seconds to update the firmware (they let me watch). Tecsun sent them a little silver box with a cord that plugs into the radio just below the LCD screen. After removing the face plate, they merely plug in the cord, press a button and voilà, the firmware is upgraded to 8820, and no more soft mute problems. They told me mine is the first one to get the update and it seems just great so far!
I asked if they will be updating new radios before they ship, and they said, “of course, by all means.” [T]hey are now selling the radio with 8820 firmware. People who bought the radio before are also welcome to send theirs back for the upgrade.”
Kaito able to update PL-880 firmware in-house
Posted on December 24, 2013 by Thomas
http://swling.com/blog/2013/12/kaito-able-to-update-pl-880-firmware-in-house/