Sturgeon’s Law Ninety percent of everything is crap.
Derived from a quote by science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon, who once said, “Sure, 90% of science fiction is crud. That’s because 90% of everything is crud.” Oddly, when Sturgeon’s Law is cited, the final word is almost invariably changed to ‘crap’.
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Over the weekend the Spam Index here at bbogardus@asco.com dipped back into the sixties, with 66, 63 & 64 received. This morning we were back up to 78.
I wonder if I can get a restraining order against [no sender] because he keeps pestering me about [no subject].
arcosar@superonline.com was right, I just couldn’t ignore an email with the subject line that read, Just can’t ignore this email. I didn’t open it, but I couldn’t help writing about it here.
Thanks to CrawfordKWwqs@msn.com I now know where to get help if I’m ever bit by a radioactive archnid, the Spiderman Pharmacy.
Today at the tire place they pulled a nail out of my, less than 3 month old, left rear tire and patched it up. Last time this happened to me I wasn’t so lucky. In July of 2003 I picked up a nail in my less than 2 month old Toyos, but that time it was too close to the sidewall for patching, so I had to buy a whole new tire.
Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 17
Got the Japanese front license plate mounted this evening. A friend at work made up a mount out of 1/8 aluminum and bent it according to my fancy-schmancy AutoCAD drawing. According to Tim, he doesn’t do holes or windows, so I spent my lunchtime drilling the 4 mounting holes and the 2 plate mounting holes (both in the bracket and the plate.)
Tonight when I got home I painted the bare aluminum with some flat black paint that I last used to cover up the stock muffler, which for whatever reason, was plainly visible in the rear view of the car.
Although there are four holes in the mount, there are only three used to bolt it to the car. Because I didn’t want to have to disassemble nearly the entire front underbody plastic cladding to have unfettered access to the mounting points, I managed to only get two bolts in. After once again dropping the 3rd bolt on the third attempt, I gave up. Believe me when I say that 2 is more than sufficient to hold this little license plate and it’s bracket to the car. The things I took out were there to tie down the car to the deck of the ship that brought it over from Japan, one bolt would probably be enough…
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 17
Just notched over the 20k mark on the drive home from work. Once home there was just time enough to unpack the lunch buckets and change clothes before heading back out. Tonight being the first Thursday of the month meant Master’s Miata Club business meeting.
Donna is thrilled. It looked good when I saw it on someone else’s Miata. It looked cool when I looked at the pictures of some. It looked neat when I did a Photoshop mock-up. But somehow it lost something it the translation to real life. Maybe if I had a lighter colored car? Oh, well, I’m keeping it on until at least this weekend so I can take a picture or two of it on the front, but after that its coming off. Anyone want a replica Japanese license plate?
Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 17
We have three lights in front of the house that we leave on all the time. One to light the house number and stairs, one bug light to light the door and one at the end of the driveway. It seems like these burn out way too often and all 3 will go about a day or so apart, so it seems like I am always complaining about burnt out light bulbs. My mother-in-law found some 2,000 hour bulbs in a catalog so she ordered me a six pack.
Last Friday I changed out the one at the end of the driveway with a long lasting bulb. I can see why they last that long, these suckers are dim. I guess it is expending 60 watts of power and giving off 30 watts of light and 30 watts of heat. I’ll let you know it lasts 76 more days.
After a visit to Kroger?s to pick up tomorrow morning’s breakfast essentials I cruised by the 2 Japanese restaurants in town checking for photography backgrounds. I figure if I’m going to take a couple of photos of the car with the Japanese license plate and then remove it, I might as well try something a little more artsy than backing it out of the garage and snapping away in the driveway. A night shot might be cool, I wonder if they leave the lights on after they have closed up shop for the day?
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 17
We did out weekly grocery shopping this afternoon (top down, woot, first time is has gone down in over a week) and it was time to stock up on my favorite elixir, Diet Dr. Pepper. As I picked up a twelve pack I noticed a box right next to it that said Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper, a strange impulse came over me so I bought one of those too. I sure hope I liked the taste or I don’t know what the heck I was going to do with the other 11 cans.
As we are checking out the kid bagging asks, “Is this any good?” while pointing at the cherry vanilla version. My response was, “I don’t know, but I will in a couple of hours.”
It has been a couple of hours and if that kid is reading this, “It ain’t bad.” I’ll have to wait until I’ve tasted a few more before I decide if I buy it again… Trouble is that it doesn’t seem wildly different from regular Diet Dr. Pepper. Come to think of it, if you tried to describe the taste of Dr. Pepper, you might just use the words cherry & vanilla already. So isn’t this new soda flavor kind of redundant.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 18
Got up this morning and finally took some photos of the Japanese plate on the front of the car (obviously, looking at the previous post.) I guess now I can take it off the car. Trouble is that even though I don’t really like the way it looks, I like it’s look. (huh?) There was all the money, time & effort it took to get the plate on there, especially by my friend who actually fabricated the trick mounting bracket. On top of that, and maybe the hardest to swallow, there is the fact that I would have to admit to poor judgment in conceiving the mod in the first place.
