Etymology Online: cheap skate, “miserly person,” 1896, from cheap (adj.), second element perhaps from American English slang skate “worn-out horse”

I’ve bought myself some new secondhand hi-fi. But cheap!

From the top:

• Technics tuner amplifier ST-X902L, probably worthless, I’ll clean it up and give it away free to someone. Lightweight. If I can’t fix it, I’ll just junk it.
• Technics AM/FM tuner. Reasonable quality.
• Technics RS-X502 Double casstte recorder + player, Dolby B, C, HX Pro (headroom extension).
• Technics SL-PJ38 CD player.
• Technics SU-X502 multi channel amplifier with digital/optical inputs.
• Sony STR-DH730 7.1 channel 85W/channel tuner amplifier.
• TEAC AG-D9260 7.1 channel tuner amplifier (gold one at bottom).

$7 each! Of course, that’s the good news. The bad news is that “some are working, some are not”. I don’t know any more than that at the moment, I haven’t tried them yet. I like fixing things, and even if they are duds, at $7 each I’m not worried.

So they join my other hi-fi stacks:

Am I crazy or what? 🙂 🙂

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I love Minidisc. I’ve written about it here before. I own four Minidisc decks and about 100 discs since the early 1990s.

The thing about the discs is that they never wear out. They are virtually indestructible. They’re enclosed in a caddy with a sliding cover and they need both a laser and a magnetic field to record – i.e. they are magneto-optical discs. So even though I bought all those many discs back in the early 1990s, they’ll last me forever. I can erase and reuse them over and over.

One of my Minidisc decks is incorporated in a Sharp AM/FM + CD amplifier, and the great benefit of it is that I can have a disc loaded in the transport semi-permanently, and if I hear anything on the radio that interests me and I want to keep, I can just hit Record and it instantly starts recording. It just starts at the next available space on the disc. I don’t have to fiddle around finding a blank section, just bang and it’s recording. Then when it’s finished, I can edit it, name it, add it to a list, whatever. You can’t do that with tape.

However, both this Sharp and the Sony Hi-fi deck in the gold stack above have gone faulty – they won’t eject. I’m almost certain they have broken rubber drive belts.

You can buy a bag of assorted drive belts from Jaycar, 25 belts for $23.95 (robbery!) But that’s the Sony hi-fi deck above – a work of art. Beautifully made.

Bored? What me? Never.

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Finally, finally! I have my replacement Miele dishwasher. This is the insurance claim after the ceiling collapse in March. It’s only taken six months!

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Wow, I’ve been hearing about the TV series Succession for the past year, and blow me down, I realised that I have the 10-episode three disc set of series 1 DVDs that I bought about three years ago. I’d forgotten I had them tucked away in a pile.

Anyway, I’m well and truly hooked. I’ve watched the first five episodes so far and it’s very good. It’s about a very (obscenely) wealthy and powerful New York family that has an uncanny resemblance to the Murdochs, and all their nasty power struggles. The reviews all mention the foul language and that’s for sure. They’re not only obscenely wealthy, they are obscene, full stop.

One of the main characters is having dinner at a hideously expensive NY restaurant and he makes the remark that when you are as rich as they are, you just don’t have to think about what anything costs. There are no prices on the menu, not even for the wines. Whatever it costs, however grossly expensive it is, you just order it or buy it. You don’t need to hesitate because you are rich.

This particular dish they order is a deep fried bird. That is, it’s a small deep fried song bird that you eat, head, feathers, feet, wings, bones, the lot, in one big bite. But not before you place a white cloth over your head first so that you don’t see it. Gross! And as I said, obscene.

I recommend it. The TV series, I mean, not the bird.

Some of the reviews are calling it the best TV series ever. Bulldust! Rubbish. Typical American exaggeration. I could name you at least a dozen better series, including made in Australia ABC series. Americans don’t know how to make great TV.

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Bloody ‘ell, the rain and wind have set in. What crazy weather. We had the September record maximum on Thursday, 34.4deg, and now it’s down to 20C, and 18C tomorrow. Weird.