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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Step 2 is possibly blame it on something besides the GPSr. (emphasis mine)
This can be caused by a few separate issues and will cause the unit to not update. If the USB cable is bad, being connected to anywhere but directly to the back of the computer, and incompatible USB core driver system on the computer itself. These, or the device is just not operating properly. I would recommend calling in to our software team from this point. We will need to check some advanced settings on the computer to see what could be causing this.
I’ve tried it directly from the PC on the desktop and the laptop. Tomorrow before I call the Software Team I will try it on my work PC. Odds are heavily in favor of the unit being bad, but I’ll dance the dance so I can get this fixed under warranty.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 378
 Step 3 in repairing my Garmin Venture HC was to call Technical Support. But first, for funzies, I decided to try and load the software using my work computer, as expected it didn’t work, so I dialed the 1–800 number for Garmin. There I was thrown into the voice mail pit of despair. The last email I received said I needed to talk to the Software Support Team. Well, as you can guess, there is no option for Software Support even after trying two separate branches of the hollow tree of hope. The third time through I opted for the next available Technical Support Representative.
After not too long a wait a nice young man answered and wanted nothing to do with the trouble ticket I had from my email steps and made me explain the whole story all over again. When I go to the part about being elevated to Software Support and he put me on hold and set up a transfer to the appropriate desk. Shortly I was transferred directly to a nice young woman with a hint of Indian accent.
I quickly explained how the unit was acting, she had me try the three finger start up that would reset the unit to its default settings. I once again got the same blink and fade out as before. After that she went ahead and set up my RMA.
This afternoon I set in motion the Venture’s trip back to Kansas, not via hot air balloon or clicking together my ruby slippers, but by FedEx ground. Now we wait.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 378
Last night we went to dinner at Outback because we had received a coupon in the mail to buy one Special Summer Adventures entrée for $9.95 and get the second one free. I added a Coke to drink (actually required for the coupon to be valid) and we split a Caesar’s Salad. Total with tip $19.
Tonight we went out to dinner at Ryan’s for the MMC’s monthly meeting. We had a coupon to buy one Mega Bar (AKA: Stupefying Buffet) and get the second free. I added a sweet tea and our total with tip came to $14.43.
With the food and overall dining experience, the Outback dinner out was worth $35, the Ryan’s meal was barely worth $10.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 380
I mean that not in a avian way, but in a Deadhead or Phish Followers way. These are a few of ingredients that were stirring around in my subconscious leading to last night’s final dream:
- Attending the June CSRA Geocachers meeting where there were 60–70 people.
- Reading the logs of caches where it seems like some folks travel in packs from 6 to 12 or more and do big quantities of finds in a day.
- A brief conversation with a cache owner when I returned his banished from SCDNR land ammo can.
- A short scene from the last movie we watched, Invisible Circus.
- I ate too much junk from the Ryan’s Mega Bar the night before.
- Waking a 4AM to go to the bathroom, thus leaving enough time to get back into deep REM sleep before…
- …being jolted awake mid dream so the last snippets were fresh in my brain.
We were out caching on a South Carolina back road and had just logged a find. Donna was sitting in the car planning our next destination and I was walking the short distance into the woods to replace the ammo can. Donna shouted, with a slight bit of alarm in her voice, "Brian!" I hastily tossed some pine straw over the cache and started out of the woods. I can see what caused her state. There parked on the other side of the road from where we were was a bus that looked like it came from a scene in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. And out of the bus piled dozens of people aged from 8 to 80 in odd dress that looked like it was borrowed from J.F. Sebastian's manufactured companions in Blade Runner. There was juggling, a unicycle rider, tambourine playing, etc. As I got closer I recognized the faces, they belonged to geocachers from the local Club. Just as I was crossing the street to introduce myself to one of these characters with a Cyrano de Bergerac nose when the alarm went off.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 380
Three weeks ago lightning struck near our house and fried the TV and surround sound system (plus some other stuff) and within a couple of hours we had made a trip to Sears and bought a new flat panel TV and a home theater setup. They had a sweet deal on a Panasonic SC PT760 HTIB, so we opted for a Panasonic TC L32C12 TV so that they would talk to each other and there would only have to be one remote on the coffee table.
Because we were in such a hurry, it was nearing closing time, that it wasn’t ’til we got home that we realized they hadn’t given us the remote for the HTIB & one of the rear speakers. We went back on Sunday and collected a remote and the speaker. When we got home and I started setting up the surround sound, I noticed that the remote they gave me was not the same as the picture in the owners manual. It had most of the buttons, some in different spots, but it didn’t have other crucial ones. Because it was Sunday, Sears closed early, so the right remote would have to wait until Monday.