After the breakfast bagel and skimming the newspaper we went over and took a fairly long hike in Hitchcock Woods. First time we have done that in a while. We have long since given up trying to keep track of the miles, but we walked for real close to 2 hours, so I figured we covered 5–1/2 to 6 miles.
This afternoon we watched, well mainly me, Tom Cruise in The Last Samurai. OK movie, but in typical Hollywood fashion it was over blown and derivative.
Speaking of derivative, I’m kind of watching the Stupor Bowl and I’ve seen commercials for 3 upcoming films from Hollywood so far; a new Batman flick, War of the Worlds and The Longest Yard. The Longest Yard? Adam Sandler? Chris Rock? Heaven help us, because it will probably make millions…
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 18
Jack wakes up at home with a huge hangover after the night of his office Christmas party. He forces himself to open his eyes, and the first thing he sees is a couple of aspirins next to a glass of water on the side table.
And, next to them, a single red rose!
Jack sits down and sees his clothing in front of him, all clean and pressed. Jack looks around the room and sees that it is in perfect order, spotlessly clean. So is the rest of the house. He takes the aspirins, cringes when he sees a huge black eye staring back at him in the bathroom mirror, and notices a note on the table: “Honey, breakfast is on the stove, I left early to go shopping– Love you!”
He stumbles to the kitchen and sure enough, there is hot breakfast and the morning newspaper. His son is also at the table, eating. Jack asks, “Son…what happened last night?”
“Well, you came home after 3 A.M., drunk and out of your mind. You broke some furniture, puked in the hallway, and got that black eye when you ran into the door.”
“So, why is everything in such perfect order, so clean, I have a rose, and breakfast is on the table waiting for me?”
His son replies, “Oh THAT!…Mom dragged you to the bedroom, and when she tried to take your pants off, you screamed, “Leave me alone, lady, I’m married!”
Broken furniture — $85.26
Hot Breakfast — $4.20
Red Rose bud -$3.00
Two Aspirins -$.38
Saying the right thing, at the right time…“Priceless”.
Today it made it to at least the middle 60’s. The sun seems to be getting a little higher in the sky, so even at 4:30 for the trip home it was fairly warm. I kept the jacket on though as in the shade it was still kind of cool. My cubical neighbor guarantees that there will be no more cold weather as yesterday he finally finished the install on his wood stove he has been monkeying with for the past couple of months.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 20
I had a dentist appointment for cleaning this afternoon and I put the top down and left it that way. I didn’t bring the cockpit cover, it was at home on the workbench in the garage, so it felt really strange to leave the car sitting outside unprotected. There wasn’t any chance of rain, but I’ve gotten so into the habit of putting the cover on, even for short spans, that I was uncomfortable the whole time I was in the dentist’s office. Turns out I had good reason, I’ve developed a couple of small cavities requiring a revisit for filling. The car on the other hand was fine.
When I got back to work I left it down again. I did think about putting the top up, but in the end I left it down. The weather was clouding by quitting time, but it was still warm enough to ride home topless without my usual light jacket. Seeing as we had no commitments this afternoon we turned the 6 mile ride home into 26.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 22
I don’t really like the Japanese license plate on the front of the car, but I don’t want to take it off. I posted a thread over on the Miata.net Forums asking if I should keep it or lose it yesterday. So far the yeses and noes are running about even.
Chinese and Japanese share the same lettering scheme, but the “letters” have different meanings in the different languages. The kanji characters along the top is supposed to represent the location of the plate owner (like our states) and possibly reads Ueno, a prefecture of Tokyo. A couple of Chinese speaking members of the forum noticed the kanji characters are reversed giving them an unintended meaning. In the Cantonese dialect they represent a slang for ‘long dong’!
If I parked in the front row of a glass walled Chinese restaurant I might get very good service from the waitresses, but the plate will have to come off for sure now as it is a blatant misrepresentation of the truth. 
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 23
A while back I had a friend of a friend make up a side banner for this site. I liked it but he had put an RX-8 in it. I asked if he’d do a different one with just Miatas, well today it came via the email. I have it integrated into the site, but I had to darken up the theme a little to make it work (as it was I had to lighten up the banner.)
