Whatever

Born Again

Today was our semi-annual (bi-annual?) dental teeth cleaning appointment. My two upper front teeth are capped (kid thing, threw something against the wall which bounced back and busted teeth and split my lip) and for the past decade or so my gums surrounding the caps have always been slightly inflamed. At first we thought it was a reaction to whatever metal the caps were made of. But that turned out to be a fairly costly failure as the new gold caps didn’t fix the issue.

Last appointment my dentist talked me into seeing a gum guy. The results of that were I should increase my brushing from once a day to twice and bump the flossing from once a week to daily. Well I didn’t get the twice daily brushing thing going, but I did make it a habit to floss every night.

Today, both the hygienist and the dentist remarked how much better the gums looked around those caps. When they asked what I was doing differently, I told them I was flossing daily now. The dentist mmm’d his approval, but the hygienist positively squealed in delight. She said, “We just love born again flossers around here.”

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 62

If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Another

None of the galleries of my pictures is working. I wonder how long that has been? I have been using a program called Simple PHP Gallery. A while back I went to the home page of the author to check for updates, but discovered that the web page was unavailable. There was a little note from the hosting company asking if I was the owner and would I like to renew my agreement…The script was still working so I just ignored that.

Something must have changed on my host to alter the way the script works, but I’ll be danged if I know what that might be. Might have happened in the recent spam attack or some upgrade of a pearl module or whatever. Guess I’ll be hunting up a new picture gallery method.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 13

Linguistic Aptitude

For whatever reason I am good at understanding people who are speaking with an accent. In my wife and my travels over the years I am always the designated interpretor. I have never mastered any language other than English (and sometimes my mastery of that is in serious doubt), but when other people speak ‘merican in a mangled form, usually after a minute or so I can figure out what they are trying to say. Also, I don’t notice it, but my wife will tell me that as I talk for a while to people who have a strong accent, I will start to take on that accent in my speech as well.

Mike Ward‘s 6-year old daughter was having a sleep over and she wrote him a list of what she wanted to do. He can understand his daughter’s list, but was offering a free beer to anyone else who could decipher it too.

* paly games
* and liscin to my inp3 palyer
* haev pytsa
* wactv
* and dowl
* and wac a moovy
* read a book
* and look at the Cisrmois tryye
* and do my karoke
* liin to radyo disny

I’m pretty sure I got them all (except for one.)

* play games
* listen to my MP3 player
* have pizza
* watch TV
* and draw (guessing ????)
* watch a movie
* read a book
* look at the Christmas tree
* do my karaoke
* listen to Radio Disney

So Mike, if I’m right on the draw thing, when’s a good time to stop by?

New Year’s Revolutions

That’s right revolutions, I gave up on resolutions a few years back when the only ones I could actually stick to, were to ride my bike less and gain some weight.

Radio Paradise is out as my internet radio station of choice. For the last week or so it has been plagued by drop outs and annoying buffering for 10 seconds to forever until it reconnects. Now it could possibly be my fault as it seemed to have started about the time I got this whole wireless network thing going…or it could be they knew I didn’t donate my usual 5 spot at the end of the month like I’d been doing all year…or whatever, but RP is out and RadioIO-eclectic is in. RadioIO-eclectic is a little harder edged, plays more cover tunes (which I like) and doesn’t play many “oldies” (which I sort of miss), but most of all it hasn’t once dropped the stream on me.

Netflix is back. This time we opted for the cheapest entrance fee – $9.95 (+tax) – which entitles us to one movie out at a time with unlimited rentals per month. Because there is a distribution center in Columbia, SC now we are looking at quite possibly a three day turn around time. We are going to plan a mid week movie night, and if the mail gods are smiling we should have another movie available for a weekend night. We quit NF in October of ’04 and haven’t watched too many flicks since then, so it only took about 10 minutes to line up 20 movies for the queue. I’m sure keeping it that full won’t be an issue for a while. Guess I’ll see about getting a plug-in to show the queue on the right hand side here, so you can see what we’ll be watching on Wednesday nights.

