Kevin Bresnahan

They have priced out nearly everyone, not just you. Only the rich can afford most of these wines now. But you know, I don't think the wineries really care. They have very limited production and they still sell out to these rich clientele. They make the most profit that they can. I don't even know if I can blame them. They want to make the most money they can - they are a business. "Subsidizing" us less fortunate wine drinkers is not good business. BTW, most of these wineries didn't just whomp the prices sky high. They slowly raised the price starting around 1991 or so. If a vintage didn't sell out, they kept the price the same. An example is Caymus. I used to buy as much of this as I could afford. I saw it go up by about $10-20 every year for about 5 years until it hit around $75. There it sits. Back when it was $20 a bottle in the late 80's, you had to pre-order it. Now, at $75 a bottle, you can find it at most high end wine shops. They hit their top asking price. Will it come back down? Not to $20. But I have seen many places selling older vintages for $65 (still way too expensive for me). Later, Kevin

Being a motorcycle driver, I am more than a little worried about distracted drivers. The number of people I see texting while driving is staggering. Texting while driving should be treated like drunk driving. Get caught once and lose your license for 30 days. Twice - 90 days, etc. I passed a guy the other day who was smoking a cig with his left hand, texting with his right (using his left wrist to "hold" the steering wheel) while listening to his iPod with headphones (illegal in MA). If that guy had to react quickly, it wasn't going to happen. I got as far ahead of that car as I could. Later, Kevin

Eh... WTF??? Puccini died in 1924, so technically "Turandot" should be in the public domain. However, Puccini died before he could finish it. Franco Alfano was brought on to finish it. There is some debate as to how much Alfano added, with some claiming he merely formalized Puccini's final sketches. However, the copyright date for "Turandot" is now 75 years after Franco Alfano's death in 1954 because of his little edit.

Having conversed with Bob via E-mail lately and had him send me some of his other works, I feel he meant for "Black Dahlia" to be heard in a surround system. Bob is big into multi-channel music and if you spin the multichannel SACD of this, you feel more involved than when you play the two channel mix. However, having said this, I agree with another poster that "Turandot" is Bob's masterpiece. It's crazy that Puccini's estate was able to get it pulled for copyright violation because someone added two bars of music to the opera in 1925. Later, Kevin

Sounds like it could be some kind of "audiophile" thing. There have been several odd things sold that get stuck onto CDs to "stabilize" them. The most popular was a ring around the outside of the disc. I've never heard of one around the center but with these things, anything's possible. Thank god most of these idiotic things went the way of dodo. BTW, I agree that the SH forum member's love for these target CDs has me buying a lot of music that I would not normally buy. I buy them because I figure someone at the SH forums is looking for it. The "hits" (musically) with these old CDs have been few, but they've been worth it. A lot more misses. For instance, I was never a Rickie Lee Jones until I picked up a target of her debut recording. Great stuff. I've since picked up her whole catalog. "Pop Pop" is really good. Rickie backed by Jazz musicians playing standards. Even Joe Henderson gets onto a couple of tracks. Then there's Joni Mitchell. I just can't get into her funeral dirge style. Her voice just doesn't hit me right. I just picked up a super-rare West German red-faced Polydor CD of Roxy Music's "Avalon" because I figure forum members would want it. Thank god because it does nothing for me. Later, Kevin

In general, registry edits are not implemented until you re-boot. The registries are not read except during boot. Later, Kevin

Try this to see if it's what you're looking for. Later, Kevin

Unfortunately, as a juror, you can't ask anything - one of the more frustrating aspects of our judicial system. If the lawyers don't bring it up, you don't find out. In my particular case, I assume that the witness came forward at a later date and the guy who beat up the scawny kid was quite the bully (it come through loud and clear in his testimony) so he was probably able to convince the kid that calling the cops would be a bad idea. But that's supposition on my part. The lawyers didn't ask, so I'll never know. BTW, during the 8 weeks of NH jury duty, I got called onto many juries, but I was kicked off for various reasons. It's easier to get kicked off a jury than it is to get on, so anyone who gets the call and doesn't want to serve, just go and give a plausible reason and you'll get booted. One trial was a woman suing Dunkin' Donuts for serving her a hot coffee in her car that she spilled into her lap while driving down the road. When I got called up, I told the judge flat out that I have no sympathy for the plaintiff and that we often joked about the woman who sued McDonalds for the same thing - I could not be impartial. The judge thanked me for my honesty and took me off. Kevin

Dan, it seems like you want the particulars of cases so.... The first jury I sat on was a civil case for unlawful termination. In reality, it was about an assault by a supervisor on a lousy employee. The scene: Guy habitually late to work at a local newspaper and when working, sucks at it (testimony of supervisor/defendant). The guy comes in late, gets spoken to (yelled at?) rather harshly by the supervisor, so the guy pushes over a stack of papers and goes outside to have a smoke (testimony of plaintiff). The supervisor goes out to tell him he's fired (testimony of supervisor) but instead, proceeds to beat the hell out of the kid (testimony of plaintiff and witness). This witness was clearly a surprise for the defendants (the supervisor and the newspaper company). After the witness testified to a rather startled jury, there was an immediate call for a sidebar. The lawyers convened and the jury was sent to a back room to wait. After about 3 hours, we get the word that there was a settlement and our decision would not be needed. The judge was cool though - he asked us how we were leaning. We all agreed that the weight-lifter supervisor was at fault once he beat up the scrawny employee (although he did deserve it) so we would have ruled for the plaintiff. The judge said that they settled because that's the way they thought we would go. We also asked the judge if we would have been able to get the supervisor into a court-mandated anger management class. The judge said sorry, can't happen. But he would forward our comments to the defendant's attorneys.

