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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On the way home from work I noticed that the left fog light was burnt out. This is the third bulb that I’ve had to change. I can’t remember which ones in which order, but I could swear it wasn’t too long ago I changed this same bulb.
There is a 70% chance of rain in Blue Ridge, GA for Saturday, but we are prepared. Stopped at the local Movie Gallery and picked up my guaranteed great movie for everyone. Of the movies recommended the other day all I could find was one, but I’m sure it will be crowd pleaser. Because we were renting from the gallery section (AKA older movies) if we rented 3 @ $1.99 we would get two free. For our rainy day viewing pleasure we have:
Thomas Crown Affair
My Cousin Vinny
Mr. & Mrs. Smith
The Italian Job
Fargo
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 137
 We’re here. The trip up was very nice, we stopped for pizza in Dhalonaga at our favorite Italian place before hitting the real mountain roads. Woohoo. But wouldn’t you know it, when we hit the best part of GA60, AKA The Snake, we would got stuck behind an aptly named Sequoya, big, ponderous and slow going. Minor inconvenience.
The only other minor inconvenience is the 1/2 mile of unpaved road to the cabin. At a couple of points it is seriously slanted up and water is making nice little wash outs to try and steer around. I only scraped the undercarriage once, but I wouldn’t want to drive down it a night. Plus tomorrow should be interesting as we are supposed to get some good rain in the afternoon.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 139
 When I went to blog on Friday night I tried several times to upload the image you see in Friday’s post. It would never finish uploading, always timed out. So I wrote the words out and guess what? I couldn’t save the post. I used the repair tool in Cpanel but that made no difference. I backed up the database with a plugin and I exported it using WordPress’s built in feature. I considered upgrading to 2.5.1. I tried again this evening and couldn’t get it to work again. I tried adding a comment to a post. That worked. I triedto post by adding a chunk at a time. That worked for one chunk, any more that 10 words and it wouldn’t save. I gave up. Wait ’til I get home and then I’ll try and post stuff.
In spite of the rain, which was mostly light, we enjoyed spending a couple three hours shopping and eating in downtown Blue Ridge before heading back to the cabin for the rest of the day. Later in the day the skies cleared and the sun came out, but by then we were to settled to go back out. There was a game room with a foosball table, an arcade game console with several vintage games and a pool table. I was reminded that I sucked at pool when I was younger and that 30 years away from playing hadn’t improved my game any. Fortunately most everyone else was as sorry at it too.
My guaranteed to please everyone movie was not a total success, one person didn’t even watch and another got up and went to bed at about the halfway point. And truth be told I would have rather seen the original version. And probably the other three people were just being polite by staying to the end.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 141
 To commemorate this fine occasion we all gathered on the porch last night to take a group picture. I had a tripod in the trunk (for those HDR Post Office pics), I was going to be the photographer. With the help of my assistant Donna, before snapping the real thing, I experimented with some exposures and seating arrangements. Here is a composite. And while the real thing came out OK, I’ll never be a portrait photographer.
The other 4 cabinmates were more the late sleeper types so Donna and I packed our car and hit the road at around 6:30 this morning. The only disadvantage to this move was that we spent the first couple hours driving with the top up because of the cool temps. The big advantage and what made it all worthwhile was the fact that we had the roads all to ourselves. No Sequoyas to slow us down on the Snake, no nobody. We didn’t even come across another vehicle in our direction for any of the twisty stuff at all. We barely saw any cars going in the opposite direction either.
We got home at noonish and after lunch I washed the Miata even though it hasn’t been very long since the last one. We are long through with spring here in the flatlands, but in the Georgia mountains it is in full swing with both the pine and hardwood trees throwing off pollen, combine that with the 1/2 mile of gravel road to access the cabin and the Emperor really need a bath.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 144
Donna and I have decided to double the contribution to our retirement fund. From now on when we travel to Georgia we are going to pick up a 5 week play on the Mega Millions to go along with our usual multi-week Big Game quick pick here in South Carolina.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 144
Work
Bike Ride
Eat
House on DVD
FRS
Flickr!
Blog
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 144
I’ve had a lot of complaints about my uninteresting posts for the last couple of days, well just one complaint (Hi Mark), but with my single digit readership, one is a lot comparatively, so I’ve decided that tonight I will repeat a post from the glory days. I’d link to the post, but it is short enough to just quote it here.