On Monday I took back the wrong remote only to be handed another Panasonic Home Theater remote that was not the correct one either, but it did have more buttons, so I took it hoping that it might work out. Didn’t.
Called the store on Tuesday and they said they’d order me one. At no cost. Shipped to me. At least the latest remote allowed me to set up the Viera Link on the surround sound unit so it and the TV would talk through the HDMI cable. Success. I could turn on the surround sound amp, turn off the TV speakers, pipe the audio from the TV into the amp and the TV remote made the volume go up and down with the hutch doors closed on the surround sound system. It worked for about 2 hours. The remote no longer controlled the volume. I checked the settings and it looked like it should be working, but it wasn’t. I decided to wait on the correct remote before trying again.
Fast forward to late last week and the correct remote arrived at the house. Reread the instructions in both the TV and the HTIB, reset both units to factory defaults and ran the set ups. The displays read like I had both boxes set to use the Viera Link, but the TV remote would not control the HTIB volume. I swear it did work the once.
Thinking maybe it was the cheap $20 HDMI cable, I bought a $40 version with gold plated ends. Didn’t help.
I was now almost positive it wasn’t the cable. (I mean I could have bought two bad cables, but what were the odds that two different cables from two different stores made by two different companies would both be no good? So did the TV’s Viera Link chip stop working or was it something in the HTIB?) My money is now on the surround sound system being the culprit.
Now if I could find a local store with another Panasonic HTIB I would buy it and try it to see if that fixes the problem. This is not as easy as one would think. Choices in Aiken for electronics is very limited. There is Walmart, Target & Sears. Neither Walmart nor Target carry Panasonic surround sound systems. All Sears has left in stock is the $400 SC-PT770. Best Buy in Augusta has the next model down, SC-PT760, for $300, so we drove over there this morning.
We didn’t see the $300 one on display, only the more expensive one, so when a sales guy shows up I ask about the SC-PT760. He says, “I don’t think we have those, let me check.” Off he goes. We wander around a bit. We stand and wait. We shuffle our feet. We wander some more. We stand around some. We give up and walk out. Silly us for thinking the sign out front that said — No Interest on Anything in the Store — meant on your Best Buy credit card.…
This afternoon I dismantled the Panasonic HTIB and returned it (and the $40 cable) to Sears. We are keeping the TV. For now.
Because my birthday is in September and I gave Donna a hang dog look, plus she is thoroughly disgusted with me and this whole surround sound mess, she upped the budget a couple hundred bucks and the current plan is to pick up the low level Samsung HT-Z320 at Wally World and order a slightly larger TV that will just squeeze inside the hutch, the Samsung LN37B530. When the Samsung shows up we will take the Panasonic back to Sears…
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 382
I bought the Samsung HTIB today and when I got it home it talked to the TV just fine. I can now turn on the surround sound system, leave it on, set it to D-IN and the TV remote controls the volume…apparently this is a standard function of the HDMI interface and each manufacturer calls it something different.
On a slightly different note, when I reset the TV to factory defaults the other day, I let it auto tune in all the channels it could find. It found some digital channels along with the regular ones. Most of the channels come back as “scrambled” and show nothing, but the music channels, they come in just fine. I wonder if Atlantic Broadband knows this?
Changed the Emperor’s oil and rotated his tires today. While I had the back wheels off I relubed the slider pins on the discs brakes. I had been getting a slight moaning sound when backing up right after coming to a stop. The right rear top pin was getting kind of rusty, but it cleaned up good, so I hope i won’t be sounding like I’m running over cats anymore. Oh, and the back pads were getting real thin, gonna have to replace them sooner than I thought.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 382
 We saw no yucca plants on the Yucca Valley trail in Hitchcock Woods when we traveled it yesterday. I would tell you how far we walked in the woods, but I can’t because our GPSr is broken and hopefully in Olathe, Kansas by now.
This morning we got up early-ish and rode a big loop ending up downtown to pay bills. Unfortunately the New Moon wasn’t open so we couldn’t get a muffin for breakfast. Ended up at Waffle House.
After breakfast we drove over to Augusta to take a picture of a hockey puck in front of the James Brown Arena, which is as close to geocaching as we could get. Have I mentioned our GPSr is broken?
