What did everyone buy themselves for Christmas?

PWRRYD

Seems every year in addition to exchanging gifts with each other, my wife and I also buy ourselves one gift.  This year I used some Amazon gift cards I received from work and bought another ClassDaudio amp board.  I already have the toroid transformer and power supply board.  So I'll soon have a 250W x 2 amp in my stable.  Anyone else buy themselves a hobby related gift?

ani_101

Massdrop hifiman planar headphones and soon the SB ceramic cones.... but sometime early next year

jr@mac

A quad of Rival 7", some NOS Realistic dome mids, and the last few parts for a new "no moving parts" measurement PC. 

Wolf

I haven't made the buy yet, but I'll be ordering a few small parts from PE. I'll have a pair of 2.0mH Super-Q coming soon to wind-up as mult-itap coils to 10mH. The bobbins on the smaller units are not large enough to support the physical size of the coils as they'll be.

D1PP1N

I hope everyone got something they really wanted. We got a new couch the couch is really nice electric, usb chargers, and cool stitching pattern but we have pets so we just always see a sheet, kitchen sink and faucet(not installed). I also bought a Canik TP9SF and a henry lever action rifle. Dont have a pic of the henry. 

jhollander

Bought some x-o parts from the PE classifieds (x-o parts are my weakness).  Big sheet of Cherry veneer. Burned some vacation time last week and next.

PWRRYD

Very nice Mike!

Tom_S

Nothing yet for myself. I'm waiting to see what Santa brings tomorrow - my list was mostly smaller tools, router bits, & such. But I do need a new Jasper Jig....

squamishdroc

We haven't picked it up yet but we are getting a trials bike for Christmas.

kennyk

Since I pay the CC's......I buy a lot of stuff for myself. 

squamishdroc

D1PP1N said:

I hope everyone got something they really wanted. We got a new couch the couch is really nice electric, usb chargers, and cool stitching pattern but we have pets so we just always see a sheet, kitchen sink and faucet(not installed). I also bought a Canik TP9SF and a henry lever action rifle. Dont have a pic of the henry. 

Cool cats! We have 3 of our own and my wife considers herself a bit of a crazy cat lady

isaeagle4031

A PR of old school Soundstream 12s and an Elemental Designs 9.2x.I might even buy a dsp and do a full active system in the Jeep

Turn2

squamishdroc said:

Cool cats! We have 3 of our own and my wife considers herself a bit of a crazy cat lady

Two of our cats blew a cool grand in vet bills last week. It was worth it. I didn't have any useful plans for that Christmas bonus anyway.

D1PP1N

My wife has 4 cats and a dog. I didn't't want another dog or more cats But the 2 in the picture are really cool cats. I wish the older 2 were like them. Hopefully we can get down to just 2 animals in the future. Its impossible to keep the house clean now. 

kennyk

Yes, have a new addition to the family.

 "Diablo Dog" is 9 weeks old.

Ed_Perkins

Nothing like the unconditional love of a dog.  And someone who will listen to your every word, regardless of how many drinks you've had!

squamishdroc

kennyk said:

Yes, have a new addition to the family.

 "Diablo Dog" is 9 weeks old.

Can't say no to that face! Cute little puppy Kenny

Gowa

12 sheets of walnut burl-16''x 20''. One for each day of Christmas.

Turn2

In spite of the unexpected feline financial hit, I'm about to pull the trigger on an astrotracker camera mount to take up my game a notch. Just need to decide which one to go with. Pulled these off without one in '17. The tracker allows longer lenses and /or longer exposures. (Those are fireflies in the second shot.)

ani_101

Nice, which one have you decided on?

ani_101

Here's one of mine, taken in Badlands, SD, 1 minute exposure, 14mm focal length, no tracking, on a camera tripod. If you notice, the stars are not pin points, but slightly elongated but acceptable to me.

ani_101

And here's one, where I wanted very very elongated stars!

Star Trails at Eagle Bluff Light house, Peninsula State Park, Door County, WI

jr@mac

Loves me some SoDak badlands!

Turn2

ani_101 said:

Nice, which one have you decided on?

Looking at either the iOptron SkyTracker Pro or the SkyWatcher Star Adventurer Astro. I'll also grab a good inexpensive ball head. We may need to start an Astronomy thread.

Love those Badlands skies. It's tough to find those dark, clear skies here in Iowa, but at least we aren't Illinois.

FYI - To keep from trailing, use a shutter speed no more than 500 divided by your lens focal length.

suprf1y

squamishdroc said:

We haven't picked it up yet but we are getting a trials bike for Christmas.

Nice! Sherco makes some great off road/hare scramble bikes too. I ride an Italian Husky, and our local dealer switched to Sherco and Beta once Husky became KTM

Ron_E

I really didn't plan to buy myself a Christmas present but my computer started acting up. My SSD boot drive apparently reached its end of life. I found a utility that checks the SMART info on drives and started checking out drives. My 3TB data drive was flagged with a "caution" because of all the sectors that had been marked as bad. So I ordered a new Samsung SSD boot drive and a Toshiba 4TB data drive. It was a good time to buy drives over the holidays with all the sales.

Here's a link to the disk utility I used. https://crystalmark.info/software/index-e.html While researching ways to transfer all my files from the old data drive to the new drive I found out about the robocopy command in windows. I was able to move all the files and keep all the attributes like dates with them. It even moved my windows swap file. The Samsung SSD came with a disk clone utility that moved my old boot drive.

robocopy: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/1073.robocopy-and-a-few-examples.aspx

Ron

Bryan@MAC

kennyk said:

Yes, have a new addition to the family.

 "Diablo Dog" is 9 weeks old.

K, you da man!!  

Bryan@MAC

And you guys with the astronomical shit....I guess I will have to live vicariously thru y'all.  I was talking to @D1PP1N and his Pops in Grand Rapids ......it's crazy what you can do with scopes.  
 

NavyGuy

Bryan@MAC said:

And you guys with the astronomical shit....I guess I will have to live vicariously thru y'all.  I was talking to @D1PP1N and his Pops in Grand Rapids ......it's crazy what you can do with scopes.  
 

Haha, yeah, not many stars to look at in the night sky in Chicago. 

I think my present to myself is going to be dual SDX12 subs for my living room as soon as our shipment gets in.

Nicholas_23

kennyk said:

Yes, have a new addition to the family.

 "Diablo Dog" is 9 weeks old.

So what breed of hound did you get there Kenny? If you need someone to test belly rubs on Diablo Im available .

Nicholas_23

Always curious about offset guitars so when guitar center a squier jazzmaster for 200 bucks I asked for one , the Mrs went half on it with me. Plus they had a discount on 200 dollar purchase so got it for 180 shipped. Honestly , for being a lower end "fender" this thing isn't bad. I did the set up myself and added a new set of strings , took the bow out of the neck and set the intonation as best I could for my first attempt at trying it. I ordered a tortoise shell pickguard but didn't line up so I kept the original black on it. Now I would like to replace the open humbuckers with something else and was thinking maybe some gretsch units or TV Jones pups. Anywho , this it what I got from Santa as an early present this year.