Cases are still on the climb though this update is not as bad as the recent postings.

Heading to work this morning in the fog. This photo was taken near Pardee Dam. It was foggy at the higher elevations. Once I hit the valley it all cleared up.

What’s weird is looking through the iPhone screen I get better visibility. Direct view through the windshield is hazy and what appears to be more fog than it actually is. Odd shit.

I got a really good deal on a few more signs (like I really them). The seller happened to be in the same city that I work at so it was meant to be. Yeah… that’s it.

I have about a half dozen signs I need to hang up. I’m just about out of space inside of the Manetarium but have plenty of room on the exterior walls. I just don’t want it to be visible from the road level traffic.

This morning I took off to get Starbuck for the wifey and a few donuts for myself. The local turkey gang was rolling deep on the streets today. They didn’t even bother moving out of the street until I started honking my horn. Little shits are getting braver when deep in numbers.

So in my efforts to fix the Mackie MCU Pro I found out the key card that was inserted into the station was for a different model. It had never dawned on me to even pull it out and check to see if it was a 929 key card. It turned out the damn thing was for the 927 model.

What does that mean? You can’t change the value of the set temperature without the proper card inserted. It is the whole purpose of the card so that users in a manufacturing environment won’t be jacking up or lowering the specified temperatures needed to work on a product.

I ended up bypassing the key care sensors by opening the station up and removing L6 (a LED) and jumping the pads together with a piece of bus wire. Now I can set any temperature within the 929 range without using a key card. Nice.

I’m lucky I have another soldering iron to use while I made the modifications to the HAKKO 929. I have Metcal iron that works very well for soldering smaller components.

Last year I switched over from using an older Mackie 32 bus mixer board to a desktop Mackie MCU Pro and a Scarlett 6i6. This allowed a smaller footprint mixing console and enough audio inputs to accommodate two keyboards and a microphone. I wanted to downsize the and modernize the music technology.

Well… shit. The MCU Pro developed this horrible high pitch whine internally. It does not bleed into any internal audio recordings but will definitely be heard if I used my microphone to record acoustic sounds like voice.

I tore it apart and have determined the MIDI input / power supply board is the culprit. Unfortunately the ICA 0726 transformer component I suspect is bad is also an obsolete part. I can’t find the part anywhere.

My only path to fix this annoyance is to purchase a complete board assembly. I’m willing to do this if it is a reasonable cost. The reality is I’m wearing headphones when doing most of my recordings and the whine will not be heard. The issue becomes apparent when I will try to use the microphone and record voice.

I contacted Mackie through email. Hopefully the support team will have a board assembly for sell.

UPDATE: after several attempts of reducing the sound without replacing the transformer I ended up purchasing the entire power supply board. I know for certain the whine noise is coming from this board since I disconnected all other connected PCB’s. The board will be shipped soon.

Now this is getting freakin’ super bad out here!! Even with this huge surge you have these nay sayers sticking to the story that it’s not real, fake news.

It looks like we are up 32 cases which is a lot lower than the last time.

My grandson “Keone” and I put up the outside X-mas lights today. We were able to complete the main colored lights. We have for the past couple of years installed lights around the trees and boulders.

It was just earlier this year I was thinking 3-4 new cases a day is not bad for our small population. Now it’s @##$$T@! up to 58 cases during the same time frame. What the hell!