What Birthday?

My email to Geocities on Saturday, much to my surprise, generated a reply. They told me to call their Account Verification Department at 866-850-4303. After 5 minutes on hold I got a live one. The fellow who answered the phone was probably in India, but his English was excellent. To verify my status as web site owner the first question he asked me was my birthday, the very first question that the web site asked, and I told him I wasn’t sure.

I mean who doesn’t know their birthday right? Well, I know mine, but I don’t remember which one I used when I opened the account. I figured that one day I’d pass along the reigns of the web site to someone else and should use a date that means something to the bike club. The bike club was formed in 1980, so I thought I picked January 1, 1980. I was wrong.

When I guessed wrong the guy basically said that is as far as he could go and shipped me off to another department. More time on hold, but this time after 5 minutes I hung up. Somehow I’m figuring the whole birthday issue is going to be a problem.

I tried logging in again about a half dozen times trying various bicycling related terms as the password, I know the login: aikenbikeclub, but I have no recollection of what the password might be. after giving that up in frustration, I thought maybe I would try Plan B, I would report the ABC site for violated the Geocities Term of Service. After poking around a bit I managed to find the form for report this egregious violation. After filling out the form and hitting the submit button I ended up at a Page Not Found error page. Nice. I tried a couple more times with the same results.

Looks like I’m just going to have to change my home phone number…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 135

Nice One

Way back in January I converted the PAL DVDs of all three series of William & Mary I had bought from across the pond to NTSC for watching here. Donna and I had already seen the first two series via Netflix, so we just watched Series 3 and put the box away.

Last week I asked my manager at work, who is actually from Jolly O’l England, if he was interested in seeing the show. He said yeah, he already had it in his Netflix queue, but why wait. I brought him the boxed set. Sunday was a cold and rainy day so he and his wife, lit a fire in the fireplace and settled in on the couch to watch the show. He popped in Disc 1 that contained the first three episodes and nothing happened, the DVD player just sat there. To say they were a bit disappointed was an understatement.

He brought me the discs back on Monday and told be it wouldn’t play. I said I was sorry, I reminded him I told him it might not work because I couldn’t get past the intro stuff on my Sony DVD player before it stopped and told me it was the wrong Region Code for that player. He said his was a Daewoo and that it would do anything.

I brought the discs home and tried the first in my DVD players, the JVC, the Sony, the PC, the laptop, nothing. The PCs didn’t say no disc, but didn’t show any VOB files or any files for that matter. I tried the second disc and it worked as expected in all four places.

Can you guess what the problem was? Yup, that’s right I had labeled the DVD,but neglected to actually burn the files to it. DOH!

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 134

Houseless

Fox has a special 2-hour episode of 24 on tonight so there is no new episode of House. The adventures of Drs House, Cuddy, Wilson, Foreman, Thirteen, Kutner & Taub will have to wait a another week.

House: “Lies are like children: they’re hard work, but it’s worth it because the future depends on them.”

So instead I’ll be watching Free Anime! Are you enjoying your Time of Eve? The first four of six 15 minute chapters or online now. Chapter 5 will be released next month.

Or maybe I’ll read some more of Bitter Truth by William Lasher. I’ve read a couple of books by him that center around a Philadelphia lawyer named Victor Carl and have enjoyed them, this book is a little stranger than most, but sometimes when a person has a way with words that you enjoy so you would read anything they wrote, even if it was a restaurant menu.

I know people who look at the stars and say the night sky makes them feel insignificant, but I don’t believe them when they say it. When I look at the stars I don’t shrink but grow, filled with the perverse certainty that the whole of the universe has been put here solely for my amusement and enlightenment. But face to face with the grinning mask of death I know the truth. I am a randomly formed strand of DNA no more significant than random strands of DNA that define the leaf of grass upon which I tread or the cow whose charred muscle I gnaw. I eat Chinese food and crap corn and sweat through my socks and stink and the same DNA that gave me this nose and this chin and my ten fingers and ten toes has also sentenced me to oblivion. It directs my arteries to clog themselves with calcified fat, it directs my liver to wither, my kidneys to weaken, my lungs to spew bits of itself with every cough. And in the face of this utter randomness and planned obsolescence I can’t even imagine mustering enough energy to get out of bed and to walk the streets, to dry clean my suits, to return my library books, to vote for judges whose names I can’t pronounce, to act my part as if any of it really matters.

Or what I should do is balance the MMC checkbook and produce the Treasurer’s Report for the Club meeting this Thursday…sigh.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 134

My List of the Top 10 Albums of Rock & Roll

Thanks to Rick for this idea. In alphabetical order, my list of the
Top 10 15 Albums of Rock & Roll:

  • Allman Brothers Band – At Fillmore East – 1971 A live double record set. Almost every night of my junior year of high school I would fall asleep to to side three which consisted of “Hot ‘Lanta” (5:17) & “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” (13:04)
  • America – America – 1972 Three guys, three guitars, three voices. Awsome headphone music, a guitar and voice in each ear and one in the center of your brain.
  • Beatles – Hard Days Night – 1964 Quintessential British invasion rock. Plus I’ll bet every scene from the movie of the same name has influence at least a dozen MTV era music videos.
  • Blue Oyster Cult – On Your Feet or on Your Knees – 1975 Another live double record set. Included maybe their biggest hit “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”, but my favorite track was “Then Came the Last Days of May”.
  • The Cranberries – Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We – 1993 A perfect blend of dreamy Celtic music and rock and roll. Dolores O’Riordan singing Dreams did and always will raise goosebumps on my arms.
  • Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young – 4 Way Street – 1971 Four extremely gifted musicians with enormous egos to match came together to create lighting in a bottle and went their separate ways even before the album was released.
  • Deep Purple – Made in Japan – 1973 Four words: “Smoke on the Water”
  • Eagles – Hell Freezes Over – 1994 There were four new songs written for this album that were basically throwaways while the meat was a re imaging of 11 of the bands biggest hits in a mash up MTV unplugged style & an orchestra.
  • Guns n’ Roses – Appetite For Destruction – 1987 If you say name the greatest hard rock album of all time I would say this is it. “Welcome to the Jungle” my friends.
  • Nirvana – Unplugged in New York – 1994 Know for their grunge style music this acoustic album of mostly cover songs released after Curt Cobain’s suicide was one of the groups best selling discs.
  • No Doubt – No Doubt – 1992 A Ska influenced sound and while there are several other good tunes on the album, Gwen Stefani in a simple blue polka dot dress signing “Don’t Speak” is what got this on the list.
  • Pink Floyd – Dark Side Of The Moon – 1973 This one really doesn’t need any words, but what other rock album could be played in sync with the Wizard of Oz and actually enhance each other?
  • R.E.M. – Automatic for the People – 1992 The kings of alternative music in the early 90s brought the mandolin to rock with the help of the string arrangements of Led Zeplin’s John Paul Jones.
  • Stray Cats – Rock This Town – 1990 OK, so it is more Rockabilly than Rock & Rock, but this album started a whole trend of copycat bands and people dressing up in like Zoot Suits and stuff.
  • U2 – Joshua Tree – 1987 They could have stopped after the first three songs and this album would still be on the list. “Where the Streets Have No Name”, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “With or Without You”
Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 134

Stop Calling Me

It seems as if the Aiken Bicycle Club has forgotten to renew their web hosting agreement, maybe even on purpose, so a Google search turns up an old link. That Geocities page has me listed as the Secretary and Newsletter Editor. The President, VP and Treasurer are, I think, no longer living around here, so none of their contact info is worth a darn. Neither of my email addresses are valid, but the phone number is still good and last weekend I got not one, but two calls asking about bike rides. There have been others previously on a sporadic basis, but two in two days made me want to do something about it.

I created that page back in the early 90s on Geocities and the page you see is a cookie crumb left behind in 2001 when the ABC went big time and got their own domain. It hasn’t been touched since and there is no way I can remember what the log in info is so I could change it or take it down. Today I used the Yahoo contact page to ask then to take the site down. I’m sure I’m spitting in the wind.

A long, long time ago I created a web site for my local bicycle club. I have moved on and so has the bicycle club, but unfortunately the old Geocities web site has not. I no longer remember the username or password for the site and undoubtedly any email address I used as a contact is no longer valid.

If you search the web for the ABC the first result is the old Geocities site and I am still getting phone calls requesting information I can no longer supply. Is there anyway that the site could be decommissioned on my request?

If not maybe it could be removed for violating your Terms of Service, to wit:

7.2 Prohibited Uses
(p) use your home page (or directory) as storage for remote loading or as a door or signpost to another home page, whether inside or beyond Yahoo! GeoCities;

Thank you for any help in this manner.

There is another Geocities page that comes in a close second when searching the web for the ABC and it also has my phone number listed. I emailed the contact on that page over a week ago and have not heard back from the owner yet. If I had to bet he is in the same boat as I am and has long since forgotten his Yahoo login info too and is too embarrassed to admit it to me. I searched for his name, Andy Nagai, and found a photography site with the domain of nagaiphotos.com. I know this is the same person because it has the same email address I used to try and contact him. It also listed his phone number (626-392-9506.) A reverse look up of that number results in a California cell phone that may or may not still belong to him (and I’m not paying anything to find out), so maybe I should just call it…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 133

I Got Nothing

The bright yellow bananas that I bought last Friday that weren’t ripe on Monday, I ate the last one this morning and it still wasn’t ripe! We went grocery shopping tonight and I bought some more bananas, I’ll report tomorrow on their ripeness.

If you, like me, don’t think Netflix’s recommendation engine is all that smart, try Jinni. Sorta like Pandora for TV & Movies. Sorta. You can search by entering keywords, themes, mood, place. I’ve tried it a couple of times and my conclusion is they need a bigger database and maybe that be helped along by more people joining… Interested? You have to drop them your email so they can invite you into their “private” beta testing. If you try it, let me know what you think.

If you need a T-shirt that is newsworthy the day you buy it, I have just the shop for you: CNN Shirt. Those short little scrolls at the bottom of your TV screen like “Octopus pulls plug, floods aquarium” can be immortalized in your choice of 6 colors, 2 styles and 5 sizes. How can you resist?

The Big Picture (fast connection a plus for this)

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 132

4 Month Update

OK, we’ve had the new Robbins Streamline Top on the car for 4 months now, time for an update. The top has made well over a hundred transitions and it has stretched out just fine, making the raising and latching of the top a cinch. But putting it down is not the simple unlatch and throw it over your head the OEM was.

I still have to reach back and help the top (front) of the glass window down, by pushing slightly back and down. Doing the maneuver has become almost second nature and doesn’t slow down the operation (unless I fumble it, like I’m apt to do every dozen times or so.) My concern is to what this will do to the longevity of the top. I can’t help but think in a couple, three years that that extra push along with the aging of the fabric is going to cause a rip along the top or bottom of the glass.

One other little nitpick (and it really is a nit) is that the original top had a short strap that went from the edge of the top between the first and second ribs and attached to the frame which the Robbins Streamline top lacks. The purpose of this was to pull on that bit of the top, tucking it inside the well when the top was lowered. With the Robbins, the top folds up fine, but there is a little ear sticking out of the well that needs poking under when putting the boot on. I think I need a picture to better illustrate my point, but to do so might elevate the nit to a full blown bother.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 131