I’m Back… from the Dead!!

[short-time]

October 31, 2024

I’m Back… from the Dead!!

Greetings gentlemen,

With high season only a month away it’s hard to believe yet another year has somehow slipped by almost unnoticed. To me it seems a year these days’ amounts to little more than four or five months… if you know what I mean. I suspect this time-warp compression is unique to us old-farts. Guess everyone experiences it in their later years - the only escape being dying young. In my humble opinion, dying young is greatly overrated. Sure it would be great to be immortalized like James Dean, but to checkout at 24 to achieve it somehow tarnishes the dazzle and glory of it all.

I was indeed very sorry and shocked to learn of the passing of the boards’ owner, Marcel earlier this year. I only met him once briefly. I tried to recall the occasion but really couldn’t. I believe someone introduced me to him near Nana-plaza in a casual passing encounter some 20 years ago. Perhaps he had just departed the Woodstock bar. I was also shocked to learn of his somewhat tender age – as it seems I was over 15 years his senior when he passed-away. Of course being mortal, we just never know when the grim-reaper will call.

Although I did not know Marcel personally - I do know he was a very good man. I also know he had many, many friends, which speaks for its self. Additionally, I recall he was a charter member in the Bangkok chapter of the Dutch connection (a select crew of wooden-shoed-fun-lovers).

I found a recent post that indicates the Thai 360 board will live on. I like the sound of that. Reckon I would be lost without it, as I drop in around December each year (lately) to get caught up prior to my visits - now for the past three years in a row, maybe…

I have a ticket for a December 3rd departure which is rapidly approaching. Scored a great deal this year which I believe is one of the best I’ve ever found and I stole it for only U$ 1,083 total! Flight is only 23.5 hours with a 20.5 hour return. Both travel times include a single four hour layover, with only two planes each direction. Further, all departure and arrival times are near perfect for me. Last year I paid over $2K with flight times in the 25-32 hour range, if memory serves. Twenty years ago I was paying maybe $1,000 - $1,200 for a round trip LOS ticket (best guess). What gives here?? With this latest discounted ticket, perhaps my Boeing planes are rebranded 737 MAX’s with the custom fitted blow-out-door-plugs sans fasteners that became all the rage near the beginning of this year. Kinda reminded me of the old James Bond flick when Goldfinger is sucked out of his plane into the stratosphere after a bullet blew-out a window portal of his Lockheed Jet-star.

Thought I was sitting pretty a little over two weeks ago, then a fly in the ointment appeared; my life was instantly thrown in to jeopardy when I was stricken down with a TOTALLY unexpected double-header-heart-attack!! Is this Gods payback for my many shameless double-header moral misdeeds of the past? Damn, as someone once said: when it rains it pours! I had just completed a routine blood-workup with yearly physical less than four weeks earlier. My doctor, looking over my numbers declared me “fit of wind and limb” with near stellar numbers in every category: heart, lungs, kidney, liver, etc, the works. I only required two maintenance medications at the time, one of which I had been taking for over 40 years (synthroid). This was down from three daily maintenance meds from two years earlier when they nixed a blood pressure med following my dieting loss of nearly 50 pounds, which I have maintained.

I spent eight days in the hospital and was released last Friday (a week ago tomorrow). I now have two stints. They kept me in the hospital an extra four or five days dealing with a blood clot which caused an irregular heart beat (I guess). I really don’t feel all that bad, now. I have no chest-pains or shortness of breath. Indeed, the first attack was awful; I had been listening to music for probably five or six hours in my lazy-boy recliner.

This I do most days when I’m at home. Reason being, I’ve been something of an audio-video-nut all of my adult life. I currently own the largest most powerful audio-video system I’ve ever seen in anyone’s home. In posts of the past I think I’ve mentioned I like classic rock and that’s what I listen to or watch. My main speakers consist of a pair of Klipsch Jubilees. These you won’t find in their consumer speaker catalog or hifi stores as they are pro special order gear only. Note: on the Klipsch website there is a pro gear section.

