After some minor negotiations with the boss, I have acquired a new DVD player that is almost everything I want. (I have to sell my two current DVD players to cover the cost of:) Go.Video ‘s D2730 was listed in Playboy’s “Working Without Wires” article (by Penn and Teller , no less) this month and I knew I had to get it. This baby has all the DVD features I need: 5.1 Audio via RCA outputs, DTS decoding, VCD and SVCD compatibilty. To make things better, you can stick a WiFi card in the back of it and get videos, mp3s and jpgs off your computer, too!

So far, I am exstatic with only two issues:

• only MPEG Type I mp3’s — it’s not a big quality difference (I think) but it means I have to redump several CDs
• no support for AVIs or MOVs — I have to convert DivX, XviDs and Apple videos to mpg

I would bet that support for these formats is forthcoming, but I will not get my hopes up since I’ve been waiting for synch support on my hiptop for more than a year. I know that cutting edge tools are often left to linger without signifigant upgrades and cool new features despite their superior advances.

STOP IT® Pipe Repair Tape is a knitted, fiberglass tape coated with special urethane resins that are water-activated. It is ideal for repair of pipe leaks and reinforcing pipe joints in any situation – even under water!

I am in awe of this product from Indumar Products, Inc. but I am starting to question the sanity of it. On the surface a product that combines the resourcefulness of duct tape and spackle, and magically enhances it to work better underwater seems like science fiction come to life…but if you have a plumbing leak isn’t it usually indicative of a larger problem that shouldn’t just be spackled over?

Arnold ‘s inappropriate behavior is not limited to just women, an African American fellow bodybuilder says that Arnold used the n-word quite a bit back-in-the-day according to Matt Drudge.

I do not see what the big deal is. Haven’t we all derided people who are different from us when we needed to feel better about ourselves? I mean, if they really were so great they would be Euro-descended males, too.

Right?

Between Memorial Day and Labor Day for the past four years I have hosted a Friday night dinner club, the Rollerfeet Restaurant Summer Series. My original goal was to introduce several new-to-Austin friends to the variety of non-chain restaurants in Austin. (I was appalled to hear them going to Chili’s for dinner on the weekends.) It has continued each year with dinners at locally owned-and-operated establishments with only a handful of repeats over the four years. At this point even I am amazed at the number of these places that are available here and the quality of the food they serve. Here’s a list of places I reccommend.

I’d like to give a shout out to the eastern box turtle. As a youngster, I kept a small fleet of these for a while in a terrarium and at large in our backyard. They were a lot like toy tanks, but much better because they didn’t get stuck and they ran on crickets and worms instead of batteries.

Certain BpBers will recognize the above specimen from Elk Neck State Park, Maryland.

Coincidentally, the Post had an article about them on Sunday. Apparently they live to be 70 to 100 years old and are disappearing due to encroaching development and youngsters keeping them as backyard pets.

That is a complicated issue for turtle advocates. They know that for many, pet turtles have been a gateway to a love of wildlife or a career in science. But increasingly they are putting the word out that the world has changed and that removing even a few can hurt.