Hydrogen Audio’s Wiki is a great resource for information about different compressed music formats. Most importantly for me is their list of recommended encoder settings.

If you think the war on drugs is a good idea, read this article.

Today, Richard Paey sits in a wheelchair behind high walls and razor wire in a high-security prison near Daytona Beach. Paey is a 46-year-old father of three, and a paraplegic. His condition is the result of a car accident, a botched back surgery, and a case of multiple sclerosis

Dale Franks and QandO has written a good response to Hugh Hewitt on the Miers nomination debacle. Hugh thought that Miers was a great candidate. He is delusional.

Slate has posted an interesting article about where the White Sox name came from, as well other information about team names.

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Originally uploaded by bogdon6.

Last Saturday, Laura and I drove part of the Blue Ridge Parkway. It was great. While a lot of people in the DC metro area go to Shenandoah National Park, the Blue Ridge Parkway is just south of the Park, far more beautiful, and much less traveled than Shenandoah. I’ve posted a few pictures I took of the drive on Flikr. Click the picture for the link.

Check out this Anti-Miers nomination ad. It’s pretty hard hitting, especially because it was produced by conservatives.

The NY Times has a great article about Donald Trumps wealth. He claims he is worth billions, but it looks like he is worth far less than $1 billion. Timothy O’Brien writes:

Forbes, in bestowing a $2.6 billion fortune on Donald in its 2004 rich list, credited him with owning 18 million square feet of Manhattan property, which certainly is an impossibility. On one occasion, Donald told me that the West Side yards, which he doesn’t own, would have 10 million square feet of salable space when the site, now known as Riverside South, was completed. (Mr. Weisselberg told me, alternatively, that the site would have about five million square feet of salable space.) However measured, the yards were by far the biggest property in Donald’s former Manhattan real estate portfolio – but he no longer owned the tract.

Between 2000 and 2004, Forbes allowed Donald’s verbal billions to grow by $1 billion. The jump came during a period when the stock market bubble burst, Donald’s stake in his casinos – one of his most valuable assets until “The Apprentice” came along – had fallen in value to $7 million and, despite Manhattan’s red-hot real estate market, he owned much less real estate there than he let on.

Donald said his casinos’ myriad problems – no profits, suffocating debt, disappearing cash – did not mean that he had failed in Atlantic City. Instead, he described his management of the casinos as an “entrepreneurial” success, defining “entrepreneurial” as his ability to take cash out of the casino company and use it for other things.

About a month ago I decided that I would walk home from work. It turns out that I only save 20 minutes by taking the Metro, so now I walk home almost every night. Each night as I walk through Georgetown I see this chair. It cracks me up. The chair costs $1369, but that exorbitant price doesn’t include delivery and assembly. Wouldn’t you think that if you pay $1400 for a chair, it would at least come delivered and assembled? I have blown up the tag below.

Major League Baseball is irriated with the latest “Got Milk Campaign.” The AP reports:

Poking fun at the sport’s steroid scandal, the television ad for the California Milk Processor Board talks about a player getting pulled from a game “after testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance.”

In the next scene, a coach pulls a carton of milk from the slugger’s locker.

“There is nothing humorous about steroid abuse,” said Tim Brosnan, executive vice president for business for baseball. “I would think that the California Milk Processor Board and their advertising agency would know better regarding an issue that threatens America’s youth.”

Are you kidding me? There’s something funny about almost everything, including death. Always look on the bright side of life, I say. This isn’t even about steroids, it’s a parody. Parodies can be funny and this one is. MLB needs to either take steroids seriously and really do something about it, or it needs to lighten up.

I took a walk to the bank this morning and stopped in Ritz Camera to ask them a question about cleaning some old slides. I was very, very pleasantly surprised by the saleswoman I talked to. The problem with many stores today is that salespeople don’t know anything, but this woman was very knowledgeable and very helpful. It made my day. I’ll definitely go back to Ritz Camera.