On the way home from Georgia a line of birds started to waltz out out in front of us way out on Pine Log Rd. They got part way and turned around and then as soon as I got by they came back out and completed the trip.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 382
 Via io9: DNA Portraits Reveal Your Inner Beauty.
They list three options for turning your DNA into actual art. These companies will send you a sampling kit which you then return for processing. Then you work with them choosing colors, images, etc. to get something that you would be proud to display in your home. One company wants $1500, another wants $299 and third ranges from $120 to $499.
There is a 4th option to get some DNA art and the price is right, free, but it is not your DNA, it is your website’s (or any web site for that matter.) WEB2DNA Art Project’s representation of this site is the image above.
Afraid to turn your web site’s DNA loose on the internet for fear of cloning, how about a simple dot graph? You can get that at aharef.info.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 382
Sometime over the weekend I got something stuck between a couple of back teeth. Rigorous flossing removed the offending piece of food stuff. Later that day I poked my tongue back there and felt something sharp. And a hole. Great, I probably busted the edge of a tooth that was probably mostly filling. Visions of expensive crowns danced in my head.
Fortunately it only ached a little back there, not hurt, and it was sensitive to temperature. Tuesday I called the dentist and they had just had a cancellation for Wednesday at 11:00AM. Today was my lucky day. Turns out I had broke out an existing filling, so they just had to clean out the hole, scrape off a little tooth material and pack the hole full of Mighty Putty.
Our Dirty Monkey is really a lotion dispenser, but we use him for hand soap.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 383
Until Season 6 of TDTVS. They are already filming episodes in Hawaii and like the junkie I am I’m already reading the spoilers…
I had downloaded all the Season 5 vids from a back alley of the interweb and burned them onto DVDs. I lent these out to a co-worker a couple of weeks ago and yesterday he came up to me and asked what he needed to do to get another set of discs. Seems he has misplaced them. He has turned his office, home and cars inside out with no luck. Curiously a Neflix disc of Air Bud: Golden Receiver (AKA: Air Bud II) is also missing from his possession. Coincidence, I think not.
This Sunday is Episode 5 of TDTVS2 and AMC is going to run a mini-marathon of the first 4 episodes leading into numero cinco. Guess where I’ll be from 6:00PM until 11:00PM?
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 385
A distraught senior citizen phoned her doctor’s office.
“Is it true,” she wanted to know, “that the medication you prescribed has to be taken for the rest of my life?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so,” the doctor told her.
There was a moment of silence before the senior lady replied, “I’m wondering then, just how serious my condition is, this prescription is marked ‘NO REFILLS’.”
Have I mentioned lately that my GPSr isn’t working? I thought so. We are approximately 4 days into the 12 to 15 working days before our repaired unit is scheduled to be returned to us.
Two working days into the process we knew we wouldn’t be able to make it that long. We bought a new Garmin eTrex Vista® HCx from Walmart online and had it shipped to us. The UPS man dropped it on the doorstep this afternoon.
This is a slightly upgraded unit compared to the one that is broken and in for repair. It has a micrSD slot so there can be a lot more stuff stored in the unit, like gigabytes worth instead of just 24 Meg. It has an electric compass, so when I stop befuddled in the middle of the woods while looking for a cache, the needle will still be pointing at the cache instead flopping around. It has a barometric altimeter, so I will know how high we are above sea level (which the Venture does too when the topo maps are used) or maybe when there is an approaching storm. It also has the ability to give point to point on road directions like a Tom Tom or similar, but we probably will never use that feature.
There are ammo cans shaking in there hiding spots just knowing we are back in the game again.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 386
 We spent a pleasant morning traipsing through the woods surrounding Boyd Pond today. Boyd Pond is a recreation area slash park that is southwest of Aiken and when we first moved here it was available only to employees of the Big Bomb Plant, but now it is open to every Tom, Dick & Harry (I think.) There is a switchback laden trail on the east side of the lake for hiking and biking along with a straighter, shorter nature trail. On the west side is a park with a boat launch, picnic tables, playgrounds and softball fields. We did all 5 caches here, 3 east and two west while walking 4–1/2 miles.
Lunch was outside at Moe’s watching the Whiskey Road traffic zoom by and the afternoon was spent watching Season 7 Disc 2 of West Wing. Only 15 episodes left…
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 386
We needed a renewal on Retirement Plan B, so we made a trip to Georgia to buy a chance at the next ten drawings of Mega Millions. Augusta is about fifteen miles away as the crow flies, but our round trip was 200 miles long.