Happy 2002
New Year’s Day. Cold, maybe mid forties. The Miata sits in the garage all day. The farthest I venture is around the block on rollerblades. Donna goes to the store, but uses the MSV.
That was my first blog post on January 1st, 2002. Now that was quality.
While moving from one bedroom to the other a couple of weeks ago Donna was going through some boxes and stumbled on the bill of sale from our first Miata purchased on November 7, 1989 for list price, $16,639. It was a middle range ‘A’ package car with the only options added being air conditioning and floor mats. We financed the car at an interest rate of 12.5%, so we ended up with 60 payments of $344.63.
Funny thing though, fourteen years later when we bought the Emperor, a top of the line LS, because it had sat on the dealer’s lot for nearly a year they were willing to deal for a below invoice price and with interest rates at 4% we ended up with 60 payments of $311.25.
So maybe the good ol’ days, in both blogging and Miata buying, weren’t so good after all.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 144
 Tonight’s episode must be Locke centric as it started out with his birth.
Appropriately, or not, I think that John will be my next acquisition. That is, if I happen to bid victoriously.
Somebody needs to beat the snot out of Ben again, all the bruises on his face are clearing up.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 146
We have taken next week off from work and unlike the past few years we are not flying or driving off to the opposing corners of the lower 48 states — we are staying home. When asked where we are going, I have been half kiddingly telling everyone at work that we are going nowhere because we spent all our money on remodeling the bathrooms.
The truth is we are going nowhere, we’re staying home, but it won’t be all pina coladas by the pool for me, mainly because we don’t have a pool, but because I have rooms to paint, the two “new” bathrooms, two bedrooms and the hallway between them.
Plus the outside of the house needs a spring cleaning. I need to blow all the oak pollen clusters off the roof and the siding needs to be pressure washed. I’ve got a bottom-of-the-line pressure washer that I’ve used the last couple of years on the deck and when I mentioned I might even do my driveway, buddy Mark volunteered to lend me his gas powered 4.5 HP Troy Built pressure washer so as to speed up the process. He gave me 2 pieces of advice for using his washer compared to my wimpy unit; 1} don’t spray anywhere near your window screens because you’ll cut right through them like a hot knife though butter (don’t ask him how he knows) and 2} if you have no shoes on and see a spider, poisonous or not, walking across your foot, do not try to spray him off with the washer, trust him, the spider bite would be immensely less painful.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 148
Got a primer coat on the bathroom and painted all the trim in the hallway today, doesn’t sound like a lot, but that hallway is mostly trim. It spans from one bedroom to another with the bathroom in the middle. There is an entrance from the dining room and three separate closets. I don’t think that any of the six doors in this hallway had the same style doorknob on it, there were silver knobs and brass knobs, both polished and antique and there was even a “crystal” knob.
To make it easier to paint the trim and the doors I pulled all the doors off the walls and then stripped off the mis-mash of hardware. At first I thought maybe I would just clean all the different layers of paint off the hinges and knobs then re-install them, but decided that if we were going to all the trouble to freshly paint everything maybe we should just get some new hardware. Because of all the new shiny chrome fixtures in the bathroom I was thinking maybe we would do chrome hinges and such. Nope, one chrome hinge (1/2 of the hinges required to hang a door) was $8 and we needed 10 big ones and 4 small ones. Opted for brushed stainless steel at two bucks each. For what it would have cost in just chrome hinges we came back from the big box home improvement store with hinges, screws, a couple knobs and 5 new door knob sets.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 152
I put the top up to drive through the downpour to get a Sunday paper. The car spent the rest of the day dripping water on the garage floor. It was also my only foray outdoors as well.
Did a little painting, did a little reading, did a little surfing and now I’m watching the FRS on ESPN trying to get back in the game against the Twins.
Hopefully tomorrow morning it won’t be raining and we can get in that threatened bike ride or a walk in the woods.
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Joanne Herring: Why is Congress saying one thing and doing nothing?
Charlie Wilson: Well, tradition mostly.
Julia Roberts has a throw away role, Tom Hanks is excellent, but this is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s movie and he is great.
