Rants

How Was Your Day?

I need to swap the bedroom set to the summer bedroom. I need to clean the pine pollen off the back deck. The garbage disposal in the kitchen has stopped working, so I need to take it apart and see what has jammed it up. I still have 12 days of vacation photos sort through.

So what did I do today? We went geocaching, on a Time Speed Distance Rally with the MMC, watched two episodes of West Wing and I’m listening to the FRS on the internet.

Oh, and I have to order a new battery for the Miata.

We finished a disappointing tied for fifth (out of 6 cars) in the rally this morning. We made one error due to a misleading statement from the rally masters misinterpretation and another because of a missed a clue. We felt that we had kept track of the time and mileage overruns, but even subtracting them from our totals we were still way over and lost big points. The capper was I worked a pounds to kilogram conversion the wrong way and blew the bonus question.

After lunch at the BBQ place one of the Club members had left his lights on and the car wouldn’t start. That is a picture of three of us trying to push start him. After about 4 or 5 attempts we gave up on that and went inside to see about borrowing some jumper cables. The jump start work its magic and off he went.

On the way home Donna and I stopped at a quick stop store in south Augusta to get a bottled water and a Sprite. When we got back in the car I turned the key and was met with silence. Hmm, did I have the clutch all the way in? Tried again and still nothing, but radio display flashed as I went by. The dome light was on, so I figured it wasn”t a dead battery. Funny thing was that with the ignition switch in the ACC position the radio display would flash and there was a clicking sound (like 2 relays) coming from the instrument cluster.

Pulled out the cell phone and called Rudy (AKA Clunk) (or is it Thunk) and his first thought was battery, even after I described the symptoms. He said hold on, I’ll get the truck and come take a look. Thirty minutes later Rudy and Patti pull up. He brought some wrenches so we could remove the battery and (for what I figured was for testing purposes) the battery out of his Mazdaspeed Miata. We swapped batteries and the car started right up. According to Rudy the newer batteries don’t give you any warning, like they used to in the olden days. now they just up and die. We called a couple places to see if they had any batteries for the car and one said we don’t carry ’em, called the dealer and the other had one, but for $90 and he was all the way on the other side of town. Rudy has his truck and Patti just got a new Lexus, so he let me babysit his battery for a while.

It is still going to cost a hundred bucks or so for the battery, but it won’t be a generic replacement from Autozone, it’ll be a quality Westco replacement that is designed for the Miata.

Thanks Rudy.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 180

Disappointing

We rode the tandem in to work today, and with Wednesday’s trip on it as well, this is the first time we have commuted by bike twice in one week in a looong time.

That bike ride was the highlight of my day. I managed to only finish half of the front brake job I had planned for the Emperor this afternoon. The left front went fairly easy. I say fairly because after 6-1/2 years and nearly 90,000 miles the brake rotor and wheel hub become very fast friends. The folks who make cars know this and they put a nice threaded hole through the disc so you can separate them by cranking down on a bolt screwed in there. But, it takes a scary lot of torque on that bolt before you hear that satisfying pop when the two pieces of metal finally separate. Also one of the caliper slider pins took a bit of coaxing to go back in because with the lube spread on it, the little noise abating rubber sleeve tended to slide out of it’s groove, preventing the pin from fitting in the hole.

On the driver’s side I got the pads off, pulled the caliper and then the bracket off, the second rotor came off easier than first, but then I hit a snag. The top caliper pin was frozen solid in the bracket with corrosion. I sprayed some penetrating fluid on it. Cleaned and lubed the other pin while I waited for the magic. I hammered on the pin and tried backing it out with a 17mm wrench with as much force as I felt comfortable with to no avail. I might have upped the force level by 50% or more, but I didn’t want to break the pin or bracket because we are a one car family and I needed to at least be able to put the car back together and have it operational.

Calls to the Augusta Mazda place, a Miata.net sponsor dealer and Advanced Auto asking about a replacement caliper netted me quotes of from “Can’t Get It” to $185 and we can order it. I then tried the Mazda dealer in Columbia where they still have to order it, but they will sell me just the bracket and pin for less than half the other guys wanted for a re-manufactured caliper and bracket.