It included a route that took us through the South Carolina counties of McCormick and Edgefield. You can guess why the long circuitous route, geocaching, but what was the significance of the counties? It was because of the South Carolina County Challenge. If you find a cache in every one of South Carolina’s forty-six counties, you will get the coordinates to this bonus 47th cache and then you can add this “prestigious” goal to your caching resume. Eight down, thirty-eight to go.
On our way home we stopped in at Books-A-Million to buy something that will help us accomplish a sister challenge to the county one, the South Carolina DeLorme Challenge. You buy a $20 book and you have to find a cache on each of the 63 pages it takes to cover the state to get the coords for the final mystery cache and another trophy for the mantle.
The rules don’t disallow using the same cache in both challenges, but to us that would seem like cheating, so we will be getting at least 109 more caches in South Carolina. I’m willing to bet it will be a lot more than that.
I only wish we knew of this stuff back a few years ago when we were going on those Post Office Photography Safaris.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 388
When I said there were 63 pages to the South Carolina DeLorme Challenge I was wrong. The last map appears on page 63, but the first 15 pages of the book have other information, the first map page is #16. That means there are only 48 pages to find caches on.
We already have eight of forty-eight done, so we are almost 17% finished. Well really, if we stick to having separate caches for each of the challenges, we are only 7 of 48 because the one lonely find we have over in Summerton, Woodside Wonder, is eligible for use in Clarendon County and DeLorme Page #47.
It probably won’t be lonely for long though, got a breakfast meet at the Cracker Barrel in Florence with cousin Laurie on Sunday. I predict more counties and pages will be gotten this weekend.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 388
I don’t always agree with him and some of his picks are too artsy, but more often than not, if I enjoy reading his positive review of a movie, I will enjoy the movie. Right now Mr. Ebert is in Toronto at their film festival and has been writing, not reviewing, about the movies he has seen. I have just gone through his posts from the festival so far and added 6 movies to the Saved section of my Netflix rental queue:
- A Serious Man
- Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
- Chloe
- Men Who Stare at Goats
- The Informant!
- Whip It!
Of course I will have to wait about a year or so for these to actually get into the regular queue. Then they have to migrate their way to the top through the 60 or 70 movies already there, but I’m pumped.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 388
 First up is Hockeyhick’s and Cache-n-Kerry’s Road-tripping Puck which is a souvenir puck from the Greenville (SC) Grrrowl minor league hockey team. The team has since folded and the TB owners want this puck to be their proxie fan and to “take it to pee-wee games, high school and college games, minor league and pro games, all around the globe!” We feel for the Greenville hockey fans as just last year the team over in Augusta pulled the same folding act. Coincidentally the Growl and the Augusta Lynx played against each other frequently because they were in the very same league. Sunday before last we drove over to Augusta to take a picture of the puck in front of the home of the Augusta Lynx, James Brown Arena.
 Second is Simba from Disney’s popular 1994 animated feature film The Lion King. Simba’s goal is to see as many zoos, circus’ and habitats as he can before returning home. We found Simba in one of the caches from our big loop on Sunday and when we got home and read the goal, Donna said, “Hey, there is a circus coming to Augusta next weekend.” I checked the interweb and it turns out the circus was in town right then and the last showing was already well underway. We hopped in the car and drove over anyway. Turned out it was perfect timing. The crowd was almost entirely gone and the roustabouts were just starting to strike the big top. Walked in, Donna held Simba in her hand, I snapped the photo and we left. We might swing by the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia this weekend for another photo op.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 390
The other day we were sitting around waiting for an appoinment when Donna said, “I’m seeing stars.” She hadn’t bopped her head or made any sudden moves, she was just sitting there and the stars went away, so we thought nothing of it.
This morning at work she came to me and said, “There is something in my eye.” I pried open her eye lids and had her look up down and all round, but I didn’t see anything. She described it as a bright curved thing just off to the right in her field of vision. I asked, “Do you think it is a big floater?” Maybe came her reply, let’s see if it drifts out of the way. I checked in with her after about an hour and she said it wasn’t as bright, but it was still there, so we agreed she should call the eye doc. They said if she came over around lunch they would fit her in sometime this afternoon.
The doc dilated her eyes and shined his aircraft landing light brightness instruments in there. He came out with some good news, there was nothing sight threatening going on, but she did have a posterior vitreous detachment. The stars she noticed on Tuesday was the moment when the vitreous separated from the retina.
