So Much To Say…

…So Little Actually Worth Saying.

Are you as I tired as I am of the incessant promotions and marketing for the movie Cars? On ESPN’s Sportscenter last night they interviewed on of the actors who voices one of the cars. And some of the characters are so stereotypical they border on insulting; Mater, the slow speaking and possibly dim witted southern rusted tow truck voiced by Larry the Cable Guy. George Carlin the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman voicing the psychedelic VW van, Fillmore. Plus Ramone, the bright purple hydraulically enhanced low-rider voiced by Hispanic Cheech Marin.

Do we really need a movie version of Miami Vice? An 80’s style rap commercial for Pepto Bismo?

And speaking of commercials were these made by the same ad agency? For the Hummer H3 the stylish, eye catching “Urban Techno” and the totally lame and unimaginative “Goldilocks and the 3 Bears.”

Is it WordPress or more probably, my lame web host, but all of a sudden the plug-in I use to attach the thumbnails to posts is no longer working. Tried stopping and restarting the plug-in, but that didn’t work and if I shut it off all the past attached pictures disappear.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 192

41,000 Chain Links

Just less than a mile from home on the way to work this morning the odometer glided past the 41k mark.

Play Ball

Tonight we went out to watch a friends son play baseball. We have watched Jacob play since T-ball (he just got his driver’s license 6 days ago) and now he is playing with the big boys, the 15-18 year olds. The T-ball was fun because the kids were just so cute, but at this age it is almost like real baseball.

We have been known to watch his younger brother play baseball too. But with a four year difference in ages, Jared’s games always seem a lot less structured than big brother’s. Don’t get me wrong, we like to watch Jared play, he pitches a mean game, but Jacob’s games have the benefit of being played by older more experienced kids.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 190

Nice Evening For A Convertible

The recent 80’s with low humidity weather, which is very much unlike SC in June, has been perfect weather for top down motoring. After dinner Donna wanted to go over to Hopeland Gardens and take a walk, so we drove over. The parking lot was empty except for two other cars.

Tops Down

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 188

Forgetful?

Didn’t get to post last night because my webhost misplaced my SQL Database. Put it down with his keys I guess… He must have found everything late last night because when I got up this morning the database was right where I left it yesterday.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 186

The Third Shoe Drops

Chemo treatment number 3 for Donna was Friday and this one made the last one look like vacation. The last two we were able to leave from the Cancer Center and have a nice lunch, this time it was straight home for chicken & barley soup thoughtfully provided by a friend. More soup for supper too.

The last two chemos caused a lot of stomach pain and low grade nausea that we kept pretty much in check with the 3 different meds we were given prescriptions for. This time, in spite of trying to stay ahead of the nausea with medicine, early Saturday morning Donna was visited by Mr. Upchuck, twice. Mid-morning on we didn’t feel terrific, but everything stayed down. We made a short trip out to the Cancer Center for another Neulasta shot at 11:00AM and managed a slow walk around our 1 mile long block, but other than that the couch was her friend. This morning we had a repeat performance of Saturday morning, but once again the stomach settled for the rest of the day. She even felt good enough to get a cup of ice cream and walk a block of downtown Aiken tonight.

We have a couple of things we would like to blame for being hit so hard this time. Four days prior to this chemo we spent 4 long days on the road to and from Virginia which was tiring. By Thursday she wasn’t feeling good, stomach-wise, already and we went out to eat with the Miata Club to a not so great restaurant. At least we hope this is what caused it, because we can control them and the lead up to #4, and last, chemo will be less eventful and less stressful.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 184

Sticker Fun

Put on the replacement C & H sticker on the back bumper. I think it is a little bigger than the last one. The original sticker in silver that I put on crooked was 6″ high and I thought it looked a little big, so when I went to dark yellow I got him to make it 5-1/2″ high. This one looks like we reverted to a 6″ size. Seems a bit too big and I put it on leaning a little too much, but it looks good back there anyway.

I had one zoom-zoom sticker left and I put it in the same spot I have on the last two cars, on the inside of the trunk lid with each zoom straddling the trunk latch, so you can see it when the lid is up.

Now we just have to make a trip to Deal’s Gap to get a dragon sticker and start the under lid collection in earnest.

While I was there I straightened out the lid. loosened the 4 nuts and pushed and pulled until it is pretty good, not perfect, but better than before. I used an 11/64th drill bit as a spacer. On Monday I’ll take the calipers back out and give you the new measurements. Oooh, goody, more trigonometry.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 182

Trunk Math

The good news is the trunk is fine, just the way I looked at it was off. This morning at work I walked out to the parking lot with my digital calipers in hand. I measured the gap on the right side of the trunk lid, near the front it read .196 inches and at the rear it read .151 inches. That I could see, so now I measured the let side which I thought looked good, near the front it read .165 and near the rear it read .209 inches.

Time to do some ciphering. The difference between front and back on the left is .044 and the difference between front and back on the right is .045 meaning the trunk lid sides are parallel, but it is installed crooked. If we add up the gaps at the front we get .361 while the back adds up to .360 inches. At this point we’ll go ahead and throw out that odd thousandth of an inch because of not measuring in exactly the same spots on each side. The gap between trunk and fender should be .180 inches all around. I guess tomorrow morning I’ll go out to the garage and loosen the 4 mounting bolts and see if I can it all lined up.

For fans of higher math let’s use a little trigonometry and see what the angle of error is on the freshly painted trunk lid. The error between front to back was .044 inches or the opposite side of our triangle. The distance between front back measurement locations is 22 inches or the adjacent side of our triangle. Using my favorite mnemonic, Oscar Had A Hairy Old Ass, I know the tangent of the angle is the Opposite divided by the Adjacent. I can divide .044 by 22 and get .002, now I just have to figure out what angle has a tangent of .002, or what is the arctangent of .002. The calculator that comes with windows does tangents, but not arctangents, so a googling I go. I am led to Carbide Depot.com and their free online trig calculator which gives me an angle of 0.11459140° or if you like, 0° 6′ 53”.

Not much of an angle, but noticeable (at least on one side) to me.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 181