It was his first attempt at something vertical, he kinda of specializes in signatures, those 60x300 images at the bottom of a forum post. He is only 16 and just started doing computer graphics in August of last year. Like any kid, cost is an issue so he is hosted on Geocities and has a “free” domain name, so you have to drill down through the popups and ads, but the images are worth it. Blood Lite Arts
I still liked my old page so I have implemented a style switcher, so you can pick which look you like. There a few bugs in the system still, but I’ll see if I can work them out. The most annoying is for some reason it loads the default first and then switches. That happens pretty quickly on individual pages, but with the bigger archive files it is really noticeable. Plus for some reason in Firefox the new banner doesn’t show at all…
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Continue reading New Banner
If all you see are little squares for the title of this post it must be because you don’t have the Far Eastern Language Support Pack installed. What it says, according to Babel Fish is, Goodbye License Plate in Japanese. What amounts to the shortest Mod reversal in my Miata career occurred tonight, after only 9 days I took off my Faux Japanese Plate.
I thought I might have had a taker for it in the Miata.net community, but I haven’t heard back, so I guess not. May try and sell it on eBay. I’ll box it up on Monday and see what it weighs, then I’ll list it. Unless somebody reading this wants it, $25 plus shipping that is the plate and the custom mount for a Miata.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 23
Take the Star Trek Quiz |
Worf
You appear tough and cold, but deep inside you are a hopeless romantic and highly motivated by your emotions and sense of honor and ethics.
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In June I’m leading the Master’s Miata Club on a trip to the Hwy21 Drive-In in Beaufort. We are going to be joined by the Low Country Miata Club from Charleston. Last year the 2 clubs got together to go to the only other drive-in in operation in SC, The Big Mo, just up the street from us in Monetta.
Today, Donna and I took our first fact finding mission to Beaufort. We left Aiken at 9:00 AM and it took 2–1/2 hours to make it there, with 2 small breaks. This seems like a good start time, as it will get us into town around lunch. After lunch, activities will probably be walking around the historic downtown, shopping or just sitting around the waterfront. Mid afternoon we will drive to the hotel and check in, maybe freshen up before heading over to the drive-in to get in line so we can get good parking spots.
The drive-in is about 5 miles from the historic district and is across from the Marine Corp Air Station. You can’t miss it as they have a huge sign right on US21 visible for about a mile in either direction. The drive-in is about 200 yards down a side road. Because they also do a flea market thing on Saturdays during the day it was open, so Donna and I stopped in for a visit. The first thing you notice is that it is a lot bigger than the Big Mo. There are 9 rows for cars where as Mo has 6, maybe seven. The concession stand and the restroom facilities are light-years improved over the Big Mo’s. They are bigger, brighter and better kept up. We chatted with the owners a bit, told them we were coming with a car club in June. They seemed very friendly. When we told them where we were from they of course asked if we knew of the Big Mo. These guys are only coming up on one year of drive-in ownership, so when they were starting out they of course visited the Boaz’s at the Big Mo to get pointers on running a drive-in. As a matter of fact the FM transmitter they use for the movie audio is the Big Mo’s back-up unit. The cool thing about the Hwy21 is that they didn’t actually need the transmitter, but felt they should have one for modernization, because nearly all of their corded speakers still work!
We thought at first we would try to stay in a B&B. That might have been an expensive proposition and we were not too sure that the Miata Club folks would want to go that way. Plus it seems a shame to stay at a place like that when you are really getting a short night sleep and leaving, what with staying out late at a drive-in. A B&B should be savored. There is a Best Western right in the historic district, so we went inside to check it out. They were already all booked up for the Saturday night in question anyway. For kicks we asked the price, $139 to $169. Yikes! Those B&B’s are not sounding so expensive after all. When we left town we drove back the way we came and there are about 6–8 chain motels in between downtown and the drive-in. There was a Country Inn and Suites that looked promising. When we got home we went to the internet to check prices and they are $115 a night. Ain’t nothing cheap.
More research is required. I envision at least one more day trip in our future. Cool thing is I now have a Beaufort phone book, no I didn’t steal one from a phone booth, they had them as giveaways at the Visitor’s Center. While we were they we also picked up a bunch of menus from restaurants in town. In tomorrow’s installment I will tell you all about lunch in Beaufort…
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 25
On yesterday’s trip to Beaufort we started by looking for the Visitor’s Center. It is a touristy type town, so every little spot has a sign outside mentioning Tourist Info, but that is usually just to get you in the door. We stopped into one place that offered walking tours and he was helpful, gave us a map of the historic district and was helpful about a lunch spot, but didn’t know where the “official” Visitor?s Center was. Should have been an omen.
Donna asked a gift shop place and was directed around the corner and up a block, but that proved fruitless. We did find a bookstore where she asked again, only to be brought to a second individual who said the Visitor’s Center was about 10 blocks that away, but there is a smaller one back near where we parked. But the smaller one might not be there anymore, as there was talk of consolidating it with the bigger one. We risked the closer but uncertain one. When we arrived it turned out it was all gone (although there was still a sign offering visitor info outside the place.) An omen?
