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’.

Random Images

Joining The Crowd Many Minimimmos January Effingham - 29541

Miles Per Gallon

Fuelly Fuelly

Blogger’s Night Off

The barbed wire fence was lit­tle deter­rent as this water tank along NM14 and it got a very col­or­ful paint job. There was a geo­cache just a lit­tle fur­ther north along the fence.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 178

How Was Your Day?

I need to swap the bed­room set to the sum­mer bed­room. I need to clean the pine pollen off the back deck. The garbage dis­posal in the kitchen has stopped work­ing, so I need to take it apart and see what has jammed it up. I still have 12 days of vaca­tion pho­tos sort through.

So what did I do today? We went geo­caching, on a Time Speed Dis­tance Rally with the MMC, watched two episodes of West Wing and I’m lis­ten­ing to the FRS on the internet.

Oh, and I have to order a new bat­tery for the Miata.

We fin­ished a dis­ap­point­ing tied for fifth (out of 6 cars) in the rally this morn­ing. We made one error due to a mis­lead­ing state­ment from the rally mas­ters mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion and another because of a missed a clue. We felt that we had kept track of the time and mileage over­runs, but even sub­tract­ing them from our totals we were still way over and lost big points. The cap­per was I worked a pounds to kilo­gram con­ver­sion the wrong way and blew the bonus question.

After lunch at the BBQ place one of the Club mem­bers had left his lights on and the car wouldn’t start. That is a pic­ture of three of us try­ing to push start him. After about 4 or 5 attempts we gave up on that and went inside to see about bor­row­ing some jumper cables. The jump start work its magic and off he went.

On the way home Donna and I stopped at a quick stop store in south Augusta to get a bot­tled water and a Sprite. When we got back in the car I turned the key and was met with silence. Hmm, did I have the clutch all the way in? Tried again and still noth­ing, but radio dis­play flashed as I went by. The dome light was on, so I fig­ured it wasn”t a dead bat­tery. Funny thing was that with the igni­tion switch in the ACC posi­tion the radio dis­play would flash and there was a click­ing sound (like 2 relays) com­ing from the instru­ment cluster.

Pulled out the cell phone and called Rudy (AKA Clunk) (or is it Thunk) and his first thought was bat­tery, even after I described the symp­toms. He said hold on, I’ll get the truck and come take a look. Thirty min­utes later Rudy and Patti pull up. He brought some wrenches so we could remove the bat­tery and (for what I fig­ured was for test­ing pur­poses) the bat­tery out of his Maz­daspeed Miata. We swapped bat­ter­ies and the car started right up. Accord­ing to Rudy the newer bat­ter­ies don’t give you any warn­ing, like they used to in the olden days. now they just up and die. We called a cou­ple places to see if they had any bat­ter­ies for the car and one said we don’t carry ‘em, called the dealer and the other had one, but for $90 and he was all the way on the other side of town. Rudy has his truck and Patti just got a new Lexus, so he let me babysit his bat­tery for a while.

It is still going to cost a hun­dred bucks or so for the bat­tery, but it won’t be a generic replace­ment from Auto­zone, it’ll be a qual­ity Westco replace­ment that is designed for the Miata.

Thanks Rudy.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 180

Idiot

While on vaca­tion I used the credit card for every­thing, but because I am so used to using the debit card, I moved it to a slot of the wal­let that was out of sight and put the CC up front. The only time the debit card was used was to take out cash every other day or so. The cash was for drinks, snacks, trin­kets and lunch if it was cheap enough.

As we were leav­ing Cortez, CO towards the end of the vaca­tion we filled up with gas and then went inside to grab some cash at the ATM. I swiped the card, punched in my PIN and the machine whirred for a while and spit out a receipt. No cash though.

I called out to the woman behind the counter, “Is this thing out of order? I didn’t get any cash.” She said that they hadn’t had any com­plaints. Like ever even, it always works. She said the store wasn’t respon­si­ble for the machine, but she walked over with her cord­less phone and asked if there was a phone num­ber on it. I read her the 1–800 num­ber and she dialed it.

About then I took a good look at my receipt:
Requested Amount: $60.00
Dis­pensed Amount: $0.00
Invalid PIN

I told her, “Go ahead and hang up and I apol­o­gize, it was oper­a­tor error.” I had swiped the credit card and typed in the debit card PIN. DOH!

