Rants

That Hurts

OK, so I’ve had a sore big toe for about a week now, feels like an ingrown toenail, meaning it is just fine unles I hit on something. I can deal with it. But this morning I noticed it right off as it hurt to even walk. Just the act of pushing off with the toe made me wince.

Now the ingrown toenails I’ve dealt with before have all been at the very end of the toe. This pain is coming from the side of the nail about halfway down it’s length. If you wanted to make this grown man squeal in pain, all you have to do is squeeze the side of my toe. Today’s planned hike in the woods was called off and we stayed home while I tried to minimize my walking.

We did manage to get to out to the MMC Breakfast Meet. It was in downtown Aiken, so we didn’t have far to go. Veggie Omelet with Grits for Donna and Hot Cakes with Sausage for me. Donna had water and I had an OJ.

Meal Cost: $10.92
Tip: $2
Spent Today: $12.92
Year to Date: $1,047.09

I want to keep the Flickr! South Carolina Post Office Photos separate, mainly because the map is filling in and looking cool, so I created a second account for other pictures. First up were the ones from last night’s sunset trip. Here is my favorite shot: Gnorm & John

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 157

Monday Wrap

I should have saved my Sunday Addendum for tonight’s post.

Yesterday I was all hyped up about Neflix’s Instant Watch deal, today not so much. There is a limited amount of movies available this way and you can forget about any new releases. Turns out it is more like subscribing to a second tier “premium” cable channel, but you get to pick what and when to watch not them. Here is a random row of four movies from the Action & Adventure category:
1) Flight of the Phoenix – 1965, starring Jimmy Stewart
2) Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter – 2001, starring who knows
3) Any Which Way You Can – 1980, starring Clint Eastwood
4) Daylight – 1996, starring Sylvester Stallone

Row three of the CD collection has been burned finishing up with Green Day. Next Row starts with Griffith, Nanci. So far, 292 folders containing 2,122 occupying 7.89 Gigabytes of hard drive space.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 148

Save Internet Radio

Time is running out for US based independent web radio streams. From the savenetradio.org website:

On March 2, 2007 the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB), which oversees sound recording royalties paid by Internet radio services, increased Internet radio’s royalty burden between 300 and 1200 percent and thereby jeopardized the industry?s future.

At the request of the Recording Industry Association of America, the CRB ignored the fact that Internet radio royalties were already double what satellite radio pays, and multiplied the royalties even further. The 2005 royalty rate was 7/100 of a penny per song streamed; the 2010 rate will be 19/100 of a penny per song streamed. And for small webcasters that were able to calculate royalties as a percentage of revenue in 2005 ? that option was quashed by the CRB, so small webcasters? royalties will grow exponentially!

These exorbitant rates go into effect on May 15 (retroactive to Jan 1, 2006!). Without Congressional action the majority of webcasters will go bankrupt and silent on this date. We need your help. Please take a moment to send a letter to your member of Congress to keep Net radio from being silenced.

Go to the Act Now! page on the Savenetradio.org and fill out the form to email your legislators and ask them to stop this huge rate increase on webcasters. Don’t know who your representatives are? Neither did I, but by filling out your address information you will get their names and a mugshot so you can recognize them on the street or CSPAN.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/07: 122

Good Morning Sunshine

SunriseThis is the sun coming up over Manhattan as seen from the 8th floor of the Newark Airport Marriot was pretty much the bright spot of the day (if you don’t count the fact that the guest laundry is free.)

The church service for Donna’s Aunt Mary was today, but the interment had to be canceled. Cousin Laurie (the one in SC that we visit) was bringing the ashes, but her husband had some medical issues and had to be rushed to the hospital in Harrisburg, PA. The repast still went on, just with two empty chairs.

I would love to write some more, but this internet connection keeps dropping and it is very frustrating. The only way to restart it is to crawl under the desk and “reboot” the modem/router by unplugging it, counting backwards from 100 by sixteens and replugging it back in.

Wired-for-Business

Why is it that you can stay at the $75 a night Quality Inn off the interstate and you get free wireless high speed internet, but spend the night in the $250 a night Newark Airport Marriott and it costs you $9.95 (plus applicable taxes) a day?

The previous two nights were spent in a New Britain, CT extended stay hotel that caters to business folks and it cost me $4.95 a day for high speed web access. Yet the local Motel 8 was giving it away.