Charlie Wilson: You mean to tell me that the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is to have the Afghans keep walking into machine gun fire ’til the Russians run out of bullets?
Gust Avrakotos: That’s Harold Holt’s strategy, not U.S. strategy.
Charlie Wilson: What is U.S. strategy?
Gust Avrakotos: Most strictly speaking, we don’t have one. But we’re working on it.
Charlie Wilson: Who’s ‘we’?
Gust Avrakotos: Me and three other guys.
This is the second movie in a month about war in the middle east, Lions for Lambs being the other, both were interesting, thought provoking and worth a watch, but Charlie Wilson’s War was much more entertaining.
We are on vacation, but not going anywhere, so it was odd not going to work today. Even odder was going for a bike ride at eight o’clock on a weekday. We may have to start riding earlier on weekdays when not on vacation. I went to the store this morning to get some actual paintbrushes for the bead board instead of my usual foam-on-a-stick things and when I went by the corner quickie mart the price of gas was $3.72, passing by the same store tonight the price had jumped by a dime to $3.82.
I’ll be glad when the FRS aren’t on ESPN anymore and I can go back to listening on the radio because tonight looks a lot like last night. They have gone and dug a themselves a 4 run hole again that I’m betting they aren’t going to be able to dig their way out of either.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 156
 They just turn their heads
Nobody helps him
Now he has his revenge
I kept waiting for the song and it didn’t show up until the credits, that was my only complaint. We went over to Augusta to see the movie in a nice theater with stadium seating instead of the little shoe boxes available here in Aiken. It was showing on 5 screens with a choice of start times of noon, 12:30, 1:00, 1:30, 2:00, so we went over and shopped a bit before getting lunch knowing that when we were ready there would a movie start time waiting for us.
We finished lunch at 12:25 and with the short walk to the the theater we figured we’d see the one o’clock showing. We bought tickets, used the restroom, hit the concession stand and started towards our theater. As we did we passed right by the one showing the 12:30 running, I paused and listened. It was 12:40 something and they were still running previews, so we went inside. Caught the end of the trailer for the new Batman flick and one for another totally forgettable movie, before the screen went dark and AC/DC’s Back in Black started playing. We were lucky in another way because the 12:30 showing theater was the one showing it via DLP.
I’m a sucker for movies based on comic books and knew I’d like this movie just from the trailer. I was not disappointed and thoroughly enjoyed this movie. My wife, who still hasn’t forgiven me for making her see the Michael Keaton Batman movie and rolled her eyes at the first Fantastic Four movie, actually sort of liked it too. So stop what you are doing right now and go see this movie. Seriously. Go.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 157
Usually it happens in June and usually it is the MFY overtaking them, but this year it is different. The FRS almost always start strong and lead the Eastern Division until the middle of June or early July when the wheels come off and they fall from the top spot. Usually the New York Yankees replace them in first place.
This year the swoon started early as yesterday’s loss to Baltimore caused the Red Sox to relinquish first place in the division to the Tampa Bay Rays. Who? Up until this year the team from Tampa was known as the Devil Rays and for the first ten years of their existence have never won more games than they have lost, even their best year, 2004, they were 21 games below .500. If they knew all it took to become a winner was remove the Devil from their name, I’m betting they’d have done it a lot sooner.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 158
 We went for a hike in the woods yesterday and purposely saved the Kalmia Trail for last figuring that it is mid May and they should be in full bloom. Some were, most weren’t. We have had such a weird spring, probably missed the peak by a couple weeks.
Finished painting the hall yesterday too. I picked a light green to go with the existing bedroom color and as a compliment to the bright green of the bathroom. It is almost too light. Good thing I had painted the trim gloss white or you might not even notice that it is green.
Today I finished painting the bright green in the bathroom. It has the opposite problem from the hallway, it is almost too bright. When you first see it you are taken slightly aback, but if you look at it for a while it is actually a nice looking color, especially against the white bead board. Tomorrow the towel racks, shower curtain rod and TP holder will get put up and it’ll be a working bathroom again. We’ll probably move back to the cooler side of the house on Sunday.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 160
 This morning Donna and I had our annual eye exams. First the doc shines a really bright light in your eyes while telling you to look every which way. Then one of his staff Divas of Torture drops a combination of drops in each eye which makes your pupils dilate until it looks like you have no corneas. Then once your eyes are wide ass open the doctor returns and shines a really, really, really bright light in there. Niiiice. Afterwards all you can do is spent the 5 hours inside a darkened house because a mere 60 watt bulb appears to put out about 77,000 lumens.
