The other day I bought a DVD writer for my computer. It was only $59, so I figured I’d just get it. It is a Lite-On 411s model, and while not the fastest (4X), it is popular, which means that should I ever run into trouble, I would probably be able to find plenty of help. At any rate, it installed with ease and I have not had any problems so far. It is compatible with all four standards, can play any region DVD (using a hack) and burns CD-R’s at some ridiculously fast speed. It also rips CD’s much quicker than my old drive. Plus, it replaced my internal DVD-RAM drive and my external CD-RW drive.

Last night I converted one of our Mini-DV tapes to a DVD-R disc. It works great in our DVD player. I was just using the program that came bundled with the drive: Sonic MyDVD 4.5. It seems to do a great job of painlessly converting the tape to disc, and can build the title menu automatically, insert chapter stops every X minutes, or you can insert chapter stops manually.

The DVD I made last night was of Bay’s birth. I was planning on just starting the recording process, and then going to bed, but I ended up watching the entire tape. Bay gives a riveting performance in his reality-show debut. 🙂

The Sony Vaio Type-U computer is only 167mm across, 26.4mm thick, has a 5-inch screen, is powered by a 900mhz Celeron processor, and runs WindowsXP. It also has 64MB of video memory. I think I need this.

A little round cat.

Springtime is nice.

Today we played in the backyard. And papa weeded the flowerbeds.

From our backyard.

Today’s Power Rankings at SI.com have the Angels at #1 and Dodgers at #2. This must be the first time the two teams have held those spots. I’m sure it won’t last long, especially the Dodgers… Also of note are the two Texas teams, following up strongly in the 3 and 4 spots.

So I was on my commute to work this morning, sitting at a stoplight and something caught my eye. It was written on the side of a Wendy’s, in fluorescent green, yellow, and orange letters: SPINACH. That caught me by surprise. How times have changed. Spinach used to be considered (and I think still is) by kids to be the worst vegetable. Maybe brussel sprouts is just as loathed. At any rate, Wendy’s was calling attention to their Spinach and Chicken Salad, which doesn’t sound too bad. Except when I go to Wendy’s, I’m thinking “burger”. Then later on in my commute, I passed a DairyQueen. On the side of their restaurant was a banner that read “Flamethrower Belt-buster Burger”. Now that’s more like it!

I am listening to the Cubs play the Diamondbacks right now (on MLB internet radio). The Cubs announcers are awful! One of them is the play-by-play guy, and he’s ok. The other guy, Ronnie, is just a whiner. Oh man is he bad. Complaining about everything! How nothing is going the Cubs’ way. And talk about “Homers”. They guys are so into “their” team. They don’t refer to the team as “the Cubs”. They refer to them as “us” and “we”. As if they are playing on the team. That really bugs me.

Maybe I am just not used to announcers like that. I grew up listening to Vin Scully, Jerry Doggett, and Ross Porter. (And later to Don Drysdale and Rick Monday) All of them are fantastic. They aren’t “homers”, but try to be objective about the game. They applaud good plays on both sides, and are knowledgeable and entertaining enough not to need a sidekick. My only complaint has been that Ross Porter is, as my dad would say, a “computer-mouth”. Every sentence that comes out of his mouth has a number in it. I guess he’s really into stats. Well, I suppose, I don’t mind “computer-mouth” as much these days. I would even go so far as to say that I would miss his style if he ever changed. Hehe, I just remembered that several years ago, I called into DodgerTalk after a game just to egg him on. I asked him how to calculate slugging percentage, and he went on and on… 🙂

Another announcer that I like is Jon Miller who announces *gasp* Giants games, as well as baseball on ESPN. He’s good.