Is the owner of the Knicks that stupid? I mean seriously. Has Isiah done anything even remotely good in his post-playing career? Marbury and Francis in the same backcourt. I rest my case.
Yesterday I got my new CD transport: NEC 6Xe CD-ROM. It's an external SCSI CD-ROM drive built back in 1995. The nice thing about it is that it has digital coax out. So I can hook it up to my DAC and use the analog output on those. I'm listening to some Mono on it right now and it sounds great. My first impression is that it's better than my vintage Sony discman, which isn't very surprising. The transport is also dead quiet, which I like. The discman has a tendency to make spinning sounds sometimes. There's a nice review of the NEC here.
I've also been looking at upgrading the ballhead on my tripod. After talking to a friend, I realized just how inadaquete my Bogen ballhead is. After locking, my camera/lens will still drop a few degrees. This makes framing rather challenging because I had to basically frame with the drop in mind. So now, I'm looking at the Arca-Swiss B1. It's basically the standard by which all other ballheads are judged. It weighs 1.6lbs and can support 90lbs. The ball is slightly elliptical to give tension when it's off-center. Bad news is that it's $400 plus whatever the quick-release plate would cost. Maybe I'll get one used off eBay. We'll see.