Dave Garrett

Not to start an intercity pissing match with the residents of Austin, a wonderful place I've not visited in far too long, but if one is in search of a good meal, there's no place in Texas (and arguably the entire country) that can beat Houston when it comes to variety and quality. Yes, there's an abundance of crappy chain eateries here, but if you're willing to venture off the beaten path, the rewards are plentiful. Exhibit A: Robb Walsh's 100 favorite Houston dishes

That Amazon seller must've been hitting the pipe a little too enthusiastically - there have been several copies on eBay recently and they seem to be averaging around $450-500.

Marginally cheaper at Amazon.uk - I ordered it from them yesterday, and after VAT was deducted and shipping added, my total came out to GBP 52.42, or $84.09 (I have the foreign Amazon sites set up to charge me in USD so as to avoid foreign exchange fees from my credit card company).

Wow. End of one era, beginning of another. Sad I never got a chance to see the band in person, but happy to hear that everyone is pursuing new and equally vital paths. I will treasure the four CDs and DVD as mementos of a really special group.

Not without a hardware mod.

If memory serves, making an Oppo player region-free for standard DVDs is as simple as entering a hidden code, but doing the same thing for Blu-Ray discs requires a hardware modification which may void the warranty. You can buy them already modified from some vendors, or you can get a kit on eBay and DIY - it is apparently not very difficult.

It could very well have died. My (home-built) computer is 9 1/2 years old, and it's on either its third or fourth optical drive. Typically the laser pickups start to crap out, resulting in the inability to read/burn certain kinds of discs, but I've had one that was a mechanical failure - the internal drive belt broke. You could always get a replacement internal drive; they're not that hard to install, and the data transfer rate will most likely be higher than that of an external drive.

I just ran across this earlier today. Far worse than I'd realized, and I already had a pretty low opinion of some of their business practices: The truth about PayPal

Head coach of women's basketball. She held the same position at Duke before coming to UT.

Screw the Pac-10 South. Bring back the Southwest Conference.

I used the recent 40% off coupon to pick up the Rhino Big Star box set at my local Borders. But there's not a lot (music-wise, anyway) there that interests me much anymore. I'm hoping they stock the deluxe Bitches Brew set like they did with the KOB one, and another 40% off coupon comes along then. A couple of the Borders stores in my area still have copies of the big KOB set in their locked cases - no takers even when they had them on sale at 50% off.

I haven't done a comparison of the titles on the LDs and the DVDs, but if I'm not mistaken the DVD set contains a selection of shorts from both of the LD box sets that were released (Swing! Swing! Swing! and Vitaphone Shorts: A 70th Anniversary Celebration, aka Cavalcade of Vitaphone Shorts vols. 1 and 2). The second LD set was very hard to find, and supposedly only a few hundred copies were pressed. It was practically unobtainable if you hadn't gotten it when it was first released, and I was very happy to find a brand-new copy buried in the racks at Lazer Blazer in LA. I still have the LDs, so I haven't felt compelled to get the new DVD, but it's definitely a must-see collection of gems.

His books collecting his columns on math from Scientific American were a formative influence when I was a kid. I had no idea he was still alive. I also had no idea this existed until stumbling across it on Amazon just now, but I'm really tempted to get it so I can revisit some of his work for the first time in almost 35 years.

I have a small sign on the window in our front door asking UPS and USPS (i.e., the regular mailman) to please leave packages not at the front door, where they are exposed to plain view of the street as well as the elements, but at the other door under our carport, where they are much better protected and much less visible to passersby. I used to have few problems with UPS - the local delivery driver we had would without fail leave packages under the carport, even though it meant walking all the way up our driveway with boxes that were frequently heavy (I was still buying a lot of laserdiscs back then). Now, they just ignore the sign and drop all the packages right on the front stoop. Pisses me off, but nothing's disappeared yet, even an electric guitar in an oversized box. And their signature confirmation is a joke. When I track packages online, they always show that the package has been signed for every time, even though it's invariably dropped on the front steps. They don't even ring the doorbell anymore to alert me there's a package out there, on the rare occasions when I'm actually home instead of at work. Both the Postal Service and FedEx are considerably more anal when it comes to signature confirmations.

I was trying to decide on a CD for this morning's commute to work, and without knowing that today was Jackie McLean's birthday, wound up grabbing this one: Serendipity once again manifests itself.

Brian Fies has an interesting analysis of that piece up on his blog here.

So I figured that I wouldn't have to change my bank account number but I would be subject to collection efforts. This is really infuriating but my best option may ultimately be to try to raise another $60 out of my LP listings. And I can't even place negative feedback on this bitch's profile! This is strictly anecdotal, as it's never happened to me, and PayPal may have changed their rules regarding this, but I have heard of many instances in the past where PayPal sucked money out of users' bank accounts without asking when their PayPal balance was insufficient to cover a claim. I believe it used to be explicitly stated in their T&C that they reserved the right to do so. That is why you should never have your primary bank account linked to a PayPal account. They may require you to have a bank account in order to use their service, but smart PayPal users will set up a bank account exclusively for use with PayPal, maintain only the minimum balance in it sufficient to keep the account active (in my case, around $50), and sweep the PayPal account of incoming funds as soon as they clear. eBay and PayPal are definitely gamed in favor of buyers these days, and their seller protection policies are a joke.

Was hoping to make it to the Houston date later today, but I'm flying out on a business trip very early Monday morning and still have some work to finish before then.

Well alrighty then! Did you happen to notice who distributed it??? The fabulous Treniers. Any relation to the plain ol' Ordinary Treniers!??? Not sure this could be called ordinary, but...

I used to practically live off Bustelo and Marlboro Reds. Quit smoking at least 15 years ago, and essentially gave up caffeine a couple of years ago after being strongly advised to by my doctor. I'll occasionally have a Coke or iced tea, but no more high-octane coffee - now it's decaf espresso for me (and I'm fully aware of the cognitive dissonance those two words tend to inspire when put together). Never knew Bustelo had an instant version, but if it's comparable to the regular stuff it's gotta be good!