Bicycling

Disappearing Profiles

Dear Brian,

We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account, effective September 1, 2008.

Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1, 2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our customers.

If you have any questions, please go to http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962 or call us anytime at 1 (888) 638-3549. We apologize for any inconvenience.

– The Netflix Team

This showed up in my inbox a couple of days ago. Nice. Donna and I love this feature as it allows us to keep movies and TV shows separate. That way when a movie gets returned a movie comes back, when a TV show gets watched a TV show comes back. Without this feature we are going to have to micro-manage our soon to be single rental queue to keep the mix in that order. I’m a little miffed at what they are doing and how they are handling it, I even signed an online petition, but they are still going to be the best game in town. Since joining Netflix back in 2000 we have probably been in a brick & mortar video store a dozen times and every time we do, on the way out the door we say, “Thank God for Netflix.”

For kicks this morning we went for a bike ride and for the first time in about 3 years we rode separate bikes. Very quirky for the first half dozen miles, but seemed normal by the second half of the ride. The choice of riding a tandem or a single bike has both pros and cons that pretty much even out, so we have decided to toss the single bikes back into the mix with a little more regularity than once every three years.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 212

Changed Our Minds

We went back to Kohl’s to look one more time at the comforter set we really liked last week and loved on the web page. Neither one of us were thrilled with it this week. So we looked around and picked out something different. Then to coordinate (we hope) we bought a separate boxpleat bedskirt and a couple standard pillow shams in a color called Incense. Tomorrow we think we’ll head to Bed, Bath and Beyond to get a set of sheets using a 20% off coupon we got in the mail.

My godson Gnorm is famous. I’m hoping he doesn’t see the link that CT posted in his comment for yesterday’s entry, might take the euphoric winds right out of his sails.

We rode the tandem to work today and when we got home we hopped in the car went shopping in Augusta and drove home the long way, over the dam at Lake Thurmond. Good thing our primary purpose of cycling to work isn’t to save gas, because our little evening trip negated about a weeks worth bicycle commuting.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 202

Saved A Couple Bucks This Morning, But Spent Them Later

Rode the “Bus” into work today. Not mass transit, but our own alternative fuel vehicle, the tandem. I call it the Bus because compared to a single bike the tandem rides and drives like one compared to a single bike. We didn’t really do it to save the gas money, but because we have been threatening to get back to biking to work for the longest time and today was the day. We have vowed to ride to work every other Friday, you know, the one we actually work. We are also going to try and take a ride on the Friday we are off work, weather permitting.

Speaking of weather permitting, we don’t let anything below a 50% chance frighten us off, so today’s weather calling for a 20% chance of afternoon thunder showers was a non-issue. Until about an hour before quitting time. The skies outside darkened and fearing a repeat of Tuesday’s hail I checked the weather radar. At first glance it looked like we were in trouble as there was a long line of orange and red south of Aiken and Augusta, but when put in motion that line wasn’t really moving north. Still, the plain green was spreading our way, so it looked like it would be a wet ride home.

We had a couple of offers from co-workers with pick ups for a lift home, but declined them because if it was raining, we and the bike would probably get just as wet loading the bike up and on the drive. By the time we left it had been raining for a while and had slowed to a sprinkle, so the roads were wet. Turns out that is where most of our wetness came from because as we got closer to home the rain stopped and the roads had dried. Just as we made it home it did start to rain again, but too late to soak us.

The Emperor didn’t go to work, but it did get out this evening. We went out to eat with friends and then did a little more shopping for the final accessories for the green bathroom, a set of towels, a toothbrush holder and a shower curtain, leaving just needing one more thing, a liquid soap dispenser.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 174

Charlie Wilson’s War

Joanne Herring: Why is Congress saying one thing and doing nothing?
Charlie Wilson: Well, tradition mostly.

Julia Roberts has a throw away role, Tom Hanks is excellent, but this is Philip Seymour Hoffman’s movie and he is great.