We walked the ten blocks. On arrival we went inside and poked around the place for a while, picked up some brochures and got a Beaufort phone book, before we decided to leave and walk back for some lunch. Because it was sunny and warm we thought a couple of bottled waters would make the trip back more pleasant. They had a soda cooler there in the front office and I grabbed a couple of cold ones and went up to the counter. There were two people behind it and 2 customers on this side. Both individuals were helping one person and another was waiting their turn, then me. The woman being helped was buying something too, so the woman behind the counter was refolding a map while the guy was running her credit card. The kid running her card was way to effervescent and acting loudly too cute to be enjoyable. The woman was having trouble folding that pesky map. This was taking way too long and who knew how long it was going to take the two to handle the woman in front of me, so I looked at Donna, and she looked back, we wordlessly decided we could make the walk without collapsing if we didn’t have the water. I put the bottles down and we left. Portend of things to come?
The first place we came to I pooh-poohed as it looked too new and crowded. We walked down a little alley to a place that had a signboard on the main drag. There was a nearly full outdoor dining area and some steps up to maybe a place to dine inside and a door underneath that looked like an entrance. We chose downstairs, but when we opened the door it was definitely a bar. Smokey and dark, with patrons startled by the bright light of the opened door, we knew in an instant this wasn?t for us. I just let it close with the both of us still outside. At restaurant #3 we opened the door, entered and stood there deciding what to do. There wasn’t any sign saying “Seat Yourself” or “Please wait to be Seated”, so we hesitated in the entranceway. Ah, here comes someone on the wait staff, she’ll help. Nope, she breezed on by without so much as a how do you do? We figured they didn’t want our business, so we left. We got a little closer at place number four. We were greeted at the door and shown to a table, menus were dispersed, but that was it. We sat at our table for the longest time, we made our choices, but no one stopped by the fill our water glasses, let alone take our order. By now we had pretty much decided to get in the car and drive out to the strip and eat fast food, but we spotted a sign across the street to a place we had seen a menu from at the Visitor’s Center. With a sigh we decided to give it one more try. We were greeted with a smile, seated at a table against the wall that held cloth napkins, given a menu and our blue, real glass, goblets filled with ice water. After taking our order our waitress disappeared. A little while later we see her grab her purse and head for the door. Oh, no. We’ve been here before, our waitress bails at the end of her shift and we never get served. The other waitress in the place is helping about three other tables and has so far not even looked our way. After about 15 minutes and Donna has rearranged her purse a couple times to entertain herself, we had just about decided to leave when our meal arrives. The salad was great and the flat bread pizza, while almost too over done, was tasty. Our new waitress was very attentive once we had our food and because we split the two items between us our bill, with tip, was only $16. Glad we didn’t end up at the Burger Doodle, but boy that was harder than it should have been.
This is not the first time we have gone through an ordeal while trying to get a meal while traveling, so you would have thought we would have caught on to all the omens thrown our way, but no we were blind to them. We had a previous good experience with Beaufort a decade or so ago, so this little snafu hasn?t totally soured us on the town. When we next visit I think the first thing we will do is find a lunch spot early before the crowds and the wait staff tires.
Not too far outside of Beaufort, SC are the ruins of the Old Sheldon Church. It was built around 1750 and burned by the British forces during the Revolutionary War in 1779. The church was rebuilt in 1826 only to be burned again in 1865 by Sherman’s men in their march to the sea. Finally taking the hint, it was not rebuilt.
As we were leaving another group was showing up to look around and I took this throw away shot with them in it. I now wished I waited for them to leave to frame, as I think I may like this angle better. Although they add something because it appears like they all looking up at the building…
On the eve of Valentine’s Day I received every husband’s dream, wife sanctioned internet porn searching. Donna is a big fan of Trading Spaces and she heard/read somewhere that the hostess of the show, Paige Davis, was canned from the show for the discovery of a Paris Hilton style sex tape that was somewhere on the net. She asked me to try and find it. I answered promptly, “Yes ma’am, I’ll look in every filthy corner of the net for you.”
It didn’t take long to find out that the tape was not really of her. Or maybe it was the greatest cover up ever perpetrated, it was denied it was her, just some one who looks and sounds a lot like her. The tape may (or may not) be real, but apparently racy pictures of Paige at a gay male charity function are not — Paige Davis Gone Wild!