They weigh in at about 250 lbs each, are almost six feet tall, four feet wide and two feet deep. Each speaker is a stacked pair of compression horns; the upper KPT-402 horns are for the mids/highs. The huge lower bass bins are of an unusual “folded horn design” similar to the much older Klipschorns. Power rating is 1200 watts each at 4 ohms. They are sold to movie theaters everywhere (north America), but you never see them as they are behind the screen. The smaller speakers along the walls of a theater are for clarity of speech during quiet passages. A single pair of Jubilees with 2400 watts of power will drive at least a 500 seat theater to full thunderous-earth-shaking volume. If a theater is larger than 500 seats, and most are – you will need more speakers and more power. I have over 800 watts available for my Jubilees from three modified vintage stereo Crown amps (the Jubs are tri-amped) and I find the power more than adequate for my living room 🙂. There is much more. I also have a pair of Klipsch KPT-904 bass bins also pro behind the screen gear, but these are of a bass reflex design. They have their own Crown amp but normally, I keep these turned off as I don’t need any more bass, but they look cool as hell on their sides pushed together with my 83” LG-C3 OLED TV setting on top. As these big-ass bass bins are made for behind the screen use only, they have no speaker grills, so four naked hi-power 15” woofers stare you in the face directly under the 83” video screen… looks almost threatening ☢️!

I also have a tremendous collection of concert videos, movies, and audio recordings as well as four or five hundred documentaries. In all my media collections I strive for the highest quality recordings I can find. This usually results in enormous size files, so I have a collection of 16TB hard drives to hold it all with three different media players. They are: an OPPO BDP-103, a GIEC 5300 w/ TNT firmware and my newest and most expensive player being a Pannde PD6 which weighs in at just under 40 pounds! All of the electronics is stacked into a standard six foot, 19” studio rack.

Bastard babies! Sorry I’m getting a little side tracked here fellas. Must be all the drugs they have me on…although I do love to talk about my monster stereo. Should anyone be interested start a thread and I’m sure I’ll ring in, (that is if I’m still above ground) but I jest, back to my heart-attacks for now.

Anyway, while listening to music a pain suddenly appeared. At first I thought it was a cramp. Only a few seconds later the pain ramped-up to tremendous intensity, then I noticed the pain was now localized directly in the center of my chest and I believe it was the most intense gripping pain I’ve ever experienced. Yikes! At that moment I realized I was having my first heart-attack! Oh, happy day.

Well, I reckon it could have been worse – and then it got worse! In the hospital the night after I received the first stint, I was sound asleep. About 4 am a nurse entered and woke me to ask how I was feeling? I told her fine, why did you wake me up?  She asked me if I was having any chest pain or discomfort. Nothing at all I replied. She responded by telling me something significant had happened. I suggested she check her monitoring equipment for a loose connection as I couldn’t possibly be having another heart-attack with no chest pain whatsoever. She replied: I’ll be back…

About 20 minutes later I awoke again into a drug dazed foggy notion only to see maybe eight people in my room… Great I thought we are going to have a party, well Hu-La-Hu!! This was starting to remind me of Bob Fosse’s old movie “All That Jazz” when Joe Gideon (played by Roy Scheider) managed to do just that in his hospital room bed, following a severe heart-attack. Sure enough one of the doctors present was a cardiologist. He counseled me that I was having a second heart-attack! He stated they needed to repeat the procedure I had a day earlier to insert a second stint. I signed the authorization to begin the procedure immediately at about 4:30 am. The next day my cardiologist informed me a nasty blood-clot had appeared in my ticker that was not present prior to the second attack and was causing problems that had to be addressed. What next I thought?

Fortunately, whatever they did, it did not involve another surgical procedure, although my hospital stay was extended. They finally released me four or five days later and I was happy as a pig-in-shit to be back home!

Strangely enough, I had not really thought about how this unexpected double heart-attack would impact my planned visit to the LOS just a little over a month away, until I got home that is.

I have an appointment to see my regular doctor next Tuesday, and I will ask for his thoughts on my scheduled December vacation. Should I go ahead or cancel? That’s the dilemma I’m now faced with. Three days ago I would have given the odds of going ahead with my vacation as being maybe 50/50. Now, the more I think about it, the more fool-hardy it sounds. For starters, the doctors cannot determine how much damage there has been to my ticker for another ten weeks. Of course I would still like to go, but should I chance it? What would you guys do in this situation? I welcome your thoughts, particularly from veteran heart-attack survivors – should there be any here... Feel like I have one foot in the grave and the other standing on a banana peel! To be continued… I hope.

S-T

P.S. Sorry about the rambling and length of this post fellas – they have me whacked on drugs and I don’t do one-liners, also, I’m desperately trying to stay away from all flat-liners!

[Old Hippie]

Wishing you the best sir!

[Coss]

1stly,  I am impressed by your audio visual set up, in my circle, I am a computer obsessive, sound maker, video maker.  I am but a babe in the woods, compared to you, well done for taking an obsession to a resounding success!

2ndly,  health - what a bummer, like most here, we're all getting close, to the river Styx and it sounds like you were looking for Charon the ferryman.

13 hours ago, short-time said:

one foot in the grave and the other standing on a banana peel!

