Rants

88,000 Genetic Manipulations

We went grocery shopping on Friday afternoon and I bought a small bunch of 4 bananas. Buying bananas always seems to be a chancy proposition, invariably they are either bright green or so ripe they are fit for nothing but an ingredient in banana nut bread. Friday was my lucky day (or so I thought), as the bananas on display were the very definition banana yellow.

Saturday morning I went to peel one of the bananas and I knew I was in trouble because the skin was thick and hard to tear. Ever hopeful, I took a bite, big mistake, it was tough as shoe leather, I spit it out and threw the rest away. Using all the brain power I could muster I determined that these pieces of fruit were not ripe and decided to skip Saturday’s banana and wait until Sunday before eating another.

By Sunday the peeling process was slightly better and the banana was almost al dente, but I choked it down anyway. No banana this morning and I am hopefully that by tomorrow they will be really ripe.

The only way I can explain it is that these bananas have been genetically altered so that they turn yellow when they really should still be green.

The Emperor flipped past the 88,000 mile mark on the way home from Augusta on Saturday.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 128

Intrepid Ibex

No time for posting I’m too busy monkeying around with a distro of Linux, Ubuntu 8.10. I’m in for some serious fun as it doesn’t recognize the wireless card in the Dell laptop I’m installing it on.

Back to the command line in a terminal window (those weren’t the days), Step 1 get and install some drivers:
sudo apt-get install cabextract
wget ftp://ftp.compaq.com/pub/softpaq/sp34001-34500/sp34152.exe
cabextract sp34152.exe

At first it didn’t install because it didn’t recognize the command ‘cabextract’. When I got that working I couldn’t complete step 2:
sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

Didn’t recognize ‘ndiswrapper.’ I did discover that it will connect to the internet if I plug in the cat5 cable straight from the router. Tomorrow I’ll figure out this wrapper thing.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 106

I Need More Time

At work the password required for network access is good for 45 days and when you get down to 5 days left it will start reminding you each time you log in that your password is going to expire in “X Days.” ASCO also uses an AS400 for its business systems software and it needs a separate password from the one you need for the PC network. The AS400 password is only good for 28 days, that is not too bad, but the annoying thing is that it starts to remind your password will expire at the 14 day mark.

Why don’t they just go ahead and start reminding you when you get down to say…27 days left.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 100

French Toast

The MMC meet for their monthly breakfast event here in Aiken at the Sugar Magnolia Cafe (not to be confused with Sugar Magnolia’s Cafe in Lompoc, CA) and we got a nice turn out of 10 people in 7 cars, 5 Miatas and a Sebring (which counts as two Miatas), a much nicer turn out than the November one there which was just Donna and I.

Frakking Sony DVD player. I spent most of the late morning and early afternoon trying to get William & Mary burned on a DVD. No matter what I tried, none of the 4 discs produced would do anything but play the No Public Display warning, the production company logo and the “pirating is stealing” PSA before halting and giving an out of region error message.

All the forums posts I found on the net said that the programs I was using should take care of the Region Coding. Then I searched for a way to set the Sony DVD player to region free and found that there were no sure fire way of doing it with my model, but there were a couple of ways that I could try that worked on similar models. Ha, close, but oh so frustrating.

I’m not sure what prompted me, but about 3 o’clock I took one of the, what I thought were toast, discs into the other room and tried it in the old JVC player. It worked perfectly….

The JVC was exiled to the back bedroom a few months ago because it was refusing to play DVDs or lock up with increasing regularity. We bought a Sony DVP-NS57P for $40 at Walmart to replace it and it has been great; until now. I’ve moved the JVC back into the living room, now the two of them sit on top of each other in the cabinet ready for anything.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 100

Windows 7 May Not Be For Me

Nothing really wrong with the interface and it seems that Microsoft took the complaints (or at least that Hi I’m A Mac commercial) of those annoying and prolific “Are You Sure You Want To Do That?” dialog boxes seriously, but I think I have a video driver issue. Try any full screen video and it locks up, not just Ctl+Alt+Del locked up either, but hold down the power button for 5 seconds to shut it off locked up. The Netflix streaming movie viewer didn’t even have to get to full screen, just a mere attempt to load and it was reboot city.

I thought an updated video driver might help, but Dell only offers a video driver in the XP flavor for my laptop (it’s what came preloaded from the factory.)

I wonder what I have to do to undo the installation without having to reload XP all over again. Maybe I can just format the partition and edit the boot loader file? Off to Google to see…

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 100

85,000 Tourist Trolleys

Just about 5 miles outside the touristy St. Augustine, Florida the Emperor passed by 85,000 miles. We stopped in for a brief visit and all those ubiquitous trolleys were nearly empty of tourists. We parked in the lot of the Fountain of Youth, but were too cheap to spend the $7.50 each to get in, so we asked for a tourist map of the town so we could find our way around. We parked at the visitor’s center and the next place we were too cheap to pay admission ($6 ea.) into was the famous Castillo de San Marcos. We did take the walk all the way around the perimeter of the fort and that was good enough for us.

We then wandered the old city and almost didn’t need to eat lunch as a couple of the restaurants had people handing out free samples to entice us into eating there. The pizza nearly had us, but we ended up at Casa Maya and we’re glad we did, the food was fantastic.

Tonight we are staying at the Longboard Inn, a B&B in New Smyrna Beach (I wonder where the old one went?) It is only a few dollars more expensive compared to the Holiday Inn Express outside of Savannah we stayed at last night, but the breakfast will be leaps and bounds better (cinnamon bun excepted.)

Started up, went down, back up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 62

Sky City

I just saw a trailer for the new movie Australia and is it just me, but did they totally rip off that theme from TDPM?

Do you think the newest versions of the Chrysler minivans (which don’t seem to be too mini anymore) with it’s more angular look is meant as retro in the same mode as the new Beetle or the new Camaro?

Dear Fox, I downloaded the the illegally copied & shared bitorrents of last three episodes of the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles because I couldn’t watch them directly from your site. I used to be able to watch shows directly, but something has changed since last year. The video herks, then jerks and then the audio becomes unsynced. At first I thought it might be my high speed connection had slowed, but I can still watch stuff on ABC.com. Ironically when it usually happens is at your minimal commercial breaks, even the ones where there is no actual ad there.

Started upn, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 38