The Good Gramps

A woman in a grocery store happens upon a grandfather and his poorly behaved 3-year-old grandson. It’s obvious to her that Gramps has his hands full with the child screaming for candy in the candy aisle, cookies in the cookie aisle; same for fruit, cereal and soda in their respective aisles.

Meanwhile, Gramps is working his way around, saying in a controlled voice, “Easy, Albert, we won’t be long — easy, boy.” Another outburst, and she hears Gramps calmly say, “It’s okay, Albert, just a couple more minutes and we’ll be out of here. Hang in there, boy.”

At the checkout, the little terror is throwing items out of the cart, and Gramps again in a controlled voice is says, “Albert, Albert, relax buddy, don’t get upset. We’ll be home in five minutes; stay cool, Albert.”

Very impressed, the woman goes outside where Gramps is loading his groceries and the boy into the car. “You know, sir, it’s none of my business, but you were amazing in there. I don’t know how you did it. That whole time, you kept your composure, and no matter how loud and disruptive he got, you just calmly kept saying things would be okay. Albert is very lucky to have you as his grandpa.”

“Thanks, lady,” said Gramps, “But, I’m Albert — the little bastard’s name is Steve.”

One Eyed Jack

On Sunday I noticed the passenger side fog light was out (only one reflection in the shiny back doors of an SUV.) Tonight I popped on down to Advanced Auto and bought a new H1 bulb. I briefly considered a fancy new LED replacement, but they are roughly 3 times the cost and the LED portion is sometimes longer than the standard bulb, making fitment problematic.

As I sat on my butt on the garage floor removing the front right tire, so I could access the fog light housing, I had a distinct sense of deja vu. And it didn’t seem like too long ago that I was doing this same thing and to this same fog light. So to see if this a regular recurring thing I’ve added a “Fog Light Bulb” tag for tracking purposes.

The Emperor got the spa treatment today after work. Not just to wash the north Georgia bugs off, but the interior needed vacuuming to find a couple “dropped in the cockpit” items. At the Tallulah Gorge Overlook earthcache I lost the stylus for the Ipaq and it was presumed to be inside the car. Also, on the drive back from Hendersonville I dropped a maple covered peanut. Didn’t find the stylus, but did find the peanut.

And finally, because it is October, I remounted the Vampire Teeth in the mouth of the Miata.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1071

French Homework & Whales Beached

While geocaching in Athens, GA, in search of crossing off Clarke County, we came up to an old abandoned railroad bridge, there sat a UGA student doing her French homework. She noticed my camera and offered to move, but I said, “Stay where you are, it’ll add to the photograph.”

My Fantasy Football Team is no longer undefeated. The Purple Whales scored a very tidy 110 points this weekend, but my opponent has scored a 148. My only hope for victory is he has the Baltimore Ravens defense, and if the New York Jets can score about 15 touchdowns in the second half of tonight’s game, it might bring that defense’s score to -12 and create a loss. Hey, they don’t call it Fantasy Football for nothing.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1070

Back in the Mountains

After a weekend off, we are back in the mountains again, this time the Georgia & North Carolina ones. We drove up to Hendersonville to see my sister and her husband at the SMH. For the first time in a long time we didn’t eat lunch at West One, but instead ate at Hannah Flanagan’s, where everybody’s Irish. While we are on this trip we are also doing wee bit of geocaching. Nabbed a couple of state parks, a couple of counties and a DeLorme page.

Started down, went up, went down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1069

122,000 Moments Of Disappointment

That is about how many times I’ve been disappointed with the Red Sox this season. There won’t be any more of them until next year though, as last night, as they have done most of all of September, they managed to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory in the late innings to a team they should have beaten.

While on a short trip to top off the Emperor’s tank for a weekend trip, it passed through the 122,000 mile mark.

You Have No Idea How Much That Cost

If you have visited a Google search page today you would have seen the image here. Because today is my birthday and I heart the internet, I wanted to do something special on it. So I commissioned this piece of claymation style birthday art and broke open my piggy bank to get the folks at Google feature it.

Ok, ok, that is not exactly correct, the image is there because I just happen to share a birthday with a famous internet search site.

There’s 2 Hours I’m Not Getting Back

The other day we were in Staples, trying to find out what happened to the rebate we were supposed to get for a shredder we had bought, when a display of Wireless N Routers caught my eye. Donna noticed and asked if we needed that. “Not really, but it might help with streaming Netflix,” I answered. So today, when the $20 rebate showed up in the mail, she said, “Let’s use that for that router.”

I brought home a shiny new Netgear WNR2000 for $30. Before I disconnected the ancient Linksys WRT54G I went to various spots in the house where the laptop is typically used and took some signal strength measurements.

Disconnected the Linksys and put the Netgear router in place. First I tried to discover my type of network connection using the router’s setup wizard. The next steps caused me to drop my connection to the net. So, I rebooted both modem and router and tried it again. Same results. Reboot modem and router again. Next I ran a cat5 cable from modem to PC just to make sure I did have internet access. I did. Then I tried to follow along with the included flyer to do a “No CD” install. That met with the same fate as before.

The last option was to try the install with the included CD. I followed the prompts and, holy cow, it installed just fine. The install took a lot longer than I thought it should, but it worked and didn’t install a bunch of crap on the PC either. Should went that way from the start…

After setting up the security, I logged in with the laptop and walked around the house rechecking the signal strength. It varied from 6db to 13db WORSE than the old G router. The reported speed read 65 vs 54, but every time I tried a webpage it was very slow loading.

Disconnected everything and put the old router back in play. Guess we are going to Staples tomorrow and getting the money back.