My 10¢ on travelling with health issues -  is that if I do travel, what sort of trouble do I cause should something happen on the plane or over there? On the other hand if I stay it could happen here, and then I'd miss my, likely last chance. I've been holding off for health issues for the last 7 years, but now I'm clear for January.

So I reckon, if the doctor says you'll survive the plane, then go, you can have taxi drivers and others do the lifting and you can always sleep in a seat with the good meds you will have.

Cheers and good to see you're still with us.

[Titanic]

On 11/5/2024 at 12:27 PM, short-time said:

October 31, 2024

I’m Back… from the Dead!!

Greetings gentlemen,

With high season only a month away it’s hard to believe yet another year has somehow slipped by almost unnoticed. To me it seems a year these days’ amounts to little more than four or five months… if you know what I mean. I suspect this time-warp compression is unique to us old-farts. Guess everyone experiences it in their later years - the only escape being dying young. In my humble opinion, dying young is greatly overrated. Sure it would be great to be immortalized like James Dean, but to checkout at 24 to achieve it somehow tarnishes the dazzle and glory of it all.

 

I was indeed very sorry and shocked to learn of the passing of the boards’ owner, Marcel earlier this year. I only met him once briefly. I tried to recall the occasion but really couldn’t. I believe someone introduced me to him near Nana-plaza in a casual passing encounter some 20 years ago. Perhaps he had just departed the Woodstock bar. I was also shocked to learn of his somewhat tender age – as it seems I was over 15 years his senior when he passed-away. Of course being mortal, we just never know when the grim-reaper will call.

 

Although I did not know Marcel personally - I do know he was a very good man. I also know he had many, many friends, which speaks for its self. Additionally, I recall he was a charter member in the Bangkok chapter of the Dutch connection (a select crew of wooden-shoed-fun-lovers).

 

I found a recent post that indicates the Thai 360 board will live on. I like the sound of that. Reckon I would be lost without it, as I drop in around December each year (lately) to get caught up prior to my visits - now for the past three years in a row, maybe…

 

I have a ticket for a December 3rd departure which is rapidly approaching. Scored a great deal this year which I believe is one of the best I’ve ever found and I stole it for only U$ 1,083 total! Flight is only 23.5 hours with a 20.5 hour return. Both travel times include a single four hour layover, with only two planes each direction. Further, all departure and arrival times are near perfect for me. Last year I paid over $2K with flight times in the 25-32 hour range, if memory serves. Twenty years ago I was paying maybe $1,000 - $1,200 for a round trip LOS ticket (best guess). What gives here?? With this latest discounted ticket, perhaps my Boeing planes are rebranded 737 MAX’s with the custom fitted blow-out-door-plugs sans fasteners that became all the rage near the beginning of this year. Kinda reminded me of the old James Bond flick when Goldfinger is sucked out of his plane into the stratosphere after a bullet blew-out a window portal of his Lockheed Jet-star.

 

Thought I was sitting pretty a little over two weeks ago, then a fly in the ointment appeared; my life was instantly thrown in to jeopardy when I was stricken down with a TOTALLY unexpected double-header-heart-attack!! Is this Gods payback for my many shameless double-header moral misdeeds of the past? Damn, as someone once said: when it rains it pours! I had just completed a routine blood-workup with yearly physical less than four weeks earlier. My doctor, looking over my numbers declared me “fit of wind and limb” with near stellar numbers in every category: heart, lungs, kidney, liver, etc, the works. I only required two maintenance medications at the time, one of which I had been taking for over 40 years (synthroid). This was down from three daily maintenance meds from two years earlier when they nixed a blood pressure med following my dieting loss of nearly 50 pounds, which I have maintained.

 

I spent eight days in the hospital and was released last Friday (a week ago tomorrow). I now have two stints. They kept me in the hospital an extra four or five days dealing with a blood clot which caused an irregular heart beat (I guess). I really don’t feel all that bad, now. I have no chest-pains or shortness of breath. Indeed, the first attack was awful; I had been listening to music for probably five or six hours in my lazy-boy recliner.

This I do most days when I’m at home. Reason being, I’ve been something of an audio-video-nut all of my adult life. I currently own the largest most powerful audio-video system I’ve ever seen in anyone’s home. In posts of the past I think I’ve mentioned I like classic rock and that’s what I listen to or watch. My main speakers consist of a pair of Klipsch Jubilees. These you won’t find in their consumer speaker catalog or hifi stores as they are pro special order gear only. Note: on the Klipsch website there is a pro gear section.

