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Seeing Hootie and the Blowfish has become a Labor Day tradition for Nicole and me. We head downtown, eat ribs, enjoy the show, and spend a great evening together. This year, we had to pay and entrance fee, which was a little disappointing. We then had to go buy tickets so that we could trade them in for ribs and drinks. We picked a tent, picked some ribs, and and had a great dinner before making our way through the lawn. We were about an hour early and it looked like we were going to have a great location — until we walked into theRead More →

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In: Automotive
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I would have missed out on this great car show if it hadn’t been for my friend Kurt (whom I met at my first Porsche DE weekend) asking me if I wanted to go. So Nicole and I followed Kurt and his wife Becky to the small town of Oxford, OH. The entire downtown area was blocked-off for Porsches and there were a lot of great cars to see. Had I known my car was going to be part of the show, I would have washed it. It was still dirty from the track and still had the numbers on the windshield, Oh well. MyRead More →

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In: Automotive
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After my first Drivers Education weekend, I was hooked.  I loved the opportunity to take my car to a road course and push my own limits (if not those of the car), all while having an instructor in the car with me and not worrying about being faster than anyone else.  I felt safe and had fun, so I was back for a second time. I was not surprised that I remembered the road course completely.  I didn't lose much from my previous time on the track, but it took me until the end of the first day before I was back to where IRead More →

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In: Concerts
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Setlist Concert download It’s July and perfect July evening and Nicole and I meet-up Luke and Michelle Shiver for our trek to downtown Indy. Michelle and Nicole grab chairs to take out to the grass while Luke and I park at the Zoo and walk back. We arrive fairly early but center section of The Lawn is already pretty well packed. No worries, we sit close to the front on the right hand side, with easy access to refreshments and restrooms. The show is great. Being in the front row at an small indoor venue is my favorite way to see a concert. But relaxingRead More →

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In: Automotive
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I completed my first Porsche Drivers Education event at the Putnam Park road course this past weekend.  I'd been wanting to do something like this for quite some time, but just never made it happen.  I'm very pleased that I finally did.  The people I met were awesome and the time on the track was probably the most fun I've had in my Boxster in the 8 years I've owned it. At first, I was concerned that I'd feel this strong urge to upgrade my 2.5L Boxster to something more powerful.  I was surprised that the weekend had the exact opposite effect — I wasRead More →

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In: Automotive
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I read an article regarding MP3 Player Integration on the SEMA.org site. Here is a direct quote: Ford has plans in the works to protect itself from potential prosecution for being a conduit to illegally downloaded music.  One of Ford’s ideas is a user consent agreement to be used for MP3 playback where car buyers would be required to confirm that the music they are playing in their vehicle was acquired legally. This is yet another example of how out-of-touch Ford (and other domestic car companies) is with consumers, especially those in their 20s and 30s.  They can’t be serious – a waiver regarding myRead More →

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In: Home Theater
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Great, after spending hours and hours ripping almost all of my DVDs to my server, I find a firmware patch that allows my DVD drive to read movies at about 10 times the speed.  Apparently there is a RipLock feature on most DVD drives that prevents high-speed reading of DVD movies.  I guess this is great if you're watching a movie, because the drive is spinning very slowly, but not when copying.  AnyDVD has a feature to slow down a drive in software, so if I really wanted it slow during movie playback, I can easily set it back to "slow" that way. Anyway, hereRead More →

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In: Concerts
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Setlist Seating Location: Section D, 5 rows from the back Our good friends Bryan and Tammy Willett came to visit us for the weekend and go to the show. They are professional UK tailgaters and brought all of their gear. We tailgated at Huggy Bear for a few hours, eating, drinking, playing corn hole, and being merry, before heading to the concert. Our seats were a couple of rows apart, but there were some empties in between so we all sat together and people-watched before the show. My summary of the night’s perforce: an awesome setlist that seemed to be more geared to what theRead More →

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In: Home Theater
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The story in question: "The DVD War Against Consumers" on BusinessWeek.com David H. Holtzman of BusinessWeek: You need to do some more research. This guy has no idea what AACS does and I'm surprised this article was even published.  For starters, he needs to go to wikipedia.com and search for AACS . It has nothing to do with downscaling non-HDCP video outputs.  It is an advanced content sharing system that enables the exact functionality he is championing. It allows users to distribute the content of HD-DVD/Blu-Ray disc across multiple devices for personal use.  These copies are encrypted, so they can't be shared widely on downloadRead More →

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In: Entertainment
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I saw the third X-man movie this weekend and was very impressed. This trilogy provided the most satisfying story arc of any set of science fiction movies since the original Star Wars (Matrix 3 was kinda of a let down.) Of course, having decades of comic books from which to borrow story lines helps the writing / planning of short- and long-term stories. The special effects and action sequences were a couple of notches above the previous two movies, so I think that make this the best of the three. This movie instantly became one of my all-time favorite science fiction movies and I can’tRead More →