I was planning to buy a flat panel monitor a couple of months ago when my computer decided to give me problems. After an extended stay in the service department it came home with a new hard drive (magically, it was twice the size of the one it replaced) but took the $$ I'd saved for the monitor.
So I was going to treat myself to a monitor with a portion of my income tax refund. I'm looking around but haven't decided on which monitor to get. Probably a good thing. This morning when I went to play the tape of last night's Davd Letterman, the vcr that taped it turned off after I pressed play. It played fine in the vcr that will only tape in 2-hour mode (so is pretty useless for taping but is fine for copying tapes). Since it played in the 2nd vcr, my guess is the problem is with the vcr, not the tape (I haven't tested any other tapes yet). And it may not be long before it won't tape any more either.
Now the question is - do I buy a new vcr? a dvd recorder? upgrade my digital box to a pvr? The latter isn't an affordable option - either $400 for the box or an extra $20/month on my cable bill.
I want to be able to multichannel tape. Can I do this with a dvd recorder or a pvr?
Friday, March 30, 2007
I love a good sale!
Yesterday I decided it was long past time to get a new pair of Reebok's so at lunch time I headed over to the el cheapo department store. I don't go there often but whenever I do, it seems that what I want to buy is on sale. This week it was buy one pair of footwear, get the other (equal or lesser value) for half price.
I was hoping to spend no more than $50 for one pair of Reeboks but figured I may as well take advantage of the deal and get 2 pairs. Found 2 pairs in my size that I liked. One pair was $60, the other was $40. By my math, the total should have been $80 before tax. My total was just under $53 after tax! I was charged half price for each pair!
I was hoping to spend no more than $50 for one pair of Reeboks but figured I may as well take advantage of the deal and get 2 pairs. Found 2 pairs in my size that I liked. One pair was $60, the other was $40. By my math, the total should have been $80 before tax. My total was just under $53 after tax! I was charged half price for each pair!
Movies I'm Looking Forward to Part 2
I went to Reign Over Me last week (I actually paid for this one; it wasn't a preview) and saw some previews that looked good.
Georgia Rule - http://imdb.com/title/tt0791304/ - Jane Fonda, Felicity Huffman, Dermott Mulroney - great cast!
Waitress - http://imdb.com/title/tt0473308/
Georgia Rule - http://imdb.com/title/tt0791304/ - Jane Fonda, Felicity Huffman, Dermott Mulroney - great cast!
Waitress - http://imdb.com/title/tt0473308/
Friday, March 23, 2007
Houdini poisoned?
The article doesn't mention that Houdini wasn't autopsied because he was Jewish.
From Yahoo! News:
Houdini poisoned? Remains to be exhumed
By LARRY McSHANE, Associated Press Writer
Get ready for "CSI: Houdini." A team of forensic experts will pore over the exhumed remains of renowned escape artist Harry Houdini to determine whether he was murdered more than 80 years ago, the head of the investigative team said Friday.
"Everything will be thoroughly analyzed," promised James Starrs, dean of the disinterment dream team of pathologists, anthropologists, toxicologists and radiologists. "We'll examine his hairs, his fingernails, any bone fractures."
Legal paperwork necessary to dig up Houdini's body from a New York City cemetery will be filed Monday to get the process started, said Joseph Tacopina, an attorney representing Houdini's family. It could take months before the body is exhumed, although the process should move faster because the family and cemetery officials support the plan, he said.
Houdini died at age 52 on Halloween 1926, days after the athletic magician was repeatedly punched in the stomach by a college student testing the performer's abdominal muscles.
His death certificate listed him as a victim of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. No autopsy was performed, though, and rumors that he was murdered started almost immediately.
"The Secret Life of Houdini," a biography published last year, revisited the rumors and detailed the injection of "an experimental serum" into Houdini shortly before his death at Detroit's Grace Hospital.
The authors suggest the likeliest suspects were members of a group known as the Spiritualists. The magician devoted large portions of his stage show to exposing the group's fraudulent seances.
Houdini received an assortment of death threats from the Spiritualists over his final years.
In the Houdini biography, authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman explore a November 1924 letter in which one of the movement's devotees, Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle, said Houdini would "get his just desserts very exactly meted out ... I think there is a general payday coming soon."