I reinstalled the old parts back on the right side and took a drive around the neighborhood to set in the new stuff on the left. The car stops fine, but there is about 4″ more pedal travel. I’m attributing this to the increased travel the left caliper needs to make up for the nearly worn out pads on that side. Still I’ll be taking it easy though until I can get the new bracket and pin on Tuesday.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the motion sensing light quit working again. 🙁

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 147

Motion Sensing Light Fixture

Our laundry room is in the garage and every time you go in or out during the night time you have to reach up and away to pull down on a chain to get the light on. After almost 20 years, my patience has worn thin and felt it was time to get a light that would turn on by itself.

We went to Lowe’s over the weekend and searched and searched and they had all manner of “on at dusk, off at dawn” devices and plenty of outdoor spotlight motion sensing lights, but no indoor types. I was just looking for something I know I’ve seen somewhere, one side screws into a socket and the bulb screws into the other side, but no dice.

When I was complaining about my inability to find this motion sensing light socket thingie to my cubical neighbor Jim on Monday he said he was in Home Depot on Sunday and had seen just what I was describing. On Tuesday Donna and I made the short trip to HD and looked all up and down their lighting section…twice…and couldn’t find anything.

Beginning to doubt the existence of such a fixture, when we got home I searched the interweb and found several places that sold them for around twenty bucks. I saved a link to place and contemplated whether or not I wanted to pay $7 to ship it.

This morning my cube neighbor said he was in Home Depot again yesterday buying some rabbit fencing to keep the hungry from his garden, saw the motion sensor fixture again and thought of me. I told him I had searched high and low and couldn’t find it. He offered to buy one for me, but I said if it was in the store, I’d find it myself. He told me it was not where I first looked, but over by the junction boxes and light switches.

Tonight Donna and I made a return trip to get one of these elusive objects. We looked up and down the aisle Jim described and didn’t see anything. We expanded our search parameters buy going slowly up and down the aisles on either side…twice…and still so no such thing.

I broke down and asked. The customer service rep behind the counter said they were at the end of aisle 4 on the right. Shazam! There they were.

First thing I did when we got home was unscrew the bulb, screw it into the motion sensor base and screw the whole thing into the wall socket. Pulled the chain to turn on the electricity, waved my hand wildly in front of the sensor and was rewarded by nothing. Crap. Unscrewed the bulb from the base, the base from the wall and put the bulb back in and it lit up pretty as could be.

All that effort and the thing doesn’t work. Now, it means a return trip to the store. Should I chance it on another cheap unit or just get my money back and just keep yanking the chain? I tried it a second time with little hope of any change and for whatever reason, it worked.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 147

What Birthday?

My email to Geocities on Saturday, much to my surprise, generated a reply. They told me to call their Account Verification Department at 866-850-4303. After 5 minutes on hold I got a live one. The fellow who answered the phone was probably in India, but his English was excellent. To verify my status as web site owner the first question he asked me was my birthday, the very first question that the web site asked, and I told him I wasn’t sure.

I mean who doesn’t know their birthday right? Well, I know mine, but I don’t remember which one I used when I opened the account. I figured that one day I’d pass along the reigns of the web site to someone else and should use a date that means something to the bike club. The bike club was formed in 1980, so I thought I picked January 1, 1980. I was wrong.

When I guessed wrong the guy basically said that is as far as he could go and shipped me off to another department. More time on hold, but this time after 5 minutes I hung up. Somehow I’m figuring the whole birthday issue is going to be a problem.

I tried logging in again about a half dozen times trying various bicycling related terms as the password, I know the login: aikenbikeclub, but I have no recollection of what the password might be. after giving that up in frustration, I thought maybe I would try Plan B, I would report the ABC site for violated the Geocities Term of Service. After poking around a bit I managed to find the form for report this egregious violation. After filling out the form and hitting the submit button I ended up at a Page Not Found error page. Nice. I tried a couple more times with the same results.

Looks like I’m just going to have to change my home phone number…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 135

Houseless

Fox has a special 2-hour episode of 24 on tonight so there is no new episode of House. The adventures of Drs House, Cuddy, Wilson, Foreman, Thirteen, Kutner & Taub will have to wait a another week.

