Not an advertisement for Vista

Vista%20logo.jpgDon’t look for Warren Meyer to be a spokesman for Microsoft Vista any time soon:

The laptop I bought my kids 6 months ago is rapidly becoming the worst purchase I have ever made. Not because the laptop is bad, but because of a momentary lack of diligence I bought one with Vista installed. It has been a never-ending disaster trying to get this computer to work. [. . .]
Vista is rapidly becoming the New Coke of operating systems. I have had every version of windows on my computer at one time or another, including Windows 1.0 and the egregious Windows ME, and I can say with confidence Vista is the worst of them all by far.

Read Meyer’s entire post, which he backs up quite well. Meanwhile, sales of Vista continue to lag badly behind those of XP.

How to buy your next new car

car%20salesman.jpgInasmuch as I have four college age children, I have become somewhat of a used car buying expert. But if you are in the market for a new car, check out the five-minute video below of car guy Rob Gruhl giving some practical and clever advice on how to find, finance and negotiate buying a new car.

Shasta mugged

Shasta.jpgAlthough the Houston Cougars put up a better fight against the Oregon Ducks than Michigan did, Shasta — the Cougars’ mascot — had a can of whoopass opened up on him by the Oregon Duck mascot, as the video below reveals. As a result of the fracas, the Oregon mascot has been suspended for Oregon’s next home game; meanwhile, it appears to me that Shasta could use a few lessons in self-defense. As a grizzled veteran of following Houston football, all I can say is that this would never have happened to Shasta while Bill Yeoman was coaching the Cougars. ;^)

The hottest seat in Texas

franchione091307.jpgAfter Texas A&M’s narrow escape last weekend over Fresno State, Brett Zwerneman of the San Antonio Express-News continues to lead the chorus (see earlier posts here and here) that doubts A&M football coach Dennis Franchione is going to produce a serious Big 12 South contender in Aggieland:

How did it come to a triple-overtime game against a smaller program that finished 4-8 last season? The Aggies, however, did double up on Franchione’s oft-stated goal of simply scoring one more point than their opponent. [. . .]
The No. 25 Aggies had better progress in a hurry, however, if they’re to compete for their first Big 12 title in nearly a decade. A&M is lucky Bulldogs receiver Marlon Moore tried sticking the ball out for a touchdown ó resulting in a fumble ó during Saturday’s first overtime. Texas A&M Otherwise, the Aggies would be 1-1, and Franchione might’ve had a tough time holding on to his gig ó during the season.
A road game at Miami looms Sept. 20, with contests later in the season at Texas Tech, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Missouri, comprising A&M’s rockiest schedule since the league started play in 1996.
The above games are supposed to be tough. Fresno State wasn’t. [. . .]
Franchione is a mediocre 27-23 through 50 games at A&M, but this was supposed to be the season that his veteran squad finally emerged as a true threat in the league.
Instead, all of the old questions about A&M’s direction are bubbling to the surface. As one frustrated A&M graduate put it, Franchione was hired to close the gap with Texas and OU, not Baylor and Iowa State. [. . .]
Franchione, 56, already owns the worst overall loss and the two worst bowl losses in school history over his previous four seasons.

But hey, even if the Aggie football team is not top ten caliber, the Fightin’ Texas Aggie Marching Band is!

A billion dollar boondoggle?

Main%20Street.jpgKevin Whited reports that downtown Houston’s night life continues to dissipate from lack of demand. This despite the fact that various local governmental entities have invested at least $1 billion in the downtown area by building a baseball stadium, a basketball arena, a convention center hotel, a light rail system and assorted other goodies.
Sort of makes you wonder what would happen if even a portion of that $1 billion were invested in something that Houston really needs, such as improvements to flood control and traffic hotspots? My sense is that such an investment would dramatically lessen the risk that citizens would lose their lives or suffer property loss in the event of heavy rains (which occur with some regularity around here) or a traffic accident. Thus, we aren’t as safe as we could be, but our local governmental officials have seen to it that we are as comfortable as reasonably possible while being entertained. Gotta love those priorities.

Another Justia.com search tool

justia.jpgAs noted earlier here and here, Tim Stanley and the folks over at Justia.com are developing some of the best and most useful legal search engines on the Web. I’ve been meaning to pass along a recent email from Tim, which introduces yet another cool tool:

“We have put online the Federal District Court case opinions and orders that are available using the opinion report in the Federal Courts’ ECF. These are updated daily. We have categorized the opinions by state, court, type of lawsuit and judge and combinations of judge and type of lawsuit. You can also subscribe to each of categories through RSS feeds to track a judge or court’s decisions on different issues. And we also give the cause of action for each case.
We are using Google’s hosted Business Custom Search Engine for the full text search. Google is now OCRing PDF image files, so even PDF files that have images of scanned documents will be in most cases full text indexable and searchable. Like the OCR of Google’s Book Search. You will need to look at the cached copy to see the highlighted searched text though, and then find in the original PDF to be 100% that what you are reading is correct. Google should be doing a pretty good job of indexing and ocring these court decisions, although it may take a few days for a new document to show up in the index.
We have also noted on the federal district court case filing database when we have a judge’s opinion (you will see a little gavel. The case filings are at here.”