They weigh in at about 250 lbs each, are almost six feet tall, four feet wide and two feet deep. Each speaker is a stacked pair of compression horns; the upper KPT-402 horns are for the mids/highs. The huge lower bass bins are of an unusual “folded horn design” similar to the much older Klipschorns. Power rating is 1200 watts each at 4 ohms. They are sold to movie theaters everywhere (north America), but you never see them as they are behind the screen. The smaller speakers along the walls of a theater are for clarity of speech during quiet passages. A single pair of Jubilees with 2400 watts of power will drive at least a 500 seat theater to full thunderous-earth-shaking volume. If a theater is larger than 500 seats, and most are – you will need more speakers and more power. I have over 800 watts available for my Jubilees from three modified vintage stereo Crown amps (the Jubs are tri-amped) and I find the power more than adequate for my living room 🙂. There is much more. I also have a pair of Klipsch KPT-904 bass bins also pro behind the screen gear, but these are of a bass reflex design. They have their own Crown amp but normally, I keep these turned off as I don’t need any more bass, but they look cool as hell on their sides pushed together with my 83” LG-C3 OLED TV setting on top. As these big-ass bass bins are made for behind the screen use only, they have no speaker grills, so four naked hi-power 15” woofers stare you in the face directly under the 83” video screen… looks almost threatening ☢️!

I also have a tremendous collection of concert videos, movies, and audio recordings as well as four or five hundred documentaries. In all my media collections I strive for the highest quality recordings I can find. This usually results in enormous size files, so I have a collection of 16TB hard drives to hold it all with three different media players. They are: an OPPO BDP-103, a GIEC 5300 w/ TNT firmware and my newest and most expensive player being a Pannde PD6 which weighs in at just under 40 pounds! All of the electronics is stacked into a standard six foot, 19” studio rack.

 

Bastard babies! Sorry I’m getting a little side tracked here fellas. Must be all the drugs they have me on…although I do love to talk about my monster stereo. Should anyone be interested start a thread and I’m sure I’ll ring in, (that is if I’m still above ground) but I jest, back to my heart-attacks for now.

 

Anyway, while listening to music a pain suddenly appeared. At first I thought it was a cramp. Only a few seconds later the pain ramped-up to tremendous intensity, then I noticed the pain was now localized directly in the center of my chest and I believe it was the most intense gripping pain I’ve ever experienced. Yikes! At that moment I realized I was having my first heart-attack! Oh, happy day.

 

Well, I reckon it could have been worse – and then it got worse! In the hospital the night after I received the first stint, I was sound asleep. About 4 am a nurse entered and woke me to ask how I was feeling? I told her fine, why did you wake me up?  She asked me if I was having any chest pain or discomfort. Nothing at all I replied. She responded by telling me something significant had happened. I suggested she check her monitoring equipment for a loose connection as I couldn’t possibly be having another heart-attack with no chest pain whatsoever. She replied: I’ll be back…

 

About 20 minutes later I awoke again into a drug dazed foggy notion only to see maybe eight people in my room… Great I thought we are going to have a party, well Hu-La-Hu!! This was starting to remind me of Bob Fosse’s old movie “All That Jazz” when Joe Gideon (played by Roy Scheider) managed to do just that in his hospital room bed, following a severe heart-attack. Sure enough one of the doctors present was a cardiologist. He counseled me that I was having a second heart-attack! He stated they needed to repeat the procedure I had a day earlier to insert a second stint. I signed the authorization to begin the procedure immediately at about 4:30 am. The next day my cardiologist informed me a nasty blood-clot had appeared in my ticker that was not present prior to the second attack and was causing problems that had to be addressed. What next I thought?

 

Fortunately, whatever they did, it did not involve another surgical procedure, although my hospital stay was extended. They finally released me four or five days later and I was happy as a pig-in-shit to be back home!

 

Strangely enough, I had not really thought about how this unexpected double heart-attack would impact my planned visit to the LOS just a little over a month away, until I got home that is.

 

I have an appointment to see my regular doctor next Tuesday, and I will ask for his thoughts on my scheduled December vacation. Should I go ahead or cancel? That’s the dilemma I’m now faced with. Three days ago I would have given the odds of going ahead with my vacation as being maybe 50/50. Now, the more I think about it, the more fool-hardy it sounds. For starters, the doctors cannot determine how much damage there has been to my ticker for another ten weeks. Of course I would still like to go, but should I chance it? What would you guys do in this situation? I welcome your thoughts, particularly from veteran heart-attack survivors – should there be any here... Feel like I have one foot in the grave and the other standing on a banana peel! To be continued… I hope.

 

S-T

 

P.S. Sorry about the rambling and length of this post fellas – they have me whacked on drugs and I don’t do one-liners, also, I’m desperately trying to stay away from all flat-liners!

I remember you in Thermae, hope your medical condition improves and you can do the trip.