Dave Garrett

fwiw, ConAgra is accepting lids for refunds, as are local grocers. My parents had a jar that my mom had already eaten a spoonful out of, but my dad said that the local Kroger he'd purchased it at refused to give him a refund. I told him he should've asked to speak to the store manager and raised hell about it - I can't believe that would actually be store policy for something like this.

If you have a bad back, like Jim does, it's not too much money. Chronic pain is a bitch, and avoiding more expensive medical treatment, if you can, is a good thing. For what it's worth, Aerons can be had for considerably cheaper than list price - I've seen them for $400-500 before. eBay's a good place to start for anyone really interested in getting one. And no, I don't have an Aeron at home (although I do at work). But I've been considering a major upgrade to the computer chairs in our house, as they're both cheap $60-70 big-box office supply jobs that probably outlived their usefulness at least five years ago. I can sit in my Aeron at work for hours on end without fatigue or discomfort, but more than an hour or two in the chairs at home and my back starts to protest.

It was 90 minutes. Here's what you missed: Strayhorn heroically rescues Ellington by largely doing all the work on "Anatomy of a Murder" and "Paris Blues" Then Strayhorn heroically helps lead the civil rights movement with Lena Horne. Then he gets sicks, heroically fights his illness, visits Paris for the last time, writes "Blood Count" and then dies (heroically). Our local PBS affiliate screwed the pooch on this one - somewhere between 2-5 minutes before it ended, they somehow cut to a completely unrelated children's program, and by the time someone presumably figured out they'd screwed up and cut back to the Strayhorn program, it was already over and the post-credits "funding by..." scroll was winding down.

Abebooks.com (formerly the Advanced Book Exchange, hence the acronym) is based in Canada. From the linked thread, it sounds like this may have been a new-book purchase, and Caiman is one of the members of their supply network for new books. I have no experience with that end of their business, but they've been my preferred tool for locating used/rare books for years, and I've bought hundreds of books through their site with very few problems. Book dealers pay a fee to list their stock on Abebooks, who then serve as a middleman for payment processing when a customer places an order through the Abebooks site. Alibris, unlike abebooks, collects a large markup from buyers, and if I'm not mistaken, make it difficult if not impossible to directly contact the seller, at least prior to a sale occurring. It's a revealing exercise to use one of the book meta-search engines like Bookfinder.com to run a search for a particular book; it's frequently easy enough to identify the same book from the same dealer listed on multiple services (usually the description is identical), and quite eye-opening to see the price differential between the listing on abebooks and the one on Alibris. I don't believe Alibris used to gouge buyers like this in the early days of online rare book services (back when Interloc was just starting to establish a web presence for itself), but it's been so long since I've purchased a book using Alibris that I can't recall with certainty.

Bingo. I don't do a lot of selling on eBay, mainly buying, but from various comments I've read over the years from regular eBay sellers who use Paypal, that is exactly what you should do. IIRC, Paypal is not subject to banking regulations, and they have strenuously protested over the years that they are not a bank and should not be subject to those regulations, despite having every appearance of engaging in many of the same financial activities that banks do. So they can get away with things that a regular bank would be slapped down hard for by federal regulators. The bank account linked to my Paypal account only has a token balance in it, just enough to keep the account active, and on the rare occasions I do sell something on eBay, I don't leave the received payment in my Paypal account or the bank account attached to it for very long. It is far too easy for an unscrupulous buyer to receive an item and then file a non-receipt claim with eBay/Paypal, and before you can react, Paypal has reversed the payment out of your account. Even if you used delivery confirmation, it's a potential hassle I prefer to minimize the chance of getting burned by. The reverse applies as well - if you're buying a big-ticket item, it's better to fund the Paypal payment with a credit card (despite the nagging screen you'll get urging you to reconsider doing so when you send the payment). If you get burned, and the seller has emptied his Paypal account of funds, you may not get your money back. If you pay with a CC, you can initiate a chargeback with your CC company. The caveat here is that Paypal really, really dislikes chargebacks, and is liable to close your account for doing so. But if the amount involved is large enough, it can be worth that risk. If you do a bit of googling, you'll find page after page of complaints against Paypal. Many of them are typical half-cocked rants by people who failed to read the fine print on the terms of service when they signed up, but there are many others that are IMO quite valid. For what it's worth, I've never had any real problems with Paypal itself, and have only been ripped off for small amounts of money on a handful of occasions where Paypal was unable to recover any of the funds.

