Weekend Update

First the good news: We are finished with Phase Three of Donna’s breast cancer treatment, Friday was #33 and her final radiation treatment. Lumpectomy, chemo and radiation are done. Now we are on to the preventative process. Because her cancer was ER+ she will be taking a drug called tamoxifen for 5 years to help prevent any recurrence.

Now to the mediocre news: We only made it through 18 of 24 episodes of TDTVS, AKA Lost: Season 2. Some of the situations and happenings are just too weird. But mostly what keeps us coming back is the humor, especially Sawyer’s irreverent and on target nicknames for the rest of the survivors. It seems as if some of the back-story we are getting is mostly rehashing of last years back-story with a touch of new stuff added to make the character’s stories meld together with strange coincidences, how their lives interacted in the past without them knowing about it.

Then the bad news: Two help desk tickets, two separate emails and even two phone calls have gotten me anywhere with my current web host, ssWebHost, so I’ll be moving to the .net address soon. The first ticket actually prompted a dialog. They said that I should let them know and they’d send me a link to where I could set up my new credit card. I responded that they should send it to me. 4 days later I still hadn’t heard back so I tacked on another message to the ticket asking again. After a week of no replies, I opened a separate ticket asking for way to change my billing info. I figured the new one would pop up on their radar. Nope.

I emailed the billing department of the web host. Silence. OK, let’s try emailing their support address. All I heard back was the white noise of packets zipping by my node.

Hidden in a dark corner of ssWebHost’s web page was a contact phone number, Friday I gave them a call. After an unusually long time the phone started to ring with a very strange sound. I knew I wasn’t calling Kansas. After about 7 rings an automated voice mail system kicked in. It was not English, could have been Russian or some other middle European language. Having dealt with enough of these type things I figured if I hit the #2 on the phone I might get another language and if I was lucky it might be English. Nope. Maybe I misdialed. The second time I had the same pause as before, but this time instead of the funny ring I was disconnected.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 378

46,000 Revolutions

That is approximately how many turns those little cute wheels on my rollerblades made this morning. Wow, first time in at least 6 months I’ve strapped on the skates and I did my usual 3 mile out and back. I was surprised I didn’t fade in the end, seeing as I hadn’t used those muscles in a while. May do it a little more often now as the temps have dropped out of the 90s in the afternoon all the way into the middle 80s, positively autumnal.

Coincidentally that number is the same as the number on the Emperor’s odometer right now (actually 46048.) It happened yesterday on the way to work.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 376

The Lost Weekend

LostStarring Brian Bogardus as Don Birnam and introducing Donna Bogardus as Helen St. James.

We went to the video store this evening and spent $25 renting all 7 DVDs of TDTVS. Twice.

The first time we went into the store and found the TV section where they had the Lost discs all lined up. I grabbed the first three thinking that would be enough to keep us busy for a while. Donna said, “No get all of them.” Checked out all seven and came home. Donna took a quick nap and about 5:30 we thought we would start our marathon. Each disc has 4 episodes and each episode lasts about 42 minutes, so we figured we would watch one disc tonight leaving 3 for Saturday and 3 for Sunday. When I opened up the case for disc one, I realized it was a Season One disc. WTF? All of them were Season One…

We didn’t pay attention in the store, we just figured that the second season’s stuff would right up front because it just came out on Tuesday. Nope. Donna called the store up and asked if they had Season Two in stock. They did. She asked them to put the whole set aside for and we would be in later to get them.

