Dave Garrett

My wife has an old (about 6 1/2 years) laptop that only has a dual-core processor and 3GB RAM. For what she uses it for (light websurfing, editing MS Office documents and presentations, accessing her corporate network via VPN), it's still perfectly adequate.When it was new, it came with Vista installed. I'd had a sealed, retail Win7 upgrade CD that I got for really cheap ($30, IIRC) when Win7 was first released, and kept intending to use it to upgrade the laptop to Win7, but inertia and a lack of the necessary free time to do so had me procrastinating until the middle of last year. The upgrade was trouble-free and as quick as one could expect an OS upgrade to be, and after a day or two of pulling down all of the Win7 updates and double-checking the config on everything, I was surprised at how much better the performance was with Win7 than it had been with Vista. Boot times are significantly faster, and there's no longer an interminable wait after user login until all the startup processes load and you can actually start using the machine. Plus, no more godawful Vista User Account Control to deal with. I was thinking that we'd probably have to buy a newer laptop soon, but the upgrade has extended the old one's useful lifespan for a while longer. I should've tackled the upgrade a lot sooner. Vista flat blows compared to newer versions of Windows.

If they released a big box of surviving recordings from 65-67, I'd be all over it, despite a lot of that stuff having circulated over the years. But I can't really get excited about this new set when I'm not that interested in about half of it, especially at the price they're asking for it.

IIRC the upgrade to Win10 for existing Win7 and Win8.x machines will be free for a year after it's released. I have two Win7 desktops that I have no intention of upgrading right now, but will probably reassess that decision when the window for the free upgrade is close to closing. I also have a Win8.1 laptop that I'll almost certainly be upgrading, as I'm not a big fan of Win8/8.1 and I expect Win10 to be an improvement, if only an incremental one.

I once had a CD that literally had multiple teeth marks in it from where my late German Shepherd had gotten hold of the package as it came through the mail slot (she always felt strongly that one of her primary duties was to protect us from the unspeakable danger posed by incoming mail). It wouldn't even play, but I was able to rip it using EAC and burn a CD-R that played fine. It took several hours to rip, however, and EAC's error correction indicator was maxed out for most of that time. The next time something similar happened, I wasn't as lucky. Had a package punctured by a sharp object in transit, shattering the jewel case inside and leaving a visible dent in the CD-R within the jewel case. The track that was affected by the dent would play, but started skipping and locked up as soon as it got to the damaged section. Tried ripping it with EAC, but unfortunately lightning didn't strike twice.

That thought has crossed my mind more than once, but I'm still having trouble processing that a team that was expected to do well to break .500 this year is actually trading the best record in the AL back and forth with the Royals. 162 games is a long way in the future, though, and who knows what will happen between now and then?

If I lived in the UK and had PEN 15, I'd have to register it with a Lotus Esprit, as a nod to a long-ago Usenet acquaintance who owned one and referred to it as his British Roadpenis. Recently this guy made the local news with a plate that slipped by the Texas agency responsible for vetting vanity plate applications. After the news reporter pointed it out to them while seeking comments for his story, they indicated that they were going to recall it. Killjoys.

Posted this in the "Post A Pic" thread before remembering this one: https://www.facebook.com/adam.nedeff/media_set?set=a.10153848803898102.1073741832.608003101&type=1&pnref=story

Apple is trying to force streaming services to kill free tiers: http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/4/8540935/apple-labels-spotify-streaming

It's possible that they have big houses because they *haven't* spent a large chunk of their income on amassing large record/book/movie collections.

Increasing densification of housing is the wet dream of the New Urbanists. To them, single-family dwellings in suburban areas (or areas that used to be suburban) are the misbegotten poster children for the evils of Sprawl. Those who aren't on board with this line of thinking are to be roundly shamed. Another data point that overlaps with this somewhat like a Venn diagram: the tiny house movement.

The main post office/mail distribution center in downtown Houston is closing in the next couple of weeks - the land was put up for sale some time ago, and the operations are being relocated to the remaining distribution center in north Houston and another retail/business mail post office facility elsewhere in the downtown area. Since the current downtown post office site used to house the Southern Pacific rail terminal for many years prior to the post office's construction in the early 1960s, it would be an obvious endpoint for a high-speed rail line. The Amtrak station is also in very close proximity to the site.

I just caught up with both parts of the docu a couple of days ago and thought it was very well done. "Not a lot of new or earth-shattering information, but lots of things I hadn't seen or heard" is almost exactly how I described it to a friend who hasn't seen it yet - Gibney did a great job crafting a film that should appeal to both newcomers to Sinatra as well as longtime fans. There's been speculation as to whether the complete retirement concert will get a CD or DVD release. It would be nice if it were presented as bonus material on the inevitable DVD and Blu-ray releases.

