Rants

Even On The Net The Commercials Are Loud

Just got through watching the first segment of last night’s New Amsterdam and when it went to the Toyota Corolla commercial the decibel level jumped 4 fold.

So far my toying with WordPress 2.5 has not been very positive. The My Netflix plugin doesn’t work (no big deal.) When I did have it working, the new image uploading thingie didn’t place the alt or title tag in the linking image, so it didn’t have a title on the Lightbox2 pop up (I think I can hack that.) Now, tonight for some reason, I can’t upload an image at all, it uploads and then stops with this: An error occurred in the upload. Please try again later. (Deal breaker.) Then, once the upload fails, I cannot navigate away from the post page without getting a 412 Precondition Failed error. I will have to test this out as it may be just a plugin conflict. This blog remains the same for now as I’m testing the upgrade using the thumbdrive.

Toilet shopping is harder than you might imagine (at least for us.)

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 96

Weekend Wrap Up

We went downtown last night to get an ice cream. The place was hopping. That was to be expected because the middle jewel of Aiken’s Triple Crown, the Spring Steeplechase, was yesterday and it routinely attracts 30,000 people and a lot of them hang around town long after. The restaurants were packed and there were several venues with live music. We arrived at the Sweet Cow Creamery at just the right time, we were next in line to be served and by the time I paid for our ice cream there were a half dozen people storming the door to get in.

This morning after watching last Thursday’s episode of Lost with breakfast, we went out and got lost in Hitchcock Woods. As usual, we were not really lost, we just didn’t know exactly where we were. The map hasn’t been updated in a long while and there are quite a few new trails that can confuse us for a short while.

To help you through the next few dark days until April 24th, go to the Lost Island Video and see want some talented Losties have created.

So far I am 31 of 48 in my March Madness picks leaving me only 20 points behind the leaders and next round games are worth 15 points. That’s the good news, the bad news is that there are still 15 of the 21 people entered ahead of me. Unlike last year when I watched none of the games, this year I have actually watched a few of the games. The b-ball players these days love their tats. There was one guy playing for Memphis who I could have sworn had the whole Declaration of Independence tattooed on his upper arm.

We are taking the day off from work Tuesday because the BMW’s are coming to town. We can’t start driving until 9:00AM, but that is OK because I have the perfect way to spend those pre drive hours — baseball. The FRS open the season in Japan against Oakland and the game starts at 6:00AM on ESPN2.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 86

I Hit The Rent Limter. Again.

Monday we placed two red envelopes in the mail. This morning I got 2 emails from Netflix saying that they had received the discs. So far so good. This afternoon I got one email from Netflix saying they had shipped one movie. Why not two? Did an email not get sent? So I checked my queue and there at the top it lists movie number 2 as shipping on Wednesday. WTF? It is not like it listed long wait or even short wait. Why the delay?

It just happened a couple weeks ago too. I mailed one back on Thursday, Friday I received the email telling me they had received the disc. They didn’t mail my next movie until Monday. Again why the delay?

I can almost forgive the one where the movie arrived back at the distribution center on December 30, but didn’t ship one out until the 2nd of January. But I can’t, because they actually received 2 movies that day with one being shipped out New Year’s Eve (which is still the next day.) Why the long delay?

My favorite delaying tactic is that whenever they get a movie back and for whatever reason, your next movie isn’t at the closest distribution center, they even tell you it will be shipping the next day from another distribution center. So not only do you have to wait 2 or 3 days for the mail instead of the usual one, but they add an extra day right from the git go. Haven’t they ever heard of the internet? It should take seconds to get the word to the next distribution center that I want that movie, not hours.

I’m being throttled, but what am I going to do, switch? Netflix is still the best fit for us and I think they know it.

Started down, went up, back down, up again, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 75

I Guess I Should Have Opted For The Road Hazard Warranty

The car has been handling a little quirky recently and I figured it was time for an alignment. The car tracks straight when you let go of the wheel, but seems to need constant attention to keep it in the center of the lane. Almost felt like I needed new shocks, but that shouldn’t be an issue because I just had new one put on back in August.

It couldn’t be a low tire as I keep a pretty close watch on the pressure, checking it every Saturday along with the oil level. Wait a minute, the last couple of Saturdays I haven’t done it for one reason or another. Maybe I should go check. I just did. Right rear 27-1/2 psi. Right front 27-1/2 psi. Left front 27 psi. Left rear 15psi. Ruh-roh, Reorge! Dis-mounted the tire and found what looks like a small nail about 2 inches in from the sidewall. Should be able to get this one plugged, depending on how long it is. The last time I found a nail in the tread area it was so long that it tore into the sidewall. Judging by the diameter of this nail it won’t be that long.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 72

Monitor Stand

New DesktopA couple of weeks ago my work PC crapped the bed. I ended up with one that was earmarked for someone else in QC. Unfortunately the monitor that came with the unit was a 17″ flat panel and that had less real estate than my present 20″ tube behemoth, so I didn’t take it. My cubical neighbors (they work for a different manger) just had their same vintage tubes replaced with 22″wide screen flat panels, so I figured now was the time to press the issue with my boss man.

He agreed and passed the request through channels so I could get a new screen too. I was lobbying for a 24″ Ultra Sharp Dell Widescreen, but the manager in charge of purchasing the new PC equipment thinks that the money for this sort of thing comes out of his pocket, so I got the same bargain monitor as the others. It is a GE and while it has a small tilt adjustment there is no vertical height adjustment. Sitting on the desktop was too low, a 1″ thick Reid Tool catalog was close, but the 2″ thick ream of copier paper is perfect.

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Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/08: 64

A Kick In The Pants

Router Since Saturday our internet connection has been problematic. Sometimes it was dial-up slow, others it would take 2 attempts to get to a web site and sometimes it seemed to be browser specific. I wanted to blame the cable company, you know take the easy way out, but before I made a fool of my self I decided to try a couple things.

I cleaned out my internet temp files. I cleaned out the hard drives temp files. Both were substantial. I defragged. Tonight I figured I better eliminate the router from the equation, and that turned out to be the problem. When I hooked a Cat 5 cable from modem to PC, things flew with nary a hiccup. I downloaded a firmware upgrade, reset the unit to it’s default settings, set it back up from scratch and once again we can watch streaming video with aplomb.

Started up, still up.
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Now That’s Interesting

On tonight’s episode of Lost we find out that the island has some strange power over the surrounding environment and every person on it. Oh, that’s right, we already knew that…

So of the “Oceanic 6” that get off the island, we now know 2/3rds of them. In the “flash forwards” so far we have found out that Jack is so afraid of something that he goes back to being a drunk, Hurley is so afraid of something that he hides out in a funny farm, Kate is so afraid of something that she is hiding and now we discover that Sayid is so afraid of Ben he kills people.

Interesting thing about watching the show on “live” TV is watching the commercials. For the longest time I figured I was the whole wrong demographic for the show. The ads skewed way young. Old Navy clothing, birth control pills, the hip new Ford car that you can talk to get it change the music playing instead of the archaic button pushing, etc. But finally in the next to the last commercial break I felt better, there was an ad for Viagra.

Speaking of Old Navy ads, was the new Urban Safari look advertised inspired by the whole running through the jungle on Lost or is that the new look and they picked Lost to sell it because of the whole running through jungle thing?

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