Thursday Morning Notes - Feb 21

- Back home in NY with my dead laptop in tow; merely a hulk of useless metal, plastic, and circuitry. But interestingly, I found online a whole community of aggrieved HP Pavilion users who had suffered the same exact problem - a computer that ran insanely hot before crashing altogether. They said that the heat burns out the video card. There were mixed signals on whether HP is acknowledging the problem, and if, and for how much, they can fix it; I'm waiting to hear from them.

But I suppose it's time to move on. Thanks to the reader who mentioned the Mac Book, which is actually what I'm on right now; I'd mistaken it for an IBook, what do I know? This is certainly a fast little machine, and the idea of running Windows on it concurrently is intriguing, even if it sounds rather unstable. Another reader emailed to say that he's found that Dells are very dependable from his experience of lugging laptops around on the road for many years . Problem there is that they currently come loaded with Vista, and Formulator doesn't run on that...

Anyway, the timing is particularly awful, as I'd been compiling a musical playlist on the HP for the wedding....so I need to do something really soon. I guess you'll know when I do when the volume of posts picks back up.....

- Why Tonto will stick to the turf. But the Toddster has a handy excuse for Cowboy Cal, who will press on to the Derby.

Cowboy Cal...emerged from the race with a "sore gluteal muscle in his left rear," Pletcher said.

"That probably explains why he wasn't cornering so well on the turns....He'll probably jog for a week or 10 days. I think we're still in good shape to make the Blue Grass," the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby prep on April 12 at Keeneland. [Daily Racing Form]

- I'd written here about how Pompano Park was clearly the best performing of the Broward County racinos, but it seems that all is not rosy even there, even though its revenues continue to exceed both Gulfstream and the former Hollywood Dog Track combined [pdf]. Management says they will cut purses by 35% and slash the racing schedule by two days a week.

Pompano has a $2.7-million purse overpayment “that cannot go any higher,” and needs to hold purses to $12 million for its 2007-08 meet, Steven Wolf, the track’s senior director of racing operations, said in the e-mail.

The changes are “outrageous,” said Jeffery Schneider, an attorney who represents the FSBOA. They are part of what FSBOA considers Pompano’s effort to de-emphasize live racing and focus on the slot-machine casino it opened in April 2007, he said.

“Their card room is doing better than expected, their simulcast is doing better than expected, and their slots play is more than the other two combined,” said Schneider, an attorney with Miami law firm Tew Cardenas. [Bloodhorse]

The horsemen at Pompano have been operating without an agreement with the track regarding a specific percentage split of revenue; the track dedicated a flat $12 million to purses for last year, and is instituting the cut in order to maintain that amount. A civil suit filed by the horsemen requiring a percentage of revenues is pending in court. With a move afoot in the state legislature to cut the state's share of racino revenue from 50% to 35%, perhaps the track is making a Jeff Gural-type play for legislative relief. A meeting between the parties is supposed to take place within a few days.