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 180

I Hate Plumbing

Sun­day I got the screened porch cleaned off of pollen and we moved into our “sum­mer” bed­room. Tonight I fin­ished edit­ing down the vaca­tion pic­tures to 124. For most, the title will be enough, but I still will need blurbs for quite a few of them so they make some sense. I ordered the new Miata bat­tery this morn­ing. Tonight I fixed garbage dis­posal, it grinds up stuff just fine

But in the process I cre­ated two leaks under the sink. There is now a plas­tic bin under there to catch the water. I knew I was in trou­ble when I dis­con­nected the dis­posal drain out­let, the rub­ber gas­ket was all gunked up, along with the seat­ing sur­face of the unit. I was not going to be able to make a water­tight con­nec­tion no mat­ter how hard I tried clean­ing up, but I tried any­way. As a bonus the thin wall tubing’s flange was eroded away in a small area. The other leak is over near the trap sec­tion of the Rube Gold­berg maze of pip­ing required for a dou­ble sink with a disposal.

Tomor­row it is off to the Big Box Home Improve­ment Store to buy a new unit, some pip­ing and a gas­ket or two.

The FRS are play­ing the MFY tonight on ESPN and the game that was sup­posed to start at 7:00 PM just started (2–1/2 hours late) because of a rain delay. Every time these two teams get together it is a marathon heavy­weight fight last­ing around 4 hours, so I will be read­ing about how this one comes out tomor­row morning.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 181

How To Buy A Miata Battery In 10 Easy Steps

1. First thing Mon­day morn­ing call a Miata.net ven­dor to pur­chase new bat­tery. I chose MMMi­ata because they are 200 miles away, not Moss Motors which is 2000+ miles away, so I could get it before Thurs­day when I would return Rudy his bat­tery at the MMC meet­ing.
2. Con­firm with CSR that the bat­tery is in stock.
3. Await emailed ship­ping con­fir­ma­tion.
4. Tues­day mid-morning call MMMi­ata to find out why no email. Turns out when they said it was in stock, it was in stock at the man­u­fac­turer and it would ship from Penn­syl­va­nia. My order was taken Mon­day morn­ing and faxed to Westco on Tues­day, so it would prob­a­bly ship Wednes­day, with a 2 to 3 day deliv­ery. Mean­ing if I’m lucky, I might get the bat­tery Fri­day.
5. Hang Up in Dis­gust.
6. Get butt chewed by wife for not ensur­ing prompt deliv­ery.
7. Call local dealer to see if they a Miata bat­tery in stock. Augusta sold their last one yes­ter­day and might get some more on Wednes­day or Thurs­day. In Colum­bia they have two on the shelf.
8. Call MMMi­ata to see if they can expe­dite deliv­ery. They have to call Westco and get back to me. Receive phone mes­sage that they could do it and it is not too late, just call and let them know if I want that. Call MMMi­ata back and be told it would be approx­i­mately $50 more (over the $18 already paid for deliv­ery) to get it to me by Thurs­day.
9. Can­cel order with MMMi­ata. Be told it will be at least Fri­day before my charge card is refunded because that is the day they do that.
10. Drive to Mazda dealer in Colum­bia and hand them my charge card.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 182

And I Thought I Had A Bad Day Yesterday

When we got to work this morn­ing we were greeted by this grue­some dis­cov­ery. First time I had seen any­thing like this. Poor dove.

How could this have hap­pened? We had some thun­der­storms come through the area last night, maybe high winds? Another bird/animal chase it into the fence?

Just as mys­te­ri­ous as its appear­ance, was its dis­ap­pear­ance. By our after­noon walk, the bird’s body was gone with no sign of it on the ground, nary a feather anywhere…

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 184

When It Rains It Pours

First the garbage dis­posal deba­cle, then the Bat­tery saga, now this morn­ing I get a call from the bank’s fraud unit. Some­body got a new wardrobe using my debit card. Three hun­dred dol­lars at Men’s Wear­house, another $160 at Men’s Wear­house and $140 at FootS­mart. Oh, yeah, and a dol­lar at iTunes.

We had to stop at the bank on the way home and fill out some paper­work. Because it is a debit card the money is out of the account, we’ll get it back, it is just a mat­ter of time.

