Dave Garrett

Are there any other kind besides crappy ones anymore? People used to swear by Taiyo Yuden as the gold standard for quality CDRs, but their parent company got out of the CDR manufacturing business several years ago. Given that the market for pressed CDs has fallen off so much, it's not too surprising that the CDR market has softened as well. eBay used to yank auction listings immediately if the terms "CD-r" or "CDR" or "CD copy" appeared anywhere in the listing. They made no distinction between whether a CDR was a properly-licensed or pirate copy (which is probably not unreasonable on their part, since they probably had no appetite for devoting the required staff to making a case-by-case determination). Not sure whether this is still the case, as lots of things have changed at eBay in the past few years.

This has been an intense series so far, with both games closely-fought nail-biters until the end. Verlander wound up tying his career-high mark for punchouts with 14, all for naught when Giles wasn't able to get anywhere in the neighborhood of his dominant 9th-inning performance of the previous game. Given there was an open base when Sanchez came up, I think I'd have put him on rather than let him hit, but hindsight's always 20/20. Giles has been lights-out until now this year, a welcome return to form after his dumpster-fire postseason last year. Here's hoping this was just one of those times when, as Hinch characterized it on live TV after the game, shit happens.

So German dogs display the same Teutonic sense of restraint, propriety, and order as German people do? Who knew?

I don't think a lot of people have fully realized yet just how much better the Astros' rotation is this year. They have been putting up some ridiculous numbers so far, and are first in MLB in both strikeouts and ERA. Verlander, Morton, and Cole are #2, 3, and 4 respectively in the AL in ERA (Oakland's Manaea is #1). Double-digit strikeout totals have become almost expected in every start - as I type this Verlander has 13Ks through 7 innings tonight. During April, Cole had 61Ks - only Chris Sale (63 last year) and Randy Johnson (63 in 1999) struck out more batters in their first six starts after being traded to a new team. Their win total at this point is about where it was last year, but when you compare the rotation then to the rotation now, they are in a much better position now, and it's not even close. Of course, according to Trevor Bauer, it's because they're cheating.

0-60 times are only one measurement. I prefer to look at the entire package, namely, is it fun to drive? There are plenty of cars that are faster than mine in a sprint to 60, but that doesn't make me wish I were driving something else. Judging from the eye-opening prices low-mileage, well-preserved '99-00 Sis have been fetching on Bring A Trailer lately, lots of other people feel the same way. But should one so desire, one of the main reasons Hondas of that vintage acquired such a legendary reputation among enthusiasts was how well they responded to tuning, particularly how easy it was to get big power out of the venerable 1.6/1.8 liter B-series motors. One example among many:

"Svelte" is relative. My Civic Si is 2600 lbs, and my '90 CRX was 2100 lbs, but given current Federal safety standards it's practically impossible to mass-produce cars that light anymore. Overboosted power steering is a corollary to the increasing shift to drive-by-wire technologies, where direct mechanical linkages are replaced by electronic or electromechanical systems. On many new cars, for example, the throttle pedal is no longer directly connected to the throttle body, but merely acts as a sensor that transmits inputs to an electronic controller that in turn operates the throttle body. No doubt it increases fuel system efficiency, and every bit of efficiency will be needed to meet CAFE standards.

Yeah, like the Murano or the Honda CR-V. I can't stand the "elevated living room on wheels" feeling either - I prefer my ass to be a few inches above the pavement. Then again, I freely admit I'm completely out of step with the target market of new car buyers, as I also prefer light weight, nimble handling, manual transmissions, and a minimum of electronic crap, which is probably why my daily driver is a 19-year-old Honda.

I saw an AutoWeek piece that essentially theorized that sedans were on the cusp of becoming obsolete, as buyer preferences were increasingly trending in favor of so-called "crossover" vehicles that ride higher than a sedan and have considerably more cargo space - basically a similar form factor to an SUV, but the size of a sedan as opposed to a truck. I'd expect Ford to focus (pun fully intended) on developing crossover vehicles, not just trucks and SUVs, and I believe this has been mentioned in a few of the more in-depth pieces out there, but it's being overlooked in favor of the "OMG FORD'S GETTING OUT OF THE CAR BUSINESS!!!!111!!!" clickbait.

If it's an Android phone, this may be of interest: How to Get Your Android Device to Show up in File Explorer (If It Isn’t) I've never had a phone fail to show up in File Explorer as a mounted drive when connected to a PC via USB, but I've always had iPhones.

Still waiting on mine - preordered from Amazon UK at the beginning of the year. Order status says it was supposed to be here no later than last Friday, but once in a while it seems to take a lot longer than expected for orders from the UK to arrive here.

That should've bolstered Castillo's case for a Lead Glove Award! There was a fair amount of snark online regarding Hosmer's $144 million contract after his game-losing gaffe Saturday. Which is unfortunate, as everyone has a bad day at the office once in a while. In general, I like Hosmer, but in this particular instance I can't say I was disappointed with the way the game ended.