I may have not found anything tonight, but if she ever comes in and I’m looking at internet porn, I can just say I was looking for that Paige Davis tape. (once )
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 26
“Only” averaged 75 slices of Spam a day over the weekend. There were even a couple of virus infected ones on Friday. In honor of Valentine’s Day here are some of the love themed messages I received:
swap girls that are loose tonight from Weberlgfpq@elite.net
wedgecrummy@madtui.com promises Get a wild date
Not to be outdone aikgtwwpzb@astrosfan.net says meet your sexy dreamdate today
No matter who or what you are there is someone out there for you:
Fat girl needs to talk to someone from Woodsonmhoi@einsundeins.de
Fat boy needs to talk to a girl from Phillipsjzo@emirates.net.ae
Skinny boy needs to talk to someone from Arredondoaaxe@ioc.net
Whatever you weigh, it is still a good idea to Become a stud in bed according to BonitaRyanOxdd@P.com
The rain that the Weather Channel had been promising for our area for Sunday noon, finally arrived here mid-morning today. Because of that we managed to eke in a top down drive to work. The windblocker was up along with the windows and the temperature control was about halfway to hot. Tomorrow and Wednesday it will be in the mid to lower 70s, woohoo, then the following two days it will be down into the 50s before settling in to the 60s where it should by this weekend. Not exactly spring, but the signs are there.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 27
OK, maybe Ed Bradley I can understand, Elizabeth Taylor is a stretch, but Kobe Bryant? We know Kobe has sex with the correct gender and of the proper age, but as to consensual, eh, maybe.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 28
A precious little girl walks into a pet shop and asks in the sweetest little lisp between two missing teeth, “Excuthe me, mithter, do you keep widdle wabbits?”
As the shopkeeper’s heart melts, he gets down on his knees so that he’s on her level and asks, “Do you want a widdle white wabbit, or a thoft and fuwwy bwack wabbit, or maybe one like that cute widdle bwown wabbit over there?”
She, in turn, blushes, rocks on her heels, puts her hands on her knees, leans forward and says, in a quiet voice, “I don’t think my python weally gives a thit.”
If not at the joke in the previous post, at least at the man who took over an hour to post it to his blog.
About mid-morning my email alert chimed and when I opened it I got a little joke from one of the usual suspects. I thought it was cute and I hadn’t blogged one in a while, so I went online and hit “new Entry.”
Because it came the way it did there was of course several right brackets and extra carriage returns to remove, so I cut and pasted into an empty txt file. After sprucing up I cut and pasted it into the Entry Body area and hit publish.
I was greeted with a 404. Huh? Back button, try again, 404. Maybe there is some sort of hidden escape character that I can’t see and the cutting and pasting is just inserting it, which makes the entry fail. So I open the txt file in word and save it as a word document. I close out Word and open it back up to the file. I then save it to a plain txt file again. Open the txt file, copy and paste that into the Entry area again and hit publish. 404. Dang.
Next I try and paste in each of the 3 paragraphs one at a time publishing after each one. First one goes fine, second one too, but number three is the culprit. So I try pasting it into the Extended Entry area to see if it would work there. Nope. Dang, Now I’ve got 2/3 a joke online and no punch line. I delete the post and rebuild the blog. I’ll try again when I get home, maybe something at work is causing it…
I forwarded the email to home and did the whole clean and prune exercise again before attempting the posting. All three paragraphs at once netted the same results, 404. (which reminds me, I need to make a custom 404 page for here) So I plugged in the first two paragraphs and published. I then started adding 3 or 4 words at a time from the punch paragraph until it failed. Which turned out to be right after the word python. I tried skipping the word weally when pasting and that didn’t work. I then tried typing in the word weally, nope. How about if I spell it correctly? Really didn’t do the trick either. So then I went back to my original txt file and pasted it in. That worked! There was a line break after the word python in that file, so I cleaned up the text file and I left the extra carriage return in after python and that worked too. The thing that I did to solve the problem and not have a misplaced carriage return was I placed a no breaking space in html code between python and weally.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 30
I can’t beleive it. the word “p y t h o n” causes me to not be able to publish. First it was the joke. Then I had the same problem with me bitching about not being able to post the joke. What the heck is that all about? Is it just me?
I can use python
as long as it is the last word in a line. But I cannot type the word python and another word with a plain space between them. I have to seperate the words with & n b s p ;. Good thing this blog isn’t about snakes.
Because I’m a total novice at this whole internet garage sale thing I had a friend list the Japanese License Plate & Mount for me. Opening bid is $15 or buy it now for $30. Hurry, you only have 6 days left.
Buy Me!
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 30
 Went for a little hike in Hitchcock Woods this afternoon for two reasons; one to take this picture. Which looks pretty much like the last two months photos. I bet next month’s will show some change, because spring will be cranking up by then. And two was to go for a nice walk in the woods. I know we were rained out of hiking last week, but for some reason it seems longer than 2 weeks since we’ve hiked.
The car is pretty dirty and today would have been a nice day to give it a bath. The Emporer doesn’t look too bad from further than 30 feet away (see yesterday’s Rural photo), but it has got an under layer of road grime, and believe it or not a sprinkling of pine pollen on top of that. Plus the wheel wells and the tires now have a orangish dirt covering in spots as a result of yesterday’s Rural picture. But I refuse to wash it because the Weather Channel is calling for rain tomorrow night and Monday, with more in store for Wednesday and Thursday.
