HDTV not HGTV

About a month ago I wrote about my cable company trying to cheat me out of $2.99 a month for a stupid digital adapter box that I didn’t need. I managed to get them to stop charging me the money because one or two adapters were supposed to be free.

I also hoped that in the end I wouldn’t need it. You know what they say about hope? “Hope in one hand & bleep in the other.” By the end of the month all the HD versions of the regular channels disappeared and if you wanted to watch the lo-def versions you needed the adapter. This is no good. Once your eyes have feasted on tasty 16:9 crystal clear images, you just can’t go back to a 4:3 fuzzy-wuzzy picture.

Not wanting to give AtlanticBB the satisfaction I hoped maybe a newer amplified Mohu Leaf would pull in all the local channels unlike the regular Leaf we tried 5 years ago. This way we would keep the high-speed internet and drop the TV portion of the bill. Well you know what they say about hope? Unlike 5 years ago with the non-amplified Leaf, this time we got the local Fox affiliate great, but NBC was nowhere to be found. To top it off ABC worked well only most of the time.

Giving up, I called Atlantic Broadband and asked what do I have to do to get local channels in high definition. Right now we are paying $132 for the Limited TV package and the 125Mb internet, but if I wanted to drop the internet down to 100Mb we could get the “Essentials Package” which would be the Limited TV in HD and they’ll toss in HBO and EPIX for $95…for the first 2 years, then it goes up $5 bucks a month until it gets back to $130ish…at which time we will no doubt have to call and beg for a lower rate for a different package.

Our appointment was scheduled for 2:30 to 5:30pm yesterday and I certainly hoped whoever showed up to do the work would be better than the last time these chuckle-heads had to come into our house. This time, like a Vegas slot machine paying out a few coins, hope won.

Al was pleasant, competent, and went above and beyond. The only possible bad thing I could say about our hour and forty-five minutes together is he reeked of cigarette smoke when you got near him. Because our signal strength was only marginally acceptable he went outside and climbed the pole across the street. From up there he removed a couple of old filters (that are no longer used anyway.) He also ran a ground wire from the new splitter he put on the house to the ground on the electric meter instead of the ground stake (which is not to code) that Mutt and Jeff didn’t fix 4-1/2 years ago. He then made up a couple of new RG-6 coax lines to replace my interior runs, just because.

We have the same channels as we did before, only now in glorious HD. We now also have 5 channels of HBO and 4 of Epix which we will probably hardly ever watch, but I left them in lineup of channels that we will scan through while surfing using the remote, so who knows.

Somewhere along the line when I was telling Donna what we were getting HDTV, either I mis-spoke or she mis-heard, so she was disappointed when I told her we don’t get HGTV even though everytime we are in a hotel room in which that channel is available, she will invariably remark, “I’ve already seen this one.”

Fox, Ed Fox

After last year’s living embodiment of the company’s safety mascot for the ASCO Halloween Costume Contest, I decided to return to a Wintercroft paper mask. Previously I’ve been a large skull head and a pumpkin head, but this time I wanted to make one of his animal masks. I chose the fox because that is ASCO’s Director of Operations actual last name.

Ed is a pretty chill guy, but sometimes you never know how someone might take something and there was a tiny part of me that was worried he was thinking I was making fun of him, but he was fine with it, actually told me it was the best costume ever.

Because I bike road into work today there would have been no way to carry the mask in this morning, so I brought it in yesterday in one of those large reusable grocery bags. A few years ago they added an extra step in the front entrance security process. Now the guard has to look inside your lunch box (or any bag other you are carrying) to look for weapons. When I got to the door on Monday I unzipped the lunch box and said, “Here’s my lunch.” Then I spread the handles of the grocery bag and said, “Severed animal head.”

The guard took a beat…and…then…he smiled.

Afternoon Update:
They take a photo of everyone in costume in the cafeteria in the morning and then when that’s done, the costumed parade through the plant, zig-zagging around the aisles in all the department and office areas so the non-participants can see everyone who has dressed up. Even though I put my company name badge mid chest and had changed it to read Edd Foxx, I had a few people afterwards asked me who I was supposed to be. One wondered if I was supposed to be the Carfax fox and another wondered if I was Star Fox from the old Nintendo video game. You have to admit, the mask would have worked for either one.

Thursday Update:

Here is the group picture. Everyone’s individual picture is posted on the bulletin board and all employees get to one vote for their favorite. I have no idea how many votes I got, but I bet is was zero as I didn’t even vote for myself. First place went to Ike & Tina Turner, second place went to One Night Stand and third was Scary Clown. For the record the clown is not standing on anything, unlike the fellow in the middle, he is about 6’6″ tall and weighs in around 300 pounds and has a naturally gravely voice.