While entrapped indoors this afternoon I did mount all the shiny new chrome bathroom racks and such. The wall on the left as you enter the bathroom looked so good that we hated to put the door back up because it totally hides it. If it was just us we might have got away with it, but occasionally we have people over and they might not be so comfortable doing their business without a door to hide behind, so I put the door up.
Somewhere between Egypt & Guyton, GA the Emperor cruised past the 77,000 mile mark. I kept my eyes peeled, but didn’t see a welcome to Egypt sign. If I had I would have stopped so Donna could have taken my picture in front of it. I need another image to add to the Travels with Brian gallery.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 163
 Spent today at Roebling Road Raceway watching NASA racing. Our friend John Haff races a Miata in TTF class (TT stands for Time Trial and the F stand for the sub class determined by weight and HP.) He usually does really great in class, but today his car, nicknamed POS by his race team CFO (wife Carol), lived up to it’s reputation by refusing to shift gears reliably. Made for a somewhat frustrating day for John, but for the rest of us, the weather made for a great day spectating at the track. I took over 200 hundred pictures, but a third of them were of empty track as I attempted to catch speeding automobiles and another third had just part of the car in it for the same reason. Of the remaining third, most were blurry in an unartistic manner or mis-exposed or with crummy composition, so I’ve probably got about a dozen keepers. But not one shining star.
On the way back home we filled up the Emperor with gas in Sylvania, GA paying the bare minimum under four bucks a gallon.
Oh, and Egypt, GA does have a little sign marking the city limits that is noticeable when traveling north, but the road didn’t have a wide enough shoulder to pull over on without endangering our lives when attempting a photo or endangering the Emperor with sliding into the swamp-like ditch lining the side of the road.
Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 166
 Even when the gurgle monster strikes. We were doing some clothes washing when a strange sound emanated from under the house. The really bad news came when a toilet flush bubbled back up the bathtub drain. Eight thirty on a Sunday morning I started dialing plumbers.
First one I called must have a new phone system because when the answerer kicked in it said, “The person you have dialed has not set up their mailbox. Good bye.” Plumber #2’s andwer kicked in fine and I left a message. After thirty minutes they hadn’t called back (and never did), I picked another one to call. My third option was #3 on the list because they are pricey compared to others we’ve dealt with, but a real live person answered the phone. He even called the city for me to get them to come out to see if it might be their problem and not mine while I decided whether I wanted to wait for the city to find out something before committing to having one of his plumbers come out (there is a $125 call out fee for Sundays.)
When he rang back I told him to send away as we had checked with neighbors and they weren’t having issues. Besides we just had the bathrooms remodeled and who know s what might have gotten disturbed after being woken up from a 50 year slumber in that process. The plumber and the city fellows showed about almost at the exact same time 45 minutes later. The three of them spent the next 45 minutes looking for for my clean out. We had no clue, never needing it in the 19 years we’ve been here. Our 80+ year old neighbor from across the street came out and offered up his advise to where to find it. Then the next door neighbor showed up to complicate matters by reminding that these houses were once on septic systems until sometime in the sixties, so the clean out might be in the back. Finally the city guys found it using a metal detector. It was about two feet away from the water meter.
Looking down the hole we could see a trickle of water flowing towards the street. Uh-oh. Just to be sure they stuck a pressurized hose down there to confirm it was my problem and it was. The plumber went to work. He dug up a place near the house looking for another clean out. He crawled under the house trying to chase pipes. He sat in his truck and wrote out my “options.” Number one was snake, starting out from the street, and hopefully reach any clog $$$. Option two was continue digging around near the house hoping to stumble on a closer clean out to use the snake in $$$$. Or option three, redo my entire under house drainage system $$$$$$.
