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Make sure you ask him to verify the end links are smooth (no dents). I looked at my clasp again and it has a double profile, but that is not quite like the gen double profile... but it's an attempt. Tell him you're from RWG, I said he could expect a lot of business from the watch nuts here if he had GOOD parts. I'm also talking with him about his non-riveted folded Oysters with hollow mid links. As soon as the factory gets some made he's going to send photos. I've also told him there will be strong demand for "large" tubes in the end links to take 2mm spring bars. He is going to specifically ask the factory to build them like that. I'd look for those within 2 or 3 months.

I've got two of Yuki's 7206 bracelets here, and I've got to say I'm impressed. Well, I'm "pretty" impressed. One of them is just great but the other has endlinks from hell, all dented and nasty looking. To his credit, Yuki gladly agreed to take it back and pick another good one for me, and send photos before shipping. GREAT service! I polished up the good bracelet with some paste, worked over the links thoroughly, and have it on my 6536 as I type this. It's really, really nice. There has been some discussion recently on VRF about the 7206 bracelets we're seeing recently. Here is a treasure trove of additional information about "what to look for". It's worth a read. Interestingly, Yuki's example has the double curve at the clasp. Very nice. VRF 7206 discussion

Well said, Dems. Have you seen the movie "Miracle"? To me, the most powerful moment in the movie was when the coach had them skating crushes until they puked, then something clicked, the light came on in their minds, and the coach said "The name on the FRONT of your jersey is a heck of a lot more important than the name on the BACK". Once they figured that out, they were a team. Before they were a team, it was easy to discriminate by perceived skill level or even where they were from (Boston College). After they became a team, that stuff was still true but it simply didn't matter anymore.

Monday, October 12 10:24 AM EDT Microsoft Purchases Evil From Satan By Brian Briggs Redmond, WA - Microsoft purchased evil from Satan for $2.7 billion after many months of tough negotiations. "We've been after Satan for some time," said CEO Steve Ballmer. "Negotiations were tough, but I think both Microsoft and the Prince of Darkness are happy with this deal." Microsoft already controls 15% of the evil market, and with this purchase that number nears 100%. The Department of Justice voiced concerns over one corporation controlling so much evil, and launched investigations. "We feel that there are real opportunities with evil, and that when evil is integrated into our next generation of Windows products consumers will appreciate evil on their desktop," said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. "Businesses haven't been able to fully realize their evil potential. With evil integrated into Windows Seven, corporations big and small will begin to see enhanced evil productivity." "Evil is a real growing market," market strategist Frank Dresgan of Merrill Lynch explained. "Microsoft is a little late in the game, but even when they enter a market late they still tend to dominate. I think we'll see the same results with evil." "I've been dealing with Microsoft for some time," Lucifer said. "I've been at this evil thing for millions of years, and wanted a way out. I considered an IPO, but then Steve-O and Billy came along and told me about their 'Evil Everywhere' plan. I just couldn't refuse." Evil was founded by Satan close to the beginning of time. It has been growing steadily ever since, although most of the growth has accelerated in the past fifteen years with the development of the Internet. Satan plans to retire to a small island in the Bahamas and write a column for the local newspaper.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. A freezer is actually not cold enough, they only go down to zero or so. What's REALLY a hoot is getting out in a hot tub, then jumping in the -20F snow, then back in the hot tub. The snow instantly freezes to the crystal (and your bum) then it melts right off again. And... it's never cracked or caused a failure in a plexi crystal for me.

Well said, Ken. Even for an ignorant Aussie. (running and hiding) All kidding aside, those are great points. And yet, our public schools are teaching kids to have massive self esteem, which they do not earn, and they actively remove potential sources of what I call "character building events". For example, all the little darlings get a trophy at a soccer match, and often no score is kept. We can't have anyone getting their feelings bent because they lost. How can this pumped up and unearned self esteem be reconciled against what might be called "pride"? Certainly it's not racist to be proud of your accomplishments, but what about being proud of yourself simply because you exist? Might this baseless pride/esteem be part of what seems to be driving an artificially elevated sense of self worth, often at the expense of others? If you've never had to concede defeat, it's awfully hard to give someone else credit for being "better" than you. Not because of who they are, but for what they do. When you've never had to encounter those feelings of competition and loss in yourself, then probably you've never done the mental work to understand the difference between "who" you are and "what" you do. And by extension, the fact that everyone else feels the same as you.

