Dave Garrett

Most people have a very limited and inaccurate understanding of probability. There's a reason that the lottery is referred to as the "math tax". The NYT had a piece within the past day or so on why a lottery winner should opt for the annual payments instead of the lump sum. As the vast majority of commenters pointed out, they are simply wrong. Among other things, the advantage you'd have when it comes to investing the winnings by having the lump sum easily trumps getting a larger payout spread out over 30 years. The best thing I've ever read regarding lottery winnings is this thread on Reddit: What to do if you win the lottery

I've been fortunate to have had ready access to the Rothko Chapel for many years (I lived in close proximity to it for most of the 1980s and 1990s), but it's rare to be able to see a significant aggregation of representative works from every phase of his career under one roof. It was definitely one of the more memorable exhibits I've been to in quite some time.

Mark Rothko retrospective at its only US stop. Had been looking forward to this one all year, and it did not disappoint. Also the same day, an exhibit of Dutch Renaissance painter Joachim Wtewael's works. http://www.mfah.org/exhibitions/mark-rothko-retrospective/ http://www.mfah.org/exhibitions/pleasure-and-piety-art-joachim-wtewael/

Edit: never mind, can't seem to embed YouTube videos anymore, they just show up as links. It was a lame joke anyway.

I think Jim's guesses are probably correct - it sounds like your internet connection either went down completely or got extremely slow at some point during the attempted upgrade to Win10, and it caused something in the upgrade to get irretrievably buggered up. The failed restore to Win7 could've been caused by any number of things - no idea there. As far as the seemingly never-ending queue of updates, that's not uncommon if you're restoring back to something approaching factory default settings and then trying to bring it up to current patch levels. When I upgraded my wife's arthritic laptop from Vista to 7 last year, the actual upgrade didn't take all that long, but pulling all the updates down and installing them took several hours and multiple restarts. Windows Update is pretty good about recovering from an unexpected shutdown in the midst of the update process; we've had power outages on several occasions that have forced me to attempt to shut down both of our desktop computers before the batteries in the UPS ran down, and every time there have been updates in the queue that started to install during shutdown. Since the batteries in the UPS are only good for 10 minutes or so, the updates didn't finish installing before the computers ran out of juice and shut down in a suboptimal fashion. As soon as the power came back on, I fired up Windows Update again and it figured out what had been installed and what hadn't, then picked up from there smoothly. IIRC, the default setting is for it to install Important updates - you have to manually select the Optional ones if you want to install them. I recommend treading lightly there, as I've had to roll back Optional updates before (usually new hardware drivers) when they caused my machine to blue-screen immediately upon restart. It pays to click the "more info" link on the Optional updates and determine exactly what they are for before deciding whether to install them or not. If you decide to try the Win10 upgrade again at some point, keep in mind that you will be relinquishing control over the decision to apply non-Optional updates or not - with most non-corporate versions of Win10, Microsoft is forcing users to accept updates, and you will only be able to postpone them for a limited time before you have to install them. They are trying to migrate everyone to a brave new world where the OS becomes just like "software as a service" applications.

Yep. Which pretty much guarantees that multi-CD digipaks (or other packaging made of thin cardstock) are going to get squashed in transit and arrive with, at minimum, a permanently creased spine on the digipak. The last two CD sets I've ordered from Amazon.de had this happen.

For those in the UK/Europe (or those in the US with a multi-region Blu-ray player) and a taste for genre films presented in extras-laden editions that equal Criterion's, Arrow Films is having a nice sale on multi-disc bundles until the 30th. For once, shipping from the UK to the US seems quite reasonable as well. http://www.arrowfilms.co.uk/shop/index.php?route=product/category&path=93

I don't think I've ordered from Mosaic in longer than that, and I still get the catalog. Mine just showed up in today's mail, so don't assume you've dropped off the mailing list just yet.

Assuming these are the books in question:

Yeah, the USPS has been closing/consolidating mail processing centers for at least the past couple of years. These are the bigass facilities where all incoming mail for a city or region is ingested before it gets distributed out to the local post offices and from there to the carriers. They claim there should be no impact to service, but then they turned around and warned people to add a day to the expected delivery window for first class mail. Houston used to have two mail processing centers, one attached to the main post office downtown and another one north of town. They just closed the downtown post office/processing center several months ago, sold the property, and consolidated all operations into the remaining processing center. Hard to believe, but Houston no longer has a post office downtown, just a much smaller facility a few blocks outside of the downtown core. They used to keep the downtown post office open until midnight on April 15th to accommodate last-minute tax filers, so the procrastinators are now going to have to presumably not procrastinate quite so much, or run the risk of a late filing penalty.

