And what did we buy today?

Ok, so here is a first. I bought only two film caps from Parts Express. 30% of the cost was shipping. Not good business on my part but they were on sale. Gets me every time.
Better than when I order from JL. DHL got 23 and JL got 15 on the order arriving today. Still in disbelief they can make 5 copies of a 7x7" board for that kind of money. I'm not sure but I expect I'd pay more than that for 5 blank boards from someone like digikey. I did just for giggles twiddle some of the options. Even a color change drastically changes production times. They must have that green 2 layer board down to a T.
 
I bet much of what Parts Express orders from China half the total cost is shipping and duties too. Diesel for those big boats is not free. An end user doesn’t see that because it’s simply reflected in the price.

I always wait for orders to stack up till it amounts to something unless its an emergency. And now that every holiday has a sitewide sale at PE I’ll just do it during one of those. I didn’t even do that this past labor day, because I just put a pallet of sheet rock on my credit card, and by policy, I have to wait for it to CLEAR, with zero balance, before ordering anything for audio. Next order will be to JLC anyway, when all the designs are ready to go out at once. There is still one I’m fiddling with the architecture on, so it’s still a ways off. Just has to get done before the first session of the new Congress, in case the politicians do anything that might interrupt the supply chain.
 
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Six 2" X 12" X 8' boards to build raised garden beds. I have seen people around here are using stock tanks for such. I looked them up, and someone has money. a 40 gallon stock tank is roughly 2' X 4' and 1' deep. It costs $130. For less than $100 I can' build two raised beds four times the size.
 
The dogs started using ours to bathe in. The horses will still drink out of it if they have to, but now prefer their buckets in their stalls which now need to be filled at least twice a day. I need to go buy a $30 kiddie pool next year when all that gets back in stock at Walmart so the $130 stock tank can go back to what it’s supposed to be for.
 
Some surplus capacitors that are out of production, hard to find.

Picked up a car buffer that will up the quality and reduce my workouts.
 

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Just couldn't walk past a large photo of a mountain that all 3 of my kids have climbed. It isn't the effort but the significance of Heart Mountain that gave me pause. Bought it for them to hang in one house and then the next in line to view. Wasn't going to buy 3 of these! Oh yah, there is that comet trying to photobust the photo. How rude.
 

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A new battery for a pretty old and tired smartphone, which means pulling off the display to get in under there to replace the old one so it's going to be interesting... the new thing for me this time around picking up the delivery was, for the first time my order was delivered to an outdoor parcel locker which is operated by the smartphone's bluetooth (had to load a special app on the phone), and... had to also have GPS engaged, which I guess may be some additional security/anti-fraud feature or so, in the past have only experienced lockers opened with a code delivered by sms.
 
If the phone is only 3G enabled, it is out of date.
Technology advances fast.
Be very careful, spare displays for old phones are difficult to obtain, and are at times absurdly costly.

Do back up the phone, just in case.
And check if the power supply / data sockets are worn, might as well replace when the unit is open.
Here they use neutral curing silicon, if needed, to stick the parts together for water and dust entry issues.

Here the simple (20 MP camera, 5G, 8 GB RAM, and 8 core processor, and so on) phones start about $125....which makes you pause and think about spending $30 and up for a new battery for an old phone,

Only 4 GB internal storage on my older, more basic phone, the 2 year old unit currently in use has 128 GB internal capacity, and the new ones seem to have 256 GB in starter models...camera has improved from 5 to 40+ MP resolution as well.
 
Many of the improvements of newer phones only drain the battery faster. Standby times have been reduced from weeks to a few days.
If it was not for the tricks of the manufacturers and Android versions, many older phones would be perfectly useable.
One Chinese manufacturer of a very good phone I bought, gave the remote door of Chinese secret service (which any Chinese phone has) to some scammers after 3 years. Turning on the phone remotely and loading all kind of useless adds and apps, popping up all the time, exhausting the storage and making it unuseable. This even happened after factory reset, so not my fault. It always said the Playstore had installed it, even as this was disabeled. So there is a deep rooted "install spyware remotely function" working.

So while you are right that it would be better to keep using them, the industry makes it pointless. If the hardware is too good, the kill it by software means.
 
Bought 2 amp modules from Aliexpress. Sure/ Wondom BDM8-A TPA3255 Ver. 1.2

These should have had symetric inputs. This was changed to single ended in the version 1.2 I got. The input plug still has 5 connectors, but they are useless. I needed such a module for the output of a symetrich DSP. Two more useless amps in the storage...

Seems to be no more TPA3255 with symetric input on the low cost market.
 
Many of the improvements of newer phones only drain the battery faster. Standby times have been reduced from weeks to a few days.
If it was not for the tricks of the manufacturers and Android versions, many older phones would be perfectly useable.
One Chinese manufacturer of a very good phone I bought, gave the remote door of Chinese secret service (which any Chinese phone has) to some scammers after 3 years. Turning on the phone remotely and loading all kind of useless adds and apps, popping up all the time, exhausting the storage and making it unuseable. This even happened after factory reset, so not my fault. It always said the Playstore had installed it, even as this was disabeled. So there is a deep rooted "install spyware remotely function" working.

So while you are right that it would be better to keep using them, the industry makes it pointless. If the hardware is too good, the kill it by software means.
That is some serious **** you experienced.

BTW all hardware and software sold in the English speaking countries also have a backdoor for governments. All large manufacturers had to give in, Apple being one of the last.