ABOUT THE WRITER Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the Miami Herald. Colonoscopy Journal: I called my friend Andy Sable, a gastroenterologist, to make an appointment for a colonoscopy. A few days later, in his office, Andy showed me a color diagram of the colon, a lengthy organ that appears to go all over the place, at one point passing briefly through Minneapolis. Then Andy explained the colonoscopy procedure to me in a thorough, reassuring and patient manner. I nodded thoughtfully, but I didn't really hear anything he said, because my brain was shrieking, 'HE'S GOING TO STICK A TUBE 17,000 FEET UP YOUR BEHIND!' I left Andy's office with some written instructions, and a prescription for a product called 'MoviPrep,' which comes in a box large enough to hold a microwave oven. I will discuss MoviPrep in detail later; for now suffice it to say that we must never allow it to fall into the hands of America's enemies. I spent the next several days productively sitting around being nervous. Then, on the day before my colonoscopy, I began my preparation. In accordance with my instructions, I didn't eat any solid food that day; all I had was chicken broth, which is basically water, only with less flavor. Then, in the evening, I took the MoviPrep. You mix two packets of powder together in a one-liter plastic jug, then you fill it with lukewarm water. (For those unfamiliar with the metric system, a liter is about 32 gallons). Then you have to drink the whole jug. This takes about an hour, because MoviPrep tastes - and here I am being kind - like a mixture of goat spit and urinal cleanser, with just a hint of lemon. The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose, watery bowel movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground. MoviPrep is a nuclear laxative I don't want to be too graphic, here, but, have you ever seen a space-shuttle launch? This is pretty much the MoviPrep experience, with you as the shuttle. There are times when you wish the commode had a seat belt. You spend several hours pretty much confined to the bathroom, spurting violently You elimi nate everything. And then, when you figure you must be totally empty, you have to drink another liter of MoviPrep, at which point, as far as I can tell, your bowels travel into the future and start eliminating food that you have not even eaten yet. After an action-packed evening, I finally got to sleep. The next morning my wife drove me to the clinic. I was very nervous. Not only was I worried about the procedure, but I had been experiencing occasional return bouts of MoviPrep spurtage. I was thinking, 'What if I spurt on Andy?' How do you apologize to a friend for something like that? Flowers would not be enough. At the clinic I had to sign many forms acknowledging that I understood and totally agreed with whatever the heck the forms said. Then they led me to a room full of other colonoscopy people, where I went inside a little curtained space and took off my clothes and put on one of those hospital garments designed by sadist perverts, the kind that, when you put it on, makes you feel even more naked than when you are actually naked. Then a nurse named Eddie put a little needle in a vein in my left hand. Ordinarily I would have fainted, but Eddie was very good, and I was already lying down. Eddie also told me that some people put vodka in their MoviPrep. At first I was ticked off that I hadn't thought of this, but then I pondered what would happen if you got yourself too tipsy to make it to the bathroom, so you were staggering around in full Fire Hose Mode. You would have no choice but to burn your house. When everything was ready, Eddie wheeled me into the procedure room, where Andy was waiting with a nurse and an anesthesiologist. I did not see the 17,000-foot tube, but I knew Andy had it hidden around there somewhere. I was seriously nervous at this point. Andy had me roll over on my left side, and the anesthesiologist began hooking something up to the needle in my hand. There was music playing in the room, and I realized that the song was 'Dancing Queen' by ABBA. I remarked to Andy that, of all the songs that could be playing during this particular procedure, 'Dancing Queen' had to be the least appropriate. 'You want me to turn it up?' said Andy, from somewhere behind me. 'Ha ha,' I said. And then it was time, the moment I had been dreading for more than a decade. If you are squeamish, prepare yourself, because I am going to tell you, in explicit detail, exactly what it was like. I have no idea. Really. I slept through it. One moment, ABBA was yelling 'Dancing Queen, feel the beat of the tambourine,' and the next moment, I was back in the other room, waking up in a very mellow mood. Andy was looking down at me and asking me how I felt. I felt excellent. I felt even more excellent when Andy told me that It was all over, and that my colon had passed with flying colors. I have never been prouder of an internal organ. On the subject of Colonoscopies... Colonoscopies are no joke, but these comments during the exam were quite humorous ...A physician claimed that the following are actual comments made by his patients (predominately male) while he was performing their colonoscopies: 1. 'Take it easy, Doc.. You're boldly going where no man has gone before!' 2. 'Find Amelia Earhart yet?' 3. 'Can you hear me NOW?' 4. 'Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?' 5. 'You know, in Arkansas , we're now legally married.' 6. 'Any sign of the trapped miners, Chief?' 7. 'You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out...' 8. 'Hey! Now I know how a Muppet feels!' 9. 'If your hand doesn't fit, you must quit!' 10. 'Hey Doc, let me know if you find my dignity.' 11. 'You used to be an executive at Enron, didn't you?' 12. 'God, now I know why I am not gay.' And the best one of all: 13. 'Could you write a note for my wife saying that my head is not up there?'

Freddy, I don't know if you remember but a few years ago we were talking about how aged crystals took on more and more of an amber tint. Someone (IT WASN'T ME!) subjected a Superdome to some crazy intense UV at his job and reported that after about 30 to 40 hours he started seeing this crazing but no color change. He told us "Stop! Stop! It's ruining the crystal!" and little did we realize... Fascinating, eh??