Not the same company, but one of the channels that runs lots of old TV sitcoms and dramas from the 50s and 60s (MeTV, probably) used to run a similar catheter ad incessantly late at night. Guess they had established with some confidence that the majority of viewers between midnight and 5am watching shows like Combat, Sgt. Bilko, Dobie Gillis, Route 66, Car 54 Where Are You, and so on were aging boomer males with prostates the size of grapefruit.

If you mouse over the "stuck" quote box, you should see both the quote and the quote box itself outlined in blue, and a popup that says "Hold ctrl and right click for more options". Doing so will reveal a context menu with the options "Remove Quote" and "Remove Quote and Keep Contents". Select the one you prefer, and the quote will disappear. I just happened to stumble upon this (not very obvious) solution after having the same problem on several occasions when attempting to reply to a message.

Thanks for posting the tip about the Deadbase 50 deal. I'd have almost certainly missed it, as I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else. I have a paperback copy of Deadbase IX, and haven't been too inclined to pony up for a printed copy of any newer editions, but for $2.99 I don't have to think about it any longer than it takes to hit the "Buy Now with 1-Click" button.

Yep. What they did to the Astros in game 4 of the ALDS, and what they did to the Jays yesterday, should not have come as a surprise to anyone who saw last year's KC-Oakland WC game.

A great story about an event that transpired at a reading in Illinois earlier this week: http://dangerousminds.net/comments/a_beautiful_story_about_patti_smith

Indeed. It's somewhere between ridiculous and ironic that Houston now has very good baseball and basketball teams, and a perpetually godawful football team, but guess who still gets the lion's share of viewership, let alone media coverage? I just saw a piece last week that claimed that almost twice as many people on average were watching Texans preseason games (featuring mostly second-stringers) than watched the Astros-Yankees wild card game. Football is king in Texas. 'Twas ever thus, and seemingly always will be, unfortunately for those of us who recognize the clear superiority of baseball. I know I'd watch more Astros games if it were possible with any of the cable providers in Corpus Christi, and so would many other fans in this area. This is an Astros market, but since the Astros have been on "Root Sports" and whatever it was before that, they simply aren't available here to watch. They used to be on Fox Sports all the time. So I can understand why the Astros tv market is small, even in Houston over that general timeframe, with some games getting a 0.0 viewership. What still doesn't make sense to me is why Houston is considered a small market for baseball when it's the 4th largest city in the nation. Root Sports took over Comcast SportsNet after the latter's bankruptcy. CSN was collectively owned by Comcast, the Rockets, and the Astros, but most people never got to see televised Astros or Rockets games even in Houston because said ownership wouldn't budge on the carriage fees they were asking from competing providers like DirectTV, Dish Network, and AT&T U-Verse. The upshot was you were screwed if you didn't have Comcast cable, the only provider that carried the channel. Neither side would budge, and CSN eventually went bankrupt without the revenue from the carriage fees. As soon as Root got the remnants, the other providers were able to pick up the rebranded channel, and order was partially restored, but there are a lot of people still pissed off over the whole affair. Collateral damage was that CSN had very good, detailed local sports coverage for lots of other things besides MLB and NBA, all the way down to high school football, all of which went away as that kind of reporting isn't really in Root's wheelhouse. Not for another 15 years or so, according to recent projections. Houston is actually #4 now and Chicago is #3, but growth in Chicago has slowed to a crawl and is still booming in Houston, so most demographers think it's no longer a question of if but when Houston will pass Chicago. There's still plenty of undeveloped/redeveloped land in the Houston area to absorb future growth, which is certainly not the case in Chicago.

Indeed. It's somewhere between ridiculous and ironic that Houston now has very good baseball and basketball teams, and a perpetually godawful football team, but guess who still gets the lion's share of viewership, let alone media coverage? I just saw a piece last week that claimed that almost twice as many people on average were watching Texans preseason games (featuring mostly second-stringers) than watched the Astros-Yankees wild card game. Football is king in Texas. 'Twas ever thus, and seemingly always will be, unfortunately for those of us who recognize the clear superiority of baseball.

