Rants

Why Bother?

It is halfway through game #11 and the FRS are losing 3-0, fast on their way to being 2 and 9 to start the season.

At first I thought it was kind of comical that the team that many predicted to be the best in the majors stumbled out of the starting blocks, but now it is not so much funny as it is depressing. Their fantastic pitching staff has appeared more like little leaguers and their fearsome batting lineup has only about two of them batting more than their weight.

I know, I know Mark, I should have faith and believe that it is till possible to finish the season at 154-8, but right now it is kind of hard to believe that they won’t finish dead last in their division. Right now the only bright spot is that they lead the MFY 2 to 1 in the season series.

Started down, went up, still up.
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Oh & Five

Columbus: It’s amazing how fast the world can go from bad to total shit storm.

9:45 PM
I sit down at the PC and check on the FRS score – ooh, only losing 3 to 2 in the sixth, we’re still in this one.

By the time I get logged into Gameday Audio the Indians have scored another run, it’s now 4 to 2.

Why, oh why, MLB.com, when I click the audio button on the web page of the Boston Red Sox do I get the Cleveland radio announcing team. You would think if I’m on the FRS page I would get the WEEI crew of Joe Castiglione & Dave O’Brien.

By the time the audio player is loaded and I have changed broadcasting teams, I hear like two pitches called and then on the third pitch some moke for the Tribe hits it into the right field seats with two runners on base. 7 – 2.

9:50 PM
I close the Gameday Audio player and open up Winamp to listen to the soothing sounds of GotRadio New Age Nuance.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 988

The World Is My Oyster

Not me, but the woman in the car with two kids I saw Saturday.

As we like to do on Saturday morning we have breakfast at DD. I get a small coffee with cream and sugar to go along with, aptly, a coffee cake muffin. Donna gets a toasted plain bagel with butter and cream cheese on the side and washes it down with a small hot chocolate/no whipped cream. We then, if possible, sit at the stools looking out over the parking lot and read the store’s copy of the Saturday WSJ.

Near the end of our breakfast this Saturday I notice a small 4-door car pull into the nearly empty parking lot and stop smack in the middle of the traffic lane. I could see a short overweight woman behind the wheel. At first I thought maybe she was trying to figure which spot to pull into, but she didn’t move. After about 30 seconds, both back doors open simultaneously and out out step two kids, a boy and a girl. They both look to be somewhere between 9 to 12 years old, maybe 5′ tall and weigh about 200 pounds. They close their doors, start walking into Dunkin’ Donuts and mom starts to drive off.

I go into full cranky old man mode: I say, inside my head, to myself, “This is the last place she should be bringing those kids for breakfast, they need a little lean protein, a small glass of juice and some exercise. And I can’t believe she is just dropping these kids off. Where is she going? Back down the street a bit to buy a lottery ticket?” But she doesn’t go far, she pulls into the opposite side of the lot to park, taking up the better part of two spots with her 1998 Ford Escort. This sets off another volley, again inside my head, about how people can’t park worth a flip, either through arrogance or ignorance (kind of wish I had one of these handy.)

For all I know my crappy attitude towards this family is totally unfounded. It could be that the woman just got Social Security check on Friday and could finally pay to get her car out of the shop, where they still haven’t fixed the power steering right and she has a few dollars left over so she can buy her two grand-kids, who she rarely gets to see, a couple of hot chocolates on this chilly morning.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 986

No Dam Blogging On Monday

Last night I didn’t watch House and I didn’t download the torrent today either. The show is now officially dead to me. It started a couple weeks ago with the dream sequence show, during which Dr. Taub showed up to deliver a machine gun for blowing up something while driving a Hyundai Sonata. At the next commercial break, guess which car company had the first ad? Right, Hyundai, you get 20 points. And ended with the movie/musical very special Greg falls off the the wagon into a bottle of vicodin because Cuddy might die and she rewards his mis-guided concern by breaking up with him.

Instead of House, I watched something more “exciting”, the last couple of innings of a spring training game between the FRS and the MFY. I did not recognize a single player name mentioned for either team.

The rest of last night and then again tonight was spent vacation planning. We are going on another trip out to the west coast. Nine days of visiting western Washington, western and central Oregon with a brief foray into northern California (as long as the radiation levels are not too bad.)

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 969

What Goes Up

Must come down.

We have a co-worker who has been lusting after a New Camaro Convertible ever since the concept version appeared 4 years ago. It is practically all he talks about. He has been running the same Camaro Convertible Concept screensaver on his work PC for nearly that long. A couple years back I found a Matchbox version of the car of his dreams (orange with black stripes) and it has sat on top of his monitor peacefully until a few months ago.

When we moved into the new area with its lower cubical walls, his Matchbox car became visible to passersby and a target for messing with. If this person’s obsession wasn’t so pronounced and he didn’t make such a big fuss about it being moved it probably would have stopped after a few days, but it was just so much fun. The weekend before last when he wasn’t around, someone tied it up so it was hanging about 2 inches down from the ceiling. On Monday morning the fellow’s reaction was priceless, he kind of stamped his feet and moaned. “Why won’t people just leave it alone.”

That move actually backfired on all of us who enjoyed his reactions to his car being moved an inch or two or rotated 90°, because he decided to just leave the car hanging, making it more trouble than it was worth to mess with it. The car stayed right up there until today. The department manager came in this afternoon and told him to take it down. Which prompted the best reaction from him yet, he whined, “But I didn’t put it there!”

The manager wasn’t just picking on him, I was told to take down the Stubby Rocket that I had hanging from the ceiling too. To be fair, his boss, the Plant Manager, has this rule that nothing should be higher than our low cubical walls.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 963

More Randomness

For the past several years we have paid the Weather Channel online for a service called Weather Gold which removes all the ads from our weather page and allows us to view a more recently updated local radar image. I’m not sure how long it has been going on, but there is a small red colored temperature in the upper left hand corner of the page that never matches what our current temperature.

For the longest time it seemed like it was only a couple degrees off, but more recently the gap has gotten larger. The other day it was 64° here and the red number read 12°. Out of curiosity I placed the cursor over the number and it turned out it is a link. I clicked on it. I was taken to a weather page for Rochester, MN. If you reload the page it changes cities. I’ve tried it four times this evening and I have made a tour of the south, Saint Petersburg, FL, Charlottesville, VA, Charleston, SC and Montgomery, AL.

On Thursday, after several minutes of hunting and having to create a login I managed to write Customer Service :

The Weather Channel Interactive Support
Ticket Information:
Ticket #: 1409-3170291
Date Created: 3/3/2011 2:11 PM EDT
Issue:
Issue Type:
Details: In the upper left hand corneer of my WeatherGold page there is a small temperature reading that is different from my home city’s temp. When clicking on it it takes you to the weather page of a random city. Why?

I’ll keep you posted…

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 963

Merely An Observation

I know that folks who live elsewhere are paying a lot more than we are here in Our Fair City for gas, so this is not a complaint. We filled the Emperor up with gas tonight and it cost $3.389 a gallon for 10% ethanol premium grade. And that price is with the 10¢ off because of our Kroger shopper’s card. We filled the tank 12 days ago and the cost was a “mere” $3.039 a gallon. That is an increase of 11.5% in less than two weeks.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 962