The MMC monthly meet­ing tonight was at a Chi­nese restau­rant and , no fool­ing, my for­tune was: “Now is a lucky time for you — take a chance.”

So on the way home we stopped and bought a MegaMil­lions lot­tery ticket using the six num­bers on the back.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 186

Vacation Photo Outtake

Fourd Sea­sons — a car sculp­ture next to Carhenge in Alliance, NE.

I have posted my vaca­tion pho­tos online, both here and on Flickr. Right now there are titles and no cap­tions, so it is sort of like watch­ing TV with it on mute, you can get the gist of it, but not the full effect. Come back in a week or so…

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 188

Sheetrock Fairy

We returned the dead bat­tery to the dealer in Colum­bia. The fel­low was sup­posed to charge us 9 bucks for a core charge the other day, but he waived it and asked that we bring the bat­tery back when­ever it was con­ve­nient for us. Well, it prob­a­bly would never be con­ve­nient, but it was an excuse to go caching.

I picked out a few along the route there and a bunch more once we got to the cap­i­tal city. First stop was Leesville. From the descrip­tion and clues we fig­ured it would have been an easy find, we were wrong. after a cou­ple of passes with the GPS we were get­ting frus­trated. To make mat­ters worse, today was the town’s annual Poul­try Fes­ti­val and peo­ple started show­ing up look­ing for a place to park to get to the fes­ti­val area, so we logged a DNF. There were two other caches in Leesville, but we went ahead and marked them for a return visit some time when it was quieter.

The next one was up the road about ten miles and it was another that sounded easy and ended up as a DNF. Num­ber three was in Lex­ing­ton in a small patch of woods and after pok­ing around in the for­est floor for 5 min­utes we started to seri­ously doubt our geo­caching abil­i­ties. Donna wanted to toss our elec­tron­ics into the nearby pond.

After drop­ping off the bat­tery at the Mazda dealer we headed to down­town to take a sec­ond pass at a cache we DNF last month just before start­ing on vaca­tion even with the help of Donna’s sis­ter Sandy and a help­ful build­ing employee. In another bit a bad tim­ing, we couldn’t find a place to park close by and there were lots of peo­ple roam­ing the area because there was an event at the nearby civic cen­ter. Once again we couldn’t find a reg­u­lar sized con­tainer inside a 5′ x 25′ garden.

Good thing we found the next three we attempted or I would have helped Donna throw the GPS and PDA into the near­est body of water.

When we got home I real­ized we had been vis­ited by the Sheetrock Fairy. There lean­ing against the side of the house was a par­tial sheet of dry­wall, a box of screws, a roll of tape and a bucket of mud.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 189

Brian The Plumber

Fri­day after­noon was replace the garbage dis­posal day. On the way home from work we stopped in at Home Depot and bought a Bad­ger 5 and a 12″ long 1–1/2 diam­e­ter metal flanged pipe to replace the eroded original.

Right up front I caught a break, Insinker­a­tor has not changed their sink flange/mount in the inter­ven­ing decades since the old dis­posal was pro­duced. I got to skip the first dozen steps because I didn’t have to remove the old sink drain/flange and install a new one. Lit­tle did I know this was the last break I’d get until the next day.

Unhook­ing the elec­tri­cals and rewiring the new dis­posal went smoothly and in flash the unit was mounted to the sink. I took the old pipe and the new one into the garage, dug out my $1.98 hack saw, mea­sured the old pipe, trans­ferred that num­ber to the new pipe and cut it off. Crawled under the sink and mounted the new dis­charge pipe to the dis­posal. Uh, oh. It was too short, it didn’t reach the drain pipe on the other sink. The new dis­posal was a cou­ple inches smaller in diam­e­ter than the old.

At this point I have to inter­ject an obser­va­tion, both my wife and I agree that it took 3 trips to HD to com­plete the job, but nei­ther of us can remem­ber what the sec­ond two entailed exactly.

Not only was the pipe too short, but it was mis­aligned ver­ti­cally as well. Back to the store for more pipe. I could get another 12″ metal pipe, but there were no metal T sec­tions for under the sec­ond sink to be found, so we ended up with three pieces of plas­tic 1–1/2 pipe. I also spent $6.50 on a new hack saw.