Yep, and they used to be in a box together, until they lost the license. I was in the market for the box until I saw it going on ebay for $250. i was lucky to get that box for my B-day from my wife a few years back. does anyone else have this set? i always wondered why each DVD has a round punch hole thru the barcode ? I was thinking they did this so retailers couldn't sell the dvd's individually ? I have this one too - it's a fantastic set. Criterion only had a very brief licensing window for these titles, and there was some discussion about this shortly after the set's release, so I didn't wait too long to pick it up, knowing that it was going to be out of print soon. The same thing happened with their release of Peckinpah's STRAW DOGS. Your supposition about the punchouts through the barcodes is correct. This set and Universal's amazing Alfred Hitchcock: The Masterpiece Collection containing his later films are pretty much essential for Hitchcock lovers. His early British films are available on various cheap public-domain DVDs using source materials/transfers of marginal quality, but I think I recall reading somewhere that there are plans in the works for a higher-quality set of those as well.

PM sent.

Just placed an order. Thanks for the tip! Ditto. Well, I got the book today, and it is indeed very nice and clearly a labor of love, but the dustjacket was really beat up. I don't mean a little bit - it almost looks like it was removed, crumpled up and then straightened out as best as possible and put back on the book. The book itself is in better shape, but the base of the spine is banged up and there's a scrape across the front cover. In short, it looks like a used book. I expect better for $45. I'm going to email Cadence and see what they have to say. I'd be interested to know if your copy looks any better when you receive it from them.

Just placed an order. Thanks for the tip!

Not entirely uncommon with interlibrary loans, especially for rare and/or valuable books. Sometimes the lending library will also put restrictions on the loan, such as allowing the book to be sent to your local library but stipulating onsite viewing only there - no checkout. The online form I fill out on my local library's website to request an ILL has a field where you're supposed to indicate the maximum amount you're willing to pay to borrow the book, if the lending library charges a fee. I usually put $5.00, and I've only had to pay that once out of many requests. I don't mind paying $5.00 to borrow a book that would be prohibitively expensive to buy (or one I'm not yet sure that I want to buy), but as I mentioned previously, $20 is a different story. Thanks to everyone that responded.

Anyone have the Great Black Music: Ancient to the Future book about the AEC? As the link indicates, it's apparently no longer available via the AEC's website, at least temporarily. It was $50 when it was available, and the price caused me to hesitate a bit too long before it was either sold out or went out of print. I recently tried to borrow a copy via interlibrary loan, only to have my local library inform me that the library owning the copy they'd located wanted a $20 fee to lend it. I declined, figuring that if I were going to have to pay $20, I'd just as soon wait until I located another copy for sale. So, for those of you who've read the book, what's the verdict - essential, disposable, or somewhere in between?

Apparently Savvis (one of the larger US hosting providers) had a major network outage affecting a couple of its data centers, which knocked Lycos and Tripod offline. More details in this Computerworld article.

This was going around my wife's office here in Houston a couple of weeks ago, but fortunately she managed to avoid catching it. Not so fortunately, my mom wound up with a marginally milder version...on Christmas day. Needless to say, she wasn't up to eating much of a Christmas dinner. Must be a Texas thing, as I haven't heard much about it going on anywhere else yet.

I don't have it yet, but the 4-disc version is on its way to me - I didn't preorder and was waiting for a full tracklisting to become available to make a decision as to which one to get (tracklisting for both the 2- and 4-disc versions is here). So far, I haven't seen anything but rapturous reviews of either set (you may want to take a look at the zappa.com forums). Both sets contain the original vinyl stereo mix of the album, and everyone seems to agree that it's indisputably the best this title has ever sounded on CD. I think which one you get depends on how much you're into FO - serious fans will probably want the 4-disc one. Unfortunately, there are several tracks on the 2-disc one that are not on the 4-disc one, so if you're a completist, you'll want both; as much as I love FO, I'm only getting the 4-disc version unless I eventually run across a deal too good to turn down on the 2-disc one - I'm simply not going to pay $32 for a handful of unique tracks. One other thing to consider is that the 4-disc set is a limited edition, and I'm guessing there were a lot of other people who didn't preorder but were waiting until it was released and more details were available as to the actual contents to order a copy, so if you think you want one, I'd recommend not waiting too long.

