A Modified Echelon

Right after work, we packed the car and headed west, destination, Cartersville, GA. We started with the top down. Kept it down, but put the windblocker on for Donna’s Interstate drive as it was starting to cool off. When I picked up the driving again about 60 miles outside of Atlanta we put the top up as it looked like we were coming to rain. Of course it started to rain at dark, at about the time I started to navigate the dreaded I-285 loop around the big city. On Atlanta’s beltway there are at minimum 5 lanes of road in each direction and at 9:00 PM on a Thursday night they all are quite busy.

I was traveling in the middle lane at around 70 to keep all my options open and ahead I noticed the back of a Miata with one tail light out, first one we had seen in the first 150 miles of our journey. As we got closer Donna said, “Hey, there is a Miata.” About that time I noticed in my left rearview mirror the distinct light signature of a set of barndoors approaching in the lane to the left of me. Almost at the same time as I pulled along side of the one-tailighted Miata, the other one pulled along side of us. I tooted the air horns and got a beep-beep from my right. As the three of us rolled down the road in a modified echelon for a moment we passed a 4th Miata in the extreme right lane. The Blue Angels had nothing on us, too bad it wasn’t a bright sunny day so we could have acknowledged what was happening and drove like that for a while longer.

We arrived at our hotel and base of operations for the next two nights at around 9:30 after 230 miles (and no other Miata sightings.) A brief storm had just passed through the area knocking out the hotel’s cable, but we didn’t care we were tired and just went to bed.

Purchased Today: $0
Money spent since 03/03/03: $106.57
Started down, went up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 57

How’s This Work Again?

After living with the 4-Way Stop at the end of our street for 6 days and having passed through it a couple dozen times I have come to the conclusion that people here in Aiken don’t know how a 4-Way Stop works. It is not just because they are unfamiliar with this particular one, they just plain don’t know how to deal with one. As a public service here is the section on 4-Way or Multi-Way Stops from the South Carolina Driver’s Manual:

Another situation is at an intersection where all streets have stop signs. When this occurs, a sign reading “4-way” or “Multi-Way” is added to the stop signs. A motorist arriving at the intersection must yield the right of way to motorists who arrived before him, waiting his turn to enter the intersection. If two motorists arrive at the same time, if on different streets, the driver on the left should yield to the driver on the right; or if on the same street, a driver desiring to turn left should yield to the driver from the opposite direction.

This is one of those things that is remembered long enough to pass the test and then forgotten if you never use it. This may be part of the problem, my wife and I racked our brains trying to locate another 4-Way Stop in town and couldn’t do it, Aikenites never get to practice this art.

RADIOIO II

To listen to the free stream with Windows Media Player you need a plugin called Abacast. Tried installing it here at home and for whatever reason it doesn’t work. The low band (mono) mp3 stream is still there, but I can’t listen to mp3 at work because it uses an IP address and the network weasels have blocked access to anything with just an IP. In searching for a replacement I found something really close, Radio Paradise, and there stream is stereo. They are also listener supported and if I can get the stream at work I will consider donating something to the cause.

Test Mule

I removed the flasher from the third brake light today. I’m a test mule for a device that a friend is going to make. It addresses the big complaint that everyone over on Miata.net has with the flashing 3rd light, incessant blinking. This thing has a small circuit board with a couple of components on it, so that it flashes real quick for 5 times and then burns steady. It takes a minute to reset to flashing, so if you are in stop and go traffic it always burns steady after the initial 5 flashes (unless you sit for more than a minute without applying the brakes.)

While I was at it I took off the instrument hood and drove around the block a couple of times. There is a squeak in the dash on bumpy roads that goes away when you press on the hood. My hood is only held on by the 2 screws and only one of the three snaps so I thought maybe a replacement hood would fix the problem. As with any squeak, it’s not that easy, even without the hood it is still there. Got to be somewhere deeper in and when I press it stops a lot more than the instrument hood from vibrating. More trouble shooting is required.

Purchased Today: nothing
Money spent since 03/03/03: $96.63
Started down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 54

Read The Fucking Box Carefully

Our cordless phone/answering machine went weird on us about a week ago. You would pick it up and it would just beep three times when trying to use the handset. I checked the owner’s manual and all that was mentioned was two beeps and that meant you were too far away from the base, which wasn’t the case, unless 2 inches is too far away. One thing the owner’s manual said was if it wasn’t working at all was to reinitialize the handset to the base. This procedure involved unplugging the battery in the handset and unplugging the power supply to the base for 5 minutes. That worked once – the very first time I picked up the phone I got a dial tone. Hung up and tried again right away and three beeps were it. Bought a new battery for the handset and charged it overnight. It too worked once and then beeps. While in Target this afternoon we figured we should go ahead and replace the phone, the answering machine portion still worked, but we really use the cordless phone too.

Picked up this snazzy looking 2.4Ghz phone for only $55. Got it home took it out of the box and plugged it all up. Broke out the manual for it to see how to set up the answering machine portion and couldn’t find any mention of it in the papers. Read them again slower, still nothing about answering machine. That’s when I looked over the box and it didn’t say anything about an answerer. The picture sure looked like it would be an answering machine, but looks can be deceiving, it was a speaker phone, That is why it had a speaker in the base. Doh! Boxed it back up as best I could and back to Target we went. This time I made sure it said Answering Machine on all 6 sides of the box. Different company and different looks, but $5 cheaper. Got to find a neat recording to put on there, guess I’ll go Googling for a wav file.

Was I The First To Run It Update

I’d like to call my wife to the stand. She swears that the signs were not in place at 4:20 when I made the left into my subdivision yesterday. Also the yellow diamond shaped signs warning of a stop sign ahead weren’t there either. When we left the neighborhood this morning there were 2 city cop cars out making up for the cost of the signs by catching unsuspecting drivers as they motored through the new signs. One had somebody pulled over and the other was just lurking on our street far enough back not to be seen from Two Notch Road.