Dave Garrett

I've heard a lot of good things about that book, but for as much praise as it's garnered, one of the more common comments seems to be that the editor had to have been asleep at the wheel, judging from the number of obvious gaffes that should've been caught well before it went to press.

I don't think this was an accidental overdose related to recreational use - I've seen some comments that indicate that the combination of physical ailments he was suffering from had led him to rely on the mixture of multiple very potent pharmaceuticals that ultimately killed him just to manage chronic pain. The implication was that he felt compelled to continue performing, and couldn't do so without some pretty heavy opioids to cover up the messages his body was trying to send, which for most people would be a strong indication that it was time to slow down. At his age and physical condition, when those kinds of drugs are involved the threshold between a deep sleep and a fatal overdose narrows considerably.

There have been three editions. The first "big red" one was IMO the best one, in terms of both the writing and the photography. It was also available in hardcover but the paperback is far more common. The second and third editions were smaller, more the size of a regular trade paperback, and were significantly different in terms of content; a lot of stuff had been added since the first edition, but much of the content that made the first edition so good had been edited out in the later editions. They are not entirely without their own merits, but I think it would have been a better idea to augment the content of the first edition with new material rather than largely take the clean-slate approach. OTOH, the oversized pages of the first edition enhanced the photographs immeasurably, and I'm sure they would have lost some of their impact in the smaller format of the later editions. The second edition looks like this: And the third edition:

I can't think of any other surviving American driver of his generation of similar stature - A. J. Foyt is probably closest, at around five years younger than Gurney was. Mario Andretti and Al Unser Sr. are both almost ten years younger. It's said that Gurney started the tradition of winning drivers spraying the crowd with champagne from the podium when he did so after winning Le Mans with Foyt in 1967.

I'm really sorry to see Musgrove go. Without his performance in key high-leverage situations, the Astros don't win the WS. But I'd also be lying if I said I wasn't excited by Cole joining the rotation. Can't wait to see if Brent Strom can work his usual magic to help Cole regain the form he had in 2015.

Believe it or not, I came to appreciate Dreams via Faye Wong's Cantonese cover in CHUNGKING EXPRESS before I'd ever heard the Cranberries' original. I think I still prefer Faye's version, but that's probably due more to familiarity with it than any objective merits. RIP to Ms. O'Riordan. She will be missed.

Yeah, that "hybrid" type of setup is very common, not least for the reason that it's a hell of a lot cheaper to have a 100GB SSD just for OS and applications than it is to have a 1TB SSD for everything (I'm not sure how large they're making them now, but the price of a 1TB SSD is already enough to give you pause compared to a regular old spinning HDD, so I'm pretty sure I'd have sticker shock at anything bigger). Plus, the SSD should theoretically last longer in that configuration because you won't be writing to it nearly as often as you would if it was being used to store data.

Solid state drives (SSDs) do have a limited number of write cycles before they fail, but that number is high enough to where it's usually not something to worry about in normal use. To optimize the lifespan of an SSD, though, there are some settings that should be changed as they are really only needed on a regular hard drive: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2043634/how-to-stretch-the-life-of-your-ssd-storage.html Swapping out a regular hard drive for an SSD is probably the single most effective thing you can do to dramatically improve the performance of an older computer. It will boot up and load programs much, much faster.

If I were looking for the next step up from a soundbar, as far as speakers go I'd definitely consider the Energy Take Classic 5.1 system. It's long been regarded as one of the best "bang for the buck" budget systems out there, and you should be able to get it new for around $300. https://www.amazon.com/Energy-Classic-Theater-System-Black/dp/B001202C44 I've been happy with the Onkyo A/V receiver I have, but it's a several-year-old model that was one of their top-of-the-line units at the time. Not too familiar with their current product line, but the TX-NR656 looks like a pretty nice unit in the $350-400 range, and they used to have a lower-priced NR5xx series that might be worth checking out as well. Be forewarned that if the newer units are anything like my Onkyo, they will probably be pretty complicated to set up due to a wide variety of configuration options, but once you've invested the time to do so, you shouldn't have to touch it again unless something else in your system changes significantly.

My wife is from Springfield. The first time she mentioned Kum & Go, I thought she was joking. In Texas, we had 7-11, UtoteM, and somewhat later, Stop & Go. Kum & Go would've been an endless source of amusement for legions of 14-year-olds.

That would be Microsoft's Home Use Program (HUP), and it's definitely the best deal for Office if you're eligible. Companies that have a Microsoft enterprise software license and opt in to the HUP can offer dirt-cheap copies of Office to their employees for installation onto a home computer. Technically, you're not supposed to continue using software purchased via the HUP if you leave the company, but in practice I don't think this is actually enforced (although this may have changed since the subscription model gained traction - it's been several years since I last had to deal with Microsoft enterprise licenses on a regular basis). I despise the subscription model, but I'm about to have to grit my teeth and get an Office 365 subscription in response to some recent business requirements. Chuck, I'd only add that if you do decide to try one of these alternatives, you may have to change the file associations if you want to continue being able to just double-click the file to open it, otherwise your Mac will still try to use Office to open them, putting you right back where you started. As lipi points out, you can always open the files from within the alternative application, if you don't mind going to the File > Open menu option (or something similar) instead of double-clicking the file icons. Here's a step-by-step guide to changing file associations in OS X: Change File Associations in Mac OS X