It really is too soon for pine pollen, but that is just what it is. I’m thinking the 30–35 MPH winds of early this week shook it out of the trees prematurely. Our company’s property is littered with pine trees and every spring for three weeks we get a major dusting of the yellow powder.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 33
Last week some time I noticed the “Invite a Friend to Gmail” link was back at the top of the page when using Gmail. I ignored it.
Later in the week I noticed the “Invite” link was gone. Oh well, I figured if I wasn’t giving them away to “friends” fast enough, they were passing them along to those who would. Turns out they weren’t gone, just moved. The invite think has its own little block on the lower left of the Gmail page right below the labels menu. I have 50! to give away. Ha, I don’t have one single person to give a Gmail address too, let alone 50.
I have pestered everyone I know, I have offered them up free to strangers who have stumbled onto my blog via the Insane Giveaway Nights, I’ve tossed a few to fellow Miata.netters and I have even given them away philanthropically via gmailomatic, so how the heck am I to rid myself of these?
Even though it is against the Gmail Terms of Service I am going to sell them that’s how (what are they going to do, take away my account?) So if you want one of my Gmail Invites, just paypal $1,000.0 US to me at brian AT mr-miata DOT com. I figure if I sell enough of them I can buy one of those brand new next generation Miatas that they are going to introduce in about a week at the Geneva Auto Show.
On our way back from Columbia this afternoon we passed by a cemetery and out front was 3’x 5′ white banner with bright blue lettering. “SPECIAL! 2 Plots. $31.00 per Month.”
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 34
Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 34
Continue reading There’s A New One Coming III
Spam Count: 64 for Friday, 62 on Saturday and 74 on Sunday.
Among the smut and meds, this week’s newest trend, uncounted riches are promised. I didn’t open them to see if they were a variation on the Nigerian scheme, but I’m betting they’re not, they are probably the usual crap with a “catchy” title.
rrlioynmfpqmqr@mypersonalemail.com sez: Mr. Payne has $989,165 for you and your fa…
yasijvmerlc@darkhorsefan.net sez: Mr. Morton has $063,327 for you and your f…
xtvkaknfj@a4.no sez: Mr. Gates has $490,781 for you and your fa…
htmwq@pearl-online.de sez: Mr. Farmer has $099,258 for your family
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Yesterday I would have sworn those pictures were not the real thing, but I guess I was wrong. Today Autoweek put a small article and a photo gallery online and sure enough those are the real thing, the next gen Miata. I kind of like it, the interior less than the exterior, but it really doesn’t matter as I am not due for another new Miata until 2010.
Today was an unseasonably warm day, it was about 15 degrees above normal, so my old raggedy 2003 Miata got to be driven around topless. Almost made the trip to the dentist for a couple of fillings enjoyable. And after work, we of course, took the long cut home. Tonight we will probably take the long way to the store to get OJ for tomorrow’s breakfast. Tomorrow will be more in the normal range, but Thursday it is supposed to be 10 degrees below normal. Make up your mind Mother Nature.
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 35
Middle70’s and sunny. The car is still dirty because it is going to rain again tomorrow. I probably will wash it Saturday because we have a Miata Club event on Saturday night. It will be dark by the time we get together so no one would notice that the car is dirty and it is going to rain again the next day, but it will be time, last washing was over a month ago…
Started down, went up, back down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 39
The light near the front stairs burnt out Monday night, so yesterday evening I replaced it with another one of those 2,000 hour bulbs my mother-in-law bought. I’ll be keeping track of how long this one lasts too. The one I put in earlier this month is still going and has 1,400 hours left before it burns out.
Auction ended today for the Japanese license plate and mount. Even though 3 people put it on their watch list, there were zero bids. Even though I know this is a studio shot with a photoshopped in background, it’s still a cool image of the new Miata.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 40
A couple weeks ago a co-worker asked me to help out with his son’s science project. It was a simple job, print out the headings for his tri-fold display. They want some stuff that was longer than they could print on their home ink-jet. He brought me the PowerPoint presentations and asked if I could print out the headings in a nice dark blue, no problem, I thought. We have a nice big ol’ Hewlett-Packard DesignJet800 plotter that can print on 36″ wide paper and I guess maybe the whole 150′ length if you didn’t run out of ink.
When I printed out the first page, much to my surprise, it was a lovely shade of purple. I started testing other shades of blue and they all came out different shades of purple. The really dark blue-green came out with almost no purple, but it looked black or gray not blue at all. When I asked if purple was OK, he said yes with little enthusiasm, but what could we do? I ended up printing out everything for the science project because there was no way that they would be able to match my purple shade at home on their printer.
