Dave's Thoughts of the Day: September 24th

Wild NFL Weekend, to say the least.  Much has already been said about it, but officiating has dragged down the league in a big way.  Nobody has held back from ripping officials.   In fact, what's interesting is that broadcasters, for the first time that I can remember, are openly ripping officiating during the game.   I don't remember broadcasters being close to this open about their disdain for any officiating before.   Seems like a bully move to wait until replacement refs take the field to rip them.

49ers... I love how a lot of the nation is quitting on them.  It was one week!   Every team can play a bad week once in a while.  My goodness, and this stuff about Alex Smith.  Were people expecting him to go to the Pro Bowl?  He is what he is, he's still good enough to keep the team in most games.  Even at all this, the 49ers were still within range to win.  These things happen.   I wouldn't be surprised if the Jets suddenly got a boost in their point spread at home.

LOCKS went 2-3 with UAB and SCAR hitting.    Dallas came close but missed their -8 (they won by 6).   Notre Dame covered -5.5 and won by 7.   Rutgers proved me wrong in a big way and won by 900 points (they were +7).  Well... what can you do?

I have big news for the DITC podcast listeners!  (http://blogtalkradio.com/daveinthecity)   At long last I have wired a completely new studio setup to improve sound quality!  Here's how it broke down:


To do this, I needed a USB sound card, which is basically a sound card in a box with a USB cord that connects to your laptop.   You need it in order to connect a mixer to the laptop, since it doesn't have a line-in jack.  Would you believe these jokers at Guitar Center tried to upsell me on this fancy mixing box with USB on Friday?  The damn thing cost about 140 dollars!   Instead I get this cheap USB sound card for 21 bucks... it was lousy quality, i.e. too much noise, so I changed it to the Diamond Xtreme USB card for 40 bucks out the door.   MUCH better.

The point of all this was to fix the echo problem we've had on the podcast, especially in the last two weeks.  So what I did was isolate the Skype connection on the laptop instead of the desktop computer.  Then I would set up the mixer so that all of the other sources except skype would return to the caller.   This also meant the desktop computer (i.e. music and sound effects) was set up as a separate channel on the mixer.  I used to put music/skype/mic on all as one channel on the mixer and relied on Skype to sort them out.  

The problem was, if Skype was lagging behind, it would let the caller's voice go to the computer and THEN bounce right back to the caller with a delay.  The problem got a lot worse when my slow desktop computer upgraded Skype to version 5.0.  I said enough was enough, so I spent the entire weekend setting up the music and skype as separate channels on the mixer.  It's more complicated than it sounds!

I'm so glad to have Del Taco a mile away now.   Nothing like picking up a couple tacos, a burrito, and crinkle fries with a drink all for $5.45 with tax.  That went great with the Sunday Night Football game.  Del Taco is a Taco Bell competitor, so the food is similar to Taco Bell, but in my view, equally as enjoyable.  I like the Del Taco burritos much more.  The Tacos, you can go either way.

Next weekend, I'm going to see if traffic cooperates with Carmageddon II in effect.  If it does, it would be a great weekend to try Mozza, the often talked about pizza restaurant that gets great reviews on Yelp and Chowhound.

I'm really looking forward to Packers/Seahawks tonight.    If I had a gut reaction I would say Seahawks win it with their superior defense.   Then again, they would also rely on Doug Baldwin to produce.   Not only that but he might not be healthy.  I mean come on... Doug Baldwin?

"FoxCon" makes the Apple iPhone?   Why wouldn't Apple manufacture their own products?  I never realized the outsourcing was full borne.  I recognized outsourcing of parts and such but entire units being made by a separate company?  All Apple did, in that case, was apply their cute little logo and imagineer the thing?

Ever notice that we haven't heard from Disney a whole lot lately?  i.e. big Animated Motion pictures in the works, Disneyland theme park news, etc.   The biggest thing I remember out of the Disney Company lately was the opening of "Cars Land" at California Adventure.  That was legit big news, but since then the biggest thing they have going is this movie "Frankenweenie."  I won't be waiting in line for that one.

Speaking of cute and logos, "New Girl" is starting season number.... is it 2?  I think Season Two this week on FOX.  Breakout show of the year last year.   The "awkwardly cute" Zooey Deschanel stars in it, as the promo copy says.  I sampled a few episodes last year... doesn't really seem like a show for guys.   It's not a bad show at all, but it gets into very feminine like issues like bathroom space and emotions and relationships and so on and so forth.

Did you know they make ground italian sausage?!  My mind is blown!  I was always buying the regular fresh sausages and tearing off the casing to make the little sausage chunks I needed for pasta and pizza.  Then, yesterday, I went over to Ralphs and found a whole package of pre ground sausage for $3.50.  Do the dance!

That really is all for now.  Catch you all later...