Moving Monday

I spent most of the day moving everything from my office/cubicle up front into the new digs at the back of the plant. It is kind of an adjustment because I have been in the same room (with various forms of furniture) since starting at ASCO in Aiken in 1989. I searched the ol’ blog here for a 180 degree panoramic photo I took of my work area several years ago, because I was sure I published it here, but can’t seem find it. So I will post it here and promise that tomorrow I will do the same thing for the new home.


Be sure to click the image to get a page with a bigger size, then select Full Size at the bottom of the page to view it in its full glory.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 913

Blue Movies

And I don’t mean the kind of movies those of you who are my age or older are thinking of, I’m talking about them blue ray movies. Last night as the MMC Christmas party was winding down our host brought out his copy of Bullit in blu-ray so we could watch the famous chase scene. As one person put it, “They had to round up an awful lot of vintage cars to film this.” The picture was so bright and crisp you could have sworn it was filmed earlier that day.

Donna and I were so impressed with the picture that we thought maybe we would get one of those new fangled blue movie players for ourselves. You can get them at Walmart for a less than a hundred bucks. Then I started thinking, if we are buying one, why not get one that includes Netflix so I can stop dragging out the laptop to to do the Instant Watch thing. Here is a Panasonic for about $130 at Amazon. It says wireless ready, so you have to spend an additional $80 on an adapter. Nah. A little further digging reveals a Panasonic with the wifi adapter included for $170. Alright, but now I have to do a little research because it mentions it is Wireless N, I’m still chugging along with G and I need to know if they are compatible. Turns out it is. In that research I also find that the player will also allow me access to several internet applications like Twitter, Skype, Picasa and Pandora that are worthless to me. Thanks anyway. What about getting all those torrented TV shows to my TV? Not possible the Panasonic Viera Cast. This morning’s paper had a Target flyer shows a wireless ready Samsung for $110. You of course need a $80 adapter for this one too, but Amazon has the player for the same price as Target and the adapter on sale for $60 making the combo the same price as the previous Panasonic unit. The Samsung player jumps into the lead with this little feature AllShare: Sync up your entire household. A wired or wireless DLNA connection lets you stream your PC audio and video files to your HDTV using your remote. But it is knocked right off the pedestal when internet searching turns up conflicting reports of it’s ability to stream any old file. Sigh.

Right now we are going to stick with what we have. I’m just not ready to spend the money on something that may or may not work, especially since dragging out the laptop and plugging in an HDMI cable a couple times a week is really no big deal, plus this had the potential to develop into a money pit. For one it is $3 a month more to rent Blu-Ray from Netflix. Then the wireless G might not of hacked it streaming HD data, so another $70-80 would be needed for a new Wireless N router. Next the 7 year-old PC would have trouble keeping up serving the media. $2,000 later we would realize that a 32″ LCD wasn’t big enough to really enjoy our new found high definition video and the cheap $200 surround sound system wouldn’t sound good enough…

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 913

Road Ends

We went over to the bike/hike trail along I-520 this morning. We wanted to check up on the condition of our three caches there. Plus there were two new caches we wanted to find, along with a couple of dangling DNFs we thought we’d take another shot at.

All three of our caches were AOK, we found the two new caches and DNF’d the two we couldn’t find the first time. It is not always true, but more often than not, if we don’t find it the first time, we won’t find it on return trips.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 913

Double Up

Although these numbers are not too bad, Dr. PCP says with my high blood pressure they would really like to see my HDL be a lot higher, so he says we are going to double the dose of simvastatin from 20mg to 40mg. In four months we’ll check again and see if I improve.

  Chol HDL LDL Trig
Goal <200 >31 <100 30-150
12/06/10 176 41 114 105
05/18/10 151 38 91 109
12/15/08 167 41 92 171
03/21/08 164 37 104 115
12/12/07 175 38 104 165
07/17/07 185 36 117 162
03/05/07 195 39 123 167
09/19/06 167 37 103 135
04/06/06 168 37 106 126
12/08/05 182 35 120 137
07/28/05 177 30 113 169
06/17/05 164 31 85 238
05/06/05 174 27 108 194
01/10/05 176 33 110 167
09/21/04 209 24 131 271

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 911

Zoom Zoom Magazine

Somewhere along the line I left my name and address in the hands of Mazda operatives and as a consequence of that action I now get a glossy magazine (AKA advertisement) three or four times a year. The latest edition of Zoom Zoom magazine arrived in my mailbox the other day.

Included in this issue were stories about the new Mazda2, a history of 90 years of Mazda vehicles (with a nifty poster) and a story about all 3 generations of Miatas in Hawaii. The reason for Hawaii was that is where the press was first introduced to the latest version of the car in 2006. They rounded up 3 local Miata owners and their cars to drive the same route as they did back during the introductory press drive.

When they wrote the blurb on the 1999 2nd generation car, I guess they took the owner’s description as gospel, because they wrote that the color was British Racing Green, but that color was not available in 1999. British Racing Green was only available on the Miata as a special edition in 1991 & 2001. His car was really painted a similar color called Emerald Green Mica. Doesn’t anyone with Mazda fact check this magazine?

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 911

Whatever Post #1000

When I installed WordPress all those years ago I cleverly renamed the the default category from Default (duh!) to Whatever. Because for the longest time I had two separate blogs running concurrently where in one the main category was Miatatude and the other was Rants I didn’t ever think that the newfangled category of Whatever would ever catch up. But it did, possibly hinting at my lazy categorization habits, and now Whatever is the king of the categories and this post marks its graduation into the 4 digit range.

Stumped as to what to get your favorite SciFi geek for Christmas, io9 has a guide for you. The item that is on the top of my Star Trek wish list is the Enterprise Bridge Full Size Wall Mural. 15′ x 9′ of marvelous-ness, but way out of my price range. More my speed, Expendable Red Shirt T-shirt…

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 911

Still Here, But

I’ve got frostbit hands so I can’t type.

They canceled Terriers and I’m too depressed to type.

We’ll be moving into the new offices out back of the plant next week and I’m too busy packing to type.

We just put up the Christmas Tree and now there isn’t enough juice left to run the PC.

I can’t type now because I’m too tied up filling out online surveys hoping to win a free gift card/shopping spree/haircut from all the merchants we visited the last couple of days.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 911