Year: 2015

MMC Meeting

For the first time in quite a while we attended a Masters Miata Club meeting tonight. Must have really wanted to go too. It was raining when we left the house and it was freakin’ pouring by the time we got to the other side of town. We spent almost all of the rest of the way to North Augusta driving in a real frog strangler.

About a mile from the restaurant it turned into sprinkles. It was still sprinkling when we left to come home, but it basically quit a few miles later. Didn’t drop the top because the skies were still dark.

Did some more route planning last night for the middle part of our trip, 6 more states, 4 Washington counties and the birthplaces of Larry Bird & Jason Bourne:
Day 5: Parkersburg, WV to Frankfort, KY – 299 miles
Day 6: Frankfort, KY to Xenia, IL – 270 miles
Day 7: Xenia, IL to Lebanon, MO – 300 miles
Day 8: Lebanon, MO to Bentonville, AR – 255 miles

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 32

Closer Than You Think

What started six months ago as a hare-brained idea, quickly morphed into a weirdly themed road trip and has settled into a 2 week vacation from work to drive 3,000 miles visiting 21 states and Washington DC. Is now only about4 weeks away.

I’ve route planning for a few weeks now and now I’m busily finalizing, as final as we can make it, daily routes. So far, 4 days done, which is 7 states, plus DC and 5 Washington Counties.
Day 1: Aiken, SC to Abingdon, VA – 288 miles
Day 2: Abingdon, VA to Culpepper, VA – 295 miles
Day 3: Culpepper, VA to Frostburg, MD – 225 miles
Day 4: Frostburg, MD to Parkersburg, WV – 222 miles

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 32

Windows 10

 

 

This blog post is being brought to you in all of its Windows 10 glory.

I reserved my “free” upgrade to Win10 from 7 after Microsoft stealthfully installed the sign-up widget in my tray disguised as an update a few weeks ago. After reading a post on Lifehacker last Wednesday on how to skip the wait and go ahead and update now, I took the plunge.

Downloaded it and installed it on Thursday evening. The start menu was some sort of hybrid between 7 & 8 and I tried modifying it to my liking, but by yesterday evening gave up and downloaded a 30 day trial of the beta of Start10 to get back that Win7 menu love. The real deal will cost about $5, which seeing as the Window upgrade was free, an easy pill to swallow.

Like Windows 8, if you have a tablet or a phone all that touch screen goodness is still baked in, but unlike 8 if you have a plain ol’ laptop (or desktop) it isn’t forced down your keyboard. So far it runs just fine on this 1.3Ghz laptop with 3G of RAM. It starts up marginally quicker, but takes longer to shutdown. The upgrade was painless with the exception of Windows Mobile Device Center was incompatible which we use to sync our ancient IPAQ for geocaching. But I plugged it in, some perhaps newer version installed and it went ahead and synced up.

There have been a few teething problems, mostly involving Firefox (surprise) the icon disappeared from the task bar (fixed) and the Firefox label in the upper right-hand corner of the browser randomly pixelates (not fixed.) All the file associations were kept, but the first time you open a program by double-clicking, a file a dialog box pops up asking if you want to keep the default program or use a Windows 10 featured program or download an “app” from the Store.

All in all I like it and will probably do the desktop when Microsoft gets around to offering it to me. There are several other items of note that you should be knowledgeable about before taking the plunge, so if you want to get the latest version of Windows, do some reading – start here: Everything You Need to Know About Windows 10

Cars and Coffee, Part II

Ready For My Photo

We went over to Augusta’s Cars & Coffee this morning because they count as a car show for the Moss Motoring Challenge. We got there about an hour after the 8:00 AM start which meant that we ended up having to park in the hinterlands next to lowered & stock pick ups, heavily modified 370Z’s and lightly modded 9th generation Toyota Corollas.

As we were lining up to take photo for the challenge there was a woman sitting in the passenger seat of the truck next to us. She looked at me kind of strange as I stood there holding the challenge poster, so I launched into my 50 words or less description of the Motoring Challenge. When I finished she said, “But is the picture supposed to be upside down?”

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 32

Motoring Challenge Points 1, Approx Miles Driven 60
Totals So Far: 76 points & 3005 miles

Sensitivity Correctness?

I had this joke forwarded to me today:

A few days after Christmas, a mother was working in the kitchen listening to her young son playing with his new electric train in the living room. She heard the train stop and her son said, “All of you sons of guns who want off, get the heck off now, cause this is the last stop! And all of you sons of guns who are getting on, get your behinds in the train, ’cause we’re going down the tracks.”

The mother went nuts and told her son, “We don’t use that kind of language in this house. Now I want you to go to your room, and you are to stay there for TWO HOURS. When you come out, you may play with your train, but I want you to use nice language.”

Two hours later, the son came out of the bedroom and resumed playing with his train. Soon the train stopped and the mother heard her son say, “All passengers who are disembarking from the train, please remember to take all of your belongings with you. We thank you for riding with us today and hope your trip was a pleasant one. We hope you will ride with us again soon.” She hears the little boy continue, “For those of you just boarding, we ask you to stow all of your hand luggage under your seat. Remember, there is no smoking on the train. We hope you will have a pleasant and relaxing journey with us today.”

As the mother began to smile, the child added, “For those of you who are annoyed about the TWO-HOUR delay, please see the witch in the kitchen.”

Looks to me like the wording has been altered in the first paragraph and the punch line…

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 06/25/15: 31

Essence of 57,000 Dust Mites

The Emperor rolled by the 57,000 mile mark on Donna’s trip to get her allergy shot this morning.

I can’t help myself, I’m watching the Sox on MLB.tv right now. The good thing is they only gave up two runs in the first, scored one of their own in the bottom of the first. And it is still 2-1 after 4-1/2 innings. Bad news is it has been raining on and off at Fenway and now the game is official, so if it starts pouring real bad and they have to call it the FRS would be the losers.