As we were checking out we asked for the “Stupid Renters Discount” and explained what we had done. The manager was there and had the clerk call up our account. She could see we had picked out 7 DVDs just two hours before and took pity on us. She did a swap thing and we didn’t have to pay for them the second time. Nice.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 376

Wait’l Next Year

While not mathematically eliminated, it is all over but the crying. The FRS are 9 games behind the hated Yankees with 22 games left to play (24 for the Yanks.) So if the Bronx bombers play just .500 ball ’til the end of the season, the Sox will need to go 21 and 1 to win the division. They are only 6 games behind in the wild card race making it only slightly easier there. If the Twins play .500 ball until season end the Bosox only need to go 18 and 4. đŸ˜€

My Yankee lover boss would tell you that is was their 5-game sweep in Fenway that sealed the Red Sox fate, but their troubles really started after they waltzed through inter-league play and then were swept 4 games by the lowly American League Tampa Bay Devil Rays back in July.

Well, wait until next year. Maybe they won’t even be in contention and I’ll be saved from the shame.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 373

Bit Bucket

Had a big ol’ post lamenting my web hosting search, but with all the Mozilla browser tab openings and closings I somehow dumped into the bit bucket – POOF – gone.

Without the time and energy to recreate it, you’ll just have to take my word for it, it was of absolutely no use to no one who wasn’t, like me, search for a web host.

Donna has suggested that I just chuck it all and go cold turkey, give up the whole blogging thing.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 372

mr-miata.net

Well, the first half of the migration process is complete, a new domain name has been chosen: mr-miata.net I got it through Yahoo! they have a deal where it is a $1 for a year (first year and new names only), so for $21 I have that domain registered for the next 3 years.

Now comes the hard part, finding a host. I want one that is cheap, less than $10 a month, that is reliable and meets some not to demanding requirements: UNIX hosting, 5G storage, 25G transfer, 5 MySQL dbs, FTP and the latest PHP & Pearl. If they are giving a domain name it better get registered to me, not them and then they better offer to host that name and my new dot net one on the same site. Yahoo is just a little over the limit at $12 a month. Right now I’m leaning towards BlueHost for $6.95. Their CEO even has a WordPress blog: MattHeaton.com.

Started down, went up, back down, up again, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 370

Northeast Visit Notes

They are right proud of their gas up there. My brother was all excited because the price of regular gas had just dropped under $3 a gallon to $2.98. I filled up the Miata tonight and if I could get away with regular it would have cost me $2.28 per.

The Marriott Hartford/Farmington is still living in the past. No Wi-Fi. High speed internet was available…for $10 a day! And just 12 channels on the TV, four different ESPNs, the big 4 networks, Weather, Golf, HBO and USA were the TV options. I can sort of understand it, the place is smack in the middle of an office park, so the traveling business guy lets his company pick up the 10 bucks for internet and could not care at all if HGTV is on the TV line-up. Wouldn’t matter anyway because there was no way to concentrate on anything because they were the host hotel for a soccer tournament and the joint was crawling with hyper active kids with zero parental supervision. The only pluses were the weekend rate wasn’t to bad and it was only 10 minutes from my mom’s house.

Speaking of family, mine definitely puts the dys in dysfunctional. I’m not sure anyone cooks at home up there, we ate out nearly every meal. Trying to get everyone to agree on where to go was like herding wildcats. And it is not like we are dealing with a lot of people here either, Donna & I, two; sister and husband, four; plus brother and mother equals six. We hadn’t visited in 2 years and after these 2 day I think we are set for another couple years before we need/want to go back.

The flying wasn’t so bad and the security wasn’t to intrusive. The whole liquid thing is weird, you have to put lotions, toothpaste, etc. in your checked luggage, no carry on. Of course once you get past the security checks into the terminals you can walk into most of those newsstand places and get small size lotions and stuff, the clerk will remind you that you can’t carry it on, but who’s to know if you put it in your pocket or purse. They don’t recheck your carry-ons again before boarding.

We rented a Sebring and it worked out pretty good. Saturday was mostly a washout, but we did get the top down quite a bit over the weekend. Including both the ride from the airport on Friday night and back to it on Monday morning. The car only had 6400 miles on it and it made a squeal and a thunk when starting off each morning. More disconcerting was the fact that a section of the top near the edge at a fold was already showing big-time wear.

Started up, went down, back up, down again, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 366