MY WATCH by MARK TWAIN ca. 1870 AN INSTRUCTIVE LITTLE TALE My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining, and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping. I had come to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable. But at last, one night, I let it run down. I grieved about it as if it were a recognized messenger and forerunner of calamity. But by and by I cheered up, set the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart. Next day I stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact time, and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to set it for me. Then he said, "She is four minutes slow -- regulator wants pushing up." I tried to stop him -- tried to make him understand that the watch kept perfect time. But no; all this human cabbage could see was that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator MUST be pushed up a little; and so, while I danced around him in anguish, and implored him to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed. My watch began to gain. It gained faster and faster day by day. Within the week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred and fifty in the shade. At the end of two months it had left all the timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen days ahead of the almanac. It was away into November enjoying the snow, while the October leaves were still turning. It hurried up house rent, bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not abide it. I took it to the watchmaker to be regulated. He asked me if I had ever had it repaired. I said no, it had never needed any repairing. He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open, and then put a small dice box into his eye and peered into its machinery. He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating -- come in a week. After being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell. I began to be left by trains, I failed all appointments, I got to missing my dinner; my watch strung out three days' grace to four and let me go to protest; I gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last week, and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and alone I was lingering along in week before last, and the world was out of sight. I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling for the mummy in the museum, and desire to swap news with him. I went to a watch maker again. He took the watch all to pieces while I waited, and then said the barrel was "swelled." He said he could reduce it in three days. After this the watch AVERAGED well, but nothing more. For half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that I could not hear myself think for the disturbance; and as long as it held out there was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it. But the rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all the clocks it had left behind caught up again. So at last, at the end of twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and just in time. It would show a fair and square average, and no man could say it had done more or less than its duty. But a correct average is only a mild virtue in a watch, and I took this instrument to another watchmaker. He said the kingbolt was broken. I said I was glad it was nothing more serious. To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the kingbolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger. He repaired the kingbolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost in another. It would run awhile and then stop awhile, and then run awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals. And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket. I padded my breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker. He picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his glass; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with the hairtrigger. He fixed it, and gave it a fresh start. It did well now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would travel together. The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the thing repaired. This person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the mainspring was not straight. He also remarked that part of the works needed half-soling. He made these things all right, and then my timepiece performed unexceptionably, save that now and then, after working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate spider's web over the face of the watch. She would reel off the next twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang. I went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he took her to pieces. Then I prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for this thing was getting serious. The watch had cost two hundred dollars originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for repairs. While I waited and looked on I presently recognized in this watchmaker an old acquaintance -- a steamboat engineer of other days, and not a good engineer, either. He examined all the parts carefully, just as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with the same confidence of manner. He said: "She makes too much steam -- you want to hang the monkey-wrench on the safety-valve!" I brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense. My uncle William (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good horse was a good horse until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good watch until the repairers got a chance at it. And he used to wonder what became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers, and engineers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him.

I ran across some photos on VRF showing Superdome crystals that have been crazed from UV exposure. They're fascinating, but I'm not real sure I like them. Thoughts? This photo barely shows how the crystal on my Sharkie is starting to do the same.

One thing that really catches my eye here, is the crystal profile and the way it meets the insert. It's *exactly* the same as the early MBWs. The lack of a small vertical "lip" leading up to the dome is a tell, but it also makes me think we're onto a case that can accept gen T39 crystals. How many short domes can there be for the factories to choose from? Here's a really nasty photo of my early MBW as delivered.

Niiiiiiice! Wonder if these will fit an early MBW?

Correct, O/S that's a really good redial. The only thing wrong with it, to my eye, is it looks too fresh and new. This one even has the correct hands with narrow lume, and "ringed" caseback. Verrrrry nice. I hope one of you lads wins it! No bloodshed now, okay?

An "albino" 6263 from VRF

This one has a repainted dial and it's missing the gen bezel. But all the other hard to find parts are there. You can likely get it cheap, and miscellaneous bezels do come up once in awhile, but I can almost guarantee you won't find one that will work. Good hunting! Doxa Sub 300

Five-O

It's actually much simpler than that... ever since O/S had that little tryst with Miss Understood and posted the photos to the Mods area he's been in (cough) timeout.

There is no watch case anywhere with a more perfect shape than the early 1675. What a find! That is over-the-top gorgeous. And what a nice smooth chocolate color, no blotches or speckles... It's just great. Congratulations!

Owwwww, I just snorted orange juice out my nose!

Hello Chudd, fellow addict. Welcome to the group. This is an important first step, to admit you have a problem. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Just remember "baby steps." One small step every day. We have found a manageable first step is... 1) I will buy no more than ONE watch every day. You can do it! We got your back.

Well she actually prefers prunes over dates... Now that you mention it, I wonder where the old bird went? Last time there was a long break in her activity she... um... Holy Crap Gotta go, bye!!

Ah, the eternal debate. Jubilee? Or Oyster? I like 'em both.

Wow, great photos! When I think back to the crap that Paul used to sell us (Submariner with a GMT dial on it) and then look at this, I can only go "whooooaaaaaaa..." Nice stuff! We've come a long way, baby.

Thanks Chrono and Samurai! Tonight we're having Rep Weather, it's just acting like a hurricane, but it's not really the same thing. We haven't broken 100mph winds yet. YAAARGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

What the heck? You didn't get your Nobel Peace Prize? All of us in Admin got ours ... here, I'll nominate you for one too.