Quincy

Giant's players have the flu "Cornerback Aaron Ross caught something over the weekend and got sick on the plane, causing a one-hour delay upon departure from Newark-Liberty International Airport on Monday, until the mess was cleaned up. On Friday, fullback Madison Hedgecock, safety Michael Johnson and defensive tackle Manny Wright missed practice because of the flu and high temperatures." It continues to amaze me the stupidity of sports teams that do not take the initiative and provide flu shots for their players. The World Series starts at the beginning of the flu season and the Super Bowl is in "prime time." I know companies that provide them for their minimum wage workers! A flu shot is cheap insurance given the amount of money that's on the line. When are these jackasses going to wake up, as it's so preventable.

Oh man...when do they tour? First news of the '73 Winterland box and now this bit of colorful mad goofiness. A good Grateful day!

I have the old 16 disc Coltrane box. It does not contain "Solacium" from The Cats as Coltrane (and Sulieman and Burrell) sit out on the Flannagan trio number.

and sometimes Clementine.

For a couple of years I recall a sale happening in August, although there have been Augusts without sales. As others have said, the best deals affecting big boxes tend to be 10% off on selected sets or free shipping when you spend some amount such as $100. The big boxes that get targeted for sales tend to be pre-WWII jazz sets or the larger more expensive sets (say with 7 discs.) I think last year they had a sale on Selects where they were being offered at the old price. Or maybe it was just a warning that prices were going up, so buy them soon. I doubt your 2 big boxes will specifically go on sale (though of course they could benefit from a free shipping sale.) Mosaic owns the Bird set outright so there aren't time constraints on that one. Recent Ellington sets, such as the Reprise sold at a pretty good clip. Although the small group material has been more easily available recently so perhaps it won't sell as fast (also factoring the in economy.) If you want them I think I'd just go ahead and get 'em.

Duh. Didn't know the book had been made into a tv show, but it sounds like fun. Hey, jazz is dead, might as kill off humanity at some point (wait till I'm done first.)

Have to admit I checked my set (I've had it for almost 3 years) and I'm ok. I've played the set a couple of times but feared I'd been "brain dead" part of the time. I thought I was getting up to speed on some of the music more quickly than normal. Nothing like a wee bit of repetition! Thanks for the recs by the way. I just got their Bartok set in the mail today (not from yourmusic - just call my "the fed," as I thought I should inject some cash into the music industry at more old fashioned prices. Having checked out other quartets' versions from the library I have a feeling the Takacs still be a steal on my part.)

I saw him as one of the Dylans in I'm Not There yet didn't recognize him as "the guy from Brokeback Mountain." I didn't figure out that was him until reading the obit today. Damn, that's what the good actors want to happen, that you forget who they are and believe the character. (It might help that I'm not great with names though.)

Thought I'd share a happy service story. In early December I ordered the 3 Takacs Beethoven String Quartet sets. I guess between the holiday & getting so much music at once over 30 days passed before I noticed that I had 2 Disc 3s and no Disc 1 in the Late Quartets set. You're supposed to report such things within 30 days, but I thought I'd give it a try. I sent an email and got a reply in less than 3 days. I was told there was no need to send the old set, that a new one would be sent. It arrived within a week of the email as promised. Nicely done!

I wish NBC had the Super Bowl, just to watch plastic man Tiki Barber squirm.

He's over 330 miles away in the east, your mom was from the coast. The Moose is practically in cowboy country. Your mom's old hometown lost the tallest sitka spruce in the country (maybe - depended on how you measured, though now it doesn't matter) last month as a storm snapped it in half. 700 years old & 206 feet tall is no more. *edited to remove map showing Seaside to Moose's city, as it didn't "stick."

In that case, I gotta see it ! If you haven't seen at last some of R. Kelly's "Trapped In The Closet" then you'll miss a good deal of the humor in the South Park episode. There are more episodes after that (and another "season" just came out recently), but that'll at least get you up to speed.

