Year: 2004

Where Has All The Glamour Gone?

Today’s Photo Friday challenge is Glamour and I had a very hard time coming up with a picture for it.

Tonight we made a little outing to the local mall and I brought along my camera figuring I’d snap a glamorous mannequin in one of the stores or in their window. Nope. Couldn’t find a single one, at least not a complete one anyway. A few waist up things with no heads and a couple of full bodied ones, again with no head. How glamorous is a neck stump? Not very.

My back up plan was to head into the book store and snap a pic of the magazine Glamour, but they don’t carry it or it was either sold out.

I ended up with a nebulous challenge filler, using definition #3 and an old Miata photo.

I remember when we first moved to Aiken 15 years ago, everyone was so excited as they were just breaking ground on our very own mall. No more driving all the way over to Augusta, GA. After a year and a half of watching the building get constructed, it opened with much fanfare and a 65% occupancy rate. All the stores we names of stores you would see in any mall (although in some cases, 2/3 scale of a regular mall stores because we are a smaller market.) They all had big bold neon signs and marble store fronts with shiny glass and brass. Marble tile floors and bright lighting. It was a glamorous place to shop.

Over the years the place filled up to near capacity with stores, but somewhere along the way shoppers tastes changed. Malls became passe, the strip mall, anchored by Targets and Old Navy stores experienced a renaissance. The malls occupancy rates fell. The unthinkable happened and an anchor store left. Then another. In an effort to survive they cut rents and now former cart merchants moved in the abandoned store fronts. Gone were the nice signs, replaced with hastily created canvas banners. Store with names you never heard of moved in. The occupancy rate is approaching 65% again.

It is not so glamorous to shop in the mall anymore. The once hallowed halls of upscale commercialism is now becoming a giant Wal-Mart where the departments are separated with walls instead of aisles.

TV Life Is Good

It’s sweeps month. TV is fresher: 4 weeks of first run Friends. TV is livelier: famous guest stars like Danny Devito pop up on Friends. TV is sexier: Danny Devito plays a stripper at Phoebe?s bachelorette party on Friends. I don’t watch Friends, but I get to see promos for the show on one I do. Sweeps means I get to see fresh episodes of West Wing.

The title of this post was intended as sarcasm, but who am I to judge? And really, what is more believable, Phoebe becoming aroused with a naked Danny Devito or Tony Zeigler, presidential aide single handedly brokering the salvation of Social Security?

Caricature #2

Dave Scott of CarArtz.com has got my new caricature almost finished. He sent me some sketches this morning to show me he was hot on my job. Last time he just sent me a completed proof before we ironed out the details. Really interesting stuff to kind of see the process. Here is the first step, a pencil and paper sketch.

Sketch 1

From there he scans it in to the PC and gets the major lines on, then throws some color at it.

Sketch 2

Next comes adding the details and then the highlighting. (I asked him to make the car face the other way so when I hang it on the wall the new car caricature and the old car caricature will be facing each other.)

Proof 1

I ask for some color changes in the car and seat color. Plus I want the carartz logo smaller and near the bottom. Here is the 99.9999% completed image. (I asked for a little more brown in the car color.)

Proof 2

I’m stoked. Think I’ll go wait by my mailbox for the tube….

WalFuckingMart

I know I brought this on my self, I’ll never learn, etc. but we made a shopping trip to Wal-Mart tonight. We need a bathroom scale and one of those triangular pillows for sitting up in bed. First stop Target, they had scales, but no pillow. I suggested Wal-Mart because they are just the type of store to have those pillows. Plus it was Tuesday at 9 PM, it shouldn’t be to crowded. So we put the scale back and headed up the street to Wally World.

The store was not crowded. Wal-Mart HQ must know that this is an off night for shoppers, so they restock. We nearly got run over twice by associates hauling goods out to the shelves on carts. We couldn’t find the pillow here either. A woman swore they had some just yesterday, but they weren’t where there were, so they were gone. Picked out a scale and headed for the checkouts. They were manned as if there was nobody in the store. This is one of those big ol’ Supercenters with like 35 checkout lanes, two were open. Each line was 6 deep with people with full carts. No express lanes were open. After 5 minutes of standing and steaming, I told Donna, “Just put it down, we’ll go back to Target.”

Sorry, Wally World you just lost $34.95 +tax, Target got it.

Fog Light DRL Mod Failure

Today I decided to tackle turning the OEM fog lights into DRLs following the instructions in the Miata.net garage article.