Charlie Wilson: You mean to tell me that the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is to have the Afghans keep walking into machine gun fire ’til the Russians run out of bullets?
Gust Avrakotos: That’s Harold Holt’s strategy, not U.S. strategy.
Charlie Wilson: What is U.S. strategy?
Gust Avrakotos: Most strictly speaking, we don’t have one. But we’re working on it.
Charlie Wilson: Who’s ‘we’?
Gust Avrakotos: Me and three other guys.

This is the second movie in a month about war in the middle east, Lions for Lambs being the other, both were interesting, thought provoking and worth a watch, but Charlie Wilson’s War was much more entertaining.

We are on vacation, but not going anywhere, so it was odd not going to work today. Even odder was going for a bike ride at eight o’clock on a weekday. We may have to start riding earlier on weekdays when not on vacation. I went to the store this morning to get some actual paintbrushes for the bead board instead of my usual foam-on-a-stick things and when I went by the corner quickie mart the price of gas was $3.72, passing by the same store tonight the price had jumped by a dime to $3.82.

I’ll be glad when the FRS aren’t on ESPN anymore and I can go back to listening on the radio because tonight looks a lot like last night. They have gone and dug a themselves a 4 run hole again that I’m betting they aren’t going to be able to dig their way out of either.

Started up, went down, back up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 156

Back In The Saddle Again

Sunrise Over Ford Conger FieldThis morning when we passed the steeplechase field and I pointed out the sky, Donna said, “Stop and take a picture if you want.” So unlike two weeks ago when she made this same offer, this time I did stop.

For the first time in 3 months I have used “bicycling” as the category for a post. I think we may have taken a 2 mile ride a couple months ago to test the new rear wheel after bending it on some railroad tracks. But tonight was a full fledged 7-1/2 mile ride. We headed over to the Gatewood subdivision to check out the Christmas lights because, as with Halloween, the residents there seem to go all out. I don’t mean this in any way to be rubbing it in to my more northern readers, but I was wearing cycling shorts and a short sleeve jersey for this adventure — it was 73° at 8:00PM.

This is highly unusual for us. We aren’t normally getting snow or anything, but this time of year the average high is around sixty and the low should be in the middle thirties. The Emperor’s top has been down and I’ve had the boot cover on it since Sunday. We’ve had a nice run of low 80° days this week, but a return to normalcy is on tap for the weekend, by Sunday it will be a high of 56 and a low of 28.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 496

Fireworks?

Killer Klowns From Outer Space, the Special Edition sits unwatched on the coffee table. Maybe tomorrow afternoon, before the Killer Klowns from New York invade Fenway Park and are hopefully rebuffed by those scrappy kids in an ice cream truck.

After last night’s ballgame, I felt cheated by this afternoon’s contest, even thought Boston won, because the game only went for three hours and thirty-seven minutes. Compared to the four hour and forty-three minute marathon loss on Friday, today’s contest was a minute waltz . Tomorrow’s FRS / MFY game is going to be on ESPN and won’t start until 8 PM, which means it probably won’t go off until at least midnight. I may just go to bed without seeing the whole game, the FRS are going to win or lose whether I’m watching or not.

After the game this evening Donna and I decided to ride the tandem downtown and get a scoop of ice cream at the Sweet Cow Creamy. We have a fairly powerful headlight and a flashing taillight, so night riding in our small burg is a fairly safe proposition. Things were going smoothly until we were about a half mile from our destination and crossed some the railroad tracks. We hit a rough spot that wasn’t too visible and slammed the back wheel pretty hard. About 50 yards later a loud bang was heard. Gunshot? Firecracker? Nope, back tire. We had a flat.

Fortunately we had a spare tube and pump and were not too far from a well lit street corner. I popped off the back wheel and put in the new tube. Donna showed me the big hole in the tube, I showed her the bent rim and for good measure, the nice split in the tire (thankfully not all the way through.) Got everything back together and pumped the tire back up with a small collapsible pump that we got when we bought the bike. Because you can only get 1/2 to 2/3 the air pressure recommended for the tire with the bity hand pump, we finished the trip, including the ice cream stop, slowly and carefully.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 398