At home I mea­sured twice and cut once and got every­thing back together. Now for the test. We ran the tap and hit the switch. No leak­age at the dis­posal to sink and dis­posal to out­let pipe, but that pesky u-trap was drip­ping pretty good. I tried two dif­fer­ent types wash­ers (a hard plas­tic wedge and a square rub­ber gas­ket) with no help. I put a wrench on the nor­mally hand tighten joint and even that didn’t do any good. After about three hours of mon­key­ing around it was decided to just clean up and leave a plas­tic bin under the u-trap and revisit it another day.

When we looked in on the bin on Sat­ur­day it was dry. Huh? Ran some more water, spun the dis­posal and there was no leak any­more. Cool.

The only prob­lem with these spon­ta­neous cures is won­der­ing when they might spon­ta­neously fail.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 191

Vacation Photo Outtake 2

Dino — In front of Flint­stones Bedrock City in Custer, SD.

I wish I had taken a few more pic­tures of this place, but it looked a lit­tle run­down (sort of like noth­ing had been done to it since its hey­day in the early 70’s) and nei­ther Donna nor I felt com­fort­able parked in the empty lot out front, we didn’t even want to go in the Gift Shop which looked open.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 190

Three Hillbillies

Three Hill­bil­lies are sit­ting on a porch shootin’ the breeze.

1st Hill­billy says: “My wife sure is stupid!…She bought an air con­di­tioner.“
2nd Hill­billy says: “Why is that stu­pid?“
1st Hill­billy says: “We ain’t got no ‘lectricity!”

2nd Hill­billy says: “That’s nothin’! My wife is so stu­pid, she bought one of them new fan­gled warshin’ machines!“
1st Hill­billy says: “Why is that so stu­pid?“
2nd Hill­billy says: ”Cause we ain’t got no plummin’!”

3rd Hill­billy says: “That ain’t nuthin’! My wife is dumber than both yer wifes put together! I was going through her purse the other day lookin’ fer some change, and I found 6 con­doms in thar.“
1st and 2nd Hill­bil­lies say: “Well, what’s so dumb about that?“
3rd Hill­billy says: “She ain’t got no pecker.”

Never Argue with a Woman

One morn­ing the hus­band returns after sev­eral hours of fish­ing and decides to take a nap. Although not famil­iar with the lake, the wife decides to take the boat out. She motors out a short dis­tance, anchors, and starts to read a book.

Along comes a Game War­den in his boat. He pulls up along­side the woman and says, “Good morn­ing, Ma’am. What are you doing?“
“Read­ing a book,” she replies.
“You’re in a Restricted Fish­ing Area,” he informs her.
“I’m sorry, offi­cer, but I’m not fish­ing. I’m read­ing.“
“Yes, but you have all the equip­ment. For all I know you could start at any moment. I’ll have to take you in and write you up.”

If you do that, I’ll have to charge you with sex­ual assault,” says the woman.
“But I haven’t even touched you,” says the game war­den.
“That’s true, but you have all the equip­ment. For all I know you could start at any moment.“
“Have a nice day ma’am,” and he left.

Little Blue Pill

A man goes to an oral sur­geon to have a tooth pulled.

The den­tist pulls out a freez­ing nee­dle to give the man a shot.
“No way! No nee­dles! I hate nee­dles!” the patient said.

The den­tist starts to hook up the laugh­ing gas & the man objects.
“I can’t do the gas thing. The thought of hav­ing the gas mask on is suf­fo­cat­ing me!”

The den­tist then asks the patient if he has any objec­tion to tak­ing a pill.
“No objec­tion,” the patient says. “I’m fine with pills.”

The den­tist then returns and says, “Here’s a Via­gra tablet.“
The patient says, “Wow! I didn’t know Via­gra worked as a pain killer!“
“It doesn’t,” said the den­tist, “but it will give you some­thing to hold onto when I pull your tooth.

National Bike To Work Day…

…is Fri­day, May 15th. Donna and I won’t be rid­ing to work that day, I have a doctor’s appoint­ment across town, so we are rid­ing tomor­row. Which is OK because it will be smack in the mid­dle of Bike to Work Week and it is pretty near the mid­dle of National Bike Month.

I just hope the roads aren’t crowded tomorrow.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 190

Shhhh, LOST is On.