We chose option one and got lucky, he found and cleared the clog with very little snake left on the reel.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 168
 Lots of interesting cars were racing this weekend. From a little Legends racer to a fresh off the showroom floor 2008 BMW M3 Coupe. A ton of Mustangs, but I bet the biggest percentage were BMWs and there was a father daughter team that took the prize for innovative paint jobs — a Checker Cab and a “Police Car.”
In am effort to broaden our Netflix TV DVD repertoire I spotted something called Flight of the Conchords. It arrived the other day and we finally got around to watching it tonight. The experience didn’t start to well. First was the 2 minutes of HBO advertisement that I was forced to watch, no fast forward, no next chapter, no main menu. Just like the Interpol Warning, etc you are stuck watching promotions for HBO shows. Then when we were through with that nonsense when I hit the button to go to the episode list the DVD locked up. The only way out was to turn off the player and start over. This time I started the disc and switched the TV over to watch a segment of Cash Cab skipping the HBO self promo. But then the DVD player locked again when trying to select an episode. Crap. Tried the disc out on the laptop and it played fine, but after all that, we watched only about 10 minutes of the first episode. Didn’t like it.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 170
There was a 40% chance of afternoon thunder showers. We took the umbrella to work, but left it in the trunk. My job was to keep track of the radar and if it looked like thunder rolling our way I was to go out, take off the cockpit cover, raise the top and bring the umbrella back in.
I failed miserably at my job. When it was time to go home at 4:00 PM I got up from my desk and walked down to the other end pf the plant to get Donna. As I passed by some windows it looked very dark. Uh-oh! As we left the plant someone was walking in with an umbrella saying that it had just started raining. He was right and they were big fat drops too. As we walked quickly to the car the rain intensity picked up rapidly. We started running (this is the only time I regret parking in the north forty), it was coming down at a pretty good clip by the time we reached the car. I popped the trunk tossed in everything I was carrying and started to take off the cockpit cover. Tossed the roof up and Donna tried valiantly to click it down while I wadded up the soaking wet cockpit cover and tossed it too into the trunk. I started the car and raised the windows as the rain poured down. The interior was pretty dry, but we were pretty wet.
 About a mile from the plant the skies really opened up, even with the wipers on high I had to slow down because of visibility. Then it sounded like somebody was shooting at us. Pow! Bam! Rat-A-Tat-Tat! Call 911 we’re under fire. It was hailing. Pea-sized up to grape-sized frozen water was pelting us. With absolutely no place to hide I just kept driving. I’m afraid to go out in the garage to look at the car and see if there are any little dents, but not as afraid as I was during the storm that the hail would get big enough to start tearing through the canvas roof and start hitting me on my noggin. After a couple more miles, and a couple more cloud bursts, the skies cleared, the rain stopped and we donned our sunglasses for the rest of the trip.
Started down, went up under duress, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 172
 We are in the middle of a British Movie Binge — Casino Royale (well sorta British), Once begat The Commitments, The Last Detective (Disc 2 of Season 3), Death at a Funeral (didn’t finish), Starter for Ten, Keeping Mum (on the coffee table) and Rumpole of the Bailey: The Lost Episode (next in the queue.)
Starter For Ten, was pretty darn good. It reminded me of those 80’s John Hughes movies, Pretty in Pink, 16 Candles, et al. In plot it was probably most similar to Some Kind of Wonderful. The 80’s soundtrack (The Cure — Psychedelic Furs — Echo & The Bunnymen) probably helped the comparison along as well.
This is interesting — The Netflix Player by Roku. I’m trying to justify the purchase, but I’m having trouble. Of the Netflix library there are only 10% available for viewing using this box. Admittedly that is 10,000 titles, but they are mostly older flicks and TV shows. Not that I can’t find a bunch of stuff to re-watch, but I already have 100 movies in the regular rental queue to watch, there is bunch stuff on HULU that I want to see and the FRS are on the radio nearly every night, so my free time is limited. I haven’t really explored Joost or Miro or even Find Internet TV. The $100 would be better spent on a PC to TV converter so that other internet media could also be watched on the tube besides just Netflix.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 172
P.S. Which Sports Car Are You?
Continue reading Pretty In Pink
 Last weekend at the races when there was break in the action some of us were sitting around at Camp POS When this fellow walked up and asked if I would do him a favor. I said sure and followed him over to a concrete pad.