Yesterday I had to make up a sign for here at work and not thinking I choose a nice blue for some of the lettering. Of course I cussed loudly (to myself) when the blue printed as purple. After completing the sign project I made it a goal to find a fix. The internet knows all, so off I went in search of a solution. My first stop was at the HP support forums. I searched for “blue prints purple” in the DesignJet800 forum and was rewarded with seven hits. The first one says, “Latest firmware has new color maps to help with this.” Bingo.
I check my plotter and it says I have firmware A.02.09 installed and A.02.12 is available, so I download all 24Meg of it and put it on my desktop. The file is an executable, so I double click and it installs some maintenance software on my C: drive. After it installs, it automatically starts the program and promptly tells me it can’t find the printer?! I do a quick double check and the printer is listed as one of my printers.
I go back online to the page I downloaded the firmware upgrade from and scroll further down the page to where the troubleshooting section is. There is my problem, you can not do this over a network, you have to be directly connected to the printer or run the program from the server. I hunt down our local IT guy and ask if he would run this update from the server. Yes, but not today, ask tomorrow.
Fast forward to this morning. I copy the maintenance program file to a networked drive and follow him to the computer room. He logs on and has to map a drive to the directory I used, and then he double clicks on the application. The hourglass appears for a half a minute or so and then disappears. We wait. And wait. And wait. The natural reaction is to try again and sure enough, history repeats itself, nothing. We go to the task manager and there are 2 processes running and neither of them are using any CPU time. I tell him to go ahead and kill the processes and I’ll move to Plan B, direct connect.
I go see one of the assembly engineers to borrow a laptop. First I check and see if it has a USB port so I can load all 24Meg of the maintenance program to it. He hands me a power supply too, as the battery, like every laptop battery in the plant, is dead. I disconnect the printer cable from the net port and plug it into the back of the laptop and turn it on. The Windows98 start screen displays and I hope to myself it is at least 98SE. I get lucky, as it turns out the OS is 2nd Edition, so I can use the USB thumbdrive.
But first I need the drivers, so I go back over to my desktop to surf the net. My thumbdrive is made by a company called Wolverine, so my first couple of searches brings back a lot of hits for Marvel Comic’s X-Men and the University of Michigan football team. I finally find it, www.wolverinedata.com and down load the drivers. Seeing as I can’t use the thumbdrive yet, I have to transfer the drivers to, egad, a floppy disc. Rifling through my desk, I find a disk in the bottom of drawer #4. After loading the USB drivers on the laptop, I to plug in the thumbdrive and can’t. Nice design work Dell, the USB port is too close to the parallel port to accommodate both devices at the same time.
I unplug the printer and copy the maintenance program to the laptop. Double click and it loads right up. The program starts and it can’t find a printer, again. This time there is a good reason, its not plugged in. Unplug the USB drive and plug in the printer, still no joy. Of course you knucklehead, the DesignJet800 is not installed as a printer on the laptop, this is the first time they’ve seen each other. Back to my desktop PC and back to the internet to download the driver for the printer. It is of course 1.9Meg so Have to use the thumbdrive again.
Unplug the printer, plug in the USB drive, copy the drivers to the desktop, unplug the USB drive, hook up the printer and install the printer drivers. Whew. Run the maintenance program and it finds the printer. Yippee! It reports that an upgrade is available and I should not turn off the printer until it is finished. I click OK and watch as a process bar creeps along the screen installing file 1 of 3. It finished the first and starts the second when a BSOD pops up on the laptop! F%*k! I hope I haven’t screwed up the printer’s memory. I shut down the laptop and when the screen on the printer says, Turn off printer”, I do just that.
I start the printer again and boot up the laptop. The printer seems to start up normal, so that is a relief. I start the maintenance program again and when I click OK a progress bar creeps across the screen installing file 1 of 2. So at least it knows it finished the first file OK. After both files are loaded the laptop program says, “Success.” The printer shows an hourglass and then it transitions to a pictogram indicating I should unplug it, I do just that.
I unhook the laptop and turn the printer back on. The printer boots normally and I check the firmware screen and it says I have A.02.12 installed. Hook it back into the net port and return to my desktop PC to retry yesterday’s sign where the blue printed purple. After all that song and dance the blue still prints out as purple! Sh#t!
I go back to the HP forums to check out the other 6 hits from yesterday’s query. Response number 3 looks promising, it is from a moderator: “When loading the paper, be sure to scroll down all the way to the bottom of the paper list and select the enhanced color profiles. These selections, along with the current firmware, should get you up and printing blue in no time.” I trot over to the printer and select enhanced color profiles. The paper list I just scrolled through is repeated, but with an EC on the end of the paper name. I select the appropriate one and try printing the sign, one more time. Finally, I got blue.
