32ーF and cloudy this morning, going up to 42ー today.
Finally broke down last night and ordered a piece of equipment for my studio that I've been eyeballing for about a year now. It's the Line 6 Helix LT modeling processor. It's basically a digital preamp and effects unit that will allow me to digitally reproduce the tone of pretty much any guitar or bass amp ever made. Like the early Eddie Van Halen tone? There's already a preset for that. Even semi-obscure and unique sounds like the early Billy Sheehan bass tone (my all-time favorite bass tone) is in there ... and that was the bit that pushed me into it. I have the old electronic preamp from Pearce Electronics that the tone is based on, but it's in bad shape these days. I had a conversation with Billy last year about my old Pearce preamp, and he was urging me to try the Helix, as
that's what he's using now, too. So, I'm finally going there. Looks like my home studio will be about 90% digital now. Looking forward to getting it.
Drew, the state of Illinois used to send us the renewal paperwork about three months in advance as a reminder that our plates were coming up for renewal. Then, they replaced that with just a postcard notice. A few years ago, they decided to stop that all together, as a means of cutting costs. The Wife and I both know when ours expire, so we generally remember in advance. The F-150 that we don't drive as much, though, catches us off guard once in awhile. The general practice here is that they will issue a warning up to 30 days past the expiration. After that, you'll probably get a ticket. They also add an additional $20 charge to the renewal after 30 days as well.
Nice picture, Eric. I use both metric and SAE in my job. Some of our bigger customers use metric measurements on their part drawings (John Deere, Case/New Holland, and Caterpillar, for starters). There are a lot of people here who seem deathly afraid of metric, and I've never understood why. It's so much easier to have one base system (base 10), than the SAE system, which is all over the place (base 12, base 3, base 1760, ...), not to mention fractions and their conversions to decimals.
Reloading is definitely not somewhere I'd trust myself doing conversions to metric, either. Even a small mathematical error could yield potentially dangerous results.