The exhumation plan received support from Anna Thurlow, the great-granddaughter of "medium" Margery, whose husband Dr. Le Roi Crandon was one of the Spiritualist movement's biggest proponents and one of Houdini's enemies.
"At the very least, there was a group of people who wished Houdini harm," said Thurlow, who was forced to consider that her ancestors may have been murderers. "Whatever the answer is, it (exhumation) will resolve this mystery."
Starrs, who presided over the exhumations of gunslinger Jesse James and "Boston Strangler" Albert DeSalvo, said that if Houdini was poisoned with heavy metals — arsenic or mercury, for example — there should be evidence of that more than eight decades later.
"I wouldn't be involved if I simply thought this was bringing a rabbit out of a hat," he said.
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Radio Station Points
I collect points on several of the local radio stations. You get these points by knowing songs that were played at certain times, listeners' names that were said on the air, bonus codes, doing online surveys, clicking on advertisers' websites. Points can then be exchanged for prizes - movie passes, dvds, concert tickets, radio station merchandise, etc.
Until yesterday I was only successful at getting movie passes. They're pretty easy - between the radio stations, newspapers, moviecontests.com, and whoever else gives them out - there are more passes to get than there are seats in the theatres. The production company wants a "sell out". Of the 5 premieres I've been to with passes, I think people were only turned away from one.
But I digress.
Whenever I've tried to win a dvd or concert tickets, I'm lucky if I can log in to the station's website or, if I can, if I can even get the chance to click on the "buy" button. Usually I don't see the button and by the time the page refreshes, the item is sold out. Twice I've been able to click on the "buy" button but the item was sold out before my transaction completed.
Yesterday I got lucky. One of the stations doesn't post the onsale time on their webpage - you have to listen to the station. I don't. But I noticed they were selling (out) their basketball movies yesterday and just happened to be on the page when the "buy" button was displayed for "Hoosiers" (2DVD version). Clicked and won!
Of course now I don't have many points left on that station and probably won't have enough when the Stargate Atlantis 2nd season DVD boxset goes on sale. But there will be lots of bonus codes this weekend so maybe I will.
Until yesterday I was only successful at getting movie passes. They're pretty easy - between the radio stations, newspapers, moviecontests.com, and whoever else gives them out - there are more passes to get than there are seats in the theatres. The production company wants a "sell out". Of the 5 premieres I've been to with passes, I think people were only turned away from one.
But I digress.
Whenever I've tried to win a dvd or concert tickets, I'm lucky if I can log in to the station's website or, if I can, if I can even get the chance to click on the "buy" button. Usually I don't see the button and by the time the page refreshes, the item is sold out. Twice I've been able to click on the "buy" button but the item was sold out before my transaction completed.
Yesterday I got lucky. One of the stations doesn't post the onsale time on their webpage - you have to listen to the station. I don't. But I noticed they were selling (out) their basketball movies yesterday and just happened to be on the page when the "buy" button was displayed for "Hoosiers" (2DVD version). Clicked and won!
Of course now I don't have many points left on that station and probably won't have enough when the Stargate Atlantis 2nd season DVD boxset goes on sale. But there will be lots of bonus codes this weekend so maybe I will.
Larry "Bud" Melman dies
I loved his appearances on Letterman...and I remember him handing out the hot towels.
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/03/21/obit.melman.ap/index.html
Letterman's Larry 'Bud' Melman actor dies
NEW YORK (AP) -- The balding, bespectacled nebbish who gained cult status as the oddball Larry "Bud" Melman on David Letterman's late-night television shows has died after a long illness.
Brooklyn-born Calvert DeForest, who was 85, died Monday at a hospital on Long Island, the Letterman show announced Wednesday.
He made dozens of appearances on Letterman's shows from 1982 through 2002, handling a variety of twisted duties: singing a duet with Sonny Bono on "I Got You, Babe"; doing a Mary Tyler Moore impression during a visit to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where her 1970s show was set; handing out hot towels to arrivals at New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal.
Cue cards were often DeForest's television kryptonite, and his character invariably appeared in an ill-fitting black suit behind thick, black-rimmed glasses.
