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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We bought ten bucks worth of candy at 5:00PM on Saturday at Fred’s. Pumpkin shaped lollipops, bubblegum and a couple bags of foiled wrapped chocolates. One bag of the chocolates were spheroid shaped filled with either fudge, caramel or peanut butter that were wrapped in foil. The coolest thing was that the foil was colored like eyeballs. Really life-like blood shot eyes.
By 8:00 PM when we shut off the porch light we still had nine dollars and twenty five cents worth. We had a total of about six trick or treaters. We also had about that many walk right on by after going next door or across the street. Of the half dozen kids that came to the door, four were brother-sister pairs and each time Donna offered the boys a couple of eyeballs they freaked and refused. The girls on the other hand were eager to take them.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 464
Yesterday the Emperor had dental surgery. It was November 1st, so the Vampire Teeth came off and went into their plastic bag for the next 11 months.
After nearly 23 months and 27,000 miles the Emperor’s shoes are getting worn out. They are not to the wear bars just yet (close) and are starting to get hard, so yesterday I ordered up some new foot wear. General Exclaim UHPs in 205/50 x 15.
Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 464
There were 89 spam messages caught by my spam filter at work this morning and quite a few dealt with trying to sell magic pills to improve my sex life. I am amazed at the creative titles and thought that they could be broken down into which Cable TV channel they would be shown on if they were the titles of infomercials instead of the subject lines of spam.
Release your inside beast! on Animal Planet
African temper in amour on BET
Your prescription for success on Discovery Health
Become arousal athlete! on ESPN
Pumper for pant muscle on Fit TV
Recipe for hot nights on FOOD
Invest in your wang! on CNBC
Be her volcano on National Geographic
Just be a male! on Spike
Right spell for your ‘magic wand’ on SyFy
No sad accidents in bed on Tru TV
Be furious in bed on Versus
I’m not sure what channel these last three belong on, maybe you have some channels I don’t get, let me know what you think:
Be good at humping!
Become a lech instantly
Flaccidity is not for you
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 466
The Art of Being A Miata Passenger
Donna always gets this one right, but sometimes the driver just doesn’t listen — …you must be sure to remind the driver to get gas, and have money on hand in case you want to buy something in one of those small towns that don’t have ATM’s or take credit cards.
100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do
My favorite — #18. Know before approaching a table who has ordered what. Do not ask, “Who’s having the shrimp?”
50 Amazingly Helpful Time-Tested Tips for the Kitchen
Chalk? Really? — #14. To banish ants from the kitchen, find out where they are coming in and cover the hole with petroleum jelly. Ants won’t trek through the jelly. If they are coming under a door, draw a line on the floor with chalk. The little bugs also won’t cross a line of chalk.
Helpful Hints for Life
No time for a bath? Wrap yourself in masking tape and remove the dirt by simply peeling it off.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 466
The Miata cockpit can be a very warm place for various reasons. It is not helped that the outside air vented into the cockpit is heated 15–20 degrees above the ambient outside air.
 Several years back I decided to try and cool this air down. I used nearly every trick that I could unearth on the Miata Forums, ensure the heater flap closed fully, close holes in hood with tape, stuff a piece of insulation in the seal between cowl and engine compartment and tape over holes in firewall leading to the windshield cowl area, yet I remained defeated. On my own I thought maybe if I removed the big plastic piece over the inlet for the cabin air I might get some outside air directly in the system. This exposed a big opening directly to the vent system’s squirrel fan covered only with a wide mesh appropriately sized to keep out overweight house cats.
 Having had to clean small leaves and pieces of pine straw out of that fan from inside the car a few times in my Miata owning career (major milestone approaching) I thought it would be a good idea to cover that up. The only thing I had handy was a spare 20x20 house HVAC filter. So I cut out a piece of the fiberglass mesh roughly the size of the opening, edged it in some maroon duct tape I had left over from covering the holes in the hood and taped it over the opening.
 I change the “cabin air filter” out each time I change the oil which is about every 3 months. Do I breath cleaner air because of this filter, I doubt it, what with all the time I spend with the top down, but it must be doing something judging by how dirty it looks when I swap it out. If you look in the clean filter picture above you can see a bunch of debris to the right of the filter, I don’t think this would have made it into the fan without the filter because of the 2″ vertical wall of the opening (probably designed that way to keep out water), but stuff has made it in there before, probably due some sort of perfect storm scenario, and since I have been using this filter method nothing has made in there yet.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 467
Yesterday morning I wiped the dust off my monitor with a damp cloth. A few minutes later I noticed a bright green dot 1/3 over from the right and about half way up while the screen saver was running. I run an adjusted version of Euphoria and the background is mostly black, so that bright green dot was very visible. It doesn’t get any better when I’m working either because I draw in AutoCAD with a black background and that green is the color I use for dimensions.
I Googled “dead pixel” and found a few places that offered methods to fix them. But the first thing I learned is I didn’t have a dead pixel, but I had a stuck pixel. *The title of this post wouldn’t have sounded near as cute if I used stuck instead of dead.
I tried two different software methods and maybe I didn’t let them run long enough, only about 15 minutes, but neither had any success. I then moved onto the more dangerous physical methods. The pencil point directly applied to the stuck pixel insulated by a couple sheets of paper fixed the problem, for about 2 minutes. Then we moved on to the tapping of the screen on the pixel with a Sharpie, with the cap on, this worked too. For about 15 minutes. By the afternoon I was coming to the realization that I was going to have to live with that one bright green spot and maybe change my AutoCAD background to white.
At the 2 o’clock break, with the usual gang gathered in my cube, I was regaling folks with my attempts to fix the stuck pixel. As I was demonstrating the tapping technique that had worked for the relatively longest time, I picked a random spot on the screen and practiced hitting it with the right pressure, just enough to make a nice white halo around the cap of the Sharpie, when my stuck pixel unstuck. I was about 4 or 5 inches away from it, but on the second or third tap it winked off. Hasn’t returned since.
Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 469
Or are you just glad to see me?
We took a “little” trip to do some geocaching today. After going 0 for 2 in Hampton County last weekend on the way home from HHI, there was one more left that we wanted to try and it was only 72 miles away (as the crow flies.) We warmed up with a series of 4 ammo cans in a park in Jackson, SC. Then we drove through the bomb plant to get the other half of a multi that we had gotten Stage 1 of last Sunday. We ducked into to Georgia on US 301 to visit the country’s oldest operating Welcome Center (dedicated January 1962) and the grab nearby cache. On the return trip back into SC I took a picture of my state’s Welcome Center. It was closed in 2000.
The drive down was on really back roads passing through only a couple towns and they had populations of less than 3 digits. We made it to the spot where our goal was, at a boat ramp on the Savannah River called Stokes Bluff Landing and we might not have found the cache if we didn’t read the clue. We decided to loop into Georgia and come back on the west side of the river and pass through Augusta before coming home, but when we hit US 301 we turned right. Passed that GA Welcome Center again and retraced our route back.
About 200 miles of driving with the top down on a beautiful fall day. We were 11 of 12 in finding caches for the day and it wasn’t until I got home and logged them online that I realized we really blew it by missing that one, our total cache finds stands now at 249…
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 470
 Today was the second Glorious Fall Day® in a row and for the first time in about three months we went for a walk in Hitchcock Woods. Took a nice little 3–1/2 mile walk among the falling leaves.
Because the weather was perfect for it as well as walking in the woods, the Emperor got the full spa treatment; bug/tar removal on the nose and rocker panels, a good washing, headlights polished, wax and a window washing. We are now set for the winter.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 471
Back in the day we used to take pictures, get them developed and place them in photo albums. When we first went digital, a step was added to the process, upload them to an online service. Somewhere along the line that extra step was eliminated and the consequence of that is now there are no physical images to bore your friends and neighbors. All the photos are mere ones and zeros on a hard drive.
A couple years ago I found an online place that mashes up the photo development and photo album into a full color bound book and we have made several of them from our vacations.
We took a 2 week trip back in April and I just now got around to making a photobook from the pictures. I made it for us to put with the rest of our vacation memories, but you too can own those memories, buy one for yourself for Christmas. Or if you are cheap, just check out the gallery here on mr-miata.net.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 472
Did you read last night’s post? What was I trying to say? I just looked at my front page, all 7 posts, and there was maybe one there that was really blog worthy. The week before was hardly any better.
I need a break, not a big break, but maybe some short random breaks. So let’s try this, for everyday that the top doesn’t change state, I’m not going to post anything here.
If the weather is accurate tomorrow will be the first day off under this plan.
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 473
Can you find the Miata in this picture?
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 474
Although we swore we were going to be staying home this weekend because we will be on the move the next two, we couldn’t stand it. We had completed the Alphabet Soup — South Carolina Style Challenge a couple months ago by grabbing 26 caches within the state’s border, each one beginning with a different letter of the alphabet, we hadn’t done the final stage in Belton. That was today’s destination.
We started by doing the bread crumb series of caches which start in North Augusta and end in Greenwood (or vice versa.) At each cache you get part of a set of coordinates and after doing all 6 you end up with the whereabouts of 2 different caches, one in each of the end point cities. Seeing as we were heading north, when we got to Greenwood we plugged in our bonus cache coords and headed off for it. When we pulled into the park where it was located the place was jammed with cars and people soccer balls. Turned around and left, to come back another day.
We also had a few others to look for on the way up and way back besides our goal cache in Belton. We finished the day with 10 caches found, 2 counties checked off, one more DeLorme page complete and one DNF.
Unfortunately the DNF was for the one cache we really wanted, Alphabet Soup. I know I really shouldn’t wear shorts when caching, but I’m willing to put up with a few random scratches for comfort, so I risk it. Hunting for this cache I really regretted it. Here is the log I left on the cache page:
It was easier finding the 26 letters of the alphabet caches than it was finding this one.
Walking along next to a stream when the arrow of the GPSr points 40′ into the the brush perpendicular to the trail. After about 5 feet in I knew I was not coming out of this unscathed, there were pointy thorns aplenty tangled everywhere. I got within 25′ of GZ and couldn’t get to it for the brambles. Backed up a few feet and attacked at another angle. Different briars stopped me, still about 25′ away.
Struggled back to the trail looking for another way in. Spotted something promising about 15 feet further along. Only a few steps in and already it was major pokeville. Dodge. Weave. Duck. GZ is 25′ way. Dang it. I’ve already been stuck several times, so I barge along parallel to the trail and get myself locked in real good in a tangle of stickers. Check the GPSr, yep, 25′ away. Losing a little more skin and blood I forge through the stickers in that direction.
I stop when I get to a point where there is an inch of water on the ground. The arrow on the GPSr is pointing back the way I came and you can guess as to how far away it said I was…twenty-five feet.
My wife, who had given up long ago because of the briers, talked me out of the sticker bushes before I passed out from blood loss and we mumbled and grumbled our way back to the car. I am not going to look good in shorts for several weeks…
If we ever come back for this one I’m bringing a DR Brush Mower!
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 475
Can you say root canal?
I did not watch this evening’s episode of House. I will plan on downloading the torrent, so I can watch it in HD tomorrow. I understand tonight’s episode has something to do with a sick porn star and absolutely nothing to do with her having a root canal.
Same deal for Castle, don’t watch and download the torrent, their first suspect has airtight alibi, turns out he was having a root canal done at the time of the murder.
I need to buy a Nestle’s $100,000 Bar 100 Grand Candy Bar soon as the Emperor currently has 99,864 miles on the odometer. I’ll be careful to chew it up on only the right side as I wouldn’t want the soft, chewy caramel to pull out the temporary filling from my freshly root canaled tooth.
Modern dentistry is awesome, the hardest part of getting a root canal these days is holding your jaw wide open for 45 minutes straight, well maybe the second hardest after you see the bill.
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 476
In honor of unfriend being chosen as 2009’s Word of the Year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, I just did it to everyone I had previously “friended” on Facebook and MySpace by deleting my accounts on both services tonight.
So long, farewell, I hardly knew ya (sometimes literally.)
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 477
Sure hasn’t upped the quality here.…
Taken April 17, 1995 at a Master’s Tournament Practice Round. The sureal look is courtesy of Seattle FilmWorks. You mail them a roll of their film, they develop it and send you back prints. For a few dollars more they digitize the photos and send them to you a 3–1/2 floppy disc.*
*Not anymore. Seattle FilmWorks stopped doing this kind of thing around 2001 and then changed their name to PhotoWorks. In 2008 American Greeting bought PhotoWorks and now they are like any other company that lets you upload photos and have them developed or turned in mugs for gifts…
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Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 478
Over the bridge and through the swamp to Donna’s sister’s house we go. It’ll take us 4–1/2 days. No, we are not riding the tandem. Five hundred and fourteen miles is the most direct route down I-95, which we hate and avoid like the H1N1 virus, so we will spend most of the trip on two-lane back roads and beating back thorny bushes looking for Army surplus ammo cans full of Happy Meal toys.
The route back home will be 582 miles, half Florida Turnpike, half Georgia state routes and it will take us about 14 hours.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 479
 Just shy of Bowman, the Emperor, Donna and I split a candy bar in honor of his latest mileage achievement.
From Aiken, SC to Pooler, GA it is 136 miles as the Google flies, but we traveled 288. Along the way we visited an honest to God (pun intended) Abbey with real monks and stuff to look at 47 different nativity scenes in media that varied from rolled newspaper to stainless steel. We geocached in 3 different counties, finding 5 and DNFing one. We had Japanese for lunch, American for dinner and we are spending the night in a hotel that doesn’t have ice machines.
Tomorrow we cross into the other world where you can’t get sweet tea to drink, but you can get a paperweight made of a baby alligator head encased in lucite, the glorious Sunshine State, Florida.
Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 481
 There is a sign on US17 in South Newport, GA that proclaims “The Smallest Church in America.” With our love of Roadside Americana we would have stopped to look at it even if there hadn’t been a cache nearby. Donna went inside and read a sign that said you can have your wedding here, it had better be a small party as it would be a tight squeeze with just preacher, bride, groom, best man and maid of honor. At 10′ x 15′ it is pretty small and I’d have a hard time fitting the Miata inside, but someone has found even a couple more churches littler — Smallest Churches in America.
We didn’t do a lot of extra driving today, Google says it is 197 miles from Pooler, GA to Lake City, FLORIDA and we only took 244 to get here. It was raining when the day started and for most of the trip it varied from drizzle to downpour until we entered the Sunshine State. Then true to it’s nickname the skies cleared and within a few miles we had the top down. Found 7 geocaches today, including our first one in Florida, DNF’d only one and that was another Florida first.
Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 483
 We are spending the next two nights at the Lakeside Inn in Mt Dora, FL and while the place is nice it would probably have been in its prime several decades ago.
Today it took us only 147 miles to go the 136 Google told us it would. We stopped several times to do some geocaching, finding 7 of 8, and walking along several trails of the Ocala National Forest.
Started up, went down, went up, back down, back up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 489
 We drove a whopping 76 miles today, to Winter Springs and back and we finally ran into the Florida we love to hate, 6 lanes of heavy traffic interrupted by traffic lights every 1/4 mile. We did find an alternative route back that involved a toll road (best two bucks we spent today) and a two lane back road. The trip over was to have a quick visit with the fellow who lived across the street from us in Aiken. Oliver was the neighborhood historian as he lived there from the beginning and made friends with everyone he met. Unfortunately a couple of years ago his family moved him down here to be close to them when he and his wife began to show their advanced age. He enjoyed our visit and we enjoyed brightening his day.
Did minimal geocaching today, striking out on the one that is actually only 350 feet from our room at the Lakeside Inn, but we did find the one that was in a park a short walk away.
This evening we walked into downtown Mt. Dora for dinner. Last night’s dinner at the dining room at the Inn was fantastic, but we were looking for something a little lighter. Donna wanted ravioli so we walked up the 5 blocks to a pizza place thinking that they might have something Italian as well. They did. but no ravioli, so we backed back down the hill looking for likely suspects. After dismissing a couple we ended up at the Frog & Monkey Pub. No ravioli, but they did have a small flat bread pizza that was the perfect size for us to split. Donna got a bottled water and I got some Pond Water — Guinness & Root Beer. Don’t laugh, it is actually pretty good.
Started up, went down, went up, down again, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 493
 We arrived at our destination in Palm City by lunch time today. A slight mis-turn in the town Okeechobee and two trips to the local Publix put our mileage for Wednesday at 203 miles instead of the 160 Google maps advertises. This brings our total mileage from Aiken to Palm City at 958.
It rained pretty much the whole day so the closest we came to geocaching was a virtual one in Okeechobee, but it was coming down so hard that we did not even get out of the car to answer the questions. I’m not going to count it as a DNF.
Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 493
 While the turkey was cooking and some of the guests were boating, Donna and I headed into downtown Stuart to do a little Geocaching. There were very few people in most of the places in downtown, so it made it fun not having to look over our shoulders to make sure we weren’t muggled while signing logs. Our total take for the day was 7, we had done 2 earlier that were within walking distance of Sandy’s house and then five more in downtown.
My favorite hide was the one from the picture above, called Road To Victory, mainly because of the hide of the cache itself. The size was listed as a regular, which normally means an ammo can, but those are usually kind of hard to hide in an “urban” environment. So it was nice to find exactly that, an ammo can, that was hidden in plain sight, bolted to the back of a Jeep in front of a little military museum.
Started up, went down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 495
 Did the sane thing and avoided any place that had anything to to with shopping today.
We went 1 for 2 in local Palm City geocaches in the morning. There is another that we started after, but we aren’t counting either way — it was 120′ into a swampy area that neither Donna or I could see a non-watery path towards.
In the afternoon we went sailing the St Lucie River around Palm City, Stuart & Port Salerno aboard Jolly Mon Song the 34 foot “yacht” of Sandy and Paul. It was a 3 hour tour with a stop at Finz Waterfront Grille for lunch in the middle.
The evening was spent playing a variation of Oh Hell and watching JJ Abrams reboot of Star Trek in Blueray on the Tomlin’s ginormous flat panel TV.
Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 497
 Returned from home Florida today in a marathon 13 hour 607 mile drive, making 8 pit stops along the way. Two for meals, one for a snack, two for gas and 3 just for driver changes. Somewhere south of Orlando the Emperor passed through the 101,000 mile mark. Total mileage for the trip — 1608 miles.
We are always careful about checking for Clemson home football games before heading into the SC upstate, but completely forgot to check for a University of Florida game before planning our route home. We were “forced” off of I-75 near Ocala by the rapidly multiplying Gator fans on their way to the game. Turns out it was for the better though, as we got to retrace some of our route down along some fantastic rural central Florida roads in the opposite direction.
Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 499
Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 500
I’ve started the South Carolina Post Office photo book. I liked yesterday’s photo collage thing so well I’m going to use it on the cover.
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 501
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