A mur­der­ous ex-dead per­son, psy­cho doc­tor with a H-bomb, a love tri­an­gle hand­cuffed together in sub, a giant ancient statue and a mys­te­ri­ous metal box.

This is goin’ to be good.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 190

To Each His Own

While dis­cussing last night’s Sea­son ender of TDTVS around the water cooler in the office today I men­tioned that I sort of enjoyed the way it was done and I’m look­ing for­ward to next sea­son. The only part I thought was really over­done was the Juliet being sucked into the hole with Sawyer try­ing to save her. While pok­ing around the net I found a TV writer from USA Today or the Boston Globe that thought that scene was the high­light of the show and Josh Hol­loway should get an Emmy nod for it.

I would tell you that the whole nuclear bomb to pre­vent the plane crash in the future bit was when the show jumped the shark, but I’m not sure that term could even apply to LOST. It has been doing that since the pilot episode. Maybe if they didn’t have some hare­brained out in left field thing going on, that would be their ver­sion of jump­ing the shark.

Donna and I took the after­noon off to go see the new Star Trek flick. We picked a Thurs­day after­noon in hopes that we would be some of only a few folks watch­ing. Should have waited until next week, I guess it is still too new, because there was a big crowd, prob­a­bly 25 peo­ple in the theater.

You can tell the peo­ple who made this movie are fans of the orig­i­nal because the cast­ing was near per­fect and the Nimoy scenes were there for a pur­pose, not just thrown in as a fan appease­ment. Two and a half stars out of 4. Will I go to the the­ater to see it again? Nope. Will I buy the DVD? Nope. Will I watch it on TV if I stum­ble on it in a cou­ple years? Prob­a­bly. My only real com­plaint is the same one I have about most new movies based on older TV shows or movies (with the excep­tion of the sec­ond X-Files movie); because we can, we do, with the spe­cial effects.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 192

Kamakazie Kricket

I was just out in the garage giv­ing the Emperor a lit­tle sponge bath in prepa­ra­tion for tomorrow’s MMC event when I spot­ted a cricket watch­ing me. I’m not even pos­i­tive crick­ets have eyes, but this one sure seemed like it was giv­ing me the once over. There were sev­eral large splats on the nose of the car that I was Quick Detail­ing off and maybe this cricket felt I was being dis­re­spect­ful of a dead rel­a­tive or something.

It was no ordi­nary cricket either, it was big one, about the size my friend Mark might use as bait while fish­ing for kayak sized cat­fish. Well, all that star­ing kind of unnerved me a lit­tle, so I slipped off my sneaker and moved slowly that direc­tion to flat­ten Jiminy out.

In some places it is believed if you kill a cricket it is bad luck, but with the way my luck is run­ning recently, who would notice. I’ve also heard that if kill a cricket it’ll rain, but with the weather we’ve had, and are pre­dicted to have, who would notice.

As I swung my Nike with deadly intent at our giant cricket, it leaped out of the way at the last minute. Did he jump away from me, no, he jumped AT me!

I am proud to say that I didn’t squeal like a lit­tle girl as it bounced off my arm, then my chest and then who knows where. I did how­ever flail my arms and upper body around in a pathetic attempt to get away like an unco­or­di­nated spaz who just stepped on a banana peel.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 192

For Sale Rent

There is a house just around the cor­ner and down the street that has a sign out front. One of those $1.79 ones from Home Depot that says in big white let­ters on a red back­ground:

FOR
SALE
BY OWNER

Appar­ently he hasn’t had much luck sell­ing it, so he has decided to try another option, rent­ing it. Instead of buy­ing a new sign for $1.79 he just taped over the word SALE with some mask­ing tape and wrote the word RENT in magic marker.

 

If you were his ten­ant imag­ine how fast this guy will spend money to fix a problem?

Started down, went up, back down, up again, down once more, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 196

Is This Considered Outside?

I went out to the edge of the lawn and retrieved the paper. We ate both break­fast and lunch on the porch. Other than that, nei­ther of us have been out­side the house. Unless vir­tual for­ays via the inter­net count.

