X-Files II

Watched it again last night. I could have sworn last week John Doggett was in a coma. This week he is just fine, but in the intro his partner Monica Reyes is in a car accident and guess what, ends up in a coma. The show is becoming like a daytime soap opera in fast forward. Next week is Agent Scully’s turn? They are calling for the return of Fox Mulder to end the series with a bang, I’m sure when we first see him he will be in a coma….

Oh, yeah, this episode reminded me of something, I could swear I saw the same plot in an old Twilight Zone episode.

Tech Day

Put the top up to wash the car this morning. Back down for the drive over to the GA Welcome Center to meet the gang. Today was Tech Day for the Master’s Miata Club. We meet there and drove over to Kurt’s house because he has a two car attached garage, a place for four cars in the drive, a single car un-attached garage with workshop and he lives at the end of a dead end road where more cars can go. First we made a “quick” stop at the local Mazda dealer, they just got in a new 2002 Titanium Gray SE and we wanted to peep at it.

Today’s Tech Special was brake bleeding. Rudy bought a Forced Induction device called a speed bleeder. You pressurize the brake system and open the bleed valves and whoosh, out with the old and in with the new. No need to pump the pedal. Supposedly this allows you to do the job by yourself, of course it took 4 of us to do it. 🙂 They did 4 cars (I think including clutch systems too) and Rudy changed over to some new Axxis brake pads. I didn’t do the brake thing as I was busy installing toggle switches to replace the hazard & pop-up buttons. Now that I got them in there, I’m not sure I like it.

I’ll give it a couple weeks to see if it grows on me. Needs a little refinement as well. The outside plate I made was a little too small and I need a backing plate or something as the switches move around when used as I couldn’t get them tight to the console.

When we went in for our pizza lunch I put the top up as there were some gray clouds hovering about. Cleared up a bit after lunch so the top went back down. Jim Creer brought his polishing wheel and magic goo so he could show me how to shave the lettering off the side makers. It is an old hot rodders trick from way back, to polish off the raised lettering on the red and yellow lights to keep from getting unsightly dried wax build up. He did one and then part of another, which I then finished. Borrowed the stuff from him so I can do the tail lights evenings this week.

Started down, went up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/01/02: 54

That Hosting Company VI

Below are a couple of quotes from their email a week ago….
“This transition period will begin Sunday @ 8:00am PST, March 10th, 2002. And will require approximately 5 days to complete.”
It has now been 6-1/2 days and they are not finished. I know this because…

“During this transition period you may experience unexpected downtimes.”
They didn’t need to pluralize it because it has been *downtime* since about 4 AM Tuesday morning. Nothing. My site, my friend’s site, their own site…..n o t h i n g .

I think the 5 day thing was just to let them get a head start before we sent the Internet Police after them.

There goes $7 down the drain.

It is March Madness time and I’ve entered the office pool. In a couple of weeks that $7 will be lining some one else’s pocket. I have never come close to winning the NCAA Tourney pool. I take that back, I came close 4 years ago when my cubical neighbor didn’t know what to pick so I told him to just go with the highest seed and for the final four take them on the order of their year end poll position. He won! and he gave me $10 for my help.

We also have a Football Bowl pool that I fare much better in, 2 years ago I won and a year ago I finished second. For football the point spread counts, so I have a Excel spreadsheet that generate a random number, which is then used to pick the winner. This past January it failed miserably and I came in dead-last. But that is OK too, because the last place person gets the booby prize of his or her money back.

This year instead of grappling with trying to pick the upsets right in the NCAAs, I went back to that highest seed thing – I’ll let you know.

Hershey’s Miniatures

Another San Francisco morning here in Aiken, SC. Cold, damp, foggy, real ugly this morning so we put the top up for the ride in. Today was lunch date with my wife and by noon it was sunny and had warmed up nicely. We made the 20 mile round trip to the Burger King that is less than a mile from the plant for Whoppers (Regular for me and a Jr. for Donna.) Can’t imagine being trapped inside a giant SUV with an A/C that is on all the time, missing the sounds and feel of the outdoors on spring days like this….

Not having an SUV almost cost us a couple of pieces of chocolate though. On the way home we stopped at the drive-thru of our bank to cash a check. Used the lane closest to the bank so when the teller pushed out the little draw again with my cash and driver’s license back I reached up and in, grabbed the envelope and started to pull away. The teller as she was wishing us a good weekend, said, “Wait, you forgot something.” When I took the envelope, I felt something else in the draw, but ignored it as they always keep a pen in there for folks who don’t have one and I thought that is what is was. When I reached back in there I could feel some little squares, so I picked them up. They were a couple of those little Hershey’s miniatures in St. Patrick’s Day colors. The teller smiled and said, “See, not a pen.” If I had an SUV I would have been looking down into the tray and would have seen the candy. Of course, taped to one, was a bit of paper that invited us to refinance our mortgage with Regions Bank. Erin Go Braugh, indeed.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/01/02: 50

Yikes! How about a warning?

I guess I set myself up for this one. Way back in the late 80’s when the internet was young, my favorite past time was to view other folk’s web pages. Find an ISP and look at all the local people’s sites. Some were lame, some were good and others were awe inspiring. I could waste hours a night surfing home pages.

Flash forward to the 00’s (?) and today’s new home page is the blog. Go to the Blogger home page and there on the left are recently updated blogs and blogs of note. Click one and it leads to more, which lead to more and the next thing I know it is time for bed. how I got there last night I don’t remember, but I started reading Sean’s Daily Drivel and for whatever reason it captivated me.This guy was writing about ordinary events like most, but he was incomplete. He kept refering to Kelly in the past tense. I read further and further back and then there it was, February 25th would have been his wife, Kelly’s, birthday and this was the one month anniversay of her death! Just 6 weeks ago Sean is another happy-go-lucky 25 year old, married for about 6-1/2 years and today he is a widower. Wife got sick on a Saturday with what they thought were kidney stones and by Monday she was gone, a victim of a blood infection.

That wasn’t what I bargined for while reading blogs. Damn, I’ve been bummed all day thinking about that. One day things are cool and like 48 hours later your world is rocked, big-time. Hang in there Sean, I hope the blogging helps ya. It sure opened my eyes.

Missing THC

Top down and boot on for the ride home. Because of the continued absence (63 hours and counting) of That Hosting Company the Miata club site is nowhere to be found. We still have the Geocities space so I uploaded the most current web site back there. Figured a banner ad or two is better than nothing. http://www.geocities.com/masters_miata/

Started up, went down, still down.
Top Transitions since 02/01/02: 48