Pop Up Ads

On the newspaper?!? One day last week when I opened my newspaper there was a 3″ x 3″ low tack glossy sticky note announcing the newspaper’s new program about paying your bill online. I thought nothing of it until today when there was another on the front of the paper. This one was for a Tobacco Use Prevention Program touting giving up smoking for Mother’s day as a gift. OK that is a public service announcement, but I bet commercials are definitely next.

On a quasi-related note, I saw something tonight that Major League Baseball has agreed to place a diamond shaped ad for the movie “Spiderman II” on all the bases, plus in the on deck circles, on a certain weekend in June. Not that ads and sporting events have never gotten together before, but this just seems a bit much to me.

Don’t Need No Reality TV

Never caught the “Reality TV” bug. But I do get my own version of it via the internet – blogs. You get a glimpse into the personal lives of people all over the world. Back in the Blogger days I would always check a few of the recently updated ones from the front page, then they had this thing called Next Blog that would send you a random site. The latest thing I stumbled on uses Google technology and the fact that everybody has a digital camera and posts their pictures on the net. Random Personal Picture Finder

Miata Pickup

I swear I’ve mentioned this before, but can’t find the post…the Miata is as good as a pickup on a sunny day. Finally finished painting the bedroom this morning, so to finish off the room we decided we needed a new area rug. Off to Home Depot, then to Lowes, where we found something that fit what we were looking for: 8’x10′, mostly tan with a hint of maroon & cheap. Put the rolled up carpet into the passenger’s footwell, poked it out between the seats while resting on the windblocker. Good thing it is a short trip, that flapping plastic is kind of annoying.

Clocks

Don’t hate me, OK? I usually listen to Radio Paradise while sitting in front of the computer and just now they played “Clocks” by Coldplay. I love that song.

We’re Back

Two major events over the last 4 days to report:1) It has only taken 5 months for me to realize I can’t see very well close up. Way back when I had a the Splash Green loaner, I wrote about The Good, The Bad & The Ugly and under Bad #3 I mentioned that the speedo was calibrated in 2MPH increments between the major numbers making it hard to know how fast I was going. Today on the trip home while trying to set the cruise control at 65 I noticed that it wasn’t in the center. Upon closer inspection I realized that there are only 3 ticks, not four, between every 10 mile per hour mark. Doh!2) File this one under ugly. The night we left I slightly misjudged the location of a curb and drove right across the corner of one in a Hardee’s parking lot. The front tire went up and over and when it went back down I hit the bottom of the car hard on the curb and then the back tire went up and over. Big thud! I managed to slightly bend over the 1/4″ thick seam that sticks down along the outside edge of the car. Didn’t hit the red painted portion of the body, just the flat black area.

For Future Reference

Just turned over 6,000 miles on the car today, so we are getting close to the first Mazda recommended service at 7,500.When I do take it in, probably after vacation, don’t let me forget a couple things. Have the them oil the trunk hinges as they are starting to creak when opening and closing the lid. Also, I noticed a couple of those plastic pins that hold in the splash liner in the right front wheel well are missing when I washed the car the other day. Nothing is going to fall out or anything, but hey some engineer thought they ought to be there and he must have had a good reason. The driver’s top latch still feels way to easy to close, no leaks or wind noises or anything, but something is not exactly right (maybe the passenger side is too tight?)

Fog Lights As DRLs Revisited

Finally accomplished what I set out to do all those weeks ago. To prevent to possible immolation of the dashboard I hooked the same +12v that goes to the fog light relay to where the voltage would be applied to the switch normally (how Mazda does it, just with a different source.) I then hooked the ground from the switch directly to the metal frame where the relays are mounted, bypassing the headlight switch, allowing the fog lights to operate without the need for the low beams to be on. Now if the ignition is on and the switch is pressed, the fog lights are on. I will now train myself to turn them on in the day and off at night, unless of course there is fog.

While I had the combination cruise control and fog light switch out of the dash I swapped the two colored light bulbs. For some odd reason the fog lights had a green lamp and the cruise had an orange one, while when the cruise is active there is a green light in the speedo cluster that says, oddly enough, CRUISE to let you know it is, well, active. My swapperoo matched greens for the cruise. The orange for the fog lights will make sense too when I do the future mod of getting some of that protective film in yellow to put over lights…