Last week, I had to say say “goodbye” to a friend. In early 2012, I was on a business trip, which connected through Phoenix. When I got to Phoenix, I was horrified to discover that I had forgotten my headphones. The thought of a week of business travel without tunes was too much go bear.
Of course, one of those airport vendors had my back, for a price. I bought a Klipsch headset for my iPhone, for way too much money, and went on in audible bliss.
Turns out they were pretty damn good earbuds. Great sound quality, and a decent microphone for phone use.
I have had these for over 4 years now. That includes two phone upgrades, and the purchase of replacement ear socks (or whatever you call those silicone rubber things that fit inside your ear). It has been on a few thousand miles of walking/running/gym time, and a couple thousand hours of phone calls and conference calls.
But last week, on one of my hikes, the sound began cutting out. It appears that the wire near the input jack was having intermittent contact.
Damn, now it is back to the (mediocre) headset that came with my iPhone. I already miss the ol’ Klipsh’s. (They were S4’s, and actually sounded pretty darned good.)
I guess $25 a year for great sound isn’t too much to spend
Many stepping stones, lessons learnt, and gear came and went, but one thing I always wanted, but never really pulled the trigger on was recording gear. I remember the wonder of working with my guitar instructor who had borrowed one to record a demo for his band, and just how cool it was. A standard cassette tape, two sided, each side had a stereo recording, so by the magic of electronics, if you had the right gear, you could record 4 distinct tracks separately on a single, commodity cassette tape. 
It isn’t particularly rare, or exciting. It started life as a new guitar to augment my, at the time, well aged, and slightly abused Charvel that I bought in 1986. I bought it in 2002, and it came from The Musicians Friend. A “Made in Mexico” Tele, it was a true Fender, not a Squire. At one time the “Made in Mexico” meant an inferior product, but those days are long gone. It was nearly the same quality as the “Made in the USA” version, but about 1/2 the price.
Things were going well until I found the 
This time the damage is a set of 6 CD’s from the end of the Racer X dynasty. I have a couple of the CD’s already, but I bought this to get the two live recordings from the Snowball of Doom shows.
Gary Moore was one of my earliest influences when I began learning to play guitar, and there are a few of his songs that I still enjoy playing. An Irish rocker whose styles range from hard rock, to pop, to jazz, and a metric buttload of blues, Gary Moore has left a wide footprint both in my foundations, as well as in my music collection.
I remember when Spotify came to the US, and I eagerly got in the early access list. The thought of access to a huge library of music, with the ability to sample as much as I wanted whenever I wanted. At the time, the only other option were the Internet Radio stations, and while I liked Pandora, I found that it took endless grooming of their stations to match my tastes.