Do you think that is what happened to Dave Bowman aboard a Discovery One EVA Pod as he entered the TMA-2 monolith? When he said, “The thing’s hollow—it goes on forever—and—oh my God—it’s full of stars!”, was he just having a PVD?
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 391
This was our Friday afternoon off and I put it to good use by replacing the back brake pads on the Emperor. Donna put it to good use by having the time to try out a shrimp salad recipe she saw on a Barefoot Contessa cooking show.
I spent the evening plotting out caches along routes for the two statewide challenges we are doing. Now we just have to hope that on Sunday we don’t get the 60% chance of rain, but fall into the 40% no rain range. And she spent the evening watching Food TV looking for other meals to try out in case we fall into the 60%.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 392
Guess what came in he mail today? If you said a newly refurbished Garmin eTrex Venture HC, give yourself a lollipop. We’ve loaded it with batteries and taken it with us so we can compare how it works against our new Vista HCx tomorrow.
This morning after Breakfast with the MMC we took a drive down to Jackson to do a little caching. Jackson is in Aiken County, which we obviously already have, but it sits on a fairly desolate DeLorme Page (51.) We were 2 for 4, but that was OK as we only needed one to be considered a successful expedition.
Plan A was to drive up early Sunday morning to Florence for Breakfast with Laurie, but we opted for Plan B, leave at 4PM on Saturday. This way we could do some caching on the way up too. Three for four with one abstention before it got too dark to see. Added two more counties, Calhoun and Orangeburg and two more DeLorme pages 45 & 46.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 395
96,000: Saturday while leaving of town the Emperor crossed over that many miles.
398: Number of the Emperor’s top transitions since 10/24/08
194: Total number of caches we’ve found so far.
37: Number of caches we have DNF’d
14: Number of SC Counties we have found caches in.
11: Number of pages of the SC DeLorme Atlas we have found caches on.
7: Number of minutes left until the next episode of TDTVS2 starts.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 400
1/2 Mute Button — Instead of the full mute which brings about total silence when you hit it, how about something that just cuts the volume level 50%? This way, as you are listening to a show and a loud commercial comes on you can reduce the volume to something that is less intrusive. Then when the show comes back and you hit the button again, the volume change won’t knock you out of your recliner.
The Chronoblade
In an ancient Victorian Britain, a young collector of oddities stumbles across a time-traveling soldier which spurs him into conflict with humanity’s selfish nature, with the help of a tomboyish female mechanic and her closet full of assault rifles, culminating in a cliffhanger for the sake of prompting a series.
Thanks to Liam Cooke’s working model of the Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000 based on the original idea of David Malki.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 400
Should have saved it for today, because I got nothing.
Except for a tear in my eye for what could have been. In the last two days the FRS lost two games to the lowly Kansas City Royals. If they hadn’t they would be only 4 games behind the MFY and then taking 2 of 3 from the Yanks this weekend could have put them just two games out in the east with a week left in the season. Instead, best case if they win tonight, they will be 6 games out with eleven to play, means a sweep this weekend is their only hope at winning the division. They’ll still make the playoffs as the wild card and that worked pretty well for us in 2004.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 403
Venture capital needed for a new company that Mark, Jim and I are forming to make food fun and easy. Jim’s first request is help in making a PB&J sandwich without ruining your nice fresh, soft white bread. Peanut butter and jelly formed into slices and individually wrapped, ala Kraft Singles. I thought that once that product takes off our next release should be a Fluff ‘n’ Nutter variation.
After our new company is making money hand over fist we will be getting into genetically engineering fruit. Mark likes apples, but hates the skin, so our first venture in that direction be be to create an apple that will peel like a banana. I thought why stop there, we should make it so that alternating sections are either dense intertwined fuzz or little bitty hook things so that when reeled down and pushed together below the apple they become a stick like handle.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 405
Is your dog listless? Not eating? He could be depressed. Is he shy? Introverted? Uncomfortable in social situations? This new device may be just the thing to put a little swagger back in Fido’s step — DoggieLoverDoll.
Another example of the fine line between madness and genius…
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 408
 It was a quiet and rainy day here at the SMH. We were up early enough to get the lot mowed and give a bad haircut to the hedge in front of the porch (before picture to left) before the rain started.
We didn’t get in any caching because we are not hard core enough, a little (and it was not always little) bit of precipitation scared us away.
So we stayed inside and watched all of Disc 5 of Season 7 of West Wing this afternoon and we now have just the very last 3 episodes to watch. We are still not sure what we are going to replace it with in our TV rental queue, quite possibly nothing.