Only in New York (or make that New Jersey)

newmeadowlands-large.jpgI recognize that real estate is a bit more expensive in New York than in other places. O.K., make that a whole lot more expensive.
But $1 million per season for a football luxury suite?
This is crazy expensive and it doesn’t even include the cost of beer and brats. But it makes sense in a New York sort of way. If you are a hot-shot broker entertaining the next great hedge funds, you can’t just go out and buy a luxury suite to a Giants game (although maybe you could for a Jets game ;^)). Inasmuch as the suites are being sold on 10-year contracts and rarely change hands once they are sold, a big shot has no way to ensure that he will be able to enjoy a game in 2015 in a luxury suite unless he owns a suite. In short, it’s become the quintessential asset that money can’t buy by the time the games are being played, so the big shots better pony up now or they will be out of luck.
And when New York eventually swings a Super Bowl, can you imagine the price that these babies will be selling for?

Tiger’s latest milestone and another caddy snit

Tiger-Woods%20091107.jpgIn case the start of the NFL season distracted you, the remarkable Tiger Woods shot a closing round 63 at Cog Hill in Chicago to win another PGA Tour tournament over the weekend, the 60th professional tournament title of his storied career. ESPN.com’s Bob Harig puts Wood’s accomplishment in perspective:

Woods matched the tournament 18-hole record by shooting an 8-under 63 at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club, becoming the first player to do so twice. He posted the lowest four-day total (262) in 104 years of tournament competition — which beat the previous mark by 5 strokes. He won the tournament that used to be known as the Western Open for the fifth time, just one behind Walter Hagen.
Woods has won five times at Cog Hill.
And he joined Sam Snead (82), Jack Nicklaus (73), Ben Hogan (64) and Arnold Palmer (62) among those with 60 or more victories in PGA Tour events.
All at age 31. [. . .]
He has won six or more times in a season five times. This year, four of his six wins have come at the biggest tournaments — a major (PGA Championship), two World Golf Championship events (CA Championship and Bridgestone Invitational) and now a playoff event.
And his other two victories came at two of the more popular regular tour events, the Buick Invitational and Wachovia Championship.
Perhaps just as remarkable as his number of victories is the speed with which he got there. Nicklaus was 36 years old when he won his 60th title in 1976. Palmer was 41 in 1971 when he won for the 60th time. Woods could take the next five years off and still be on pace to surpass Nicklaus, Hogan and Palmer.
Or, as Justin Rose put it, “I’d have to win 15 times a year for the next four years to get there by the time I’m 31.”

Meanwhile, last weekend’s tournament gave us yet another entertaining professional golfer-caddy snit (previous snit posts here and here), which gives me the opportunity to pass along this classic Caddyshack clip (which happens to be one of Tiger Woods’ favorite movies) in which Bill Murray’s legendary Carl Spackler explains how he successfully resolved a similar snit with while caddying for the the Dalai Lama:

A couple of Houston legal legends

jamail%20and%20haynes.jpgIf you didn’t catch it over the weekend, don’t miss Mary Flood’s article and related blog post on two legends of the Houston legal community, plaintiff’s lawyer Joe Jamail and criminal defense attorney, Richard “Racehorse” Haynes.
I’ve been blessed to have had the opportunity to watch both of these masters in action over the years. Jamail’s special talent is in his ability to talk to and relate with jurors, while Haynes is, bar none, the best craftsman of cross-examination that I have ever seen in a courtroom. Take a moment to learn more about two of the most important Houston lawyers of our time.
Photo of Jamail and Haynes by Johnny Hanson.

Why is Ben Stein a business columnist?

ben_stein%20091107.jpgAnswer: To give bloggers an opportunity to point out that he apparently does not know what he is writing about.
Inasmuch as I’ve taken Stein to task on several earlier columns (see here, here and here), I was getting ready to prepare a post pointing out the folly of Stein’s latest column, this one on the financial impact of the meltdown in subprime mortgage sector. But then I discovered that Felix Salmon had already done so, in which he observes the following:

. . .it turns out that Stein is completely wrong, yet again: can anybody explain to me why this man still has his column?

Read the entire post.