Might be turning off the PC at night and during the days for a while. Started to get a loud rattle this afternoon. At first I thought it was the sound of a hard drive about to self destruct. I shut the PC down and started it back up and all was quiet, for a while. Shut it off again and when I restarted the computer I commenced to backing up my documents. When it started making the noise again I cracked open the case and pushed on each HD to see if the noise would stop, and it would for as long as I was putting pressure on the drive. But neither felt like it was vibrating enough to make that much noise. Sounded more like it was coming from the power supply fan and a quick whack in that area silenced it. There is also a CPU fan in the same general area so it could be that too. But seeing as if either one were to fail silently it would be catastrophic, I’ll just turn off the PC when it is not in use. Going to put a slight crimp in my search for ET for a while.

Started down, went up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/06: 1

Wasted Leap Second

Changed the oil and rotated the tires today at 38,500ish, or about a hundred miles overdue. And for the second time in approximately 50 Miata oil changes I used a non-OEM filter. I realized I needed to change the oil somewhere on the road home from FLA last weekend, but the fact slipped my mind until like Friday night. By then it was too late to order it from my usual on line haunt and I just can’t bear to travel the 50 mile round trip to the nearest dealer (for several reasons) to buy one. On our Saturday morning shopping trip we went in to Advanced Auto and picked up 4 quarts of 10w30 Penzoil and a filter. Some schmo was monopolizing the jumbo book of filter compatibilities, so I asked at the counter. I gave the man the particulars and he asked which brand I wanted, “Fram, Puralator, Mobile1…” I said, “Whatever, they all filter oil, right?” I got a Fram, I think because it was first alphabetically.

After the Miata servicing we had just the right amount of daylight for a walk in the Woods. To change things up we drove to the other side of town to enter at a different spot. We had walked this particular section a couple times or more, but when the trail turned right to head further into the woods, Donna said, “Let’s go straight.” To which I replied, “That’s no a real trail, it ends right there.” But as I spoke she kept walking and I had no other choice but to follow her down the rabbit hole. The map I carry showed no trail, but sure enough, what looked like the end, merely resembled one as it turned into a narrow, windy, little used path down a hill. I was no too worried about getting lost as we were traveling along one edge of the woods and the railroad bed that was to our left was still there, just that it was now 30 feet above above trail level when it was once slightly below it. The map showed if we continued only this route we would come to a trail spur that would lead us back into the woods proper or if we continued past that we would come to the eastern edge of them and several officials trails. When we hit the spur we thought in for a penny, in for a pound and continued along in the uncharted territory. Unfortunately after only 50 yards or so we were confronted with an ugly 20-25 foot drop-off to a stream with a corresponding steep climb out on the other side. We quickly returned to the spur trail and finished our walk in a civilized manner.

Had I realized the Top Transition count was going to end where it did I just might had gone out in the garage and put it up before calling it a night.

Started down, went up, back down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 399

Oh! Charlie

Aiken added another chain eatery to its lineup the other week, O’Charley’s. Tonight Donna and I sampled the place. The menu was pretty much like all the others in the casual dining category. There wasn’t anything there that you couldn’t get identically or really similar someplace else. Whatever their signature dish is, the one every one thinks of when they think of O’Charley’s, I hope we didn’t have it, because our dinner was totally forgettable. Matter of fact, we have after one meal decided that we may not ever need to go back. The place was packed, but that is more attributable to the fact that it is new, than the food and or atmosphere.

Not that the food was bad. We split a side salad, whole rack of ribs, fries and slaw. We started off with a bowl of potato soup that no less than two co-workers said was to die for, and I wouldn’t suffer through a paper cut for any more. More cheddar cheese and bacon pieces than potatoes served luke-hot. The ribs were advertised as “Fall-Off-The-Bone”, but they needed some coaxing to let go of the bone. Fries are fries and the cole slaw was slightly better than average.

Within a mile of O’Charley’s is a Chili’s, a Ruby Tuesday, an Applebee’s and they are building a Fatz Cafe which are all the same kind of eatery. Also within the same radius is an Outback, a Red Lobster, an Atlanta Bread Company, a Ryan’s, an IHOP, about a dozen different fast food places and the usual smattering of Chinese, Mexican and Pizza places. I wish them luck, put they probably don’t need it because although Donna and I probably won’t ever darken their door again there are definitely enough others that will.