There sat his race car. I said, “Nice color.” He started to tell me about how there were only so many made in that color and what years it was available not realizing he was talking to a Miata Geek, I stopped him by saying that I had a 95 in the same color, Laguna Blue, before my current car and still miss that hue.
He was doing an alignment and needed someone to sit in the driver’s seat to simulate having himself in the car, so it would be set up correctly. I said, “Oh, you need some dead weight. I’m just the guy you need.” The car had a full roll cage and a racing seat and even with the steering wheel off it took some major contortionist moves to get in. Getting back out was even a little worse.
Donna and Carol had followed us over to stand around and make fun of me. Carol, of course, had her camera, so she snapped a couple of quick photos of me sitting in the car while I was making vroom-vroom sounds.
After he was done and thanked me for the time I made my way back to Camp POS. John was done with his latest adventure, so I asked if he wanted me to turn in my POS Racing hat because I had helped that other Miata out. He said, “Don’t worry about it, he’s in a different class.”
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 173
 Rode the “Bus” into work today. Not mass transit, but our own alternative fuel vehicle, the tandem. I call it the Bus because compared to a single bike the tandem rides and drives like one compared to a single bike. We didn’t really do it to save the gas money, but because we have been threatening to get back to biking to work for the longest time and today was the day. We have vowed to ride to work every other Friday, you know, the one we actually work. We are also going to try and take a ride on the Friday we are off work, weather permitting.
Speaking of weather permitting, we don’t let anything below a 50% chance frighten us off, so today’s weather calling for a 20% chance of afternoon thunder showers was a non-issue. Until about an hour before quitting time. The skies outside darkened and fearing a repeat of Tuesday’s hail I checked the weather radar. At first glance it looked like we were in trouble as there was a long line of orange and red south of Aiken and Augusta, but when put in motion that line wasn’t really moving north. Still, the plain green was spreading our way, so it looked like it would be a wet ride home.
We had a couple of offers from co-workers with pick ups for a lift home, but declined them because if it was raining, we and the bike would probably get just as wet loading the bike up and on the drive. By the time we left it had been raining for a while and had slowed to a sprinkle, so the roads were wet. Turns out that is where most of our wetness came from because as we got closer to home the rain stopped and the roads had dried. Just as we made it home it did start to rain again, but too late to soak us.
The Emperor didn’t go to work, but it did get out this evening. We went out to eat with friends and then did a little more shopping for the final accessories for the green bathroom, a set of towels, a toothbrush holder and a shower curtain, leaving just needing one more thing, a liquid soap dispenser.
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 174
 We went downtown today, had lunch, bought an ice cream cone and watched a parade. Veterans groups, high school ROTC groups, boy scouts, politicians, army trucks and fire engines. Do other countries have parades like this too?
Got the first coat of blue on the smaller bathroom and I have to say it is a nice bright blue without the vibrancy of the green in the other bathroom. Perfect. Coat two goes on tomorrow. I painted one coat of primer over the Vin Rouge paint of the bedroom in preparation for painting it a darker shade of blue. But first I’m going to paint the ceiling, which hasn’t been done in a while. Then all the trim will get slathered with the gloss white before the walls get covered in flat Ocean Cruise.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 174
According to my WordPress dashboard this is post two thousand seven hundred and one. I think there are a lot more, but some must have got lost in the many times I’ve restored from a backup or moved from a different blogging platform. I deduce this from when I went hunting yesterday for mention of when I had painted the bedroom red I’m going to now paint blue. If you check the archive for the month of April 2004 you will see that there are several days of missing posts. There are several days of multiple posts, but that is to be expected because at that time I had two different blogs going, one Miata related and one Rant related. There should be nearly 60 posts per month because then, like now, I rarely missed a night posting on both.
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 174
About 3 weeks ago I received an email asking for permission to use a photograph of mine that I had on Flickr! called 12-13-2007 Sunrise. It was to be used at the bottom of a page to end a section of a 30 page Executive Summary entitled Savannah River Basin Textile Recovery Plan and Graniteville Area Redevelopment Plan. Yikes, that’s a mouthful. It is a set of recommendations developed over about a year of study for the local economies in Aiken, Abeville, Anderson, Edgefield, Greenwood, Laurens, McCormick, Oconee, Pickens, and Saluda counties that have been negatively impacted by the closures of textile mills and related facilities.