"Everyone always wondered if Calvert was an actor playing a character, but in reality he was just himself -- a genuine, modest and nice man," Letterman said in a statement. "To our staff and to our viewers, he was a beloved and valued part of our show, and we will miss him."
DeForest's gnomish face was the first to greet viewers when Letterman's NBC show debuted on Feb. 1, 1982, offering a parody of the prologue to the Boris Karloff film "Frankenstein."
"It was the greatest thing that had happened in my life," he once said of his first Letterman appearance.
DeForest, given the nom de tube of Larry "Bud" Melman, became a program regular. The collaboration continued when the talk show host moved to CBS to launch "Late Show with David Letterman" in 1994.
The Melman character opened Letterman's first CBS show, too -- but used his real name because of a dispute with NBC over "intellectual property." DeForest, positioned inside the network's familiar eye logo, announced, "This is CBS!"
DeForest often drew laughs by his bizarre juxtaposition as a "Late Show" correspondent at
events such as the 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway and the Woodstock anniversary concert that year.
His last appearance on "Late Show" came in 2002, celebrating his 81st birthday.
DeForest also appeared in an assortment of other television shows and films, including "Nothing Lasts Forever" with Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd.
There will be no funeral service for DeForest, who left no survivors.
Find this article at: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/03/21/obit.melman.ap/index.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/03/21/obit.melman.ap/index.html
Letterman's Larry 'Bud' Melman actor dies
NEW YORK (AP) -- The balding, bespectacled nebbish who gained cult status as the oddball Larry "Bud" Melman on David Letterman's late-night television shows has died after a long illness.
Brooklyn-born Calvert DeForest, who was 85, died Monday at a hospital on Long Island, the Letterman show announced Wednesday.
He made dozens of appearances on Letterman's shows from 1982 through 2002, handling a variety of twisted duties: singing a duet with Sonny Bono on "I Got You, Babe"; doing a Mary Tyler Moore impression during a visit to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where her 1970s show was set; handing out hot towels to arrivals at New York's Port Authority Bus Terminal.
Cue cards were often DeForest's television kryptonite, and his character invariably appeared in an ill-fitting black suit behind thick, black-rimmed glasses.
"Everyone always wondered if Calvert was an actor playing a character, but in reality he was just himself -- a genuine, modest and nice man," Letterman said in a statement. "To our staff and to our viewers, he was a beloved and valued part of our show, and we will miss him."
DeForest's gnomish face was the first to greet viewers when Letterman's NBC show debuted on Feb. 1, 1982, offering a parody of the prologue to the Boris Karloff film "Frankenstein."
"It was the greatest thing that had happened in my life," he once said of his first Letterman appearance.
DeForest, given the nom de tube of Larry "Bud" Melman, became a program regular. The collaboration continued when the talk show host moved to CBS to launch "Late Show with David Letterman" in 1994.
The Melman character opened Letterman's first CBS show, too -- but used his real name because of a dispute with NBC over "intellectual property." DeForest, positioned inside the network's familiar eye logo, announced, "This is CBS!"
DeForest often drew laughs by his bizarre juxtaposition as a "Late Show" correspondent at
events such as the 1994 Winter Olympics in Norway and the Woodstock anniversary concert that year.
His last appearance on "Late Show" came in 2002, celebrating his 81st birthday.
DeForest also appeared in an assortment of other television shows and films, including "Nothing Lasts Forever" with Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd.
There will be no funeral service for DeForest, who left no survivors.
Find this article at: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/TV/03/21/obit.melman.ap/index.html
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Last night's "Boston Legal"
There was a character in last night's episode, "The Bride Wore Blood", with the same last name as me (spelled differently according to tv.com).
That makes 3 tv shows my name has been used in. The first was "Nemesis", an episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" (the cute bad guy had my name). The 2nd was the season 2 premiere, if I remember correctly, of "Star Trek: Enterprise" (the crew were locked in their quarters and my namesake crawled through the Jeffries tube).
Have you ever been on tv?
That makes 3 tv shows my name has been used in. The first was "Nemesis", an episode of "Star Trek: Voyager" (the cute bad guy had my name). The 2nd was the season 2 premiere, if I remember correctly, of "Star Trek: Enterprise" (the crew were locked in their quarters and my namesake crawled through the Jeffries tube).
Have you ever been on tv?
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