I'm thinking, like, wherever the deepest part of Fuck You Hell is, that's where they need to be moved. Not necessarily the people, just these assholes mouthpieces. Apart from the genuinely concerned and/or truly anti-progress faction (of which I'm sure there's a handful) this has If You Want My Support, Get Off Your Ass And Come Pay And Me For It and/or Too Late - The Airlines and/or The Highway Lobby Have Me In Their Pocket written all over it. No doubt. Although there are apparently a fair number of folks who just don't want a high-speed train running through their land, with the rationales for such opposition ranging from safety to noise to "Fuck Those City-Dwelling Suits, Let 'Em Drive, And Stay the Hell Off Of My Property". I can't see anyone who's ever seen a bullet train in operation seriously mounting a noise objection. We're not talking about a friggin' BNSF freight train here, the bullet trains are much quieter. And in the Houston area, there's already been a bunch of hand-wringing and pearl-clutching over one of the proposed routes for a downtown terminus, from the neighborhoods through which that route would pass once inside the city limits. Northwest Mall at 290 and 610 has been proposed as an alternative terminus, but that presumably wouldn't be quite as convenient for business travelers as downtown would be (recognizing that lots of business travelers have destinations outside of downtown). Don't underestimate the attraction of not having to subject oneself to a TSA cavity search in order to board a train. Although I'm sure they'll eventually try to expand their reach to passenger rail as well, if it ever becomes a popular alternative mode of travel again.

It's by no means a done deal, and in fact there's a decent chance that it may get (ahem) derailed. A lot of rural landowners/farmers are lining up against it, and they've managed to raise enough of a stink to get the attention of the Legislature, which has resulted in the proposal of several ill-conceived bills designed to hamstring the project. http://www.citylab.com/politics/2015/04/meet-the-opposition-to-texas-high-speed-rail/390576/

Thanks for the tip, just received it, didn't expect such a massive box though, had to cancel my other errands to bring back this mofo at home. Yeah, it's definitely one of the heftier DVD sets that's ever been released. The only one I can think of right now that's bigger/heavier is the complete-series Dark Shadows set that's packaged in a large coffin-shaped box.

Maybe the one doing the hooking should be called The Hooker. Pitching sucks? "We want The Hooker, bring out The Hooker!!!" I could get behind that chant. With The Hooker in double-A and Hoes in triple-A, I sense the start of a new trend for the Astros and their minor-league affiliates.

According to Amazon, I got the monochrome Saint set in mid-May 2010, and the color set about a month later.

Heineken also offers a "DraughtKeg", which is a miniature 5-liter keg pressurized with its own self-contained CO2 system. When I've had beer from one of these, it always seems to taste better than the bottled stuff, which is likely due to the keg beer not getting skunked from exposure to sunlight. They claim that the beer will stay fresh for a while after the keg's tapped (not sure how long, but I think at least 2-3 days?), and some enterprising homebrewers have apparently even figured out how to reuse the kegs.

Got a DVD catalog in the mail from Daedalus Books today - haven't had a chance to do much more than skim it, but I noticed they had the big FORD AT FOX box which has been mentioned here before for $69.98. I thought that was a great deal until I happened to check Amazon to see what they were selling it for - $55.99! This is a fantastic set, and they're practically giving it away at that price. I guess the big Ford fans all got it when it was first released, but as we get further and further removed from the era in which these films were current, I also think classic films are becoming a harder sell. I never cease to be surprised by the number of folks I encounter who can't bring themselves to watch anything if it's not available on Blu-ray, which automatically disqualifies countless amazing films. http://www.amazon.com/Ford-Fox-Collection-Claudette-Colbert/dp/B000WMA6HI

I've grown tired of a lot of the annual April Fools' exercises on the net, but that was great (of course, I'm a "dog person").

All of the Barnes & Noble stores local to me have a separate "Media" department combining DVDs/Blu-rays and music (CDs and, more recently, vinyl), and they have staff dedicated to the Media department. Granted, the music selection is pretty bare-bones compared to what it once was, in contrast to the DVDs and Blu-rays which are quite well-stocked. Or did you mean that B&N didn't have staff specifically allocated to music and not video?

The R2 set of the B&W shows is great. Amazon UK's occasionally had it cheaper in the past (I got it from them for around GBP 30 shipped several years ago), but the current price is still a good deal.

You might find this of interest: https://medium.com/matter/shitphone-a-love-story-a44e66434807 Also the discussion regarding this piece at Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2z6zd7/shitphone_a_love_story_switching_from_an_iphone/

You might want to give Firemin a try: http://www.rizonesoft.com/software/firemin/ I tend to keep a *lot* of tabs open, and rarely reboot my machine, so Firefox winds up using between 500MB to well over 1GB of RAM if it runs for a day or two without a restart. With Firemin running, it's using anywhere from 2MB - 40MB. Note that some people have reported mixed results with Firemin, so it may or may not work well for you. I've noticed that it does seem to increase CPU load a bit, but not enough to be worrisome. Also note that when you start Firemin, it doesn't appear that anything is happening, but it should be running. You just have to look in the Processes tab in Task Manager to see that it's running. I still have to restart Firefox every couple of days as it seems to slow down eventually after a long period of uptime, but memory management has been vastly improved with Firemin in the interim.