The ending of last night's HOU-SD game was the damnedest thing I've seen all week. Astros win on walk-off popup (seriously)

That is insane. When Oppo announced they were winding down production, they said they were going to continue to manufacture players for now and they expected to have sufficient inventory to last until the summer or fall. Guess they didn't necessarily mean all models. They do have a link on their website's info page for the 205 allowing you to "register for a potential production run". I'd think they could easily sell as many as they could crank out in the next few months.

You need a VPN. Not all VPNs work, however, when it comes to circumventing MLBTV's asinine home-market blackouts - SmartDNS was the favored one, but apparently they are having issues this season, so they seem to have been superseded by YonderTV. Alternatively, there's no shortage of user-posted streams on the r/MLBStreams subreddit, which is also a useful resource for VPN users. I get all the Astros games on AT&T Sportsnet Southwest via Comcast, so I haven't had to seek them out elsewhere. If I were in Corpus and faced with watching the Rangers, I'd probably just say the hell with it and get season tickets to the Hooks games instead.

Yeah, I was googling fruitlessly after reading that, to no avail. The way the writer worded it: "One of the new songs “Colt .45 Swinging” — which Cobb wrote for Houston’s then nascent baseball team — was made available this week to coincide with Major League Baseball’s opening day." could mean any of several different things. He doesn't specifically say it was released, but that it was "made available". Maybe they let the Astros use it in conjunction with some of their opening day activities?

That was indeed a great piece - pretty sure it was featured by Longreads recently, which is how I stumbled across it. There is so much crap posted online about what constitutes "healthy eating" that a link to that piece should henceforth be the default response whenever someone brings up a questionable nutrition-related claim backstopped by dubious science.

Previously unreleased Arnett Cobb sessions from 1963 to be released this August in observance of his centennial: Treasure unearthed from late Houston jazz legend

Blue Note Label Boss, Don Was, Is Not Ready To Give Up On Jazz

My understanding is that SquareTrade will attempt to repair a covered component, and if they can't repair it, they will either replace it with the same model or pay the replacement cost/original purchase price. If the item's value is below a certain price point (they say "typically around $400"), they skip the repair attempt entirely and pay the claim. I'd agree that repairs are probably a non-starter with most AV receivers these days, unless the repair involves replacing the entire circuit board. And since my unit was already discontinued when I bought it, if I'd had to file a claim they wouldn't have been able to replace it, so I'd have presumably wound up getting reimbursed for the purchase price. I almost never opt for extended warranties, but the combination of Onkyo's HDMI board issues and the positive comments I'd heard regarding SquareTrade's customer service convinced me that it was reasonable to do so in this case. Like any insurance, you have to decide whether it makes more sense to pay the policy cost up front, or self-insure and assume the risk of further out-of-pocket costs down the road.

FWIW, I got my Onkyo TX-NR818 from Crutchfield. That model had been discontinued already, and supplies had dried up everywhere. Mine was a B-stock unit that was the last one they had in inventory. I took a chance on it as that particular model had some specific features I wanted that had been phased out in the model that replaced it. I did wind up getting a 4-year SquareTrade warranty for it as well, but never had to use it. Most extended warranties are garbage, but SquareTrade is worth a look if you think you might need something more than the standard one-year manufacturer warranty on an electronic component.

Does the connection drop after the components have all been powered up and running for a while, or does it not sometimes fail to recognize the connection when the receiver is initially powered up? Sometimes AV receivers can be sensitive to the order in which components are powered up, and the HDMI handshake can fail if that order is deviated from. I usually have my TV already powered up, then I power up the source component (Oppo 95, Roku, or cable box), then wait a bit before powering up the receiver last. I have a several-years-old Onkyo AV receiver and have been very happy with it. I haven't kept up with the newer models, but Onkyo had some fairly well-documented issues with HDMI board failures in units manufactured between 2009-2012 and wound up repairing a lot of affected units even though they were long out of warranty. I assume their QC processes related to HDMI boards have gotten better since then.

There's always been a debate about whether hard drives were more likely to fail from repeated startup/shutdown cycles or from being powered up all the time, although I assume this may be less of an issue as SSDs have become more common. FWIW, my computers have run 24/7 for years with no problems, and they're off-the-shelf, consumer-grade PCs, not purpose-built servers. My monitors are likewise powered up all the time, but they're set to go to sleep after ten minutes of inactivity.

+1 on what Jim said, just to confirm that the problem is with the monitor and not with the computer or video card. But I'd strongly suspect the monitor has crapped out based on your description - I had a Samsung monitor that did the same thing several years ago. Don't know how big your current monitor is (or how big a monitor you'd like to have), but I've found ASUS monitors in the 23-24" range to be a solid choice at a low price point. Those with more specialized needs (gamers, folks who do a lot of photo or video editing, etc.) may well prefer a higher-end monitor, but for general use the budget ASUS models work just fine. Newegg has this 23" one for $139.99 with free shipping, but you get a $20 rebate card for a final cost of $119.99: ASUS VX238H Black 23" 1ms (GTG) HDMI Widescreen LED Backlight LCD Monitor 250 cd/m2 ASCR 80,000,000:1

It wasn't discussed in that interview, but pulmonary fibrosis is not a disease that can be slowed or significantly controlled through treatment. The median life expectancy after diagnosis is only 2-3 years, with 5 years being pretty much the best-case scenario.