Mr Info

Razor Shines

I re-upped. Just from the small sample here, it looks like TD & MM may reap a larger season ticket base by installing JP as the QB.

Judging by your posts and replies to other topics, it seems you are an expert in many areas. Here's one Another in here And a whole bunch in here

It is always refreshing to see someone have a civil and considerate discourse without resorting to gross generalizations or acrimonious discussion. No one "wins" these type of discussions and there are no awards. But, I had a chuckle reading your music theory analysis about the Dead.

This is totally unrelated to the original post but may be of interest to any campers in the VA area or plan to visit VA. Kiptopeke State Park near Cape Charles on the south end of the DelMarVa peninsula is a great place to camp. It is clean, well-maintained, and reasonably sized. And the campers are removed from the RVs. You can easily walk to a private beach. They also allow fishing 24 hours from the pier. They turn on lights on the side of the pier for night fishing. From the south it is easily accessed by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel which is a real marvel. There becomes a point on the bridge where no land is visible in any direction. Because of its small size, spaces are reserved well ahead so plan if you want to camp there. A good place for a relaxing, yet fun, vacation because there is not the typical tourist craziness due to its location.

Hey, Marv's Neighbor, did you know he is selling his place in Williamsburg? Or are you Marv's Neighbor in Chicago?

Right now The Stooges are available in the free section of On Demand on Comcast. There are about 10-12 episodes out there.

Drew's wearing a Dead t-shirt, drinking beers, and having some fun. He's a party boy. Go Drew...dammit, seems like an OK guy to hang with - just wish he had "it" and we could look forward to relying on him to take the team to the promised land.

I am going to comment on this post but there are a couple others like this one, too. We looked at these resources, too, but they were more meant for the tract-type house rather than the custom house. "This Old House" is more appropriate for serious custom building than these others. But it's renovation rather than new construction. But the level of detail they are delve into is more like the research we did. Unless you are an experienced home builder, a custom home should not be your first project. Our home builder, with 30 years experience, (and his sub-contractors) had never heard of or were unfamiliar with the some of the suppliers and products we chose. Most GCs, electricians, hvac, trim people, etc. are very familiar and comfortable with the products they use. And they are good products but, in a custom home, maybe there are better products that suit what you are trying to do and they are simply not experienced with these. Now, you could hire an architect and an interior designer to do all this for you and have them work with the builder and contractors. But this book is meant for those who want something special but hiring architects and interior designers are beyond their budget.

Thanks - I had looked around and I could not find a similar book but I missed this one and I don't want to copy someone else's work. "Dreams to Beams: A Guide to Building the Home You've Always Wanted" by Jane Moss Snow. The paperback is readily available and inexpensive. But I am going to send you a PM before I buy it. I am interested in the TOC - our target audience may be different. And this book is 15 years old.

We are building a house and considering writing a book that would be entitled something like "Custom Building a House on a Budget". This is not intended as a LAMP but rather whether I should spend the time and energy on writing something that few people are interested in reading. We have been repeatedly asked by friends and acquaintances that see the house as to where we obtained certain things, who are architect was, and so on and so forth. To make a long story short, we spent a great deal of time on products, suppliers, and vendors to determine how we could get the greatest bang for our buck in building a custom house. We picked everything from the windows, flooring, and doors to the switch plates, mouldings, casings, balusters, data cabling, etc. The book is intended to be for someone acting as a GC or for someone who hires a GC. We did the latter and stayed very close to our budget by looking at most items as commodities and getting the best price for an item from anywhere around the country. If you're building a custom house you expect to have a custom builder instead of a tract builder but we plan on offering suggestions on determining the flexibility of the GC before you hire. We have had some pitfalls with our GC but they have been correctable and just helps with providing more material for a book. After viewing the thread on How old is everyone??, it appears there is a diverse population here so this may be a better sampling than our friends. I am not looking to make a buck but it would have helped us if a book like this had been available. But I do not want to write it for my own satisfaction - I have plenty of other things to occupy any free time. It may be that people are happy with letting the builder make all the decisions for them. Some people have told us just that. Thanks for any feedback. Tony

Pooj, PM me some contact info. I know the CEO of Cavalier phone and will get to the bottom of this and have them contact you or tell you who to call. And this interests me as I will be moving within a few months and will be disconnecting my cable broadband and going to satellite and DSL. Tony

Donna Jean Godchaux-Mackay is still singing in the Heart of Gold Band along with the son she had with Keith. Before she joined the Dead, she was a background singer for Elvis, Etta James, Boz Scaggs, Neil Diamond and others. Hard to believe she could sound so awful at times. But I am sure the drugs and alcohol didn't help. One favorite memory of a Dead show was when Keith was toasted and hunched over his piano just plink-plunking on one note and Jerry came over and gave him a stiff kick in the ass. It didn't help much and the roadies helped him off during a space jam and he returned more focused a bit later.

Very true...but those latter two are so disappointing to me that I don't have them. Waters wrote 90% of their music and he wanted to pack it in even before The Wall came out. Instead he booted Wright out of the band. Waters defines the embattled, tortured musician. But I read a recent interview and he has mellowed somewhat after the protracted legal battle with the rest of the band. But I don't believe you will ever see him and Gilmour having tea and crumpets together. I won't be surprised if TheMadCap chimes in on this, too.

I'm checking but it may take me a couple of days. I have some acquaintances that worked in London and Nottingham. I am not sure they are still there but may have some US friends that are.

