114,000 Grains Of Rice

Tonight’s meeting of the MMC was hopefully the last at Little Mexico for a long time. When the President picked this place he had good intentions as it fit the requirements we were looking for in a “permanent” home for our meeting, i.e. central location and visibility of the parking lot from a high traffic street. Trouble was the food is Grade B Mexican, but it was only envisioned as a meeting place with sharing of a couple of hors d’oeuvres over business chat and unfortunately (or fortunately depending which side of the plan you were on) the drive to a restaurant for dinner after the meeting thing never caught on.

Donna had a chicken quesadilla and I had a carnitas dinner in which the pork was fattier and somehow drier than what we normally get at our local Mexican place. Along with the meat and tortillas it came with pico de gallo, refried beans and about 114,000 grains of “spanish” rice. Which is coincidentally, the mileage achievement the Emperor passed on the way there.

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No Longer California Dreamin’

I rarely speak of politics here, even around election time, but this year is an exception because I actually voted in a mid-term election. Usually only picking the Grand Poobah will make me leave my cave and high speed internet connection to mingle with the masses, but this year there was a local issue that I wanted to put my 2¢ into (literally.)

I had high hopes for being able to pick California as the state I wanted to retire in, but my hopes were quashed when the voters there defeated Prop. 19. Oh, well, there are 4 or 5 more elections between now and then. Also as a geocacher I was disappointed that the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco have banned giving away toys with “unhealthy meals.” Most of the cool schwag that I have found in ammo cans came from a kids meal at a fast food restaurant.

Closer to home South Carolina voted in its usual Republican manner and in doing so elected the state’s first woman Govenor (welcome to the 20th century SC) and defeated in the US Senate race, my favorite crackpot candidate, Alvin Greene. But the defeat was actually a victory of sorts, Alvin’s got a new job as a crackpot commentator on of all places, Fox News.

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Now We’re Talking


I wonder just how much this Hyundai Sonata would set me back?

RIDES Magazine & Hyundai (if I’m going to buy one, someday I’m going to have to learn how to spell that right the first time) have teamed up to showcase the new turbo’d Sonata at SEMA. Sure looks good, but I’m betting that the Sonata that might end up in our driveway isn’t going to look much like that. A guy can dream though. Details and more photos available on AutoBlog.

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SC County Challenge Completed


Nature Trail in Boyd Pond Park

After countless miles and countless hours of crisscrossing the state of South Carolina finding a geocache in each and every county we took a short 1/2 mile hike in Boyd Pond Park, which is less than 7 miles from home, to grab the Challenge’s bonus cache. We also found 4 others and DNF’d one while we were out & about.

You know, if we were smart, we would start seriously working on the Georgia DeLorme Challenge (we have 14 of 60 already) and Georgia County Challenge (16 of 159) as we do the 42 state parks…

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Another Weekend

Yet another State Park on a lake…


Clarks Hill Lake from Mistletoe State Park

Two Georgia State Parks down, forty to go. We had a very good day caching, percentage-wise, going 7 for 7, on quite a variety of container types, an ammo can, a gold painted ammo can, a test tube thing, a waterproof match box, a fake sprinkler head, a cammo wrapped pill bottle and a plastic pigeon.

Tomorrow we are going to go do the SC County Challenge (and maybe a few more, time permitting.)

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You Never Forget Your First Subaru

There is a Forrester commercial out entitled Reunion and the tag line is so true:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5UwvFbi5PE

My mother-in-law bought a Subaru back in the early 80’s and that thing was a piece of crap with many issues that repeated trips to the dealer never really ever permanently fixed. To top things off it started to rust around doors and both front and rear quarter panels after 5 years, in New Orleans! I’m sure the cars are much better 20 years hence, but because of that one car I would never own a Subaru…

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No Buck & McCarver

I’m watching Game 2 of the World Series with the TV sound muted and listening to the Texas Ranger’s radio broadcasters through MLB Gameday Audio. Unlike when I tried this trick with the FRS a couple of times during the regular season the audio and video are very close to matching up, probably less than a second, so it is entirely bearable.

There is an article on Deadspin on how to sync up the audio and video. In my case the video is slightly ahead of the audio, so my fix to perfectly sync them up is to use a DVR, which I don’t have (good thing it is close.) If your audio is ahead of the video there are several ways to sync them up using some software and maybe some cabling depending on your audio setup requirements.

As a bonus, the juxtaposition of the audio from one commercial over the video of a different one makes the between innings gaps a lot more interesting.

Silencing Joe Buck And Tim McCarver: A Simple Tech Solution To Our Crappy World Series Announcers

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