I said go ahead and use it, all I asked in return was that they send me a copy when they were printed. Came in the mail on Friday. Glossy thing with lots of consulting techno-babel that takes up a lot of space and doesn’t say much. I was surprised that mine was the only photograph in the whole thing (aside from the cover.) There were about 250 copies printed up, and the other 249 will be distributed to stakeholders throughout the region (whatever a stakeholder is.) There is a list of them on the back page along with the Project Team, Steering Committee and at the bottom the Photography credit of yours truly.
You can say you knew me when.…
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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 175
Paint Shop Pro stopped working. The other day I uninstalled the latest version because I couldn’t figure out how get the media cataloger to not work in the background (which was causing things to work slowly) and a couple of other minor issues. I reverted back to version 9. Tonight for some reason I can’t resize an image. Might be time for the computer version of a high colonic.
I’m almost out of Firefly episodes to watch, just 2 left, and the darn show is starting to grow on me. Oh well, add it to the list of Fox orphaned shows that I wish were still on. Though perhaps it is better this way, a half season of brilliance, before they have a chance to began their inevitable decline into mediocrity.
I have been steady in my resolve to not watch any spoilers (even any ABC promos) for this weeks season finale of Lost. I want to be surprised, but I’m worried. I have been reading interviews with the cast members, who can’t give or haven’t given anything away. In one tidbit I read these words: “The finale will change the way you watch the show. It will introduce new variables that would never even be considered previously.” This damn show is already so far out there that I’m worried as to what the heck that might mean. It is either going to be such an awesome twist that I will be stunned into appreciation or it will be so far fetched that it will jump the shark.
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 176
 On Memorial Day I spent a good bit of the afternoon pressure washing my driveway and got 1/2 of it done. The neighbors on both sides of us have long single wide driveways and no garage access. They both handle the issue differently, one keeps all three cars in the drive with him doing the parking order shuffle each night depending on the sequence the three drivers are leaving in the morning. The other keeps one car in the driveway and two angle parked on the grass to the side of the drive and one spends the night in the street. Donna and I on the other hand have one car that we park in the garage and a 2 car wide driveway that sits empty.
Jack Sparrow: “Funny ol’ world, innit?”
I Want To Believe this will be a good movie, but it has been a long time, maybe too long. When I stumble on an episode, I can’t watch it (unless of course it is one of about 10 of my favorites.)
Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 178
Can’t blog right now, last hour of Lost is on. Come back tomorrow.
That Ben is such a nice guy.
Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 180
 …is Indonesian for “doubt” or “uncertainty”.
The last episode didn’t actually jump the shark but it did water ski precariously close. The same thing that really derailed National Treasure for me is one of the things that stretched credibility to the breaking point. Ben blows up the “vault” in the Orchid Station so that he can get to the place he needs to be to move the island. He follows a tunnel for a while then has to kick his way through a sheet of ice and starts to climb down a ladder into a room that looks as if it has been sealed for a very long time. A rung of the ladder breaks because the wood is so old it is dry rotted and Ben tumbles to the icy floor. He then gets up, dusts himself off, pulls some matches from his pocket and lights one. He takes the match to a hurricane lantern hanging on a nail, lifts the glass and the wick lights! That Dharma Initiative lamp oil must really be something.
Another little thing that I need someone to explain to me why the lying. Locke convinces Jack who in turn convince the rest of the Oceanic 6 to lie about the whole island experience. They concoct a story about how they were the only survivors to protect the ones they left behind. Why? The island is no longer where it was, Locke moved it (in space or time or both), how are they going to get found?
I loved the wooden wheel thing that Ben had to turn to activate the whatever that would move the island, reminded me of the Wheel of Pain that Conan had to turn as a child slave that made him the strong man he was. Also kind of reminded me of the wheel that the donkey was chained to in the blacksmith’s shop where Will Turner worked. Or maybe the helm of the Black Pearl. Where’d those last two references come from? TDPM was on USA tonight and I would have watched the whole thing too, if Donna hadn’t make me rewatch “There Is No Place Like Home Parts 2 & 3″ at around 9:00 PM.
Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 182
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