Once upon a time, I lived with a number of roommates in the Brighton MA area. It was a really fun time and I’m very glad for the experience. I don’t know if they’d necessarily agree.

For those of you not from around here, September 1 is the day that just about every lease in the Boston, Cambridge, Brookline area starts. Everyone needs to get up really early and get all their junk out of their apartment. They need to figure out something to do with all their stuff for a few hours while they try to track down their landlords to pick up their new keys. This means that it’s utter mayhem to be driving in the city. There are angry and stressed out people all over the sidewalks.

This past weekend was Alumni Reunion at Alfred University. I made the drive out with a buddy for the event.

The highlight of the weekend (other than seeing everyone again) was the two Pethan performances. Pethan, of course, is the best band that you’ve likely never heard of. The performances were streamed to an adoring audience of several on the internet.

The shows were archived here:

• Friday Night (2013-06-07)

{{< youtube o6jdD5aPoGo >}}

Recently, one of my credit card numbers changed. This ends up being a pretty annoying process as you never remember to update all the various things that use this card.

This time, I received a nice email from Amazon saying that my Kindle magazine subscriptions would be canceled if I didn’t login and change the credit card number. Fair enough. It took me a few days to log in, by which time they had canceled my subscription. Also fair enough.

Over Easter weekend I was given a Counterpoint SA-20 hybrid audio amp and matching SA-1000 preamp. The list price for the set was $3890 in 1989 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that’s $7412 in 2013. Not bad for the low price of “Get it out of my basement!”

When I got it home, I plugged it in and immediately let the Magic Smoke out. It looks like the driver for one side was damaged before the amplifier was put into storage. According to the former owner of the part, the same thing happened the first time he plugged it in. Internet searches show this to be a pretty typical problem with this amplifier. The power MOSFETs are apparently a bit delicate.

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to go to the Maine Botanical Gardens

Here are some pictures: