Personalization

When we moved to Aiken we started banking at the Aiken County Bank. They had a whopping two branches, but one of them was right along our drive to and from work, so it was convenient as heck. Ten years ago they sold out to a larger regional bank called Carolina First, same two branches in town, but occasionally we would stumble onto another Carolina First while traveling and could save the ATM fees when we needed some cash. Middle of last year Carolina First was sucked up by the 15th largest bank in the US with assets of just over 200 trillion dollars, TD Bank.

When TD Bank loaded up their software into my old friend the ATM at 142 Chesterfield Street they added a nifty little personalization step that allows users to set what amount they want as their default Fast Cash withdrawal and whether you want a receipt with each transaction and I can’t really remember, but maybe one or two other things. This is really nice because 9 times out of 10 I just want $20 cash, but they left out one important setting.

The first screen that is displayed after swiping your card is one asking you to choose one of the eight different languages you could use to communicate with the machine. Oh, today I think I would like to practice my Arabic, no, no, French, nah…maybe Japanese. Come on, don’t you think that the language should be one of the things you could personalize?

Windows 8

I tried out the consumer preview of the next version of Windows last night and this evening. Then I deleted it. I’m guessing you smarty pants phone users will feel right at home. If I had a touch screen on the laptop it might have been cooler, but it wasn’t just the whole mouse gesture thing that was a bust though, there were a limited amount of “apps” available and most of them required a Windows Live and/or Xbox log-in. I couldn’t get an App to play my existing music or videos and if you wanted to open a file explorer you just ended up back on a very familiar looking desktop indistinguishable from any version of windows from 95 and up. I think for desktop computing I’ll be sticking to Windows 7.

Just like I predicted, although raining in the morning, it was absolutely a perfect afternoon for driving around in a convertible, of which ours was home in the garage.

We’re Being Toyed With

The past two days the weather channel has told us that the temperature would be in the low seventies with little chance of rain, so we drove the Miata to work with visions of top down drives home. Yesterday it was sprinkling, so we kept the top up. Today we managed a few miles with it down, but had to put it up when we got our haircut because of threatening skies.

For the next two days they are calling for scattered and then isolated showers, 30% chance for each. So we we’ll drive the Sonata and you watch, the weather will be sunny and mild…

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1117

Poor Steve

We have an assembly engineer who has decided to take a job elsewhere, some place a lot closer to home. His last day is this Friday. It is also the last day of our payroll clerk and for her there is any number of little tributes and sharing of food stuffs, unfortunately for him, nothing. So Donna asked me to make up a little farewell card for him.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1115

Spel Cheker

We had breakfast at DD this morning and after walking out on Saturday morning because no one wanted to wait on us in a timely manner we were glad to see the little older woman behind the counter. She, unlike most of the younger kids that man the register, can enter our highly complex order* without hunting for several seconds looking for the right button to push. Not only that, she seemed to be the only person in the store and we got our food and drinks in a more timely fashion than usual.

On her badge, there was a label, right under her name with her title, SHEFT LEADER.

*Small Coffee, cream & sugar
Small hot Chocolate, no whipped cream
Coffee Cake Muffin
Plain Bagel, toasted with butter

All Hail The Saloon!

This a picture of the first 4-door automobile the Bogarduses ever owned. It is a 1981 Honda Civic all fitted out with our bikes on the roof rack. If you look carefully you can see Donna in the driver’s seat waiting patiently for me to get back in the car so we can go somewhere, possibly New Orleans. The building in the left background was the apartment building where we lived in Meridian, MS while I was assigned to the Naval Air Station there.

I was working second shift and Donna was going to school during the day so we needed two cars. The four door joined a similarly colored 1980 Civic 3-door hatchback in our stable*. The 4-door only stayed with us for a year and a half before being traded in on a 1983 Honda Prelude in, you guessed it, maroon. I could never really get comfortable in the 4-door because the seat didn’t go back far enough for me, while in the hatchback it did.

*I would have said garage, but that would have been incorrect because we just had spots in the apartment complex LOT and not even assigned ones.

It is also the last 4-door car we owned for 30 years. Until the Purple Whale came along, who by the way, got a nice little bath this afternoon.

Lazy Post

I only have so many words that I can type per day, so geocaching logs is where are all of them went today. Pretty pedestrian stuff, but if you only read one of these, let it be #6.

  1. Among the Palmettos – Parking coordinates, smarking coordinates. We pulled into a handy spot near the playground and took a nice little walk to the cache. We spotted the container in short order and in our usual fashion, then discovered the easy way out. Took a SC Parks clip and left a few small items. TFTC
  2. Lakes Region Challenge Hamilton Branch State Park – After finding Among the Palmettos we walked out to the point to find this one. Took an SC State Parks jar opener and left Chick-Fil-A fun book. TFTC
  3. Mt. Vernon Halfway House – Neat container! Swapped a couple of travelers. TFTH
  4. Rabbit’s Revenge – We were here in the park hunting the SC Parks Lake Challenge cache and we passed less than 1,000 feet from this one, so we thought what the heck. We took a Matchbox car and left some Mardi Gras beads. TFTH
  5. Lakes Region Challenge ? Baker Creek State Park – We too used Succotash’s coords and I made parking more difficult than the walk to or finding the cache, it was a good thing we weren’t in the Miata… Took nothing and left some Mardi Gras beads. TFTH
  6. Beans for Delightful – We were here in the park hunting the SC Parks Lake Challenge cache and this one was a little more than a half mile further along, so we thought what the heck. We were a few hundred feet from GZ when I noticed a large bird walking parallel to us through the trees. At first I thought it was a wild turkey, but it looked way too big and it was moving about 4 times as fast as any turkey I had every seen. I pointed it out to my wife who too got a brief glimpse of it before it was to far away to see any more. I kind of wish the park was officially open, so I could have asked a ranger if there were an wild emu (although the coloring looked more like ostrich) living here. Oh, yeah, we found the cache too. Took a kiddie book and left some Mardi Gras beads and a small Florida pin. TFTH
  7. Haunted Stump – We left nothing and the only thing we took was a worthless lottery ticket, all the while not disturbing the snail living on the the container’s cover. TFTH
  8. Lakes Region Challenge ? Hickory Knob – After finding the Haunted Stump cache we walked across the street to grab this one. We took a Matchbox car and left a kiddie book. TFTC