Started down, still down.
Miata Top Transitions since 01/01/05: 347

Underwhelmed Again

Sometime earlier this week I received a certificate in the mail that entitled me to a $35 gift card just for test-driving a new MX-5 Miata. So guess what we did Saturday morning? Right.

The interior is not as bad in person as it looked in pictures, for that matter the same can be said for the exterior. The gauges are trendy in that they start at the 6 o’clock position, but are easy to read and they shouldn’t ever be hidden because of the Miata’s first ever, tilt steering wheel. Kudos’s to the return of a real oil pressure gauge (although I didn’t really notice it.) The seats felt uncomfortable because they have tightened up the seat bottom bolsters making the seat narrower. I bet that you would get used to it after a while though. The car is larger inside, but really only on the driver’s side. I could actually get comfortable with the seat forward one notch unlike the current car. There is even a bit more headroom with the top up. They kept the 50/50 weight balance, but in and effort to reduce polar movement by getting as much weight towards the center of the car as possible they moved the engine back about 3 inches. To do this they moved the exhaust manifold to the opposite side of the engine than the current car and it encroaches on the passenger side of the interior. Not only is there a swelling of the center tunnel, but also the foot well has been pushed back. Donna is 5′-2″ and with the passenger seat pushed back all the way, she cannot stretch her legs fully out! I remember back in July when I sat in one at the gap it felt very tight on the passenger side and attributed it the center tunnel intrusion, but I see that it wasn’t just that. She was not uncomfortable, but just a little crowded. I would be uncomfortable on a trip over there though.

The door tops are marginally higher, but you can probably rest your elbow there comfortably. Although, for whatever reason, during our test drive I don’t think mine found its way there. The Z-fold top doesn’t tuck down as far as the current one, it stops about shoulder high, thereby filling in between the seats. The larger seats seem to block more from the back too. It all adds up to the interior being more encompassing, makes you feel like you are sunk down in the car. The steering wheel has audio controls in the spokes and looks like it was pulled from a Mustang, not a high point.

Exterior-wise, the fender flares are still polarizing; sometimes they look geeky and other times not so bad. The front looks a little too cute; it reminds me of Nemo, the clown fish from that Pixar movie of a few years back. I’m sure the after market will take care of that in due time (a nice set of shark’s teeth in the mouth might help.) There were several things that glared out at me in the pictures I’ve seen that I didn’t like at all, head lights, marker lights, tail lights, third brake light, but standing next to the car in person, they didn’t really bother me. One thing that really bugged me in the pictures I saw of the car with the top up was a funny hitch around the window. Made it look like it was coming undone from the frame or something. Turns out to be an extra folded seam along the edge of the top (hard to explain) that is a rain rail. Once again it didn’t seem so obvious in person. The Z-fold top with one center latch is trick. The no boot thing is nice, sorta, I don’t like the looks of the empty spaces that show on each side, they’ll probably make a nice spot to catch falling leaves.

They had a new black car parked right next to a black ’05 Mazdaspeed and you can tell they are related, but the newer one is larger looking. Not MG Midget to MGB larger, but more like a younger brother who grew up with better nutrition. It is still very much Miatalike, but with each passing generation of the car it creeps further from its roots. When we went from the first generation car into our current 2nd generation vehicle it seemed more grown up. It had a little more power and a little more torque. It was quieter, both inside and out. The interior was much nicer in looks and materials. Plus they added all those power goodies that we take for granted in cars now days. The new Miata is probably about the same incremental step up from our current car, as it was from the first generation Miata we used to own before. I’m not so sure that is a good thing.

Donna may have said it best. While chatting with the salesman afterward, she told him she didn’t like it, “It felt a lot like riding around in that Mustang convertible we rented a few years back.” If that is the case, it spells doom for us lovers of raw rear-wheel drive sports cars, but maybe success for Mazda as the car may attract a more mainstream buyer.