Not only is is fast and free at the national chain places, I have never had an issue hooking up. Tonight at the Marriott I successfully managed to log in, agree to the conditions, check yes to the fee and get to view one page of the Weather Channel web site for losing connectivity. I rebooted, I swapped out for my cat5 cable and rebooted again with no luck. I ended up having to call the 1-800 number to get a help desk person. A five minute wait and we did a couple of things, including disabling the wireless (remind me to turn that back on later huh) and disabling the wired NIC and re-enabling it so I could get back on line.

That time I managed to stay connected for about 2 minutes before being dumped off. Back to the 1-800 number. This time we ran over a few other things and the CSR tried a couple of resets on her end. I am automatically getting an IP address, but I’m not getting a DNS address. The CSR said she would report this up the food chain and see if they could figure out what the problem is, but for now we left it alone as I’m back online. I just don’t have a high confidence that I’ll stay connected.

Brrrrrrr!

Ice PossibleEven though it was supposed to be cold, rainy, and maybe sleety (if that is a word), Donna and I decided to get out and see the sights. I Googled for “Central CT Attractions” and the 6th link on the 2nd linked page was a list of covered bridges. Connecticut has a whopping 5 of them and there were three that were located no too far from each other in the northwest corner of the state. A plan was hatched. We stopped in and asked my mom if she wanted to go, fully expecting her to say no, but she was up for the ride, so the three of us piled in the rental car.

Today’s high was a low 40s, but that was this morning before the precipitation started, and it went downhill all day. Our helpful little Pontiac G6 reminded us, every time I started it up, that the road might be icy. There were several times that the thermometer read 32 degrees, but it was always rain coming down. Maybe it was sleet those couple of times that the sound of what splattered on the windshield deepened or maybe not, but we did see a thin coating of ice on some of the trees at the higher elevations.

Of the three bridges, two were built in the middle 1800s and still in operation, you could drive right over them. The third was built in the middle 1970s in Kent Falls State Park and was erected as a point of interest for the park. The falls looked interesting, but because of the weather we will save them for a different day.

We had pizza for lunch in the town of Kent at a place called Paisans, it was good, but I won’t recommend you go out of your way to eat there, unlike yesterday morning’s breakfast spot.

If you ever find yourself in Port Jervis, NY seek out Cafe Roxanna. We had breakfast, but from looking at the menu their lunch would be worth the stop as well. Eclectic food served on funky dinnerware, photographic art from locals hanging on the walls and laid back jazz on the sound system, the only thing missing was the word Moon in the restaurants name.

Tomorrow we shift the show to the Garden State…

Best Buy, Worst Service

Ice Scrapin' ManThe battery in my digicam is getting tired. After taking only a couple dozen exposures it is starting to shut down and it has always been doing 2-3 times better than that. Yesterday, somewhere in Maryland, after striking out in a Radio Shack and a camera store, we ended up at a Best Buy. They didn’t have a Kodak labeled battery, but they did have a generic. For $20.99 I was out the door.

When we stopped last night I opened, with great difficulty, the plastic oyster shell and put the battery in the camera. All three lights on top of the camera started blinking, meaning that the battery was fully discharged and would be a while before it would be ready for use. In the morning all three lights were still blinking. Bad news.

Today on arrival in New Britain, Donna wanted to got to Friendly’s and I wanted to go to Best Buy. My brother knew just where to go, a shopping center on the Berlin Turnpike. We started at Friendly’s where we were seated and promptly ignored. After waiting 5-6 minutes and no one even acknowledged our presence, we walked out.

In Best Buy I went over to the Service Desk and explained that I purchased this battery at a different store in a different state and that it wouldn’t charge. The CSR started entering stuff in a terminal from my receipt, mid type another employee walked up with a phone and handed it to my CSR saying, “This person wants to speak to someone in customer service.” The CSR stops what he’s doing and starts to talk on the phone. After a half minute or so when it is apparent he isn’t wrapping up the conversation, Donna looks at him and says, “We were here first.” He takes the hint and tells the person on the phone to hold on a second. More typing and then he hands me a paper voucher and says go to the cashier and they will give me my refund.

The cashier takes one look at the papers and says, “I’m not normally at a register, I don’t know how to do this.” She gets on her radio and asks for help. After some non essential chatter we finally see another CSR head our way. She tells our cashier this is how you handle a suspended transaction and proceeds to hit an 8 or 10 sequence of keys so fast I don’t know if anyone could follow. When she gets to the end, she goes, “Uh-oh. Did you buy this in another state?” “Yep,” I tell her. “Must be the tax messing it up.” Off she goes with our cashier in tow.

After another couple minutes the original CSR walks over and hands me $21. I guess the extra penny was because I had to wait so long.