The weather was call­ing for an 80% chance of rain, so we had planned indoor activ­i­ties. We watched the first 4 episodes of this season’s Law & Order: Crim­i­nal Intent, caught episodes 3 & 4 of this season’s In Plain Sight and the movie, The Changeling. It never did rain. Until the day was 80% over.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 196

Time Travel

I went out­side to get the paper this morn­ing and dis­cov­ered I had been mag­i­cally trans­ported to Novem­ber. It was cold, well rel­a­tively, any­way. We even put the top up on the way to work and prob­a­bly will again tomor­row when it is sup­posed to be in the mid­dle 40s.

Tonight when we went out to pay bills we grabbed two on the other side of Aiken. Both of these were con­sid­ered small in size. We are slowly inte­grat­ing the smaller hides into our reper­toire. We were six out of nine geo­caching on Sat­ur­day morn­ing with the fifth one being find #100. The three missed were in the small cat­e­gory, but we weren’t totally hope­less at that size, two of the six finds were con­sid­ered small.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 198

Vacation Photo Outtake III

Tin­ker­town Museum in San­dia Park, NM.

Admis­sion to this piece of Road­side Amer­i­cana is three bucks and then they give you a quar­ter back so you can lis­ten to this band wel­come you.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 200

91,000 Fried Synapses

Looked down this morn­ing on the way to work and I noticed the odome­ter read 91047. When did that hap­pen? Over the week­end? Some time in the last cou­ple of days?

I couldn’t stand it any longer, upgraded Word­Press to Ver­sion 2.7 tonight and to top it off I added a new look (with still some tweak­ing to do.)

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 200

Wither Flickr!

There are only 5 days left until my Flickr Pro account expires. I’m not so sure I want to renew, I could waste that $25 some­where else.

I like host­ing my own pic­tures as I have total con­trol on how they are dis­played, but they don’t get as wide an expo­sure if they are just stuck here in my cor­ner of the internet.

Pre­vi­ously I used (still do actu­ally) a sim­ple gallery script, but any­time I changed the look of the blog I had to mon­key with the script’s CSS (Cas­cad­ing Style Sheets) to get the gal­leries to match the blog http://tinyurl.com/43e39j.

With the recent upgrade I’m try­ing a gallery plu­gin that will solve the look issue, but it doesn’t work as auto­mat­i­cally as I’d like. It imports a direc­tory fine, but doesn’t cre­ate all the thumb­nails http://www.mr-miata.net/?page_id=4087. Plus I will have to re-title and enter the cap­tions for all those hun­dreds of images (453 just of Post offices.) Oh well, what else do I have to do?

How about cap­tion­ing those last 120 vaca­tion pho­tos before you for­get what they are of.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 202

Sneaky

We are in Hen­der­son­ville, NC for the next cou­ple nights. My sis­ter and her hus­band are vis­it­ing the area and see­ing as this is closer than Con­necti­cut we always try and meet them when they are here. For years they have been telling us that when Allen hits 55 he is going to retire early and move here.

Tonight while on a drive north of town they asked if we minded vis­it­ing a devel­op­ment where there are some nice home lots that they we think­ing of buy­ing in, we said sure. We drove up to near the high­est point in the place and looked around. It was about 500 feet higher than the main road and the views were great. There were a couple/three lots still open, one had a for sale by devel­oper sign, one had a for sale by a real­tor sign and one didn’t have any sign except for what looked like a buried cable marker. All of them looked like a nice spot to put a home.

After we got back to the hotel my sis­ter told us that the one with­out a for sale sign was theirs. They had bought it a cou­ple years ago and wanted to get an unbi­ased opin­ion from us.

Sneaky.

Started down, went up, back down, up again, down once more, went back up, still up.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 207

Chimney Rock

Chimney RockSpent most of the day with sis­ter Diane and hus­band Allen.

We started the day at Chim­ney Rock Park where we spent about 3 hours walk­ing up, around and about on the trails and stairs there. Lunch was on the out­side deck at a small Mex­i­can place in the neigh­bor­ing town of Lake Lure where Donna and I had eaten a cou­ple years ago on a fall leaf peep­ing expe­di­tion. It was as good as we remem­bered it.

From there we made another run to their now revealed secret hide­away. We drove around, got a tour of a model home where the dec­o­rat­ing bud­get was prob­a­bly more than the cost of our home in Aiken. Allan then took a look at a dif­fer­ent lot and spent sev­eral min­utes talk­ing to the developer’s son try­ing to work a deal.

