Damn This Is Daunting

I’ve been using AutoCAD in my work since 1987. I am comfortable doing stuff in it, matter of fact, before we got networked and Microsoft Office I used to do a lot of stuff in ACAD that it really wasn’t designed to do. I am by no means an all around expert, 3D is a foreign language to me, but when anyone at work has a question, I’m the go to guy. Well now I know how they feel when they face with the myriad commands of AutoCAD and overall complexity of the program, I just installed Adobe Illustrator. I need to redo the Barndoor Fan Club logo and design something new for some T-shirts and it helps the screen printer (and saves me money) if I can give him an Illustrator file.

I’ve bought a 3 inch thick book on using the program, but boy howdy, it’s got a lot of commands with strange names and nothing works like I think it should. I imported an AutoCAD drawing and the text stuff came through OK, but I need to fill something and it won’t cooperate. I have figured out the object is a compound path, but I need to turn it into a plain path to fill it. Back to the book.

Tickets To The Masters

Tickets to the 4 day Masters tournament are handed down from generation to generation. They have closed the waiting list to get on the waiting list. That is not say they are impossible to get. For a price nearly anything can be had.

My wife and I don’t golf and are not really into following it as fans. We used to go to one of the practice rounds each year in the early 90s, because it was like $5 to get in and you just walked up to the gates on the day and in you went. It would be like living in Indianapolis and never going to the 500, so we went. The course is better looking in person than it is on TV and during practice the golfers are loose and having fun, you could take pictures and get autographs. Always thinking how cool it would be to go to the actual tournament.

Somewhere around 1995 they made a decision to limit even the practice round tickets. Can’t blame them the place was getting too crowded and the crowd was getting boisterous and the traffic jams outside the gates were getting really troublesome. The first couple of years after they instituted the lottery we got tickets, but since then we have been shut out. It seems like the tickets are going to all out-of-towners that come to Augusta and spend big bucks on hotels and meals. Of course the officials claim that it is a fair lottery, but too many of the locals who used to go are getting shut out too. Urban legends have cropped up of getting distant relations to apply for the practice round tickets and then pass along to the locals so they can go.

Tonight my across the street neighbor called and asked if we wanted a couple of tickets to go see the Masters tomorrow. We turned him down. We have nearly all our vacation for the year either taken or scheduled. Plus it is going to be raining and low 50s. If the weather was going to be sunny and 75 we might have burned one of the last two free vacation days we have left free. I wonder if our neighbor will think of us next year or was this our one and only shot at this.

MX-5 Passion Stickers

Way back in October of last year the folks that run the MX-5 Passion site, a Miata Net like site for Italy, discovered the Barndoor Fan Club and emails were traded, pictures shared, etc. Then one fellow asked me to send him 6 of the BDFC stickers and he would mail me the same amount of their site’s stickers once they had them made up. I mailed them off and everyone of their team put a sticker on their car, even the M2s. I hadn’t heard about the stickers in so long I forgot all about them, until yesterday. Ben emailed me to let me know that a half dozen MX-5 Passion stickers were on the way. wOOt!

Purchased Today: nothing
Money spent since 03/03/03: $73.75
Started up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 51

Amelie

Looks like a rainy week, at this rate it is going to be over a month since the car has needed to be washed, but hasn’t. Which means it has probably been a couple months since the last wash. Maybe this weekend. The oil needs changing as well, the lifters are clacking with more frequency on startup.

Watched the best movie I have seen since Amelie, back in February, tonight. It had drama, sex, tension, pathos and a cast of like 2. Go rent The Business of Strangers if you can find it. And if you don’t like it, email me and tell me why and I’ll paypal you your rental fee.

Purchased Today: zippo
Money spent since 03/03/03: $73.75
Started up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 51

It’s Been Like 3 Years & I Still Miss It

Sunday night isn’t the same with out the X-files. The only thing that is remotely worth watching is “Inside The Actors Studio” with James Lipton. This week I skipped it because it was a rerun of Richard Gere, but next week is a must watch because John Travolta will be on. On a somewhat related note, I could have sworn I saw Mr. Lipton as a court sketch artist this morning in “Escape from the Planet of the Apes” on the Fox Movie Channel. He is not credited with that role on IMDB or on the Bravo site’s biography of him.

You’re Dumber Than You Think I Think You Are

Went out for breakfast this morning and managed to eat outside although a little chilly. Afterwards we were going to walk around downtown and pay our bills, water, cable and power, but the rain started lightly so we had to put the top up and drive to the three places. I’m sure we burned more in gas than we saved in postage, but oh well.

Watched Chinatown and The Two Jakes back to back today. I remember watching The Two Jakes on video way back when it first came out and I thought it was an OK movie. At the time I didn’t even know that there was a prequel. Today I thought it sucked, most probably it was because I could compare it to Chinatown. May even buy Chinatown for my meager collection. To me everything just looked right, Jack Nicholson was perfect for the role, as were the other main characters, but Roman Polanski’s direction is what made the thing great. On a side note, Chinatown was on AMC today about the time I finished watching it on DVD.

Favorite quote from the first movie: “You’re dumber than you think I think you are.”

Purchased Today: $15 in gas
Money spent since 03/03/03: $73.75
Started down, went up, still up.
Top Transitions since 02/02/03: 51

This Is Like, Ya Know, Work

We had the deck installed on the back of the house 2 years ago, a portion of it was built over the concrete pad that was outside our bedroom door. The only thing on the pad was the grill and the only time I used it was when grilling steaks once every month or so. The concrete was mostly covered in moss and every couple of years I go out with some bleach and a broom to try and eradicate the green stuff, never 100% successful. They were supposed to get rid of the concrete pad, but it was poured like 8″ thick so after wasting a day with a jack hammer and only nibbling around the edges I told them to go ahead and just build over it. Big mistake, the moss just jumped up the 6″ onto the wood of the deck. I spent a couple of hours this morning trying to get all the moss of the deck. Just like the concrete pad I was not 100% successful. I got a big portion of it off, it is no longer slick in spots and the green color is almost gone. I used some deck cleaner stuff in a bottle and scrubbed with a big stiff brush. I think to do a thorough job I am going to need a pressure washer. Must be some one at work with one I could borrow, instead of spending several hundred bucks on one.