2017

In many ways, 2017 was personally a lost year with health issues consuming far too much of my life. Nearly everything planned fell apart or was left incomplete once started, so it is without fondness that I bid the annum goodbye.

The one silver lining to the past twelve months is that my father is now able to eat solid foods again. He even gained weight during our one week stay at my sister’s house!

At least there were concrete improvements to government and foreign relations for the country despite the petulant whining of those invested in the current power structure and worshipping pop culture. As I’m writing this, a true resistance is trying to become a revolution in Iran against a genuine dictatorship in direct contrast to the histrionics here in the United States making me wonder if sanity has become a rare commodity in our decadent society.

Being a year of disappointments in the narrow range of events that is my life, it is no wonder I find the outside world more interesting. Sadly, domestic entertainment was also a place to find discontent as television series I used to enjoy have deteriorated into repetitive storylines punctuated by social justice nonsense in a desperate bid to signal virtue where there can be none, for they originate in Hollywood, land of sexual harassment, abuse, and prostitution.

A few bright spots on TV were found, mostly from foreign origin. In no particular order, the following entertained me:

• Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency
• Stranger Things Season 2
• Erased (Netflix live action)
• Kemono Friends
• Sakura Quest
• Alice & Zoruko
• Kino’s Journey –the Beautiful World-
• Recovery of an MMO Junkie
• Gotham

Movies also underperformed as Marvel’s formula has become trite and threadbare now reducing everything to a comedy or an overstuffed mess. Unfortunately, Warner execs decided that Justice League needed to be reshot in that vein, making what could of been a great film into something that was only okay. Since most movies I liked this year were actually released earlier, the list for 2017 is going to be short:

• Dunkirk
• Kong: Skull Island
• In This Corner of the World (released in the USA in 2017)

As you can probably tell, the entertainment industry isn’t entertaining me very much these days.

This situation may explain why I’m listening to my music library more than ever while rebuilding and tinkering with speakers. Slowly moving from simple replacements to building passive crossovers will graduate to more complicated physical rebuilds of cabinets to start the new year. Some blanks for new baffles have been cut and the circle cutter on the Dremel motor tool will get used for its intended purpose for the first time.

Lacking a workshop, the living room is not really suitable to live in at the moment. Before the cutting of circles begins, I’ll be cutting and gluing speaker grill fabric to replace some I badly damaged in an experiment earlier. Down the road learning to apply vinyl wrap will occur since there is no way to paint or stain during a harsh Minnesota winter (due to fumes having nowhere to go). However, a heat gun is safe and a little extra heat is something we could use with the sub zero temperatures outside.

Hopefully all of this will culminate in some building enclosures from scratch in a project aimed at having ridiculous high quality portable sound out of small drivers. That exercise will most likely involve a 3.5” subwoofer driver along with 2” drivers for the stereo. Finding a small amplifier to drive all three is competing with using a mono amp on the subwoofer and a separate stereo amp for the satellites. 

Anyway, I hope 2018 is better for me than 2017 was.