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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Red Race Car Lime Kiln Light January 2005 We'll Take Number 11

Miles Per Gallon

Fuelly Fuelly

Free Iced Coffee Day

We took advan­tage of the nice weather to ride the tan­dem to work today. The kids are all off of school this week because of that lit­tle golf tour­na­ment in Augusta that is named in honor of the car club we’re in. This made the ride in and the ride back at lunchtime dou­bly nice as the traf­fic was very, very light

I got lucky and got a free small iced cof­fee late this after­noon, but only because Donna wanted to get some­thing cold after our yearly eye exam.

One of our local DD shares the same build­ing with a Baskin Rob­bins. We went in because we had a coupon that was going to expire soon for a Buy One Get One 50% Off ice cream cone. While stand­ing there wait­ing to get our cone Donna asked the fel­low behind the counter, “Has it been busy today because it is Spring Break?” He replied, “Its been busy, but prob­a­bly more because it is Free Iced Cof­fee Day.” Then he offered us one. I accepted.

5 Months Later

Back in May we stum­bled onto the Google Street View Car on our bike ride home from work. The updated views are now online. If you click on the photo above, you will be taken to the street view in ques­tion. Feel free to move the lit­tle man along the block of Park Ave between Marl­boro and Williamsburg.

To wit­ness an anom­aly in the fab­ric of space and time, start at Williams­burg and work your way east (to the right) and at one point Donna and I, along with the per­son walk­ing along the street, flash out of the pic­ture for an instant and then pop right back. Where did we go?

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 1174

Top Count Placeholder

The top went up on Mon­day because of a threat of rain and stayed up ever since due to the cold. That same cold didn’t pre­vent us from rid­ing the tan­dem to work on Tues­day though because there is a remark­able dif­fer­ence in wind­chill fac­tor between 15 MPH and 55 MPH. Plus at fif­teen you are work­ing, as opposed to just sit­ting still at fifty-five. Tomor­row it will go down for the way home from work as it is sup­posed to be back in the low 80’s.

The top is start­ing to look a lit­tle ragged in a cou­ple spots. The tan fab­ric is worn enough that the black under layer is show­ing through. Where that is hap­pen­ing is a dou­ble layer of mate­r­ial any­way because that is where the top shop repaired it when it was wear­ing through on the inside a while back. With the advent of Pur­ple Whale own­er­ship the rate of top tran­si­tions has decreased to a trickle, so I’m sure we can get a cou­ple more years use out of it, if we can stand the unkempt look that long.

I don’t know if it is that par­tic­u­lar Rob­bins top or the instal­la­tion of the top or a lit­tle of both that is to blame, but the top count stands at about half of the OEM top before it needed replac­ing. But, I guess you get what you pay for, because the Rob­bins top was about half the cost of a offi­cial Mazda unit…

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 1173

Sunday in Aiken

A short bike 10 mile ride. Break­fast at DD. Gro­cery shop­ping at Kroger.

Lunch. Wash the Pur­ple Whale.

After­noon spent watch­ing the Weather Chan­nel and lis­ten­ing to the FRS on the inter­net. Which is more related than you think in that they are both like rub­ber­neck­ing at a car acci­dent on the Inter­state, hor­ri­ble to see, but you just can’t turn away.*

Evening spent blog­ging and surf­ing the web.

Try and reel in your jealousy.

*On a related note, I just got an email that offered MLB.TV on my Roku for the rest of the sea­son for a measly $10, so that if I actu­ally wanted to see that wreck…

Le Tour Est Terminée

We were up early this morn­ing to get in a short bike ride, so we could be home in time to see the fin­ish of the Tour de France.

Next year we prob­a­bly won’t do the cable upgrade to watch the race. There isn’t any ten­sion or sus­pense any more, the guy who wins is **SPOILER ALERT** always the guy wear­ing the yel­low shirt.

20,000 Miles Of French Roads

Actu­ally the tour only cov­ers a lit­tle more than a tenth of that fig­ure at 2,173 miles, but on yesterday’s short flat stage from the Provence of Kroger to the depart­ment of Board­man the Pur­ple Whale crossed the 20k mile figure.

As we do every year we’ve upgraded our cable pack­age so we can watch the bike race. What started as the Out­door Life Net­work and mor­phed into VS (later they spelled it out, Ver­sus) is now this year the NBC Sports Net­work. NBCSN doesn’t show as many repeats as Ver­sus did, so it is not as con­ve­nient for us to watch the week­day stages. Last year Ver­sus had a 2 hour show be tween 5 & 7PM, but this year we have to wait until 8:00PM.

We were tempted to try their live stream­ing, but try as I might I could not find any infor­ma­tion if I could replay the stage when ever I wanted, Like 5:00PM…

Hey! Four Eyes!

Three of the pairs of glasses I’m think­ing of try­ing from Warby Parker on the 5 pairs, 5 day deal, I could mock up using their Vir­tual Try On ser­vice. I had to lay­out the Percy and the Reynolds myself using Paint Shop Pro. I’m still wait­ing on our local eye­glass place to get me the ones I picked out from them. If I haven’t from them in another week I’ll go online and try these.

We missed out on the usual Fri­day bike ride to work this morn­ing because when we started load­ing up the bike I noticed the rear tire was flat, like no air at all. We either picked up some­thing on the way home or I didn’t get the tube in right the other week and it finally failed.

Speak­ing of fail­ure, the left fog light of the Emperor has burned out. Sounds like a Sun­day after­noon project.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Tran­si­tions since 10/24/08: 1155