After a two hour break for after­noon naps we went back into down­town Hen­der­son­ville to see the end of the big plant & flower show and get some din­ner. Two words: West First. Best pizza since, well, ever.

Between yes­ter­day and today we are 6 for 6 in geo­caches. Five of which Diane & Allen have done with us (we may have con­verts on our hands.) Tomor­row on the trip home we may do a few, weather permitting.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 209

It Didn’t

The weather that is. It was rain­ing when we got up, so we decided to take the Inter­state back instead of US25. This put us off the Geo­caching Along A Route plan, so that even when the sun did come out towards the end of the trip and the top came down we were nowhere near any­thing to look for.

Here is a photo from yes­ter­day. The 404′ Hick­ory Nut Falls at Chim­ney Rock Park.

Hickory Nut Falls

Started up, went down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 212

Busy Bee

Chimney RockTim will be happy to know that I finally broke down and cut out the sheet rock to repair the holes in the bed­room wall from the plumb­ing inci­dent. I suck at mud­ding up the seams.

I’ve been try­ing to get all my photo gal­leries trans­ferred over to the new style. I’ve got most of them done, but I will still have to copy and paste titles and cap­tions to the hun­dreds of pho­tos. And that doesn’t include the 453 Post Office pictures…

Fran­ti­cally try­ing to down­load all my Flickr images that I don’t have a gallery for here by tomor­row, so I don’t have pay them the $25.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 213

Nothing To Say

That’s not really accu­rate, I have plenty to say, I just can’t get moti­vated to say it, rather wan­der the net. Seri­ous case of BA tonight.

Started up, went down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 216

Math Smath

Every Wednes­day Fire­house Subs comes to ASCO and sells fresh made sand­wiches. There is a three woman crew that makes about 70–80 sand­wiches between 11:30am and 1:00pm. For the ease of it (and the shapes sort of fit), lets call them Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear. Papa Bear is the one in charge, the order taker and money han­dler. She rec­og­nizes the reg­u­lars, remem­bers their names and their usual sand­wich of choice.

Donna and I spo­rad­i­cally take advan­tage of this ser­vice every cou­ple weeks or so. Today was our monthly engi­neer­ing depart­ment com­mu­ni­ca­tions meeting/lunch where every­one buys a sub to eat while we watch a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion and dis­cuss cur­rent events, work related and oth­er­wise. Usu­ally Donna and I split a sub and she eats at her desk while I eat mine at the meet­ing, but today I was on my own as Donna didn’t want a sub.

I’m guess­ing to either elim­i­nate bore­dom or per­haps give some cross-training, Papa Bear has started mak­ing the subs and Momma Bear has been han­dling the order­ing part of the busi­ness. Now I’m sure Momma Bear is a nice kid and all, but I think when they were pass­ing out brains she didn’t get in line because she thought they said trains and wasn’t interested.

I ordered a small steak sub, $4.50, added an iced tea, $1.25 and you could hear the gears turn­ing, after a slight pause she said $5.75. I handed her a ten dol­lar bill and I think she stopped breath­ing for a sec­ond as she har­nessed all her brain func­tions to do the math. It just wasn’t hap­pen­ing so she punted, “Papa..what’s.” I said, “$4.25.”

I think if I had said $7.25, she would have given it to me.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 218

Flux Capacitor

Last night at around 11:30 as I was lying in bed read­ing I heard a loud BRRRRRRRP noise that lasted for 5 or 6 sec­onds. It was right out side the win­dow. It hap­pened again but for a slightly shorter time. But this time it didn’t quit, the sound level went down to a dull brrrrrrrr…

The only only thing mechan­i­cal right out­side our bed­room win­dow is the A/C unit. When I opened the win­dow I could tell that was where the noise was com­ing from. I checked the vent and air was com­ing out, but it wasn’t cold any­more. I shut off the ther­mo­stat and went to sleep. Tomor­row was another day.

This morn­ing I called a repair place and they said they could have some­one out to the house about 3 o’clock. I took the after­noon off from work not only to go home and wait, but to accom­plish a cou­ple small things around the house that needed doing. The fel­low called at 2 to ask if it was OK to come over now. He made the call from my dri­ve­way. He had knocked, but didn’t get an answer. That was because I was on the back deck wash­ing off a year’s worth of mildew and dirt with the pres­sure washer.