Although I am stuck with a PC, both my father and son have Macs, both on Tiger. I am their "unoffical" systems administrator, although I am not a tech person (don't have to be with a Mac!) Anyway, would you (or others) mind to describe a couple virtues of Leopard that you have found useful - I have been trying to decide whether/when to upgrade the two of them. Plus side: I really like the way Time Machine works. Previously I had been using Retrospect Express for backup, but if I ever want to grab one thing that gets deleted Time Machine will make it so easy to do so. I was slow to use Spaces but it's not bad. You may or may not find it useful. The Finder cover flow is also something I've used more than I thought I would, though I don't use it that often. Negatives - Well, it broke my older edition of Photoshop Elements (2.0). Many older Adobe programs have been hosed. I believe it's because they took the carbon rather than cocoa route, but don't quote me on that. A new version of Elements comes out in late spring, and I still have a G3 with Panther on it so I can still use the program on the old machine. I've also sometimes had kernel panics when running Azureus (bit torrent program.) I've read it relates to the program, the fact I'm using a laptop and wireless, and other things. Weirdly it only happens in spurts, like for a few days every 3 to 4 weeks, then it'll cure itself. Makes very little sense. Check again to make sure you there aren't any programs that you rely on that may break, as that's probably the most important thing. Also, for an insanely in depth review of Leopard, see Arstechnica. Nobody does reviews better.

Just another to say go for 2 GB of RAM. While it will work fine with 1 GB, you'll be happier with 2. Like MagicAlex I too am still using my PC for sound editing (which I don't do very often) so I can't respond to that part of your question. There are applications that don't work under Leopard, partly due to the way that some software companies wrote their applications when OS X first came about. List available here.

Me too. And that was before I moved to the Pacific Northwest. Here the song makes lots of sense, especially this time of year. ~ Edited to add I thought this thread was going to be about Arthur Lee's collaboration w/ Hendrix.

The Great Divide Hercules is by far my favorite. These taste even better if you age them awhile. I once aged 3 bottles for over a year. I since haven't been able to make it past a month of aging. Hair of the Dog makes one too, but the alcohol content is lower than the Great Divide (thus so is the price.)

Whereas searching for Glenn Gould without the first name will give you lotsa hits for some reason.

But he has such a cool mustache, and would have looked great in a 1930s flannel uniform. One thing that those who are disappointed about their favorite players not making the Hall of Fame can do is go to What If Sports, make a team of Hall Of Famers and one of guys who had some great seasons but otherwise didn't make it, and bash 'em against each other. What if...another time waster brought to you be the internet.

That SI article by Heyman was painful. Based on his logic of Blyleven vs. Morris I was tempted to send an email to point out that in their one playoff confrontation Blyleven beat Morris, so obviously he should recant his vote for Morris and switch over to Bert. Truth is I don't mind all that much if someone does vote for Morris and Blyleven, it's the Morris and not Blyleven that irks me. (Though if you're going to let Morris in, I'd go back and add Luis Tiant, and...) And you know that will happen too. Oof. I don't know if he'll ever get by the writers either given how strange his career was. Through age 27 he was off the charts. 70 SB & over .300 & terrific OBP, never mind the "is that a data entry error?" 71 SB in 88 games as a 21 year old. Had he been able to play second base he'd be an automatic. But after he turned 27 the batting dropping around 50 points. Granted it came down from .330 and his OBP remained high. And he was "only" stealing 40-50 SB for the next few years. And then from age 31 on he was merely a solid American League player, a guy who got on and who stole less in each passing year, although during a time when managers sent their runners less. If he had died in a car crash at 29 he'd be the French Canadian James Dean and likely have gotten into the Hall quickly by a special vote. Instead we have the less sexy arc of aging on display for 23 seasons. I think a good stoning is in order for the Dunston vote. Gee, he may have been a nice fellow to some reporter, but c'mon. I think the Finley vote was dumb too, but at least he won 200 and finished 2nd in ERA a couple of times. But Dunston? What, led the league in most concussions for fans in the seats behind 1st base caused by his throws for 10 years running? Yes & no. Rice's numbers haven't changed, but think of how baseball has changed since he first became eligible and now. His HR total for one was higher up the list when he retired, and guys who hit close to 400 HRs but not 500 were still considered powerful sluggers. Once it became more common for guys to hit 50 HR in a season people stopped talking about Dale Murphy's case as well, and less than 500 HR suddenly wasn't enough for power hitters. (Well, not quite true as Perez & Cepeda got in during this time, but it took some orchestrated campaigns to push them in after years of not getting in.) Now that so many of the bigger numbers are questionable, suddenly Rice's numbers seem more legit. Though not enough feel that way for entry this year. The other thing is the insane amount of statistical information that is available now compared to 14 years ago, and so much of it for free thanks to cheaper computing power & the net. Not that many of the voters are sophisticated enough to digest them. But some negatives have come out for Rice, such as his road averages, that weren't easily known 12-15 years ago. So those kinds of things can change one's perception. However, I do agree with you that since you can vote up to 10, and it would be better if these clowns would spend some time doing some research about the more qualified candidates instead of voting for Knoblach, Dunston and the like as some kind of joke or one last tribute to a long time player. If you want to do that write a web "where are they now" column about the guy spelling out what made him so swell. At least Gossage got in. As far as the rest go, in the past I've mostly favored a "tight" HoF. But I would far rather have Dawson, Blyleven, Rice, Raines, Morris, Tiant, Tommy John, Murphy, McGwire, Dick Allen, Kaat, and several others all get in rather than Bowie Kuhn. Grrrrrrrrr.