After West Wing I spent the next three hours watching the FRS lose to the Yankees again. I know the games don’t really mean anything standing wise, we’re not catching them for the division and we have a lock on the wildcard, but if they don’t at least win tomorrow I’m going to have to take an incredible amount of grief at work on Monday from my manager…
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 409
We came back from the SMH via US25 instead of the Interstate and snagged a few caches on the way.
The eight finds put us over the two hundred mark, 202 to be exact.
We crossed off three counties, Greenville, Laurens & Greenwood, bringing us to 17 of 46 completed in that challenge.
Plus we filled in 3 DeLorme pages, 17, 18 & 33 meaning we are now finished with 14 of 47 pages.
We also crossed off the letter X from the SC Alphabet Challenge leaving us needing only J & Z to complete the 26 needed for that one.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 412
Just watched last week’s season premier of FlashForward and it wasn’t too bad, very interesting premise and just like the premier of the show it is being compared to most, LOST, one needs to suspend their grasp on reality to buy into the carnage of the opening scenes. But like TDTVS, I think if given a chance this may be an interesting show.
Before watching FlashForward we watched the contents of the red envelope on the coffee table, The Jane Austen Book Club. I’m a guy and I have never read a Jane Austen book and I think that may have helped in my enjoyment of the movie. I’m pretty sure this was classified as a “chick flick” when it first came out and I would have never even thought of dropping it in the rental if not for the recommendation of a fellow MMC member. Why did I trust her suggestion? Because she likes a good action flick as well as the next guy, that’s why. I so bought into this movie that I didn’t even recognize Emily Blunt and I saw what I thought to be an actual familial resemblance between Amy Brenneman and LOST’s Maggie Grace who played a mother and daughter.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 412
At 7:30 this morning they dragged my groggy wife away on a wheeled bed and three hours later a nurse was pushing her out to the car in a wheelchair. She had three incisions in her mid-section, was short one minor …wait let me check Wikipedia … organ and crumpled in her fist was a script for Dr. House’s favorite pills.
Isn’t modern medicine so amazing? I can’t help but think of that scene from Star Trek IV when the crew of the Enterprise travel back to the then current time (1986) and they have to rescue Chekov from a hospital because Bones is worried for his safety in the hands of practitioners of barbaric 20th century treatments. Imagine how we would react to what constituted the practice of medicine in the 18th century if we somehow found ourselves there.
She is still a bit sore and the vicoden is keeping the edge off, but she helped me cook dinner, washed the dishes and we walked around the small block in our neighborhood afterward. Current plan is to return to work next Monday.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 412
Finished the last of West Wing tonight. To use one of President Bartlett’s favorite expressions and the nearly last line spoken on the show, by the newly inaugurated President Santos, “What’s next?”
 Last night, after their 5th loss in a row, the FRS backed into the Wild Card spot in the American League playoffs because the Texas Rangers lost as well. This means that even if the Red Sox lose their last 5 games they will still have a better record than the Rangers if they win all of their last games. Which is a good thing too because the FRS are about to lose the the Blue Jays again tonight (in a double digit shut out no less.)
This morning the Sox web site was proudly directing folks to the store where you could buy your 2009 Wild Card paraphernalia. No thanks. Admittedly the 2003 World Series winning Red Sox were the Wild Card team, but trust me, this is not the 2003 team. They’ll be lucky to get past the first round the way they are playing.
First there was the regular sized grocery cart. Well not actually the first, that was really a folding basket carrier patented in 1948, let’s say original modern shopping cart. Next probably came those small plastic hand baskets, perfect for those 10 items or less shoppers.
The next variation was the ones that have a slightly smaller basket which sacrifice grocery space for a plastic toy car in front to place the kiddies.
When our newest Kroger opened up 5 years ago or so there was another choice added, a 25% larger basket (mostly in width) for those big family bi-weekly shopping trips. The new store was more brightly lit to enhance the shopping experience and had slightly wider aisles, coincidentally about 25% wider.
A couple years later these small carts appeared that had a shelf for those small plastic baskets, which in a strange way almost returned the cart to it’s humble roots and allowed those to lazy to actually have to carry those ten items.
On a quick trip to the store this evening I noticed a 6th different kind of cart sharing the abandoned in the parking lot experience with its brethren, sort of a hybrid between the small cart with shelf and a regular cart. It looked like a plastic basket cart with a wire basket about a third of the size of a regular cart permanently attached.
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 412
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