I can understand everybody's concern with IT outsourcing but oursourcing is not limited to IT and impacts nearly every aspect of the economy. Everyone is looking to cut costs. Sorry to see that you had a bad experience. I own a software development shop in the US but my staff is in China (I used to work in Shanghai for a large US corporation). But none of our jobs has been to replace people here in the states. In all cases, either there was not enough IT staff to perform the development or web designers did not wish to do the coding. The latter preferred design work over programming. We are a temp agency for software development. There are certain functions that are difficult to offshore in IT, such as operations, but they can outsource or "re-badge" (EDS, IBM, etc.). I will give you my perspective of where IT offshoring, for the most part, is headed. If I were a US IT software professional, I would look to become a software design or architecture person. Designing and creating the specifications for an application are parts that companies want to keep "in house". Then passing them off to whomever performs the development and monitoring and checking those deliverables in the production environment are also important "in house" functions. Just like foreign firms in Asia have become the producers of a great number of physical commodities for the US (and other nations), so will the production of software follow a similar vein. The US firms have become the so-called "brains" behind the design of products and the Asian firms are the "brawn". I have made generalizations and there are certainly exceptions to what I have stated but the world is getting smaller and certain adaptations are necessary.

It's good to hear that - congrats - and keep going, you'll do it. I dropped 25 lbs three years ago and have not gained it back. I did not use the fad diets, instead I exercised more, cut back the amount of food, and dropped snacks. Now, my diet has morphed into one that is low on fats, protein, salt, and sugar and uses low glycemic index complex carbs (rye/pumpernickel/grain breads, oatmeal, spinach pasta, etc.), fresh veggies, and fruit. Sure, I still have wings, pizza, and a Zweigles but that is an exception relegated to some Sundays. My cholesterol is 25% lower and I recently ran a 7:08 minute mile. In my mid-forties, I am pleased with that but my goal is mid sixes. Eating healthy is not too difficult at home but presents a challenge when you go out. But once you understand caloric and diet nuances, you can find something on a menu that tastes good and is relatively healthy. It can be done solo but it helps if your partner is into the weight loss thing and healthy diet modification. My wife is also athletic and in amazing shape and has adapted her cooking to this healthy diet. She didn't need to lose weight but wanted to eat healthier. Another impact is that my children look to eat healthy, too. They will eschew a pastry and select a fruit. The veggie selection is still limited for them but they always like fresh carrots and broccoli.

I agree with staying at a Disney property because it is so convenient. But waiting for the buses in the morning and evening can be a pain. My .02 - pick a location (Epcot, Animal Kingdom, etc) where you will go for a day and get up early and drive there right before it opens. You will get a fairly close parking spot and will not have to wait for the buses going there and coming back. Since you are staying in Disney, parking is free at their parks. For about the first 2 hours in the morning, we (kids and us) were able to get in the popular rides without waiting. And read the nuances about using Fast Pass. Once you get the hang of it, use it to get on a ride right away when the lines are 2 hours long.

Wow - this is another monumental decision in 2005, go to SD or NO? The last SD trip was a hoot. Parts of the trip to Tijuana are still in remission but I remember Cipro being sold everywhere "We have Cipro - No prescription required" because of the anthrax scare. That was Halloween weekend and we dressed up at the tailgate party in rubber football masks with Buffalo horns. But the painted breasts in Bills colors (who was that?) at the tailgate was the best "costume". It was nice to meet up with some of the regulars here - Bob Lamb, AKC, Hardy, Jay, and others. Found out that Steve Christie is quite the partier.

Nick, If she wants to get things moving on her site and a professional impression is important to her, it might be best to have someone experienced with e-commerce enable it for her. Then you could look at the source and add some things, enable others, etc. If there is no quick desire to have this up, I suggest you look at some books by Jennifer Niederst. I own an off-shore company (but, then you are already off-shore), Chone, LLC, that does software development. Mostly, we augment staff or perform the actually coding for web designers. I'll send you a PM with some of our costs. I can guarantee you that you will not be able to find better talent at a better price. By the way, don't know how much international calling you do but have you checked out Skype? It's the rage in Europe & Asia. I call and teleconference my staff for free using it. Tony

Look at Totem Acoustic if you want speakers that look like furniture yet sound amazing.

Here, here... my favorite post, so far, of 2005.

I can't believe the Bills would consider using Bledsoe as a marketing tool this offseason for season ticket sales. If they did, there might be a decline in sales. Marketing's gotta be on Willis and Evans. Tough situation for MM and TD - good team core but do you stick with Drew or give an unproven and untested JP the helm? I am sure the lack of performance by DB in big games and against good defenses is not lost on them. I guess they keep hoping that he'll break out of the funk. I am not going out on a limb by saying this but I think JP and DB will be splitting time with the first team in mini-camp and pre-season though DB will be the "official" starter. I guess we'll see where it goes from there. But, my sources also tell me that JP better become a "student" of the game and not simply believe that his talent will do it for him.

Having worked in research in the pharmaceutical industry, count me in as skeptical about this product. It contains antioxidants, vitamins, herbal ingredients, and other OTC ingredients. I believe some natural remedies are efficacious or, rather, there is a chemical in them which is effective. But using vitamins to prevent colds & flus goes back to some work Linus Pauling had done many years ago but has never been clinically proven. None of the ingredients in this have been clinically demonstrated to prevent influenza. On the other hand it has been demonstrated, in limited studies, that positive or optimistic thinking may provide benefits in battling some afflictions. Perhaps thinking that this medicine will stop your flu causes the body to offer a better defense mechanism. OTOH, your can ingest as many herbal remedies and be as positive thinking that you want and it will never prevent a type 1 diabetic from requiring insulin. But still people buy Enzyte and Enhansulin and snake-oil hair remedies - P.T. Barnum was correct. I would go with the clinically proven remedies. I had seen where flu shots were now available in many states. I would do some more checking around. I received one about a month ago and have had no flu though those around me have had one or two.

It's gotta happen. BTW - got your check today.