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Just wait until Thursday when we get back to ASCO and try it by ourselves. Tonight after school we headed over to the central NC shopper’s Mecca of the Concord Mills Mall. First stop was the Bass Pro Shop for my two compatriots who are avid hunters. I managed to go ahead and pick up a couple pair of hiking socks myself. Plus a little surprise for our chauffer these three days. After the Bass Pro Shop visit we made one loop of the big mall, didn’t do too much shopping, mostly looked in from the outside of the stores and made fun of all the other patrons (…not that we probably weren’t getting the same treatment from them too.) After a hard couple hours shopping we went out to dinner. There were about 2-dozen places to eat within a stones throw of the mall (Rule #37 of business travel: Never, ever, ever eat in a food court at a mall.) Although we probably could have walked to the restaurant we chose, we hopped in the vehicle and drove over. On the recommendation of someone who had eaten there before, tonight’s epicurean repast was at Razzoo’s, a “Cajun” restaurant. I’m sure a true Cajun would be severely offendeded by the food there being referred to as Cajun, but in a Dinesylandesque way it fits what us outsiders might think is Cajun cuisine. The food was spicy, but not too, and very tasty. The red beans and rice was great, the rice was cooked to perfection, but beans weren’t cooked to nearly mush like the true New Orleans style dish I was used to. Next time we are up this way we’ll probably come back as for the first time in our 4 nights out on Uncle ASCO’s dime both the service and food were worth the over tipping we have been doing. Because the two Marks both consumed 3 beers each to soothe their tingling taste buds and I was only drinking Cokes, I became the designated driver back to Albemarle from Concord. Mark H handed me the keys to his wife’s new (850 miles) Ford Expedition. Fortunately when we left the restaurant someone had left the spot in front of me open, so I could drive straight out. I’m sure if I had to back that behemoth out I would have crushed something in the row behind me. If you have been used to driving a Miata for the last 15 years and when you aren’t and are driving the big family car of a Honda Civic, piloting an Expedition is a truly frightening thing. Titanic comes to mind, turning corners is like avoiding icebergs, hard. Because it is a truck-based vehicle, Ford has softened the spring rates to that of overcooked linguine, add on to that the tires have sidewalls as tall as Ewoks and you are in for a Weeble-like trip. I now know, first hand, exactly whom those yellow diamond shaped signs with the pitifully slow recommended speeds for curves are aimed at. The rule of thumb in a Miata is to double them, in this thing you had better heed them or risk tumbling over like lawn furniture in a hurricane. The surprise I mentioned earlier turned out to be on me. As an impulse buy at the checkout counter at the Bass Pro Shop they had a bin full of outdoorsy themed ball hitch covers and smaller antenna toppers. I spent a whopping 3 bucks and bought an antenna one that looked like a bass to put secretly on the Expedition. Turns out the thing has no visible antenna, must be built into the windshield. Maybe after I take out the Vampire Teeth out the Miata’s mouth I’ll put the fish on its antenna. Started up, still up (I’m guessing.) Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 344 Someone explain this to me: Donna received in the mail yesterday a letter that stated, “A review of our records indicates that you have unused miles in your Dividend Miles account.” To redeem her 2,454 unused miles she could select from the below list of magazines and take as many as she wanted until she ran out of miles. This has happened about 3 or 4 times in the last decade, even thought we haven’t flown on US Airways for 20 years and even when we did we were never in their frequent flier program. Anyway, we have done the magazine picking each time and it hasn’t cost us a cent. The only angle I can think of that once subscribed the magazines are hoping that you will renew (which we have never done.) This time we will be getting a year’s worth of Time, Giant and All You. The Halloween look is gone from the blog. The vampire teeth are off the Miata. Time to return to our normally scheduled lunacy. Tonight when I got back from Albemarle, NC there were three boxes waiting for me on the dining room table. 1) Plug wires from Rspeed, 2) air and oil filters, plus spark plugs from Trussville and 3) a cell phone from Tracfone. Boxes 1 & 2 are for this weekend’s 30,000 mile service for the Miata in my driveway. Box 3 is nothing but trouble. Started up, went down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 345 I was informed tonight at the MMC Monthly Meeting that I hadn’t uploaded the latest newsletter to the web site. Must have slipped my mind. I was also informed that I had a wrong meeting place listed for the Club’s annual Holiday Party (when I copied and pasted something I forgot to change a line.) So I told them if they didn’t like it fire me. They didn’t. Guess I’ll get busy on that tomorrow instead of drawing valve parts… Started down, went up, back down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 347
