CarlSeibert

And what of the person who already HAS two 'tables?

Gutenberg tweeted this today - at the very moment I was looking for a picture to illustrate a story that said it was too bad Tebow has become irrelevant in the NFL. My cat says she'll endorse headphones if the price is right.

Happy Birthday!!!

That's more reasonable. Still a bunch of money for a discontinued product. Then.... http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B002LARRDA/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new I don't know what any of these guys will eventually get, but my plan to buy two spares when the price slid south part $150 looks to be pretty much shot in the ass. I just ordered a PogoPlug. We'll see how it works.....

Courtesy of R2DF in Stereophile I had never heard of this guy.

So now SBTs are going for thirteen hundred bucks on the secondary market. But on a hopeful note we now have: http://vortexbox.org/content/149-Logitech-SqueezeBox-replacement-for-under-30 Have I mentioned lately that the VortexBox people rock.......

Oh my.

Dusty - you and Luvbug had a great run. It just doesn't get any better than that. It hurts like hell when we lose one (heck. I'm weeping and I never even met the critter) but the love is so worth the pain. Hang in there.

Congrats Jacob! It looks like I will get back the thousand bucks that an ethically challenged health care provider stole out of my bank account. In addition to having the thousand bucks again, that means I won't have to do all the mean things to that company that I would have otherwise. I will do some mean things to them to anyway. Protect the public and all that.

Interesting. If it turns out to sound pretty good it would be nice to see it sold in your friendly local record store instead of those dreadful plastic things you usually see.

Happy Birthday!!

Oops. Here's the image

Frank Morgan. Listen to the Dawn

At Sky Harbor. Waiting for plane home after visiting sister, brother in law and mom. All around a good day. Merry Christmas everyone!

I just took a look at the New York Times story. "Angry and combative"?? Blame society, video games and everybody but...? Ya think maybe this LaPierre guy needs a little refresher in crisis PR? What a fucking moron. I'm dumbstruck. The NRA is supposed to to be the slickest lobby since the invention of slime. This is schoolyard stuff. Unless there's some secret, common sense defying new set of parameters and I missed the memo, these guys are doing a huge disservice to their constituency.

I don't think that's a dumb idea at all. There are any number of statistically dangerous activities that turn out to be safer - orders of magnitude safer - for people who spend a lot of money on them, join a club, or attain some sort of expertise. Think bicycling. We know that the concealed weapons permit folks people are pretty trustworthy. But licensing for all gun ownership wouldn't fly second amendment-wise. (Nor do I think it should, frankly). A hefty tax might have the desired effect and heaven knows, the government could use the dough. (Of course it's an open question whether they'd use it on health care or war.) I agree that we present a lot of images that are damaging. Video games, most of entertainment, books, even. Most of that we can't do anything about. It's a reflection of who we are. To become a totalitarian place where art and entertainment are heavily censored would be, well, a worse reflection. On the other hand, there are some things that we can control and we ought to. Has anybody looked at a policeman lately? Arrested development cases posturing to look like killers. Nice role model work there. Would it hurt to lose the storm trooper/ outlaw biker get-ups? All our heroes seem to be the people who operate outside the rules. Cold hearted violent killers way too often. That's stuff that authority figures can actually control. Without subjugating anybody, without eroding the liberties that are (or were) the underpinnings of our society, and maybe, just maybe, with effect.

And therein lies the rub. How would we do such a thing? And would it be morally acceptable if we had the means? Many people would argue that, apart from some really extreme, nonfunctional folks, even crazy people should have a shot at being responsible for their own destinies.

Very likely, there really isn't. That's part of what makes this so frustrating. We should probably being doing less rather than more, since we are making victims out of countless people who will never encounter any real physical threat. The murder rate is falling, along with the crime rate in general. And these sorts of attacks are not becoming more common, even though it sure seems that way. (My own newspaper, by the way, is under-covering this story by just about any measure. Maybe we're doing a good thing by our own sloth.) I think Dusty observed that this guy walked in the front door. There was no back way in. Apparently, there was no back way out, either. That's one of the things that bothers me about the way schools are built. In almost every one of these cases, the attacker manages to corner a whole classroom full of people and have his way with them. Self defense experts teach people that if their home is attacked, the first choice is to get out and run like crazy.

No Dinny, the cheetah.

I'm pretty much with Dan on this, but maybe for slightly different reasons. When 9/11 happened, it wasn't two hours before the talking heads were gleefully blathering about how many freedoms we should be willing to give up because of the attack. Not to do something about the attack, just because of it. And the answer was lots. Just because. I felt physically sick when I heard that on that day. I feel physically sick when I think about it today. We shouldn't have given up any freedoms that day. Not the stupidest, teeny weeniest ones. We should have grown a backbone and stood up to those clowns. Every time a policeman had to go through due process, he should have whistled a happy tune knowing he was sticking it to al Qaeda, showing them they were powerless to fuck with us. If we react in frustration to this, we're letting some astonishingly vile little person set our agenda for us. I say absolutely not. I think there are things we could do to rationalize gun regulation, but now very specifically is not the time to even think about it. We need to make a show of not being afraid, of not being cowed by murderous lunatics or fear-mongering talking heads. (And rationally, there's not a lot of risk here. Mass murderers kill about 150 people every year, and the number isn't trending up. That's about on par with the rarest of rare diseases. ) All that said, I do think there's something very, very wrong with how we secure our schools nowadays. I'm so glad I don't have kids. Every kid in elementary school knows - knows for real - what "lock down" means. In a decent society, only people in prison should know that. We've lost the battle before the first threatening circumstance even happens.

Tapatalk now seems to be working on both my IOS phone and Android tablet. Thanks Todd!

John, it's just you. They want you as a customer in an obsessive, stalker kind of way. They'll buy every carrier in America if they have to. It's a little creepy.

Sprint called back, right on schedule, for the third time, to check on the status of my phone problem. (A cell was down so our mobiles ceased working in our house. It was fixed relatively promptly.) What's got into their customer care department? The service was stunningly, shockingly good. They've always been pretty good for the thousand line customer, but I called this in as a schmo with two phones on a family plan. If you can't depend on crappy service from your cellphone carrier , what's the world coming to?

Has Tapa talk been acting strangely for anybody else? Today on both my Android tablet and my IOS phone, when I touch a thread, the newest posts displayed are several years old. 2011 in what-did-you-do-today and 2006 in DIY gallery. Oddly, the last posts shown on the threads menu page are the real latest posts. From a browser, everything works OK.

Happy Birthday!