Radio Paradise

The Loud Thud You Heard

Was me crashing down from 40,000′ just like Oceanic Flight 815 (Sidney to LA.)

Last night was a new episode of TDTVS and true to my decision, I didn’t watch it. I was going to wait until September and watch the DVD of Season 2 in it’s entirety. Donna, who has less will power, watched it in the other room, while I wasted time on the internet with Radio Paradise playing softly in the background to mask any dialog leakage.

I’m not saying I’ve been a saint all this time either, I have pumped co-workers for a few details of what has been happening and I have peeked at a few screen captures from Season2 on some fan sites.

After talking with one friend/fan at work during break this afternoon, I fell off the wagon. I spent the next 45 minutes reading the synopsis of the first 12 episodes of Season 2 on the official ABC site.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 35

Now What?

Last night while listening to my new favorite internet radio station, it began to do random, but frequent dropping out. Tonight when I cranked up RadioIO Eclectic it was still doing it. Dang.

Tried RadioParadise and for the last 309:20 it has been rock solid.

To quote my favorite pirate:

Jack Sparrow: Funny ol’ world, innit?

New Year’s Revolutions

That’s right revolutions, I gave up on resolutions a few years back when the only ones I could actually stick to, were to ride my bike less and gain some weight.

Radio Paradise is out as my internet radio station of choice. For the last week or so it has been plagued by drop outs and annoying buffering for 10 seconds to forever until it reconnects. Now it could possibly be my fault as it seemed to have started about the time I got this whole wireless network thing going…or it could be they knew I didn’t donate my usual 5 spot at the end of the month like I’d been doing all year…or whatever, but RP is out and RadioIO-eclectic is in. RadioIO-eclectic is a little harder edged, plays more cover tunes (which I like) and doesn’t play many “oldies” (which I sort of miss), but most of all it hasn’t once dropped the stream on me.

Netflix is back. This time we opted for the cheapest entrance fee – $9.95 (+tax) – which entitles us to one movie out at a time with unlimited rentals per month. Because there is a distribution center in Columbia, SC now we are looking at quite possibly a three day turn around time. We are going to plan a mid week movie night, and if the mail gods are smiling we should have another movie available for a weekend night. We quit NF in October of ’04 and haven’t watched too many flicks since then, so it only took about 10 minutes to line up 20 movies for the queue. I’m sure keeping it that full won’t be an issue for a while. Guess I’ll see about getting a plug-in to show the queue on the right hand side here, so you can see what we’ll be watching on Wednesday nights.

Might be turning off the PC at night and during the days for a while. Started to get a loud rattle this afternoon. At first I thought it was the sound of a hard drive about to self destruct. I shut the PC down and started it back up and all was quiet, for a while. Shut it off again and when I restarted the computer I commenced to backing up my documents. When it started making the noise again I cracked open the case and pushed on each HD to see if the noise would stop, and it would for as long as I was putting pressure on the drive. But neither felt like it was vibrating enough to make that much noise. Sounded more like it was coming from the power supply fan and a quick whack in that area silenced it. There is also a CPU fan in the same general area so it could be that too. But seeing as if either one were to fail silently it would be catastrophic, I’ll just turn off the PC when it is not in use. Going to put a slight crimp in my search for ET for a while.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 1

Hot Diggity

The Holiday Inn Express here has got a “Business Center” that has free access to the Internet. Don’t tell ’em that this ain’t business, OK? I’ve even got Radio Paradise playing in the background….

Bad news is that they also have MS Word installed, so I really have no excuse for not finishing up the Master’s Miata Club November newsletter.

But first I have to tell our dining out stories.

Last night for dinner we ended up eating a lot later than planned because as it turns out after you get north of Rock Hill, SC (unless you go into Charlotte, not take the by-pass like we did) there isn’t anyplace to eat until you get to Albemarle. There was a Sagebrush steak house a block past the motel, so we ate there even before checking in. The food was better than the one that went out of business in Aiken, but nearly as good as the one in Rock Hill. Topping off the experience was the least personable waitress known to man. Seemed almost a shame to leave her a big tip, but what the heck ASCO was paying for it…

Today Mark and I asked the instructor where we could get a good hamburger (ie. not fast food) for lunch, he recommended 2 places as possibilities, Kathleen’s Kitchen or Rosebrier. Directions were given and they sounded similar except (I thought) one was left and one was right at a light about a half a mile down the road. Mark was driving at I was navigating. We made the first few way points just fine but went straight where we supposed to turn. I noticed Kathleen’s Kitchen on the left as we passed it. Mark made a circle around the block to get back to KK, but after all that, it wasn’t open! Well, if Kathleen’s Kitchen was left, the other place was to the right. We headed right on the look out for the Pizza Hut that we were supposed to turn at to find Rosebrier. We drove. And drove. And drove some more. When the speed limit went up to 55 and civilization (as much as there is in Albemarle, NC) faded we decided to hang a U-turn and go back. For grins we drove on by Kathleen’s Kitchen and maybe a 1/4 mile past was a Pizza Hut. Woohoo. We found Greenbriers. The hamburger was good, not great, but a lot better than Hardee’s, et al. So much so, that maybe that is where we will have lunch tomorrow. They had a decent choice of other sandwiches to choose from too.

One good thing came out of our extended wrong turn though. We drove right by the place the motel clerk said was good for seafood which had planned on getting tonight. And it looked like they were doing a good lunch business.

That Ought To Slow Them Down A Bit

When I got up this morning there was still a few IP addresses sucking bandwidth that I had to deny. Figuring that new ones would keep popping up and that they were all loading the page /archives/miatatude I figured a good way to keep them from doing that was to just rename that category in MT. Miatatude became Miata Tude around 10:00AM and so far today’s bandwidth usage has been 96.19 M compared to 417.46 MB yesterday and 963.85 MB on Saturday.

One problem though, I’ve killed my Radio Paradise recently played list. Cover me, I’m going back into Cpanel…fixed it. I had denied the IP that the feed comes from.

Started down, went up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 287

Happy Father’s Day

I certainly hope that all you fathers out there had half as nice a day as I did. While I’m not a father myself, so I didn’t get a hand drawn card or burnt toast in bed, I did have a nice leisurely day. This morning was spent reading (The Genesis Code by John Case) on the screened porch listening to Radio Paradise. With both the humidity and temperatures lower than normal for around here, the screened porch was the place to be. So much so that after lunch with friends I headed back out there to read some more and listen to the Red Sox trounce the Pirates.

Excuse me while I go finish the book and then it is back to reality. Tomorrow starts a new work week and I really need to get going on a Master’s Miata Club newsletter…

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 191

WEEI II

Last week while listening to the Red Sox/Blue Jays games on WEEI via MLB.com the annoying sound gaps I’ve been complaining about seem to come and go. I sent an email reply to the last customer service address I had that said keep them posted, but heard nothing. Saturday and Sunday the Yankee’s games were on the tube, so I watched. Monday and Tuesday games with Baltimore were on ESPN as well. Tonight it was back to “radio” and I couldn’t make it through the player introductions the silences were so bad. Tomorrow I’ll give them a call on the toll free number and see if I can get 2/3rds of my money back or something.

Guess I’ll go back to listening to Radio Paradise in front of the PC in the evenings and check the box scores in the morning…

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 158