Chasing Steeples: The Fall Edition


After gifting the Club the use of his spot and tickets for the past two Aiken Spring Steeplechases, this time President Tom gave us the opportunity to attend the Fall Steeplechase. He donated to us the spot for one vehicle with two extra parking passes in case someone didn’t want to meet at our house and walk over, plus a dozen tickets to get in the gate.

Six club members claimed the tickets right off, us, Karol & Dennis Mason and Emilie & Kirill Skliar, and maybe because it was sort of last minute, no one else piped up. The six of us that were going started looking for guests to bring because we didn’t want Mr. Varallo’s largess to go unused. By Friday we thought we had all but one spoken for. But by Saturday we only had one guest use a ticket to get in, a friend of Karol & Dennis’s, named Lee. Sigh. Their loss.

On Thursday Donna and I had to run an errand, so we cruised by the field to see if we could eyeball where spot #262 was and were excited to see it was near a jump. It wasn’t until we got there Saturday morning to set up that we realized it was right at the jump. As before with previous steeplechases the Bogarduses and Masons arrived practically as the event gates opened to set up. Soon the other spots started to fill up too. As our direct neighbors arrived, we traded introductions and offered up food and drink. They reciprocated to be friendly and because everyone always brings way more than they need to these events.

We had two portable grills (one charcoal, one gas) setup for cooking the hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken & vegetable shish kabobs. There were Fritos and a couple bags of chips with about four different kinds of dip to nibble on. There were crackers, cheese, sliced ham and venison sausage for grazing, with brownies and an Italian raisin bread for your sweet tooth. To drink we had iced tea, soft drinks/mixers, beer, Jack Daniels, Vanilla Crown Royal and a bit of bubbly.

Spot #262 was not only right at the exit of a jump, but as it turned out, in 4 of the 5 races, the horses lined up to start right in front of us. Unlike flat races where the horses are slotted into a starting gate, in steeplechase they parade from the paddock and then line up in reverse start order behind a judge who then walks them in a line towards the rail. There they do a left face maneuver, so when another judge (on foot) waves the red flag, they take off sort of like they just came out of a gate. Because these are naturally skittish thoroughbred race horses it never goes smoothly, yet somehow they always end up with a reasonably straight start.

In between the first and second race we had some special guests arrive to liven up our tent with youth and conversation, Courtney (Lee’s daughter), along with her friends Little Courtney, somebody possibly named Bridget and a couple others. We fed them some of our food and we helped ourselves to some of their liquor. They watched the carriage parade with us, then the second race, and just as quickly as they came, they disappeared. Left behind the booze though, so we knew they’d be back.

In between the third and fourth race a fellow MMC member Chip was on his way to somewhere when he noticed the Club sign in front of Dennis’s truck, so he stayed long enough to say hello before he too disappeared. In between the fourth and final race Emilie & Kirill headed over into the infield to walk through the shops and take in some of the pageantry that is steeplechase, which Donna and I and the Mason’s had already done earlier.

Emilie & Kirill came back after the fifth and final race finished. Not long after, Little Courtney and Bridget popped back in to join us as we all whiled away some time waiting for the crowd of hurry-homes to disperse some before attempting our own exit. Bridget got Dennis to pop the cork on her bottle of sparkling wine and the nine of us toasted another fantastic day at the races in Aiken. We couldn’t have asked for better weather or a better spot to watch the races. Thanks Tom!

What’s In A Name?

On Monday when I changed my fantasy football team name from Purple Whale to Angry Ladybugs another team owner in the league, our IT Guy, changed the name of his team to Purple Whales. When I asked him about it on Tuesday, he said it was just a joke and that he would change it back.

He said he really did it so he could ask, “How come Angry Ladybugs?” I explained the original of the Purple Whale name to him (read it here) and how on Monday my cubicle neighbor prompted the name change (read it in the previous post) from whales to ladybugs.

By Thursday my co-worker, and former friend, hadn’t changed it back, so I decided to maybe I’d change the Angry Ladybugs back to Purple Whales (as far as I know ESPN doesn’t care if you have 2 teams of the same name in the same league.) But then I thought I would follow POTUS’s twitter handle example and call myself the @Real Purple Whales. Made a logo and everything.

So, this morning I asked the team name usurper why he still hadn’t changed back to his original name, Dark Helmet. He said, “Well I was going to until I saw what you did, so I’m going to rename my team The Original Purple Whales as soon as I find a suitable image to use for it.”

When I got to my desk, cubical neighbor David, who prompted the Angry Ladybugs name swap to begin with, wondered why I had already changed away from it. I gave him the run down and he decided that he would join the fun too by changing his team name to Dark Helmet to poke at the IT Guy.

