Uncle Skid

Ingrid Jensen Quartet w/Geoff Keezer, Friday, April 15th at Mona Shores High School, Muskegon, Michigan. I'm not very familiar with either of them, but judging from the search results, there are at least a few fans on this board. Comments? Is this one I shouldn't miss? Anybody else in the area planning on going? sheldonm -- road trip??!!!

Nothing screams "heavy metal" quite like a $40,000/month "Performance" coach.

Joe G Randissimo Jim A Chuck Big Al Upright Bill sheldonm Larry Kart Lazaro jamn (Jack -- rarely posts anymore) trizno (Johnny Gist) ... but I keep missing Paul (conn) at various midwestern Organissimo shows. Maybe this summer!

I just won this one on EBay, after a long and vicious bidding-war with Big Al:

I'm done, but I'm not going to mail them until the 14th. Dem bastids ain't gettin' my money early!!

B-)

ROAD TRIP!!! Northwest goes direct from Detroit to Amsterdam! I'll swing by and pick you up, Chuck! B-)

Yes -- Mark's photos make me kick myself for not making the (relatively short) trip to Chicago to see all of these great shows! B-)

Since when are the Indigo Girls "mullet music"?* *oh, OK, I finally got it! Took me a minute!

Very nice photos, Mark! Wish I could have been there!

I was watching one on Ebay recently -- it went for $102.50 on 3/20.

In addition to what Kevin suggested, try changing the resolution. In Windows, it's "screen area" under Display Properties->Settings. Flat-panel monitors all have "native" resolutions -- the resolution in which everything will look the sharpest. If it is set to the a different resolution, it will still display something, but it might look quite awful. This is different than normal monitors, which were capable of supporting many different resolutions. On flat panels, the native resolution is usually 1024x768 (15"), or 1280x1024(17" or larger).

Yes!! Happy Birthday!

But aren't Verizon and Verizon Wireless completely separate? I would bet the regular old wired Verizon won't need a thousand bucks to hook you up. I hate 'em both -- the wired Verizon has a monopoly on local phone service here, so they have been gouging me for years.

Yup. And he's STILL not playing fair!!

March 16th, and it's still coming down here. Just took this picture out of my window -- the deer seem to like it, we've seen them quite a bit this year. However, I suspect that has much more to do with the urban sprawl around here than the snow. Joe -- the skiing has been quite good around here the last few days -- if you're ever anywhere near here, let's go!

Got me some FRANK comin' next!! B-)

I went ahead and did it, and there's no doubt in my mind that this is legit. When you first start the process, they come back with about six multiple choice questions that only you should know the correct answers. For example, mine included questions about the street of my former residence (5 choices, only 1 correct), and also the make/model of a car I had purchased about 12 years ago. Once all those questions were answered, I was able to view and print the complete credit report. I chose to only get one from Experian, as we are all entitled to one "free" report per year, per credit reporting agency. Since there are three agencies, there was a recommendation to do one request every four months or so, effectively giving me three complete, free reports per year. The most surprising thing on the report was the "request for your credit history" section. This section lists all companies that have requested to review my credit history over the last few years. Over 15 companies were on that list, most of which I have no relationship with. The big offenders were Capital One Bank (9 requests over 2 years) and BankOne (12 requests over 1 year!!). I assume that these must be where the bulk of those preapproved credit offers come from!

From the Federal Trade Commission: Looks like people who live in western and midwestern states can do it now; southern and eastern states follow later this year. Anybody done this yet? It seems like a good idea to do this every once in awhile, if for nothing else than to see if things are accurate. Also came across this recently - buried in the fine print of all those unsolicited credit card offers that come in the mail is a toll-free number to "opt-out": 1-888-567-8688 (1-888-5-OPTOUT). There is also a website (www.optoutprescreen.com). I read somewhere that you must type in that address directly, as they don't allow linking. I'm always skeptical of things like this, but they both appear to be legitimate.

Adblock is still my favorite. Ya gotta love the ability to make all those annoying ads go away. Plus, with Firefox, I haven't seen a popup ad in quite a long time! Firefox w/Adblock vs IE at allmusic.com:

Yes! I know exactly what you're talking about. I bought a 20G Archos MP3 player a couple of years ago, and I recently replaced the 20G hard drive with a 40G. I'm still regretting not going for the 60G or 80G. My wife thinks I'm nuts -- she says there's no way I could ever listen to that much music at one time, so why is it necessary to have all of it loaded on the player? Of course, that's not the point! I never know what I'll be in the mood to listen to, so not having all of it is not an option! B-)

Less than advertised space on hard drives usually comes from differences in the meaning of "megabyte" or "gigabyte". Somewhere in the fine print of the user's manual there is probably a statement like "20.0GB (actual formatted capacity less)". This is due to the fact that marketing and sales literature define a MB as 1,000,000 bytes, and a GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes. But the "real" definition of a MB and GB involves powers of 2, so 1 MB is actually 1,048,576 bytes (2^20 power) and 1 GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes (2^30 power). So, your 20GB model is 20,000,000,000 bytes, which is technically (and according to your computer) 18.6GB. So, you aren't losing any space during setup.

How is this Google feature any different from the countless "reverse" phone lookup feature on many sites? I'm aware of at least one site that has had that feature for at least 10 years. Google may make it easier by generating a map automatically, but the ability to get your name and address from only your phone number has been around for quite awhile. What I find much more disturbing is the "people search" at places like intelius.com. In additon to searching by phone, you can use social security numbers and maiden names, and do background checks as well. I was on my high school reunion committee last year, and we paid for a three month subscription to that site. We found quite a few "lost" classmates that way, but it was scary how much personal information was easily available.

A Blue Mitchell set recently sold on Ebay for $150, as a "buy it now".

This just in from the "I did not know that" department: