Hypertensive Disease. Mays died of heart disease, examiner says

Mays owned a partly constructed house in a Greer subdivision just north of J. Verne Smith Parkway. Hillsborough County Medical Examiner Vernard Adams said Mays suffered from hypertensive heart disease, and the wall of the left ventricle of Mays’ heart and the wall of one of his arteries were enlarged.

The boisterous, bearded 50-year-old known for hawking OxiClean and other products on national commercials was found dead Sunday by his wife in their Tampa condominium. “The heart disease is perfectly consistent with sudden death,” Adams said. An official cause of death will be issued after toxicology and other tests are completed in eight to 10 weeks. “While it provides some closure to learn that heart disease took Billy from us, it certainly doesn’t ease the enormous void that his death has created in our lives,” his wife, Deborah, said in a statement. “As you can imagine, we are all devastated.” Adams said Mays was taking the prescription painkillers Tramadol and hydrocodone for hip pain, but there was no indication of drug abuse.

Maxwell. I7 3D Rendering Machine Build

Cyberpower sent us a factory-overclocked Phenom II X4 955 system wielding two Radeon HD 4890 cards in CrossFire. We pit the formidable rig against our previous System Builder Marathon Core i7 machine to see if AMD can deliver a viable gaming alternative. The latest 2 TB hard drives are still expensive, but 1.5 TB disks provide low power consumption at a better cost-to-capacity ratio.

We look at offerings from Samsung and Western Digital to determine the value of taking a step down from the flagships. When a new paradigm like cloud computing or a new platform like Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) comes along, it’s smart to ask tough questions. With 36 lanes of PCIe 2.0, 3-way SLI could be the X58 chipset’s biggest challenge.

Ketchikan. Alaska Ship & Drydock gets ferry contract

KETCHIKAN, Alaska (AP) – Alaska Ship & Drydock has received the contract to build a new airport ferry scheduled to begin operating in Tongass Narrows in early 2011. The Ketchikan-based company submitted the low bid of about $7 million to build the Ken Eichner II airport ferry, according to ASD spokesman Doug Ward. The state awarded the basic bid plus two alternate items to the company for a total of about $7.4 million, Ward said.

The new, approximately 116-foot ferry will replace the aging borough ferry Bob Ellis on the short run that links the Ketchikan community with Ketchikan International Airport. It will be built at the state-owned Ketchikan Shipyard. Information from: Ketchikan Daily News, Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Austin Daye. Character counted for Pistons in NBA draft

The Pistons picked Gonzaga’s Austin Daye with the 15th overall pick Thursday night and followed up in the second round with Georgetown’s DaJuan Summers and Jonas Jerebko of Sweden. They drafted Arizona’s Chase Budinger for the Houston Rockets, who gave them cash and a second-round pick in 2012 or later. Detroit desperately needed to add tall and talented players because it likely will be without Rasheed Wallace and Antonio McDyess next season. “With Rasheed Wallace being a free agent and McDyess the same way, we had to focus on the frontcourt,” Dumars said. But Dumars was also determined to players who are good guys and he is confident his new forwards fit the description.

“Over the last nine years, this was probably the toughest year dealing with issues,” said Dumars, who is the Pistons’ president of basketball operations. “I said, ‘Never again will I deal with the issues or drama.’” The Pistons had a six-year run of advancing to the conference finals before getting swept in the first round by Cleveland in April Detroit used three of the first 39 picks on forwards and is about $20 million under the salary cap, giving the franchise assets that could give it a chance to rebuild quickly.

Toni Basil. That song was about me.” Many songs with names in the title, of course, are not about anyone, like Velvet Underground’s Sweet Jane, which concerns the surreal life of a rock star.

Some artists slip so many names into their songs that it’s hard to keep track. The Beatles are fearful name-droppers: Julia, Lucy, Martha (actually Paul McCartney’s dog), Michelle, Jude, Maxwell, Robert, Sally, Rita, Prudence and so on. What we (sort of) know is the plaintive ballad Julia from The White Album is about Lennon’s mother and Eleanor Rigby is an amalgamation of Eleanor Bron, who starred with The Beatles in the film Help! and half of the name of a store in Bristol, Rigby & Evens Ltd. Bob Dylan also shamelessly name-checked women, among them Corinna, Isis, Rosemary, Lily, Sarah, Hattie, Ramona, Maggie, Marie and Johanna.

It’s believed Visions of Johanna is for Johanna Gezina van Gogh, sister-in-law of Vincent van Gogh, and allegedly the sour It Ain’t Me, Babe was a parting gift to Joan Baez. But the most intriguing is Sara from Desire, a song to his first wife, Sara, who he had sung about in Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands. The painful and unambiguous lyrics plead for reconciliation: “I can still hear the sound of the Methodist bells/I had taken the cure and had just gotten through/staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel writing Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands for you.” Sometimes, however, the song just isn’t about you. Oasis’s Wonderwall, for instance, isn’t about Noel Gallagher’s former wife, Meg Mathews, as many believed. ‘The meaning of that song was taken away from me by the media who jumped on it,” revealed the bolshie Mancunian.

HP teams with Google, Fandango for Web

Typical. I FINALLY pull the trigger on a new printer and boom! This happens. ‘Course, this is also more than *twice* what my bran-spankin’-new Canon AIO will cost, and the idea of easily printing out web content is a dubious one at best.

Wasn’t two weeks ago when, after locking down some movie tickets on Fandango, I *almost* went to print them, but then I read the fine print. Turns out I could just bring my credit card to the theater, jam it in one of many automated ticket machines and pop out my tickets on THEIR dime, not mine! Kinda kills all the cool (if there ever was any) in “printing your own tickets,” huh? Might as well get SOME convenience/savings for the effin’ service charge!

Freshman Mikie Mahtook battled like a seasoned veteran in LSU win

OMAHA, Neb. — At the time, Mikie Mahtook probably wished he had the Golden Sombrero. In Monday night’s College World Series championship opener, Game 1 of a best-of-three set between LSU and Texas, the Tigers’ freshman center fielder struck out his first three at bats against Longhorns starter Chance Ruffin, and when he had the chance to redeem himself in his fourth plate appearance — with a runner on first, one out and LSU trailing 6-4 — Mahtook succeeded in putting the ball in play, but his ground ball to second became an inning- and rally-ending double play in the eighth.

“They were three terrible at bats,” Mahtook said of the strikeouts. But making contact proved reassuring. So did the team’s right fielder, junior Jared Mitchell, a recent first-round pick of the , who approached his rookie teammate in the dugout, told him to shake it off and said, “You’re going to come back up again in a big spot.” After Mahtook had a Jeterian single in the 10th (a weak ground ball poked just between the first and second basemen), that big spot arose in the 11th.

Smith Tour. Report: Golfer Chris Smith’s wife killed in crash

Beth Smith, wife of PGA Tour player Chris Smith, was killed Sunday when the sport utility vehicle she was traveling in collided with a Greyhound bus transporting a Canadian semipro football team, The News-Sentinel of Fort Wayne reported. Abigail and Cameron Smith, who the newspaper identified as Smith’s children, were listed in critical condition Monday morning at Fort Wayne’s Lutheran Hospital. Angola Fire Department spokesman T.R. Hagerty said an occupant of the SUV was killed in the crash.

Twelve 12 others received minor injuries. Chris Smith has been competing on the PGA Tour since 1991.

Derek Fisher Heroics Lift Lakers To Brink Of Title

Fisher hit a 25-foot three-point shot with 4.6 seconds left in regulation and then nailed a 27-footer with just over 30 seconds left in overtime to give the Lakers a 94-91 lead. Pau Gasol scored the remaining five points to seal the win. “On a championship run you’re going to have moments where you just make big plays, and tonight was one of them,” said Lakers guard Kobe Bryant, who scored 32 points. “The guys stepped up. That’s what the journey is about.

” The Lakers lead the best-of-seven series 3-1 and can wrap up their first title since 2002 with a victory on Sunday in Orlando. Bryant led the Lakers with 32 points but the 11-times All Star and 2008 Most Valuable Player was not at his best, hitting only 11 of 31 shots. Gasol and Trevor Ariza each added 16 for Los Angeles.

Feeling. Gadgets: Even in a recession, you gotta have tunes

While the design doesn’t really matter as much as the sound, they do look cool and are made for long-term wear with their patent-pending oval ear tips. The tips give the user passive noise-cancellation while blocking out some of the ambient noise. That gives the user a nice consistent sound. Unlike dozens of other headphones I’ve tried, these did wear with comfort.

During a recent cross-country flight, the only thing that got me to take them off was the flight attendant. Several different tips are included with the set, which ensures the right fit for most any user. Reading a recent press release on the earphones, this is how Klipsch described the sound: “Additionally, the Image S4 and S2 are moving coil designs with controlled damping, allowing them to deliver smooth, full-bodied sound that is similar to a balanced armature.