A long time ago on a internet far, far away I found a site that was chock full of 50’s retro designs, called PixelDecor. I asked for and received permission to use some of the images (Chunky & Eames come to mind) there as background for the MMC web site. Most recently I was inspired by the pattern called LiteBrite when I had the rounded corner look for this blog back when I was using MT. As part of my updating here I am hoping to get permission to use the image above to use as the background (where you see the dark blue now.) I’d say I’ll keep you posted, but you’ll know anyway on one of your next few times you visit. Which reminds me, those Life of Brian chapters from the ol’ MT days still have that rounded corner look with those colors. Better get working on updating them. Plus there is still the dusty morgue of 2002–2003 blog entries to wipe off and import here… Started down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 347 Did the 30k service this morning. Donna and her mom went out to a couple local festivals and I put the Miata up on jack stands under the awning where mom’s MSV usually resides. Changed the oil and filter. I have been changing these items in my Miata every 3 months or so for nearly a decade and a half and it never ceases to amaze me how much oil will drain out of a horizontally mounted filter. Even more puzzling is that I try and place an old t-shirt in the same spot in an effort to catch this flow and occasionally I succeed and others I stain the concrete driveway in several, sometimes large, spots. As usual I rotated the tires while I change the oil. Checked their air pressure and topped off at 29 psi (60 in the spare) where required. I even sprayed the tires with some ArmourAll foaming tire cleaner. As an experiment I sprayed the inside of the wheel wells with the foaming stuff too. Worked a lot better, blacker, than when I use a sponge in there when washing the car. Changed the air filter. It was quite dirty. The manual says clean it at 30k, but I think the 8 bucks for a new one is the least I can do for his highness. Changed out the spark plugs. The old ones didn’t look too bad, I probably could have re-gapped them and put them back in, but a fresh set of NGKs is, like the air filter, cheap medicine. I also installed 2 new spark plug wires. That’s right two. On the old Miatas there was a coil pack with the typical 4 wires running to the 4 spark plugs and the OEM ones were notorious for starting to break down after 20 to 40k. The 2001–2005 Miatas have a coil directly mounted to two of the plugs and a standard wire from those coils to the other 2 plugs. Recently I have been noticing a slight bit of engine roughness in the mornings when the car is cold and it seemed like new wires were called for. I also dumped a half a bottle of fuel injector snake oil into the gas tank. For good measure I “washed” the car using some Quik Detailer and a towel. Tonight when Donna and I went out for a drive and some clothes shopping, the rough running was gone. Was it the plugs, wires, fuel injector cleaner or a combination of all three? Started down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 347 Donna and I went for a bike ride this morning and ended up for breakfast out again. This time we switched things up a bit and went south of town, so instead of eating at the New Moon Cafe we dined at Best Bagels. We get one bacon, egg & cheese bagel and a second plain toasted bagel. We each then get one half of each bagel and swap tops and bottoms with half the B,E&C split between them. We learned long ago that getting two bagels loaded with breakfast food stuffs is too much for us to eat, not that we couldn’t do it, but it makes the last 3 miles home on the bike more difficult. How is this for a neat trick, I went for a 10.8 mile ride while she went for 13.2 and we rode the tandem! Turns out her new cyclecomputer has two separate settings, so it could be swapped back and forth between two bikes if you were so inclined and somehow when I set the tire size calculation number I entered it for bike number two and the computer was set to number one. I broke out the instructions and set #1 to the same number tire size as #2, so no matter what the computer is set for, it will read correctly. I uploaded the “highlights” of the first half of 2003. Not every one is a gem, there are a few polished stones and a couple of rocks left in the mix, but guaranteed there are no lumps of coal nor dirt clods. If you ever want proof that there are folks who have a duller life than you, it is right there for you in my archives. I wonder why when I imported those 6 months the plugin that displays them skipped the first two table cells? Update: I uploaded all of July 2003 and one post from August and the table straightened itself out. Started down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 347 Sitting patiently, second in line behind an Acura MDX at a stoplight tonight and after waiting for what seemed a long time, but was perhaps only a couple of minutes, he crept up a foot or so in what I can only assume was a threatening gesture towards the light or perhaps just frustration at having to