Well, IT Guy went to change his name back mid-morning and discovered that someone was using it, he shrugged and renamed the team back, but used all caps – so he’s DARK HELMET again. This got my cubical neighbor to change his team name from Dark Helmet to Swamp Cat, which thank heaven, is unique to our league. This is also an improvement from his former league default name, the word team, followed by the owner’s last name. Which come to think of it, a pretty neat name for a team would be to use the actual words last & name – Team Last Name.

I guess I’ll go change my name back to Angry Ladybugs. And for the record, I don’t think my changing the team name had any effect on its performance. My “star” running back got only 4.1 of ESPN”s predicted 13 points last night. Now I’m in danger of losing this week to an opponent who has two guys on bye in his active line up and will more than likely end up fielding only seven players.

Maybe It Will Help

I’m usually not very good at this Fantasy Football thing1, but I keep plugging at it. This year I won in the second and sixth weeks, but the rest were losses. I’m about to go down in flames in week seven unless Kirk Cousins throws for 6 touchdowns and passes for 500 yards.

On the back counter of my cubical I have two picture frames that over the years have held various things. Recently there has been my drawing of the CTBNL in front views and side views. Before that there was the Miata & Sonata front views. Because of our new Mini addition I decided to replace the side view of the CTBNL with my recently produced avatar drawing.

As I was getting ready to put the picture in the frame my back door cubical neighbor said, “Hey now that you don’t own the Purple Whale any more, don’t you think you should rename your football team the Ladybugs?” I said, “Ooh, that sounds intimidating.” And it doesn’t, but it got me thinking, how about an angry ladybug? To the Google Cave!

I found a few likely candidates and at first settled on one, but then picked a second one. Before I pay $10 bucks for the image, which one do you like best, left or right?

So, the Purple Whales are now the Angry Ladybugs. Who knows, maybe the name change will alter my fortune, I’ll win out finishing 8 & 5 to make the playoffs.

So That Explains It

Nearly every year since 1999 Donna and I have been running an event for the local Miata club called the Bug Splat. Regular readers know what I’m talking about because almost every year I have blogged about it here. If today is your first visit, read a few and come back.

It has seemed to me that with each passing year, the quantity of bugs smashed on the front of Miatas each summer has steadily decreased. I know this hasn’t really bothered the participants, they are in it mostly to be led on a drive around the local back roads with the ice cream finish, but it has bothered me. I have contacted an Entomologist at a local university, changed routes several times and even tried adjusting the starting time to optimize our interactions with insects, all to no avail.

Turns out that it doesn’t matter how often I monkey with the setup of the Bug Splat Rally, because German scientists have actually proved my Diminishing Bug Hypothesis – Warning of ‘ecological Armageddon’ after dramatic plunge in insect numbers

58,000 Perferations

Our recent seven-day trip in the CTBNL was the first big road trip we have taken in it since we bought it last year. When we got home both of us commented how the seats in the car didn’t seem as comfortable as the ones in the Emperor. They are the same seats in both cars except the Emperor’s seats were covered in tan leather with about 58,000 perforations in the center sections instead of the black cloth of the CTBNL.

The only thing I can think of that would make that much difference between cloth & leather is stick-a-tude. In the cloth seats, you plunk your butt down and that is pretty much where you stay. This which is why the autocross guys love ’em, you don’t slide around a lot in the turns. With the leather, there is just enough slippage that after a few minutes of driving your butt self-centers in its most comfortable position.

So, we have (re)started to explore getting leather upholstery.

At an MMC Bug Splat event a few years ago, there was a couple in the club who had recently had their seats recovered in leather at a local shop and were showing them off. Because at that time the leather seats in the Emperor were getting tired looking and worn in spots, we had been considering that same job. We oohed and aahed appropriately as both Donna and I thought it looked really nice. When we asked how much it cost, it sounded expensive ($1200), so we tabled the idea and decided to think of the wear on our seats as patina2, not a defect.

That four-figure price above included installation and the hive mind that is the Miata.net Forums say it is a do-it-yourself job. I’ve looked at a couple of guides on there and it is possibly doable even for me, but it will probably take me not the 8 hours claimed, but a whole weekend to do the job. That same wisdom recommends either LeatherSeating.com or Katzkin as the quality leather upholstery to buy. The price (shipped) direct from LeatherSeating is $750. The Katzkins are only sold through re-sellers and there is only one vendor on the forum shopping page that sells them, GoMiata, and a set shipped from them is $670. Either way I’ll still need another $30 for hog-ring pliers and the rings. Coming up with the $700 free dollars won’t be the hardest part about re-upholstering the seats though, it will be setting aside a full weekend of not driving the Miata…

On the way back from Columbia on Saturday the CTBNL passed the 58,000 mile plateau.