Microsoft, along with Adobe and other major software purveyors, has moved toward the subscription-based model in recent years, irritating many of us who don't require the latest and greatest versions every time a major update is issued and find the older one-time-purchase versions continue to work just fine. Of course they love it because it ensures an ongoing revenue stream from every licensed user. You might want to consider one of the open-source competitor packages available for free download, such as OpenOffice or LibreOffice, both of which are available in Mac OS X-compatible versions. Both are compatible with MS Office documents and file format, with certain caveats. OpenOffice LibreOffice

Blimp was done back in 2011 - that restoration is available on Blu-ray via ITV in the UK and Criterion in the US: COLONEL BLIMP - RETURNED IN ALL ITS GLORY Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation has done almost all of the restorations of Powell & Pressburger films - AMOLAD was an exception because Sony holds the rights to that one (at least in the US - not sure about worldwide). Scorsese's longtime editor (and Powell's widow) Thelma Schoonmaker has previously indicated that they are slowly but surely working their way through the Archers' filmography.

There is a new 4K restoration of AMOLAD that is currently starting to make the rounds in a limited theatrical rerelease in the UK (and hopefully, elsewhere, but so far only a New York run has been announced). Early reports are that it is absolutely spectacular, on par with the restorations of THE RED SHOES and THE TALES OF HOFFMANN that have been done in recent years. Lest anyone think this is another one of those instances where a studio simply strikes a new print, slaps a "restored" label on it, and sends it out to the repertory circuit, Post Magazine had a piece about this with some fairly technical details as to exactly what went into the restoration: Restoration: A Matter of Life and Death

I once had mint original Verve stereo pressings of the first four Zappa/Mothers albums that it had taken me quite a while to track down (this was in the pre-internet era). Had to sell them for quite a bit less than I'd paid for them during a period when I was dead broke and needed the money more than I needed the vinyl. Replaced most of them eventually, but the replacements weren't as nice as the ones I'd had to let go. I haven't had a vinyl rig set up in years, but I still have all of my LPs, and every time I've been tempted to offload them, I remembered those Zappa discs and thought better of it.

I got that same email (I've been an AutoWeek subscriber for probably close to thirty years). I gotta admit, when I found out earlier that he had passed, the first thought I had wasn't of Gomer Pyle, but of him singing "Back Home In Indiana" before the 500 every year. I had figured he wasn't long for this world three years ago when he said that it would be the last time he was going to sing before the race.

Toward the end of the season, when it became apparent to even casual baseball fans that the Astros were poised for a deep run into the playoffs, a local publication decided that it would be a good time to hop on the bandwagon and started running regular pieces covering All Things Astro on their website. The first piece that appeared was in the midst of namechecking all the things that a longtime Astros fan would expect (Jimmy Wynn, J.R. Richard, 1980 and the Phillies, 1986 and the Mets, and so on), when they casually tossed in a reference to "Lowell Passe". I replied to the tweet they'd linked the piece in, toning down my initial reaction ("Who the fuck is "Lowell" Passe?") a bit, but never got a response.

I have a fair number of baseball books, but if I had to pick a desert island selection, I'd be hard pressed to top the four volumes in the Fireside Book of Baseball series: Fireside Books of Baseball and Other Sports and Games Others that come to mind: Lawrence Ritter's The Glory of Their Times, Okrent and Lewine's The Ultimate Baseball Book, Norman Macht's massive three-volume biography of Connie Mack, and Charles Leerhsen's recent bio of Ty Cobb, a long-overdue corrective to the conventional wisdom propagated over many years by Al Stump that Cobb was a miserable human being.

If it were me, I'd just replace the power supply. No need to get a new refurb PC just to extract the power supply from it; assuming the PS is a standard size, you should be able to get one for significantly less than $105. It doesn't have to be the exact same model power supply as long as the replacement outputs at least the same power as the old unit. In my experience, most lower-priced HP desktops come with a factory power supply that just puts out enough power to run the machine as-is, but if you start adding expansion cards or other peripherals that suck up a decent amount of power, the stock PS quickly becomes insufficient and you have to swap it out with a higher-powered unit. So you should be able to easily find a new replacement that will probably more than meet your power requirements. Micro Center has a crapload of them: http://www.microcenter.com/category/4294966654/power-supplies and I'm sure other e-tailers like Fry's or Newegg have a similar selection.

He played for the Yankees in '76 and for a handful of games in '77.

There was a good piece from Longreads this week about the author's obsession with Vintage Contemporaries paperbacks (a series that was ubiquitous in US bookstores during the 1980s), in particular Bright Lights, Big City. Judging Books By Their Covers

That article is more than a bit whitewashed. The Astros didn't exactly "volunteer" to move to the AL. The team was up for sale in 2011, and owner Drayton McLane had agreed on a price with prospective owner Jim Crane. MLB had leverage in that they had to approve any sale, so the Astros' sale was made contingent on moving to the AL. Crane wasn't happy about this, and the upshot was that he wound up with what was said to be a $70 million discount on the sale price in return for accepting the move, the cost of which was supposedly split between McLane and MLB. Some of this is mentioned a bit further down in the comments.

Not for much longer - he has completed his rehab assignment and is supposedly coming off the DL tomorrow.