Wow, seeing these so cheap almost makes me want to buy them again as gifts. Then again, I have an old tape of a scratchy LP that needs replacing...Nothing like rectifying the early sinful method of music sharing 20+ years later.

Most years I beat or at least meet the appropriate indexes, although I don't really care how I do between Jan 1 - Dec 31 of a year as I'm always going longer. It's tricky figuring out what "the market" is now that I'm so diversified into foreign markets, small caps & large (and those cats overlap) and as I pay taxes & commissions while the averages don't. I do my best to see what percentage I have in each region and compare, and it helps that I rarely make even 6 transactions in a year. I tend to buy what's down (within reason, not just because something is down) yet I'm almost always early, and that behavior may hurt me a little in a yearly comparison but I fare better longer term. When I had less money I did outperform "the market" much more easily, though with more risk than I take on now as I wasn't as diversified. My comment had to do with the amount of time that you stated was necessary, as you said an hour "per stock" each week. If what you said was true I'd lose about a day and a half of sleep per week, though a tiny bit less if you'd don't consider a closed-end fund to be a regular stock requiring that amount of time. If one is investing in micro-caps more time researching than usual would be required, though the transaction costs are greater so moving willy nilly would hurt a "civilian." Generally I believe by using value methods, particularly with stocks that pay a dividend, it takes nowhere near the amount of time you stated, and the upkeep isn't as great by favoring companies with sounder finances. Some years such value moves don't work as well, but over a lifetime a nonprofessional will probably fare better than with momentum strategies namely due to transaction costs. I enjoy being better able to control the timing of capital gains by owning individual stocks. That said over the years I tend to replace stocks with indexes as it's easier.

I'm so sorry. It's very tough to go through. I hope you're able to have another in your life sometime. Or if not a cat, then a dog or something else that brings joy & comfort.

Not sure about your first point though - since there is no positive test to refute, why even entertain the possibility that he received steroids inadvertently? I've stopped keeping track the details. So oh yeah, this is all observational stuff, not test results. Not sure about my first point either then! Sorry, I meant "professional weightlifter" like Vasiliy Alekseyev, where Rog would wear a red bodysuit and walk up to a podium with his big belly hanging out and his nuts hanging low. Ah, memories from the Wide World of Sports from the early '70s. No doubt Clemens did lots of lifting & weight training, as did Bonds.

In the mid-1980s I was friends with a guy who was a 3rd generation weightlifter who did steroids. I ended up going out west for a couple of weeks with him and getting exposed to this bizarre weightlifting scene that involved a Russian steroid dealer and all sorts of theories as to what one could do to improve one's health. With people involved with weights & getting stronger it doesn't matter whether there's good medical science to show that a healthy fit person doesn't need B-12 shots. B-12 is usually the first thing all these sorts of obsessive weightlifter types go for. It's probably because you get instant results - your pee turns a shade of gold that is hard to acquire by other means. While Roger isn't a weight lifter, he's been hanging out in that sort of culture for some time. Trainers & longtime weightlifters receive a lot of respect and are believed to know more than the poo-poo know-nothing medical establishment. So I could easily believe he'd want B-12 injections. I could also easily believe he'd want shots of deca-durobolin too. Admitting to the B-12 is great for his story though, as there are instances where trace amounts of steroids end up in these sorts of supplements, especially if acquired from dubious (or foreign) sources. So now he has an out. And if he did have steroid injections, by admitting to the B-12 it's easier for him to lie, as he can try to make all the injections in his mind B-12s, sort of like how someone can make some sex acts not be sex.

I'll take Marino on the field, but can I take my chances with Griese as a studio host?