wait for practically no vehicles, when the cross traffic light goes yellow and ours soon follows by turning green. Started down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 347 1805 Lewis & Clark 1st sight the Pacific Ocean. A cowboy in Texas got pulled over by a State Trooper for speeding. The trooper started to lecture the cowboy about his speeding, and in general began to throw his weight around to try to make the cowboy feel uncomfortable. Finally, the trooper got around to writing out the ticket. As he was doing that, he kept swatting at some flies that were buzzing around his head. The cowboy said, “Having some problem with Circle flies there, are ya?” The trooper stopped writing the ticket and said, “Well yeah, if that’s what they are. I never heard of Circle flies.” So the cowboy says, “Well, Circle flies are common on ranches. See, they’re called Circle flies because they’re almost always found circling around the back end of a horse.” The trooper says, “Oh,” and goes back to writing the ticket. Then after a minute, he stops and says, “Are you trying to call me a horse’s ass?” The cowboy says, “Oh no, officer. I have too much respect for law enforcement and police officers to even think about calling you a horse’s ass.” The trooper says, “Well that’s a good thing,” and goes back to writing the ticket. After a long pause, the cowboy says, “Hard to fool them flies though.” Aiken added another chain eatery to its lineup the other week, O’Charley’s. Tonight Donna and I sampled the place. The menu was pretty much like all the others in the casual dining category. There wasn’t anything there that you couldn’t get identically or really similar someplace else. Whatever their signature dish is, the one every one thinks of when they think of O’Charley’s, I hope we didn’t have it, because our dinner was totally forgettable. Matter of fact, we have after one meal decided that we may not ever need to go back. The place was packed, but that is more attributable to the fact that it is new, than the food and or atmosphere. Not that the food was bad. We split a side salad, whole rack of ribs, fries and slaw. We started off with a bowl of potato soup that no less than two co-workers said was to die for, and I wouldn’t suffer through a paper cut for any more. More cheddar cheese and bacon pieces than potatoes served luke-hot. The ribs were advertised as “Fall-Off-The-Bone”, but they needed some coaxing to let go of the bone. Fries are fries and the cole slaw was slightly better than average. Within a mile of O’Charley’s is a Chili’s, a Ruby Tuesday, an Applebee’s and they are building a Fatz Cafe which are all the same kind of eatery. Also within the same radius is an Outback, a Red Lobster, an Atlanta Bread Company, a Ryan’s, an IHOP, about a dozen different fast food places and the usual smattering of Chinese, Mexican and Pizza places. I wish them luck, put they probably don’t need it because although Donna and I probably won’t ever darken their door again there are definitely enough others that will. Started down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 347 Cafepress has added black t-shirts for printing on. At one time I had an idea that was perfect for a black shirt, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. I have always wanted to have a tee that said “New Navy” on it, as a parody of the Old Navy merchandise. Maybe one that says, “Regular Navy.” Now I just need a line art sailor graphic and I’m n business. Started down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 347
This was taken at the power station at the J. Strom Thurmond Dam. I’ve a couple other possibilities from today’s photo safari. One from an intersection not too far from home, plus one or two more from around the dam area. Started down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 347 I got a new mouse at work today. Spiffy new wireless jobbie with a tilt wheel (AKA: horizontal scroll) and because I’m a lowly user, I cannot install the drivers and I can’t even plugin a different mouse and have the system recognize it, it takes an administrator. Our local IT guy was off, so I called the Help Desk in Florham Park. Mike answered the phone. When I explained what I wanted to do he assured me that just unplugging the old mouse and plugging in the new mouse to the same USB port was all I needed to do. He said it works 9 out of 10 times. I said, if I happen to be a number 10 I’d call him back. Every contact with the help desk generates a ticket number. I got my email telling me that a ticket had been created with the trouble listed as: “client had new mouse he thought he needed someone to install the software. ” Time on the ticket was 3:09:41. Because I wasn’t sure if the weasel was going to check on my PC status, I went through the motions even though I knew it wouldn’t work. Shutdown PC, unplug old mouse, plug in new mouse, restart PC. Oh, geez, the mouse doesn’t work. Shutdown PC, unplug new mouse, plug in old mouse, restart PC. Look at that, the mouse works. Once I’ve logged in I notice I have new mail. The trouble ticket has been closed with a solution of: “explained to client that software is not required to operate new mouse.” Time of closure was listed as 3:09:45. Elapsed