House: “Lies are like children: they’re hard work, but it’s worth it because the future depends on them.”

So instead I’ll be watching Free Anime! Are you enjoying your Time of Eve? The first four of six 15 minute chapters or online now. Chapter 5 will be released next month.

Or maybe I’ll read some more of Bitter Truth by William Lasher. I’ve read a couple of books by him that center around a Philadelphia lawyer named Victor Carl and have enjoyed them, this book is a little stranger than most, but sometimes when a person has a way with words that you enjoy so you would read anything they wrote, even if it was a restaurant menu.

I know people who look at the stars and say the night sky makes them feel insignificant, but I don’t believe them when they say it. When I look at the stars I don’t shrink but grow, filled with the perverse certainty that the whole of the universe has been put here solely for my amusement and enlightenment. But face to face with the grinning mask of death I know the truth. I am a randomly formed strand of DNA no more significant than random strands of DNA that define the leaf of grass upon which I tread or the cow whose charred muscle I gnaw. I eat Chinese food and crap corn and sweat through my socks and stink and the same DNA that gave me this nose and this chin and my ten fingers and ten toes has also sentenced me to oblivion. It directs my arteries to clog themselves with calcified fat, it directs my liver to wither, my kidneys to weaken, my lungs to spew bits of itself with every cough. And in the face of this utter randomness and planned obsolescence I can’t even imagine mustering enough energy to get out of bed and to walk the streets, to dry clean my suits, to return my library books, to vote for judges whose names I can’t pronounce, to act my part as if any of it really matters.

Or what I should do is balance the MMC checkbook and produce the Treasurer’s Report for the Club meeting this Thursday…sigh.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 134

Stop Calling Me

It seems as if the Aiken Bicycle Club has forgotten to renew their web hosting agreement, maybe even on purpose, so a Google search turns up an old link. That Geocities page has me listed as the Secretary and Newsletter Editor. The President, VP and Treasurer are, I think, no longer living around here, so none of their contact info is worth a darn. Neither of my email addresses are valid, but the phone number is still good and last weekend I got not one, but two calls asking about bike rides. There have been others previously on a sporadic basis, but two in two days made me want to do something about it.

I created that page back in the early 90s on Geocities and the page you see is a cookie crumb left behind in 2001 when the ABC went big time and got their own domain. It hasn’t been touched since and there is no way I can remember what the log in info is so I could change it or take it down. Today I used the Yahoo contact page to ask then to take the site down. I’m sure I’m spitting in the wind.

A long, long time ago I created a web site for my local bicycle club. I have moved on and so has the bicycle club, but unfortunately the old Geocities web site has not. I no longer remember the username or password for the site and undoubtedly any email address I used as a contact is no longer valid.

If you search the web for the ABC the first result is the old Geocities site and I am still getting phone calls requesting information I can no longer supply. Is there anyway that the site could be decommissioned on my request?

If not maybe it could be removed for violating your Terms of Service, to wit:

7.2 Prohibited Uses
(p) use your home page (or directory) as storage for remote loading or as a door or signpost to another home page, whether inside or beyond Yahoo! GeoCities;

Thank you for any help in this manner.

There is another Geocities page that comes in a close second when searching the web for the ABC and it also has my phone number listed. I emailed the contact on that page over a week ago and have not heard back from the owner yet. If I had to bet he is in the same boat as I am and has long since forgotten his Yahoo login info too and is too embarrassed to admit it to me. I searched for his name, Andy Nagai, and found a photography site with the domain of nagaiphotos.com. I know this is the same person because it has the same email address I used to try and contact him. It also listed his phone number (626-392-9506.) A reverse look up of that number results in a California cell phone that may or may not still belong to him (and I’m not paying anything to find out), so maybe I should just call it…

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 133

Cost Cutting?

We received our ESPN Magazine in the mail today. Strange thing, all the usual crap cards that are stapled in just fell on the counter. That happened because there were no staples in the magazine.

You can buy 25,000 staples for $5.49 at, where else, Staples. ESPN Magazine has a monthly circulation of nearly 2 million. Eliminating two staples per magazine means they are saving about $10,500 a year.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 129