Another Reason Why I’ll Never Own A Hybrid

We had some unseasonable cool weather on Monday, so we drove the Miata to work. It was cool enough in the morning for me to almost want a light jacket. It was sort of cloudy at quitting time, so we even made the return trip home with top down.

Both times I started the car it seemed to turn over a little slowly before catching. Battery going dead? The original battery lasted 5-1/2 years and this one is only a touch over 2 years old. Maybe there is a small amount of dark current that drains the battery, but it was never noticed because the car was a daily driver and the constant charging kept it going. I may duck into an AutoZone or similar and have then analyze it later this week.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1044

True Grits

Yesterday was breakfast with the MMC and while some folks did, neither Donna nor I had grits.

We also watched the Jeff Bridges play Rooster Cogburn. About three months ago we rented the 1969 John Wayne movie and didn’t make it past Glen Campbell in the boardinghouse. This newer version of True Grit we watched all the way through and enjoyed. I can give this analogy for our preference, the 1968 Mustang GT is a classic automobile and was an awesome car for its time, but given the choice, we would opt for the 2011 model.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1044

Spam or Marketing Tool?

This email made it through the first line of Spam Defense at work, Postini, but got caught in the second line, Outlook’s Spam Filter.

From: Marianne Gardner [mailto:Marianne.Gardner@lateforbreakfast.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2011 3:24 PM
To: A Cast Of Thousands (including me)
Subject: Re: Re: Job

Hello,
I am glad to inform you about available vacancy C16882 in advertising business.

Position name: Supply manager.
Branch: Supply
Positioning: All States USA
Salary: $75000
Reports to: Senior Supply manager
Duties : Coordinate supply projects.
Manages the creation and maintenance of Equipment Bill of Materials. Reviews purchase orders to ensure adherence to quality and procedures. Control activities for all phases of supply projects

Requirements:
- Citizenship: US
- Bachelors degree
- Credit rating more then 700
- 3 years of work experience
- Strong computer skills
- High level of communication skills
- organizational skills

If you are ready to move forward please send your response with resume.

ronald.hrdepartment@gmail.com

At first I instantly classified it as spam because it contained a random and unconnected group of ASCO & Emerson employees and the different email addresses of the sender and the one they wanted a reply to. But then the sender’s email address URL caught my eye, lateforbreakfast.com, it intrigued me. So I opened a browser and entered the URL into the address line and hit enter. What could happen?

Turns out Late for Breakfast is the name of an Australian Pop/Jazz group and their web page is quirky enough to make me read the whole thing and even listen to a couple of their tunes. The music is not bad actually, kind of reminded me of Steely Dan.

So, what do you think?
Spam – just something to get me to reply to the gmail address to verify that mine was a valid address or some sort of monetary scam.
Marketing ploy – knowing the type of person who would be curious about the URL would aslo be the type that would enjoy that style of music.

Boards

The typical southern afternoon thunderstorms have kept me from finishing the staining touch up on the deck, but I did make a little progress after work today without opening a can or handling a brush. I borrowed a friend and his pickup truck to make a trip to BBHIW to buy the required boards I needed to replace the top boards of the railing.

Even though I have tried to stay ahead of the curve with staining, a few of the top boards of the railing do need replacing because of warping and cracking. Rather than replace just the couple of bad boards, I decided to replace them all with some of that newfangled recycled 2-liter soda bottle stuff. The composite decking is expensive, $20 for an 8′ piece, but it does come with a 20 year warranty.

There were 8 separate boards that need to be changed and it would have taken seven 8\’ sticks because the next two smallest boards I have after one 2′-9″ piece, are 4′-6″ and then there is another one that is 4-8″. I did manage to save a few bucks by buying 12′ boards because I could combine it down to 4 pieces.

We might have been able to deal with the 8′ pieces in the Miata, but 12′ would have been a little dicey, so we called for help.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1043

Rutting Netflix

We have been two at a time Netflixers since way back when. A couple years ago they threw in streaming from the cloud for FREE. At first they limited the amount of time you were allotted by how many DVDs your plan allowed, then they bumped it to unlimited streaming (still FREE.)

Today I received an email from the fine folks at Netflix:

Dear Brian,

We are separating unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming into two separate plans to better reflect the costs of each. Now our members have a choice: a streaming only plan, a DVD only plan, or both.

Your current $14.99 a month membership for unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs will be split into 2 distinct plans:

Plan 1: Unlimited Streaming (no DVDs) for $7.99 a month
Plan 2: Unlimited DVDs, 2 out at-a-time (no streaming) for $11.99 a month

From $15 to $20 on September 1 for the same thing, that is a 33% increase. The folks that were in it at 1 DVD and unlimited streaming got zapped for even more, they are going from $10 to $16 or 60%.

Our 2 DVDs were separated into 1 for TV shows and 1 for movies. But we are running out of TV shows we want to watch, Law & Order (The Mother Ship) is the last one and while we are only on Season 8 of 20, #8 is the last one available on DVD. The rest are tied up with exclusive rerun deals with cable TV. So today I went ahead and changed our plan from 2 to 1 DVD at a time and kept the streaming portion. Even with the downgrade in service it will still cost us a buck more when the price goes up in September.

I’m going to see just how much we stream per month, which is mostly me on the laptop watching stuff that wouldn’t appeal to Donna. Maybe we will just drop the streaming altogether and go back to getting 2 DVDs at a time for the $12.

I think if they eased up the price, in what I call The How To Boil Frog Method, it wouldn’t have been too bad and maybe not have inflamed users like me into doing something rash. After all, how much does it cost per month for HBO? $20?

Eco Mode?

The Sonata has an ECO button on the dash and when it is pressed in does something magic, I think (because it isn’t covered in the owners manual that I downloaded from Hyundai), to the throttle response and shift points to increase the car’s fuel mileage. To let you now that the system is armed and working there is a green ECO displayed in the middle of the dash. I find the light annoying so I keep the ECO switch off.

We filled up with gas tonight for the first time since we tested the lower limits of the gas tank and we had been 477.6 miles of mostly just to and from work commuting. The Purple Whale drank 15.26 gallon of regular fuel, so we averaged 31.3 MPG for this tank.

I wonder what would happen if I left that switch on?

On Deck

OK, so the last few days have been spent refinishing the deck. I pressure washed half of it one day last week and finished yesterday. Because of the diminished chance of rain today and tomorrow I did some staining tonight. The last time I did this I used a sprayer and it took a while, so this time I did it with a roller and it was a lot quicker. But it was not accurate (I’m not sure that is the right word) so that I need to go back tomorrow and do some touching up around the edges. Detail work.

It is a pain in the butt to have to do it every few years, but if you want it to last and the money you spent on the thing not to go to waste, you got to do it. The above photo was taken during construction 10 years and 11 months ago.