In case the pictures I’ve been posting here aren’t enough to satisfy your hunger for new MX-5 info, you can see a streaming video of the launch at the Geneva Auto Show. Go to the registration page, enter your email address and this code: id5499a2. You will get a login and password back in your email which will allow you to watch the stream on Monday. You will also be able to download later a promotional video, which will include some of the launch stream as well as other stuff the following day.
Decided to go ahead and wash the car this evening instead of waiting for tomorrow. All nice and shiny again, which will last until Sunday, when our next rain is predicted.
Started up, went down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 44
A lady walks into a drug store and tells the pharmacist she needs some cyanide.
The pharmacist said, “Why in the world do you need cyanide?”
The lady then explained she needed it to poison her husband.
The pharmacist’s eyes got big and he said, “Lord have mercy, I can’t give you cyanide to kill your husband! That’s against the law! I’ll lose my license, they’ll throw both of us in jail and all kinds of bad things will happen! Absolutely not, you can NOT have any cyanide!”
The lady reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of her husband in bed with the pharmacist’s wife.
The pharmacist looked at the picture and replied, “Well now, you didn’t tell me you had a prescription.”
I had to amend the top transition total from yesterday’s post. After we got back from the store and the photo shoot I put the top back up as it was still a little damp. It stayed up all day today because we didn’t even go out in the Miata until nearly dark.
We went out because it was the Master’s Miata Club’s Twelfth Anniversary Dinner. Every year we get together and go to a local restaurant and eat. What’s different than the usual monthly gathering at a local restaurant and eating you ask. Well, we don’t discuss Club business in a formal matter and where we are is usually a notch up on the restaurant pecking order, i.e. the food is better and we usually dress a little nicer.
From our original newsletter:
On January 30, 1993, at 3:00 in the afternoon, a small group of people met at the Gibbs Memorial Library in Evans, Georgia. There were twelve people present, all from different walks of life: different ages, different lifestyles and different tastes. The one thing they had in common was a love for their Miata.
So, we do the anniversary dinner towards the end of January or February, because that is the time of year the Club was formed and it is usually cold enough around here that doing a top down driving event would be iffy.
Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 44
It was just a month ago that I had to have a hole patched in one the tires on the car. Last night on the way out I noticed that the right rear tire looked pretty low. Sure enough it held only 21 pounds of air compared to 29 for the other three. On the way to the dinner I stopped at the corner station and put 29psi in it. This morning it was down to 28. Just walked by it and it might be my imagination, but it looks lower than that now.
I just took the tire off and at first look I didn’t see anything. A second closer look I found a small slit that when pried slightly apart revealed something shiny. None of the local tire places are open on Sundays, so I put 31psi in the tire and I’ll check it again in the morning. I’ll probably just drive it to work and get it fixed after work.
Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 44
There was 31 pounds of air in the right rear tire this morning, down a pound. After work I dropped Donna at home and headed over to the tire store. They took the car in back and I waited, marveling at the 20″ & 22″ DUBS they had in the showroom (I wondered how much one weighed, but didn’t try and lift one for fear of herniating myself.) After 20 minutes the fellow came from back and said, “Which tire?” I confirmed that I told him right and he said that they had the tire submerged and they couldn’t find any leak. I told him that I thought that I found something and had marked the tire. We walked out into the shop and they pulled the tire again and I found my mark and showed them what I saw. They pried around in the hole while drizzling it with soapy water, but couldn’t make a bubble. I went back inside and waited. Twenty minutes later he came back out and said they couldn’t find any leaks. The tech had removed the tire from the wheel and felt all around on the inside and could still find nothing. They sent me on my way, no charge, saying if it keeps leaking, bring it back.
I’ll put 30psi in tonight and keep checking it…
Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 44
Ever vilgilant Postini stopped 78 pieces of spam on Friday, 66 on Staurday and 55 on Sunday. It also allowed 6 to sneak through. What I really liked about 4 of the 6 that made it through were the sender’s names:
Fulgenzio Merrill
Standoffish S. Porous
Zimri Ponder
Spartacus Alicea
Trouble is that their email addresses didn’t have the same sort of flair (in the same order as above):
Kajetan@jennison.com
abetter@aspecialmemoryflorist.com
Josef@jaegervineyards.com
Jamaal@futuramic.com
The subjects were the usual dreck (in the same order as above):
DUH Pharmmaaccy — Homer Simpon’s Drug Store?
Darlin how good to see you! — The Secrets of Human Sexuality Ebook. This one snuck by the spam gaurd by including a dozen or so homilies, including my favorite: How can one better magnify the Almighty than by sniggering with him at his little jokes, particularly the poorer ones.
CHP Mediccations — Ponch & Jon’s Drug Store?
GWA Pharmaaccy — Greek Wakeboard & Kite Surf Association’s Drug Store?
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