Big Papi Is Not Screening My Voicemail Anymore

We’ve decided to go ahead and keep the cheap Verizon phone we bought on vacation and just let the AT&T Pay As You Go account expire. The per minute charge is the same, so no loss there, but I did have to reenter the 70 odd contacts we had accumulated on the old phone into the new phone which took some time. At least with Verizon I could enter them offline in a CSV file and then import them in one fell swoop. Trust me, that was a huge time saver as it might have taken forever using the phone number pad.

My only real downside to the swap is I can’t find a way to get a free ringtone on the phone. With the prepaid plan you can’t add an attachment to a text message or email and you can’t use their Verizon Cloud or Backup Assistant Plus to load a media file to the phone. The only ones you can get are the ones for $3 in the Verizon store!

Though I do kind of wish I could get Big Papi’s voice back as the intro to the voice mail again (even if I could find the recording, I’m sure there would be no way to use it on the new service, if I can’t get anything but their approved ringtones on the phone.)

Mmmm…Hambugers

Yesterday morning as Donna and I sat outside the south-side DD eating breakfast and reading the paper, a couple exited with their three small children in tow. They ranged in age from probably 3 to 9-years old. She was carrying the smallest kid and he was holding a box with a half dozen donuts, plus a couple coffees and an OJ bottle. The middle child was walking right between them, while the oldest was off to one side carrying his own paper bag and bottle of chocolate milk. About a 4 or 5 steps out of the door, the oldest one says, “Can I have a hamburger?”

When we first moved to town this spot was occupied by a Shoney’s. About a dozen years ago, as Aiken’s population grew bigger, they tore down that building and built a newer, bigger Shoney’s on the spot. Whether due to Aiken’s changing tastes, more competition or the fact that their typical customer just didn’t like the transformation, the new, bigger Shoney’s closed its doors after about five years.

Three years ago they tore down the empty Shoney’s and put up a new building that houses two separate food businesses. One side is a DD and Baskin-Robbins combo. The other is a Five Guys Burgers and Fries, hence the oldest kid’s question.

Is The Purple Whale A Robot?

Issac Asmimov’s Three Laws of Robotics:

  1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

The other week Donna had a late afternoon, after work doctor’s appointment. I drove over with her and rather than wait in the doctor’s waiting room full of sick people and uncomfortable chairs, I waited out in the Sonata with a book and my own music. With the sun shade covering the windshield, both front windows open and sitting in the passenger seat I was quite comfortable. About an hour into the wait, all of a sudden the music stopped. I looked over at the radio display and it was blank. Oh, crap, I killed the battery.

I hit the illuminated start button again and everything came back to life. Phew.

Had the car just invoked the Third Law?

I’m A Bird!

Seeing as I’m having a hard time coming up with posts for this blog every night, thinking content length might be my main stumbling block, I decided to open up a Twitter account. Maybe if I tweet something short I would be motivated to turn them into some rambling wordy posts.

Because I’m so late to the game, finding a username was more difficult than I expected.I tried various permutations of “Life of Brian” and “Mr-Miata” to no avail. I even tried BrianBogardus and that was taken. Sheesh.

On a lark I plugged in my old way back in the Navy daze crude nickname…and it was available. So I took it.

After logging in I rethought it and decided to change it. A couple more unsuccessful tries and then I hit a winner – @MisterMiata. All it took in today’s fast paced shortened world was to spell out mister instead of using mr.

Merrell And ?

We went for a 4 mile walk in Hitchcock Woods this morning. Started at the Fulmer’s Stable entrance and headed uphill until we couldn’t go any further then looped back a different way down the hill. Because our start point, being near the stables, is a major horse riding meeting spot, we have to keep our heads down while walking around near there to avoid the recycled hay piles. As we walked I kept noticing a lot of small flowers along the trail. About a third of the way through our walk I decided to document all the different ones I saw.

Because I can only positively identify what the very last picture is of, the first person who can identify the kind of flower, plant our fungi in all of the first nine pictures will win a fabulous prize of my choosing. Just leave your answers in the comments.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1230

Turns Out It Isn’t Always

Screendoor

As good as a pickup truck that is.

We have needed to replace the screen door to the screened in porch on the back of the house since last year. It takes a water beating because of its location near a roof valley. But when the bottom part of the screening spontaneously separated from its channel at the bottom last week, it forced our hand. We had to get a new one.

The door is 36 x 80 in size and the width was a couple of inches too wide to fit through the Sonata’s pass through trunk opening, so it was eliminated from cargo duty. Next in consideration was our usual go-to car, the Miata, which I have proudly proclaimed here on many an occasion as being as good as a pickup on a sunny day. We talked through a couple scenarios in which we might carry a screen door back from the store using the Miata, but couldn’t think of a good way, so opted for Plan C.

We decided to hand carry it back from the nearest BBHIW which is only a little more than a mile from home. Our biggest obstacle would be crossing the busy Whiskey Road in front of the store, but because we made the trip over before 8 o’clock this morning, the normal high amount traffic usually present was nowhere to be found, we didn’t even have to slow as we changed from parking lot to street.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1229

Magic Antenna?

Magic HDTV Antenna

No combination of rabbit ears, pre-amplifier and fancy Leaf antenna will allow me to pull in the signal from the local FOX affiliate reliably, which is supposedly closest tower to me. This is not really a big deal until football season rolls around in a couple of months when FOX carries one to two games every Sunday. In the mean time I have not given up hope of finding a do-it-yourself HDTV antenna that will do the trick. Last week I stumbled on a neat idea on instructables that looked like it was worth a shot, the Fractal Magic DIY HDTV Antenna. I even had all the pieces needs to make this baby in house.

So yesterday evening and tonight I put this magic antenna together. With just the Mohu Leaf hooked up we get the big 3 networks and their 4 total sub-channels for a total of 7 channels, with the Fractal Magic DIY HDTV Antenna – only 4. CBS and it two extra “really old TV show” channels were gone.

The antenna was magic alright, it made 2 sheets of plain paper, a 10×18 inch piece of poster board, 10 feet of speaker wire stripped of its insulation, a couple of crimp connectors, 6 foot piece coax cable and 2 hours of my time disappear.