Netflix flub

As you can see, I’ve been using Netflix for over six years.

In all this time I’ve never had a problem with Netflix. Until now.

We rented ‘Blade Runner: The Final Cut’ on Blu-ray, and the disc was defective. It froze at a certain spot and wouldn’t recover. (Yeah, yeah… I cleaned it and tried again, etc.) So I returned it and asked for a replacement. They sent a high-def disc, but it was in the defunct HD-DVD format! I returned the disc, indicating it had been mislabeled. So what did they send? Another HD-DVD copy. Grrrr…

This time I called and actually got to speak with someone. “Destroy this disc!” I told him. I’m not going to bother asking for another copy from Netflix. I think Bismo owns ‘Blade Runner: The Final Cut’ on DVD. We’ll watch that.

BTW, Best Buy and the Sony outlet stores have stacks of the BDP-N460 Blu-ray player for only $140. If you can use Ethernet instead of Wifi for streaming video, that’s an incredible deal.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PRUE BURY!

Happy birthday to Prudence Bury, my all-time favorite Beatles girl. After many years of curiosity and sporatic searching, I got serious about using the Internet to find Prue, and with the help of Lia Pamina I finally did. Prue and I began corresponding last year, and an in-person introduction is tentatively scheduled for this coming September.

Having wondered about Prue since seeing a 10th anniversary screening of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, I had built up a rather idealized image of her in my mind. I wasn’t prepared for how easily she breezed past that ideal, totally knocking me out with her charm, humor, warmth, and sincerity.

Independent of her Beatles connection, Prue Bury is impressive and accomplished, and she is the very definition of a true Class Act. It is my great privilege to know her in a small way.

Great North Wood Barks

Last week’s installment of ‘Tim Rice’s American Pie‘ on BBC Radio 2, the second in the series, was about Oregon. I was surprised to hear Rice mention the cartoonist Carl Barks.

[audio:http://dogratcom.s3.amazonaws.com/Audio/2011/Jan/RiceBarks.mp3|titles=Tim Rice’s American Pie: Salute to Oregon]

Here is a Barks story I posted over two years ago. It was the first one by him I ever read, which didn’t happen until I was fifteen.

Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #126, 1951 Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #126, 1951 Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #126, 1951 Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #126, 1951 Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #126, 1951
Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #126, 1951 Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #126, 1951 Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #126, 1951 Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #126, 1951 Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #126, 1951

© Disney
Barks died in 2000, the same year that Charles Schulz passed away, but Barks was 99 — old enough to be Sparky’s father! Here’s a nice video about the late, beloved Old Duck Man.

McAfee’s broken protection racket

Security software is a necessary evil. Sometimes the problems it causes are almost as bad as what it’s supposedly protecting against. For example, in the process of preventing spyware from slowing down Windows, anti-spyware software tends to… slow down Windows.

You’re lucky if slowness is the only downside to running real-time protection. McAfee has managed to cripple thousands of Windows XP users with its latest security update, which mistakenly quarantines an essential system file:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20003074-83.html

This is what I do for Windows security at home:

That’s it. And none of them cost anything except the time and effort to set up. Oh, and something else. If you use a mail client like Outlook Express or Thunderbird, pre-screen your mail with a web browser and delete anything suspicious before downloading it.

Dying to run, running to die!

It’s seemed that over the past few years more runners are dropping dead during races. Yesterday’s Boston Marathon had such an incident, but fortunately the victim was revived. He had a stent installed a few years ago for a blocked artery, yet he continued to run marathon distance races! I can’t imagine his doctor thought that was a great idea.

Something else about yesterday’s marathon was that it was the first to use disposable transponders for tracking the runners.

Spectator blues

Stuck on sidelines again for the Boston Marathon. I was told by the ortho doc and a couple of PT’s that my injured knee could take six months to recover. It’s been four, and it’s starting to feel better.

Here’s a brief look at the scene this morning, as the second wave of the 27,000 participants was queuing up for the starting line that’s way up over the hill. Carol can be glimpsed at the end ducking through a corral, followed by Eric, who waves.

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