Yeah? Then what the hell does it mean to a woman? Depends on which side of the plate she's swinging from.

My wife isn't a collector at all, and gets irritated with the amount of crap I have around the house - unfortunately, in addition to music, I have large book and video collections as well. I still have the vinyl I acquired in high school and college, but there ain't no way I'm going to be able to set up a vinyl rig again until I downsize something else. Before we were married, she used to work for a local nonprofit that put on classical concerts; they eventually branched out into jazz shows as well, a move which proved extremely popular. Thanks to her position there, I got to see (off the top of my head) Jaki Byard, Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Jacky Terrasson, Cyrus Chestnut, and Roy Hargrove, among others. But she's much more of a casual music fan than I am, and, as others have mentioned in regard to their spouses, she doesn't have a lot of tolerance for the more "out" stuff - let's just say that I don't often play Cecil Taylor when she's around.

You'll never find a TV that's been properly set up on display in a big box store. Almost without fail, they all will have the brightness and contrast jacked way, way up so they will stand out under the bright fluorescent lighting. It's almost impossible to tell under such conditions how a TV will really look once it's installed in your living room and the settings cranked down to something approaching reality. And if you're really intent on tweaking a set so it'll perform to its maximum ability, you'll want to have it professionally calibrated by an ISF-certified technician - these guys have special tools and intimate knowledge of TV service menus so that they can make setup changes that aren't accessible via the standard controls.

How many CDs do you have? 160GB isn't much space when it comes to storing uncompressed WAV files, and even if you use one of the lossless compression formats like FLAC, you're only going to gain probably a 30-40% reduction in file sizes. You don't even want to think about a lossy compression format like MP3, which you could conceivably cram a medium-sized CD collection onto a 160GB drive with, unless you're prepared to sacrifice a lot of sound quality. The bigger issue is this: hard drives have a finite lifespan, and it's typically only a few years. You'd need to have two copies of everything backed up onto separate drives to be reasonably safe against failure. CDs don't degrade or wear out if they're handled properly. Hard drives eventually fail even if they're properly cared for. Of course, it sounds like you've got a bigger issue on your hands - if my wife were to bring this up, my counterargument would be "but that's what the shelf space is for".

My parents are both in their 70s. A couple of years ago, their old Chrysler econobox had far outlived its usefulness, and it was time to buy a new car. With the exception of a Beetle in the mid-60s, they had never owned a non-American car. I, on the other hand, have been a loyal Honda owner for close to 20 years, and recommended to my dad that he test-drive an Accord. But they headed off to the Mercury dealer, hell-bent on getting a new Sable. Long story short, the salesman at the Mercury dealer pissed my dad off so bad that he swore he'd never again set foot in their dealership, and the next thing I knew, he was emailing me to let me know that a new Accord was sitting in their garage. The way he takes care of cars, it should easily last them for 15 years. But Hondas aren't always an easy switch for someone accustomed to softly-suspended American sedans - their suspension is tuned stiffer for better handling, more like Euro sedans.

Where else but YouTube? Burroughs - Thanksgiving Prayer

Mouse Gestures - Firefox add-on

Both of those are now available at BMG, so they should be showing up at YourMusic soon. I just ordered them from BMG yesterday, along with several other new arrivals: Johnny Griffin - The Congregation Lee Morgan - The Cooker Ike Quebec - It Might As Well Be Spring

They actually did, before having an as-yet-unexplained last-minute change of heart (rumored to be a rights issue, but you'd think those kinds of things would be cleared up well in advance). Some copies actually made it to retailers' shelves; I was lucky enough to find one at Borders the week it was released. There was a plentiful secondary market on eBay for a while, as many people that also found copies cashed in on their luck, but those sources seem to have largely dried up. Newbury Comics is offering several, however, at not too much of a premium: BOOMERANG on eBay

The sandwich part may be new, but doggie ice cream's been around for a while. Frosty Paws

CD Universe has this on sale now for $45.49 - that's the second-best price I've seen on this so far. The best was Wherehouse.com, but that was using a coupon that expired over a week ago - I got it from them for just over $39 shipped. I was planning to use a 30% off Borders coupon before I ran across that deal, but I'd have probably paid full price for it if nothing better turned up - it's that good.