I found the relay under the dash (at least I thought I did) and pulled it free from the mount. I couldn’t figure out how to separate the relay from the connector though. I was going to pop out the red/yellow wire as instructed with its metal end still attached, so I could reverse the mod easy and not have to cut the wire. After struggling for a few minutes I though, what the heck, I’ll cut the wire. First I checked to see if I had some barrel splices to use, I didn’t. I figured I’d wait until I had everything else ready to go before I made a trip to the store.

Next task was to locate a +12v source that is only on when the ignition switch is in the run position. The article mentions he used the radio power wire, but totally fails to mention where it is. Hmmm. There are like 4 other relays in the same area, I don’t know what any of them are for, but one is bound to have a wire that I could use. Turned the key to run and checked for 12 volts. Got one, pink wire. Switched the ignition off, no power, bingo. I even started the car and the 12V goes away while the car is starting. Beautiful. I got a six inch piece of wire and a vampire tap and hooked into my new friend the pink wire.

Seeing as I don’t have any splices I don’t want to cut the red/yellow wire just yet, I’ll try testing it by just pushing my tapped wire into the red/yellow wire connector. I turn the key to run and sure enough there are lights shining on the wall. Yippee. I go around front to admire my handy work and, %@#$, the fogs aren’t on. But the low beams are!?! Now I check to see which page I printed out, as there are instructions in the garage on how to do just this, low beams as DRLs. Nope, I’ve got the right ones. Curious.

Well I wanted DRLS, I got ’em, let’s see if everything else works as advertised. Turn the stalk switch to parking lights and they come on and the lows stay on. Turn the switch to headlights and the lows stay on. With the lights on I hit the fog light switch, they turn on and the lows are still on. Hit the high beams and the fogs go out and the lows are still on.

Cycle thru the routine a couple times. A couple passes through is when I notice that when my new DRLs are on and I turn the headlights on with the switch the light on the wall seems marginally brighter. Can’t really tell how much because it is midday, but definitely brighter. This is something that the folks who have done the lows to DRL conversion complained about. In other cars the DRLs are the lows on reduced voltage so they are not as bright, but the Miata conversion ran the low beams at full power.

Here is where I start to wonder how much current is running through my little 22 gauge jumper. Do I have the right relay? Seeing as the red/yellow wire wasn’t cut, just where was I sending +12v? The instructions said it worked on a 2001 LS, did something change on the 03? So I unhooked the jumper from the red/yellow connector and taped it back. Going to call the dealer tomorrow and see if he will let me copy the fog light circuit diagram…

Jeez, Talk About Self-Centered

If you have been reading here this week you know we had an ice storm here Sunday/Monday. I bet almost 75% of the people in the area lost power. Some for only a little while others are still without. Our power was only off until Tuesday evening, but cable didn’t come back on until Thursday night, we were lucky.

I didn’t see this, but my wife read it to from this morning’s paper. We have what they call Rants & Raves where people call or email in their bouquets or brickbats. I’m sure a lot of places do this now a days, sells papers. One person wrote in to complain that the cable company was lax in their responsibility because they were still without cable and they were going to cancel. Don’t you think that maybe the cable company volunteered their bucket trucks to help out the power guys restore electricity to houses and that might be a little bit more important than somebody getting to watch QVC or Jerry Springer.

Made Up For The Neglect Today

It didn’t make it to the 60 degrees as promised today, but that didn’t stop Donna and I making the trip to Augusta with the top down this afternoon. We went over to Rader to run the Master’s Miata Club “newsletter”, The Driver, through their postage meter. The word newsletter is in quotes because it was actually a postcard. Last month it was just a one pager that included the wrap up of our one get together in December and little else, I called it a Mini-Driver. This month because the January meeting consisted of nothing but event planning, all that needed to be disseminated was the February events. They fit on a post card I called a Microminiature-Driver. Next month, the Subminiature-Driver, readable only using a microscope.

The Splash Green Miata was still unsold and sitting on the lot. Good thing Rader is running a sales business and not an automobile shelter, or they would have euthanized that car by now. Of course, they shouldn’t feel like the Lone Ranger because a search of the inventory of every dealer within 150 miles of me turns up 12 more of these albatrosses still collecting dust. At least Rader doesn’t have any of the horrible 2003 Strato Blue Special Editions clogging up heir inventory like so many other dealers, another search turns up twice as many (26) of them languishing unsold within that same 150 mile radius.