He was done in about a half hour, the only thing wrong was a dead Flux Capac­i­tor. Actu­ally the dual run/start capac­i­tor for the blower and the com­pres­sor was shorted out.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 218

Unfried Side

At what point does too much adver­tis­ing about a new prod­uct tip over into neg­a­tive feel­ing towards said product?

Finally, after being not lit­er­ally, but fig­u­ra­tively rained out all last week and the first 80% of this week we got to ride the bike into work today.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 218

When The Going Gets Tough

To Mr. Fletchers RideWe went for a nice lit­tle hike in Hitch­cock Woods this morn­ing, that is until we were stumped for the sec­ond time try­ing to find the Crazy Creek Cache. We tried three weeks ago and tram­pled the heck out of the hill­side where this thing is located with­out find­ing it. Today we were con­fi­dent that it wouldn’t elude us again, unfor­tu­nately all we did was delude our­selves. Also we didn’t know it at the time, but it set the tone for the rest of the morn­ing. We tried two other caches more near down­town Aiken after we exited the woods and were stumped by both of them.

When the going gets tough, the tough go shop­ping, so we went to Kroger to get our weekly sup­ply of gro­ceries (at least there we found everything.)

I changed the oil and rotated the tires on the Emperor after shopping.

This evening we drove with some friends to Lex­ing­ton for some deep dish good­ness at the Uno Chicago Grill there. This is the very antithe­sis of last weekend’s pizza in Hen­der­son­ville. Donna and I knew bet­ter, sens­ing a large meal, we split a salad and a pizza for one. That was just enough, but regret­tably when Rudy and Patti offered me a slice from their large pie, the still lin­ger­ing great taste in my mouth over­ruled my com­mon sense and I ate the ten­dered piece. It tasted great but sat heavy with me for the next cou­ple hours.

Started down, went up, back down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 221

Lucky Seven

GEOffery the GiraffeAfter last night’s din­ner in Lex­ing­ton we con­tin­ued west on I-20 to Flo­rence. We were going to met Donna’s cousin for break­fast at the Cracker Bar­rel on Sun­day morning.

I picked out seven caches in north­west Flo­rence near the HIE where we were going to be stay­ing, so we would have some­thing to look for before we met Lau­rie at 8:30. The first one we even walked to because it was behind the McDonald’s at the same exit.

Another cache was right down the road from the hotel near a boat ramp. It was back in the woods a hun­dred yards or so and we had been doing the drunken bee dance for about 10 min­utes and get­ting a lit­tle frus­trated. It was an ammo ca, it shouldn’t be this hard to find. It was kind of trashy in there too, cans, bot­tles, plas­tic bags, etc, amaz­ing how much con­sid­er­ing how far away we were from where humans should have nor­mally been. We were stand­ing there decid­ing whether we should dance some more or give up, we had the time con­straint of the break­fast meet and all, when I saw some black boat line at my feet and wrapped around the base of the tree we were stand­ing next to. My nat­ural curios­ity led me to see where the other end of it went. There, sus­pended about 20 feet above our heads by that black rope, was an ammo can.

We found six, but elected to ignore the last one when Donna read in the logs about there being a lot of ticks in the area where it was hid. We had run out of time any­way, when we got to the Cracker Bar­rel it was already 8:27. Laurie’s car wasn’t there. She is nor­mally very prompt, so we knew we wouldn’t have to wait long.

Pretty soon it was 8:40 and still no blue Honda Accord, so we broke out the cell phone and gave her a call to see where she was. She wasn’t answer­ing her cell, so fig­ur­ing I had mis­la­beled her num­bers in our phone’s direc­tory I tried the home num­ber. She answered and I asked,“Where are you?” “Home,” came the reply. She quickly put two and two together and knew why I was call­ing on a Sun­day morn­ing, so she added, “That’s next week.”

Ear­lier this week when via emails we agreed to meet for break­fast, both Donna and I over­looked the fact that Lau­rie had put the date of 6/7 in her email. We just assumed that it was to be this Sunday.

I guess we will be eat­ing break­fast at the Flo­rence Cracker Bar­rel two Sunday’s in a row.

Hav­ing been promised seven caches today and only get­ting six in Flo­rence when we went out shop­ping this evening we made a slight detour and stopped by to visit GEOf­fery the Giraffe.

Started up, went down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 224