Astros locker-room celebration on Sunday after clinching a spot in the wild-card game. Didn't see many mentions of this, aside from the obligatory apology from the TV network for airing the f-bombs. Someone on Reddit suggested that there oughta be "I Love You MFers" t-shirts printed up. I'd sure buy one.

https://holidaymag.wordpress.com/ No recent updates, but there's still plenty of interest there, if Holiday is something you find of interest. Speaking of old magazines, I see that Esquire recently rolled out a digital archive of every back issue on a subscription basis: http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/09/how-esquire-built-esquire-classic-a-new-standalone-digital-archive/

Could be something corrupted in your profile, assuming you already tried the standard drill (rebooting the machine) with no joy. I'm using the latest production versions of both Firefox (41.0) and Flash, and have no issues with Flash videos. Check your Flash plugin to see what it's set to - I prefer "Ask to Activate" as I despise autoplay videos.

An interesting analysis of what's on the 18-disc set from that other forum: http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/bob-dylan-bootleg-series-vol-xii-the-cutting-edge-11-6.387120/page-86#post-13047097 And from Expecting Rain: http://expectingrain.com/discussions/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=85325

Given that the third-party seller is "EBRecords, Inc.", I'd strongly suspect that they *are* ebreggae, and the price before shipping is probably pretty close to their wholesale price. I haven't signed up for a wholesale account, but I know that a lot of people who aren't resellers have done so. They don't seem to really be doing much to discourage anyone from that despite the statement you mention.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/20/arts/music/erroll-garners-concert-by-the-sea-gets-a-new-sound.html Looks like previous speculation as to whether this new release was the harbinger of more to come in the post-Martha Glaser era may have been spot on.

So very sorry, Dan. Our dog passed away last year after a lengthy illness, and 12 years was far too soon for us as well. It always is. I've always loved Robinson Jeffers' poem in remembrance of four-pawed friends that have passed on. May it provide some solace in your time of grief. "The Housedog's Grave" By Robinson Jeffers I've changed my ways a little, I cannot now Run with you in the evenings along the shore, Except in a kind of dream; and you, if you dream a moment You see me there. So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door Where I used to scratch to go out or in, And you'd soon open; leave on the kitchen floor The marks of my drinking-pan. I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do On the warm stone, Nor at the foot of your bed; no, all the nights through I lie alone. But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet Outside your window where firelight so often plays, And where you sit to read -- and I fear often grieving for me -- Every night your lamplight lies on my place. You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard To think of you ever dying. A little dog would get tired, living so long. I hope that you when you are lying Under the ground like me your lives will appear As good and joyful as mine. No, dears, that's too much hope: you are not so well cared for As I have been. And never have known the passionate undivided Fidelities that I knew. Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided . . . . But to me you were true. You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend. I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures To the end and far past the end. If this is my end, I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.

Ernie B's Reggae is the best place for US customers to purchase Bear Family sets. They don't appear to have the 1960-64 set in stock, but they do have the 1955-59 set, and it's $90 cheaper than the price on Bear Family's site: http://www.ebreggae.com/Home.asp?cookieexists=false&FFID=&X3LE=y&X3GE=&X3AE=y&X3RE=&X3ASE=&X3LSE=Bear+Family&X3GSE=&X3AID=&X3AAN=&X3QT=NewSearch&X3NU=&X3RON=&X3KS=y&X3SO=&SearchIDTxt=637571850R80848180S8290249&X3RY=&X3LR=&image1.x=0&image1.y=0&X3A=Nat+King+Cole&X3G=ALL&X3F=ALL&X3R=ALL&X3Y=ALL&X3PR=ALL&X3L=Bear+Family&radAllMusicd=on&radNewOrUsed=on&X3TL=a&X3LEL3=&X3GEL3=&X3AEL3=&X3REL3=&X3ASEL3=&X3LSEL3=&X3GSEL3=&X3AIDL3=&X3AANL3=&X3QTL3=NewReleases7Days&X3AL3=&X3FL3=&X3RL3=&X3RYL3=&X3LL3=&X3GL3=&X3YL3=&X3PRL3=&X3NUL3=&X3RONL3=&X3KSL3=y&X3LRL3=&X3EMIDL3=&X3CBFL3=&X3CBDL3=&X3ARTL=&X3LABL=&X3GENL=&X3RHYL=&X3SR=1&X3P=1&X3CARTCQ=no&ChkSFTxt=&RADBTxt=7&NROTxt=&SSFTxt=&SSSTxt= Even better, click on the tab labeled "Wholesale" and you can set up a wholesale account to get an additional discount as long as your order is over a certain value threshold (I think it's $50, which should be no issue for the majority of BF sets).