time from opening to closing, 4 seconds. Didn’t even give me a chance to see if it was going to work. You don’t think the Help Desk Grunts are graded on average ticket closure time, do you? As I stew whether to call back and open another ticket or not, I get a new piece of email with the subject line of: “Help Desk Customer Satisfaction Survey for Ticket # 26443.” “The Help Desk is committed to delivering the best service to you our customers. As part of our commitment, we would like to invite you to participate in our online satisfaction survey.” Perfect, I’ll fill out the survey and give them a piece of my mind. There is a clickable link in the email that goes to a server in Florham Park where the survey is hosted. So I click. Nothing happens for a bunch of seconds until the connection times out and I get a “the page is unavailable” error. Nice service guys. I think I’ll just wait to Monday to let the local guy do it…
Started down, went up, back down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 349 Due to circumstances beyond my control I attended the Aiken Kidney Benefit production of Oliver tonight. Cockney accent, nearly incomprehensible. Southern accent, sometimes difficult to understand. Residents of Aiken, South Carolina playing Londoners, unintelligible. I can only hope there was a good reason for it, Fagin was lip-syncing his songs. At intermission I told Donna that I thought he was doing just that, but I wasn’t positive. In the second act Fagin has several solo numbers and it was confirmed in Ashlee Simpson-like fashion when the actor stumbled on a couple of words and the song never skipped a beat… Started down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 349
Speaking of perfect convertible weather, the word is out amongst all members of the topless fraternity on that too. Well over 90% of ‘verts I saw this weekend had their tops down, even the BMWs & Sebrings. Started down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 349 Either sometime last night or early this morning the Emperor passed the 31k mark. I’m betting it was yesterday sometime as the odo tonight, when I noticed it, read 31038. I have narrowed down all the Miata photos I have taken in the last year to the 20 finalists for the 2006 calendar. I need 13, one for each month and then one for the cover page. I’ll probably create a separate gallery for the calendar. While I’m at it I might do a gallery for the 2005 photos too. The seven also-rans from 2006 and the ones already in the Miata gallery that aren’t in the ’05 calendar will still fill the regular Miata Gallery well enough. I wonder if the PHP gallery software I’m using allows subdirectories? Guess I might never know. I just clicked on the automatically generated link on each gallery page that is supposed to take you to the author’s web site and he hasn’t renewed his web hosting agreement. I guess now is the time to try the enhanced version that I downloaded a while back. At least that web site is still up. Started down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 349 Finally imported the last of the posts from Brian’s Early Blogging Days, AKA The Reader’s Digest Condensed 2002. Started with one blog on Blogspot using Blogger in January of 2002 and one became two shortly thereafter. Moved to MT and piggybacked the 2 blogs on my Barndoor Fan Club web space. Two became three with the addition of a photoblog. Moved to my very own domain and then swapped to Pivot for blogging software. Combined all three blogs into one and moved back to MT. Jumped ship to WordPress in an attempt to eliminate referrer spam and here we are. As threatened, I have created a gallery of the photos I am using on my 2006 Miata Calendar. Added one for this year’s images and added back some to replace the missing from regular Miata gallery. Take a look by clicking on the links on the right under Photos. Started down, went up, back down, up again, down once more, up to dry off, still up. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 354
Started up, went down, back up, still up. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 356 Ever since August/September when I was pushing 10Gigs of traffic and 90% of that was referrer spam, I check my stats and raw logs every few days. Using a combination of pages equal hits and searching through the log I find the offending IP address and ban them. So far 152 IP addresses are no longer welcome. I have a couple of WordPress plugins running that are supposed to block some of this, but so far I’m not sure they are up to the task. Banning IPs is the only surefire way, but it means constant diligence is required. Something new has popped up in the access logs, instead of requesting a GET which loads the page and consums bandwidth, there have been quite a few that are requesting a HEAD which doesn’t load the page and results in zero bandwidth usage. Are they being friendly? Or are they just probe droids looking for pages to exploit? I’m betting on the latter, so they are going on Santa’s Naughty list… Started up, still up. