Day 733, July 5, 2022

Maximum Intensity Sometime in 1999 or 2000, I took a Greyhound bus to Washington D.C., slept on the floor of someone’s study, and attended an academic conference where I interviewed on a job search. Simultaneously, I was coming down with pneumonia that had me shivering through the night. Unable to sleep, I was somehow able to access the internet and browsed the early days of ebay. My first internet amp purchase was a 1970s Fender Vibrolux. Despite my apprehension, it was shipped, vacuum tubes and all, to my home. That amplifier has followed me throughout my days. The wonderful amp tech, Jim Metz, saved it from a conductive fiberboard (precursor to circuit board). The old Oxford speakers were replaced with modern Naylors, and a few capacitors have been changed out over the years. But recently, the amp has been relegated to the sidelines because of some intermittent noise, a sometimes ringing, like a penny shaken in a glass Coke bottle, and a particularly noisy idle, like a snoring anima