My idea.

I was thinking about a combination of the two with the logo smaller and on the upper left breast of the front. Unfortunately, I can't seem to upload my concept idea but it is in my "Uploads" area. Kevin

I've been called to jury duty 4 times. The first two were in Massachusetts and I didn't get on a jury. The last two times were in NH and in both cases, I got to sit on 2 juries. In NH, jury duty is for 4 weeks. You go in on Monday and see if you get on a jury for that week. If you don't, you go home until the next Monday. In 8 weeks, I only got into two juries. One thing I will say about my time in these juries - I used to wonder how OJ's jury acquitted him. Now that I've sat on a few, I no longer wonder. OJ probably could've sued the Goldmans for lost revenue and won with the last group I was with. Several of my fellow jurists were complete morons. You can tell that they don't make you take an intelligence test to sit on a jury. It might be time to start.

The main reason target CDs are collectible is because they are the first CD pressing. However, to my ears, a large majority of these targets sound vastly inferior to later CD pressings. In most cases, it's not even close. Why are they so popular then? It's because many CDs remastered in the past 5-10 years sound even worse. Comparing these crappy-sounding target CDs to the currently available crappier-sounding CD usually favors the crappy-sounding target. The only thing that sounds worse than a target CD is a modern, compressed/limited-to-all-hell CD. And people wonder why the CD is a dying medium? You can't buy the currently available CD if you want decent audio.

Just finished: Stanley Turrentine - Jubilee Shout (LP1) (Blue Note) Now playing: Curtis Fuller - Four On The Outside (Timeless) - I buy anything with Pepper Adams on it. Up next: Richie Kamuca - Richie Kamuca's Charlie (Concord)

Cue up The Beatles... Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four... Happy Birthday Jack!! Kevin

Best free movie player out there is the VideoLAN Player.

I got an E-mail from AUM Fidelity this morning announcing a new "LP only" release of the David S. Ware Quartet's "Live in Vilnius". Only 1000 copies will be pressed. Their last LP release, William Parker's "Petit Oiseau", sold out pretty quickly, although that was only 500 copies. I listened to some samples of the band at an earlier date and it's not my "cup 'o tea", but I thought I'd pass it on. The link: http://www.aumfidelity.com/NBLP4.html Kevin

I think that's one of the reasons I like that album so much. Less clutter It's much easier to hear Grant's contributions. ?? Grant is not on "Another Workout".

DSL modems do die on occasion. I know several people who had connection problems and it took a new modem to fix it. The ISP could also send a reset commend to it. Sometimes it just gets bunged up. Also, is this computer connected to the DSL modem directly or are you connected through a router or wireless network? If you have a direct connection, how is it made? On some DSL modems, you have the choice of USB or ethernet. Ethernet is faster. Kevin

Not many PCs support more than 4 GBs of RAM and if you're running Windows XP, it won't let you do much with anything over 2 GBs. Rule of thumb is Windows XP, 2 GB RAM - Windows Vista, 4 GB RAM. BTW, for Dan's case, 504 MB of RAM is not enough and it is a very unusual number which makes me wonder how it got there. Also, having only 20 GB of space on a 114 GB hardrive (another weird number) means that it is getting rather full. I would recommend getting an external hardrive and getting a lot of that stuff off your main drive to make it run faster. Lastly, you should consider de-fragging that drive, however, be warned that de-fragging almost 100 GBs of stored data will take a very long time. Kevin

I don't know how long they'll be grandfathered in - the government sold the frequency spectrum to cell phone providers for 4G network transmissions. Once those cell phone towers start transmitting, any TV broadcasts will mess with them. Later, Kevin

What a crappy start to a birthday! It's raining cats & dogs out there this morning. Maybe my first present will be to go back to bed... nah. Gotta go out there in this mini-hurricane. Later, Kevin

Most digital broadcasts are in the UHF band. Therefore, with a set-top digital tuner (free from Uncle Sam), "rabbit ears" should be all you'll need. There will be less need for the extendable antennae from here out. I installed a gov'ment approved free digital STB for a friend of my Mom's and she got way more channels than before and every one came in perfectly. She was ecstatic.

This is not a unique event at Blue Note. People seem to forget about the fiasco with Wayne Shorter's "The Soothsayer". They fixed that one after it had been out for years and never told anyone about it. I had to buy a copy every now & then until I got one with the fixed CD in it. Kevin

Michael - Any chance this music was recorded? Any chance you might want to offer CD-Rs of this recording for sale? Other people are doing it and it seems to be a pretty good way to make a few bucks. I'd buy it.