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 356 After only one ride on the tandem I knew I didn’t like the seat that came on it. I tried a seat I had laying around, a Flite Titanium, but that was literally a pain in the derriere. Recently I tried the Terry Dragonfly seat off the road bike because it was so comfy there. On the tandem you are sitting a lot more than on the single bike, so what worked there didn’t translate as well to a double bike, so I broke down and bought a seat with a bit more padding from the same company — the Terry Fly CroMoly Saddle. Butt testing to begin soon. Started up, went down, back up, still up. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 358 Donna’s mom Barbara Morrison, who has lived with us since the spring of 2000, passed away this evening. Blogging may be light for the next few days as I help my wife and her family through this difficult time. If you feel so moved — National Kidney Foundation Thanks folks. We appreciate the thoughts…and know if you were closer would probably be like some of our co-workers from Human Resources and Accounting who showed up last night with enough food to feed the incoming family (and then some.) Tonight we expect the second wave of relations and the second wave of food from the the people who work in Donna’s department. Through the marvel that is the Internet: Barbara Morrinson’s Online Obituary Like frightened ducklings we have taken to shredding all the junk mail we receive so that identity thieves can’t get their greasy lunch hooks on our name and address. The quantity has become large enough that we now need to sort through and only shred the pages that actually has our names on them and just trash the harmless prepaid return envelopes and fake credit card looking bits of plastic for fear of overloading the industrial strength shredder at work. Today, during a quiet moment, I was sorting through a heap of snail spam, and came upon one of those sneaky checks that they hope you will cash and unknowingly sign up for something. This one was from our friendly credit card issuer and was for the princely sum of $20. By cashing this check you would agree to be enrolled in the Payment Protector Plan at a cost of 89¢ per $100 of the ending monthly balance. I’m not sure what the heck the Payment Protector Plan is because I had already discarded the rest of the mailing, but I’m betting I don’t really need it. What caught my eye about this particular check were the words printed right above my wife’s name, “Pay to Donna Bogardus or Bearer.” So, if I had thrown this bit in the trash and it found it’s way into the hands of a nefarious individual, he would not only have a name and address to do his worse with, but he would be paid twenty dollars for his troubles. And on top of that, we would be paying an extra couple bucks to our credit card company. Started up, still up. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 358
It was a mile or so walk from where we could park to the Memorial Gate in Hitchcock Woods where the festivities were to take place and we couldn’t have asked for a better day. The temperature was in the low 70s and the sun was shining brightly. There was even enough color left on some of the hardwoods to really enhance the setting. I think next year Donna and I will find a spot in the woods and wait for the post blessing hunt to come charging by. Started up, went down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 359 While we were at the Blessing of the Hounds we had a stranger take a group picture of us.
Left to Right — Back Row: Me, Donna’s oldest brother Jim, her next older brother Steve. Front Row: Jim’s daughter Jennifer, Donna, Jim’s wife Linda, Donna’s younger sister Sandy and her youngest brother Scott. To see how much we’ve changed since last year, go to the entry for 11/25/2004. This morning I dropped one of Donna’s brothers at his big-rig at the interstate truck stop where he had parked it, so he could go back to work. From there, Donna’s sister rode with me to the Columbia airport where she was to board a flight back Orlando. Around noon the other two brothers and family hopped back into their rental car and drove to Atlanta to get on flights to points west. Donna’s mom lived with us for the last 5–1/2 years and even though we were quite often in three different rooms doing three different things, it is strangely quiet here tonight without her. I want my West Wing! It was a nice enough day that we could ride around with the top down, but the cloudy skies and weather forecast got us to put the top up if we were away from the car for more than 2 minutes. Started down, went up, back down, back up, down again, up again, down once more, up yet again, still up. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 366 1) Write a Will. Started up, went down, back up, still up. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 368 New background for the season. Or at least until I get tired of it. Started up, went down, still down. Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 369 Did I really think it was necessary to do a whole post just to announce that I had changed the background here? Like wouldn’t it be patently obvious to the casual reader that something was different since last time? And if a first time visitor looked in, why would it matter that it had changed, the whole experience is new? |
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